When did the video game industry decided to use February as a sort of video gaming floodgate? January had zero releases. But come February and everything comes out faster than you can say “But I’m not done with Skyrim.” You better be! Because this week, another reportedly 100 hour RPG hits store shelves. If that’s too much, maybe a sequel ought to a four-year-old shooter with demonic tentacles ought to do it. No? Fine, go play the Resident Evil 6 stop gap then.
Excel is fun! No, I’m serious. It really is as long as you fill it with something you care about like your favorite team’s stats, how often black comes up, or, I don’t know, stamp statistics. Fill it with video game stats, and you can get a picture of the video game industry as a whole. I did it the past two years already thanks to my insane hobby of writing about game releases weekly, and this time my methods have become far more sophisticated. By that I mean I used Excel instead of an abacus.
SAN MATEO, Calif. — Jan. 31, 2012 — Capcom®, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games today confirmed that Dragon’s Dogma™, its highly anticipated open world action title, will be released for the Xbox 360 ® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system in North America on May 22, 2012 and across Europe on May 25, 2012. Capcom is also pleased to announce that purchasers of Dragon’s Dogma will have the opportunity to be the first to experience a playable demo of Resident Evil® 6, ahead of its release on Nov. 20, 2012.
Oh my God! An actual, honest to God new release! I was starting to think those were a myth, whispered in dark alleys by rumormongers. Better yet, we’re getting three of them this week folks. That’s an infinity percent increase from the past four weeks. Why am I still talking? Let’s get straight to them.
Another dry week coming up folks. Look on the bright side. More time for you to “finish” Skyrim am I right? If by some miracle you already finished it, maybe you should take a look at the game I’ve got lined up in today’s 20/20, or you can hold out until next week when the proverbial video gaming flood dams break once again. Your choice.
It’s about 1:30 in the morning. Bleary-eyed, I traverse through the rocky, unforgiving terrain with my trusted bodyguard. We’ve seen the horrors of battle together…raiding bandit encampments, taking down giant spiders and brutish frost trolls, and eliminating unspeakable terrors in the deep dungeons of the world.
How’s everybody’s January? Anything new? Job? Car? Girl/boyfriend? Waistline? No? Looks like the game industry’s taking their cues from all of you because yet again, nothing comes out this week. Thankfully, you’ll still have something to read from my little article this week. I have rechristened last week’s new segment, which I’ll only abbreviate given its inane-ness, THCSAFWR! into 20/20. What do you think?
Oh the lovely December lull, that magical one month in a year where I get to sleep in on Sunday nights. But what’s this? A well known franchise coming out AFTER Black Friday? Must be a Nintendo game.
Remember. Release dates are quite literally made at the whims of the publisher. The following are subject to change without any warning.
Mario Kart 7 (3DS)Tuesday December 4, 2011
Sorry about the late heads up on this game. Sunday releases have a tendency to sneak past my Coming Soon net. So, what’s new in this sixth iteration of Mario Kart? As always you can expect a couple of new racers and new tracks, I hear you get to race around Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort. We’ve got new power-ups like the Raccoon Leaf, A Nintendo favorite recently, straight out of Super Mario Bros. 3 giving you a nifty tail to swing at other racers and the I-can’t-believe-it-wasn’t-a-Mario-Kart-power-up-before power-up, Fire Flower, which lets you shoot a limited number of fireballs. Admittedly, shooting fireballs in Mario Kart has been done before on Mario Kart Double Dash, but only Mario and Luigi had access to it, and Petey Piranha and King Boo for the nitpickers out there. This time around anyone can get it. Mario Kart 7 also introduces a hang glider that pops out of the back whenever you find yourself airborne giving you more control of where and when you land. Some of the tracks also have underwater areas, although they feel like regular areas with a visual blue tint to make it feel like you’re underwater. Coins played a pivotal role back in the first Mario Kart and the Game Boy Advance iteration of Mario Kart, and Mario Kart 7 wisely brings them back adding a much needed layer of strategy to the series if Mario Kart Wii was anything to go by. How much coins you’ve collected in a race determines your maximum speed, and getting hit by your fellow racers causes you to lose precious coins.
