Every week, sort of, features editor Anthony Burch discusses games and gamer culture in his “Rev Rant” video series. You can watch the previous rantshere. If nothing else, this week’s rant certainly has one of the silliest titles yet. My skin is also red again, because colorblind people aren’t the best at using chroma keyer. Take a single game mechanic. Look at it from as many different perspectives as possible....
The title of Beenox’s latest —Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions— is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s not dimensions that are shattered, but a mystical tablet. Adding to the chaos, the pieces are scattered across various dimensions. This prompts Madame Web to task various Spider-Men to obtain the shards before Mysterio, the game’s Big Bad, has the chance. It’s the perfect set up for what makesShattered Dimensionsso unique, giving the player control of one hero in four different “styles,” allowing for the developer to offer up more web-slinging variety than any Spider-Man game before it....
Wii Fit Plusis a $20 upgrade toWii Fit.It includes everything from the original title, plus new games and new “fitness”-related things that I only sort-of care about. The game now tries to count how many calories you’ve burned by using theMET system(but like its attempts to tell me how obese you are via theBMIscale, I have my doubts about the validity of these guesses). It also allows you to set up your own routines based on your goals, and it lets you make a Mii of your babies, cats, or dogs and chart their weight progressions....
An unnamed source tellsKotakuthat Nintendo’s upcoming console, codenamed Project Cafe, will not have a hard drive. Instead,it will feature 8 gigabytes of on-board flash-based memory, and that will likely be used for game storage. That’s not a lot of storage, but it’s far more than the Wii offers. Beyond this, the system is also said to support saving to SD memory cards. Of course, Nintendo is not commenting on this....
This weekend, our bosom buddies over at Tomopop have been covering Chara Hobby, a massive Japanese event where vendors show off an assortment of model kits and figurines. But who cares, right? The only reason you are reading this is because you saw that drop-dead sexy picture of Zero Suit Samus and wanted to find out more about it. Right next to our bounty huntress with the adorable beauty mark is a fully poseable Varia Suit Samusfigma....
Here come some new challengers! Oh, wait — you were expecting them? Sure, we already had a pretty good idea that Darkstalker’s Hsien-Ko and Marvel’s Sentinel would be joining theMarvel vs. Capcom 3roster. First the rumors, then yesterday’s confirmation. How about a bunch of official screens and videos, though? Now it’s officially official and stuff. Both characters will be unlockables, so limber up your thumbs —Marvel vs. Capcom 3is almost here, and it hits shelves on February 15 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3....
Yesterday, EA unveiled thethree-person cover artfor EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, and today, they put out a video of the three athletes — John McEnroe, Roger Federer, and Serena Williams — playing at the Australian Open and Wimbledon. You can see it after the jump. You would think that they’d have sent us the video yesterday, so we could’ve just combined the video with the screenshots, but I suppose they wanted the separate media to stand on their own....
A beefy (and kickin’ rad) patch is now available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of EA Black Box’sSkate 2. The list of fixes, tweaks, and improvements is so large I had to include it post-jump. Below are a few of the major things that Black Box addressed with the free patch: I don’t know about you guys, but the clunky off-board stuff gave me fits when I first tried the game....
According to apostingon the SOCOM blog, update 1.30 forSOCOM: Confrontationwent live today. It fixed over 100 problems related to gameplay and network performance. Servers went down at 5 A.M. (EST) to accommodate thehefty patch, and reported back to service around 7 A.M. IfSOCOM’sservers were sentient, they would feel remorse. All player statistics were wiped this morning. The deletion resolved problems with incorrect recordings and their relation with the Trophy patch....
You know what game is terrible?Spectrobes.ThisPokémonrip-off from Disney looked somewhat promising, but I played the first one and it was not good. It is with great excitement then, that we presentSpectrobes: Originsfor the Wii. LikeSilent Hill: Origins, but with less demons. If you want to learn about the secrets of the past through flashbacks of significant events, then you’ll want to playSpectrobes: Origins. If you’ve always wanted to use the unique Wii controls to explore vast worlds, excavate three-dimensional fossils and unravel an engaging story while discovering the key to preventing a galactic threat, thenSpectrobes: Originsis your game of choice....
The Revenge of Shinobiwas one of my favorite Sega Mega Drive games, mostly because it was one of about six titles I had at the time, so it didn’t have much competition. Regardless, it was a pretty cool sidescroller, not least thanks to the random inclusion of Spider-Man as a boss. Spider-Man was the only comic character that Sega was able to license for the game, as it had previously pilfered The Incredible Hulk, Batman and even The Terminator for use in the game without their owners....
Namco Bandai has announced thatSplatterhouse, a reboot of the 1988 arcade classic, has now gone gold. It’s out on November 23 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It’s also extremely bloody, and the voice inside the head of the game’s main character yells things like “F**k that guy” as you soak the floors in the blood of monsters. I know this because Namco Bandai sent some preview code in my direction, and in between the 12 other games I’ve had to play for review, I popped it in today....
ZEN Studios has announced that itsStreet Fighter IITribute pinball table — an expansion forZEN Pinball— will be coming to PlayStation Network on August 20. The table will feature all of your favoriteStreet Fightercharacters, as well as combo shots that trigger animated “attacks” using art and sounds from the fighting game’s universe. If this seems a bit familiar, it’s because the table was previously released for the Xbox LIVE Arcade version ofZEN Pinball....
