Gaming Today |
- Wahlberg Confirms Role as Nathan Drake in Upcoming Uncharted Movie
- Tony Hawk Shred Review
- Everything you think about graphics is stupid
- Billy Bob Thornton: Hollywood Sucks Because of Video Games
- Grab World of Warcraft On Sale Through Nov. 30
- Steam Kicks Off Big Thanksgiving Sale
- Axl Rose Suing Activision For Putting Slash in Guitar Hero III
- Splatterhouse Review
- Donkey Kong Country Returns Review
- 2010 Video Game Gift Guide
- Imagine the Look on this Black Ops Player’s Face (VIDEO)
- Free Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood DLC Coming in Mid-December
- Dune Wars (Civ IV Mod) Version 1.9: Now With Bigger Sandworms!
| Wahlberg Confirms Role as Nathan Drake in Upcoming Uncharted Movie Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:57 PM PST Remember when we heard that David O. Russell‘s casting choices for Sony’s upcoming Uncharted movie could include Mark Wahlberg, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and we all laughed because that sounded like the worst possible cast for a movie about finding treasure and knowing history and gunfights and climbing things? Turns out it’s all true. Wahlberg will be Nathan Drake, groan, and not Nathan Fillion, obviously the best man on the planet to play the role. The star of The Happening and Max Payne confirmed as much to MTV News. Apparently, Russell also wants Pesci and De Niro to play Drake’s uncle and father — already taking liberties with the stories of the series, as those are two new characters we’ve never seen before. Wahlberg said he had spoken with Pesci about the possibility, while Russell’s people were speaking with De Niro. The roles haven’t been written yet, but those are the guys Russell wants to have in mind when he finally pens the script. If this all sounds utterly terrible to you, good, I like people who agree with me. Because I will never forget Planet of the Apes or The Italian Job. They haunt might nightmares, and I fear for Nathan Drake. But that’s just me.
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| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:35 PM PST Over the years, fake skateboarding on my TV has been one of my favorite pastimes, but that peaked with skate 2. Tony Hawk Ride wasn’t good, and skate 3 was beyond boring in comparison with 2. The question, now, is about whether or not Tony Hawk Shred can improve enough on Ride to make it, well, worth a damn to gamers who have spent so much time virtually skateboarding. The answer to that question is a resounding “no.” Non. Nyet. Fundamentally, the game is the same, with one large addition and one small addition that I’ll get to in a minute, and the board peripheral is, as far as I can tell, exactly the same as last year’s version aside from a new paint job. While the two main new things do improve the experience somewhat, Shred still ends up being little more than an awkward exercise machine. Let’s get the new stuff out of the way so we can then dwell on the negative. The big new addition is snowboarding, and it actually does a lot for the game, and by “a lot,” I mean it improved the final score I’m going to give it by 10 points. The snowboarding is better than the skateboarding from a mostly cognitive standpoint; it simply feels more correct to be riding downhill while standing on the fake skateboard than to be riding on level ground. There’s also less turning on a downhill snowboarding run, which is a very good thing when dealing with this awful peripheral. The small new change is Casual Plus mode, which allows you freedom of movement within set boundaries. Previously, it jumped from the completely on-rails Casual mode to Confident, which gave you almost complete freedom, but Casual Plus is the ideal way to play since you have to use this — let me repeat myself –awful peripheral. Don’t misinterpret that statement, though; Casual Plus may be the best way to play, but it still doesn’t make the game any good. It’s just the least unenjoyable method for using this thing. So, yeah, this awful peripheral. The trouble with it starts as soon as you turn on your console, as it did with Ride. You have to calibrate it, but it doesn’t go as planned; You can do exactly what the pictures tell you to do, but the game still likes to berate you for not doing it right. And then, when you’re playing the game, it generally will not respond the way you want it to. Sometimes that works in your favor, like when, in my case, my skateboarding avatar would grab the tail of the board while in the air despite me not moving at all, but most of the time it doesn’t work out that well. Here are some things the board likes to make impossible for you: steering, doing a grab on purpose, everything else. Try hitting a score target in a half-pipe on Confident or Hardcore. You will fail. There was one trick I was able to pull off consistently, and that’s doing a flip. I didn’t intend to do flips all the time, though. Nope. But you do a flip by popping the board up while you’re in the air, and since flailing around with the board is the name of the game here, it’s super easy to do two or three flips every time your avatar finds himself off the ground, even if all you’re trying to do is not a flip. I’m sure there’s some asshole reading this who mastered Ride and is just as dedicated to this game who’s thinking, “If you just knew what you were doing….” I’ll be totally honest here by saying that, no, I did not really know what I was doing most of the time while playing this game. Unfortunately for this game, though, I did all the tutorials, and despite managing to pass them I still had no idea, really, what was going on. The worst part about that is that it isn’t a new problem — the same thing happened with Ride last year. When you put all that together, we have a game that will have you flailing around cluelessly as you try to pull of tricks. Be sure to wear shoes when playing, or you might, as I did, bloody your toes as you flail. That’s right, not only was the game not fun, but the required peripheral did physical damage to me. Yay. Pros:
Cons:
Final Score: 10/100*P.S. Don’t make any more of these games.
