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• Shadow of the Colossus: First Impressions

  Fear not. Shadow of the Colossus is a pretty epic title, but I won't run to the computer and bang out a report every time I actually get Agro to run in the direction I want him to—though if you ask me, that's an accomplishment in itself. First impressions are fun to read, though, so I will accommodate the good readers of 61FPS. It probably won't surprise you when I say the presentation in this game is absolutely gorgeous. I usually give an opening cinematic ten seconds to please me before I mash the Start button, but when I sat back and watched Wander's ponderous but purposeful journey to the Temple, I felt something familiar pull at me. Like I was watching a favourite sequence from a well-loved movie. Various flashes of imagery and sound in this game already remind me of The Neverending Story, a book that never fails to instill me with a sense of solemn adventure despite multiple readings. Doubtlessly you already know that Shadow of the Colossus features a quiet, calming atmosphere that stands to be butchered by Hollywood, so I'll talk a bit about how it plays. What you need to know: this game is creaming me. Read More... Posted Apr 08 2009, 03:06 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: the legend of zelda, playstation 2, shadow of the colossus, nadia oxford

• Time For Me To Play Shadow of the Colossus

  From the Department of “Oh God, Why?” comes word of a Shadow of the Colossus movie. Hollywood has yet to get a game movie right, and there's no immediate reason to decide that the movie based on this Playstation 2 masterpiece will be any different. In fact, Justin Marks, the talented hero responsible for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li will be penning the script. May as well hunker down in the fallout shelter with your Civil Defence helmet pulled over your head. Feel free to sigh: that weary, defeated feeling that comes with most game movie announcements is no doubt familiar by now. What's especially sad is that a Shadow of the Colossus movie truly stands to be a heartbreaking waste of the source material. It's a game that thrives on its sparse atmosphere and quiet but riveting heroics. Sadly, Hollywood requires by law for action movies to waste approximately five words per second, and God only knows how it classifies video game movies. I suspect the categorization involves a filing cabinet marked “FOR AUTISTICS.” The Shadow of the Colossus movie is likely going to be very loud and it might contain jokes about horse boners. Admittedly, I am talking partially out of my bum. I have never played Shadow of the Colossus, but reading this dire news has driven me to bloody well start. Read More... Posted Apr 07 2009, 08:33 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 2, shadow of the colossus, game movies, nadia oxford

• Silent Hill, Killer 7 and Not Having Fun With Great Games

  I am less than taken with Bit.Trip Beat. Subsequent playings have not improved my opinion of the game. As I’ve gotten further into it, the fundamental flaws in its design I spotted at the beginning have been born out later in the game. Some people love it. I don’t. They think it’s fun. I don’t. C’est la vie. As I mentioned in my article about Bit.Trip, though, I don’t think that games need to be fun in order for them to be good. I was pretty vague in making my point though. 61FPS reader Kit wrote me an email last week to ask just what the hell I was talking about. How can a game be good if it isn’t fun to play? Isn’t fun implicit in the very act of playing? When’s a game good but not much fun? Read More... Posted Apr 06 2009, 10:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, super mario bros 3, silent hill, nes, konami, playstation 2, gamecube, super mario bros, wiiware, quantic dream, david cage, suda 51, silent hill 2, gaijin games, BIT.TRIP BEAT, silent hill shattered memories

• Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami

  Two truths. Today is March 13th. It will not be spring for another eight days. Also, the original soundtrack to Okami is not chiptune. At all. In fact, it is fully orchestrated and entrenched in traditional Japanese composition, a far cry from the heavy metal and pop roots of the blissed-out blip songs composed on the NES or similar consoles. Have you gone outside though? It is freaking gorgeous out there. It may rain, it may be cloudy, but the bitter miasma of late winter has lifted, washed away as if by… a celestial brush! Given, it’s likely that the fine weather is a result of the Earth’s natural solar orbit and axial spin, but I like to think that there’s a sun goddess wolf out there making it nice outside. I’m going to find her. We’ll go to the park and play fetch. Beautiful women will be all, “Oh your dog is beautiful!” And I’ll be all, “Check dis.” Then Amaterasu will make a bushel of fragrant botanicals grow at our feet. Here are three selections from the Okami soundtrack. Listen, be in bloom, and grab your DS or PSP. Go play outside today! The Great Goddess Amaterasu’s Revival Hit the jump for more fresh goodness. Read More... Posted Mar 13 2009, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, platinum games, wii, clover studios, capcom, atsushi inaba, sony, playstation 2, chiptune friday, okami

