And don't say the Zelda CDI games because, true fact, there is no evidence anyone actually played those

Since starting this weekly feature back in January, I’ve tried to keep things positive. There is so much negativity throughout gaming that the last thing we need is another article on a somewhat popular website throwing shade and trashing the art tens or dozens or hundreds of people spend years trying to make a reality. That’s what I’ve only asked happy questions, fo??r the most part, and plan to continue doing so going forward. 

But this week? Fuc??k it. I’m in a mood so let’s get nasty talking about the game or games we hate the most.

One of the reasons I've avoided this topic is I couldn’t think of a game I absolutely despised. I never played E.T. or Superman 64 or all the other stereotypical games that always end up on these lists. (Side-note: Knowing what we know about E.T. and its development, can we all just agree to lay off it?) It’s not that hard for me to find fun in gaming so I end up enjoying most of the titles I play. Sure, there are some I don’t like. Aero the Acrobat for instance or last year’s Langrisser Re: Incarnation – Tensei – are both garbage titles. But I don’t hate them. They’re just bad. Major Minor’s Majestic March, however, is a game I absolutely despise.

If you haven’t heard of it, good for you. It’s a Wii-exclusive title by the Parappa the Rapper designer and artist. In it, you take control of Major Minor who leads a marchin?g band across several maps as you attempt to keep the tempo going using the Wiimote. I was in band during high school (no surprise) so I enthusiast??ically bought it when it released eight years ago. The very next day I traded it into GameStop for like four dollars in credit.

Major Minor’s Majestic March is a broken game. It’s a cute concept and the artwork is adorable, but holy hell do the controls on this piece of crap completely fail and fuck over any chance of getting a good score. Like the awful Wii port of Samba de Amigo, the Wiimote has to be barely moved to work, completely ruining the Ha??rold Hill fantasy this game is supposed to take me on. The developers might as well have ??just made it a standard push-button control scheme. At least then I would have been able to beat it.

I’m sure the Destructoid staff and community members will come up with more well-known titles than me to shit on, but I hope to black female Jesus I never play a game as awful as Major Minor’s Majestic March again.

Peter Glagowski

I've never been a fan of "so good it's bad" type of media. I typically can't power through the low points to get to any of the unintentionally humorous moments. I also don't see? the point in watching something so poorly made that you're laughing at the lack of quality. Someone may have actually tried to put effort into that and you're just telling them they are terrible.

So when I say Rogue Warrior is probably the worst game I've ever played, I really mean it. The grotesque use of curse words, the extremely point?les??s hyper-violence, the contrived scenarios and level design; there really isn't a single thing about the game that works.

The PC port is, at least, adequate, but this is a thoroughly unimpressive game that fails to capitalize on the legacy of its real-life inspiration. Not even the ludicrous Mickey Rourke rap song can save this. You just get tired scenarios, a glitchy cover system, and some drab looking visuals for a few ??hours before the game unceremoniously ends and kicks you to that stupid rap.

The only reason I've ever even played this is du??e to getting the Quakecon bundle on Steam in 2011. It came with literally everything?? ID Software and Bethesda related, so now my Steam library has a few black spots on it. I figured what the hell and soon regretted that decision. I want my two hours of life back!

Chris Carter

Last Action Hero, and I have a simple story behind it.

As a kid, sometimes my mom would rent games for me on a special sale week called "Two for Tuesday" at a local video store. We didn’t have much money so it was the perfect way for me to try out tons of games, especially since the pricing wa?s cheaper than Blockbuster even before the BOGO offer.

To sort of toot her horn a bit, my mom was a beast game-picker because she actually listened to my interests (even though she wasn't big on games herself), and asked other trusted confidants for advice, sometimes even consulting magazines. So one day she rented me Last Action Hero, a beat ‘em up on SNES. This one was out of the b??lue and she decided to surprise me because I liked the film and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was...not good.

When ??the time came and she asked me how it was, I still remember getting really sad -- after telling her it was good initially, I couldn’t hold in the white lie anymore when she asked?? me again at dinner if I was still enjoying it. She was even more cautious after that.

Love you mom.

Bass

Whe??n talking about the « worst », it’s always difficult to figure out if we’re meant to talk about games with the most objecti??ve technical issues or just what we liked playing the least. Of course, some people mix the two and say that the games they dislike are objectively the worst, but we don’t talk to these people.

There’s something enjoyable about playing absolutely broken games, as far as I’m concerned. When I first played Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) I didn’t mind its glaring bugs and egregious loading times… I was 12, and at that age, you don’t have any standards yet. But with time I’ve come ??to find the numerous glitches in that game pretty darn enjoyable. That’s a totally different take because you acknowledge the bad parts! Unpolished Unity games hold that ??special kind of charm as well.

I’ve personally had the least amount of fun playing polished games with problematic game design decisions. The “best” example of that would be Paper Mario Sticker Star, which I unfortunately pre-ordered. It was a very polished game, and a nice visual and musical feat for a handheld device. I hated playing it, more than any other game. The game routine consisted of simply fetching randomly scattered real-world objects to progress forward while avoiding all its pointless and time-consuming combat. The game simply required me to stare at it with a blank expression for hours on end. No thought was needed to play the game, and there wasn’t anything in it that got any reaction out of me either. Sticker Star felt like a ??turn-based RPG without the character progression, without the gameplay, and without the story. A big game of nothing.

I was crossing the event horizon, and all I could see before me was pure darkness stretching infinitely.

But not everyone has to mind that. It was a pretty game, with pretty music. Action commands still do wonders to make a turn-based battle system more dynamic, and it’s okay to enjoy something that just lets you shut your brain off after a long day of work. After all, nobody gets to decide what the best and w??orst is, and I'm no exception.

Don’t forget to check out my Game o??f the Year picks when they go live in a couple weeks!

Kevin Mersereau

My Name Is Mayo is by far the worst game I’ve ever played. It’s so fucking bad that it, literally, bribes you to play it. That’s right. It promises one of those coveted PSN platinum trophies, in under 45 minutes, for the?? price of just one dollar. Also, your soul. It wants that too. 

You could be playing any other game on the face of this planet, but still, you find yourself pressing that same goddamn button over and over again in the ho??pes of raising that ever-important gamerscore. 

If you asked me right now, while the memories are still swimming around haphazardly through my skull, I’d tell you this is the definition of hell itself. It takes the thing you love (video games), makes it as utterly unappealing as possible, shows you hilarious pictures of jars of mayonnaise wearing different outfits to ease the transition, and then BOOM! You just spent almost an hour clicking the same stupid fucking button in the hopes that you'll get a digital trophy which you will probably never even look at again. If that’s not hell, then I don&rsquo?;t know what is. 

For the record, I beat this game twice: Once on the PS4 and once on the PS Vita. Approximately thirty minutes after beating it the first time, I was informed that the Vita had a different set of trophies. I could, with enough patience, have yet another easy platinum. 

