Category: Random

April Fools: Cliffy B. and Miyamoto Team Up for Gears of Wario

Gears of WarioI’m sure many of you heard that next week, Cliffy B. is set to appear on Jimmy Fallon to deliver the dish on Epic’s new game, and quite possibly debut it for the whole nation. While many people foolishly assume that this is going to be the much anticipated Gears of War 3, other sources have learned that this is something even bigger than that: Gears of Wario.

We all know that the secret to good video games is collaboration, and that Epic Studios is no stranger to working across the Pacific to team up with Japanese gaming greats. This is more than evidenced by Epic’s willingness to let Gears of War characters appear in Lost Planet 2 this year. However, Gears of Wario will be an experience unlike any other, as the two super pimp producers Cliffy B. and Shigeru Miyamoto (Shiggy M.) team up to deliver one hell of a gaming curb stomp.

Gears of Wario focuses on Wario and Waluigi as they travel across a war-torn Mushroom Kingdom, on the run from the law and the locusts, who have come out of emergent pipes dotted about the apocalyptic landscape. The game is set to drop in March 2012.

Source- Joystiq

GameCrush: Giving Play Dates a New Meaning

GameCrush facepalmWe all know how it goes. Lonely nights at home eating cheese puffs. Drinking our Halo Mountain Dew. Thinking about the next Dungeons and Dragons night while we putter away at World of Warcraft or Modern Warfare 2. Wishing that we had a lovely lady to talk to. Actually, I’m not too familiar with that, but I know some sad dudes are. They could probably use GameCrush, a new service that allows gamers to pay girls to play video games with them.

Honestly, I would like to say that I’m surprised that a service like this exists, but really I’m not. In fact, I wish I’d thought of it first because I’m sure they will find an audience for it. Whatever pays the bills, right?

Basically, you pay GameCrush $6.60 every ten minutes to have a girl play on either XBox Live or flash based Web browser games. Apparently, the options range from “flirty” to “dirty”. Yikes. Anyway, I’d link you over to their actual site, but it seems that GameCrush itself is currently getting slammed (pun kind of intended) with traffic right now, so instead you can check out the press release. I hope for your sake that it is for purely lol-cational reasons.

Source- PressLift

GamerSushi Asks: More Likely?

Zoltar- BigSo it seems that everybody’s favorite features here are the ones where we all get to share a little more about our gaming preferences. Personally, I’m a big fan of the discussions that happen in these threads, and it’s one of my favorite parts about writing and participating here- seeing what you dudes think and being able to bounce stuff back and forth.

As such, we’ve come up with a new questionnaire of sorts: More Likely. Here, I ask all of us to put on our best fortune telling caps, and divine the future like some kind of Gamestradamus. We will make our predictions and only time will tell who the real winners are in this game. The way this works is simple: just answer which of these things you think is more likely. Feel free to go into as little or as much detail as to the reasons for your answer.

So without further ceremony, allow me to get the ball rolling…
Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: More Likely?

Gaming Pop Quiz, Spring 2010 Edition

Ah, Spring is rolling on in, bringing with it a wave of warmth, pollen and a fresh batch of new games. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I was still trying to catch up on new games at this time of the year. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Anyway, in honor of the bountiful harvest of gaming goodness, we’ve brought a new 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, Spring 2010 Edition

GamerSushi Asks: Games You Miss?

Final Fantasy 13I just spent a whole weekend in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest Interactive, the glorious tech and social media festival. I got to experience a whole lot of awesome things like hanging with some folks from Revision3, Burnie Burns from RoosterTeeth, and fans of Web Zeroes.

However, one thing I didn’t get a lot of: video games. As much fun as I ended up having, whenever I’m separated from gaming for a few days or more I start to go a little nuts. All weekend long, I couldn’t stop thinking about Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s sweet multiplayer and Final Fantasy 13. Despite its opening story issues and inherent Japanese-ness, Final Fantasy 13 is still tickling at a bone that doesn’t get tickled too often these days. I’m not sure what it is, but even though I had some complaints about the opening chapters, I keep finding myself drawn back to it.

So, what games do you guys start to miss when you have to get away from gaming for too long? What are you playing right now?

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing?

