Archive for June, 2008:
Wii - Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy - first impressions
It’s been all play for me so far today. The second game I tried out was US import title Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy - a shoot-em-up from tiny developer Budcat. 
It’s an old-school side-scroller with a very distinctive graphical style, that some will immediately write off as cheap and nasty, but it’s got a great deal of charm (and allows for a lot of onscreen action, which gets very hectic very quickly). The hook is that every time you destroy an enemy, you can catch the falling debris and add it to your ship. This means you can grow at an exponential rate, eventually taking up most of the screen if you’re clever. Of course if you’re hit, then whichever piece came into contact with the bullet will fall off, but you can press and hold the Z button to revert back to your original size - for when you need to dodge between many onscreen bullets. Though this puts you in more danger - if you can get debris surrounding your tiny craft, you’re not only well protected, but your firepower increases depending on what you’ve added - various other ships add different firing capabilities, with which you can take out almost any small enemy that comes into your path. There’s also a detailed editor which allows you to create your own levels, though you do need 107 blocks of free memory to do that, so I need to delete some old VC/WiiWare games before I do that. But for now, Blast Works looks very intriguing indeed - it’s an interesting idea, well executed, and looks to have plenty of value. Especially as the Easy difficulty isn’t quite as simple as the name might suggest. Read more from the source here
Wii The 5 Things You Need to Know About Mad World
The 10-Cent Tour: The Wii gets yet another over-the-top, pointlessly gory title. Is it worth getting your — um — blood up for? Scott Jones gets his hands dirty. 
Read more from the source here
Wii - Atari issues statement regarding AITD review scores
Atari has issued a statement to Gamesindustry.biz about the recent reviews of Alone in the Dark. The company said that it’s happy with UK reviews of AITD, but refused to comment when asked about the legal rumours that have started appearing on the web. 
“We’re happy with the review scores in the UK,” a spokesperson explained. “We believe the game speaks for itself.” Read more from the source here
Wii More poor Alone in the Dark scores from Scandinavia
Alone in the Dark doesn’t seem to be very popular among our Nordic brothers, as it now appears the Gamereactor Norway review wasn’t just an ugly stain on an otherwise brilliant cloth. 
Read more from the source here
Wii The 10 Big Surprise E3 Announcements
From gameplayer… “Ahh, the Electronic Entertainment Exposition. As the annual event held in the middle of the year in the US, E3 brings the gaming industry together under one roof for one great big shindig. 
And notwithstanding the recent down-sizing of the show (E3 ‘07 was the first to adopt a new back-to-basics model, kicking out all the hangers-on and making it more of a press do), E3 is still the biggest gaming event of the year and a time when the most exciting announcements are made. And E3 ‘08 will be no exception. Join us as we don on our beaded scarves and peer into our crystal balls and predict the ten surprise announcements to occur at this year’s E3.” Read more from the source here
Wii Shop Channel has small tweak added to it
Channel used to say settings it now says Setting and Features. It could be indicative of something to come or maybe just Nintendo thinking just the name Settings didn’t cover what they wanted. 
Read more from the source here
Wii German Gaming Site Claims Atari Pulled Ads & Filed Wrongful Suit Against Them
“The past few weeks of videogame publisher drama have been for the most part dedicated to the dispute between Tecmo and their former Rockstar/Director Tomonobu Itagaki, however Tecmo will need to move over and make room for another old school publisher. 
German videogame site 4players.de claims to be involved in apparent legal battle with Atari stemming from the sites review of “Alone in the Dark”, a multiplatform horror/action game published by Atari in June of 2008. Keeping in mind that the original article is in German, and it is well beyond the “normal” business hours we would utilize to obtain a comment from Atari, we were able to loosely interpret the following information from the public complaint aired on the German gaming site:” Read more from the source here
Wii - Brain fitness market booming with Boomers,nintendo console games reviews
At 32, he’s not worried about losing his memory. He’s taking advantage of a growing market in “brain fitness” spurred by aging baby boomers. 
Teenagers cramming for tests and people worried about “senior moments” can now turn to an explosion of brain-assisting video games, such as Nintendo’s Brain Age; puzzles that are said to ward off dementia, such as Sudoku and crosswords; and online tips that claim to train the brain.” Read more from the source here
Wii owners must Escape the Museum
Casual games are invading consoles once again–and this time it’s the hidden objects genre that’s making the leap. Other casual games that have already come to consoles or handhelds in one form or another include Bejeweled 2 Deluxe (on Xbox Live), Cake Mania (now a DS game, and coming to the Wii), and Diner Dash (Nintendo DS, PSP, and Xbox Live). Escape the Museum (no relation to the movie Night at the Museum) starts with protagonist Susan Anderson and her daughter Caitlin in the museum where Susan works. A major earthquake separates them, and she must work her way through the different exhibits by clearing the debris, rescuing priceless artifacts, and solving puzzles. The game has 12 different “hunt and find” areas, and 25 graphic-adventure-style scenes, where Susan must combine and use items she finds in the area to get past an obstacle. Escape the Museum is developed by Gogii Games, and is coming exclusively to the Wii. It will be out in stores before the holidays for $19.99. Hidden objects games, otherwise known as seek-and-find games, or I-spy games, are one of the most popular categories of PC casual games. The genre currently accounts for almost 20 percent of game downloads from casual portals such as Big Fish Games, Arcade Town, and iWin. Similar to the Where’s Wally? [Where's Waldo? in the US] books, gamers have to find certain items on a list within a time limit. These items are hidden within a picture of a location which is also brimming over with other items. In other casual gaming news, Sierra Online yesterday announced that it would be bringing TikGames’ Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos from PC to Xbox Live. Gamers track the titular Dr. Chaos through a series of exotic locations in cities including Tokyo, Cairo, Paris, and San Francisco. The Live version will simply be called Interpol and will add a multiplayer co-op mode so four gamers can work together to find clues. Interpol is due for release this autumn, with a price and age rating yet to be decided. Read more from the source here
New Wii menu update 3.3 nullifies Twilight Princess hack
We’ve got some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the bad news: Nintendo’s latest Wii menu update (3.3) effectively plugs up the Twilight Princess hole that served to foster a homebrew community – or, perhaps more accurately, it casts the homebrew community into a realm of darkness. According to the update, “Beacuse unauthorized modifications to save files may impair game play or the Wii Console, updating to Wii Menu version 3.3 will also check for and automatically remove such save files.” 
As for the good news, the Wii menu update also lets you move a Mii from from the Mii Plaza to the Mii Parade, and really, isn’t that awesome enough to make up for killing homebrew? The countdown has begun for someone to produce a Wii downgrader. Read more from the source here