I’m still laughing at Big N–with these guys, I’m quite convinced it’s either feast or famine. One minute it’s sheer brilliance, the next a move of colossal stupidity. And now, the slapstick is out in full force as we discover that it’s not just Super Smash Brothers Brawl that has the disc read problems.
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Have you ever wondered what that stingray felt like as it jammed the lethal barb into Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin? Ever wonder what’s going through the minds of those killer bees jamming smooth stingers repeatedly into their target with no fear of disembowelment?
If you are, you may need professional help, but THQ is desperately hoping you’re interested in launching some wrath of nature all on your own. Dubbed Deadly Creatures, the early word on this sucker is that you’ll get to play as a tarantula and as a scorpion, off to wreak buggy havoc on a scale never before imagined–the backyard. You might even–the word is way too early to do much more than speculate–use your buggy abilities to help police solve crimes. How, I can’t imagine, but I guess anything’s possible when you come right down to it.
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Sometimes, it’s possible to overthink something. As is the case when pounding down the enormous infonugget that is Tiff’s blog on Destructoid as she talks about the phenomenon of media-inflated girl gamers and the inevitable backlash of “me, too!”.
While I’m personally all sorts of enthused about the fact that thirty-eight percent of the gaming population is currently female, as Tiff asserts with support, I’m inclined to disagree with her about the whole Munn / Chobot / Webb phenomenon. Especially her assertion that said phenomenon is part of a movement designed to “establish a visual narrative for gaming women that heightens gender alienation while simultaneously muffling the significance of the woman gamer’s voice.”
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And before you ask, no, I will NOT use any cheap Wii puns–for instance, under no circumstances will I be calling it a “kii problem”–in this article for any purpose other than illustration. And with that, I launch into a discussion of Baroque, an RPG slated for the Wii and one other system.
I was deliberately evasive on that last point to build a little tension–for you see, Baroque will be coming out not only for the Wii…but also for the Playstation 2.
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No, that misspelling was both intentional and thoroughly ironic, o my wii-dership. You see, in a thoroughly wii-pugnant move on their part, Big N decided they were going to charge fifteen bucks for the new Wii Wheel, a plastic wheel-shaped frame that you can snap your wii-mote into to play the newest iteration of Super Mario Kart on the Wii, but now with extra realism. Kinda.
Of all the wii-pulsive, wii-volting (okay, I think I’m about out of Wii puns), money grubbing moves I’ve ever see, this one takes the taco. Fifteen bucks! For a plastic WHEEL! The hubris is astonishing. And all this after they pulled the super-cool move that was Zombie BBQ, too. Man, what happened?
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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the distinct honor of being one of the greatest game ever created–so great, in fact, people are climbing over each other to toss rocks at it. Few games of this quality are hated so fiercely by this many people. Is the hate justified? Or are people just spewing their anger for no reason?
There is a very real reason why people are not shy about throwing insults TP’s way: it is not the revolution people were expecting. Though the game introduces many new gameplay scenarios and a wider world to explore than previous title in the franchise, it doesn’t try to leap away from its comfortable past.
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After hearing about this list of idiocy thanks to my good friends out at Destructoid (I’m really beginning to love Destructoid), I figured it would be entertaining for us all to mock GamesRadar mercilessly via their list of the thirteen worst gaming innovations of all time.
So let’s go check out what GamesRadar hates, and then wail on it like Trekkies at Lucasarts Ranch.
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Okay, so by now, everybody is well aware of the enterprising soul out there took advantage of N+ (whose motto must be identical to that of Globo Gym from Dodgeball: “We’re Better Than You! And We Know It!”) and its level design feature to create actual replicas of The Legend of Zelda.
It’s amazing, make no mistake, and I can just hear the boys at Big N shrieking in rage that their console titles have basically been ganked out from under them and there’s really not much they can do about it.
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We’ve probably all heard the PR speak that Rock Band is more than just a video game, it’s a new platform. With an awesome four player mode, the ability to take your band online and compete with other plastic rockers and new songs added every week via the wonders of Downloadable Content, Harmonix seemed like they were really on to something. And then they announced Rock Band for the Wii.
Let’s ignore the fact that Rock Band won’t head to a Nintendo console until June of this year, 8 months after the original versions launched. You would think that consumers waiting to rock on their Wii would be treated to something special after patiently playing through Endless Ocean and No More Heroes while they dreamed of becoming a Rock Star. Well, you would be wrong. Rock Band Wii doesn’t have downloadable content, it doesn’t have customizable characters and it doesn’t even have online play. Aside from the cool drums, it doesn’t have anything that makes Rock Band rock.
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When I saw that I would have to clock in a whopping 450 matches to unlock every character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I decided to veer towards the dark side to see who made the cut. So I’ve been trudging through the god-awful - reprehensibly bad - Sub Space Emissary for the last week, enduring the most bland, banal and downright boring mode imaginable. I was all set to write off Brawl completely - archaic game mechanics in a side-scrolling fighter isn’t my cup of tea - but then I discovered something: I love old Nintendo games.
Now that I have played through the abysmal adventure mode and unlocked all 35 characters (why is Wolf in this game anyway?), I’ve been trying out some of the other modes. It turns out, as much as I’ve been mocking this game for being little more than nostalgic fan service, I was practically giddy seeing some of these stages.
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Play Trivia!