Sick Tunes: The Soundtrack of Hotline Miami

In keeping with “What We’re Playing” Monday, I thought I’d throw up some examples of Hotline Miami’s phenomenal soundtrack. Part of what makes the 2D shooter so much like crack is the fact that the music so infectious and hypnotic, evoking that iconic 1980s synth sound of a bright but dark Miami. In some ways, the violence of the game coupled with a kicking soundtrack almost makes it feel like Drive: The Game — which isn’t a bad thing at all.

This first track, Miami, by Jasper Byrne, can be found at the end of our most recent podcast.

Continue reading Sick Tunes: The Soundtrack of Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami: The Drug of Rinse and Repeat

Hotline Miami

Sushians, welcome to our first ever “What We’re Playing” Monday post. I know. You can probably barely contain your excitement.

This weekend, I spent pretty much the entirety of Saturday afternoon obsessively picking my way through Hotline Miami, a top-down 2D stealth/challenge room shooter by Dennaton games, gifted to me during the most recent Steam Sale.

For those of you unaware (which means you haven’t listened to the newest podcast), Hotline Miami is a violent game about busting into rooms full of bad guys and taking them out in the most brutal, daring way possible — all while maintaining twitch-quick reflexes.

The thing about this game is that it is old school, throw your controller across the room hard. You bust into a room full of mobsters, and you have to rehearse how you’re going to eliminate them quickly and methodically, one by one. If you’re not perfect, you get your brains blown out. As such, it requires a certain amount of rinsing and repeating, as you attempt to clear the same rooms over and over, racking up an absurd amount of deaths.

There’s something strangely addicting about this kind of gameplay. I’m not sure if it taps into that old part of us that was used to trial-and-error gameplay, the kind that required you to get a level absolutely perfect, step-by-step, if you ever wanted any hope of progressing. All I know is that on Saturday, I was a slave to Hotline Miami’s drug, trudging through half of its levels all in one sitting, sometimes shouting in triumph, sometimes cursing and swearing the game off forever.

All that to say — if you haven’t played Hotline Miami, you should certainly give it a try. It’s probably one of the more addictive games I’ve played in the last year. Have any of you guys played it? What are some other games you’ve played recently that relied on this kind of rinse and repeat drug? Go!

Dust: An Indie Programmer’s Tale

Dust

The world of making indie games is something that’s become a recent fascination for gamers. With wide open platforms and fewer barriers between a game creator and the consumer than ever, it’s certainly appealing for would be game-makers to take a stab at producing their own content.

This summer, one of XBox Live Arcade’s blockbuster releases was a game known as Dust: An Elysian Tail. Dust is a Metroidvania (or Castleroid if you’re nasty) style game with a bit of a cartoony flair, with a really interesting art direction and a wonderful setting. I’ve heard nothing but good things, and the gameplay videos are promising as well.

But the most interesting thing about Dust? It was created, essentially, by just one man, Dean Dodrill. In a fascinating Postmortem feature at Gamasutra, Dean walks through his solo development cycle for Dust, in which he quit his day job, taught himself how to code, built the game’s systems from scratch and struggled to get it out on time. He goes through the ups, the downs, the woes, the prayers, the deadlines and everything else, in what’s probably one of my favorite game articles I’ve ever read.

Seriously, if you’re interested in ever taking a stab at your own game or just admire the people who do, I highly recommend checking out this article. Has anybody played Dust? Anyone out there already dabbling in constructing your own video games? When do we get to play them? Go!

Source – Gamasutra

GTTV Pre-E3 Trailers: Dishonored and Lords of Shadow 2

Man, as if next week isn’t already going to be crazy enough, it seems like developers are trying to get ahead of the game by putting out some new trailers on GameTrailers TV’s annual pre-E3 bash. Madness, I say!

In addition to LucasArts announcing Star Wars 1313, a mature third-person shooter that takes place on Coruscant, Konami and Mercury Steam have revealed the first Lords of Shadow 2 trailer. It doesn’t show any kind of gameplay, but it gives a glimpse into the direction of the next game, with Gabriel Belmont as the villain of sorts… and even hints at a new Belmont clan arrival.

