I walked four blocks south and one block east from MTV headquarters yesterday to play some upcoming games from Midway. Among them was “TNA Impact!,” a September game for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii based on the generally more athletic if not as charismatic company of wrestlers who compete against the industry’s dominant league, WWE.

Two of TNA’s most physically dynamic stars, Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles were at the event, playing the game and standing within earshot while the game’s designer gave me a demo. The game was pretty fun. I mostly button-mashed and wound up, playing as Daniels, performing some cool high-flying moves and, when in danger, issuing some vicious uppercuts to my virtual opponent’s most sensitive body part.

I ran into trouble when I tried to discuss the story with the game designer. Specifically, I wasn’t sure how to ascertain whether the story treats wrestling as — were the wrestlers listening? — “real.” It’s 2008. We all know pro wrestling is a performance, a physically demanding one that is less combat and more coordination. But still, the word “fake” doesn’t roll of the tongue when wrestlers are standing nearby. It seems so insulting. I asked about the story and the designer told me it’s mostly being kept secret for now. I asked if he could at least say whether it treats wrestling as if it was real or if it acknowledges that it’s f… I paused. Second try: Or does it treat wrestling like it’s a job, I asked?

The designer tried answering my question, explaining that the game will position the player as their own wrestler within the TNA organization. Third try from me: So, it acknowledges that these guys have scripts and don’t necessarily hate each other? (Were Styles and Daniels hearing me stumble through this??). Does it acknowledge that wrestling is … uh … involves a script? I couldn’t say the word. And, really, is “fake” even the right word?

From what I can tell, the TNA game will treat wrestling as if it is a real, unscripted sport. That’s the storyline, which, now that I think of it, is what seems fake. Nevertheless, I don’t think people go to wrestling games for the stories but for the gameplay. I’m no aficionado. It seemed fun for casual players. I told the designer, Daniels and Styles that I enjoyed the game. No, I wasn’t faking.

Next: Time to deal with those taunting me about my “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2” scores.

A trusted friend had led me to believe that “Dolphin Olympics 2,” a free PC browser game available on the Kongregate service which hosts my 2007 Game of The Year, is as captivating as a bear trap.

This friend has been known to fire up “DO2″ in his web browser during moments of boredom, turning such periods into moments of glee. Sadly, I failed to do the same.

On Wednesday night, near the conclusion of a long day, I took my first dip into “Dolphin Olympics 2.” I used the arrow keys to swim and soar a dolphin through sea and air. I just wasn’t hooked, netted or whatever verb you use to describe ensnaring the smartest animal in the ocean.

Hang on while I try the game again (via this link) to be sure it’s not for me..

….

No. Just played another two-minute game. Just swam through hoops, flipped over the horizon and scored lots of point. It’s like a 2D dolphin-based “Tony Hawk.” But, sorry, Justin, this is not going to be another “Desktop Tower Defense” for me.

Diary readers, give it a shot and see for yourself. I do hear that many people love it.

Next: Game time has been scarce this week. Maybe I’ll get some “Eden” in tonight?

Words will fail me as I write this diary entry. I cannot easily describe the magnificent feel of Nintendo’s DS game “Rhythm Tengoku Gold” — coming to America in the next few months as “Rhythm Heaven.”

But if “Rhythm Tengoku Gold” were not a video game but instead the process of typing this diary entry, then the sentence you are now reading would have been typed letter by letter automatically by the computer, with me waiting — waiting — waiting — until the moment I needed to insert the period. Then a cymbal would crash. “Crash!” And the next sentence would be automatically typed as well until the moment I could drum the next period. “Crash!” And this whole paragraph would be set to a soundtrack so that every time I typed a period and heard the crash it would be in rhythm with a catchy song. “Crash!”

If “Rhythm Tengoku Gold” were not a game but the process of driving to the movie theater, not only would a song play the entire journey, but every time you needed to turn on your blinker to signal a turn or lane change, the blinker’s tick-tock would keep perfect time to the song. The road itself would have been designed to compel you to use the blinker only at those moments when the blinker best fit the music.

Does that help? I can be more specific… Read more…

I keep asking friends who own PS3s if they’ve played “Siren: Blood Curse” yet, a game that is already a contender for best horror game of the year.

I keep hearing excuses, including an apparent prohibition by some girlfriends from letting their significant others play the creepy multi-character game in their presence.

(Could these excuses also explain why most of the major U.S. gaming outlets have yet to review this Sony-developed download-only game more than 10 days since its release? Or did this article I reported in May already explain why how a good game could get shunned?)

