61 Frames Per Second : wii

Whatcha Playing: Earth Day Edition

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:00 GMT

April 22nd, the day we all take off from work and gather at our local mosques and synagogues to solemnly pay respects to our mother Earth on the anniversary of her creation... or something. So do your part and take your game time today away from blasting zombies and chainsawing aliens in half, instead playing games all about helping mother Earth. Here are the four games that I'm playing for Earth Day:

Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol for Nintendo DS

Rather than cleaning up a house and helping with domestic troubles, this Chibi-Robo has been tasked with turning a barren field of sand into a lush flourishing public park. Like SimCity, you get to design your own world, laying paths and streams, rocks and hills, even benches, fountains, clock towers, statues, and mini-games to your liking. The nicer your park, the more visitors it gets each day. You also have to befriend local toys (including Molly Mapletree, seen above) to help you build up your park and battle smoglings who aim to pollute all the beautiful nature you've brought to the park, but the majority of gameplay is planting flowers. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds, thanks to the charm and playfulness found in all Skip-developed Nintendo games.

Flower for Playstation 3

Nature is so relaxing for those first few levels, but the final stage really flaunts the nature vs. man-made-atrocities vibe. It's vindicating to smash your trail of flower petals straight through scaffolding and watch a child's swing-set color itself and start swinging in the wind. My only problem with this for Earth Day is that it romanticizes the wind more than the flowers. Playing Flower makes me want to go ride a bike, not water a tree. Still, at least it's prompting me to go outside.

Bonsai Barber for Nintendo Wii

This WiiWare title asks you to be kind to nature in a very different way, by playing the neighborhood barber in a village of anthropomorphic plants. Yes, it's a cute and quirky little topiary simulation. The adorable factor in this game is fairly high without ever becoming sugary sweet, and seeing your shrubbery clientele bristle with joy when you've completed their new 'dos might just make you want to go outside and trim those hedges.

Pixeljunk Eden for Sony Playstation 3

If the above games are a bit too casual and cutesy for you, though, here's a true hardcore platformer. While a bit more abstract, the main focus of the game is pollinating flowers. You essentially play as a spider who thinks it's a bee who has done some psychadelic drugs in the garden. Through the techno and bright colors, the message is clear: more flowers = more awesome.

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Gaming for Two: Animal Crossing's Turf Wars

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:54:00 GMT

I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing: City Folk lately. Now, this doesn't mean I'm not angry with Nintendo for essentially dumping Wild World on the Wii with the halfhearted effort of a child making sand-pail towers at the beach. I, uh, just wanted to do the honest thing and pay off my mortgage.

But good intentions pave the road to Hell, and my return to the 'hood wasn't peaceful for long. I'm embroiled in a turf war with my husband, who controls the north side of Onett. I pimp my fruit trees in the south side, near the shore. Tilling foreign fruits will literally grow an orchard of money trees.

My husband doesn't see it that way, and he's already warned me that those damn trees had better not start creeping northward. He pretends he doesn't want my precious money trees, but I know otherwise. Now I'm vigilant whenever I hear him play the game.

“Are any of my trees in bloom?” I call from the other room.

He says, “Yeah, some oranges.”

“Don't you touch them.”

“I'm not going to touch your goddamn fruit.”

“You'd better not. I have connections. Nook hires out more than contracting.”

I expect my connections with Nook will dissolve soon. Probably violently. I took out ad space on the town's bulletin board to announce that he'll lick peanut butter off any body part it's applied to.

(”Anywhere.”)

Thank God the game gives one money-spewing rock per day to each player. Otherwise, shovels would be digging into jugulars.

Maybe we'll overcome our animalistic yearning for territory and live in an uneasy truce. More likely, I'll get tired of the game again and let my husband strut across Onett as its unchallenged Drug Baron.

Related Links:

Gaming for Two: Super Smash Bros Melee
Animal Crossing City Folk: Nintendo at their Worst
The Baa-ad Neighbours of Animal Crossing

Happy Endings With House of the Dead: Overkill

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Happy Endings is a new, semi-regular feature on 61FPS that highlights some of gaming’s most memorable climaxes. Most games end badly. These games sum it all up in style. It goes without saying that Happy Endings is spoiler heavy so beware before you proceed.

House of the Dead: Overkill could have been an astounding failure. Headstrong Games had a decent pedigree, and there was little doubt that they could make a solid, entertaining rail shooter that stood next to the very best in Sega’s franchise, but humor is hard to implement in any game. Styling Overkill as a 1970s grindhouse feature was a brilliant move in theory, but making something that looks and sounds cool is a far cry from making something smart and legitimately funny. Headstrong pulled it off though. From the guffaw-worthy banter between Detective Washington and Agent G, to the waving American flag that adorns your health bar after stringing together thirty consecutive kills (yes, that combo is called a “Goregasm”), Overkill pulled off the impossible: it was a good game that was also funny.

But none of its cheese, ultra violence, or winking nods to classic exploitation prepared me for this dialog at the end.

As G and Washington fly off into the sunset on a helicopter, having killed the villain’s towering mother-turned-zombie-monster, they have this exchange:

“Frankly, Casanova, I’d be more worried about reading the past twelve hours as a fucking indictment of contemporary feminism!”

“Beg pardon?”

“I just think two dick wielding cop clichés taking down a one-hundred foot birthing mother is a statement limited in its interpretations.”

“I’m not sure you can read too much into that.”

“Not to mention the strongest female role model in this entire affair ain’t much more than a girkin in a pickle jar!” (Female lead Varla Guns is just a jar-bound brain at this point.)

I didn’t even know what to say when I saw this. Can anyone out there show me a single other game that actually ends on a self-analyzing punchline? No. Because it doesn’t happen. The princess is in another castle, tee-hee, does not count.

Related links:

Ode to the Light Gun or The Only Peripheral You’ll Ever Need
WTFriday: Goldman's Drama Academy
Trailer Review: House of the Dead – Overkill
Will Games Ever Be Funny?

Genres I'd Like to See on the Wii: 3rd Person Shooters

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Hello, developer studios? Yes, the Wii remote is motion sensitive. It's pretty nifty and I know some of you are super excited about he MotionPlus add-on. However, did you know the Wii-mote also has a pointer function? Yeah, that sensor bar thing with the infrared light. Oh? You keep forgetting about that function eh? Keep getting distracted by the wiggle waggle hmm? Well wake the hell up already because you're missing some golden opportunities!

Maybe I'm a touch off base here, but it seems to me that the pointer functionality is a little bit neglected within the Wii library. Considering how superior an experience the pointer offers over the analogue stick when it comes to aiming, you'd think, you'd really think, the Wii library would abound with quality titles that take advantage of that function, and you'd be wrong.

With that in mind, I'd like to see some third person shooters on the Wii. Many people focus on first person shooters when talking about how natural a match the pointer is, but I believe, and have for a long time, that the pointer would benefit third person shooters even more.

I am really not a fan of the FPS, the lack of peripheral vision bugs me especially if the action gets intense. Plus, I like to see the character I'm playing. Third person shooters are a lot more fun for me. I can see what's behind my character and the pulled out camera invites more usage of platforming and adventure elements. On the down side, actually aiming your weapons can be problematic.

Various solutions to the issue of aiming include auto aiming, lock-on systems, and even switching to FPS mode for precision shooting at the expense of movement, all of which see use in the Ratchet and Clank series. While convenient, they do remove most of the skill involved in actually aiming, as the game does the work for you. The weapons in the Jak games mostly rely on the auto aim feature. It works pretty well but only because the guns either have wide ranges of effect or spray bullets machine gun style. Even though you have little control over your aim, you're going to hit something.

Oh but would it not be fantastic to just point and shoot? To sweep the reticule across multiple enemies leaving a trail of lock-ons to fire off a missile massacre all while skillfully running and leaping? To do it all without having to hold down multiple buttons to strafe or relying on the game to do it all for you?

