ANALYSIS!

Around 0:12, some Mexicans mock a white guy and sarcastically ask if he knows Spanish. This could place the game’s location virtually anywhere in a pre-development Los Angeles. Also note the time-honored tradition of people thinking you’re stupid because you don’t know their language while they’re acting like a goddamn redneck.

0:18 – Michael Ironside continues his campaign of being in every single video game ever by lending his voice to another grumpy old coot. This is significant because it might mark the first time any Western doesn’t involve Lance Henrickson.

Blah blah blah, minigun in a carriage, whatever… the Mexican “knows this land!” and somehow resists tagging the nearest statue of a war hero he can find… what the FUCK does “I’m living in history” mean?

Trains, Spanish villas, cannons, people in army uniforms… zzz… guess it’s all about how the action turns out, as usual. I’ll award BIG points if the main protagonist isn’t another reluctant outlaw, because Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series has milked that one same storyline for nine years straight now, and Episodes From Liberty City showed they’re now doing it with the same goddamn map.

I’ll remain cautiously optimistic.

Nice background. Your cover art skills are matched only by the recent cherry bombs you’ve dropped down the gaming toilet. Here’s hoping you didn’t switch to the DirectX code base for this one.

Van Halen
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
And The Cradle Will Rock
Atomic Punk
Beautiful Girls
Cathedral (Solo)
Dance the Night Away
Eruption (Solo)
Everybody Wants Some!!
Feel Your Love Tonight
Hang ‘Em High
Hear About It Later
Hot For Teacher
I’m The One
Ice Cream Man
Jamie’s Cryin’
Jump
Little Guitars
Loss of Control
Mean Street
Panama
Pretty Woman
Romeo Delight
Runnin’ With the Devil
So This Is Love?
Somebody Get Me a Doctor
Spanish Fly
Unchained
You Really Got

Guest Acts
Alter Bridge – Come To Life
Billy Idol – White Wedding
Blink-182 – First Date
The Clash – Safe European Home
Deep Purple – Space Truckin’
Foo Fighters – Best of You
Foreigner – Double Vision
Fountains of Wayne – Stacy’s Mom
Jimmy Eat World – Pain
Judas Priest – Painkiller
Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache
Lenny Kravitz – Rock And Roll Is Dead
Queen – I Want It All
Queens of the Stone Age – Sick, Sick, Sick
Tenacious D – Master Exploder
The Offspring – Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)
Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life
Weezer – Dope Nose
Yellowcard – The Takedown

It doesn’t say if you get to hit any of the tweakers from Weezer with a guitar, but that’d justify the series’ title in my opinion.

Developers, you are not as funny as you think. And this goes for those of you across the sea as well, I’m not indulging in the same “Japan is better for gaming” bullshit that most journalists like to take. If you put in a joke quest where I have to retrieve some old lady’s underwear, it better not be completely fucking impossible to find. It just amplifies the suckage your game is pouring directly into my eyeballs like fresh goddamn coffee.

Of course, Google is loaning out the usual insipid hilarity that comes with any trip into our cyberspace prototype. I can’t find a walkthrough that tells where the stupid underwear is, and one preview article with the hee-larious tagline “Where’d that old lady put her underwear? No seriously, it’s for a quest.” has been subjected to the typical ctrl-c, ctrl-v reporting that the internet professionals are known for. In other words, this article that describes finding underwear in a building (which is completely unhelpful) repeats 30 times in a brilliant repeat of the quest itself before we get to the usual light porn and flaming stupid forum chatter.

Here are the highlights:

Tomb Raider: Underwear
Boxer briefs go bushido with Samurai Underwear: each design is named after famous…
Narwhal has a couple of jokes about underwear and bodily functions
used heroin needles, used hookers, used underwear, used parachutes, used soap
…. with a white shipmate suit and blue underwear (I know her underwear is blue because you …

I still haven’t found the thing. This quest is dragging this game down to bullshit levels.

It also seems to be a recreation of the famed battle between Cliffy B. and Jason “Jace” Hall.

But seriously, Marvelous. Amnesia? Possessed by a dark spirit? I have an idea, how about hyper-speed punching, mid-air battles and melodrama? Better yet, base a game on my sense of deja vu that recurs every damn time I read an adventure game plot. Waggling the controller would clear the stale fart smell my synaesthesia relates to plotline amnesia.