Battlefield Bad Company 2We’ve repeated it so many times, but I think it can’t be overstated: the amount of great games we’re getting so far this early in 2010 (with more still to come) is simply staggering. Already we’ve played a game of the year candidate in Mass Effect 2, seen some stuff we’ve never seen before in Heavy Rain, and soon will be revisited by an old friend in Final Fantasy XIII. Oh, and that’s not to mention the Resident Evil 5 DLC (second pack released last week), Crackdown 2 (coming this summer), Splinter Cell: Conviction or the newly released Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Speaking of DICE’s new game, that’s what I’ve been playing a good bit of this week, in addition to Heavy Rain as well as Tropico 3. If you’re curious, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a fantastic multiplayer game, and even has a fairly decent single player game, from what I’ve experienced. I’ve been up late a few nights playing some epic multiplayer matches. Something that’s become obvious to me is that I simply love Battlefield’s multiplayer format. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or simple that its layout is just better than many other games, but whatever it is, it hits me in that special place.

So what about you guys? What are you playing lately? Go!

Great Betrayals In Gaming History

Ever been playing a game and everything is moving along swimmingly: health is full, skills are maxed and victory is within your grasp, when all of a sudden, the game turns on you, like a digital Brutus. Et tu, PS3?

This has happened to me a few times and while I tend to not get too caught up in things like that, there are a few instances where the wound in my back from the knife still feels raw. And no, I’m not talking about crap where your favorite series, long exclusive to one console, suddenly becomes multi-platform. That’s not betrayal, that’s business.

One such example is Final Fantasy VII, kind of the most obvious one, so we can start with that. Aeris dies. *GASP* Well, yeah, and while it made some people cry (I call them “pussies”), it made me emotional for a whole other reason: I had spent quite a long time leveling her up earlier in the game and those hours were now wasted! I felt like the game was saying to me, “Sorry, Anthony, maybe you should have taken up another hobby, one that won’t wave its junk in your face and leave you crying in a heap on the floor, numb to all feeling except for the new rug burn on your face!” Or something like that, it got garbled in the translation.

Another time where I felt like the game was out to get me was Devil May Cry. I had spent time, blood and tears building my skills, honing my craft and kicking tons of demon ass in order to be ready for anything the final boss could possible throw at me. And what do I get? A complete change in game mechanics, where it turns into Star Fox 64! How lame is that? Developers: dance with the girl you brought, ok? Don’t change things at the very end just to be able to add another bullet to the back of the box.

But the final betrayal that still stings, that really pisses me off, that actually gets to me emotionally is Chrono Cross. See, in Chrono Trigger, which I played about a dozen times, the game has a nice happy ending. Chrono and Marle get married and become king and queen of Guardia. Until Chrono Cross.

When Chrono Cross starts ten years after Trigger and Guardia, which, if you will remember, we just left happily ever after, has been DESTROYED. That’s right and by their seemingly peaceful neighbor, Porre, too. In fact, to rub a little more salt into this gaping wound (minds back out of the gutter, please), in Trigger, you did all kinds of good deeds and even left the mayor of Porre as a kind and generous man.

You don’t find out the truth until late in Chrono Cross, but it you eventually meet the ghosts of the three main characters of Chrono Trigger. And though countless theories abound, it would appear that they decided to KILL OFF the characters before the game even starts. So much for being a sequel to Chrono Trigger.

The only pain I feel that comes close to this horrific betrayal is when I watch Alien 3 and see Newt and Hicks dead BEFORE THE MOVIE FREAKING STARTS. This is the gaming equivalent and I have to tell you, it hurts. I didn’t play Chrono Trigger over and over again in my youth just to have those characters butchered OFF-SCREEN shortly after I reach the end of the game! Bad Square Enix!

So that’s my outpouring of pain. Do you guys have any stories where a game has treated you like a doormat after you lovingly invested hours in it?

Microsoft Fanboy Rant

DISCLAIMER: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS POST ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE MICROSOFT FANBOY AND DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GAMERSUSHI STAFF. ALSO, THIS IS A PARODY POST, SO DON’T LEAVE COMMENTS THINKING THIS IS REAL OR THE MORON POLICE WILL COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND KNOCK THE STUPID RIGHT OUT OF YOU.

First off, **** you.

Whew, had to get that off my chest. Listen up noobs, I am 13 and I have a 360 and it’s the only console I will ever need and I will tell you why: because anyone who doesn’t have one is a ******. I got mine on launch day, bitches. I even bought a second one three days later because mine turned red from all the awesome it was spewing. In fact, the 360 has so much awesome in it, I am on my 24th. Name one console so epic it takes two dozen of them to channel its powerful essence. I’m waiting… What’s the matter? Lag?

I thought I should mention how Sony seems to be gaining some ground with its price cuts (copy cats) and exclusives (all lame). Who wants to play Uncharted 2? If I want a third-person cover based shooter, I got Gears, thank you. I prefer my protagonists to have no necks and even less personality. And as for God of War 3, bah. Kratos looks likes Vin Diesel fell into a vat of baby powder. Give me Ninja Gaiden anyday! (What? They have an improved version of Ninja Gaiden on the PS3? Your mom has an improved version on the PS3!)