Weak-willed as I am, y?ou bet your ass that I dropped everything I was doing at that moment just to put this demon to rest. I’m a total fucking trophy whore. I&r?squo;m not proud of it, but it’s true. 

If there’s any good at all left in this world, they will never release My Name Is Mayo on another platform again. Mentally, I don’t know if I could handle it. Despite the mind-numbing repetition, we all know I wouldn&rsq?uo;t resist that urge&he?llip;.  

That sultry, bikini-clad jar of mayonnaise. Staring at me. Teasing me, Beckoning me……..&nbs??p;

“Just one more click. That’s all.&rd??quo;

*****

Now that is a list of some very bad games and also Paper Mario Sticker Star. And I think all of us oldsters played a game or two we ended u?p regretting during "Two for Tuesday" promotions.

The post What is the worst game you’ve ever played? appeared first on Destructoid.

Not feline it

[Normally I'd pooh-pooh someone hoping for a game to be bad, but Manchild makes too damned strong of a case for Bubsy being butt-garbage that I can't make a reasonable argument against him. If you're going to revive a series, why change what it's all about? So sit back and take in all the shitty platforming nostalgia! Wanna see your work on the Front Page? Write a Cblog, dang it! - Wes]

I've been waiting my entire adult life to write an article about a new Bubsy game. I just never knew it until today.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. If the new Bubsy doesn't suck ass, I'm? quitting vide?o games forever.

When I was about eight, maybe nine years old, Bubsy came out on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. I was so stoked to have another animal-based platforming game, one with all the notable 'tude of the Sonic series and all of the charm of a crusty jizz rag in an alleyway. But being young and impressionable, I had no idea that behind it was all the sneering cynicism of a company trying to make a buck off of the decidedly better platforming experience that was Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm not going to lie; these days, I kind of find them both shit for some of the same reasons, the primary one being level design that does not remotely encourage speed in any sort of rewarding fashion. My own game I'm developing is a riff on the concept that you are just going too fucking fast to reasonably react to obstacles in your way; but Bubsy with its poor collision detection and confusing art direction emphasized this in a way not even Sonic could muster.

Oh Sonic. I thought ye were so mighty. I was so enamored by the mysteries of your world back then, so coveted by the colorful glory you brought to my television screen. If anything I now prefer your 3D iterations despite their many flaws because I can see where the hell I'm going at least twenty percent of the time. But back to fucking Bubsy.

Everyone rips on the 3D Bubsy game all of the time, most likely because it wa??s a big pi??le of shit. But believe it or not I have some kind of bizarre fondness for it. I admire the simple polygonal world. I think it's a living nightmare to actually play the game; it feels like my hands are in cement blocks while I wrench and twist the controller in frustration. But its look, most likely not a conscious avant garde artistic decision and more likely unfamiliarity with new hardware being responsible, is appealing to me. But I don't hate it, I just find it simple, old - sort of unremarkable.

I DESPISE the first Bubsy game.

I remember being young and it being one of the first moments of self-awareness I ever had. Where you come to grips with the reality of your own frail existence. Like when your mother first lied in front of you and made you shut up about it, Bubsy was a fraud. I uncovered him, stripped him of his obnoxious white shirt, and saw the pink nipples of fragility and shame beneath. I realized I hated playing the game, every miserable second. That I was just slamm?ing buttons monotonously on the controller on total auto-pilot hoping fun would find my position in the room and?? reach out of the TV screen to touch me. But it never did.

And that's why I want the new Bubsy to be a big piece of shit.

There are expectations we place on things. Everyone wanted Yooka-Laylee to return them to nostalgia of Banjo-Kazooie. Some got that experience, many were disappointed. They didn't ?know quite what it was, perhaps. There was some magical element in the formula that was missing, a dash of some mysterious spice they couldn't put their finger on, and it just ended up being unsuitable to their conditioned, well-refined palette. In the same way Kraft Dinner will never taste the same as it did when they were young, something is just lost as the years go by. ?And my assertion is that an evolution of an experience is more important than a recreation of one.

I think Shantae: Half-Genie Hero is genius precisely because it feels like a refreshing revival of all the things I like from games gone past. You have a brilliant art style that takes full advantage of all the modern improvements in resolution, animation, and color while being familiar enough that you could just as easily transpose the entire thing right back into the 16-bit era and not miss a beat in terms of the gameplay itself. It's not remarkably new or different in what it does, it just does it really goddamn well and manages to stand out above the rest of the retro revival crowd due to really solid, tight design principles. And the music? Oh my fuck. "Mermaid Factory" is masterpiece all on its own, and the soundtrack for that game will forever live in m??y car. What a treat??.

Super Mario Galaxy, which I just picked up today after ten years (!!! I feel old...), is the p??erfect example of how to do a 3D platformer, and should be the golden standard for the genre. It may not give you the big sprawling world to run around in, but the freedom of dimension it offers in the fact that planets and platforms can be thoroughly explored from all angles, and the illusion of wide open space does a pretty good job to emulate the feeling you get when you can run anywhere and do anything? in a 3D space.

No insult to Yooka-Laylee. I like the game, and it feels pretty similar to Banjo. But there is this unfortunate tendency to place all of our hopes and dreams on a new game recapturing an experience in its entirety, the way WE remember it, when that is by most accounts a rare possibility. I have not felt like any Sonic game in recent memory gives me the same feeling of the older Genesis titles, but on the other hand, Freedom Planet gives me the whole Sega experience in a way I didn't expect, evoking the same sensations I get from reliving Sonic, Gunstar Heroes, and Alien Soldier. It's its own thing, and it doesn't entirely feel like any one of those experiences (even if it really is trying to be Sonic in many ways), but it hits the same wavelength for me. It's a vague concept, capturing the feeling of an experience, and that's why so few reboots are really successful; unless you innately and intimately understand that and can recreate it, your game too will feel like a fraud. Your game will feel like a Bubsy, a wolf in sheep's clot?hing hiding a shriveled, flaccid member beneath a shroud of utter lies.

Bubsy needs to find that frequency, but in a different way. It needs to hit the same note it did back when it was parading around as a rival to Sonic despite not being good enough to slurp on the blue salt of that wrinkled patch of skin between his anus and testicles. I think they call this note "the brown sound." A sound at such a pitch as to induce its listening audience to shit themselves uncontrollably. Like a masochist in leather and chains, I want Bubsy to push me to my knees and humiliate me with how goddamn horrendous it is. I want a game to finall?y come out and live up to every expectation ??I have of it, and my list of requests, Accolade, is quite simple.

I want the hit detection to be utter shit. I don't want Bubsy himself to ever shut the fuck up for a single goddamn second the entire game, him constantly spewing one-liners to the point where you can hear the voice actor deliberately taking breaths in between an endless assault of bad puns and corny feline-related plays-on-words. I want it to be more unfair than I Wanna Be the Guy, and more poorly-designed than my six-year-old's levels in Mario Maker. I want it to be artistically incomprehensible, rife with graphical glitches, inconsistencies, and enough freezes and crashes just to be irritating, but not enough to make me give up entirely. The trailer nearly brought me to tears of joy with its bottom-of-the-barrel Unity-flip assets. I nearly came when I saw background textures flickering with all the intensity of teenager performing fellatio. It was like I could feel the rubber pads of Bubsy's? foot pushing down on my back and feeding me sweet nothings as I was whipped raw. "MEEOWW YA LIKE ?DAT? I CALL IT MY 'CAT O' NINE TAILS,' MORE LIKE 'CAT O' NINE LIVES,' AIN'T IT JUST FUCKIN PURRIFIC?"

