The largest annual gathering of industry personalities is underway in San Francisco this week, and our very own Nicolo Accordino is in attendance. Our resident King of Fighters is checking out hot indie games, hobnobbing with other game journalists and attending panels until sundown tomorrow, so be sure to follow his Twitter feed for the latest.
The Rumble Pack Posts
Long before we became the discerning gamers of today, we were kids unwrapping video games and Nerf guns under our Christmas/Nondenominational trees. For me, there were some real holiday stinkers, like NES Ghostbusters 2 and Pictionary. But for all the licensed junk, there was usually a Mega Man cartridge nearby. I know that popular opinion dictates that I should dislike parts four through infinity, but they were always my video game comfort food. I guess it’s through this nostalgic lens that I can fully embrace Mega Man 10, a solid but not stellar entry in the series.
Of course, MM10 has the unfortunate distinction of following 2008’s Mega Man 9, one of the best games in the series and a wonderful digital throwback. MM9 was just the back-to-basics shot in the arm that the Blue Bomber needed. Almost all of the bloat was cut out, leaving gamers with a lean action-platformer that was actually fun to play, even when it was kicking their behinds. MM10 also leaves out the superfluous stuff – don’t bother trying to charge your Mega Buster here – but it doesn’t add much either.
This week, the Pack chats with the legendary Max Schaefer, one of the minds behind the Diablo series and CEO of Torchlight developer Runic Games. Schaefer discusses the game’s development, ties to Blizzard, a forgotten Lynx classic and even a few tidbits on the studio’s upcoming MMO. Later, Justin, Tom and Tony dive into Toy Soldiers mint-condition battlefield, Nick hunts down Zeus in God of War II and Kaz suggests that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 might be the ultimate modern warrior. Plus, the Activision vs. Infinity Ward brouhaha and a return to the Aperture laboratory.
Editor’s Note: Late in the interview, some of the sound was distorted as we brought Skype to its knees with far more conference call participants than recommended.
You can come out of your fallout shelter now; the ApocalyPS3 is over and there’s a new podcast to download. This week, Tony delves deeper into the story and multiplayer of BioShock 2 and Nick channels Poseidon’s Rage in the first half of the God of War Collection. Tom and Justin follow that up with a Heavy Rain deluge that touches upon everything from rocking babies to tying shoelaces…oh, and there’s a story in there, too. Plus, a plea to dust off your Wii and the final word on the PS3 brouhaha.
Relevant Links:
Neil LaBute’s Heavy Rain promotional video (courtesy of /Film)
Wii owners, live it up while you can! This week, you get first dibs on Mega Man 10, another NES throwback that should bring in big bucks for Capcom. You also get a legitimately old (good) game in the form of Fatal Fury Special. DSi owners are less fortunate. However, I am curious about EA’s tween-focused Flips series, which appears to be the DSi’s first batch of visual novels. The “genre” has an audience in Japan, but not so much in the states.
Special thanks to Nick for the Fatal Fury Special assessment.
Mega Man 10
WiiWare/Capcom
1,000 Points
Mega Man 10 doesn’t need a cheerleader, but I’ll still give it the full Justin endorsement. Whether it’s a worthy successor to the ninth installment remains to be seen, but it’s definitely fun…if your idea of fun is falling into bottomless pits and spike traps, that is. You can expect a full review in the next week or two once I’ve bested the game’s robot masters – which are not as goofy as they could have been – but this is a pretty safe investment. I also don’t think it’s quite as slapdash as the 1up review would lead you to believe.
Between the “ApocalyPS3” and the Infinity Ward scandal, it may be hard to take your attention away from Kotaku, Joystiq and the like today. However, if you have a few minutes to spare every now and then, you should do yourself a favor and mosey over to Jeremy Parish’s GameSpite blog. He recently asked his readers to help shoulder the promotional duties for the print version, GameSpite Quarterly, and it only seems right for our site to answer his call to arms. After all, Mr. Parish has been hugely influential on how the five of us discuss and appreciate video games.
For the past 10+ years, the 1up editor and his cohorts have been writing thoughtful essays on games new and old. While some may visit for his musings on Mega Man 10‘s Sheep Man and those brutal roguelikes that Tony enjoys so much, we’ve always been more impressed by his retro analyses; it takes real insight to find something new to say about a game that came out more than a decade ago. We’re not necessarily asking you to go purchase all four issues, but we do urge you to browse the site and express your appreciation. The books fill a niche that even venerable publications like EGM and Edge never could.
It only took us a few years of inaction, but The Rumble Pack podcast is officially available for download at the Zune Marketplace. Be sure to stop by our Zune page to review our show and help us climb the charts.
The following is a review inspired by the game’s brilliant loading screen poetry…
Winterbottom has been a long time in the making,
But this indie adventure is surely worth taking.
As the titular thief, delicious pies are the treasure,
And traversing his world is always a pleasure.
Two weeks ago, I recall sitting at my computer, taking in all of the X10 trailers and thinking to myself that Microsoft would absolutely have the strongest lineup of the year. Halo: Reach, Crackdown 2, Fable 3 – that’s a pretty amazing foundation, you must admit. There were lots of big announcements, big and small, and it just felt like this year would be the great gaming year that 2009 could have been if everything hadn’t been delayed. Well, just in case you had any doubts, Nintendo made sure to put them to rest on Wednesday with an even bigger barrage of release date bombshells than its Redmond neighbor.
To cut to the chase, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor will all debut this summer, long before the fall blockbuster season. The latter two franchises have very rarely been launched outside the winter months, so this seems almost unprecedented by Nintendo. Maybe this means that it has even bigger November guns in store for us, the most obvious of which would be Zelda. But even if Nintendo has inexplicably decided to forgo the November gold rush completely, we’ve still got a lot of great games that all of us here at The Rumble Pack are dying to play.
Here’s my take on everything that’s going to keep my Wii (and DSi) from getting dusty throughout the first half of the year…