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Sony sued over PS3 firmware update

Owners of PlayStation 3 systems that have been broken by the latest firmware update have filed suit on behalf of everyone who downloaded system update 3.0 or 3.01. Two gamers from Texas and Iowa allege that the latest update caused PS3s consoles to malfunction, with problems including loss of controller use and the malfunction of the Blu-ray drive.

Their main complaint seems to be that Sony is charging a $150 fee to repair the consoles that were broken by the firmware update. The two are now seeking a class-action lawsuit against Sony.

Back in 2006, an owner sued Microsoft for bricking his console with an update and settled out of court.

A Tetris chair

There’s no denying that Tetris is close to the heart for many people, the brick-puzzle game has inspired artists for decades, including Mexican industrial designer Gabriel Canas, who designed the Tetris chair you see above. It’s not available for purchase anywhere, as it’s still a concept, with the only specimen planted at Canas’ own home.

Damn, Nintendo censors a swear word in Metroid Prime Trilogy

Nintendo has actually gone ahead and censored the dialog of Admiral Dane in the new Metroid Prime Trilogy. In the original Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the Admiral says “Damn!”, while in Trilogy, he says a whole-hearted “No!”.

It’s a very minor change, and I’m not the least bit affected by it, but it’s interesting to see what is censor-worthy in Nintendo of America’s eyes.

via GoNintendo

Gaming community blackmails Infinity Ward over MW4 domain name

Now here’s something you don’t see everyday — It seems that a gaming communtity by the name of Ziip got their hands on the domain name modernwarfare4.com and decided to blackmail Infinity Ward for its use.

No, they aren’t asking for a large sum of money but instead a copy of Modern Warfare 4 for each member of their community.

How will Infinity Ward respond to this? Well, they will most likely just use a domain name like codmodernwarfare4.com which will redirect to modernwarfare4.infinityward.com like they did with Modern Warfare 2.

But wait, what happened to Modern Warfare 3?

Tekken 6 shirts from TapouT announced

TapouT, a clothing brand geared towards the mixed-martial-arts community, has announced today that they will be creating shirts based on the Tekken 6 video game. These same designs will also be available in-game for characters to wear.

“Tekken 6 and TapouT fans share a deep-rooted passion for the mixed-martial-arts lifestyle,” said Namco Bandai’s Makoto Iwai “This partnership will bring TapouT’s signature style into the world of Tekken, giving new experiences to video game enthusiasts and MMA fans alike.”

Hopefully these shirts won’t look as awful as Ecko’s Halo shirts. The new clothing line will go on sale this September.

Read (PlayStation Lifestyle)

New Resident Evil movie in 3D, first in trilogy

A new Resident Evil trilogy has spawned, beginning with the new Resident Evil: Afterlife film. It turns out that the entire movie will be in 3D. Paul W.S. Anderson, director and writer of the film, had a few words to say about the movie:

“I always envisioned Resident Evil as a trilogy of films,” Anderson said. “And we’ve been very lucky where it’s a trilogy where the audience has built and built. I wanted to kick off a brand new trilogy. I’m really excited we’re doing it [in 3-D] and we’re using the same camera system [James] Cameron used for Avatar. There are a lot of exciting things about this one. I don’t regard it as Resident Evil 4, I regard it as a re-tooling and rebirth of the entire franchise.”

Details are still scarce at the moment, but we know that Milla Jovovich will return as Alice. Resident Evil: Afterlife will be hitting cinemas September 17, 2010.

Read (ShockTillYouDrop), via Evil Avatar

New Activision titles on Steam 25% off

Steam has updated this morning with a couple of titles from Californian developer and publisher Activision. Featured in the update are Space Quest Collection, King’s Quest Collection, Aces of the Galaxy, TimeShift, and 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures. All of these games will be 25% off until July 30th.

If you haven’t checked out 50% off deal for Paradox Interactive titles, be sure to give that one a look, too.

Read (Steam News)

Buy a Wii, get a game free at GameStop

GameStop is having a promotion this week for anyone planning to purchase a Wii. As the title suggests, you’ll get to grab a free Wii title with the purchase of a Wii console. However, the titles are from a limited selection:

• Don King Boxing
• Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games
• Sonic Unleashed
• MadWorld
• Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
• Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip
• Wario Land: Shake It
• Wii Music
• Animal Crossing: City Folk – Game Only
• My Fitness Coach
• Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
• Excitebots: Trick Racing – Game Only

Not exactly your triple-a titles, but hey, it’s a free game. Wario Land: Shake It is a pretty damn fun game, too. Anyways, the offer began today and will last until July 26th.