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| Everything you think about graphics is stupid Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:24 PM PST
Graphics are important. They’ve always been important, and they’ve always been on the frontlines of the console war battlefield, as platform holders endlessly vie to gain the visual upper hand over the competition. Graphics are among the most tangible things that consumers can evaluate before making a purchasing decision, so having a game that looks great, especially in the HD generation, is a crucial part to selling a product to the average gamer. Visuals are important, but they aren’t everything, and even though we all seem to know that, we are always so incredibly ready to forget it. There is a worrying trend in the industry of judging a game on graphics and nothing else. Not only that, but our idea of what constitutes high quality visuals has become so incredibly skewed that I believe we’ve lost sight of what really makes a fun game. Even worse, I worry that this is bleeding over into developers as well, where graphics come first and gameplay comes as a distant second. I’d argue that this is bad for the gamers, but it’s the gamers who are encouraging a culture that assumes a good game is identified by good graphics. Crysis is a fine example of a “visuals over substance” mentality. When people talk about Crysis, they never mention the gameplay. It’s always the graphics, graphics, graphics. They are most certainly impressive, I’ll grant you that. Running them at full spec on my PC is absolutely breathtaking, and wandering the lush jungles is genuinely astounding … until the actual “game” portion of the experience kicks in, and everything turns sour. Clairvoyant AI, random difficulty spikes, enemies with the damage threshold of Scarface, pointlessly gimped super powers and boring, mediocre first-person-shooter action is the core of the Crysis experience. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Look at how PRETTY it is! And of course, we gullible fools swallow it up. A game is a visual delight, ergo it must play like a dream. Unfortunately, gamers have started to embrace the opposing concept — that if a game doesn’t meet their high visual standards, it must be terrible. Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is the most recent victim of this. While I’ll happily concede that the game is getting a mixed response for legitimate reasons, with some people loving it and others not enjoying the way it plays, a large portion of vocal gamers are writing the game off instantly for its graphics. Now, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom’s graphics are not the most amazing in the industry, but they are not bad, as some people would like to argue. They’re just not dripping in lighting effects and huge amounts of textures. Yes, that gives the character models, especially the main characters, a bit more of a rudimentary look, but the exaggerated way in which some people are criticizing the graphics speaks volumes about how spoiled we’ve become. Here’s the thing — Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is a gorgeous game. Not because it has a load of visual horsepower, but because its art design is superb. I call the game beautiful not because it has the best bump mapping or bloom lighting in the business, but because people with real artistic talent came up with a unique aesthetic style. The design of the game’s primary enemies is amazing, as the corrupted soldiers of Darkness drip with an oozing, gloopy black slime and their feet stick to the floor with each grotesque step. The game is full of simple visual touches and endearing animations that outclass anything in the beautiful but sterile Crysis. This is why, to me, a game like Majin looks better than a game like Crysis. Artistic skill will always beat technical power, as far as I am concerned. I think many of us have completely forgotten that design is better than graphics, and I also think that has informed the way we react to certain visual styles. It’s become the norm in this industry to praise “photorealistic” graphics and shun anything that isn’t dark, gritty and believable. This is typified with my opinion on Viva Pinata. I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, that Viva Pinata is the best looking game this generation. I have been laughed at for suggesting this. Laughed at because it isn’t Gears of War, or Killzone 2, or Uncharted. No, it’s not one of those games with realistic physics, or a grey and moody atmosphere. It’s bright, it’s simple, it’s clean, and it contains gorgeous colors that pop on an HDTV more than any “realistic” game. The design is amiable and fun, with amazing textures on the various creatures that bring them to life. More importantly, Viva Pinata boasts far more imagination and invention than anything you get in a “realistic” shooter with its focus on dreary, wartorn backdrops and grey gun barrels. The fact that such an argument