The Wii is considered Casual Central by most hardcore gamers and industry insiders. With the exception of whatever games that Nintendo publishes, most hardcore games languish and die on the Wii, while plenty of sub-par shovelware flourishes, much to our chagrin. Before its release, I had pegged Epic Mickey as a game that would be the metaphorical canary in a coal mine regarding the ability of the Wii to have success with non-Nintendo hardcore games.
The result, to my great surprise, is that the canary lived. According to the L.A. Times, who unlike us, has access to NPD data still, Warren Spector’s camera-challenged adventure/platformer sold 1.3 million units. Frankly, I’m stunned and a little bit annoyed. Epic Mickey got mixed reviews, though with a 72 Metacritic score, they are mostly positive. Having reviewed it for GamerSushi and finding it to be severely lacking, I am frustrated that a game that, in my opinion, doesn’t deserve this kind of success finds it on the Wii, while other, more deserving games fail.
What do you think about this? Are you surprised at all? Does this validate the Wii’s hardcore credentials for you or is the jury still out?
Verdict?
Nintendo won over the fanboys with their 25th Anniversary Edition of Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii. Well, not all of them. As seen in this 1UP article, Nintendo screwed up royally by porting the games over with a bare minimum of extra content. Don’t get me wrong: the CD and booklet were pretty cool, but one track from each Mario game, usually the track of the first level? Not exactly what I thought I was getting.
Which leads me to wonder, as the article does, of what publishers could throw in to special editions of games to make them more worthwhile. The fabled Developer’s Commentary is always a favorite that people clamor for, but is oddly rare. Lost levels, playable ones even, would be kind of cool.
What would you like to see in collector’s editions? Do you think Nintendo missed a great opportunity here or are you happy with what they provided? Speak now!
It’s a brand new year, so it’s time for a brand new edition of Would You Rather, that game where you answer questions and give us awesome rants and diatribes about life, gaming and what you had for dinner.
It’s been some time since our last WYR (November), so I think everyone should be recharged and ready to give us some good responses. Since we’re in a bright shiny new year, I thought it would be pertinent to come at you, bros, with a salvo of 2011 gaming-related queries. I know, I know, the 2011 thing is already getting old, but you’ll probably stop being told that it’s a new year on every site in the world sometime within the next week. That’s just how bloggers roll, I guess.
For the Would You Rather virgins out there, the game is simple: I ask questions, and you follow up with your answers. Give as much or as little explanation as you want for your choices, but we all know that we like to see the reasoning behind the madness.
But don’t let your answers suck. In previous years, we’ve threatened violence and humiliation for having bad bouts of WYR responses. This year, we are going to be more civilized, and instead threaten verbal assaults on your immediate family. After all, you can’t come back to the site if we’ve broken your hands. Anyway, answer away, gents.
Yesterday, I got off the late bus and finally picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops, joining the masses currently playing through another one of Treyarch’s well-received stabs at the CoD franchise. So far, I’m a huge fan of the campaign, and it’s managed some intense and epic moments, and the pace never lets up on you from the moment it starts with its memorable opening missions.
However, during the first Vietnam level, S.O.G., I’ve run into a bit of a problem with some bad game design. It turns out I’m not the only one, either. If you haven’t played the game (and even if you have), there’s a point in the mission where your objective is to take a hill back from the NVA. They are storming across and hopping down in trenches, and your mission marker tells you to get to the bottom of the hill.
Another year of gaming has gone by, which means it’s time for us to reflect on the games that really made 2010 stand out all its own as one to be remembered. This trip around the sun has produced some clunkers, disappointments, triumphs, wins, fails, works of art and everything in between. We saw quality releases from January through December, and a few surprises that threw us for a major loop in the best way possible.
To create this list, the GamerSushi staff (myself, Nick, Anthony, Mitch and Jeff) all made our own individual top 10 lists. From there, Nick used the powerful science of magicmatics to conjure up a final list, based on some mumbo jumbo he did with a point system. What you see is something like an average of all of our lists together, and one that we’re all happy with, minus a few honorable mentions of course.
So, without further ramblings from myself, I present the Top 10 games of 2010!
If everyone else gets to make “Best of the Year” lists, then by golly, so do we. Only, instead of the trite awards that every other site dishes out, we try to be a bit more creative with our end of year awards, bestowing unique honors that bring both shame and glory. That’s right: it’s time again for the annual Sushi Awards.
For those with a keen memory (or that know how to use our search bar), you’ll recall that we did this for 2009 and 2008 as well, so feel free to go over those to remember how awesome those years were, prior to this one.
As with those previous entries, keep in mind that the Sushi awards represent our goofy and snarky take on the year in gaming, for better or worse, chosen by the GS dudes. A proper “best of” top 10 list is coming next week. But for now, enjoy these custom awards and tell us what you think!
I have made plenty of snarky remarks in the past about the nature of the Internet and how it gravitates towards certain viral videos. One of the trends that I dislike is the way everyone clamors over every single cover of the original Super Mario Bros. theme. It’s completely lost any magic it once had for me.
However, this is something different. This is one dude (Diwa de Leon) covering a medley of Super Mario Galaxy’s excellent original score. Yes, he voices/plays all the instruments himself. And yes, I’m impressed. You should be, too.
As promised, here’s yet another edition of the GamerSushi Show, 3 weeks in a row! Seriously, you should be impressed with us, because I am. And I am not easily impressed.
