While not the first of it’s kind, three friends have embarked on a journey through the Mushroom Kingdom this weekend. The goal is to complete 7 Mario games (Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 2, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy), within 3 days. It started up on Friday June 27th at 3PM. You can check their progress here
The main goal is to raise money for Child’s Play, a charity that provides games for children’s hospitals.
Will they succeed? Will they fail? Pull up a Toadstool, and watch!
UPDATE: They finished all 7 games on time, and raised a total of around 10,000 dollars for Child’s Play. Great job guys!
Uncle Sofa knows how to get the party going. He was created using the Spore Creature Creator.
The Spore Creature Creator is but a crumb of crust from the pie that is Spore. The name is pretty literal as all you do in it is create creatures. But unlike a normal character creator, this one will hold your attention for quite a while. In most games I tend to select the most normal looking character, or the polar opposite; the entire process taking around a minute. I’ve been playing around with the Spore Creature Creator for the past seven hours without getting bored.
What sets this apart from most character creation software is the feeling that you’re actually creating something unique compared to choosing Face 5, Body 4, and Haircut 9. The feeling of working with the tool is most comparable to playing with modeling clay. You sculpt out the body and begin adding features to it. There’s no correct answer as to where any of the items are supposed to go. Do you want your creature to have it’s face on it’s back? Go for it. Want every surface of it to be covered in Mouth’s? Do it. Want an upside down head? I sure did! So I did it:
One of the coolest parts of the program is the many ways available to share your creatures with your friends. In the “Test Drive” where you make your creation walk around, dance, emote, you can click a button on the UI to take a picture.
If your friends aren’t impressed by things that don’t move, you can click another button to create an animated gif of your creature doing wacky things.
Finally, the feature that impressed me most was the ability to record videos of my creature (in this case Uncle Sofa) doing things, and automatically being able to upload them to Youtube all in game.
After creating a creature you can name it, give a brief description, and upload it to the Sporepedia where anyone can download your creature. You download a PNG image of the creature you want and when that’s put into the game, it’s recognized and automatically loads as a 3D creature for you to tweak and modify.
More than anything the Creature Creator makes me extremely excited for the full release of Spore. Thinking of the possibilities of evolution and cross-breeding with my pre-existing character palate makes me grin ear to ear.
A colony of Uncle Sofa exploring the cosmo’s in search of a more habitable environment for it to colonize… I can’t wait!
The Spore Creature Creator will be released on June 17th, with a free trial coming at the same time. Spore fully releases on September 7th.
Ubisoft Montreal has announced plans for a follow up on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, with a promise of a ‘new breed of gameplay’. If you recall the great Ubisoft leak of 2006 included art for a new Prince of Persia game. It had a unique look to it, which this announcement describes as a ‘brand-new illustrative art style’.
The game features a corrupted world that the prince will need to heal. It seems that the prince in this version isn’t the same prince from the Sands of Time trilogy. The story is less focused on reality, but more magical fantasy. When you “heal” parts of the world, the transformation occurs in real time (sky returns to normal color, plants regrow, etc.).
Some notable differences between this and the Sands of Time Trilogy, is the lack of time control. This was a big feature for the last games, and it will be interesting to see it go. The environments won’t be as linear, but instead more open organic, ala Zelda. It’s not as open world as Assassins Creed, but the paths will offer multiple options. As seen in leaked concept art, the prince has a Glove which allows him to slide along walls. He can use it for combat situations too. Ubisoft seems to be taking a different approach to combat as well. Instead of a room full of enemies to hack and slash to pieces, there will be fewer enemies and they will be more powerful leading to more interesting battles.
Ubisoft release a video on their site of one of their artists doing an exclusive illustration of the Prince. It can be viewed Here.
I’m interested in the new art style, and really can’t wait to go hands on with the new Prince of Persia this holiday season.
The first of April is a day I usually dread. A plethora of stupidly false news stories pop up in hopes to fool people. This year there have been some truly fantastic offerings.
First up there’s a trailer for a proposed Zelda movie from IGN. It’s production value is surprisingly quite good.
Next up we have what appears to be a collaboration between Ubisoft and Konami:
The game itself is Metal Gear Solid 4, but the costume is that of Altair from Assassins Creed. It really shows off MGS4, which I am now in full hype mode for.
While the exact terms are a bit sketchy, some very interesting material has “leaked” in regards to the next Sonic game. A few weeks ago, Sega trademarked Sonic Unleashed, which brought with it the usual “Should the franchise be put to an end” talk. Many gamers view the 3D Sonic games as bad, and think that Sonic should go back to 2D gameplay.
Shortly after the trademark scene, a whole boatload of images appeared online claiming to be from a new Sonic game (presumably Unleashed). They were said to have been found on a Sega FTP, but it’s still unclear where they truly originate from. Gamers response from the screens were mixed. But that all came to a screeching halt when a video showed up, showing off potentially the answers to gamers prayers:
It appears that the game may be rooted in 2D game play in a 3D world, aside from some 3D sections.
