The new Mars table is out for Pinball FX 2. Well, “new” if you haven’t already been playing it for a year on the Playstation 3 as part of Zen Pinball. In terms of sci-fi tables, it’s not quite as lively as Earth Defense Force, but it’s got its own sexy near-future cool. You’ll discover fancy gravity tricks, a fat space shuttle that sits in the middle of the table when it lands (I’m playin’ here!) and occasionally deploys a robot arm, a satellite that literally orbits the table, a cute little spider robot helpfully retrieving your ball (am I the only one who remembers AMEE from that Val Kilmer Mars movie?), scanning beam missions, and a mysterious pyramid. And, of course, a weird face peering out at you. It wouldn’t be Mars without that face.
I like Mars for how hard it is to lose the ball. I think it’s safe to say this is the most generous Zen Studios table in terms of letting you play longer. Mars is the table for those of us averse to failure.
And courtesy of the folks at Zen Studios, we have two free codes for Mars. It’s an add-on to Pinball FX 2, so it won’t do you much good unless you already own the core game. Post in the comments section below and make sure you’ve entered your email in the sign-in box when you post. In 24 hours, I’ll draw two names from a virtual hat and the lucky winners will get Mars for free. The table, not the planet.
Most Wanted Entertainment is excited to introduce Defenders of Ardania, a tower defense game built out of Majesty 2. In this developer diary, designer Andras Klujber explains that this is tower defense, but with a twist. We all know that you can defend in a tower defense game, but what Defenders of Ardania supposes is…what if you could attack?
If the enemies and us both have a base, and “good will” is spewed forth against us in endless hordes, why shouldn’t we return it in kind?
This is how it came to be that Defenders of Ardania put a little twist in the tower defense style and smuggled in the possibility of sending units…Just think about it! The enemies attacking us in waves are still there, but being forced to defend is now extended with the possibility of striking back.
Defenders of Ardania also has three playable races, hero units, spell powers, unit upgrades, multiplayer, and a storyline. It sounds to me like Most Wanted has inadvertently made a real time strategy game.
I don’t mean to be a jerk, since I’m looking forward to whatever Most Wanted decides to do with Majesty 2. Tower defense games have plenty of room for new ideas. For instance, the recent Warzone Anomoly tasks you with managing a convoy working its way through defensive towers.
But the supposed unique twist in Defenders of Ardania is in no way unique. Allow me to again mention a really cool game on the Playstation Network called Comet Crash. It seems at first blush like straight-up tower defense, but it introduces the mechanic of building barracks that gradually accumulate an offensive army. In addition to the usual tower defense gameplay, you have to decide how much to invest in barracks, what sort of counterattack you’ll assemble, when you’ll loose it, and what you’ll do to manage its attack path. Comet Crash even has multiplayer, and it works particularly well for two players in the same room, playing on the same screen.
So, yeah, Most Wanted, that’s a cool idea for Defenders of Ardania. I’ve been enjoying it for the last few years.
We don’t really do reader mail on this site because, frankly, we don’t get any reader mail. But when someone writes me some literature, I can’t resist sharing it. The following poem, titled “Your review is so garbage” was written by murut87, who shared it on 1up in response to my Patapon 3 review.
Your review is so garbage.
Oh man,here`s come Tom Chicken…..
Your review is so awful,i didn`t have problems on this game,really addictive game but you are worst.
The reason why we all hate your review:
Your review is so awful.
Your review are not-understandable.
Your review are so junk.
You not playing this game…..instead,you just watching….and then you review it suck.
Your rating a totally complete bullcrap.
Thats all i can say,your review are worst than my cat.
The only thing that would make this poem better is a picture of the aforementioned cat.
There is no face with proportionate palm expansive enough to express the internet tactical error repeatedly committed by rajah sulayman, a hyper-defensively sincere yet profoundly naive photographer of cute homeless girls, himself, and puppets (no really, puppets ). Sorry raj , the internet has a will and way of its own and internet bullying has always been this bad. “Was (impending forum) ‘rape’ the first thing to pop into your head?” It was when I read the titles to all of your threads, man!