It's a perfect match I fantasize about. I dream of remakes or new entries into the Mega Man Legends series; a pair of games that suffered from some clunky controls. Or, holiest of holies, a third person Metroid game.

Where are the TPS games? Anything buried in a mini-game collection doesn't count. C'mon devs, this should be an obvious choice!

Related Links:

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Handjobs for Homebrew: Brawl Stage Studio

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

If you're like me, you probably subscribed to Masahiro Sakurai's Smash Bros Dojo blog hyping the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl over a year ago. On a daily basis, Sakurai and company revealed fun new features of the game, some of which were standard and blasé and some of which were mind-blowingly awesome. The two most amazing, without a doubt, were the inclusion of fan favorite Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character and, of course, the level editor. Including a level editor in Super Smash Bros Brawl meant nearly infinite replay value, even moreso than the game's prior iterations which have long since owned the attention of gamers for years. The only problem was that controlling the level editor was finicky and many gamers, including myself, would often press the wrong button and delete all their hard work. Designing stages in the living room on the Wii was stressful. If it wasn't great, then you were deemed a failure by your roommates and loved ones. What started as a wonderful idea to extend the user interaction in a fan-favorite franchise had become a nerve-wracking and oft-ignored add-on.

Well no longer is this quite so harrowing an affair as programmer Xane has released the beta of his Brawl Stage Studio application, a homebrew program that allows you to build your Smash Bros stages from the comfort of your PC, save them to an SD card, and play them in Brawl. Fantastic! All the features are there, from conveyor belts and statues to the stage soundtrack, and even a few new features like setting the player spawn points and including your own custom thumbnail images. Plus, typing with a keyboard is much easier than using the virtual keypad on the Wii. But, as Levar Burton used to say, you don't have to take my word for it. Just check out this demo video:

Brawl Stage Studio is still in beta, which means ther are still some bugs to fix and potentially new features on the horizon. Download it and send your feedback to Xane here.

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Ghostbusters: Slimer Edition to Come with Free Plastic

Bob Mackey — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:15:00 GMT

What you're looking at right now--courtesy of 1UP.com--are the various plastic trinkets bundled with Amazon.com's Ghostbusters Exclusive Slimer Edition (not pictured: LEGO ripoff figurines of four random ghouls). How much would you pay for a collection of plastic trinkets that could easily find their way into your average McDonald's Happy Meal? 10 dollars? 20 dollars?

How about 70 dollars?

That's right, for a mere 70 dollars more than the "bare-bones" retail version, Ghostbusters: Slimer Edition will reap you the following rewards:

* An exclusive Slimer bust designed and created by the original movie sculptor, Steve Johnson. Comes complete with a certificate of authenticity signed by the sculptor himself.
* Exclusive Ghostbusters Minimates. Only be available with the Slimer Edition.
* Exclusive Ghostbusters Gamer Graffix Console Skins.
* Exclusive Ecto 1 Key Chain with lights and sound.

Along with Steve Johnson's signature, I'm wondering if the sculptor will also include a few choice words about economic responsibility. "You moron!" and "So long, suckers!" both seem to fit the bill. Of course, if you drop 70 extra dollars--let me repeat, 70 extra dollars--on this shameless and exploitative cash grab, it's possible that you deserve more than an insult scribbed on a certificate of authenticity. Food for thought.

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Dragon Quest X and the Wii Lifetime Equation

John Constantine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It didn’t hit me until today just how long the Wii is going to stick around. Forget the fact that Nintendo have sold millions upon millions of consoles in record time or that the box continues to sell in vast quantities on a monthly basis. The real metric is Dragon Quest.

Consider this: there have been just three new Dragon Quest games released in the last seventeen years. The shortest gap between games was the three years between Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest VI, the longest the five years before VII was released. Square-Enix plans to release Dragon Quest IX in July, a full five years after Dragon Quest VIII. This averages out to a new Dragon Quest every 4.25 years.

Dragon Quest X was announced for the Wii last December. It’s reasonable then to assume we won’t see DQX until early 2013. That’ll be the Wii’s seventh year and Dragon Quest X’s release will guarantee the system at least one million more consoles sold that year.

Dragon Quest X + Wii = Potentially the longest shelf life for a Nintendo home console.

Math is fun!

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The 'Bout Time Report: Dragon Quest IX Gets a Release Date

Watcha' Playing Addiction Edition: Can't Stop Playing Rune Factory Frontier (Wii)

Amber Ahlborn — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:00:00 GMT

Hello, my name is Amber and I'm a Rune Factory-aholic.

It has been quite a long time since I marathoned a game. I'm still recovering from it actually, It being my weekend Rune Factory Frontier binge that saw me planting digital crops into the wee hours of the morning. I've stated before that I've never seriously played a Harvest Moon game, having recently cut my genre teeth on Rune Factory 2. Not only is Frontier a fresh experience compared to Rune Factory 2, it blows that game out of the water. I can enthusiastically confirm that combining a Zelda-esque adventure with Pokemon like collecting and wrapping it around a lite social sim with a side of farming and resource management equals one addicting experience.

I love this opening theme.

A major component of the appeal here is being given a nearly overwhelming number of things to do, and having to deal with the subtle strategy of fitting it all into your time limited day. I've played into the end of Autumn and thus far the game has proven to be incredibly robust, with numerous goals that don't involve endless fetch questing. Whatever Frontier is doing, it's doing it right because I'm hooked. My only major complaint is how much sleep this game has stolen from me.

Now if you'll excuse me, crops need watering, weapons need crafting, food needs cooking, monsters need taming, and dungeons need conquering. You may not see me for a while.

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Namco, Your Klonoa Commercial is Dangerously Misleading

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Spoiler Warning. Giant, story-ruining, spoiler warning. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Spoiler Warning.

You know what, Namco, I’m getting a little tired of having to have these talks with you. I know you’re tired of it too. If you paid attention, this wouldn’t be happening. You’ve been doing a lot of good lately, and I want you to know I’m proud of you for it. Not only did you decide to remake Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the game’s tenth anniversary, you brought back much of the Klonoa Works team to make it. Director Hideo Yoshizawa, artist Yoshihiko Arai, and composer Kanako Kakino. Wise, Namco, wise. You even decided against that atrocious redesign of Klonoa you were batting around last year.

This commercial, though, Namco. I don’t know if this is a very smart choice. It’s a little… misleading.

Yeah those kids sure are having fun. That announcer’s letting us know it too. Awesome. Some parent is going to buy Klonoa for their kid because it's about a fluffy bunny-cat man and his smiley face friend after watching this, for sure. Tell me this though?

How’s that happy kid going to feel when they get to the end of the eighth level and Klonoa's screaming, holding the corpse of his murdered grandfather?

How about when he beats it and he's told that Klonoa’s entire life was a lie and then the fluffy bunny-cat is forcefully torn out of reality, clutching onto the hands of the best friend that betrayed him?

Yeah. Way to think it through, Namco.

Editor’s Note: I wrote an article some months back identifying Shuichi Sakurazaki as the creator and director of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. Seems that the credit should go to Hideo Yoshizawa. That said, as far as I can tell, these two men might be the same person. Anyone out there know what the deal is? The internet is less than forthcoming with the appropriate facts.

(Link: Kotaku)

Related links:

Klonoa: Careful, Namco. You Tread On My Dreams.
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Friend Codes from an Outsider's Perspective

Bob Mackey — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

If you're a hardcore Nintendo gamer, you've undoubtedly run into the problem of friend codes. For the most part, the unintuitive nature of Nintendo's online service (quick, tell me how to find your Wii's friend code) has been aggravating to those of us used to the user-friendly ways of XBox Live and PSN, as well any pedophiles out there looking to snag a pre-teen's digits--though I guess we shouldn't feel too bad for the latter group.

