I had to put Demon's Souls aside for while to cover a couple of must-review titles, but I decided that I was going to take a break from reviewing for the weekend and just play for fun. Popping it back in my PS3, I was instantly sucked back in. Taking that short time away, I had forgotten how ridiculously awesome it is. The atmosphere, the feeling of exploration… everything. I totally love this game. That's not to say the game is flawless, though—it suffers from the same issue so common to many RPGs in that the developers want you to choose the type of character you play before you really know what your preferred play style will be.

I'm not ready to eat crow about Dead Space: Extraction yet (I was pretty hard on it for being an on-rails shooter—making me think it was basically another dumbed down version of a popular franchise for the Nintendo Wii), but I will say that with each new clip and trailer I see, my opinion of the game seems to improve. That may not mean a thing in the long run (because we've all seen great clips and trailers and then played a retail version of the same game only to find out it sucks…), but I like to be honest—and right now I'm getting a positive vibe from the game.

This new clip (running just over four minutes) talks about the characters in the game and shows off some more gameplay. Interestingly enough, the characters on display in the clip look identitical to their voice actors. I don't know that I can recall another game where that's ever happened.

Dead Space: Extraction is set to invade stores on September 29th.

Konami’s announced the official release date for their downloadable zombie slaughterfest, Zombie Apocalypse. Anyone with a hankering for killing hordes of the walking dead will want to mark September 23rd and 24th down on their calendars. Xbox 360 owners will be able to download the title one day earlier than their PS3-owning brethren for some reason. When I last saw the game, it looked a lot like Smash TV with zombies. Since I happen to love Smash TV, this got me very excited.

More breaking news thanks to Twitter. How did we ever manage to get news in the in the old days of 2008?

Actor Boris Kodjoe broke the news (in 140 characters or less…) that he's now signed on to appear in the fourth entry in the Resident Evil franchise, Afterlife. Here's the tweet where he spills the beans:

“In Toronto meeting with the director of my new movie Resident Evil: Afterlife. Very exciting!!! Lots of stunts, shooting guns, monsters.”

If you're not familiar with who Boris is, you'll get to experience his work firsthand very soon. The actor is starring alongside Bruce Willis in the new film Surrogates.

Kodjoe joins Milla Jovovich (who's returning as Alice) in the new zombie flick. Paul WS Anderson will once again be directing.

A while ago, I complained about demos that failed to impress, and wondered why it seemed so difficult for developers to accomplish what appears to be a fairly straightforward task.

At the end of the piece, I invited developers to write in and school me if I was off-base, and one actually did. Talented game dude and all-around good guy Andrew Rubino dropped me a line not too long after my blog ran, and this is what he had to say:

In summary, making a demo is harder than it seems, especially for some games. A demo for something like Gears of War would be relatively easy – have a couple combats and the player walks away with a good understanding of what the game is about. But a demo for something like Batman is harder, (something that I can see now that I’ve played the full game, which is awesome, btw). (More after the break)

Proving that horror isn't based on guns and gore

HIGH Refreshingly different and mature on a kid-centric console.

LOW The lack of play variety may put off some players.

WTF Do religious artifacts really need more powerful upgrades?

He's not angry, just misunderstood

HIGH Hanging motionless for a split second a hundred feet in the air above a boss before crashing down on it bionic fist first.

LOW Fumbling ineptly with certain biomech enemies for a large amount of time before discovering their weakness.

WTF When replaying certain sections, the in-game chatter is sometimes replaced with more profane versions of the same sentence.

I apologize in advance for any biology-related discrepancies

HIGH Absorbing a big lifeform just slightly smaller than me.

LOW Miscalculating my orbit in the sun levels and dying when I was close to finishing a level.

WTF Shouldn't my lifeform become intelligent at some point after consuming so many others?

Disclosure: This post has nothing to do with gender, sexism, or the like.

Playing inFamous made me think of other games that I've played where I have the ability to make choices that effect the story or other parts of the game—to be "good" or "evil" so to speak. And after some thought on the subject, I discovered I was hungry and made a sandwich. After that, games such as Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, BioShock, Morrowind/Oblivion, and Fallout 3 came to mind. The question that I pose is this—what makes a good way to allow the player to "choose" their path while not pandering to ideological extremes and still providing an engrossing experience? Ideally I would be able to chose virtually any action I wanted, and have the game respond accordingly regardless of what I chose. Is this even possible? Or has it been done already?

A while ago, I received a request for a quote from a guy named Chris at a site called The Submission. Chris was putting together an article about replayability, and I was glad to contribute, although I don't quite think I said what he expected… In any event, I thought it was an interesting read when all was said and done.

My review of Cursed Mountain is nearly done and I've got another piece coming up for (believe it or not) Sudoku Ball Detective. In the meantime, I've started playing Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii, and I'm finding it to be a difficult experience. Difficult not in the sense that it's hard to play, but difficult in that part of me wants to praise it and admire it, while another part is deeply unsatisfied with its structure and content.

I definitely need to play more of it before making up my mind, but whichever way it goes, I have a feeling that this is going to be a difficult piece to write.