>> ^ponceleon:
A pity he didn't review Shadow Complex... definitely one of the best games made in a very very long time. If you own a 360, you are REQUIRED to download Shadow Complex. It is Metroid/Castlevania mixed with a bit of splintercelly tangent thrown in... HIGHLY recommended!


I second this recomendation. It is a good game.

A pity he didn't review Shadow Complex... definitely one of the best games made in a very very long time. If you own a 360, you are REQUIRED to download Shadow Complex. It is Metroid/Castlevania mixed with a bit of splintercelly tangent thrown in... HIGHLY recommended!

Hurray For Tex Murphy Reference... Hurray for mentioning Tim Tams ('who brought the Tim Tams' was said in the interplanetary meeting)... Hurray for a funny review of a game that I used to want but no longer do thanks to its hoards of uninspiring reviews.

I must get Metroid Prime 3 at some stage.

Crapsticks. my15minutes and I re-played D2 not too long ago.. wish I'd known about this!

There are a bunch of games I re-visit. Dozens in MAME alone, but others like Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy, SMB, Zelda, Metroid. Is anyone else on the sift a speedrun voyuer? I mean I don't do speedruns myself but I love watching them (tool-assisted or not -- both types are interesting).

♥ I LOVE VIDEOGAMES! ♥

^ I like the big Nintendo IP's (Mario, Zelda, and Metroid). I'm just disappointed that it's the same trio today that it was nearly 20 years ago. I would love to see an M-rated game from the same creative people. In theory the new Metroid is supposed to satisfy that demand, but I loved the Prime series, and would rather have Nintendo create a new IP if they want a first-party M-rated IP. I don't want Samus to become a brutal slayer-vixen.

I'm interested in the new Castlevania game they announced (because they say Kojima is part of the dev team!), but that will be for 360 and PS3, and not on Wii at all.

Castlevania is a 3rd party (Konami) IP anways.

>> ^Farhad2000:
Everything at E3 looked like shit. Bad economic times guarantees formulaic and safe games with sequels making the biggest showing.


In bad economic times, even the criticism becomes formulaic and safe.

The games industry has been all but recession-proof. In fact, up until very recently, the game industry seemed to be gaining momentum as people started staying home and curling up with videogames instead of going out.

The real thing that pushes games to be "formulaic and safe" is the same thing that always happens when there's really only a handful of companies with deep pockets competing with one another: they need to invest so much in individual products just to compete, it's hard to justify making a big bet on an unproven concept.

That said, "formulaic and safe" in the game industry usually means betting on the big name developers and development houses. Sometimes that means a sequel factory, other times it means God of War, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Brutal Legend, Resistance Fall of Man, and Halo come out, rather than just seeing the same IP getting dusted off year after year (Hey there Mario, Zelda, Metroid!).

That said, usually there's at least one title that gets announced at E3 that surprised me, and this year there was nothing.

As far as original IP from this year, look to things like Brutal Legend, The Last Guardian, Heavy Rain, Dragon Age, and Alan Wake.

If those don't qualify, what is the last game you thought was not formulaic and safe?

hmm...I don't like their characters or the style. It looks great, but I have my reservations about how this will turn out. I think they are going in the wrong direction for what I look for in Metroid...

It's spelled "psyched." And I am, too.

Really surprising that Retro Studios isn't developing this - their handling of the Metroid Prime titles for the GameCube, Wii, and DS breathed new life into an aging (but very popular) Nintendo franchise. But Team Ninja has had some success with their recent Ninja Gaiden titles (the DS Ninja Gaiden title is quite awesome), so I doubt that they'll mishandle it.

Samus Aran is one of the first *femme video game heroins.

I recommend watching the HD version. It looks very sharp.

I missed the part where women became game consoles. The ones I've been with couldn't be turned on and off with the push of a button, couldn't look and act completely different based on my mood, and most importantly they didn't have a joystick.

So, when comparing gaming consoles, I'd say if I were recommending someone who had to choose one, the 360 is the way to go. It has the largest/best game library, has Xbox Live, Netflix, etc.

As much as I think the PS3 is a technological marvel, there just aren't enough console exclusives to warrant recommending one. Resistance, MGS4, and Little Big Planet are stellar, but until we get God of War 3 and Gran Turismo 5, I'm not sure why you wouldn't go for Xbox with Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, etc. However, if you just want a Blu-ray player with some added functionality, PS3 is definitely the way to go.

The Wii is in some other space. It's great fun for parties, but hardcore gamers have little else except Zelda and Metroid.

That said, if I have to choose between sex and the 3 videogame consoles, I pick sex.

The Ubisoft developers themselves were pushing this as one of the selling points of the game, and this video does a much better job of arguing its effectiveness than Ubisoft themselves did.

