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| March 31, 2010... Winter
Lose |
So much for winter! Guess I'd
better whip up a new banner now that the snow
has melted. I'm feeling in a Bonk-ish mood lately,
so that's the way I'll probably go.
Now for some gaming news!
Unsatisfied with tearing Guitar Hero and Call of Duty to
shreds, Activision CEO Bobby "Extra Absorbency" Kotick is set
to sink his teeth into Blizzard next. The World of
Warcraft creators originally had some autonomy from
Activision, but a corporate restructuring has put Thomas Tippl
in charge, who serves under... you guessed it, Bobby
Kotick. The same Bobby Kotick who ripped the
creative heart out of Infinity Ward and stretched Guitar Hero
to the point of snapping.
I have a funny feeling that ten years
from now, we'll be talking about Activision the same way
we talk about Acclaim now. In the past
tense.
| March 30, 2010... Holy
Gomola! |
Now here's a juicy find, from the fine
folks at Tiny
Cartridge... a PC Engine emulator for the
Nintendo DS that runs most games at or near full
speed. The cleverly named NitroGrafx still has
trouble with more demanding titles like Street Fighter II:
Championship Edition, and the US titles need to have their
encryption broken first, but it's still one of the more
impressive emulators I've tried on the system, ranking right
up there with jEnesis DS and trailing just behind NeoDS.
I'm playing Gomola Speed right now, and although the DSi's low
profile D-pad makes it hard to wrap your alien boa constrictor
around food pellets and enemies, the game at least
looks just like it did on Magic Engine. Games
that aren't as dependent on diagonal input work
perfectly, including TurboGrafx favorites like
Galaga '90, Ninja Spirit, and Bonk's Revenge. Here's the
icing on the cake... NitroGrafx will even run CD-ROM
games! I gave Castlevania: Rondo of Blood a quick spin,
and although the apparent lack of MP3 support made it a
mostly silent experience, the overall performance was
much stronger than I would have expected from the dated DS
hardware. This is definitely one to download if you want
to take these games on the go and don't have a PSP
handy.
In amazing dumbass news,
some kid attending the Penny Arcade Expo tried to sneak off
with a beta copy of the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game
Breach. Well, "sneak" isn't really the right word... he
stepped up to the booth with a laptop and USB cord, and loudly
announced to the development team, "I'm going to steal your
game." When they asked him to stop, he made a break for
the door with one percent of the code, about ninety-nine
percent less than he would have needed to play the
game. He was arrested later that day, but is currently
out on bail... way out. After paying two
hundred dollars to spring himself from the clink, he skipped
his arraignment, then skipped town. If you live on
the East Coast and notice someone with a cocky grin and
an unsettling resemblance to Harry Potter, you're advised to
call the authorities... or better yet, Dog the Bounty
Hunter. Yeah, do that. It'd be a lot more
entertaining watching him drag this kid's sorry ass back to
jail.
| March 29, 2010... Cruel to Be
Kind |
I bought Sonic's Ultimate Genesis
Collection yesterday, and although I'm really impressed with
the quality of the emulation and the reasonable price
(just fifteen bucks at GameStop!), I do wish Backbone
hadn't been so sadistic with the unlockable
bonuses. You won't have to cough up any
Microsoft points for them, but you
will have to wade through duds like Flicky
(imagine Mappy if Mappy sucked), Alien Storm, and Super
Thunder Blade to gain access to Sega's awesome arcade
games. At this point, I would almost pay to unlock
Zaxxon if it meant never having to play Decapattack
again.
Oh yeah, I also bought Madworld,
because... uh... why did I get this again? Oh yeah, it
cost eight bucks on Amazon. I could never resist a deal
like that, even if it's death to my budget. It's
probably why I also picked up Dragon Age: Origins from the
Electronic Arts store during the PAX East sale. I
wouldn't have even considered this purchase a month
ago, but since the price was so low and my admiration for Mass
Effect 2 is so high, I just had to take the
plunge.
Speaking of PAX East, I had a man on the
inside who was able to attend all three days of the
show. It sounds like the convention has really
grown since it began in 2004, threatening to eclipse the E3
trade show in both attendance and industry involvement.
However, as large as PAX has become, there is still plenty of
room for classic gaming, as demonstrated by the Crazy Otto
machine on the show floor. The early ancestor of Ms.
Pac-Man was available for all to play, but our man on the
field took special interest in the game, taking footage
of it in action.
The gameplay looks roughly the same as
Ms. Pac-Man, but the marketing department did this game a big
favor by asking the designers at GenCom to change the
characters. Crazy Otto is a tiny yellow head on spindly
legs, and the monsters look like apples with antennae.
The famous intermissions are still there, but the love affair
is between Crazy Otto and a bright red clone.
Ooohkay...?
There are many times when I felt
that video game history took a wrong turn- the push for 3D at
the cost of everything else, the hype-fueled success of
the Playstation 2, and Electronic Arts' turn to the
darkside just to name a few- but in this case, I think it
made the right move in kicking Otto to the curb and
introducing Ms. Pac-Man as his replacement. As good as
it was, I don't think anyone would have remembered this game
with its original cast of
characters.
| March 27, 2010... Suffer Like
G Did |
And you will, if you play Resident Evil: The Darkside
Chronicles! There's a review of the
game in the usual place.
Good news for gamers burned by King of
Fighters XII... there's every indication from early
screenshots that the sequel will suck less. Teams that
were split apart for the sake of a speedy
release have been reunited, and classic KOF characters like Mai Shiranui, Chin Gentsai,
and the Degener-esque King are back into the ring after a
year-long hiatus. One of the pictures suggests that
there could be up to thirty-one characters in KOF XIII, a
significant improvement over the paltry twenty-two in the
previous game. Now they just have to give back all the
moves that Clark lost and we'll be in business!
Nintendo is also throwing its hat
into the 2D fighting ring with Photo
Dojo, a DS exclusive that lets you create
your own characters and backgrounds with the system's built in
camera. It's clearly not going to compete with King of
Fighters XIII or even the massively flawed previous game, but
the footage on Kotaku suggests that it'll at least be
good for a few lulz. Kielbasa
PUNCH!
| March 25, 2010... Kind of
Gamey! |
The PSP turned the big 0-5
yesterday. It's a good time to look back on all the fun
I had, uh, emulating old PSOne games on the system. All
right, that's not totally fair. I really
enjoyed Burnout Legends and Mega Man: Powered Up too, and
would have gotten my money's worth out of the classic game
collections if the PSP's display hadn't been so friggin'
blurry.
Microsoft's Game Room service launched
yesterday as well, and I've got to tell you, this thing needs
serious work. I'm still trying to wrap my head around
the notion that a console powerful enough to handle the mighty
Mass Effect 2 could have trouble keeping up with a crusty
arcade title like Shaolin's Road. Things are going to
get messy when Krome breaks the 8-bit barrier and tries to
emulate Konami's more demanding beat 'em ups from the early
1990s.
Until Microsoft and company work
out the kinks with this service, I'd just recommend that
you pick up Atari Anniversary for the Xbox.
It'll run on an Xbox 360, and will give you half the titles
offered in the Game Room for a small fraction of the
price. While you're at it, grab yourself a copy of Namco
Museum 50th Anniversary, which features dozens of classic
arcade games you won't find in the Game Room.
You won't get any mascots running around a faux arcade,
but on the plus side, you won't have to pay for them,
either.
| March 23, 2010... Tales from
the Darkside |
I thought that turning Resident Evil
into a light gun game would be a brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, Capcom also made the mistake of trying
to turn it into a movie with Resident Evil: The Darkside
Chronicles. While this means that the acting is at least
ten thousand times better than it was in The House of
the Dead, it also leaves the player fighting a camera
held by the most spastic, easily distracted director since
Quentin Tarantino. Instead of looking out a window or
down at a gum wrapper on the floor, why not face the zombies
attacking me?! While you're at it, try to keep the
camera steady... I'm tired of filling the walls with holes
because you jerked away just as I was lining up a head
shot.
