buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

September Releases

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Lately, I’ve been trying to list every game coming out for the major consoles and the PC. I think from now on, going forward, I’m just going to list the games I think would be of interest to the buttonmashing-dot-com audience. I’m guessing the majority of you guys and gals aren’t interested in Pony Palz 3. Let me know if I’m missing my target audience.

Without further ado, the month of releases:

Xbox 360 banner
Week of September 2nd
Infinite Undiscovery
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise – I gave the original Viva the College Try but i never really did it for me. The kids sure loved it, though.
Warhammer: Battle March
NFL Head Coach 09
FaceBreaker

Week of September 9th
NHL 09
TNA Impact!
Zoids Assault
NHL 2K9

Week of September 16th
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Rock Band 2 – I probably won’t be getting it. Will you?
Armored Core: For Answer
Pure
Battle Fantasia

Week of September 23rd
LEGO Batman
BAJA: Edge of Control
Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts ’09 – I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again — how does this game continue to sell? Who is BUYING IT?!

Week of September 30th
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Legendary
Guilty Gear 2: Overture
Samurai Warriors 2: Extreme Legends

Wii banner

Week of September 2nd
Rapala’s Fishing Frenzy with Fishing Pole – “DUDE! Did you check out the new Rapala Fishing game on the Wii? It is intense! I landed a twelve pound large-mouth last night. It was intense!
Defendin De Penguin – The assault on our children’s grammar continues.

Week of September 9th
Active Life Outdoor Challenge
The Price is Right
NHL 2K9 – A slapshot with the Wiimote actually sounds like a fun time.
Hell’s Kitchen – Being berated by Gordon Ramsay is a dream of mine. This is my dream fulfilled.
Ten Pin Alley 2 – Here’s another sequel I missed the original on. Bummer.
Cabela’s Legendary Adventures

Week of September 16th
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility
Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2 with Dance Mat – Hottest Party 2?! Squee!
Zoo Hospital
Offshore Tycoon – Great. We’re ruining our kids grammar and teaching them to be criminals.
Crazy Golf
TNA Impact!
Ocean Commander

Week of September 23rd
LEGO Batman
Wario Land: Shake It!
Samba De Amigo – I never played the original, but I’ve heard great things about it. Why not pick up some Wii Maracas and go whole hog.
SimCity Creator
Lost In Blue Shipwrecked
Pitfall: The Lost Expedition– Don’t we have enough Pitfalls? (That is a rhetorical question)
Yamaha Supercross
Brothers in Arms: Double Time

Week of September 30th
Carnival Games – Mini Golf
We Cheer – Winner for the creepy boxart of the month.
Monster Lab
Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune
Brave: A Warrior’s Tale

Nintendo DS banner

Week of September 2nd
Defendin De Penguin

Week of September 9th
Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir
The Price is Right – Will it be hosted by Bob Barker or Drew Carey?
Spore Creatures
Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise – Is it just me or is this a poorly titled game?
Hell’s Kitchen
Lock’s Quest – I think this is the first game I’ve listed so far that I’m actually interested in picking up. RPG and tower defense all in one.

Week of September 16th
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen – Okay, make that two in a row. Dragon Quest on the DS should be amazing.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Line Rider 2: Unbound
Mazes Of Fate – Winner of the cool boxart of the month.

Week of September 23rd
My Japanese Coach
LEGO Batman
Kirby Super Star Ultra
Disgaea DS – Another Sony mainstay on the DS.
SimCity Creator
Shaun The Sheep – Man, even commercial mascots are getting their own games!

Week of September 30th
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Monster Lab
ZUBO
Di-Gata Defenders

PC banner

Week of September 2nd
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Flatout: Ultimate Carnage
Spore – It’s coming. Are you ready?

What’s point of listing anything else this week?

