G-pinions

No words... look!


Weeeee!





Check it out! It's the pie pan from Sno Bo Kids!


It's Pac-Man driving a kart!

If you haven't figured it out yet, there's a brand new Mario Kart for the arcades! And it's already being tested in Japan! How did this happen? How did Nintendo's fourth biggest franchise have a huge, amazing new title slip through the god damn cracks? Heck, Gamespot had a freaking rumor about a new Age of Empire game being announced for Christ's sake, and no one caught wind of a new Mario Kart game until it's already out? Man! Best. Surprise. Ever.

So here's some of the details. After Nintendo has proven time and time again they simply should not be allowed anywhere near the Mario Kart franchise anymore (Double Dash was good... but MK64 sucked) they let Namco, Holy Grail of Gaming; ambrosia for the soul; Honey for my unsweeted milk; the company that gave the Dreamcast it's best game and the world Katamari Damacy; Namco, complete control over making this game. Thank God.

Oh, and they ditched the gimmick karts and the two per ride deal from Double Dash, they ditched the lame track design as well (I hope). They added... well... here's a picture:



They added the Nam-Cam. It takes your picture before the race and paints you up to look like the character you're controlling. The guy who is Mario looks like an evil, and decidedly pissed from being dead so long, version of Karl Marx. Wait... Groucho Marx. Yeah, that's the one. Just give him a cigar and, I don't know, a duck? And watch him go! Look how weird that lady chick looks as Yoshi. I'm steering far away from that freak.

What else is new... well, the jumping is back. You can go airborn by hitting break and accelerate at the same time. Power sliding is still in there as well, though I'm not sure how it works exactly. There are still items, but racers are more race-centric as opposed to the last two console titles.

Man, I think I want this game, right now, more than just about anything ever. I want four karts in my apartment right now. 24 tracks, we could go a week or more without stopping. There's even a battle mode in there. I have no idea if this is ever coming to America, but I would bet Nick's hair it's coming to the Gamecube. It's being made on the Triforce Arcade Thingie, a collaboration between Nintendo, Namco and Sega (I wish Sonic was in this...) that makes porting a snap. They could delay this for next year's Revolution release, but what's the point? It looks like a Gamecube game, though much better than Double Dash, and I want to play it now!

More pictures:


That's Donkey Kong. A monkey riding a kart; what will they think of next?



Here's a tiny piece of art showing off the new items. Let's see how many we can identify:



I honestly have no idea what most of those are. Twenty items? I can't even fathom the possibilities. I'm just happy Boo is an item again. Boo and coins are back, can you ask for anything more?



Ok, the one thing more I would ask for would be Koopa Troopa. But we do have Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man and Blinky! Weeee!

With the prospect of a bunch of these bad boys lined up at E3, there's a chance I won't even be able to make it out of the Nintendo booth. I just hope that Perfect Kart Zero is playing near Mario Kart GP so I don't even have to move for three days. How many more days until E3 anyway? 87 days? If anyone wants me, I'll be running head first into a wall to induce a two and a half month coma.

Ubisoft is back in the good book, for now. Well, at least until EA buys them, which apparently didn't happen yet contrary to some reports. Point is, they listened to their fans, and all the bitching (I guess it wasn't just me), and gave the awful Lumines US box art a bit of flavor. The original still gets the nod, but this new one is a decent improvement. Observe:



Now they just have to avoid being bought out, revert the Prince back to his original inert badassness, and make a BG&E2.

When the time came to buy Alien Hominid I had a very important decision to make: did I want a watered down version of the game that offered support for only two people? Or was I going to take the sane stance and pick up the real version; the one that allowed up to four platform-loving, stick-figure-controlling fiends to take part in the festivities? Obviously, I bought the Gamecube version. What's great with two players can only get better with four... unless it's Norrath, which is as unplaybably bad as Crystal Chronicles with more than two people. Anyway, at the time I was quite pleased with my purchase. It was a cheap game, offered more entertainment than all but a handful of 2004's many releases, and was one of the few four player co-op games in my library. Of course, there's always room for improvement.

