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• Whatcha Playing: Earth Day Edition

  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. Read More... Posted Apr 22 2009, 04:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, playstation 3, nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, wii, wiiware, psn, chibi-robo, skip, eden, pixeljunk, pixeljunk eden, flower, earth, bonsai barber

• 4bidden Fruit - The Methadone For Your Eden Addiction

  Pixeljunk Eden was the first game to make me happy I'd "invested" in a Playstation 3. Unfortunately, I wound up investing a lot back into it. First there was the HDMI cable so the game –specifically designed for HDTVs – wouldn't be blurry and vague. Then there was the lack of sleep as Eden hypnotically pulled me through its lush gardens full of vibrant lights and sounds. Finally, there was the lost sense of reality, as I started to imagine myself as a grimp and looked up at the towering buildings in Manhattan, estimating how far I could fling myself from the top of each one in fruitless efforts to collect pollen. Dear reader, if you're like me, you need a gardening experience to wean you off of Eden safely and comfortably before you find yourself on a fire escape eyeing the opposite rooftop. Might I recommend 4bidden Fruit. Read More... Posted Jan 27 2009, 06:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: derrick sanskrit, addiction, eden, pixeljunk, pixeljunk eden, browser

• Trailer Review: Edge

  Take a gander at this trailer for Edge, the new iPhone/iPod Touch game released today by mobile phone game developer mobigame and feel the waves of nostalgia for a game you've never even played. In its presentation, Edge is equal parts Marble Madness, Q*Bert, and Tron, but it clearly has potential to be ever so much more. Read More... Posted Jan 05 2009, 03:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: marble madness, trailer review, derrick sanskrit, everyday shooter, edge, ipod, iphone, eden, pixeljunk, tron, echochrome, cubello, orbient, art style

• Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 3

  Catching up? Read part 1 and part 2. 5 - The World Ends With You (DS): The insanely ambitious action-JRPG probably makes the most use of all the DS hardware has to offer of all DS software with the possible exception of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and even then The World Ends With You does it with so much more style and flair that the comparison seems woefully unfair. It's clear that Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts team put years of thought and research into what the DS could and could not do and the result is a game that breaks all expectations like so many angsty teenage hearts. It takes a truly great game to affect me outside of my gaming time, and much like Wii Fit got me thinking about jogging to the train every morning, The World Ends With You got me wearing pins on my bag for the first time since college, picking out just the right ones that may, someday, save my life in heated battle. Oh lord, did I love that dual-screened battle system... Read More... Posted Dec 11 2008, 02:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: the world ends with you, little big planet, playstation 3, nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, wii, top ten, super smash bros, world of goo, super smash bros brawl, de blob, eden, pixeljunk, echochrome, pixeljunk eden, braid, cubello, top 10 of 2008, cicus atari

• Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals

  We here in the United States celebrate our nation's Thanksgiving tomorrow, one of the great national holidays where just about every office is closed as we gather with family and friends to eat, drink, be merry, and prepare ourselves for the brutal holiday shopping season that starts the very next day. Sony, who usually update their Playstation Store on Thursdays, saw fit to treat us to this week's updates a couple of days early to save us the trouble of fighting tryptophan-induced grogginess, and oh the treats they have in store! First, of course, is the weekly free costume for LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy, a turkeyface. Hilarious, yes? No? Hmm, well maybe these next few items will give you something to be thankful for... Read More... Posted Nov 26 2008, 01:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: little big planet, playstation 3, derrick sanskrit, sony, super street fighter 2 turbo hd remix, the last guy, eden, echochrome, thanksgiving

• Whatcha Playing: Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!

  It's always a curious thing when games are sold exclusively at one chain of stores. I can understand if, hypothetically, Big Box Store shells out big bucks to have the exclusive sales of Frat House FPS Sequel. The built-in fanbase will want the game and rush to the nearest Big Box Store, that store makes enough money to profit from their initial investment, and the publisher still got their game out there to the masses and made some extra cash while they were doing it. What bothers me is when smaller, somewhat unknown or niche games are exclusive to one store, making it harder to find and less likely that curious gamers unfamiliar with the property will give it a chance. I was worried when this happened last year with the long-awaited Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol which found its way exclusively to Wal-Mart shelves, but thankfully that game turned out wonderfully. And so now, some three months after its release exclusively to Toys R Us, I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Soul Bubbles for the Nintendo DS. I can't say whether it was worth added trouble of having to go find it, but I can say that so far it is one of the most enjoyable DS titles I've played in months. Read More... Posted Sep 23 2008, 03:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, boom blox, nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, lost winds, eden, eidos, soul bubbles, locoroco, mekensleep

