AndrewTS

A Soul Calibur 4 review...from someone who doesn't like fighters. Yeah. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...Soul-Caliber-IV

The Braid demo is pretty awesome. Shame about the price. I will not get it right away but cross my fingers and hope it drops in a few eeks. Also,

*thumbs* Lots of people forget this point. The movie is shot well and Keaton was a good Batman, but shitty Bruce Wayne, and the Napier/Joker/killedmyparents stuff was kind of annoying. However, the "I made you! No! I made you first!" was some really crummy writing, IMO. I think the best thing about Batman 89 is that it paved the way for Batman TAS and the TimmDiniverse, even though that was never the intention. To paraphrase Mike Nelson, Batman and Robin isn't the worst movie ever. It's one of the worse things ever. Also--and I mean this in a non-prejudicial to any persons way--HOLY f'n CRAP IS THAT THING EVER GAY!!!

Found a youtube video channel with a lot of good reviews of the Batman games--plus, he shares my tastes, mostly (ugh! Trouble in Transit): Batman Vengeance (GC, PS2, Xbox) -- I think he's really overrated it, but I do grudgingly like it.

Surprised he only covered the 3 "Joker" games (and Revenge Genesis and Return NES are basically the same), and missed out on Batman & Robin. No, no, I don't mean the SNES game based on the animated series. I mean Clooneybats and Robin, the bat-nipple-tastic, Bat-Credit Card holding, Ultimate-Solution-starring, Ahnuld-ice-pun-spewing, Uma-scenery-chewing, ultra-gay movie...turned into a game. By Acclaim. Other than vids of Clooneybats and Robin dying, this is pretty much the only gameplay vids I can find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Aq5Q0tZ2Xk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Q05ShNb4c...feature=related A somewhat less grievous sin was Batman Forever Arcade, which was at least somewhat playable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RORYd7_yCM

At least it isn't a crappy FMV game: http://reviews.cnet.com/pc-games/clue/4505...7-30975697.html

Sin Tzu on console wasn't terrible, but it was a fairly standard 3D beat 'em up while there are much better games of that style available. Honestly I liked Final Fight Streetwise way more than console Sin Tzu, because while you could buy all those moves in Sin Tzu, they were mainly just combo variations. Also, it disappointed me because I had hoped it would have been a polished up version of (console) Batman Vengeance. Best part of console Batman Vengeance were the cutscenes. I liked what it tried to do but the controls and play mechanics were just too broken. Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know that vid was available yet. I totally believe it, too. I don't think I got past the 3rd level. =/

If they're going to change, it would be nice to have a more logical way to play the game, rather than by process of elimination of who holds what cards. Was there any practical reason for the little props?

WRONG!! -Adventures of Batman and Robin for Genesis is a freaking hard game but technically amazing with solid gameplay. -The original Sunsoft Batman The Video Game is really really good (with an awesome soundtrack, too). -Batman Returns (SNES) is a solid Final Fight-ish beat 'em up that got good reviews. -Batman Rise of Sin Tzu for GBA is a really good platformer/beat 'em up in the vein of the SNES Batman TAS game. Heck, the game that came before it (Batman Vengeance on GBA) is a pale, below-average copy of that SNES game. -There are many that consider the NES Return of the Joker a classic. I found it too freakin' hard to really enjoy, so your results may vary. Although the games are more often bad or mediocre, like most licensed games.

Congratulation! You win his utter disgust! Those were pretty much my exact thoughts about the series. Great series, and at the very worst still "very good," albeit with some misguided attempts to "fix" the flaws. I'm hoping he ends up sprouting those wings, too. It's no secret I like the new Prince of Persia games, right?

Yeah, that's the obvious solution, but why the hell would they make it that way? It's like opening a packet of printer paper to see that it has been scribbled on in pencil. Sure, you can take an eraser and clear it to blank paper, but why the hell should you have to do that in a character creation mode?

I didn't even remember Eminem. I rented the game, but still am not Gold-connected or looking to (just send out some bill payments. =P); however, first impressions have not been good. The interface was pretty confusing (I was trying to create a soul without using an existing character as a template, but didn't realize I had to choose that one randomish-block in the center to do that, and only found it out by reading the manual which worded it vaguely. Then I noticed that to create a new character, you pretty much have to randomize something to start with, which sucks because I'd rather have a vanilla character to built upon, rather than keep randomizing to come up with something that isn't so far off/terrible looking and loaded with crap. Then there's the lack of good creation parts, since apparently you need to do unlocking just for the right to be able to buy this stuff (ugh). Oh, and I really suck at the game something fierce, too. it does seem a hell of a lot slower than the last one I played much of (SC2).