• Miami Law: Welcome Back Victor Ireland of Working Designs

  Somehow I missed Victor Ireland’s re-emergence last December. I shouldn’t be too surprised. It might be big news to me, but the return of a niche industry icon best remembered by a handful of geeks for his American localizations of niche videogames ten years ago isn’t exactly Edge Online headline news material. It’s sidebar at best. For everyone reading who doesn’t smile when they hear the word Alundra, here’s the score. Victor Ireland co-founded Working Designs. After opening in 1986, Working Designs was one of the only publishers in the Western world devoted to localizing strange Japanese games, particularly those JRPG things we enjoy so much here at 61FPS. Working Designs translations tended to be a bit strange, littered with juvenile humor and American pop culture references. They serviced a very small audience; not only were they putting out games in an unpopular genre, they had a habit of releasing them for doomed consoles like the Turbo-Grafx 16, Turbo CD, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn. Working Design’s golden age was when they started releasing Playstation games at the end of the 1990s. Read More... Posted Mar 04 2009, 08:05 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, working designs, playstation 2, sega, Playstation, lunar, sega cd, lunar the silver star, sega saturn, hudson, arc the lad, turbo grafx 16, turbo cd, gaijinworks, Miami law

• The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad

  Romanticizing the pre-internet age of games criticism is common amongst those of us born before 1990. With the presses stopped on Electronic Gaming Monthly, the last survivors of gaming print’s heyday are Gamepro and Nintendo Power. Those magazines still cater to the adolescent audience they always have, but they’ve lost all of their old schlocky appeal. It’s a good thing. Gaming print isn’t dead, and games criticism is slowly but surely emerging from its fandom-based larval form. Yeah the internet’s glutted with drivel, but there’s a lot of substantive, well-written study of the medium happening. *cough* One thing certainly hasn’t changed. Gamefan may be long dead at this point, but Dave Halverson is still publishing monthly volumes of unabashed fandom in Play. Play, like Gamefan and Gamer’s Republic before it, isn’t really criticism. The magazine doesn’t engage in heady intellectualism like Edge, but it also doesn’t fall into Consumer Reports-style, reviews-and-previews tradition of Gamepro. Halverson’s publications are professionally made ‘zines, literal love letters to the industry they cover. The furor surrounding Halverson’s praise for Golden Axe: Beast Rider a few months back was surprising. The man isn’t a critic. He’s a lover. He publishes The Girls of Gaming, for crying out loud. Despite his flighty editorial mandate, Halverson’s pubs have had a surprisingly lasting impact on North American gaming culture. Today, Treasure is an iconic development studio beloved the world over. Gunstar Heroes wasn’t responsible for that notoriety. It was Gamefan’s constant lionization of the company that birthed the cult of Treasure. Gamefan was, for me, a message in a bottle. Every single month, I would open an issue and be overwhelmed by bizarre foreign games I would never have a chance to play. And at the back of every issue waited the most cryptic and vexing passages of all: the advertisements for Halverson’s import games shop Game Cave. The ads were four-pages long and littered with miniscule pictures of games accompanied by nothing more than a title. That was where I saw this. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, victor ireland, working designs, sony, playstation 2, play, gamecube, Playstation, nintendo power, golden axe, xbox, gamepro, vagrant story, arc the lad, golden axe beast rider, gamefan, arc the lad collection, maximo, gamer’s republic, tactics ogre