• Quickies: Homestar Ruiner

  While we were all ridiculously pumped for Bionic Commando: Rearmed last week, there was another highly-anticipated downloadable game to tide us over for the first half of the week: Telltale Games' point-and-click WiiWare adventure Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode One: Homestar Ruiner. Odds are good that if you're on the internet you're already somewhat familiar with the world of Homstar Runner and its brash luchador masked star Strong Bad, and, if you're anything like me, you were with them from fhqwhgads and quit right around Cheat Commandos. A quick glance through the Toons section of the site shows that, like The Simpsons and Family Guy, I'm probably better off for having missed the past few years of redundancy. How does this bode for the first official H*R video game? Read More... Posted Aug 18 2008, 05:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wiiware, adventure, eden, bionic commando rearmed, cartoon, homestar runner, strong bad, telltale games

• Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher

  So you think PixelJunk Eden is a deliciously freeing, genre defying romp through psychadelia but that the whole experience is vaguely familiar somehow? Maybe that's because Eden was designed by the same dude who programmed Star Fox back on the Super Nintendo. In fact, a quick look at Dylan Cuthbert's history in game design shows a pattern of smashing game genre conventions, all the while producing addictive works of beauty. Way back in 1992, Dylan designed and programmed X, a first person shooter/puzzler that showed off wireframe 3D graphics on the Nintendo Game Boy, a feat that had never been achieved on the clunky grey box before OR after. Based on this exciting new style of gameplay, Nintendo hired Dylan's team at Argonaut Software to develop a 3D arcade shooter for the brand-new Super Nintendo. Read More... Posted Aug 11 2008, 02:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, game boy, derrick sanskrit, playstation 2, star fox, super nintendo, eden, pixeljunk, fun fact

• Chiptune Friday: Little Sound Disko

  It's hard to believe that this track by Japanese Chiptuner USK was composed on a Game Boy. It's not because of the limited sounds and effects, oh no, that all works just fine. It's because this song clearly requires many more colors than even the Game Boy Color was capable of producing. I present to you the Game Boy rave stylings of USK's "Little Sound Disko#05" Read More... Posted Aug 01 2008, 02:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: game boy, derrick sanskrit, chiptune friday, 8bitpeoples, eden, pixeljunk, USK

• Far Out, Man

  When the demo for PixelJunk’s latest play on genre convention, Eden, went live on the Playstation Network late last week, I was still knee deep in a country spanning jaunt, my only real gaming time devoted to quick sessions of Shiren the Wanderer and Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. I’ve been following Eden closely since Dylan Cuthber and Q Games started showing it off earlier this year, intrigued by its subdued yet dense pop-art visuals, deep house soundtrack, and its peculiar momentum-based play. Now that I’ve spent some time with the free appetizer hosted on PSN, I am, like Derrick, entranced by Eden. Beyond the basic satisfaction of moving through Eden’s gardens, its central theme of growth – your actions bring life to the environment resulting with subtle shifts in each garden’s music – is emblematic of the shift in the way games broadly can be classified. Read More... Posted Jul 31 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, derrick sanskrit, everyday shooter, phoenix wright, Playstation, psn, shiren the wanderer, eden, pixeljunk, echochrome

• Whatcha' (Wish You Were) Playing: How Does Your Garden Grow?

  Last night, PS3 owners got a special treat in the weekly Playstation Store update, and no, I'm not talking about the Street Fighter IV system theme – a downloadable demo of the newest game in the PixelJunk series, Eden. While I am enthused by the PixelJunk concept of innovative idea-based reasonably priced games, Racers and Monsters just didn't grab my attention. With my first playthrough of Eden last night, however, I was instantly smitten. In this garden-building action-puzzler, the player controls a small "Grimp" character, swinging on silk threads and jumping from calligraphic leaf to calligraphic leaf of thoroughly modern stylized garden. Crashing into pods releases clouds of pollen, which is gathered in seeds which can then be activated to sprout new plants, which allow you to travel farther, to even more seeds, pollen, and techno-organic bliss. It sounds complicated, and at first it feels like it too. I'm not ashamed to admit that I failed the first garden miserably (twice!), but the environment and surprisingly compelling physics were just so captivating that I couldn't stop. Read More... Posted Jul 25 2008, 03:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, derrick sanskrit, ps3, eden, pixeljunk