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At GDC this year Nintendo detailed an upcoming game finally coming to American DS systems: Rhythm Heaven. The game was a hit in Japan, and Satoru Iwata seemed confident that it will be a hit in North America as well: he treated everyone who came to see his keynote with a free copy of the game. Unfortunately, the title seems to miss much of what makes rhythm games fun, while also mucking around with what made the WarioWare series so intriguing.
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Guitar Hero has become something of a juggernaut of a franchise—and this is probably going to inspire some hate in the comments—but the more Guitar Hero games Activision Blizzard sells, the more the quality seems to take a nose-dive. We reviewed Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero On Tour in one feature: they both fit under the umbrella of terrible ideas that were sure to make a ton of money. Guitar Hero: World Tour was certainly worth the money, but it can't beat the feature set of Rock Band 2. Guitar Hero: Metallica seems like just another way to cash-in on the hype cheaply, with everyone involved making out like bandits—or so the conventional wisdom would say.
Preconceived notions can go to hell. The game starts with Metallica walking slowly towards the stage, and then you tear into "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The audacity of this move is surprising... there isn't a gentle build as the first song takes you to ten. Crank the sound system, turn the lights down, and invite some friends over: this is the most aggressive, metal, and well-designed love letter to a band you may ever see in gaming.
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Telltale has stumbled upon a pretty great formula, turning popular franchises like Sam & Max and Homestar Runner into episodic games with classic point-and-click adventure gameplay. Now the company has set its sites on the claymation duo of Wallace & Gromit. But how well does the series translate into the game world? Ars ventures into the first episode of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, Fright of the Bumblebees, to find out.
If you're played any of Telltale's previous games—or most other point-and-click adventure games for that matter—you'll feel right at home with Fright. The gameplay is identical, and consists mainly of speaking to other characters and using a variety of different items to interact with the environment in order to solve puzzles. You will switch back and forth between the titular duo, but there is no difference between the two.
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At GDC, Sony's upcoming action game Infamous was on display for us all to see. I sat down with some of the game's levels at the Sony Bloggers' Lounge and spent a great deal of time putting this "ground-based superhero" title through its paces. The impression I came away with? Infamous could be the next big action franchise for Sony.
The core story of Infamous revolves around Cole MacGrath, who is caught in the wake of a blast that decimates one of the game's three islands and knocks out power across the board. Cole is knocked unconscious, but wakes up with the ability to use electricity in a number of ways. As a result, he sets out to eradicate the gangs that have risen out of the chaos to terrorize the islands; whether he does it altruistically and seeks to restore law and order or just wants to remove the competition so he can take what he wants is up to the player. The story is told with a combination of cutscenes and beautiful comic-book animatics, the latter being especially cool to watch as they feature a really unique art style.
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Imagine a game where you're the sadistic god of a very small island. You can create animated people at will and then torture them to your heart's content. Feed them to sharks, strike them with lightning bolts, throw them into a nearby volcano (it's actually an acquired skill) and, if you feel especially generous, feed them by cracking coconuts on their heads. Pocket God lets you explore your wrathful side in tormenting innocent virtual people.
If that were all there was to Pocket God, we would sum up the application by saying: "cute for five minutes, possibly worth the one-dollar price, no good long-term gameplay." However, there's far more to the whole Pocket God experience, and that's due to the designers behind the product.
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Once upon a time, there were six girls who had to visit their sick grandmother. No, wait, there were actually seven. In order to get to their grandmother's house, the Red Girls had to travel through a nearby forest to get there; it was a quick and safe journey, as long as they stayed on the path leading through the woods. But if they stayed on the path and made it to the house safe and sound, then their stories ended in failure. Confused yet? Don't worry, that's a common feeling when playing Tale of Tales' newest horror/adventure game, The Path.
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I'm sober these days, after making a deal with my wife that I'd give up the bottle until our baby is born. We figure it's a small sacrifice compared to what her body is going through, but the unintended consequence is that reviewing bad games has become very, very bad. It used to be I could slug a scotch or two while trying to fight through a game like Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution, but now I have to stare into the abyss with eyes that are stone sober. This game actually put me in a bad mood.
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It was only a matter of time before we got a Metal Gear Solid game on the iPhone. Given the quality surrounding Kojima's franchise, this was actually something we were all looking forward to. This isn't the first time the series has appeared on a mobile console, as the Metal Gear Acid games have proven to be popular adventures on the PSP; now, Metal Gear Solid Touch has arrived for the iPhone/iPod Touch and is bringing third-person shooter action to the platform. Unfortunately, Kojima Production's freshman entry to Apple's platform leaves much to be desired.
