That Game Company (I always think of 'that 70's show'), the same company that brought us
has been hard at work for the PS-Triple putting together another very unique game called:

.

The setup: You're not dust on the wind, much to Kansas' chagrin (RHYMING, I HAS IT). Instead, you are a petal gently blowing on the breeze. If you wanted to do nothing more than use the game as an aesthetic simulator, you could do so; warm gentle breeze playing through your surround speakers, marvel at the pretty hi-rez pictures.

Oh ho, don't be fooled, tho! As Samuel L. Jackson would say, Pizza, Pizza, Motherfuckers! as he detonates the bombs strapped to his waist, killing all the terrorists.

What that has to do with 'flower' is not entirely clear, other than it is a vague attempt at an analogy to show that there is much more to this game. It uses the Sixaxxis controls to steer (pretty responsively) the petal in 3D. The interesting part is that this is secretly....


...wait for it...
















That's right, this game is a racing game in a flower-coated shell. It has a track, namely the unopened flowers. And the more you hit, the faster you go. The wind whips behind you and in all your horrific 600 HP (that's Horse Petal) engine bears down on the course. Of course, there's no lap timer, you can take all the time you want in the world. But there is a course, and there are checkpoints (end of levels).

But don't let that fool you; it is a beautiful game that as everyone's favorite Beardtoid put it, in his nearly unintelligible Indigo Montoya accent, "Nearly a religious experience."

This game pushes the envelope of games towards art. It's that good. I think there is a strong narrative; the game sucks you in, but manages to keep making you think not only about the mechanics and the confines of which you play, but also about WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

And that's where I'll leave it. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it's part existential and part philosophy. I believe That Game Company has made a genius of a casual/short/open game that pushes towards art.

I give it four out of five beardtoids.






(I'd give it five if it was longer, fyi.)

Also, addendum, I've been locked out of the site since the |-|@ç|<3R incident, props to Hamza for helping me get back in.

that is all

When I woke up this morning, I found this in my inbox:

Hello,
How are you and how is your work hope all is moving fine.i seek for honest partner and i meet you at destructoid.com and it was interesting and attractive then i drop by to know who this was, i will like to know more about you. if you wouldn't mind you can reply my mail.
i will be very glad to read your mail with all pleasure. it will be nice to meet you and also read from you. please do honor my invitation so that we can exchange our pictures and maybe become partner.
Remember the distance does not matter what matters is the love we share with each other.
i wait to hear from you soon.

Kiss Regards Miss Suzee


(Picture not included)

Just wanted to give others a heads up, as I'm not looking to 'partner' with anyone spamming via dtoid.

Also, Happy New Year!

No, we aren't talking about mating. If you came in for the mating pictures, you'll have to move on.

We're talking about:



I played the original, ORIGINAL PoP on the PC way back in the day before most of the loyal dtoid readers were in short pants. It was definitely patterned after its generation, which I lovingly refer to as 8-bit batshit hard.

You didn't just die, you died every seven seconds. Thought about sex because you were male? Yep, that's a distraction, and you're dead. Hmm, I might be on to something with that... but I digress.

Anyways, Throw-Your-Swords-On-The-Ground-They're-Attacking-Us and We-Got-Outbid-For-One-Of-The-Best-MMORPG-Companies-By-Broke-Ass-Atari Developers Ubisoft have brought us a new romp through the Prince of Persia world involving a ... Prince? Ok, not so much. How about a thief with a donkey, and a Princeess.



So technically, I think they honestly should have called it Princess of Persia.

Honestly, she's the one *doing* stuff half the time.

Let's break it down.

First: Art. The new style is pretty nice. I thought I'd hate it at first. And I didn't. Until I saw a shadow. So they have this beautiful artwork, and shadows that look like blocks. It makes no sense.

Gameplay: The running and jumping and climbing mechanics and animation are all fine. No problem there. The problem with gameplay comes from the fact you cannot die. Literally. Ever. There is no risk, ever. And that means....

No reward.

For our word impaired frends, let me break it down with teh picture:


The princess saves your horrible-timing ass every time. What's worse, is I don't LIKE the main character. I'd rather play as the princess, to be quite frank. She's far more developed as a character, and far more interesting.

I am not really sure why they decided to use the two person mechanic, when it's really only a one-person effect. Most of the time, she simply follows silently behind you, like a good woman does. And then, when you go to climb something, she's all over your backs, strangling your thiefs as you climb.

She sort of magically super-speeds there, onto your back. It looks pretty poor and makes you wonder why they didn't just have her climb behind.

So I'll tell you right now, I didn't even beat the game for this review. I got so fricking bored, doing the same thing over and over... Eventually you unlock more magic spells for the princess to use. I thought that might vary the gameplay up.

