fortytwo points

Yes, It Is Too Much MUGEN

I promised you some MUGEN insanity, and now I deliver:

In a perfect world, this would be standing up in an arcade somewhere.

-Unfather

GTA IV DLC Gives us Wang and We Say "Thanks?"

1Up's Kat Bailey shared with the world yesterday some ground-breaking news; there's gonna be dick in GTA IV's Lost and the Damned DLC. Now, that's probably not going to be the reason why Xbox Live owners pick it up today (it's out today, remember?), and it's probably not going to be appreciated amongst the seemingly homophobic GTA IV community, but it is significant for the precedent it sets. Mainstream games, or their DLC at least, can now have full frontal.

This may be the beginning of a new area of art house-style experimentation amongst game developers or it may be the porn industries first serious foray into the digital entertainment market. Either way I welcome this shift in atittude, despite the fact that I will be skipping past this particular part of history. It means new people will work with games and that in turn will generate new ideas (even though the first few will probably suuuuck). Rockstar has opened a door that someone only had to dare open, and now every one else can benefit from it.

You probably don't, but if you want to see the first schlong rendered in a popular video game, check out the video below. I won't tell:

(update 2/22/09: dick video got pulled and I can't find another. sorry meat gazers, you're just gonna have to download it)

Okay, I lied I'm totally telling. Your IP is...

-Unfather

Splatterhouse Brings Violence Back to Beat-'Em-Ups

I came across that video while I was trying to decide whether or not to write about Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution (conclusion: not yet). It feels like a long time since a really violent, disgusting murder simulator has graced our consoles and I'm glad I was reminded of Bottle Rocket's Splatterhouse remake before I wasted my time with a wacky boxing game. Sorry Nintendo but at least for now, I'd rather rip somethings head off and drink its brain fluids than fight my friends while I fight the inaccuracy of your gimmicky controller.

You may remember Splatterhouse as the gory side-scrolling brawler that Genesis owners rubbed in the faces of Nintendo fans while they were playing Disney tie-ins, or you may otherwise confuse it with the shitty Friday the 13th game. But when the original was released, it not only offered a blood-splattered good time but a fairly involved one at that.

Playing as college student Rick Taylor, who mistakenly chooses a haunted mansion to do his parapsychology research paper in, your girlfriend Jennifer is kidnapped by supernatural entities and you are knocked unconscious and left for dead. When an ancient Mayan hockey mask decides to use your dying body as its host, you are bestowed violent ass-kicking powers and head-off to save your love from the horrors of the mansion.

SPOILER ALERT:

Zero Punctuation: Little Big Planet

I've got a lot of new stuff coming up to really get this site in gear but in the mean time, how about some funny? Yahtzee's latest Zero Punctuation is up and he finally gets around to scoffing in Little Big Planet's direction. Acknowledging that what it does do it does well, he still has to bring down the room with the harsh reality that, like Spore, it's a significant game of disproportionate substance. Lube your cochlea and have a listen:

I share his sentiments about the user-generated content. While the tools were no doubt difficult to create the end result still feels like a cop-out, as if the developers assumed the players would finish the job for them. The biggest insult comes in the form of the moderation however, and I don't mean how they pull down every level that so much as smells like it has been near licensed material.

Moderation by the developers was the only way gamers could have avoided having to dig through mountains of shit to find those indigestible golden nuggets of level in LBP. But rather than use the moderators in this way, they instead spend all of their time yanking down every half decent homage to a classic game or product that they find. Way to expand the game, guys.

Anyway, Zero Punctuation continues to hit the nail on the head, evidencing again why Yahtzee is one of the few hammers worth bashing with.

-Unfather

X-Play's Afro Samurai Review Stereotypical

I love 3rd-person combat games because they usually benefit from a good mix of action and story, but if there's any bane that almost all of them suffer it's redundant gameplay and bad camera angles. X-Play took the time to review Namco Bandai's Afro Samurai this week and of course found this to be a note-worthy complaint that, coupled with some strange stylization choices, earned it a 3 out of 5. With it's super-stylization, hip canon, and entertaining ultra-violence, do you think Afro Samurai worth your time?