Read (GameStop)

Warcraft movie director announced

The same guy behind the Spider-Man trilogy has been announced to be the director for the Warcraft movie. Sam Raimi is also responsible for such works as “The Evil Dead” and “Drag Me To Hell.”

Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures will be working together for the film. So, maybe it won’t be so bad if Blizzard has most of the creative control.

“Sam’s passion for ‘Warcraft’ is undeniable and we know that he will create an incredible film worthy of Blizzard’s phenomenal franchise,” said Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull.

“From our first conversation with Sam, we could tell he was the perfect choice,”” added Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “Sam knows how to simultaneously satisfy the enthusiasts and the mainstream audience that might be experiencing that content for the first time.”

There’s a lot of Warcraft lore out there, beginning from the debut of the scourge up to the return of the Lich King. And who can forget all of the novels that spawned along the way? Details are scarce right now, as the movie is still in production. Hopefully more information will pop up in this year’s Comic-Con.

Read (Toronto Sun)

Animal Crossing City Folk Game Review–Absolute Absurdity

Animal Crossing: City Folk, now available on the Nintendo Wii (were you expecting Xbox 360?)  may well be the most absurd game I’ve ever played.  And considering not so long ago I was writing about a game called You Have To Defecate Upon King Bhumibol, that’s saying a LOT.

As for the plot, you play a random traveler on his way to a certain city that’s populated entirely by cheerful anthropomorphic animals despite the fact that your character is clearly human.  Those of you wondering if your avatar is, in fact, some kind of closet furry join me in wondering the exact same thing.  Your new town is admittedly rather small and quaint, but boasts a clothing shop, a museum, a bus station, and a general store run by everybody’s favorite loan shark / raccoon, Tom Nook.  A word about Tom Nook–he operates the general store Nook’s Cranny (ba DUM bum!) and will give you your first home loan to purchase a place in the small town.  He will then offer you a job in Nook’s Cranny to get you started paying down your debt, but he’ll promptly fire you after one day with a huge amount in mortgage left.  At least I think that’s the currency of choice there; I’m a little spacey on that detail.  Anyway, the good news is that Nook’s Cranny deals in pretty much EVERY ITEM KNOWN TO MAN OR ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMAL, and thus, you’ll be able to sell Nook any random piece of garbage you find anywhere to pay down your house debt, despite the fact that he could literally stay within sight of his shop and get the exact same thing himself for free.

Seriously–it’s actually quite possible to pay off a home loan in Animal Crossing City Folk with cherries you find on public trees.  No wonder Tom Nook’s a loan shark–people can pay him off with shiny rocks and sticks they found on the ground and he’s required by some kind of law to take them.  He’s got to charge ridiculous fees just to keep ahead of the deflationary curve!  If I went down to MY bank and asked if they take cherries on a mortgage payment they’d probably have me arrested.  Or shot.  Possibly both!

This game is just the epoch of absurdity.  For instance–after getting fired from Nook’s, I went to the town’s bulletin board on my first day and left a rambling, profanity-laden diatribe about how I wished every resident of the town would die in a series of horrible tragedies just to see what would happen.  Sure enough…they greeted me with cheerful smiles and sunny waves and offers to join them for dinner or bridge or knocking over garbage cans or whatever giant anthropomorphic animals do for fun.  You can’t get a rise out of these people, thus you’re left to play the game as intended.

Which is, sadly, boring.  You go fishing.  You find fossils which you take to the museum where they make appropriate oohing and aahing noises over before putting them on display.  Occasionally you can go into the city (hence the name, City Folk) and see a movie or go shopping.  It’s like life, if your banker were a raccoon that accepted tree bark on a mortgage payment and your neighbor were a five foot tall pig that walked on its hind legs and sent you a vase on your birthday.

And frankly, if I wanted my games to be more like real life, I think I’d just stop, you know, playing games.

Let’s Tap Game Review–Let’s Not And Say We Did

I know I’m coming down awfully hard on today’s title, but I assure you it’s with good reason.  I’m going to preface the remarks today by saying, unequivocally:  Sega, thank you for taking chances.  These chances don’t always work out, as is the case with Let’s Tap for the Wii, but still–I’m glad you took the chance all the same.

