Frogger

Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Konami
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail

Xbox Live Arcade has been doing a bit of counter-programming the past couple of weeks. While everyone else releases, um...nothing, they're debuting a new game a week for download. The first was Frogger, a game that's more memorable and fondly remembered for its quirky premise than for being a fun game. Thing is, Frogger is really difficult. The game demands near inhuman patience from players. And as sure as those fricking turtles will dive on your ass, there's sure to be some new high scores set by players of this incarnation of the game. And that I'm down with.

What I wasn't too happy with was the updated look of the game. In fact, I was pretty ticked until I discovered that you could swap the game back to its classic form by changing the options in the pause menu. For some reason, this feature isn't available in the top options menu.

Anyway, if you're interested in game design, Frogger is worth a download just to see how not to overhaul a classic game. Digital Eclipse managed to make the game uglier than the chunky original. And the "richer" melodies they programmed to replace the bleep and bloops made Frogger sound more like a slot machine than a video game. Very tacky.

I'm sure Xbox Live Arcade is recording which version of the game players prefer. And knowing my luck, folks probably prefer the new one. The conspriacy nut in me wonders if that isn't why Digital Eclipse buried the old school option in the less-obvious pause menu. It would be a shame for the graphical overhaul portion of the game's budget to suddenly be determined unnecessary.

Oneechanbara X

Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: D3
Review Type: Looky
Version: Trailer


The "Simple" series from D3 is a bargain-priced line of mostly bad games. Lately, though, some developers have been throwing some kooky concepts at the wall. The Zombie vs. Ambulance and Daibijin, in which Godzilla-sized babes clad in bikinis attack are prime examples.

The Oneechanbara games are hack and slash in the vein of Dynasty Warriors. The twist, of course, is that your sword-wielding avatar is wearing only a cowboy hat and a skimpy swimsuit.

Jonnyram of the NeoGaf forums clued me into the word play in the game's title. Oneechan is means "sister" or "girl" and chanbara (which I knew from being a martial arts nerd) means "sword fight." Sister Swordfight has a bit of Tarantino kinda ring to it doesn't it?

You gotta wonder if games like Oneechanbara that have been fairly cheap up until now, will remain interesting at next gen pricing. The YouTube link below lists the game as a Simple 2000 release -- which would imply that the game cost 2000 yen, or around $17.15. Very unlikely. But who knows? Right about now folks in Japan should be getting very creative in their attempts to make money off the unpopular Xbox 360. We'll see what D3 has to say for themselves in the coming weeks.

Trailer here.
Official website here.

Portal

Platform: PC
Publisher: Valve
Review Type: Looky
Version: Trailer


Portal is a puzzle/shooter hybrid from Valve. In a nutshell, the game is a locked room maze game. The player creates passages out of deathtraps by shooting entry and exit portals onto walls, then passing themselves or other objects through the man made rifts. Essentially, it's a game built around those Acme-brand portable holes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

A friend of mine showed this trailer to his grandmother, who response to the game's fast and loose bending of the laws of time and space was "I don't even know what I just saw."

The game, along with Team Fortress 2, will come bundled with the purchase of Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Trailer here.

Next Gen Star Wars

Check out some next gen pre-visualization from Lucas Arts at Youtube. And do it quick because, you know, it's Youtube.

Video

Heroes

Platform: Wii
Publisher: Marvelous
Review Type: Looky
Version: Trailer

The Wiire has new details on Heroes, a Wii title by Killer 7's Suda 51. The game shares a similar stylized look (a brilliant work around for the console's modest horsepower). I dig the urban/grafitti flavor in the trailer as well. The game's story, with paid killers competing to climb the hit man pop charts, seems a lot like Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera. I betting that rising up the ranks, offing each of your competitors at a time, will make for tidy story-telling vignettes very similar to the way that Killer 7 was broken up.

The game is due in 2007 in both the U.S. and in Japan

Watch the video here.
Video link fixed. The Wiire story MIA.
Thanks, GameSetWatch!

New Review

Go read my X-Play review of Big Brain Academy. Watch the video review too, the segment producer game up with some funny gags around the game's host, Dr. Lobe. It's no easy feat making entertaining TV with footage handheld game.

Hey! I found my Magnetica review as well!

Late to the Party: Hexic

Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail


I find myself playing Xbox Live Arcade way more often than I expected to. Most of the games there can be found in some other shape or form elsewhere. But I'm not the type to look go looking for games in the MSN portal. Just not my scene, I suppose.

So when I don't feel like re-engaging the myriad quests I'm juggling in Oblivion or taking another pass at learning how to play Ghost Recon, I settle down for a game of Hexic. The game was designed by Alexy Pajitnov, the brain behind Tetris. Yet two puzzle games couldn't be more different. Where Tetris is comes at you in a steady stream, forcing you to think and react on your feet, Hexic trickles.

