Classic advertising always makes me smile, and nothing’s better than when a company nails it in a way that makes you pine for the era it was made in. I’ll be damned if I don’t want to place my glass bottle of sparkling lemon lime beverage on a Pac-Man cabinet. Thanks 7-Up!

I’m a big believer in comedy games. There haven’t been many, but it’s an interesting concept. We’ve already established that a game can make you cry (mission accomplished, Trip) — but can a game make you laugh? It’s the question Wideload Games poses in Hail to the Chimp, a party game that claims to be rife with political comedy. But is it really a rib tickler, or should it be yanked off the stage with a Vaudevillian hooked cane?

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Checking Out the Competition is a new feature that you’ll see popping up from time to time, wherein the staff at theBBPS takes a look at what else is out there in the world of games journalism.

Out of all the sites I frequent on a daily basis, GamesRadar has to be the newest to be added to that rotation. Owned by UK-based Future Publishing (the same people behind such print magazines as Official Nintendo Magazine, PC Gamer, and the online website CVG), it serves a role not unlike the role 1UP plays to the Ziff Davis group. A central destination for the readers of their various game magazines, GamesRadar posts a good mixture of new content and content reprinted from their print publications. For example, even though it first appeared in PC Gamer UK GamesRadar features the brilliant piece 365 Days of Free Games, an article that (as the title suggests) offers a free game for every day of the year. On a side note, I feel inclined to call this one brilliant as I was thinking of running the same article. When I came across theirs, I put mine on ice.

At the same time GamesRadar is promoting some fantastic original content, like their current 7 Out of 10 Week, celebrating mediocrity in gaming. Many of the other things you’d expect to find in a comprehensive gaming site — news, previews, reviews — are all present. The site also offers a fairly comprehensive database of cheat codes, not unlike GameFAQS.

On the downside there’s a bit of advertising overkill going on. Pop-ups and those annoying graphics that take up your whole browser for a second are rampant. It’s a shame, because asides from that GamesRadar offers a pretty solid experience. Everything from editorial pieces like those mentioned about to exclusive coverage about new games (check out their fantastic Fallout 3 interview here) is fresh and original. Whether you’re looking for an alternative to Gamespot, IGN or 1UP, or a new site to add to the rotation, make sure to check out what GamesRadar has to offer.

If you would like to have your site or blog featured on Checking Out the Competition, just drop me a line: jimmycanuck at gmail dot com.

Sony’s been teasing their upcoming PSN game The Last Guy for awhile now, but they hadn’t really given away what the game would be about. At the same time they’ve been touting their love affair with Google. The addition of PS3 Google Search, the direct uploading feed to YouTube, the use of the Google Media Server — all awesome results of the Sony/Google love-in.

The Last Guy seems to be the first playtime experience to combine the quality of Sony gameplay with the sheer ingenuity of Google. The game has you guiding survivors of a zombie holocaust through the streets via Google Maps.

Even better, it’s only $5. The Last Guy will be hitting the Japanese PlayStation Store by the end of July and hopefully the US soon after. At 5 bucks I think I may have to cave and get a yen card so I don’t have to wait.

There’s been a lot of chatter on the internets these past few days about the drastic reduction of zombies in the Wii version of Dead Rising, Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop. I think the above picture says it all.

Also — flash photography will not be permitted Willamette Parkview Mall this time around.

The recent hype surrounding the upcoming wii-welease of Dead Rising got me thinking. Sure the original game had it’s potential, but the whole thing was a poorly executed mess. Why in the hell would they want to port this monstrosity? Why would Capcom want to bring Dead Rising back from the dead? (see what I did there?)

And then I really did some thinking. I can’t remember a game that got my panties in a twist more than Dead Rising did. Not because it was bad, but because I wanted it to be so good. And at it’s core it was. Shower heads through zombie skulls? Lawnmowers munching up undead parts? A fucking sword? It had everything. I even loved the photography. But then when it came to the mission structure — the glue that should have held all of this quality gameplay together, Capcom stumbled head first into a weed whacker. Save points were damned near inaccessible (it shouldn’t take me half an hour to get back to one when I want to shut the damned game off), and worse yet, if you missed a timed story event it was gone. After that happened (and it always happened) the game was just about hacking zombies until your thumbs bled for no real reason. I couldn’t imagine a situation that pissed me off more — gameplay I loved shattered by paint-chip snacking developers who didn’t realize that games are supposed to be fun.

They say the new Wii version may fix a lot of this, and based on that alone I’m eager to check it out. Still, if the screens are any indication this version is going to be a port that completely misses the point. Swarms of zombies are scary. Gaggles of zombies are not.

So what about you — what game got you so mad you wanted to chuck the disc through the developers undead skull?

When I’d first heard that a Bourne game was on the way, I was a tad skeptical. When I’d heard Matt Damon refused his likeness, I was beyond skeptical. When I heard that it was going to distance itself from the films and focus on the books, a skeptical bird flew through my window and hit me in the face, knocking me clear out of my skeptical chair. But then I’d starting hearing things — good things — and my skepticism turned to curiousity. So how did it play out?

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