Interview: Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga Q & A

Posted on September 21, 2009 by geelw

Well, it took a little while, but given that Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga is shipping next week, the timing is actually perfect. I initially thought this would be a simple Q & A session with an Xseed employee or two, but thanks to Xseed’s Jimmy (“New Daddy!“) Soga and busy-bee PR guy extreme Scott Fry, the Q’s got sent out to Japan where I’ve the pleasure of noting that they were answered by Kiyoji Tomita, Section Chief at KUROGANE (the Osaka-based team assisting K2 with the development and localization process). How’s that for service?

Anyway, here we go – enjoy!

Continue reading →

Gallery: Adventures to Go

Posted on September 21, 2009 by geelw

OK, I’ll admit it: Natsume’s upcoming Adventures to Go really intrigues me (and a bunch of other folks out there). Sure, random dungeon generators are nothing new to an “old” guy like me. Hell, I remember playing games such as Dungeon Hack on the PC, A D & D Slayer on the 3DO and Dungeon Creator on the import PlayStation ’til the cows came home. Then… there’s that brutal Nethack intervention I went through some years back, but we won’t discuss that in public (“the horror… the horror…”)…

Continue reading →

Gallery: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Tagforce 4

Posted on September 20, 2009 by geelw

Had some quick hands-on time with this at Konami’s NYC press event a while back. Nice anime visuals, deep gameplay, plenty of battlin’ cards and creatures and a more “mature” feel than your Pokemon games, for sure. Fans will be completely enraptured, newbies will be baffled, very helpful tutorials aside. Interesting side note: Konami spells it Tagforce, but it seems to list at most retailers as Tag Force. “Potato, Poh-tah-toe, Tomato, Toh-mah-toe….” and all that…

November 17, 2009 is the release date, so mark your calendars accordingly.

Continue reading →

Review: Scribblenauts

Posted on September 18, 2009 by geelw

Platform: Nintendo DS

Developer: 5th Cell

Publisher: WBIE

# of Players: 1 (Wi-Fi: 1 – 2)

Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10+)

Official Site

Score: A-

The first two things you’ll need to realize about Scribblenauts are as follows:

1) it’s not a platformer at all
2) Trying to play it as such will make for quite a bit of frustration

The game is actually a fantastic hybrid puzzle/brain salad sandbox experience that lets you dive in to test your word power in a lot more interactive manner than traditional pen and paper word games. There are a load of puzzle as well as action based challenges that require a bit of thought if you want to see all the game has to offer. If you’re like me (that is, ancient enough to actually remember those classic Infocom or other text-based PC adventure games), what’s here is a bit like those oldies. However, you get to see what you input as text materialize on screen and you can interact with your choices in a number of amusing ways. Of course, you can simply sit back and let what you’re called forth do whatever it wants to do, which in my opinion, is the beauty of Scribblenauts’ design.

Continue reading →

Natsume News: Afrika Goes Gold

Posted on September 17, 2009 by geelw

Until now, Natsume hasn’t published a PlayStation 3 title, but that’s about to change as its upcoming PS3 exclusive, Afrika has gone gold and should be available soon. I remember this photo safari simulation as being one of the earliest PS3 games announced (through some amazing screenshots in Japanese game magazines a while back) and as you can see throughout this post, it still looks pretty darn good.

Anyway, here’s the press release, a bunch of screens and CG renders. Given the success of Natsume’s family-friendly Harvest Moon games as well as the company’s status among gamers of all stripes and a publisher of well-crafted niche games, this one might be a bit of a sleeper hit when it’s released.

Continue reading →

Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga Gets Ship Date, Web Site

Posted on September 17, 2009 by geelw

It’s allllllllllmost here, department: Xseed Games’ next Wii exclusive, Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga is set to hit stores across North America on September 29, 2009. The K2/Marvelous Entertainment-developed Action/RPG also has an official website up now with loads of great game info, screens, wallpapers and some really nice music from the game playing in the background. In case you haven’t been following the game to date, here’s a quick rundown of what to expect in an easy to digest press release format.

And in case you’re asking, yep, I’m still holding my breath for those VKES interview questions I sent off a while ago. I know that there’s been a LOT going on over at Xseed (including at least one new Xseed baby – Congratulations, Jimmy!), but I’m a supremely patient sort these days…

Continue reading →

Nintendo Unveils Holiday 2009 Lineup

Posted on September 16, 2009 by geelw

And it’s a BIG lineup at that. Granted, this long as heck listing happens to includes both first and third-party Wii and DS releases, WiiWare and DSiWare exclusive titles as well as games that aren’t coming out until early 2010 (which is part of the 2009 fiscal year, so they’ll still count when profits are totaled). Release dates are yes, subject to change on some of these (as per usual with such a lengthy list of upcoming games).

Continue reading →

Scribblenauts Pre-Launch Event Spells F-U-N at Nintendo World

Posted on September 14, 2009 by geelw

“What, no B-A-G?” That’s probably what Julie Cheng was thinking when she got the very first retail copy ofScribblenauts... or what you’re probably thinking Julie Cheng was thinking if you look at that photo long enough. Yup, these press photo ops are so darn obvious, it’s a bit comical to the more snarky eyeball such as mine…

Continue reading →

Trailer: Calling

Posted on September 14, 2009 by geelw

It may be a bit low-res, but this brief, creepy teaser of Hudson’s upcomingWii horror game, Calling (set to hit retail sometime in Spring 2010) is nicely unsettling, in a Ringu kinda way.

After watching this a few too many times, I’m not picking up the phone for at least a month AND I’ll be walking backwards so no one sneaks up behind me. Or maybe I should just hold off on leaving the house at all until AFTER the game comes out… y’know, just in case…

Damn kids and their creepy dolls these days…

Gallery: Zaku (for the Atari Lynx!)

Posted on September 13, 2009 by geelw

If you’re one of those folks who remembers the late, lamented (and technically superior to other handheld gaming systems of the period) Atari Lynx, well, guess what? There’s actually a small, dedicated group of folks out in California working away on a brand new game for the handheld, which still has a small, dedicated user base. Zaku, published by Super Fighter Team is a horizontal shooter being created on an actual Lynx development kit and according to the official website, will run at a blazing 60fps, making it the fastest game ever on the system… Continue reading →