In Marathon mode you're given all the time you want to ponder your moves. And if you want to beat the game, thoughtful play is vital. One ill-advised spin can trigger an avalanche, destroying an hour of hard-won progress. And they call games like Hexic "casual" games.

Recommended

God Hand

Platform: PlayStation 2
Publisher: Capcom
Review Type: Looky
Version: Trailer



If Takashi Miike created a brawler it might look something like God Hand. No, the game isn't a yakuza game or totally over-the-top gory. It just looks gonzo -- like the end of Dead or Alive or pretty much all of Happiness of the Katakuris. Hints the the game will be more than a little wacky: the purple chihuahua and the spanking sequence.

This game has Shinji Mikami's name attached. With Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry and Killer 7 in his win column, the chances are good that this one will rock (and be more than a little challenging).

As per usual with unique Japanese titles, there's no word that the game will see Western shores.

Watch the trailer here.

Tingle's Rose-Colored Happy Land

Platform: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Nintendo
Review Type: Looky
Version: Scans

Tingle is the bane of many a Zelda fan. He's a twinkle-toed, 35-year guy who cosplays as an elf. He's a metatextual comment on fandom that makes American fans feel uncomfortable with the Peter Pan connotations of playing games. Because of all the Western hate we probably won't see this oddball offering for the DS. It's already been rumored that Mr. Kooloo-Limpah won't be in The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess because of all our whining. Thanks, jerks. First you kill Cel-da and now you banish Tingle.

Check out these Japanese magazine scans to see just how kooky Tingle's Rose-Colored Happy Land looks. The game looks like an RPG with the WarioWare art style. Can't beat that.

Scan 1
Famitsu Scan at NeoGaf

Update: The official Tingle Site is now up!
(via 4 Color Rebellion)

Late to the Party: Half-Life 2

Platform: PC
Publisher: Vivendi Universal
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail

Late 2004 was a bit depressing. I'd spent a quite a bit of money on a new video card and memory for my computer and still couldn't get Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 to run to my satisfaction. I put both games on indefinite hold. Eventually the throb of my gamer's blue balls faded. And then World of Warcraft, a game that looks and runs great on pretty much any crap computer, came out and I never looked back.

Almost two years later I've got a new computer with the horsepower to revisit both games. I'm glad I waited.

Half-Life 2 is astoundingly good. The game feels like a combination of my two favorite Disneyland attractions -- the dark ride and the shooting gallery. Like Mr. Toads Wild Ride the game tells a story by moving you through space. You move from one scene to the next propelled by curiosity, the drive to survive and the search for weapons, heath and ammunition. The pacing of the game is remarkable considering the fact that loading screens break up the action. I admire the way Valve punctuates the moments between balls-out action set pieces with thoughtful puzzles. I love the God-like feeling that came over me when my gravity gun begins to work on flesh and blood. "So this is what it feels like to be a Jedi," I thought to myself as I flung guards over railings with the flick of my wrist. The game's finale, set in the Gilliam-esque interior of the towering Combine, is probably the easiest part of the game, but it was easily the most exhilarating.

Recommended

Playing with Explosives

Crazy Idiots
Half-Life 2 Chain Reaction
Mob Vicious: SOCOM
RTS Suicide
Battlefield 2: Fun With C4
Radio 4: Exploding Grandpa Daft Punk! Yay!
Vice City: "The explosion wasted you."
Halo: Warthog Jump

Happy 4th!

Late to the Party: King Kong

Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Ubisoft
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail

King Kong is an interesting failure. I played through the game this weekend, finding it alternately engrossing and infuriating. Engrossing because it aims for immersion. And there are moments, like the time I found myself running between the legs of brontosauri with raptors in hot pursuit, that it suceeds. But the game tries too hard to shrug off the fact that it's a game and almost every time it does so it suffers.

Yeah, it's one of those games with no HUD, no health bar and no aiming reticle -- making every flubbed shot and death feel more unnessesary than waranted. And then there's the game's look, which yo-yos between gorgeous and butt-ass-ugly. The fleeting slices of beauty are far outnumbered by huge slabs of mediocre. Spend some time with your face shoved into an dimly lit cave texture while a giant centipede gnaws on your ass-cheek and your disposition won't be so rosy either.

I can't hate King Kong. It's a game that tried to soar above movie liscence mediocrity, but like all overachievers wound up taking a nosedive engulfed in flames. At the very least the game is an easy 1000 achievement points and a great cautionary tale for those who would take the "thinking man's shooter" premise too far.