Brian over at gaming-guide Kotaku has posted both a video and review of the God of War 2 demo that Sony sent him. In short, he’s impressed.

Brian, I do trust you. Now, ahem, if anybody from Sony is reading this and would like to send me a copy of the demo, I’m more than happy to post a review of my own.

Fueled with booze and surrounded by boobs, self described “B-Level game designer” David Jaffe let loose some details on his “God of War” series recently at the Playboy Mansion. Drunkenly shooting down rumors that he has been working on part three of his series before part two is even released, Jaffe boldly admits that his PSP version was shit and ultimately scrapped to save face and cash. Jaffe’s gaffes continued tumbling out once the sauced up Sony marketing exec Jeff Reese tried selling some bullshit that only the most devoted of fan boys would have bought.

Multiple platforms? Unless Sony is developing another hand held device or wising up and not selling a console purchased solely by oil barons and virgins for life, Mr. Reese is just talking out his overly paid ass. Then again he is drunk and surrounded by the boobies so perhaps he gets a pass.

Jaffe goes on to rightfully praise the Xbox Live service and hopes the Sony equivalent will be competitive and perhaps surpass Live someday. Considering how unappealing it would be to have some geek shove a microphone in your face at the Playboy Mansion for an impromptu interview, Jaffe managed to indulge his fans (and ego) with some wonderful sound bytes. Not to mention giving birth to one hell of a catch phrase when bullied by the butt-hurt, alpha-male Sony exec.

For those not in the know, “God of War” is a sadistically sublime game on the PS2 wherein you control a bald (he shaves it!), Conan-like Man God that has his way with women and splits monsters from the Greek mythos right up the middle with his bloody hands and chained blades. Studies have shown that playing it for a mere hour is tantamount to cock-punching Mike Tyson and calling him “A Gay” to his face.

In last year's Destroy All Humans! Pandemic Studios put players into a satirical and sardonic look at 1950s America during the height of the Cold War. It was one of my favorite games of 2005, and when I found out there was a sequel in the works for this year, I nearly shot my disintegrator ray right in my pants.

I picked up the game the day it came out, but didn't have much time to play it until last week, when I decided to make the supreme sacrifice that SG readers have come to expect from me, and spent four straight days doing nothing but, well, Destroying All Humans, to find out if the game is worth a pile of your "earth money."

Warning: There will be spoilers in here, but none of them should rise to the level of "Darth Vader is Luke's Father" or "Trinity and Neo Get Killed" or "Snape Kills Dumbledore."

...What?

Moving on.

Destroy All Humans! 2: Make War, Not Love
Rated T for Teen
PS2, Xbox
Destroy All Humans! 2 picks up a decade after Destroy All Humans! ended. Cryptosporidium-137 is gone, but his clone, Cryptosporidium-138 is alive and well, masquerading as the president of the United States, and wreaking havoc from within (Hrm. Maybe Dick Cheney is an alien. I'll have to look into that. It would explain a few things.) Everything is going beautifully, until the KGB shoots Cryto's mothership out of the sky and kills his commander, Orthopox-13 (who then spends the rest of the game as a floating holographic head.) The destruction of the mother ship, and Crypto's search for revenge is what we writers call the "inciting incident" or the "hook" to get the story moving, and get moving it does.

You'll begin in Bay City, which is suspiciously similar to San Francisco and swarming with those damn Hippies, before moving on to Albion, which is suspiciously similar to London, and also swarming with Hippies. From there, the story takes you to Takoshima (want to guess what that's suspiciously similar to and swarming with?) and points...beyond, as new and unexpected enemies arrive and give Crypto plenty of opportunities to make war, not love.

What's New
Just like its predecessor, DAH!2 is a sandbox game, and the designers have created even bigger environments and added even more side missions for players to explore, including a really funny continuing story where Crypto gets humans to join the Cult of Arkvoodle, the ancient Furon Lord of the Sacred Crotch (seriously.)

There are new weapons for Crypto to carry around (my personal favorite is called the Gastro Gun, mostly for its humor, rather than its ability to destroy all humans) as well as new weapons for his saucer (my personal favorite being the Anti-gravity Field, entirely for its ability to destroy all humans.) You have new mental abilities to play around with, but to unlock and upgrade them, you'll have to abduct various humans and mash them together in the saucer's gene blender (this is a lot more fun than it sounds.) Finally, the holobob from DAH! has been replaced with the Bodysnatch ability, where you'll physically take over an unsuspecting human to activate various side missions, and avoid raising the always-annoying alert level.

Though the missions aren't particularly complex or overly-challenging for experienced gamers, players who complained about how quick and easy it was to finish Destroy All Humans! should be pleased with the length of the sequel. All the side missions, the size of the play areas, and the addition of multi-player games (like tennis, using PK to launch humans over a fence at each other) give you plenty of stuff to do. They've also added the ability to call your saucer to the various landing zones, so you don't have to waste a lot of time running from one side of the map to another and back.

