So, many of you may have heard of the Katamari series before, but never before have I been so enamored with it. The Xbox 360 demo for Beautiful Katamari really seems to have done me in, and so starts my love of the game. While in my local GameCrazy, my friendly neighborhood GC-buddy, Dusten, showed me “Me & My Katamari” on the PSP. Wow, can we say gorgeous? The cartoon-like graphics just look so crisp and clear on that high-resolution PSP display, and the music is kookie and strange… how wonderful.

If you’re not familiar with Katamari, while the story lines seem to be strange, I mostly ignore them. Instead, I just focus on the gameplay… which is awesome. You roll this little ball around–a Katamari ball–and stuff sticks to it… and then stuff sticks to the stuff that stuck to the ball, and then stuff sticks to that stuff, and so on. Eventually you’re sticking people and houses, and who knows what else to your ball which is now becoming quite large (measured in meters). When you’re done, the King of All Cosmos tells you what your ball comprises of, and scores your ball.

After I’ve put some more play time into Me & My Katamari I’ll give you all a full review. Until then, I strongly recommend that you give it a look-see.

Some of you are aware of my fascination with family and cartoon-link games. Viva Piñata is a game that I completely got distracted from before it got really good. Well that problem is gone. The distraction was Crackdown, and since I finished that game I’ve been spending a lot more time playing Viva Piñata. Since getting back into Viva Piñata, I’ve discovered a whole new depth to the game. There seems to be a lot of event-driven activity in there, and there are certainly a lot of achievements to be unlocked.

Since picking the game back up, I’ve unlocked another 19 achievements for a total of 380 gamer points. I’ve also built a mine, unlocked several variants of several piñata, and had an awful lot of fun in the process. This game is doing a fantastic game of recapturing my attention and helping bridge the gap until the next great game.

My previous review of this game can be found here.

If you are playing this game and would like some tips, I encourage you to check out http://www.pinataisland.info for some tips and information about the game.

Okay, so I know I’m gonna catch flack for this one, but I must declare Bioshock a suspense thriller instead of a shooter. Yeah, so you’re in first person, and yeah, you shoot things, but this is so much more than a shooter. So much more indeed. Here’s the rundown of the demo.

SPOILER ALERT: Contrary to my normal position on not posting spoilers, in order to make my point with this game I must post some degree of a spoiler. If you don’t want to read the spoiler, PLEASE STOP NOW.

Right in the beginning of this game, you’re a victim in a plane crash–though I suspect your character may have had something to do with the crash–and you’re in a large body of water, presumably the ocean, near a lighthouse. Once you enter the lighthouse you enter a strange sort of elevator that takes you under water quite a ways. Then you get shown a video telling you about this underwater city of “Rapture”. The moment the elevator stops, you see a man being killed by a very strange looking creature, and it’s kinda scary. Then the creature comes after you, clawing at your elevator roof. You’re told to get out of the elevator and then you go and find a weapon yadda yadda yadda. Then you find a syringe, and like any good game player assume that it is a good idea to inject the contents of the syringe into your character. Your character’s body kinda freaks out you you get the creepiest cut-scene ever.

A very pale-looking little girl–you don’t get to see all of her–talks to a gigantic monster in a dive suit with a drill on its arm like its her little pet. She says that she thinks you’re an angel, but then reconsiders when she sees you breathing. But she assures her “pet” that you will be an angel soon.

Conclusion: This game is not a shooter. As I said, this game does have shooting, and that’s all find and dandy, but this is so much more than a shooter. In shooters you don’t have story lines this disturbingly creepy or suspenseful. I actually got a kick of adrenaline playing the demo, similar to when you watch films like Silence of the Lambs or Halloween. This game is really pioneering a new type of game, which actually seems to be just as much about the story–which seems incredible–as well as the graphics and gameplay–which also seem quite nice.

I seriously recommend that folks try the demo for themselves and see what they think. It just blew me away.

any console is now open for others to come and review. Since I–manchicken–only have so much time to game, there is no way that I could possibly try out all of the possible games there are two try. My individual pwnage is therefore limited to the games that I’m interested in, and the games that I can get around to playing. For this reason I have decided that our collective pwnage can be greater than my individual pwnage, and I’ve opened things up.

