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12.13.2010

Pluribus Unam, Shuma-Gorath we will Obey.

Shuma-Gorath is one of the oddest characters in the Marvel vs Capcom 3 line-up. He was first debuted in Marvel Super Hero's: The Fate of Two Worlds" which was one of the best god damn arcade fighters of it's time.

So why should anyone give a shit? Well for one he has tentacles. Naughty ones perhaps yes, but definitely deadly ones. If you head over to capcom-unity they have a really awesome deal going on.



Apparently they had the community members vote on different designs for their awesome pre-order gift. They called it "Marvel vs Capcom Waste of Flesh t-shirt". I personally really like this design a lot, and am going to be pre-ordering this for the t-shirt!

To order and receive this amazing t-shirt click on the "store" button on the top there. Or just click here... Jeez you lazy bast....

12.11.2010

Donkey Kong Country Returns impressions


The developer Retro studios has once again cradled one of Nintendo's biggest franchises in its bosom and raised a fantastic game. The last year has been a banner year for platformers on the Wii and the 2D platformer genre in general. Games like New Super Mario Bros, Super Meat Boy and Donkey Kong help prove that its still one the best game designs around and with the right team, can compete with anything 3D games have to offer. I wanted to give you guys a quick roundup of my thoughts so far about the game and what you can expect if this game is on your radar.

It's just a 2D platformer why should you care?
Retro Studios seems to be Nintendo's ace in the hole and boy they don't disappoint. Granted this game doesn't have the same 3D rendered graphics like the originals, but it does have beautifully animated colorful characters and environments. Donkey Kong Country Returns level design is fantastic and offers tons of secrets to find, challenging platforming, and creative uses of the levels environments to effect gameplay. Each level in the game seems to be always asking you to do something a little different and each level feels fresh. Your also going to be in for a challenge; in the first world alone I died at least 10 times and didn't even come close to finding all the KONG letters and puzzle pieces in each level. Oh yeah, did I mention that each level also has a time attack mode as well? In case you looking for more of a challenge. The game can be difficult at times, but the game does offer you lots of ways to make it easier on yourself by adding checkpoints and banana coins. With the banana coins you go to old Kranky Kongs shack and purchase extra balloons, a puzzle revealing parrot, and invincibility juice. Much like Mario Bros 3, you access them on the main map and use them before you enter levels.

12.08.2010

New Tomb Raider is a prequel/reboot.

If you're like me you're probably pretty sick of Tomb Raider. Especially if you've actually played any of them before "Lara Croft and the Guardians of Light" -- which sounds dangerously close to a Harry Potter title.

Well they aren't done with her yet. In fact they've unbraided her hair, muddied up her face, and taken years off her life with this next reboot. All we have to go off of is this image:

You have a smudge of dirt right... no... no... there! no wait there's more.
Apparently we're going to learn all about Lara's past, and how she came to be the treasure hunter we all know, but not all love. This one will be called "Lara Croft: The Evolution". As of right now those are all the details we get, but it is interesting to me (keep an eye here for updates).


12.07.2010

Wiiware demo Monday... yes we know it's Tuesday.

I wanted to get this up yesterday but my day job got in the way. But I want to come back every Monday and feature the new Wiiware demos that were released since Nintendo is incapable of doing that on its own for some reason. So far Nintendo is offering one new demo a week for a total of 4 demos being featured in the Nintendo channels main homepage at one time. If you want to find previous releases demos your going to have to dig into the "Newest Additions" section of Wiiware. Good luck with that.

This weeks new game demo is Fluidty. Published by Nintendo.



12.05.2010

Augmented reality device lets you suck and receive virtual sensations, oh yeah

Chalk this one up into the "Is this for real?" category. TagCandy is a device built by Yasuaki Kakehi of Keio University. The device consists of a handheld base with a speaker and a senor built into the top of it. Then you place a ordinary lollipop into the top of the device and whalla your living in the future baby. Once you place the delectible candy in your mouth and begin to er... you know, suck the candy. The sensor will pick up your movements and the device with play one of many different sounds, such as firework or biting an apple for instance. The speaker vibrates and through that you can either feel the sound on your tongue and through bone-conduction technology, you will hear the sound by touching the candy to your teeth. There are plans in the future to add more functionality to its repertoire such as biting recognition and the ability to share sensations over the internet. We all know what happens when we get the internet involved into such things don't we ;- ). There is a nice video clip here that highlights this wonderful technology.




Take a good hard look fellow gamers. Could this vision of augmented reality be the next leap in video games? Nintendo needs to step up its game in order to take us to the next level and I don't think the Vitality Sensor is going to do it. I can see it now, Wii2 comes packed with Nintendo themed lollipops. Can you imagine the combination of Wiimote technology and mouth sensations! Satoru Iwata I'm talking to you. I've always wondered what if felt like to stomp on goombas in my mouth. God, that sounds oh so wrong.

What do you think of this new augmented reality technology? The future or another WTF device?

12.03.2010

Battlefield Bad Company 2 offers Vietnam thrills at a better price

Screw Blackops and heck, screw Activision. The Battlefield Bad Comapany 2 Vietnam DLC Map pack can be yours for $15 dollars (ack its a little pricey) and you can skip the $60 dollar investment for another Call of Duty yearly rehash. Also if you have the VIP access code from when you purchased the game you will get it all for free. As you can see from the video below your getting the same Battlefield with a nice 60's vibe makeover. Your going to get 5 maps: Hill 137, Vantage Point, Phu Bai Valley, Cao Son Temple, and the Battle of Hastings along with some new vehicles. I'm not advocating that the Vietnam war was a fantastic time in history, but throw some good multiplayer antics and I'm sold.



