PWNies 2008: Best Independent Game

Okay, it was World of Goo. I'm not going to mess around with the nominees, primarily because I feel guilty that I didn't get to play Braid, so I can't be sure if I would have preferred it to this game or not.

Anyway, World of Goo was a real triumph for independent games, as the experimental gameplay project published a really successful game out of a simple concept (and some good humor and art design). Despite an apparent 90% piracy rate (shame) the game appears to have made some coin. I wrote a review of it for BlogCritics here, so you can read that if you're interested in reading a boring positive review.

PWNies 2008: Best Game

Welcome to the most presigious awards show at The Legal Arcade, the PWNies. Tonight, we'll (the royal We) be deciding what was my favorite game that I played in 2008. Here are the nominees:

Grand Theft Auto 4

Metal Gear Solid 4

LittleBigPlanet

Fallout 3

Fable 2


...and, the winner is *opens envelope* Of course!

Grim Fandango! Certainly my favorite game of 2008. I had never played it before, and it was a marginally better experience than any of the other nominees. I loved MGS4 almost as much, but Grim Fandango edged it.

Alcopops Banned from Video Games by Illinois

Um, yeah. Not that there has ever been a game that happened to advertise "alcopops", but in Illinois, there never will be. There you have it.

via Kotaku, via GamePolitics

The Wii is Personified by its Own Download Screen

I just wanted to point out that everything you need to know about the Wii, you can find out from its downloading progress bar. Look at it here, at 2:20 in the video. Rather than a percent completed bar or something, it's Mario constantly running forward, collecting coins and eventually breaking the blocks above him with every 1/3 of the download that is complete. Here's why this is all you need to know about the Wii:

1. It looks slick and cool, though it doesn't actually give you the information you need.
2. It has Mario, who is in nearly every game worth owning on the Wii, excluding Zelda, of course.

The Wii is just really cool and fun, but isn't actually as powerful or helpful, exactly. But still, that Mario nostalgia draws me in heavily along with plenty of other people, so I like this download indicator better despite how mostly unhelpful it is for showing, you know, how much of the thing you have downloaded so far.

The Case of The You Testament

Now, this is a site about controversial games, and if this game were mass-market at all, this would be huge news. The You Testament is a game in which you play as a lost-to-history thirteenth disciple of Jesus, and you can be anything from white male to black female. Jesus also teaches you about meditation, and harnessing the power of chakra. The game also apparently ends with you hanging on a cross for hours, waiting to die (I haven't been able to play it this far). Thankfully, the only people who know about the game are basically open-minded and fair about it.

The game is the final work of the independent solo game developer Mat Dickie, who has been creating games entirely on his own of fairly large scope for years. A quick look at his other games after playing The You Testament will show you that this game uses bits and pieces of all of his other games, including some really interesting wrestling sims. This does give an odd feel to The You Testament that you don't find often, because it is 3D and nearly polished enough to appear to be a well produced game, but certain elements appear weak because you are actually playing the design of one man. The eyes don't really look right, you'll find almost immediately, and Jerusalem is oddly chaotic and weird, but that makes sense when again you consider that one guy had to program the AI, graphics, sound, story, and everything else.

Anyway, it's really a very interesting look at the Jesus story from the perspective of another man at the time, and I'm very glad that there aren't legislators out there citing this as destructive to our children or anything. I'm just very glad this sort of thing exists in gaming and sad to see such a productive game designer quit his post.

Saturday Silliness: Pokemon: The Live Action Film

There are, in the works, approximately 280 movies based on video games in a permanently incomplete state right now. There's even one for The Sims, which is only slightly less silly than a Tetris movie, in my opinion. Anyway, it's time to cash in on the Pokemon franchise once again, but back to the original Red & Blue set, this time with live action and more star power than a barrel full of very important monkeys. The cast:

The role of Ash will be played by Ben Affleck. Ash is being reimagined in this film as someone much more like Ben Affleck.

Pikachu: Sean Connery. The movie begins with the regular "Pika, pika chu!" crap but near the beginning Meowth teaches Pikachu English for some reason. Hilarity ensues as Pikachu yells "I cannuh do it, cap'n!" in a Scottish accent.

Meowth: Christopher Walken. 'Nuff said.

Team Rocket: Donald Sutherland and uh... Meryl Streep.

Squirtle is to be played by Jack Black.

Here's a script excerpt:

Ash (Ben Affleck): Pikachu, you can't do this, you have to stay in the Pokeball!

Pikachu (Sean Connery, heavy Scottish accent): Pee-kah! Pee-kah Choo!

Ash: It's really not all that bad in there... I think.

Pikachu: Ah've had aboot enough a ya talkin', laddie! 'Ere's a li'l taste o' the lie'tnin fer ya!

That follows quite naturally from there. I may or may not post more film material on the site in the future.

Code of Honor 2 One of the 10 Worst Games of 2008, Thanks to Me

I reviewed the God-Awful game Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island for AceGamez a while back, and MTV Multiplayer posted Metacritic's top ten worst games of 2008 today. I am proud to say that my review was partially responsible for keeping Code of Honor 2 #8 on that top ten list! Here's my blurb on its Metacritic page:

"Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island is a game that simply won't appeal to anyone who knows what a real first person shooter experience is like. It isn't over the top or realistic, it isn't exciting or interesting, the story is awful and none of the technical details are even close to being up to scratch either. All it really has going for it is that it installs, you can play it, and, as far as I know, it won't plant a virus on your computer."

I think it's also the funniest review out of that list, which is a real marker of how good a review of a bad game is. You can read the full review here.