Daily Loaf

Back before it was the Wii, Nintendo had code-named its new console The Revolution, and when the best selling console of this generation did come out a few years back, its motion controlled game play was indeed revolutionary. Like so many revolutions, it didn’t quite live up to its original promise.

Take the original Wii Sports, which came bundled with the system and offered a whole new experience – tennis, golf, baseball, bowling, and boxing that all felt somewhat, or even a lot like the real thing. You couldn’t help but smile a big, delighted grin the first time you tried it. But then came almost everything else for the damn Wii. Shovels full of middling to poor games, just a few bright gems (mostly from Nintendo) trying to shine from the towering dung heap of third-party cash-ins and motion-gimmick nonsense. My Wii, like that of many gamers, sat lonely and empty and un-played.

But those big, goofy grins are back baby! Read the rest of this entry »

Can a game succeed solely because of pop-culture fandom? Thankfully, Ghostbusters manages to capture enough ghost-wranglin’ gameplay that we don’t have to answer that question. We love the plot, find some fault with the repetitive — occasionally brutal — gameplay, and appreciate the light hand with Ghostbusters 2 fan service.

So, does bustin’ make the GammaTesting.com guys feel good? Sure. Good, but not great.

Listen up! (Then check out all the other Gamma Testing episodes.)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep14: Ghostbusters

Monday may mark the beginning of the end for pushing buttons or even holding something in your hands to play a video game. At their annual Xbox 360 E3 (or, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry) Media Briefing in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced Project Natal, a seemingly highly-accurate motion-sensing camera that makes players the controller.

“It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about no wheel at all,” - Stephen Spielberg

Using camera technology presumably from 3DV, a company Microsoft was reportedly in talks with to purchase after the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, has positioned Microsoft as the one video game console maker to be out-done at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). While Nintendo and Sony have yet to reveal their announcements, Microsoft looks like it has the hit of the show on its hands as its made games even more simple and accessible than Nintendo has done with the Wii.

“It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about no wheel at all,” filmmaker Stephen Spielberg told the audience of the Xbox E3 09 Media Briefing about Project Natal. The video game industry has seen many innovations in the controller department over the past few years with such new modes of control such as guitar and drum controllers and most notably the Wii remote. Project Natal doesn’t reinvent controllers, it makes them obsolete. Well, there are some games that are best played with a physical controller, but what project Natal promises is quite amazing.

Have a bone to pick with the name Natal? As it’s only a project name for Microsoft’s new camera technology, it’s highly likely that it’s name will change radically. Still hung up on the name? Let’s move on to what really matters, the features:

Read the rest of this entry »

In this episode, the GammaTesting.com guys (including CL’s own Brian Ries) 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.

New release Madworld for the Nintendo Wii: It’s Sin City meets The Running Man meets Escape From New York. What more do you need to know? Well, you should probably know it’s actually just kind of mediocre and occasionally dull, more like The Spirit meets The 6th Day meets Escape From L.A.

Anyway, Madworld is a blood-soaked, profanity-laden, super stylish action game for everybody’s favorite family-friendly game console.

Before I got my hands on it, I hadn’t turned on my Wii in months — not since Wii Fit came out, and that exercise program only lasted a week or so. As many have lamented, no one’s really making much in the way of hard core or cool games for the Wii these days – it’s mostly just shovel ware for kids with the occasional gem from Nintendo. The cool games that do come out on Wii, like Rock Band, have better versions on the more powerful consoles, so why buy them? But developers are starting to expand their horizons, and Sega brings us this bloody romp that’ll have you flipping your wrists to cut dudes in half with a chain saw, ram sign posts through their skulls and slam them into spikes over and over again.

Madworld has mad style. It’s all black and white, comic-book-style art — very reminiscent of Sin City. This style serves double duty – adding real visual flair and interest to the game while at the same time hiding the Wii’s lesser graphical prowess. The only color is red (well, a little yellow too), and almost all of that red is blood. And there’s lots and lots of blood. Read the rest of this entry »

For a while now the Wii gamers have been left behind the Xbox 360 and PS3 crowd in terms of extra downloadable tracks for Rock Band and Rock Band 2.  If you’re one of the people who have bemoaned your lack of classic Canadian rock versus the other versions, today heralds the release of yet another chunk of DLC that should elicit a cheer.

This week’s Wii Rock Band DLC brings the entire best-selling Rush album, Moving Pictures, to the Wii tomorrow, including fan favorites YYZ, Limelight, and more. As an added bonus, this isn’t the cover band that has mangled Rush Rock Band tracks (’in the style of’) previously – these tracks are copied directly from the master album recordings. That’s right – 100% more Lee, Lifeson and Peart than before!

The other nice bit of news was today’s statement from Harmonix & MTV Games about what Wii Rock Band players have to look forward to in terms of downloadable content for the future. Read the rest of this entry »

In my latest Bar Tab column I admit to being seduced by the mighty Wii for the first time. In fact, it was the first time I had played a video game since my crazy (lazy) college days. I enjoyed myself. I also enjoyed watching the Big Lebowski with my dad and brother Joel … and downing about a half dozen White Russians. Drinking, eating, throwing football and playing Wii. Looks like that’s what will be on the agenda come Christmas Vacation. And, of course, watching Christmas Vacation. Here’s a snippet from my latest Bar Tab :

We drank. We threw the football in the street. We tried to avoid conversation topics that would lead to arguments. We had a Scrabble battle (Pops beat me). We drank.

Continue reading “Wine Women and Wii: Wade has a new vice.”