As has been known for quite some time, the fine folks at O2 Software were finally getting around to porting this sugar coated gem to the Xbox. I just assumed it was going to be a belated port with no extra bells or whistles. I have no idea why I thought that. I probably just didn't want to have envious eyes for a game I wasn't going to ever own. It has finally come to light just what will be different in the Xbox version, and I have to admit it sounds rather tasty. Not as tasty as a Russian's head, but still more likely to cause a finger lick or two than a yellow snowball.



According to everyone's favorite obscure website that really knows its games, eToychest, the new Alien Hominid X (I came up with the name. Do you like it?) will feature new modes! There's a new 2-4 player mode called "All You Can Eat" starring the Fat Kid. This doesn't sound too great, since it's just button mashing, but it is something I can't enjoy in my version. Also, borrowing slightly from Viewtiful Joe 2 and NFL2K5 (yes, both of those games) there is a new Replay Mode. This sounds rather fantastic. As the name implies, you can zip backwards to any point in a level and, well, replay it. That means you can play the part where you suck FBI agents up with your UFO beam and drop them in the wood cutter over and over again. Yay!

But there's even more than that. The game fully supports Xbox Live. Think those lazy bastards at Polyphony are embarrassed now? Most exciting for someone like me, you can download new PDA levels. I'm not sure if the developers are going to slap together some new ones or if you can actually download player created ones, but I'm holding out for both. Man, how cool would that be? It could be like the GBA port of Chu Chu Rocket. There were over 2500 puzzles in that game. Shockingly, I never finished them all. I think half of them were impossible, but Sega never acknowledged my strongly worded email.



For those who like to, you know, actually play games online, Alien Hominid has you covered there as well. It hasn't been confirmed either way, but I assume the online component is just for the main game. While that does sound really fun, it would be even cooler to play the PDA Mode with four complete strangers. If you think it's hard trying to persuade your friend to bring the boat back to you, think about how difficult it will be to convince some exiled ten year old prince who always gets his way? And his way involves you dying in every manner possible. Regardless of how the online mode is actually implemented, that a developer so new to the world of console gaming is able to include it at all is exceedingly awesome. Those child eating hooligans at Bottlerocket Entertainment should think long and hard about their future as video game developers.

For all the good news this column is gushing out, there has to be some bad news as well, right? Unfortunately, there is - as of right now, Alien Hominid X isn't even coming to America. For some reason, the publisher deemed those walrus eating bastards in Finland are more worthy of such a fine game than the all too needy North American audience. eToy has assured me that urgent word has been sent to the publisher that Americans would love to feed the fat kid, but they have not yet responded. When etoy finds out if this will come to America I'll let you guys know. Until then... stare longingly at your GC version of the Hominid and wish you were downloading a new PDA level that spells out POOP with the trees.

I know it's pretentious as all get out, but half of the reason I frequently update this site is just so I can catalog my opinions on a week by week basis. How egotistical is that? Well, not nearly as bad as The Narcissist, who actually brought a mirror to the ring so he could ogle his Grecian physique before and after each match. But probably a notch above Tony Danza, who loves his own name so much he refuses to go by any other name in the various endovenous he lends his extraordinary talents to. Extraordinary doesn't necessarily mean good, does it? If it does, change it to bile-inducing or anti-succulent, depending if you spend your days as a chef or not.



Now that I've devoted a good chunk of my post to a non-video game related introduction, it's time to get to the very opinion that caused me to write in the first place - Paper Mario 2 is boring. Oh so boring. In fact, I would go so far as to say Paper Mario 2 is the most boring game I have played this entire generation. Seriously, I had more fun playing the demo of Front Mission 3. Did I mention that FM3 is a friggin' strategy game? Have you ever heard me even talk about any strategy game ever? That's how boring PM2 is.

