Unlike a certain other Western-themed game, Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West makes no attempts at being overly serious or realistic. To put it in simpler terms: Lead and Gold is basically to Red Dead Redemption what Team Fortress 2 is to Half-Life 2, in the sense that they’re each marginally related to a bigger game but choose a more lighthearted approach. In fact, Lead and Gold and TF2 have quite a few similar qualities. Both are multiplayer-only shooters, class-based, and make a point of being cartoony and unrealistic. With so much in common, it’s easy to go in to Lead and Gold with a more open disposition, and for the most part, this game delivers the things you’d want and expect from such a shooter.
The days of Evel Knievel may be long gone but the daredevil stuntman’s spirit rides on in Hello Games’ PSN-exclusive Joe Danger. One difference between Joe and Evel? Besides the whole “reality” thing, Evel never saw the absurd Trials HD-style obstacle courses Joe needs to navigate.
Most comparisons to Joe Danger do often bring up Trials, and for good reason. Those familiar with the spirit-crushing difficulty of the latter will find refuge in Joe Danger, as the same basic premise (and controls, to an extent) are present in Trials without the obscene and frustrating ramp-up in difficulty. There’s always the same goal in a Joe Danger track: finish by any means possible. Moving from left-to-right often accomplishes that quite nicely, though a number of ramps, traps, springs, walls, buildings, and explosives may stand in your way.
Throughout the course of my gaming life (roughly 20+ years and counting) I’ve played a lot of games. Stay with me now, I’m going somewhere with this. As I’m sure anyone with a similar background to my own can attest (CFD! readers, feel free to back me up), in every “generation” there are always a few titles that stand out more than the rest. For example, if you talk about the NES, peoples’ brains are apt to fix on something like Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. as opposed to Clash At Demonhead. Mention the PlayStation years and it’s bound to be games like Symphony of the Night or Final Fantasy VII. The reason I’m bringing all of this up is because you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who was alive and of controller-using age at the time who wouldn’t consider Earthworm Jim one of the SNES/Genesis era’s “Classics.”
Shiny Entertainment’s princess saving, crow bounty hunter beating, head whipping, cow launching, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt destroying little earthworm that could is every bit as much of an icon for his time as the blue hedgehog and the ethnically-stereotyped plumber. Of course, like most mascots circa the mid-90′s, Jim never amounted to much after his breakout hit. Earthworm Jim 2 was a great game, but it wasn’t as great as the original and the less said about the other attempts at continuing his legacy the better. Enter Earthworm Jim HD. It’s the same Jim we all loved once upon a time, only now he comes with slick graphics and a reworked soundtrack.
But was our love for Jim purely grounded in nostalgia, or is there more to it than that? Would revisiting his mission to save Princess What’s-Her-Name and thwart the evil Queen Slug-for-a-Butt’s plans for galactic conquest even be worth it today?
Hey there, kids! Who’s up for a slice of justice with a side of comedy? Show of hands?
Well, you’re in luck! To celebrate this week’s upcoming release of Ron Gilbert’s DeathSpank (yes, that’s right – The Secret of Monkey Island‘s Ron Gilbert) on XBLA and PSN, our friends over at EA and Hothead Games have graciously provided us with some free copies of the game for our loyal readers. So if you’re down for a little Diablo-style action-RPG gameplay mixed with a liberal dose of humor, we’ve got your hook-up.
However, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, after all. We’re not going to just do the typical random drawing sweepstakes this time around. We’re going to make you work a little bit for it.
Just how much work, you ask? Hit that jump and find out.
So a while back this thing happened with space zombies, a giant glowing stone thing and a bunch of psychotics. Everyone’s favorite errand boy, Isaac Clarke, managed to escape the doomed USG Ishimura and apparently makes it back to civilization. Of course, everything goes to Hell and he finds himself in the thick of it once more, but we won’t be taking part in any of that business until next year.
Rather than risk allowing players (read: potential customers) to forget about the only worthwhile Survival Horror franchise on the market at the moment, EA has opted to dangle a carrot in front of our noses in the form of a downloadable prequel adventure.
In case you haven’t heard, we’re getting a new Contra. Kind of. You see, Konami has decided to give Arc System Works (of Guilty Gear fame) the task of bringing us a 2D side-scrolling shooter that shares everything from their classic franchise except the name. And 1UP seems to have gone and gotten themselves a little preview of the next Contra that’s not actually Contra. The lucky little…
Have you ever looked back at your childhood video game collection and thought: “Where the hell did I get that game from?” That one random game with no connection to any of your favorite series. Was it a gift from an estranged relative? Did you buy it with birthday money based solely on the box art? Perhaps a friend loaned it to you before moving to eastern Europe? There is no end to the possible explanations for its manifestation.
