From Kanto to Hyrule, Mobius to Santa Destroy, Planet Reach to Little Big Planet, Cinema Student, Screenwriter, and all around gamer, Eric Parra is a bad enough dude to bring you your weekly fix on relative gaming. Whether it’s reviews, previews, or FAQ’s, matters that are professional or just personal, make sure you check Neon Tommy every week for all sorts of interesting tidbits in the world of video games. And remember, it’s dangerous to go alone.

 

So the past few weeks have been pretty booming in the world gaming. With the recent release of “Diablo 3,” “Max Payne 3,” “Sonic 4: Episode 2” (I care), and news on “Tomb Raider,” “The Last of Us,” and “PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE,” there’s quite a bit to talk about. Fortunately, others have already been talking about them all, while I’ve been playing "Street Fighter" in preparation for EVO (which I’ll probably elaborate on as it draws closer) and "Final Fantasy Dissidia: Duodecim," because it’s a portably fun game regardless of the complexity of its name.

So in case you’re not up to date, or just mildly curious, I’m going to do a brief recap for the week and go into specifics when I eventually cross into them at some other date. Probably starting out with "Sonic 4."

The big game right now though, is "Diablo 3." Not much of a PC gamer myself, I have dabbled in some of company Blizzard’s other titles, and have heard that most problems lie in the battlenet system. I’m only partially up to date with it (as of today through word of mouth), but I know that you need a battle.net account to play games online (like "StarCraft" and "World of Warcraft") but apparently you need it just to start up "Diablo 3."  It has something to do with hacking or stealing possibly, but even though "Diablo" is mostly a single player game, you need to login online in order to get it started, and as such the servers overloaded on its release date and error 37 prevented everyone from immediately playing the game they so sought after. A short time later, error 3003 took 37’s place and people continued to have trouble logging in, but for those who did make it through, the game is supposedly pretty good. Like  100% time/life-consuming good, as with many a Blizzard game.

Because of "Diablo’s" debacle, "Max Payne" hasn’t received too much of a presence, but it is there no less. With amazing animation that shows off the wear and tear Mr. Payne has to deal with in his old age, the third installment is much like a grimmer, more realistic version of the "Uncharted" series, keeping tact the noir style that has made the game what it is today. For the most part, the game takes what previous "Max Payne" games had and adds on to them with realism and fluidity, exemplifying the experience while still containing that familiarity. 

And of course, there’s another Sonic game out, and it’s actually pretty good. I’m very interested in getting my hands on it, but from what I’ve gathered, it’s a modernized version of "Sonic 2" and "Sonic CD" combined with a few new elements and everything wrong with "Sonic 4: Episode 1" fixed up into something swell. It’s gotten good praise, so I’ll leave it at that and we’ll all see where the old spiky blue hedgehog finds himself in the future.

As for "Tomb Raider," it’s a game I’m very interested in and was looking forward to playing this year. That’s not going to happen though, seeing as the developers of the title (as well as "Bioshock Infinite," another game I was hoping to play) have decided to push the release date back to the first quarter of 2013. In one sense I’m disappointed that I won’t get to play some awesome looking games in the near future and have to settle with the other awesome games I’ve bought yet to play, but on the other hand I’m glad to see that these developers are taking their game development seriously and would rather make a good game comeback than release a crappy sequel, which both have been known for at one point or another. 

“The Last of Us,” is a Naughty Dog title ("Uncharted," "Jak and Daxter") that’s causing a bit of a buzz with its stellar cinematics and, well, basically being made by the people who made Uncharted. So far no gameplay has been revealed, but there’s another new trailer (featured at the bottom), and that’s kind of cool. 

Then finally there’s “PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale,” which has come to terms with being a “Super Smash Bros” clone, but wouldrather be seen as an homage with new ideas and fun battles. I’m interested in it, even if it’s just to play as Jak versus Ratchet or Kratos vs Fat Princess, plus with changing Playstation inspired level designs and a few gameplay tweaks, it’ll probably be as fun as “Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble” (another Smash Bros-esque title that I rather enjoyed.) I mean, I do enjoy Smash Brothers, but this game will have characters that Smash will likely never touch, so the more the merrier, right?

And so that’s about it. Or at least what I know about games for the week.