Eddy has written a total of 422,116 words on this site.

I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

Rumor: NBA Jam Gets a Revival

NBA JamBoom shaka-laka! He’s on fire!

If anyone knows those words, then they will be excited to hear one of the newest rumors circulating around the video game realm this week. Namely, that NBA Jam is getting revived by EA Sports for an exclusive Wii title. That’s right, the Midway classic that we played in arcades and on our SNES or Sega Genesis are getting the Frankenstein treatment, coming back to us in the year of our Lord 2010. Allegedly.

While details right now are scarce, it seems that there is a pending announcement that could hit later this month. I’m not sure if you guys ever even played this game, but it ranks among my top sports games of all time, and probably as the greatest basketball title that I can remember playing. I loved getting on fire and doing the crazy make-your-opponents-weep kind of dunks to get absurd scores by game’s end. Even though I don’t have a Wii, I seriously can’t wait to see how this turns out.

Does anyone else remember playing this game?

Source- VG247

Gaming Pop Quiz, 2010 Edition

As you all know about our sweet little Internet cave that we call GamerSushi, we’re all about shooting the junk and really digging into gaming discussions, campfire style. This is a cool community, and as such we like to chat about what makes us tick as gamers, and how our gaming identities were formed. Enter the second edition of our feature, Gaming Pop Quiz.

Here’s how it works: We’ve come up with 7 different questions about your gaming history. As always with our getting-to-know-you type games, feel free to answer with as much or as little as you like. Obviously, some of these things you might not remember, but answer to the best of your ability. Go!
Continue reading Gaming Pop Quiz, 2010 Edition

GamerSushi Asks: Best Sequel?

Metal Gear Solid 3Last night, I stayed up ludicrously late to beat Assassin’s Creed 2. It was one of those things where I knew I was closing in on the end of the game, and was willing to do whatever I had to in order to see the end. Fortunately for me, the game is a blast, and has easily become one of my favorites for this past year, if not one of my favorites of the generation.

Part of what is so fascinating about the game is that as a sequel, it is such a ludicrous improvement over the original it’s hard to even compare the two. The gameplay that was only hinted at in the first one seems fully realized here, and the story is way better to boot. I’d even recommend it to people that hated the first one, it’s such a great open world game in comparison.

When I really think about it, next to maybe Metal Gear Solid 3, it’s one of the best video game sequels I’ve ever played. Seriously. Maybe one of the greatest sequels ever made. Lots of games improve with new iterations, but there are some that occasionally take gigantic leaps over the predecessors in a way that’s hard to imagine. Metal Gear Solid 3 was one such game for me, because it blew MGS 2 out of the water completely. Uncharted 2 is a great sequel and game, but the first game was already good, where as the original Assassin’s Creed was just mediocre.

Anywho, all of that to ask you guys- what’s the best sequel to a game you’ve ever played? As good as AC2 is, I think MGS3 is still the king of all sequels. One of the greatest games of all time, hands down. What about you? Go!

Bayonetta Combat Gameplay Montage

A game we haven’t talked about much here but that is covered elsewhere in copious amounts would have to be Bayonetta. Partly for her boobs and lack of clothing (she sheds it as you perform greater combos), and also because people love those old school action combat games. Me, though, I’ve never been too interested in them. Honestly, Wolverine is one of the first ones I’ve enjoyed after hating Ninja Gaiden, feeling so-so about God of War, “meh” about Devil May Cry, etc.

However, I must say that this Bayonetta combat gameplay video is sick as hell, and looks like lots of fun. Who else is wanting to play this game?

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing?

Assassins Creed 2It’s the New Year’s Edition of What Are You Playing, so let’s get to it.

I know that many of you dudes are probably cackling like mad and experiencing all the new gaming loot you got over the holidays, so I’m curious to see what the responses have been here. I know that Anthony has been playing the junk out of Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, which I’m sure is true for others as well.

As for me, I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed 2 and just loving it. While the first hour or so of the game starts off terribly awkward and almost clunky, the rest of it has been a blast. The game really opens up once you get your villa, and I can’t wait to see what else lies in store for Ezio and the Assassins. It’s one of those things where I’m getting more hooked to the game the more I play it, which doesn’t happen very often.

