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• A Few Thoughts on Wii Graphics

  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? Read More... Posted Mar 23 2009, 07:30 PM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: no more heroes, wii, madworld, amber ahlborn, graphics, art style, art design

• No More Heroes’ Suda 51 Writes About Action Figures. I Can't Stop Reading.

  I like to think that I’ve gotten less judgmental as I’ve gotten older, less willing to look down on others because they enjoy things I don’t. I’m still happy to look down on people for the way they act, the things they say, and the things they do, but my days of calling people assholes for listening to bad pop music are gone. Last weekend, while spending time with my extended family, my nineteen year-old cousin Mark spent a goodly while berating my thirteen year-old cousin Kara for her obsession with Twilight. “Those books suck. That movie sucks. It should all be destroyed! It’s terrible and stupid and I hate it!” First of all, there isn’t much honor in telling a thirteen year-old that what they like is stupid. It’s your job at thirteen to like stupid things. For example, I used to carry around a suitcase filled with all my Phish bootlegs. But more than that what’s the point in judging a person based solely on what they like? When I asked Mark why he hated Twilight so much, he answered, “Twilight ruined Hot Topic.” Yeah. Read More... Posted Mar 19 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, no more heroes, suda 51, killer 7, goichi suda, twilight, hot topic

• The 61FPS Review - MadWorld

  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. Read More... Posted Mar 16 2009, 11:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, platinum games, wii, madworld, 61fps review, sega

• Sailing the Internet Seas, Historical Preservation, and The Great Rumble Roses vs. Silent Hill vs. Metroid Dance Party Throwdown

  Beware! Sail too far to the east, brave soul, and you will come upon that most dangerous of seas. The sky changes to a sickly fresh bruise color, all angry purple and yellow, and the waves will toss madness and froth against the bow. Even the sturdiest ship, the steadiest mind, will be shaken by the foul humors waiting for them beyond the horizon. Ye have been warned. Beware! Beware the internet! I got lost in an internet vortex this afternoon. It all started innocently enough. Smooth sailing, reading Multiplayer’s interview with Steve Papoustis about Dead Space: Extraction. This led to Matt Hawkins’ Fort 90, and that’s when things started to veer off course. For anyone unfamiliar, Matt’s one of NYC’s great games journalists, but he’s also a madly prolific renaissance man. Fort 90 is a dangerous place, dense with images and text. It’s an easy place to lose your bearings, and that’s what happened to me. Matt linked to the Garry’s Mod work of one MrWhiteFolks. MrWhiteFolks made some spectacular high resolution images of No More Heroes character models stripped of their cel-shading. Very cool stuff. He also made this: Oh there’s more. Much more. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, metroid, no more heroes, resident evil, silent hill, gears of war, halo, resident evil 4, dead or alive, dead space, mtv, silent hill 2, dead space extraction, gmod, silent hill 3, rumble roses, fort 90, garry’s mod

• MadWorld: Actually a Pretty Even-Keeled World

  Unlike Bayonetta, Sega were all too happy to let me try out MadWorld yesterday. After a quick tutorial in the controls, I was thrown, for lack of a better phrase, into the deep end of Varrigan City. I walked away from the game thinking three distinct things: One: Ultra-detailed black and white games are as cool in practice as they are in theory, but I can see why there aren’t too many of them. Two: Platinum Games took Suda 51’s No More Heroes combat model and improved its accuracy and versatility in significant ways. Three: MadWorld’s kind of… boring. Read More... Posted Jan 29 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, no more heroes, viewtiful joe, platinum games, wii, madworld, bayonetta, atsushi inaba, sega, suda 51, god hand

• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Open World

  The strange thing about the way we delineate time is that repetition — twelve hours, seven days, twelve months, rinse, wash, repeat — tends to make everything feel cyclical. Come January, we stare forward, looking at the flow of hours to weeks like a one-way street full of fresh landmarks, memories, and conversations. But when we end up back at December, there’s a collective and pervasive sense of déjà vu, an overwhelming feeling that we’re suddenly back in the exact same shoes we were the last time it was December, and we take stock of everything we saw upon that fresh stretch of road as though we’ve come back to the start. We weigh the fruits of time’s passage and immediately compare them to what came before. Maybe that’s why those of us so obsessed with pop culture, who worship at the altar of creation and consumption, gravitate towards retrospective lists; we just can’t seem to help looking back right before we look forward again. I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out just how to quantify the videogames of 2008, wrestling back and forth with just what to say. There are games that, by the end of my time with them, I downright loathed, that I never wanted to play again, but that I couldn’t shake out of my brain thanks to one aspect of their design. I never managed to finish Grand Theft Auto IV because I was so repulsed by its schizophrenic depiction of character when it put so much emphasis on story (and more on that later.) GTAIV’s Liberty City, though, is something I still think about on an almost daily basis. It is one of the most beautiful and strange creations I’ve ever seen, something more than a photograph, sculpture or film thanks to the way you are allowed to inhabit it. The game’s goals are frustrating to achieve, its characters more personality than people, and its story is at odds with its interactivity. But its world is astounding, just real enough to be familiar, and just other enough to warrant exploring it when its real world inspiration is right outside your door. I hated Grand Theft Auto IV by the time I stopped playing it, but I have to bring it up here because 2008 was the year of the Open World for me. Read More... Posted Dec 16 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, no more heroes, burnout paradise, far cry 2, crackdown, top ten of 2008, mercenaries, elder scrolls, best of 2008

• Joe’s Top Ten Games of 2008 – Part Three

  The official mandate has come down from the top—that it is December, and we all write about games, so we all have to pick some arbitrary number of them that we enjoyed above all others this year. I am taking on this task in the way of our forefathers, using their traditional number (10) and order (from great to most greatest). Games were chosen for this list using a highly scientific list of criteria, including but not limited to dopamine levels, blood alcohol content, darts, and how well the box art fit into my photo mosaic of Satoru Iwata. Today is #4-#2.   4. No More Heroes I don’t think I’ve ever cackled with glee more often at a game than I have at No More Heroes. It’s the ultimate otaku fantasy simulator, and it revels in obsession and bombast. It’s also the ultimate otaku simulator, and it revels in loneliness and sociopathy. Were the clunky town-based elements a bad impersonation of western sandbox design, or a cynical elbow to the ribs of western sandbox design? Is it a legitimately great game or a bad game that’s ironically great, and could it somehow be both? And what was up with that real ending? For No More Heroes, a game that loves and hates itself in equal measure, these questions could be debated endlessly. The most outrageous game of the year, and the must-play of the last twelve months that most people didn’t. Read More... Posted Dec 15 2008, 11:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: no more heroes, Grand theft auto 4, rock band 2, joe keiser, top 10, top 10 of 2008

• Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1

  Yes, it's that most wonderful time of the year, when we make our lists and check them twice. As Bob and Cole have already pointed out, annual Top 10 game lists are popping up all over the place. I started organizing my own list over a month ago and had a very hard time leaving a few games out (come on, it was a pretty damn good year for games), and since thirteen has been my lucky number since the third grade I am now proud to present my own personal Top 13 Games of 2008, brought to you in three managable installments. Hopefully there'll be a little something for everyone. Let's get this party started: 13 - rRootage (iPhone/iPod Touch, ported from PC): You know what I always loved about the classic top-down shooters? Those huge, insane, too-many-flying-objects-on-screen-at-once boss fights. Wouldn't it be great if someone made a game that was just that? Oh, and if it were portable - fit right in my pocket. And it would be so sweet if I could play it with just one or two fingers and listen to whatever music I wanted to while I played. Yeah, that sure would be a dream. Oh wait... somebody made that game? And it's free? Woah... Read More... Posted Dec 09 2008, 01:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, wii, top ten, wii fit, ace attorney, iphone, goichi suda, top ten of 2008, 2008, rRootage

• Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

  While reading Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds’ sharp history of postpunk, I started thinking about videogames. I’m nothing if not predictable, I know. There’s a slight corollary between the gaming zeitgeist and punk rock. Not politically, of course. Videogames are, at least popularly, more conservative today than they’ve ever been. Just look at Bobby Kotick’s reasoning for dropping Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters from Activision’s release schedule: "[Those games] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” I realize that Activision is in the business of making money and not artifacts to inspire the human soul, but publicly stating that your publishing ethos is assembly-line-production makes it difficult to assess the creative merits of Guitar Hero: Buy This One Too, Just ‘Cause. No, videogames in 2008 are, like punk rock in 1974, taking a medium that’s become marked by excess and stripping it back to its most basic. Even beyond Capcom’s retro efforts and traditional two-dimensional, genre exercises (Braid, Castle Crashers) on Xbox Live, designers like DICE are trying to keep games simple and raw. Mirror’s Edge, for all of its visual polish, uses only three buttons for the bulk of its action and the game’s goals are uncomplicated (run to, run away.) Games are also trying to put the power of creation back into the audience’s hands. Halo 3’s Forge, LittleBigPlanet, and Maxis’ Spore might not be putting players into the guts of design, but they are inlets for everyone to make their own games. You don’t need to know how to play guitar to rock, and you don’t need to know C++, or draw, or write to make a game. Add these mainstream juggernauts to the booming independent dev scene, the confrontational tedium of games like No More Heroes (as Goichi Suda says, punk’s not dead,) and we may look back on the 2010s as gaming’s punk rock era. But how does punk lead to postpunk, the rebellion of aestheticism through the surreal and the futurist against the simplistic and traditional? What would that game even look like? Read More... Posted Nov 13 2008, 04:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, dice, no more heroes, halo 3, guitar hero, Ghostbusters, spore, activision, super mario galaxy, spectrum zx, mirror’s edge, goichi suda, bobby kotick, dues ex machine, maxis, simon Reynolds, punk, rip it up and start again, postpunk, brutal legend, best of 2008

• Sega "Gets" the Wii

  As previously stated, the Nintendo Wii is just about two years old now, well enough into its life cycle to no longer forgive developers for unfamiliar hardware restrictions and lazy ports (yes, I'm looking at you, Harmonix and Rock Band). Most people still look at the Wii as home of the goofy mini-game collection despite its having also hosted some truly unique and wonderful unloved gems like EA's Boom Blox, Ubisoft's No More Heroes, Capcom's Zack & Wiki and THQ's de Blob. There is one major game publisher, though, who seems hard-pressed to make the Wii completely awesome with a wide range of aggressive titles, and that publisher is (believe it or not) Sega. That's right, longtime Nintendo rival Sega. Kinda makes you wonder why the Dreamcast flopped... Read More... Posted Oct 31 2008, 12:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: boom blox, derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, wii, madworld, the conduit, sega, sonic the hedgehog, zack & wiki, dreamcast, sonic unleashed, sonic and the secret rings, de blob, house of the dead, samba de amigo, nights, sonic and the black knight

• The Revolution WILL Be Colorized

  It's easy to hate on third-party games for the Wii. A vast majority of them are quick and dirty ports or poorly constructed party games with a noticable deficiency in the fun department. Maybe that's why I get genuinely excited when a high quality third-party game comes along. Boom Blox was a blast (oh god, I'm sorry about that), No More Heroes was enthralling, SSX Blur was a great deal of fun after you took the time to relearn the controls. Unfortunately, none of those games sold particularly well. Let's hope that's not the case with the next Wii sleeper hit, THQ's de Blob. Read More... Posted Jul 02 2008, 10:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: boom blox, derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, wii, katamari damacy, de blob, thq, third parties

• Clover Returns, Heavy as Platinum

  While the final months of 2006 were exciting times – the Wii and Playstation 3 were released mere days apart while the Xbox 360, DS, and PSP really started to heat up content wise – it was also a time of mourning. Just after the release God Hand and Okami, Clover Studios disbanded. Parent company Capcom absorbed much of the staff while the designer trinity of Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil), Hideki Kamiya (Devil May Cry), and Atsushi Inaba (Viewtiful Joe) went off to form a new independent studio. Clover’s games were true rarities in the industry, each one an artistic ziggurat built on a foundation of violently colorful worlds and idiosyncratic mechanics. Viewtiful Joe’s comicbook world of an empowered movie buff that found the player manipulating the action with VCR commands, Okami’s sumi-e fantasia that allowed the player to literally exert their will on the world through painting; truly special stuff. That’s why it’s so exciting that yesterday’s rumors about their new games turned out to be absolutely true. Read More... Posted May 13 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, devil may cry, infinite line, no more heroes, shinji mikami, viewtiful joe, platinum games, resident evil, wii, hideki kamiya, psp, clover studios, madworld, capcom, bayonetta, atsushi inaba