The topic of friend code frustration came up on the always-entertaining Drunken Gamer Radio this week, when one of the hosts talked about the impossibility of explaining the friend code system to a casual gamer eager to hop online with a Nintendo title. I experienced the very same thing a few weeks ago, when my girlfriend picked up a DS along with Animal Crossing; she planned on checking out the online features of the game, and asked me--an Animal Crossing veteran--how to do such a thing. At this point, I poured a big, sweaty glass of scotch and muttered, "Sit down. This is going to take a while."

What follows is a written reenactment of our conversation.

"So what do I do to get online in this game?"

"Well, first you need to find out your friend code. I can't remember if the DS has one or if the game has one." (I hit up Google) "Oh, it's just the game."

"So how do I know what my friend code is?"

"I'm not sure." (I hit up Google again) "Oh, you have to get it from someone in your town."

"Now what?"

"Now you need to find someone who has the game and make sure that you both have each others' friend codes. Then you need to coordinate a time when at least one of you has the game on in online mode."

"But I don't know anyone else with the game."

"Um, Internet?" (At this point I made a break for the door.)

Keep in mind that this post is not intended to patronize the uninformed; it's meant to show how impenetrable Nintendo's online features can be if you're not aware of how stupid they are--hell, when I picked up the DS Animal Crossing for myself a few years ago, it took me a bit of digging to find out just how I could play that bad boy online. Admittedly, Nintendo's ass-backwards ways do a good job of keeping children safe without parental intervention, but I can't imagine the amount of people who've given up on trying to take a Nintendo game online due to all of the convolution involved. Sure, complaining about friend codes is akin to pissing in the wind at this point, but it still seems a bit odd that the company is happy with befuddling and frustrating their casual audience along with us uber-nerds.

Related Links:

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Jet Grind Television: WiiSpray

John Constantine — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Last summer, Martin Lihs finished his thesis project at Bauhaus-University. Amidst the ocean of Wii remote mods created in the past three years, Lihs’ is especially cool. The WiiSpray is a plastic spray paint can with the motion sensing guts of your average Wiimote. Today, the WiiSpray has its own functioning interface and it lives up the homebrew peripheral’s promise. Utilizing the Wii’s internal tech and flash, Lihs has created a marvelous slick interface that recreates the look of Earth’s best urban vandalism. There are even stencils!

Being the consumer whore I am, I immediately starting thinking about WiiSpray’s potential franchise use. Jet Grind Radio is an obvious first choice. Imagine modifying the original’s analog skating with a smooth point and click interface that has you zipping about the city, choosing your tag spot and then filling the screen with your brick-and-mortar canvass. Then DJ Professor K could judge your style, spitting anarchist drivel out of the WiiSpray’s speaker.

The other might seem like a fanboy’s wishful thinking, but Mario Paint Wii would be another great fit for Lihs’ creation. The original Mario Paint is a technological anachronism in this day and age, considering how its core tools come built into damn near every operating system in existence. A new Mario Paint, however, packed with unique plug-in peripherals like WiiSpray, could modernize that classic in fine form. I could finally finish that cartoon I started in 1995 and I wouldn’t have to use that ridiculous mouse!

Check out the WiiSpray here.

(Link: Boing Boing)

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Give Super Punch-Out a Chance

Bob Mackey — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I've been talking about Punch-Out a lot this week, from blogging about the new Wii update yesterday to gabbing about it on the Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This podcast on Tuesday (episode release forthcoming). In fact, I've had so much Punch-Out on the brain that I happened to overlook the fact that one of my favorite games of all time, Super Punch-Out, saw a Virtual Console release this Monday. And now that I no longer have to play Sophie's Choice when it's time to decide which Wii Channel needs to die for the sake of a new download, you can bet I was beating the living snot out of large, cartoonish boxers as soon as humanly possible.

I've come to observe that Super Punch-Out is mostly unknown and unloved, especially when compared to its iconic little brother--a cultural touchstone for anyone growing up in the 80s (I guess we all wanted to beat up Mike Tyson). But when you strip away the nostalgia, Super Punch-Out is actually a much better game. Regrettably, it lacks a bit of the character that made the first one so memorable--there's no Doc, NYC jogging vignettes, or mid-round chatter--but Super Punch-Out is still a perfection and expansion of all the things that made the original game so great. And you get to beat up a clown--the deepest, darkest desire of any normal human being.

I'll admit that I overlooked Super Punch-Out back during the game's original 1994 release--after all, what more could you do with such a limited premise? But when I played it years later through the magic of emulation, I discovered it was everything I loved about the original game, but better: Little Mac had a few new moves to play around with, but some new power punches were nothing compared to what his 16 opponents (no repeat boxers here) could do. And, just like the original, SPO is a real showcase of Nintendo first-party polish; the characters are huge, well-animated, and still impressive today--and the realistic sound effects are contrastingly brutal for such a cartoony game.

Rather than reimagining old franchises, the best games of the 16-bit era perfected them; and Super Punch-Out--along with Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past--is a fine example of this trend. Don't miss out on this great game a second time.

Related Links:

The Problem with Punch-Out
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The Problem with Punch-Out

Bob Mackey — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Hardcore Nintendo fans have been grumbling this generation, and most would say rightfully so; the Wii updates to beloved franchises like Super Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. have been rehashes--and sometimes downgrades--of games seen last generation. Even The Legend of Zelda: Twlight Princess wasn't much more than a prettier Ocarina of Time. But Nintendo knows what bones to throw to the hardcore, and they throw them well. Take the upcoming Punch-Out, for example; old-school Nintendo fanboys have been heralding it as the Wii equivalent of The Second Coming, despite the fact that it's merely a pretty remake of a game they played 20 years ago. For Nintendo, this is a win-win situation--after all, they can keep the most vocal minority of their fanbase happy while appealing to the casuals who will no doubt buy this game en masse. But to the impartial observer, the freak-out over this long-awaited sequel calls into question just how much we're willing to forgive when something repeatedly jabs at our nostalgia nerve.

Before the hate starts a-flowin' let me say that I'm super-psyched for Punch-Out, but I still have a healthy dose of skepticism. While the game looks (and reportedly plays) like it was developed internally, if the reports of it being no more complex than the original Punch-Out are true, I'm going to be a tad disappointed. With Super Punch Out, the better but less-iconic sequel, Nintendo realized that the puzzle-fighting of the original game could only be stretched so far, so they added only a degree of fisticuff complexity along with boxers which had a much larger variety of moves. All in all, a perfect game, and a logical conclusion to the Punch Out series. But this new game looks to provide a more accessible and familiar experience at the cost of everything that made the sequel so great.

For now, I'm hoping that the gameplay impressions I've been getting from podcasts and the like will be improved upon with some in-depth previews sometime this month. Until then, I'm going to be a big, stinky curmudgeon about Punch Out, mostly because I hate fun. Please forgive me.

Related Links:

Everything You Need to Know About the Wii Storage Solution
GDC News: Final Fantasy to Hit Virtual Console
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The 61FPS Review - Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii)

Amber Ahlborn — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:00:00 GMT

This week I played my very first zombie game and even though this is not really my genre of choice, I did not hate it. Dare I say I even had some fun? I may have grinned a little at beating up the undead with a mannequin but I deny all accusations of laughing maniacally while running over zombie poodles with a lawnmower.

I really am not into horror. I'd rather read the Wikipedia article for a synopsis than watch a horror movie, and so it was with a bit of trepidation that I began Dead Rising: CTYD. Soon my fears were allayed when I discovered this was more like a brawler than a survival horror game. Thusly relieved, I snagged a shopping cart and proceeded to run down the undead like a possessed bargain hunter on 50% off sales day.

