The Nintendo 3DS

I've never been much of a Nintendo Fan, as I've found their games to be too gimmicky. Now, there's the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS slated to be released in spring-summer of this year in Japan. Here's what it promises to be like:

I applaud Nintendo for taking steps towards new and innovative things, but is this just going to lead to more Mario games being made? Nintendo takes all these risks to make something different and fantastic, and then dredge out Mario or Link instead of something...unique. Don't get me wrong, the DS has some great games developed by other companies like Rondo of Swords, but it's starting to feel like all the innovation and technology is used to simply "Make another Mario game".

Assassin's Creed 2 review

Assassin's Creed 2 is a continuation of the first game, picking up exactly where it ended: Desmond Miles finding secret writings on his wall that are a foreboding of what's to come. Instead of Altair, Desmond now takes control of another ancestor, Ezio Auditore, and now roams through the streets and over the rooftops of famous Italian cities.
The good: the improvement in graphics is well-noted, as faces are given more characteristic, animated movement with expressions that make you want to empathize with the characters a little. The control is also a bit better, but suffers a little with the camera moving on its own at some points.
Story-wise, it's a lot more cryptic than the original, almost Dan Brown-esque with how things play out.
The introduction of puzzles when glyphs are found pulls the game away from the slightly monotonous tasks Ezio has to go through and gives the brain something else to do, not to mention reveals another piece of "The Truth".
Treasure chests and feathers have replaced the flag "adventure" from the first game, but have other purposes, like uplifting your uncle's villa, buying better armour to protect yourself with, and help your mother out of the funk she's fallen into.
Assassination contracts are also a great addition, as each one requires something different to be done. Some aren't all that easy and require a bit of thinking.
Races, beat up events and courier assignments: these also keep the game interesting, and there aren't that many of them to do so each assignment doesn't bore easily.
The not so great: monotony. Once you get the hang of what all of the symbols on your map mean, you'll more than likely follow whatever pattern you've set yourself to ensure you've gotten everything: climb a tower to a viewpoint, seek out the treasures and feathers, do other misc. tasks. Rinse, repeat. If you meet a guard, run away or kill him, loot corpse and hide it. Repetitiveness can make even the once-fun things become a chore.

"Name a feature that you would like to see implemented into your console of choice"

For the XBox 360, I would have a d-bag detector installed. It would detect if a player in an online game is wearing Axe Body Spray, measure the height of hair to ensure it's not gelled into douche-spikes, detect the keypoints of facial muscles to ensure that a douche-pout is not being made, and sense whether any music is being played in the background. If all of these criteria are met, a jet of pepper spray would be emitted directly into the player's eyes and the disc tray would melt shut.

Dead Space

I know I'm about 2-3 years late on playing this game, but it took that long to convince myself to take up this survival horror.
The famed "Planet Cracker" USG Ishimura has been incommunicado after sending out a distress signal. That's where Isaac Clarke enters the picture, having an interest in not beginning repairs, but also in saving his girlfriend Nicole from the large and seemingly dead ship. However, things aren't as dead as they appear to be.
The good: Firstly, the scare factor. This being my first horror game, it scared the pants off of me a lot of times. It wasn't only the necromorphs pretending to be dead or babies jumping off ceilings to stab you in the neck. The game got into my head and played on my fears through little atmospheric sounds: a crew member you meet banging his head against a metal pipe, or the constant, small whispers of "Isaac" that can be heard throughout the ship. The use of ammo also left me feeling truly alone, as killing enemies has to be done precisely and effectively. No bullet spraying here!
Secondly, the graphics. Despite the age of the game, the graphics don't seem to be dated at all, and move quite fluidly.
Thirdly, the story. I knew from the beginning that things weren't what I expected them to be, but holy plot twists. What you thought was the cause of all your problems ends up being what was preventing everything to begin with.
Fourthly, the slight RPG-style system. One can buy power nodes to modify one's suit, weapons and modules to take out enemies a lot faster.
The not-so-bad: the controls. I was never a big fan of 3rd person shooters, as it places the camera too close to the back of the person's head and leaves less than the full screen for shooting at targets.
The vast array of weapons. There's really no reason to buy anything else besides the plasma cutter, as a meager inventory only allows for an insufficient amount of ammo to be carried for each weapon, not to mention air tanks and med packs. If you play your cards right, selling most of the ammo you find will generate enough money to keep your suit and cutter well modified.
The characters. I felt like Hammond's and Daniels' bitch, running around doing everything they asked me to do. At least with Bioshock, there was a plot point to doing it, but with this, it just felt like the NPCs had nothing else better to do than sit in their little confined safe room, ordering me around the ship.
All in all, a great game that I could play over and over again.

