Preview: Dreamkiller

Twisted minds produce twisted nightmares for the tortured souls possessed by the unknown.  Welcome to Mindware Studio’s Dreamkiller. (more…)

Week in Review June 20-26, 2009

The gang returns for another exciting week of Week in Review. This week, the regulars were graced with the presence of Joe, KemansWar, as he gave his thoughts on the review he knocked out. So sit back and enjoy! Make sure to check out the reviews and leave us feedback.

Reviews:

• Xbox 360: Battlestations Pacific
• Xbox 360: Prototype
• iPhone: geoDefense
• iPhone: Seek n’ Spell
• Nintendo Wii: The Conduit
• DSi Ware: Mighty Flip Champs

Thanks for listening, Please leave us a comment on the show or send us an e-mail at:

Direct Download (right click, save as)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

NC Update 6/29

Here are the latest game videos and DS demos available from the Nintendo Channel. (more…)

DSiWare Update 6/29

Here is your weekly update of games coming out for DSiWare. (more…)

Wiiware/VC Update 6/29

Here is your weekly update of game releases for Wiiware and the Virtual Console. (more…)

XBLA Review: Sam & Max Save the World

Telltale Games has delivered a real blast from the past with their release of Sam & Max Save the World; now available on Xbox Live Arcade. Experience all of the hilarious antics as Sam & Max work together at saving the World in this classic 3D Graphic Adventure game. (more…)

DSiWare Review: Mighty Flip Champs

When I think about the game Mighty Flip Champs, a few words come to mind. These words are simple, unique, and frustratingly fun. This is my first DSiWare review, and this is a game that deserves to be reviewed not only because of all of the reasons listed above, but for the fact this is the first title for this service that really showcases what handheld downloadable games are capable of.

Developer: Wayforward
Publisher: Wayforward Technologies
Genre: Action, Puzzles
Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 800 DSi Points ($8.00)
# of Players: 1

You are Alta, a tiny 8-bit sprite wizard, who uses a wand to flip through each page of a variety of different mazes. Your goal is to make it to a frog like creature, on one section of the map, as fast as you possibly can to earn the best ranking possible. Sometimes you will have to collect certain items, hit a switch, maybe break a block or two, or constantly flip through screens to land in certain areas, all before you can go to the frog and advance to the next stage. The game is split into numbered worlds, each with around 8 stages or so in them, with a set amount of screens in each area. I’m in world 4, stage 2, and I have been playing the game for at least five hours or so, so this is not something that you could breeze through in one day, trust me on that.

Controls are simple and easy to use, and are not frustrating at all. You move your character left and right with the directional pad, use the up and down buttons to move up and down things like ladders, wired fence areas, steps, etc. All of the face buttons on the right side of your DSi will make your character raise its wand, and flip the screen over to the other side, and that is about it. All of these controls work out just fine, but the addition of a jump button would have definitely made some of the puzzles a lot easier to solve. Also, mapping the switching controls to all of the face button can cause some unwanted deaths by flipping the screen when you do not want to, but for what this game is trying to do, the controls work out just fine.

The music is great, with a variety of 8-bit melodies that will either tense you up in certain situations, or calm you down in others. When your character dies, she spirals off the screen to a theme that sounds a lot like Mario brothers when you die, which adds a nice nostalgia factor to those reminiscent of the old 8-bit days. The flipping sound when the screen changes to the other is great, and makes a loud thud type of noise when you switch the bottom screen to the top, which sometimes scared the crap out of me. The noise that is made when the main character raises their wand is a swooshing kind of noise that sounds simply awesome. The music and sound design in this game is simply fantastic.

This games uses an old school 8-bit design reminiscent of the NES days, and it works out quite well. No high polycount here ladies and gentlemen, so stop the complaining, because not a lot of graphical power is needed to make a game like this look great. You will walk around in places like dungeons, Egyptian pyramids, robotic factories, temples, etc., and all they consist of is a few plain blocks and background, represented in a variety of colors, with some decent images used in the background to represent the theme of each level. The characters will range from frogs, to bunnies, to cats, and so on. Each of these, along with the main character, are represented in the way that they should be, and that is in a basic style, with more emphasis on color and art style, than on polygon count.