But the crown jewel of last night’s trailers would have to be the Dishonored gameplay trailer. It looks like Bioshock and Half-Life 2’s bastard child, if that’s at all possible. View some sweet assassin kills and the crazy steampunk atmosphere below. Lords of Shadow 2 trailer after the jump.

Dishonored E3 2012 Gameplay Trailer

Continue reading GTTV Pre-E3 Trailers: Dishonored and Lords of Shadow 2

The Great GamerSushi Review Round-Up

Bastion

Ahoy, gents and lasses of GamerSushi! I’m writing to you from the ridiculous world of fatherhood, some bizarre alternate reality where the universe felt that I was somehow fit to be entrusted with the care of a little girl’s life. It’s just a bit of an adjustment, which is why I haven’t been posting at all this week. In the meantime, Mitch and Anthony (and Jeff!) have been rocking it out with some great content. I’ve found the tiniest bit of equilibrium over the last couple of days, and hope to be producing more of that myself shortly.

But first, I wanted to draw your attention to the newest batch of reviews. In the GamerSushi update post, I promised that we’d been awaiting the debut of our new grade chart to post a few outstanding reviews, and for once I wasn’t a dirty liar. Here are the reviews we’ve posted in the last week, with more coming all the time:

So far, I’m really liking the way the updated review system has translated into actual grades. It seems a bit more balanced to me, and doesn’t give us quite as many A and S scores. Other reviews coming soon: Journey, Twisted Metal, Portal 2 (that one is super late), Final Fantasy XIII-2 and more.

What are your guys thoughts on the new review system? Have we completely lost our minds? Go!

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Trailer is Smashing

The long-rumored Sony version of Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers was announced on GTTV last night and the PlayStation blog put up a short trailer explaining the game. Called All-Stars Battle Royale, the game will feature Sony characters (including some third-party characters as revealed last night) duking it out on a variety of themed stages. Check out the game in action below!

The game is a little too similar to Super Smash Bros for my taste, but for some people this will be right up their alley. The characters confirmed so far are Kratos, Parappa the Rapper, Sweet Tooth, Fat Princess, Colonel Radec from Killzone and Sly Cooper. More will be revealed at E3, so stay tuned for that. Personally, I’m curious to see if Solid Snake will be coming back after his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and what the third party characters are. What do you guys think of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale?

GamerSushi Asks: Dream Playstation All-Stars Roster?

Dream Roster

Well, it’s been a rumor for many years and as of this writing it still technically is, but it has been all but confirmed that Sony is working on their own version of Super Smash Bros, but with Sony characters, naturally. The announcement has been teased and hinted at by many sources and should be confirmed tonight. Even if it isn’t a real thing, it’s still a fun thing to think about.

So that begs the question: who would you put in a Playstation All-Stars game? Obviously, Nathan Drake, Cole from Infamous, Ratchet (Captain Qwark? PLEASE???), Jak, Sweet Tooth, Sly and Kratos are the easy ones. But dig deeper than that. Who else would you want to see? Parappa? Gex? Maybe Solid Snake, since he became synonymous with Playstation? Let’s hear your dream roster!

Source: VG 24/7

God of War: Ascension Trailer Goes Back to the Start

Strange how these trailers come in waves; first we had the Dishonored trailer and now God of War: Ascension (which was leaked early, to no big surprise) is making its landfall. Ascension apparently tells the story of Kratos before he became the Ghost of Sparta.

I’m not the biggest fan of God of War, but I know that it’s on the most widely-praised character action games of the last couple of generations so any news about a new title is a big deal. Are you guys excited about God of War: Ascension? How do you feel about it being a prequel?

The GamerSushi Top 10 Games of 2011

Back at the end of 2010, a glance at 2011’s calendar either sent gamers into a fit of excited trembling or utter despair. How were we going to play all of these games? What surprises were in store for us? Which ones were going to be worth the money? Could the long-awaited sequels live up to the years of promise? At the beginning of 2012, we now have all of those answers and then some. And thus, the GamerSushi Top 10 Games of 2011 list is born.