Take me, Bubsy. Take me into your limp, yielding embrace. Run your claws down my back and make? me remember what it w?as like to be ten and stuck with you for an entire fucking weekend because the video store had a no-return policy.

The post The new Bubsy better suck or I’m quitting video games forever appeared first on Destructoid.

There used to be dinosaurs in Brooklyn

[Ed. note: El Great Burcho published this on February 2007. It's one of our Golden favorites.]

No, I'm not being ironic, or corny, or funny. Neither am I drunk, stoned, nor under the influence of outside forces requiring me to like the Super Mario Bros movie anymore than I already do.

I simply wish to inform you, the reader, as to the reasons why it seems to get an undeservedly bad vibe from the gaming commun?ity at large, and why we should all treat it with a h??ell of a lot more respect than we really do. 

Do you think you're pre??pared for how long this article is going to be?

You have no idea how long this article is going to be.

Hit the jump for a prepared dosage of cinematic excellenc?e, complete with screencaps of my favorite bits.

The special effects.

You've gotta give them credit where credit is due: while the blue screen shots are very easy to spot with my older, wiser, not-eight-years-old-and-therefore-prone-to-believe-everything-I-see-in-a-movie-is-real eyes, the FX shots have so far managed to stand the test of time. Whether we're talking about the CGI shots (like, say, Koopa and Mario disintegrating between both worlds at the very end) or the practical puppetwork (the Goombas), it's hard to complain about the quality of how the effects themselves were pulled off. Hell, nine years later The Mummy even ripped off the "face in the sand" effect seen a??bove.

Bob Hoskins as Mario.

Complain all you want about Luigi's lack of mustache, but you can't deny that casting Bob Hoskins as Mario was a stroke of genius. He nails the accent, and manages to make a well-developed character out of what was essentially written as a two-dimensional cartoon. In case you didn't know, Hoskins -- who also played badass Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- is one of the most versatile British actors still alive today. For God's sake, the man played Iago in Othello, and he had the balls to play a fatass, Italian plumber for a children's movie. And evidently, he didn't even know that Super Mario Bros was based on a video game: after already accepting the job, he went home and ?told his son, who promptly went apeshit and showed daddy the video game. I can only assume that by this point, it was too late for him to back out of the film.

The girl who plays Daisy is really cute.

Look at her. Pouty lips,? big eyes, hot eyebrows...she's like my dream girl, except not cheating on me with a 24-year-old guitarist from an underground Emo band.

Gave John Leguizamo his start.

 I think this is a good thing. Regardless, he wasn't bad as Luigi, and this is the film that allowed him to make the? jump from standup comic to big-screen actor. Granted, it only took a couple of years for him to make the same jump in the exact opposite direction, but you get my poin?t.

Mario does some actual goddamn plumbing.

Mario, the plumber, is actually doing some plumbing that doesn't involve jumping into a pipe. Until Superstar Saga, this was the only evidence we had of the fact that Mario occasionally, you know, works.

Political satire.

In case you can't read, the poster behind Koopa reads "KOOPA THE ENVIRONMENTALIST," and he's holding a chainsaw. It's not exactly J??onathan Swift, but you have to admit that, it's pretty clever viewed in the context of a kids' movie.  In changing Koopa from a king to a president, whilst keeping all of his fascist traits, the writers simultaneously made the film (A) more accessible, and (B) more socially relevant. Plus, we get a lot of cool-looking "VOTE KOOPA" posters, complete with pictures of Dennis Hopper kissing babies. Come on, it's pretty clever.

It taught us Super Mario's last name.

It makes sense that their last names would be Mario, considering you don't usually classify siblings by the first name of the most popular one (e.g., my sister and I are not "The Anthony Siblings") -- but nobody really put two and two together until the movie did it for?? us. Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Say what you will about the canonicity of the f??ilm, many fans (myself included) still accept that Super Mario's last name is the same as his first. You can reject everything else about the film, but this aspect of it has still endured over the years.

The set design.

Sets like those in Super Mario Bros really make me miss the 90's: it was a time when CGI was too expensive and risky to use in great quantities, thus requiring the use of practical sets and special effects. Honestly, look at that city; it's only used in about two scenes, but it's extremely, extremely detailed on a Blade Runner kind of level. Neon lights, huge crowds, big buildings...after films like Mario Bros and Dark City, this kind of set workmanship doesn't exist ?any??more. 

The Goombas.

One of the main critiques of the Mario Bros movie during its release was that it was too scary and adult for kids, but too silly and childish for adults. While I loved the flick as a kid, I can now see what those reviewers meant: the Goombas are pretty fucking creepy. They're about nine feet tall with heads the size of my fist, they never speak in anything but guttural gibberish, and their faces are WAY too expressive. The Goombas are a case of special effects done too well: despite the limited surface area of th?eir faces, the Goombas are capable of e??xpressing pretty much every emotion known to man. This is kind of cool, but also kind of terrifying. I'm not even sure if this is necessarily one of the movie's good points, but it bears mentioning nonetheless.

Some of the dialogue is pretty funny.

Not knee-slapping hilarious, but clever:

Luigi: That’s incredible. There used to be dinosaurs inBrooklyn?

Mario: Don’t get excited, Luigi. There used to be Dodgers, too.

Radio: Be on the lookout for two aliens…

Luigi: What, now we gotta deal with aliens, too?!

Mario: Luigi, we’re the aliens!

Luigi: We are?

(Mario nods)

Luigi: Woah, cool!

Spike (pointing at Koopa): Fascist!

Iggy (also pointing at Koopa): Oppressor of the proletariat!

Koopa (pointing at himself): Guy in charge.

Anthony Anderson's first big role.

I kid, I kid.

The most unintentionally slow chase scene ever filmed.

While most of this list is filled with genuinely great things about this movie, even I can't ignore how bad the sewer chase scene is: after rescuing some kidnapped girls from the Goomba lair, Mario and the hostages grab a mattress and proceed to surf down the frozen sewer pipes, at which point they are pursued by the Goombas. I don't know why, but the way the chase is filmed makes it feel as if the characters are moving at roughly two miles an ??hour -- and sadly, it's the major setpiece of the film (I used to have a glow-in-the-dark-poster depicting this scene). It's hard not to watch the scene and laugh at how utterly unexciting it is, but therein lies the film's accidental genius: you just laughed at how bad?? the chase was! You are unintentionally enjoying yourself! Ha! 

The evil granny.