Perhaps what's most obnoxious about The
Darkside Chronicles is that none of its weapons have the
head-poppin' impact they had in Resident Evil 4, or even
its watered down sequel. If the pistol in indeed
"effective for head shots," why do I have to shoot a decayed
corpse between the eyes five times to bring it down for
good? I don't remember this being an issue with The
House of the Dead, where a shot to the face takes off part
of the face. It's probably because Capcom thought
it would be cute to force the player to buy upgrades for all
the firearms, which cost a king's ransom in gold. Look,
I'm not interested in scouring each stage for money so I can
waste time with obsessive-compulsive inventory
management. Just cut the crap and give me a shotgun that
turns zombies into a pulpy mess with a single squeeze of the
trigger.
Anyway! I'll be taking a
mini-vacation today, but since the hotel will have wireless
access, I won't actually be going anywhere as far as you're
concerned. When I'm not watching cable television,
soaking in a whirlpool, or getting hammered on rum and
cokes, I'll be loading my DSi with downloadable content.
If you've got any suggestions for purchases, feel free to
leave 'em in the forums.
Speaking of the DS, the rumors of a
next-generation handheld from Nintendo are picking up
steam. If you're thinking about buying the DSi XL, I'd
strongly caution you to hold onto your money and wait for the
true successor to the DS, which will probably be
released at the end of the year. Previous reports
claimed that the system will include a GameCube-quality
graphics processor and an iPhone-like accelerometer, but a
recent update on Siliconera brings a
whole new dimension to its capabilities. The upcoming
3DS will offer a three-dimensional picture without the need
for expensive glasses... or even those cheap ones you used
to get at movie theaters.
I'm not sold on 3D visuals of
any kind, and I don't think the illusion of
depth will bring much to the gaming experience. However,
if developers reserve that gimmickry for the title screen and
concentrate on bringing next-generation graphics and gameplay
to a Nintendo handheld, I'll be
happy.
| March 21, 2010... Special
News Flash! |
It would appear that Australia's Michael
Atkinson is out as the attorney-general of South
Australia. What this means to Australian gamers is that
they'll finally be given access to uncensored mature-rated
titles, unless another tight-fisted tool with a grudge against
an entire industry swoops in to fill the power vacuum.
Special thanks to Merus from the GameSpite forums for
this news, and to Aussie-Nintendo for
confirmation. More news at it
happens.
| March 20, 2010... Parting Is
Such Sweet Sorrow |
That wraps up Mass
Effect 2! It was thirty-five hours
of awesome (with the occasional minor annoyance), capped off
by an incredible climax. Now that it's all over, maybe I
can get some work done around here! If I can resist a
second playthrough, anyway.
So! I'm toying with the idea
of adding iPod/iPhone/iPad/iCarumba reviews to the site.
The lack of a real controller with real
buttons is still an issue with most games, but the
quality of the software on this versatile line of phones and
music players has nevertheless improved. I've already
gushed about Street Fighter IV in a past update, but I'm just
as impressed with Pac-Man: Championship Edition, which looks
nearly identical to the original game on the Xbox 360 but
packs in dozens of new stages. The expansion pack that costs more
than the actual game was a tacky move on Namco's part,
but there's enough content in the standard
package that you probably won't need it. Other
games worthy of notice include Space Miner, Mole: Quest for
the Terracore Gem, and the trip-a-riffic Space Invaders:
Infinity Gene.
I'd like to make an announcement before
I sign off. JustinZero is the latest member of the few,
the not totally ashamed members of The Gameroom Blitz's
forum. Stop on by and welcome him if you have the
inclination.
| March 18, 2010... Rock All
Night, Sleep All Day |
Sorry for the lack of updates,
folks. Mass Effect 2 has torn my sleep cycle a new one
over the past week. I've just had too many days of going
to bed at the crack of dawn and waking up at three
in the afternoon. It's just not healthy, man!
Anyway, a review is forthcoming, so stay tuned.
Just one thing before I go... Microsoft
is switching to a smaller motherboard for its Xbox 360 game
console. Could a slimline version of the system be far
behind? We never got a travel-sized version of the
original Xbox, so a more compact Xbox 360 would be an overdue
but nevertheless welcome
gesture.
| March 15, 2010... Shirt
Heads |
Last night, I started a Zazzle store
with three T-shirt designs.
Shortly afterward, two of those designs
were taken down because they were treading on the sacred ground of intellectual
property.
I understand why big, greedy
corporations would want to protect their precious fucking
copyrights, but it wasn't like I wanted to make a fortune on
these shirts. I just wanted a chance to celebrate video
game culture, and perhaps get a little recognition in the
process. It's what I was hoping for with the homebrew
games, and the video reviews, and this site. However,
every time I try to start a trend, it either falls on deaf
ears or is ruthlessly shut down thanks to this country's
plutocratic copyright laws. When you're met
with this much indifference and resistance, why even
fucking bother?
| March 15, 2010... Holy
Shirt! |
Would you wear this on a T-shirt?
Because I'm thinking of putting it on
one.
| March 12, 2010... A New
Hope |
My faith in video games has been renewed
thanks to Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 and a surprisingly
sharp conversion of Street Fighter IV for the iPhone.
Mass Effect 2 was an especially pleasant surprise... it's the
first Bioware title I can honestly say I enjoyed, and the
more I play it, the more I love it. Street Fighter IV is
no slouch either. Capcom has done the impossible,
making its flagship fighter playable on a format
that hobbles most old-school arcade games. Some
concessions had to be made- the pared down cast is almost
exclusively taken from the nearly twenty year old Street
Fighter II- and there are some puzzling quirks in the
otherwise clever interface. Why can I tap the
revenge meter to pull off super moves with Ryu, but not
Chun Li or Guile? Nevertheless, it's an
unbelievable port that's also a cruel tease to PSP and
Nintendo DS owners. C'mon Capcom, why not bring this to
a real handheld game system?
All right, let's get right to the good
stuff. There's a new feature on The Gameroom Blitz,
dedicated to Xbox
Live Indie Games. Far too many
of the titles on the service are getting the
cold shoulder from mainstream sites and blogs, so I'm picking
up the slack with periodic reviews of my favorites, along with
a few duds that offer a bitter reminder of what quality
control was like on the service back when it was called
Community Games. I don't think I'll ever cover
as many as Juice has on his own
site, but if I can reach ten percent of
that total, I'll be pretty happy with that achievement.
Wait, Indie Games don't have achievements!
Pretend I said
"accomplishment."
| March 10, 2010... Grumpy Old
Men |
After a furious rant prompted by
a failed attempt to download Street Fighter IV for
my iPod Touch, I've realized (perhaps not for the first time)
that I never feel more alive than when I'm bitterly
complaining about petty grievances. My God, I'm Andy
Rooney!
Anyway. There's fun stuff planned
for The Gameroom Blitz in the near future, but there are still
a few loose ends I need to tie up before it's ready.
Just know this... it's something almost no other sites are
doing, and it should keep the Blitz more current than it's
been in the past. Those are the only hints you'll get
until it's ready!
| March 9, 2010... Pause for
Effect |
I started Mass Effect 2 last night, and
wound up playing the game for over three hours. Why
don't I remember the original being this fun? Oh yeah,
probably because it wasn't. Bioware has completely
overhauled the sequel, streamlining the interface and throwing
in a handy compass that keeps aimless wandering to a
minimum. The action scenes are more engaging, too.
Sure, cover shooters have been done to death over the last
three years, but Mass Effect 2 adds a lot of fresh features to
keep the action from feeling like just another Gears of War
rehash. Having Jacob work his midochlorian magic on
enemies while Miranda rips them apart from the inside is a
beautiful thing.