It sounds like we’re using hyperbole, but we truly feel like 2011 was one of the greatest years of gaming we’ve seen in quite some time. That much is evidenced by each staff member’s ballot – the submissions we used to determine our final top 10 (and yes, your votes for Game of the Year counted as one of our submissions, as well) were wildly different and full of an astounding variety of games. One thing was certain – gamers had a wealth of choices last year, and everyone benefited from it.

So, without further ado, here is our list of the top 10 games of 2011. Enjoy, dudes.

Continue reading The GamerSushi Top 10 Games of 2011

Top Six: Mitch’s Gaming Moments of 2011

Every year there are many standout moments in gaming that redefine my hobby and help me appreciate it in new ways. Last year it was riding into Mexico to the tune of “Far Away” in Red Dead Redemption, managing my own guild of assassins in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood or riding down a river in a patrol boat with the Rolling Stones in the background in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

2011, being the landmark year that it was, was not deficient in great gaming moments and I’ve pared my memories down to six selections of moments that have helped shape this year for me. Come along as I try to sift through all the great games this year had to offer and try to nail down which small selections changed my perception of gaming in 2011. Continue reading Top Six: Mitch’s Gaming Moments of 2011

Today’s WTF: Metal Gear Rising Revengeance Trailer

Metal Gear Rising disappeared from the scene for a while, dropping only a brief trailer of the game’s protagonist Raiden chopping up dudes and watermelons with motion-gaming like movements. With nothing about the game being released since then people began wondering if we were ever going to see the game again. Well, the new trailer for Rising has leaked just a couple of hours before its appearance at the SPIKE Video Game Awards tonight and all I have to say is “wow”. You can judge what kind of “wow” that is for yourself after you view the trailer.

So yeah, that happened. The Metal Gear games were always a little crazy, but Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (yes, that’s the real title) is down-right bat-shit insane. Revengeance is now being handled by Platinum Games, the studio behind Bayonetta and Vanquish, so you can see where it gets the heritage of over the top action from. What do you guys think of Rising’s new direction?

Review: Batman: Arkham City

batman arkham city review

2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum was not just a landmark title because it was really, really good, it’s also one of the very few games in recent memory to take a super-hero license and use it well. Arkham Asylum was a faithful adaptation of the Caped Crusader, one where players actually felt like they were Batman as opposed to just slapping his moniker on a bland brawler and calling it a day.

Developers Rocksteady clearly have a deep love for the Dark Knight and when the follow up title Batman: Arkham City was announced last year at Spike’s Video Game Awards fans eagerly began salivating at the prospect of another chance to be Batman. Did Rocksteady follow up Arkham Asylum with a worthy successor or should they be locked up? Continue reading Review: Batman: Arkham City

Finding New Thrills in Gaming in 2011

Confession time, gents and ladies. Playing Batman: Arkham City makes me feel like a kid again, and I don’t really care who knows it. As of right now, it’s my game of the year. I’ll tell you why in a moment.

Arkham City Concept Art

But first, there’s something you may have already guessed about me, but I thought I should confess that as well: sometimes I can be a bit of a cynic. I always try to look at the brighter side of things, but in this day and age, the overwhelming cynical voice of the Internet can be a bit of a bog that all of us get stuck in. Especially when it comes to gaming. Continue reading Finding New Thrills in Gaming in 2011

Batman: Arkham City Impressions

Batman: Arkham City impressions

Swooping out of the shadows with a vengence, Batman: Arkham City has finally arrived and it’s being hailed as one of the greatest games of this year (and that’s saying a lot). People are calling it “Crackdown with Batman” and it currently sits at a 95 on Metacritic (97 on PS3).

I played the game for a few hours last night and I’m seriously impressed so far. Arkham City runs on the Unreal engine just like Gears of War, but I’d go as far to say that Batman actually looks better than Gears. Checking your cryptographic sequencer on a rooftop with the Gotham skyline in the background and the spotlights casting lens flares all over the screen looks really really good. As nerdy as that sentence is, I just can’t get over how awesome the game looks.