She comes out of nowhere and doesn't really fit the tone for the rest of the movie, but at one point Mario and Luigi are mugged by a cattle-prod-wi??elding granny who shrieks, "I WANT KOOPA KOINS! I WANT KOOPA KOINS!" She's only around for about ten seconds before Anthony Anderson throws her into traffic, but the granny remains one of the more memorable (and sadly, one of the most well-developed) characters in the film.

The grossest prop/character ever designed.

When Koopa took over, he de-evolved the previous Mushroom King into his primordial state of f?ungus.

Ew.

The entire plot is actually a tweaked version of Hamlet. 

The old Mushroom King (King Hamlet?) is de-evolved (killed) by King Koopa (Claudius), and it's up to an inexperienced hero (Mario/Luigi) to restore balance to the kingdom by avenging the king. Daisy is Ophelia and Spike an?d Iggy are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Except, you know, nobody dies. 

Mario and Luigi's leisure suits.

Lookin' gooooood.

"BOB-OMB!"

Mario stands on a bridge, weaponless and defenseless. King Koopa stands across from him, armed with a flamethrower. What does Mario do? He takes out the small ??windup bomb given to him by the old,  fungi-fied king and proceeds to wind it. Koopa squints, trying to see w??hat he's doing. Suddenly, the realization hits him:

"Bob-omb."

At this point, everyone in the city sees what Mario has in his hands, and they proceed to FREAK THE FUCK OUT. Cars crash, people trample each other in an effort to run away, and chaos generally ensues. All based around a small black ball wearing plastic Reebok sho??es (seriously, the Reebok logo is on the Bob-ombs shoes. I'm not posting a capture of it, you'll have to look for yourself). There isn't a kid alive who saw the movie and didn't want one of these.

Dennis Hopper actually signed up to play a giant, evil lizard.

And I haven't the slightest idea why. Did they lie to him and say he wasn't going to have the silliest hairdo ever put on film? Or did they fail to mention that he spends an entire scene up to his neck in mud? I don't get it, but it's damn entertaining to watch one of the guys who starred in Easy Rider shoot? f?ireballs at a mustachioed Shakespearean actor.

This waiter.

He's at the very beginning of the movie. WORSHIP HIS MULLET AND YE WILL FIND TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Yoshi!

The inclusion of Yoshi is pretty damn cool. He shows up about halfway through the third act,which is when most movies choose to stop introducting new characters. So, if you're a fan of the games, you've been looking for references, waiting for your favorite characters, and so on -- by the time Mario and Luigi don their trademark costumes, you assume that we've already gotten all the Mario characters we're gonna get. But, who is that small, chained dinosaur in Daisy's cell? It's Yoshi! How cool! And he has at least one of his abilities from the game (his long tongue), and he actually uses it to help Daisy (he trips up Koopa's bitch of a wife and helps Daisy escape)! Of cours?e, he gets stabbed in the throat soon after he d?oes so and we never see him again, but it's still the thought that counts. 

The "meteorite bluffing" scene.

At the very end, when Mario and Koopa face off, we've been led to believe that the meteorite piece Daisy keeps as a necklace is the most important item in the movie: by reu?niting the shard with the meteorite that killed the? dinosaurs,  the universe's two parallel dimensions will merge and Koopa will be able to take over Earth. Koopa has it in his mouth and all seems lost, until Mario bitchslaps him in the back of the head and Koopa drops the rock to the street below.

Mario, knowing that he has to give Luigi time to make it to the rock, decides to bluff.?? He takes off one of his shoelaces and holds it in his hand, pretending that he is actually holding Daisy's meteorite necklace. "You want the rock? Come and get it!"

This scene is cool for t??wo reasons. Firstly, it shows that Mario is a pretty smart sonofabitch. Secondly, it allows the viewer to avoid the annoying cliche where the hero and the villain fight over a small, precious object, constantly try?ing to balance their desire to kill one another with their desire to get the object back. Considering Mario and Luigi are in two different places at the film's climax, Mario's decision to bluff allows the viewer to be worried for both characters at the same time: if Mario actually had the rock, we wouldn't care about Luigi, and if Luigi had it, then there'd be no reason for Mario and Koopa to fight. From a screenwriting point of view, Mario's bluff is actually a pretty clever way of avoiding cliche and keeping the suspense up for both protagonists.

The "de-evolution gun" is just a spray painted Super Scope.

Cool, huh? 

Awkward pre-9/11 use of the World Trade Center towers in a destructive capacity! 

Eeeeeeeesh. Moving on. 

The sheer number of references to the video game.

Including, but not limited to: Bertha the fish, Kuribo's shoe, Bullet Bill, Thwomp, Mushroom Kingdom, Toad, Yoshi, the Koopa Kids, Boom-Boom, Wigglers, Snifits, Fry Guy, Ostro, Bob-Omb, Mario and Luigi's use of the peace sign, the mushroom powerup, the climax's recreation of the end boss fight from Super Mario World, Koopa Troopas, and Goombas.

And people complain that the movie isn't f??aithful enough to the video game. Come on.

The "let's make a sequel" ending. 

If there's a more depressing type of ending than the "please let us make a sequel" cliffhanger, I don't know what it is. When Daisy, clad in super-hot battle gear kicks open the door to Mario's flat and declares that "I need your help," the movie joins the ranks of The Italian Job and Serenity as one of those films whose hypothetical sequel had great potential that was never realiz??ed. 

So, there you have it. If you've already seen the movie, I hope you have a new  appreciation?? for it. If you haven't seen it, I hope you do. It's great for nostalgia value, if nothing else. 

The post Why the Super Mario movie is an ??underappreciat??ed masterpiece appeared first on Destructoid.

We're gonna suck all the things

_{[Mash Tactics airs Monday through Friday at 4p.m. Pacific on Dtoid.TV. Watch Rick 'King Foom' Olson play a variety of games, each day with its own theme. With a heavy focus on community and viewer interaction, you can be as much a part of the show as anything else.]}

Mosquitos, ugh. Never content to just nibble on your arm, these little bastards love to target eyelids, earlobes, toes, and exposed ass-cheeks in an effort to drive you completely insane. They always know right where to get you, and no matter how protected you think you are, these sneaky critters will find a way to get past even your best defenses. This evening on Mash Tactics, we're going on a m??ission to figure out why they do these horrible things, and how they get away with it?. 

In an attempt to learn a bit more about the mosquito thought process, we'll be stepping into the virtual mind of one of these winged devils, using the 100% scientifically accurate Mr. Mosquito game mosquito-simulator, as a guide. I'm sure much of value will be learned this evening, and I can only hope that by the end of the show we will hav?e come to understand, and appreciate, the deep, mysterious, and complex life, of one of nature's biggest and most notorious a-holes. 

QotD: Bug bites suck. Tell me all ab??out the worst one you've ever experienced.

''

The post Live sho??w: Sucking it up for science in Mr. ??Mosquito appeared first on Destructoid.

Our tips line has been flooded with emails about how this Italian game, made by a group of students, is supposedly worse than Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing. Is it really?