Will OnLive kill consoles?

The console wars might be over a lot sooner than we think. OnLive is a gaming service, going live on June 17, that allows for a PC or Mac user or anyone with just a regular television to play just about any game through the use of a broadband connection. All that is required is a month-to-month fee of $14.95 and the purchase/rental price of each game. The OnLive system would allow for cross-platform playing with your friends, regardless if they're PC or Mac users. If you wish to play on your television, one would have to purchase the MicroConsole TV Adapter and some cables. One doesn't even need a really great high-end laptop with an expensive graphics card to play even the most heavy graphic game. Still not sure OnLive would work? The website states that "As part of the registration process for OnLive, you will be sent a performance test to run to see if your computer and network configuration are sufficient to run OnLive".
This is probably one of the greatest ideas I've ever heard of other than Steam. It gets rid of the need to have specific hardware to play certain games. There would no longer be any console-specific games and the idea of trading in to stores like GameStop would become a memory (and the money would stay in the hands of people who worked so damn hard for it).
It's probably not something I would sign up for, as I prefer having a hard copy of the game gracing my shelves in my collection, but it's certainly a step forward in the right direction of using the great technology that's already developed and getting gamers closer together without the need of buying an entirely different console.

Dante's Inferno Demo

When I had first heard that a game was being made graced with the name of the epic poem written by Alighieri, I thought game production companies had finally run out of original ideas. It was when I heard about the marketing ploys they pulled at cons that I thought that the companies' leaders had completely lost their mind. Now, all I feel is a little bored with the whole thing.
The good: the high frame rate allows for smooth movement and a certain amount of "pretty" in an otherwise disgustingly gory game. 3D cinematics are well done visually and aurally, especially with the voice work. I could see blood and sweat in Dante's pores, which was a nice contrast to the soft feel of Beatrice (naked boob aside).
Another thing I liked is the option to condemn your enemies or send them up to heaven, but seemed less of a moral choice and more of "which button do I feel like pressing?"
The bad: most everything else. It's a button-smasher (my least favourite genre), so the learning curve remains at a constant: smash this button to swing your large scythe, or smash this button to kill everything with laser crosses.
The 2D cinematics looked like something that would be on MTV from the 80s or, as a good friend of mine put it, doodles from a metal-head teenager's book margins. It looked like it came from an artist that was just beginning in the field and really had no idea what he was doing.
Camera centring is extremely annoying and tedious to work around, especially when fighting Death. The inability to move the camera led to difficulty in depth-perception, and forced me to randomly flail around and button-smash to get the job done.
Neat idea, but poorly executed.

"What's your favorite boss battle from any game?"

(question stolen from InsideGaming twitter)
There are plenty of boss fights that are memorable to me, from Dark Dragon in Shining Force 1 to Mr. X from Streets of Rage 2 to Frank Fontaine in Bioshock. All of them had something different about them that I enjoyed.
However, I'm left to choose only one, and that would have to be GLaDOS from Portal. I started the game loving the cheerful little voice that came on in the room of each test chamber, helping to guide me through each puzzle and lead me closer to the prize of cake. However, each success led to increasingly dissuading remarks coming from my supposed helper. GLaDOS began to care less and less about my success, becoming bitingly apathetic towards my well-being as she led me into a firey pit. Someone who I once trusted has now become the thing I must destroy to get out of this terrible place.
Similiar occurrences happen in Halo 3 (with Cortana-Gravemind) and Bioshock (Frank Fontaine/Atlas), yet they never seemed to drive home as hard as GLaDOS did. There's no option to destroy Cortana herself (although she's right on the edge of Rampancy anyway), and Atlas/Fontaine gives himself away instead of denying it all or calling it Ryan's ploy to cloud the eyes of the player.
Or maybe it's simply because of GLaDOS' childlike voice that gets me.