It does not. So if you've played for about three hours of the game, really you've experienced the whole thing. The only difference is your eyes aren't bleeding from having finished the journey. I really did give it a fair shake; I was bored after the first full level (not a good sign), and persevered another two and a half because I thought they would really vary things up more. But the truth is, that yes, it looks nice; but a good looking does not a fun game, make.

Sound: The sound is great, the music is ok, but nothing that will sodomize itself into your brain. Take that how you will ;)

Summary: So after everything is said and done, the creators of POP wanted to change up the game, make it more appealing to 'the masses.' However, in doing so, they have alienated the fun out of the series, leaving a series of pretty pictures, yet falling short of truly achieving anything worth a $60.00 price point. (also why it has been already discounted as new to $39.99 at most GameStops.)

Play enough POP, and you'll probably need the

Hello, cheeel-drun! [insert fallout radio announcer here]

Today I would like to talk to you about a game for the PS3/360 (Wii and Ps2 also have it, but gimpified versions, so we won't discuss them) called:



First, let me tell you that I HATE WWE. As in, I want to kill Vince McMahon, should I ever get the chance and noone would ever know. I'd I'd stab him to death with an icicle while shouting 'You actually PAY writers to write things like Mae Young giving birth to a HAND!?' and the icicle would melt and there'd be no murder weapon.

Not that I've thought about it.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE wrestling. But not WWE. No Bromance wanted. Ring of Honor. Some TNA (non ex WWE ppl with the exception of Christian Cage who really has stepped up since going to TNA). When the wrestlers get out of Vince's control, sometimes you have excellent WWE matches like Rey vs. Tajiri and Rey vs. Evan Bourne (ex ROH alum Matt Sydal); but those are the exception, not the rule.

Anyways, I bought TNA: Impact because I have [u]*HATED*[/u] 2007 and 2008's iterations of the Smackdown franchise.

1. They took away my beloved N64 controls. I'm still upset. Seriously, how hard is it to allow someone to make their own frigging control scheme. I mean, really. In this day and age? Get with it, Yukes/Jakks/THQ.

2. 30 or 32 created wrestler slots. How 1997. We have hard drives. Hello!?

3. Significantly less moves with the reworking to next gen consoles. Weaksauce.

4. Online characters not usable if you put any kind of markings/decorations on them. Double Weaksauce.

5. Match pace is equivalent to a snail slugging uphill in the middle of a blizzard with a shaker of salt on it. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, typical gameplay in 2007/08 consisted of Punch... mash x mash x mash x, repeat for 30 more seconds, get up if no other moves had been done to you. So building a luchadore style match was painfully slow and impossible to do.

6. Couldn't edit superstar's movesets

I purchased TNA, but although the gameplay was EXTREMELY entertaining, the CAW system was horrible. Although the Canadian Destroyer looked awesome. One thing it FORCED me to do was learn a new control scheme. And it wasn't half bad. So I decided to give SvR2009 a try and see what could be done.

I will start by saying that only #5 and #6 are off my list of complaints above. You can edit movesets, and match pace is a bit faster. But there are a lot of plusses that aren't on that list, as well.

1. Create a Finisher - Greg Miller's IGN review hit the nail on the head when he said it's there, but it feels unfinished. I believe they agreed on a set number of moves to work with, instead of really opening the potential of what could have been done. But, most of what folks want is being approximated over at caws.ws (for those looking for created finishers for their favorite wrestler CAWs). Hopefully they will expand on this either by patch (doubtful) or by new monetary iteration (more likely)

2. WCW Roster - That's right, you can make additional rosters and transfer people where you want. Want to put Rey and his homies back into WCW? Go right ahead.

3. Road to Wrestlemania - I actually like this. Seven storylines that are fun and well thought out, that you have to play multiple times in order to collect unlockables. The match commentary is altered to talk about the storylines, it actually feels like you're watching the show (even when the WWE logo and copyright 2008 pop up at the end of that week's storyline, as if the show was going off the air). It's little touches that really make it interesting.

4. Graphics. With the exception of some yelling mouths (their jaw kind of unnaturally hinges as if to imply they are going to suck you in a vortex), the graphics are PHENOMENAL. Just stunning, in a lot of cases.

5. Tag team finishers - This is a nice touch, but implemented rather poorly in some regards. See drawbacks section below. What is super nice is that if you have a stable, you can assign different tag finishers based on who you're teaming with in the stable. Me likey.

6. Career Mode - While it's no GM mode, I really like the ladder climbing you have to do to win all the belts. This mode is simple, but fun, IMHO. I'm totally cool with the lack of story option, half the fun is making that up in your head, anyways. Did I just commit that to virtual paper? Disregard the man behind the curtain. Anyways, I have already made my proverbial provisional persona, Balpocalypse, in the game. But this time, I'm building up the stats of another CAW of mine, a kickass Diva named The Red Menace (she's totally awesome). What's nice and different in this game, is you can take your divas through ANY championship career path. Red is currently my Women's Champion, Intercontinental Champion and ECW Champion. She's Hardcore ;) The only thing I DON'T like is if you try to go for Tag Titles, you don't get to choose who your partner is... that is to say, they give you a list, you cannot choose from anyone.