Gioventù Ribelle (Rebel Youth) is meant to depict some events of the end of Italy's unification period, in honor of the country's 150th anniversary. Made with Unreal Engine 3, its creator Raoul Carbone has said that the? game has an ambitious goal: "To show [...] that an Italian videogame can compete with the big international titles."

Which, by Garibaldi, of course means you don't implement AI, keep the stock Unreal Tournament sound effects, and make it look like a mod of Unreal Tournament 2003. Check some of the other gameplay footage below, courtesy of NeoGAF.

?Whee-heehee, don't fall into the black space at 1:30!

T?o be fair, it l?ooks about as bad as that one obscure first-person shooter in which you shoot American soldiers with Israeli flag shoulder sleeve patches, while traversing rooms filled with Hitler paintings. Or you know, games like that.

But is this really as bad as Big Rigs? I think a game needs to be a real paid product to be worthy of that comparison, and I don't see any 'infinite running backwards' option here. Hell, objects are even solid in this game. Because you should never let him forget about it, let Alex Navarro's immortal review brighten up your day!

You can download and try Gioventú Ribelle yourself right here. Now excuse me as I go watch Visconti's classic The Leopard to flush memories of this game out of my brain. You should do the same, and please keep in mind that this one game doesn't reflect Italy's indie scene or game industry at large, as evidenced by this Italian IGDA chapter's open letter.

[Thanks Cr?es?cenzo, Stefano, Giulio and everyone else who sent this in!]

The post Is this Italian shooter as bad as Big Rigs? appeared first on Destructoid.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior is getting a sequel, despite the first on??e being absolutely dreadful. 

For some reason (possibly due to its generic macho name), the game sold ludicrous amounts of copies in the United Kingdom, getting into the charts and staying there for quite a while. Of course, we don't know how many gamers swiftly returned the awful g??ame, but those first sales are wha??t count, and so we have a sequel. 

City Interactive will be using CryEngine 3 and aims to bring the game to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The first game is currently awaiting a PS3 port in February, which will arrive with a number of fixes to the original code. Whether those fixes make the thing playable remains to be seen. 

This is a sad day for videogames.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior sequel confirmed [VG247]

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Sick of having to touch your touchscreen? Well, those days are over, son! The folk at Fling have used science to their advantage and released a physical analog stick that at?taches to the screen via a suction cup. Yes, that's the most absurd thing ever, but it apparently works!

Just schlunk the little bugger wherever it's needed on the screen and it will transfer your thumb movements to the screen, keeping your iPa??d free of the grease and sweat and bits of pube crumbs that are trapped under your fingernails. 

??It costs $25 and pre-orders open on January 6. I wouldn't persona?lly buy one, but I'd accept one as a gift. Which is actually my attitude toward the iPad itself, so ... 

iPad gets suction-based analog stick solution [VG247]

The post iPad gets a real, physical analog stick … kinda appeared first on Destructoid.

Wow 505 Games, you guys really know how to pick your artists. This is the cover art for a new game from the publisher famous for giving us IL2-Sturmovik and Hotel for Dogs: The Game. It's called Deep Black, and if you saw it on a shelf, you could easily confus???e it with something else.

According to my research (looking on Google for a bit), Deep Black is a third-person-shooter from Russian developer Biart Studio. Despite what the box looks like, it's actually nothing like Platinum Games' Vanquish, as it's centered around underwater combat. In fact, it's got more in common with XBLA's Undertow. 

So, is this an innocent coincidence, or is a certain publisher hoping to pick up some extra?? sales from confused gamers picking up the wrong box? We can't say for sure, but it's pretty amusing either way.

Uh..Haven’t I Played This Game Before? [Gameblurb]

The post Deep Black’s cover art is more Vanquish than Vanquish appeared first on Destructoid.

Fans of Darkstalkers and Capcom vs. SNK have had to patiently stand idle while Street Fighter, Marvel and even Tekken are getting a turn at the Capcom fighting wheel. Unfortunately, they're going to be w?aiting in line for a very long time, because neither series is getting a new game soon.

"Right now we're focused on Street Fighter X Tekken, SSFIV: 3D Edition, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike Online Edition, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and maybe something else somewhere," says US VP Christian Svensson. "That's more than enough fighting products for an audience to digest in the near term without overly ca?nnibalizing each other.

"We also only have so many development resources. Not just any team can make a credible fighting game and we have loads of requests for lots of titles that we don't have the resources to make. While we listen very closely to fan requests, any product decisions have to overlay positively against strategic objectives and be prioritised against product viability. It takes years to make a game (that's multiple years), even an HD Remix, so while we may get to them some day, that day is still ??likely to be a ways off."

Looks like my dream of Capcom vs. Gospel Bill will never happen now.

Sven explains why some projects aren't being?? greenlit [Eventhubs]

The post Capcom: Darkstalkers 4, Ca?pcom vs. SNK n??ot coming soon appeared first on Destructoid.

R??elationships end all the time. Sometimes it's the man's fault, sometimes it's the woman's fault, sometimes it's nobody's fault at -- VIDEOGAMES! VIDEOGAMES DID IT! EVERYBODY LOOK AT THE VIDEOGAAAAAAMES!

According to a survey of 1,500 gamers, videogames like Call of Duty are being blamed as an increasing cause of romantic meltdowns. The poll states that ove??r half of women are "jealous" of their lover's hobby and the amount of t??ime they spend playing. Meanwhile, 5% of gamers admit that their habits have cost them a relationship. 

One in ten males state that they've dumped a date to play games, while seven out of ten regularly annoy their partners by spending all their time with digital representations of big, burly men. A spokesman fo?r researcher One-Poll said,  "It seems like a games console often means the??re are three people in a relationship. It's a bit sad if the virtual world is taking precedence over the real world."

And this, fr??iends, is why I made videogames my job. Now when the wife tells me off for gaming, I just say "I AM DOING A WORKING" and then I get to punish her by throwing DVDs at her like they were ninja stars. That'll learn 'em.

Games 'causing relationship breakd??owns' - Research [CVG]

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I like Alpha Protocol. I l??ike it a lot. So far it's one of my favorite games of the year in a year already full of superb RPGs and promising m??ore to come.

As Destructoid's resident Alpha Protocol apologist, I acknowledge that the game is very rough-hewn (at times almost intolerably so), but in my estimation, what it does right carries far more weight than what it does wrong. But this post isn't about how I disagree with the review, but rather about how I might not be the only Alpha Protocol apologist out there.

Though the franchise is effectively dead thanks to middling reviews and slow sales, the game itself has still managed to move over 700,000 copies since its launch in late May. Those aren't exactly Modern Warfare 2 numbers, but they're a good amount con??sidering that it's a new IP from a (relatively) obscure developer based in mechanics that a??re much more "RPG-like" than some other, more distilled titles that I won't name.