What about you guys? What are you playing? Go!

2010 Gaming Resolutions

Every year, New Year’s Resolutions are the big thing to do once January rolls around. People make fake promises to themselves in order to build their self esteem and generally and make them feel better. In general, they hope this mental self flagellation results in them being able to sleep better at night, if in fact it causes any betterment at all in their daily lives.

I’ve only had a very minimal experience with these self imposed restrictions or boundaries, but only this year were they actually a positive thing for my health. However, I wondered what it would be like to pen up a few resolutions that related to video games. Here’s what I came up with:
Continue reading 2010 Gaming Resolutions

Assassin’s Creed: Initiation

TheDuoGroup makes really sweet videos. In fact, they make some of my favorite video game videos that I can remember. Just recently, they posted this awesome Assassin’s Creed video with all original art work and motion graphics, telling the story of Altair losing his ring finger and getting his assassin’s blade before the events of the first game. They do a remarkable job with it, and once again I am impressed with their work.

Right now, I’m loving Assassin’s Creed 2 so this is pretty cool to see. What do you guys think?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSUcfdpD7yg[/youtube]

Are Demos Evil?

Resident Evil 5 DemoI feel like we’ve got a pretty good thing going on here at GamerSushi. In many ways, I’d like to feel like the discussion that goes on here is perhaps ahead of the curve on some gaming issues in comparison to other sites. I think this is especially true when topics we’ve debated about here start to appear in more mainstream outlines.

Take the subject of demos, for instance. CVG has posted an opinion piece stating that demos are evil, and no good really comes of them. The writer raises some good points which we’ve covered here, but I thought it would be good to revisit them. I think the main problem with demos is that they don’t often showcase the things about a game you really need to get a grasp of it.

Most games operate on a curve that teaches you about the game the farther you get into it, so the first few minutes is most often ideal. However, the first 10-15 minutes aren’t always the sexiest parts of the game, so developers don’t often do that, giving you weird glimpses into what they’ve made (see Resident Evil 5’s demo). I’m curious to see how the new PSN features that allow you to experience the first hour of a game operate, and how they work against game demos.

What do you guys think about game demos? Are they evil?

Source- CVG

GamerSushi Demands: Post Your Lootz!

Well, it’s Christmas time, and naturally that means one thing: epic loot! For many gamers, this is the time of year that we can’t stand waiting for, because we know that Christmas Day will reap a bountiful harvest of the things we’ve been dying to play for the last year or even longer.

So far, I haven’t been able to do any present opening, so I’m not sure of what gaming things might be waiting for me, if any. If I get some money/gift cards, I’ll be very tempted to buy Left 4 Dead 2, which I keep hearing is even better than the first one. If nothing else, I’m going to be saving up money for Mass Effect 2 (January), Splinter Cell (February), Final Fantasy XIII (March) and Heavy Rain. This week I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed 2 and while it starts off pretty terribly, it’s getting better fast.

So, what kind of loot did you guys get? Feel free to post about it, gaming or otherwise. Go!

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is Looking Hot

I never really played the first Battlefield: Bad Company game, but I hear it had some really cool features, and its multiplayer showed a ton of promise. Well judging from the preview of Bad Company 2 below, it looks like they’re taking what they learned from the first game and making a kick-ass follow-up. The multiplayer demo is looking all kinds of hot, so I’m actually excited about it. Maybe I’ll have to pick the first one up over the holidays on the cheap…

Who else is excited about this game? Go!

Franchise Fanboy Wars

Things are pretty messy out there in the video game realm. Gamers fighting against gamers, flames flying around the tubes left and right. People claiming superiority over one another because of a purchasing decision. What have we become?