The game's strongest asset is its visual presentation, which utilizes 2-D sprites from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Patriots. The story is told through still frames from MGS 4, with dense text appearing over them. The plot touches on key moments from Guns of the Patriots, but it won't make much sense to someone who hasn't played the game.
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The awkwardly-named 10 Balls 7 Cups provides a virtual skee ball experience on the iPhone. Like its real-world counterpart, you try to amass points by rolling balls up an inclined platform and bouncing them into a series of cups. Cups that are smaller and harder to reach offer higher point scores than the ones that are larger and closer.
If you've played skee ball at a carnival (or even at a Chuck E Cheese), you know pretty much everything you need to know. 10 Balls 7 Cups even lets you collect tickets so you can buy virtual prizes. These range from t-shirts and whistles to tanks and sports cars. The program keeps track of your loot so you can enjoy each of these non-existent prizes over time.
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The downloadable game platforms that the respective consoles have given gamers are probably the best trend to come out of this generation; there are easily more interesting things being done in the $10 game area than in the $60 market. Smaller products with smaller budgets mean greater risks being taken, and that's a very good thing. This week the Wii was blessed with a reimagining of Pong—of all games—and Bit.Trip Beat is just about the best thing since sliced Lumines.
The concept is simple. You twist the Wiimote to move your paddle up and down the screen and hit dots as they fly at your from the right. Don't let that fool you; the game is monstrously hard, even on the first of the game's three levels. Each dot when hit sounds a note, and the pulsing backgrounds add a highly visual element to one of the oldest gaming concepts in existence.
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Any Grand Theft Auto game on the DS is going to be defined by the hardware, as Nintendo's portable is the least-powerful system on the market. It also sells amazingly well, moving 3 million units last December. That's a customer base that's impossible to ignore, so Rockstar has decided to shoehorn its most popular series into the little money-making machine. What's surprising is just how good the result is and how much care went into the game's design. The motivation may have come from profits, but the execution is pure class.
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The Trackmania series of games has always had a cult following on the PC; the game's solid graphics, addictive "one more try" gameplay, and dedicated following make it quite the impressive racing title. The game was ported to the Nintendo DS quite a while ago in Europe, but Atlus has done gamers a favor by publishing the title in the US. After more than enough time for a full review, we have our verdict: this is a great way to make a fun game portable.
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Resident Evil 5 is the first current-generation Resident Evil title to be released—unless you count the Wii light-gun game that took players through past games, and I don't—and it labors under the pressure of following up Resident Evil 4, which was one of the most-loved games of the past ten years. Capcom seems more than willing to shake up the foundation of their beloved franchise, and if you thought the demo for this game was controversial, wait until the fans get their hands on the game. There will be fallout.
I'm not saying the game is bad, and I'll explain in a moment why I think it's good, but Capcom has a major PR issue with Resident Evil 5—not with the racism issue, although we'll address that later—but because fans of action games may not give any game with "Resident Evil" in the title a shot. On the other hand, Resident Evil fans may not be willing to take this particular ride because it's an action game. Even more dizzying is that the game is designed to be played as a co-op experience.
This is not a good start for fans of the long-running series.
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It's rare to need a break from a game after only fifteen minutes of play time, but that's exactly what happened when I sat down to review MadWorld on the Nintendo Wii. The game can be incredibly numbing—the blood and the f-bombs, the killing and the maiming, and the unrelenting negativity of the game don't offer much in the way subtlety. The game takes place in a black-and-white world, where red splashes of blood are the only color. It can sometimes be hard to see what's going on, but you'll always know what to do: kill.
You play Jack, a swaggering killer who is sponsored by an unnamed company, represented in a voice over by a sinister character called XIII. Your job is to kill people in the most entertaining ways possible, for the viewers of the show you're participating in. This little bit of metagaming gives the ideas behind MadWorld a crazy sort of logic. You get points for your kills because your viewers are grading you. Rending someone with your chainsaw is good for a few points, but why not shove a signpost through them, and then throw them into a bed of spikes? Each level is filled with weapons and environmental threats; finding the best ways to slice and dice your way to big points is half the fun.
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You know Oregon Trail, don't you? It's the classic computer game developed way back in the 1970s that taught students about 19th century pioneer life. Kids learned what it took to bring a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri along the trail that snaked its way west into Oregon territory, passing through Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming onto Utah and Idaho. You had to feed your party by hunting, carry supplies, manage cash, and so forth. The game made you think and reason. You couldn't win just by being a passive participant.
1848 has just met 2009, as the iPhone version of Oregon Trail went live on the App Store yesterday. Retailing for six bucks, Oregon Trail combines westward-moving hardship with brightly designed graphics and iPhone-based touch interactions. The game retains the challenges and decision making exercises you remember, but sprinkles in new side missions and customization options.
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