In other news, Microsoft's Game Room
service launches in a couple of weeks. If you
haven't been keeping track, it's a virtual arcade with
hundreds of classic titles from Atari and Konami. The
games are reasonably priced, costing three dollars
each, but bare-bones in comparison to the typical Xbox
Live Arcade release, without any enhancements. Some of
the games are a hard sell even at three bucks a
pop, especially the thirty year old Atari 2600
releases. However, there are a few gems that are
worth the price of admission, with many more promised for the
future. I'll be sure to offer my first impressions of
the Game Room when it arrives in late March.
| March 7, 2010... Fashionably
Late? |
I'm here, I'm here! Sorry, I just
got preoccupied with stuff. Stuff like this,
mostly.
I really need to get cracking on that
Xbox Live Indie Games feature. Developers have really
stepped up their game since the service first launched as Xbox
Live Community Games a year and a half ago. While there
are still plenty of cheesy Flash-quality titles with grade
school artwork, the number of professional and
semi-professional games have sharply increased. I'm
especially impressed with Shoot 1UP, a shooter which brings
wicked excess to new levels, and Kaiten Patissier, a
screen-twisting, cake-making puzzle/platformer with
pastel graphics straight out of a late-era Super Famicom
release. Surely these games are worthy of some
publicity, even if it's just from this place!
Some quick notes before I amscray.
They're making a sequel to Scribblenauts, which shouldn't be a
surprise since the first one sold pretty damned well in spite
of its flaws. Eh, player control is so
last century anyway! Steve "17" Ballmer is
hinting at an Xbox 360 with a smaller form factor.
It's exactly what everyone wanted from the last Xbox, but
better late than never, I suppose! Finally, Walter Day
of Twin Galaxies fame is hanging up his referee
whistle after nearly thirty years of tracking the high
scores for every game known to man. All the best to you,
Walt!
| March 5, 2010... Superzapper
Wii-charge! |
I was feeling a bit peckish, but one
disconcertingly greasy poppyseed muffin later, I've got the
strength to begin this update. I'll take this
opportunity to inform you, loyal and few readers, of three
important facts about the Nintendo Wii:
1) Its Classic Controller kind of
bites.
2) A GameCube joypad isn't
much of an improvement.
3) You do have other
options.
The first, Thrustmaster's T-Wireless game pad,
was reviewed on The Gameroom Blitz a couple of years
ago. The controller was hobbled by a crummy directional
pad but was rescued from mediocrity by one very cool
feature... the option to remap the buttons and
even the joysticks to your heart's content.
This let you customize controls in Virtual Console
games that didn't natively offer it and even play
Sin and Punishment with twin analog joysticks, a
more intuitive setup than any of the three offered in the
game's option menu. At the time it was released, it was
a welcome alternative to the Classic Controller, but not a
perfect one.
No, those would come later, starting
with Raphnet's Genesis to Wii
adapter. This dongle plugs into one
of the GameCube ports on the side of the Wii, and supports
hundreds of controllers with a 9-pin D-shell connector.
Chances are, if it's really old, it'll work. You can
even plug in an Atari 2600 joystick and use that if you're so
inclined, but since so many Virtual Console games require at
least two buttons, you won't get very far in anything
more complicated than the original Mario Bros. No no no,
I mean the one with the POW block and the toilet crabs!
Anyway, the adapter shines when used with the Sega Arcade Pad,
a small six button controller that hit stores just in time for
the Genesis version of Street Fighter II. The buttons
are awkwardly mapped to more closely approximate the layout of
the GameCube controller, but the Sega Arcade Pad is as
comfortable and responsive as it's always been, and synchs up
perfectly with Genesis titles like Streets of Rage
II. If you've got a large library of these games on your
Wii, this adapter is a must-have in spite of its slightly
cheap construction and the couple of weeks it will take to
arrive from French Canada.
Raphnet's adapter is pretty good, but
believe me, there are better ones out there. My personal
favorite is this Chinese number that
lets you connect a Playstation gamepad directly to the bottom
of the Wiimote. This opens up a whole new world of
possibilities... Thrustmaster's T-Wireless gamepad wasn't
compatible with Geometry Wars: Galaxies, but this adapter
is, and the game plays like a dream with a Dual
Shock. It's also given me a chance to dust off my purple
Saturn joypad (which is worth a zillion dollars now, but
you'll have to saw off my fingers to get mine!) and burn
through a few games of King of Fighters: Orochi Saga.
It's like 1998 all over again, with me sitting in my
underwear, spending all night playing games from a
teetering stack of Saturn imports. Except now, I'm
older, the system is more powerful, and... uh, the
underwear is larger.
Some industry news before I
go... the battle between Activision and the founders
of Infinity Ward has
reached its climax, with Jason West
and Vince Zambella accusing their former boss of overstepping
his boundaries and douchemaster general Bobby Kotick
dismissing their claims in the most condescending manner
possible. The relationship between Activision and
Infinity Ward has always been contentious- West and Zambella
were never down with the "no fun" approach to game design that
Kotick champions- but after the
wildfire success of the Modern Warfare series, the
last thing I thought Activision would do was
jeopardize its future by gutting Infinity Ward and
breaking the spirit of its
remaining employees. Didn't they learn anything from the
castration and subsequent failure of Guitar
Hero?
| March 4, 2010... Seriously
Short Update |
There's a new review on the Blitz,
courtesy of Ken Tibbs. He's a long-time reader of the
site and a regular contributor to the forum, so I thought I'd
give him a shot as a reviewer. He's left no stone
unturned in his comprehensive examination of the recent
Playstation 3 exclusive White Knight Chronicles... if you're
thinking of adding it to your collection I'd suggest giving
Ken's review a look first.
Now if you'll excuse me, I just found
out that my next batch of classes starts NEXT WEEK and I need
a couple of hours to freak
out.
| March 2, 2010... How
Much Is Enough...? |
How much is enough?
When
your soul is empty
How much is enough?
In the land of
plenty
When you've had all you want
and you still feel
nothing at all
How
much is
enough?
| February 28, 2010... I
Actually Miss the Encyclopedia Britannica Guy
Now |
Boy, this wasn't a good way to close out
February. I did a little surfing on Wikipedia and
discovered that the reference to my GameBoy Advance conversion
of GORF in that game's Wiki page was quietly erased, along
with a brief description of another
programmer's Jaguar CD game, which was released in
limited quantities several years before. Well, isn't
that a nice fuck in the ass! I spent three long
months on that game, only to have it largely ignored by its
intended audience, then blotted out of existence by the one
source of mainstream publicity I had available.
The apparent logic is that since the
games weren't official, they weren't worth mentioning.
So what? The arcade game wasn't strictly according to
Hoyle either, lifting elements from two popular coin-ops
without the consent of their respective developers. More
importantly, the GameBoy Advance version of GORF is a good
game. So was the Jaguar CD version,
judging from the accolades it's received from the few
gamers lucky enough to get their hands on it. These
games are better than any of the official versions of GORF
I've played... isn't that worthy of some mention? Not
according to skirt-chasing douchenozzle Jimmy
Wales and his army of anal-retentive dweebs
with delusions of alpha maledom. A note to Jimmy if he's
reading this, and I do so hope he is... what's the point of an
encyclopedia that anyone can edit if you're just going to edit
it out?
One more thing... if you're planning on
firing up your Playstation 3 today, don't. It's
convinced that 2010 is a Leap Year, and has went into a
Y2K10 meltdown as a result. Customers have complained
that their systems will no longer access the Playstation
Network or even run games thanks to this bug. This mess
will surely be ironed out in the next week, but until then,
you might want to put your progress in Heavy Rain on hold and
play some other system for a while. Might I recommend
the Sega
Saturn? Perhaps something in a
fine
1985
vintage...
| February 26,
2010... Ninja Blah |
I've written another review!