Mighty Flip Champs is a fun game to play, but not a game in which you should try to rush it to the end of a level, just because you want to finish it in the fastest time possible. This is more about paying attention to what is going on in both of the screens of your DSi in each level, and figuring out the best way to navigate through it, and then trying for the best time. Honestly, some levels took me almost 20 minutes or more to complete because I kept landing in the wrong area, I did not collect the right items, hit the right switch, etc. If you are not into challenging games, or are easily frustrated, then you will not have any fun at all. For me however, I like a good challenge every once in awhile, and I am a fan of unique puzzle games, so Mighty Flip Champs was right up my alley.

There is some replay value here, but not too much. Each level you complete has a ranking system, D through S, according to how fast you complete the level. There is also a Flip counter on the right of the screen, which will count how many times you flip through the different screens (numbered on the left side of the screen). Showing off your best scores to your buddies locally is nice, but an online time attack mode, or leaderboard functionality would have been nice to have, so that you could compete for high scores with people from around the world instead of just people sitting next to you in your living room. Still, you will challenge yourself for the best score time and time again throughout each level, especially if you are the completist type. There is replay value here, but there needs to be more if a sequel of this game gets made, so that it could really show its potential to the world.

Mighty Flip Champs is a DSiWare title that is worth your money if you are willing to put the time and effort into. The old school graphics style, mixed with a challenging twist on the puzzle genre, makes it a winner in my book and it is definitely worth checking out. (A)

- Matt H

New Punisher: No Mercy Trailer

This Thursday, Punisher: No Mercy will be shooting its way onto the PSN. The video is gory, I mean come on, it’s the Punisher. You can’t have a Punisher game without blood, violence, and destruction. Punisher: No Mercy is an FPS that is designed to bring intense and fast paced multiplayer action. In addition to the multiplayer action, gamers will also be able to experience a single player story mode that features exclusive artwork from Marvel’s artist Mike Deodato.

iPhone App Review: geoDefense

geoDefense is by far the typical tower defense game. The thought never came to mind that I would see Geometry Wars and Tower Defense hooking up, but it did and this is its perfect offspring!

Developer: David Whatley
Publisher: Critical Thought Games
Genre: Tower Defense
Rating: 9+ (iTunes)
Price: $3.99

At first glance of the game it reminds me a bit of Geometry Wars for the XBLA. Some of the features that made Geometry Wars awesome was found in geoDefense – neon colors and exploding objects that distort the grid-tiled background. geoDefense definitely had an eye appeal to it with not much audio other than your iTunes running in the background, but what really made the game that much more fun was the levels and the difficulty of them.

Right off the bat, I was pwned by the AI on the first Easy level. Right there I knew that this game will make you think about tactics all throughout the game. Knowing the strength of each enemy, the power of your towers and thier upgrades, and where the best locations for your towers will be the key to winning each level. Even the creator knew that this game was difficult; leaving all 30 levels unlocked.

What bothered me about the game is that there was no enemy counter to let you know how many you had left to kill; the only thing there was to let you know when the next wave was coming. The other pain I had was that the towers always targeted the lead enemy, unless it was out of the target area. While that is great if it worked all the time, but I found out that it was never the case. I found that the towers were more concerned about the ones just spawning than the ones getting to the “exit.” At first it was frustrating, but there is a work around to that issue; all you have to do is tap on that enemy and all the towers that the enemy travels by will target it.

All in all, geoDefense is an exotic blend of Geometry Wars and a tower defense game. If you’re a fan of tower defense games and you have an iPhone, this is a must buy, and you won’t be disappointed by the price. Hardcore tower defense fans will find this mind challenging and blast, while novice players will also enjoy the game, learning as they play. (A-)

- Mike K

X360 Review: Prototype

There are many things to enjoy in Prototype; maneuvering about the city and driving over a 100 civilians running for their lives, while in a tank, really kept me entertained. On the other hand though – the occasional moments of frustration while playing through the title, really put a damper on my smiling face and opened my eyes to the many flaws Prototype has. (more…)

Cities XL Beta Key Contest (Closed)

Who wouldn’t want to have control of a city at their finger tips? In CITIES XL, you play as a mayor of your new city. CITIES XL is pushing the limits allowing gamers to build sophisticated and massive cities on realistic 3D maps. If that’s not enough to get you interested, you can also interact with other gamers on your planet to create interconnected cities on persistent planets to trade with each other in a global economy.

Interested now? Awesome! We only have 10 keys to giveaway, so here’s what you have to do:

• Make sure you’re following Rejected Gamer on Twitter.
• Leave a comment in this post saying “I want a Cities XL beta key…please @(your_name). For example: “I want a Cities XL beta key…please @X3R0_9″
• Please don’t reply to us on Twitter for this giveaway. Only way to get a key is post your comment here.
• First 10 replies will get a direct message via Twitter with the beta keys. If you are not following on Twitter, we will not be able to send you the key.

