Other Games

Back in the 90s, I was VERY much into anime and Japanese pop culture in general. And I had a GameBoy Color Pikachu (where IS that?), and hung out at the anime store in Fremont, California, eagerly looking for new games. That’s how I came across Sega’s Puyo Puyo for the first time. Puyo Puyo is in the class of games inspired by Tetris. Stuff falls from the top of the screen, you fit it into stuff on the bottom of the screen, stuff disappears, don’t let stuff reach the top of the screen. ...

SCEA wants all you PS3 owners who tried their “Home” virtual lobby once and then never tried it again that if you log in from May 14-21, you can get a new, limited edition, never to be offered again, Chamber apartment with trees, waterfalls, and skeeters. Well, maybe not the skeeters. Read all about it!

When I’m running around the mean streets of the Rogue Isles in City of Heroes, you know what I hate the most? Nah, not the dons of the Family. Not even Longbow. It’s those damn tourists from Paragon City. And NOW I find that the heroes themselves are thinking about slumming their dark sides on my turf? Sente hopes the expansion adds more depth to the Mission Architect, allowing real choices instead of “if it moves, kill it. If it doesn’t move, harvest it.” gameplay so common in CoX missions. Syp sees this as a necessary move to separate the game from Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Spinks wonders why it took so long for such a basic premise as heroes and villains swapping sides to make it into the game. Hudson hopes the expansion will deal with City of Heroes’ boredom factor. ...

It’s a gray, rainy day today, perfect time to stay home and game a little. Could be a perfect time to level up a few alts in City of Heroes. Zubon of Kill Ten Rats uses the new Architect system to design the perfect opponents for his new characters and bring them to level 20 in a single mission. Ogrebears has some issues with SOE’s partnership with ZAM.com to give that third party website more access to the game data than any other website, ever. It’s not so much that they have been set above EQ2i, LootDB, EQTraders and such, but because that it seems poorly designed and incomplete. ...

My guild – on the Nintendo DS? Well, no, it’s a Japanese RPG, though, with a pedigree that stretches back through some of the best JRPGs and anime ever written. Steampunk. Zeppelins. Customize your airship. Even without the name, this would be a must buy. But WITH the name – total WIN. Kotaku has a lot more about the game.

The founders and developers at Flagship Studios-Seattle, makers of the doomed but wonderful Mythos MMO, formed Runic Studios from the phoenix ashes of Flagship and have come back to life with the Mythos dream clenched in their fiery beak. Um. Too flowery? These two screen shots are from Torchlight, an action-adventure RPG in the style of Diablo and Mythos. Click on them for the full-sized originals. Runic Insider correspondent Taylor Balbi, ex-community manager for Mythos, saw a preliminary build of Torchlight at the recent Game Developers Conference, and has a long, long feature list for the game. ...

Ripped right from the refrigerator door, Crayon Physics Deluxe answers the age-old question, “What if those drawings I made in kindergarten were REAL? And I had to guide a ball around them to collide with stars for points?” The developer has just released the beta/demo, so it’s only the first two worlds and a partially functional level editor, but it’s cool to think of inventive ways to bring your drawings to life as incredible, crudely-drawn, machines. ...

Frogster released yesterday a new Spellborn-based web mini-game. It’s region free, so anyone in the world can play it… and since our Acclaim beta is a week overdue (raise your hand if you’re surprised. What, no hands?), this is about the best we can do to sate the Spellborn craving… I dunno if this will work on my blog, but it might! You can also play it at its official home if you like.

Seems weird to be writing about the Xbox New Xbox Experience because, after all, I don’t have an Xbox… but my son does :) And when he returned home from college last night for Thanksgiving, he came toting his 360. And so I got my first look at the NXE. First off – he complained that he couldn’t find ANYTHING any more. We eventually got the thing hooked up to the home network again, but what once was a simple switch between wired and wireless was something that he instead struggled with for an hour – before it suddenly started working. No idea why. ...