By now all that previous stuff has become expected out of every Mario Kart iteration, but in a sign that Nintendo may finally be getting wiser when it comes to online, Mario Kart 7’s online features look fairly impressive. In addition to being able to race against up to eight other strangers, friends, and racers you’ve met before, in 60 frames per second by the way, Mario Kart 7 gives you the ability to customize your racing experience by creating Communities. A Community consists of a set of rules that everyone in the Community abides by. For example, one Community will only have light karts with only Mushroom power ups (Speed boost) available during races while another will only have the Mario Circuit track available for racing. In classic Nintendo fashion, creating a Community generates a 14-digit code that all participating players must enter. In a slightly un-Nintendo fashion, these codes can be given out to strangers fairly easily.
Mario Kart 7 fully utilizes the 3DS social features. The Street Pass function, once activated, lets you exchange your Player Cards. These cards have your racing stats, your Community info, ghost data, and your Mii racers. Even the Spot Pass function (Basically the ability to receive updates while the 3DS is in sleep mode) gets to stretch its legs too. Nintendo will regularly push new Communities and up to 20 ghost data for players to beat through Spot Pass.
Mario Kart’s quality has always been like a rollercoaster. Sometimes Nintendo nails racing itself but misses when it comes to track design. Sometimes the opposite happens. But through it all, the series remain consistently fun regardless of what it is they didn’t get right. That might just explain its enduring popularity with just about everyone that picks it up.
Wow! They don’t make slingshots like they used to anymore don’t they?
Don’t ask me why, but the movie trailers totally remind me of Uncharted 3. A lot of the set pieces in the trailer almost feel like they copied it straight out of Uncharted 3: The ship, the desert, the desert city locale, and hell not to mention the fact that the whole plot revolves around treasure hunting. And even Snowy feels Sully’s counterpart what with the white hair and all that. Kinda makes me wonder if the 2D platformer game will play anything like Uncharted 3.
What do you do when you got 4 disparate games like a Real Time Strategy game, a wakeboarding game, an RC toy car racing game, and a remake of an old PC game? Release them individually digitally, perhaps? That would’ve been the sane thing to do. A step below that involves mushing them all into one retail disc and giving it the most generic title of all time. I wonder what a step below that involves?
Some game companies just can’t wait for the Wii U to come out. That’s the only explanation I can think off that explains away why 1) a publisher decides to make their own version of the Wii U controller for the Wii and 2) a publisher figures that the market is big enough for two slightly different Wii U wannabe Wii controller. On the bright side, at least this one comes with two different games, Drawsome Artist (Paint program) and Drawsome Sketch Quest (Max and the Magic Marker clone with multiplayer). Game companies seriously need to learn to be patient.
I bet you anything that you’d never figure out that this is actually a Mario Party game just by looking at the title. Literally. Look at the box cover. Yes, this does have Dragon Quest crossover characters in addition to Mario and his usual suspects. But don’t write this off as just a Mario Party game though. The board game in this case plays far more like Monopoly, and early previews suggest a very deep game involving property investments. Great. Now even Mario is joining the 1%.
What kind of innovation can one bring to the Match 3 sub-genre of puzzle games? How about the ability to rotate the board so the gems will come from the side instead of the top? That’s nice, I suppose.
Good ol’ reliable Mario Kart. How can one go wrong with you, o inventor of a genre? Come to think of it, how many genres have Mario invented?
The last time South Park was on consoles was that odd first person shooter on the N64. Why was it a first person shooter? Because Goldeneye and Turok were big things back then I guess. The developers of Fallout:New Vegas are crafting this new South Park: The Game as an RPG, which I think is the better genre choice.
Food comas are the best aren’t they? You stuff your bellies full of whatever is on the table. Before you know it, you’re sitting with your head half cocked to the left with drool slowly running down the side of your lips unaware of your surrounding. Your relatives could draw you a nice little mustache, and you just wouldn’t care. Where were we? Oh right games.
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