Since it is just 5 days before the classic gothic-horror rougelike RPG finally hits the states, let us whet our appetite with a video.
Fair warning for those watching the video: this game is not for the feignt of heart. With a dark storyline, slower paced action gameplay and a completely unforgiving death system where you lose it all; this game is not for everyone. But if you enjoyed the Shin Megami series and Azure Dreams or Izuna this is surely one to check out.
From the creative insaine minds at ThinkGeek comes the most superfluous accessory since the WiiZapper; the WiiHelm. Now instead of flapping your arms around and possibly looking a bit silly you can wrench your neck. The website does little to convince that the product is needed, especially with lines like “…the average gaming geek is just not up to the strenuous task of vigorous arm movement for longer than 10 minutes. This makes those extended play sessions a thing of the past…” Yes it certainly would put a damper in one’s play time when they loose equilibrium from swinging their head around like a special ed kid. But at least that beats having the remote slip out of your hand and break your tv.
For those curious how exactly the helm would work with the motion controls, thankfully they provided a video of the product in action
With the release of Brawl and its undeniable awesomeness, everyone I’ve seen has the same thing to say: “We were disappointed with the lack of voice communications support.”
I can understand why you would want to communicate with your friends in game, both to coordinate matches and just to have some fun. But think about this for a minute, do you really need voice in this game? Let’s look at some of the things you’ll be encountering in your adventures with voice chat!
Instant Online Radio! Ah, who thought we could get music we’ve never heard of by artists without labels at such poor quality? Listening to music while playing a video game is great, especially when it comes over someone else’s 10 dollar Wal-Mart mic, which can barely communicate with its own headphone jack, let alone start a disco. I don’t know about you, but I love it when people share their musical tastes with me while I’m trying to say something important to my teammates or calling for backup. It makes be feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
10 year olds with superiority complexes! When I’m playing online, I enjoy listening to someone half my age talking about his enormous testicles and dropping F-bombs like he grew up at the state Veteran’s Hospital. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something when I beat up someone so young, and it’s ok to feel proud, because the little bastard had it coming. The state of our youth is in good hands when we can say with conviction that our children are growing up strong minded, strong willed, and strongly in need of some grammar lessons.
NEED A DISPENSER HERE! NEED A DISPENSER HERE! NEED A *OH MY GOD WILL YOU JUST DIE*
So the next time you start thinking to yourself “I wish this had voice communication so I could talk to the person I’m playing with,” just remember what comes with it. If you really want it that bad, get their cell phone number.
Ok I know the whole Nintendo Seal of Quality thing is bullshit but come on. I wouldn’t waste my time with this if it was a free flash game.
What’s even more ridiculous is that this is actually a port of an arcade game released in 2004. Arcade Link
Konami Hype/Shame Page
“Originally an arcade game created by legendary designer Eugene Jarvis (Defender, Robotron: 2084, and Cruis’n series), Target: Terror puts you in the place of an elite anti-terrorist agent who is charged with protecting the U.S. from all terrorist activities.”
Who else thinks Eugene is in his 80’s and hitting the bottle a little too hard these days?
More Screens
On May 29th you can take a step back in time nearly 20 years and pay full price for it at the same time.
“Back in the summer of 1986, Bandai released a fitness game titled Family Trainer: Athletic World on the 8-bit Famicom which shipped with a flimsy mat controller. The idea was to get kids off the couch and in motion with simple mini-games that were played by stepping on the circular cues located on top of the mat. Sales were mediocre and Bandai eventually abandoned hopes of starting a video game fitness craze.”
Then:
Now:
The more things change, the more things stay the same?
Via NCSX
Remember when you got paid to sit in a room for an hour while images were flashed on a computer screen and a guy watched you try and distinguish the difference between a consonant and a vowel? Now imagine you’re doing the same thing, only instead of vowels, there are ninjas, and instead of getting paid, you shelled out forty bucks. Pretty bum deal, huh?
Suffice it to say that there isn’t anything special to Ninja Reflex. There are six minigames in which you are required to perform a specific task, be it hitting ninja cutouts with shurikens or catching flies with a pair of chopsticks, in order to advance yourself through the various belt colors. That wasn’t a very long sentence, but there really isn’t much more to it.