Destroy All Humans! 2 never takes itself seriously, contains all the satirical humor that made its predecessor so much fun to play, and takes it even further this time around. The relationship between Crypto and Pox is hilarious, and the thoughts and dialogue of the NPCs does for the free love of 1969 what Destroy All Humans! did for the repression and Cold War hysteria of 1959.

Crypto is a more fully-developed character in the sequel, (just how much depends on dialogue choices the player makes during conversations with supporting characters, and I encourage you to explore them all) so he's more than a just a cool-looking model with a Jack Nicholson-eqsue voice that seemed a little arbitrary last time. He frequently breaks the fourth wall to make comments on elements of the game, too. At one point, he complains to Pox, "The game's called Destroy All Humans, not Keep Kids Off Drugs!", he rants about all the crates that are scattered all over one of the levels, and during one particularly long-winded exchange with a character says, "You know the player's in the kitchen making nachos by this point, right?"

Good for Geeks Because: You're playing an alien and you can destroy buildings with your flying saucer. If that's not enough to get your slide rule, uh, sliding, there are enough pop culture references to get their own VH-1 special, and many of them are really geeky (Rocky Horror, Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.) With a little bit of work, you could even turn it into a drinking game. But remember, geeks: if you're drinking alone, you're not partying. You're an alcoholic.

Bottom Line: It's really fun, it's really clever, and the story is well designed. It does what a good sequel should do, and takes all the things that made Destroy All Humans fun, and builds a great game upon that foundation. It's not quite San Andreas to Destroy All Humans!'s Vice City, but it's still a hell of a game. If you missed out on the Wii, didn't feel like dodging bullets in a PS3 riot, or have a hatred of Microsoft irrational enough to keep you from buying a 360, have no fear. Destroy All Humans! 2 is available for those quaint and obsolete PS2s you have propping open a door right now, and for that Xbox gathering dust in the closet that you swore you were going to mod into a media center. It's a perfect game for the special geek in your life (and let's be honest with ourselves, people: for most geeks, the special geek in their life is them. And there's nothing wrong with that.)

Grade: A-

Wil Wheaton is totally going to mod that Xbox into a media center.

Bully, the controversial new PS2 title from Rockstar games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, has earned a rocky road leading up to its release. Everyone from CNN's Lou Dobbs, to game hating laywer Jack Thompson, to the British House of Commons have all weighed in on Bully's potentially civilization-eroding threat.

The actual game play involves schoolyard fights, wedgies, and dunking weaker students' heads in the toilet. Now surprisingly, it also features hott boy-on-boy kissing.

For no apparent reason, Bully's main character Jimmy Hopkins can be led into steamy homosexual kissing scenes when he approaches certain characters. Maybe the designers were taking out a little "controversy insurance" just in case the game's violence didn't make enough of a stir.

Or maybe Jimmy just had a special awakening at Bullworth Academy.

According to 1UP, EGM got an inside look at Guitar Hero 2, and reveals the following set list, which should elicit various forms of ZOMG!!11! from Guitar Hero geeks -- myself included -- everywhere.

Guitar Hero 2 will include all the features of Guitar Hero, but will add a co-op mode, where players can jam together choosing rhythm, lead, or bass guitar. The game advertises over 55 songs, and it's unclear whether these 22 songs are the entire set list of popular recordings, with the remainder being unlockable indie artists, or if there will be more tunes the young people will enjoy when the game is released in Rocktober.

On a personal note (yeah, because this entire story isn't one huge personal note, already) I am thrilled that one of my hoped-for songs, Miserlou, is included.

. . . ZOMG!!111!1eleventy!

Thank you for your indulgence.

A game's soundtrack can be a major factor in turning the masses on or off. The Grand Turismo, SSX and Tony Hawk franchises all typically have top notch sounctracks. In fact, I first started to enjoy Louis XIV because of the most recent SSX game. Today Empire Interactive revealed the rocktastic musical lineup for their upcoming sequel to FlatOut.

On the bill are Rob Zombie, Alkaline Trio, Audioslave, Wolfmother, Fall Out Boy, and a questionable Nickelback. I know that when I'm speeding down low traction dirt roads, with scenery resembling an abstract painting by a prolific monkey, the last thing that's going to push me and my surging adrenaline over the winning edge is a track by Nickleback.

FlatOut 2 is due for release June 30th in Europe, and August 1st in the United States, with 12 new race environments, and twice as many tracks. Vehicles available this round have doubled, divided into race, derby and street classes. Online play is fully supported on all platforms, with battles of up to 8 players on Xbox Live and PC, and 6 players on PS2 Online.