Mongo Nation

Better start sending out those Christmas wish lists…

By Jeremy Azevedo

The gaming industry is throwing everything they’ve got at us this holiday season, with so many good games on the way that most gamers may never get a chance to play them all. (Not that this will stop me from at least trying…)

Hopefully this won’t cause the more “indie” titles to be completely lost in the shuffle, but then, any indie publisher willing to go head to head with Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 probably deserves whatever they get, amitire? Oh, and For you Wii owners out there, I hope you’re having fun with Wii Music because there isn’t much of anything else coming out anytime soon. Big surprise, eh?

Gears of War 2

System: Xbox 360
Release date: 11/07

Fans of the original smash-hit shooter will be pleased to find more of the same, albeit with bigger bosses, slightly tighter controls and visuals, and a much improved online multiplayer mode. The story is still set firmly in the Michael Bay mold of big explosions and dialogue spoken in grunts, but when the game looks and plays this good, who cares? If you live in Australia, Germany or Japan, don’t hold your breath for this one, as GOW2 promises to be incredibly violent and will almost certainly be banned there.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

System: Mutli-Platform
Release date: 11/18

Lara Croft may have finally achieved a complete 360 from awesome to unacceptable, then back to awesome again. Gone are all the sluggish mechanics and lame combat of previous titles, replaced instead with more of the exploration and sense of discovery that made the original so memorable. Well, that and the tiny, cleavage-baring costumes. Expect more God of War-style set pieces and more of an emphasis on actually raiding tombs in this sequel. Read the rest of this entry →

Worth saving?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Most of the complaints that I hear to do with Konami’s “Lost in Blue” series in general have to do with the amount of maintenance that goes into just keeping your characters alive, and how it puts a damper on exploration. These are perhaps people that don’t know how to get out of action game-mode and relax a little.

Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked does have it’s share of faults. The graphics are a little underwhelming. As with most games on the Wii, I’d really rather see 2-D or cel-shaded graphics, as 3-D models just tend to look a little janky on the system regardless of what game it is. And it’s a little weird how the characters inexplicably belt out one in ten lines of dialogue. What’s the point? I don’t understand why all of the dialogue isn’t spoken at this point. And of course, the most glaring problem is the fact that, right from the outset, your characters are constantly starving to death. Which does, indeed, inhibit exploration. Seriously, you have to eat like fifty coconuts a day just to stay alive. It’s retarded.

They look skinny, but apparently host stomach parasites with the appetite of ten fat guys.

Here’s the thing, though: Lost in Blue is not meant to be rushed through. That you characters require constant maintenance should tell you that the way to get ahead is not to rush blindly into action with empty pockets, but to take your time and prepare. If you imagine what it would be like to be stranded on a desert island, it probably wouldn’t be all about fighting wild boars with your bare hands and swinging from vines like Tarzan, but rather, taking the time to build up your supplies and ensure your continuing survival. Cute as it seems, Lost in Blue is almost sim-like in the way it embraces this idea.

The proper way to enjoy Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked is at a leisurely pace. Before going out to explore the island, you really have to take a day to gather supplies, pack a few lunches, make sure your tools are in order and that you have a back up supply of water. It’s not exactly an action packed experience, but it is relaxing and most of the mini-games are actually pretty fun and make good (but not obtrusive) use of the wiimote. You’d be surprised how much further you get with a little pre-prep, even while dragging your dead-weight partner around with you. Really, that broad isn’t good for anything more than an extra inventory bag.

The rare and mysterious singing/clapping jungle pandas.

Protip: Early in the game, you will have a strong urge to punch this game in the face. This is because you need like 100 vines in order to progress and there don’t appear to be any around. This will feel very much like bullcrap to you, but I will save you an aneurysm and tell you what to do. After you fight the boar, you will be able to push a rock. You have to have Lucy with you (but then you sorta always have to bring her with so that almost goes without saying). A little further ahead, you will find a cooking utensil. It’s in a craggy area near where you find some crystals, and you can even make a shortcut back to basecamp near here. On the way back, you will be attacked by an ox, which triggers a minigame. After completing this, you will be able to access a forest with all the vines you need! As long as you always keep a stock of ready made lunches and firewood on hand, the game is a lot easier from this point on.