What strikes me, though, isn't the number so much as Sega's behavior. 700k is a lot. Just how high were their sales expectations for Alpha Protocol that they'd definitively choose to cut and run after it "bombed"? Given the strength of their marketing push prior to the release, I'm thinking they were ??hoping for quite a lot. It's still a shame. A lot of much less deserving games have gotten sequels, and now Obsidian won't get the chance to make a more polished follow-up.

What do you think? Did Sega jump the gun and kill off a slow-burn title? Did they, like too many other publishers, put overmuch weight on Metacritic scores and first-week numbers? Or did they just know, in their corporate heart-of-hearts, that Alpha Protocol just sucked so bad?

Sega sold 700,000 copies of Alpha Protocol [Siliconera]

The post Alp??ha Protocol manages sell 700k in spite of itself appeared first on Destructoid.

Earlier this week, we reported that MundoRare has closed its doors forever due to Rare's corpor??ate bullshit. The fan community had planned to reignite its love for the fallen company by creating a free documentary to be distributed on Xbox Live, but the studio shut down the project for? not being "on message."

Today, Rare has officially responded to the closure, in what could be adequately described as a corporately pedestrian statement. Managing to sidestep the criticism a??nd not address the documentary, the British developer simply said it was sorry about the closure.

"Everyone at Rare was very sorry to hear that MundoRare would be closing," states Rare. "We've appreciated all their support and work over the years. We wish everyone involved with the site all the very best f?or the future."

At least Rare didn't try to spin the issue, but then, how can you spin a situation whereby some of your very last supporters on Earth officially gave up on you because you killed their plans to celebrate your?? own history? That's pretty indefensible.&n?bsp;

Rare responds to fan site closure [Eurogamer]

The post Rare responds to fan site’s closure appeared first on Destructoid.

Next week, a "Nickelback Track Pack" is coming to the Rock Ban??d Store. I have nothing else to say about this, so here ar?e the songs in the pack:

• "Burn it to the Ground"
• "Figured You Out"
• "Never Again"
• "Photograph"
• "Rockstar"
• "This Afternoon"

The tracks are going to cost money or something, and will be available for those consoles that Rock Band is available on. Just… whatever.

The post I’m sorry: Nickelback track pack hits Rock Band next week appeared first on Destructoid.

Here it is folks, the latest videogame news, straight from my television set. That is how Bass and Treble will look in Mega Man 10. They'll be made available as playable characters via DLC on April 5th, for the cost of 200 Wii points. Also launching on April 5th is the first of three downloadable Special Stages for Mega Man 10, for a measly 100 Wii poin??t??s. This stage will have it's own unique boss, though nothing else is known about it at this time.

Even later, on April 26th, we'll see the return of Endless Mode (one of my favorite aspects of Mega Man 9) for 300 Wii points. We'll also get not one, but two more Special Stag??es, again for one buck each. Of course, this all only applies to the WiiWare version of the game, and may not apply to the PSN an XBLA ports.

So far, I'm not sure that I like Mega Man 10 as much as Mega Man 9, but there is no arguing that the DL?C is better this time around. Three new stages, and a character that has never before enter?ed the realm of the low-res sprite. That's pretty much "the balls" for a retro-Mega Man fan like myself.

(And yes, I know Forte appeared on the Wonderswan version of Rockman and Forte. That doesn't count.)

MM10 DLC Revealed, Bass Confirmed As Third Playable Chara??cter (UPDATE) [Protodude's Rockman Corner]

The post Bass, Treble, and more Mega Man 10 DLC confirmed appeared first on Destructoid.

Before you get all up in arms over a recent remark made by Stuart Black, the senior designer of Criterion's Black, allow me to elaborate; the Destructoid headline character limit, she is a cruel mistress. Speaking to OXM, Black -- the man, not the game (bummer, I know) -- went off on the c??urrent line-up of shooters.

"There's a lot of cover-based shooters out at the moment. But when a guy hunkers down behind something, you've just got to sit there and wait for him to pop his head up. Pops up, couple of bullets to his head, pops back? down again ... and I'm waiting for him to pop back up again? F***ing boring. I can't be bothered hanging around like that."

I'd say that accurately describes the general cover-based shooting experience. What's so great about Black expressing this rather typical outrage with the genre is that he's working on a shooter himself. Whether the project he's attached to ends up being Black 2 or not, it doesn't matter.

You'd think he wouldn't be in the trash-talking mood unless his game was up to snuff, so it'll be infinitely entertaining to see how that goes. Good l??uck with that!

Black creator: current FPSs are "f***ing boring" [OXM via That VideoGame Blog]

The post Shooters are ‘f**king boring,’ says designer of Black appeared first on Destructoid.

Ubisoft has revealed controversial new plans for anti-piracy measures on all i?ts PC games. Taking a leaf fr??om the Steam and EA playbook, the European publisher has announced that all of its games will require online activation via an Ubi.com account. The only trouble is, Ubi's gone a step further.

On one hand, the new DRM plans will let you install your Ubisoft games on as many computers as you like. You will also be able to run games without a disc, and even save them remotely on Ubisoft's servers. The catc?h is that Ubisoft will require you to always be online when you play your games, in order to keep the products verified. 

While many PC game??rs have a persistent Internet connection, a significant amount do not, and the lack of offline play will surely snub a few customers. The new measures are already generating a potential riot from the always-touchy PC g?amer crowd who believe it's a stupid and presumptuous move to assume gamers are infinitely connected to the 'net.

What do you reckon? A bold and respectable move on the part of Ubisoft, or a misstep tha?t will create a significant backlash? I'll give Ubisoft one thing -- the company's got? some balls, even if it is lacking in the foresight department.

Ubisoft Launches Anti-Piracy Countermeasures [GameSpy]

The post ?All Ub??isoft PC games will require an Internet connection appeared first on Destructoid.

It's almost the end of the year, which means that top ten lists and reflective features are all the rage. Time magazine is among the first to print its definitive top ten games of 2009, and I'm sure you can all guess which game has taken the top slot -- that's right, Velvet Assassin!

I mean, Modern Warfare 2.

Surprisingly, Batman: Arkham Asylum takes second position while DJ Hero somehow manages to be the third best game of the year. Here is the complete rundown of Time's picks. See how much you agree/disa?gree with?? the mag's selection:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
3. DJ Hero
4. Borderlands
5. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
6. Geo-Defense Swarm
7. Scribblenauts
8. Halo 3: ODST
9. Assassin's Creed 2
10. Uncharted 2

An interesting mix of totally predictable selections littered with a few surprises. What do you think of the list? A good top ten? Totally incorrect? Evidence of BIAS? Feel free to hash it out in the comments and let us know w?hat your own picks would have been.

The post Time’s top ten games of 2009 appeared first on Destructoid.

I recently got to play a beta of Super Meat Boy, and it was awesome. I haven't played a game with this much impending death in a long time. So far, it seems the Super Meat Boy world is pretty much made up of five things; you, the walls, th??e floor, giant buzz-saws, and cute little bunnies (who frequently jump into the buzz saws).

Oh, and blood. Lots and lots of blood.

