Games Cheats and Reviews

You didn’t know that Thor, Norse god of smacking things over the head with a mallet, was once a kid like you and me, did you? Well, Canadian developers Frima Studio are kicking your mythology professor directly in his tweed-attired booty by dropping the real history of the god that made it sort of okay for men to wear braids, as long as they couple it with a winged helmet.

Be advised: you will smack some noggin in Young Thor. In fact, you won’t do a hell of a lot else. You will also jump, to be fair. Mostly, though, you gotta kill stuff. Goblins, giants, some kinda weird, bird thingy, you gotta Hulk smash every scaly skinned bastard you see before he does the same to you. This sounds pretty hot, except when you learn that Young Thor only offers seven different kinds of enemies, and only about a dozen levels. It sounds even less hot when you realize that Thor’s abilities — the game has RPG-like leveling-up elements — are quickly outstripped by those of the enemies on later levels. This necessitates a lot of going back through early levels and grinding through the same bad guys over and over. Now me, I kinda like grinding. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. But it’s not for everybody.

Software piracy is something that really rubs me the wrong way.  As a developer of PC software (not of the gaming variety) it makes me especially irritated when game studios chose to release a game DRM-free as a show of good faith, only to have it exploited to hell and back by the selfish masses.  [...]

The Alien vs. Predator of Naval warfare. Awesome mechanics, but boring as hell.

To those who include level editors in your games, be advised: this is how you’re supposed to do it. Joe Danger, the charming first shot from British developers Hello Games, includes, like seemingly every racing game these days, an easy-to-use level editor. The difference is that Joe Danger really includes it: making it a part of the challenge as you race along. You literally have to build the track as you go during the tutorial — a brilliant conceit that actually makes learning and using the level editor relevant to gamers generally, not just those with a penchant for sharing their artistic brilliance (or lack thereof)…with the ladies.

Okay, enough about level editors, already. Who is Joe Danger? He’s a dude playin’ a dude disguised as another dude! No, wait, that’s Robert Downey, Jr. from Tropic Thunder, what the hell am I thinking? Joe Danger is a former motorcycle daredevil aiming to make a comeback on the motorcycle daredeviling circuit. He looks kinda like Leisure Suit Larry, but make no mistake: unlike Larry, Joe’s actually got game…with the ladies.

Having witnessed StarCraft being pirated to hell and back over the last decade, the developers decided to crackdown on the rampant issue…

With E3 just about a month away, it seems like the obvious venue for Nintendo to finally explain just what the hell their mysterious Wii Vitality Sensor will actually be used for. But could that explanation be coming much sooner than expected?

Nintendo has announced they’re planning a press conference in New York in conjunction with the American Heart Association this Monday, May 17, where they will make “a special joint announcement.” While the press release makes no mention of what this announcement will be, the natural speculation is it will revolve around the Vitality Sensor, considering the device is used to read a player’s pulse — something that could lead to the sort of games the American Heart Association might approve of.

Very little has been explained about the Vitality Sensor since its reveal at E3 2009, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata saying at the time that games “have been used for stimulation, but maybe it won’t be long until games are used for relaxation and even to fall asleep.” Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has previously stated the Vitality Sensor and its first compatible games will be shown at E3 2010, but then, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t make any announcements about it leading into E3, either. And if Nintendo would rather have much of their E3 focus fall on the Nintendo 3DS, it would make sense to get the Vitality Sensor reveal out of the way a month in advance.

Who am I? What the hell is this place? Why does everything and everyone look so weird? And more importantly, why are they all trying to kill me?

Some of those questions are answered by the end of Zeno Clash. Then again, quite a few of them aren’t, but the story is more just a tent pole holding up an enormous canvas of weirdity and dream logic. People like to talk about world building, but the guys behind Zeno Clash actually went ahead and made something completely new and self-consistent. It’s crazy, disorienting and just plain fuck-off weird, but in a way, it all comes together.

After repeated watches you get to read between the lines and realize what’s really going on in it. It might look like just another chunk of carnage-strewn Gears warzone, but it actually reveals a lot about the state of things in Gears of War 3. A hell of a lot.

ThisKidPlaysGames.com writes: "Nintendo have been top dog of the portable gaming world for nearly 2 decades, but Sony’s PSP sure as hell hasn’t gone down without a fight. Now we decide out of the 2 who has the best games library.

Ironstar writes:"It brings me to a huge disappointment to see a game that I love so dearly come to such a terrible decline, though this isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with such heartache."