I enjoyed Sonic Adventure, but Adventure 2 didn’t quite do it for me. Sonic the Hedgehog (360/PS3) was what I thought I wanted, but there were a few to many flaws to get me sucked in. Sonic and the Secret Rings was a fun diversion, but this really seems the best route for the Sonic games. I’ve been a huge fan of the franchise as a whole (going so far as to owning many a copy of the comic books), and really think the future is looking up with this game, and the Sonic DS RPG. I eagerly await the official announcement which is expected at an upcoming Sega Gamers Day in May.
This week Epic shows up to the Steam party and it brought the Unreal collection which includes all the previous Unreal games leading up to the recent Unreal Tournament III. You’ll get 10% off everything until March 24 including the Unreal Deal (heh, rhymes) which is priced just a few bucks above UT3, and includes the other four games. I’d go for that if I were you.
Guitar Hero is making it’s way to the handheld market, with Guitar Hero On Tour. Instead of using a full on plastic guitar, a more DS friendly fret board attachment plugs into the GBA Expansion slot. You use a guitar pick stylus to strum on the touch screen.
The game is set to feature over 20 songs (80% of which will be master tracks). The game is set to come out this Summer, but no price was announced.
Life can sure be hard when your arm is infected by satanic powers. Sure, you’ll gain the ability to use it as a grappling arm, and be able to make it really big to punch large foes, but it can be a real put off to the ladies.
Thus is the story of Nero, A trench coat clad, white haired lad that has a blue demonic arm (affectionately called the “Devil Bringer”). Nero leads the story of Devil May Cry 4. Fan’s of the series will notice that there has been a change up. Normally players assume the role of Dante, a similar trench coat clad white haired lad, that also has ties to demonic power. Early on in the game (shortly after Nero runs to church, kicking creatures with swords for legs on the way), you’ll find that Dante isn’t missing from this installment. He makes his grand entrance by attacking the church leader, just as Nero makes his way in. With a new found rival, and a dead clergyman, the events of Devil May Cry 4 are set into motion.
The average player could play the game by furiously mashing the attack buttons, but the real fun of the combat comes by generating combos. It’s satisfying to launch your opponent into the air with your sword, juggle him mid-air with bullets, jump up in the air to join him with aerial sword attacks, and finish him off by using your demon arm to throw him to the ground. There are weapon and skill upgrades throughout the game, but if you don’t want to get into all of that you can set it to automatically upgrade you.
The first half of the game was very enjoyable. The enemies are fun to fight, and try combos on. The bosses are larger than life, and present interesting challenges. The problem is that once you make your way to the final area, something happens to Nero and you begin playing as Dante. While it’s interesting to see how the two differ in playstyles, what’s not as interesting is the environments you’ll find yourself traversing. Dante’s missions are basically everything Nero just did, but backwards. You go in reverse order through the same levels, fighting the same foes and bosses. Once this is done, you get back to controlling Nero. The next mission is fighting the bosses a third time, working your way up to the the final boss. Sure they’re much easier to take down at this point, but I really think Capcom could have expanded the variety a bit more. Despite repeating content, what’s available is fun.
The production value of the game makes it feel like a summer action movie, with epic battles, a love story, and fairly good acting. The orchestrated music can really complement serious scenes, and when you’re locked in the heat of combat the music will reflect that situation with an offering of rock. The voice acting in the gorgeous cutscenes is equally good. Seeing the graphics that the game pulls off makes me extremely excited to see what future Capcom games will look like (Resident Evil 5, I’m talking about you).
Overall I’m pretty satisfied with what Devil May Cry 4 offers. Besides some backtracking complaints, I can’t really think of many other issues I had with the game. Having never played a Devil May Cry game before, I didn’t feel overwhelmed due to lack of knowledge of the universe. I played it on Human (Easy) mode, but I plan to replay it on a Harder difficulty to see what’s different. If you’re a fan of the series, or a newcomer, I really recommend checking this game out.
Sony Computer Entertainment and Evolution Studios have announced a follow up to Playstation 3 racer Motorstorm. This time you will be able to race monster trucks, ATVs, and bikes, around Pacific Island (known for it’s 16 “diverse multi-route tracks”). The environment will be able to be modified by the race, which could radically change the next lap.
In a financial results announcement, Take-Two officially announced a sequel to the award-winning Bioshock. It will be developed at the new 2K Marin studios, with help from Bioshock designer (and current 2K Marin Creative Director) Jordan Thomas. Ken Levine will also helping out with the project.
Welcome toButtonbasher. I'm KLind, and I created Buttonbasher on June 1, 2005. We offer Standard Definition Views in a High Def world. Honest opinions on games based on what they are not just how they look. Feel free to email me with any suggestions, comments, hate-mail: at KLindblogger@gmail.com Thanks for visiting Buttonbasher!
