The Gamers Tavern: GamesCom 09

Yes folks, our relative proximity to Cologne allows us to visit GamesCom next week starting Wednesday 19th August, and we'll be bringing you the latest news, hands on impressions, sneaky shaky cam videos, and best booth babe behinds (maybe also with hands on impressions, we'll see how it goes) from the show floor. 

So don't be lulled into a false sense of security with our usual pattern of erratic bi-yearly updates, because as of next week we will be taking it to the max, pushing the envelope, turning it up to 11, and generally being as awesome as awesome can be. 

So keep your eyes fixed on TheGamersTavern.com next week and we promise you if nothing else, the finest collection of booth babe pics you have ever seen.  Plus some stuff about games and that.

Loookin' Gooood: Mafia 2 Footage

The original Mafia is perhaps one of my favourite PC titles from earlier this decade, but it unfortunately seemed to miss the mass market approval that was seen by GTA 3 and its sequels. Mafia 2 is looking to hopefully erase that stigma and judging by the quality of this 15 minute demo from E3, it could well become a veritable sleeper hit when it drops in early 2010. The footage shows one of the earlier missions in the game during the winter of 1945 and encompasses all of the key gameplay touchstones of the Mafia series - vintage car driving, dramatic gunplay and superb writing.

 You know the drill, so hit the jump to watch the footage.

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Play this game! Vol.1: Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link

   Gather round Tavernites, its time you learned a bit about one of the most glossed over Zelda games in the history of the franchise.  In my first volume of Play this game!, I bring to you the NES classic Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

I must begin by saying that while I had played the first Zelda before this one, Zelda 2 was the first NES game I owned, so a do have that nostalgic tie that keeps me coming back. Nevertheless, its still a great game on its own, and a direction that Zelda should revisit in my opinion. 

Released in 1987 in Japan, and 1988 in NA 2 years after we got The Legend of Zelda, Zelda 2 hit the stores with mixed reviews.  The fact that it was NOTHING like the first game really let a lot of fans down expecting the open world, top down game play from the first.   Zelda 2 did however retain the charm from the first game, while adding a more action/platform experience to the mix.  Also with the addition of experience points, you could say that this is the closest Zelda has come to being a full out

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Innovation..or not Innovation..... that is the Question??

So E3s been over for a few weeks now but a sudden reality popped into my head the other day about the shows main hyped game titles, pretty much all the great ones were sequels. Assassins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, God Of War 3; I could go on but does this means the gaming software is stagnating, that the community is happy having what they're used to, what they can relate to.

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I await a realistic fishing sim with baited breath

We had our Gamers Tavern first annual fishing trip at the weekend.  Good times were had. However two things came to my attention that day.  Firstly, that I am a person capable of inflicting great amounts of grievous bodily harm on poor unsuspecting fish, and secondly, that despite the advancements of this generation of consoles, we still do not have a fishing simulation that can accurately convey, for better or worse, the true experience of fishing.

The first thing that I noticed that is sorely lacking in our fishing simulations today is an accurate representation of the look of pure fear and terror in the fishes beady eyes as I wallop him unsuccessfully about the side of the head for the umpteenth time. You only have to look at games such as Half Life 2, or more recently, Mass Effect, to see that today's machines are more than capable of producing convincing facial features that clearly show emotion in the characters faces. Fish can't be that hard to do.

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