Tower Defense games are usually not my cup of tea. “Not my cup of tea” being a euphemism for stronger, harsher words that more accurately describe my distaste for the genre. Lately, however, whether due to my seeking them out in great fits of boredom or more or less having them shoved in my face by people recommending I try them, I’ve been slowly swayed towards the opinion that the seemingly mundane, simple, and simply mundane genre can have a few titles that are of genuine quality when infused with the proper mechanics and interesting elements.

So, does Robocalypse: Beaver Defense have the right stuff to make it not just “another one of those ****ing tower defense games” but an actually interesting title?

Not yet. (but keep reading to find out why the “t yet”)

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Moon hit its second wave of theaters this weekend and I was pretty ecstatic when I found out that one of those theaters was basically in my backyard (at Santana Row in San Jose). You see, I’ve been following Moon pretty closely ever since I first read about the independent sci-fi flick. Something about the director’s premise just struck all of the right chords with me – hard science fiction set in a realistic future free from badly-animated CG aliens.

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Ah, the simple things in life. Seeing a deer on the side of the road while driving to work. Having a three day weekend. Finding $5 on the street. All of these are good, but what about when you are stuck at work, a week until payday, and were just told that you have to work this Saturday? Pretty bummed, eh? Well my friend, I’ll tell you how to wash those blues away, in three easy steps.

Step 1 - Open your Gmail account.

Step 2 - Create a new email message and add your friends to the “to” field.

Step 3 - Behold the crab.

Ah, the crab. The unsung hero of the emoticon. What little adventures will he have in the future? Well dear reader, that is up to you. Read on for some postcards from 4cr’s very on Mitch on his crabby escapades.
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Artists. That’s what Jody and I call ourselves in the 4cr offices. Yeah, we know Mitch is the web artist dude with all the ladies swooning over his awesome comics (and all the guys not getting them – but whatever). Jody and I, however - we are old school. We’re talking pencil on paper, no art training whatsoever, making crazy awesome art.

That image up there? I drew that 13 years ago. There’s so much wrong with it that if we were to devote any time to it, we might need another sister site devoted just for that purpose. See the full thing after the break, where you can also check out Jody’s super awesome Fire Emblem-inspired artwork that he drew when he was 15.

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Long-time rebels might recall that in addition to my love for gaming, I’m also really into music. I go through phases where I obsess over a band or album and listen to it repeatedly for days, weeks, even months on end. The previous album I did this with is “Flashy” by Electric Six. That disc is actually still in my car and has been the only thing I listened to while driving since its release last October. So it’s been about nine months of listening to just that while driving about town on my various errands. It’s good driving music and the album’s got a wide variety of pacing from song to song.

I will probably keep listening to it in my car. But at work and on public transit, I’ve found myself gravitating towards a newly-discovered artist: Oxvylu. It’s a project by Chris Hatzopoulos, who is a co-creator, artist, and letterer of The Bear Stories (a comic about a socially-devious, misogynist, asshole bear living in a world of humans).

Oxvylu, despite being hard to pronounce (Ox-Vee-Loo being the proper way), is Videogamesounding Music – meaning it is original music which sounds like it could have come from a 1980s videogame. It’s a fancy way of saying “chiptunes.” However unlike a lot of chiptunes I have heard, Oxvylu’s compositions are full of different layers of sound to appreciate, and none of them compete with one another. There’s nothing overly “happy” about it, and in fact there’s moodier undertones through much of it. Furthermore, the Oxvylu pieces follow a more classical song structure, which is something I find to be absent in many chiptunes.

On that note, I prefer to think of chiptunes as an instrument rather than a genre, and have heard some cool “real” bands integrate chiptunes into their songs rather nicely (See: Sports: The Band for a great example).

MySpace links for free listening: Oxvylu, Sports: The Band, Electric Six

It’s been a huge week for Ghostbusters. The movie, having just turned 25 years old, is finally available on Blu-Ray (or could we say “Boo! Ray” even though that’s a bad joke?), and its spirit lives on with the recently-released videogame on every console. I can’t speak for everyone, but I do know of a lot of people my age who had once imagined how cool it would be to be a Ghostbuster.

At the age of nine, I even had an outfit I’d wear on my imaginary adventures. It consisted of a tan spring jacket with a Ghostbusters logo taped to its sleeve. I’d have to draw the logo with marker each time I wanted to dress up in the costume, because sadly the tape would lose its stickiness and the logo would fall off somewhere outside. For a proton pack, I had a backpack. The “gun” part was just an empty tissue box with a paper towel roll taped to the front, the whole thing then wrapped in my dad’s electrical tape to make it look cool. He wasn’t a fan of that, but it was for the greater good. Ghosts had to be caught!

