Nintendo’s weapon of choice turns 58 today, and considering how many games he’s given us over the years it didn’t seem right to let the day slip away without shouting out a Happy Birthday to Shigeru Miyamoto.
November 16, 2010
Birthday Wishes – Miyamoto Edition
November 15, 2010
Your Recommended Dose of Import Nostalgia
MonkeyPaw Games grants two flashback import wishes on PlayStation Network this week, with Money Idol Exchanger and Sonic Wings Special, both of which release tomorrow for $5.99 a piece – under the Import tab in the PSone Classic section.
This seemed significant for two reasons –
1 – Money Idol Exchanger’s economic puzzle challenge stands out in my mind most because someone gave me hell for not mentioning it when reviewing Critter Crunch last year.
2 – Sonic Wings deserves a mention entirely because one can never have too many military based 2D shooters – it’s a fact.
Catch some hurriedly grabbed YouTube footage after the break.
Your Monday Dose of Zen
Aksys Games brings the dog track to WiiWare with Derby Dogs this week, entirely important because it reminded me of the greatest sport ever imagined within a videogame – of course I’m speaking of poison chihuahua racing.
If you’re unfamiliar with the sport, you can catch some video after the break, or consult the nearest available copy of God Hand.
November 13, 2010
Review – Guwange
Cave’s bullethell blast from the past hit Xbox Live Arcade with all the trimmings this week, plus a few features I wouldn’t have anticipated. Running through modes and stages, I can’t shake the thought that Guwange would make a spectacular Wii title. That isn’t intended to veer completely off topic, but has just been floating around in my brain while tackling the core of this game – controlling two physical objects on screen simultaneously.
Each of the game’s three playable characters is linked to a shikigami, an entity that player’s can summon at their leisure, and also one that each character seeks to free themselves from, the driving bit of narrative beneath the barrage of bullets standing between the player and that goal. At first this can result in several shades of retina overload, keeping track of two objects on-screen while Cave’s fine sprites vanish beneath the chaos of color changing bullets and loose change, until survival seems like sheer luck while pushing the analog sticks of the 360 controller in all directions. But a one size fits all difficulty setting, generous screen display and co-op options, as well as three modes to suit all possible tastes should help the uninitiated quickly discover an elegance at work that speaks to Cave’s well earned legacy as shooter royalty.
November 10, 2010
It’s On Like Donkey Kong
But only if Nintendo says so.
The company filed a request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in order to trademark the phrase, which they word as “in honor” of the approaching release of Donkey Kong Country Returns. At no additional charge the same PR spiel cites the pop-culture nature of the phrase’s use in music, television and film, which I would naively think reason enough toward why Nintendo shouldn’t be able to trademark the phrase.
Keep in mind I ain’t no lawyer or anything, just a dude walking the wasteland of gaming.
Review – Fable III
The design imperative represented in most games on the market is simple, and nigh-universal: give the player one thing to do, and develop and fortify this mechanic until it is strong enough to engage the player for the bulk of the experience. The addition of the odd mini-game (driving a tank in Gears of War, for example) serves to break up the action, but the focus of the design is still to provide a mechanic that can be successfully repeated for the entire game without becoming tedious.
Fable III represents the opposite extreme, and an entirely alternative design philosophy. Here is a game that provides a myriad of game options, with the caveat that each is relatively simplistic. The effect is that Fable III feels like a game made up of mini-games; an exploration mini-game, a finance mini-game, a combat mini-game, a social mini-game, and so on. The dilemma lies in whether players will find the sheer number of these mini-games to be sufficiently engaging as to offset the fundamental simplicity of the mechanics.
November 9, 2010
White, Green, Blue and Dead All Over
For those of us who have made the case for violence as art, a staggering lack of evidence has been our biggest downfall. Dismemberment, decapitation, gallons upon gallons of blood; it all rings the wrong bell for people like Roger Ebert and the Red Cross.
But then along comes White, an avant-garde take on painting a portrait in the style of a Jackson Pollock or an angry art major. From first-year students of the Graduate School of Games and Interactive Medias in France, White allows the player to paint a portrait using various weapons to murder anthropomorphic paint balls who giggle and prance along a barren white canvas.
Take for instance my own painting, after the break.