Totally kickass faceplate.

Marble Madness pioneered a new genre of gaming back in 1984 on the Atari. Combining platforming, puzzle solving and incredible patience it was your job to navigate your marble from one end of the level to another. The game inspired numerous titles like Super Monkey Ball, Marble Blast Ultra and Mercury Meltdown. The latter was a launch title on the PSP and received fairly positive reviews and now Ignition Entertainment brings a sequel to the Nintendo’s Wii called Mercury Meltdown Revolution. I guess they didn’t get the memo it’s now called the Wii.

The basic premise of Mercury Meltdown is simple. Navigate your blob of mercury through various levels to reach an end goal as fast as possible. It sounds very straight forward, but there are plenty of curves in this game which add some strategy and puzzle solving elements.

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Back in May of 2006 I wrote a review of Rockstar’s Table Tennis. The game came out just as the Wii hype was taking place, and people immediately said - “Why isn’t this coming out on the Wii?” Fast forward to today when the game finally makes an appearance on Nintendo little white console. But is it the game people hoped it would be? Not quite.

For the most part the game remains completely unchanged in terms of content. There’s still the same characters, courts and outfits to unlock. In fact the entire single player campaign is identical to the Xbox 360 counterpart. Where the game differs is the online multi player component, namely there isn’t one on the Wii. Read the rest of this entry »

I just launched a new site.

The Weekly Release.com will chronicle the releases for Games, DVDs, HD DVDs, Blu-Ray Discs and Movies every week.  It’s something I’ve done for 4 years now at Evil Avatar.  Now I’ve just centralized it.

This is one of the coolest pieces of swag I’ve ever received. It’s a personalized straight jacket promoting Manhunt 2 from Rockstar Games. This isn’t just some cheap iron on name, this is frickin embroidered text on this bad boy. Now the only question remains, did they send one to Jack Thompson?
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Ooooh, this guy is a beauty! 12″ Of Master Chief Glory. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

I’ve got a video of the unboxing which I’ll get up in a little bit. I need to find a decent MPEG4 Editor first.
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So what is it lately with companies sending out emails/press releases/etc announcing an upcoming announcement.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about with the names removed to protect the innocent.

Heads up Nick:

_______________   will release findings of ___________ on Monday, October 29th.

Thank you for that.   This just seems to be happening more and more.  I’ll get emails like, “Hey, just wanted to let you know we have an uber super secret announcement coming tomorrow so get ready!”  Here’s an idea, how bout you just send me the announcement.

Most people aren’t happy about being #33, but I am. I came across this great Blog entry on the Design Vitality website. The entry talks about unconvential inspirations for web design.  And you know what’s really awesome? A site I designed from scratch was listed at #33!!! What’s better is it was two ahead of that monstrosity that is Kotaku.

The Gamers’ Gallery was listed in the product design section.

Whether it’s a DVD menu title, video game, or toaster, web designers can learn from what other design fields offer. Use them to consider usability, aesthetics, and create new effects that are usually reserved for offline design.

Sweet!

There’s a show on TV right now called Pushing Daisies in which the main character talks to dead people to help solve the mysteries surrounding their deaths. Folklore follows a similar premise by having you visit the netherworld to unravel a mystery in the village of Doolin. In Folklore you follow the story and play as two different characters with intertwining paths. Ellen is a distressed young woman drawn to the Village of Doolin by a mysterious letter from her dead mother.

Keats is a reporter at a sci-fi magazine who receives a frantic phone call from a woman at the Village of Doolin. Both arrive to find a woman dead on the cliffs of the town, and murder is in the air. It’s their job to get to the bottom of the crime as well as discover what exactly happened in the village 17 years ago in the Village’s past.

The game itself is broken up into two parts. The first has your character walking around town, talking to townsfolk and looking for clues. The second has your character transported to the land of the dead to talk to a character from village who has since been deceased to fill in a piece of the puzzle. Each one of these sections make up a chapter of the game, and each chapter is played by each character. Cut scenes are played out in a pseudo comic book style look with a mix of frames and real rendered 3d graphics with popup text. This was sort of a disappointment to me as there are a few cut scenes that are actually rendered really well with complete voice overs, while the graphic novel style cut scenes seemed more low budget. With all the touts of Blu-Ray and the space it provides, not having the voice overs in these other cut scenes seems sort of silly. Especially when a huge epic RPG like Mass Effect or even Oblivion has every line of dialog voiced.
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