Wii Review: The Conduit

The First-Person Sci-fi Shooter that is supposed to change the way we look at games on the Wii has finally arrived. Does it accomplish this task, the truth is, in some ways it does and in some ways in doesn’t. Let us get into the review.

Developer: High Voltage Software
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Sci-fi First-person shooter
Rating: T (Teen)
Price: $49.99
# of Players: 1-12
Online connectivity: 12 Player Online Multiplayer w/ Rankings

You are Agent Ford, a hired gun for a secret organization kwon as the trust, which is led by Mr. Adams. You are sent out to retrieve the ASE (All Seeing Eye), but you soon find out that things are not what they seem. The Story is told through short conversations that the characters have before each level, and each of them does an adequate job to bring some personality to the story. Nothing special here though, government, aliens, and conspiracy, it is a road that a lot of games have traveled.

The game looks fantastic; environments are richly detailed and well designed. I am not a person who knows too much about graphics, but the textures on the water looked great, the ASE looks awesome, and the character models of the enemies are well done. Not too much emotion or personality here, other than flying back when you get a head shot from a rifle, you will not see many more animations than that from your enemies. A little more personality might have been nice, but this is a FPS people, flying back from a headshot is enough to get me pumped up.

The background music really sets the tone throughout each level of the campaign, as well as in the multiplayer modes. A lot of action movie-esque music is used, and that is fine by me, which consists of some rock or techno types of beats with the pacing of them changing throughout each level. The voice work of the main characters are done well, but the enemies voice overs are blah at best. Some sound really menacing, while others sound like a squeaky toy that your dog might play with. An emphasis on the enemies sounding more menacing should have been the main focus.

The controls (or options of controls) are what set this game apart from most other shooters, in which there really is no set control scheme for you to work with, seeing as how you can adjust almost every single aspect of how you play by tweaking certain aspects of the game to your liking. Want to run faster, turn a little bit quicker between shots, relinquish every action to button presses, move your HUD to a different area of the screen, you can do that and so much more. I stuck with the basic control scheme, B to shoot, A to Jump, C to Crouch, flicking the nunchuck to throw grenades, and flick the Wii remote to do a melee attack, and it worked out just fine for me. I did tweak my look sensitivity and running speed though, and it worked out great. Simply put, you can play the game however you want, and that is just plain awesome.

You have a variety of Alien and Human weapons at your disposal, but the alien weapons are just variations of a sniper rifle, assault rifle, and rocket launcher that the humans use. With as many weapons as there are available, you will find yourself using only a few weapons throughout the game, simply because they will be the only ones that you will need to get through each level. For me, the assault rifle, strike rifle, and sub machine gun were enough for me to get through the whole game. And while some are cool, like the deotimizer (which shoots a homing laser beam onto your enemies), only a few are necessary.

The Conduit is a simple run and gun FPS that is just absolutely fun to play. The single player campaign is intense and satisfying, there is some puzzle solving that can be done with the ASE every once in awhile, but at its core, you will spend most of your time shooting down wave after wave of enemies, and even though we have done this a million times before, scoring a headshot never gets old. The multiplayer mode is also very fun, and offers your basic modes (Deathmatch, free for all, etc.), each with a few variations of how you play them. You can customize the color of your character, the HUD placement, and tweak your Wii speak options in here as well. I only experienced lag once or twice during online play, other than that, I had a great time with it.

Not too many games on the Wii come packed with replay value, but The Conduit does. You can earn achievements throughout the game that can relate to finishing a level, obtaining a certain amount of kills with a certain weapons, etc. These achievements will help you unlock concept art, cheats, and a few other things as well. The online multiplayer features a ranking system, in which you level up by scoring a certain amount of kills in each game, and the more kills you obtain, the higher you will move in your rankings, and be able to brag to your friends. There are also secret disks that can found in the single player campaign that help you earn more achievements to unlock the items I stated above. There is enough replay here to keep you coming back to The Conduit for at least the next few months, if not more. This is something that I think the hardcore gamers will appreciate the most.

I forgot to mention that the five difficulty levels that you can change on the fly also add some more replay value to the game. Adjusting to your liking seems to be the running theme here, and it works out great.