Rating: 7 out of 10
+1 if your favorite TV show is Lost
-2 if the you loved Devil May Cry but hated The Sims

The new console version of Castlevania is… a fighting game?

By Jeremy Azevedo

From the moment he first saw the Wii, Castlevania series director Koji Igarashi knew that it would be the perfect system for a new, truly interactive Castlevania action game.

This is a guy who seems to actually carry a whip with him wherever he goes, so of course he would seek to replicate the experience of cracking the Vampire Killer whip with the Wiimote.

While Igarashi contends that his hew game, Castlevania: Judgment is more of an action/adventure game, it is clear that this is purely a fighter. Igarashi worried that using the Wiimote in a full-sized 3-D adventure might have made player’s arms tired after awhile, so he set out to make the gameplay enjoyable in shorter bursts.

While it doesn’t have the depth of Street Fighter or Soul Calibur, it does play quite a bit like Power Stone on the Dreamcast, one of the most entertaining multiplayer fighters ever made. All of the moves are simple to do, and the action is fast and filled with environmental hazards/surprises. I sure hope it’s four-player simultaneous like Power Stone too! In fact, it better be or I’m gonna be good and pissed. I mean, how goddamn hard is it? Smash Bros. did it like 100 years ago, Konami should be able to figure it out.

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Could Rambo and the Karate Kid be far behind?

By Jeremy Azevedo

When I was a little boy, I would drop whatever I was doing and dance along whenever I heard the “Ghostbusters” theme song…

Seeing these pictures from the new Ghostbusters game takes me back to those times. In what is essentially the official sequel to the first two films, all of the original Ghostbusters will be making their return in Ghostbusters: The Game. We’re talking about Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and all of the major supporting characters (save for Rick Moranis, who has yet to recover from the tragic loss of his testicles as a reult of one too many “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” movies).

Written by Ramis and Akroyd themselves, the new game puts you in the shoes of a rookie experimental equipment technician (guinea pig) joining the Ghostbusters to combat the latest supernatural threat to New York City. The following images are from the Xbox 360/PS3 version of the game, which is vastly superior to the Wii version in terms of visuals. But I wouldn’t discredit the cool factor that is bound to result from using your Wiimote as a proton blaster, which is exactly the kind of thing that the Wii was designed for!

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Scenes from the goriest game ever to come to Wii!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Madworld by Sega is so violent, It’s already reportedly been banned from being released in Australia. Australia! A country that was once settled by British prisoners too gnarly to be kept on their own continent!

Well you probably won’t be purchasing this game here at notoriously bible-humping US chains like Walmart either, by the looks of it. Hopefully everywhere else will carry the title though, because not only does it look like a goddamn Frank Miller graphic novel in motion, but the Wii is desperately in need of a mature title like this to counterbalance the hundreds of shovelware kiddie titles threatening to tip Nintendo into the abyss of fanboy backlash. Whatever happens, We’ve got new pics and trailers from MadWorld right here:

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Our review of the Nintendo fanboy’s latest wet dream!

By Dustin Pena

II spent a wonderful Saturday in Hollywood waiting in line, miles away from any hint of a woman, for the midnight release of my most anticipated game of 2008, Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

Magically I was the first lucky gamer to purchase the game at the stroke of midnight and as I made my way out of the store I was met by a round of applause from my fellow line goers. I felt just like Cinderella, only sexier.