I'll just keep cranking them out, and you'll keep
not reading them. Today, the victim is... well, I won't
refer to it by name, in the fear that it will come back to
haunt me like Biggie Smalls or Tim Rogers. All you need
to know is that it's got more quicktime scenes per
ounce than any game short of Dragon's Lair. Also, you
should never rent or buy it under any
circumstances. Just play Ninja Gaiden II instead,
and have your little brother flip to a rerun of
The Matrix on TNT every thirty seconds. You'll get
roughly the same experience.
Also, Sony just realized that the
PSP Go was a dumb
idea. And the last horse drags
itself across the finish
line!
| February 24,
2010... Look Ma, One Hand! (also, Wii/DS spring
releases) |
First order of business: there's a
new
review on the site. Dust off that
Wii... it's time to live vicariously through 21st century
swordsman Travis Touchdown in the outrageous action game No
More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle!
What's next on the menu? Nintendo
recently announced release schedule for both the Wii and the
Nintendo DS. You can click this
link for all the juicy details, but here's
a brief look at what's coming out and when:
Mega Man 10 (March 1st):
Holy crap, I forgot all about this one! And
it's coming out next week?! Man, I gotta find a
way to get my Wii online. Anyway, this is the sequel to
the well-received Mega Man 9, which was the subject of one of
my last video reviews. If you didn't watch it, all you
need to know is that it was a worthy successor to the NES Mega
Man games and a lot more enjoyable than the spin-offs
released for more powerful systems.
Nintendo DS XL (March
28th): The super-sized sequel to Nintendo's
popular handheld will arrive in stores by the end of
March. This is great news for sight-impaired
players and PSP haters with screen-is envy, but it's hard
for me to get excited about it now that news of the more
powerful DS 2 has been leaked.
Cave Story (March
28th): It's been a long time coming (a long, long
time!), but at last, the beloved action-adventure title will
arrive on the Wii with sharper graphics and numerous
enhancements to the gameplay. As a consolation to
players who were expecting it over a year ago, all this extra
content will be included with the game by default, rather than
sold separately as was originally planned.
Monster Hunter Tri (April
20th): Exciting news for fans of the series...
not only will Monster Hunter Tri come packed with the more
ergonomic Classic Controller Pro, but it will be free to play
online. If you've never tried Monster Hunter, you'll
have a chance to get up to speed by playing the demo released
on WiiWare in March.
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten
Sands (May 18th): Just in time for the upcoming
Bruckheimer film, The Forgotten Sands rewinds the series
back to the good old days, before the prince got all mopey and
started listening to Godsmack. As an added bonus, the
Wii version comes with Konami's loose port of the original
Prince of Persia, first released for the Super NES in the
early 1990s.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (May
23rd): This is the brass ring, fellas.
Nintendo's serving up a second helping of Super Mario Galaxy,
with the same eye-popping graphics and planet-hopping
gameplay but more interaction with Yoshi. If you
like Yoshi, score! If not, putting up with the greedy
green dinosaur is a small price to pay for a sequel to the
best game on the Wii.
Sin and Punishment 2: Star
Successor (June 7th): Sin and Punishment was pretty
sweet as a Virtual Console download, but there were just two
problems with it. The first was that the jagged graphics
that were already dated when the game was first
released on the Nintendo 64 in 2000 weren't done any favors by
seven years of technological advancement. The second was
that the gameplay was perfectly suited to the Wiimote, but the
game didn't actually support it. The sequel will address
both of these issues when it's released in the first half
of June.
Metroid: Other M (June
27th): This one's a wild card. This game,
developed by the currently Itagaki-free Team Ninja,
features stunning side-scrolling action along with
the first-person shooter segments introduced in Metroid
Prime. However, there's no telling how the
side-scrolling scenes will actually play... will they offer
the exploration and careful platforming of the very first
Metroid game, or the instant gratification of Team
Ninja's stylish Ninja Gaiden series? Only time (about
four months of it, I suspect) will tell.
Dragon Quest IX
("Summer"): Square-Enix shocked the world by skipping
the next generation consoles and bringing the ninth
installment of the Dragon Warrior (or is it Dragon Quest
now? Whatever!) series straight to the Nintendo
DS. This one's actually been out in Japan for almost a
year now and has predictably been well-received in that
territory, but finding an audience for it here in
the United States will be an uphill battle.
That's probably why Square-Enix chose to let Nintendo take
that risk.
Speaking of Square, I spent a little
quality time with Einhander and was amazed by what I
saw. It's a rock-solid shooter with some of the most
stylish graphics I've seen on the original Playstation... a
little stark, yes, but the Blade Runner-meets-Tron aesthetic
really works for me. As you'd expect, there are plenty
of bosses, and many of them are utterly
breathtaking. In the second stage, you'll battle an
all-terrain vehicle that weaves its way through the desert
like an angry rattlesnake, launching heat-seeking missiles and
even pouncing on you. Sink enough shots into this
serpentine dirt buggy and it falls apart piece by piece,
eventually taking out a city block in a violent
explosion.
This fight is epic enough to be a
suitable climax for the stage, but that was just the
mini-boss! The real deal at the end of the stage is
armed with machine guns and flamethrowers, and is so gigantic
it won't even fit on the screen. Einhander, you do what
other Playstation shooters only wish they could, and
that's with one hand tied behind your back!
| February 23,
2010... Ladies and gentleman, the president. And a
goat. |
Sorry for the wait, folks... I
thought I'd be able to introduce you to the site's next
contributor, but it seems he's a little shy. Instead,
I'll bitch about Cross Edge, one of several RPGs released
last year by niche developer Nippon-Ichi. There are
many, many things wrong with this game, but all the other
reviewers have ravaged it for its microscopic sprites,
needlessly complicated combat, and monotonous
soundtrack. Instead, I'll complain about the one aspect
of the game that ruined it for me... the most
pointless and desperate video game crossover since the
Battletoads teamed up with the stars of Double
Dragon.
Any excitement that could be had
from uniting characters from five different worlds is
completely ruined when half those worlds are more
like pea-sized asteroids
floating aimlessly through the darkest corners of
the universe. What the hell is Idea Factory, and why the
hell should I care? The game ignores these questions,
pairing the instantly recognizable Darkstalkers cast with lame
newbies fresh from the Generic Anime Protagonist
factory. The notion of forgettable characters like
Atelier Marie fighting alongside the brightest stars from
Namco and Capcom is like asking the kid picked last in
recess to pinch hit for Babe Ruth. A note to
Nippon-Ichi, if they're even around in six months... crossover
games don't work when half the characters in the
cast shouldn't have been created in the first
place.
| February 20, 2010... Put
Down the Knife, Baby! |
SoThink HTML Editor is the jealous,
abusive girlfriend of web site editors. The
minute I edit a page in another program, SoThink takes its
revenge by converting the entire file to
the letters "ÿm." I think it's time to ditch the
bitch before she goes into full Lorena Bobbitt
mode and hacks off my PNG files while I'm
sleeping.
Anyway, not much exciting has happened
over in Blitz country over the last few days, so you haven't
been missing much. I just bought a copy of Muramasa that
I'd rented from GameFly, further hemmorhaging what little
money I have remaining on frivolities. In my defense,
it's a pretty entertaining frivolity!
I've been having a lot of fun with Wii
games lately, which totally was not what I was
expecting when I dragged the old system out of the shed last
month. Lately, I've been spending as much time
with Nintendo's humble console as I have with
the mighty Xbox 360, especially during last week's No
More Heroes 2 marathon. Meanwhile, the last time I
turned on my Playstation 3 was to watch the Blu-Ray edition of
Labyrinth for a college class. Yes, I'm getting a grade
for watching David Bowie dance with Muppets. Yes,
America's educational system really is that deep
in the crapper right now. I think they'll be printing my
diploma on squeezably soft three ply paper.
