While I was playing the demo for the upcoming PSP God of War game I kept coming back to the same thought… I can’t believe this is running on PSP hardware! The graphics look just like the PS2 game and there were no slow-downs or hiccups to break up the action.

God of War: Chains of Olympus is the first PSP game I’ve played where I really felt like the limits of what the PSP can do were being pushed. That isn’t to say it’s the best PSP game I’ve played, just that is seems to push the hardware the most. Though I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t one of the top of the crop as far as the portable platform goes. Continue Reading »

So this little hands on is going to cover the gamut from cool to suck. The Wii-Zapper? Cool. Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles? Suck.

First up is the the Wii-Zapper. While there’s no disputing the fact that it’s really just a hunk of plastic that you attach your controller too, it does work well and it does what it’s supposed to. It does a fine job of hiding the wires between the nunchuck and Wii-mote and your forward hand rests comfortably with your finger on the trigger.

Continue Reading »

Dan’s back from E3, yet still sick so we make him do most of the talking this week telling us grand tales of hotel-hopping and rubbin’ shoulders with some of the elite gaming journalists.

This week we talk about:

• Whatcha’ Been Playin?
• Dan at E3
• Our Favorite E3 News
• Upcoming Releases

We seem to be having problems with the in-browser player (Chipmunk voices FTW!) we’re working on it but the downloaded file or through iTunes is working just fine.

It seems like we might not be able to get the in-browser player working for this episode. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Download Episode 16

One of the bigger suprises for me at this E3 was the lack of available to play games around. Take Bioshock for instance, the games wasn’t playable on the show floor even though it’s being released in just a few weeks. Maybe it was playable behind closed doors, I don’t know… the didn’t want to let me in.

Of course that wasn’t true for everyone, and and there are some hands-on reports floating around, like this video from G4 as well as a first hand account from Gaygamer.

I’ll be honest, I was a tad annoyed I didn’t get to check out the game in person but I still can’t wait to play it.

This video really only give you a small taste of how awesomely awesome this freaking game was. At first I didn’t get it cause the room was loud and I couldn’t hear the game… then I noticed the headphones they had provided to go with it. Once I slipped those babies on the entire experience changed. That’s right, experience. This is one of those rare games that is way more than the sum of it’s parts. Everyday shooter is no joke.

True it’s Geometry Wars crossed with Every Extend Extra with a heaping amount of Rez on top. And let’s be honest here, that’s really enough in and of itself to be awesome. But those elements come together to make something incredible, and I can tell you know that this game was a wonder to behold. If I didn’t already own a PS3 this game would be a system seller, that’s how much I dug it. Continue Reading »

For years scholars and geiuses have debated the most important topics of our time: Does god exist? What’s the meaning of life? Can a digital version of Jenga possibly be better than regular Jenga? Well we can now finally move past the hypothetical phase and into cold hard reality (at least on that last question).

During last week’s E3 I had the chance to try out an alpha (read: very early) build of Jenga for the Wii, and I’m both happy and sad to report that it has a lot of potential, but it’s got A LONG way to go. Playing the game is simple, you put the pointer on the block you want to move, squeeze the buttons and use the Wii-mote to move the piece around. Some pieces move easier than others naturally and when you get a piece out you simply place it on top.

Since it was such an early build the one thing that glaringly needs help is the physics. It may seem like a simple Jenga game but anyone who’s played it in real life knows the game all comes down to physics and gravity. Pieces lean on each other and are inter-dependent of one another. Without a very solid physics engine in the background there’s no way the game is going to know what pieces are set tight and loose, and how those relationships change with each piece removed. Continue Reading »

As opposed to live-to-tape. Think of it as a liveblog that gets published after the show’s over. Not the ideal situation but I just can’t type that fast.

I’m sitting here waiting for the Ubisoft press conference to start and I’m really wanting to be blown away be Assassian’s creed today. I was underwhelmed by what I saw of the game at Microsoft’s press conference for a game that’s shipping this year.

During the demo bodies hung in the air, dropped items disappeared and the game just seemed really rough. There was also some weird digital looking (intentionally mind you) scanned of crowd members going on, which lends credence to the whole “does it really take place during the crusades or is it some time travel thing” that some of us have been wondering about.

Any way you slice it this game is so anticipated that not even Jade Raymond will be able to get us to accept a substandard product.

And away we go….! Continue Reading »