Despicable Me 2 Toy Profile of the Week (8): New, Yet Nostalgic…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

This week’s peek’s not plush or plastic,
But two board classics quite fantastic.
And one old viewer from the past
(like older models, built to last).

Hasbro’s grand Monopoly
goes DM2-themed, as you see
The rules, the same, the fun, so great
That special box, you just can’t hate!

And Operation! – another winner,
Make sure to play it after dinner
poking that Minion may gross you out
(But that’s subject to quite some doubt)

That Viewmaster, yes, it’s so cute
That Minion’s mug is such a hoot
From Fischer-Price and Basic Fun
they’re teaming up for everyone.

You’ll want to buy all of these things
(I hope your car’s got mighty wings)
Your home will be packed to the roof
Big DM2 Fan? You’re THE proof!

Shown above:

Hasbro’s MONOPOLY: Despicable Me 2 Edition Game – The MONOPOLY game has never been this mischievous! Assemble the Minions! Gru is back with a villainous plan to take over the MONOPOLY game. Spin the Minion to make your move, collect Banana Bucks fast, and own all your favorite Despicable Me properties. Suggested retail price: $19.99

Hasbro’s OPERATION: Despicable Me 2 Edition Game– Whaaa’?! Stuart’s having a bad, bad day. He accidentally swallowed some unicorn fluff, his noggin’s gone nutty, and his tongue is toxic! What’s a Minion to do?! Operate! It’s the same classic OPERATION game fun, plus the wacky humor of Minions! Suggested retail price: $19.99.

Despicable Me 2 View Master® – See your favorite Despicable Me characters like never before – in vivid View Master 3D! In partnership with Fisher-Price, Basic Fun has developed the Despicable Me 2 View Master including a new internal design that provides a 50% brighter and larger image with a smoother operation and a new focus on 3D adventures featuring 21 images (across three reels) to tell the Despicable Me story. Suggested retail price: $9.99 (viewer), $4.99 (reel pack), $14.99 (gift set including the viewer, three reels and a branded case)

Despicable Me 2 toys and other licensed products will be available at retailers nationwide beginning in May 2013. Despicable Me 2 hits theaters on July 3, 2013.

Mystic Chronicles: Meet The Heroes (1): Four On The Floor, Ready For Action…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

With Kemco’s “old-school” JRPG Mystic Chronicles coming to the PSP this summer from Natsume, the company is dropping a few names and giving players a chance to meet the cast and learn a little bit about them. Say hello to them below and check out the screenshot gallery I posted back in February for some images of the gameplay. All we need now are some videos of this in action and that particular triangle is completed…

Anyway, here they are:

Lux

Lux is the main character of Mystic Chronicles, and the player will control him for the majority of the game. This young man may seem like a simple village boy, but he’s surrounded by a mysterious past that may come back to haunt him. He’s very close to his sister, Fina…

Fina is a nun who players will meet early in the story. Strangely, this woman of the cloth looks a lot like Lux’s sister, Fina. Is there some sort of connection between the two ladies? Lux is determined to find out…

Ray

Ray is a mysterious member of the ancientDarkClan – and whether that connection will be blessed or cursed remains to be seen…

Alberto has known Lux since he was a child. A mentor to the youth and a captain in the Holos Guild, Alberto’s guidance will become pivotal in some of the difficult decisions Lux’s journey will lead him to make.

Hmmm… My nostalgia sense is REALLY tingling now… all we need is a release date. Natsume won’t disappoint on that end, but you’ll need to wait a bit because that’s how they roll. Back with more on Mystic Chronicles as news arrives – stay tuned…

The Women Of Defiance: All The Ladies In The House Say (Whatever The Hell They Want To)…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

Not just eyeball candy for the guys, these special ladies are a going to be a big part of what makes the upcoming show guaranteed to reel in viewers of both sexes who like strong female characters who get to go toe to toe on a few levels with the men in their brave new world. It should be quite intriguing to see how well this cast does over time across the viewership, as there are a lot of interesting personalities the cast has to work with and I’m sure the writing team will have a hard time if they need to get rid of any of these characters in an upcoming storyline. As always, we shall see…