I would say that actually training to become a ninja is less of a chore compared to this game. To advance to the next belt, you have to play each minigame more than three times a piece, and if my math skills still serve me well, you have to play over 200 rounds of the same six minigames to get to black belt. That may not be that much compared to other games, but the sheer monotony of the task is an immediate turn off.
One of the things that gets me is that for a game called Ninja Reflex, your reaction times are not stored anywhere. Sure, they pop on the screen for that half a second after you click, but after that it disappears along with your sense of accomplishment. And during your quest for jewels that qualify you for your next belt test, you can’t replay games once you beat them, even if your times sucked balls. But I guess that doesn’t really matter when no real records exist.
Multiplayer is more of a formality than a mode. You can play one version of each of the six minigames, and then compare scores. That’s it. You’d be better off driving your friends to a Circuit City and letting them play the demo stands for ten minutes. At least then you could say that you did something.
There is, however, one thing that this game has that no other does. Meditation. Straight up, sit in silence meditation. You have the option of having the stereotypical old Asian guy talk you through all the steps, or setting a timer on the game for your own silent meditation. While you’re doing this, the screen shows a giant Ying Yang symbol gently rotating back and forth to the sound of nothing. Seriously, if you’re going to meditate, don’t let a video game be your first foray into it. Jesus Christ, I could only listen to 30 seconds of it before deciding that I would be better off just sleeping.
There are a lot of worse games out there that aren’t as well made, but that doesn’t mean you can make a game like this and expect people to pay full price. There is literally no reason for this game to exist by itself. Maybe, just maybe, if some sort of third person ninja shooter with a decent plotline and an array of weapons came out, then Ninja Reflex would be a decent side section for that game. As it stands now, wait for it to hit the ten dollar bin before rejecting it again on the grounds that your local college campus probably has something similarly interesting that pays five bucks an hour.
In addition to being useful for breaking windows, bashing people over the head, stabbing, driving, and other random acts of violence, you can now use the Wii Remote as a universal remote for watching television. Japanese Wii owners can download the TV Guide Channel, which will let them surf through channels, share their favorite shows with their friends, rate shows, view demographic data to see what other Wii users are watching, and receive an e-mail or SMS message 30 minutes before a show they want to watch is going to begin.
It looks like for all its “pure gaming” ideals, Nintendo is bowing to the multi-media desires of the masses with this. Still, if they were to implement this in the US, I’d be all over it. Unfortunately, I think that until cable television becomes nationally standardized (as opposed to only within a certain state or company), this cannot be a reality.
Official Nintendo Site
I grew up on Legos. Hours of my childhood were spent building complex structures out of plastic blocks using only my mind and a strangely intuitive booklet of pictorial instructions. I’m a grown man now, and I still find myself getting giddy over the upcoming Lego themed games.
The early days of Legos in the Gaming world were sketchy at best. If you don’t remember any of them before Lego Star Wars, it’s because most of them crashed and burned (Lego Racer, anyone?). Who would have thought that there would be a proverbial renaissance of Lego video games, starting with Star Wars, and moving on the Indiana Jones and Batman? I don’t know about you, but I’d piss myself with glee if I could see one lego man tearing out the heart of another over a pit of lava.
I don’t know if it’s the style, the game play, or the humor that makes me want to play these games, but I know it has something to do with seeing your enemy blow into pieces when you shoot it with a blaster. It’s incredibly cheerful and violent at the same time. We can only hope that they keep it up in the upcoming games, and that novelty won’t be lost once we get there.
While looking online for what Lego themed games were coming out soon, I stumbled across Lego Universe, an MMO that in my opinion has the greatest possibilities for any game known to man. Freaking pirates and ninjas and lego spacemen all fighting and occupying the same world. Building your own vehicles and houses, making yourselves immense weapons from scratch. If they do this right, it could be the greatest thing since Freebird was written. However, there are an immense number of ways that this could fail miserably, so fingers crossed that this will not go down like Hellgate did.
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