Awesome Radical Gaming

That’s right, this Thursday the playable demo for Devil May Cry 4 will be downloadable through both the Playstation Store and Xbox Live. Awesome, I can’t wait to play the game. All the details are below:

Warm those broadband connections. The Devil May Cry® 4 playable demo hits both the PLAYSTATION®Store and Xbox LIVE® Marketplace this Thursday, January 24, 2008. Devil May Cry 4 has been rated M for Mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB).

The demo introduces gamers to the gothic-inspired supernatural world of Devil May Cry 4, new protagonist Nero and the awesome power of his Devil Bringer. The demo consists of a sampling of sections from the full game, chosen to showcase Devil May Cry 4’s varied locales, allowing gamers to familiarize themselves with Nero’s unique abilities. Players will receive instruction on the various new actions that the Devil Bringer bestows, such as the ability to slam creatures to the ground, cover great distances in a single bound or even grab enemies while on the ground or in the air and pull them towards Nero to continue an attack combo. The Exceed system allows Nero to “rev up” his sword as if it were a motorcycle throttle and unleash devastating attacks. Players will need to master all these techniques before the end-of-demo showdown with the mighty Berial.

Fully demonstrating the power of the next generation of consoles, the Devil May Cry 4 demo brings to life the coastal city of Fortuna and its surroundings in exquisite detail, such as the port and the snow-capped mountain ranges. Devil May Cry 4 delivers its intense action at a constant 60 frames per second at 720P resolution on HD monitors, ensuring seamless and breathtaking gameplay in stunning high definition.

I picked up Advance Wars: Days of Ruin yesterday at the Nintendo World Store launch party (I arrived to the party late, but it didn’t look like I missed much…the only thing I saw there was Advance Wars: Days of Ruin banner hanging up, and everyone working was wearing Advance Wars shirts). After playing through a good number of the missions already I wanted to give some initial impressions of the game.

This is the big banner

The game itself is set in a world where meteors have recently crashed, kicking up huge amounts of dust that blot out the sun and pretty much everyone is dead. The few people that are still alive are killing each other (in turn based combat) for various reasons. Days of Ruin is a lot darker then Dual Strike, and the overall the game feels a little more mature then it’s predecessor. The units, however, still have a sort of “cute” look to them that sort of makes you feel bad when you have to sacrifice one for the betterment of the whole.

Days of Ruin introduces some new units into the mix, such as a motorcycle unit that can capture bases, and a flare unit that can shoot a flare to an area and remove the fog of war around it. Also, units can now level up. Each time a unit kills another unit, it gains a level up to a maximum level of three. Higher level units have increased attacks and defense. You can also put a commander unit in another unit, which levels up the unit automatically to level three. Units around the commander unit receive bonuses. Commander special attacks are still there, just not as powerful as in Dual Strike.

Other then that, the game plays very similar to Dual Strike. It’s just another Advance Wars game, and that’s never a bad thing. I’ve only played up the campaign up to level 12, and done a few of the bonus missions, but overall, at least so far, the A.I. hasn’t destroyed me…yet. I’m sure things get much worse, but so far I’ve been able to get an S rank on all the campaign missions.

Overall I’m really enjoying the game and can’t wait to beat Robert over Wi-Fi.

Rez HD will be coming out soon for XBLA (January 30th), and if you don’t want to spend the 800 points on the game, head over to the official Rez HD site, sign up, and be sure to check the “Do you wish to participate in the drawing to win a prepaid code for Rez HD?” I had Rez for the PS2, and it was cool and everything, but I don’t know if I need the HD version of the game, too. I also happened to have a headache one day while I was playing the game a lot, so I think I negatively associate Rez with headaches. Sort of like how I got food poisoning and continued to try and play Mass Effect…I can’t play Mass Effect anymore.

If you don’t know what Rez is…you basically fly around and shoot stuff to music…for a more detailed description see below:
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Two new games hit the Virtual Console today, Adventures OF Lolo 2 and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. Adventures of Lolo 2 is a puzzle game, featuring Lolo, Lala, and the Great Devil. Sounds cool. Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers is basically another Street Fighter game, but with Cammy this time.

Fix yourself girl, you got a cameltoe.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t played these two games. The press release is after the link.
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So, I checked the Playstation Blog today and saw a post about how Patapon was going to sell for only $19.99 at release, which is really cheap considering most games release at $39.99. I wonder why they decided to release the game for so cheap…I think the game looks amazing, but I guess it won’t exactly have mass appeal. Patapon is scheduled to ship February 26th.

I love Coast to Coast, I listen to it everyday at work. It’s a radio show where they talk about UFO’s, aliens, bigfoot, government mind control programs…it’s basically X-Files on the radio. And everyone is being dead serious, no matter how ridiculous the claim.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the host, George Noory, doesn’t realize this is a prank call. The caller plays the role of Gordon Freeman very well.

Bionic Commando for the NES is basically totally awesome. The Japanese version placed the character in a battle against futuristic Nazis. The final boss was Adolf Hitler, who had been resurrected by evil scientists. Unfortunately, the U.S. version had all of that removed, but it was still a fun game. I remember playing this a lot as a kid and loving it.

This new remake, Bionic Commando Rearmed (available on PC, XBLA, PSN) looks really nice. Seriously, from the video it looks very well done, the graphics look totally sweet. I wonder if it will have all of the future Nazi stuff included. It is scheduled to be released in Spring of 2008. Here’s the whole press release:
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New Castlevania DS screenshots have surfaced, possibly showing a follow-up to Iga’s most recent Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. It looks like this newest Castlevania might have a female protagonist. What’s even more interesting is on the title screen there is a Wii menu item, indicating some sort of Wii connectivity. Does this mean their is a Wii Castlevania game in the works and that this DS game somehow connects with it? Or does it have something to do with WiiWare?

Also, it seems from the screen shots, that the anime style art from the previous two DS games is gone, something I couldn’t be happier with. Those last two games just didn’t seem right with the change in graphics. I still played them, sure, I just like the older style much more. All the pictures are shown below (click for larger image):
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Before seeing this, I wasn’t really super pumped about Brawl…I mean I’m obviously going to get it on day one and I know it’s going to be a great game, but I wasn’t foaming at the mouth to get it, I wasn’t thinking about it every waking moment. This, however, has changed my mind. Famitsu has only given eight other games a perfect score. Sure, one of them was Nintendogs, but whatever. Brawl is going to be totally sweet. Here’s a short translation from the review:
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The Smash Bros. Dojo revealed today that Sheik will be making a return appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Sure, Sheik didn’t make an appearance in Twilight Princess, but that doesn’t matter, he/she is too awesome to leave out. Also on the site are a number of new screen shots of Sheik in action, as well as her moves. She really is a very masculine woman.

Standard Special Move -> Needle Storm
Side Special Move -> Chain
Up Special Move -> Vanish
Down Special Move -> Transform
Final Smash -> Light Arrow