Couple Gaming

While perusing some old Gaming Magazine issues, I came across a quiz about MDK.

*sigh*.  “Oh how I miss MDK.  I loved that game..”  And I wondered how many other people think back on creatures they’ve killed, heroines they’ve saved, characters they’ve known and loved, and ponder how much they miss them..

So, I want to know:  What games do you miss, and why?

I will go first:

MDK - The witty banter between the characters was fun, and the puzzle solving & strengths per character made this a PERFECT Couple Game.  (I would play the brain, Ymiris would play the action-hero).

ShadowMan - Anyone that’s been around here long enough knows we loved this game.  The subtle spooky undertones, the characters, the music; the very idea of living in 2 different worlds as 2 different people - few games really pull this off (though I’m surprised how many try).

OK, let’s ask Ymiris what games he misses:

Vampire the Masqurade:  One of the best games I have played, but it was bugged so bad that the ending never worked, a patch was later made by fans but I never got it.  But still this game had great dialogue, great character development and a great selection on how you wanted to play the game.

Mechassult:  Well because the closest thing to this game in recent years was Chromhounds, and I liked Chromhounds but it was no Mechassualt.  I really enjoyed the fact you felt like you were in this giant machine, you had to make sure to cool down, you had limited ammo and you weren’t able to just race around like a 10 pound machine.

Aliens vs Predator:  I loved the MP on this game, and the game itself was amazing.  I will always remember the way you started as an alien, face hugger to chest burster to adult, it was great!! I am hoping the one currently being made lives up to the previous games past.

Ghost Master:  This is one of a few SIM games I loved, and I played this with Ophilye for hours and was pretty damn sad when we finished it.  Basicly the game was all about scaring SIM’s and getting more powerful, it even had ghostbusters who came in after you.   I loved that game and miss it still.

For you twitter addicts (myself and Ophilye included) Gamerdna has launched tweetmygaming , a great little site that shows all gaming tweets and cool little graphs about what game is being talked about most.  I know some people find twitter dull and don’t understand the allure a lot of us find with it, but for me its two things, a way to keep in touch with friends during the day who don’t live in my state and don’t have time to dedicate to IM, and an RSS feed for all things that interest me, gaming being a big one.  I think Gamerdna just gave me a new feed I will use a lot!

OK, there are about 2,000+ reviews of what is going on at E3 right now.  If you’re not following someone on twitter, or their live blog, or blah blah blah, then you’re obviously a very busy monkey… Which is why I’m going to recap some of the highlights!

Here’s just a few of the things that have come up so far:

XBOX:

• Rock Band: Beatles will be out 9-9-09.
• “Joyride”: a free game that uses the Avatars
• Lots of new Sequel games :
  • Left 4 Dead 2
  • Crackdown 2
  • Halo: ODST & Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta
  • Final Fantasy XIII
  • new Tony Hawk
  • Forza Motorsport III
  • Modern Warfare 2
  • Metal Gear Solid Rising
• Zune Video Marketplace
• Netflix: Add movies to your queue w/ Xbox, instead of just watching what has been added.
• Twitter, Facebook, & LastFM will be on Xbox.
• Project Natal: Making your body the controller with full body tracking
  • Use your face to log in, navigate the screen with your hands, actually maneuver a ball with your feet, and paint with any part of your body
• 1vs100 BETA started last night for 50,000 lucky players.  Ymiris & I played it for a good hour, fully addicted.  WAY too much fun, and highly suggested as a couple game!!!

Nintendo

• Multiplayer Super Mario Bros. released Holiday ‘09.  Excited about this as a Couple Game, with the same fun feeling of the original Mario Bros, with a smart camera that will pan out & in as players separate.
• Wii Fit Plus - Fall 2009
• *NOTE* UBISOFT announced “Your Shape” for the Wii, which will include a camera & analyze how well you do the exercises.  Looks a bit more advanced than the Wii Fit title.  We’re more excited about this one.
• A new controller “extender” called Wii Motion Plus that detects angle & precision in motion, released with Wii Sports Resort.
• New Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers.. more Shooter than Turn-based.
• New Kingdom Hearts 3.
• Mario & Luigi get microscopic & invade Bowsers body in the cheesy DS “Bowsers Inside Story”.  Looks cute, but I’m ashamed to say it just screams Rental.
• Nintendo Sun DS
• James Pattersons’ Womens Murder Club - DS game that plays like a book.  Unfortunately, this feels like a cheesy pandering to women, pulling together my favorite Room 219 with Nancy Drew.
• C.O.P: The Recruit, a racer much like a good-guy version of GTA.
• Style Savvy, which actually looks like a good Tween/Teen Clothes Shopping/Accessorizing game… one of the things I keep praying Imagine would be, but never is.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed & probably buy this one.
• NOTE: Ubisoft announced yesterday more Imagine games, including a “make crappy bead necklaces that you can buy from us”.  I DESPISE IMAGINE & KNOW THERE IS A PLACE IN HELL FOR THESE DAMNED GAMES.
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Finally, some Adult games!  All of look fairly delicious…
  • The Conduit
  • Resident Evil: Dark Side Chronicles
  • Dead Space: Extraction
• Metroid: Other M .  Very wild-cardy, but we’ll see what happens as they release more.  I’ve always wanted more Samus.