The game's first boss will do well to keep with the game's bloody, saw-filled feel. ??From the looks of it, the thing is basically a giant chainsaw with feet. Why hasn't this been done before? It's such an obviously good idea; a chainsaw with feet. Here is it, 2009, and this is the first ti??me I've seen one.

Want to simulate the feeling of fighting this boss right now? Well, you can start by making chainsaw-sounds with your mouth while squirting ketchup all over your computer monitor. If that's not enough, you could listen to the actual theme music for the boss, which can be found right here. If you really wanted to go for it, I guess you could do all three. Just don't let anybody c??atch you while you're at it. They might think you're weird. 

[via Meat Boy's Twitter]

The post You will not survive this: Super M??eat Boy boss ??reveal appeared first on Destructoid.

According to a NeoGAF post from a Visceral Games employee- "It is a shame that no one bought this (Dead Space Extraction). As much as everyone made fun of Frank Gibeau's 'experiment', it will actually influence the SKU plan with respect to the Wii". So I guess we'll be seeing less games like DSE ??on the Wii from here on out, but is that? a bad thing?

Dead Space Extraction is a good game with a few fantastic moments, but it's missing a lot of stuff that has proven to sell "M" rated games, on the Wii or otherwise. For example, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (which sold over a million copies) had a lot more content than DSE, despite being in the same genre. Likewise, DSE lacks the creative magnificence of No More Heroes (which sold well enough to get an awesome looking sequel), as well as the name recognition of the Call of Duty games (two of which sold over a mil on the Wii) and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (which also is a Wii million seller).

So I say to EA, you're right, don't make more games like DSE. If you want people to buy a $50 game in this highly competitive market, make sure it's a creative masterpiece, over 12 hours long, and/or carries a big name brand. No more of this "Our market research has shown that on-rails games are Wii friendly!" crap. Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles ??has proven ??to be the exception, not the rule, when it comes to sales in that genre.

[via Gonintendo]

The post Visceral Games bummed about Dead?? Space Extraction s?ales appeared first on Destructoid.

When Two Worlds II was announced, it is said that Jesus Christ himself wept tears of purest piss and that every?? virgin girl in the world had her hymen shattered into a thousand bloodsoaked pieces. It was as if Adolf Hitler had raped The Devil and his seed had helped birth the very essence of Sin. What I'm trying to say is that Two Worlds was f*cking awful, and a sequel is the last thing anybody w?anted.

Two Worlds II developer Real?ity Pump is using the RPG follow-up to debut a new engine called GRACE, which will deliver a "breathtaking experience." Considering the last game made me pull out and eat my own hair in madness and rage, I must be forgiven for remaining somewhat skeptical, but you know what? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. 

So here we are then, brand new screens for Two Worlds II, a sequel to possibly the worst RPG of this generat??ion. Will it be good? Let's wait and find out!

Las Vegas, October 19th 2009 – It’s time again to return to the world?? of Antaloor. Fulfill your carnal curiosity by checkin??g out four brand new screens directly from the RPG masterpiece, “Two Worlds II.”  The game’s developers, Reality Pump, have created a revolutionary new engine called GRACE, and these screen shots give testimony to the engine’s capabilities.  

A trip to the swamps will demonstrate the breathtaking experience that Two Worlds II has to offer.  The result of Reality Pump’s extensive technical development, the game’s environment has been painstakingly created to fully immerse the player into the Antaloorian universe.  For example, the marshy ground sucks at the character’s feet?? hindering his movement more so then if he was on dry land.  Additionally, dynamic sounds have been constructed to further demonstrate the game’s attention to detail.    When the hero steps into the marshy ground, he will hear a terrifyingly disgusting squishing noise that will make the player cringe with delight.

Luckily, there are many wooden paths and stakes placed throughout the swamp, which will allow the player to traverse the treacherous terrain with more ease.  However, whether you can use the comfortable paths and bridges without paying a toll depends on the disposition of the l??ocal residents – and y?ou better believe that “Have a good day!” does not pass their lips on a regular basis. But let’s face it…would you be bubblin’ over with joy if you had to wake up every day to drizzling rain and tendril of swamp mist?

The post Two Worlds II gets screens as all Earth’s babies cry out appeared first on Destructoid.

Painkiller: Resurrection? How embarrassing -- I forgot that game even existed. This may or may not have anything to do with the action-oriented first-person shooter getting about zero marketin?g. Just sayin', guys.

The game does apparently exist and it's almost ready for release, darn it. Did any of you know Painkiller: Resurrection is launching in a little more than two weeks? Unti?l earlier tonight, it was news t?o me. Anyway, that's not important.

What is important, however, is that it can be pre-purchased on Steam. Doing so will not only save you money, but it'll also net you Painkiller: Black Edition (yes!) and Painkiller Overdose (/shrugs) for no extra cost.

Steam, you may be totally evil and out to kill my family, but damn you know how to sell me?? things I didn't?? even know I wanted.

The post Pre-purchas?e P?ainkiller: Resurrection, get free games appeared first on Destructoid.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers... I still can't get over that name. It's got three more syllables than Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, the game I previously thought would remain champion in the "unnecessarily long title" contest for years to come. I believe in Capcom though. Hopefully in a few years, we'll get Super Street Fighter IV Versus Resident Evil Turbo Zombie Warfare HD Wii Edition or something. That would be a triump indeed.

Anyway, back to the news. After the jump, you'll find videos depicting 16 seconds of break-dance violence and a little over a minute of a beachfront fantasy in The Crystal Bearers. It's videos like this that make me think this game is going to flop, despite how fun the game looks. I fear that Final Fantasy fans (of which there are many) will be turned off by the game's pervasive sense of humor and SD graphics, and non-Final Fantasy fans (of which there are even more) will be turned off by the, y'know, Final Fantasy-ness.

I guess I'll have to wait until Kwanzaa to see if I'm right. 

[via GoNintendo]

The post ??Break-dance fighting and beaches in the Crystal Bea??rers appeared first on Destructoid.

Today is a grim and sorry day in the history of Xbox Live, as the worst first-person-shooter to ever grace the Xbox 360 has a demo. You too can now sample a mere fraction of the horror that inspired our 1/10 review and caused me so much pain ?I was almost in tears by the time the credits rolled.

Want to know why there aren't many civil war games out there? This title, with its love of single-shot, slow-loading muskets, will quite definitively s??how you why. It is the metaphysical concept of pain made real and reproduced in plastic disc form, and I do not wish good things upon those who inflicted it upon the world. As far as I'm concerned, the creation of this game is akin to a major terrorist attack on the United States and the developer should be tried for treason. 

So yeah, enjoy the demo!

The post Darkest of Days darkening Xbox Live with a demo appeared first on Destructoid.

If you have a Wii and love Japanese horror, then you're no doubt interested in checking out Ju-On: The Grudge. However, the box art makes it look like the worst game to have ever existed. The American cover art is alright, save for its "Haunted House Simulator" tag line, but the European box? Oh my God, the European box ...

