i'm aliiiiiiiiive

It's been so too long since I last posted and I have so many good topics to write on so I seriously will be back posting regularly after this summer hiatus. I really appreciate ANY readers out there and wish I hadn't been slacking so much this summer, since I managed to win a blog award (see at right)! I know it's not much but it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know that my blog is useful to peeps out there.

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syberia review

I just finished playing Syberia and I can honestly say it's been awhile since I've had the pleasure of playing through a game that was so enjoyable and challenging throughout! Syberia is a true classic point-and-click adventure game and I constantly found myself comparing it to what I consider the pinnacle of adventure gaming, the Gabriel Knight series.

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i support all girl gamers

I mean it when I say that. I don't care if you play the games I play, you love sports games, ultra-girl-oriented games. I'm just glad that girls play games. Which is why I was slightly tickled (if not, to use her words, annoyed) to find a mention of my lil' blog at a new video game blog called OneGirlGamer. As I said, I'm happy to see anything out there about games from a girl's perspective but apparently she doesn't quite feel the same way!

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wii fit plus

Last year when Wii Fit Plus was originally announced it was going to include an "improved, updated balance board with better measurement metrics". This turned out not to be true, and of course I had already decided to sell my Wii Fit on Craigslist in preparation for the new game complete with new board. Fast-forward to Wii Fit Plus getting released and of course it has the same old board, AND they release it as a just-software option for like $30 if you've already got the board.

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finally played new super mario bros wii

Thanks to GameFly we've gotten to play tons of games we never felt like spending money on, and the latest of these has been New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

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no wii HD on the horizon

Those of us out there that try to defend the Wii as a valid gaming console have less hope for near-future advancements now that Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has denied any rumors of an HD Wii in development. In his mind, the addition of high definition graphics capability would not be enough to make a new Wii console stand out and sell successfully.

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hotel dusk: last window?

If you read this blog at all you know I love point-and-click adventure games more than any other genre. I'm always on the lookout for great games that I missed in the past as some of the best adventure games are older titles. Still, occasionally new games come out that make me jump for joy because of their commitment to preserving the wonderful tradition of point-and-click. One company whose game I have really taken a liking for is Cing, who developed Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the Nintendo DS. Imagine my surprise and thrill when my boyfriend clued me into to recent development news on a Hotel Dusk sequel! Apparently titled Last Window, the DS game is not strictly a sequel but does star my favorite video game anti-hero Kyle Hyde in a plot that occurs a year after the events of the original Hotel Dusk game. Last Window will also make reference to characters from the previous game. Gameplay elements will likely be very similar with a few changes including rumble-pak support. As a huge fan of the first Hotel Dusk game I will for sure be pre-ordering this one... whenever it gets a North American release date, anyway!

Last Window DS - New Details

silent hill: shattered memories

We recently signed up for GameFly (we're a little pissed at the crappy copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum we received as one of our first games, but that's another story/Xbox360 rant..) and one of our first selections to be mailed to us was Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Nintendo Wii. Made by (in my opinion) the always trustworthy Konami, I had heard that this game was a retelling of the original Silent Hill title but from the perspective of Cybil the cop. This is not really the case, although the game does deal with the original Silent Hill story. Lost and scared in what seems to be an abandoned town during a snowstorm, you are looking for your daughter and things are of course not what they seem. The controls are cool - you have a flashlight in one hand which serves as your camera control, and a cellphone that opens up menus for everything else. There is no real combat; there are sequences where everything goes dark (if you know Silent Hill you'll know what I mean) and bad things come out to get you and your only choice is to run run run! These parts are actually less enjoyable to me as the environments often start looking very monotone after running through four or five rooms like this, plus I personally play games like this one for the creepy plotline and story elements. Shattered Memories does provide a good deal of this in an eerie environment with great ambient scariness. There is an element of interview with a psychologist that is a weird but cool twist and can alter the progression your game takes apparently based on how you answer questions and respond to activities. Overall I'm really enjoying this new Silent Hill title and though I am ambiguous on how I feel about the removal of combat, I am glad to have more Silent Hill lore to whet my palate. Love it!

mario is timeless

Video game characters come and go; some are universally loved, others hated, and other still manage to be remembered for cheesy lines, awesome weaponry and crazy special moves. Yet no video game character is (or really, will ever be) as pervasive as everyone's favorite Italian plumber Mario! Whether you grew up with Mario in the 80's, originally meeting him as "Jumpman" in the Donkey Kong arcade game, or you met him as a youngster in Super Smash Bros. or any of the other more recent Mario franchises, one thing is for sure: the world cannot get enough of Mario. He is tenacious, cute, exciting and brave. He always manages to save Princess Peach, no matter what kind of crazy situation with Bowser she's got herself into now. This summer he and Luigi even ventured into Bowser a la Innerspace in Bowser's Inside Story, and now a whole new generation of gamers will get to experience classic side-scrolling fun in New Super Mario Bros., which dropped this past weekend. So whether Mario is a favorite of yours or you have minimal experience with the short, scrappy plumber, rest assured knowing that Mario is here to stay.