SONY:

• Uncharted 2, which looks like a pretty & intense watch-your-mate-play game.
• MAG
• PSP
  • Hannah Montana lilac PSP
  • Patapon 2
  • Rock Band (? — just touched on)
• PSP GO — pretty slide-out controls, tiny, light, Wifi, 16G memory, and SO sexy.  Do Want! 80% reduction in price for applications, more titles are digitally distributed.  You know I’m not a graphics girl.. but I’m seriously amazed by how good the graphics are for such a small, portable gaming system.
• • “Sense Me” analyzes your music library to create playlist moods.
  • Grant Turismo for PSP GO
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
  • Little Big Planet
  • Harry Potter / Hannah Montana
  • Resident Evil (!)
  • Ratchet & Clank
  • Rock Band Unplugged
• Final Fantasy VII will be on PSN

It has been a very long time since I have played a fishing game.  As a matter of fact I think the last one I played was one of those little hand held devices you could pick up just about anywhere.  I liked them enough, but it never held my attention for more then a few minutes at a time and obviously was no where near as fun as real fishing was, but it was nice to pass the few minutes on the car drive to the lake.

I can’t say I am actually excited about this game, and even less so with the rumored $70 price tag, but I am interested.  Watch the video and decide if you would drop $70 for it, in the mean time, see you on the lake!

If you are anything like me you have been hearing about how awesome House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii is, but what was so special was never really conveyed to me, either due to my own reading skills or the way the reviewers told their story.  So let me break it down for you.

Ophilye and I were in crappy moods and we both felt like a good game of shooting zombies would make us feel better, and Gamefly just sent us House of the Dead: Overkill.

Now what made this game so fun to us is it did what we didn’t expect, so if you want that same feeling, maybe you should stop reading and just go rent it.  If you are walking the line between “oh, yet another iteration of that stupid game” and “well, maybe it’ll be fun..” then please read on.

*****SPOILER ALERT****

Ok so this is the Wii, the console that every woman and child in america has or wants, with loads of shovel-ware thrown its way and most of it’s target demographic wearing makeup or playing with dolls.  With this expectation, when the game opened to a stripper, dancing away, and I am not talking animated stripper, this is full motion video of a real 70’s stripper with a wii controller, I was excited.  Now don’t get too excited, she wasn’t naked, but she was sexy and it was the perfect opener for a game that was balls to the wall and something straight out of grindhouse!  2 men throwing obscenities left and right  before you even get control of the game,   The writing and cinamatics reminded me of  Tarentino’s recent “GrindHouse” flick, it caught us so off guard both Ophilye and I were laughing and cheering.  We then got to the game play, which was just like the old House of Dead, you point the wii controller and shoot zombies as the camera dictates what you will see and where you will go.  Truth be told, if this game only had the gameplay it wouldn’t appeal to too many people, unless you loved House of the Dead (I did!)  or wanted a light gun shooter game.  But luckily they added that “grindhouse” effect and story line and that made us both want to keep playing.

It’s obvious at this point that I’ve only played the first level, but am BEYOND excited to continue playing.  The obscenities, violence (albeit poorly-lit & 70’s-ish), and blatant sexuality makes it a game we have to play when the Couple Gaming Test Subject goes out to play, so I wanted to let every couple gamer out there know:  TRY OUT THIS GAME.  We know you bought the Wii for the wife & kids, but this is the “mans game” you’ve been hoping would one day show it’s pimply ass.

Go, make the wii full of testosterone.  It’ll be good for both of you.

A long time ago ( over a year!) I wrote a short little article about a new MMO being made by funcom Dark days are coming and finally we start seeing more details about this MMO, now known as Secret World, across the gaming sphere.

Below is the teaser trailer for Secret World and I LOVE this trailer, but there is no game play and that is what we want to see and lets face it, funcoms MMO’s are always lack luster, not to say they are bad,  I loved Anarchy Online even with it’s horrible bug filled launch, and I bought AoC and played it up to level 47, but it also couldn’t keep me or that many others.  I am hoping for much better things from this MMO as the concept really appeals to me, who doesn’t want Cthulhu in their MMO?

A short blurp about the game

The Secret World will have no classes or levels. Tornquist…describes it as an “action-adventure-MMORPG” with “fast, reactive combat”. Although there will naturally be character progression and an incentive to play the game for a long time, “The Secret World begins where other MMOs end,” he says. “There’s no grind to get to a preconceived place.”…Furthermore, the entire game (which we know will include London, New York, Seoul, New England and Egypt as launch locations) will be open from the start.

