Garou: Mark of the Wolves™
1999 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 38.1MB + Mac
I had never tried Garou before, I’m a hard set fan of the Street Fighter series but ended up enjoying this a lot more than I expected, maybe my second best 2d fighter.

Beach Life
2002 | Simulation | Windows | Eidos Interactive | 343.1MB
Sadly I couldn’t get this to run on Vista, no short review here.

The King of Fighters 2003
2003 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 40.2MB + Mac
I’m getting quite burnt out on fighting games with this summer throw-down even, this seems like a fine fighter, but they are all seeming to blend together.

Atlantis Evolution
2004 | Adventure | Windows | Dreamcatcher | 2.3GB
Atlantis has a very classic style to it which will remind you of games such as Zork but with some very creative backgrounds. Fans of this type of game may get quite a kick from it, but there’s a little too much random clicking for my taste

Jaws™ Unleashed
2006 | Action | Windows | Majesco | 741.8MB
Jaws was slated with terrible reviews across the board, I find the premise rather interesting and the first few minutes of the tutorial made me feel like I could bleed a little joy from this game. However it becomes quickly apparent that the horrific controls won’t be something you quickly get used to. The controls and the whole feeling of the game was so bad that I couldn’t progress further to find what other flaws Jaws was hiding

Enemy Engaged 2
2007 | Action | Windows | Strategy First | 768.5MB
This sadly doesn’t live up to it’s potential, the campaigns are a lot of fun and varied, but the game just feels broken at it’s core with bad terrain and AI.

Today Stockers all across North America are desperately try to keep BioShock on the store shelves. But with all the hype of last weeks premature release by several stores, it looks like keeping this game on store shelves may require allot of extra work and lots of inventory. Last week there were reports of copies of BioShock going for as high as $159 on EBay. With all the hype surrounding this game on the Internet, and the great reviews this is sure to be a huge seller. European gamers will have to wait until August 24th to get their feet wet in this game.

BioShock is a “genetically enhanced” first-person shooter that lets players do things never before possible in the genre. Gamers enter the game as a castaway in Rapture, an underwater utopia torn apart by civil war. Caught between powerful forces and hunted down by genetically modified “splicers” and deadly security systems, players have to come to grips with a deadly, mysterious world filled with powerful technology and fascinating characters. No encounter ever plays out the same and no two gamers will play BioShock the same way. “With the release of BioShock, we are redefining the shooter experience by providing players with the freedom to decide how to proceed and which actions to take,” said Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K. “The teams at 2K Boston and 2K Australia have captured the essence of this underwater world and brought it to vivid life in the art design and open-ended storyline. Welcome to Rapture.” In the decaying art deco underwater city of Rapture, players can turn everything they encounter into a weapon, biologically modify their body with plasmids, hack devices and security systems, upgrade weapons, craft new ammo variants, and experiment with different battle techniques. “The development team has been working on BioShock for years to push the limits in every way possible, so we are excited for gamers to finally experience BioShock as we’ve always imagined it,” said Ken Levine, President and Creative Director of 2K Boston. “We delivered on our promise of bringing gamers a unique and enriching first-person shooter experience that not only challenges their capacity to adapt and survive, but tests their values and commitment to the inhabitants of Rapture.”

BioShock’s features include:

• Biologically modify your body with plasmids which are genetic augmentations that empower you with dozens of fantastic abilities including: send Electrobolts storming from your fingertips, unleash a swarm of hornets hatched from the veins of your arms, or strategically turn enemies against one another with irritants.
• Take control of your world by hacking devices and systems: reprogram enemy security bots into personal bodyguards, modify vending machines to change prices, and transform machine gun security turrets into powerless pieces of metal.
• Upgrade your weapons at Power-to-the-People stations located through Rapture: craft variants of ammo and plasmids by picking up materials in the city to modify them at U-Invent kiosks.
• Turn everything into a weapon: the environment, your body, fire and water, and even your worst enemies. BioShock’s free form combat options allow gameplay scenarios to be approached with a variety of weapons, active and passive plasmids, environmental objects utilization, exploitation of political alliances, or a combination of techniques. Find your style but know when to adapt.
• Explore an incredible and unique art deco world hidden deep under the ocean, vividly illustrated with realistic water effects and truly next generation graphics.
• Make meaningful and mature decisions that culminate in the ultimate question: Do you exploit the innocent survivors of Rapture to save yourself…or risk it all to become their savior?