GRID 2 Multiplayer Hands-On: It’s Like Lightning (But With Better Handling)…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

The single player in GRID 2 was quite thrilling in that demo from a few months back, but Codemasters knows that many will be snapping up this one first and foremost for the multiplayer modes and fortunately, the game shines even more here. A few members from the dev team rolled into NYC with a new demo that just so happened to be on the same day and in the same hotel as Namco Bandai’s Global Gamer’s Day, so it made for an exciting start to a long day packed full of great upcoming titles. The Xbox 360 version was set up (and looking fantastic, by the way), but being the only writer to pop up at this first session meant playing against the people working on the game and only having the slimmest of chances of beating any of them during the bunch of races about to take place… Continue reading →

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Not A Joke After All, But Full Of Laughs Nonetheless…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

OK, other than clicking on the page on April 1 and entering the Konami Code on my keyboard to blow up all the stuff on the site with clicks, I ignored this “game” because it was pretty obvious that it was an April Fool’s gag gone viral. Hell, NO ONE would make a game like that after Duke Nukem Forever, Bulletstorm and a few other humor-centric shooters didn’t exactly set the world on fire. That and hell, Crytek was too busy working on stuff like Warface, Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3 DLC plus whatever else they’re cooking up, so this HAD to be a big, fat joke. Welllll, to quote Ah-nuld in that gun shop scene from The Terminator… WRONG.

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is not only real, it’s a standalone game that doesn’t require owning the original version of Far Cry 3 to play, looks completely nuts and sorry to say, isn’t going COMPLETELY old school because it’s a DIGITAL-ONLY release. Hell, if Ubisoft were smarter about this retro thing, they’d get this out in a LIMITED edition for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and sell it on that fake online shop they’ve set up on the Blood Dragon site. Do one run and that’s it for physical copies. They’d certainly get the attention of core gamers, collectors and those who just want more options in how they play their games, that’s for sure.

Hopefully Ubisoft and their PR will pay attention to my non-negotiable demands and make this happen as a retail product – I can see a bunch of people snapping this up if it’s packing the heat they expect.

PREVIEW: Dark Souls II: It’s Not Easy Being Green (Or Hardcore, For That Matter)…

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

If there were ANY doubts that Dark Souls II would “go casual” among the pack of journalist-types who attended Namco Bandai’s Global Gamers Day last week here in NYC, those were squashed VERY flat by the mighty throwing of one VERY large axe by an enemy during a demonstration of the game. While the team at FromSoftware’s main design goal is to make the game more “accessible” to players, to the producers that word (which means “casual” to some gamers) meant accessibility ONLY in terms of making sure the game’s pacing put players into even MORE dangerous situations much faster than in Demon’s Souls and the first Dark Souls. Fetch-questing for NPCs has been minimized and backtracking through enemy infested areas is out (although you CAN choose to explore anywhere you like), replaced by a refined warp system and areas where surviving enemies and the insanely deadly environments will become your primary challenges. Continue reading →

GOG.com Brings You Too Much (Again): A Weekend Interplay Sale Of Epic Proportions!

Posted on April 12, 2013 by geelw

Nice! 33 Interplay games, most of them awesome all go up for a super sale this weekend over at gog.com, so if it’s going to be rainy and messy like it here right now, you’ve done all your spring cleaning (lucky you!) and need some fun stuff to melt the hours away, here you go. There’s too much stuff to recommend, but may I suggest a little Descent or Freespace, (airsickness bags not included – hope you like flying!) perhaps a side of Shattered Steel (BioWare’s first game), a side order of Stonekeep (for you dungeon crawlers out there) and absolutely try the Earthworm Jim 1 & 2 pack (EWJ 3 is an acquired taste, but interestingly weird and wacky). OK, get whatever YOU want or get them all. Hey, you’re buying, so it’s all your choice, right?

Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut Random Screenshot of the Day: Soup to Nuts & Out of a Jam…

Posted on April 11, 2013 by geelw

“Ruh-Roh”. Welllll, this COULD go three ways for FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan (just call him York… and call him a cab, as he’s going to need one if he makes a clean getaway from that Red Seeds Killer). He could try and engage the mad killer he’s been seeking for a while in a physical altercation (not a good thing if it’s suit-wearing fisticuffs against ratty robe wearing axe-swinging). He could try to put him down with a couple of well-placed shots from that gun he’s hopefully carrying (since he IS a FBI agent, he SHOULD be carrying his gun when exploring such a freaky location, right?)… OR he could remember that old comedy movie classic that was on TV late last night and attempt to confuse the killer completely before getting away in that cab you called.

“What old movie?” You ask, dear reader? Well, like I said… it’s a CLASSIC:

I think that Red Seeds Killer is in for quite a surprise. He’ll never see this coming, that’s for damn sure…

And just how will YOU get away from that axe-wielding maniac when you’re playing Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut, coming exclusively to the PlayStation 3 on April 30, 2013? While you’re trying to decide that, make sure to take note of the updated HD visuals, PlayStation Move and 3D TV support, over 100 improvements over the original version and much more. Well, don’t spend TOO much time ogling those tweaks and letting that axe swinger get too close. Losing your head while checking out the scenery is only supposed to happen when you’re on vacation. Well, this long trip to Greenvale I’m taking IS sort of a vacation… but it’s certainly not what I’d call ANYTHING resembling a paradise. PROTIP: try running away, actually. I don’t think that killer has much of a sense of humor (or knows who the hell The Marx Brothers are, for that matter)…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Game Director Swery 65 is certainly feeling quite cool these days, as fans of his work have been whipping up some very nice artwork about his game and there have even been cosplay sightings at some recent conventions of certain characters from Greenvale. If you get REALLY lucky, you may even see Swery doing a bit of his own unique impression of York at one of these events, but pretend you’re thinking he’s adjusting his glasses because he’s not wearing a nice suit and tie like York has…

Movies You Didn’t Know You “Needed” A Sequel To (2): The Hangover Part III

Posted on April 11, 2013 by geelw

Yikes, AGAIN? OK, time out. Look, the first one was hilarious and unpredictable in a few ways and the second one felt as it was a tracing done by a wagon-load of monkeys on a very bad acid trip. This third installment in the Hangover series is giving me a hangover just from watching the trailer, but hey – it’ll do big at the box office I bet. Yeah, yeah, crude chuckles are here to spare (OK, I laughed twice), but I hope this is the final voyage of the starship Wolfpack, as you can’t go any further down unless you make the next one a straight to cable flick with an entirely new cast. Which is frightening enough for way too many reasons. Hmmm… let’s seven say months from that opening weekend to the DVD release, folks? Start your clocks in three, two, ONE…

Oh, how I miss the Marx Brothers…

Injustice: Gods Among Us TV Spot: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close…

Posted on April 11, 2013 by geelw

Hmmm… STILL no Swamp Thing in this game? OK, that’s a little in-joke there (VERY little), but WB Games and NetherRealm DO have a (wait for it) BIG hit on their hands which should be the go-to game for DC Comics fans for some time. I guess it would have been too much to ask to see that fighting engine get put to use in a more RPG-like setting, but I also guess that one day we’ll see a developer blend those styles and more successfully. There have been a few fighting game influenced role-playing experiences, but it’s been a while since there’s been one that REALLY packs a punch (oh, the puns…. the puns!). Anyway, this looks like a total blast, so I say buy it and grab a few friends for some fun on a rainy weekend. Of course, if I were in charge of the DLC, I’d add in Ally Babble, The Spectre, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Plastic Man and The Creeper as bonus characters, but hey – my old comics memories can probably beat some of yours to death any day of the week (provided I get enough sleep the night before that big brain-battle)…