If Dead Rising were a movie, it would sit comfortably in the B movie horror/comedy sub genre. The story is pure B grade cheese loaded with ridiculous scenarios, peppered with plot induced stupidity. That's not to say it's awful. The unfolding of the story is interesting enough. The dialog is, well, not as bad as Capcom's usual efforts and the voice acting is decent. Ultimately it doesn't matter much because we didn't come for the writing; It's a Zombie Apocalypse and anything can potentially be a weapon!

And here is the heart of Dead Rising. You are Frank West, freelance photojournalist, trapped in a mall with thousands of zombies. You must survive for 3 days by any means necessary while also rescuing fellow survivors. It really is a great video game premise. The mall is loaded with mundane objects Frank can make imaginative use of. A good thing too, as the missions can be challenging. Zombies populate the mall in small clusters and will occasionally pop out of nowhere. Often I wished the camera was a bit farther away from Frank so I could see behind him a little, regardless, the camera didn't get in the way and the controls worked well enough. As you bludgeoned zombies with various objects, different flicks of the Wiimote or button presses would unleash different kinds of attacks. The zombies themselves were mostly slow. Some obligingly stood around doing nothing, giving you time to line up that shot with a saw blade or whatever else you wanted to throw. Just don't grow too complacent or the smarter, more aggressive enemies later in the game will eat your brain, and watch out for the dive bombing killer parrots.

A lot of the missions involved escorting survivors to safety. Thankfully, the AI did not suck. The characters would actually fight back if grabbed. Most importantly, they did not seem to have suicidal tendencies. I once did a little game testing on a MMORPG and one of the missions I replayed over and over again involved escorting a prince who's sole purpose in life seemed to be to aggro everything on the map.

The only aspect of Dead Rising: CTYD that really disappointed me were the visuals. As is so often the case these days, it aimed for a photorealistic style but fell short. The graphics are gracelessly utilitarian. The environments were appropriately detailed if a little rough, but the characters creeped me out. It looked like a lot of motion capture was used in the cut scenes and really, mixing different levels of realism is a no-no. The animation of the body and gestures were at a higher level of realism than the models, while the facial animation was at a lower level. The muppet-like mouth movements did not match the realistic faces and the body gestures only emphasized the lifeless mannequin-like qualities of the models. The end results often caused the non-dead characters to appear less life-like than the undead ones. The game was hardly an eyesore, but the characters did tumble a little ways into the Uncanny Valley.

There really was a lot going on in Dead Rising: CTYD and rather than try to go into detail on the miscellany, let me just end by listing a few of the oddities.

~ You can find all manner of alternative costumes for Frank in the clothes stores. Alas, I did not find any high heels to go with the dress I had him wearing.

~ Frank is apparently only a photographer in cut scenes, as you never get to make use of his camera yourself, not even as a blunt instrument.

~ The Wii remote pointer makes aiming guns a breeze, but you still have to use the analog stick to look around.

~ Why would anyone want to eat a piece of fruit dropped by a zombie?

Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop sets out to give gamers an arena to go zombie killing wild with whatever comes to hand and it succeeds. If watching the above video made you giggle (and you are hopefully older than 17), then this game is for you. This non zombie game fan gives it a B.

Related Links:

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The 61FPS Review: Retro Game Challenge

The 61FPS Review: Star Ocean The Last Hope

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT

A strange thing happened to me between downloading Bit.Trip Beat and beating its first boss. While delighting in its vivid color, laughing at its signature character leaving rainbows in his wake across digital space, and letting its infectious chiptune beats colonize my brain, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. That’s fine — I’m a firm believer in the fact that a game doesn’t need to be fun to be good — but I was expecting to have fun. I wanted to have fun. I was engaged by it, but not in a good way. I found the game to be overbearing and stressful. Then it hit me: Bit.Trip Beat is a bad game.

Its presentation is immaculate and the idea behind its play is sound; a horizontal shooter that has you deflecting objects instead of projecting them, making ammunition and enemy one and the same — Pong + Arkanoid + Gradius = Bit.Trip Beat — is a great foundation. The game is broken though. The motion controls are adequate but far too sensitive, and the game doesn’t allow you to adjust the sensitivity. It also doesn’t offer d-pad control, so you’re stuck. As you chain together hits in rhythm to the music, your combo meter rises and the visual effects start to intensify. They intensify so much that the color and flashes of light make it impossible to follow the action. It should be challenging to play at a high level, of course, but it should come from the speed and layout of the game’s obstacles, not because it’s hard to see. Most problematic though is that there is no respite throughout Bit.Trip’s long levels. Scrolling shooters necessitate moments of peace that allow you to refocus and rest before the next series of challenges. You need chances to blink. Without them, the game becomes exhausting. Bit.Trip is oppressive, necessitating that you pay attention constantly, or fail as a result. In spite of these game breaking problems, Bit.Trip’s scoring very well in reviews. Why?

I worry that Bit.Trip Beat’s critical success is a case of the Emperor getting a new wardrobe. Game critics, fans, and casual players are all enamored with the retro-styled games trend. Games with chic visual and aural designs that recall gaming’s NES, Atari, and early-arcade heyday are in high demand right now and I think that some people might be willing to praise a game based solely on its aesthetics. They're new graphics whores for a nostalgia-obsessed age, drunk on the promise of limited technology instead of high-end graphical feats. I’m one of them. I laud Mega Man 9, Space Invaders Extreme, and Edge for their old school looks and sounds. Those are three very well made games underneath their attractive façades though. I expect great things out of Bit.Trip Beat's creators, Gaijin. They’re clearly a very talented team of developers. Before they make Bit.Trip Volume 2, I hope they learn from their first game’s mistakes, no matter how well their first game was received.

Related links:

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet
Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited

Why I'm Excited For What WiiWare Could Soon Become

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Even though it was a firmware update that pretty much everybody called well over a year ago, it was still pretty exciting to see that SD Card channel go live on the Wii yesterday. Almost everyone who has downloaded more than one game from the Wii Shop Channel has felt the aggravation of having to "clean out the fridge" at some point, and with the twenty minutes of rearranging necessary for me to download the long-awaited Bit.Trip Beat last week, I was pretty much pissed at my favorite little white box. Getting home from work yesterday to see its inviting blue glow, I just wanted to hug the Wii and tell it that everything was going to be alright now.

First, I could happily move my Virtual Console and WiiWare games to the SD card without worrying about forgetting them forever. Then I could reinstall the Nintendo Channel and the Wii Fit channel I had to delete to make room for World of Goo. Ooh, and then I could finally install that Mario Kart Wii channel I'd been putting off. And then I can finish that game of Paper Mario I had to remove from the Wii when I downloaded Tetris Party!

Having access to these games without taking up precious system memory was not only liberating but a revelation. I'd been putting off or flat-out ignoring all but the most-desired WiiWare and Virtual Console games specifically to avoid having to delete old games, but now everything's changed! It's time to revisit the Wii Shop. Time to finally play LostWinds, Space Invaders Get Even and (yes, I'm terrible) Mega Man 9! I can actually look forward to upcoming WiiWare without having to worry, which is great because there are tons of great games coming out soon like Cave Story, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, Cube Gardens of Zen, Super Meat Boy and Night Game. Oh, and Hudson's upcoming "first person soaker" Water Warfare. That may just be the first deathmatch shooter game I genuinely want to play.

Then, of course, I start dreaming about the potential...