For more information, visit the BioShock website, and the community site.

Today only Amazon.com are selling The Sims Life Stories for the Mac at $12.99, reduced from $29.99 with free shipping if you add another $12.01.

The Sims life stories is your basic Sims 2 package without any of the numerous expansion packs available, this would make the game worthless if it wasn’t for the addition of multiple story lines, much like you’d expect from a console version. Collectors of Sim games will likely get a kick out of something new, even if they are missing many of the items and additions they are used to.

Fatal Fury 3
1995 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 19.1MB

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2
1998 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 30.2MB

Hitman: Blood Money
2006 | Action | Windows | Eidos Interactive | 2,159.8MB

Athena
1986 | Action | Arcade | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 143.3KB

Imperial Glory
2005 | Strategy | Windows | Eidos Interactive | 1,175.8MB

When I got wind of the BioShock Demo being available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace I started the download before I went to work this morning. But at 1.3 gigs in size I could not wait around and get a little game play in before work. If only I had picked the right six numbers for the Powerball last Saturday, my gaming would not be bothered by this pesky work stuff and I could have sat in my underwear playing BioShock all morning. Sitting at my desk this morning was the longest five hours of my life. As soon as noon rolled around, I was heading back home to play a little BioShock, and I have to say it was worth it.

I will try not to give away to many specifics of the story, but keep my comments mainly to game play and environment. The controls are your basic First Person Shooter controls, so not really anything new there and besides developers are kind of locking into a formula that seems to work with the controls. The visuals are amazing there is not another Xbox 360 game out there that looks this good. There is a scene where you are floating underwater trying to get to the surface. Between the visuals combined with the sound effects really evoke the sensation of terror. You almost feel like you are truly struggling to get to the surface for air. When you fight enemies they have certain presence that seems to make them really scary. You will notice as you finish them off they all seem to look a little different. One enemy that attacks you while being on fire is truely amazing, he is covered in flames as he lunges at you doing his best to send you to the same demise as he is certainly headed for. When you are finally finished beating him to a plup, you will notice his body is covered in burns. Like I said the visuals really REALLY good. The game seems to have this formula of crazy heart pounding action, then calm, then the suspense leading up to another super intense action scene.

I did notice a couple of visuals that seemed kind of off. First when you are swimming on the top of the ocean, I kind of got the feeling that I was floating over the water. Think of Shadow Run and floating up the ladders and you sort of have the idea. Since this is a first person perspective I kind of expected to see my arms reaching out in front of me as I swim. Second some of the clouds seemed kind of a strange color and texture as I was swimming, for those of you who have ever run Microsoft Windows in 256 colors instead of True 32 will understand what I am talking about. It just did not seem quite right. But honestly these two small instances do not even compare to the great eye candy that is the rest of the game. Seeing fish flopping on the ground or the flames that are consuming an enemy as he attacks you are incredible.

Before I played the Demo I was thinking about picking up this game when it got its first price drop. But now I am going to go out and pick this game up day One! My suggestion is try out the Demo. I think you are going to be like me and start racing to get through whatever game you are playing right now so you can be ready to start this game the day it comes out. I just finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Sunday, and I am planning on working twice as hard to finish up Call of Duty 3 before August 21st so I can dedicate myself to this game. If you are someone who believes in try before you buy then you definitely need to bump BioShock to the top of your Game Q.

Today only Amazon.com are selling MonsterGecko PistolMouse FPS Console for the PC at $5.99, reduced from $9.99 with free shipping.

Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a PC light-gun, it is in-fact a PC mouse shaped like a gun. This frankly looks horrible, and I can’t imagine using it in a FPS with any great accuracy compared to a decent Logitech mouse, but I’ll reserve judgement since I’ve not tried it. Alternatively this would make a great mouse for my desk at work.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Blizzard Diablo 2: Lord Of Destruction for the PC & Mac for $7.99, reduced from $19.99 with free shipping.

Diablo 2 may not be a new game, but there’s still nothing that gives a multiplayer action dungeon crawl quite like Diablo 2.

