I love a good crossover as much as the next man, but things have been getting way, way, way out of hand lately. Come on now, Solid Snake in Smash Brothers Brawl? Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe? Yoda, Darth Vader, and that guy from The Force Unleashed in SoulCalibur 4? Capcom vs Tatsunoko? X-men and, well, any character from the Top Cow universe? As exciting as many of these either are or could be, this is border lining on ridiculous. Of course zany crossovers are nothing new, especially in gaming. One of them was this beat-em-up classic, which paired together Rare’s Battletoads with Technos Japan’s Lee brothers. Besides the fact that both franchises had home games which were at one time published by Tradewest (who published this game), there was no real connection between the two. Beside a few key flaws here and these, this is mindless beat-em-up fun.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Because we haven’t had enough coverage of Christian Bale this week, a Teaser trailer for the new Terminator movie coming out in 2009 surfaced this week over at io9. In addition a still of Christian Bale portraying John Connor was released with Bale aiming a large automatic rifle at a disabled terminator’s head. Still can be seen above. Click for the full-size picture. Teaser is below from a youtube mirror.

The Powet Community is reeling from the midnight screenings, and more of us will be seeing The Dark Knight this weekend. Join in the Batman: The Dark Knight discussion after you see the movie. Spoilers will be filling the thread soon, so don’t peek until you been there. Trust me. Don’t wait. Skip lunch for a week to save money if you have to, but see this. Batman Begins sat atop my own personal list of favorite comic movies and this delivers far greater a story and performances. The Dark Knight is the flick to beat this summer. Sorry Iron Man, Sorry Hulk, Sorry Indy. We had fun, but you can’t kill the Batman.

The Dark Knight Thread (spoilers)

Now I’m just as excited about playing the newest iterations of Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Guitar Hero, SoulCalibur, and Silent Hill as the next gamer, but if you ask me, now is an awesome time to be a fan of classic gaming. Throughout these past few years, we’ve had several compilation packs of classic titles from companies like Taito and Midway. Nintendo, Sega, SNK, and NEC have been putting much of their systems’ back catalogs on the Wii Virtual Console, while the PSN store and Xbox Live Arcade have had a steady stream of both classic and classic-style games made readily available for download. Just when you think things couldn’t get any better, Konami recently released the Japanese version of Dracula X on U.S. shores for the very first time, and Capcom will be releasing new Mega Man, Street Fighter, and Bionic Commando games throughout the next several months. Then there is this, Contra 4. Out of nowhere, Konami has given gamers a clever throwback to the 16-bit glory days of Contra, while still keeping it relevant today. They’ve managed to bring back everything old school gamers loved about Contra while at the same time reintroducing it to a new generation of gamers.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

For those of you not going to The Dark Knight this weekend (and by the way, if you exist, and you’re reading this site, WTF man), your big chance to see the Watchmen trailer has arrived.

And for those of you who ARE going, but are as impatient as me, well, your big chance to see the Watchmen trailer has also arrived.

Hesitant as I am on the idea of this movie delivering the goods, I have to say this – Zack Snyder’s movies cut one hell of a trailer.

Alright, quit gawking at the words and watch the trailer already!

Swagshow, a venue not unlike our own here at Powet but limited to YouTube videos, managed to make their way down to E3 and capture some footage of the two new Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia and Judgement.

Order of Ecclesia already had some footage released that’s been floating around the net, and this video just provides greater coverage of the Glyph system that the game uses, as well as a bit of dialogue between main character Shanoa and her mentor Barlowe. The Glyph system is interesting in that you can assign glyphs to each hand to attack with, using either the same glyph for both or different glyph for each. As has been mentioned before, the action will be combination of styles from previous recent Castlevania games such as Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow, with a traveling map similar to oldschool classic Simon’s quest.

As for Judgement, we only get to see a small snippet of playtime. Playable characters revealed are Simon Belmont, Maria Renard, and Alucard. Though gameplay seems fluid and the characters seem to move and attack well, the game thus far looks like a clone of Soul Calibur….with zombies. However, I will hold off on my contempt for the game until I get to watch the full thing when it’s released.

During some E3 exploits, Mortal Kombat producer and the overall frontman of the series Ed Boon sat down and talked alot about the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game.

More detail is explained by Boon, and shown in background during gameplay, about the differentiations between the Fatalities and Brutalities that the MK and DC characters have respectively. Also shown is a new component of the Kombat franchise called “Freefall Kombat”, wherein both warriors are in a state of pounding the hell out of one another whilst falling from a great height in an attempt to build a power meter to deliver a super move by the time they hit ground. An interesting concept, though seems a bit gimmicky to me.

What really excited me about watching the gameplay was twofold. Firstoff, the gameplay, though technically being 3D, has a much more 2D linear feel to it that reminds me of classic 2D MK games of old, without the motion confusion of more recent games. The other aspect was that many of the old signature character moves that have faded as the MK series as gone on seem to have returned. Scorpion has his classic-rendition of his Teleport back, while Sonya has both her Ring Toss attack and Scissor Grab move. These moves will come in handy for oldschool players who will be standing off with DC legends like Flash who works similar to Kabal but somehow seemingly more fluid, and Superman, who’s packed with heat vision, ice breath, and earthquake attacks.

Check out Gametrailer feature.

Though E3 thus far seems to be slightly more lackluster than previous years, it seems some diamonds are still managing to shine through the layer of mediocrity that has so far been shown.

Some rather impressive Resident Evil 5 footage has been shown out of E3, and while IGN has some clips to show off of the game along with a tentative release date of March 19th 2009, Gamersyde comes through with some high-resolution video for your viewing pleasure. Due to some bandwidth issues on their part, we’re unable to directly stream the video from here, but feel free to check out the videos *HERE*

Thus far, what we see is some good single-player action featuring good ol’ Chris Redfield, including tangles with the disgruntled locals, as well as some nasty confrontations with a rather imposing individual wielding a hulking sledgehammer/axe ready to bash your brains in. We also see some co-op play with your lovely female compatriot Sheva Alomar. From what I can tell, the environment and gameplay is strikingly similar to what we saw in Resident Evil 4, though game producer Jun Takeuchi states that enemies won’t be like the Ganados, and will be more intellegent.

This might be all we see of the game until it’s release next year, but so far everything is looking A-OK as far as living up to hype.