In Blitz news, I've got a couple of fun
surprises waiting for you all in a couple of days. Stay
tuned! Also, if you see SoThink HTML Editor, tell her
that I was working late tonight and that the perfume on my
neck was from a mall sample.
| February 17,
2010... Backlog Jam |
Thanks to GameFly, my own impulse
spending, and even a few generous donations, I have
entirely too many games to play. There's the shockingly
fun 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand, the yet unfinished Darksiders,
that copy of Red Faction Guerrilla I'm getting in the mail for
buying Darksiders, the two Wii games GameFly sent
that I've had for weeks but STILL haven't beaten, PixelJunk
Shooter, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a free copy of Cross Edge
that the previous owner just wanted out of the house, three
flavors of Rock Band... it's gotten totally out of
control. I promised myself I wouldn't buy more games
until I finished what I had, but beating Dark Sector opened
the floodgates to even more software I didn't need. If
there's any bright side to this, it's that I should be able to
supply the site with fresh reviews for the rest of the year...
and at the rate things are going, probably the rest of my
life!
Just a couple of things before I
go. First order of business: I'm switching over from
SoThink HTML Editor to PageBreeze. If I like the
results, the switch will be permanent. If there are
weird formatting issues with the front page, you'll know
why. Second thing: Capcom is releasing an iPhone version
of Street Fighter IV, but given the system's exclusively
touchscreen control, the game will probably be more like Thumb
vs. Thumb. People are hounding Capcom to release a PSP
version of the game, and I can't say I blame them... it just
makes more sense in that format. Finally, in
Conan-zuma's Revenge news, word in Hollywood is that guitarist
and professional lickspittle Kevin Eubanks won't be back for
Jay Leno's return to The Tonight Show. Wow, things must
be REALLY bad for Jay when he can't even get support from his
favorite house n-er, band leader!
| February 14,
2010... This Concept of "Wuv" Confuses and
Infuriates Us! |
It's Valentine's Day. In the
immortal words of Dick "Nosferatu" Cheney, "So?"
I do have a present for you though,
esteemed and extremely few readers. I've written a
review of the PSN release Pixeljunk Shooter,
which reminds me as much of the old computer game O'Riley's
Mine as Atari's thrust-heavy shooter Gravitar. It's just
two months old, which is actually a pretty good lead time
by The Gameroom Blitz standards. I've also got a review
of a very old game over at 1UP.com... the
Pac-Man tabletop released by Tomytronics in the early
1980s. Give that a look if you're in an especially
nostalgic mood.
| February 12, 2010... The
Day the Music Died |
Things are tough all over for the music
game genre. Activision and its defiantly
douchebaggy CEO Bobby Kotick recently put a
bullet between the eyes of Red Octane, the
co-creators of the Guitar Hero series, as well as a sizable portion of the staff at
Neversoft, which assumed control
of the series after Harmonix left for greener
pastures. Well, that's what they thought,
anyway. The developers of Rock Band were retroactively stiffed
out of the $150 million "performance bonus" they were given in
2008, when MTV was confident that its video game subsidiary
was a cash cow with inexhaustible udders. Here's my
question... what kind of moron gives you millions of dollars
for games you'll make years later, then demands that money
back when the games bomb and the cash has already been
spent? Oh yeah, the same moron who ran Midway into the
ground last year.
In RPG news, Fable
III is reported to be about a man of
great power who makes fantastic promises to the people of
his kingdom, only to discover too late that they were all
impossible to keep. So in other words, it's the life
story of Peter Molyneaux.
Speaking of broken promises, I'd like to
apologize for not writing a review this week. The
original plan was to do a write-up of Brutal Legend, but
despite Jack Black's best efforts, that game just wasn't much
fun. The gameplay was such a snooze that I couldn't
bring myself to finish the impossibly long
battle with General Lionwhyte, the apparent stunt double for
David Bowie on the set of Labyrinth. Now I'm leaning
toward a review of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, since it's a
more recent release which frankly is a hell of a lot more
entertaining. I'll let you know what I decide sometime
next week.
| February 11,
2010... Master of
Mura |
I need a new banner for the site.
Something wintery, but not so Christmasy. Any
suggestions?
So, I replaced the Wii component cable,
and that seemed to do the trick. The jitters are gone
completely, and I've only seen a couple of brief screen
flashes when I was playing the system last night. I'm
actually pleasantly surprised with the Wii... now that
I've got it working again I dare say I've underestimated this
machine. There's a lot of rotten apples in its software
library, yes, but that only makes the
unspoiled fruits that much sweeter.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Muramasa:
The Demon Blade are especially good. The first game is a
throwback to the 2D platformers of days gone by,
with generous portions of Super Mario Bros. 3 and
Super Mario World added to the mix. In fact, there's so
much borrowed from those two games that you start to
think "New" Super Mario Bros. is just coasting on
Nintendo's past successes. However, it starts
to blossom as you progress, dishing out
the devilishly clever levels gamers have come to
expect from Shigeru Miyamoto. The power-ups are a mixed
bag (not the micro mushroom again!) and I can't
imagine how the game would work with four players, but flying
solo it's been well worth the time and money.
Muramasa is the descendant of Odin
Sphere, which in turn was the offspring of Princess
Crown. The series has steadily evolved over the
last fifteen years, growing from a charming and ambitious
action/RPG that wasn't much fun to play, to a game with the
same high aspirations but tighter action scenes and gorgeous
hand-painted backdrops, to an extremely polished title that's
just a stone's throw from excellence. The combat in
Muramasa is so refined that it makes Odin Sphere look like
Princess Crown, and Princess Crown look like a slog through a
tar pit. With a joystick and a single button, you'll
glide through the air with the deadly grace of a hawk, slice
foes to ribbons with a relentless barrage of sword slashes,
return shuriken and other projectiles to their senders, and
block- then counter- incoming strikes. Such simple
control could have quickly turned into a button-mashing mess-
just ask anyone who owned an Amiga in the 1990s!- but in
Muramasa it's perfectly natural, and damned near
perfect.
The graphics are on par with Odin
Sphere, which is to say outstanding. Never mind that
Odin Sphere is three years old at this point... its visuals
are timeless, and the same can be said of Muramasa.
VanillaWare's Japanese motif is utterly flawless, with hilly
countrysides, shady forests, and humble villages all rendered
in exquisite detail. Each stage is a living painting,
with the only downside being the pasted together
marionettes passing as characters. Sorry, but after
ten years of watching Flash cartoons, I've grown
acutely aware of the difference between real
animation and the subtle tilting of heads and
limbs.
So I guess the bottom line is that
Muramasa is a terrific game. It's not
quite a masterpiece, but the fact that I can't put my
finger on what's missing suggests that it's very close to that
point.
| February 8, 2010... Wii
Croaked |
There's reason for me to believe that my
Wii is on its last legs. Whenever I use it, the gameplay
is interrupted by thick horizontal black lines cutting through
the screen at random intervals. It doesn't matter if I'm
playing disc games or just hanging out at the front end,
the lines will keep popping up until I shut off the system in
frustration. Lately the lines have been accompanied by a
violently jittering picture that's just as random but even
more distracting.
I've done some research, and there are
two possible explanations for this... either the television
set isn't designed to work properly with the Wii, or
the system's graphics processor has been melted into
a glob of silicon. I'm ruling out the first option,
since I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a long time ago if
the television wasn't playing nice with the Wii. That
leaves a costly repair as my only remaining option.
I don't even want to send it
back to Nintendo, because my system's running the Homebrew
Channel and I hate the thought that they'd remove it or
send me a new system with an unbreakable security
update. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with the
Homebrew Channel that has nothing to do with pirating Wii
games... to me, it's part of the system's functionality, and
losing it all for the sake of the system's shaky
official software library is too bitter a pill for
me to swallow.
