It’s been a month and a half now of mowing down zombie after zombie in Valve’s spectacular coop extravaganza: Left 4 Dead.

I have to admit, Left 4 Dead disappointed me on day one. I beat all of the campaigns on the normal difficulty setting in 5 hours on the first day. I played them alone since my wife didn’t want to try it and I didn’t know anyone else who had it on the 360. In general, I don’t like playing online with people I don’t know so I went solo. When it was all over, I felt somewhat unsatisfied. It was short and didn’t feel very different from a regular FPS.

Then I finally convinced my wife to try Versus Mode with me online and that was the end of my social life. Now we’re both addicted and play it daily yelling at each other to get the Hunter off or freaking out at the sight of the dreaded Witch! Valve, you’ve got a winner in Left 4 Dead and I hope you don’t take too long to come out with some DLC!

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Here we are, more than 2 weeks after my initial review and I had a lot more time to find the ups and downs of this game.

In my previous posts, I said I could not find many downsides to this game. I unfortunately found several now but I also found some new good sides.

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A couple of months ago a music executive said that royalty rates for songs used in video games are “paltry” and a game executive replied by saying that really, the music companies ought to be paying the gaming companies for promoting their songs.

This argument could really be applied to any license, music or not. It used to be that a game could profit enormously by having a connection to an established license. But now that media consumption patterns have shifted, those licenses profit just as much by being featured in a game.

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Only two days ago did I procure the Grand Theft Auto clone Saints Row 2, but I already feel the need to write about it.

Yes Saints Row is a GTA clone, but that does not mean its creators should be ashamed of it. Clone just mean someone took a good idea and build on it. That’s called innovation and if people refrained from cloning and improving good ideas then we would still be driving around in Ford model T’s.

Now, let’s take a look at this game from the perspective of its most likely user: a GTA IV player who’s looking for even more goodies from a sandbox game.

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It’s been two weeks since I unwrapped SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation and rushed home excited to frag.  14 days of lag, disconnections, and other online server-related annoyances. Over 330 hours of patiently waiting for the patch that will justify my day one purchase. I believe that’s almost 20,000 minutes too many.

I’m now looking to sell my copy of SOCOM but sadly there are too many people out there trying to do the same. I would trade it in but that would most likely turn my purchase into a ridiculously expensive rental. No, I think I’ll keep waiting for the inevitable patch.

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As most of you have undoubtedly already known for a week now, my most anticipated game of this year has been delayed 1 week due to a couple of Qur’anic verses found within one of its songs. Being a Muslim who has been absorbing every little bit of information about Little Big Planet since its announcement, the delay was almost surreal to me.

The one game I was truly excited about this year is unintentionally going to hurt Islam’s image. No, Islam’s image isn’t going to be hurt because of the inclusion of the verses, it’s hurt by the removal of said lyrics by Sony.

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Back in February, I wrote about how I’ve been dying to make a Little Big Planet remake of Super Mario Bros. world 1-1.  Well it seems that someone has already made one!

Yeah it’s pretty ugly and plays as slow as molasses, but it still looks pretty faithful level-design wise. What really irks me is that this was done in the Beta and, since I wasn’t part of the beta, I didn’t even have the chance to be the first to make a Mario homage Oh well, I can still be the best!

Here’s to hoping the only game I’ve pre-ordered this year doesn’t get delayed once more …

I was reading Rayna’s blog the other day when she mentioned this new game Akoha. What can I say, the concept behind Akoha is quite brilliant! A card game that rewards people for doing good deeds in real life? That’s awesome on so many levels!I love card games and I always talk about doing good deeds so I feel almost as if the designers of this game had me in mind all along! Rayna just gave me my starter deck on Friday and I can’t wait to get started spreading good all other the world and tracking how far my good deeds go! (more…)

I’ve been an avid video game player since the first time I put a quarter in that ‘Weird Space Invaders thing’ all those years ago. Many games passed through my hands since then, some good, some bad, but no matter in witch category they would fall, many would have one critical flaw: they often confuse challenge with frustration.

Now before I go any further, I want to respond right away to the avalanche of ‘wuss’ emails I will probably receive later on. I don’t want to know that you were able to go through this or that level or mission on your first try. Fine, you were able beat the mission I wasn’t able to. Good for you, but the point wasn’t a single mission or a specific game.

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Due to some extenuating circumstances, I have only just finished Bioshock last weekend. Needless to say, the game has a lot going for it. It’s gorgeous to look at most of the time, had a great story, really fun weapons and pseudo-magic, incredibly detailed fictional world, and the atmosphere was out of this world! You’d think that was enough, wouldn’t you? No, the brilliant team behind the game decided to add emotion…

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