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2K Sports announces Baseball Blast

The Wii is notorious for having an extensive library of titles that are nothing more than a collection of mini games, so why not add one more to the mix?

2K Sports has recently stepped forward to announce Baseball Blast! which is just that, a collectinon of baseball themes mini games. The game will apparantly have an authentic feel to it as it will feature a MLB-licensed teams.

Content wise expect to find over 20 mini games along with a trivia mode featuring over 100 questions. I’m not going to pass judgement until I actually see the game but why can’t more studios put out good Wii games like The Conduit and Dead Space Extraction?

NHL 10 will be awesome, improvements showcased on video

If you thought NHL 09 was awesome, wait until you get a wiff of its successor, NHL 10. Above is a feature walkthrough done by the game’s producer, David Littman, that showcases a majority of improvements that will be added to the game.

A few of the improvements include first-person fighting (which we heard about a while back) the ability to trap the puck against the side boards and away from the opposing team, and the fact that actions after the whistle is blown will effect the actual gameplay.

NHL 10 will be out for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on September 15th.

Fuel Game Review–Freedom to Ride

Racing games and I generally do not get along.  I find them somewhat dull and repetitive, even after the initial adrenaline shock wears off.   This left me with something of a quandary as I discovered a racing game that was actually pretty entertaining, and it’s a new one out for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC called Fuel.

Fuel assumes a future in which Al Gore is allowed by Federal law to laugh and point at everybody who can’t produce a receipt for a copy of An Inconvenient Truth.  Seriously, though–it’s an “alternate present” in which the weather has only very recently gone completely insane, turning large areas of the United States into “no-go” zones, or areas where no human being can safely live.  Thus, humans pack themselves into huge megacities, a la Judge Dredd, except these human hives are apparently warm and comforting places powered by wind and solar and biodiesel, and thus everyone lives in Al Gore’s fantasyland.

There are, however, a few mavericks who realize that, the sudden cessation of gasoline usage has left a whole LOT of spare capacity just sort of lying around, and thus, this gives them the opportunity to take it for their own use.  Hey, why not?  Not like anyone ELSE is using the stuff anyway!  So they appropriate large quantities of fuel and use it to stage quasi-legal offroad joyride races.

To that end, you’re dropped into a scale area of roughly five thousand square miles and set to race.  You’ll be able to select various races against other competitors, as well as having an opportunity to engage in “free riding” but more on that in a minute.  First, we have to deal with the races themselves.  In this way, Fuel is a lot like literally every other racing game on the market.  You drive around trying desperately to pass other people and reach the finish line.  In this way, Fuel is just as good as any other.  The graphics are solid enough, the controls are a little twitchy and take a little getting used to but still do fairly well, and the background music is appropriately rock.

Fuel would be a game much like any other if it weren’t for one critical difference–the free ride mode.  Free ride does just what it sounds like it does; free ride allows you to tear around the map in literally any direction you please, pulling tire-squealing turns on roads, donuts on the beach, whatever you like,  There’s even some structure here as your free ride mode allows you to drive to places where challenges are being held.  Completing these challenges nets you extra fuel, which in turn allows you to buy other vehicles.  Plus, you’ll be able to obtain new parts for your livery, find fantastic views at so-called vista points, and just generally run riot all over the map.

Fuel is, therefore, a game of surprising depth and substance, as well as plenty of fun.  For those of you who already like racing games, you may well have found the ultimate in racers right there.  But for those of you who haven’t been very fond of the racing game subgenre, then you may well want to give Fuel a try.  This is the game that just might change your mind about racers.

Fishing Master World Tour Game Review–Calm and Frantic By Turns

Once, long ago, I discovered the glory of a certain sports game, then on the Playstation 2.  It was Hot Shots Golf, and it became one of my personal favorite relaxation games.  I’d line up my shots, consider angles, and then take my shots, one right after another, on beautiful courses to the sounds of birds and the occasional insect.  After a while, I never thought I’d find a game like that again, until I found Fishing Master World Tour on the Wii.