But in pretending to be a Ghostbuster, never once did my friends and I consider the financial problem associated with it. I did have the Sega Master System version of the game, and that involved a heavy asset management portion – but I seldom paid attention to such things. All that mattered was stopping that damn marshmallow man from stomping on the buildings when the PK Energy meter turned red.

The folks at Overthinking It, however, have thought about the financial woes of being a Ghostbuster – and in great detail. They’ve thought about it so much that it’s almost scary. While I do find the math behind the accounting a little intimidating, it’s still entertaining. If you’re a fan of Ghostbusters, it’s worth a read.

Cue the bellyaching! Oh, wait. You say the bellyaching has begun? Good. This is the Internet, after all, and we will always need and have something to complain about. Take Nintendo, for instance. The company that practically revived videogames from the dead 25 years ago and then re-invigorated the medium to make it more appealing to newcomers just three years ago is once again taking flak, from its fan base, this time for its latest announcement.

Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed Nintendo’s plans to include a “demo play” feature in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and has hinted that this feature will likely be in future games from the company as well. The concept is simple: If gamers are having a hard time completing a particular level, they can go into a menu and choose to have the game finish the level for them while they, presumably, watch along to learn how it’s done. There’s a joke to be made here about Nintendo probably wanting to incidentally cut down on the number of Wii Remote-flinging incidents causing injury and/or property damage, but let’s try to approach this with a more serious mindset.

Read the rest at Toronto Thumbs

In an interview with USA Today, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned that Super Mario Bros. Wii will be the first game to support a new feature that we’ll find in upcoming games. What feature, you ask? Something called “Demo Play.” When you’re stuck in a certain area of a game, you can activate demo play and the game will play for you. Alright, it isn’t quite as silly as you might think. Demo Play won’t let you unlock new content, so it is more like loading a YouTube video or checking a strategy guide.

What are your thought on this feature? Should strategy guide publishers be worried?

Personally, I think I would use it for role playing games. It would be like watching a movie, the best part of an RPG is the story, battles get kind of repetitive. I wonder if the game can lose while playing itself?

source: Joystiq

Shaun wrote about the magic of SMW, and I wanted to share my two cents.

My household was a year or two late to the 16-bit era, and when we finally sold our NES (epic regret) and got a Super Nintendo, it was the SMW-less core system. Though we borrowed the game from friends numerous times over the ensuing years, we never ended up buying it, and my game-playing skills being what they were — very bad – the era came and went for me without even really getting to know Mario’s 16-bit adventure.

This all changed two years ago when I downloaded the game on the Virtual Console, jimmy-rigged a Hori Digital Pad, and dove into it headfirst.

More at PL…

It’s time to catch some ghosts with Ghostbusters The Video Game on the Wii. I heard it’s a blast to play. Don’t forget; don’t cross the streams.

Check out the full list of releases after the break.

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Metroid: Other M came as a fantastic surprise when announced at Nintendo’s E3 press conference. It’s a Metroid game from Team Ninja, the team responsible for some of the most hardcore games of the past decade. Who could have seen it coming? Even more surprising is the fact that they managed to keep this a secret given that just about every other announcement of this E3 had already been spoiled on Twitter. From watching the trailer, you could clearly see the Metroid basics of strange vistas and monstrous beings abound. However, there was another huge surprise lurking in the teaser: a vague nod to a plot. Other M is being sold to us as the game that finally fills in Samus Aran’s history, a game that explicitly explores her motivations and background.

My only reaction to this is “Why?” Does Metroid really need a plot?

Jamie, being the fine Canadian that he is, already dished out some thoughts about this. While I understand his arguments, my concerns over Other M are on a far lower level. I’m not that worried that they will destroy the mystery and symbolism of Metroid. I’m more concerned that they will destroy the essence of the series itself. In Nintendo’s rush to prove that they have a mature “hardcore” franchise, they might very well succeed in turning Metroid into Halo, and this is what I fear.

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Is it just me or does this game have a pikmin feel to it?

Here’s the game overview, straight from the devs.

Welcome to African savanna!

In Lead the Meerkats you are a young meerkat and you have a lot to accomplish. You have been separated from your pack and the time has come for you to form your own meerkat pack.

Name your pack and meerkats. Dig burrow networks and enlarge your territory. Forage for food and grow your pack size. Stay on guard and be ready to make quick decisions. Run to the safety of the burrows or fight your enemies. Go head to head with a rival meerkat pack. Lead your pack to victory and rule the savanna. Are you ready for the challenge?