Please see the “pwn with us” page for more details.

So please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to pick on Nintendo here. I’m a big Nintendo fan actually, I’m just tired of the disappointment. That said…

Today Nintendo released the Metriod Prime 3: Corruption preview on WiiShop. When I saw this I was ecstatic because I thought that Nintendo had finally wised up and decided to start putting playable demos in the WiiShop. Imagine my surprise when I fired that bad boy up and all I get is a video.

This video is fantastic, and the game looks great to be sure… which is why I wanted a freakin’ playable demo. PS3 fans and Xbox 360 fans have been enjoying playable demos for a while. PS2 and Xbox fans have even been able to obtain playable demos via the official magazines for a long time, too. This is the sort of thing that Nintendo fans have really missed out on, and it’s the kind of marketing that Nintendo has ignored at their own peril.

Nintendo, just in case you missed my point, your fans want playable demos via WiiShop or some other Nintendo WiFi Connection application. We are tired of seeing every other system give us fantastic game previews when all you give us are web sites–pretty as though they may be–and videos.

Could somebody please put this series out of its misery? These titles are just inhumane anymore. EA, are you really going to keep on killing the momentum that your PC version of this game has reached by releasing these crappy console versions? This is just stupid, please stop it.

Pros:

• The Wii controls are actually quite elegant here

Cons:

• The graphics and music are the same as the GameCube version of this game
• The GamePlay is the same as the GameCube version of this game
• This game is very limited when compared to the PC version of this game
• This game, due to it’s limited capacity, gets very old very fast

The bottom line is that if you’ve ever played the PC version of this game, you will never enjoy a console port of it. Ever. My wife is a huge fan of this series, and when we stopped having Windows-based PCs in our house (we’re 100% Kubuntu GNU/Linux baby!) the only thing she missed was The Sims 2. These console versions have done nothing but tease and disappoint her.

So, many of us have been sitting around twiddling our wiimotes and nunchucks for the better part of the last year wondering when the hell Nintendo was going to come out with all of these neat games that they had in the demo videos that they were putting up for the Wii when it launched.

Well, now we know that the lion’s share of these well-anticipated games were nothing more than vaporware, prototypes, and unstable-nowhere-near-ready versions at the time of Wii’s release. This leads me to the moral question: did Nintendo lie, blunt-faced, through their teeth, to their fans, and the people who’ve made the Wii the great success that it has become?

Well, to that I would say both yes and no.

Yes, Nintendo lied
Now, Nintendo will probably argue that they didn’t give an official release date for these games so there was no misinformation being spread by them. To that I say “come oooooon!” That’s a load of hooey and you know it Iwata! Those videos that were well-circulated online and offline showing games like Mario Universe, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and the most-anticipated Smash Bros: Brawl were most certainly put out there to make people think about playing those games in particular, and since there was no official release date, many assumed–and Nintendo did nothing to dissuade this–that these would be released after Wii’s launch or shortly thereafter. Many Nintendo fans–myself included–were very disappointed to have to wait almost a year for many of these titles, and longer for some.

No, Nintendo didn’t lie
Well, I did say that Smash Bros: Brawl was the most-anticipated, but I meant it was the most-anticipated of the post-launch titles. Ledgend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was most definitely a release title, and it was by far the best Zelda title I’ve ever played. Also, Nintendo has more than delivered on the Virtual Console. I’ve been playing a lot of classic games from my boyhood such as Kirby’s Adventure and Super Mario Bros.. The online connectivity and Nintendo DS connectivity has not been anywhere near satisfactory thus far, and I think the recent Pokemon game and Strikers game are the only two that have online capabilities thus far.

All-in-all, I really think that this has prooven the power of vaporware in the market today. I think that early adopters feel a little burned by Nintendo this time around though. In my opinion, all early adopters should get even longer extended warranties or some other gimme (maybe a t-shirt or something) from Nintendo to say “thanks for dealing with our crap this past year.” Because let’s face it, many of the Wii games that have come out so far in 2007 are crap… pure crap. I did not buy my Wii so that I could play Pirates of the Caribean or Shrek 3 on it. I bought my Wii to play Smash Bros: Brawl and Mario Universe and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Please consider that idea Iwata. How about thanking the people that make you richer than stink, even after you were not completely forthcoming with us.