In other words, the Wii is still awesome: “The game has two different control methods, one that involves the Wii Remote and another that uses the Classic Controller, for players who prefer more precision“

In his biggest attacks on common sense yet, his glib blob of a paragraph on Arkham Asylum contains three things that raise the hair on the back of my neck; the fact that it’ll change the way I think about comic book-based games, that it contains what’s called “free flow combat”, and the magically gay phrase “Could this be the first-ever Batman game that doesn’t suck? Forgive the harsh sentiment, but it’s true. And that’s part of the reason why I’m so excited about this…”

Okay, back up. One, don’t you fucking presume to know what millions of people think about comic book games. Two, “free flow combat” is mentioned in such a way that the awesome being made of pure light rendered in dim colors so as all you lesser beings can comprehend it on your own terms, Geoff “Stupid” Keighley, can’t quite seem to understand what it means or thinks that a company’s buzzphrase is that awesome. It’s not. Arkham Asylum’s combat system seems pretty fucking cool, but it’s the next gen touch on brawlers that Call of Duty 4 was for shooters. It’s an enhancement, and it looks like it’ll rock. Calling it Web 2.0 just makes you look like Chunk claiming Michael Jackson once used his bathroom, though.

Third, fuck you. Keighley’s awesome historical prowess seems to have missed two excellent Batman games; The NES outing, a balls-hard platformer based on the Keaton/Nicholson movie, and the SNES’s sublime game based on the Animated Series. Instead, Keighley plunges straight into hyperbole about why you should be faggily glad that WB is blessing you with a golden shower of the first definitively awesome Batman game… EVER!

I’m not sure how this other Batman game is, but the sounds of the chubby little Dark Detective pattering around the perfectly isometric batcave is pretty soothing in the background while I go do other things:

This is the kind of jackhole who tailors his reviews to be quotable on game boxes, and this is the secret to his success; mutual ass-kissing. The makers of Burnout Paradise knew this, and puckered right up for him in hopes of an award IN MY FUCKING LOADING SCREEN KILL ME YOU FUCKS

Okay, fine. We’re tired of scratching by on five cents a day from our ad server. You know what? We can attach ourselves to some developer’s pale, flabby, expansive underside in search of recognition. It’s gotta be somebody with clout, but kind of on the down and out…. Hey Sega! Resonance of Fate; Looking SEXY, babe!

Special thanks to Zara for calling my attention to the MSX Batman game.

But whatever, they haven’t showed actual gameplay yet so I’ll assume they’re only kind of creepy and stupid for now. And probably bound for eternal torment of some sort that involves Uwe Boll’s new arthouse film based on a real-life, ten hour prison rape.

In other news, I can’t do anything without it becoming some kind of demented epic. Miscommunications somewhere between the landlord and the construction crew working on our new store have led to damages to the facade, namely a few feet of drywall being destroyed and two stained glass windows being removed. Since we signed the lease, the landlord is kind of leaving things in our lap, agreeing only to let us keep the windows and giving us the task of fixing the damage. They’ve done the rest of the work, though, so we’ll at least be receiving the space on schedule assuming the fumigation isn’t bogged down by the roaches from hell.

In the meantime, the stained glass windows have vanished. I questioned the construction crew as to where they went. “Two white guys” was the entire reply. So people are basically looting the shop while the construction happens, I guess.

(A friend has informed me that you do, and it’s even more epic. Plus your character now looks quite a lot like The Riddler. Sold!)

Then again, I guess I can understand why the team felt the need to include the tutorial. Looking at video of the upcoming Bionic Commando game, they desperately needed Treyarch’s Spider-Man engine to figure out how to make a game in the first place because this game looks like some synthesis of the latter’s web-slinging engine… with guns!

The real kicker that convinced me that both the dev team and Veronica Belmont will not be joining John Carmack on his rocket-building binges was the Qore interview where they talked about how important it was to pick up in the story just where the original left off. You haven’t gone insane; They actually said that. Apparently there’s somewhere you can go, narrative-wise, after blowing up Hitler’s face. Then again, Sony or whoever probably didn’t hire Belmont to do any complex math problems, as Google’s search suggestions indicate:

Since some of you are obviously unaware of how to turn off SafeSearch to look for some real spank material, I added a helpful guide to the above picture. Also, “boyfriend”? Seriously, you’re aiming too high.

Anyway, my money is on Rearmed. The upcoming sequel to the original Bionic Commando’s sales numbers has a bad case of gaybeard and Akira arm.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Now that I’ve seen this trailer, that MIGHT change:

Not just themed levels, but new gameplay features? Show me a price tag and I might say yes.