Lead the Meerkats is the first game to simulate the exciting life of the meerkats. Lead your pack and enjoy the company of these lively and endearing animals. Lead the Meerkats offers a fun gameplay experience for animal lovers of all ages.

Official Site

Screenshots after the break.

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Few revelations could have placated the long time Nintendo faithful at E3 this year more than the announcement that another Metroid title was in development. The applause within Club Nokia was instantaneous, and I’m certain the person to my right started convulsing almost immediately; the person to my left added “new Metroid game” to his notes as if he’d forget, but that’s another story.

As gamers have absorbed the news, there’s a nagging concern as the knee-jerk excitement gives way to a recognition of what was shown in the footage. The Team Ninja project consists of video sequences focussed on developing a back story for the bounty hunter, presenting characters and emotional elements through externalized story-telling tactics. In other words, aspects that are largely foreign to the series. Nintendo told me that the project was about telling a different story in the franchise, and for now that appears to rely on anime-styled cinema to wedge a new entry into the series. I can’t help but think that this has more to do with selling units in Japan, where the series has proved less popular compared to Nintendo’s other storied franchises. Yet there’s more at stake than that.

As Hideo Kojima wisely pointed out at GDC this year, technical limitations played a definitive role in the design and narrative aspirations of early video games. Designers were forced to find unique ways to tell stories, often achieving fresh narrative approaches by nature of the marriage between what was desired and what was technically possible.

While that caused Kojima to create a stealth-oriented genre that continues to thrive today, it also gave birth to a science fiction series that represents the single most symbolically significant franchise Nintendo claims ownership over, linked to the best examples of a genre where the primary goal is to think harder about who we are and where we are going. With technical limitations fading and giving rise to unparalleled design possibilities, there is every reason to be concerned that this most preciously-guarded franchise will be raided and exploited, lessening the significance in the attempt to broaden the appeal.

Read the rest over on Toronto Thumbs

Michael Tucker’s recent article about his impressions of New Super Mario Bros. Wii has opened up a discussion on the direction Nintendo is moving Mario in when it comes to the 2D platform sense. While I have yet to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I’ll admit that its introduction at Nintendo’s E3 press conference last week was pleasantly surprising for me. I, like many of you, am a huge fan of Mario. There’s something about him, and his side-scrolling adventures, that makes it hard to not want to play Super Mario World whenever I think of the name “Super Mario.” In the interest of getting these thoughts out, I will ignore the beckoning call of my Super Nintendo, if only for a little while.

Chris Lepine, who runs The Artful Gamer, recently shared his thoughts on Super Mario World on Toronto Thumbs, and at the time of publication of that article (which was to be part of a bigger special devoted to the game), I hadn’t yet gathered my feelings for the title adequately enough to justify putting them down to paper. Eventually I devoted a small portion of a podcast to it, and now, there’s this. Yet I still feel there is much to be said about the game beyond what’s currently on my mind and, indeed, I doubt I’ll ever be able to put it all into words. Either it’s just one of those games, or I am just an emotional mess because of it.

Lepine’s article is one that anyone who has ever enjoyed a Mario title should read. It’s not too long, and in spite of this it still happens to spark the imagination. When recalling a title such a Super Mario World, people invariably fall back upon its graphic style and its excellent musical score. But what made Super Mario World so great wasn’t necessarily a singular thing such as sights, sounds, difficulty, and what have you. It isn’t even the introduction of Yoshi, nor its showcasing of Mode-7 effects. The game came at a point in time where it made a profound impact on me. It was something familiar in that it was a 2D side-scroller (and full disclosure: at the time I doubt I knew what 3D even meant save for earlier console attempts and mimicking this concept via 3D glasses). Yet at the same time, Super Mario World was also refreshing and new. It’s the title that launched with the Super Nintendo, and therefore this carried a lot of relevance. People were being introduced to both it and the system at the same time and, to this day, I can’t think of one without the other.

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Time spent with Bayonetta leads to more of a seduction rather than an impression. She called to me like a Siren at E3, causing me to crash into the Sega booth several times throughout the week. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard me praise the title, and it certainly won’t be the last. But let me offer you an anecdote taken directly from the show floor.

I enjoy watching other people play videogames at events like E3 nearly as much as playing them myself. It’s challenging to really feel a personal connection to the games on display with all the commotion surrounding every available screen as well. And as I was watching a group of steady customers take turns at Bayonetta, I inadvertently eavesdropped on a conversation occurring behind me. Two people were obviously impressed by the game, and I turned around as they started discussing the more technical aspects on display to find that one was from Infinity Ward and the other was from Sony Santa Monica. And surely I thought that had to be noteworthy.

Read the rest over on Toronto Thumbs