Basically, Let’s Tap is a collection of five smaller games all controlled by the same method: setting your Wiimote down on a box, preferably a tissue box or some similar cardboard box and tapping on the box.  Yes, that’s right–in this game, you will almost never touch your Wiimote.  You’ll play games like Tap Runner (where you compete in a four-man foot race by tapping on the box your Wiimote rests upon with various degrees of pressure), Rhythm Tap (where you’ll tap out a series of rhythms in time with on-screen indicators), Silent Blocks (where you’ll remove blocks from a stack in a bid to lower an item stacked on top of them to the ground), Bubble Voyager (where you move a space-suited character through a series of obstacles) and Visualizer (which isn’t so much a game as it is a way to play around with the tapping system to make various special effects).

I’m somewhat at a loss by this game.  There’s no storyline here–it’s almost as if Sega were making a demo reel for some greater application to be announced later. I admit that the concept is unique enough–I definitely don’t remember the last time I played a game that literally required that I never touch my controller–but I’m just slightly dismayed by the results it yielded.  Sure, this game is fun, but not for very long.  There’s just so little TO it that it can’t produce much in the way of a fun factor.  All you do is tap, tap, tap a box over and over and over and over again for little or no clear reason.  And when you smack a box a couple hundred times with your hand or fingers in rapid succession, chances are you’re going to be left with a sore arm and not much else to show for it.

In fact, after playing a round of Let’s Tap, I’m left with a whole lot more questions than answers.  Why did they even bother with this game?  There’s so very little to it that it’s almost not worth playing, except as some kind of precursor, some kind of training implement to a future game.  And it could definitely be interesting–think about a version of Missile Command where you fire missiles by PRESSING A BUTTON corresponding to a tap on a box.  Especially if you were to use the Wiimote simultaneously to aim by turning the Wiimote slightly to the left or right to adjust an aiming reticle before firing.  That’d be awesome.

But I’m getting away from the point here–the point being that Let’s Tap, by itself, is really not much of a game.  It may represent a greater game to come, but for right now, Let’s Tap should better be titled Let’s Avoid This Piece of Crap And Get On With Our Lives.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves Game Review–Defies Any Easy Description

Sometimes there’s a real downside to writing about Wii games.  Like I said in the headline, they defy any real or simple description.  It’s hard to tell what exactly is going on sometimes.  They can even be downright confusing.  That’s definitely the case with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves.

Long, long ago, civilization was infested with these things called “form batons”, mystical objects that contained vast power and ostensibly controlled a race of tiny humanoids if the hieroglyphs are to be believed.  Anyway, one day, Nintendo’s biggest anti-hero and treasure hunter extraordinaire Wario was sitting in his chair at home, sucking down cake and donuts and suchlike when one of those tiny humanoids from the hieroglyphs abducts Wario’s snacks.  Naturally, Wario can’t stand for such nonsense, and thus he chases after the tiny humanoid to recover his snacks.  What he finds instead is one of the legendary form batons.  Thus, Wario will join a whole cast of motley characters, including a dog and cat taxi driving team, two inveterate gamers, a cheerleader, an inventor and a witch with her pet demon familiar in a series of slice of life-style vignettes as they go about their lives.

You, meanwhile, will have to accomplish a series of tasks in rapid succession, accomplished by doing various things with your Wiimote.  You’ll hold it like a waiter holding a tray, like a remote control, up in front of your nose like an elephant with its trunk, and on top of your head like a mohawk to do any of a number of things, including driving a car, picking up trash with a remote controlled robot, picking your nose, and scrubbing a cow’s ass.  No, seriously.  You’re going to do all that and even less savory tasks.  Frankly, I was amazed enough to find myself working my Wiimote into a position where I could ram a finger up a polygonal nose on a polygonal face, but when I started running a scrub brush over a cow’s rump roast, well, that just did it for me.  I had nothing to say.

The graphics are, of course, last generation weak, but the biggest problem with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is also the biggest joy–the controls.  Several times I found myself about to start a game and I was left totally unaware of what to actually DO.  Oh, sure, I knew how to HOLD the Wiimote–they make that perfectly clear from the second you start a game–but I didn’t always know what to do from there.  Did I swing to the left?  The right?  When do I pick up?  And most unaccountably of all, why won’t the Wiimote acknowledge ANYTHING I do, no matter what direction I move?  This didn’t happen often, but when it did, it really spoiled the game.

