Brütal-Legend

Some of you may remember when I wrote a whole article about how I loved Tim Schafer (oh yeah, and also a Brütal Legend review). Guess what, you guys? He’s making a new adventure game with Double Fine and Ron Gilbert! I’m really excited about this. Kickstarter is one of the best things the internet age ever invented. I’ve helped fund about four projects through it and I’ve never regretted a one. My contribution may have come after they met their $400k goal (in one day, holy cow!), but I’m more than happy to put my $100 down. Can’t wait for the game! ...

Sorry to keep delaying posts, but the rest of this week is super busy thanks to the recent blizzard, so I probably won’t have anything until next week. Don’t worry, the ME2 review should be about as epic as the Brütal Legend one to make up for the lack of posts.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Wallpaper courtesy Pet-Shop on DeviantArt”] [/caption] Ruminations on video games as an art form - this could very well become a Mother 3 review. There will be spoilers here. Seriously, don’t read it if you want to play Mother 3 and not have the plot spoiled. There’s a trite comparison that floats around the internet almost every month that always gets my eyes rolling. Inevitably, someone will call such-and-such the Citizen Kane of video games or ask what the Citizen Kane is or claim that the medium is immature because we’ve yet to hit our Citizen Kane. It’s exhausting and, quite frankly, futile and stupid. To begin with, Citizen Kane opened with good reviews and was generally well-received, but it didn’t start to gain notoriety for ten years. It didn’t even make #1 on a top movies list until twenty years had passed. When the Citizen Kane of gaming hits (god I hate that phrase), we probably won’t know it for quite some time. The more important point is that movies and games are apples and oranges. ...

Apotheosis- 1. The fact or action of becoming a god; deification 2. Glorification, exaltation; crediting someone with extraordinary power or status. Do you know who Tim Schafer is? When I still lived at home, my dad used to ask me, “When are you gonna grow up and stop playing video games?” He tells my mother that he’s sure I’m addicted to the medium. It’s true that I spend the vast majority of my free time playing games. I can name developers, producers, writers, designers, and even composers for games from my favorite series of games. This vast information age enables me to know everything about a game, down to its minutia, just by checking an online database. If there’s not enough information there, I can almost guarantee there are five or six fansites devoted to uncovering every last detail. It must be daunting for developers nowadays to produce in this environment. ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. On Rocktober 13th, two great games came out: Uncharted 2 and Brütal Legend. So far I’ve finished Uncharted 2 (still gotta go back and get the Platinum Trophy), so I’m working on Brütal Legend and both have been great stories so far. Like almost any review says, Uncharted 2 is a fantastic action movie with great dialogue and character interaction. I’m glad they didn’t have Nazi Zombies this time, but their replacement was kind of annoying too. Also annoying: the final boss! Took me a while to finally get a workable strategy against Lazarević, but once I did, things were going better, but I was still losing. Ever had it where you can’t complete a gaming task, so you shut down a game and then come back to it and beat it in one go? Thanks for being kind of late Saturday morning Eric, if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have beat the boss. I am not looking forward to battling him on Crushing mode for what will probably be my last required trophy. The ending of Uncharted 2 was great and it had some hilarious lines in it. I’m kind of debating whether or not I should make Eric watch the cinematics from the game, because they make a decent, if disjointed, movie. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. I get tired of saying it guys, but, really, MLB Power Pros 2009 is not coming to North America. Nintendo has, yet again, released a list of upcoming titles for 2009 ( seen here, from Kotaku) Seriously guys, it sucks, but we’re not getting the game. Gamestop Getting Paid Hey readers, surprise! Gamestop likes to make money. Since they like making money so much, they’ve launched their own digital download store for casual games. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow", he continues. “If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony…When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console - and the PSP [portable] too. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. E3 is a magical time for video games. So much news happened in this past week that this is gonna be an epic post filled with tons of trailers and news. In no particular order, here it goes: Look! A three-headed monkey! First off we have the Monkey Island news again. Tales of Monkey Island will be debuting next month (!) on 7 July from Telltale Games. Yes, it’s super exciting…yes, Telltale has proven that they can have moderate success and timely release with episodic adventure games…but I don’t feel the humor of Ron Gilbert in the trailer. ...