ATEI is here again, to give us mere mortals a glimpse into the terrifying under belly of the so called Arcade industry in, well, Europe? United Kingdom? London? It's probably only representative of Earls Court, for those 3 days, and if Arcade looked like this, I should've worn a suit for the last 20 years of my life.
ATEI comes around again, and requires investigation (will Love and Berry make an appearance three years running?).
With a subtle shift towards prize machines, and Sega pushing their UFO Catcher hard yet promising their largest showing yet, curiosity abounds.
This right here is it. Available right this second on Xbox Live, for mere pennies, the best arcade game in an age. Synapse firing, adrenaline rushing, instinct driving, bright, wild and neon-fucked. You don't really need to read this review, just go and buy it now.
Don't believe me? Alright, that is a little slim. Space Giraffe is the spiritual successor to Tempest 3000 and Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter's personal rebuild of David Theurer's 1980 arcade original. Except, Space Giraffe really isn't Tempest at all. An inspired piece of design turns everything inside out.
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I’m sick and tired of the debate surrounding the Wii remote. Is it a gimmick or revolution? None of that matters one iota after five seconds with Konami’s Elebits, because in the time it takes to grab your first virtual object with the remote, twist it push it, pull it and fling it away you realise that this game can only work with the Wii’s controls. For the first time ever you’re actually touching a virtual world and the uniqueness of that feeling is paradigm shifting in the same way that anyone who can remember using a mouse for the first time will understand.
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'Doctors and nurses' - most of us have played it, either as children or adults. It's a subject matter that lends itself well to high drama, something borne out by the raft of medical soaps and documentaries bombarding our television screens on a daily basis. Given the right treatment there's huge scope for translating the tension of the operating theatre into a video game, especially on the Nintendo DS, with the stylus making an obvious scalpel, and the touch screen acting as human tissue to get stuck into. Trauma Centre takes this synergy between the DS hardware and the surgical profession, and then runs with the idea slap-bang into a brick wall of unimaginative narrative and poor level design.
Read MoreAnother year, another chance for myself and Madbury to snag some Love & Berry cards, and take some photos.
Fear is not something that most people actively go chasing, and yet horror texts are a large part of our day to day life. It’s that whole feeling of controlled fear, the ability to let oneself descend into a world of savagery, sickness and madness, yet always feeling safe in the knowledge that the real world is only a button press away, that allows us to immerse ourselves in these somewhat disturbing flights of fantasy. Whatever the reason, Condemned is a rare treat for those who like their games to give them that thrill.
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I never ’got’ Shenmue. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a masterpiece and all, but if you're like me then your love affair with the Dreamcast was all about big whiz-bang games like Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio. If you're like me then you spent a day playing the game, thought "Wow, how incredible that people are finally making games the way they should be made," and then went off to handgun-only-finish Resident Evil 2 for the fourteenth time. If you're like me then you still wake up in the night thinking about your only-partially-consensual molestation in secondary school by a younger boy named Truro.
If you're like me, then maybe you need a bit of Ally of Justice in your life.
Read MoreMyself and JibberX went New York queuing, Wii style, for the midnight launch at Toys 'r' Us. We came back happy.
Video A - Mix 5
What an oddball release Rhythm Tengoku is. On the face of it we have a fairly standard rhythm action game, but as we've come to expect from the developers who gave us Wario Ware the gameplay is divided up into a series of self contained and unique mini games, something previously unseen in the genre. Stranger still, lurking within Rhythm Tengoku's extra modes is a perfectly implemented six piece drum simulator which just might prove to be more of a draw than the main game itself.
Final Fantasy III is one of my favourites in the series. It combines the hardkore oldskool sensibilities of tne 80s with the marvellous open-ended job system which made Final Fantasy V famous in the 90s. It's wedged just between the games which are not noteworthy enough to warrant a remake and the ones that are good enough already without messing. One could argue that if any of the old FFs deserved a bells-and-whistles update rather than a straight port, it was this one.
Video AGoing shopping can drive you blind with rage, the queues, the prices and that doesn’t even take into account items being stocked. Donkey Kong certainly suffers from this problem, whilst channel-flicking DK found himself drawn to purchasing the new mini Mario toys. In a shopping frenzy, he found out they were totally sold out. Anger gets the better of this primate, and he breaks into the Mario factory and steals the mini Mario’s!
Ever since Satoru Iwata has taken helm of Nintendo, the company’s direction has changed radically. Completely new consoles have been launched, new gameplay mechanics have been devised and new intellectual properties have been created. Geist is a beacon amidst this more diverse portfolio that sums up a new Nintendo. Taking a stale genre like the FPS and mixing it up to create a hybrid of styles is part of this fresh, globally aware initiative.
I've had a rabbit jumping off whales to reach the moon, a trampolining pair that turn into foxes, shooting ghosts with a bow and arrow, plucking facial hair from onions, a flying witch watering magical flowers, and it just goes on from there. Imagination, caution to the wind, madness throughout, just outstanding.
Click this page for more thoughts, videos and pics.
http://www.opensenses.com/features/rhythm-tengoku-videos-and-first-impressions
Well, then, LocoRoco... where do you begin? Sony have at last come up with a game tailored for simple portable fun; something they can finally, maybe, hopefully lord it over Nintendo with. It's a bloody good stab at it too. Out go streetgangs, lazily-coded ports, and duff control schemes and in comes simplicity and an attachment to squealing emotive little singing blobs of colour. Are we on for a win here? It certainly seems that way. Reading the video game forums out there (not recommended), you'd think this was the second coming.