Depends on how you feel about Deadly Alliance, et. all the ones since. However, all the talk about this being a giant leap forward for the series, or a return to form of the style of the 2D games, etc. seems to be idle talk while the products themselves are more of the same. FFS, Armageddon didn't even have *character bios* in them, let alone real endings (it was text + kata BS).

You did, basically. Imagine Deception, but subtract one of unarmed fighting styles from each character. That's what they did with some of the unarmed styles they "saved" from stripping it from those characters. Spread 'em around. MK vs. DC seems so half-assed. The team used the Unreal engine to...present us with basically the same animation and moves that were in Deadly Alliance and its inbred offspring.

Can't afford the game right now, even. I just went through a month where I had to pay two student loan payments, car insurance, a car payment, and various smaller expenses (including filling up the gas tank, natch). Should be better off in two paychecks, though.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6195113.html?...estnews;title;1 This isn't quite cancellation, but right now Activision could be sitting on them, other publishers may jump on them, or they could just not get released (some may be unfinished, like I think Wet is). GB was basically done, though, and should have been a no-brainer hit. However, it looks like the suits have spoken, and we're getting no-risk rehashed crap that stopped being good years ago, and somehow Prototype (thank goodness for that at least).

Well, despite the odd omission in the press release, it looks like the Ghostbusters game is in the clear: http://kotaku.com/5031711/ghostbuster-the-...ting-on-my-desk I doubt they'd be sending out preview copies that late if they planned on shitcanning it.

You're too busy staring at the half-dead tree to see the forest is burning down. Tim Schaffer is apparently looking for another publisher of Brutal Legend anyway, so this may be a mutual parting of ways on that project, at least. XBLA game: http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/869/869820p1.html

At it's best, they were the #1 console maker in the U.S., had quite a bit of "edgey" marketing and kicked Nintendo's asses for a bit. Then there's pretty much every other point in time. Sega, once a mighty force in the game industry, is a 2nd rate publisher that was bought up by a damn pachinko company. How did they get there? By being really, really dumb. Everyone knows the biggies, but let's reflect on all of the little things that made them yesterday's news, shall we? Add as many as you want. 1. Beyond Oasis -- Sure, it's near the end of the Genesis lifecycle, but one of Sega Japan's more respected figures (albeit more as a music composers) has directed this kick ass little game that rivals the Zelda series in many ways. So, do you actually market it? Or throw it out on the market with limited production, a few lousy magazine ads, and pretty much ignore it's existence? Well, if you're Sega America, yes, that's exactly what you do. Who cares about building what could be a mega-huge new IP leading towards the next-gen when you can hock a ton of crappy licensed games? 2. We don't need no stinking RPGs -- Sega had absolutely no interest in promoting RPGs in the States at all. It's arguably because of Nintendo taking a wash on Dragon Warrior back in the 8-bit days, but come on--things changed a hell of a lot since then. Despite the fact that Sega had a glowing RPG series of their own, and a really good strat RPG series as well, you'd barely know they existed based on Sega's American marketing. 3. Knuckles' Chaotix -- So, the 32X is not really doing all that hot...granted, this happened before with Sega CD, but surely Sega could do something to save it? A must-have title to spark interest in the platform? Let's go to Sonic!...wait, no, how about that new character, Knuckles? Okay, great. So...do we get the Sonic 3/Knuckles team on it? Naw, how about most of the key Sonic CD players? Okay, questionable, but acceptable. But Knuckles alone wouldn't be in it...how about Knuckles and a bunch of other fuzzy and non-fuzzy anthropomorphic characters? Sure, why not. Although, how about we implement a play mechanic that gimps their speed at the expense of new play mechanics? Hmmm...now, we're getting a little more dubious. Okay, how about we release it in what is clearly an unfinished state--nearly no enemies in the levels, tons of little bugs, and virtually no puzzles that make any uses of the great new play mechanics? Brilliant! Oh, and make it impossible to buy anywhere. 4. FMV games -- Back before Nintendo figured out non-gamers would go nuts over digital sudoku, training their brains, and electronic puppies, Sega reached out towards the casual/non-gamer market. Sega decided that these potential gamers weren't interested in games because they weren't enough like really ****ty movies. Man, wasn't Dragon's Lair great? The animation, the humor, the deaths, the....um...gameplay based on pressing arbitrarily selected button commands at specifics points in time? Well, that's what Sega decided their CD system needed. But let's boil down the game to it's basics. Forget the gorgeous animation humor--that gameplay! That's it! Married to really grainy footage of actors who were hasbeens or never weres. Of course, Sega wasn't the only one to get into the act, because the 3D0 folks did too. Before Dana Plato and Kirk Cameron moved onto more worthwhile projects like snorting lots of coke and/or Christian propaganda films, they were doing FMV games. 5. "We're done here, shut out the lights when you're done Ninty." -- You have to hand it to Sega, they knew when to move on. None of this silly "supporting your system as long as it's commercially viable." Oh no. When the 32X and upcoming Saturn were on the way, it was time to focus exclusively on them. What? What's this? Nintendo has a new game coming up? With a computer-generated ape? Ah, who cares. They're like totally stuck in the past, dudes! It's all about sticking crap in the cartridge slot of your existing system and really awful 3D!