is laughed off without gamers even willing to debate it stands as proof at how conditioned our eyes have become. That’s why it’s dismaying to hear the well-worn, tired, and bratty accusation that a current-gen title “Looks like a PlayStation 2 game.” This has become one of the most stupid, pathetic comments to have cropped up in recent years, and the sentiment appears to be cropping up more and more. Here’s the thing — if you’ve used the term, “Looks like a PS2 game” to describe something on the Xbox 360 or PS3, then there’s a 95% chance that you were talking absolute shit. In fact, I invite you to go back and replay your PS2. For days. Then come back, look at the 360/PS3 game you were criticizing, and punch yourself in the nuts for saying something so stupid. Nearly every game that looks comparatively poor on the PS3 or 360 is still better looking than the average PS2 game. It’s incredibly sad that we’ve become such spoiled infants as to forget that. Besides which … some of the best videogames ever made were on the PS2. Since when did having “PS2 graphics” hurt those? Great graphics are great only relative to the time period they’re in. Great graphics get outclassed and become obsolete in just a few years or even less. Great art, however, is timeless. Great gameplay remains long after the aesthetic thrill has worn off. I’m not saying that graphics don’t enhance the experience, of course they do. But they do not make good games bad, or bad games good. And very, very, very rarely do they ever look like PS2 games, unless they were on the PS2 to begin with. So there.
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| Billy Bob Thornton: Hollywood Sucks Because of Video Games Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:23 PM PST Straight from the mouth of Bad Santa: Hollywood is making “the worst movies ever” because of video games, and those of us who like them. Commence simmering hatred. In an article in the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph, Billy Bob Thornton had this to say about movies and video games:
Oh. Apparently, his new movie Faster, featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is a complicated revenge tale in which a murderer gets out of prison and goes on a killing spree. Supposedly, it’s a lot deeper than a video game. He also said this:
Sounds like Mr. Thornton (star of such beloved gems as Mr. Woodcock, the aforementioned black comedy Bad Santa, in which he has sex with overweight women in changing rooms of department stores, and the cinematic national treasure Armageddon) has never played a video game — nor, for that matter, been exposed to a movie outside of TV commercials for the last decade. Nobody tell him about the World of Warcraft movie. Or the (maybe) Halo movie. Or the Uncharted movie.
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| Grab World of Warcraft On Sale Through Nov. 30 Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:26 PM PST The big new World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, is due out next month, and Blizzard is hoping it’ll be a big enough deal to get new players to pick up the game. To help facilitate the process, you can grab WoW and its two earlier expansions for obscenely low prices for the rest of the week. Head out to the stores for the next few days (not Friday, obviously, unless you’re really hardcore) and you can snag the original World of Warcraft game for $5. Get the expansions — Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King — for another $5 and $10, respectively. If you get roped into WoW like the other 12 million subscribers Blizzard already has on the hook, it’ll run you somewhere between $12.99 and $14.99 per month to play the game. And Cataclysm will go for another $39.99 when it comes out on Dec. 7. We got some time with Cataclysm at BlizzCon last month, and it is pretty stellar. If you’ve been undecided about WoW before, now’s the time to finally draw that broadsword and start some raiding.
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| Steam Kicks Off Big Thanksgiving Sale Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:37 PM PST For the next five days, PC gamers can snag a bunch of deals on Steam games, and 30 lucky winners will get five games for free. Valve has different featured games coming up each day at a big discount, and is also offering “gift packs” of several games that you can buy and give away to others. Discounts for today include Half-Life 2, Deus Ex, Borderlands and R.U.S.E gift packs, and a few single downloads of games cut as much as 90 percent — with the price of Borderlands slashed in half to $9.99. Steam users can also fill out a “wishlist” of their top games, and doing so puts them in the running to win their top 5 games for free from Valve. You have to have a wishlist on Steam in order to be among the 30 winners, though. Your odds aren’t great — Valve recently reported Steam had as many as 30 million members — but hey, somebody has to win, right?