After Ymiris posted his anticipation of a new horror game called “The Path”, we were positively flabbergasted to be contacted by the developers.  US! Couple Gaming, actually being seen!  After we got over the shock & Ymiris could hear again (I’m a screamer), we downloaded our Review Copy (Squeee!) of The Path, and after an incident that resulted in needing a new laptop (Note to couple gamers: Clean out your fans), I finally got my hand on a girl.

And I have been wandering ever since.

First, I’ll let you in on a little secret: This game is not your typical game.  This is the game that real gamers scream for at the top of their lungs.  This is something new.  This is what needs to be heralded from rooftops, shown to every new developer;  when you bought FEAR or Doom, you didn’t know it, but that disgust on your face was you screaming “WHY CAN’T YOU BE THE PATH?!?!?!!” Remember the first time you played Shadowman?  Fatal Frame?  Hell, the first Silent Hill?  You’re going to get those shivers here.  I promise.

Let me give you a quick summary, just to give your mind somewhere to go:  This game is based loosely on Little Red Riding Hood.  You go through 7 sisters, ranging in age from 8 to 18.   Each one of these girls is dropped off at the end of a street, and you are always given the same instructions:  Go to Grandmothers House.  Do Not Leave The Path.

Like any real girl, one cannot follow directions & still live her life.  Sure, fine, follow instructions if you need to.. but it won’t get you where you really need to go.  No, you are going to need to go into those woods, find what is hidden, make your own Path.

As you play each of the girls, you slowly uncover who they really are.  Each girl has her personality, her ideas, her hopes, her dreams, her cynicisms, her fears, her own demon, her own hell.  And each girl is doomed.

I cannot tell you more than that, but as you wander as each girl, you realize you’ve been dropped in a Lynchian dream.  Every object you come upon isn’t just an object, it is going to mean something to someone, and you are not always going to be told the only answer.   I’m not sure there really is a “right” answer for this game, and walkthroughs are going to be a bitch.

I will give you 3 hints:

1. Take your time.  You should not run in this game, ever, and the camera changing is one of your biggest hints, not an actual hindrance.
2. Find everything you can.  There is no silly Achievement in this game, so the things you are finding are there for a reason.
3. Enjoy the Horror.  Darken the room, get a GOOD set of headphones (with bass and reverberations) and Enjoy it.

Which brings me to my last points.  I’ve told you the storyline is excellent, the originality is off the charts, and the character immersion is unbeleivable, but one of the best parts of this game is the sights and sounds.   The musical score, the miscellaneous sounds, the breaths, the creepy creaking and wolf growls, they are the icing on the cake.

Don’t think it’s all good, there is definitely an adjustment period for this type of game, and it is not going to be as polished as you’re used to.   The visuals are disrupting at first, and the pathing & slow-moving girls leaves a lot of  room for improvement (in hopefully coming releases).  The moving through Grandmothers House when “successfully” completing a girl felt almost like the developers cheated us out of an interactive ending; it was a good, creative ending, but I know it could have been better.  I found that  if you just let go, maybe look for some of those hidden meanings that Lynch fans love, you’ll enjoy it quite a bit more.

As for being a “Couple Game”, both Ymiris & I give it HUGE thumbs up.  With 7 girls, it’s easy to trade off running characters, especially if you need a break  from the forest, and it’s fun to share accomplishments and highlights with each other.  In addition, the game is developed by Gaming- and Designing- Couple Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, whom we are hoping will guest-write for CoupleGaming on how they came up with this concept, and how they work with each other to create something like this.

Thank you to Tale of Tales, not just for the review copy of  the game, but for creating something so outside the point-click-shoot-levelup that has become the standard.  Thank you for creating something beautiful, and chock-full of horror!

You can get the game Here

Ever since Xbox 360 introduced us to their version of a Mii, we have been longing to abuse ourselves in various ways.  Sure, we now have our little avatars having Party Chats, and we can dress our avatars in ridiculous clothing (if no one has seen what I did to Ymiris’ avatar, I highly suggest looking for it. He’ll be the adorable man in bright white pigtails & leather biker jacket), but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Thus Xbox joins with Ninja Bee (@ninjabeegames for twitterers) to give us Kingdom of Keflings.  In it, we use our lovely avatars to help little Keflings build their little renaissance village.

Let’s get this straight:  Yes, this is a basic building game.  You are given basic blueprints to make buildings (say, a house) and you (and your keflings) gather resources (wood, coal, gems, wool) to build the basic parts dictated by the blueprints.  This is a fairly basic concept for any gamers that have played any of the building games - Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, SimEarth, etc.  “Get Resources, build 1 piece, put multiple pieces together to make building”.  It’s so simple, non-gamers catch on quickly and gamers get that nostalgiac twinge.  Awww.

