Tetris Party Deluxe – For the Wii and DS. Is Tetris worth $30? Not to me, but if this is your thing… ships 6/01/10

Naughty Bear – PS3 and 360. I think we can already chalk this one up as another desperate plea for attention from 505 Games and just move on. Ships 6/09/10

Hot Shots Tennis for PSP – If it’s the same game as the PS2 version… eh. Otherwise, I love the Hot Shots Golf series, so I’ll keep an eye on it. Ships 6/01/10

Legend of Kay for DS – Still being delayed, but not by a whole lot. Ships 6/09/10, or so they say.

The unbelievable amount of shit I’m not even going to bother adding unless somebody gives me money up front: Club Penguin Elite Penguin Force Herbert’s Revenge, Let’s Play Garden, Let’s Play Ballerina, Let’s Play Flight Attendant, Bass Pro Shops The Hunt, America’s Next Top Model, and Let’s Paint.

I just started updating the website myself. Here are some highlights.

Alan Wake, or judging from the cover, Dude, Where’s My Car 2: Oh look at us, our main character is named A. Wake! We are fucking storytelling GENIUSES! To fight the darkness, you need to use… LIGHT! You never guessed that because you’re not a fucking genius like us ohhhh that shit just took a downturn.

What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!?: Wins for having that title on a sequel, some monster-looking guy crying on the cover like our previous employee, and actually being hard media instead of some ethereal rights-neutral download-only sack of shit. Thanks, Atlus!

Jane’s Hotel: Probably not the best place to get laid, is all I can say.

Hand me a cigarette because I just came.

Despite Tecmo’s main fucking retard Itagaki being placed in cryogenic stasis to relegate him to a role where he can’t commit any more offenses against women and fighting games, his assy spirit lives on at the company via a series of ghastly apparitions and phantom toilet cams. Tecmo, instead of returning to the their SNES days of producing playable games, seems to have ported DOA Extreme 2 to the PSP under the name DOA Paradise.

Practically all you’ll find in the way of images are some nudes from an unrelated website of the same name and this:

Okay, still looks like it was coded with one hand (you’re welcome for the mental image of moon-face masturbating furiously while programming his latest magnum opus) but it’s not quite what the Man himself would have done. We’ve created a diagram using the above picture to outline all the important gameplay aspects that will make it seem like the fucking retard never left the company.

Since Itagaki likes to remind everybody that he’s the only Japanese person to really understand the American market at least once every fifteen minutes, we went with the spirit of things and added a button to ejaculate directly into Kasumi’s hair:

Blood Bowl is a direct video game adaptation of the table top game. Two game modes are available in single player, Classic and Blitz. Classic is the table top game. Nearly every action requires a die roll based on the player’s stats, out of Movement Allowance, Armor, Strength and Agility. Every race has different median stats for their players and ‘classes’, as well as different starting talents. The goal is to score touch downs to win the game. Touch downs are achieved through running or passing the ball down the field. Murdering the entirety of the other team is optional, but highly recommended because it makes scoring easier. Blitz adds a number of micro-management options, like negotiating contracts, buying player equipment, and so on. It also allows the game to be played in real time, which is stressful, hectic, and awesome.

A lot of care has gone into some of the game’s details. Each stadium has stands full of cheering spectators who cheer and boo at the appropriate moments. Two commentators create a dialogue based on what takes place during a match. However, the commentary is preset phrases and I had heard every single comment possible after playing three or four matches. Fortunately, there is an option to turn off commentary. Every race has a unique touch down dance, but not unique animations for catching, passing or tackling. The most customizable races are Chaos and Skaven (rat men), who have an additional ‘Mutation’ field for their leveling players. Given enough experience, a Skaven or Demon player may develop something like additional limbs to aid in ball handling, or tentacles which create an additional hindrance when an opposing player attempts to break away or run past a player with tentacles. The mutations do appear on character models, altering their physical appearance. The largest disappointment in the aspect of models and animations is some of the games more vivid incidents are hand waved away by text boxes. “Angry spectators storm the field and incapacitate some of your players” is read from a few lines of text, and the match simply begins with people unconscious.

The rule set as a direct adaptation poses a problem. On the player’s turn, they are allowed to perform any number of actions until they choose to end their turn, or a roll is failed which results in turning over to the opposing side’s turn. Un-opposed movement is the only safe action. My biggest complaint regarding this system is the die rolls required to move the ball. Passing the ball and catching the ball are two separate actions and require two separate die rolls. Distance is not factored into the two separate rolls, so there is a chance that a player will fail at handing the ball off to another player even if the player is standing right next to them. I will never begin to comprehend how it makes any sense. In my imagination, I see the ball carrier attempt to hand the ball to someone, someone that is not paying attention, or someone that slaps the ball out of their hand in order to be a jerk. Picking the ball off the pitch is another die roll. I recall one game very fondly, where a freshly kicked ball at the start of the round ended up at my catcher’s feet, who proceeded to chase the ball around the field because it took him three turns to pick the damn thing up.

