Site Redesign, 80 Million For Ronaldo!?!?

Hi All!

Hopefully you got here via Maccas Sports Gaming Page - if not...how the hell did you get here? Regardless, the main site is undergoing a slow and painful redesign but hopefully the new layout will let me post and update more often than I was before.

Along with aesthetic and behind the scenes functional changes there will also be some content changes. Of course I`ll still be focusing on soccer gaming but I`ll also be doing non-soccer and also non-sports game reviews. Along with work, the wedding, a buying a home, and general laziness another reason I wasn`t updating as much was due to a bunch of non-sports games that were occupying my time. I hope to add short reviews and impressions of non-sports games that tickle my fancy.


One of those non-sports games that I`ve been playing more recently has been Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. I actually just completed the main story part of the game today and from start to finish I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with this game. Everything from the presentation to the story to the unique (but not overdone) use of stylus controls was top notch. Most amazing is that Rockstar Leeds managed to cram in almost all of GTA IV's Liberty City right into the game! With the exception of Alderney/New Jersey all of Liberty City is represented, block for block, accurate to the 3D next-gen game.

The game itself uses a 2/3rds top down view with some quasi-cell shaded graphics which work wonderfully well on the DS and despite the traffic and pedestrians the action hardly ever slows down. The missions resolve around the GTA stable of driving and shooting but there's a great variety and the three final 'boss' missions are a blast. There`s no voice work but the story unfolds in 2D comic-book style static cut-scenes and the main character Huang Lee has a some great one-liners.

The game controls via the D-Pad, shoulder buttons (for lock-on) and the four face buttons but the use of the stylus is unique and varied - having you do activities ranging from hot-wiring a car, to assembling a sniper rifle, to arming/disarming a bomb!

If you have a Nintendo DS I wholeheartedly recommend this excellent title - the single player clocks in at about 7 hours but there are lots of other mini-games and activities that you can still play even after the story is done.


Well that's all for today. Hope you followed E3 last week - while there were a ton of exciting titles on display I'm always dismayed by the fact that sports gaming (with the exception of racing games) never makes a big splash in LA. That said, there were some FIFA 10 tidbits.....360 degree dribbling, anyone?

:)

Lavan