Nintendo

Review – Spider-Man: Friend or Mere Acquaintance

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In another installment in my untimely series on finding something to hate while surrounded by the best games in years, here’s another look at games that ate shit in 2007.

Until recently, the Spider-Man franchise had been the only comic book license that somewhat translated into an enjoyable gaming experience. Next Level Games, a company that specializes in cramming a licensed properties into games that have nothing to do with the license they are based on, must have won some sort of raffle to be awarded the development of Friend or Foe. Any company that works solely in licensed games is going to suck worse than a circus put on by disabled veterans. Anyone who tells you different is Next Level Games. →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Review – Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

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Sequels are usually a bad thing. For every one that changes game mechanics enough to make the new series entry fresh, there are five that tweak the graphics slightly, add a new combo counter and a new character or two. A sequel should not replace the original game; simple expansions of themes and mechanics should not cost full retail price. Instead, gamers deserve sequels that coexist with the originals. Super Mario 2 did not replace Super Mario 1, nor did 3 replace 2 – all of them were different enough to warrant keeping the older titles around. This is how sequels should be handled (someone inform EA, please).
By “somewhat powerful” it means “very weak”.

Luckily for me, my ludicrous idealism is not applied uniformly. →  Four out of five dentists recommend reading more.

Out of Print: The Trouble of Finding Old Games

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When I began college, the Peer to Peer filesharing scene was dying. With campuses clamping down on the networks, and with iPods making the concept of actually purchasing music legitimate again, the likes of Kazaa and Limewire were hard to find. Despite this I managed to acquire a massive amount of music as a student. Rather than search for high quality files, my freshman self tore through the CD binders of my friends, ripping any album I thought to be interesting. This method of sampling made me not just a fan of new music, but of whole albums. In a world where the single is all the rage, classic rock albums became my poison of choice. And when I got out of college, I realized I wanted physical copies of most of them. →  U R Not lamE.

Review – Lunar Knights

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Because Lunar Knights is such a solid little game, I had hoped the gameworld would be fleshed out; I hoped that I’d have enough new levels to allow me to upgrade all my weapons without returning to the same stages over and over. I wanted the many mechanics to continue to build on each other and each to be fully realized. Hell, while playing it I designed my own game (usually I charge to see my ace designs, but for the sake of this review I am willing to go hungry):
Multiple high quality CG movies in a DS game? Yes, please.

Imagine Zelda in one expertly designed dungeon that has many facets closed off at any given point. As you progress you gain control over the weather but cannot change it at will, you must decide on the climate before descending into the dungeon, so choose well. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Breaking news – Wii sales decent, PS3 the greatest

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Edit 1.26.08: This first interview is likely fake. The odds of a new blog getting first Robbie Bach and then Ken Kutaragi interviews one after another seem infinitesimal. If this is the case, don’t I feel like an ass.

In an interview that shocked the gaming world, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach announced that the Wii is in fact selling. This contradicts earlier reports that the console was an abysmal failure and moved only 14 units this past holiday season.

From Bach:

“At Microsoft we think of the Wii in a different bracket of gaming so its hard to compare the two consoles. The Wii has a very small life cycle and doesn’t compare to the Xbox 360 feature wise. And while it is taking plausible 360 sales its important to notice that Nintendo has created a revolutionary device and Microsoft expected it to sell decent, and the system can afford to sell decent because its very similar to a childs toy. →  I’m so excited, my braces are tingling!

Gaming on the L train

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I like to look cool. Obviously I’m not alone in this, but living in New York and taking the much-derided (for its “hipness”) L train makes this a more pressing issue for me than most. Many of our dear readers no doubt plop into their clunky cars, polluted with fast food wrappers and other etc’s, and drive to and from work more or less anonymously. I, on the other hand get jabbed with stares by confidence-sapping girls who are far too pretty, rich, and successful to ever want to talk to me for more than an instant. Still, I like to pretend.

So when I received my shiny-black Nintendo DS for Xmas, my thoughts quickly turned to “how cool am I going to look using this on the subway?” →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

2008 Game Predictions part 2

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Continued from Part 1.

Christian’s predictions

Devil May Cry 4
I realized when I decided to write about this game that I knew very little about it. What are they doing with DMC4? If you look around the ‘net you will find previews, but fewer than I expected. Leave it to Gamespot to write a classic preview that lays out the entire first five levels of the game, complete with story spoilers for me to read.

As nice as the game looks, I’m getting a bad feeling about the whole project. I have no idea how Devil May Cry stacks up to the competition in terms of sales, but I can’t imagine that its last entry led to numbers comparable to God of War or the numerous Ninja Gaiden revisions. →  I got served!

All you ever need to know about Japan

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After spending 10 nights in Japan I am now qualified to make sweeping statements about the Japanese culture. The following are immutable truths (told in a convenient pros and cons style) about this wonderful and bizarre country:

Pro
Suntory Boss is the boss of them all since 1992.

There’s no use denying it.

Con
Japanese people seem as pro-Japan as Americans are pro-America. I was asked by one of my gracious host’s fathers why we came to Japan. He was an awesome guy but really pushed hard for an answer he found satisfactory. I think the question was probably just mistranslated and he actually asked, “How awesome is Japan?” The same day, a man on the street approached us and told us in English that “Japan is number 1.” →  Onimusha 2: Samuread’s Destiny

Is this the beginning of the end? Looking back at the past two years

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Two years ago, I was a fairly one dimensional gamer. I enjoyed 4X games on the side, enjoyed PC FPS and RTS… but my heart and soul belonged to MMOs. From punching the wall when dying one too many times in Everquest as an emotional 17 year old, to dumping a girl over World of Warcraft at 24, I was dedicating–easily–30 hours a week to MMO games. Yikes. A second job. That didn’t pay.

Then I burned out. And suddenly, I had free time again. I filled it with other video games, of course, but also structured my personal life better. It was no longer a rush to get home, shovel food in and get raiding. I had thought that perhaps I had finally grown up. →  All you need is read.

Mario Galaxy Non-Review

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Not long into Super Mario Galaxy, the player will become quite accustomed to, maybe even fond of, seeing Mario enter each level with his arms spread as he flies around and lands on a safe spot, shouting “yes!” on his success. About 20 stars in, it dawned on me; the next time I entered a level, I really wanted to see Mario scream “yes!” as he performed a greased landing, hitting the ground running at top speed, not stopping until he got to the end (or came up to some tricky group of hazards).

This might sound like I am really looking for Sonic the Hedgehog Galaxy, and I suppose that is the point. Back in the day, it was always Sonic who was considered cool and edgy, while Mario was the gentle goofball. →  [post launches in virtual reality],[put on your VR headset now],[left click on your mouse to open the remainder of this post in your web browser on your digital computing device]