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| Axl Rose Suing Activision For Putting Slash in Guitar Hero III Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:11 PM PST Axl Rose is pretty upset that Activision featured former bandmate Slash in Guitar Hero III. The Guns N’ Roses frontman is suing Activision for $20 million for its inclusion of Slash in the game after the band licensed the use of its song, “Welcome to the Jungle,” supposedly on the condition that the former GnR guitarist wouldn’t be associated with it. It seems “not associated with it” translated to Activision as being “the face of the game on the cover and in all advertising.” The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday, claims Activision lied about Slash’s role in the game in order to get GnR to license “Welcome to the Jungle.” According to the Hollywood Reporter, Rose tried to back out of the licensing deal after he found out Velvet Revolver and Slash would make it into Guitar Hero II, but Activision told him the inclusion of Slash was for demo purposes at a trade show. Then GH III came out, and Rose called his lawyer. Here’s an excerpt from the complaint: “[Activision] began spinning a web of lies and deception to conceal its true intentions to not only feature Slash and VR prominently in GH III but also promote the game by emphasizing and reinforcing an association between Slash and Guns N’ Roses and the band’s song ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’” For good measure, Rose is also claiming Activision used “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for GH III when it was only licensed for GH II. Why it has taken Rose three years to figure out he was supposedly duped and file a lawsuit, however, isn’t clear. Maybe he wanted to wait for Activision to make some money and break some sales records with Call of Duty games before he went after his $20 mil. Via gamesradar.
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| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 01:22 PM PST “The key is blood, Rick,” says the Terror Mask, a super-violent demon trapped in slasher movie prop not terribly different from the object of similar character from the Jim Carrey comedy. “It’s always blood.” And not long into Splatterhouse, we kind of want to be like, “Yeah. We get it. Blood.” Splatterhouse, the 3D update of three arcade classics from the early 1990s, is bathed in blood. It revels in blood. And years ago, when Mortal Kombat was edgy and getting flashed by strippers in Duke Nukem was the talk of the schoolyard, yes, Splatterhouse’s extreme amount of virtual monster blood and gore would have probably been a big deal. Today, however, this game is trying too hard to be true to sensibilities that made its predecessors noteworthy and controversial, while failing to inspire any real shock or excitement. Blood is the key to everything in the game, from power-ups to health to the actual opening of doors, but mere digital blood and guts don’t have the same shock appeal they did in the earlier days of the Console Wars. Today, Splatterhouse’s main characteristics — splatter, in a house — have worn a little thin. At the start of Splatterhouse, you find yourself joining the story of wormy college hipster Rick Taylor, as he lies bleeding in the middle of a large room, his screaming girlfriend being dragged off to some unspeakable death by a Bride of Frankenstein-haired Mad Scientist named Dr. West. Already, the game is awash in the stylized, almost cel-shaded red that will be its primary hue for the rest of the game. In his seemingly final moments, Rick manages to reach out and get hold of a mask that seems to be calling to him. Getting hold of the mask and putting it on saves Rick’s life and transforms him into a hulking, nigh-unstoppable killing machine as the demonic mask and the nerd meld as one. Think Spider-Man’s Venom, but pointier. The Terror Mask, as it’s called, agrees to help Rick save distressed damsel Jennifer in returns for Rick helping to shed copious amounts of blood from various monsters employed by Dr. West. Some are small and kind of look like the atomic monkey-like wretches of Gears of War. Others are more man-like. A few could be demons that have stepped straight out of Doom. One resembles a massive frog. All could easily take jobs in some Resident Evil title. So begins the slow slog of Rick hacking through, dismembering, and generally annihilating these monsters on a quest to reach West and Jennifer. Splatterhouse takes great pleasure in the various ways you can mutilate enemies as you go, and rewards you for being gruesome. Blood accumulates as Blood Points, which are spent to purchase new skills and abilities for Rick, and blood also fills a gauge you can expend in order to heal or activate special, super-strong moves. Cooler kills often give you more points, and Splatterhouse always wants you to think about how you’re doing your killing. You can wield various melee weapons (and one massive shotgun), or just punch and throw enemies until they die. But the best way to finish enemies off is to weaken them and then perform a Splatterkill on their stunned bodies. This is generally a quicktime event in which Rick does something horrible to finish off the enemy, like smashing its skull in his hands or ripping its lungs out. Splatterkills are cool — once. Unfortunately, while