• Do Girlz REALLY Rock? - Liveblogging Bratz

  Our fearless Editor-in-Chief knows a few too many things about me. He knows I love any excuse to turn on my Wii. He knows that I have a soft spot for "girl games". He knows that I spent many a summer at performance art camp. I could see the wicked smile peeking out from behind all of his best attempts to hide it when John handed me a copy of Bratz: Girlz Really Rock for Wii with the simple request of liveblogging my first play session. I resisted, I recoiled, but ultimately I relented. With President's Day off and a lingering Valentine's Day hangover to soothe, the time was ripe for bright colors and vapid pre-teen idols: Read More... Posted Feb 17 2009, 04:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wii, playstation 2, girl gamers, bratz

• Trailer Review: Demon’s Souls

  From Software, you guys got some weird in your blood. Who in the hell makes console exclusives these days? Not only that, who in the hell makes exclusives for every console on the market? And who in the hell makes console exclusives that are spiritual successors to cult hits that were console exclusives in the previous generation? You guys, whew, you guys are nutty. You’re nutty nut bars and I love it. It’s a big month for From Software. Just last week in Japan, they released Ninja Blade on Xbox 360. Ninja Blade is a third-person action game that is a modernization, in both tone and technology, of their Xbox-only franchise Otogi. Today, they released Demon’s Souls in the land of the rising sun. Demon’s Souls is the Playstation 3 version of From’s PS2 oddity King’s Field, a series of distinctly western RPGs full of the dungeon crawling and character customization Elder Scrolls fans go ga-ga over. As you can see from this trailer, Demon’s Souls is a real odd duck. Read More... Posted Feb 04 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, trailer review, microsoft, xbox 360, sony, playstation 2, xbox, king’s field, Demon’s souls, ninja blade, otogi, from software

• Get Your Tensor Bandage: Wii-Whip Action Comes With New Indiana Jones Game

  Lucasarts recently opened its mouth and spilled its guts on Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for the Wii, the Playstation 2 and the current family of handheld systems. I feel like I'm in a brave new world: my brain's having a hard time remembering when Indiana Jones games didn't feature a squat, plastic yellow protagonist with pincer-hands and a primitive drawn-on smile. Not to say we're not old enough to remember such a time. Sigh. The Wii version of the game will (of course) feature waggle. The press release plays the gimmick up in the obvious manner: “Wield your Wii Remote™ like Indy's signature whip for a variety of uses — from combat to navigation to puzzle-solving.” Oh boy. I'll leave the light on for you, tendinitis. Read More... Posted Feb 03 2009, 10:32 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: wii, playstation 2, indiana jones, retro, nadia oxford, lego Indiana jones, indiana jones and the temple of doom, waggle, indiana jones and the staff of kings

• At Least Batman: Arkham Asylum's Story Will Be Good

  It’s been pretty disheartening to see so many people losing their game industry jobs these past few months. First and foremost, it’s terrible to see thousands of talented people out of work. It’s also tragic to see so many games get cancelled. I’m still upset that Free Radical’s Star Wars Battlefront 3 will never come out. That game looked unbelievable. That’s not always the case with cancelled games though. For example, I think the world’s a better place now that Pandemic’s The Dark Knight tie-in won’t clog up shelves across the land. From the sounds of it, that game was troubled with a capital OUBLED. It’s cancellation also means that Rocksteady Games’ original Batman game, Arkham Asylum, will have a much better chance of getting noticed by the millions upon millions of people obsessed with Bruce Wayne and Joker. This new trailer doesn’t have any play in it, so it’s pretty useless for giving an impression of Arkham Asylum as a game. What it does have is plenty of story. Competently written and awesomely voiced story. Read More... Posted Jan 29 2009, 08:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, trailer review, xbox 360, PC, playstation 2, the dark knight, eidos, batman, urban chaos, rocksteady games, pandemic, arkham asylum

