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| He's back! |
Super Meat Boy Ultra Edition is coming to retail shelves as an actual boxed product. It will release at $20, and for that price you'll get a lot of goodies along with the game.
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Tags: PC, Super Meat Boy
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By Ryan Winslett
Some of you Xbox players may have heard about this little downloadable title called Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I understand it's a pretty big deal.
You PlayStation 3 and PC gamers may have also heard said title will be dropping on your gaming rig of choice come Sept. 28 for fifteen smackers. Also a pretty big deal.
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Lord of the Rings Online has been around since 2007 and was released under a standard (at the time) subscription model of fifteen dollars a month. The game also featured a lifetime subscription with a one-time fee of $200. Going free-to-play is also something Turbine did with DDO, resulting in much greater success than they with a subscription model. Will LOTRO follow suit?
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Developer: GameLayers
Publisher: GameLayers
Release Date: Feb. 5, 2007
System: PC/Firefox
ESRB Rating: N/A
0:00 I don't really feel like actively playing a game today, actually. So, for my last Games for Lunch entry on Joystick Division, I've decided to try out a more passively multiplayer game.
0:01 "Hi and welcome to the Nethernet" says a steam-punky guy in glasses, from a comic on the official Web site. He goes on to describe how you play the game just by surfing the internet, unlocking badges, leaving traps and rewards. "If you don't have time to play, you're still earning points." Sound challenging!
0:03 At the risk of spamming my followers, I try to sign in using Twitter rather than creating a new account. Twitter gives me a PIN number to enter on the main site, but I can't seem to find where to enter it. Oh well, I guess I'll create an account.
0:04 I set my player name as "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" because I can. Then I set about downloading the Firefox toolbar needed to actually play the game. The 2.7 MB download is done pretty quickly.
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Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: July 21, 2010
System: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: T
In a nutshell: The gameplay is much more colorful than the graphics.
0:00 I've been careful to avoid reading any reviews or previews of this game so I can go in as fresh as possible. All I know is that everyone who's touched it seems to love it without exception. Man, I really hope I am not the exception.
0:01 The title screen reminds me of a movie from the '20s or something, with it's black and white and fancy fonts. "Limbo contains elements which may be offensive..." says a tiny disclaimer. I leave the "Gore filter off" and jump on in.
0:02 Fade from black to a gently lit black and white forest, with trees that fade to fuzzy indistinctness as they recede into the background. Um, where's my character? Oh, there he is -- a solid gray person-shaped blob with two glowing eyes. He slowly rises on his hands and knees. I think I'm going to have to shut the blind if I'm to have any hope of making him out. Excuse me.
0:03 I run left along the 2D movement plane, figuring they wouldn't expect that. I end up stepping over a small white egg, which cracks to give me 5 Gamerscore points and an avatar award. Nice!
0:04 I jump off the end of a downed tree and down a sloping hill. The fall is about three times my height, and my body crumples horribly upon landing. Oh, right... this isn't a Mario game.
0:05 This time I slowly edge myself off the tree stump this time and slide down a hill... right into some spikes. OK, I'm learning, I'm learning...
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Publisher: Hello Games
Release Date: June 8, 2010
System: PlayStation 3
ESRB Rating: E
In a nutshell: Excitebike + Tony Hawk's Pro Skater = AWESOME!
0:00 I really liked the old-school feel of the five minute demo I played at PAX East. But what really pushed me to download this one was the passion displayed by developer Sean Murray at last week's Develop conference.
0:01 Nice cheery guitar, bass and maraca music over the preview screen as the square-jawed protagonist stands at the foot of a ramp, smiling. I'm grinning like a fool already.
0:02 A cassette tape appears in the corner of the black screen during the loading. Is this a reerence to those old tape-loading systems or something? That's before my time, sadly.
0:03 "J-j-j-j-j-j-joe DANGER!" says an over-caffeinated anouncer "Folks, let me tell you about Joe Danger," says a grizzled sounding man. "He was the world's most determined stuntman. That was a long time ago, back then he was a household name ... But it all went wrong. They said he'd never walk again, but he showed 'em. Now he wants to make his comeback. Maybe YOU can help." This quick story is accompanied by old newspapers and billboards showing Joe with a '70s mustache. Cute and, more importantly, QUICK!
0:05 The menu is a sort of trailer park. I zoom in on "Stunt Weekly" and choose "Joe Danger Returns," my only option. My mission is to "Collect all the Ministars?" Um.. "all the Mobsters?" This text is nearly unreadable on my 20" standard def TV.
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Publisher: 505 Games
Systems: iPhone OS (reviewed), Android, PS3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Sept. 29, 2009
ESRB Rating: E
In a nutshell: Avoid that tackle. OK, now avoid that next tackle. Now repeat roughly a billion times.
