June 01, 2010 by Greg Noe
My apologies to Nate in advance for totally stealing his Memorable Ideas theme and twisting it from forgettable games into something far less interesting, but I have to write about this.
New Game Plus is probably one of the coolest, most obvious, and underused features in video games today. There is no better way to get me to immediately replay your game than to give me every single item, weapon, magic, and point of experience that I finished the game with at the start of the my next playthrough. Yes, it makes everything Win Button easy, but it is so very satisfying returning to the boss the gave you so much trouble the first time and one-shotting him into oblivion. New Game Plus should be a required feature of every RPG and adventure game.
For the unaware, New Game Plus means starting the game over but loading your characters from when you last beat it. You generally retain most non-story items and weapons, and keep your existing level and stats. It's generally a nice reward for conquering a game, but as we'll see, can also be used for a variety of reasons.
Read moreMay 31, 2010 by Nate
For all its talk of innovation this generation, Nintendo seems to be falling back on its old tricks like never before. Alongside its Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, Nintendo announced two games at E3 2009 that surprised the videogame community: New Super Mario Bros Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2.
What's that I hear you say? "Big deal! How are new Mario games a surprise?" Well, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the first 2D Mario game to hit a console since Super Mario World, just under nineteen years ago. And Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the first direct sequel to a Mario game since Super Mario Bros. 3, just over twenty years ago. Nintendo may be feeding casual gamers with one hand, but it's got plenty of snacks for Mario lovers in the other.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii was set loose upon the world last November, and continues to sell like Wii-branded hotcakes well into this year. But Nintendo held Super Mario Galaxy 2 off until this summer, ensuring that they have a full three years to create bold new worlds for Mario to explore. Is the Galaxy worth revisiting, or was one trip to the cosmos enough?
Read moreMay 28, 2010 by Paul Eastwood
Resident Evil is the original survival horror game. It didn't invent horror, but it definitely laid some groundwork as far as the genre went in video games. It was originally released in 1996 for the Sony PlayStation. In 2002, it was released as a remake for the GameCube in a surprising deal that had the series on Nintendo's system and eventually led to the stellar Resident Evil 4. It is the GameCube REmake (get it, RE stands for Resident Evil? Ah, nevermind) that I will be playing.
So what I want to know is this: Is this game good, and is this game scary? I've played Resident Evil 4, and had a few good jumps, but overall it was just a moody action game (arguably becoming the basis of the modern third-person shooter). The original (and remake) had a lot more focus on puzzle solving and exploring, and less on fighting.
I'm going all out with this one. I'm playing at night, while everyone else is sleeping, with the lights off. Let's see if we can get a good scare out of this.
May 27, 2010 by Nate
Some games are unforgettable. After forking over our birthday money at K-Mart, we bounce all the way home in the backseat of the station wagon, wrestle the plastic wrap away from the box, gingerly place the game in the system, and steady our feverishly shaking hands with an anaconda grip on the controller. We don't let go for hours. And when the credits roll, we tear up a little, knowing we'll always cherish that first time through.
And then there are games that are largely forgotten weeks after release. Niche appeal, scathing reviews, or even just lack of hype can doom a game to obscurity and the Target bargain bin. But even these games deserve a second look...sometimes. Every once in a while, a kernel of brilliance can be found within these steaming piles of mediocrity. The purpose of this feature is to sift out some of these conceptual gems and put them under the microscope.
Today's trip takes us all the way back to 2008, when a game called The World Ends With You dared to eschew every gaming convention it could think of, for better or worse. In the "better" column resides one particularly inspired idea, the Level Slider.
May 26, 2010 by Nate
Retro revivals are all the rage nowadays. In the era of the low-budget downloadable games market, everybody's digging into their past to give a classic a fresh coat of paint or create a sequel with old-school flare. The former provides a proven template onto which shiny new graphics can be applied, while the latter guarantees interest from lifelong fans who long to experience that same magic like it were new again.
3D Dot Game Heroes is a retro-styled installment in Nintendo's famed Legend of Zelda series, albeit one that was developed by a different company and published for a different company's hardware, and it would be slapped silly with copyright infringement lawsuits if the word "Zelda" appeared anywhere in it. From Software, known for its Armored Core series and the recent hit Demon's Souls, doesn't just take a page from Nintendo's book: the book gets Xeroxed from cover to cover. Almost everything in 3D Dot Game Heroes feels like it was stolen from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, from the plot to the controls to the stage designs to the items and everything in between.
We tend to view knockoffs as inferior, bitter, envious versions of the genuine article. Does 3D Dot Game Heroes lack the essence of its explosively-popular inspiration, or does it manage to work a little magic of its own?