More schadenfreude after the seitesprung! Continue reading →
I’ve been eying with curiosity a copy of Nascar 2011 for the Xbox 360 sitting here on my desk. Not that I’ve ever played a Nascar game, but my recent wheeltime with Shift 2 has me wondering if I’m missing anything. Millions of fans can’t be wrong, can they?
However, it sounds like the game might be in slightly rough shape, based on a press release about an upcoming patch. The list of fixes is one of those lists that makes me wonder why those things have to be fixed in the first place. They released it like that? Of course, I don’t really know Nascar, so I can’t make heads nor tails of some of that stuff. For instance, one of the fixes:
Ensure only Carl Edwards performs a back flip
Driver unique gymnastics moves! Among the bugs being addressed:
Truex Jr. & Bill Elliott being corrupt during celebrations
Sauron, man.
Section 8: Prejudice goes live this week on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s not much of a wallet threat, because it’s only $15*. But it is much of a wallet threat because Section 8 is so awesome. There’s plenty of new stuff in here to satisfy us Section 8 junkies, and plenty of core awesomeness to satisfy anyone who plays shooters. Graphics whores need not apply, but they’re probably still marveling at shiny things in Crysis 2 anyway.
You’re probably psyched for Portal 2, and you should be. It loses a little of the first game’s heart by going bigger, longer, and deeper. But Portal minus a little heart is still a fine game. Stay tuned here for a special guest and something not unlike a game diary.
Mortal Kombat: No Subtitle or Number Needed is also out this week. You’ve been playing the demo, right? Me either. SOCOM 4 goes live. The single player is nothing to write home about (“Dear Mother, other than the annoying stealth missions, it’s business as usual on the front — heavy scripting, bad story, unremarkable guns — but at least my teammates are competent.”). I do look forward to seeing how the multiplayer shakes out; developer Zipper Interactive’s last game, MAG, was a work of genius.
Get your heiny** to Mars in Pinball FX 2 this week. The Mars table is old news for folks who play Zen Pinball on the Playstation 3, but it’s a good table, with great sci-fi flavor and a forgiving layout. Next week, we get a whole new table with Sorcerer’s Lair. Paranormal — one of my favorite Zen Pinball tables — is due out “in the near future”.
Finally, Conduit 2 comes out if you’re that rare breed of shooter fan who only has a Wii. Why do you only have a Wii? Well, at least you’re finally getting a game with a proper multiplayer horde mode.
* do your own spacebuck math
** Pinball FX 2 is rated E for everyone
These days, any shooter is two separate games: the single-player and the multiplayer. So when you read one of the recently written reviews of SOCOM 4, which doesn’t come out until next week, it’s more useless than normal. Particularly given how the SOCOM games have put so much emphasis on multiplayer.
To Gamepro’s credit, they’re letting me write two reviews. The review of the single player was just posted. Find out how awesome it is when your shooter includes stealth missions!
Remember when you thought you’d never again read the words “you have been detected” followed by the words “mission failed”? According to SOCOM 4, you’ve got another thing coming.
Thumbs down for SOCOM 4’s single player.
I can’t really get worked up for Resistance 3, partly because it looks like any other competent unremarkable shooter. But mostly because it’s going to be missing my favorite feature: the cool co-op mode from Resistance 2.
However, one of the most encouraging things Resistance 3 will do is bring back the weapon wheel, which lets you carry an unlimited number of the game’s crazy guns. This is a reversal from Resistance 2, which limited you to two guns at a time. In other words, the next game will be more like Ratchet & Clank, and less like Halo.
On 1up, I’ve written a list of completely new things you’ll be seeing in Resistance 3.
At one point in the co-op action game, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, the players drift down a river on a round raft. The raft has four motors on the edges. When a player uses one of the motors, the raft drifts in the appropriate direction. This being a raft floating on water and physics being physics, it is liable to turn as it moves. So that can get messy. Then there are the other three yahoos on the raft who might have their own ideas about where the raft should go. I once went canoeing with my buddy Kevin when I was a kid. I was awesome at paddling the canoe. But he kept screwing us up by paddling different from me. Canoes, man. It’s a wonder humanity ever made it across the Bering Strait.