Whatever the case, I must confess the reason that I stopped playing the game on Monday night was that I got scared. Read more…

I thought it would be a game that would spell the end of my Xbox 360. And I expected it would come suddenly, in the flash of a red ring. I was wrong.

The day that I had expected to arrive at least a year ago appeared to arrive on Saturday morning. That is when my launch Xbox 360, a 20GB machine that has whirred through my complete play-throughs of “King Kong,” “Gears of War,” “Mass Effect, chunks of so many other games and dozens of Xbox Live Arcade games — a machine that has been my primary DVD player since 2005 — did the game console equivalent of a hacking cough, stumble and cold sweat.

My Xbox 360 did not die, but it appears to be on its way.

Shockingly, my Xbox 360 has not red-ringed. It has suffered a stranger, seemingly fatal malady, one that Google has barely begun to catalogue: Read more…

I began my diary this week with a story about my unhealthy obsession with Take Two’s “Civilization Revolutions” on the DS. Literally “unhealthy,” you may recall, because the game motivated me to stay underground, sitting in a subway station, breathing subway station air, for 45 minutes more than I needed to a week ago today. So I quit the game. Last night a friend opened his DS and showed me that he’s now hooked.

In the middle of this week, THQ sent me a new preview build of “Lock’s Quest.” I think they’re subtitling the game as “Construction Combat,” which fits. “Lock’s Quest” is an isometric real-time-strategy game that puts you in control of a hero named Lock who can be manually controlled to fend off armies of bad guys. These bad guys attack in timed waves. The main way you hold them off is with towers that you build from pieces of walls and turrets bought from a budget of points earned in combat. This essentially makes the game a tower-defense title, like “Desktop Tower Defense” or “PixelJunk Monsters,” but with story and character action mixed in. I’ve played it through many of my subway rides this week. (This build, unlike the last one, let me get past the tutorial.) It plays well, it’s fun. I’m hooked.

The headline here is that in 2008 my DS gaming has been almost completely driven by games not made by Nintendo. How odd is that? Read more…

If I was able to be one of 36 members of the gaming media to nominate the best games of E3, surely someone will allow me, today, to nominate my pick for best Xbox Achievement of 2008?

Who cares if the year is barely halfway finished? How can there be a better Xbox 360 Achievement than “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2“’s Wax Off?

Let’s back up for a second. In my last diary entryI wrote about my Tuesday morning session with “GWRE2.” I liked the twin-stick shooter but didn’t feel yet that it was the best game in the series.

I hadn’t unlocked all of the game’s six modes yet. On Tuesday night I did, and the game became my favorite “Geometry Wars,” after all. Credit the new game’s Pacifism mode, which ensnared me with the best let-me-try-one-more allure of a good bag of potato chips. Pacifism Mode also contains what I think is the best and most smartly designed Achievement of the year: Wax Off.
Let me make my case.. Read more…

What I thought would be a dry 24 hours of not playing games was enriched in the final minutes, early this morning, with the pleasant discovery that the new twin-stick shooter “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2” was available for download over Xbox Live Arcade.

This was great news for me not just because the first “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved” was my favorite game of the Xbox 360’s launch, but because the unheralded “Geometry Wars: Galaxies” on the Wii (classic controller is a must!) was one of my top 10 games of last year.

The new game offers six modes of play, each unlocked after investing putting time in the previous one. I only played three this morning: 1) the three-minute-timed Deadline, 2) a mode called King in which you can only shoot from safety zones that appear and disappear anywhere on the game board — echoes of dark-world safe zones in “Metroid Prime 2: Echoes” — and 3) Evolved, which plays similarly to the main mode of “GWRE.”

I often start playing sequels in a skeptical and grumpy mood. “GWRE2″ suffered from that. Read more…

Given the strong recommendation of readers of this diary, I decided yesterday I will try to get past the second level of “Kid Icarus” but Monday was not the night to do it.

No, Monday was the night for playing more “Siren: Blood Curse” on the PlayStation 3. It scared me in good ways and in one very bad way.

I have long been curious about the “Siren” games. I’m not a big horror fan, but I was intrigued by reports that the games in the series let you play multiple characters in a village, hijacking the eyesight of friends and foes for special split-screen dual views of the levels, all while you resolve a number of diverse plotlines. It’s all sounded to me like a mix between “Majora’s Mask,” “Silent Hill,” “Battlefield: Modern Combat” and “Indigo Prophecy.” Who wouldn’t want to play that?