How about a rehash of the previous PS2 games, in case you missed them? Er, I mean, re-release: http://kotaku.com/5029291/mortal-kombat-ko...n-coming-to-ps2 And back on topic, Joker and Green Lantern are confirmed, along with Jax and Kitana. No word on which GL. http://kotaku.com/5029247/green-lantern-jo...niverse-line-up

This is a very curious mental image, considering your protests. Which ones? Here's some other Kojima stuff (I'll spare you the stuff that is seriously, actually gay though.): http://castlevania.armster.org/kojima/postcard13.jpg http://castlevania.armster.org/kojima/postcard09.jpg http://castlevania.armster.org/kojima/yaso09.jpg It is a bit disappointing that she obviously has the chops for the NES-style artwork, but for one reason or another doesn't go for it (I blame Japan). This anime bullshit must go, though: http://sickr.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/castlevania21.jpg

Each one of them, save for Dawn of Sorrow, has used a new gameplay system. What's the problem? Fuck that. First off, Ayami Kojima can and does make characters that don't look like that (look at the character designs in SotN, look at Hammer, Yoko, and Julius). However, the CV games have had a hard time finding an audience in Japan, and having bishie protagonists were an effort to change that, sadly unsuccessful, though. Plus, in case you didn't get the memo (which was 3 games ago, BTW), they did switch character designers on several of the recent ones. Dawn of Sorrow--shit. Portrait of Ruin--shit. Castlevania Judgment--shit sandwich with vomit dressing. They all suck. Give me Ayami anyday. Sadly, Japan *likes* the character designs in Castlevania Judgment, but it seems their current tastes have been skewing to horrible lately (look at sales charts). Order of Ecclesia uses a different artist, but it's more invoking of her style than the anime trash we have been seeing: http://amanezco.blogspot.com/2008/05/castl...f-ecclesia.html.

Don't expect dismemberment or head ripping. I saw a few fatalities already: http://www.gamespot.com/video/943566/61942...stage-show-demo Superman has Sheeva's "pound you into the ground like a spike" finish, and Scorp takes off his mask and lights you on fire, but there's no explosion/bones, you just fall down. There's a *lot* of recycled moves. Supes has ice breath that basically works like Sub's freeze, Flash has a Kabal style dash, Batman smokebomb teleports, etc. Basically, if you can think of a move in the older games that would be logical for one of the DC characters to do, bet on it being here. So, Wonder Woman having you GET OVER HERE with her golden lasso or something--well, bet on it. Although they'll probably try to reuse moves for MIA characters. I larf at the notion that the animation is ground-up new for this game.

Ones I'd most like to see at this point: Green Lantern (and not freakin' Jack Black) New Gods I pretty much think the "production" on that movie is an ongoing bad joke. I bet Whedon could write a Kevin Smith style stand up skit with all the grief he had to put up with when he was briefly on the project.

Scroby is such a big Animal Crossing fan he inexplicably adds an "s" to the title.