The plot–and yes, there’s a plot, which actually elevates this one a couple notches–puts you as a young fisherman (in the generic sense–you can be a fisherwoman if the mood so strikes) who’s gone venturing out with his pet dog (or her pet dog, or either of theirs’ pet cat) to become the world’s greatest–a Fishing Master.  And of course, the only way to be a master of anything is by going forth and doing it repeatedly.  If you want to be a Pokemon Master you have to catch a load of pokemon.  But if you want to be a Fishing Master, you’ve got to catch a lot of fish.  Along with plenty of other stuff, including the keys to the boat that’ll be carrying you around the world.  You’ll play various tournaments all over the world, and engage in various quests besides.

The Wii, as you’ve probably already figured out, is pretty much tailor-made for any kind of fishing game.  With its motion capture technology and lower emphasis on graphics, it’s perfect for the kind of gameplay that fishing games require.  You can pull back on the Wiimote to cast, and the nunchuk makes for an excellent rapid-reel system.  The combination of a perfect rod controller and a perfect reel controller, plus a solid overall environment that doesn’t need a whole lot of graphic processing capability–how much computing power do you need to portray a lake with some fish?  They’ve been doing that since back before the PS1, so even the Wii can’t flub this job.

Granted, it’s a fishing game.  More specifically, it’s JUST a fishing game.  All you do is fish.  You’ll cast your line out and you’ll let it sit until you get a bite.  You’ll have the option of selecting various baits, as well as regular chances to upgrade your rods.  But no matter how many fancy bells and whistles are ever attached, at the end of the day it’s still just throw line, catch fish, repeat.

This brings me back nicely to my original point, that this may well be the best chill game I’ve played since Hot Shots Golf.  You cast your line, you catch fish.  But the fish will FIGHT.  And when you get that fight, you’ll really be in for a fight, snapping your rod back and forth to tire out the fish so you can reel it in.  It’s unusually frantic for a game like this, in fact, it’s almost out of place.  But it fits, in its way–that’s what real fishing is.  Long periods of calm punctuated by a fish fighting for its life against nearly impossible odds.

There will still be, however, plenty of long periods of calm, and staring at that bobber, waiting for a fish to strike can be downright reflective.  Relaxing.  And just enough to make Fishing Master: World Tour one of my favorite chill games.

Punch Out Game Review–A Serious Pain in the Shoulder

Again Nintendo prevails on my deeply ingrained sense of nostalgia by bringing a game that I actually recognized from my original straight-eight days of gaming. See, way back when, before Mike Tyson was a gigantic practical joke / train wreck, he was a professional boxer. And a good one, too! So good that Nintendo commissioned a game around him, dubbed Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. As time went on and Iron Mike’s career went wildly off the rails (and his contract expired, unrenewed), Nintendo then sought a way to re-release their game without paying Tyson. Thus, the game was shortened to Punch Out and Iron Mike was replaced with a no-name called “Mr. Dream”.

And now, Nintendo has once again released its Punch Out line, this time for the all too appropriate Wii. You’ll once again step into the role of the Bronx’s boxing sensation Little Mac, looking to make a name for yourself along with your trainer Doc Lewis. You’ll take on a series of outrageous characters with a series of different boxing styles until you face your final opponent. You’ll also be able to completely replay the game in a whole different way by selecting the Title Defense mode, in which you’ve already won the title but are now out to hold onto it against every boxer you defeated. And they’re none too happy about the loss.

The first thing that I have to tell you, if you’re going to try this game is, for the sake of all that’s holy, STRETCH FIRST. It may not be intuitive—stretch before playing a video game? Preposterous!—but you’re going to save yourself plenty of hurt if you stretch your arms and shoulders before playing. The way this game is set up, there’s two ways to play—with the Wii controller horizontally inclined like a normal controller, or using the motion sensitivity features of the Wii to make regular air punches, and believe me, you will be throwing a LOT of punches. The boxers you’ll face are downright turtles in their capacity for blocking, and you can pretty much count on one in every two or even three of your punches landing. That is, of course, unless you’ve studied a walkthrough or videos or even practiced in advance so you already know each boxer’s pattern.