The funny thing is that out of the
three current generation systems I own, including a
near-launch Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3 I MacGyvered back to
life with spare parts, the Wii would have been the
last console I thought would die before its
time. I'm going to roll the dice on a replacement
component cable and see if that fixes the problem. If
not, I guess that means The Gameroom Blitz will be a Wii-free
zone for at least the three weeks it'll take for Nintendo to
examine it.
| February 5,
2010... Grand Theft Hell
No |
Seriously, I'm done with this fucked up
series. I don't care how much praise it gets
from magazines like the oh-so-trustworthy Play,
I don't care how many celebrities they can get to make
cameo appearances, and I don't give a damn how many new
features they pile into the next game... I'm not
buying this again. I've given Grand Theft
Auto entirely too many chances, and it's disappointed me
each and every time. The only time I've felt
good about buying a game in this series is when I
picked up a copy of Vice City for the PC, and that was only
because its soundtrack was written to the disc
in MP3 format and easily added to my
collection. I didn't actually play
it, because if I had, I would have stomped the disc into
dust like I did with GTA4 today.
How do I hate thee, Grand Theft Auto
4? I'd need a hundred hands to count all the
ways. Instead of fixing the core issues that have dogged
the series from the very beginning, you throw more cherries on
top of the shit sundae and hope nobody notices. The
driving is only slightly less woeful than before, with a
massive turning radius for all but the best cars, and the
combat is a sluggish, pathetic mess; trounced by the seven
year old True Crime: Streets of LA. The game
engine is mechanical and constipated next to other
sandbox games I've played in the last three years, and no
amount of vapid mini-games, mean-spirited
advertisements, and other extraneous features
can hide this. In short, it's crap. All the
"professional" reviewers who were paid to say otherwise
should hang their heads in shame while I strike them
repeatedly with a rolled up newspaper.
Let me take this opportunity to warn
other game developers not to take the same route Rockstar did
and turn their games into "life simulations" at the cost of
the core gameplay. Nobody's playing your games to bowl
or gamble or troll for booty. They could do this stuff
in real life, or if they're that desperate, play video games
exclusively devoted to those pursuits. What you need to
do is concentrate on your game's central focus, the
reason your customers bought it in the first place. When
you blur that focus with needless distractions, as the
makers of Burnout and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater did with the most
recent titles in those series, you fail as game
designers.
| February 3,
2010... Australian
Idiot |
There's a new review on the web site,
folks. This time it's Borderlands, the
unique blend of first-person shooter and dungeon crawler that
was released last summer. Next up to bat is Brutal
Legend, an equally peculiar hybrid starring Jack Black of
Tenacious D fame. It's only rock and roll, but will I
like it? Find out next week.
Before I go, I'd like to direct your
attention to a man. He's not much of a man, though...
just Michael Atkinson, prime minister of South
Australia. He's been a target of ridicule for gamers
thanks to his stubborn refusal to approve a mature rating for
video games in Australia. That ridicule is
well-deserved... in an age where the video game industry makes
$25
billion each year and top releases like Modern
Warfare 2 rival the success of the
big-budget films like Avatar, Atkinson's attitude is a
dinosaur, and deeply condescending to the citizens of his
country.
Recently, the attitude has spread
from the video game industry to the world of politics,
where it affects everyone. Atkinson crafted and
eventually pushed
through a law forcing bloggers and
other internet commenters to post their full names and home
addresses when discussing political candidates and issues in
an election year. Atkinson insisted that the law
was meant to protect candidates from the big, bad
opinions of the blogosphere, but who would protect the
bloggers from retribution when the candidates took office
and had control of the already overreaching powers
of the Australian government? It's not hard to imagine a
situation where a dissenter would be bullied into submission
by tax collectors, or police officers, or even child
protection agencies.
After Australia's citizens expressed
their objections, Atkinson backed away from the bill,
promising that it would not be enforced and that he would
repeal it... after the election. Wait a minute,
what? You wrote this bill. You made
damned sure it became law. Now Australians are supposed
to trust you to kill this law, written by you to
protect you from negative opinions of you on
the internet? The late Steve Irwin gave rectal exams to
crocodiles every week, and even he wouldn't be dumb enough to
fall for this. Freedom is not a carrot on a stick.
Freedom is not a shell game. Freedom is not something to
be barted for with self-serving politicians. It's an
unalieable right, and shame on you for treating
it like your own personal commodity, to be doled out at your
whim!
This actually ties back into video
games, because Atkinson made a similar statement when
discussing his most vocal critics on the subject. After
complaining that he's received death threats from disgruntled
gamers, he claims "I'll consider
changing my mind about all this when the gaming community
decide to behave in a civil fashion." The death threats are a non-issue... hell,
I've received death threats. There are crazy
people out there who communicate exclusively in death
threats. That's no reflection on the gaming public as a
whole.
As for listening to gamers about the
R18+ rating, that was quickly revealed as a lie when Atkinson
dismissed an open discussion on the subject, claiming
that it wouldn't be fair because only those in favor of
the rating ("R18+ nerds," as he called them) would
participate. Hell, with that logic, you might as well
ban free elections. Only the people who care
about them are going to vote, right? Given Atkinson's
frightening socialist leanings, I wouldn't be surprised if
that were next on the menu for him...
| January 30, 2010... O No She
Didn't! |
I swear, Oprah's studio
audience makes fans of The View look like
worldly intellectuals. Then again, I'd probably strain
to find nice things to say about Jay Leno too if I could get a
brand new car out of the deal. "Uh, he feeds Kevin
Eubanks only the highest-quality dog food? He's
not on television twenty-three hours of the
day? Wait, that won't do... how about this? He
smells like Cool Ranch Doritos! That's a compliment,
right? Now where's my Corvette?"
Off that subject (which I have so
thoroughly beaten to death over the past week), I just
received Brutal Legend in the mail from GameFly today, and am
currently downloading The Battle of Forli, one of the missing
chapters from Assassin's Creed II. I've heard it's not
up to the standards of the rest of the game, but what the
hell, it'll give me a chance to ride Da Vinci's flying machine
and catch that achievement I missed the first time
around.
Also on tap for the near future is the
Wii game New Super Mario Bros., from the makers of old Super
Mario Bros. I didn't actually want to buy this game
outright, but since GameFly thought it would be cute to send
me Brutal Legend instead, I guess I had no choice. This
game has held onto its value more stubbornly than Uncle
Scrooge to his first dime... I felt lucky just to get it for
$46 shipped!
| January 27, 2010... Never Buy
the Chrip Chrip Shoes |
Really. They totally
suck.
Oh yeah, I thought I should mention that
there's a new review on the Blitz. This time it's
Bayonetta, the wild 'n crazy action title from the
creators of Devil May Cry and God Hand.
It's practically the offspring of those two games, with
the lesser qualities of both carefully bred out. The
camera is wisely set at a distance from the action and the
sharp control leaves you free to pound on angels to your
heart's content without having to tuuuuuurn around to face one
hiding in a blind spot. The dumb, momentum-killing
puzzles from Devil May Cry are also far less frequent,
restricted to scenes where the heroine must stop and
rewind time to gain passage to exits held just out of her
reach. However, the gorgeous graphics and complex
combat have remained intact, making
Bayonetta superior to the beat 'em
ups Platinum designed for Capcom and one of the best
games released this year. We've still got eleven months
left, so there's plenty of time for it to be elipsed by other
releases, but nothing's topped it
yet.
A friendly reminder before I go... The
Battle of Forli mission pack will be released for Assassin's
Creed 2 today, if you're lucky enough to have the Xbox 360
version. Are you stoked? I'm totally stoked.