Nintendo's Mario Endures Even As Games Come and Go

afrika on ps3

One of the major issues I take with game reviewers online is that sometimes it seems like they judge all games against the standards of the most fun, most mainstream, most popular game to have come out recently rather than fairly judging a game against its own standards. If a game sets out to entertain you for hours with bloody and crazy first-person shooter fun, then judge it to that standard. If it instead sets out to teach you something, or help you lose weight, or make you relax or think, these are the standards it should be judged against! In particular I am seeing this happen with a new Playstation 3 game called Afrika. Afrika seems pretty much like a realistic safari version of Pokemon Snap - you cruise around the African plains as a professional photographer shooting prize-winning photos of African species on the Serengeti. This game is suffering from the fate of a wide disparity between critics' scores and user scores, and I think the problem is the one I outlined above. Of course if you are a huge fan of Halo 3: ODST and you compare Afrika to that you will probably think it is boring! I haven't tried Afrika yet so I guess it could totally suck but I just can't believe that it deserves IGN's score of a 3.5 "Bad". Lucky for me I still get my GameStop privilege of "signing out" a game for a few days like a free rental - I think this game is the perfect candidate as, well, it's just not a good time to be spending $50 on a glorified Pokemon Snap!

Anyone out there tried Afrika yet? What did you think?

new super mario bros wii preview

Many Wii gamers are eagerly anticipating the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, coming out November 15th. Fans of the classic Mario series will be glad to know the upcoming Mario Bros. game will actually challenge your gaming skills. One of my favorite sources for upcoming game news and very detailed reviews, Game Trailers, has an awesome preview video of New Super Mario Bros. Wii showing the co-op gameplay and other exciting aspects of the highly anticipated game. Check out the video and get excited about playing Mario Bros. with a bunch of friends, all on the same TV screen (what a concept in these days of online multiplayer only, right?)!

this potential wii game sounds cool

So I randomly came across mention of this game called Sadness for the Wii recently and although it doesn't have a release date for the US that I could find, it does sound pretty cool and I would love to try it if I could. It looks to be a survival-horror style adventure game with a story centered on a Victorian-era woman and her blind son in turn-of-the-century Russia. Claiming to make you face your greatest fears, the game deals with themes of paranoia, schizophrenia and nyctophobia, a.k.a. fear of the dark. The game uses the Wii's nunchuk and wiimote controllers as the character's hands, giving the player a sense of immersion into the plot. The latest news on this game is from over a year ago so who knows if this title is languishing on some developer's desk somewhere. IGN has some pretty cool images that look like concept designs more than anything else, but they do look scary and cool. The game is in all black and white and would be a nice addition to the small but growing library of Wii games aimed at older gamers.

this is kind of an outrage

Nintendo is probably my favorite of the Big Three game publishers but I'm a little pissed off this weekend after discovering two pretty annoying slights that they've pulled with regards to Wii Sports Resort and the MotionPlus Controller. First, don't get your additional MotionPlus at GameStop (as we did of course); turns out Nintendo is pricing the controller add-on at $25 at GameStop whereas every other freaking retailer is selling it at its MSRP of $19.99. Hella lame. Second (and more grievous in my opinion) offense: when we bought our copy of Wii Sports Resort, it came bundled with one MotionPlus and we bought one extra for the above ripoff of $24.99. Now, not even a month later, there is a "limited" Wii Sports Resort bundle for $60 with TWO MotionPlus controllers. As it should have been originally considering that WSR's true value definitely comes in multiplayer mode. So being the loyal Nintendo brand fans and Wii players that we are, we dropped an extra $20 overall on our purchase of WSR and the MotionPlus add-ons that supposedly will be an important feature of tons of new great Wii games. So anyway, like with many other annoying life-isn't-fair moments, lazy gamers who don't want to support new innovative products are getting rewarded for holding their money until the companies have a chance to respond to the dumbass decisions they made in the first place. Hella. Laaaaaame. Boo on you, Nintendo, I hope this isn't a trend you're adopting.

cops caught playing wii during drug raid

Not much to say about this one except: hilarious! A bunch of cops were caught playing Wii Bowling while raiding a drug dealers house in Florida. Those officers should probably just spring for a break room Wii especially once the rumored price drop happens. You have to figure that a drug dealer probably has a lot of disposable income and most likely an awesome video game collection and home entertainment system. People everywhere need to realize that between camera phones and the internet it is not safe to do anything you shouldn't be doing while on the clock.