• Sony’s New Year’s Resolution

  For all intents and purposes, 2008 was an excellent year for Sony and the Playstations. Was it the salad days of 2001, when the Playstation 2 was coming into its own and Sony was crushing every proverbial ass in the world? Certainly not. But the Playstation 3 managed to finally get itself a stable of quality exclusives that weren’t completely ignored by the public and panned by the media. The Playstation Portable, despite receiving only a scant few notable games, had a banner year in Japan and continued to grow its install base in the rest of the world. The Playstation Network worked out a few of its kinks, and even if it’s the ugliest baby since Sloth, at least Home launched. And the good ol’ Playstation 2 continued, eight years after its birth, to both sell and play host to great new games. The end of the year, however, did not look so hot. The Playstation 3 got trounced by its competitors leading up to Christmas. You see, it didn’t matter how damn good Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rim, or Valkyria Chronicles were. What mattered is that the average person in every country where the system is sold does not have $400 for a videogame console right now. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, motorstorm, psp, sony, playstation 2, Playstation, littlebigplanet, resistance 2, valkyria chronicles

• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Character

  Next time you start telling somebody about a game you were playing — not a puzzle game or anything equally abstract — pay attention to how you refer to what you were doing in the game. Are you saying, “Then I jumped on the goomba!” or are you saying, “Then my guy jumped on the goomba!” Is it you finding the boomerang or is it Link? Are you driving the car, making the basket, managing the farm? Or is it your proxy, that little character walking about when you push a button to the right, that window meant to be a human being’s field of vision? As much as I thought about open worlds in 2008, I spent just as much time wondering what role character plays in great game design. A great game character doesn’t need to be one specific thing. It can be you, a literal representation of how you see yourself physically and even spiritually. It can also be a suit for you to put on, a fiction that you can inhabit, a doorway into story that isn’t just different from your daily life, but quite literally impossible. There was no shortage of astounding games in 2008, but there were a handful that, for me, were wholly defined by how they let you inhabit their characters, and characters made both for and by the player. In my first look back at ’08, I mentioned how it was character that ultimately kept me from getting the most out of Grand Theft Auto IV. There was just too much dissonance in how Niko Bellic was represented. There were three Nikos. There was the Niko you see speaking in cutscenes, a haunted, practical man of honor, making a new life for himself in a new country by hunting down the demons of his past. There was the Niko you guided through the game’s structured missions, a ruthless, opportunistic murderer who would destroy anything and anyone for a buck. And, finally, the Niko that you played, the blank slate who could do anything in Liberty City, whether it was enjoying a nice walk on the beach or assaulting an international airport with nothing more than a motorcycle and a baseball bat. At no point in GTAIV did these three Nikos meld into a single character, and the constant contradictions between them made it impossible for me to enjoy the game after a certain point. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Yakuza 2 (my absolute favorite game of 2008) were two of last year’s greatest achievements precisely because they didn’t fall prey to GTAIV’s representational failures. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 06:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, top ten, gta, playstation 2, mario, soul calibur, peter molyneux, yakuza, yakuza 2, best of 2008, soulcalibur iv, fable ii, kazuma kiriyu, old snake, goomba, solid snake

• Katamari Christmas - Rediscovering the Cosmos... Twice

  December 23rd, I'm home for the holidays, as are both of my sisters. I am just finishing my self-appointed task of the morning by clearing 100% of the Chroma Dam in de Blob when my elder sister asks what the gameplay is like and if she can learn. I begin to describe and then compare the feeling to that of Katamari Damacy. She is intrigued. I hand her the case to the original Katamari Damacy for Playstation 2. Her eyes light up as she pages through the manual. "Can I play this one?" "Sure." I turn off the Wii and go to make some tea. "Can I play it now?" "Oh, um...yeah, okay!" A bit of background very quickly. My sister is not an avid gamer, but she is also not a n00b. She is at present the typical "casual" gamer. She plays Brain Age, Wii Fit, Guitar Hero and Scrabulous, but to the best of my memory she has not touched a traditional platformer since the original Super Mario Bros. And now here she was, playing a cult-hit Japanese game that required not one analog stick, but two! Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 06:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wii, playstation 2, casual, katamari damacy, iphone, namco, christmas

