Book of Revelations

And it came to pass, and I enjoyed 2 EA games in one day.

I have made no bones about the fact that I like Fight Night on 360. It's a genuinely decent, nuanced fighting game. There's no buttton mashing, because there are pretty much no buttons involved. If you lost, it's because you're not as good as the other guy. That's rare in a beat 'em up. There's usually the option just to hammer 'n' hope. I lived with a blind friend of mine for a few years, Ed, and he could easily beat anyone at Mortal Kombat on the N64.

Yada yada. At the end of the day. I like, and bought, an EA game. If you're a serious gamer, they are The Enemy. EA have long represented the death of ideas, and all that. But Fight Night is great.

Today I grabbed the demo for Def Jam: Icon. And it's pretty damn good as well. I liked the previous two (pretty much putting paid to the first two paragraphs of 'oh, yeah, I guess I've heard of EA), and this one is very, very different. It's made by EA Chicago, the team behind Fight Night, and it shows. The previous games were essentially wrestling titles (I think they were developed by Yukes), but this is more of a brawler. It takes a lot of the Fight Night ideas, the risk/reward structure of heavy blows and counters. It's also fucking wierd. The background bounces around in time with the music, which isn't as distracting as it might sound. But the deep background is a series of angular sprite planes, looking like a German expressionist movie set. Occcasionally you get hit with a fire extinguisher by an elderly Korean man.

Basically, they've taken an overblown, ridiculously macho idea, and turned it into the oddest fighting game since JoJo's Bizarre adventure. I may have to buy it. To use special moves, you hold down the left trigger, and move the right stick as though you were scratching a record. It fits the subject, and it's also delightfully batshit.

The other game is the new NBA Street. It's also very good, but I haven't played it enough to rant to the same degree. It's very fast, OTT, and very street. I don't even know what that means.