Why is it boring? In my review of Dawn of Souls, a game I thoroughly enjoyed (at least I loved FF1, I'm still making my way through FF2) I said something to the extent of "This game is so simple a baby with excessively heavy drool could finish it." The combat is just tapping A until everyone is dead and the story is so simple I could have skipped it and not actually missed anything. In fact, making up my own story with silly voices and elaborate dances would have ultimately created a much more fulfilling experience. I still liked the game, though, because it was fun. The pacing was rough at times, but the music was great and the enemies and locations were interesting. Also, it was older than the discovery of finely shredded cheese (I love those commercials. You know the ones: the husband thinks finely means "about bloody time!" as in "finally" but it just refers to the size of the cheese in question), and old games always get a break in my book.



Paper Mario 2, however, is not old. In fact, it's probably one of the ten most recently released RPGs. So, if anything, it should be really freaking good. Also, it comes from the pedigree of Mario and Luigi's Superstar Saga, wish I absolutely loved, and Mario RPG, which may very well be one of the five best games Square has ever made. This is where I raise my eyebrows thusly and say, with a hint of venom in my voice, "Or does it?" You see, Intelligent System's didn't make M&LSS and they sure as hell didn't make Mario RPG. I don't even think they existed that long ago. But they did make the original Paper Mario, a game I missed out on because my Dreamcast is one of those "I can't be in a relationship if I think you're with someone else" kind of systems. "It's me and no one else, not even that SNES floozy. I've seen you fingering her eject button." My DC was jealous. At the time, I was a might bitter, but seeing as Paper Mario 2 is so bad, it's probably best I wasn't allowed anywhere near the first.

Despite claims to the contrary, Paper Mario 2 is not funny. In fact, I laughed longer and harder at a line from 24 this week than any part of Paper Mario 2. Granted, it was a particularly fantastic part, and maybe the only genuinely funny line in more than 3 seasons... do you want to hear about 24 for a bit? It'll be real quick, I swear. There are these two terrorists, a wife and husband, and their son. The father is trying to kill the son and the mom wants no part in that. So she gets the counter terrorist, um, union (what does CTU stand for anyway?) to help her. When her husband decides to use the son as a hostage, she lets loose on this whole rant about how she hates America and won't help them if her son gets hurt, because she really hates our insolent ways. Blah blah blah. She probably talks for about 700 seconds, uninterrupted, about how she hates every American, as well as Canadian and South African citizens living in the US. Jack, the hero, is on the phone to his boss while she's ranting, though he's staring at her slack-jawed while she rants. When the ranting is finally (not finely) finished, there was a second of silence, and then Jack said to his boss "Did you get that?" And the episode ended. Made Timmy and I laugh quite heatedly.



Besides a renegade dragon eating helpless Toads (the mushroom guy, not the amphibian) there hasn't been any part funny enough to make me actually smile. And the combat, though implementing some minor real time elements, is way too easy. Sure, it keeps me slightly more interested having to hit A right before I jump on an enemy, but it's still so easy. I want some real challenge. I'm more fearful of dying by way of falling feathers from multching birds than from an enemy in Paper Mario. In fact, if I was to end my life in such a manner (by way of feather) it would actually be far less humiliating than dying in any manner from a blow in Paper Mario.

I'm more than 15 hours into the game right now and see no way it can improve. In fact, the deeper I go into the adventure the worse it has become. So long straight forward text based adventure, hello colect-a-thon. Do they really think it adds to the experience to force players to run all over the Kingdom? Surely, even the most feeble minded of denzians can see through this black shroud and realize that arbitrary length detracts more than adds to any gaming endevour.

In case it does somehow resemble a fun title, though - and in the off chance I grow to actually love the game - I now have irrefutable proof that the game was pretty close to bad in the not so early stages of the game. I have no idea how much longer I am forced to plod through this title, but I have three of the seven stars needed to open The Thousand Year Door so I'm hoping that I'm almost at the mid-way point.



Oh, and the music stinks. Every RPG needs great music. Seriously, it's worth delaying a game a year or more just to make sure it all sounds great. The graphics at least look cool, but who cares about graphics when I'm backtracking every 15 minutes accompanied by lame music? Oh how I wish I was playing KotOR 2 instead.