Couldn't we get DEMOS now? I've downloaded plenty of demos on PSN. Some convinced me to buy the full game, some did not. Apple's app store has tons of Lite versions of games that serve as free demos (in fact I just downloaded one for Sway) and those have only proven to raise interest and ultimately sales of the finished products. Demos work in this day and age of downloadable distribution. I was perfectly willing to accept before that demos were impractical on the Wii because of memory limitations, but with hard drive space opened like this it should be no problem. The most Nintendo would need to do is add a page to the Wii Shop channel for demos specifically. I imagine the extra work for the developers to make a demo to stand beside the finished game would be negligible in most instances as long as Nintendo doesn't restrict file sizes any more than they would for the finished product. Think about it: not sure about Bit.Trip Beat? Try the first level. Think High Voltage Hot Rod Show might be for you? Here's one course to race around for free. Of course, these would not be mandatory and entirely up to the developer, but it seems like a fantastic idea to me, and one that would make users significantly more likely to try and maybe even buy otherwise unheard of games.

WiiWare should be the feather in the Wii's already fancy cap. As stated before, retail Wii games can not be updated once they're released, unlike PS3 and Xbox 360 games, but WiiWare can (I distinctly remember there being a Dr. Mario Online RX update at one point). The SD card solution released this week has made me exponentially more excited by the prospect of WiiWare and I already have plans to fork over more of my hard-earned money to the Wii Shop as a result. Take this momentum, Nintendo, and run with it. Make WiiWare great.

Related articles:
Everything You Need To Know About The Wii Storage Solution
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Whatcha Playing: Lost Winds

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is Coming, and Cecil is a Clod

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:09:00 GMT

A strange thing happened to me when I heard that Final Fantasy IV is coming to Virtual Console: I didn't care. I think I burned out on the title with the swift finality of a doused candle flame. I can't imagine why. I've only played and completed Final Fantasy II (SNES), Final Fantasy IV (Playstation), Final Fantasy IV Advance, Final Fantasy IV DS and innumerable fan translations.

I am, however, pretty excited about Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for WiiWare, despite the cringe-inducing title. I guess I'm happy enough to slay the same monsters and abide by the same archaic menus if it means glancing at Kain's bum from a whole new angle.

I also think it's going to be kind of cool playing as Cecil's son. Bonus points if the boy has to earn his place as a hero. One of my favourite kids' books is “Mattimeo” by Brian Jacques. The story is a sequel to “Redwall,” and the running theme involves the maturation of the spoiled son of Matthias the Warrior.

But I'm already facepalming over the name “Ceodore.” Cecil's brand for his first-born son is a perfect example of the moon warrior's boring tendency to flip-flop. Obviously, he decided he was going to name his boy after his lost brother, Golbez. To avoid making Ceodore the playground's bitch, he used Golbez's real name: Theodore.

Naming your child after a family member, alive, MIA or otherwise, is one of the greatest honours you can bestow upon that relation. Cecil's final act of forgiveness towards his brother is touching. Too bad he created a monster-name by crazy gluing part of his own name onto “Theodore.”

Really, Cecil. Could you not wait for the next child? Or did something deplorable go down on the wedding night, something so unspeakably disappointing that Rosa locked her chastity belt and threw the key into Baron's moat?

Chin up, you white-haired emo kid. I'm just playing with you. Sure, Ceodore is a deep, meaningful name. And you will have lots of babies with Rosa, no doubt. By a strange coincidence, one baby, or maybe two, may jump really high upon exiting the womb. Be prepared to catch, okay?

Related Links:

Gaming on a Train: Final Fantasy IV
Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life
Final Fantasy IV the After: Will America Land On the Moon Again?

Everything You Need to Know About the Wii Storage Solution

Joe Keiser — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:50:00 GMT

As we’ve said, one of Nintendo’s big reveals at GDC today is the long, long awaited solution to the Wii’s storage woes. It's so obvious it's not even worthy of a condescending drum roll: it’s just the ability to load Virtual Console and WiiWare games off an SD card. Could someone please explain to me why this took two years to roll out?

From today’s Nintendo GDC keynote, we know that this solution adds 32GB SDHC card support and is implemented via an SD card menu that looks a lot like the Wii menu. But I’ve been playing with it, and so have all the extra little details after the jump. This might be rather fine data for something as pedestrian as a storage solution, but don’t blame me: Nintendo has given me way too long to think about what I want from this.

Here’s the breakdown:

There’s load time. The Wii still can’t actually load games in-place off the SD card; instead it has to copy them to system memory temporarily, and then load it. This means you will be twiddling your thumbs while the copy takes place, and on a big game like Sin & Punishment this load can be nearly twenty seconds long.
It recognizes all previously backed-up VC and WiiWare games. Imagine my surprise and buyer’s remorse when I opened up the SD card menu for the first time and found Solomon’s Key, a launch VC title I hadn’t played since 2006. If your SD card is where your ill-conceived late-night VC purchases have been buried, get ready to be slapped by a bunch of history.
The Wii Shop can only sort of use the SD card. While you can download from the Shop onto the SD card just fine, once the game gets there the shop can’t see it right away (ie: it flags the game as “downloadable” instead of “downloaded”). Only if you try to download the game to the SD card again will it figure out you already have it and give you an error. If you’re like me, you have WiiWare junk all over the place, and this update isn’t going to help you get more organized.
Don’t move your save games. If they didn’t work off SD card before, they still won’t now. This is a VC/WiiWare solution only.
It doesn’t break The Homebrew Channel. If you already have it installed you can still use it after the update, so don’t worry about that half-finished game of Beneath a Steel Sky you were playing in ScummVM.

GDC News: Final Fantasy to Hit Virtual Console

Bob Mackey — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:40:00 GMT

Fans of the old-school Final Fantasy games haven't exactly gotten the best treatment in recent years; while ports and remakes of the early games have been available in abundance, those looking for a faithful retro RPG experience have had to turn to expensive eBay copies (with possibly non-functioning batteries) or emulation to get their fix. After all, if Square can charge $30-$40 for revivals of their past hits, what incentive do they have to offer much cheaper version of these games on services like the Wii's Virtual Console?

Well, it looks like Square-Enix has had a change of heart--or they've just initiated the final stage in their "milking fans dry" plan--with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's announcement that the famous franchise will indeed be hitting Nintendo's digital download service. According to Wired's Game|Life,

Starting in May in Japan, the first six classic Final Fantasy titles will be released on Wii's Virtual Console service. In the U.S., said Iwata, the games that were actually released in the U.S. will come out here, too.

Even if you've played the first three American-released Final Fantasies a million times, it's still nice to hear that we'll finally have a chance to play these games in their original forms--as adequate as the GBA ports of IV and VI were, they were a bit lacking when compared to the originals. If anything, it'll be great to hear Nobuo Uematsu's stunning Final Fantasy VI soundtrack again the way it was meant to be heard.

Related Links:

Cloud's Ghostly Face Says, "More Final Fantasy VII? Only I Know, Suckahs."
Trailer Review: Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life.

GDC News: Wii Storage Solution Confirmed

Bob Mackey — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:10:00 GMT

If you're a fan of the Wii's Virtual Console and WiiWare digital download services, you've undoubtedly encountered one of the console's biggest setbacks: its meager amount of storage space. The company's had many glib answers for angry fans demanding a solution to the Wii's lack of a hard drive, but we've only heard rumors and Nintendo's whole "just move your games to an SD card" line since the grumbling began. And who can forget the infamous and disingenuous fridge analogy that was spouted by a Nintendo PR rep in the Fall of '07 and repeated millions of times throughout the Internet to this day? Yes, we clean out our fridge when food goes bad, but downloaded ROMs are in no danger of rotting--okay, maybe the Alex Kidd games.

However, with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's 2009 GDC keynote speech comes exciting news that addresses the concerns of hardcore Nintendo nerds. Thanks to the liveblogging efforts of Joystiq, we now have confirmation of a new SD Card Channel for the Wii, which will let owners of Nintendo's popular console run games straight from their SD cards. This is a huge and admittedly obvious correction to Nintendo''s storage solution of the past, which allowed a Wii owner to copy but not play games from an SD card. If you've ever had to delete channels to make room for new ones, you know what an annoying and time-consuming process (for the indecisive, anyway) it can be. While it's true that this simple solution should have happened a long time ago, it's nice to see Nintendo finally address an issue that only a minority of its fans are experiencing.