I have to admit that I enjoyed this game.  I liked the rapid switching of games, and how at higher speeds it could be tough to keep up.  There was some challenge involved here–it was no walkover.  It took me two, even three times to get through some stages.

All things considered, this is definitely a game to get your hands on and wrap some smooth moves around.

Hell’s Kitchen Game Review–Another Game That Shouldn’t Be Fun

When I first got my hands on a copy of Hell’s Kitchen for the Wii, I was pretty convinced that there was no way this could be entertaining.  I mean, for crying out loud, you ever see that show?  It’s just some British guy screaming profanity for an hour while other people cook.  And yet, somehow, despite all reason and good common sense, this game is unaccountably fun.  There’s no two ways about it; Hell’s Kitchen is fun, but it probably shouldn’t be.

Basically, in Hell’s Kitchen, much like the show you take on the role of an aspiring chef in the none too tender mercies of Gordon Ramsay. You’ll manage a kitchen and a dining room, seating patrons, taking orders, preparing and detailing food to be served.  Actually, you’ll just tell a waiter what to do by pointing and clicking with your Wiimote.   Everything you’ll do, from mixing ingredients to clearing dishes, is done by pointing and clicking the Wiimote.

You may be wondering how such a game could be on the Wii in the first place, let alone merely rated T, because as anyone who’s actually seen the show knows watching it on network TV ends up with it sounding like a Morse code tutorial as designed by someone on a whole lot of meth.  But they actually managed to pull it off by A. continuing the grand tradition of bleeping out any and all of Ramsay’s profane dialogue and B. making the game itself little more than a casual computer game knockoff with licensing bonuses.  Playing Hell’s Kitchen felt like nothing so much as a particularly deep episode of Diner Dash.

On the one hand, a casual game like Diner Dash is pretty well suited to the Wii’s admittedly inferior graphics capabiliities and control scheme that focuses on the point and click.  Adding on a license like Hell’s Kitchen actually boosts the credibility of things a bit, and gives it a connection to something people are already familiar with.  There’s also a really interesting strategy element here that bears mentioning–dishes are all made differently, and you may have three or four dishes to process per table.  Thus, you’ll have to figure out which ingredients you need, and in which order you need them.  You may need, for example, two eggs, three fruits and two grains.  If you’re smart you’ll already have one of each pre-made before you even start.  But then you’ll have to start preparing ingredients on the fly, seeing which dishes will take longest to prepare and taking advantage of the time lag to prepare the other ingredients.  Plus you’ll have to do the whole thing on the fly under a time limit.

See what I mean?  Despite the fact that this game is fairly simple there’s a lot of different permutations involved here, and getting your head around all of them can be downright difficult.  That dichotomy is actually kind of weird, and adds to the fun factor.  This game shouldn’t be this complex.  Or this entertaining.  And yet, it is.  There’s an odd sort of compulsion to this game that makes you long to jam your success in Ramsay’s smirking little maw and make it all the way to master chef.

And you’ll get the chance to do exactly that here. Even better, you’ll get actual recipes that you can try if you’re desperate to make an incredibly complex dish (seriously, there’s a recipe for a salad that requires BLANCHING vegetables.  I took one look at it and said, no, I think I’ll just cut some lettuce.).  But the key thing is, Hell’s Kitchen is a hell of a game.

The Munchables Game Review–OM NOM NOM NOM…

If you ever wondered what a hybrid of Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy might look like, then you need look no farther than Bandai-Namco’s newest bizarre action title for the WIi, The Munchables.

In The Munchables, you’re part of a race of fuzzy little critters that inhabits the planet Star Ving, in which said critters do nothing but eat on a series of peaceful islands interconnected by rainbows.  You may wonder how critters that do nothing but eat can actually survive in their ecosystem–that’s thanks to the Legendary Orbs, gigantic stone structures that vaguely resemble…pudding?  I think that’s pudding.  But I’m terrified that it might be something much, much more disgusting.  Anyway, the Legendary Orbs generate a nonstop supply of food for the critters on the islands, and all is high-calorie heaven until a race of aliens shows up and steals the Legendary Orbs so that they too can become superpowerful monstrousities. All would be lost until one of the critters notices that, hey…these aliens, these “space pirates” as they’re called…look an awful lot like food.  And so, in what may be the single lowest point in interstellar diplomacy since Douglas Adams’ microscopic space fleet was inadvertently swallowed by a small dog, the Star Vingians proceed to eat their invaders.

