Gamesugar

July 29, 2011

Ascending the Metatron (Or Something) in El Shaddai

Filed under: News Feed — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 6:46 pm

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
The demo for El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron has been available on Xbox LIVE for a while now, though you may have overlooked its strange offering, as I initially did. In my capacity as an official Sugar Human, I recommend you reconsider.

The demo takes place in what might best be described as a bizarre drug induced hallucination; a world made of shadow and glass, laced together like a spider’s web. At one point, the perspective shifts to that of a side-scroller, where I leapt across rolling waves of clouds and flying rocks as the sun rose and fell, replaced by some ominous face in the background, again and again.

The demo is strange and dreamlike; sheathed in angelic armor that breaks away to reveal what appears to be some kind of surfer bro in jeans, the protagonist platforms through areas that seem only tangentially related, finding demons to fight in glassy arenas made of light and dark.

I challenged a boss, only to suddenly find myself somewhere else, platforming again, as in those strange dreams where you walk through a door to find the nature of the dream has completely changed.

It’s going to be a pretty thin summer for games this year, so it may be worth your time to check out this bizarre action entry; I played for half an hour, and though I’m not entirely sure what it is that I played, I can tell you that it was awesome. El Shaddai will arrive in North America on August 16 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

July 19, 2011

Review – Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 9:00 am

Call of Juarez The Cartel
Out today is Ubisoft’s latest entry in the Call of Juarez series, The Cartel. Following an inter-agency task force designed to bring down a rising drug cartel responsible for a recent terrorist attack (that’s right; it’s street crime plus terrorism), the game offers three playable characters; a DEA agent, FBI agent, and LAPD officer—all of whom are preposterously corrupt and ultimately grossly incompetent.

As the story progresses, the three (supposed) law enforcement agents concoct a series of deeply stupid and massively illegal (never mind immoral) strategies for bringing down the Cartel (and achieving a handful of additional goals), most of which fail miserably—which is not surprising, on account of their flawed and nonsensical nature.

Meanwhile, a complex story of cops and gangsters with multiple agendas and conflicting (and frequently changing) agendas is weaved. Now, for clarity: this is not a story that is complex in the engaging, labyrinthine way, but rather the messy and highly confusing way. It’s never entirely clear who’s doing what, and for what reason; the only absolute is that everybody is doing something you don’t know about, and it’s going to bite you in the ass.

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July 13, 2011

Refresh Rate – Sonic the Hedgehog

Filed under: Archives — Tags: , , , — Nathan White @ 4:37 pm

Sonic the Hedgehog Refresh Rate Sega Master System
Nostalgia is a funny thing. I got into collecting old videogames around eight years ago, in part to re-establish a connection with my inner child; to transport myself back to a simpler period in my life. At the time I started snatching up the initial bricks and mortar of my current collection, I was in a strange place in my life. I had just completed my (somewhat delayed) post-secondary education, but couldn’t find a job in my field and was therefore employed as a “sandwich artist”. My girlfriend (now wife) and I were living in an cramped apartment in a not-so-great area near downtown (complete with corner dwelling hookers, an adjacent coffee shop populated by recently released psych-ward patients and a psychotic drug dealing downstairs neighbor).

I had never gotten rid of any of my old videogames from when I was a kid, and I even made enough use of them to justify taking them with me when I left the comfort of my parent’s basement.

I don’t remember the exact moment I started “collecting” videogames, I just started buying the old games that I remembered liking but never owned as a kid – some I’d rented, others that I’d played at friend’s houses. From there I got into games and systems that I never had access to, such as the Turbo Grafx-16 and Sega Master System. It was during my introduction to the Master System that I heard about the numerous ports of popular Genesis games that had graced the console. Titles such as Altered Beast, Streets of Rage 2 and even Mortal Kombat all saw 8-bit Master System releases. Intrigued, I started collecting and discovering them for myself, and the game that intrigued me most was the Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog.

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July 11, 2011

Review – BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nathan White @ 4:01 pm

Review BlazBlue Continuum Shift II 2
Essentially an updated, albeit portable, version of the console original, Continuum Shift 2 brings more of the same 2D fighting flash to series fans… but does this update bring enough to the the table to warrant the purchase?

The answer to that question depends on what kind of fighting game player you are. On one side of the argument, this portable update of the PS3/360 original would be the perfect way to get introduced to the series. It’s a near-flawless handheld recreation that boasts smooth animation, brilliant 2D sprites, tight controls, and even throws in the original game’s DLC characters.