Joytiq is reporting that EA plans to shut down 42 servers as of September 1st, 2007, and another 7 as of November 1st, 2007. As a gamer who has not completed all of Madden 2006 yet this is a little disturbing. Not to mention that this is clearly EA’s way of pushing gamers into purchasing the latest sports game expansion pack …… excuse me I mean latest versions of all their roster changes for sports games …. Whoops slip of the tongue I mean latest full version their sports games line up and other games that have newer versions out.

Microsoft seems to be able to keep the servers up for the Xbox version 1? And it has always been a Mystery to me why exactly EA needs to maintain servers aside from the Xbox LIVE servers? It always seemed like a great way to obtain email address to send advertisements (Cough, SPAM, Cough) about their new products not to mention data mine the other information they force you to enter. Aside from Square Enix, it seems that EA is the only other company that needs to maintain redundant servers to allow online game play. Since Square Enix does this to charge extra and allow cross platform play it leaves one to wonder what EA has up their sleeve in the future, and I doubt it is cross platform game play.

I am sure there are a pages of statistics and an army of bean counters over at EA that can tell you that hardly anyone is using those servers, and that it costs truck loads of money to keep them running. But here is the deal, if we as gamers can only use these sports games for a year or two maybe we should not have to clean out our wallets to buy your game. Maybe games that require EA servers to be maintained should only cost $30.00 or $40.00 to buy. I also think that EA should be much more forth coming about the fact that you will only be able to play these games for two years or probably less in the future. I would bet that within a few years they will shut off their servers the day that the next versions are released. I honestly hope that Microsoft and Sony step in and do something about this, because I think it is really a black eye to both platforms that EA can swindle money from customers using their respect platforms. I would encourage anyone who has purchased games that are affected to send emails to EA, Microsoft, and Sony about your feelings on this matter. I hope this makes everyone think twice about buying EA games and additional EA content. Lets all hope that 2K Sports can step up to the plate and give us all a true online gaming experience.

Check out what the guys at Penny Arcade think about EA, I definitely agree! Click here!

Here is the schedule for the mass unplugging

September 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Arena Football for PlayStation 2
Arena Football for Xbox
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox 360
FIFA Soccer 06 for PC
FIFA06 for PC
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation 2
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PC
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation 2
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA World Cup 2006 for Xbox
Fight Night Round 3 for PlayStation Portable
Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox 360
Madden NFL 06 for PC
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation 2
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation Portable
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for PlayStation 2
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for Xbox
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for PlayStation 2
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for Xbox
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for PlayStation 2
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for Xbox
NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360
NBA Live 06 for PC
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation 2
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation Portable
NCAA Football 2005 for Xbox
NCAA Football 2006 for PlayStation 2
NCAA Football 2006 for Xbox
NCAA March Madness 06 for PlayStation 2
NCAA March Madness 06 for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PC
NFL Head Coach for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for PC
NHL 06 for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox

November 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Burnout Revenge for Xbox
Burnout Revenge for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PC
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Most Wanted for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed Most Wanted for Xbox

Via Joystiq

A couple of stunners stick out in this week’s Gametap list

Fatal Fury
1991 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 4MB

Fatal Fury Special®
1993 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 11MB

Real Bout Fatal Fury
1995 | Fighting | Neo-Geo | SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION | 23.6MB

A great lineup if you are a fan of the Fatal Fury series, Gametap went pretty overboard with the release of 3 games, but I’m sure fans will just eat it up.

Betrayal at Krondor ™
1994 | Role-Playing | DOS | Sierra Entertainment | 48.7MB

The overview of Betrayal at Krondor makes the game sound very tempting with the promise of a dynamic choice driven story

Hitman: Contracts
2004 | Action | Windows | Eidos Interactive | 270.5MB

Hitman is a fantastic game, if you missed it before it makes a great addition to all the other Hitman games already on Gametap.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 ™
2001 | Action | Windows | Eidos Interactive | 299.4MB

Gametap continues its rather disturbing fascination with vampire games here, but they are all just so darn good

As usual the games listed as “Windows” can’t be played on a Mac, the rather old (but highly rated) Betrayal at Krondor will play on a Mac despite being a DOS game.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Halo2 for the PC for $34.99, reduced from $49.99 with free shipping.

Wow, this is a really great deal, if I had the money on hand I’d be picking this one up. I hope soon we’ll also be able to get a copy of Vista to go with it for $34.99 also.