The first thing I did when I got home was attempt to lay a smash down on the world by throwing my mitts around over the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. I waited longer to get a match than I did in line to buy the game! What?! Nintendo knew this was gonna be a huge selling point for the game so why were the servers taking a leave of absence? Simply Amazing. In fact it wasn’t until my buddy and I traded our very personal Friend Codes that I was able to quickly connect and hand him his ass on a turtle shell. Once I started wailing on him and mouthing off with my personalized taunts like “Kiss my brown” I saw a little light at the end of a very long, long tunnel.

Mario takes a break from the action to help a Pikachu cross the street.

After we disconnected I decided to do what I do best, play with myself. I quickly pummeled through Classic Mode with my favorite newcomer, Pit from the Kid Icarus series, made popular on the NES and Gameboy. The game has a hefty roster of new challengers to get acclimated to, but I only found a select few (hint: they all have wings) suitable to my fighting style. The rest were mostly throw aways as far as I’m concerned, but I’m sure that somewhere out there, someone is an Olimar loyalist. Right? Maybe? I just keep telling myself that and I’m sure Nintendo does too. The biggest change in the series is the inclusion of non-Nintendo characters for the first time but you’ll have to earn ‘em

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Forget lightsabers, it’s all about the Beam Katana!

By Dustin Pena

While fanboys across America are swimming in tears over the recent delay of the Super Smash Brothers Brawl’s February release, I’m swimming in blood with another recent Wii exclusive title. I’m talking, of course, about No More Heroes.

In the game, you assume the role of aspiring assassin Travis Touchdown, who looks like he just returned from a shopping spree at Urban Outfitters. Gay. Travis wants to hack n’ slash his way through the ranks of the world’s top assassins, thus earning himself a hot night of hump hump with his big tittied contact, Sylvia Crystel. Super Smash what?

About 0.01 seconds before the whole screen is showered in digital blood.

In order to get to #1 you must master the ways of the Beam Katana, a lightsaber-like sword that can cut through meat like a hot knife through butter. They call it a Beam Katana but it’s more like a magic wand as it has an uncanny ability to turn people into blood. You swing your Beam by tapping the A button on the remote and once you whittle down an opponent’s health you swing the remote in a certain direction to deliver the finishing blow that decapitates or cleaves the opponent in half with a 100% chance of blood showers. If you rally up a string of combos a slot machine appears and should you hit the jackpot Travis will scream out a bone-chilling war cry such as “Raspberry Choclate Sundae!” or “Blueberry Cheese Brownies!” and if you’re not Travis it’s time to shit your pants. Once Travis belts out the names of various desserts he enters into a murderous rampage where the screen goes black and white, and by pushing various buttons when prompted to, Travis will dispatch his foes with even more gore and guts. There are other effects that the jackpots will have on Travis but experiencing each one for yourself is a Blueberry Cheese Brownie in and of itself.

In order to reach a top ranked assassin you must battle your way through hordes of baddies by slicing and dicing, performing suplexes, and swinging your remote like a bat to hit baseballs at murderous pitchers. The shear variety of how you can off a foe makes the battling in this game so satisfying. Your Beam Katana may also run out of juice from time to time and you must wildly “jack off” your remote to get it death ready again. Watching Travis jerk it is comedy gold. You continue on when suddenly your remote begins to ring and you must hold it to your ear to listen to instructions from Sylvia. It’s little touches like this that set this game apart. Once you hang up the phone it’s time to enter into a boss fight, I recommend saving your game by making Travis take a shit before you do battle. Seriously, you must shit to save.

The boss battles in this game are the cherry on top of the Raspberry Chocolate Sundae. No top ranked assassin fights the same and figuring out how to bring them down has me charging my Beam Katana! You’ll find yourself chopping away at dual six-shooter wielding opera singer on a baseball diamond or diving behind props at a movie studio in order to dodge the attacks of a super hero who shoots lasers from his pecker. The top assassins are so crazy and off the wall that once you defeat one you can’t wait to see who you’ll match swords with next and suffice it to say that every boss battle ends with severed limbs, spilling guts, four letter words, and gallons of gushing blood.