I suppose it was only a matter of time before it came to this. Sure, everyone’s got their favorite system of choice, be it PC, XBox 360, PS3 or the Wii… But what about the franchises? To help feed the fanboy flames, I thought I’d throw some of our most beloved characters and stories together, to see who came out on top after a brutal battle to the death. It’s the franchise fanboy wars!
Continue reading Franchise Fanboy Wars

Introducing: GamerSushi Reviews Page

premiereWell, aren’t we fancy? We just keep adding these features, don’t we? Soon, you’ll all revolt, longing to go back to the “GamerSushi that was”…

But until then, enjoy the brand spanking new GamerSushi Reviews page, which compiles all of our reviews in an easy-to-browse manner. This should hopefully be helpful in the future as we continue to add more games. Much thanks to JJ, who really killed it with putting the layout together.

In terms of more functionality and updating, we’ve got more stuff we’re working on for the near future with GamerSushi. Any other features you would love to see on this site? What do you think of the review page? Go!

Mythbusters Meets Modern Warfare 2

Oh, Modern Warfare 2. When will we stop posting about you? I’m not sure, but I do know that there is a nifty new video that combines the Discovery show Mythbusters and Modern Warfare 2, resulting in some awesome tricks that I had no idea existed. To be honest, I’ve never experienced anything remotely like this in matchmaking, so I’m curious how they came up with this stuff.

I believe I’ve posted before about a similar series done with Halo 3, which was created by the same dudes. Glad to see they’re still working together! Also, the bouncing throwing knives were incredible. You’ll see what I mean.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maCSZFEPwzc[/youtube]

GamerSushi Asks: Repeated Playthroughs

dragon-age-dlcThese days, I just don’t get a lot of time to replay games all that often. I’m so busy that as soon as I finish a game, I go right past it and move on to the next. I very rarely take the time, even when I’m in the midst of playing it, to stop and enjoy what’s going on with the experience.

Back when I was younger, this was of course very different. I would play through games again and again like my life depended on it. It didn’t matter if I had beaten it a million times, I would load it up repeatedly just to see how quick I could beat it, or to explore every last nook and cranny. This was definitely the case with Starfox, Mario 64 and Metal Gear Solid. While I haven’t done this in years, Dragon Age: Origins has reversed this trend.

I keep finding myself wanting to go back and replay big parts of the story with a new character to see how things might be different. I’ve already gone through nearly every origin story, and I’m tempted to take a new city elf female character to some pretty major plot points. In my mind, it takes a special kind of game to have that effect on me in a time when I’m kind of swamped personally.

So what about you guys? What games do you play over and over again? What game has made you do this the most?

Today’s Awesomeness: The Tetris God

Got to love that video game related humor. It seems that College Humor has posted a new original about the game of Tetris, titled The Tetris God. To explain it would be to do a great disservice to you, since you’re better off just watching it anyway. Needless to say, I think many of my games of Tetris have been dictated as such.

Destructoid Posts Top 50 Games of the Decade

sotc-2List time! We all know how lists put gamers in such a frenzy, and this newest entry from Destructoid is no different. The dudes (and a few ladies, I’m sure) have put together their comprehensive list of what they feel are the best 50 games of the last 10 years, running from 2000 to now.

While I generally don’t get my panties in a bunch over a list, I do like to take the things that they are measuring and think about how I would have ranked them on my own. I do have to admit that their top 50 list has some quality entries (Half-Life 2, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus are in some great positions), it also has a few things that I feel are misplaced. Valkyria Chronicles, for one, seems just a bit high at number 8, while Knights of the Old Republic is shockingly low at the 49 spot. Beyond that, the omission of both the Halo franchise as a whole as well as Fallout 3/Oblivion certainly raise an eyebrow or several hundred.

So what do you guys think of this list? And what are some of your best games of the last decade?

Source- Destructoid

Review: Dragon Age: Origins

dragon-ageDragon Age: Origins is the newest RPG epic from Bioware, creators of other notable titles such as Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect. Their newest game takes things a little more old school, returning the quest programmers back to the days of yore, where dungeons waited to be crawled and dragons were there for the slaying. The studio has repeatedly said that Dragon Age: Origins was always a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, and they weren’t kidding. But is it any good?