The new “Siren,” downloadable for the PS3 in 12 episodes, presents the creepy combination I sought. In the first chapter, a group of Americans come upon a Japanese village full of murdering zombies and have to run and fight for their lives. The player has to sort out why a professor and his TV producer ex-wife and their daughter are all there, why an American teenager shows up, why the guy with the rifle is hiding in the trees, whether the cameraman has a secret agenda, and so on. It’s good, creepy stuff as zombies amble toward whoever you’re playing, undeterred by the stop sign you just shoved through their body.

That’s what I like about “Siren: Blood Curse.” What’s not so good is that each 500-800 megabyte chapter of “Siren” has to be downloaded separately and then installed, separately, on the PS3. I’ve played two chapters, the first lasting 10 minutes, the second about 20 and in each case the installation for the chapters took five minutes. With 12 chapters, that means I will have to spend about an hour installing the full game, chapter by chapter. Installation can’t be done in the background while playing another PS3 game, so you have to surrender use of your PS3 during each chapter installation.

And you thought “Metal Gear Solid IV” had a problematic installation?

“Siren,” as good as it is, unintentionally makes me fearful for the future of large downloadable games. The game is very good, but having to manually oversee an hour of installation is… not so good. Surely there’s a better way?

Next: I predict no new games will be played today unless the PR guy I’m having dinner with decides to show me something cool during dinner. We’ll see!

Yes, indeed my game diary is back. I didn’t play many games for fun during E3 and was just too overloaded with work last week to file my diary. That’s all done with.

Plus there are game experiences I must get off my chest:

-I played “Civilization Revolutions” an unhealthy amount this weekend. I am wary of “Civ” games, not because they are bad, but because they are so good that they can take over my life. Two proofs: 1) I’m riding on the subway Friday evening, playing “Civilization Revolutions” on my DS. I arrive at my stop and sit on a bench in the subway station so I can finish my turn. Forty-five minutes later I’m still sitting there and decide to swear off ever playing the game again. It’s dangerous. 2) On Saturday I try one session of the PS3 version. Two sessions later — and with most of the day gone by — I decide I must not play the PS3 one again too. I need my life back!

-On Friday night, I played the first chapter of the new downloadable “Siren” on the PS3. Very creepy, but the game has weird controls. Looking forward to playing more.

-On Sunday I tried “Kid Icarus,” which I bought on the Wii’s Virtual Console. I thought this game was important and I want to understand what’s good about it in case a sequel ever comes out. But I wasn’t having fun, because the game is really hard. I found a Gamespot review which supports my frustration. The game is brutal. Is it ok if I don’t go back to this?

-I also finished the Subspace Emissary side-scroller side-game in “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” That last level should have been the only level in that whole thing. It repeats all the earlier levels and integrates them into one network of levels, “Metroid“-style. After I completed it I put the game on my shelf, in the keeper stack. I don’t really like the game very much as a game, but it is a fine museum of Nintendo nostalgia.

Next: I have some “Stubbs: The Zombie” to play via the wonders of the Xbox 360’s Xbox Originals program.

Since the last entry, I finally got a sick, nauseous feeling playing a video game. Finally! I’d heard about people who got motion sickness playing first-person shooters. I’m sure “Mario Party” has caused a few upset stomachs, too.

But for all the hundreds (thousands?) of games I’ve played, I never played one that made me feel unwell.

Then came Thursday morning.

During my morning commute, Square-Enix’s new iPod game”Song Summoner” got me seriously worried I was going to see my breakfast for a second time.

Read more…

Since the last entry a game got me a little steamed.

I was dabbling with the tutorial of my preview build of “Lock’s Quest” for the Nintendo DS. Several weeks ago, I got a demo of the game during the course of lunch with game director Jeremiah Slaczka. He didn’t need to tell me much more about it other than it is partially a tower-defense game. Good enough for me! It’s tower-defense mixed with real-time combat, actually, which is pretty interesting.

The “problem” I’ve had with “Lock’s Quest” so far is that it’s one of those games with a tutorial that’s as long as my subway ride home. I wanted to get going, to play it and enjoy it. But first it had to take me to school.

I don’t think I’ve ever held a game’s tutorial against it. There’s always something else that makes or breaks a game. But impatiently tapping through the necessary tutorial (it’s a pretty complex, though smoothly-presented game) brought back a familiar feeling: tutorial frustration. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has started a game I’m expecting to like only to be bogged down by so much preliminary explaining and semi-interactive teaching and … okay, okay, let me control the game!

I didn’t hold this kind of thing against “Advance Wars” back in the day, so things could work out superbly anyway. A tutorial can’t ever ruin a game, can it?

Next: Maybe Facebook will let me start playing official Scrabble at some point.