Teams are given a point value based on the average level of the players on the team. In order to even things out, money is awarded to a team if it plays another team with a higher point value. This money can be used to benefit the team, buy penalties against the opposing team, or buy a star player. The star players are absolute badasses, and thus brings me to my favorite moment of playing Blood Bowl. My team, Dwarves, could only be matched physically by Orcs. The opposing team hired a star player, an Orc so strong that it required me to keep three of my linebackers on him to prevent him from doing whatever he wanted. The game was in its second half and I was barely winning. The star player kept knocking my players unconscious. After knocking out two of my dudes, the star player tried to break free from my last line backer. My line backer, level one and totally pissed, hit the star player so hard that it broke his back and took him out of the game. I cheered so hard.

To me, Blood Bowl was an emotional roller coaster. Failed rolls brought absolute anger and fury, while rolls that passed phenomenally made me absolutely ecstatic. I never played multiplayer, but only because I felt the capacity for the game to make me angry would be multiplied online. It did get me rather excited to play a sports game, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Apparently Anime Expo just lost up to 80% or its staff, or will in the near future, because some executive dickhead wants to actually improve business and has been acting like… well, an executive dickhead. Cited reasons for the change include the fact that business is only increasing about 3% per year.

I hope that means this industry fanbase has plateaued. Any more kids that outrageously fat, wearing that many wigs, and this planet is going to crack the fuck open and start spiraling into the fiery embrace of the sun.

Really, I think this is our last year having a booth at Anime Expo. Between union rednecks with tiny foreheads and less patience, being stuck across from the yaoi booth, and having to avoid the most shrill bitch on the planet, I’m burning out and I’m taking this business with me. On the bright side, that probably means more updates and reviews, since I’ve gone back to my writing career.

So, to leave you for the night, Mass Effect 2 sucks. I haven’t played it, but since Dragon Age proved Bioware still hasn’t updated their engine or their fucking character animations since roughly before the sun came into creation, I’m going to sit this one out and feel safe that I haven’t missed anything. You can see by this chart and the ass-bleeding hurt reaction from a Bioware staffer that they don’t like it when you topple their carefully structure Jenga tower.

The only thing I’m going to say is that it’s great fun to get a bunch of photos of somebody on your friend list, invite them to play mid-level, then go back to your pod which would be adorned with pictures of said friend, and art formations of his name. Bask in the uneasiness of your friend witnessing a stalker shrine in his honor.

Especially if you have the fan club url written on the wall.

In keeping with this new spirit, I recommend you complete those missing parts of your soul and listen to both Sarah Blasko’s No Turning Back and The Mountain Goats’ Autoclave. (bold face is a clickable link. I don’t want you to miss these, seriously.)  These are two songs you should hear BEFORE you decide what kind of music you really like.

Also, our physical store has been hit with a “notice to vacate” form from a bleary-eyed, alcoholic sheriff’s deputy with the last name of  ”Pedro”. After a conversation with our good friend Chuck, we looked up “notice to vacate” and found this on supersite Wikipedia:

“The tenant may have a short amount of time (perhaps from 3 to 10 days) in which to correct the error. The most common causes for eviction include nonpayment of rent or a breach of the lease (such as keeping a pet when pets are not allowed). In some cases, again depending on the laws of the particular jurisdiction, a landlord may post an unconditional quit notice, meaning the tenant can do nothing to correct the error.”

In other words, hire a good settlement attorney to fuck em because they didn’t contact us directly! An attempt to pull our pants down revealed too-gigantic genetalia, and we will now get a lower rate because:

1) Don’t lie and say you own a construction firm when you employ a bunch of illegal immigrants who will steal my stained glass windows. I have nothing against illegal immigrants, in fact sometimes we help them across the border for profit, but that’s legally “misrepresentation”, a lease-breaker.

2) They destroyed all the power outlets in the west wall and the northern supports for the roofing tiles, for fuck’s sake.

3) Negligent misrepresentation is still legally binding, a la claiming there’s been no flooding when the hot water heater burst and created, over years, mildew in the back carpet.

4) For Christ’s sake, if you have two elevators don’t let one lay broken for a year straight. And don’t patch quick fixes on the other one, I’ve had enough time to gather one minute of uninterrupted footage of me stuck in your elevator, like some kind of even gayer R. Kelly epic.

5) Yeah, the faulty AC and heater are pretty goddamn epic.

6) Did I mention security patrols this place from only 5pm to 6am? I mean great, my store is protected from nightowls, but a landlord too cheap to bring the maintenance man in until 8am is a landlord too stupid to not pay for the broken window that occurred between 6am and 8am by a hobo with a grudge who was at least smart enough to analyze the security patrols here.

7) Holy shit, who decided that owning property was a good way to make money? Who decided that GOOD property was to be taxed more? This system is hell of bent in a major way. Let’s just encourage people to rape nuns with tax breaks, next.

Way to stand behind your product, in a way that’s about twenty feet behind and slightly to one side.

The big fat laffs, though, come from what Sega has labeled the

TESTOSTERONE MARKETING

and proceeded to list four points that appeal primarily to testicles and things attached to testicles:

Maxim.com real life Bayonetta search

Playboy New Year’s Party sponsorship

Girls of Gaming Cover December/January

UFC Mat & ringside sponsorship in January 2010

In the last case, the

TESTOSTERONE MARKETING

probably doesn’t even need to be analyzed too hard, but certainly involves somebody trying to get out of the game industry.

And now, your moment of zen:

I’m… really not sure what it is.