Week of September 9th

Week of September 16th
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Crysis Warhead
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
The Witcher Enhanced

Week of September 23rd
LEGO Batman
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
Guild Wars Trilogy – I can wholeheartedly recommend Guild Wars, if you haven’t played it before.

Week of September 30th
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel – Sacred is a game I’ve always been intrigued in but have never tried. Any sacred players out there?
Etch a Sketch – I think this is another sign of the apocalypse.

PS3 banner

Week of September 2nd
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
FaceBreaker
NFL Head Coach 09

Week of September 9th
NHL 09
TNA Impact!
NHL 2K9

Week of September 16th
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Armored Core: For Answer
Pure

Week of September 23rd
LEGO Batman
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway

Week of September 30th
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Legendary

PSP banner

Week of September 2nd
Brave: A Warrior’s Tale

Week of September 16th
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Yggdra Union
B-Boy

Week of September 23rd
LEGO Batman
Valhalla Knights 2

Not a bad month for games. Nothing blockbuster except for a couple DS titles and Mercenaries 2. Are you planning on picking anything up this month?

Ubiquity: It Will Change the Web

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I’m not going to explain it. Try it.

It has been the rage all day on the web. I’ve been using it off and on and it’s been amazing.

Think of it as a simple way to use anything from anywhere on the web and use it for almost whatever you want. If I was Microsoft, I would be shaking in my boots. When this is added to Firefox–and it will be, it will revolutionize how we share information with one another.

Now, back to gaming.

In [Nat’s] Hands: Too Human Among Others

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Let the teasing commence.

Getting this title has raised an interesting dilemma for me regarding professional game reviews. It’s something I intend to address in the next couple of days once I get my thoughts about it in order.

The game? Forget the story and all the online drama. Just play it to play it. You know, like Pac Man. I think if the game just said, “There are a bunch of bad monsters threatening humanity. Kill them.” It would have been fine.

Other than constant drops, the three co-op games I’ve played so far have been fun.

Since getting the PS3, I’ve been itching to play some PS2 games I’ve missed (either playing or missed playing). I picked up Shadow of the Colossus and Rogue Trooper.

Rogue Trooper is one of the most underrated, insanely fun games I’ve ever played. (UPDATE: I found this while googling. Holy crap, on the Wii!)

Plugging In

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I’m finally plugging back in after a week of almost complete disconnectedness. The missus and I took a week-long vacation with no kids and no connections. The only communication I had were brief posts to my Twitter via text messages from my cell phone. I never checked email, the site, nothing. It felt great. Untethered and fancy free.

But now it’s back to the real world. I’m behind on my emails and what-not around here, so if you’ve emailed me recently — I’m getting to it, I promise. I’m dreading the pile of work awaiting me tomorrow. Not fun. On top of all that, my daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow. Things are going to be crazy around these parts for a little while.

But after the trip, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get back to normal. At least until the next trip.

[2 Minute Review] Bully: Scholarship Edition

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Can an ape work his way to the top of the school social pyramid?

Yes, and the journey is satisfying.

DO: Crack heads, kiss girls and uh…well, attend classes, and run from authority figures to be the big man on campus

TYPE: Third-person sandbox

PLATFORM: 360 (reviewed here) and Wii

PRICE: $29.99

MEAT: You play as Jimmy Hopkins—misfit, intellectual, romantic, mascot, leader, and above all, bully. There are four cliques in the school and they all hate each other. Your job is to unite the geeks, preps, greasers, and jocks under one banner—Jimmy’s. All the while, you have to go to classes and perform mini-games for clothing and skills upgrades. You can skip them as well. However, skipping and not being in dress code will land you a beatdown by the school’s prefects if caught. You’ll eventually get to wander all over the town that surrounds the school and be able to perform numerous missions and side quests in order to be the guy in charge of it all. Of course, someone else has the same idea. This has all been done before in 2006 on the PS2. Yep, this is a port with a couple of additions, including new game stopping glitches.

