It isn’t often that nostalgia and ingenuity come in the same package in the gaming world, but today we’ve seen something with a big helping of both and a full side of fun.  New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the latest Mario title from industry powerhouse Nintendo.

NSMBW at its heart, is both a very simple and complex game, the kind that anyone can pick up with ease and enjoy—but few will master.  Nintendo reinforces this by using a very simple two button control scheme favored in classic Mario titles, with the addition of the Wiimote motion functionality for a myriad of tasks.  The integration of the Wiimote motion functionality is seamless during gameplay, and serves to further enhance the experience by allowing the players to adjust the angle of platforms, light beams, cannons, and vehicle speed—while still allowing them normal movement and interaction with surrounding objects and enemies.

The patented triple jump has been added to the 2D moveset—with wall jump and ground pound also carried over (though they were first introduced into the 2D Mario scene in New Super Mario Bros. for the DS).  The spin jump has also been carried over from prior games (first seen in Super Mario World).

The character lineup in NSMBW includes Mario and Luigi, of course, but also Blue Toad and Yellow Toad from Super Mario Sunshine (though Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad can only be played by players 2, 3, or 4 through one of the multiplayer modes).  Each player’s character can be seen following Mario on the world map during co-operative play, moving as a team through the world stages. (more…)

Torchlight was designed and developed partly by the team who brought us the original Diablo and Fate games—and that heritage is strong and easily found within the experience. Just as in Diablo, players choose from three base characters who each have their own skill tree, and proceed through a series of increasingly more difficult random environments. However, not all of the game’s similarities with its ancestry are due to the development team. Many of these features are now standard in the genre, which was defined by Diablo. These aspects would need to be present in any dungeon crawl, no matter who made it. Breaking the mold that these very folks made nearly 15 years ago would be almost unthinkable.

That’s not a critique of the game. I—and many like me—have been waiting for a new Diablo game for many years, playing Diablo II over and over again. It’s a good thing for us that it’s one of the most replayable video games ever made. Diablo III not only appears to still be very far away, but seems less and less like the Diablo I’ve loved each time I read something new about it. (more…)

Left 4 Dead 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the award winning Left 4 Dead from Valve Corporation, has just arrived. Lets take a closer look at the exposed innards of this co-operative horror FPS title and see just how far the infection has spread since the franchise’s first installment.

The additions in this title are numerous, but the basics still remain: A team of four Survivors must seek refuge from an infected world that is literally dying to add them to the mix. At the start of each level, the Survivors are provided a health pack, a pistol, and a primary firearm. Each chapter of a campaign begins and ends with a safe room, while the final chapter ends with some form of escape.

Survivors that take to too much damage in their escape must rely only on their pistol and their friends until they can be revived from their incapacitation. Survivors that are repeatedly incapacitated will quickly exhaust their second chances, resulting in their inevitable death.

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New cover, new features.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is the newest addition to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series from The Pokémon Company.  This Nintendo DS title takes the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series a step closer to the hardcore collection-oriented, stat-exp grinding  nature of classic Pokémon titles without sacrificing its own identity.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky’s story might seem familiar to any Pokémon fans that have played the Explorers of Time/Darkness titles, because they recycled the story completely (very few exceptions aside).  Don’t let that discourage you though—true to their habits, the Pokémon Company has added additional content throughout the game to create a more impressive experience.  The game brings 4 new pokémon (Phanpy, Vulpix, Riolu, and Shinx) along with returning a classic pokémon (Eevee) to the starting roster.

The game begins in the same fashion as Explorers of Time/Darkness; you play a human who has mysteriously been transformed into a pokémon.  The type of pokémon you become is dependent on your answers to a pokémon personality test.  After the test is complete and the opening scene unravels, the player is granted control of his/her new pokémon and companion.  Upon entering the first dungeon, you’ll find that combat and navigation are a seamless mesh of turn-based combat and real time strategy (Think FFXII). In this system, the player is able to use a default attack or use moves through a fairly standard RPG menu system, while companion characters use a set of rules known as IQ Skills and a move list of their own to determine their behavior. (more…)

If you’ve been playing Tales of Monkey Island, you probably already know whether or not you want to play Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood, so I won’t take much of your time. If, after the slightly less than stellar third chapter, you were thinking that you might not pick up the fourth one, then perhaps this will help you decide: (more…)

One example of the fun and macabre art style of Zombie Tycoon.

Zombie Tycoon is the latest casual title for the PSP by Canadian software giant Frima Studio. Built on the Vicious Engine, this beautifully illustrated RTS definitely has its share of strengths and weaknesses.

Zombie Tycoon boasts ten unique levels, each with its own goals, puzzles, and rewards. To conquer the living inhabitants of each stage, the player must wield three customizable zombie units, each consisting of up to eight zombies.

There are also a variety of trophies associated with different goals, ranging from challenge-based tasks like finishing a level within two minutes, to collection-based tasks  like dressing zombies up in unique costumes.  You should expect to spend anywhere from five to ten hours on the title depending on how far you’re willing to go once you’ve completed the ten levels of the main story. (more…)

Mario and Luigi are fighting some baddies inside of Bowser.

At its heart Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is an RPG in which one follows two connected stories in the Mushroom Kingdom. The main plot-line for most of the game stars Bowser as the protagonist. Fawful, a laughing, grammar-challenged roboticist has taken over Bowser’s castle, and plans to take over the entire Mushroom Kingdom with the help of Bowser’s converted army. As part of Fawful’s plan to debilitate Bowser, he causes Bowser to inhale things uncontrollably, including Mario, Luigi, Peach, and many residents of Toadtown. When the characters arrive in Bowser’s body, they find themselves shrunken, and able to navigate and adventure within his various bodily systems.