Read moreMay 25, 2010 by Greg Noe
After a flurry of six games in just five years, there hasn't been another Onimusha game since March 2006. I understand that the series always played second fiddle to Capcom's other series, Devil May Cry, but man, Onimusha always had an awesome combination of historical inaccuracy and great hack-and-slash action.
I played and loved the four main games in the series, even the one that takes place in France with Jean Reno. The first time I ever played an Onimusha game was at my uncle's house; the only thing I knew about Onimusha: Warlords was that it played like Resident Evil and was rated Mature. This seemed to indicate to me that the game would be scary or something, but what it turned out to be was simply a blast to play. Fast action, great puzzles, a storyline with famous Japanese figureheads that I recognized, and more gore than scare. My kind of game.
Read moreMay 24, 2010 by Steve
As mentioned in my previous article,Street Fighter 4 has become THE fighting game phenomenon of recentyears, and with good reason. Released to consoles early 2009 andbacked by a fantastic media campaign, Capcom gave fans a stunning,well-balanced mix of old and new. Refreshing the memories of oldfans while simultaneously creating new ones, the fighting game wasresurrected.
Its update/sequel/expansion recentlyhit stores in April, offering new characters, new ultras, and afantastic replay system along with improved online matchmaking andplay. As I do not actually own a copy of the game, this article willonly be my initial impressions on these topics. Currently releasedon 360 and PS3, an arcade version is planned for the near future,with a PC version yet unannounced and conspicuously absent.
Read moreMay 21, 2010 by Greg Noe
This game was a long time coming, but the true evolution of the Ace Attorney series has arrived with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. After four games of playing as a defense attorney, we finallyexperience what it's like to play as a prosecutor, particularly fanfavorite Miles Edgeworth. Miles has been a staple of the series butmostly as an antagonist turned sort-of-friend, but now we get to takedirect control of him in a series of cases surrounding a smuggling ringand a great thief.
I've played all the previous games in the series and reviewed the last two on this site, Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice. While the games themselves are really long and haven't really evolvedgameplay wise over the last five years, I'm still continually drawn tothem year in and year out. They just have this great charm to themthat not only stems from great original writing, but also the besttranslations in the business. A ton of effort goes into these games'stories and characters, and it shows.
So here's my review ofMiles Edgeworth, in what could be the last game in the Ace Attorneyseries since the team has apparently moved on to a new game calledGhost Trick: Phantom Detective. I truly hope we see more from thePhoenix Wright universe one day though.
May 20, 2010 by Greg Noe
I used to be a huge Halo fan. Played 16 player LAN matches nearly every other night during college in the dorms on the original, and then stood in line at midnight to pick up my copy of Halo 2 even after we had downloaded an early leaked French version. But even though I had loved Halo, the sequel left a bad taste in my mouth. It was probably a combination of the totally crappy and unfinished story along with the extremely gimped pistol that just left me wishing Bungie still cared (not to mention the horrible "ohhh take it!" E3 Zanzibar video). My brand new Xbox Live membership went virtually unused and I used my Xbox to play good games like Beyond Good and Evil.
By the time Halo 3 rolled around, I was as unexcited for the series as ever. Every time there's a new Halo, we always here about how there's now more polygons in a gun than in an entire soldier in the last game. Who cares? Well, I ended up playing through Halo 3 with a friend and I enjoyed it for what it was, a decent ending to a tumultous series. Here I was, a guy who had beaten the first Halo over five times including on Legendary, and I was giving Halo 3 a seven out of ten. What had happened in to this series?
Read moreMay 19, 2010 by Nate
It's rare that we get to combine our love for games with charitable donations, and unheard of that we can feel like a smart shopper while doing both. Such a concoction of impossibility was made real when the Humble Indie Bundle experiment went live on May 4, 2010. For a limited time, five acclaimed indie games (Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture, and World of Goo) were offered as a bundle to gamers...at whatever price they were willing to give. For any price you name, you could have access to five games you may or may not love. A sixth game, Samorost 2, was even added to the bunch as extra incentive. You could even split your price between the developers and two partner charities, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity, at whatever fractions you wanted. I gave $7.50 to the developers and $7.50 to the charities myself, contributing to the $1,270,000 in total donations contributed as of May 15. It's a great cause that also happens to be a great deal.
Having only previously played (or even heard of) the fantastic World of Goo, I decided to go alphabetically and spend an hour with Aquaria first. Aquaria was created by Bit Blot, an independent game company comprised of Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, in 2007. An indie games festival winner known for its atmosphere, Aquaria is an underwater 2D sidescroller with a focus on exploration and puzzle-solving, in the same vein as Metroid.
As I dive into Aquaria for the first time, I wonder if it's true what they say: is it really better down where it's wetter, under the sea?
