While a group of indeterminate size but unmistakable volume complains about the ending of Mass Effect 3’s storyline in the single player game — first the Tea Party, then the Occupy Movement, and now this? — I’d like to gnash my teeth about the multiplayer now that I’ve resolved not to play it anymore.
After the jump, I am done. Do you hear me? Done! Continue reading →
What the hell is going on in Sine Mora? I don’t just mean the crazy 2D sidescrolling bullet hell shooting, which is mostly manageable for a dilettante like me. The genre is known as shmups, presumably because the people describing it are too busy dodging bullets to sound out the words “shoot ’em up”. Hence, “shmup”. But what the hell is going on with these graphics? And this story? And Hungary?
After the jump, Sine Mora is apparently Latin for “yowsa!” Continue reading →
I click the age option as high as it will go, just out of curiosity. It stops at forty-five. So I could create a forty-five year old rookie if I wanted to. I’m highly skeptical of what kind of future that player would have, though. I could try and forge a late-blooming phenom, like Roy Hobbs in The Natural (though even Hobbs was a comparatively spry thirty-five when he finally made it to the big leagues), but Road to the Show is at heart a role-playing game, and at the outset I’m only given a meager allotment of experience points to divide amongst various skills. This is a game that makes a point of showing you the list of retirees after any given season, along with their reason for exiting the game, be it age, injury, or ineffectiveness. I can’t help but think my forty-five year old rookie would show up on that very list after one, maybe two seasons tops, and shitty seasons at that, toiling away in some minor league backwater, batting .238 for the Tulsa Drillers, never even sniffing the major leagues.
After the jump, rolling an alt Continue reading →
Some action games challenge you to get better, use new tools, and adapt to new enemies. Shoot Many Robots can’t be bothered with that nonsense. It is a game about simply persevering, mostly by holding down a button that fires your gun. You’ll eventually buy a new gun that does more damage to shoot the robots that have more hit points to earn money to buy a new gun that does more damage to shoot the robots that have more hit points to earn money to buy a new gun that does more damage, and so on. Repeat as needed.
After the jump, same song, same verse Continue reading →
The difference between the greatest grindhouse and the just plain tasteless is hard to define. But like the Supreme Court’s famous observation on obscenity, I know it when I see it. Great grindhouse is oddly affectionate, more than a little funny without trying too hard, as eager to please as a puppy, cheerfully grim, and completely unapologetic. It is fearless and ridiculous, more enthusiastic than crass. It is the difference between Crank and Crank 2, Planet Terror and Machete, or Drive Angry and Hobo with a Shotgun.
What I most love about Shank 2 is how well it understands this difference. Shank 2 is a great grindhouse game, not quite as glorious as House of the Dead: Overkill, but far better than the guilty pleasure of the latest Splatterhouse game.
After the jump, it’s a grindhouse party Continue reading →
21 Jump Street is a surprise box office hit! But how does it go over with the Qt3 movie podcast? Listen to find out whether we’re too high-falutin’ to enjoy the greatest leap from TV to film since McG’s Charlie’s Angels. And join us for this week’s 3×3, which starts at the 31-minute mark. Inspired by Silent House’s supposed single take, we discuss our favorite camera gimmicks.
Next week: The Hunger Games
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In the latest round of server shutdowns from Electronic Arts, Boom Blox Bash Party’s online support is on the chopping block. One of the best games you can play on the Nintendo Wii will no longer work online as of April 13th. It’s bad enough to shut down games like Burnout: Revenge, The Godfather II, and Saboteur because there aren’t many people playing them online, which means there aren’t many people who would care. But it’s another thing entirely to shut down a game like Boom Blox Bash Party that’s partly based on players creating content for other players to download. So get online levels while you still can, because they won’t be there in a month. Imagine if Sony shut down Little Big Planet. Which Electronic Arts is effectively imitating by also shutting down support for Create, a decent puzzle creation kit based on player-made content.
I can groove on a good arthouse game. I don’t mind short, experimental, or inscrutable. I’m the kind of guy who thought Bastion was deep, The Path was meaningful, and Gravity Bone was transcendent. I might even play Dear Esther one day. But Journey, the latest release from the creators of Flower at thatgamecompany? I’d rather stay home.
After the jump, indie cred revoked Continue reading →
Space Pirates and Zombies gets a hefty update today. Previously, the galaxy consisted of two main factions vying for control of each system. The civilians and UTA factions were more of less interchangeable and always self-contained. Cozy up to the civilians in one system, cozy up to the UTA in another system. But today’s update adds bounty hunters, a whole new faction with a long reach, the resources to hunt you down, and their own currency. You can compete in bounty hunter arena challenges for special crew members and you can even earn ten entirely new ships.
The update will work with your current game, but developer Andrew Hume recommends a fresh start to really appreciate the bounty hunters.
This patch will integrate itself into an existing save game, but we recommend finishing your current play through of vanilla SPAZ and starting a new one with Bounty Hunters on March 19th. Progressing through the galaxy with this new menace completes the game and should adjust the feel enough to make a new playthrough worthwhile.
More details are available here.
When you see the From Software logo, you probably associate it with Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls. But there was a time that logo meant something else to a select group of people. There was a time the From Software logo meant an almost absurdly complex, elegant, strategic, and online only giant robot game called Chromehounds (pictured) that never found an audience. That time is here again. You may not have known this about Armored Core V — I certainly didn’t — but it is From Software’s Chromehounds mulligan. I say that with equal degrees of enthusiasm and trepidation. Stand by for the review later this week, because this is a game that will live or die (sadly, the latter is most likely for a variety of reasons) based on the multiplayer community.
