Metareview: Wii Sports Resort
Giant Bomb (100/100): “Unless you're the kind of sullen misanthrope who can only feel at peace when getting headshots with some kind of virtual scope, you'll surely find something about Wii Sports Resort that keeps both you and your …
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Metareview: Wii Sports Resort
Black Wii now available from importers for $333
Yeah, we were pretty bummed that Nintendo's super-hot black Wii wasn't coming to the US, but fear not, fanboys — it looks like the stealth console has hit the gray-market import scene. Sure, you'll have to pay a bit of a premium at …
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Black Wii now available from importers for $333
Wii Sports approaches 50 million copies sold
It was an even better quarter for the Wii's evergreens. Wii Fit sold an additional 3.6 million copies, bringing its LTD to 21.82. Mario Kart Wii sold 2 million, making its total 17.39 million. And Wii Sports sold an additional 1.91 …
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Wii Sports approaches 50 million copies sold
Cursed Mountain Preview: Save Me, Science, Save Me [Preview]
Agnostic mountain climbers today don’t know how good they have it with global positioning devices, high altitude helicopter rescue parties and 457 kHz standard avalanche beacons, something I realized while playing Deep Silver’s Cursed Mountain. Step into the shoes of Eric Simmons and his missing brother Frank if you want to know what mountaineering was really like back in the day. Or at least how it was back in the 1980s, when you still needed the blessings of a yogini to get to the summit of a fictional Tibetan mountain. If the yogini’s appeasing-the-mountain ritual failed, then all the science in the pre-Internet world couldn’t save you. What Is It? Cursed Mountain is a survival horror game developed by Deep Silver Vienna exclusively for the Wii. Players take the role of mountaineer Eric Simmons and scale the haunted Mount Chomolonzo in the Himalayas to search for your brother, clues to why your brother went missing and a sacred Buddhist artifact called a terma that some rich dude with a peg leg hired your brother to find. What We Saw I plowed through the first three levels of the game in about 90 minutes in the comfort of my own home. How Far Along Is It? The game ships at the end of August, but I’m playing on a preview build that’s probably a month or so old. The graphics aren’t as pretty as they could be, but everything works. What Needs Improvement? Game Should Come With a Wrist Brace: I wouldn’t call this game a waggle fest because the combat requires rigid motions to perform the Buddhist rituals that banish attacking ghosts. However, my wrist still hurt after one particularly ghost-filled level. Part of it was probably due to the sheer number of ghosts that need banishing and part of it was from aiming at the ghosts while in the Bardo state. You go into Bardo by pressing C and have to point with the Wii Remote both to aim at ghosts and to turn Eric, since his feet are rooted to the spot while in Bardo. Eric Can’t Take Corners: Most of the game takes place in wide open, agoraphobia-inducing spaces; however some of the early levels force Eric to go through houses with far too many doorways and corners. I realize that mountaineering gear weighs the body down, but even in a space suit, it shouldn’t be that hard to move between rooms in a house – especially when there’s a ghost after you. The Writing: I dig the plot, but the dialogue script and a lot of the text in documents you find throughout the game could use a Stephen King treatment. It’s the least scary part of the game. What Should Stay The Same? Creepy Music: The music in Cursed Mountain is subtle and eerie, just as it should be. The developer says the US-exclusive Steel Box version of the game will come with the soundtrack. You Don’t Have To Use The Buddhist-kill: You can get rid of ghosts by melee-attacking them until they’re weak and then finishing them off with one blast from your enchanted pickaxe in the Bardo state. No motion controls necessary, except the aiming portion in Bardo. Complex Plot: The story in Cursed Mountain is not so simple as “there’s the bad guy, go get him.” Even if you can tell who’s to blame for the mountain being cursed right from the beginning, you can’t quite fathom all of the events that happened leading up to it. This makes you suspect nearly every non-playable character you meet (though there aren’t very many of them) and at one point something so terrible was revealed that I started to wonder if my character’s brother was even worth saving. High Anxiety: Fans of the horror genre know that there are different kinds of scary. There’s jump-out-at-you scary, psychologically disturbing scary, sad-and-eerie scary and OMG-so-violent scary. Cursed Mountain relies on the first kind of scary at the beginning of the game, but eventually, it starts to incorporate a lot of the second. By the third level, Cursed Mountain was making me downright anxious both with its setting (being alone on top of a mountain where the sky stretches out around you for miles) and with its plot (why did my brother do that?!). Final Thoughts Based on the reaction I got to my first impressions of Cursed Mountain with respect to religion, I’ll leave it to actual Buddhists to weigh in on how respectful the game is of Buddhism. The developer claims to have consulted several Buddhist authorities during development and I certainly didn’t see anything that raised any red flags. But I won’t go so far as to say it was a deep and thoughtful portrayal of an ancient religion. Cursed Mountain is a survival horror game, after all, not a step on the path to Enlightenment.
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Cursed Mountain Preview: Save Me, Science, Save Me [Preview]
Rock Band Spinal Tap-ped
Rerecorded versions of 11 songs from This Is Spinal Tap arrive next week for Wii, PS3, 360; new Black Sabbath and Foo Fighters DLC also available.