the game is going for over-the-top uberviolence with the feature, you can really only tear the arms off an enemy so many times (like, 200, tops) before it starts to get boring. It’s actually right about your tenth Splatterkill that you start to see the biggest chink in Splatterhouse’s armor: repetition. The game is all about its combat system, which is a lot of fun at first, but it really is all the game has to offer. You don’t even need to adjust your strategy at any point. If you have a weapon, use a weapon. If you’ve upgraded to better skills, use your better skills. You can punch the biggest, and the smallest, enemies in the face with about the same level of effectiveness. And you’ll be doing the same things over and over again because all the enemies in Splatterhouse are recycled over and over and over. Early level boss-type characters become later level common enemies. Sometimes they change colors or get a slight amp in power, but the way you deal with them is always the same, and subsequently, the Splatterkills are the same, so you’ll find yourself performing the same quicktime actions over and over. For example, you’ll fight zombies, killer clowns and something that looks like a swamp monster, but if its human-shaped and about your size, the Splatterkill is always to tear off its arms or rip it in half. It begins to feel unimaginative after a while. Forward progress is always kill-related. You’ll hit locked doors pretty frequently, but they rarely require you to do much of anything except kill a requisite number of enemies that are conveniently flooding into the room. These are occasionally mixed up with kill-specific locks, although these drop off substantially around the fourth level of the game. They consist pretty much of spikes on the wall you need to impale enemies on by flinging them in the general direction of the spikes. That’s accomplished either by picking them up and throwing them, or hitting them with a weapon or something toward the spikes. Either way, it’s more irritating than exciting — usually, picking up enemies is hampered by them getting loose or you getting attacked by the crowd gathering around you. Interspersed between these “kill everything right now!” rooms are side-scrolling, platforming-type sections meant to pull players back into the old 2D mindset of the Splatterhouse series’ roots. The side-scrolling portions are heavy on environmental traps, and while they’re a cool idea in theory, in practice they also tend to get frustrating. True to their inspiration, the 2D parts generally are filled with pits and sharp implements that kill Rick instantly — but really terrible jumping mechanics, for one, make playing through them more toilsome than nostalgic. In fact, most of the time when you’re killed in Splatterhouse, it’ll feel like a cheap shot, and that’s definitely the feeling the 2D portions invoke. Often an enemy will start to lay into Rick, totally stunning him and making him unable to move — with little indication that he’s being hit except his rapidly vanishing health bar. Especially early on in the game, it’s a struggle to get clear of enemy attacks and not just get the crap kicked out of you. If Rick loses a limb (which he can regenerate and also use as a weapon), you can pretty much count yourself dead if you don’t have the blood to heal quickly, because his movement and abilities are so restricted that escape from the enemies that are after you is usually next to impossible. But there’s no real way to avoid deaths — it’s not like you come back from getting killed and say, “time for a strategy change,” because there’s no such thing in Splatterhouse. If you come across a hard fight, you can switch on Berserker mode and totally wreck whatever you’re up against. Not that you’ll usually need to do so, as even the bosses are totally underwhelming (the final fight, more than any other, is a complete joke), and really no battle is that difficult. If you’re killed, it’s because a cheap shot go through or you didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that you were dying. Reload, repeat. And dying is stupidly prohibitive, on account of the fact that Splatterhouse includes some ridiculous loading times. In sections where it’ll take you a minute to figure out what you’re supposed to do — specifically the platforming sections — death early on is almost guaranteed since you have no idea what to expect. And each time that happens, you’re staring down something like a two-minute loading screen. It feels like a massive waste of time and serves to exasperate the player, making playing through some sections feel a lot like work. But despite the flaws, though, there’s something about Splatterhouse that does make it fun to keep pounding through enemy after enemy, even when it gets totally frustrating. Some of it is the story, which starts out confusing and slowly reveals bits to become slightly less confusing, but at least those bits are interesting. And a great deal has to do with the banter and comments that come from the Terror Mask and the stellar voice work that goes along with it. The mask is voiced by veteran cartoon actor Jim Cummings, and if you watched a cartoon in the 1990s, you’ll recognize him (my favorite role of his was as Beowulf in a Mighty Max episode — you’re probably too young). The mask has all the best dialogue, and while a lot of it is repeated