I won’t blame the former two. The trailers tend to make it look like yet another shooter, or even an MMO shooter, but definitely not Warcraft 3 with mentally challenged midget aliens:

Since the accompanying press release is too boring for words, I decided to run it through dictionary.com’s translater, into Japanese and then back into English. Not only does this potentially extend the olive branch to our Eastern cousins before beating them to death with it and then teabagging their corpses, it’s more amusing to read.

Hello war is the game of the exciting maneuvers which are based on the outer space of the legend of Halo®. Order to the troop of mind of the warship of UNSC of the fire where the unit of new UNSC where with campaign mode, encounter of the initial it was well known vis-a-vis the combination of the foreign country which threatens the fact that contract and the mankind are erased has been attached. Hello war it is noted, the fact that hello it dampens within the period when outer space is quick the beginning for Xbox® hello leads to title and it to be possible experiences thing is permitted. Using the guidance of Serina, external personality of the artificial intelligence which is vigor of the soldier of UNSC (A.I.), directly the troop, Warthogs, the scorpion, and swaying, it has itself strength and use, to be many, each group. In addition as for the venture commander that in the battlefield being hidden, to find, if sufficiently good fortune, it can ask the technology of ancient harbinger. In addition as for contract power it waits in order to lead those to fight of skirmish for the group of contestants with the experience whose Xbox is new. It groans in order to be defeated the enemy of the battlefield voice, the elite, it seems like illusion and [ootamaoshikogane], ask the arsenal of the unit of the contract which is new, is well known. The player who makes the strategic air which is approached necessary and reacts well appears victory.

The acquisition where the · of the world of legend is new: The picture hello set of outer space, hello first the shooter of the person of the preceding day publisher hello it fights. Experience the quick fight where it is during being opposed which reaches to the wide scope which is preceding diligently hello in the lump of the series of the big hit of UNSC and contract. Mind of the fire, it is changed for using the troop of UNSC, joins to the crew on the boat of the colony of the Phoenix class which is led by the external personality Serina of A.I. Story development in the first planet where harvest and contract of the planet are attacked follows to the mind of discovery of the ancient man-made work of the fire during travelling.

Strategic order of · of troop: Hello as for war when contract power is engaged to the UNSC unit and order of the battlefield on the arsenal of the car, you put simultaneously. Oppose to your opposite person by strategy being attached to the defense of the excellent troop, crush. Choose between the leader which turns the tide of fight, owns the technology of the elite. Using the various combinations of the leader and the unit, you it takes precedence style and you play draw up the countless maneuvers which are agreeable to the maneuvers which are personalized.

The · competes using the experience whose Xbox is new, small: It is who, with the online skirmish for the group of contestants which supports up to 6 players of the experience where the excellent commander Xbox is new see. In unique civilization, each one and strategic feature of UNSC or contract and unique attribute choose the fact that it orders. In addition as for technology of ancient harbinger when the unit which is unique because it is dominant fight is drawn up it can find.

Game of maneuvers of start of work of ·: Since starting, hello the food it supplied war to console gamers, in order to come having the genre which in the Xbox 360® is normally done with PC, it was designed clearly. Order easily, manage in the powerful troop, the troop and the believing control the good machine easily, epic sway and engage, and use intuition user interface and expand your empire. Hello as for war just the studio of the strategic gameplay ensemble of prize acquisition and using the controller of Xbox, 360 it can offer the experience of the true next generation who connects the control method of the able man you display.

Edition contents of the collector which is limited

For the first time, contents of edition of the collector to which Microsoft includes below-mentioned ones publicly and is limited are shared:

· 3 it is new, “hello the group of contestants of 3” to be good the map – be 1st 1 where map Pack* with respect to the myth which includes the map whose three is new is experienced, “the assembly”, “orbital” and “the sand box court”

The · hello it fights: It is beautiful the realistic novel of the filling Noto literary work which records first tactics the beginning – vis-a-vis contract. It concentrates in order as for the novel around Sprit of the fire of delegation contract is very an interest in the world of harvest and why to discover

Unique game car of · – departed spirit “of guard of honor”

The leader card of · 6 – as for the leader technology of the elite who can turn the tide of fight is owned

Begin travelling mind of the · of the fire patch – as an official mind of the member of the fire fighter

As an afterthought, we also did a translation into Spanish and back, which naturally mentioned alcohol at least twice.