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Rock Band Spinal Tap-ped
Guitar Hero 5 Neversoft Avatar Trailer
Enjoy this performance of Blur’s “Song 2″ from the crew at Neversoft. Guitar Hero 5 from Neversoft and Activision Blizzard for the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2. Buy the Wii version at astore.amazon.com Buy the Xbox 360 at
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Guitar Hero 5 Neversoft Avatar Trailer
SDCC: Preview of Spore Hero | Techzter.com
Players will still have the full functionality of the Spore Creature Creator from the Personal computer version, modified to work with the Wii Remote. You'll have some 250 to fiddle with to make your creations. …
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SDCC: Preview of Spore Hero | Techzter.com
Saling The World: Wii Sports Resort Leads Worldwide Charts - Gamasutra
GameSpotSaling The World: Wii Sports Resort Leads Worldwide ChartsGamasutraJunior Brain Trainer DS (Avanquest), 5. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo). Rhythm Heaven tops the week's Nintendo DS sales in North America after a recent “Lightning …Q&A: Nintendo's Kaigler on Slowing Wii Sales, Hardcore GamesWired NewsThe Video Game Release List of 7/26 - 8/1ShacknewsNintendo Details Release PlansIGNGame Informer -Journal and Courierall 160 news articles »
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Saling The World: Wii Sports Resort Leads Worldwide Charts - Gamasutra
Nintendo warns iPhone may damage its sales - Apple Insider
Globe and MailNintendo warns iPhone may damage its salesApple InsiderA cursory check many retailers prices most Nintendo DS games between $30 and $35 while an iPhone game is regularly below $10, sometimes below $5, …Nintendo concedes Wii & DS sales decline - cites strong yen & iPhoneTECH.BLORGE.comNintendo says Wii and DS sales starting to slow, label iphone as …Geek.comNintendo Reveals Wii And dsi Lifetime Sales1UP.comGamasutra -ChannelWeb -bit-tech.netall 486 news articles »
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Nintendo warns iPhone may damage its sales - Apple Insider
A Boy And His Blob Preview: You Will Fail [Preview]
Prepare for very nice graphics. And prepare to die. A Boy And His Blob, beloved NES platformer only some of us on the team have played, has inspired a Wii successor from the makers of the crushingly hard Contra 4. Oh yes, you will struggle in this one too, it seems. The guy from the company that’s publishing the game did — and he’s beat a version of the new game already! What Is It? A Boy And His Blob is a Wii spiritual successor to the the 1989 platformer of the same name. The new game is being made by WayForward and sports lovely hand-drawn graphics. The game is classified as a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer. It stars a duo that needs each other. The boy can’t fight; he feeds jelly beans to the blob, which makes it transform into a ladder, a rocket ship, a hole in the ground, etc. Enemies are lurking and lots of pits full of spikes are one misstep away. The game has the boy and his blob adventuring through 40 main stages, initially set on Earth and then back on the blob’s home planet where a despot has taken over. There are also 40 challenge stages. What We Saw I played one level that was definitely not from early in the game. I took a cue from a sign and turned blob into a rocketship. I had the boy ride him through a maze of earth and trees. But I fumbled and died. I watched a rep from the game’s publisher breeze through some opening levels and become flummoxed by later ones. This game gets hard. How Far Along Is It? The game is set for a fall release, and while it’s still being tweaked, I was told that it’s now possible to play it through to the end. It’s pretty far along. What Needs Improvement? The Difficulty: There’s no reason that a cute game has to be easy. But when a person who has played the game a lot is struggling, that’s a sign that the difficulty spikes are too jagged. I saw too many blind jumps and too many really tough leaps for any of us who still have a few strands of hair on their head to be willing to play this game through. As it is, this game could make me bald with frustration. We don’t want that. What Should Stay The Same? The Look: The game is charming, lovely, and all the other adjectives you’d want to apply to a sweet storybook-looking adventure. Blob is adorable, even when he gets red out of anger. Even cuter is when boy hugs blob. It’s probably how you looked when you were young and hugged your favorite pillow. That adorable. The Transformations: The blob turns into some cool stuff. The old hole-in-the-floor trick — slipping a hole-shaped blob under an enemy so that it drops to a cave below — never gets old. Blob as ladder. Blob as parachute. Blob as coconut that acts like a bowling ball. I liked it all. Checkpoints: You know, tough as this game is, at least it has lots of checkpoints. The Majesco man who had trouble in the later levels would always get a quick second, third, fourth, 10th try at these jumps, because the boy would always come back to life just inches from where he croaked. Final Thoughts I’m worried that this game’s difficulty could ruin it for players who would otherwise find it delightful. It’s nice enough to play a Wii original that looks this good and has this much personality. It’d be a pity if WayForward and Majesco can’t tune down the difficulty some — even if the original was, I’m told, very hard — so that more of us can enjoy it.
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A Boy And His Blob Preview: You Will Fail [Preview]