I really think releasing movies for the PSP, as they're doing so now, is a waste of time and resources. They just announced that House of Flying Daggers is the newest addition to a line-up of almost entirely crap - Spider-Man 2, XXX, Hellboy, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. As beautiful and bodacious as the PSP's screen is, who wants to watch an action movie on it? And for $20-25? The only things I can see fit for release would be TV shows, especially sitcoms and animated ones, and as much as I despise most of it, anime series. Watching an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the train seems to make a lot more sense than watching a goddamn third of XXX. And I understand that they're trying to appeal to a gaming audience by releasing poopy crap like RE2, but if anything I'd say gamers will steer clear of that pile sooner than the average chump. It just seems like putting the time and marketing money into making movies a part of the system, which I can't see being successful in any capacity, is exactly what they shouldn't be doing when they don't even have the games nailed down completely yet. Maybe something for later is the system's lifespan, when there's a wide enough user base to have a nice minimum market, but for now, ugh.

And my god, what have Ubisoft done to the wonderful Lumines box art? The Japanese art was so cool and unique; the American one looks like some desperate appeal to a non-existent gaming raver culture:



I guess as bad at that is, it still pales in comparison to the quintessential instance of changing box from great to terrible (US on the left this time, obviously - I don't feel like re-photoshopping):



Man, I still can't get over that. And now Sony might not bring Wanda and the Colossus to the US because of how poorly Ico sold. And even they blame the box art. What a tragedy - I might have to import it is if does indeed stay in Japan. I can maybe, possibly understand changing the art to better explain what the game is about, but neither of these examples even do that. The Lumines one just makes it look like a dance game, and the Ico one just makes it look like a lame platformer or something. These people should be impaled on a bed of paintbrushes for their sins. Anyhow, that's enough bitching for today. I'm just mad cause I'm too much of a wuss to play Resident Evil by myself, and Dan isn't home.

Wow, it's been a damn week since I updated this thing. Longest stretch ever, I'm guessing. Anyhow, I'm happy report that I've recently spent a good amount of time actually playing games, rather than just writing and reading about them. The gaming season somehow seems even busier than the fall, since I'm still trying to catch up as new stuff comes out. But damn if there isn't a lot of great stuff to play.

Starting with the most recent fix, Tom and I are already a good ten hours into Champions: Return to Arms. As you might recall, Tom and I played through the original (Norrath) twice soon after starting this site, and it's still one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. So I'm not really sure what else to say about the sequel, since it's pretty much exactly the same thing. Almost literally. There are two new character types, some different environments, and a very inconsequential good/evil theme tacked on - even the NPCs are the same, which is just weird. Most of the interface flaws are still there too, such as not being able to move things around in your inventory. So, with all that said, it's still a pretty great game. For anyone who hasn't played the first one, they'll certainly marvel at the hypnotically simple gameplay, great graphics, constant feeling of reward, and sometimes obscene difficulty curve. For us, we're just playing it because we're addicted to the series, apparently. You're always carrying an item you're a few levels away from being able to use, and you're always just around the corner from the next mostly cool environment/boss. It's incredibly motivating. Perhaps the best thing yet is how we approached the apparently infamous stealth level when we got to it yesterday. You're supposed to sneak past all these insanely powerful wizard man-rats in this massive cave, but, c'mon, fuck that. We have no patience for that in an Action/RPG, so we did what any archer woman and her man-tiger would do - lure them away one by one, poison them with arrows, and beat them while they're down. Besides dying from one hit a handful of times, and having to teleport out to safety every five minutes, it was a blast. Trying to pull that stealth crap on us...oh, and we fought a boss named "Threshold the Feeble". Not even Scott can appreciate that.

