My globe trotting ways have put a damper on my game plays, but I’ve had a chance to sneak some game time behind the PS2 and PC. Thanks to a new SATA hard drive, I’ve been mostly going through the gauntlet of entertaining demos, such as _Fahrenheit_ (different), _Total Overdose_ (funky), _Serious Sam II_ (it’s hard, still haven’t finished it), and _Need for Speed: Most Wanted_ (cops _and_ customization?! yay).
In the PlayStation: _We Love Katamari_. In a market that has a dozen shooting games, a hundred sport franchises, and a thousand regurgitated sequels of both, Katamari Damacy stands as one of the most innovative games since Tetris and Bejewelled. Ironically, it is the sequel, We Love Katamari, that outshines the original. The two minor problems of the original – lack of variety and short game time – have been addressed, making this game bigger, better, and more outlandish than before. BTW, its creator, Keita Takahashi, recently floored GDC Europe with his whimsical answer to their discussion question, “What do grannies like?” Takahashi won hands down with his cat-shaped controller social RPG thingamabob…
On Steam: The multiplayer “_The Hidden_”:http://www.hidden-source.com/ and the singleplayer “_Halloween: Pumpkin Night_”:http://home.r-ben.com:8000/~halloween/?s=home. Both spooky, both intriguing ideas. In The Hidden, you and the entire server hunt and attempt to bring down an invisible, superhuman mutant. In Halloween, you play a trick-or-treating teenager who accidentally unleashes supernatural forces from a creepy house on a hill. It has a few maddening puzzles made opaque due to lack of instruction and bad programming, such as figuring out how to pull the dumbwaiter and yourself up to the attic of the spooky house, but it was still a fun, short diversion.