Aliens Infestation releases for Nintendo DS today. We're excited and here's why you should be too.

Aliens Infestion for the Nintendo DS lands its way onto store shelves today. Sega may have had this game flying under the radar with little promotion and it may seem like releasing a DS title at this point in time makes little to no sense. But I'm here to tell you that there are some good reasons why you should at least give the game a look, we certainly are. To be honest I haven't played the game, so I'm going with my gut instinct on this one. So come join me and let me tell you why you should be excited for this game. Here, let this trailer whet your appetite.

Musicast 11: Mushroom Men The Spore Wars

So I'm not cool enough to have played this game when it came out. I do plan to change that in the future because after hearing the music and talking about the story I'm very interested. Even the concept art is really good!

Thanks to our friend Eric for the request. Enjoy.

Game Developed by: Red Fly Studio
Published by: Gamecock Media
Music by: Les Claypool (of Primus fame)


Please let us know what you think of this not so new series and don't forget to send us in your requests of game soundtracks for us to feature. We hope you enjoy this weeks Musicast.

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes

The Ladies Vs. Gents Puzzle Challenge

Today I went down to Union Square in San Francisco to check out Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for the Nintendo DS. As described in my last blog post, the whole marketing gimmick is to have the ladies and the gents compete in a puzzle challenge.

Game on. We're divided into opposing forces for battle.

Who's smarter — Men or Woman?

That's what Nintendo and Professor Layton want to know. I woke up this morning to an email invite from Nintendo declaring a battle of the sexes in major cities across the country. Their solution to this age old problem is to take regular crazy people off the street, have them play some Nintendo DS and solve puzzles to settle this matter once and for all. Check it out and see if your city is on the list. Luckily one event is San Francisco's Union Square on Sept 7th, so I will be down there representing all the manly men out there with my puzzle skills. Watch out ladies I'm coming for you! (Man that sounds creepy).



So I must ask. Who is smarter, Men or Women? If you Men really are intellectual beasts I think you already know the answer to this question; if you want to live ;-).

Is the DS down and out? Not quite yet.

So you might have noticed that the DS is in a bit of a drought in terms of new and awesome games. With the announcement of the 3DS it may seem that the were in a bit of a void until its future release.

But if your still in the mood to do some gaming on your way to work or on your summer vacation, I would recommend checking out Dementium II for the DS. It is the sequel to Renegade Kid's original Dementium  released back in 2007.

In my opinion Renegade Kid is the definitive FPS developer for the DS. I've tried other franchises, such as Call of Duty, but so far nothing has comes close to what Renegade Kid can do and does with the DS. It's very impressive for basically just a few guys running the show.

Dementium II is more of a FPS adventure than a shooter as you play as William Redmoor. Poor Will has awoken from a brain operation, conducted on him by a crazed Psychiatric ward doctor. In the first Dementium (spoiler) the whole game was a hallucination caused by this horrific operation. Now that you've escape the trap of your mind, you must figure out what really has happened to you, while fighting off flash backs induced by your hacked up brain. It may not be as suspenseful as a Stephen King novel, but it gets the job done.

With a fine tuned user interface and more mutated looking evil to fight, this should fill your daily gore and FPS gameplay needs. I would give it a look and support one of the best small developers the DS has.

www.dementium.com

REVIEW — Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

Plat: DS
Dev: Alpha Dream
Pub: Nintendo

I know, I know, I have been sitting on this game for awhile now. When I finally do get around to playing RPGs I prefer to take me sweet ass time and enjoy them wholeheartedly. Nintendo & Alpha Dream once again have delivered a fun little Mario & Luigi RPG game on the DS that delivers solid & familiar gameplay with a truly humorous story. Where this game mixes it up a bit is that you're going to be spending most of your time playing as big bad Bowser, as well as inside him.

Scribblenauts, I wanted to love you...

but after a week with the game the love has faded for me. Scribblenauts is a game that has a fantastic concept not seen in any other game. It gives you the ability to write on the DS touch screen, conjure up any objects you can think of and use them to solve the games puzzles. It's a brilliant idea and I must give credit to 5th Cell where it's due. They seem to have a knack for coming up with unique games. Much like 5th Cells Drawn to Life for DS, it oozes creativity but the gameplay isn't executed 100%.

Your goal in Scirbblenauts is to take control of the games main Character Maxwell and capture Starites. In order to obtain these Starites you could do anything from conjuring up the correct item or trying to reach the Startite that is stuck high up in a tree for example. There is a good amount of variety in the levels and you'll find yourself in some very interesting situations depending on what you choose to conjure into the level. At one point I was riding a killer whale, wearing a brazier and holding a turkey baster. Why? Because I could and I don't need to explain my motivations to you people! This is the magical part of the game and it rewards you the more creative you are in solving the puzzles. In the beginning when the levels are simple the game really does work well. But as you advance and the levels get a little more complicated, the faults of the game start to bubble up. It led me down a long path of frustration.