I also picked up Taiko Drum Master last week, finally succumbing to the sickeningly adorable box art (and finding a great deal on it). Like all things, it must be compared directly to Donkey Konga. Namco made both games, and therefore their interfaces and gameplay are nearly identical. Their respective peripherals both have their problems - DK's bongos don't exactly feel too wonderful or flexible under your hands, and the clap detector isn't always listening; it results in a game that can feel inaccurate and sometimes out of your control, which isn't fun. The problem with TKM's drum is two-fold - there is a rather large dead zone in the middle of the drum, forcing you to always stay near the outer edges, and the drum isn't nearly sensitive enough, as you have to make every hit full force if you want to make sure it registers. The thing that makes Taiko superior in my mind, seeing as the rest of the problems are pretty similar, is the song list. It's a huge part of any rhythm game, obviously, and DK's mostly lame pop songs and nursery rhymes didn't cut it for me. Taiko's songs are really varied, with some good pop songs, great classical songs, and a couple of songs every game ever should have (namely Katamari on the Rocks).

Oh, I finally played the Rise of the Kasai demo too. Mark of Kri is one of my favorite games ever - awesome art design, gore in just the right instances, and thrilling sneaky assassination gameplay = awesome - so I've had high hopes for a sequel. It kind of sucks, a lot, that they pulled the online co-op from the game, especially since having another character with you does add to the gameplay. The computer isn't exactly the most intelligent on the planet, what with not helping me out in some key battles, but having Rau run alongside you on the rooftops is pretty badass. I played as his sexy sister Tati, who I feel dirty about ogling since she was a little girl in the last game. All the stealth kills are still badass and satisfying, but the combat system, while still unique, lacks the dynamicness (not a word) it had three years ago. In the era of Ninja Gaiden, Otogi, and say, Resident Evil 4, a lot is expected of enemy encounters in an action game. Maybe I just forgot the intricacies of Kri's battle system, if there are any, but the combat wasn't as fun as I remembered. I guess that's good in that it encourages me to stay sneaky, but bad in that, well, you know. Still, the art design is as good as ever, especially the insanely cool Sumi-styled intro and cutscenes, and as long as it's polished a bit before release I'm sure it can live up to it's predecessor.

Man, lots of games. Last one, for now, is Mercenaries. Pandemic are on such a fucking roll, I wouldn't be surprised if Destroy All Humans! was a GOTY candidate. Mercenaries is simply a very fun, very entertaining game. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it knows that it's existence is based solely on the understanding that people like blowing things up. Yes, the GTA comparison are apt in that it's a fairly openly structured game, but it plays a lot differently. The freeform, sandbox, playground thing comes into play mostly during the missions - driving around and messing with things on your own time is fun, but gets old pretty quickly. On missions though, you have a ton of different approaches at your disposal, easily eclipsing any game before it in that regard. The physics represent a near-perfect balance of realism and fun, to the point where blowing up a pile of boxes with a grenade is worth going out of your way for. There are a couple very minor issues, such as only being able to board vehicles from one side (tough when you're trying to toss a captured general into an extraction helicopter while you're taking fire from a tank and a dozen North Koreans), and once in a while getting caught up behind a nigh-destructible tree or fence, but for the most part they don't affect gameplay. The game looks gorgeous too; the soft-lighting touch of Prince of Persia has thankfully not lost it's appeal to developers, and makes every jeep explosion-flung body look that much sweeter. It's just a really fun, VERY polished game, and certainly worth your time in all this craziness.

I got $20 on Pac Man. Anyone who can eat ghosts is a bad ass in my book.

It's time to gather around the fireplace and listen to Uncle Tom's Video Game Impressions of the Week. Despite my assertion that no new game would come into my possession until March 1st, a new game did, in fact, enter my apartment on Friday night. Technically, it's my roommate Tim's, but that is just an exploited loophole that provided an hour of pure entertainment for three very lucky gentleman. By way of a 90% off deal at Toys R Us last week, Nick was able to procure a copy of the fabled Pac Man Vs; a game so fiendishly simple I have been eying it seductively for more than a year now, but never got up the nerve to talk to it until Friday.

Some of you may be wondering what this so called Pac Man Vs could possibly refer to. Is it actually a brand new Pac Man title, you may be wondering, only our beloved hero takes on ghosts, pellets and Marvel characters in a 2D fighting game? No, it's not even close to that. Rather, this is just a multiplayer update to the classic arcade title that is now more than 47 years old. If you are entertaining any idea that Pac Man Vs is an attempt to modernize the best dang circle shaped hero of our lifetime for a newer generation, you couldn't be further from the truth.