There's also a patch for Darksiders that's supposed to fix its
ugly screen-tearing issues, so if you own the Xbox 360 version
of the game, be sure to grab that too.
| January 25, 2010... Late
Night Just Got Darker |
As you may already know, Conan O'Brien
was pushed out of The Tonight Show just seven months
after its debut. I've got the details on his departure
in About
Last Night... but if you've been following
this controversy and already know all the facts, I'll just
give you my opinion right here... it's Jay Leno's fault.
He never wanted to leave The Tonight Show, and did
everything within his power to undermine Conan O'Brien as the
host even after claiming that he wanted the transition to go
smoothly and that O'Brien was "the perfect host."
Actually, Leno's been making a lot
of claims lately, many of which directly contradict things he
said before Conan took his job.
What's most galling about Leno's hostile
takeover is that he's trying to frame this as Conan
O'Brien's failure, claiming that "if you don't get the
ratings, you don't keep your job." Oh really now?
If we're going by that metric, your scheming ass should have
been the one dropkicked out the door. The Jay
Leno Show received terrible ratings for its time slot,
was poorly received by critics, and even coined a phrase used
by frustrated affiliates to describe how Leno would make
viewers stampede from NBC and not return for the rest of the
night. They weren't calling it the Conan
O'Brien effect, pal.
However, since NBC is currently run by
dimwits with the foresight of naked mole rats, Jay Leno gets
to keep his job while Conan O'Brien is offered as the
scapegoat... his reward for pulling Late Night out of the muck
after NBC treated its last host with all the tender
care of a twenty dollar hooker. If there's a plus side
to this, it's that Conan O'Brien is more popular than ever,
inspiring an almost cult-like legion of followers, and Jay
Leno's Svengali act is all the more transparent.
Comedians have come forward to admit their contempt for Leno,
other talk show hosts have mercilessly torn into him, and
there are even rumors that celebrities are extremely reluctant
to appear on The Tonight Show after he makes his
return.
Leno is acutely aware of his damaged
reputation and is fully invested in damage control, scheduling
a guest appearance on The Oprah Winfrey
Show. He'll make some
condescending remarks about Conan O'Brien (which
Conan will be helpless to defend against after
signing that bogus non-defamation contract), squeeze out a few
tears near the end of the interview, and win back most of his
old fans. They'll be fooled, but we'll know
better.
| January 22, 2010... Down with
the Sickness |
Rock Band fever has hit its climax
here at JessCREATIONS*, Co. Studios. I just ordered
a wireless guitar to replace the lackluster
X-Plorer packed with Guitar Hero III, along with a drum
set that will probably be used twice
before getting packed into the shed with all my
other extraneous gaming peripherals. Say "hi" to my
Tekken 5 joystick and Logitech steering wheel for me while
you're in there, would you?
However, like the bumbling Nazis
from Hogan's Heroes, I regret nothing... nothing! I'm
having a whole lot of fun with Beatles: Rock Band, and althoug
I love singing and strumming along with the music, the
experience just won't be complete without a chance to
pound on the skins like good 'ol Ringo Starr. I guess
what I'm trying to say is this... I WANT BLISTERS ON ME
FINGERS!
Anyway, new content is planned for the
Blitz, starting with a review of Borderlands. I took the
economy tour with this one, playing five hours without
assistance, but I'm confident that I've seen most of what this
game has to offer. Put simply, it's a first-person
shooter for hoarders. You start the game hunting
for the fabled "Vault" hidden somewhere on a vast Wile E.
Coyote desert planet, but by the time you're done, you're so
obsessed with finding great guns and replacing them with even
better guns that you'll have forgotten all about the
treasure. Who needs El Dorado when you can have All
Destructo?
I need to spend a little more time with
Bayonetta, though. This game is completely out of
control, split evenly between ludicrous cut scenes and
frantic, often punishing battles. The going isn't as
rough as it was in Demon's Souls- not even close- but I've
racked up enough Joe Pesci statues with my lackluster fighting
skills to start my own Martin Scorsese museum. Come on
guys, cut me a break! I don't even have enough haloes to
buy a freakin' sucker!
| January 19, 2010... Cause for
Alarm |
I just received the rest of my bounty in
the mail today, including my two GameFly rentals and that copy
of Darksiders I ordered last week. I've heard great
things about Darksiders, but my copy came with a sticker on
the front of the packaging that leaves me with some lingering
doubts...
A ten out of ten from Play
Magazine? Yeah, I've heard that one before...
Or what about this time?
Then there was this...
But this was the one that broke the
camel's back for me...
All right, enough with the comedy.
I've got games to play.
| January 18, 2010... King
Me |
It's time to celebrate the birthday of a
celebrated civil rights activist by kicking back and
doing absolutely nothing. Fortunately, since most of the
stuff I ordered was delivered on the preceding Saturday,
there's a whole lot of nothing for me to do! Let's start
from the top, shall we?
DSi: Admittedly,
I thought this minor upgrade of the Nintendo DS was a dumb
idea, and I said as much in an update from last year titled
"DSi? No, Dork." However, you get a lot more receptive
to the system when your DS Lite is on its last legs and
begging for retirement. So I grabbed a DSi from eBay and
ran it through a battery of tests. Actually, it was more
like a AA battery of tests, but here's what I learned from the
couple of hours I spent with the unit.
The frontend is vastly changed,
abandoning the stripped down look of its predecessor for a
sliding bar of applications. Pressing left and right on
the D-pad switches apps, while the A button selects the
currently highlighted program. These range from the
cartridge you've inserted to a variety of widgets, including a
music player (without MP3 support. THANKS, Nintendo...),
voice recorder, and snapshot factory. These utilities
are just for fun and don't have any practical use,
but contorting my face into the horrible offspring of the
Elephant Man and Don Knotts beats twiddling my thumbs while
waiting for that AceKard 2i to arrive.
As for games, it plays them well
enough... the larger displays makes scribbling on the
touchscreen less restrictive and really brings out the detail
in 3D titles like Super Mario Kart DS. On the down side,
the D-pad is nearly flush with the unit and diagonals are just
as problematic as they were on the DS Lite, if not more
so. There's also no support for Game Boy Advance titles,
and the only way to get it back is with a grey market
peripheral called the iPlayer that costs as much as an actual
Game Boy Advance and doesn't play the games nearly as
well. Yeah, I think I'll pass on that.
The Beatles: Rock
Band: As a young man, my interest in the
music of The Beatles was casual at best. I
always regarded them as that silly boy band whose music got
really weird and experimental after a chance encounter with
Bob Dylan and his inexhaustible supply of weed. However,
as I've aged and my tastes have refined, I've grown to
appreciate their versatility. The Beatles had a fluidity
unmatched by any other musical act (with the possible
exception of Weird Al Yankovic), smoothly flowing from the
catchy rock that put them on the map to bittersweet ballads,
low down dirty blues, and even carnival music.
If anyone deserves a dedicated
music game, it would be The Beatles... and it couldn't be a
simple compilation like Guitar Hero's tributes to Metallica,
Aerosmith, and Van Halen. The game would have to be
built around the band, and inseperable from it. The
Beatles: Rock Band is exactly that, a time capsule stuffed
with the Fab Four's best performances with imagery that brings
you into the studio and even the songs themselves. Never
fear though, gamers, you'll
get as much love as George, Paul, John, and Ringo!
The game is hugely fun, whether you're hitting all the right
notes as the lead singer or keeping the beat with a guitar or
drums.