Each of the boxers you’ll face does have a pattern, and generally, it won’t take too long to learn just where to lean and where to block and where to throw punches like a lunatic, but still, in the intervening space you will be wasting PLENTY of motion. All of this can do horrible things to your arms and shoulders if you’re not careful. Trust me, I still ache from my bout with King Hippo.

But still…I’m pretty satisfied with this game. It’s got decent graphics and excellent background musical effects and fun gameplay that’ll actually be a halfway decent workout. That’s the one really interesting thing about the Wii, really—a lot of their games make good workouts. And this is a workout that’s surprisingly plenty of fun, too, making it one of the best kind: the kind where participants will come back.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online coming to a browser near you

EA has recently gone ahead and announced a new play-in-your-browser game entitled Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online. No, this won’t be an MMO based around golf but instead a regular run of the mill golf game that you play in a web browser.

There isn’t news much in terms of gameplay but EA let us know that courses like St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, and TPC Sawgrass will be featured.

Tiger Wood PGA Tour Online is apparantly scheduled to launch sometime in the fall with subscription based pricing. However, if you want to get in on the action early you can sign up for the beta here.

Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 Game Review–Better Than You Think

Sports games have always been a significant portion of the gaming landscape—be they football, baseball, basketball, or another other sport, there’s no shortage of people looking to step into the roles of their favorite players, racers and fighters and try and do those things that their heroes do every time they show up on television.

This is no different with the release of Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009.

I’d give you the plot synopsis for this one, but it’d take a couple pages.  See, one of the really truly awesome things about Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 is that each of the characters will have a positively huge storyline.  Just for a for instance, if you play as The Undertaker (my personal favorite), not only will you get to pound both Santino and Finlay into the ground (possibly opening up the patently ridiculous Hornswoggle as a management character), you’ll also go into the heavyweight championship to take on the Great Khali when both Santino and Finlay will form a coalition specifically intended to take out The Undertaker.

I have never been so convinced that Transmetropolitan was right.  TV wrestling is, indeed, phallocentric soap opera for, among others, intellectually lazy intellectual people who get off by cultural slumming. I admit to enjoying  a bit of the brain candy every so often, and there’s really nothing like this for brain candy.

Of course, it’s not all about just really arrogant ways to say “brain candy”, no sir—this is also about pounding cultural stereotypes into oblivion.  Santino, for instance—he’s from JERSEY.  His accent is thicker than Olive Garden’s alfredo sauce, and he comes in with an on-screen graphic that features a waving Italian tricolor flag.  It almost—ALMOST!—felt like I was beating the hell out of Italy itself.

I will say this much for Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009—they really have captured the pomp, circumstance and majesty that this entire sport is built around.  When I walked the Undertaker in for Royal Rumble, they actually had a dozen guys wearing hooded cassocks line my path with live torches.  It was probably unnecessary, but really, I’m glad they took the trouble.  Why the Undertaker doesn’t show up in more horror flicks is beyond me.  But anyway.

Sure, the gameplay is sort of limited—pound hell out of a competitor until he refuses to continue and then attempt to pin him.  But you can’t really blame the game for this, as this is pretty much all that wrestling actually is.  That whole saw about silk purses and sow’s ears?  Yeah, that was made for games like this.

If you’re already a Smackdown / Raw / ECW fan, then you probably don’t need me to tell you that this is a fairly fun game with some interesting storylines.  Thus, this next remark goes out to those who already aren’t watching the show with any regularity, much like myself.  You don’t need to have a really intimate knowledge of the show to be able to follow the game, so if you want a quick introduction to the world of Smackdown / Raw / ECW, then you’ll have exactly what you need in Smackdown Vs Raw 2009.  For fans it’s a must-buy, and for everyone else, it’s actually a pretty good rental.

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust Game Review–Well, At Least It Tried

It’s strange, when an old series that you’d thought was long dead suddenly decides to crop up again, from literally out of nowhere.  You’d honestly begun to think that you’d never see it again, and in some cases, you might well have forgotten it ever existed at all.  That was the case with the Alone in the Dark series, and now, it’s the case for a whole new generation of PC games suddenly making their revival into the next-gen console market.  This time, we’ve got none other than Leisure Suit Larry back for more raunchy fun in Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust.