These new-comer perks are also the biggest detriment to series diehards; there are just far to few updates to the console original, aside from the character DLC and a new game mode, to be considered a must have.

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Refresh Rate – Metroid II: The Return of Samus

Filed under: Archives — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nathan White @ 2:14 pm

Metroid 2 The Return of Samus
As a kid I never actually owned a Game Boy. I was one of the “turncoats” who went straight from the NES to the SEGA Genesis in Sonic the Hedgehog’s brilliant blue wake. That is not to say that I didn’t ever play any Game Boy games at the time. I had this good friend whose Game Boy was practically communal between him, myself, and his twin sister. We used to play Super Mario Land and Tetris almost constantly, draining a King’s ransom in batteries. I distinctly remember playing Metroid II shortly after it was released in Chris’s basement; making maps on foolscap, color coding different sections, the whole nine.

As a child I never did beat the original Metroid, nor did I complete its sequel, come to think of it. The Metroid games were something of mystery, an impossible enigma. There was an older kid in my neighborhood who had a code (his own personal password, you see) for the original NES game. He wouldn’t allow us into his parents basement until he had entered it, for fear of his password becoming common knowledge. We didn’t really care, though, because we just wanted to watch in awe while he decimated Motherbrain and gutted the white whale that was Metroid right in front of us.

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July 5, 2011

Review – Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , — Mister Raroo @ 10:20 pm

Review Half-Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax
“Are other RPGs going to seem too slow after playing this?”

My wife posed this question as she watched me play (deep breath) Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax (okay, just typing that takes half a minute, so we’ll shorten it to HMH). Also, her question was definitely valid.

At first glance HMH seems like a typical Japanese RPG. It successfully incorporates all the genre’s staples – namely it takes place in a colorful fantasy world, there’s an impending apocalypse, you play as a humble hero entrusted with saving the world, you level up via random battles, you visit towns and villages to purchase items and upgrades, you can embark on optional side-quests, and more –only it speeds them up to the point that sometimes you’ll feel like you’re watching a time-lapse video of someone playing Dragon Quest.

In other words, it’s like playing an RPG on speed. Well, okay, I don’t use drugs, but I imagine the pace of HMH is akin to seeing the world through the eyes of some junkie on a street corner who pictures himself to be a Native American hunting buffalo as he throws Styrofoam cups at passing cars. It’s no wonder the lovely Missus Raroo worried that other RPGs would be tough to play after HMH.

Just for kicks, I powered up my Nintendo DS to see if Dragon Quest VI would feel sluggish. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to transition from the lightning speed pace of HMH to the more humble tempo of Dragon Quest, though I will admit that I kept thinking “Hurry up! Don’t waste time! Just run forward into those monsters and move on to the next battle!”

You’d think that this would suggest RPGs have indeed been ruined for me, but by the power of foreshadowing I’ll just say that HMH may not be what it initially appears to be…

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Review – Puzzle Agent 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 5:34 pm

Review Puzzle Agent 2
It’s not even three weeks into summer, and I’m already retreating back to the ominous tundra that is Minnesota, to cool off and play Puzzle Agent 2. The sequel to last year’s Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent again follows FBI agent Nelson Tethers, as he returns to the creepy little town of Scoggins, where he previously solved a mystery armed with nothing but a passion for solving puzzles… well, he was also armed with a gun, but he doesn’t use it for some reason.

Having solved the mystery of the Scoggins Eraser factory in the previous game, Tethers isn’t satisfied with how he left Scoggins, Minnesota, and chooses to return on his own to figure out why so many people in town are now missing and what the hell all of those gnomes are up to, and if he happens to solve a few puzzles along the way, that’s just gravy. In case you were wondering, yes, you really should play Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (which I’ll just be calling Puzzle Agent 1 for the remainder of this review) before playing this sequel.

The ‘2’ in this game’s title isn’t one of those Street Fighter-style “play this game instead, because it’s so much better that people will think that’s where the series started, even though it has a bloody two in the title”. Puzzle Agent 2 is instead the episodic “we’ll put a couple of sentences in the beginning summarizing the events of the last game, but unless you actually played it, your connection to these characters is going to be slim to nil” type of 2, and since this is an adventure game, you want your connection to everyone to be… fat to infinite. Additionally, by playing Puzzle Agent 1, you get to appreciate how all of the old characters are even more suspicious, paranoid, and just all-around weirder than they were in the first game, which is quite the accomplishment.

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