Martian Bear Day!

The red planet rises:

Iron Brigade (formerly Trenched) was one of my favorite games of last year. No surprise really since it came from one of my favorite design studios Double Fine. It is a shooter-tower defense hybrid that has more character than the average 5-6 games combined. Even better, its co-op is shit tons of fun to play. Martian Bear is the first paid DLC for Iron Brigade and I hope not the last. It is safe to say, that with my computer blown up at the moment some tubes are gonna die tonight.

 

Also on the XBLA front.  Bastion is the Xbox Deal of the week and is 50% off. I recently got this game and am about halfway through. The world is beautifully illustrated and well realized. Plus the narrator is just too fantastic to miss.  At $7.50 it is a steal of a game. I heartily recommend it.   

Finally, Double Fine also released today a new game for Kinect, Happy Action Theater. I don't have a Kinect so can't recommend it off of firsthand knowledge, but at this point I haven't met a Double Fine game I didn't like so I'm just going to stick it in the "must buy" column. If you have kids this game looks especially awesome.

Trailers for Bastion and Happy Action Theater below the break.

Game List

Just read this article on Joystiq.  I was already pretty interested in Kingdoms of Amalur, but calling it Secret of Mana plus Diablo II may have sealed the deal of it being a "must buy".   Sadly though I have a lot of must buys.   A lot that don't get played.  My life, like everybody's, is busy.

I try to squeeze in video games when I can but a lot fall to the wayside.   Some seem like they shouldn't be allowed to be forgotten.  So I'm creating a little blog list of upcoming games I want to play and games I've missed and hope to get cheaply.  I figure the list will help me remember and may inform some people of stuff they didn't know existed.

List is to the right.  I'll expand it and shrink it as I find, play, or remember, games.   If you have suggestions of your own put them in the comments section and I'll check them out.

5 Ways Video Games Are Addicting

Reality by pyxelated

Just pulling this article straight from Cracked.com.  I also recommend reading the articles they link to.

I'm a devout MMO hater for pretty much all these reasons.  Yes, I know other video games do many of the same things.  MMO and other "social" games just are the prime offenders and do it better.

I try to stick to the basic rule -- if the game doesn't have an end don't play it, don't even try it.  The hole is too deep.

Wii U Marry Me?

Apologies for the weak-ass pun, it was the best I could do before I had my morning coffee.  Nintendo's E3 press conference was yesterday.  Obviously the big news was the announcement of the Wii U.   Like the Wii it looks like it has a ton of potential.  Like the Wii I will wait and see if any game developer aside from Nintendo can figure out how to make cool content for it.

It is always perplexing to me though why people try to immediately quantify Nintendo in terms of their competitors' consoles.  Nintendo hinted with the Gamecube that they were no longer interested in playing the numbers game.  Then, just in case you didn't get the hint, they gave us the Wii, which was a huge ol' "Fuck You" to all the doubters who had written them off as a company.   They're still trying to dig Miyamoto out from under all the piles of money they made with it.  Now they come out with the U and once again the first thing people do is try to quantify it in terms of the Xbox and Playstation. 

All I know is that the Wii was cool.  I couldn't play Gears or Mass Effect on it but I had a hell of a lot of fun with Mario, Boomblocks, etc.   My parents also own a stack of Wii games that rivals my Xbox collection.   Nothing for nothing, that is badass.  My buddy Nick imagines a brave future where the Xbox and Nintendo combine merging Xbox's online and "hardcore cred" with Nintendo's pure sense of fun and innovation.  What a sexy, heretical, love child that would be.   Emphasis on the heretical because that world, cannot, must not, exist.  Oh shit, maybe it does exist?

Kingdoms of Amalur

Microsoft held their E3 press conference today.  Near as I can tell it was Kinect, Kinect, Halo, Kinect, Halo.  Not too surprising I suppose.  If I was in Microsoft and Sony's shoes and knew that Nintendo was announcing the Wii 2 this year I wouldn't bother trying to compete with that news either.  Anything less than their own next gen console will just get swept away in the tide.

Nonetheless, lots of the Kinect stuff looks pretty cool to me.  I can't lie that I get a bit of a thrill at the idea of the Kinect Star Wars game and actually waving my hands around to grab and throw stuff with the force.  That is some serious dork out right there.   I'm also pretty stoked to hear about voice commands coming to Mass Effect 3.   Being able to just tell my squad mates what to do in combat eliminates a whole layer of menu diving and sounds really badass.  I figure those are all marquee games though that you're bound to hear about anyway.  After the break lets look at another game that I didn't know I needed.

New Must Have

E3 is coming up and video game posts seem to be some of the few I manage so I figure I will post a couple things that are catching my attention.

Prey 1 didn't even register on my radar, since I'm not a big FPS fan.  This trailer for Prey 2 has made me stand at attention though.   Word has it the gameplay is open world style ala Red Dead Redemption.   Sites seem to be using it as the basis for comparison since you play a bounty hunter.  Unless they totally fuck up that formula I need this game right now.

TGS = Bliss

The Tokyo Game Show began today and it has already given me all that I need.   If video game news could be compressed into tasty morsels of pure sustenance; Team Ico and Level 5 have provided announcements that would render me fully capable of surviving an entire winter.   That, my friends, is nourishment.

The first bit is sort of three items all wrapped up with a single, precious, Team Ico bow.  Team Ico officially announced that they will be releasing a high-definition rerelease of their two games -- Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.  If you have never played either of these games you owe it to yourself to give them a try.  They are video gaming as an art form.  I know no way to describe it other than both these games make you feel.  That right there is something incredible in a media whose complexity typically mirrors the latest Michael Bay flick.  Needless to say I will be purchasing and loving these immediately upon their release.