Despite all that, some morons keep buying PS3s, which is so lame. What do they have this year? Heavy Rain? If I want to watch a game, I will put in my HD-DVD copy of Advent Children. Besides, we have Alan Wake and everyone knows that games that take that long to make are always the best, just like Too Human. And don’t even get me started on the 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII, which is going to blow the PS3 version away! I know, you think they are identical, but I heard that there is so much more content on the 360 version that they are putting it out on multiple discs, while the puny PS3 only gets 1 disc! FOR THE WIN, CAMPERS!

And I know, the Wii and Nintendo are still winning. Who cares? They have their crappy motion control, running around looking like Adam Lambert with their tiny, white remotes, playing that casual crap. I don’t need that, I am going to get Natal and I will be looking like a Jedi pimp! No controllers here, douch nozzles! Just the power of the 360, Natal and the Force, all combining to make the most epic games ever. I never cared for handball before, but now that I don’t have to leave the house to play it, I am going to be all about that. And there will be no casual games, because no casual gamer would buy a $200 console and then for over another $100 plus bucks to play casual games. That means all hardcore games all the time! I’m Rick James, bitch!

So keep your lame ass Mario games, your fruity Zelda games with those puzzles that no one can figure out. I don’t want to play anything that doesn’t involve a gun, a headset and a plot that makes Hideo Kojima roll his eyes. Speaking of Kojima, Metal Gear Solid has always been a piece of crap, but now we get our own version and it’s going to be the bomb! The only problem with it is it’s not a shooter.

See, I love shooters. Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Gears of War, Call of Duty and Rainbow Six are all great, but I want more. I just don’t think the FPS is really represented on the 360. Final Fantasy XIII is cool and all, but I want to fire that gun of Lightning’s myself, not press a button and watch the game do it for me! I think Viva Pinata would be better in first person, with plasma grenades and rechargeable health. My appetite for destruction is still strong!

And shooters work better online and we all know that the 360 has the best online community of any place EVAR. I get to meet people like me, who hate camping, except when we do it and like to tell other people how much they fail at life because we are better than them at a video game. Telling someone they are gay simply because they shot me once is the whole reason to go online and play. Everyone does it and if you don’t like, it’s cause you are gay, too. It just feels like home on Xbox Live. I even like it when I can hear some poor loser’s mom telling him to quit playing and go do his homework or else she will throw that thing in the trash. Those kids suck at life and I would never put up with that crap from my moth—(Coming, Mom!) Gotta go, noobs. (I know you said 10 minutes, Mom, I was pwning noobs!)

NUKE INCOMING, LADIES! COMMENCE TEABAGGING!

The Ones Left Behind: Gaming’s Forgotten Franchises

With all this talk of overrated and underrated games, I thought it would be nice if we started talking about franchises that have been left behind by the current generation of consoles. We all have those games that we love and that deserve a sequel, but it never occurs. Year after year goes by with nothing to be heard about our forgotten games…*tear*

Personally, I can’t believe that Square never did more with the Chrono Trigger series. Sure, Chrono Cross was a pseudo-sequel, but the less said about it, the better. Syphon Filter was a popular series back in the PS1 days and aside from some silly PSP offerings, I don’t think anyone has mentioned it in a long time. If you want to blow someone’s mind, mention Panzer Dragoon. That game was responsible for selling systems back in the day.

What games do you think have been wrongfully left behind? What would you like to see get a revival, whether it’s a reboot or a sequel?

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: 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

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!

GamerSushi Asks: What Should Anthony Play First?

As some of you may know from comments I have left, I am anxiously awaiting Christmas Day for the 3 games I asked my fiancée to get me for Christmas: Uncharted 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Christmas is my traditional time of year for getting a bunch of games and I am very much looking forward to playing them all.

But which should I play first? I plan to play a little bit of each one that day, to whet my appetite and see what I feel like playing, but I wanted to get the opinion of my adoring public. Should I jump right into Dragon Age and potentially be there for a month or two? Or Modern Warfare 2, where the danger lies in getting sucked into the online component and not playing anything else for months on end, as happened with the Call of Duty 4. Or should I play Uncharted 2 since that one is the shortest game and then Eddy and I can do co-op together and give him a reason to put his PS3 back online?

Decisions, decisions…you make the call: GO!

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.

Today’s WTF: Macbeth by Marc Ecko?

gettingup
Do you remember Mark Ecko’s Getting Up? Well, here’s a quick refresher if this game happened to have slipped your mind: you fight against a tyrannical government by spray-painting buildings. Once The Man runs out of turpentine, then he’ll feel the sting of the oppressed! Marc Ecko also collaborated with Microsoft to make some spectacularly hideous Halo clothing a while back.