Yes. Yes it is. Very good, in fact. This may spoil the rest of the review for you, but Dragon Age: Origins is simply one of the better RPG experiences in this generation.
Continue reading Review: Dragon Age: Origins

GamerSushi Grade Chart Part Deux

grade-sheet-smallA month back or so, we asked for your input on how our grading scale worked for the games we review here at GamerSushi. You all weighted in with you thoughts, and gave some really valuable input that helped us in our discussions about how we should address our grading system going forward. Seriously, it really pointed us in the right direction. So, it is with great pleasure that we introduce to you the brand new version of the grade chart.

We’ve created a new page that has a breakdown (written by Anthony) of how the updated grading scale works. We basically combined several ideas that people gave us.

Our problem before was that since we are a small site with limited resources beyond our own wits (and even that isn’t much), there’s no way we’re going to be reviewing games that are truly worthy of D’s or F’s. Even C’s for that matter. All of our scores ended up being in the same zone for this reason, because half of our scale was useless.

What we’ve done now is address that issue by re-scaling the chart so that it basically only takes into account the hyped or AAA titles. That means that even a D could still be a good game, just a blockbuster title we didn’t enjoy as much as others. On top of all that, we ditched the +/- system, and added a new grade of “S” for the truly special games. This took care of the issues we were having where a game like Resident Evil 5 deserved an A+, but on our old scale, that would mean it was one of the “greatest games of all time”, along with Uncharted 2. In our new scale, RE5 becomes an A and Uncharted 2 becomes an S.

Anywho, Anthony explains all of that much better on the new grade chart page. I’d suggest checking it out and leaving your thoughts here! We’ll be re-scoring all of our reviews over the next weekend, so tell us your thoughts on those, too.

EDIT: Nick made the sweet graphic of the grade chart. He yelled at me for not telling you guys that. Whoops. NICK MADE IT.

Is a Modern Zelda Possible?

zelda-futureReboots. Everybody’s doing them, because it’s the cool thing. I’ve thought for some time now that one of the franchises in the biggest need of a makeover would be Nintendo’s legendary Zelda series. In fact, we’ve had quite a few discussions about it here on this site. While I think the series has had some great entries in recent years, its formula might need some re-thinking.

So it was with keen eyes that I read over an article on Kotaku posing the question: How Modern Can Zelda Get. In it, Stephen Totilo notes that the franchise has seen more and more modern technology (a boat in Wind Waker and the train in Spirit Tracks) as the series progresses. He then asks Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma if Zelda can continue to have even more modern technology than what we’ve already seen.

While Aonuma’s response was somewhat vague, I couldn’t help but become excited about the possibilities. Considering the rumor that there will be flight in the next Zelda game, it’s hard not to wonder. What do you guys think? Could Zelda be given fresh life by having a modern upgrade of some kind? Should Hyrule stay the same forever? Does the series even need an upgrade?

Source- Kotaku

The Frustrated Gamer

dragon-ageOver the weekend, I did something I tend to do whenever I am slapped in the mouth with a good RPG: I played the junk out of it. The culprit this time around was Dragon Age: Origins, and I seriously jumped in to the thing completely, putting about 20 hours or more in within just a few days. This typically happens with Bioware games. Funny how that works out.

Anyway, last night I stay up particularly late because I sense that at 60 hours of play time, I’m nearing the game’s end. So, I make my preparations, I tackle the awesome final battle, and I get to the best part of any RPG- the last boss, which in this case, is a rather sweet demon/dragon. I battled long and hard, and ultimately, smote my foe. At this point, I kick back, and I get ready for the ending of the game (of which there are 4 possible).

About a minute into it, suddenly, my game freezes. Just like that. Right in the middle of the load screen. At this point, I’m annoyed and tired, but I decide that it’s not that big of a deal. So, I reload the final boss fight, which takes a few minutes, and prepare to do battle again. Now, this boss fight is no walk in the park. It takes about 10-15 minutes. Well, halfway through the second attempt, my game freezes again. I threw the controller down in frustration and went to bed.

So now, I’m tired and have not finished Dragon Age. The worst of both worlds. When’s the last time you guys felt this kind of frustration when gaming? Go!