Just look at it! That's a Japanese horror game, being represented by a ludicrous white woman peeking out from behind a sofa as if this were the cover to a Goosebumps novel. Seriously, what is this nonsense? Where's the big scary Japanese female's eye and long black hair that every Japanese horror n??eeds these days? Why does this look like the DVD ??case to a Nickelodeon show?

I hope it really is psychologically messed up and thoroughly scary. Anybody buying this for their kids thinking it'll be like Are You Afraid of the Dark? would be in for a total treat.

The post Ju-On’s sh*tty European box art appeared first on Destructoid.

Badass community member and all around swell fellow unstoppablejuggernaut spotted a nifty gadget on YouTube. It's called the GameGun and it's a gun for games??. Nothing new there, right? Wrong. It's more than just a fancy light gun it's got motion tracking, meaning that your movements are what appear on screen. Turn left, you turn left. It doesn't use drivers, so it works with every game out there. The video above has what appears to be the inventor of the gun and owner of Blackh??all, the "company" behind the the GameGun, showing the very cool looking tech off.

I'm a bit dubious about the "company" as their website looks like it was put together by, well, a guy in his garage and because the video is of a guy in his garage. Plus, you should never fully trust someone who sucks at videogames, and he ?seems to die a lot. However, since it is a guy in his garage the tech most likely works as well as advertised since faking it might be difficult, and he says its compatible with every gaming system out there now. In fact if you disregard the low budget of the GameGun's "sales pitch" I'd say its a definite DO WANT item or at least a DO WANT TO TRY IT OUT item. In the video below he also discusses how the GameGun will have a projector mounted into it in order to project the game onto a wall or screen for playing. No price point y?et, but I can't imagine it being cheap when it drops some time before the holiday season.

(Update: Movement is handled by the keyb??o??ard built into the gun it seems.)

The post Awesome wireless game gun won’t make you better at games appeared first on Destructoid.

If a recent ad posting on Gamasutra is to be believed, Silicon Knights is looking for fresh talent to work on a game, and that game may very well be Too Human 2. So far, all the world's babies have not cried out in tandem, so until that happens, the sequel has most definitely not been confirmed.

SK is looking for someone with experience in?? a range of game systems, "including combat, UI, inventory, progression, levels, NPC actions, play balance and rew??ard schemes." They will also need to possess "familiarity with the fantasy and science fiction genre and role-playing games."

I can feel the bile rising in my throat as I type this, dreading the thought of yet more Too Human in the world. I hear the original design documents have been sealed in a twelve-fo??ot-thick case made of alternating concrete and lead layers, before being shot into space. 

Lord only knows of the wrath that Too Human 2 would wreak upon the world.

The post Jo??b advertisement smells like Too Huma??n 2 development appeared first on Destructoid.

I have to hand it to Centauri Productions, developers of Memento Mori, a new adventure game for the PC. Obscure (and often unremarkable) PC games are a dime a dozen, but they managed to catch my attention, owing mostly to the morbidly cool-sounding title.

The premise is a good, old-fashioned conspiracy: some precious works of art get stolen, and y?ou have to Da Vinci Code your way through Europe, only to find a chilling religious secret that will likely rock the base of civilization. Y'k??now, basic stuff.

The premise might be a little cliché, but it's hits a sweet spot -- we all like conspiracies and shady religious orders. Besides, Got Game Entertainment (Memento Mori's publisher) released a cinematic trailer today that's pretty slick to boot. It doesn't show much gameplay -- which consists, I'm sure, of picking things up and looking at them bemusedl??y -- but it sets the tone nicely.

Memento Mori was supposed to be out on July 7th (which was, uhh, earlier this week), but, according to an e-mail from Got Game, it's being sorted out now. But, hey, if you dig on PC adventure games, you can't really go wrong for $30.

The post Memento M??ori: the art of trailers and a flaky? release dates appeared first on Destructoid.

A new study of Metacritic data suggests that Ubisoft, aka the Activision of Europe, is the least consistent publisher when it comes to game quality, coming bottom of the pile, whil??e Rockstar triumphed as the best.

The study assigned points value?s to different Metacritic scoring brackets. Those games avering 90-100 review scores received 2 points, while games with a Metacritic score of 80-89 got 1 point. 70-79 received no points, 60-69 got -1 point and anything under that got -2 points. Not?? exactly rocket science, and I hate this idea that games rated in the seventies receive nothing (since it's a good score as far as I'm concerned), but you can get a general idea of how each publisher fares. 

Rockstar was branded the most consistent publisher with 19 points over 23 titles. By incredibly stark contrast, Ubisoft's 237 games dragged the publisher down to a score of -148. Unsurprisingly, Activision didn't do a lot better, with a shameful -138 points. Looking at this, I don't know if "least consistent" is an accurate description, however. It seems Ubisoft and Activision are consistently crap.

Of course, Ubisoft and Activision make a lot of money despite churning out garbage, so this is hardly going to make them weep with shame. However, this study has merit simply because I get a chance to insult Ubisoft and Activision ??along with t??he bargain-bucket, exploitative trash that they dare to call "videogames." That, my friends, is worth more than any Metacritic score.

The post Ubisoft is the ‘least consistent’ publisher according to Metacritic appeared first on Destructoid.

One of the main sore points about Sonic Unleashed was The Werehog, a new alter ego for Sonic that helped to represent everything that is wrong with Sonic Team's continued abuse of Sega's once-loved mascot. Naturally, since most people hated it, Sonic Team has suggested that The Wer?ehog coul??d return, continuing the studio's commitment to making everybody sad.

"In principle, I think that the users are always right," states Sonic and the Black Knight director Tetsu Katano. "They're the ones paying the money and playing the games. If they don't enjoy it, they're not going to buy it. I don't think that producing the Werehog w??as a mistake per se, but there were a lot of things we could have done better if we had more time and resources.

"If I think of any ideas then Sonic Unleashed 2 will be the time fo?r that, so I don't really have an answer for that. Bu?t you will see the Werehog again."

No announcement has been made regarding a Sonic Unleashed 2, so this is all hypothetical. Of course, it was never the Werehog that was the trouble with Sonic Unleashed. It was the piss-poor level design and unforgivable forced replay of stages. Don't worry though kids, I'm sure Sonic Team will make sure we see plenty of that as well.

The post Sonic Team threatens us with m?ore Werehog action in Sonic ?Unleashed 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to panic! In seven days time, Square Enix will make an announcement ... and it will have SOMETHING to do with FINAL FANTASY XIII! OH GOD!

Actually, it's not that exciting, but with so many publishers pulling the lame "countdown" gimmick on us, it's getting increasingly difficult to make it sound interesting. Square Enix has another of those enthralling teaser sites that the games industry loves so much, this one bearing the prophecy: "The countdown has begun. A new vis?ion will soon be revealed to the world. Register now to ensure you're there?? for the unveiling."

What could this mean? With it being Square Enix,?? I'm willing to bet that it'll be something stupid, but if the publisher would like instead to instead announc??e something that isn't disappointing, I certainly won't stand in its way.

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