The combat has also been refined too, so it’s a lot smoother than Arkham Asylum if you can believe it. There’s an upgrade system that works like Deus Ex’s where when you gain 2000 experience you will get a talent point that can be used to upgrade your suit or gadgets. The story is pretty cool so far too, but I still don’t get why someone thought building a giant prison in the middle of Gotham was a good idea (or how they got all the criminals in there) but I’m sure that will be explained later. I’m also enjoying Hugo Strange as an enemy; he’s of a different breed than the Joker, although the Clown Prince of Crime makes his presence known too (voiced deftly by Mark Hamill once again). I’m also enjoying the more open nature of Arkham City as opposed to the hub and spoke design of Asylum. Stalking the rooftops as Batman is just as awesome as you think it would be and the ability to glide between buildings makes it all the sweeter.

So far I’m really liking the game, but as with every massive release, we here at GamerSushi like to get your opinion on it. So, are you playing Batman? What are your thoughts?

Batman: Arkham City Reviews Arrive with a Pow

Arkham City

Bam! Pow! Zhom! Those are the sounds that Arkham City is making amongst the circle of reviewers as it enters the scene with one heck of a flourish. The sequel to Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum certainly sounds promising, and many are praising it as the greatest superhero game ever made. Granted, that’s not saying a lot, but it’s still a lofty and impressive claim.

Overall, Arkham City is garnering loads of positive reviews on the high end of the spectrum. It seems like it improves on Arkham City in every way, and adds the open world play style in a way that doesn’t take away from what made the previous game so much fun. Here’s one of my favorite quotes, from the Wired review:

In fact, it avoids the curse of sequelitis by making a major change to the formula — instead of a Metroid-esque series of interconnected rooms, it’s an open-world city that you can fly across, going from point to point in a matter of seconds. You can play only the missions that are required to advance the storyline, but you’re also constantly tempted with a wide variety of side missions, collectibles and challenges scattered everywhere. It doesn’t feel anything like Metroid anymore, but it sure feels a lot like Crackdown.

So yeah. Call me excited. Here are some other reviews for you to peruse:

Spider-Man: Edge of Time and the Sophomore Slump

spider-man edge of time

As you guys know I bought Spider-Man: Edge of Time this past Tuesday, and I think I’ve played enough of it to get a firm grasp on whether or not it’s a good follow-up to Shattered Dimensions and if it’s worth your time and money. The short answer is no, and it makes me really worried for future Activision published sequels that aren’t Call of Duty.

The long answer is: instead of the four different Spider-Men from the last game, this time you play only as the basic Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099. When I first heard about this I was a little disappointed but I figured that Beenox would find a way to vary up the fighting and puzzle sections enough between the two Spider-Men so it wouldn’t just feel like I was playing the same game with a palette swap. This unfortunately isn’t the case because all you do in Edge of Time is beat up dudes. A lot of dudes. The fighting in Shattered Dimensions was interesting because every Spider-Man had his own unique style but in this game both 2099 and Amazing are pretty much exactly the same except Amazing can hit people with giant web flails which are now inexplicably less effective than they were in Shattered Dimensions. The game also suffers from some pretty bad pacing issues as certain combat or free-fall sections can go on for entirely too long (free-fall also has the annoying habit of not giving enough time to recover after you slam into obstacles meaning that once you hit one thing you’re pretty much dead).

Edge of Time really feels thrown together as there’s not much inspiration in the combat encounters, the story, or the level design. The quantum reality-shifting aspects could be cool but it makes very little sense most of the time (the two Spideys even comment on how fast and loose the whole thing is) and kind of gets predictable very quickly. Hearing Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man 2099 is awesome for fans of the old 90s cartoon, but other than that there’s no real reason to play Edge of Time. Maybe that was obvious to you guys, but I liked Shattered Dimensions and I was hoping Beenox could keep up a decent level of quality. Given that Fall of Cybertron was just announced (another sequel that’s coming a year after the studio’s last title), I’m worried about how that’s going to turn out. Honestly, I’m worried about any Activision game that isn’t Call of Duty.

Do you guys have any sequels that were a huge disappointment, especially if they were sequels to games that weren’t universally loved? Go!