And frankly, I’m having a hard time figuring out just what to say about it.

This time around, you’re playing as Larry Lovage, the young horndog nephew to the great scion of the franchise, Larry Laffer, who has recently made good as a cinema magnate.  You’re hired on for a summer job doing grunt work at uncle Larry’s studio, and in the meantime, you’re also out to expose a mole hired by a rival studio to publicly air all of Laffer and  company’s dirty laundry.  In some cases, quite literally.

If you’re familiar with the movie industry at all, it will not surprise you in the least when I tell you this was written by Allen Covert of Happy Madison Productions, convincing me thoroughly that Adam Sandler is out to destroy humanity.  They’ve brought plenty of second-rate B-list star power along to do voiceover work, including Jay Mohr, who’s reprising his seemingly favorite role as a slimeball theatrical agent, not to mention a host of lesser names like Artie Lange, Dave Atell and Carmen Electra.  There are other names in here who probably shouldn’t have been here in the first place, like Patrick Warburton, Jeffrey Tambor and Shannon Elizabeth, but I guess everybody’s got to have a side project.

The gameplay is the most tedious sort of fetch gameplay—go here, get / do that, come back, repeat until you want to throw things, but considering your character is playing the lowest kind of studio grunt (if his title’s not production assistant I’ll be downright amazed), this actually makes sense.  There is a sense of humor here, but it’ll wind up being entirely too devoted to off-color humor of every stripe to be a whole lot of good.  One particularly funny bit occurs in one of the many loading screens, suggesting that your grandmother would LOVE a copy of this game for her birthday.  My grandmother would shatter the disk into bits and force-feed them to me if I ever actually gave her a copy of this.  I just know better.

You may be interested to note that this is the second recent Larry title (the first being Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude), and also the second created with absolutely no input from original Larry designer Al Lowe.  Maybe this has something to do with why they suck so badly.

But I’ll give it this much, it’s nice to NOT play a first person shooter for once, and in this industry, any game that’s not a first person shooter or a sports game has to get extra credit by virtue of SHEER ORIGINALITY.  Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust might be worth a rental just for a little bit of something completely different and a few laughs, but it’s not going to be something you want to bring home to mother.

Or home to grandma, for that matter, despite what the loading screens suggest.

Bully Scholarship Edition Game Review–Makes The Honor Roll With A Bullet

I’ve been looking forward to trying this one for a long time.  It’s true—this is the first time I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition.

The biggest irony about this one is that it’s a next-gen update of a previous-gen release.  The first time I got my induction into the world of Bullworth Academy, it was back on the PS2.  But then, the tail end of 2008 comes along and, boom…Bully gets an update.  The Scholarship Edition comes packed with lots more new content, and frankly, is a whole new class by itself.

But just for a refresher course, in case you’ve already sampled this one back in the PS2 days, you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a young man with a lousy family life as his mother’s neck-deep in what seems to be a lifelong round of Wheel Of New Husbands.  Jimmy’s mom and newest hubby are about to head for a cruise ship for their year-long honeymoon, but something’s got to be done with Jimmy.  Jimmy’s new stepdad has just the concept—Bullworth Academy, a boarding school with plenty of problems.  Jimmy’s first meeting with one of the students is both opportune and problematic—he meets Gary, a kid with even more problems than Bullworth itself (he’s admitted to having ADD and being on medication that he’s recently stopped taking, and getting to know this scary bastard reveals that he’s got at least sociopathic tendencies.).  Gary’s given Jimmy an interesting idea, though—taking over the school.  But with four separate cliques in operation, and a whole town outside Bullworth Academy, such a feat won’t be easy for Jimmy.  And if Gary takes exception to Jimmy’s methods…well…Gary has the potential to make Jimmy’s life a living hell.

Who will win?  Who will lose?  And will Bullworth Academy be left standing?