Rocket Knight Adventures was that kind of game for me; an apparition with no discernible source. Despite this, I played Adventures quite a bit throughout my formative years and it remains a game I bring up when discussing favorite hidden gems of that 16-bit era. It was a simpler time, before a pile of muscle and facial hair constituted a character. All you needed was a cartoon animal who was either adorable or Bart Simpson-esque (who, looking back today, was about as rebellious as a wacky tie).
Indie games have certainly seen a meteoric rise in popularity lately. Granted they were always there, willing to keep us entertained for hours with their genre-busting ideas, generally unique visuals and super affordable prices, but it seems as though they’ve really jumped to the forefront of peoples’ minds during the past couple of years.
The 360 created the Community Games tab (later rebranded as Xbox Live Indie Games) on the Marketplace and PSN has been graced with more than a few games from prominent indie developer thatgamecompany. In keeping with this trend, Sony has decided to bring Eufloria to PSN where it can sit comfortably alongside other indie greats such as Flower and the PixelJunk series.
What’s this? Another giveaway? Of course it is! Because CFD! loves you all just that much.
And this time around, we’ve got actual games up for grabs – specifically Konami’s recent 2.5D updating of a much beloved 16-bit hero. We’re talking, of course, about everyone’s favorite armored opossum, Sparkster.
That’s right. We’re giving away two PlayStation Network codes for Rocket Knight this week, generously provided by our friends at Konami – rejoice, fans of armored marsupials!
How can you win, you ask? Hit the jump and find out.
Tomb Raider was the shiznit during the early PlayStation era. This is fact. The series kinda fell off after Tomb Raider 2. This is also fact. Although Laura has made some decent attempts recently in her bid to reclaim her glory days atop the pile of video game heroines, none of them have quite captured the magic we felt during her first tomb raiding excursions.
Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix are taking things down a slightly different rubble-and-trap strewn path this time around, however. Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light is different in several notable ways: a) it’s a downloadable title, b) it features co-op gameplay, and c) it eschews the traditional 3rd person behind-the-back camera for a top-down, isometric view.
And we now have an official premier trailer to share with you all, showing us Laura and her new Mayan buddy, Totec, jumping, flipping and shooting their way through all-new levels. What do you think?
Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light hits PSN, Xbox Live Arcade and Steam in Summer 2010.
That was my first response to playing (the unfortunately named) After Burner Climax. A port of the arcade game of the same name, Climax drops you into a whirlwind of hectic, near-unnavigable chaos from the word go. Enemies fly at you from all directions, loosing missiles and machine gun fire upon your poor little aircraft. You may survive the first few levels, but if you are like me, your credits (it wouldn’t be an arcade game without them) will expire before even the first third of the levels are complete.
A “highly-placed source” has leaked to VG247 that Sony is planning to reveal a for-pay PlayStation Network subscription model at E3 2010.
Though the service’s free subscription won’t be affected, the premium subscribers would get a free PSN game each month with the ability to choose between “two to four” titles. It will reportedly cost £50, or about $70.
Like anyone with a PS3, waiting until Thursday can be a bit of a drag. Seeing demos and other content pop up on Xbox Live in a steady stream only enhances the obnoxious wait for Sony to play catch-up. Well, beginning in May you won’t have to wait anymore. At least, you won’t have to wait until Thursday.
Joystiq has recently discovered that PlayStation Network updates for the US will now take place on Tuesday (Wednesday over in Europe for some reason). So that means no more waiting that extra day or two for some DLC or highly anticipated demo. I suppose this can be seen as Sony finally deciding it might be in their best interest to attempt to compete with Microsoft’s (better) schedule for releasing content, but it just seems like a case of too little too late.
[Ed Note: Updates will be posted below the jump, as they come in. Thanks! - R.T.]
Remember the N64? Remember how it didn’t brick itself because the internet went down? Yeah me, too.
If you’re a PlayStation 3 owner, or if you spend any time on the internet, you might have noticed that PSN seems to be havingissues. Just in case you missed it, a few hours ago people began to notice their PS3s were unable to connect to the PlayStation Network as well as corrupting their dynamic themes and even their… *dramatic pause* …trophies.
Have you somehow missed out on the oft-talked about indie game flOw?
Well now is the time to take care of that grievous error. For today only (that’s 2/13 for those of you without access to a calendar), flOw is available for free on the PlayStation Network Store. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, you heard right: flOw is totally FREE. You can now experience life as an ever-evolving, surrealistic creature of the deep at absolutely no cost to you!
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