Games of the week for 01/03/10: Rock n’ Roller edition

Here is a list of irrefutable reasons why Wig Wam is the greatest band ever invented. If you disagree with any of them, you are a frenulum:

1. They are called Wig Wam
2. The band members are called Glam, Teeny, Sporty and Flash
3. Their songs are obviously brilliant
4. They come from Norway, the home of rock
5. The above video
6. They are called Wig Wam

I’m glad we had this little chat. Oh, and in case you were wondering, we played videogames this week. Hit the jump to find out which ones, you bunch of frenulums.

Zimmerman: Apart from playing Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes for my disgustingly late review and a little bit of time spent on The Castlevania Adventure ReBirth, my week has pretty much been spent staring at my television, waiting for the Doctor Who finale.

At the risk of nobody bothering to read the review when I eventually manage to finish Clash of Heroes, just go out and buy it if you have a DS. For thirty clams, it is by far one of the best values in gaming right now. Seriously, it’s nothing to do with a lack of desire to play it through. It’s just so goddamn long.

Grim: After picking Mass Effect 2 as one of my most wanted games of 2010, some people weren’t happy that I hadn’t played the original, so I gave the game a shot. Inadvertently, I played through the majority of it without doing any of the side missions. So now I’m on my second career or whatever they call it, trying to experience everything. Love the game, although I can already tell it will become outdated the second ME2 hits. I’m seriously pumped. Also got into the newish Trials HD add-on which kicks all sorts of ass

Cantler: Mushi Futari, DeathSmiles, Project Justice, Muchi Muchi Pork, Espgaluda 2, SFIV, 3rd Strike, BlazBlue, what haven’t I been playing? MAGfest bitches!

Tolentino: I remember promising last week to play Persona PSP while I was out in the mountains, and it turns out I’m a dirty liar. Instead I played and finished Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament. Frankly speaking, Battle Tournament is out-and-out bad as a Steambot Chronicles title, and is mediocre as a game. And yet, for the life of me I could not stop playing it. Maybe it’s just been way too long since we’ve had news of the true sequel, announced way back in ’06.

Razak: I’ve been playing Borderlands all week and wish I had opened my brothers Christmas present so I could be playing Spirit Tracks, but our gift giving was delayed so I have to wait until tomorrow. I also have a copy of Avatar: The Game sitting on my table, but I’m afraid to open it so I’m not going to. Finally, I popped in Mario Galaxy today and re-fell in love with it.

North: Final Fantasy XIII. Goddamn, this game is good. I love how people are judging it before they’ve even played it. Worse yet, people are judging it from only playing it for a few minutes. The game is fucking awesome when it gets into it. Epic battles, great storytelling, and characters I give a shit about. Also Atlus’ Strange Journey. Don’t have a soap box on that one. Just good.

Chester: Played a bit of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, which so far has plenty of character and dozens of confounding puzzles. Also picked up Castlevania The Adventure: ReBirth which is exactly what I had expected, and brought back solid old-school memories for me. As for what I will be playing this week, who knows… maybe nothing, considering that there’s a newborn in my house. But if I have my druthers, I’ll see Modern Warfare 2‘s single-player campaign to its end, and possibly even play some BioShock 2. Oh, and I’m seriously tempted to run out and pick up Darksiders this week, but I’m pretty sure that means I will never, ever finish Modern Warfare 2; maybe I’ll use Vigil’s game as my “reward” for finishing Infinity Ward’s shooter.

Concelmo: I finally finished The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Is it just me, or is Spirit Tracks one of the most challenging Zelda games ever? Not in the traditional sense, mind you, like dying all the time … but for the fact that some of the Link/Zelda combo dungeons are tough! The last Tower of Spirits level is absolutely epic, ridiculously lengthy, and involves so much thinking I almost had to use a guide at times! I don’t remember ever having to (almost) use a guide for a Zelda game before.

Oh, and the final boss is unbelievably awesome. Not only is he (or she? — don’t want to ruin it) really tough, he/she sets the new standard for fighting multiple forms. Seriously. Wow.

Other than the immensely satisfying Spirit Tracks, I played through Episode 2 of Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures (so good!) and am replaying Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (love it!).

Ross: I’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead 2, and that’s pretty much it.

Sterling: I picked up the Diablo Battle Chest and played a fun game called “PC gaming lol” where I spend an hour making Diablo work in Windows 7. I also played a bit of The Void which Anthony gifted to me because it was an indie game. My first impressions are that it is definitely an indie game.

Also played a bit of Prey which was cool until they started throwing in obligatory gimmicks. Left 4 Dead 2 as usual. A bit of Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy VIII on the PSP. RE2 is deliciously bad, looking back at it. Hearing a bad voice actor say “There was an incident involving zombies” never gets old. Which VIII, I have resolved to finally play the card game, since I nearly always ignore those shitty subgames in Final Fantasy games. Also been playing Dark Void for review, but I can’t much talk about that. 

What I have NOT been playing, however, is Bayonetta. But then, if Sega wants to throw away what was guaranteed to be a nice pre-launch near-positive review, that’s Sega’s business, not mine. Same could be said for Darksiders.

Sarkar:

Thanks, Gyrael, for sending me my dream game!

Seriously, though, I’d like to thank BFeld13 for gifting me Portal on Steam the other day. I was planning to play through it on my PS3, because I’ve owned The Orange Box since, like, May of 2008. But once someone actually spent money on me — and once Twitter told me that Half-Life 2: Episode Two references Portal in some small way, thereby making it logical to play Portal before Episode Two — I figured I owed it to the world to play Portal, goddammit. (I should note that I didn’t particularly feel I owed anyone anything — in terms of playing Portal, that is — before I received said gift.)

Anyway, it’s pretty damn awesome; I’m in the middle of the 14th room right now. Sometimes, it makes me feel very dumb (like when I realize a simple solution’s been staring me in the face for ten minutes), and in that way, it’s like Machinarium, an indie point-and-click adventure game that I finished earlier this week. I agree with everything Anthony said in his review: it’s a beautiful, effortlessly charming game that’s as much of a brain-teasing puzzle game as it is an adventure game. It’s easily one of my top 10 games of 2009, perhaps even top 5. You should all play it. In fact, as of this post, it should still be on sale on Steam for only $9.99! (Even if it’s not, the game’s totally worth its full price, which is $19.99.)

I spent the first few hours of 2010 in my room playing Rock Band 2. I was home alone, so I had the volume turned way up. Oh yeah. (Yes, I’m lame.)

Also, I remain hopelessly addicted to Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer.

Holmes: One of our editors recently made a passionate argument for Shadow Complex superiority to Super Metroid, so I played both this week to see if I could agree with him. 

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t. However, I now see how different the two games are. When I first played Shadow Complex, I wrote it off as a Super Metroid clone. That’s was wrong. Actually, I wish it was a Metroid clone. That way, maybe it wouldn’t lack all the atmosphere, mystery, and sense excitement that Super Metroid has. Swapping out Samus with a Nathan Drake clone and planet Zebes with a big cave was a bad idea. It’s still a good game, just an forgettable one.

Also played more Blaster Master, Castlvania: The Adventure Rebirth, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and LoZ: The Spirit Tracks. I’m not half as far in the game as Chad is. I envy him.