Couple Gaming

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!

It seems to be the new theme: DS comes up with about 4 games, all based on the exact same idea. No “release one and see how it’s received”, no “testing the waters”, and evidently no consumer testing, but as a rip-off version of an actually successful game.

They’ve done this with the Imagine games (after Cooking Mama), the Petz games (after Nintendogs), and now they’ve done it with Zenses (perhaps after Popcap?).

I’ll admit intense curiosity when I saw the first Zenses games: “Games with a relaxing part to them? Awesome… 2 spare time suckers at once!” Unfortunately, I think they spent all their money on the pretty covers or game pictures, and NONE on actually creating new games.

If you are curious about Zenses, take a look at the Amazon pictures; that should sum up every game part of the game. For the most part, they are Popcap/shockwave games, redone with a beach/ocean theme, and coupled with somewhat relaxing (mostly annoyingly repetitive) music in the background. There is a matching game, a memory game, a puzzle game, and a few others so banal I can’t even remember what they were (and I just sent it back this morning). The games are buggy, repetitive, and have no real point to the overall game besides getting a High Score (that doesn’t have your name on it).

So while it may have a short novelty addiction, these games should never, ever be purchased for more than $9. You will get more enjoyment out of spending that on a coffee, a movie, or tossing it in pennies on a school playground. Hell, even shoving the money down your Significant Others pants while they game would be more fun. Hmm.. speaking of…

Anyone that is a friend of this site knows my favorite games:  Phoenix Wright & Hotel Dusk.

I’ve been lucky enough that the Phoenix Wright line has continued to 4 or 5 games (like a good book series), but I have been left cold with Hotel Dusk.

Cing, the creators of Hotel Dusk as well as Trace Memory, is creating a new game:  Eye of Providence.  Here’s just a quick teaser of the game (be warned, it’s not a _good_ preview, and it’s a little dizzying, but at least we get a taste of what the developers are shooting for).

As a side note, Wikipedia is saying that Cing is also creating another Trace Memory, but this time for the Wii. I have high hopes…

Since the Wii has come out, they have really tried to utilize their nifty Wii-mote.  Yes, it’s an original design, yes you could do a lot with it.  Unfortunately, when testing out what works and what doesn’t, the Wii has come up with a lot of games that are absolute CRAP.  It’s to the point that I am afraid to buy a Wii or DS game, for fear that they are just pushing out shovel-ware.

But, as anyone that has been on this site more than once knows, I am a sucker for pretty colors, and De Blob has them in spades.  The premise is that the city has been taken over by little inkblots that have died everything black & white, filled the canals with ink, and kidnapped it’s citizens into being black dots with banal jobs.

You are a color-devoid blob, but you suck up the color of any paintbucket you touch… and you dye anything you touch as well.  So, you jump on a red paint bucket, you absorb 20 paint points, and you go paint 20 buildings.   You absorb a red and a blue paint pot, and you now have 40 purple paint points.  absorb another red after that, and you have 60 red points.  Easy, right?

OK, so the game has the possibility to get really boring really fast, but then you have little jobs to do.  “Oh Blob” gushes one little green girly-swirl, “please paint all these buildings green.”  No problem.  A guy wants “50 blue paint points to change this prison into an art studio”.. ok fine.

But the game has to get more difficult, right?  Next she wants “all of these buildings red, blue, and purple.  A little demanding, but ok.  On the next board, she says, in what I perceive to be a whiny, nasal voice “I want the top chartreuse, the middle kinda’ a burgundy color, the bottoms blue, and the little pin at the top a bright pink.  And do it in 30 seconds!”  I find myself then swearing back at her in words no one but a sailor should be shouting. “YOU #*(&ING &*#(@! DO YOU HAVE ANY F&*(#@ IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO JUMP?!  THERE AREN’T EVEN ANY #&*@()$&*( PAINT POTS AROUND HERE! YOU &#*(@ &#*(@&$#*(!!!”, and Ymiris has to send out the Couple Gaming Test Subject out of the house, lest she be corrupted by her mother swearing at colors.

But, these more difficult challenges are optional, are as all of the “achievements” you can get, such as coloring every tree or freeing every citizen.   This game really excels at playability at any gamer level, as well as re-playability, if you want to complete more “achievements”.

There is little to no pointing (smart move, as this game really doesn’t need it), and the shaking is used only when really needed.  It could have been made on any console, but the seperate-hands controller does make this game a little more user friendly (and stopped me from throttling people, though did give me a handy way to wrap the cord around my own neck).

The biggest downside is the save points: Before  or after a board.  THat’s it.  If you run out of time or die too many times, you go back to the beginning of the board, all the challenges and colors completely reset.

So.. I say give it a try.  The replayability & pretty colors means you can take it out when you’re bored or if new people come over,  and it may be one of those things you bring out when people say “pfft, wii games suck.”  Just don’t talke to the green swirly girl.  She’s a bitch.