Apparently, this channel is now available with the newest system update, so turn on your Wii and give it a try.

Related Links:

Nintendo Might Just Hate You
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out
The Earthbound Legal Conundrum In-Depth

Gaming for Two: Super Smash Bros Melee

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:12:00 GMT

Earlier today, I went out for dinner with the husband. While waiting for my steak sandwich (it was good), I started humming the theme for the Grand Palace from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. I didn't do it for any particular reason, but my husband said it made him feel very special to have a gamer wife.

We started talking about how most couples have a “song,” and we don't. I listen to music all the time, but my husband is more or less useless with the stuff. If it's not on a wrestling or video game soundtrack, he probably doesn't care.

So we thought of a substitute with which to re-affirm our togetherness: an “us” game, rather than a mushy song.

Logically, we'd pick the first game we purchased together as a married couple. Unfortunately, that game was Mega Man X6. That's what we call a classic bad decision by two newlyweds. People would have had more sympathy for us if we'd built our first home on a swamp. Over an Indian burial ground.

So we quickly shifted to our next purchase together: The GameCube, along with Super Smash Bros Melee. That, we remember a bit more fondly.

Though I loved its Wii follow-up, something felt especially special about Super Smash Bros Melee. We clocked in a lot more time on Melee versus Brawl; we were too poor to buy new games for our GameCube very often, so we squeezed every drop of Pikachu's blood and sweat from Melee.

During our first year of marriage, we made a lot of roadtrips between Toronto and Charlotte, and the GameCube came with us. None of our friends at the time had struck oil either, so we spent hours with a scant few games, Melee chief among them. One such friend roomed in a toolshed converted to a shack. Said shack had problems with mould and a special breed of badass southern spider that liked hiding in my shoes, but when you're barely twenty years old, spiders can't stand in the way of all-night fighting games and cheap insults.

There was also an element of discovery with Melee. The whimsical background and music in the Onett stage made me more curious about Earthbound (I also liked the fact that characters who got knocked into the distance ended up falling towards the hospital, like an angel cast from Heaven by a somewhat benevolent God). I also wondered up a storm about Marth, Roy, and Fire Emblem. They were somewhat out of place amongst the blobs, plumbers and mice that make up Nintendo's pantheon, but they provided a balance that was fascinating. I'd been unaware that Nintendo had designed heroes of the sword and shield outside of Link.

By the time Brawl came around, we were far better off. We played it together and had a satisfactory amount of fun. Brawl came down with us when we returned to Charlotte for Christmas, but the tool shed was gone along with the mutant spiders, and the friends that remained had grown cynical with the heaviness of life. Alas, the Melee experience couldn't be duplicated.

I guess I understand why grandparents are always sighing nostalgically over the Great Depression (and Rush lyrics). Youth and the madness of starvation do a lot to flavour your memories and make you appreciate what you have.

Related Links:

10 Games Nadia Played in 2008 Instead of Working: Super Smash Bros Brawl
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A Few Thoughts on Wii Graphics

Amber Ahlborn — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Slick

Right next to whether a game “sucks” or not, graphics is probably one of the most contentious topics in gaming and a typical source of pot shots aimed at the Wii. I recently wrote about my own feelings concerning the importance of graphics where visual quality is concerned, ultimately concluding that “it's the art, stupid!”. I might be biased.

Today I figured I'd explore the topic a little further in regards to my favorite current generation system, the Wii. Yes, yes, we know the Wii lacks the raw graphic power of those other systems, let's move on shall we?

I blame the current infatuation with photorealism for the Wii's graphic woes. Well, that's not entirely fair but it does feed into my point. When working with an artistic medium, and for now let's consider a game console a sort of medium, you play towards the medium's strengths. Oil paints are not superior or inferior to water colors. They're simply different. However, I would not choose water color if my goal was to paint a photorealistic portrait.

What is true in traditional media is true in digital form. Photorealism is easily the most technically difficult and graphically intensive art style. Read my Uncanny Valley series to see why. In order to come close to capturing reality in a game, a lot of the console's resources must be used. Everything from the interplay of light and shadow, to texture and mesh effects need to meet specific true to life qualities. This can be done on the Wii if the developer keeps tight reign over managing resources, such as in games that move on rails or exist in small arenas. These techniques function to keep the player's view within a limited area, and so the visuals in those areas can be at maximum detail without bogging the game engine down. Regardless, producing photorealistic graphics is not a strong suit of the Wii's more limited hardware. Yet, many developers seem intent on playing to the system's weaknesses when making a game not explicitly meant for general or younger audiences.

Assuming anyone listens to me, here's a little advice: pick an art style you can make look really good instead of one you can only half-ass.

There is more than one path to capturing a feel of gritty reality than copying Hollywood's take. The comic book industry has been doing “more real than real” visuals to tell adult stories for decades. The clean cartoon (yes, I said cartoon) visuals of classic anime like Akira certainly do nothing to diminish an intense, mature story. These are the resources best delved into when working in a medium not friendly to photorealism. Plus there's an added bonus. Nobody will ever confuse the likes of MadWorld or No More Heroes for the bazillion reality clones out there. Even the most random screen shot will stand out.

Related Links:

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Two Years In: The Wii's Feats of Strength and Its Disappointments

Warning: Wii Punch-Out!! Might Just Kill You

John Constantine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Last week, I came down with a flu like sickness. It was bad. I was sent home from the office twice because, apparently, I sounded like I was coughing whole parts of my insides out of my body. Today I am a well man and it’s all thanks to the power of rest and Mythbusters. Let it be known that, provided you are horribly sick, own an Xbox 360, and are a Netflix subscriber, you too can watch Mythbusters until you are fit, or fitter, than a well-made fiddle. Dr. John Constantine prescribes it! During one particularly awesome episode, Adam Savage was isolating ingredients from Diet Coke to determine which of them causes Diet Coke-Mentos-Explosions. While testing caffeine, Savage mixed a solution while commenting, “This is a lot of caffeine. Enough to kill you.” This blew my bed-ridden mind. Caffeine can kill you? Of course it can, all stimulants can! I’d just never considered it. This revelation, in turn, reminded me how dangerous Nintendo can be.

Case in point: the new Wii Punch-Out!!. Like caffeine and stimulants of all stripes, fan service can kill a person depending on its purity and provided they have enough of it. Watch this trailer for an example of what a just-under-lethal dose looks like.

Seriously, that is potent. It’s more than just the returning characters, we already knew they’d be back. Doc Louis on the bike? The pink track suit? That’s the sort of fan service that will cause hearts to explode. They need to be careful with that.

Next Level Games have, it seems, foregone the crazy power-ups that made their Super Mario Strikers games so unpredictable. That’s okay. Punch-Out!!’s special moves, activated by stars earned in the fights, have always been elegant in their simplicity. The play looks as expected, a nice re-skinning of NES Punch-Out!!. I have to say though, while the game’s gorgeous and the new renditions of old fighters are clean and stylish, the new fighter, Disco Kid, is awfully plain. What gives, Next Level? I know your art team can do better than that.

Editor’s Note: I’m not really a doctor. I am sorry if I misled you. Do not try to cure yourself with Mythbusters.

Related links:

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The Erotic Adventure of Little Mac
Georges St Pierre's Punch-Out!!
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

WTFriday: A Serial Killer's Ideas for Wii Games

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:42:00 GMT

The Internet is good because it lets talented cartoonists like Chris Onstad of Achewood put together comics about serial killers penning their own ideas for Wii games. Gamer humour isn't absent from the syndicated newspaper slurry we're fed every morning, but you can't really expect the jokes to go beyond, “Ha ha, my wacky husband plays video games more than my kids (Also, Mary Worth keeps meddling in my life)!”

