And thank God we’re through. Yesterday was pretty much the end of the annual video game holiday season logjam. Sure, a few titles will trickle out between now and Christmas, but few of them are all that noteworthy. Unlike this week, which sees the release of Left 4 Dead 2 (which is partially set in Savannah), Assassin’s Creed II, LittleBigPlanet’s handheld debut, the second LEGO Indiana Jones, and the Wii-exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. There’s also the latest in the never-ending series of Tony Hawk games. Instead of working out your fingers, though, Tony Hawk: Ride comes with a skateboard peripheral; because the best way to reverse the rapid deterioration of a long-running franchise’s fanbase is to make the latest iteration cost twice as much as usual.
I mean no disrespect to Buck Fever or the inimitable Style Lab series, but two games stand astride this week’s list of releases like the bronze colossus Helios overlooking the mouth of Rhodes. If you believe the internet (and Lord knows you should) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the greatest and best selling game of all time. It will also teach you Spanish, give you a makeover, and help you realize you’ve always been a strong, beautiful, confident person deep down inside. It’ll also probably lap the field in Fox News opprobrium. Many are wondering if the GTA “hot coffee” controversy of 2005 was just foreplay for the likely eruption of media outrage over Modern Warfare 2 and its cavalier attitude towards civilians. Either way it’s guaranteed to be the most popular game among “hardcore” gamers, both the poorly parented 12-year-old racist homophobes who self-identify as such, and everybody else who likes video games but find the “hardcore” tag as appetizing as a Monster Thickburger after reading Fast Food Nation.
If you don’t feel like slaughtering innocents in an airport, then maybe you should pick up New Super Mario Brothers Wii. This sequel to the 2006 DS game New Super Mario Brothers adds four-player simultaneous co-op to the classic side-scrolling gameplay of the original Super Mario Brothers. You can help your friends out or pick them up by their heads and throw them into a bottomless pit. And if the game gets too hard, you can let it play itself; NSMBWii is the first title to ship with Nintendo’s new “Super Guide” feature, where novice gamers can send the game into auto-pilot during especially difficult moments.
This week’s new video games are a good mix of the old and new. Oh, wait, no they’re not. It’s another round of sequels and licensed games. Not that game sequels are inherently problematic (technology tends to keep getting better, y’see), but it’s hard to get excited over the sixth Tekken if you’re not a huge fan of fighting games. Even if you like racing games, Forza Motorsports 3 will only be interesting if you really liked the first two.
There is one new and original title launching this week, and that’s DJ Hero. Activision might deck it out in Guitar Hero dress, but DJ Hero’s gameplay bears little resemblance to its big cousin or Rock Band. Sure, you still hit colored buttons at the right time, but scratching, crossfading, and rewinding have no analogue in either of the two big music games. DJ Hero isn’t just fresh and exciting, though; it’s also shockingly fun.
Find the full list of new releases after the jump.
Punch-Out!!
Rated E10+ for Everyone 10+
Released May 18
Nintendo Wii
Published by Nintendo
What It Is: Here’s another revival of a classic Nintendo franchise from the good ol’ days. Punch-Out’s particular good ol’ days ran from 1984 up to 1994, commencing with the arcade original and stretching to the SNES installment Super Punch-Out. Somewhere in-between saw the series’ most famous and successful title, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, a game familiar to pretty much anybody who ever owned an NES. Punch-Out’s certainly had a good run. Those ten years between the arcade original and the SNES version may not seem like much, but that’s an epoch in gaming time. One version of Punch-Out or another was a formative gaming experience for both my oldest brother and my youngest brother-in-law, which is an almost twenty-year swing. Now my nieces and nephews can have fun beating Glass Joe and King Hippo down to the mat. Times change, but violence is always popular.
Lands a knock-out punch: simply by existing. Nintendo updates the past better than any other company. The nostalgia factor associated with Mario, Zelda, and now Punch-Out can’t be understated, but it’s in no way vital or even necessary to enjoy the actual games. If you’re old enough to remember Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out or Super Punch-Out, you’ll probably love squaring off against old foes like Bear Hugger or Soda Popinski. You probably won’t love getting destroyed by them when you first face off. They might look the same, but after the first few rounds your opponents largely don’t fight like they did in the past. Defying our expectations like this doesn’t just insure that Punch-Out will challenge those familiar with the series; it’s a blatant provocation to fire up those of us who can’t believe we were actually beaten by a stiff like Don Flamenco. It keeps you motivated.
In this episode, the GammaTesting.com guys discuss the fine art of ignoring accuracy while wielding dual SMGs, groove to Overkill’s fantastic soundtrack, accuse Headstrong of (possibly) using the Grindhouse style to mask bad dialogue and voice acting, and, finally, confront those mommy issues we’ve been dealing with. Well, dealing with since watching the end of Overkill.
What It Is: Here’s another revival of a classic Nintendo franchise from the good ol’ days. Punch-Out’s particular good ol’ days ran from 1984 up to 1994, commencing with the arcade original and stretching to the SNES installment Super Punch-Out. Somewhere in-between saw the series’ most famous and successful title, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, a game familiar to pretty much anybody who ever owned an NES. Punch-Out’s certainly had a good run. Those ten years between the arcade original and the SNES version may not seem like much, but that’s an epoch in gaming time. One version of Punch-Out or another was a formative gaming experience for both my oldest brother and my youngest brother-in-law, which is an almost twenty-year swing. Now my nieces and nephews can have fun beating Glass Joe and King Hippo down to the mat. Times change, but violence is always popular.