The Conduit for Wii does not break any new ground on the FPS front, but the amount of customization options and replay value that this game offers sets it above most shooters out there on the market today. A definite buy for anyone who is a gamer on the Wii, or just a lover of FPS games in general. (A)

- Matt H

Side note: The game is Wii Speak compatible, but I did not try it out yet, when I do, I will let you know my experience with it on the Week in Review show.

X360 Review: Battlestations: Pacific

Hybrid; a word used to describe the combination of two or more things. In this case Battlestations is a compilation of RTS, vehicle simulator, and shooter. Featuring two main campaigns; one for Japanese and one for Americans. This WWII themed, genre confused game has its moments of merit, but the brevity leaves you wanting more. Graphics are on par with most titles out there, and sound design seems accurate to the time period.

Developer: Eidos Hungary
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Genre: Historic Real-Time Strategy
Rating: Teen
Price: $59.99

So let’s talk about what Battlestations offers. You have two campaigns available to you, Japanese and American. You start out both campaigns by flying planes of the WWII era. Let me get this off my chest first, as I don’t like to compare games a whole lot. This is not H.A.W.X (Ubisoft); the controls are completely different. How you control the planes is very similar to how you control the battleships and the submarines. You get a verity of planes from fighters to bombers and torpedoes. Missions will also add battleships to the mix to give you access to artillery, anti-aircraft, torpedoes, and the occasional depth charge to take out those pesky subs coming at you. The aircraft are the only vehicle to control independently.

As you take to the skies, you are re-taught how to fly. Your left stick controls your speed as well as rudder control. The right stick controls the entire pitch and roll. This is a drastic change that most will have to take some time to get used to. I myself found it difficult for the first hour of gameplay. Although it makes more sense once you “unlock” the battleships. Your controls stay the same for the most part. On the battleships and submarines your right stick controls your reticule for taking out the baddies. Given the era you’re playing in, the controls have the right amount of “slop”. Meaning when you are flying a Zero, it doesn’t snap to like say an F-22 Raptor. You never feel like the controls fail you, just that you fail with the controls.

I was not overly impressed with the graphics, but I wasn’t disappointed with them either. Battlestations runs smoothly and consistent with out any frame rate drops. Even when you see the sky filed with AA fire, it doesn’t even seem to stutter.

I would like to see an improvement to the AI. One of the features allows you to command your ships, subs, and planes from a map. The only problem is they don’t always follow your orders, hell they don’t even pretend to. I would have love to look at my map and come up with a strategy to take out all opponents, but it all boils down to grab your ship with the most guns, point, shoot, repeat. You do have options however; taking on an aircraft carrier is easier with torpedo bombers than with a battleship. During all of my playing, I never felt like I was commanding anything, let alone a fleet.

The story is standard fair for the most part, with the exception that about halfway through you get to play an alternate history of the timeline. Japan takes Midway and continues to Australia for instance. You’re given consciences and spoken dialog to tell you what’s going on, but I never felt engaged to the story. I never felt the pull to keep playing, to come back for one more mission.

Everything moves at a snails pace. Even at top speeds you have no sense of speed. Some games do it right, mostly racing games, but others at least make you feel like you’re moving. There was one level that I thought my game had frozen, and the 360 locked up. Nope we were just moving that slow.

There were some moments that I did enjoy playing. One such instance was running in a torpedo bomber at a full speed dive to a carrier, launching the torpedo and pulling up just barley making it over the deck. Shooting down an enemy plane and than crashing into his debris. Or taking the Yamamoto and wiping out an entire US fleet. The problem is given the amount of toys to play with the game feels very repetitive. Granted you have your choice of ships/subs/planes to play with, but each mission is the same. Enter area, kill the opposing force, and take no prisoners.

I would have to say, if you’re a history buff than you will probably like this offering. It’s not a bad game, just different from what’s available on store shelve. That’s not a slam or a bad thing to say. Battlestations fills a niche market, and does it pretty well. Overall Battlestations is a good average game that hits the marks it needs to, but moves a little too slow for most of us to enjoy. (C+)

- Joe R

Dungeon Fighter Online come to XBLA! (Please?)

To anyone who isn’t familiar with Dungeon Fighter Online, get familiar! (more…)

Preview: Max Payne III

12 years has past since we last saw Max Payne and from the look of him now, life hasn’t gotten any better.  Since leaving the NYPD, Max has decided to take refugee, from the harsh life of NYC, in Sao Paolo, Brazil; talking available odd jobs. (more…)