What Are You Playing: Show Me Your Rage Edition

what are you playing

We might have to do a What Are You Playing every Tuesday from now until the end of the year because it’s about to go down, people. There’s maybe about a billion games coming every week for the next few months on this exact day, except for Skyrim, which hits on a Friday (also known as “Eff Your Weekend Plans, Here’s Skyrim” Day). Naturally, we’re curious about your gaming tastes as it helps us format the content for the site and it also lets us know that your care enough to respond. That said, let’s dig in.

Because I’m a crazy person, my purchase today will be Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Beenox’s sophomore attempt at this property. I enjoyed their last effort, Shattered Dimensions, so who knows, I might like this one too. Other than my guilty pleasure we have RAGE and Dark Souls, one of which I know Anthony is salivating ferociously over. I also picked up the Witcher 2 on Steam for 30 bucks and of course there’s the Battlefield 3 Beta and Gears of War 3 when I get a moment. Who ever said that gamers are lazy should really look at the 2011 release schedule. That’s a lot of gaming to get done with so little time!

So what’s on your docket? RAGE, Dark Souls, something else? Polishing off the backlog maybe?

Canceled Avengers Game Could Have Been the Greatest Superhero Title Ever (Updated)

It really puzzles me as to what game companies think is acceptable for product tie-in games. For every Batman: Arkham Asylum and Spider-Man 2 we get, there’s such turd piles as Thor, Iron Man 1 and 2 and that Hulk game where you could sneak around as Bruce Banner. With so many bad superhero games flooding the market, you’d think that Marvel would gravitate towards a product that does Earth’s Mightiest Heroes justice, but apparently this promising-looking Avengers game was canned. Watch for yourself and bemoan its loss with me. Also, this might spoil the main enemy of the Avengers movie (maybe), so you know, don’t watch if you’re worried about that. Looks like the original video has been pulled, so I’ll try to add new ones as they come.

I never thought that controlling the Hulk or Iron Man from a first-person perspective would work, but this looks totally awesome. Imagine this game in co-op? One of your friends leaps into the fray as the Hulk while you fly around and blast fools with repulsor beams? I guess some things are too good to be true.

Review: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

If you’re unfamiliar with the Warhammer franchise (and given how many times in the last week I’ve had to explain the universe, I’m going to assume that most of you are), this is the granddaddy of fantasy and sci-fi tabletop games. While Warhammer is by no means the first in that field, its sci-fi offshoot, Warhammer 40,000 has inspired dozens of games from StarCraft to Gears of War. If anyone says to you that Space Marine is ripping off Gears, you can firmly say that there were Space Marines swinging chainswords long before Marcus Fenix was a twinkle in Cliffy B.’s eyes.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can get down into the nitty-gritty about Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, a third-person hack-and-slash/shooter hybrid developed by Relic Entertainment, perhaps best known for their Dawn of War (set in the same universe) and Company of Heroes RTS games. As Ultramarines Captain Titus, you’re tasked with securing a valuable strategic asset known as a Titan during an Ork invasion of the Forge World Graia. If you’re already raising a skeptical eyebrow, don’t worry; there are much more obtuse terms that will be in this review.

It’s taken this long to get a proper game from the perspective of an individual soldier, but how does it hold up against other similar titles? Does Relic’s skill with strategy games cross over into shooters? Continue reading Review: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

WWE ’12 Is Stone Cold Stunning

In my misspent youth, I was a huge wrestling fan. To this day, I can name who held the WWE title starting with Bob Backlund all the way up to when Stone Cold Steve Austin won it. After that, it changed hands every other week and I couldn’t keep up anymore. I stopped watching in 2000, but have recently started again. So naturally, like any nerd, I’ve been wanting to play a wrestling video game.

Thankfully, THQ has been working on a brand new revamp of their WWE franchise, now called WWE ’12. Judging from the video below, which showcases a full match with commentary from the developers, it looks like it’s going to be pretty special. Barring horrible reviews, I am almost guaranteed to pick this one. So hit the video below and take a look at CM Punk (yay!) vs. John Cena (boo!).

[youtube width=”500″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvbWn4_HFE[/youtube]

What do you think? Anyone play the Raw vs. Smackdown games? Does this look like an improvement to you? Do you smell what THQ is cookin? Can I be anymore of a dork? GO!