Hydrophobia and Last Generation games.

After a long week of work and band planning I finally found a bit of time to play Hydrophobia.

So far it seems like a cool action game. Sort of a mix of Beyond Good & Evil and Dreamfall. Obviously having a smart, female protagonist minus the fan-service is a big part of that but it also looks pretty last-generation in terms of graphics.

I had a lot of fun with the last-generation of games so I don't mind. Hydrophobia looks like it would have been a decent xbox original game 5 years ago. The game is supposed to be cutting edge because of all of it's water physics. So far that has primarily been running down halls that are flooding while water appears to be dripping down the screen. That part is just OK. The sci-fi setting and characters are what I really like. Also there are not a ton of XBLA games that are doing the 3rd person action complete with a decent story. So water physics notwithstanding the game is actually doing something pretty unique!

Every week it seems I hear about another last generation game that is being updated for the current consoles. It used to be that we'd just see a sequel to a game - but the proliferation of HD has really just given developers a fairly easy way to extend the life of a game that is several years old. Instead of spending millions of dollars on developing a new game you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars updating all of the game textures to HD. I don't imagine it is an easy task but it must be easier that having to start from scratch. If/when 3D takes off I doubt it will be that easy!

There are so many games for the last generation that I never got to play that I'm actually really excited to be able to pick them up again. This makes more sense considering that both Microsoft and Sony are attempting to extend the lives of their consoles for at least 2-3 years. If last generation games are updated and bundled with their sequels or (better yet!) available simply for download through Xbox live/PSN - I will meet them with my wallet!

Here are a few games I know are being re-release and a few I HOPE will be re-released.

• Beyond Good & Evil (confirmed for XBLA)
• Ico/Shadow of the Colossus (confirmed for PS3)
• Sly Cooper (confirmed for PS3)
• God of War (released a while back on PS3)
• Halo 1 & 2 (Wishlist) - Microsoft would be mental not to bundle and release these
• SSX (Wishlist) - XBLA has no sport titles do they?