So, I’ve been playing Mario Strikers: Charged for a few days now, and I thought I’d give you all my opinion. My honest opinion is somewhat disappointed. I remember Mario Super Strikers on GameCube, and I thought this would be so much like that. What I found, however, is that Next Level Games actually made this iteration much more complicated than it’s previous version.

In this version you get essentially the same game play as the GameCube version with some minor twists. The Mega Strike, as it is now called, is actually possible to defend against. What you do is depending how well you do with the timed selector and where you’re located on the field when initiating the super strike, you get more or fewer shots going at goal. So if you’re just in front of the line, and you initiate the mega strike, and you blow it on the timed selector, you get 5 balls instead of 6 balls going at goal. Let’s do the run-down, shall we?

Pros:

• Nintendo WiFi Connection support allows you to play online
• You can take your stats with you by putting your Mii on your WiiMote
• The new Mega Strike can allow for more spectacular comebacks
• The tutorial mode is very well done
• More captains and more possible side-kicks. You can also mix and match sidekicks

Cons:

• I don’t know if I’m wrong or right here, but it seems like the field is smaller
• “Defensive” moves are quickly repeatable, enabling the lame equivalent of bunny-hopping
• Defending against mega strikes is tricky since in most living room situations, the wiimote is fighting too much light interference for any real accuracy
• Series are fun, but it’s hard to get in and play a quick game of strikers online with only a series as your option

The bottom line is that I really still prefer the GameCube version of this game to the Wii version. Online play is nice, but the changes in the game make it tougher for those of us who aren’t 14 and don’t have 5 hours a day to dedicate to this game.

I bet many of you have heard of this accessory already, but it might be news for some of you. Microsoft came up with a keyboard to allow folks to type messages using a little keyboard that plugs into your Xbox 360 controller. It looks kinda like this:

I’m eagerly anticipating this accessory, because I use my messenger a when I’m on the 360, and this will make that much easier.

This keyboard is scheduled to come out on the fourth of September, 2007. I believe you can already pre-order this accessory in many game enthusiast stores (e.g. GameCrazy).

I was reading my normal technabob and other RSS feeds today when an article on [technabob] about a possible motion-sensitive Wii-like portable. I’m not going to steal [technabob]‘s thunder, so here’s the link:
Nintendo Working on a Motion-Sensing Portable

Man, that looks like it could be tricky to play on the bus.

Hey 93 games and Focus home interactive, 1997 called, they want their pathetic graphics and crappy controls back.

Call of Juarez first piqued my interest when it was on the Official Xbox Magazine’s disc about two months ago. So I rented it from my local video store, hoping it was not too good to be true… boy were my hopes dashed. I’ve been looking for a great western shooter for a while, and I have yet to see one, so I was hoping that Call of Juarez might deliver. I like games where you shoot with guns that really exist, and where the graphics look like landscape that really exists, or at least existed in the past.

And before the breakdown, what the hell was up with the beginning of this game? Why do I have to go down this nasty hill with terrible controls? It took me like 10 minutes just to get down the hill because it is impossible to judge what distances of falling will and will not kill you. Now let’s get to the breakdown…

Pros:

• The guns in this game actually existed at some point in history
• The story line seems to make sense

Cons:

• Game play is limited by the story line rather than moved by it
• You can only shoot who the game wants you to shoot
• The tasks the game wants you to perform are actually very hard to guess sometimes
• The beginning of this game just flat-out sucks
• The accuracy of the weapons seems to be off considerably at times

The bottom line is that this game might be neat for people who haven’t been lobotomized with a rusty spoon, but for the rest of us it would be nice to have a game that actually delivered on the hype.

Let me start out by saying that I think there’s a Nintendo DS version of this game coming soon. Technabob reported this a few days ago, so I’m stoked. I hope to see this soon.

Viva Piñata is a fantastic family game that I think anybody would really enjoy playing. This game is not just for kids (and no jokes about the 25-year-old an loving kid games please). In this very colorful game you are given gardening tools and a small plot of land. Your simple task is to take this plot of land, and use your tools to make it a place that piñata animals would want to live.

