Games Cheats and Reviews

Scott Pilgrim: The Game is made to appeal to your sense of nostalgia. A beat-em-up in the vein of old 8- and 16-bit classics with a purposefully pixelated art style, your mission is simply to get from one end of the map to the other while beating the crap out of everyone who gets in your way. And, for a game that celebrates the simple pleasure of button-mashing, it’s highly effective.

The game effortlessly weaves together nerd-culture references (from Super Mario Bros. to Akira) with levels and playstyle created to remind you of games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and River City Ransom. Miniscule background animations and character details ensure that, even when you’re just wailing away on clones of enemies you’ve seen in every other level, they all look distinct. And like RCR (or more recently, Castle Crashers) you also level up your character — earning new powers, greater strength, and more incentive to keep going, the further along you go.

While Grand Theft Auto may be the biggest name in crime games, you don’t get more gangster then the mob. Mafia first debuted way back in 2002, and it is time for a sequel. Mafia 2 tells the story or Vito Scaletta, an Italian immigrant and US soldier on leave after getting wounded in World [...]

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5th Cell hasn’t yet revealed the project that will follow Super Scribblenauts, but they have dropped one tantalizing tidbit.

“We’re not ready to reveal our next original game just yet, but I can say we’re using the Source Engine for it,” 5th Cell CEO Jeremiah Slaczka told Joystiq.

Slaczka wouldn’t say whether the engine will be used in the company’s unannounced XBLA project. No matter which platform the game it appears on though, 5th Cell could make good use of the Source Engine’s physics capabilities. The studio’s penchant for creative design brings to mind games like Garry’s Mod.

On this episode, Scott and James talk to another friend of the show Brian about his recent acquisition of a current gen system. We go over games that will probably be the easiest to jump in to, and why.

If the features spelled out in the recently published Microsoft patent for Kinect are accurate (via Next-Gen), the motion-control device is capable of even more than Microsoft has so far revealed. As the patent shows, Kinect can supposedly recognize American Sign Language (ASL), as well as read lips and even single out individual fingers and toes on a person’s body.

Of course, the other possibility is that Microsoft isn’t holding anything back, and the patent merely shows features that were once (or still are) planned but that Kinect isn’t actually capable of doing yet. Still, the patent shows an intriguing new area Kinect could be useful for, helping hearing impaired players interact with their games.

“Where the user is unable to speak, he may be prevented from joining in the voice chat,” the patent reads. “Even though he would be able to type input, this may be a laborious and slow process to someone fluent in ASL. Under the present system, he could make ASL gestures to convey his thoughts, which would then be transmitted to the other users for auditory display.”

There’s something special about the way an arcade game makes you feel. Whether it’s the flashy cabinet with detailed side art and glowing marquee, or the unique controls with subwoofer and speakers pointed directly at your head; there’s a certain mystique that surrounds arcade titles that is undeniable. Translating that experience into a home port of the same games we love is a difficult transition but it seems Vector Unit has taken that as their mission statement and ran with it.

Ubisoft just dropped three Petz games onto the DSi Ware service, for 800 points each. The games are Petz Dogz Family, Petz Kittens and Petz Hamsterz Family. If you dig taking care of your pets on a portable gaming platform, this might be the one for you. Also, if you like replacing all the ‘s’ [...]

Every week, the Playstation Blog crew posts the latest updates to the PSN store. If ever there were a company dedicated to downloadable content, games and otherwise, I’m thinking Sony may be it. Check out the list below, and let me know if you agree. PlayStation Plus Critter Crunch (Free to PlayStation Plus subscribers) Syphon [...]

Large publishers continue to snap up social game developers, with Disney being the latest. The media conglomerate has reportedly purchased Social City developer Playdom for at least 563 million (via Reuters).

Disney sees social gaming as a “high-growth business,” and CEO Bob Iger believes that the genre from benefit from “our many characters, stories and brands.”

Playdom is the fourth-largest competitor on Facebook, boasting an estimated 42 million active players each month. They are known for games such as Mobsters.