Dare to Play the Game

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. A rather brisk week for me, a lot of organization on my part. I took the liberty of cleaning up the house a bit since the assumption process was approved last week. My house could really be worth something in a few years but I’m…going to have to clean it up and fix some things if I want a shot at good profit. Else to be honest, I’m lucky if I make my money back. First on the list (and this might sound weird) are interior and exterior doors. Especially the interior, a lot of them are worn and scratched up (some even have holes). After that, I’ll approach the carpet which I would have never had to touch if it wasn’t for a certain type of animal. (cats are sweet, but they murder carpet whether it be with claws or simply yaking wherever they please).

Get down Morgan, Get on up…dance…dance..dance. Adam is only pointing because he doesn’t understand why the rapid movement is making him feel funny. Oh who am I kidding; Adam is probably gay anyhow. That would be the only logical response as to why there hasn’t been a X-Play love triangle of some sort. Of course I guess that would require a third person, anyhow. Oh right, I am playing with the idea of revamping a few sections on Dare to Play the Game; this is one of them, I feel like just switching to a eccentric video game picture of a week like a guinea pig playing with on an xbox controller. See isn’t that cute, well I wouldn’t have to rely on Morgan so much ya know. We’ll figure out, feel free to send suggestions (that don’t involve pc gaming, that means you Gary!).

Nintendo has officially announced its summer (and beyond) schedule, and with it come a few dates to take off work, school, or just lock yourself in your room for weeks on end. With a list of causal and hardcore games, Nintendo has dated some of the hottest titles of 2007, with games like Mario Strikers, Battalion Wars, and our good friend Metroid Prime 3 leading the pack.

BR>Wii Releases:
* Mario Strikers Charged: July 30 – Nintendo
* Metroid Prime 3 Corruption: Aug. 20 – Nintendo
* Battalion Wars 2: September – Nintendo
* High School Musical: Sing It!: Aug. 14 – Disney Interactive
* Madden NFL ’08: Aug. 14 – EA
* Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’08: August – EA
* Space Station Tycoon: August – Namco Bandai
* Brunswick Pro Bowling: August – Crave
* Dave Mirra BMX Challenge: August – Crave
* Pinball Hall of fame: The Williams Collection: Aug. – Crave
* Brothers in Arms: September – Ubisoft
* Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal: September – Warner Bros.
* George of the Jungle: September – Crave
* Boogie: Fall – EA

Awesome, Metroid Prime 3 comes out and look at all of the other releases! *crickets chirping*. Yeah, I ain’t impressed either. I mean Metroid Prime 3 (does anybody else besides me miss Metroid the way it used to be?)is cool, I won’t deny that but what else is there? No obligatory Donkey Kong title to be had? Mario Strikers is okay and the usual EA stuff should be decent for those who don’t have the luxury of owning another console (or want to use the Wiimote to simulate a few things). But the rest just blows. I mean if you didn’t already want a Wii, this list isn’t going to win you over. The only title that kinda clicks with me is the budget minded Crave title: Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. The only reason is the Williams pinball games were some of the best. Though a lot of them were licensed too which might make it hard if they have renew that license. But one can hope it ends up being faithful :).

GTA IV Special Expensive Edition Revealed (from press release)

Rockstar Games announces Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition

All of the items have been created with the utmost attention to detail to create a unique Grand Theft Auto IV experience for any fan of the series. The Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition is available for pre-orders today and will retail for $89.99 in North America.

*shakes fist @ Rockstar and proceeds to pick up a prostitute and have his way with her before depositing her body in the Brazos River* Could you contact me before you announce something that is bound to make my checkbook have a heart attack? Is that too much to ask? Look just because Halo gets to charge X zillion dollars for it’s “legendary” edition doesn’t mean everybody has to follow suit. Well actually it probably does. The extras are nice and it probably look pretty sexy but I will probably do everything in my power to avoid the special edition packaging. It will be very hard to do it, but I must :). I find it interesting that the special edition will be encased in what looks like a safety deposit box. Especially when you probably need to raid your own to afford this puppy.

Little did I know last week when I touched on Rush’n Attack that it would actually be coming out the next week for XBOX Live Arcade. Well here it is, so to save me effort and you the agony, here is the quoted section on Rush’n Attack from last week:
“Before there were games like Contra and P.O.W., there was a game called Rush’n Attack. A side scrolling action game, you were a Green Beret infiltrating what appeared to be a Soviet military base. Your mission: save the P.O.W.’s from being executed by the firing squad. The thing you will remember most about this game is that you basically knifed everything. There were also arms along the way (such as RPG’s and Flamethrowers), but it was basically about how fast you could knife enemy soldiers as you progressed through the four stages. The NES port which many are familiar with made many changes and only stayed true in actual look (not gameplay).”