Well, it turns out that public property and a decent sense of fashion weren’t all that Marc Ecko was interested in vandalizing. Somewhere along the line the clothing designer drew up a concept that adapted Shakespeare’s Macbeth into a video game. Apparently he would have converted the classic play into a hack and slash brawler where the main chunk of the game would be devoted to lopping people’s heads off.

You’ve got to admire the man’s guts, at least. He’s not afraid to do what he wants, even if it does turn him into a pariah of sorts. His response to the question of what people would think of a Macbeth game was “I don’t live my life afraid of what other people think,” adding “Our adaptation, I think, would have made it relevant to people who wouldn’t have otherwise known about this great story. It’s unfortunate, because a lot of people just don’t know Macbeth.”

Thankfully, his project had trouble getting up and never made it past the concept phase. I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this game was passed over, but who knows what the future holds? What do you guys think of this wacky premise? If you’re wondering, Marc is currently working on I Heart Geeks, a DS puzzle title.

Source: Destructoid

May Require Instructions

instructionsIs there anything better than opening a new video game? OK, well maybe a few things, but seriously, purchasing and unwrapping a new game is for real a cool feeling. Something about the anticipation, the smell, and most of all… the instructions.

I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. One of my favorite things about buying a new video game is to take out the instruction booklet and give them a good read-through before I even put the game in. Call me a dork, but it’s part of my ritual before I play. However, lately, I’m noticing a downward trend in the effort that people seem to put into instruction manuals.

Whereas old games used to have fun art, bios and worlds of information regarding the game, nowadays it seems that all we get are black and white cheapo prints that any five year old could make. Heck, the Modern Warfare 2 instruction manual ranks among the worst I’ve ever seen. Granted, the game is fun, so in the long run it’s all good, but I seriously love me some good instructering.

So am I the only crazy guy who cares about this kind of thing?

GamerSushi Asks: Drinking the Kool-Aid

kool-aidOh yeah!

With all the new games coming out every year, it becomes tricky to negotiate which games you should/shouldn’t buy. Already this Fall, I’ve bought a game I didn’t expect to (Halo: ODST) and I’ve been tempted by two other titles I didn’t have any plans on buying (Forza 3 and Borderlands). However, there is inevitably the game that everyone else seems to love, but you don’t necessarily drink the kool-aid for the way others do.

For me, that might be Left 4 Dead 2 this year. In previous years, games like Bioshock and any of the Devil May Cry games have failed to catch my fancy. Same thing with Mario Galaxies. Also, and this one might get me yelled at- Ocarina of Time. Though others loved them, I just never caught the fever. What about you guys? What recent great games do you not drink the Kool-Aid for like everyone else does? Flame on!

GameFly Thief Brought to Justice

gameflyI love me some video games, but probably not enough to go to prison. Apparently that’s not the case for some people. Take postal worker Reginald Johnson, a former truck unloader for a Philadelphia area post office. Recently, the office became the center of an investigation after many GameFly packages started to be reported as missing.

It seems that Mr. Johnson loved to lift these GameFly packages and then resell them to a local GameStop. So much, in fact, that he stole over 2,200 packages, amounting to about $86,000 of video game merchandise. How’s that for store credit?

Hilariously enough, the guy crashed his SUV when the cops showed up, and took off on foot, ditching a backpack and duffel bag that had about 160 games total between them. The dude has now been apprehended and faces 12-18 months in prison. It seems to me that if you were going to try and pull this scam, that surely someone would notice after game, I don’t know, 500. To steal a total of 2,200 just wreaks of idiocy. But I will allow it since it ends with my amusement.

Source- 1UP

Shut Up Already! Gaming’s Most Annoying Sidekicks

Video games are supposed to hold your attention for hours on end, whether that is with engaging characters, superior game-play elements or what have you. Sometimes, though, you have to puzzle at the sheer stupidity of making a sidekick who is the most annoying person (or thing) that has ever grated your patience. Here’s a list of the top five sidekicks that make me want to beat the game designer to death with a rusty spoon:

5. Kreia: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lordskreia title=

Nothing is more irritating than a character that finds fault with everything that you do, which is why Kreia comes in at number five. Whether you’re a goody two-shoes Jedi or a completely evil baby-stealing innocent-killing Sith, Kreia always has a few words to say about your choices during the game. Despite the fact that she herself is a Sith, any dark side choices you make are wrong from her point of view. Talk about nagging.
Continue reading Shut Up Already! Gaming’s Most Annoying Sidekicks