during fighting, the meta-game humor Splatterhouse employs can be pretty funny at times. It reminds me of Evil Dead: Regeneration, a fairly weak PS2 game that employed a similarly endearing humor style — Splatterhouse even includes a shout-out to Evil Dead when you find the shotgun on the body of a guy who looks a lot like that franchise’s main character, Ash. In Splatterhouse’s case, the humor isn’t quite enough to push players all the way through the game like it was with Evil Dead, but it certainly helps. It also helps that, while repetitive and fairly lacking in challenge, it is fun to beat the hell out of things, and in that way Splatterhouse reaches its goals. There are enough different moves and abilities, and Achievements and Trophies that encourage you to use them, that mix up combat pretty sufficiently in all cases. Splatterhouse also includes a Survival Mode, which is basically more of the same since the vast majority of the story mode is just surviving waves of enemies. The six stages include collectibles and achievements of their own, and coupled with amping up Rick with abilities, offer enough fun to keep you playing, at least for a while. Namco’s reboot of this cult-classic series isn’t totally perfect, or polished, to say the least. It includes weird bugs and it puts way too much emphasis on the gore facet, which just doesn’t resonate all that well (the ’90s called — it wants its controversy back). But it wins points for style, clarity of purpose and the ability to remind us of a simpler time when you only need two buttons to play a game. Splatterhouse almost can’t get out of its own way when it kills you needlessly or lets you pound through a boss fight without breaking a sweat, but when you get down to the nuts and bolts — literally ripping apart monsters in various ways with the comments of the Terror Mask and heavy metal chords echoing in your ears — it’s hard not to have a good time, despite everything, at least for a little while. Not awesome, but not awful, either. Pros:
Cons:
Final Score: 68
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| Donkey Kong Country Returns Review Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:42 PM PST
Donkey Kong Country has a pretty good reputation with the Nintendo fans out there, especially those who played during the N64 era when Rare was responsible for the series. Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii is really a return to form for the franchise and it has enough of the key elements to interest fans. Fans of Mario’s original foil will find Donkey Kong Country Returns is a platformer that captures the essence of the original games. You control DK and Diddy as they run through the jungle in cooperative mode fighting the evil floating Tiki masks and other foes to liberate the jungle banana supply. Even DK’s secret hoard is looted as the musical foes abscond with all the precious yellow fruit, leading the Kongs on a chase through multiple levels and boss battles. Donkey Kong Country Returns reminds me a lot of the platformer classic Super Mario Bros. 2.It features a lot of distinct levels to play and two playable characters. Luckily DK and Diddy have distinct moves so playing either one is a slightly different experience. The addition of a rideable rhino and the old Rocket Barrel gameplay differentiate the formula just enough to keep things fresh.
It is nice that the game also supports two different control set. A more traditional sideways Wii remote like a classic NES controller and the now ubiquitous Wii Remote – Nunchuk combo. The Wii-centric control is more of the same “waggle & flick” action that permeates just about every Wii game. Certain moves, like the Ground Smash are custom designed for the motion controller and can be pulled off in either control mode. I found that I enjoyed playing Donkey Kong Country Returns with the horizontal Wii Remote option more than with the Nunchuck. It should be noted that Donkey Kong Country Returns is a very challenging game. The platform levels offer a lot to explore and the game has a good number of levels. Unlike some recent Nintendo titles, this is a game made for players willing to push through adversity. Playing co-op reduces the challenge a little but adds the complexity of coordination with another player. Either way, expect a tough run through the game.
I was a bit disappointed in the visual delivery in the game. Maybe it’s just my fond memories of Rare’s games and the relatively immature graphics of the older generation of consoles, but Donkey Kong Country Returns just didn’t look very good to me. Its 2.5D characters were recognizable but the more zoomed out perspective and my personal bias toward HD visuals probably colored my impression. The game moves fine, the game is bright and colorful, but it definitely suffers from lots of “jaggie” graphics. Donkey Kong Country Returns is a bit of a throwback to the days of good platforming titles. Like the recent Super Mario Bros on the Wii it is an example of a platformer done right. The issue of difficulty will be a nice feature for more experienced gamers looking for a challenge. There are a lot of levels in the game and replaying these boards looking for extra collectibles is always fun. Pros:
Cons:
The Verdict: 90/100Convinced by our review? Got a copy of the game? Check out our full Donkey Kong Country Returns walkthrough!