• Sony Might Just Hate You

  Even before the company’s dramatic fall from grace, there has been a number of reasons a discerning individual might think that Sony hates them. The original Playstation had a failure rate to challenge the Xbox 360’s and the first DualShock controller didn’t become a pack-in with the system for months after its release. The Playstation 2 launched at a pricey $299 and that price held until May of 2002 when Sony suddenly and without forewarning dropped it to $199, leaving thousands of gamers out a hundred bucks when a simple press release could have saved them the trouble. The PSP launched and its screen was plagued by dead pixels and the Playstation 3 cost half a grand at the cheapest when it launched in ’06. One day, they’re committed to backwards compatibility and against rumble in controllers, and the next they’re asking you drop sixty smackers on a controller that shakes and backwards compatibility is for the birds. Yep. Sony hates you. Sony hates all of us. Well, today, Sony hates your potential creativity. Read More... Posted Nov 13 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, playstation 3, scee, psp, castlevania, sony, playstation 2, Playstation, psn, symphony of the night, castlevania iii, scea, alucard, dualshock

• Watcha Playing: The Palette Cleanser

  The past six weeks have been teeming with meaty, action games. I’ve been working through them slowly but surely, like an elegant seven course meal. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was thick, hot comfort fare, a brief appetizer of sloppy design coated in delicious Stormtrooper and rancor killing action. The game’s a buggy mess, really, the gaming equivalent of empty calories, but definitely satisfying. Then there was the dynamic horror duo of Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming, a soup and salad combo built to terrify. They didn’t really scare, but instead delivered visceral body simulations. Both games succeeded by making you constantly aware of your avatar’s physical presence and the heft of their actions, and they achieved this through a careful synergy between atmosphere and play. Yakuza 2 was truly the main course, a game I had no expectations for whatsoever that turned into an all time favorite. Its broad adventure, pulp tale of cops and crooks, and simple but ceaselessly engaging fisticuffs were nourishing, more substantial than anything released on current gen consoles. For dessert, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Another bonafide surprise, Ecclesia turned out to not be another retread through Igarashi’s decade-old formula, but a challenging successor to Castlevania 2 with fierce action whose variety and elegance was exceeded only by the game’s environments. Yes, it’s been a great month of big games, but it’s been the small things I’ve played in between them, games I’ve played for no more than a handful of minutes here and there, that have given the most *ahem* food for thought. Read More... Posted Oct 29 2008, 05:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, playstation 3, nintendo, star wars, nintendo ds, microsoft, xbox 360, wii, silent hill, silent hill homecoming, castlevania, sony, playstation 2, mega man, katamari damacy, fable 2, mega man 9, dead space, castle crashers, star wars the force unleashed, castlevania order of ecclesia, yakuza 2, wipeout hd

• Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid

  So I'm one of about three people who really enjoyed Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for the Playstation 2. It was pretty easy, pretty linear and pretty dull next to my personal Saviour, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but I really liked hatching and evolving the Innocent Devils. I had dragons, a phoenix, a maggot-gnawed crow named Bonnie Brae and some kind of deity that looked like the product of a questionable encounter between an angel and a devil. I am okay with alternative Pokemon raising. I was pretty excited when I heard Tokyopop is publishing a Curse of Darkness manga adaptation. I was even more excited when I landed a review copy. When I opened 'er up and was hit in the face by a red-headed lead boy named Ted, my excitement drained like a fratboy's bladder on a Sunday morning. Read More... Posted Sep 15 2008, 03:11 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: castlevania, playstation 2, manga, comics, nadia oxford, stupid kids, tokyopop, castlevania curse of darkness

