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Month: November 2011

Weekend Hangover: Leftovers edition

Weekend Hangover: Leftovers edition

Published November 27, 2011

Editors Note: I’ve been so busy lately, alternating between stuffing my face and being drunk that I never got around to posting this last Friday like I’d originally intended to. I hope you’ll forgive me.

These past couple of weeks have seen the high-profile releases of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Saints Row: The Third and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. At this point, almost all of the major fall titles have made their way to store shelves, so we gamers are just filthy with choices of games to play. SO MANY GAMES. Thankfully, this last stretch of the year is the perfect time to start working on all our leftovers.

Read on to see what the VGH crew have been playing lately:

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Play More Games: It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

Published November 22, 2011

Zelda: Skyward Sword

Is the brunt of the Fall releases over? (I secretly hope not, because if I can’t complain about all the games coming out I’ll have to figure out some other way to introduce these posts.) Anyway, it’s definitely waning but we still have a few more big releases left in the year. So what are they?

The biggest this week is undoubtedly The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for (what else?) the Wii. If you already listened to Episode 30, you know it’s a bit controversial among the VGH crew for its decision to use only motion controls, but I’m optimistic. Nintendo says they’ve prepared a cool, 1:1 swordfighting experience, and I want to see how well that works. I found the waggle-laden sword action in 2006’s Zelda: Twilight Princess to be pretty pointless, so at the very least this should be more engaging.

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BGM Mode: Coming Up Aces

Published November 18, 2011

Project Aces

It was inevitable that I’d eventually have to feature Namco’s Ace Combat here in BGM Mode, since Ace Combat 5‘s soundtrack was directly responsible for piqing my interest in the series. Actually, Soulcalibur–another Namco game–also deserves some credit; after countless hours spent playing SC2 and 3 and enjoying the catchy and bombastic soundtracks, I started looking for more work from the series’ main composers, Junichi Nakatsuru and Keiki Kobayashi. As it turned out, they both worked together on the Ace Combat series, along with Tetsukazu Nakanishi. Somehow I settled on Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, picked up the soundtrack, and–after being totally blown away–finally played the game.

Eventually I made my way through each of the PlayStation 2 installments, and while their quality went up and down, the soundtracks were consistently excellent. Here are a few of the most memorable tracks, starting with Ace Combat 04, from all the way back in 2001, and wrapping up with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, which just came out last month.

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Spending hangover cure: Buy one game, get one half-off at Amazon

Spending hangover cure: Buy one game, get one half-off at Amazon

Published November 16, 2011

There’s simply too damn many good games out this time of year. If you’re one of the crazy types (like some of us…) who try to play them all, it can be a pretty expensive proposition – in terms of both time and money. Luckily, Amazon has thrown us a bone which should help a little bit in the money department.

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Sideway: New York review: Play it, don’t spray it

Sideway: New York review: Play it, don’t spray it

Published November 9, 2011

The hip, graffiti-themed universe of Sideway: New York was born as the result of a collaboration between “advertainment” agency Fuel Industries and W!ldbrain Entertainment, the proprietors of the eccentric children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba! While this dynamic duo of marketing spawned the game’s world, the game itself was developed by Playbrains, whose previous console outing was a Madballs-licensed game for Xbox Live Arcade. With all these puzzle pieces aligned, it seems to paint a picture of a concerted effort to create a cross-media, kid-friendly entertainment franchise. Whether or not Sideway gains enough traction to be spun off into a Saturday morning cartoon remains to be seen, but I found the game itself to be a surprisingly fun platformer.

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Preview: Stealth Bastard

Preview: Stealth Bastard

Published November 8, 2011

Sure, there are some pretty big games out this week, but it’s also nice to take a minute and see what awesome new things are kicking around in the indie space from time to time. In a world littered with modern war-faring and the rimming of skies, it can be pretty refreshing to see some of the big ideas being dreamed up by little teams. Enter Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole (you probably didn’t see him come in though.  You know, because he’s stealthy).

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Play More Games: The Postmodern Warfare World

Published November 8, 2011

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

By now, you probably don’t need to be reminded that we’re in the middle of the holiday release season. (Your smoldering or about-to-be-smoldering bank account is probably enough reminder of that.) You can tell the storm’s reaching its peak when a new Call of Duty shows up, though. That is this week. Hold onto something while we go over that and some other stuff coming out.

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Weekend Hangover: Twister Mania edition

Weekend Hangover: Twister Mania edition

Published November 4, 2011

What the hell is going on in this screenshot? Is that a lobster?!?

I occasionally take part in the House Party promotional program, where participants are sent a free product and in return, they agree to have friends over to try it out and take pictures of the event, etc. I’ve been sent a copy of the Kinect-enabled Twister Mania, so now I have to subject a group of my friends to it this weekend. If it ends up sucking, we can always switch to Fruit Ninja Kinect or just play some Rock Band 3 instead.

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PSN indie hit Joe Danger heading to XBLA

PSN indie hit Joe Danger heading to XBLA

Published November 4, 2011

When Joe Danger hit the PlayStation Network last summer, it was universally loved, or at least universally liked. The Hello Games-developed title appeared to be a simple, Excitebike-like side-scrolling motorcycle racer at first blush, but in reality turned out to be more of a platformer-on-wheels. Charming humor, vibrant color, and challenging mechanics made for a rather enjoyable experience. A year and a half later, Hello Games has announced that the game is coming to Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Joe Danger: Special Edition, with Microsoft Studios signed on to publish it.

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Two is the loneliest number – Sony cracks down on PSN account sharing

Two is the loneliest number – Sony cracks down on PSN account sharing

Published November 4, 2011

The party is officially over for cost-conscious “game sharers”. Sony has just announced changes to their PlayStation Network usage policies regarding how many unique PS3 consoles can make use of purchased content. Effective November 18th, each individual PSN account may only utilize purchased content on two activated systems, a decrease from the current limit of five systems. The only positive note is that purchases made prior to the 18th are not retroactively affected.

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Batman: Arkham City review: Fists are my shark repellent

Published November 2, 2011

Batman AC Concept Art

Back in 2006, British film maker Christopher Nolan revived the ailing Batman film franchise with the brilliant Batman Begins. The rest, as they say, is history. In 2009, British developer Rocksteady took the video game industry by storm with their incredible Batman: Arkham Asylum and created the greatest superhero game of all time. Conclusion: the British know something about Batman that the rest of the world clearly does not.

Arkham Asylum hit so many high notes with its perfect blend of engaging hand to hand combat, tense stealth set pieces, a fully fleshed out game world, and an interesting narrative. Rocksteady showed a masterful hand with their interpretation of Batman’s universe and it was my game of the year in 2009.

Arkham City has finally arrived. The bar has been set quite high; did Rocksteady do it again?

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