Vigilante 8 Review

November 12, 2008    Category: Wii Gaming, Wii News   No Comments »

For all of the talk about Activision seeking “exploitable” franchises in recent days, here’s one release that wouldn’t seem to follow that business plan…at least not on the surface. Vigilante 8: Arcade is a mashup remake of sorts of Vigilante 8 and Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense, a pair of PS2/N64/Dreamcast car-combat titles that debuted before the turn of the century and had not been touched by developers since. While the built-in thrills of the car-combat genre remain intact and the $10 price intrigues, little else has changed in the last decade or so — more for worse than better.

Series aficionados will take heart at the integrity of the core game mechanics and universe, which are likely just as they remember it from the original games — as in Twisted Metal, you drive around a handful of diverse arenas, dispensing various projectiles in an effort to be the last man (or rather, vehicle) standing at the end of each match. Charged shots and upgradeable vehicles (via collectable scrap pieces) set Vigilante 8 apart from its now-faded genre competition, along with a 1970s setting packed with references to disco music, the oil crisis, and UFO-loving hippies.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 Review

November 12, 2008    Category: Wii News   No Comments »

Few sports-gaming mano-a-mano tussles remain because of exclusive league licensing, but the annual heavyweight brawl between Konami’s Pro Evolution Soc-cer and EA’s FIFA wages on. In one corner, you’ve got Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, the annual gameplay champion that pilfered the UEFA Champions League li-cense from its competitor mere weeks ago. In the other corner, you’ve got the fully licensed and prettily polished FIFA 09.

It shouldn’t surprise that PES’ ever-evolving organic gameplay remains the leader, though the margin’s thinning. FIFA’s made huge strides in recent years, but PES retains its mastery at creat-ing nearly imperceptible nuances that showcase stellar feel and control. Every single goal still feels earned and looks unique, which results in fist-pumping delight (and, oh, how I wish FIFA would adopt PES’ genius postgoal-replay system). Plus, the between-player jostling before jump-ing for a header — improved significantly in both titles — gives a sense of achievement each time you gain possession.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 Review


Thanks to quality retailers like 7-Eleven selling the game days ahead of time, many gamers have found that they still have to wait for the official launch to play their early copies of ‘World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King Wrath of the Lich King U.S. Servers Go Live at 9 p.m. PST expansion. Luckily, WOW Insider is reporting that the wait is almost over, as Blizzard has changed their previous launch plans to allow everyone in the U.S. — regardless of time zone — to hop a boat to Northrend at 9 p.m. PST tonight. The European servers, it seems, are already up and running with the new expansion content.

Like almost any decision Blizzard has ever made, this revelation has drawn the ire of a small contingent of upset subscribers who feel that this arrangement is somehow unfair to them. In response to one such thread on the official forums, Blizzard poster Zarhym sarcastically replied, “We’re working to ensure the sun reaches all areas of the world at the same time of day and plan to have this corrected in a future patch.”

WOW Insider also notes that there is apparently already a bug involving players being unable to create characters of the new Death Knight class on the European servers. Blizzard’s temporary solution is for subscribers to first create a fresh, level one character, then attempt to make a Death Knight. Surely this will be just the first subject of the countless hotfixes that await during the post-launch weeks ahead.


Gamers were outraged when they heard that StarCraft 2 would be coming in three different parts. Blizzard had claimed it wouldn’t let the merger between Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi impact the way it did business. But the move reeked of the type of thingthat would fit right in with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s recent comments that the company want their games to be exploitable. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Blizzard COO Paul Sams vehemently denies that StarCraft 2 is being milked.

Speaking with VideoGamer.com today before a midnight launch of ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ game StarCraft 2 Trilogy Not About Milking the Franchise, Blizzard Claims in London today, he said:

The fact of the matter is, it’s absolutely, positively untrue about us trying to stretch it out and milk it. People think that it was a monetary driven decision. I can absolutely, positively tell you, with 100 per cent certainty, that that was not part of the conversation. I guarantee it. I give my word. There was never, ever a conversation where we said, ‘let’s do this because we’re going to make more money’. I guarantee it. As a matter of fact the sole reason we did it was because we thought it was going to be a better experience. Anybody that says otherwise is not correct. It is absolutely not what we did it for.