Travis furiously jacking (charging) his Beam Katana.

The only issue I have with No More Heroes is that in order to challenge the next top ranked assassin you must pay an entry fee which means you must make money. In order to make a buck Travis must take on odd jobs such as mowing lawns, harvesting coconuts, or picking up trash, all of which play out in true Wii minigame fashion. It’s not that the jobs aren’t fun, the first time, it’s that you have to get on your motorcycle and drive to the job center, pick a job, drive to the job site, perform your job, get back on your bike and repeat several times. It’s just slows down the game and momentarily lessens your blood lust. Once you pony up the cash you can enter the next battle or use your cash to buy new threads, upgrade your Beam Katana, rent movies, or work out at a gym where the owner asks you to take off your clothes and spread your butt cheeks. (Actually I will take that Smash Bros. now, thank you.) If shopping or murdering have worn you down you can return to your hotel room and watch some movies, change your clothes, admire your card collection, play with your kitten, or take a hot dump. This game has everything!

This is by far one of the best games I’ve played on the Wii or any console for that matter. It pains me that it underperformed in Japan and if us Americans pass it over for games like M&M’s Kart Racing we will be losing out on truly original I.P.’s in favor of games based on popular snacks. If you like blood, guts, laughs, blood, boobies, lawns, blood, turds, foul language, kittens, motorcycles, blood, baseball, swords, guns, blood, blood, pecker lasers, and blood than this game is for you. If you don’t you can look forward to such future releases as Cheez-It Wrestling or Little Debbie’s RPG.

Trippy sequel to beloved Saturn game 10 years in the making!

By Dustin Pena

The original NiGHTS on the Sega Saturn is a timeless classic, at least that’s what EVERY review has been saying. I don’t remember it that way, in fact I don’t remember it. I know I played it but it must have been forgettable because you would tend to remember a game about flying child molesters if it was indeed a classic but I digress.

Regardless and of how you choose to remember your first NiGHTS experience somebody better call Chris Hanson because NiGHTS is back in NiGHTS Journey of Dreams for the Nintendo Wii.

You start the game off as a young boy named Will whose father decides to abandon him at a soccer game, presumably to speed off to Vegas for a weekend of debauchery and buffets. Now that daddy’s gone NiGHTS is safe for a good old fashioned child abduction and Will is magically transported to the world of Nightopia via scary portal. I guess the trunk of NiGHTS’ car was full. Upon his arrival, Will is met by a fat headed talking Owl cleverly named Owl. Owl is a child pimp who proceeds to tell Will that Will has the ability to fly but first he must “touch NiGHTS”…Eww. When NiGHTS began to speak to Will the foundations of my gaming world were rocked. Apparently NiGHTS is a girl! Now I don’t feel so bad cause every young boy wants a shot at an older chick. You go Will. Once you man up and “touch” this bizarre lady of the evening you’re ready to join the mile high club and the game begins.

A scene from the NiGHTS bonus underwater mescaline-trip level.

The first thing you’ll notice about NiGHTS is the mesmerizing music. Actually, you’ll be noticing the music a lot because for some reason the developers thought that the best way to enjoy the music is by blasting it over the in game dialogue. Lazy sound design really pisses me off. Nevertheless, this game is about the magic of flight and this is where NiGHTS soars…into invisible walls. This is not a free roaming aerial opera but rather an on-rails adventure where you must steer NiGHTS through a series of midair gold rings and blue orbs while paralooping wandering Nightmares, avoiding obstacles, and chasing after sky worthy Octopi! To say this game is a visual trip is to say water is wet. As NiGHTS you’ll progress through Nightopia by accomplishing various missions that mostly rely on speed or the accuracy of your steering ability. Fly through a set number of scattered rings without missing one, race this asshole to steal a key, save these dipshits before time runs out, etc. It’s not rocket science but it is fun, especially when you encounter a gigantic boss and you’re finally given the freedom to roam and soak in the Burtonesque atmosphere and the incredibly eerie music. These encounters are where the game really shines.

