While it was rumored to have been coming for a little while now, the sequel to James Silva’s 2007 Dream-Build-Play award winner, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, was finally officially announced this week.
Teased with this cryptic, poetry-laden trailer, Ska Studios’ The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile will be bound for Xbox Live Arcade “when it’s done”, but you’ll be able to sneak a peek at it in action if you happen to make it out to PAX East this year.
Despite a plethora of good reviews, Dead Space: Extraction sold very, very poorly. Last year’s on-rail Wii prequel (Wii-quel?) to EA/Visceral’s Dead Space just couldn’t find traction at the market, selling only around 9,000 copies at launch. In fact, it was looking very much like one of those games you’d be hard pressed to locate on store shelves in six months, turning up down the road in inevitable “Best Games Nobody Played” discussions.
Earlier today, Sega indicated that it does still have some handle on what Sonic fans actually want, announcing that “Project Needlemouse” is in fact Sonic 4. What’s more, it appears that the game will be episodic, with Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I set to release sometime in the summer of 2010 for all the major downloadable platforms. More information is to come as the game’s website also features locked links with countdowns next to them; one can assume because countdowns on websites are in right now.
Back in the days before video games “became mainstream” and Snoop Dogg performed at awards shows dedicated to the medium, older gamers tended to hide their participation in the hobby. People tended to look a bit sideways at anyone over the age of say, 14 or so who copped publicly to enjoying them.
Another group that had long experienced the same manner of ostracism (worse so, in most cases) were players of tabletop role-playing games and their eventual bastard cousin, the collectible card game. When Magic: The Gathering, the most famous and longest-running CCG on the market today, eventually came in stripped-down form to Xbox Live Arcade as Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers, it was like a match made in socially-reclusive geek heaven. And for this week, you won’t have to tap your entire pool of space bucks to tap some virtual mana.
All you youngsters out there may find this hard to believe, but there was once a time when people didn’t play games on their TVs or computers. There were no “Xboxes” or “PlayStations” or even “Wiis”. Nope. Instead, people used to gather around the family dinner table and play games on cardboard “gameboards” using dice, cards and little plastic statuette characters. And the most unbelievable part about these “boardgames”, as they were called, was that they didn’t even feature online multiplayer modes! Everyone who wanted to play had to physically be in the same room. Can you believe it?
Okay, of course you know what a boardgame is. You might even have gotten one for Christmas just a few weeks ago. But if you did, hopefully it wasn’t Risk, the classic “Game of World Domination” from the good folks at Hasbro, because Electronic Arts has just announced that they plan on making that old “analog” version obsolete when they release Risk: Factions on XBLA in early 2010.
“A spiritual successor, sometimes called a spiritual sequel or a companion piece, is a successor to a work of fiction which does not directly build upon the storyline established by a previous work as do most traditional prequels or sequels, but nevertheless features many of the same elements, themes, and styles as its source material.” – Wikipedia
Best to get this out of the way first; Shadow Complex borrows more than a great deal from a certain franchise involving an intergalactic bounty hunter, giant flying jellyfish and a huge brain in a jar. The exploration, power-ups, perspective, and even the map all share many similarities with one of Nintendo’s most popular series.
Obvious inspirations aside (the developers cited Super Metroid as a big influence many, many times), a game would have to do more than just copy a beloved (and arguably transcendent) favorite in order to be considered anything more than a knock-off. It would have to build upon that foundation, find ways to improve that which seemed perfected, and ultimately create something that is both an homage and a step forward. In short, it would have to be… well, Shadow Complex.
It’s a bit strange to realize that South Park has only been on the air for 12 years now; Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny feel like they’ve been an integral part of the fabric of pop culture for far longer. What’s stranger still is that for all its weight in the public mindshare, only three attempts had been made to translate Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s brainchild into into video game form before now. By comparison, its closest counterpart in terms of longevity, The Simpsons, has spawned over 20 home video game releases, if you count PC titles.
D3’s Puzzle Quest was addicting as all hell; slapping a lite-RPG skin over Bejeweled had to be a stroke of genius on the level of the first person to mix chocolate and peanut butter or hookers and blow. How do you top a formula that neared perfection on its first try?
You hand it over to Square Enix and PopCap. And have them add a dash of Pokemon to the mix.
A while back, Microsoft began advertising their XBLA “Summer of Arcade” all over the place, kicking it off with ‘Splosion Man and ending it with Shadow Complex. When I saw the “box art” for Trials HD nestled between images of human explosions and High-Def mutant amphibians, it annoyed me. Here were four great games, with potential room for a fifth, but then someone had to go and shoehorn a dirt bike game in there. Sheesh!
I resolved to ignore Trials HD and just enjoy the titles I already purchased, as there were still a few weeks until the time when that final release I’d been salivating over would be mine. Best laid plans and all that. By the time Trials HD was available, my tune had changed slightly. I figured, “What the heck, it’s free to try the demo.”
Wow.
Previously thought to be something of a moribund genre, graphic adventure games have seen a surprising resurgence of late. Classic titles are being re-issued on a variety of platforms, sometimes with glossy new visuals, and in many cases are even spawning brand new releases. For well over a decade, LucasArts and their SCUMM engine stood proudly at the helm of adventure gaming, releasing title after title and delighting fans with offbeat humor and brain-twisting puzzles.
But as the ’90s turned the corner into the new millennium, the advent of more powerful computers and the birth of online play as we know it today began to see PC gamers shift away from the once-loved genre. Several titles floundered in development hell or were simply outright canceled. One such casualty was Sam & Max: Freelance Police. This planned sequel to Sam & Max Hit The Road would have taken the series from its SCUMM-powered origins into unexplored territory for everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic dog and hyperkinetic rabbity thing duo – the world of full 3D graphics. This, however, was not to be. In a move hailed by many as the death knell for the graphic adventure genre, Sam & Max: Freelance Police was canceled out of the blue by LucasArts in 2004.
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