PERKS: excellent style and presentation, well paced, some great achievements for the whores, 20+ hours of play; mini-games are not lame—well, most are not; stellar voice acting (best I’ve ever seen, er, heard), excellent motion capture; superb dialogue; numerous LOL moments

SCREAMS: to have been better tested—the second time around (360 version—there is a patch, thankfully); some achievements are silly repetitive time sinks that you would not do in the general order of play; to have better controls in the mini games—timing is brutal on some; to have had an online or, better yet, co-op component; the main villain is a downer; buttonmashing traverses Billy faster but it offers no benefit the faster you mash; to have an auto-save feature (don’t ask)

VERDICT: Buy. Get it if you’ve never played the PS2 version.

I find it funny most professional reviewers don’t do this, but here’s my gamercard to show I completed the game.

The flying rat infestation

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Speaking of GTA IV and cheats, I recently uploaded a set of three maps to Flickr that have the locations of all the pigeons in the city (again, there’s an achievement for that). Now that I’ve finished the game and Niko has done what he needed to do, I suddenly feel a responsibility to clean up the pigeon problem in Liberty City.

If you’re like me and you’re interested in exterminating all the flying rats, you can check out the Flickr set here. I’ve embedded the images after the jump.

[Read more…] about The flying rat infestation

[2 Minute Review] Top Spin 3

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Should I break a sweat playing a sports game?

Well, I maybe didn’t break a sweat, but I did cramp my brain.

DO: Play possibly the most realistic tennis game ever. Overhand smashes, drop shots at the net and grunts that would make Maria Sharapova proud. (Okay, maybe that was just me)

TYPE: Tennis (hopefully that’s obvious).

PLATFORM: Xbox 360 (also available on everything else but the PC).

PRICE: $59.99 on the 360.

MEAT: On the surface, it’s another sports game. Where Top Spin 3 really shines is its complexity. At times it can be extremely difficult and hard to get used to, but it becomes second nature pretty quickly. The tutorials are very well done, and get deep fast. It may be a surprise, but I’m not a professional tennis player. So I can’t say if this “feels” right, but some of the shots definitely feel like they should.

There’s a career mode, of course, which I spent most of my time in. There’s nothing new here. Play some matches, get some points to get better skills, rinse, repeat. It’s fun, it’s addictive and I’ll be playing this much more. Oh, and the character creator? My daughter could have played with that for hours. Yay for electronic paper dolls!

PERKS: We’re getting dangerously close to the uncanny valley. Not sure if that’s a perk?

SCREAMS: Nothing new? Even though this is the first Top Spin game I’ve played, I’ve played enough sports games to know there’s only so much improvement can be made. It also can be insanely complex if you want it to.

VERDICT: For most gamers, this is a rental. Tennis fans and sports fans know what they’re getting and are more likely to pick it up. It’s a good buy for a specific group of gamers. You know whether you are in that group or not. If you’re not, you probably won’t be playing this.

Too Human: I’ll Ask It Again

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Is it any good? Personally, I need to see more blog reviews of games. I mean, we are the ones in the trenches. We are the ones playing games (hopefully) for enjoyment. It’s not our job to quick-play and meet a deadline and look over our shoulders at the marketing department.

Aeropause seems to think it’s good—and I don’t mean like those feminist yogurt commercials good.

Being that I am only halfway through the games main story I can’t really review it, but from what I have played so far I think the game is worthy of a 80% score. It would be a shame if this game doesn’t get a chance to improve upon itself with a sequel because of a few reviewers who just didn’t get the game. I know this is only my opinion but I truly think that Too Human is a game worthy of your money.

In the post, the author does seem to cover more of the negative aspects of the game. (I want to hear positive, people!) However, he thinks it’s a solid 80%. I’ve also heard this from others.

I think what I can honestly deduce from this game is that it does a good job of creating the love it/hate it mentality. There’s not much in the middle of the road.

Here’s the callout: show us some blog reviews in your comments below…or review it yourself.