0:00 Being in England for two months has kind of made me miss good old American football. Not that there's any American football in summer anyway but... no one over here even cares about the sport. Something about a "World Cup"... Anyway, I'm not that confident that they'll be able to squeeze a decent football experience onto the iPhone, but I'm eager to be proven wrong.
0:01 Lots of loading obscured by logos. Then I get an ad for the Xbox 360/PS3 version amid some deafening, atonal heavy metal wailing. It has me diving for the volume rocker.
0:02 I turn off the music in the options screen. There's an option for "Use your own music" but it's grayed out for some reason.
0:03 I name my player "@.@" because I can. My player's skin tone defaults to brown. At first I think this is a bit racist, then I think that it's pretty accurate, given the current makeup of the NFL.
0:04 I can choose from a bunch of lame fake team names. I choose the Pioneers because they're the lamest.
0:05 Let's start with Rookie difficulty and Challenge mode instead of Endurance. And away we go!
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Publisher: Codemasters
Release Date: Nov 17, 2009
Systems: Wii (reviewed) PSP, iPhone
ESRB Rating: E
In a nutshell: This race is too easy. This race is too hard. This race is NOT just right.
0:00 I usually prefer my virtual driving in kart or off-road form, but damned if I didn't wake up this morning wanting to race something, and this is the only unplayed racing game I have on hand.
0:01 Stirring synthesized trumpet music on the preview screen. I could see listening to this while doing a Rocky-style training montage.
0:02 Lots of wispy graphs and green speed lines whoosh around a hot-as-hell F1 car. The signal turns from red to green and it zooms down the road at warp speed, blurring everything around it. The rather pedestrian title screen with that trumpet music again.
0:03 I name my racer Brock Driverson because that's the kind of mood I'm in today. I choose Qatar as my country, for tax purposes.
0:05 I turn on the racing line, steering assist, predictive braking, anti-skid, anti-wheel-spin, and automatic transmission. I may as well not even be driving.
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Publisher: Telltale Games
Release Date: July 1, 2010
System: PC
ESRB Rating: RP
In a nutshell: Man, this guy really runs into a lot of puzzles and humorous situations in the course of his work...
0:00 I've been looking forward to this one since I first heard about it months ago. I like the look, the puzzle-based gameplay concept and the company behind the game, so my expectations are quite high.
0:01 After turning my screen pure white for a bit, the game fixes itself. Tinkling xylophone music accompanies a snow-covered field with a factory in the background.
0:02 Even when I turn off "full screen" mode and go to the lowest available resolution, the mouse is still a bit jerky. I don't know if it's my janky laptop or if the game is to blame.
0:03 I stopped the clock so I could shut a bunch of memory-hogging programs and tabs in the background, to see if that'd help the performance issues. The answer: not especially.
0:04 Cut to the basement of the FBI's Hoover building, where the Puzzle Investigation office resides. A guy at a desk sharpens a pencil and stares at his crossword dreamily. He unwraps and eats a piece of gum and blows a bubble. His eyes droop. He yawns. And... he's out. The comic timing is perfect.
0:05 A loud noise and heavy mechanical breathing wake the desk guy up. A man in a spacesuit takes his pencil and slowly opens his helmet to some foreboding music. Desk guy screams and tears up his paper in terror. But now there's no one there. Not a single word spoken and it's still some of the best introductory storytelling I've seen in a game.
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Developer: Art Co. Ltd.
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: Sept. 9, 2009
Systems: Nintendo DS (reviewed), Wii
ESRB Rating: E-10+
In a nutshell: If an ant's life is really this slow paced and dull, I don't know how they get through the day...
0:00 The hauntingly bad box art for this game has been staring at me from my game shelf every day for over nine months now. Once I play it, I can take it off my shelf and put it away in storage. So let's get this over with...
0:01 A chirpy, 12-note tune plays and then the plain title screen goes silent. Scrolling green grass at the bottom. Everything so far screams "very low-budget."
0:02 A series of static images show ants being sucked up by a tiny UFO and... dropped in a lake? In a lab with an ant on the front a white haired bearded man studies the ants. He thinks he can harness the ants to destroy all other bugs? Maybe? Really I have no clue what these pictures are supposed to be representing.
0:03 Ah, the professor is addressing me now. "Use the ants I've given you to defeat the alien ants!" Um, OK.
0:04 An overhead shot of the battlefield. The game's tutorial tells me what each on-screen button does. Most of them seem wasted on calling up menus or switching between the top and bottom screen. "Now the only way to learn the controls is by playing." What kind of a tutorial is THAT?
0:05 "Alien ants are out to plunder our natural resources!" says the professor. "Take these ants! Use them to defeat the aliens and protect our planet!" Why wasn't this portion of the story FIRST?
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