Mario and Luigi need to help Bowser defeat Fawful from the inside, and most of the plot alternates between Bowser adventuring and fighting, while Mario and Luigi help from the inside. When Bowser needs to lift something, Mario and Luigi help power his arms; when he needs to remember something, they help put together the pieces of his mind; and when he nearly dies, they return his spark from the inside, causing him to grow to enormous size, and enabling him to crush his giant enemies.

Pursuit

Much of the game is classic RPG-style exploration and menu-based combat. In true Mario fashion, individual attacks and defenses are perfected by well-timed button mashes. Attack values can be tripled or even quadrupled by pressing the button at just the right moment, and almost all enemy attacks can by nullified with the right timing; many of them can even be turned around into an offensive maneuver.

Mario and Luigi each have their own button, while Bowser has two different buttons for different move types, requiring the player to think about the timing and type of move necessary for each attack or defense. (more…)

It is the hallmark of Futuremark’s products: Feats of real-time graphics that push visual and performance boundaries alike. Futuremark has made a serious name for itself with their 3DMark benchmark–a product that is notorious for making hardware weep with cutting edge graphics techniques.

All of the assets in 3DMark’s scenes are made exclusively by Futuremark, and those scenes typically consist of intense shootouts in space. Who hasn’t thought to themselves while watching these sequences, “I would love to play this”? Futuremark has finally delivered on that dream with Shattered Horizon, and they brought along their trademark visuals to remind us of how weak our hardware is.

Shattered Horizon is a futuristic, multiplayer, first person shooter set in space. A tragic mining accident on the moon resulted in an explosion that has shattered the lunar sphere. The two affected space organizations–the International Space Agency and the Moon Mining Cooperative–are fighting for control and survival. Sounds real original, doesn’t it? Don’t check out just yet, because the game has some serious tricks up its sleeve.

Shattered Horizon throws a curve ball with its unique mechanics. The entire game is played in the zero-G locale of open space, and gives the player control of all axes of orientation. This radically new approach to FPS game play completely redefines how we look at the genre.

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After years of letdowns and poorly made licensed movie spin-off games, Batman finally gets the game he deserves. It is wonderful, gloomy, bone-crunching, puzzle-solving, sneaky, gadget-using fun. Recently it was awarded the Guinness World Record for the “Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever”, defeating the nearly ten-year reign of Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

However, there is a fairly small list of serious contenders for this title, which really speaks to how bad superhero games usually are. It was breath of fresh air in a genre where games are pumped out to release with movies. Gamers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief when we realized that it was more than just Batman: The Movie You Loved Turned Into a Below-Average Game.

Why can’t this happen more often? Why are huge successful franchises unable to translate into games? Why did Arkham Asylum work where so many Spiderman, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings spin-offs fell into mediocrity? (more…)

Chances are you already know if you want this third installment of the Tales of Monkey Island story, so I wont take up much of your time. If you haven’t checked out the first two chapters yet, you can scope my recent review. If you have played the first two, then you already know pretty much what to expect, but this episode does have a few surprises in store.

Guybrush communicates with a giant manatee

The most noticeable thing about this chapter is that the puzzles are a little less clever, and a little more monotonous. One of the puzzles, for example, is purely a trial-and-error exercise, while another forces you to fail at least twice before it is possible to succeed.

You might also notice that the failure mechanic of the series becomes a little stretched in this one. In the fist two chapters, most of the puzzles dealt with physical objects or supernatural forces–no matter what it somehow made sense that Guybrush was allowed to retry over and over again–but when he would deal directly with other people, it would rely on them being remarkably stupid. The gimmick relies on the fact that  they are able to fall for the same gag over and over infinitely in order to make it possible for Guybrush to try again as much as we wants. (more…)

And so it begins...

“If someone is reading this… I must have failed.”

With those words begins an epic adventure that consumed several weeks of my childhood. When most people think back to their favorite games of yesteryear, they fondly reminisce about the NES classics such as Zelda, Metroid, or Mario–but not me. If I think long and hard about my top five NES games, The Guardian Legend is definitely in that list.

In 1989, when The Guardian Legend came to North America, it arrived with little fanfare. While games like Dragon Warrior, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ninja Gaiden were stealing the spotlight and taking up multiple rows of shelf space in my local video store (yes kids, we old folks used to have to rent our games from video stores), there was a lone yellow box at the end of the row with a cool looking piece of art on the cover. I shrugged, rented it, and the rest is history. (more…)

Some have suggested that I may be a rabid fan of Half-Life 2. Those who say this are wrong.

I’m an obsessive maniac about everything Half-Life 2.

I love the game to death. I’ve played so many mods for the game that I lost count at around 70 (and that doesn’t include mods for Half-Life). The engine has become very familiar to me and many mods feel like more of the same. It takes a lot to impress me from the modding scene these days, and when something truly unique does come along, I sit up and take notice.

Korsakovia is a mod that takes the standard conventions and laughs in their faces. Sure, it uses the same assets of Half-Life 2, but where it dares to be different is in storytelling and presentation; and you all know that I loves me some storytelling.

Stacked clusters of floating furniture frequent this bizzare world

Korsakovia tells the story of Christopher, a man who has Korsakovia syndrome–essentially meaning he’s an amnesiac who has invented memories to replace all that he’s forgotten. You play his new memories as he explains it to his doctor. Throughout the entire game you hear a conversation between the doctor and her patient as she tries to help him remember who he was and explain what happened to him.

You learn about Christopher as you play. You quickly learn that Christopher is blind, and slowly but surely the horrific reason behind this is told though the conversation. As the game progresses, his mental state continues to decline, and the world around you reflects this.

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