The Darkness Is Where I Shine…

Being a thuggish, heroic man of my word, I just bought Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.  And to be honest, I’m pissed.  Quite pissed.

Why you ask, dearest of hypothetical imaginary readers who are always a constant pain in my ass?  Because, after playing about 30 minutes worth of the Escape From Butcher Bay portion of the game, I realized that I’ve spent the past five years ignoring this awesome title.

Where to start?  My exposure to the game has been obviously brief, but my response to it amazing.  So many cool little facets and details to this title.  So many nifty little things pulled together, straddling genres, blending ideas…. this is a title that I am clearly impressed by.

Having never played the original Xbox version of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, I don’t know what is new here and what is old.  But I do know that the game felt like a damn fine mix of Splinter Cell, Mirror’s Edge, and Far Cry 2.  Let me break that down for you.

White Knight Chronicles – Developer Interview

PS3 owners are getting the first JRPG in the US (apparently – are there really no other JRPG games for the PS3..?) in the form of White Knight Chronicles.

From the video below I’d say it’s a mix of Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star Online as you can go online and complete quests with up to three friends for a total of four party members. Hopefully they don’t try and impose some lame fee for the online component like they do Phantasy Star Online.

Also – someone should tell the developer that here in America the White Knights sometimes means something else. What is it with these games lately being so racist…

Hit the jump for the trailer.

Zombies To The Maxx!

Last night I was helping my old pal Rando Commando learn the ropes for Left 4 Dead. I had finally talked him into buying the game and picking it up again reminded me of how much I do love blasting zombies.

Since my valiant sidekick, Trixie, who is my sidekick, decided to tag along and Rando had his own sidekick/houselad Mr. Phoenix with him we were playing the game with a full 4 player roster. Wow – that game truly does shine when you’ve got a full team of human players all working together – but this is old news.

What’s new news is the all new PC game on the way – Killing Floor. 6 player survival horror co-op. Need I say more? Hit the jump for the trailer.

First Impressions: Crystal Defenders Demo (Xbox Arcade)

While on my four hour lunch break from the waffle iron factory, I decided to head on back to Boomcreek as to try my hand at a jam or two.  Feeling the urge to tackle something new, I went strolling through the downloadables section of Xbox Live, and opted to pull down Crystal Defenders, the tower defense style game spun off as yet another Final Fantasy property (it would appear that I have most definitely become the JRE’s resident FF expert…).

Tower defense games are something that I’m fairly new to.  Despite the recent explosion of the genre on the iPhone and in flash games, the only one I’ve truly dug into was the all-too-awesome Ninjatown for the Nintendo DS.  And I feel confident in saying that Ninjatown has set the standard, the high-water mark that all these other games should strive to reach.

Mass iPhone Effect

Ben Kuchera is just feeding the news right to us today.

Opposable Thumbs, via JoyStiq, dropped the story about a Mass Effect 2 prequel coming to the iPhone.  And I can honestly say that I never saw this one coming.  I mean, a DS/PSP version I would believe.  A PC or open mobile phone version wouldn’t be too far-fetched.  But an iPhone-only prequel?  Consider me surprised.

Bionic Commando Multiplayer Demo Is Out (And I Hear It Sucks)

Ahoy-hoy, Thugs.

Ben Kuchera over at Opposable Thumbs has spent some time with the newly released demo for Bionic Commando on the Xbox 360.  And to sum up his sentiments shortly, it sucks.

I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet (I’ve been too busy busting out on Quantum of Solace), but I can easily believe Ben’s statements on the matter.  Any playable build of the game has resulted in numerous folks saying that the arm/swing mechanic just feels totally off, and given the fact that the game would be more or less centered around this gimmick, that isn’t good news.  That’s like having a shooter game where your shots never land anywhere near the cross-hairs.

Dead Rising 2 – Trailer

News comes from Captivate 09 that Dead Rising 2 by Capcom is on it’s way although no firm release date has been announced.

The first Dead Rising was a good enough game but sorely lacked a co-op element. If I could have romped through that mall beating up on zombies with one of the JREmen it would have been an entirely different story.

Hopefully they’ve learned from the first one what the sequel really needs otherwise this title is going to suffer the same sort of fate Grand Theft Auto 4’s multiplayer suffered. That being a case of “would have been great the first time”.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

Face Punchers, Inc.

Last night after jam night I decided it was about time I grabbed up the demo on XBOX Live for THQ’s new fighting game, UFC 2009: Undisputed.

While the game doesn’t release until the upcoming May 19th date THQ was nice enough to drop a demo for us to get a taste of what it’s like to go toe to toe in the Octogon.

So how was it? I really liked it but to understand where I’m coming from you should know a couple things…

Need for Speed SHIFT – Producer Interview

Need for Speed: SHIFT – the new racing game from EA coming our way in September is looking to become the NKOTB in the simulation racing genre. It aims to compete with the likes of Forza Motorsports and Gran Turismo and beat them across the finish line.

From the looks of things – they’re right on target. The graphics are absolutely stunning and crash physics that make sense (Keyan and I will never understand why we can drive away from a 400+ MPH (combined velocity) head on collision in Forza). Tunnel vision when you hit speeds and driver head bobble while shifting or colliding with objects. Yeah – SHIFT looks like it could take over the corner store on the racing game block.

Let’s all pray together that the controls and racing physics have the chops to keep up with those fancy graphics.

Hit the jump for the video.

Uncharted 2 – Among Theives (co-op and multiplayer footage)

Uncharted 2 – Among Thieves is on it’s way to all you lucky PS3 owners and judging from this trailer it’s shaping up to be quite a smash hit for the PS3.

Playstation 3 has alot of great titles now like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Little Big Planet and something like Uncharted 2 just goes to show that Sony’s console can be the home to a truly spectacular franchise.

I will only say one thing to Uncharted’s discredit – it looks to be borrowing heavily from the game concepts that are the cornerstone of Gears of War. Not that this is a bad thing but if you’re going to imitate you better be damn sure that you do it right. Case in point? Saints Row.

Hit the jump for the trailer.