What makes this game more amusing is watching your Giant Avatar towering over the little keflings.. kicking them around, picking them up, watching them scream & flail madly.. it’s hard not to be amused.  OK, especially when your giant avatar is in a red dress & high heels.. I admit it, I loved watching my Mii..err.. avatar.. wander around in her platforms carrying piles of rocks and bricks. Building up your little kingdom gets to be mesmorizing while you build an art house, schools, a theatre, a wizard house, etc.  I had to fight Ymiris & The Couple Gaming Child Test Subject for 360 Kefling time nightly for a good 3 days.  It was brutal, but I feel justified tying them up & leaving them in the closet (I did turn on my Hulu Queue & now they’re totally caught up on Colbert Report, Burn Notice, & House).

The Keflings have a cute sense of humor in the few places they communicate, and it is fun to put the Keflings through school, and then have them do your dirty work mining/logging/relocating materials.

This game is incredibly addicting, very colorful, and great fun.. until halfway through.  At about the halfway point, you realize a few things:

1. You have a limited number of keflings.  You do not get more, no matter how many houses you build.
2. The buildings you are now making don’t actually add anything to your game play.  You build a hospital or a theatre, but the Keflings never get hurt nor take a break from your slavedriving.  They don’t even change their outfits to an Armani suit when you build them a mansion.
3. You do not have enough Keflings to gather, move, and inhabit all the useless buildings
4. The blueprints leave NO wiggle room.  You cannot point the buildings in another direction, add things to the blueprints to personalize them (like an extra garden or such), or increase their value by doing such things.
5. The only personalizing you can do are paint the roofs, paint the walls, and add random trees & shrubs.  Doing these things does not actually add anything to your keflings, nor make any difference more than slightly aesthetic.
6. There is no adversary, nothing to harm your keflings, no real level of difficulty.  The only way you know that you are increasing difficulty in this game is the number of pieces per blueprint & the amount of resources per piece.  In other words… turn on your game, and then walk away for a night and this game should be easy as pie.

I am about 5 or 6 buildings from the end of the game, and I have just lost interest in it.  I don’t know why I’ve built a nursery, nor a mansion (instead of just a simple house).    I’ve built a hospital, but I think it’s more for myself (in case I trip over a Kefling in my clogs).  I find myself remembering why I don’t like to buy the Xbox Downloadable Content:  When you’re done, you can’t give them to someone else to try.

Still, for $10 we as a family got a lot out of it, and I highly suggest it for gaming couples that may not be experienced gamers.

I am hoping that, if there is a Keflings II, someone throws in a little more than what I can do with my Lego’s… because at least Lego’s I can  listen to Hulu at the same time… Ymiris is refusing to just tell me what happened in Burn Notice.  *sigh*

Alright, I have NO idea where I found this site, I just don’t.   But i have been on a huge horror kick lately and with all the Left 4 Dead and gears of War 2 I have been playing it feels like I am on crack…..horrorcrack!

Anyway,  “The Path” from what I know is a short horror game based on a darker Red Riding Hood story, and it looks to be PC only and is being released March 18th 09.  That’s all the details I have..ohhh and a link http://grandmothers-house.net/

So why did I bring this up??  Because I am on horrorcrack! and honeslty, who doesn’t want to see more horror games??  I know I do.  To bad I couldn’t get an early demo of the game, but alas it wasn’t meant to be.

STOP!
Do NOT purchase a new Nintendo DS Lite just because your last one is not in the new Spring Colors, or because a herd of baboons have trampled over it. I promise you, those baboons will be back, and next time you will need to be prepared!

Last week, I ran across a list of all the games that were selling REALLY well in Japan (OK, I like to plan what the girls in Japan will be dressing up as during their next Comic-con, I admit it). I noticed that the “DSi” seemed to be high on some list somewhere, so I made a mental note of it, and stuck it away.

Today I saw a note from Boing Boing stating the Nintendo DSi is set for a US release on April 5th.

It comes with an SD card slot where you can save photos taken from the two cameras mounted on the DSi - one on the cover and one facing the player. You can also save bootable ISO images of Windows 95 and OSX on the SD card too which will be ignored by the DSi.

Both screens are bigger too - not a whole lot bigger but now big enough to rest your coffee cup on.
The DSi also comes with a new matte casing which will only break if ran over by a stampeding heard of wild baboons.

The stylus is now a little bit longer too for those who have deep nostrils.

DAMN!  OK, were your baboons wild, or trained?  And were they a herd or a heard?  Well, so the DSi may not be perfect, but at least it’s moving in the right direction.  If you want to see the pretty pictures of the DSi, head over to Gizmodo to have your appetite both whetted and satiated.  Bon Appetit!