Sims’ denial is more passionate than the usual corporate line we get, so maybe it’ll be enough to convince fans that Blizzard truly is doing this to deliver the best game is possible.

But we doubt it.

KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child may have been absolute trash, but Rolling Stone thinks it “rocks” because it “helped to reinvent the band for a new generation of tech-savvy comic book fans as virtually animated saviors of humanity.” In the music publication’s new article, “The 50 Best Rock & Roll Video Games of All Time,” Rock Band Rolling Stone Unveils Questionable List of Most Rock & Roll Games, Guitar Hero Rolling Stone Unveils Questionable List of Most Rock & Roll Games, and Rez are expectedly mentioned, but so are duds like Make My Video and and Spice World. Meanwhile, the plastic guitar-pioneering Gitaroo-Man and this year’s independently-produced, and critically-lauded Audiosurf get the shaft.

Did they miss any other titles? Feel free to make some substitutions below. For the record, rhythmically tapping Chris Redfield’s feet on the wood flooring in the original Resident Evil 1 probably doesn’t qualify, as it seems by Rolling Stone’s criteria each game must either be focused on music creation or involve the music industry to some degree. Although, the inclusion of Simon does allow for unspecified leniency.

Libraries Will Celebrate National Gaming Day on Nov. 15

See this? Now imagine it with video games. Makes it so much better, doesn’t it? And that’s exactly what we’re going to get as libraries across the country gear up to celebrate the first ever National Gaming Day on November 15.

“Gaming formats have become a valuable tool for libraries,” said American Library Association President Jim Rettig. “Not only has this new format increased library usage from hard toreach users such as teens, we also have found that video games attract a variety of users and are a great vehicle to teach basic technology skills.”

National Gaming Day will feature online tournaments using T-rated games (sorry, no Gears of War 2 bouts for you), Pictureka, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, though the setup might vary from library to library. So if you have some free time on the 15th, now you can spend it proving why games belong in libraries. Isn’t that nice?

Demigod screenshot

Publishers traditionally aim many of the big, triple-A releases for the fall, holiday rush period — this year being no exception, as this week and the past few have demonstrated. It’s hell on the wallets of gamers and on their schedules. With that in mind, Stardock has a very novel idea that CEO Brad Wardell hopes they can manage: Avoid the the holiday rush and release a game early in the year.

“What we try to do is we want to release a title every first quarter of every year,” Wardell told Gamasutra. “For as far out as our schedule goes — that’s five or six years — there’s a game coming out.”

Sins of a Solar Empire did exactly that earlier this year when it was released in February. Next up for Stardock is Demigod which is slated for February 2009. Beyond that, there’s no indication of what Stardock is planning on releasing, though the 2011 release is already locked in. Wardell claims the company has more games in development and that “we’re in the process of building a second games team.”


Now that they’ve had some time to tinker with Guitar Hero World Tour Rock Band 2 Lead Designer Criticizes Guitar Hero World Tours Music Studio, what does Rock Band developer and Guitar Hero Rock Band 2 Lead Designer Criticizes Guitar Hero World Tours Music Studio series creator Harmonix think of the competition’s innovative music creation suite? According to an interview on VideoGamer.com, it hasn’t made a very strong impression on
Rock Band 2 Rock Band 2 Lead Designer Criticizes Guitar Hero World Tours Music Studiolead designer Dan Teasdale — going so far as to imply that the tools are “half-arsed”.

Teasdale echoed the statements made by Harmonix’ public relations guru John Drake following this year’s E3, telling VideoGamer.com, “We’ve dabbled around with stuff like that before, with Frequency and Amplitude, and we learned a lot of lessons from it,” continuing, “The main one is that you can’t do it half-arsed. If you want to do a way to let players create and distribute music, you have to go all-in — not just do it as a bullet on the back of a box.”

The designer went on to deliver some thinly-veiled criticisms of Neversoft’s song creation system in Guitar Hero World Tour. “We actually want to find a way to for people to create music and express themselves, but when we do we want to make sure that people can sing, or the songs can be longer than three minutes, or that you can have more than 1200 notes, or that you’re not tied to some dodgy sample somewhere,” said Teasdale, adding, “We want to make sure it’s an authentic experience and it fits on the platform.”