With Nintendo’s Wii and DS, the features that make them standout (the stylus and motion sensing control) also turn out to be their biggest liabilities. Developers often feel obligated to make use of them regardless of how well it can be implemented. As a result, we end up with games with mediocre playability due to the fact that the developers shoehorned Wiimote/stylus functionality into what would have worked just as fine (if not better) without it. This is why we should be thankful for games such as Mega Man DX, as it proves that DS and Wii games don’t necessarily have to make extensive use of fancy new features to be good.
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Anyone with an Xbox Live account can find the Blue Dragon demo in Live Marketplace right now. There are 2 available levels, a dungeon and a forest. Both appear to be well into the game: you begin with 5 party members, lots of magic at your disposal, and in the middle of a quest.

Its nearly impossible to judge how good an RPG will be based on a demo because the things that make games like this enjoyable are the story, characters, and the scope of the adventure, none of which you can get a feel for in 2 hours of play. That said, the 2 hours is fun. Battles all take place with not yourself attacking monsters, but your shadow. If your party takes a beating, it raises a tension meter that when filled you can unleash a powerful summon attack. You can also charge your magic and physical attacks for more power (DBZ style!). I’m sure a lot of the nuances of battle were lost on me not having played the 50 levels before the one I was given, but I can see myself having a good time with this.

The battles are not random either, you see an enemy on screen and you can run from it or attack it to initial an encounter. you can also choose to take on large groups at once, which can give you a power up advantage as the battles progress, as well as more experience for inevitable level grinding.

This is a title thats been out in Japan for some time, but will come to the states August 28th. As many have mentioned its the first project since Chrono Trigger on the SNES that Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama have worked together on. I count Chrono Trigger as one of my favorite games, and if Blue Dragon can give me something half as good, I’ll have a worthy addition to the Xbox 360 Library

Shock and awe has gripped the Nintendo DS and Transformers fans alike as they new licensed game based on the 2007 Transformers movie is blowing away expectations. Our friend Tigerpaw elaborates:

My initial impressions on these games? Good with a capital G. The graphics are great. The FMV intro is amazing and the in game graphics are well-rendered and amazingly well detailed. Audio is top notch too, with all the character voice overs you could possibly want. Gameplay is solid along with solid controls. Players will have a blast stomping and racing all over the 3D environment. I’m not really far enough in to comment on the story but it’s looking pretty good so far. While it’s a really cool single player game, I think it may shine even more in multiplayer, where some great melee battles are sure to be had. Big thumbs up.

More poweteers chime in on our forums! This is great news for those of us awaiting the console releases this week.

Finally, the triumphant return of the Grandpappy of action/shooter/platformers, (and more importantly, a return to sweet, sweet 2-D). Set to be released sometime in 2007, players will take control of one of four characters, (including the unfortunately named Lance Bean), and blast their way through horizontally side scrolling levels as well as vertically between the DS’s duel screens. Check out the official press release after the jump.

With E3 a scant few weeks away, we can expect to see the game in motion soon.

One more thing…grappling hook!
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Superman Doomsday – Official Trailer

Nothing terribly surprising in the trailer, but the link above has an interesting synopsis if you click through:

When Lexcorp accidentally unearths the intergalactic serial killer Doomsday, Superman battles the creature head on in the fight of his life…literally. The world collectively mourns their fallen hero; humanity realizes it will never feel truly safe again. Superman’s enemies rejoice – all but Lex Luthor, who grieves the loss in his own demented manner, setting off a chilling chain of events that even he couldn’t have foreseen.

Sounds like Luthor’s taking a major role this time around, which is a nice change of pace from orange-maned Luthor in the comics. That was a little weird to me, as I wasn’t too well-versed in DC lore when the story originally came out.

It’s been approximately three weeks since seeing Spider-Man 3 in theatres, and I figure by this time either you’ve seen the movie, or you don’t plan on seeing it. And now, with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 having come out this past Thursday and my own plans doing an eventual review of that, I should probably get to my previous priority of sharing my take of this movie. I’ve premeditated this more than I should have.

So of course, I had been wanting to see Spider-Man 3 for the longest damn time. As soon as I heard that that they were going to do the black costume story arc, and there was going to be at least an introduction of Venom into the scene, I got about as giddy as I possible could, which says a lot for me. Even after hearing that they were also going to be throwing Sandman in as a villain as well, I was deterred at all, because as I’m sure the rest figured as well, I was hoping this would just be and introduction into Venom story, and they’d actually debut him at the very end of the movie as a teaser, or they’d simply lead up to him showing up fully in a 4^th movie. Everything was going to be fine, I assured myself.

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ID is to first person shooters what Capcom and SNK are to fighting games. Not only have they practically invented the genre, their games have introduced several conventions that we take for granted today. Doom, Wolfenstein 3-d, and Quake were the top three shooter franchises for the company. While Quake didn’t have the impact on the genre that the other two games had, it still became a favorite among players, due to the fact that it’s open source code made it able to produce modifications and conversions for the game. Also, it was one of the first games to include multiplayer over the internet, and full 3-d movement. It was followed up by a sequel that eschewed the first game’s gothic textures for a more sci-fi plot, and again by a sequel that focused strictly on multiplayer combat. After reviving Doom 3 and Wolfenstein 3-d, ID dicided to bring back Quake as well, just in time for the next generation of console systems.
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Pop Gears of War into your Xbox 360 right now and you’ll be able to download the latest game play update and bug fix, but also the the new game type “Annex” which is depicted in the video above. Skip past the cut to see the full press release with the bug fixes listed.

Annex is a variation on King Of The Hill, where players struggle for control of one spot on the map. Sounds fun already, since KotH was my favorite Halo gametype, but its sweetened by adding respawns. Yes, Gears Of War finally has a gametype where you can die and respawn.

Also on this week’s 1UP Yours Podcast, Epic’s Mark Rein stated that their team has 4 new multiplayer maps ready to go, and has been trying to get Microsoft to release them free. MS thinks charging is the way to go. Ultimately they’re going to comprimise with maps going for sale to start and going free after some time has passed. I’m fine with paying or getting them free, just as long as they get here soon!
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