Reading through the comments, there seem to be a lot of hardcore gamers who seem to be dissing this concept as superfluous, because there are too many "easy" games out there already.

I disagree.

I've been trying for a while to get mintbbb to try some of my console games. She's interested, since she knows they're very pretty looking games, and given the way that I rave about some of them, she knows they're fun too. She's an EQ/WoW vet, so I know she can play complex and difficult games, that's not what's holding her back. It's the controller.

She simply isn't used to making quick, precise movements with her thumbs, especially when the damn controller has some 16 different buttons that you need to accurately locate and press, often with a precise degree of timing.

I've been trying to find her a good onramp for a while, but she mostly just gets frustrated. Katamari Damacy is a good one, but, well, the King of All Cosmos can be a real ass, and there's not a tight enough feedback loop to really help her learn. I tried Overlords, but the game concept was tough for her to grasp, and past the first level it became clear its difficulty was tuned to be a challenge for someone like me, which made it nigh impossible for her.

We have a Wii, but that controller won't teach her how to play a 360 or PS3 game. I admit I haven't plonked her down in front of Zelda or Metroid which have traditional-ish control schemes, but I don't know that it'd get her comfortable enough with the controller to pick up something like Mass Effect or God of War on a more traditional controller.

This vid has me thinking I should give the new Prince of Persia a try for her. I'd crossed it off my list after hearing the reviews, since I don't want to pay $60 for a game I'd finish in an afternoon without breaking a sweat, especially when they didn't rate it as being some sort of must-see story or gameplay experience along the way.

At a minimum, a rental might be in order.

Interesting. Am I the only one who hears hints of Metroid in this?

>> ^spawnflagger:
can someone give the whole list, along with what game the character is from?


Solid Snake - Metal Gear Solid series
Mushroom - Mario series
Alucard - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Goombah - Mario series
Sonic
Yoshi - Mario series
Mega Man
Pikachu - Pokemon series
Kratos - God of War series
Link - Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker / Phantom Hourglass
Cloud - Final Fantasy VII & spinoffs
can't make this one out
Samus Aran - Metroid series
Kirby - Kirby series
Donkey Kong
Big Daddy - BioShock
Master Chief - Halo series
Triforce - mystical object from Zelda games
Dante - Devil May Cry series
Sackboy - Little Big Planet

Fun thing about this list is that we actually have these videos here on the sift...

http://www.videosift.com/video/Every-Mortal-Kombat-fatality
6) http://www.videosift.com/video/Resident-Evil-5-Trailer
5) http://www.videosift.com/video/Halo-2-ending
4) http://www.videosift.com/video/Metroid-ending
3) http://www.videosift.com/video/The-saddest-moment-in-video-game-history-Final-Fantasy-VII
2) http://www.videosift.com/video/Call-Of-Duty-4-Nuke-Scene

I'll admit I just uploaded 4 and 5 just now, but since these videos were never posted, I just went ahead really fast to add it in case you wanted to see it in full...

1. Micheal Land - "Rollercoaster of Death (mix)"
A so-so remix of a Monkey Island track. Not off to a good start!

2. Vangelis - "The Little Fete"
Booooring. Insta-skip.

3. Taika - "Shining in the Darkness - Down in the Dungeon Just Creatures and Me"
A remix of music from some game I've never played, from OCRemix.org

4. Ray Lynch - "Ivory"
Too slow for my mood. Skip!

5. Judas Priest - "Leather Rebel [Live]"
Not his best stuff... skip.

6. Captain Dan - "7 Seas"
Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew perform authentic pirate hip hop.
"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, bitch!"
Awesome

7. Mazedude - "Super Metroid Norfair Deathmarch"
I love mazedude's tracks, but Norfair is kinda slow. Another from OCRemix.org

8. FFmusicDJ - "Hidden Palace Future"
Sonic 2 remix, gets off to a slow start, but speeds up eventually. OCRemix.org

9. whoever made the music for Sonic 2 - "Hill Top"
Original music from the Hill Top Zone. Yay!

10. Yo-Yo Ma - "Samambaia"
A resounding "meh"


I have a lot of music that I don't like thanks to Napster (the new, legal one). But I'm too lazy to actually sort them out (there are a couple thousand at least), so I end up skipping a lot of tracks.

Some of my favorites, old and new:

Console:
Zelda series
Final Fantasy series (VI remains my favorite to this day)
Dragon Warrior
Metal Gear Solid
God of War/2
Punch Out/Super Punch Out)
Metroid (the old classic 2d side-styles, not the 1st person view)
Gran Turismo
Shadow of the Colossus

PC:
Outlaws (Old West FPS from Lucasarts)
Diablo 2
No One Lives Forever
Oblivion
Sim City
Half-Life series (Portal included!)
Wing Commander 3 (yay, Mark Hamill found work!)
Alone in the Dark
Out of This world
Age of Empires series