I've come late to the party when it comes to being a fan of Battlefield Bad Company 2, but overall I've think its offers something I don't see in a lot of first person shooters nowadays, teamwork. The game has a good balance of gameplay elements that work really well in a multiplayer arena. If you've haven't tried a match online, do yourself a service and give it a go, I'll take you on. My PSN name is IanAugust.

What do you think of the Battlefield series? 
Do you think the DLC is too expensive?

Ericson Playstation phone video WTF!

Destructoid just posted up video footage of what seems to be the long rumored Sony Playstation Ericson phone. Here check this shit out.



If you listen to the podcast regularly you would know that my poor phone is mostly broken, and have been waiting for something new to encourage me to buy a new phone. This may be it guys... seriously, but I don't know how they could do this right.

I'm on the fence about it because logic tells me that if they are going to be using the Android OS, I don't think they'll be able to just release a bunch of Playstation brand exclusive games onto it because then it would become available to all Android phones. Unless somehow they can make their own game store that only works on this particular phone.

Anyway discuss if you care, and shit even if you don't care I'd like to hear what anyone thinks!

12.01.2010

Lord of Arcana (Square's Monster Hunter)



Monster Hunter has become very dear to me as you all must know. It's probably very annoying by now I'm sure. But apparently I'm not the only one - Streets were lined with people in Japan looking to buy Monster Hunter Portable 3rd yesterday.

There is however a new game coming out by none other than SquareEnix. It's their version of a Monster Hunter type game, which is why I'm very interested in playing this game. Another interesting thing about it is all the artists they have contracted for character design:


  • Tetsuya Nomura (best known for his work on Final Fantasy, Parasite Eve, Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends with You, and Brave Fencer Musashi)
  • Yoshitaka Amano (also well known, Final Fantasy, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Vampire Hunter D, Gatchaman, Tatsunoko Productions, many many more)
  • Tod McFarlane (Whaa? Yeah Spawn*, Spider Man, Ghost Rider, many more you know)*Creator

If that's not impressive enough they also got music from:


  • Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy fame, Front Mission, Ah My Goddess Anime, SaGa series)
  • Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Shin Megami Tensei, and more)

This Line up proves impressive! I'm excited to see what SquareEnix will do with this game. It also boasts one feature that most people have been wanting out of the Monster Hunter games - a lock on button.

We'll see though!

P.S. It's a PSP game so I expect nobody but myself to really care.

Goldeneye multiplayer action with CoffeewithGames.com

I recently picked up Goldeneye for Wii and have been having a pretty good time with it. Our friend Coffee has enticed me to play some online matches with him and has provided some footage of the multiplayer mayhem so you can get an idea of what its like to play the game online.



Now as you can see from the footage that this Goldeneye plays much differently from what you may remember from your prepubescent years and that's just one of many of the changes you will see in the new version of Goldeneye. It plays very much like a modern console shooter and has taken cues from some of the best FPS out there. So all of you looking for a direct port of the N64 version may be sad pandas, but rest assured this version of the game is a good one and worth your time if your a starving FPS Wii owner. Just don't expect it to be exactly how you remembered it and enjoy it.

If you want to take me on and play some online matches post your Goldeneye friend code. Yes friends codes! I hate you Nintendo.

Here is mine - 5087 9517 7822

For England!

11.26.2010

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (jp)



Yes. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd now please!

None of this is actual gameplay but it's nice to see some of the stuff that will be implemented in this version such as: new monsters, new types of armors for your felynes, and new environments.

Seriously I can't wait for this, and now that I have my PSP GO I can actually use my sixaxis PS3 controller, and hook it up to my plasma! Alas still no online functionality though.

I'm still hoping for a 3DS release of this, but at this point I don't know if they'll do that. If this one in particular doesn't come out for it, I'm sure they'll have one for it eventually.

11.22.2010

Nintendo offering Wiiware game demos yet again

I swear I know nothing about game demos!
Starting today Nintendo is offering game demos on the Wii Shop Channel for all to enjoy. Now you may remember that last year Nintendo tried this idea before and gave us one round of demos. Then silence and it seemed that the lumbering online doofus giant went into hibernation mode. Now, If you open up the Wii Shop Channel you can try out 4 different games courtesy of someone at Nintendo getting off their duff and actually using the channel to sell us games for once.

The four demos made available are Bit.Trip.Fate, And Yet It Moves, Jett Rocket, and Thru-Space. Not at all a bad offering and if you care what I think, then I would recommend giving Bit.Trip.Fate and And Yet It Moves some of your time. I tried them both out this morning and had a good time, Oh yeah!

The current stated plan is that every Monday we'll be seeing new demos offered up for download. So after 4 years Nintendo is really starting to get more serious about its online store and push sales for games that have gotten lost in the Wii Shop Channels crappy design. Who knows why the abrupt change of course, but one can speculate that over the last year the Wiiware and Virtual console have been lacking in the awesome games department. It may be a last ditch effort to drum up some extra sales and hopefully keep developers interested in the service or a dry run to figure out how to fix their online setup for the new 3DS shop channel. Whatever the reason, its about damn time Nintendo.

11.16.2010

Pixels by Patrick Jean

This is so interesting that I had to actually post this up on the blog :O!

I recently posted this up on facebook, but just in case there is anyone out there that doesn't "like" us on facebook I really want to share this with you all.

Geeksofdoom.com state that "Happy Madison" is going to make a movie of this... "Ghostbusters-like action comedy" is the way it's worded for now. Anyway check this out:



I'm very interested in this movie. VERY! Are you?