Florida cops caught playing video game during raid

finally finished professor layton 2

I have to admit, I've been playing Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box almost exclusively since I got it and with 22 hours logged into the DS game, I finally reached the end! I did my best to play the game through completely and while I have not yet ventured back out into the game to find the last few things I didn't do, I feel pretty good about my efforts. I found and solved 136 of 138 puzzles, completed the camera and hamster mini games and the subsequent camera-photo hidden puzzle minigame, and unlocked three of the five Layton's Challenges options in the Bonus section. I thoroughly enjoyed the Diabolical Box and found it to be a fun and innovative followup to Professor Layton and the Curious Village. If I had to find one fault with the game I would agree with reviews I read that criticize the seemingly random use of voice acting - it isn't just in cutscenes but it isn't in every scene and sometimes it's like one character gets a voice actor and the one he's talking to doesn't... plus the voice acting was just a wee bit questionable what with every voice being obviously a Japanese actor behind it despite what the accent was supposed to be. Nevertheless, this game was totally awesome and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves challenging puzzle games and cute animation and music, whether you've played the first game or not. Two thumbs up for sure.

cursed mountain is out

I haven't had all that much time lately to spend playing video games (horrors, I know!) but one that I really am anxious to try out for sure is Cursed Mountain, which came out on the Nintendo Wii this week. Cursed Mountain is a survival horror game that follows a mountaineer searching for his brother who disappeared on his way to a monastery in the mountains. The animation looks gorgeous for a Wii game and the M-for-mature rating makes me want to support it just to get more games like it into development. There are only a few reviews up so far and the game seems to be scoring around a 7 out of 10 for the most part. From what I have read it sounds like the game suffers from the typical Wii issues of wacky motion controls that sometimes feel tacked on, but otherwise the game seems like a really interesting adventure title. I love games with well-developed stories and plot progressions and it seems like Cursed Mountain is a winner there. Anyone out there tried this one yet?

pokemon ds remakes headed to US

The long-anticipated remakes of second-generation Pokemon games Gold and Silver now have a release window and are expected to arrive in the North American market sometime during spring of 2010. The new titles remade for the Nintendo DS are Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver; these new versions of the GameBoy Color games released nearly 10 years ago will feature updated graphics and sound as well as newly added touch controls. Gold and Silver introduced a ton of new monsters, pokemon breeding and a day-and-night system tied to real time. With these upcoming DS releases a whole new generation of Pokemon addicts will get to experience the original metallic Pokemon titles.

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver headed to America this Spring

xbox 360: epic fail!

The new issue of Game Informer includes a feature article profiling the sales and durability numbers of the hardware consoles from the three major game companies. The magazine conducted a survey asking gamers to report incidents of hardware failure, quality of customer service received, and instances of repeat purchases of the same console. The results were not so good for Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 console is now in the spotlight for highest rate of failure, fewest customers satisfied with service, and most repeat purchases compared to the Sony PS3 and the Nintendo Wii. The report also indicated that on average a 360 took about a month turnaround to be repaired whereas the Sony and Nintendo consoles trended more towards a week. I have been lucky (knock on wood) to not have suffered a Red Ring of Death but have often theorized that this hardware failure is responsible for Microsoft's gleefully high hardware sales numbers, and this study seems to be implying the same thing. The 360 may have some good game titles going for it but its dependability and customer service are sorely lacking. Still, only 3.8% of respondents said a hardware failure would make them not buy another 360, so until Xbox gamers learn to value their hard-earned money and stop wasting it with Microsoft, the company really has little motivation to alter what has proved to be a crazy successful business model of shoddy manufacturing and guaranteed repeat purchases.

busy busy lately

It's been over a week since I posted anything here and I am setting out to break this bad habit I've fallen into. Things have been crazy busy for me between my two jobs and, well, it's summer and there are more fun places to spend time than in front of a computer writing a blog. Still, I am doing my best to find time to get some gaming in here and there. I have been playing quite a bit of Sims 3 lately and finally took the chance on setting up a Sim with the Evil trait. In fact, he is not only Evil but also Insane and Inappropriate! These traits really do make for some hilarious situations, like the friendly interaction options of "Talk About Conspiracies" (his brother is Neurotic so this is their favorite conversation topic) and "Speak Madness", which has become my go-to social interaction to use. In addition to the Sims I also managed to get a perfect score and a medal on the Crop Stomp level of Rhythm Heaven that has plagued me for a long time. It definitely helps sometimes to take some time off from a game and approach it again later. I've also been doing a fair amount of rocking out in Guitar Hero, which coincidentally has a prominent cameo in Orphan, the (very scary and disturbing) movie I saw last night.

wii sports resort

The long-anticipated follow-up to Wii Sports arrived over the weekend and predictably sold well thanks to many advance online orders as well as reservations in-store. Wii Sports Resort includes many new sports including swordplay, table tennis and frisbee! I haven't picked this one up yet as it does require the Wii MotionPlus controller add-on (one is included but of course who wants to play Wii Sports one player?). Eventually we will surely add this one to our collection as it looks like a great new game for social occasions or just kicking back with some beers. IGN gave Wii Sports Resort a 7.7 "Good" which is pretty fabulous for a Wii game these days.

IGN: Wii Sports Resort Review