There are few game series with a longer and more distinguished pedigree than Castlevania. Many now-adult gamers fondly recall playing the first game on the original NES when they were but wee vampire hunters. Decades later, a string of exceptionally well-crafted titles bearing the beloved Castlevania name graced the more portable screens of the GBA and DS and captured the hearts of old school gamers again. And of course, who could forget Symphony of the Night, the seminal entry that gave rise to the “Metroidvania” sub-genre. Simply put, Castlevania games carry lofty expectations.
Unfortunately, not every game in the franchise quite lives up to the prestigious family name (especially when they try to go 3D). So where does the Xbox Live Arcade exclusive Harmony of Despair fit into this large (and often dysfunctional) family? Hit the jump to find out, and fear not, gentle reader — I won’t bite.
In case you missed it, Hydro Thunder was a motorboat racing game from 1999 that Dreamcast owners still use as proof that there were good games for the system. A decade later, Microsoft has released the sequel Hydro Thunder Hurricane in the unenviable position of following up Limbo in their “Summer of Arcade.” How could Hurricane possibly live up to the expectations of the critically-acclaimed Limbo? I don’t think you’ll find anyone calling Hydro Thunder Hurricane an “experience,” but as a game, I believe it stands up incredibly well.
The early ’90s were a pivotal time in my game-playing development. While I enjoyed the likes of Mario and Sonic, and the home consoles they championed, I was also strangely curious of these “Pee See” games I had heard so much about. The rumored better graphics, excessive gore, and digitized breasts sold this pre-teen boy on the platform at once. However, outside of our old Windows 3.1 machine, my family never obtained a computer with which I could enjoy these games. Sure, I was able to play a few minutes here and there at friends’ homes when fathers would wander away from those glorious giant white and off-white boxes, but I was never quite satiated. Doom, Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem: they were nothing but words to me.
Beautiful and bizarre. Dreamlike and disturbing. Gorgeous and grotesque. All of these adjectives and more describe the sweet alien fruits of Chilean development house ACE Team’s labors. Indeed, it may sound like cheap, boilerplate hyperbole to say that there’s nothing on the market today quite like Zeno Clash — a nice splash for an advertisement or the back of a retail box — but that makes it no less true. And now, with the help of Atlus, (never a publisher to shy away from fringe titles) console gamers can finally step into the world of Zenozoik themselves.
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?
Uncertain of his Sister’s Fate, a Boy enters LIMBO.
You lay in the grass for a few moments, unsure of your surroundings. You slowly open your eyes and look around; you’re in the middle of some kind of forest. Massive trees block out most of the sunlight, forcing you to wait as your eyes adjust. You toss a brief glance back over your shoulder, seeing nothing but dense foliage and shadows behind you. With no idea of where you’re going or how to get there you decide to simply move forward, toward the light.
You climb across the fallen husk of a long-dead tree and find yourself standing at the edge of a small ravine. Knowing that a dead-end is all that awaits you in the opposite direction you continue on, sliding down the embankment leaving yourself no way back. At the bottom you find a small gap. You carefully lower yourself into it, realizing too late that the bottom is filled with sharp and pointed branches. The world goes black.
You open your eyes and find yourself standing on the felled tree once more. You descend the embankment a second time and carefully leap over the fatal gap, stopping only for a moment to look back at what was and was not your final resting place. You push on, uncertain of what awaits you but unwilling to relent.
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).
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.
Aside from fancy HD graphics and newfangled control mechanisms, this current generation of consoles will surely be remembered for its knack at selling old games. Whether it’s true-to-form emulations on the Virtual Console or tweaked upgrades for the 360 and PS3, the old has certainly made a claim for itself. While there is no end to the list of games people want to see re-released (EarthBound, anyone?), one game has come up more often than most: GoldenEye 007. Though licensing nightmares may keep that game from ever seeing the light of day again, with the help of 4J Studios, Rare has opted to bring its sequ… I mean “spirtual successor” out to play instead.
Finally! The long uncertainty is over! Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition has a new release date after being stuck in the nebulous zone known as Spring 2010 following it missing its initial April release. Mark your calenders for May 5th, kids (that’s next week) because you’ll be heading on vacation to Zenozoik then.
Also, Atlus dropped a new video on us, revealing a couple of new features exclusive to the XBLA port. Not only is there a new character gallery, but more important to gameplay is the new “Awareness System” where an on-screen indicator shows where other enemies are in relation to your facing; crucial for those multi-combatant fights where adversaries are on all sides.
Enjoy the video below and check out our preview here.
Sure, at this point it’s just a rumor. Of course, that screen shot could be a fake. And yes, I know rumors on the internet have a nasty habit of being fictitious. But dammit, I need this to be true.
Destructoid has reported that someone by the name of “Xbox360 Leaker” has released a screen from (supposedly) a French Xbox Live Marketplace which clearly shows a selectable Jet Set Radio (a.k.a Jet Grind Radio in the US) in their games library. As of now there haven’t been any official confirmations, but their haven’t been any denials either.
I’d hate to think that this is all just a cruel, cruel hoax, but it’s a distinct possibility. However, since I love the series so much I’m just going to assume this is true based on blind faith. Blind faith, and the knowledge that this is too freaking spectacular an idea to not happen.
One of the things we mentioned a little while back in our preview of Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition something that was teased (accidentally) that we weren’t allowed to discuss. Well, it looks like Atlus finally decided the time was right to pull the curtain back off of this new feature: the “Zeno Rush” mode.
Essentially, Zeno Rush is a speed-run mode where you can post your best completion times to online leaderboards, showing off to all your friends that you can bust bizarro mutant heads faster than they can. Assisting you in shaving crucial seconds off your playthrough is a new weapon – the Timehammer – which removes a couple of seconds with each enemy smashed.
Check the video below. Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition is coming this Spring to Xbox Live Arcade (C’mon guys! Hurry up already!).
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