05/06/08
When THQ announced Battle of the
Bands, the first thing that came to mind was a Wii-exclusive "me too" band game a la Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Yeah, yeah, it would use the Wii Remote rather than a peripheral ... whatever. Add on top of this unoriginality the confusing concept of "musical combat" and songs that dynamically changed genre in mid-level, and THQ was sure to have a stinker on its hands, right? Not even close....
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05/01/08
I was flipping through the
latest issue of Game Informer at a friend's house the other day, and as I looked at the advertisements, I realized something: I no longer knew all the upcoming games for all the systems like I used to. The ads were all over the place, page after page full of so many games I had never even heard of. But somehow they were all familiar. A lot of them looked like games I'd already seen, but in a slightly different shade. You may....
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04/29/08
There's an unmistakable adrenaline rush when
firing up a new Mario Kart game for the first time, fueled by a nostalgic return to a gaming phenomenon running 15 years strong. There's also the anticipation of wondrous new features that elevate Mario Kart racing to a new level of addiction. In Mario Kart Wii, the payoff is a game relying heavily on its roots while simultaneously taking the series into uncharted online waters. Mario Kart's....
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04/27/08
The Destroy All Humans! games
have always taken us back to an innocent time, a time when gas-guzzling cars were celebrated, not reviled; when hoop skirts and fedoras were fashionable, not ridiculed; and when giving people anal probes was novel and hilarious. OK, so that last one still holds true. This latest attempt by the Furons to wipe out humanity takes players to the 1970s, a more modern era than previous DAH outings but one with....
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04/25/08
Agatha Christie is synonymous with mystery
novels, and The Adventure Company is synonymous with -- you guessed it -- adventure games. It would seem like the combination of these two entities would be a point-and-click mystery match made in heaven. Unfortunately, as good as the source material and pedigree might be, the Wii game Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None is an absolute disaster, a perfect example of an idea that....
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