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| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:22 PM PST This is a weird holiday season for me so far, because I’m considerably less dirt poor (but still dirt poor) than I have been in recent years now that Break is paying me to write things such as what I’m writing now. So when me moms sent me the email she sends every year around this time asking about some gift items I’d like I was finally able to name some things I want to have rather than things I really need to have. (My list in previous years usually consisted of things like “rent check” and “gift card for the power company”) Anyway, here we have a list of games from 2010 you should either buy for people or have people buy for you. Just trying to be helpful, damn it. NOTE: I’m not going to recommend hardware here, just because. Microsoft Points cards/PSN cards/Nintendo Points cardsI thought this was a list of games. Well, it is, but I felt the need to remind everyone about these cards because they’re just as important as games, because folks gotta get their DLC and downloadable games. Why the hell does anyone want this? Well, it’s kind of impossible to to give someone a physical copy of, say, Limbo, and these cards let the giftee choose what he or she wants to do with it. The beauty of this is that, unlike store gift cards, this doesn’t seem like a lazy cop-out gift, because you’re not getting somebody that instead of getting them something they can get with the card. Be sure not to buy folks a card for a console they don’t own, however. Mass Effect 2Platforms: PC, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? Chances are, if a person gave a damn about this, he would already have it, because that’s how sales of RPGs work; most copies are bought in the first couple weeks of release, and so that means not one person is going to ask for this. It’s important to remember, though, that gift giving is as much about pushing s**t on people as it’s about giving them things they want, which is why I usually give my mom some non-fiction books written by liberals. And if you’re shopping for a lady gamer, odds are good she’ll appreciate that you took the initiative and put some thought into it. NBA 2K11Platforms: all of them Why the hell does anyone want this? By all accounts, this is pretty much the best basketball game ever, and there are a lot of people out there who like sports games but are too lazy or poor to go buy them. Also, a lot of sports fans are very casual gamers who rarely if ever buy new games, and so this would make a solid gift for somebody you know has an Xbox but never talks about games. Fallout: New VegasPlatforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? Because it’s better than Fallout 3 and folks’ll get a ton of mileage out of it. On top of that, I’d say New Vegas has even more of a broad appeal than Fallout 3 did just because it handles more like a legit first-person shooter than its predecessor what with the iron sights and less RPG-ish hit detection. This is a pretty great bang-for-your-buck gift. Oh, and now that it’s been patched — and it’ll be patched again soon — the glitch factor is way down. NBA JamPlatforms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii Why the hell does anyone want this? Better question: Who the hell doesn’t want this? It faithfully recreates that classic NBA Jam experience, and it’s got way more to it than it did in the old days what with online play and a pile of other modes. It is what it is, and what it is is something everyone wants. Let the trailer suck you in. Gran Turismo 5Platform: PS3 Why the hell does anyone want this? Because it’s Gran Turismo 5, and it actually exists. This is pretty much a perfect gift, because while the hardcore fans pick it up on day one, everyone else — because it’s out the week of Thanksgiving — is counting on unwrapping this in late December. And like New Vegas, this is a real time suck because there’s so much to it. It’s got a total of 1,049,977 different cars and the NASCAR circuit and kart racing, and so GT5 is basically the JRPG of racing games, and there will always be something else to do in it. Super Mario Galaxy 2Platform: Wii Why the hell does anyone want this? Red Dead RedemptionPlatform: PS3, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? It’s the new game from Rockstar. It’s GTA IV in the Old West. It’s set in the Old West. While we’ve seen a number of Western games in the past decade, there haven’t been many to love, really. Red Dead Redemption is a world you just enjoy being in, and it’s almost your moral obligation to buy this for a gamer who hasn’t yet had the chance to play it. Enslaved: Odyssey to the WestPlatforms: PS3, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? I’m actually putting this here instead of God of War III, because Enslaved is like God of War III but with much better writing. And I like Enslaved a lot more, so there’s that. Unfortunately, sales of Enslaved have been less than stellar, but that just means it won’t cost you too much to buy it for somebody, even though it just came out in October. Yeah, there’s a lot of mindless hacking and slashing, but as a whole it’s a really satisfying experience, and you’ll be doing somebody a favor if you gift this. Rock Band 3/DJ Hero 2Platforms: PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? The biggest problem with rhythm games is that the bundles are too damn expensive. They aren’t unjustly expensive, mind you, but they cost far more than games that don’t have mandatory