Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room first. Is Farsight Studio’s Pinball Arcade better than Zen Studio’s Pinball FX 2? No. Is it as good as Pinball FX 2? Not quite. Is it a must-have for pinball junkies? Absolutely.
After the jump, why would you want another pinball game? Continue reading →
As far as Ridge Racers go, you could do a whole lot worse than Ridge Racer Unbounded. This latest Ridge Racer from Namco finally does more than shunt you down narrow sterile roads with only a contrived drift mechanic where the gameplay should go. It instead takes a cue from actually good arcade racers. Which you should probably play instead.
After the jump, what’s in a name? Continue reading →
One of the problems with dynamic environments like changing weather and time of day is that they’re dynamic. For instance, during one of the cutscenes in Xenoblade Chronicles, a character looking out over a landscape observes that it’s so peaceful. Meanwhile, she’s being pelted with rain. The wind whips the trees and grass into a frenzied dance. Thunder crashes overhead. Lightning tears through the sky, illuminating ominous shapes in the distance.
“It’s just the calm before the storm,” says Shulk, as perceptive as ever. You’d think a guy who could see into the future would make a better weather man.
This week will be a test whether updated versions of classics are as good as they were in the olden days. Legend of Grimrock is an old-school, tile-based, first-person dungeon crawl in the same vein as classics like Bard’s Tale or Eye of the Beholder. But with better graphics. Similarly, Naval War: Arctic Circle is a latter day version of Harpoon, the classic dispassionate wargame that modeled SIGINT-based C3 warfare. In other words, a real-time spreadsheet battle of lines and circles. But Naval War: Arctic Circle has 3D graphics that will supposedly let you watch things blow up. Will these games play today as well as their precedents played ten years ago? Find out at your wallet’s peril.
Nintendo’s Spirit Camera is a cute gimmick-based game that adds ghosts to what you see in the camera, kind of like that bit in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride where you go past a mirror and see a ghost sitting in the car with you. Actually, you can probably strike the word game from that description. Skullgirls, the 2D fighting game which was supposed to be out last week, will be out this week instead. Tribes: Ascend, the free-to-play shooter/skiing sim, transitions from open beta to no-foolin’-we’re-actually-official.
Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Uncharted 3 will all get DLC this week at the cost of free, free, and $10, respectively. Mass Effect 3 gets two new maps, as well as new characters, weapons, and consumables you can keep your fingers crossed for as you’re grinding for booster packs. Operation Raccoon City gets a new mission playable as the Spec Ops characters from multiplayer matches (i.e. the good guys). It will be followed over the coming weeks by additional levels — these won’t be free — that tell a new story for the Spec Ops team. Finally, Uncharted 3 gets four multiplayer maps.
Want to listen to a bunch of Americans of the non-Canadian variety gush enthusiastically about a hockey comedy starring Sean William Scott? Then this week’s Qt3 Movie Podcast is for you! If you want to skip any Goon spoilers, fast forward to the 41-minute mark for this week’s 3×3. We discuss jump scares that don’t cheat.
Next week: A Cabin in the Woods
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