In this game you get to put together different places to live, you can landscape your garden pretty easily, and you can grow and sell crops to make money to continue to grow your garden.

Pros:

• Very colorful an appealing graphics
• Very easy to understand instructions help you move along the game
• A very interesting and slightly detached story line helps keep you interested

Cons:

• The online play could have been better. It would be great to be able to visit other folks’ gardens on Xbox Live
• The piñata houses are rather large, so it’s kinda tricky to place them well
• It’s far too easy to accidentally hit characters and upset them, causing them to stay away
• We could a little more action in the game, it gets a bit tedious at times

The bottom line is that this game is pretty non-linear and fun to play. It could use a little more online play and it would be nice if it mixed it up a little more.

So I have a question for the Xbox 360 game publishers. Why won’t you give gamers free downloads if we buy a game? Did you know that Nintendo at least gives you a discount on Nintendo Power if you register three games, would it kill you to give me a free game-related theme or gamer-picture? Or at least a freaking discount on one. Man.

And Microsoft, could you please give us a better way to demo gamer pictures and themes before we commit to buying them? I’m tired of dropping 150MP on a theme or gamer picture just to figure out that it sucks. The silly picture pack put out by those fellas that do Red vs. Blue really did suck. You let me try the games, but you don’t let me try the themes. No fun.

This has been a rant with manchicken.

So you all are going to think that I’m all teenie-bopper on this, but I must confess my love for Xbox 360 faceplates. These little accessories really make the Xbox 360 fit in better with my living room, and since they’re so easily interchangeable, if I want to switch faceplates to match my current favorite game I can. More games should pick up on these.

Right now, I’m sporting this sweet woody one. They also have a few customizable faceplates that you can make designs for using your computer and your printer. I’ve also seen some for Forza Motorsport 2, Halo 3, and Viva Piñata. I’ve also seen some people with some decals for the sides of your Xbox 360.

So, raise your hand if you’ve ever been blown away by a racing game. Now put your hand down if you’re normally a racing game fan. Please note that my hand is still up.

I am one of the people who has recently had their world seriously rocked by this incredible racing game. So let’s talk turkey about this game.

Pros:

• This game has the greatest in-game graphics I have ever seen, especially in a racing game. The wheels are actually round, the shading and lighting are realistic and intense.
• The suggestion line is a fantastic idea. I normally suck at racing games, so the suggestion line really helped.
• Everything is online. There are leaderboards, online races, and you can even upload all of your photos and videos.

Cons:

• The controls are a bit too sensitive, and I couldn’t figure out how to configure the sensitivity.
• A bit of a nitpick, but it would have been great if I could have kept the music playing while racing. They had some good stuff there.
• The website where it uploads all the info to requires Flash. I really wish Microsoft would stop using Flash for all their Xbox web interfaces.

The bottom line is that Forza Motorsport 2 has won me over to racing games.

So some of you know that I’ve been digging Crackdown for a while now. This game has seriously captured my interest lately because of the diversity of gameplay.

In this game you can:

• Drive cars, SUVs, and trucks
• Jump from building to buildings, jumping around on rooftops
• Climb gigantic buildings
• Fire a variety of weapons including: rocket launchers, machine guns, pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, a harpoon gun, and a minigun
• Throw all sorts of objects, including: cinder blocks, street lights, cars, trucks, explosive gas tanks, and dumpsters
• Race in both cars in street races, and on foot in roof-top races
• Do everything I mentioned online as well as offline

This is one of the few games that I was sorely disappointed to finish. The ending was kinda cheesy, but the game was a lot of fun, and I really find myself wishing there was another game like it.

Pros:

• Lots of guns makes for lots of mayhem
• A large variety in cars to drive
• Agility skills allow for a much richer enjoyment of the game world
• Huge game world.
• This game keeps you up to date on what you’re supposed to do

Cons:

• Driving controls are a bit tricky
• Some very strange glitches
• The buildings don’t always let you grab on where it looks like you should be able to.
• The ending kinda sucks
• Annoying narrator doesn’t have enough phrases, so you hear a lot of repeats

The bottom line is that I’m sad this game is over, and it has most likely destroyed similar games–GTA and Saints Row–for me in the future.