Seen in the most recent Humble Indie Bundle, Rochard is a 2D Platform/Puzzle hybrid in which players manipulate gravity to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. Playing as John Rochard, you are on a routine space mining mission for the Skyrig Corporation. However, things go wrong pretty quickly, and you find yourself battling Space Bandits and other enemies as you investigate what’s going on. Your main weapon is the G-Lifter, a gun which can manipulate gravity to life objects. You can also control gravity to allow yourself to jump higher, and alter the trajectories of objects. Each of the game’s puzzles revolve around gravity, same way as Portal’s puzzles centered around teleportation and physics. The gameplay is easy to pick up on while challenging enough to keep you engaged. It’s available on Steam and PSN, but you can grab it as part of Humble Bundle 6 until Monday October 1st at 7pm EST.

Last month at Fan Expo in Toronto I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the first episode of Arrow. I really dragged my ass on writing this review of it but that’s okay because CW also dragged their ass on actually airing the show which will premiere on October 10th. I’ve put together my thoughts on the show. I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum. Keep in mind I know very little about the Green Arrow comic on which I’m told this show is based.

The story is simple enough. Some super rich playboy, Oliver Queen, crashes on an island, spends a ton of time there, *something* happens, he becomes proficient with a bow and arrow, then he’s rescued and … he fights crime! With a bow and arrow! He fights criminals that are armed with guns with a bow and arrow!

[Read the rest of this entry…]

This past month, Nintendo Power announced that it would not be continuing its groundbreaking gaming magazine, Nintendo Power. The magazine, which has been in print for 24 years, will end with its December 2012 issue. For many gamers, myself included, this will be the end of an era. Although I had stopped reading it long ago , I remember it as one of the best gaming magazines ever created. I had a subscription since 5th grade and kept reading it all the way through the middle of my sophomore year in high school when I got my Playstation. Every month in between, I remember eagerly waiting beside my mailbox for my book to come through. The extras were awesome as well. When my mother first bought me a subscription, it came with 4 free guides: A book about Game Boy, A book about the then-upcoming SNES, Mario Mania (A game about all things Mario) and the NES Atlas (A guide with the maps of all the levels in games such as Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man). Even today, it remains the gold standard in printed gaming journalism, even if it’s obviously biased towards Nintendo.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Welcome to the Powet Top 5, where we explore the top (and bottom) 5 items we think are relevant to any of a variety of topics that span the imagination. Sit back, read, and respond

Japanese people love cats, as can be seen by such Internet sensations as Maru. This also extends to Anime, where many shows and movies feature prominent cats from pets to sentient cats to humanoid cat people. Here are my top 5 favourites. What are yours?

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Sometimes, gamers don’t necessarily need a game that reinvents the wheel, adds a new concept, or had a deep storyline. Sometimes, we just want something that’s fun. Alien Shooter is just that game Created by Sigma Team, Alien Shooter is an arcade-style top-down shooter with RPG elements. Playing as a soldier sent to clear out a laboratory infested with Aliens, you shoot your way through the game’s semi-destructible environments while killing every alien in your way. You gain money which you can use to purchase weapons and upgrade your abilities. Alien Shooter Complete is a 4-pack which contains Alien Shooter, Alien Shooter Revisited (A remake of the first game), Alien Shooter 2, and Zombie Shooter, which is like Alien Shooter, except that the aliens are replaced with Zombies. Alien Shooter2: Conscription, a recently release sequel, is also available in most places that downloadable PC games are sold. There is not a whole lot to it, but then again there doesn’t have to be. Alien Shooter is a fun filled game that takes up back to the days of our youth.

As shown by this past week’s Top 5 segment, good movie adaptations are far and few in between. However, bad movie tie-ins are all too frequent, as shown by this week’s Maximum Letdown. A movie tie-in on the Virtual Boy? Forget about it.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Welcome to the Powet Top 5, where we explore the top (and bottom) 5 items we think are relevant to any of a variety of topics that span the imagination. Sit back, read, and respond.

Thankfully, Eat, Pray, Love never received a video game adaptation (well, none that I know of anyway). If it did, I'd like to think of it as a game with a focus on stealth, cover, rpg-like stat building, and metroid style exploration. Kinda like Bioshock meets Metal Gear Solid, except Nora Roberts was writing the plot instead of Hideo Kojima. Oh, and there would be co-op and multiplayer of course.

Movie adaptations are the junk food of the gaming industry. Yeah, they taste good and kids can’t get enough of them, but they just aren’t good for you. Most gaming adaptations fall prey to the same problem: developers rush to have them out in time for the movie’s release so they can cash in, and they spend more development resources on recreating the film than implementing proper gameplay mechanics. Thus, while that video game based on this year’s summer blockbuster might move huge units within the first few months after it’s release, it’ll be regulated to bargain bin shovelware status by this time next year, and often times before the dvd hits stores. However, there are several games that have managed to not only avoid this problem, but they became classics in their own right, doing justice to the movie they were based on. Here are 5 of the best.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Grand Theft Auto IV introduced downloadable episodes to the series. After playing through Niko Bellic’s tale of redemption, players can also experience two other tales from the world of GTA IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. You can either download them yourself, or buy this disc which has both episodes on them. While both episodes utilize the same frame work as Grand Theft 4, they both offer wildly different, even if condensed, experiences.
[Read the rest of this entry…]