The game functions thusly - one player, using the Gameboy Advance, tethers their bite sized system to it's big brother Johnny Gamecube and plays an actual game of Pac Man. You know the game: a maze of dots and pellets populated by evil ghosts named Pinky, Blinky and Stinky, a bushel of some fruit or another and one hungry disembodied head. This is a straight port of the arcade classic in almost every single sense. There is still the rudimentary four color, 2 bit graphics and the same old school music and "Paku paku paku" sound effects. This is as old school as you can get.

The other players, up to three able bodied humans, use standard Gamecube controllers and a television for easy viewing pleasure. Instead of teaming up with the Pac Man by controlling the bowed Ms. variety or any of his deadbeat children, you control the archenemy of hungry circles the world over: the ghosts. The trick is, you are only able to see a small fraction of the screen. So, while your friend, using the classic Pac Man view on a GBA, is able to maneuver the good guy easily around the level with every dot and ghost in easy view, the ghosts are confided to desperately searching out he-who-eats dots while yelling strategies and advise to their fellow ghosts.



This formula works swimmingly. With only three humans participating, two of which are controlling ghosts, Pac Man has a slight edge over the competition. However, with good old fashioned teamwork and some skillful navigation, it is quite easy to trap Pac Man and touch him. Once he is caught, the catcher then takes hold of the GBA and the former Pac Man now controls a ghost. It is just a fantastic system. It's no surprise this game was merely packed in with other, more complex, Namco titles as it is truly one of the most simple "new" games to be released this generation. However, that in no way is a measure of just how much fun it is to control the evil ghosts for the very first time. It is so much fun trying to out think your friend, or springing on them when they weren't paying attention, that you will quickly forget just how dated the game truly is.

Plus:

"Pac Man ate a ghost!"

Last night I played a few demos as well. I'm sure Nick wants to jump on G-Pinions with impressions of the shockingly good Area 51 and the been there, done that gameplay present in Return to Arms, so I'll talk about a personal favorite of mine: Unreal Championship 2.

This is a huge franchise on PCs. Probably the best, and most popular, multiplayer FPS series around. It's lightning fast and highly addicting. It's also really hard for someone like me who lives and dies in the world of consoles. However, as good as the PC games are, they simply do not translate to the console world. You will never hear me say the Keyboard and Mouse combination is superior to the standard console controller, but it certainly offers a gameplay experience that simply cannot be duplicated with two analog sticks. Because of this, the best FPS titles on consoles are much slower than what you would find on a PC. For instance, games like GE and Halo, which do not require lightning fast reflexes or a high degree of coordination to compete, are the best representation of good console FPS.



Thankfully, the company that makes Unreal realizes the difference and built this new title from the ground up for the Xbox. Because of this, you get a completely unique experience that should be able to stand among the greats when it is released in a few months.

The element that most differentiates UT2 from other console FPS titles is the ability to switch between first and third person at the touch of a button. The advantages of each is readily apparent - in first person it is much easier to accurately target your enemy with a gun. For anyone who isn't retarded, you'll realize this is a rather large part of any shooter. The game is balanced almost perfectly, so don't expect any sort of disadvantage while being in the third person. Here you can roam around the environment much easier than you would otherwise be able to and attack melee style. This is what really makes the game great. Unlike Halo 2, which made the sword so cheap as to steer the game towards unplayable territory, every character can go medieval on someone and take them down with a few switch punches and slashes.

Probably the coolest thing, that I wasn't able to really understand in my brief play through, in the inclusion of different characters. This is much more sophisticated than the skin swap in Halo 2 or the different heights from Goldeneye. Instead, each character is actually completely different. For instance, there is a sniper character who, well, shoots from afar. I was a Wolverine type guy who was much better in hand to hand combat, but quite slow. As long as each character is balanced this should provide a much deeper play experience than other FPS titles. Also the game looks fantastic.

That's it. Hopefully next week you'll hear about Paper Mario 2. 2 Cool 4 You.