This is about half of why I love Bully—the sheer epic of this storyline is fantastic by itself.  But when you add the OTHER half, couple in the spectacular variety of things to do in and around Bullworth, you get a game with all sorts of replay value.  I love how you gather new skills not by defeating enemies or collecting things, but by going to class.    Almost ironically, Jimmy is very much AGAINST bullying, and it’s his repeatedly stated goal throughout the course of the game to end it at Bullworth.  There’s a lot of unexpected fun in this game, and it’s especially worth mentioning as a result.

Sure, maybe the graphics look a little last-gen for a product developed so late in the season, and sometimes the game mechanics get a downright aggressively skewed in favor of screwing the player over—hypersensitive enemies, floods of enemies, you know what I mean—but none of this really gets in the way of a good time.  And that’s what Bully: Scholarship Edition will offer–a good time action game with an epic storyline and lots to do in between.

In no uncertain terms, this is a fun game.  I had literally hours of fun with it, and I gladly came back for more.  You may want to try the original first to appreciate the fullest extent of the additions and changes made, but it’s not strictly necessary.  The key take away?  You’ll have fun.  That’s what counts.

Shaun White Snowboarding Game Review–You Can Almost Feel Air Moving

Snowboarding games, to me, may well be the only kind of sports game that makes just a little less sense than skateboarding games.  Oh, sure, when you snowboard you get to wear a lot of thick winter gear which functions as padding, and you’ll also be falling into snow, which is just a kind of cold padding.  But then again, I’ve really never heard of anyone who either froze to death or got buried alive while skateboarding.  And these are two very real dangers of snowboarding.  One word: avalanche.

So when I latched on to a copy of Shaun White Snowboarding, now available for the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, PC and PSP, I wasn’t all that sure what to think.  See, it’s not like this game has a whole lot of plot to it.  You’ll play a snowboarder who launches through a series of challenges like slalom racing, and straight out races, and other kinds of snowboarding fun, as well as an opportunity to sail down some very nicely set up courses and do tricks and flips and whatnot.  Playing the challenges allows you to get cash to trick out your board and gear, and you’ll also get to advance to different kinds of courses, like mountain peaks, back country hills, parks, and of course, Target Mountain, which is basically just one giant commercial for Target, assuming you bought your game at Target.  The best kick in the teeth about the Target Mountain pack is that it costs more than the regular, so you’ll basically be paying Target a premium to advertise itself to you.

That particular kick to the teeth aside, Shaun White Snowboarding really surprised me.  I had a surprising quantity of fun throwing myself down a mountain to a positively outstanding funk soundtrack comprised of songs like “Play That Funky Music”.  Tricks weren’t terribly difficult to pull off, and it did a really nice job of capturing the feeling of speed as you go flying down a mountain with a chunk of fiberglass strapped to your feet.  I actually managed to blow a lot of time just cruising down the various mountains, sliding in and out of the pine trees, jumping off ramps and wood piles and houses and suchlike…there’s plenty to do here, and you’ll probably be able to enjoy it repeatedly, giving it all sorts of replay value.

Okay, granted—if you like to have a storyline when you play your games, then Shaun White Snowboarding’s miserable attempt at a plot is going to be a spectacular joke to you.  There’s only so much narrative value in “improve as a snowboarder and travel to various locales where you’ll continue trying to improve as a snowboarder”.   As for action, it’s also in pretty short supply here, because you’re basically playing a sports game.  While you’ll get to chuck snowballs at your fellow racers when you’re in the Death Race portion of the game, you’ll never lay hands on, say, a shotgun or a chainsaw.  And I’m sorry, but I think being able to handle a chainsaw or shotgun would just up the awesome factor of a snowboarding game like a million percent.

The key point to take away from all this is that you’re snowboarding.  If you like the feeling of speed and the exhilaration of gravity as you take a long drop off a mountain with nothing between you and a shattered spinal column but sheer momentum and a hunk of fiberglass.  They did a solid job with it, but there’s only so much you CAN do with it by dint of the material itself.  If you’re okay with the inherent limitations of the source material, then you’ll love this game.

Grand Slam Tennis, Tiger Woods Suport Wii MotionPlus

EA today announced that EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 will hit Wii on June 16. They also confirmed that these two will be the first Wii games published by EA that support the upcoming MotionPlus controller add-on.