And that is where you come in.  You’ll steer one of two Star Vingians around, eating anything that even vaguely looks edible and occasionally jumping.  If you find a food monster that is bigger than your mouth (you can tell by noting the “level” of both your character and the character you’re about to chow down on) you’ll have to attack it first to break it into smallish, bite-sized pieces.  Attacking boss characters is slightly more complex than this, however, and requires attacking weak points that will be clearly labelled for you.

As you grow in level, you’ll also PHYSICALLY grow–picture Katamari Damacy in which you don’t push the Katamari, but rather, you ARE the Katamari.  The control scheme is very simple, requiring the nunchuk to move your character around and a couple buttons on the Wiimote to perform the rest of your functions.  It’s also a fairly fun title.  Chowing down on the various enemies and swelling in size is an admittedly visceral thrill, but sometimes, the fun gets a little…strange.  See, at the end of every round, all that food you’ve eaten has to go somewhere…and where it goes…well, this is actually really creepy.  Your character will execute a one hundred eighty degree turn, visibly strain, and…spew a pile of sparkly multicolored orbs from its lower rear quadrant DIRECTLY onto an elderly onion.  Who will in turn seem very happy about this development, and assign you a letter grade based on how deep a pile of sparkly orbs you’ve landed him in.

I thought it was some kind of weird caffeine hallucination the first time I saw it, but then sure enough, the next round I’m burying an elderly onion in a pile of spherical dookie all over again.  And he’s happy about it.

This aside, The Munchables is a surprisingly fun title with some decent humor, graphics and gameplay.  it may not be a great long-term value but in the short term it almost certainly won’t disappoint.  A terrific rental, and possibly even a good buy, The Munchables is plenty tasty.

Mario Party 8 Game Review–Take Their Hint

Seeing as how me and the Big N parted company back around the Gamecube era (as in, I had one, but after a couple weeks I took it to the local Gamestop and traded the sucker in on an Xbox because, as far as I could tell, Nintendo would not put out a game for anyone over the age of twelve), I never really got the opportunity to take a stab at the Mario Party line.  Thusly, my first exposure to the Mario Party series was this one right here, Mario Party 8 for the Wii.

Yes, it’s true–the game that amounts to little more than a board game wherein mini-games are played to decide who wins and who loses has reached its eighth iteration with this one.  And, plotwise, that’s really all you do.  You’ll play, generally in a four player environment with computer players to make up the slack as needed when humans aren’t on hand (if it’s just you, you’ll play against a trio of computer players), a series of board games.  You’ll punch a dice cube above your head when it’s your turn, then you’ll proceed the correct number of spaces along the board, at which point you’ll receive rewards or punishments based on the rules and then proceed onto the next mini-game, and you’ll repeat for a certain number of turns.

Yes, it’s a little bit monotonous. No one ever said this sucker was going to be the kind of thing you’d ever mistake for high art.  Or low art.  Or any other kind of art, come to think of it.  There’s nothing really resembling a storyline here–in fact, the only thing that keeps Mario Party 8 from being nothing more than a second-rate collection of mini-games is that it’s actually a FIRST-rate collection of mini-games.  I admit that, when I played this, I had more than my share of fun, for about the first half-hour or so.  After that first half-hour, however, that’s when the boredom settled in.  It only started grating, though, and every time a new mini-game came up, the boredom lessened significantly.

Now, there’s a lot of appeal in a game like this.  Indeed, with three or more friends around this sucker’s probably incredible fun.  Even with one extra buddy in tow, Mario Party 8 could easily be a great time.  But if you’re playing this one by yourself, the limits of the fun are sorely strained.  In fact, the appeal in playing this one in single player mode is fairly well limited to the number of new mini-game experiences you can have.  Once you’ve played through all the different games, and all the different boards, and won all the various prizes you’re able to win, you might as well just unplug your Wiimote and take that sucker back to the store, because you’ve just done everything you could ever possibly do with this game.

Mario Party 8 isn’t the kind of game you can give a simple yea-or-nay review to.  It has a series of very specific applications that, if your intended use doesn’t fit them, will limit your enjoyment of this game by limiting its usefulness.  If you need a game to play with friends or as a short-term rental, then yes, absolutely, Mario Party 8 will do the job nicely.  The game is called Mario Party for a reason–take the hint.