accessories and you don’t really get that much more play out of them, and, unfortunately, everybody knows you have to buy the new instruments/turntable every time a new one comes out, which can be problematic. Anyway, that’s why the holidays are so great: because you can tell your rich uncle that you want this expensive thing, or you can be the rich uncle and buy the thing for whoever. I’m saying the holidays exist so people can buy fake plastic instruments for each other. And you really oughtta support DJ Hero 2 on the strength of this ad: And if you’re a grandma who don’t know nothin’ about this crap, please don’t buy Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock for anybody. It’s not the same. Super Street Fighter IVPlatforms: PS3, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? Fans were on board with Street Fighter IV the first time it came out, and folks were less enthusiastic about having to buy the entire game again a year later. But those folks who were too cheap to shell out would be more than happy to accept this as a gift. Goldeneye 007Platform: Wii Why the hell does anyone want this? See: NBA Jam Final Fantasy XIIIPlatform: PS3, Xbox 360 Why the hell does anyone want this? If the world were a better place, there wouldn’t be anyone out there who still wants this, but that isn’t the case. My first thought was that inflicting this upon someone as a gift would be very cruel, but then I realized something very important: this would be a great gift for someone you want to leave you alone. As a gift for that person who annoys the hell out of you, Final Fantasy XIII will make it so you won’t have to look at them for months, assuming they dig the game enough to stick with it. Fingers crossed, right? And for f**k’s sake you hope they actually do all the hunting quests, because that means you won’t seem them again for years. Super ScribblenautsPlatform: Nintendo DS Why the hell does anyone want this? Because it’s f**king awesome. The ability to use adjectives with the items you spawn is overwhelmingly great, and there’s nothing quite like riding around killing things on the back of your giant rattlesnake. Folks who own a DS will love this game. Take it to the bank.
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| Imagine the Look on this Black Ops Player’s Face (VIDEO) Posted: 24 Nov 2010 11:50 AM PST Why is it that every video coming out of Call of Duty: Black Ops just shows sad players getting totally annihilated through no fault of their own? I’m no expert, but it’s probably because it’s hilarious. You think you’ve seen crazily unlucky or humiliating deaths before, but this one falls squarely into the “God hates you” category. This guy was probably so stunned he couldn’t even spew random disparaging racial epithets into his headset.
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| Free Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood DLC Coming in Mid-December Posted: 24 Nov 2010 11:20 AM PST There’s already a insane amount of content in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood already, but Ubisoft Montreal is showing its multiplayer fans even more love on Dec. 14. If you haven’t tried out AC Brotherhood’s multiplayer mode, Animus Update 1.0, as the first DLC pack is called, is a good excuse to do so. It’ll include a new game mode — Advanced Alliance, a tougher spin on the game’s team-based Alliance mode, as well as a new map. Mont Saint-Michel is the new French town you can wander through and murder your fellow players in, and it’s filled with “narrow streets” and “multi-leveled architecture.” And it’s all free, so happy holidays, everyone who enjoys virtually stabbing people (like me). I’m kind of in love with Brotherhood — even though I kind of hated AC 2 — so much so that I’m even playing the frustrating Facebook game Assassin’s Creed: Project Legacy that links with Brotherhood. And I kind of hate Facebook games. Brotherhood’s multiplayer mode is pretty ambitious and definitely creative, so hopefully a few new features will help pull players out of Call of Duty: Black Ops for at least a few rounds this holiday season. Via Joystiq.
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| Dune Wars (Civ IV Mod) Version 1.9: Now With Bigger Sandworms! Posted: 24 Nov 2010 11:09 AM PST Civilization V may now be out for both Mac and PC, but Civ IV remains a beloved classic, so no doubt it will be flogged by modders Half-Life 2 style until the last remaining electron has been deleted. Which is fine by me since it means more goodies like Dune Wars, an ongoing Civ IV mod based on Frank Herbert’s ridiculously convoluted, awesome-in-theory-boring-in-reality series of sci fi novels about space Bedouin drug user worm people. Dune wars plays like a standard Civ IV game -you found your city and expand across the vast planet building your empire. The catch is that the planet is a vast desert, and the cities and outposts you found are devoted to collecting moisture and spice. Also, random events include giant sandworms like the one above who roam the desert and tear up all your shizz. Luckily, no Sting and no David Lynch. And it just got a big update with the release of version 1.9. 1.9 includes new units, new building, improved effects and general tweaks and improvements to make it more stable and fun. If you’re looking for something fun to do over thanksgiving, you might consider grabbing a copy for yourself. And speaking of thanksgiving: I’m thankful that David Lynch has nothing to do with this.
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