The controller add-on, revealed last summer, promises to improve the accuracy of the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing capabilities to an almost 1:1 scale. It is to be bundled with Wii Sports Resort this spring.

The publisher notes that gamers will get a “near perfect 1:1 swing” in Tiger Woods with the accessory and that Grand Slam Tennis will offer the “deepest tennis experience” when coupled with the add-on.

Full Auto Video Game Review – A Jammed Barrel And A Blown Piston

There are a lot of people out there who, despite the fact that it happened years ago, like to debate why Sega shut down.  And the reasons are always plentiful, if a bit outlandish.  Things like insufficient processing power, a glut of games in the market, a low number of total releases, payoffs from Big N or Sony or Microsoft, and so on right down the line.

But one thing I think they all–indeed, WE all–can agree on is it wasn’t from a lack of quality games.  Sega’s been making them fun and offbeat for some time now.  In fact, one of Sega’s biggest advances came in the development of the “wacky car” subgenre, as personified by its Crazy Taxi title.  And they advanced this concept outward into a safari hunting game, and more recently, into a car battle game.  We’ll be going over that one today, a fun little title called Full Auto.

Full Auto doesn’t have much in the way of a plot: basically you just drive around and blast other cars into shredded smoking metal with a handful of weapons including land mines, machine guns, and missiles, among others.  You can likely insert your own motivations in here, somewhere, for extra fun–maybe the guy in the lead car killed your wife and you’re playing Jason Statham.

A game like this presents lots of opportunities for fun.  Driving around, blasting other cars?  That sounds like a party.  And indeed, the opportunities for multiplayer gaming are there and ready at any time.  Get a few friends together and Full Auto may well be the highlight of your evening.  Of course, this begs the question, what if your friends aren’t around, or you don’t actually HAVE any friends?  Well…that’s where you’re going to be a bit let down.
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Phelps Game to be More Than “Just Swimming”

Michael Phelps rocked the Olympics this year – the swimmer won 14 gold medals and is now a national hero. And with that, a game is currently on the way, though it will be more than just swimming. In fact, it will be “pure action,” according to 505 Games president Adam Kline.

“We believe it’s the next Tiger Woods project… it could be here for the next 10 years,” he said. “Swimming will be a part of it, but it won’t be set in an Olympic pool going back and forth.”

Kline refused to talk more about the game, noting that the company is still investigating a few different solutions. The game is being developed for iPhone and unspecified consoles in Spring 2010.

Skate 2 Release Date Announced

Defying expectations of a March 2009 release, EA today sent word that Skate 2, the sequel to the popular skateboarding game, will hit stores in North America on January 21, 2009 and the world two days later.

To make the deal sweeter, EA also revealed that those who pre-order the game now will receive an exclusive code to unlock the Throwback Pack, a special upgrade pack that includes retro clothing, accessories and gestures in-game.

Skate 2 will have you revive the skating scene of New San Vanelona, a city that is recovering from an “unspeakable disaster five years ago.” You will be tasked with creating your own skating career; it will let you create your own epic spots and challenges which can be uploaded and shared with the rest of the world.

The game is due out on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Activison Details Tony Hawk’s Motion

It look’s as Activision has just about given up with it’s Tony Hawk franchise, with EA’s skate taking all the glory and what not.

Further proving this theory is the announcement of Tony Hawk’s Motion for the Nintendo DS, and from the looks of the screen shots, it won’t be pretty.

All jokes aside, Tony Hawk’s Motion promises to include an innovative new way to play the game, utilizing accelerometer technology which allows the player to turn, twist, and tilt their way to the finish line.

New to the series however is the inclusion of snowboarding. Yep, snowboarding in a Tony Hawk video game. The game will feature 20 mini-challenges in which to snowboarding (and skate?) through. Also featured in the game is a completely unrelated Hue Pixel Painter, which allows players to bring color to a dull world, whatever that means.

Tony Hawk’s Motion is currently undergoing development by Creat Studios and is expected to hit shelves this November, for the Nintendo DS.