Check out X-Play's review with tons of gameplay footage to judge for yourself:

I myself am a huge fan of the Afro Samurai cartoon and the way it has come full circle at the end of Afro Samurai: Retribution was a masterful conclusion to the story. The sword-fighting is exciting and the personalities of the characters are top-notch so the game should have been a shoe-in for awesome. Too bad it suffers from problems that I have to believe were kind of obvious; they're the same ones previous games in the genre have had so you would expect Namco Bandai to have learned from them. Especially considering how many brawlers and fighting games they've made.

Regardless, I'll be playing this the first chance I get and I have a feeling I will enjoy it. Have you played it? Let us know what you think.

-Unfather

Walkie Tonky Fun and Surprisingly Funky

Jayisgames.com has led me to a potential masterpiece. Topping their weekend download feature is a gem I think you're gonna like. Walky Tonky is a fantastic physics-based game that has you invading Earth as a giant robot. It can lift, throw, and kick attacking tanks, cars, airplanes, buildings, and more as you quest for planetary domination. The developers Pieces Interactive are following up their incredible guitar platformer with some rockin' robot action and I am already a groupie. Check out the official promotional video:

It took a minute to get a hang of the controls but once you do the destruction becomes seamlessly funky. I wouldn't pay $60 for it but the physics concepts could definitely be moved to something I would pay that much for. The best part though had to be the clapping noise the robot makes every time you click. In fact, I got a little obsessed with it and ended up making sweet music. Again, all the claps are my clicks:

I had way too much fun while making that. That's what I call emergent gameplay.

-Unfather

Bit.Trip: Beat Shows Us The Future of Block Bumping

WiiWare is finally getting something worth mentioning. The Bit.Trip collection is a series of five rhythm-based games that meld both old and new game design philosophies with the mystical power of chiptunes, a fact which has probably either instantly gained or lost your interest. The first to be released is Bit.Trip: Beat, which I have decided can best be described as "Pong Fights Techno". Perhaps a video is in order:

As you can see, the idea is that you use your cute little paddle there to deflect oncoming debris and when you do it produces primitive noises in a manner that some may confuse with a popular medium known as "music". The better you do, the more difficult it becomes until you either beat the level or suffer an epileptic seizure. Boss battles of some sort have also been promised.

Joystiq claims to have done some horrible, nasty, morally reprehensible things to get this trailer so please do watch it, otherwise that rape shower is going to be for nothing. You might see Bit.Trip: Beat sometime this February, but there has not yet been an official release date. Looks like fun.

-Unfather

Rain-Slicked Precipice Not That Exciting, Nulls Desire To Peek

I'm just going to come out and say it; Penny Arcade has fallen off. The comic has lost its touch with the common gamer and these days you'll hear more about Tycho and Gabe's opinion of recent mergers in the gaming industry than how they felt while playing Flower. It's still funny enough to check in with every once in a while  though, and their new episodic games aren't bad. So in the spirit on giving them a fair turn I intended to review On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode Two. But then I made this:

I get why people might like these games, but I don't. The combat is way too dull to be that repetitive and I don't know why but I can't stand reading Jerry Holkins' style of fiction (as I'm sure he probably would not enjoy my amateur style of blogging). It's as if he's always trying as hard as possible and you know he can do it but he's just not able  to (in this context).

There is a lot potential in working with both the Penny Arcade license and its creators. It'll take some big changes to fix these problems by the next game, but I have been surprised before.

Good luck guys.            


-Unfather

A Real Taste of Combat in Deadly Creatures

G4.com has just posted this video of upcoming Wii-xclusive Deadly Creatures and it gives us an excellent idea of exactly what we'll be playing when it is released this coming February:

Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper have accepted roles as a pair of hillbillies that are in search of gold, but little else is known about the story other than "it's dark". Players may take the role of a tarantula or a scorpion as you combat other wild vermin like snakes and and rats on your mission to do whatever bugs do. It's clear that a lot of effort has been put into making the controls as intuitive as possible in an attempt to emulate the motions of the wild creatures, and I hope they succeed.

You can visit the official game site at http://www.deadlycreaturesgame.com/. Let's hope this one rocks, because the Wii could use it.

-Unfather

"Hyaaaahhhh!"

Japanese Pros Mock the World with Tatsunoko vs Capcom

With all the uproar about the soon to be released Street Fighter IV it's easy to forget that non-Japanese gamers are being screwed out of the latest crossover fighting game Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom. Continuing Japan's notorious legacy of rubbing it in, Capcom has posted a video of some of the world's best players kicking ass on their blog:

Being a huge Vs. series fan, I really wish I could play that. (:|

-Unfather