Lets turn the clock back to 2006. It was one year into the Xbox 360’s life cycle, and consumers were either stabbing and shooting each other in order to get their hands on the newly released PS3, or lining up for hours to get their hands on a Wii. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 gamers were still waiting the proverbial ‘killer app’ for the system. While games like Oblivion, Fight Night Round 3, and Saints Row did a good job or keeping players tied over, many of them were just higher resolution versions of games on the original Xbox. What gamers really wanted was Halo 3. Meanwhile, Epic had something brand new up its sleeve. Making use of the brand new Unreal 3 graphics engine, a lifelike alternate world, and unique gameplay features, Gears of War was unleashed on the scene, and it redefined the rules of the shooter genre.
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One thing you gotta love about Goichi Suda is that he doesn’t care how well his games are received by critics. He doesn’t care how well reviewers score his product, how well his games sell, or weather or not he gets a game of the year award. In fact, he doesn’t care about gaining any kind of mainstream recognition whatsoever, as anyone who has played Killer 7 knows. He works in this same spirit as many independent game programmers, and simply wants to share his demented thoughts with the world. No More Heroes is his latest creation. Weather you love or hate the game, it will be sure to have you scratching your head in a way that few games can.
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Wanna have some fun with your mp3 collection? Go to Steam and download Audiosurf. This game is basically a fusion of Guitar Hero, Wipeout, and Columnus. You take control of one of many characters, each grouped by difficulty and having their own special abilities. You make your way down a racetrack, picking up colored blocks. You use these colored blocks to create clusters, which score you points. The colored blocks are synced your chosen song. The game contains additional game modes, and there is 2-player co-op play available. This is an incredibly addictive game, and it has won many awards on the independent gaming scene. Pedro Macedo Camacho, who composed the game’s original soundtrack, has won an “Excellence in Audio” award at the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Currently the game is only available on Valve’s Steam distribution network. It’s available for less than $10, so check it out and support the independent gaming scene.

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Now we all love video games. At least most of you do. I can’t imagine that the majority of our visitors would be here if they didn’t, let alone reading this article. However, many of us can’t afford to run out and buy the latest new game when it is released, especially in this recession. Most of us have to deal with tuition/student loan payments, rent/mortgage payments, food, utilities, and in some cases, even extra mouths to feed. However, just because you’re swamped with bills doesn’t mean you have to keep playing the same games over and over again, simply because you can’t afford new ones. In this addition of the powet alphabet, I’m going to show you 10 selections straight from our weekly $20 Game of the Week feature, a.k.a the gamer stimulus package, designed to stimulate your collection and bail you out from the monotony of replaying the same titles again. I tried to cover every system here, and there is a good selection of genre offerings, so there is something for everyone. As luck would have it, this is also the 4 year anniversary of the column. All of these titles can be found for under 20 dollars anywhere you buy games from.

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When Devil May Cry debuted on the Playstation 2 years ago, it gave a new face to the action genre while providing an old-school vibe. It was like nothing gamers had ever seen before, but at the same time, you got a feeling of nostalgia just like you did when you played Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden back on the Nintendo. Devil May Cry helped set the trend of the action genre for years to come. Its fast paced action, upgradable abilities, and combo-heavy combat system helped lay a blueprint for games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War. The series almost went under due to a lackluster second entry, but a third game redeemed the series, even if it was brutally difficult. Now DMC goes next gen, and also makes its first appearance on the Xbox 360. Although DMC 4 treads familiar territory, it manages to provide a few surprises of its own, not the least of which is an all new playable character.
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If you have been paying attention, you’ll notice that there is a revolution going on in gaming. The independent gaming scene has been getting bigger and bigger these past few years. Freely available open-source tools such as Gimp and Blender, as well as the accessibility of easy to learn programming languages such as Python and Blender have made game programming easier than ever, and there is more of an incentive for indie developers to get started as well. Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace features sections for independently made games, while indie developed games such as Everyday Shooter, Braid, and Dishwasher: Dead Samurai have been swiped up by big name companies, releasing them on various download services to critical acclaim. These games are going way beyond DIY shooters and puzzle games, introducing unique methods of story telling and gameplay mechanics. Crayon Physics, developed by Petri Purho, is one of the most recent faces of the indie gaming movement. It won first place at the 2008 independent games festival, and it puts many mainstream-developed games to shame.
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While playing this weeks $20 GOTW, I’ve come to realize something. There aren’t nearly enough games that allow you to step into the shoes of a criminal mastermind. Yeah, Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row allow me to craft a criminal empire and run a city, but even then I’m just playing as a gangster with a heart of gold. I wanna build a secret island base, chock full of henchmen that will lay their lives down for me on my say so. I wanna send my soldiers out to put in work across the world. I wanna capture, interrogate, and kill civilians and secret agents who snoop around my base. I wanna have a badass second-in-command who swears complete allegiance to me. I wanna instill fear in my workforce by killing one of my more incompetent workers right in front of them, Saddam Hussein style. Thankfully Elixir Studios recognizes the void of villain simulators. In 2004, they released this title, which places players in the wold of an evil genius as they try to achieve world domination.
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Regardless of what anyone says, the Playstation 3 (along with its competition the Wii and the Xbox 360) is a very good system, and anyone who says that Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft is dying anytime soon is an idiot. However, the problem with the system is is that when it was first released, there were hardly any games available for it. Scratch that, there were plenty of good games, but they were already available for Xbox 360, and in many cases, they had been available for the better part of the year prior to the system’s release. Even with new features, people weren’t exactly rushing out to pay $500 – $600 just to play a new version of Fight Night or Marvel Ultimate Alliance when they could already play them on Xbox 360, and the few exclusives that the PS3 had at system launch weren’t exactly anything to write home about. However, is there was one game that was worth the price of the new system, it’s this FPS classic from Insomniac. In fact, this game along almost makes it mandatory to own a PS3.
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