Achewood's Nice Pete is the most eccentric member of a bizarre cast: he's a mass murderer—it's implied he might in fact be a child murderer—but Onstad never asks the reader to pass judgment on him. Pete's proposal for “Cereal Pro 5000,” complete with its own Protip, is one of several quick glimpses we're given into a past composed of a broken family, rusted screen doors and hungry, limping dogs. The drunken father that Pete obviously had to work around on “bad” days is the same father he aims to make proud by designing Wii games. Wii games that he evidently believes everyone can relate to.

It's impossible to feel just one emotion at the end of an Achewood cartoon.

Related Links:

WTFriday: Mario Versus Airman
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Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and the Second Chance

John Constantine — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

There’s just something about a re-release. Not a remake mind you, I mean a game being released a second time, possibly ported to another system, with a few ancillary new features thrown in to entice previous owners to cough up more cash. Sometimes they just get me angry. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Why?! You can buy perfectly good versions of those games for half the price and play ‘em the way they were supposed to be played! Grumble mumble whyioughta. That’s just the idiot inside, the natural born fanboy hungry to defend an allegiance, doesn’t matter to what or who. He’s easy to ignore, but hard to suppress. Most of the time, I love a good re-release. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Excellent! Those are great games that more people should play, glad they’re getting a new lease on life.

It is too much to ask that a game be better than it was the first time around. If a game is good enough to warrant a second try, the best you can hope for is that whatever was excellent in the original release is preserved, that anything added is un-intrusive icing on an already delicious cake. There are rare exceptions to this rule though. Devil May Cry 3’s Special Edition re-release on PS2 was unceremonious but significant. The original game, known for its sadistic difficulty, had been rebalanced in its entirety and you could now play the entire game as its villain. Persona 3: Fes, in its North American incarnation, added twenty hours to the original, made a supporting character into the lead at the climax, and rewrote the game’s ending. These don’t happen often, but they do happen.

Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden is a curious example, since it is both proof of and the exception to the rule. When it was re-released the first time as Ninja Gaiden: Black, it was improved upon greatly, featuring many of the same tweaks and additions that made Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition so, well, special. It’s second re-release, however, was less rosy. Ninja Gaiden Sigma on PS3 modernized the visuals and added a new playable character but it also demonstrated just how much the underlying game of Ninja Gaiden had aged. It preserved, certainly, but added nothing.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Tecmo’s impending re-release of the Microsoft-published Ninja Gaiden 2, is branded as a remake. We all know better though, don’t we? My sincere hope is that Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is one of the rare improvements because, unlike its predecessor, Ninja Gaiden 2 wasn’t a very good game. Its camera couldn’t follow the action, the combat lacked Gaiden’s precision, and the environments were cramped and ugly. It felt, as I said in my review, unfinished. The Itagaki-less Team Ninja has a second shot at living up to the first game’s legacy. Good luck to them.

Related links:

Fix It: Alone in the Dark, Tiger Woods, and the Death of the Glitch
The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES
Rock Star Designer Fallout: Team Ninja’s Post-Itagaki Future

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet

Bob Mackey — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

What makes Nintendo's complete neglect in promoting WiiWare so tragic is that legitimately awesome titles worthy of attention are sometimes released for the console's digital download service. Take BIT.TRIP BEAT, for example; it's a completely unique Rez-like take on the rhythm genre, yet you're probably finding out about for the first time by reading this blog post. Don't feel too bad; I just discovered the game today by reading a post about it on a message board. And that's a real shame, because BIT.TRIP BEAT is a Playstation Network-y little game that would definitely give WiiWare the same credibility that titles like Noby Noby Boy and Flower lend to the PS3. The game itself essentially plays like an advanced version of pong mixed with a horizontally-scrolling shooter; you control a paddle and hit incoming "balls" to the rhythm of some rockin' old school chiptunes.

Of course, a YouTube video is really the only thing that'll do the premise of BIT.TRIP BEAT any justice, so go ahead and take a gander at the game's trailer:

At only 600 points, BIT.TRIP BEAT is definitely worth looking into--especially if you're interesting in seeing similar titles come to the Wii's oft-ignored platform.

Related Links:

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The Best News In Sixteen Thousand Years: Cave Story Coming to WiiWare
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out

The 61FPS Review - MadWorld

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

First and foremost, let me say this: I loved just about every second of Platinum Games' debut title MadWorld. If you have a Wii and are even slightly interested in over-the-top violence, I say get the game as soon as you possibly can. If you enjoyed the Wii's reigning champ of hardcore tongue-in-cheek violence No More Heroes, you'll find a lot to love in MadWorld. If you're a fan of Clover Studio's past work, in particular Viewtiful Joe and God Hand, you will probably love MadWorld. If you are a fan of Frank Miller's Sin City and/or black comedy, you will absolutely have a blast with MadWorld.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's get into the nitty-gritty. We'll start with the good stuff. MadWorld is visually stunning, and like Super Mario Galaxy and World of Goo, another prime example of brilliant art direction in a Wii game that makes you forget the system is so much less powerful than the competition. Videos online do not do it justice, you really have to take the game home and play it in your living room to see how crisp and perfectly stylized the entire world and all of its inhabitants are. The story, believe it or not, is compelling and brilliantly paced, slowly but steadily revealing details about the Death Watch games, its organizers, protagonist Jack, and more through a mix of in-engine animation and static comic strip art cut scenes at the beginnings and ends of most stages. I'm very intentionally leaving out details in this write-up because the story (written by Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII's Yasumi Matsuno) was one of my favorite elements of the game and I would hate to spoil it for those who should really experience it themselves.

Gameplay, surprisngly, doesn't get old thanks to a healthy variety in environments, challenges, and kills and a steady increase in enemy AI. Most of the stages play out as arena-style battles where you keep killing waves of baddies, accumulating points to unlock a big boss fight, so in this regard MadWorld is very much like the aforementioned No More Heroes, and just like in that game, the boss fights are really worth fighting for, with zany characters and big quicktime-waggle-event-based payoffs. Especially in the boss fights (and the later arenas) the dodge maneuver of shaking the nunchuck will be your best friend for making it out alive. The Bloodbath Challenge mini-games keep the slaughter fresh and enaging with fun new ways to mass murder.

This brings me to, by far, my favorite part of MadWorld: the audio. From the whirr of Jack's chainsaw eminating from your wiimote to the sticky squish of blood splatter, sound effects go a long way to bringing you into this not-too-distant future decent into madness (supporting character Leo, a dead ringer for Platinum board member Shinji Mikami's Resident Evil 4 protagonist Leon Kennedy, is a hospital resident born in 1993, so unless he's Doogie Howzer this has to be at least a decade from now). The original hip-hop soundtrack sets the mood for murder perfectly with an air of style and self-worth. Jack is voiced by Steven Blum, whom you may recall is a general voice acting badass for his roles as Wolverine in the X-Men Legends and Ultimate Alliance games, as well as the new Wolverine and the X-Men animated series, hero Spike on the anime Cowboy Bebop, and various other tough-as-nails bastards in God of War, Killer 7, Dead Rising, No More Heroes, the upcoming Bionic Commando and tons of other games and animes involving massive death and destruction. The dude's got a pedigree in stone-cold badassery. Last, but absolutely not least are the Death Watch announcers, voiced by Greg Proops and John DiMaggio (Futurama's Bender). Their back-and-forth banter throughout the slaughter was always welcome and often hilarious. The occassional repeats ("I like to wash down my scotch with another glass of scotch!") are noticable only because of how memorable every line of their dialogue really is. Their spot-on slander of the game's production team has made MadWorld's end credits my favorite of the year so far (and I really thought Flower's were excellent). The one-two punch of the dialogue and the outrageously over-the-top violence made the game utterly hilarious. Even my visiting sister was entertained by the brutality and profanity. Be warned, though, I'm fairly certain you will hear the word "motherfucker" more than the word "the" in MadWorld.