• The Worst Voice Acting You Will Ever Hear, Guaranteed

  I have a certain attachment to atrocious video game voice acting, so I'm ashamed of myself for bypassing the exceptionally bad chatter in O3's Chaos Wars until something like ten minutes ago. There has never been anything quite this bad in the realm of voice acting, and if God truly loves His Creation, there never will be again. Oh sure, we can groan over "Jill Sandwich" and "WHAT AM I FIGHTING 4RRRRRRRR?????" (note the Pee-Wee Herman scream at the very end.) But even Resident Evil and Mega Man X4 had excuses: it was 1998 (or somewhere thereabouts), voice acting in video games was a Brave New World, and, more often than not, the "English" voice actors were actually Japanese people with a moderate grasp on English. If I were to offer a Japanese voice-over for an American-made game, we'd end up with a character whose commentary on the flaming destruction of his hometown wouldn't go far beyond, "Kawaii desu! Baka neko! Boku no Sexual Harassment!" Read More... Posted Sep 08 2008, 07:36 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 2, nadia oxford, voice acting, evil, o3, mega man x4, audio atrocities, chaos wars, resident

• 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

• Sonic Unleashed Wii: Should Dimps Be Trying Harder?

  Sonic the Hedgehog has the pull of a train wreck: no matter how tired you think you are of his lacklustre 3D adventures, you can't help but take a good long stare whenever one is announced. Sonic Unleashed, for example, exists only as a handful of screenshots and a couple of trailers, but gamers who insist they're thoroughly tired of the hedgehog are still finding plenty to mouth off about. The August issue of Nintendo Power created a stir with some new screenshots for the Wii version of the game. When compared to the preview material for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions, Sonic Unleashed for the Wii looks very...well, last gen. Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 01:00 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: wii, street fighter 4, playstation 2, sega, sonic the hedgehog, nintendo power, xbox360, sonic team, sonic rush adventure, dimps, super mario galaxy, sonic unleashed, playstation3, graphics, sonic and the secret rings

• Team Ico’s Fumito Ueda at the Nordic Game 2008 Conference

  As self-professed gaming aesthetes, we here at 61 Frames Per Second obviously have a deep and abiding love for the work of Sony Japan’s Team Ico and, more specifically, resident auteur Fumito Ueda. Ueda’s work on the Playstation 2, including the stylistic milestones Shadow of the Colossus and his team’s namesake Ico, are the go-to namedrops for anyone engaging in the persistent games-as-art discussion. His trademarks are characters that convey emotional depth through body language instead of dialogue and austere worlds that imply long histories and lost grandeur. It’s been three years since Shadow of the Colossus and the world’s been waiting with baited breath for any word regarding Ueda and Team Ico’s Playstation 3 debut. His recent talk alongside Siren designer Keiichiro Toyama on disruptive game design at the Nordic Game 2008 conference yielded no news on that project but provided some rich insight into his history in the industry and the early forms of his seminal works. Read More... Posted May 21 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, neogaf, sony, playstation 2, shadow of the colossus, ico, fumito ueda, team ico

• Alternate Soundtrack: Need For Speed: Underground vs Justice's †

  Written by Derrick Sanskrit Until 2003, the most serious racing game I'd played was probable F-Zero. This became a problem with my roommates, who LOVED racing games, and so I was baptized into the world with Need For Speed: Underground on the Playstation 2. Now, if your experience with this game was anything like ours, you loved every minute of gameplay to be found in NFS:U. The characters felt human and you felt genuine affection for Samantha and disdain for Eddie. The city felt alive, and oncoming traffic was a plaything to use to your advantage. Circuit races were intense, drift races were ego boosts, and drag races separated the hardcore from the wimps. Everything about the game just bubbled with glowing, neon awesome. Except for that soundtrack! Ugh! Read More... Posted May 20 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: alternate soundtrack, derrick sanskrit, daft punk, new rave, playstation 2, need for speed, f-zero, justice