The only downside is that the selection
of songs is a little slim, and you'll have to buy additional
albums online to shore up the numbers. I was forced to
pick up Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to offset
the number of irritating "yeah, yeah, yeah" songs loaded
into the default track list, effectively raising the price of
the game twelve dollars. Also, the fact that solo
performances from former Beatles members can't be
imported into this song- just the flagship Rock Band series-
is kind of a bummer. Could you imagine a dreamscape
stage for I Got My Mind Set On You with George Harrison
rocking out in Pee-Wee's Playhouse? You'll have to,
because it's never gonna happen. It's an annoyance, but
a forgivable one when you consider everything the game
gets right.
| January 14, 2010... Glaive
and a Head Cut, Two Bits |
Good news, nobody! I just signed
up for a GameFly account, so maybe I'll start writing reviews
of recent games for this dump! I'll also be receiving
several other items in the mail, including a Nintendo DSi (not
a moment too soon, considering the sorry state my old one is
in), a copy of T*HQ's Zeld-a-like Darksiders (hey, couldn't be
any worse than Twilight Princess!), a more spacious Xbox
360 hard drive (250 glorious gigs!), and other gaming goodies
which prove the old adage that a fool and his money are
soon parted.
While you're waiting, let me talk about
some of the old 'n busted titles that I've been playing over
the past week. First up to bat is Rock Band
2, which has supplanted Gitaroo Man and Samba de Amigo as
my favorite music game of all time. Sorry guys, but you
were released almost a decade ago! I was pretty
skeptical about Rock Band at first, but after watching the
outrageous opening (who knew Cheap Trick could rock that
hard?) and playing my first set, I couldn't help but fall in
love with it.
The biggest advantage Rock Band has over
Activision's long-running and crassly exploited Guitar Hero
series is that it uses real songs from the original artists,
including tracks like Man in the Box and Pump
it Up that were practically made for games like
this. Er, if the songs hadn't been made first, I
mean. Even less obvious choices like Alanis
Morissette's You Oughta Know work surprisingly well... I
haven't had this much fun angrily ranting about Dave Coulier
since Full House went off the air!
However, there are plenty of other
reasons to prefer Rock Band 2 to the competition. The
character customization is a pretty cool plus, letting you
build your band from scratch and dress them in outfits ranging
from Stephen Tyler's tight pants and silk sash to bone-studded
armor lifted from a GWAR video. There's support for
multiple instruments, so if the standard guitar isn't your
thing, you could always bang away on a set of drums or
even sing along using a USB microphone. Finally, the
game just has more personality than Guitar Hero, thanks to
trippy video filters and dynamic camera angles that make
each performance look like a concert video. Without a
doubt, this is as much a step up from the stale Guitar Hero
series as the very first Guitar Hero was from Konami's
lackluster Guitar Freaks.
I've also been making headway in D3's
Dark Sector, which I'd procured from Goozex for the trade-in
equivalent of five bucks. It ain't bad, although you
wouldn't know that from reading some of the reviews.
Many of the complaints made by Game Revolution in
particular do have merit... close-quarters combat consists of
hammering the B button with one hand while crossing your
fingers with the other, and any weapons you've stolen from
enemies only last for a half minute before they self-destruct,
forcing you to rely on a small selection of purchased guns and
your character's default weapon.
But oh what a weapon it
is! The game's baby-faced mercenary holds a
glaive, the unholy marriage of a boomerang and a curved
dagger. It's the weapon of a thousand uses, as any well
designed video game sidearm should be. Toss it at an
enemy once to stun him, then aim for a limb to lop it off,
dooming the soldier to a short, painful death from blood
loss. You can also lock the camera behind the glaive and
guide it to its next target, whether it be a gun-toting goon
or a switch granting access to new areas. The glaive can
even be treated with electricity or fire, making it even more
deadly in combat and burning a hole through the pulsing alien
membranes standing between you and your next
objective.
Without the glaive, Dark Sector would
have just been Uncharted without the platforming or the
charm. Then again, R-Type might have been just Gradius
with an H.R. Giger influence if it hadn't been
for its versatile Force Unit. It really goes to
show how a single, cleverly designed play mechanic can make
all the difference in an otherwise derivative video
game.
All right, that'll do it for this
update. I'll save my Beautiful Katamari and Mirror's
Edge rants for another time. Believe me, I have enough
complaints for Mirror's Edge alone to fill three
pages.
January 9, 2010... I Picked
the Wrong Time to Stop Sniffing Glue
Updating |
A whole lot of gaming news happened over
the past four days... and I wasn't here to cover any of
it! No wonder nobody reads this crap anymore.
The hottest news off the presses is that
Nintendo and Sony are busy working on successors to their
handheld game systems. The next DS will pack a Tegra2
processor and a significantly higher resolution for graphics
that could "conceivably approach the quality of the
Wii." Remember, this is a handheld, so that's actually
pretty impressive! The new portable will also have an
accelerometer, allowing for tilt 'n turn gameplay right out of
the box.
The PSP2 pushes the envelope even
further, with visuals that, according to tech site SlashGear, are "at a
level between the original Xbox and Xbox 360." I'm wary
of such lofty promises- after all, Sony has written a lot of
checks its collective behind couldn't cash over the last
fifteen years- but even Xbox quality performance would be more
than enough for a handheld game system with a five inch
screen. Just be sure to add the dual thumbsticks this
time, OK, guys? Yes, dual thumbsticks. Write that
down if you must.
Next on the menu is Bayonetta.
This action title from the makers of Devil May Cry actually
makes that series seem tame by comparison... which is no
small task considering that Devil May Cry gave us
lantern frogs with lesbian fairies for lures
and heroes who treat five foot long swords through
the torso like you and I would treat a paper cut. The
demo starts with the lead character, a kinky British
dominatrix, standing atop a clock tower hurtling through
space. Angels accost our heroine as the tower streaks
through Earth's stratosphere, and she fights back with lethal
locks of hair, platform shoe pistols, and the
worst instruments of torture you've seen since Acclaim
went out of business. It's nuttier than an explosion at
the Planters factory, but it never feels forced. You
don't ask why a clock tower is orbiting Earth or why
you're tearing angels in half with everything but your bare
hands... you just go with it. It's probably better that
way... the day you make sense of this game is the day
you'll be carted off to the nearest Rubber
Ramada for an extended vacation.
There's one final order of business...
Microsoft is working on an extension of its Xbox Live Arcade
service, which will let your avatar play games inside a
virtual arcade. Unfortunately, you can't actually
explore this game room, making it little more than an
excuse for Microsoft to tack five hundred megabytes of bloat
onto an 8K Atari 2600 ROM. On the bright side, it means
that the number of arcade games playable on the Xbox 360 could
reach four figures. Sunnier still is the fact that each
new title will be significantly less
expensive than traditional Xbox Live Arcade offerings, at
three dollars each. You could also pay fifty cents for
two credits, but what kind of yutz is going to do
that?
Yeah, I think that just about covers
everything I missed. See 'ya next update,
folks!
| January 5, 2010... By Popular
Demand |
You asked for it, and boy are you going to get
it! There's a review of the recent-ish Ubisoft
release Assassin's Creed II posted on the Xbox
360 page. It's a bit stream of
consciousness, but it makes its point
eventually.
I can't promise I'll make a habit of
posting new reviews on a regular basis, especially with
classes starting next week, but we'll play it by ear and see
what happens.
| January 2, 2010... Capping
off the Holidays |
It's been a Gameroom Blitz
tradition to post updates on my birthday, so why break the
streak? I just wish I had more to say! I finally
received a copy of Rock Band 2 in the
mail (hopefully functional this time) and lucked into a
cheap copy of Beautiful Katamari at a video store not far from
my house. I haven't had a chance to play the former
game, but did sink an hour into the latter. It seems
like business as usual for the King of all Cosmos and the tiny
green battery mascot unfortunate enough to be his son... the
only significant differences I noticed from We Love Katamari
are the sharper graphics you'd expect from the Xbox
360 and a lot less detail in the king's
netherregions. He's switched his attire from
uncomfortably snug black tights to poofy pantaloons, saving a
lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the player's eyes. I
imagine this was done to make the game more palatable for an
American audience, but I like to think of it as a special
birthday gift just for me. Now if only I could make him
stop throwing billiard balls at
me... |
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