Sine Mora is just a 2D sidescrolling shooter. Or is it? Actually, it pretty much is, but it’s a really good one with just enough weirdness and beauty that I recommend it even if you don’t normally play 2D sidescrolling shooters. Stand by for the review later this week.
Then there are Capcom’s Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Nintendo’s Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden 3, all out this week, and all arguably big releases. Consider this week an elevated wallet threat all around.
I’ve always felt left out of the Mass Effect series. Whenever someone mentions it’s one of their favorite series of all time, I wonder why I can’t enjoy it as much as they do. Mass Effect 3 lets me get my foot in that door, but it also shows me why I’ll never get all the way through the door.
After the jump, some things to finally get excited about Continue reading →
When I played Saints Row 3, I eventually set up a custom mix tape consisting of my favorite songs from the various radio stations. Thanks, game, for letting me assemble from your licensed music my own personalized soundtrack!
So after my first few runs in SSX, unimpressed by the random tracks that played — Who knew Foster The People has a song that isn’t Pumped Up Kicks? — I went into the custom music option to pick which tracks would accompany me down SSX’s glorious mountains. And what a surprise to discover they’d licensed Daft Punk’s soundtrack to Tron. What a great idea. That’s perfect snowboarding music!
But as I went down the list, I was surprised to find so many Doors songs. I mean, I’m a big Doors fan, but is that appropriate snowboarding music? Or did they just get it really cheaply, because there are a lot of obscure Doors songs in here. Scrolling down…wait a minute. Heart? What? Who snowboards to Crazy For You? Besides me, I mean. Am I in the classic rock section of the soundtrack? Apparently not, because they also have Kesha’s first album. The whole album. What is going on here?
Oh, wait, has SSX gotten into my Xbox Live media center. For one brief shining moment, I thought Electronic Arts’ taste in music was as bad as mine.
The good news is that Pinball FX 2 is getting four new tables this spring. The bad news is that it’s a bunch more dippy superhero stuff, timed to tacitly tie into Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie. Marvel Pinball: Avengers Chronicles is a set of four tables — available for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or Vita — featuring a collection of superheroes like, I dunno, Superman and Aquaman and that little monkey and those kids with magic rings and maybe that Green Lantern guy from the Seth Rogan movie and whatnot.
Actually, the World War Hulk table (pictured) sounds just weird enough that I want to play it. From the press release:
After the Hulk’s banishment to outer space, he returns to Manhattan to seek revenge against the Illuminati and wage war against the X-Men, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Strange in World War Hulk.
Hulk was banished to outer space? By the Illuminati? So he trashes Manhattan? Man, I don’t remember any of that stuff from the Lou Ferrigno TV show. And I am intrigued by this bit about a table called Fear Itself, even if the table is supposedly about Anthony Hopkin’s character from that goofy Thor movie:
Featuring a table design unlike any to date, Fear Itself utilizes magnetic energy in ways no one has ever before experienced on a pinball table:
“Unlike any to date”? “Ways no one has ever experienced before”? Okay, you got my attention. I mean, what am I going to do, not get the new tables? But I’m still holding out for one of these.
Two consecutive weeks of jaunty music and Muppets. I’m all cuted out, and so is my sackboy. We’re looking for something simple, yet challenging. Enough with all the jumping for now too. Platforms, platforms, platforms. What else ya got?
A puzzle? Okay. I’m listening. What are the directions? “Get the block to fall into the square hole to progress to the next level.” Um…you’ll have to forgive me if I think that sounds a little boring. “Inspired by the flash game ‘Bloxorz’.” Well, I’ve never heard of that. I guess I’ll give it a try.
BlockThing 3D. Exactly what I needed. Thanks, AliensWearHats. Although I must admit I wish you’d capitalized that first ‘s’ in your PSN name, instead of the ‘w’. Something to consider for the future.
I tend to lump skateboarding and snowboarding games into the same category, not just because you stand on a board. You work your way along a long shallow learning curve in which your thumbs make cool things happen: flips, twists, booger grab reverse wind kickback hippie grinds. Expect a lot of trendy flash, usually with DJ Atomica, purchasable baggy pants and sideways caps, and as many nods to youth culture as a big publisher like EA or Activision can manage (i.e. licensed music, 90% of which I’ve never heard of). The better games have a lot of collectibles, challenges, unlockables, and minigoals to keep you going. But unless you’re one of those Tony Hawk aficionados, your thumb wizardry will soon enough plateau and you’ll have seen all of the game you’re ever going to see without practicing a whole lot of booger grab reverse wind kickback hippie grinds.
However, as I rediscovered SSX, which has been away for far too long, I realized that this is no Skate, Tony Hawk, or even SSX. I love EA’s Skate series all the way up until my thumb wizardry plateaus. But the genius of this latest SSX is that it might never plateau. It might never throw up the usual brick walls. It is as vast as the mountains, as heady as flying, as generous as the sky, as easy as falling, as inexorable as an avalanche. And the more I play, the more I realize that this is nothing like a skateboarding game. What was I thinking? It is quite literally the difference between kicking a board down a sidewalk and falling into gravity’s embrace from the top of Mount Everest.
After the jump, gravity rules Continue reading →