Anyway, while you’re spinning and drifting down this river, you’re trying to pick up flaoting loot boxes. And did I mention that there are bombs floating all over the place? Also giant turtles with spiky shells. I suspect it will be one of those levels I’ll be driven to finish solely because I never want to have to play it again.
During a demo of the level, the game’s developer, Chad Dezern, calls the raft “an extremely democratic vehicle”. And, yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good approximation of the contemporary political process.
(In case it’s not clear, the raft represents Barack Obama, the port motor is Harry Reid, the starboard motor is John Boehner, the turtles are Rush Limbaugh, and the bombs are Glenn Beck’s tears. The river itself is stuff Fox News says. The loot boxes are the state parks that didn’t have to close this past week.)
This will probably sound as random to you as it sounded to me when I started playing a few days ago, but I’ve been playing Phantasy Star Portable 2, the PSP version of Phantasy Star Online that came out six months ago. I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. What I’m about to tell you after the jump makes even less sense. It’s even kind of, well, icky.
After the jump, eat your heart out, Second Life! Continue reading →
I regret to inform you that Patapon 3 is nowhere near as good as Patapon 2. I suppose it’s an okay game, but it betrays a lot of what made Patapon 2 special. I’ll have a full review on 1up later this week, but my current assessment is that if you loved Patapon 2, your wallet isn’t any danger.
Otherwise, this week sees the release of a Vietnam war expansion for Magicka. You’d think I was making that up, but I’m pretty sure I’m not. Also out this week is an MMO about tanks called — again, I promise I’m not making this up — World of Tanks. I can’t imagine it’s not silly. We’ll have a game diary for it along shortly in case I need to be set straight.
One of the great joys of LBP2 is using your little Pod computer, choosing Recent Activity, and seeing the community levels your friends have played and rated. The game makes it so easy to do this, and to jump into any of those levels immediately. I love that.
This is how a fella named Desslock reminded me to return to Maximum Carnage, a level in which you run around blasting malevolent robots with a laser cannon. I played this weeks ago and meant to return to it but forgot. Returning to it tonight was the perfect way to end the week. Also, sackboy plus laser blaster equals crazy delicious.
I like the rest,
but the part I like best
It goes: doodle-ee-doodle-ee-doo. Woo.
Demented Doodles 3: The Final Scribble.
The Dead Island zombie count will never be able to match the Dead Rising zombie count. But at least it’s now up from 5 to 11. Maybe 13 depending on whether a dead zombie technically still counts as a zombie.
Reader Brian has helpfully pointed to a previous zombie count of 19, but these numbers are hard to track and inherently unstable. We’ll be keeping an eye on Dead Island’s zombie population as it fluctuates.
Every time you play Patapon 3, you’re first greeted with the PSP splash screen, followed by the epilepsy warning. So far so good. Then you select your language of choice, even if you’ve already selected it before (maybe you’re feeling like a little French or Spanish this time). Then the game pops up a dialogue box telling you it’s looking for storage media. You then have to manually confirm the autosave feature by selecting “understood”. There is no option to not understand. Then there are three screens reporting the Patapon 3 is looking for, finding, and loading your system data (not to be confused with your saved game data, which you’ll get to manually load later). Then a loading screen displays a snatch of pulsing artwork in the lower right corner of the screen while the Online User Agreement loads. This is eleven pages long. You have to page through all eleven pages, one at a time, each with a button press. Then a box appears asking if you accept the terms, even if you’ve already accepted them during a previous playthough. Because, you know, it wants to make sure you haven’t changed your mind. So you have to move the d-pad to bring a highlight on screen for the accept option, at which point you have to hit a button to confirm. Then an elaborate cinematic plays for a while as it loads. After it’s played for a bit, it’s apparently loaded sufficiciently that you can skip it to reach the main splash screen. From there, you select continue and then select your saved game. Once your saved game is loaded, you have to confirm that you’ve loaded the saved game. Then three dialogue boxes scritch by and you have to confirm the last one, at which point you’re at a new loading screen on the way to the actual game. When that’s done, Patapon 3 informs you that you can press any button to start playing.
Congratulations, you have gotten into Patapon 3! You’ll get your chance to take this epic journey when the game is released next Tuesday.
