News
Win a Nintendo Wii Instantly!
{dpadz-img}Gamefly is offering a contest to win a Nintendo Wii by joining up their game rental store. It’s like Netflix but just for games.
Check it out.
Wii-Top 10 Launch Games
{dpadz-img}Mark Bozon’s blog on IGN picks his top 10 Wii launch games. Here’s my synopsis on his picks with some personal pithy comments.
10. Mystery Virtual Console Game
Nintendo’s will release some new games for their Wii virtual console, the backwards compatible software download service that will include NES and N64 games as well as old Sega games for systems like the Genesis.
9. Metal Slug Anthology
For all you Metal Slug nuts out there.
8. Red Steel
The much hyped shooter, katana wielding FPS with some pretty complex control schemes.
7. Wii Sports
The bundled game included with every Wii system. Essentially a bunch of sports mini games.
6. Excite Truck
An arcady open terrain truck driving game that should be interesting to control. Rotating the Wii controller like a steering wheel drives the truck.
5. Madden 07 Wii
Sports. This is where the Wii really has the potential to shine. Innovative gameplay using the unique aspects of the controller like the built in speaker.
4. Elebits
A wholly interactive 3D space using the Wii controller to grab, push, pull, open doors, rotate handles etc. This sounds like the game that will really sell the controller to the masses.
3. Monkey Ball
This old chestnut makes another appearance on the Wii. If you’ve played monkey ball before and like it you will probably like this.
2. Trauma Center
A surgery game? Why not. With the current slew of TV shows about forensics and hospital trauma/dramas like Gray’s Anatomy, the CSIs, House and on and on this game perfectly feeds the current milleau of the macabre.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
What else did you think was going to be number one?
Defcon-It's WarGames as Real Time Strategy
{dpadz-img}Introversion’s new game DEFCON harkens back to 80’s video games where the learning curve is gentle, the interface is uncluttered while maintaining a strategic playground of infinite depth.
With all the nuclear sabre rattling in the world right now with Iran starting a “peaceful” nuclear program, North Korea successfully testing a nuke detonation it seems prescient of Introversion to release Defcon now.
The 80’s feel may not totally be arbitrary. As anyone who has seen the 1983 movie WarGames knows, DEFCON is short for Defense Condition with a 5 to 1 countdown rating on the state of seriousness of a nuclear threat. Defcon starts the game at Defcon 5 with some sobering statistics of nuclear yields, massive projected death tolls and radiation effects. To underscore the consequence of MAD doctrine and the game Introversion has named the site http://www.everybody-dies.com.
From there play in real time against a clock to the final missile launch. The goal is simple, protect your cities, resources and military arsenal while destroying the same of your enemies. Sort of like Missile Command but with the ability to shoot back.
Defcon’s mulitplayer elements come into play with “alliances”, secret chats with other players to team up against others. Of course since there can be only one “winner” eventually someone is going to play Brutus which only adds to the fun.
Like some other 80’s games each match is relatively short at 15 to 30 minutes unlike the grueling mulit hour matches of some modern games.
It seems this game has hit a nerve as the developers note on their site the download servers were slammed during launch but things have settled down now. You can download from their multiple mirrors or bittorrent. I chose bittorrent for the demo and the 59mb only took about 10 minutes.
General reviews from various sources so far have been excellent.
1Up gave it a 8.9.
PC Gamer gave it 97%.
IGN gives it 8.8.
RSS 2.0
Atom