7. Career Mode Patch - if you are playing as a Create A Wrestler (CAW), then you build your stats by doing things in game. This is kind of cool RPG style, but you'd have to do it with EVERY wrestler and it will take, to perform some gimmick infringement, for-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvaaaaaaaaarrrrrr, Junior. So they are releasing a patch to allow you to mod all your other CAWs' stats once you've finished it once.

8. DLC - extra costumes, arenas and wrestlers. Awesome do it. If they were smart, they'd offer the entire roster of superstars from ECW, WWE, WWF and WCW. ALL of them. Take the Rock Band approach. They won't do it, but it would be nice!

Wow it sounds like I'm glowing about the game at this point. And I would have to say I AM pretty satisfied with it, actually. But I do know that's the 'new wife smell.' Or is that 'new car smell'? I always get those two confused.... I know that eventually, several drawbacks I've noticed will eventually leave me pining for a more complete experience.

Here's what I have noticed:

1. Online hasn't changed in four years. At all.
2. See complaints 1-4 above
3. Two, maybe three interactive submissions. That's it.
4. Create A Finisher (CAF) is from the front standing position ONLY. So don't think you're going to be able to make submissions of any type, or anything complicated, really.
5. Once you drop/slam an opponent in CAF, you're done. It forces you to end the move. So no, you can't Piledrive someone three times (yes, I really wanted that.)
6. Still a limited number of moves, down from what even SVR 2006 had.
7. Still no way to manually change targets of who you are facing. This year's auto targeting system seems to be a little better, but I still like my manual option.
8. AI is still retardedly lame. I'm not asking for skynet, folks; but I would like a *challenge* from the computer.
9. It still takes 3 finishers to pin someone to the mat, even with the 'finisher damage' slider set to max. It's called a 'finishing move' for a reason, otherwise it would be a 'signature move'
10. Custom ring entrance music is almost unbearably loud. I'd listen to what you were saying now, but my ears are bleeding.

So, in closing, it gets a passing grade. It's kind of like Eugene. It has GREAT wrestling potential, but when all is said and done, ends up being a little 'yellow bus special.'

Just like me.

Six and a half out of ten robot heads of domination and destruction.



that is all.

As a man with his hooks in those with the know, I received a call at 3:45pm this afternoon, telling me that LBP would be in tomorrow at my local GameStop.

I did some legwork and through a regional district manager, found that it is confirmed in tomorrow, no street date.

What that means, kids, is that if you preordered it, retail outlets (at least GameStop) should be distributing and selling them tomorrow.

I'll see you all in the world of dreams, tomorrow.

[edit: I just got a call from Aerith at GameStop (isn't she dead?), letting me know in her prerecorded do-me voice that the game would indeed be in tomorrow. She also called me five seconds later to remind me about the midnight launch of GHWT]

Elsewhere on the site, you'll find a very nice and well-thought post on why we shouldn't be upset about the LBP release.

That's not what you're going to get here.

You're going to get angry typing, from someone who was affected.

No snippy your mom jokes today, no cute pictures.

Simply unadulterated bile.

There's three parts to my problem: one personal, one theological and one methodical.


First one: Personal.

I took vacation for the launch date once it was solidified. A friend in the Air Force, who is about to deploy, did the same. We coordinated so we could play together. Now, neither of us have a game, nor can play together. Fuck you, Sony. You're 'we're sorry if anyone was inconvenienced' doesn't cut it.

Most of my anger comes from WHY it was delayed, number Two: Theological.

Sony reports that the game was delayed due to words in the Quran being sung in one of the background tracks. Sony is pulling the entire game to not offend anyone.

Resistance: Fall of Man sure as hell wasn't pulled.

Did anyone else notice that the first DLC for LBP (a preorder from GameStop) is to promote a game about KILLING GODS and RELIGIONS?

Does noone else see the hypocracy? I'm not saying it's any one religion's fault, and I'm not saying people can't be offended. What I'm saying is that

Third: Methodical

Sony, you have shown for the umpteenth millionth time what jackasses you truly are. I don't know WHO in their right mind makes your decisions, but they must be batshit crazy.

So let me get this straight. The physical copies are in the stores already. The patch to remove the song or turn it on/off is already done, so instead of releasing the game (which has garnered worldwide attention and is going to make you a shitton of money), you decide to delay it and recall it and attempt to reship it to stores within a week.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Institute a return policy, where anyone who DOESN'T have online can return the disc and get it swapped for the new 'sans song disc' with your heartfelt apologies if they were offended.

DO NOT FUCK YOUR USERBASE.

God, what does it take to get you people to make fucking decisions that make fucking sense?

MORONS.

that is not all, but it's all I'm putting for now before I get a stroke.