Okay, so all of that is great, right? Now on to the not-so-great. The biggest qualm people will have is that the game is short. My save file read exactly four hours when I completed the normal difficulty (this does not include deaths, cinemas or quicktime events, as my Wii system memory counted nine hours by that point). Completing the game unlocks two new weapons and Hard Mode, plus the game is just fun, so there's plenty of enjoyment to be had in replaying it all, but still, the whole thing goes by very fast. All of the Bloodbath Challenge mini-games are available in multiplayer mode, but I would have loved to see these available as score attacks in single player too, as well as a cinema gallery so I could reexperience the whole story without having to fight my way through thugs, zombies, and goons for hours.

The multiplayer, while a fun and easy addition, also proved problematic. Players do not receive points for kills they achieve as in the single player Bloodbaths, but rather kills of specific characters. Player one gets points for thugs wearing bull masks, player two for thugs in geisha masks. It's very hard to tell one from another when they're all in black and white and half-size for split-screen, so you'll often rack up points for your opponent without realizing it, and there is no option to turn those masks off. Multiplayer for a stylized beat-em up should not involve paying that close attention to your targets.

Control-wise, the camera can be a bit frustrating at times, and locking onto enemies takes practice, but neither is game-breaking and the controls are otherwise solid. Quicktime events with bosses have the potential to wear you out from rapid waggling. I found I needed to take a break after every other stage for my muscles to relax again. Still, thirteen big crazy ranked boss battles is three more than No More Heroes had (including Henry), and the fact that they're all shorter fights is probably a good thing in most gamers' books.

All in all, I strongly recommend MadWorld to the mature Wii audience. The story is deep and rich, the gameplay is varied and visceral, the style and production are top-notch. Many worried the game would be too easy because enemies don't really attack much in the first few stages. Let me tell you, by the end of Normal mode, regular thugs are evading and blocking attacks, teaming up on you, and attacking you while you try to combo other baddies. Hard mode starts off there and keeps going up, crippling you with only one life, so challenge is there when you're ready for it. I'd love a few more options in play, but I will definitely replay again and again for bigger and badder kills, scores, and wicked laughs. The first game to come from Platinum, the quality really lives up to the studio's name and is at the very least worth a weekend rental. I very much look forward to the announcement of a MadWorld 2.

Final grade: B+

Previous Reviews:
Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Killzone 2
Noby Noby Boy - part 1 & part 2
Big Bang Mini
Retro Game Challenge
Edge
Game & Watch Collection
Valkyria Chronicles part 1 & part 2
Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2
Prince of Persia
LittleBigPlanet part 1, part 2
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Two truths. Today is March 13th. It will not be spring for another eight days. Also, the original soundtrack to Okami is not chiptune. At all. In fact, it is fully orchestrated and entrenched in traditional Japanese composition, a far cry from the heavy metal and pop roots of the blissed-out blip songs composed on the NES or similar consoles.

Have you gone outside though? It is freaking gorgeous out there. It may rain, it may be cloudy, but the bitter miasma of late winter has lifted, washed away as if by… a celestial brush! Given, it’s likely that the fine weather is a result of the Earth’s natural solar orbit and axial spin, but I like to think that there’s a sun goddess wolf out there making it nice outside. I’m going to find her. We’ll go to the park and play fetch. Beautiful women will be all, “Oh your dog is beautiful!” And I’ll be all, “Check dis.” Then Amaterasu will make a bushel of fragrant botanicals grow at our feet.

Here are three selections from the Okami soundtrack. Listen, be in bloom, and grab your DS or PSP. Go play outside today!

The Great Goddess Amaterasu’s Revival

We’ll Always Be Together!

Two People Gazing At Each Other

Related links:

Chiptune Friday: Ethernet’s “Theme For the Water Shrine” Makes Me Want to Adventure and Possibly Defeat an Ancient Evil
Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Best NES End Credits Music in the History of NES End Credits Music
Chiptune Friday: Shut Up and Jam!
Chiptune Friday: Blaze a Blaze in the Mushroom Kingdom

Gradius ReBirth and The Joy of Sisyphean Gaming

John Constantine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Every few years, I get the itch. I’ll be reading a book or sitting in café, enjoying the air and taking in some company, when my conscious mind will simply shut off. My eyes glaze over, I drool a bit, and whoever I happen to be with at the time starts to worry. They wonder if they’ll regret not bringing a tranq gun by the end of the day. It’d probably be wise for me to start wearing a medical bracelet. It should read: “John Constantine. Irregular shmup addiction. Administer either space/terrestrial, horizontal/vertical shooter immediately. Contact Dr. Vic Viper at Up, Down, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start.” At the very least, it would ensure that no one gets hurt.

While Derrick’s been having a renaissance with the genre and Joe’s all but abandoned it, my predilection for shoot ‘em ups has been constant over the past two decades. As I said, it isn’t regular. It just comes out of nowhere. It starts with having to track one down, preferably horizontal, with a killer soundtrack, and bright color. Then I go for weeks without playing anything except for stray, half hour sessions with them, games like Einhander, Life Force, or R-Type Final. Thing of it is, I’ve never gotten good at any of them. I wouldn’t say that I’m terrible. I can usually get through the first level of a shooter without dying or, in extreme cases, continuing on the first try. But I’ve never beaten one without cheating and I’m usually struggling to keep up just a few levels in. I love the ebb and flow of a great shmup, the movement from speed and escape to the sluggish crawl that almost always precedes some giant conflict against a screen filling boss. When I die, I smile, and start over. Bullet hell or Konami standard, I take immense satisfaction in pushing the rock uphill and letting it tumble back over me.

Which, when you get down to it, flies in the face of what we expect to be a satisfying experience, right? When we judge games, the most damning thing you can say about it is that it’s frustrating, the highest praise that it challenges us in a way that makes us want to persevere, to master it. If you aren’t good at it and you don’t get better, what’s the point?

Maybe it’s an issue of play vocabulary. If something is closed and linear, defined by a beginning, middle, and end, the way we play is defined by adhering to that linearity. That’s the game language we understand. For games like a shooter though, the pleasure comes from locomotion and reflex, moving a digital phantom limb about the screen and having it respond to your intent. Winning, beating it, getting to the end doesn’t need to be the point. This might be why we feel fighters and shmups feel like evolutionary dead ends design wise; they aren’t being designed to be fun even if you fail.

I’ve got the itch right now, and I know I’m going to have to clean out the Wii fridge one day very soon. Gradius ReBirth is a scratch worth scraping at. I won’t get past the third level, I know. But I’ll push against the stone, pick up a few options, and have a hell of a good time.

Related links:

Roundtable Discussion: Genre Design Evolution
Get Option. You Cannot Reach Option.
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History

Trailer Review: Muramasa – The Demon Blade

John Constantine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

What can I say that hasn’t been said about Vanillaware’s two-dimensional skills. Undoubtedly, they can pay the bills. They are gorgeous. They are vivid. They are blinding in the extent of their flowing beauty, a realization of hand drawn gaming’s promise, a vision of the most fantastic landscapes while still evocative of the world’s natural beauty. Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is good looking, god damn it. See what I mean?

This trailer is more than, as they say, a pretty face. Most promising is that Muramasa’s play looks fast, free of the slowdown that crippled much of Odin Sphere. The combat itself looks to be an evolution of that game’s combo-based slicing and dicing as well. Odin Sphere, like Princess Crown before it, was a little too awkward to be perfect, and it's heartening to see Muramasa is improving on the formula. Here’s hoping that Vanillaware has also grown a better sense of pacing. Their previous games have been uneven, to say the least.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5