The controls are fairly simple and your given the option of several different control methods. You can use the Wii remote, classic controller, gamecube controller, or the ever popular remote/nunchuck combo. I prefer the latter. Flying with NiGHTS is much as you might imagine up, down, left, right, or twirl the control stick to perform loops. You can also twist the remote to barrel roll and perform other aerial acrobatics but this is mostly pointless unless you really love those combos. To sum it up this game is fairly relaxing and and somewhat addictive. Much like Zack and Wiki I get my jollies by playing it in short bursts and it’s certainly the type of game that lends itself to shortened sessions. The dialogue audio and frame rate animation during the cut scenes are crap but it doesn’t really ruin the experience. There are some Wi-Fi additions like two player races that are worth a look over, however the My Dream option which allows you to enter other players’ “dreams” ,where you do little more than wander around a field and see the monsters they’ve captured, is pointless and boring and stupid and lame. Add in a second character, a young lass named Helen, for some hot girl on girl action and you have an enjoyable game that should run you under seven hours of life wasted. There’s certainly nothing like NiGHTS out now so I can safley reccomend it for anyone looking for something new but with the previous release of Super Mario Galaxy fresh on the minds of hungry gamers we won’t soon be saying pedophiles are the new plumbers. For those of you who like numbers a 7/10. Good NiGHT

If you’re a Wii owner, you may have noticed, and by “may have noticed”, I mean that it must be painfully obvious to you that third party support of the Wii is abysmal, at best. Whether developers don’t understand the control system or whether they don’t want to put their full effort into an “underpowered” system, the fact remains that the majority of games not made by Nintendo mostly amount to poor-quality ports with tacked on motion controls.

“Code Lyoko: Quest For Infinity” goes to great lengths to prove that even a smaller game design company can make a game that makes sense on the Wii, and makes you wonder what the major leaguers excuses are. While Code Lyoko is a bit of a kid’s game, it does offer a fair amount of challenge to more seasoned gamers and makes excellent use of the Wii’s unique wii-mote and nunchuck control design.

To fill you in, Code Lyoko is a popular cartoon in which five teenagers enter a virtual world known as “Lyoko” a la “The Matrix”, to do battle with an evil artificial intelligence known as “Xana”. The game revolves around the struggle to stop Xana from replicating itself and invading the real world in a bid for total world domination.

You begin Code Lyoko in sort of a 2-D animated hub world, in which you can communicate with other characters similar to a point-and-click adventure game. There is little incentive to do so other than to flesh out the story and learn more about your team, which can be helpful as there is little introduction for those not already familiar with the story. It’s a little cutesy for my tastes, but anime fans will enjoy it I’m sure.

When you’re ready to go into battle, you virtualize yourself at “The Factory”, and enter the digital world. Once there, you will control four different warriors, each with their own unique powers and methods of attack. The powers are where the game really shines, as you are constantly finding new ones and powering them up with experience gained throughout the levels. Almost all of the powers require some sort of unique motion control that takes excellent advantage of the wii-mote’s unique capabilities. These may range from telekinesis and flying, to wall jumping, balancing and freezing enemies.

Not a joke this time… (We’re almost certain).

The last time Nintendorks heard about Sonic the Hedgehog appearing in a Smash Bros. game, it turned out to be a nasty April Fools prank courtesy of EGM. Now, it looks as if the mascot match-up of the century is finally a reality, as Nintendo has announced the inclusion of Sonic in the upcoming Wii game, Smash Bros. Brawl.

Not that Sonic had anything better to do than to appear in a game that’s actually good for once.

Check out the video here:

What other surprises does Smash Bros. have in store for us?

We’ve already got Pitt, now what about possibly gay Simon Belmont and abusive, alcoholic midget Mega Man?

Is anyone else hoping for the cast of Captain N: The Game Master?