I didn't play the first Kane & Lynch game, but I'm peripherally aware of it (at least to the extent it was rumored to cause a notorious disagreement that eventually caused Giant Bomb to be a website). I'm considerably more interested in its sequel, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and checked out the demo at this year's E3. My demo was a single-player (with bots) version of the Fragile Alliance multip...
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is basically God of War but in a gothic horror setting. I'm tempted to end the blog post right there, because that's pretty much all you need to know to decide whether or not you'll want to play it. It's pretty blatant. You even get health from objects that glow the same shade of green. Though to be honest, the demo was short enough that I don't know what they'll do...
Would you be interested in playing NBA Jam again but with updated rosters? You're in luck, because EA Sports is releasing that very thing for the Wii. You can shove each other, throw out elbows, do crazy dunks, and if you get three in a row the ball catches on fire. I couldn't hear it that well on the E3 floor, but someone was definitely shouting out crazy stuff when we hit dunks. Also, at one...
One game I was really looking forward to seeing at this year's E3 is Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I loved the last game from Ninja Theory, Heavenly Sword, and found the concept of this new game to be very intriguing, which is loosely based on a several hundred-year-old Chinese novel. Gameplay-wise, it's very similar to the Prince of Persia series, where you control a main character (Monkey) w...
One of my goals for E3 this year, though to be honest it's a goal I've had for years, was to perform a synchronized dance with a small group of people to Bel Biv Devoe's classic song Poison. GOAL FULFILLED. Going into Dance Central, I knew I had to give it my all, as the previous group had been led by an adorable middle-aged Japanese man in a suit who gave it his all, and therefore sincerity in...
You know it's a lot of pressure to play Twisted Metal with David Jaffe standing around watching everybody. We played a six-player death match, and it was very much a Twisted Metal game, except with beautiful graphics. I played as the helicopter, which the demonstrator said immediately after I selected it was the hardest vehicle to operate. The left and right analog sticks are used in conjunctio...
It took a while, but I finally got to spend some time with the 3DS and a handful of tech demos. Here's the first thing you should know about the 3DS: It works. It is totally 3D without glasses. I don't know how it works, but it does. There is a 3D slider to adjust how much 3D you want it to be, and you can even change it to 2D. The analog stick feels really good, and the whole thing feels like...
I don't know about you guys, but before I actually played it, I was pretty sure Disney Epic Mickey was an old-fashioned 3D platformer, but with some interesting art and story choices. Apparently it's a bit more than that. Did you know, for example, there are hub worlds? And side-quests? The hub world I saw was based off of Adventureland, the themed area of Disneyland, complete with a Treehouse...
I wonder if maybe I'm too dumb or unimaginative to play Scribblenauts games. In Super Scribblenauts, you can now add adjectives to every noun in the world, and they actually react appropriately. The demo was in Playground mode, so it entirely depended on me to think of things, and I didn't do a good job. Purple Vampire. Yes, it was purple. Cowardly Vampire Hunter. He was eaten by the Vampire an...
I played five games on the new Sony PlayStation Move. And while I really wanted to be blown away, I left with the feeling that I'd be perfectly happy never playing any of those five games again. Sports Champions: I played some ping pong here. It feels pretty good, and is very responsive, but doesn't feel more responsive than ping pong in Wii Sports Resort, which I find more charming by a landsl...
In fairness, I think this game is still pretty early. At least, I hope so, because it seems like kind of a step back from Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess took a lot of heat for being a GameCube game that was ported to the Wii, and not a Wii originals, but Wii originals tend to be very simplified, and is that what we want from a Zelda game? In fairness, it was only a 10-minute demo, but for...
I hate to pull a Jeff here, but yup, this game is totally Donkey Kong Country. There are barrels that you can throw, and barrels that fire you like a rocket through a series of other barrels. You can pound the ground. You can play 2-player with Donkey and Diddy Kong. There are enemies and you can stomp on their heads. The only things that were different, as far as I could tell, were: 1) Diddy h...
I played a three level demo of Kirby's Epic Yarn cooperatively with a very nice lady from Nintendo. The first thing you should know is the game looks beautiful. Artistically, it may be the best-looking Wii game so far. It's got virtually nonstop charm, from Kirby himself, made of a loop of twine, to the whole world of fabric and buttons. Kirby no longer eats things, he whips them, and he can wr...
I've got God of War III, Cave Story, Sam & Max The Penal Zone, and Grill-Off with Ultra-Hand. Is it weird I'm thinking of playing Grill-Off first?
I'm the one in the middle. You know you're out of shape when you're sore from playing video games all day, but I can't help it. Certainly marching back and forth between the West Hall and the South Hall four times didn't help. I'm sure all the junk food I've been consuming at weird hours is merely icing on the ragged cake. Still, it's E3, and that makes it all worth it. Day 2 was spent mostly i...
"Dark Void? No, but I get that a lot actually." E3 Day 2 is about to begin in a couple hours, but I'd promised to blog about my E3 exploits on Giant Bomb, so here I am typing up a quickie recap. Between my professional obligations to adventuregamers.com and my personal obligations to getting at least six hours sleep, I simply don't have time to write up a full blog post with previews of each an...
LeChuck and a monkey Had to work at my day job most of yesterday, but I still had time to get downtown and meet with Telltale Games , including founder and CTO Kevin Bruner and Design Director (and adventure game legend) Dave Grossman , for a company-on-one preview and discussion about Tales of Monkey Island . Don't have much time to write about it here as I have to get ready for Day 1, but if...
What's a "Darth Revan"? My first ever piece of "swag" arrived from FedEx today, via my friends at LucasArts. I'm starting to feel like an honest-to-goodness game journalist! If anyone out there wants to explain who this character is, I'd appreciate it. I'm not a big Star Wars guy.
I finally gave in to temptation and bought a 120 GB 360 hard drive on eBay last night. I paid $90 shipped, which is the cheapest I've seen it with the transfer cable and software. For a long time I felt that 20 GB was enough, but once I ripped all the Rock Band 1 tracks to the HD to play in Rock Band 2, it launched me on a path that inevitably lead here. Then NXE came along and allowed me to tr...
Yup, it's May 2009, and that can only mean it's time to list my favorite games of 2008 (by platform): Best DS Game: Professor Layton and the Curious Village Best Flash Game: Karoshi Suicide Salaryman Best Multi-Platform Game: Fallout 3 Best PC Game: Audiosurf Best PS3 Game: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Best PSP Game: Space Invaders Extreme Best Wii Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Best...