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope: 240 points

Enter the world of Kaleidoscope, a once richly colourful world that has fallen into disaster, stripped of all colour that once made it beautiful. You play as Tint, one of the residents that has chosen to remain the planet and help the wise men return colour to your home.
The game is simplistically beautiful, being a 2D side-scroller, and only gets more lovely with each colour orb little Tint finds spread throughout the game. Special powers are blessed with 3 colour orbs in the upper left: blue, yellow and red, which correspond with the X, Y and B buttons on the controller. Blue grants you the ability to run faster and push boulders into golems more quickly. Yellow allows you to float for a period of time to get to previously unobtainable ledges. Red forms a red bubble around Tint, giving him protection from certain projectiles. The A button is left simply for jumping and double-jumping.
The background music is quite simple, but soothing and not overbearing to the gameplay. Nothing great, but it's really not too bad.
I've always had a penchant for indie games, as they usually stray from the normal and show just how creative and beautiful games can really be.

The Misadventures of Mr Winterbottom

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom: 800 points.

You control Mr. P.B. Winterbottom on his adventures to obtain the Chronoberry Pie, travelling through time and space to do so. Plenty of addictive puzzles to keep one entertained, the overall theme is a tribute to silent black and white movies, even with added film grain.
Visually, Winterbottom is simple yet still appealing to the eyes. Layered 2-D graphics give it an almost 3-D effect, but isn't distracting in any sense. The design of Mr Winterbottom is a bit on the small side, yet comical in the way his seemingly stickly limbs, compared to the size of his giant head, flail around with jumps and waving with his umbrella.
The music itself is quite catching, also reminiscent of the silent-movie era, with a dark-slightly-cheerful feel to it.
Controls are extremely easy: Left stick to move, A to jump, A again to float, and X to swing your umbrella. The game allows you to make clones that aid in getting all the delectable pies on each level, which is done by holding the right trigger and moving around. You also have the choice of hitting your clones towards the pies. How you clear each puzzle is really up to you.
Sadly, I've seen the "make the clones to solve the puzzle" type thing before at Kongregate.com: The Company of Myself. After playing this simple flash game, I was intrigued by the complexity of making such a game in Flash, and hoped someone would see this game and be inspired to make something similiar for the XBox. Seems my hopes came true.

Bayonetta Interview from GI

So despite my raving about Bayonetta and its sexist ways, I tried out the demo to see if my bias was correct or not.
Bayonetta is a witch whose outfit is composed entirely of her hair, and shapeshifts it into magical attacks. From the short opening flashbacks, Bayonetta has seemingly woken up after a long period of time after some important events occurred, of which she no longer has memory of.
I have to admit, it's not as sexualized as I thought, but that's because I couldn't see a darn thing on the screen from all the flashiness and brilliant colours going on. Most of Bayonetta's attacks seem to fill the screen entirely, obscuring what's really happening. They're quite impressive to watch, but there's so many elements onscreen that it's hard to focus on anything, even the enemies, as they get lost behind the "pretty". Environments are beautifully done from what I've seen so far (and I say "so far" because I really don't plan on buying a button-smasher).
Game Informer happened to come in the mail right after I tried out the demo, and one article was an interview with Kamiya, the director of Bayonetta. I skimmed through it (as I have a dislike for that magazine) and had to roll my eyes at the fact that Kamiya tries to "play off" the sexist nature of the game by saying Bayonetta was designed by a woman. For someone from a country that openly allows the groping of women on their public trains and treats them terribly, does he really think that justifies it? I really don't think the designer really had any say in the matter BECAUSE she's a woman and had to do what her male superiors told her to. NO artistic freedom there. But, of course, to those unaware of the culture, they'll read this Kamiya interview and say "oh, of course it's not demeaning towards women, a woman designed her!" to which I will shake my head and walk away.