Xevious was one of the first shooters and released by the minds of Namco back in 1982. It actually ran on the same hardware as Galaga. Your ship was armed with the usual single stream of shots that took out everything in the air and then you had little bombs which would take out the ground targets. Enemies ranged from enemy aircraft to moving vehicles and stationary bases. Occasionally motherships would appear so that you may shoot them down. There were no traditional level-end boss enemies as in a lot of other classic shooters. This was a huge hit in Japan but only a minor hit over here. Question for Namco; you’ve released the Pac-Man’s, Dig Dug, Galaga, Rally-X, Xevious and probably two or three more I’m forgetting. Where the heck is Mappy & Rolling Thunder? I’m asking nicely. Anyhow, Rush’N Attack or Xevious will set you back 400 points each and are pretty decent choices to boot.

In 1986, Rygar was released by the minds of Tecmo. The story was that the evil being Ligar (yes it is similar on purpose) has taken over the land of Argool and Rygar, a legendary dead warrior has risen from his grave (what, all the live ones were taken to star in the 300 movie?) to fight the evil. Rygar uses the rather unique weapon known as the Diskarmor, which was a shield with a long chain attached to it. Even though most people confused Rygar as the main character’s name, its actually the same name as the evil character according to Japanese translation. The hero is really just the legendary dead warrior. Kinda takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it? Yeah I’ll just call him Rygar too. Anyhow, this great action was set apart by its unique weapontry. If you could master all that the Diskarmor could do, you could master the game. It was quite the fun experience and a challenge to play through. The NES version just didn’t live up to what the Arcade could do. There are faithful arcade ports for XBOX (Tecmo Arcade Classics) and Atari Lynx.There was also a very good PS2 offering (I do own a copy) that was later created based on the character. It could be best described as a poor man’s God of War.

PS2

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
Art of Fighting Anthology
Dawn of Mana
Odin Sphere

PSP

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
Brooktown High Senior Year
Diner Dash
Legend of the Dragon

XBox 360

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gold
WarTech: Senko no Ronde

PS3

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End

Wii

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End

DS

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds EndNaruto Ninja Council 3
Death Jr & The Science Fair of Doom
Diner Dash
Marvel Trading Card Game
NY Times Crosswords
Tank Beat

Two fantastic RPG’s come to the Playstation 2 console this week in addition to a slew of POTC Worlds End releases. First up is Odin Sphere by Atlus. This apparently comes from the same group that made Princess Crown on the Sega Saturn. (puzzled looks). Basically it’s a gorgeous looking 2d RPG that features all female heroines (some fanboy probably just got excited) and uses a cooking and alchemy system to create powerful items that increase attacks and cure certain conditions (herpes or a yeast infection perhaps?). Dawn of Mana is a game made by the minds of Square-Enix, is beautiful, in 3rd and did I mention it’s part of the Mana series (hello, Secret of Mana or Legend of Mana). So you’ll have loads of expected fun there. I really hope Art of Fighting Anthology is an actual release since it got pushed back from last week. It just had no press and you would think that even though it is a compilation title; somebody would have cared (besides me).

I received Ninety Nine Nights brand new on the 360 for $16 and some change. It should be a fun little game to waste my time with when I get to it. Which reminds me, I have a sealed copy of Gears of War for the 360 that I know in my heart I will never probably get to. It is a great game but I will probably play my sealed copy of Call of Duty 2 GOTY (360) before GoW. So if anybody wants to make a trade for GoW (like for example WWE Smackdown vs Raw 07 for 360), let me know! I wrote a slew of reviews this week in dvd and games. In DVD, I did 4400 Season 3, Constellation & the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (stop snickering :)). In gaming, I reviewed Aegis Wing for XBLA and I’m working on Mortal Kombat Armageddon for XBOX. Why the XBOX version when it was released about 7 months ago? Well, with the Wii version coming next week, I figured it was pertinent to review this title since it is 360 compatible, has the same features (unless you can use your Wiimote to do fatalities) and graphically (especially with upconversion) should be comparable to the Wii version. That and I don’t have a Wii :). Reviews are a little lacking in gaming too; mainly cause I’m not made of money (I think I told that to my ex-wife too) and I guess gaming companies don’t see the potential in this site (unlike the dvd ones). To be honest, the next “new” game I probably will be buying will be Guitar Hero: 80’s edition for the PS2 when it comes out this summer. Hey it has Skid Row and Faster Pussycat; that’s already enough to hook me in. Have a good week kiddoes.

As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)