Anyway, I actually didn’t make it to this podcast as I had family in town, but the other dudes are more than capable and ended up having a great discussion on the year 2010 in review. There’s a big discussion about the VGAs, the biggest disappointments of 2010, as well as its biggest surprises. Naturally, since I’m not there, it probably means it was maybe the greatest podcast ever of all time, so please listen to it and tell everyone how much better it is without me.
There probably won’t be a podcast next week because of Christmas, so don’t hold your breath. We’ll let you guys know if it’s coming or not, it just depends. In the mean time, check out this podcast and enjoy its gaming goodness.
And, as always, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!
I’m just going to go ahead and get this out of the way now.
2010 isn’t even over yet, and already I am kind of freaking out about the kind of year 2011 has in store for us. We’ve been saying it a lot over the last few weeks, and you’ll just have to bear with us, because we’ll be saying it a lot over the next few months as well: 2011 is going to be a tornado of gaming. It will be so crazy you may slap a bear in the face. And trust me, that’s crazy.
I promise we’ll try not to talk about Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Portal 2 too much. But it’ll be difficult. So, in an effort not to overdo the hype and the excitement, I feel like it’s best to just have an official topic dedicated to the list of 2011 games. Kotaku recently posted the entire thing, and it’s even crazier when you see it all together.
Wow. So the VGA’s happened last night, and anybody that’s remotely interested in gaming news has probably heard by now – 2011 is going to be insane. With Portal 2, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, Elder Scrolls V, Forza 4, Resistance 3, Killzone 3, Dragon Age 2, Twisted Metal, Last Guardian and Gears of War 3… it’s looking like many of us are going to go broke just trying to keep up with everything.
As I’ve said previously, I’m not exactly a fan of televised video game anything, because it seems that the people producing the material have no idea what really appeals to gamers. While the VGAs had some gimmicky and annoying bits about them last night, they were certainly better than years before, primarily because a lot of the content skewed towards gaming more than it has in the past.
Anyway, before all of this insanity happened, the GamerSushi dudes got together to record a podcast and make some predictions. We thought it’d be cool to post just after, so you can fact check us against everything that happened. Here’s the list of official VGA 2010 winners if you’re interested. Beyond the VGA’s, we play another one of Nick’s awesome games and even talk about the reveals of Uncharted 3 and Mass Effect 3.
Hopefully you guys enjoy our goofy rantings. Once again, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!
Mickey Mouse has become a mascot, so much so that many young people have no real idea that he was once a pretty great cartoon character. Enter Warren Spector and Epic Mickey, a Wii-exclusive designed to relaunch the lovable mouse, while also introducing the world to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney’s prior creation that he lost the rights to oh so many years ago. Sadly, Mickey and Oswald both deserve better than this.
Epic Mickey starts out as Mickey is pulled into the Wasteland through a series of events brought about by pure mischief. See, in the olden days before Donald Duck, Mickey was the one who was always getting into trouble and it appears that Disney is looking to bring that aspect of his personality back to the forefront. Messing about with Yen Sid’s magic paintbrush leads the Mouse on a great adventure, trying to undo the damage done by the Shadow Blot, which Mickey inadvertently created.
It’s the first week of December, so we’re bringing a brand new edition of the GamerSushi Show, back in our shorter and more frequent format. If we can keep rolling with this, you should see one of these bad boys each and every week.
In this edition, we cover a whole slew of topics, including a brief look back at 2010, and a look forward at the titles we’re going to be playing in an effort to close the year out strong. We also tackle the release of Epic Mickey, one of the Wii’s new flagship titles, and discuss the game’s virtues and a couple of its shortcomings, including third person video game cameras and why it seems so hard for developers to get it right. After that we tackle a new game from Nick (which Anthony dominates) and then take a look at Game Informer’s list of 30 Characters that Defined a Decade.
So, as you can see, just because things are shorter does not mean we don’t have anything to talk about. Once again, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!
For a company that hasn’t exactly made the best-shooter-ever-in-history, it seems that Crytek sure has a lot to say about the game industry these days. Earlier this year, they were waxing philosophical about Uncharted 2 and a few others. Now, the CEO, Cervat Yerli, is taking a few shots at consoles in general, essentially saying that the console market is keeping PC gaming from being all that it can be.
Here’s Yerli’s stance on the matter:
As long as the current console generation exists and as long as we keep pushing the PC as well, the more difficult it will be to really get the benefit of both… PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won’t be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks…
Until the PC market creates comparable revenues, companies are not going to spend enough on the PC SKU of a game.
Honestly, it seems strange to me to blame consoles for being wildly successful compared to PC endeavors. To me, that puts the onus back on PC developers to up the game in a major way. So what do you guys think? Agree/disagree? Is the console generation holding back PC gaming? And if it is, does it even matter until the PC market can show competitive sales?
Every generation has its own ups and downs. Each console and PC era is like a little roller coaster ride full of great games and disappointing ones. Ideally, with each new generation we’d see the peaks get higher and higher, but it only makes sense, then, that the drops would be lower and perhaps more full of fail.
That’s why GamesRadar has put together a list of the Top 13 Failures of this Generation, and it is a sad but mostly true account of the more head-turning moments of the last few years. Obviously, it’s got to have the dreaded Red Ring of Death on it, as well as APB, the failed MMO. Of course, the list was also going to need to touch on the Wii’s horrid online play, and the lack of all the promised console MMOs, each one biting the dust in turn. I wouldn’t have included Alpha Protocol on the list, but then again, I didn’t realize it had been in development for 5 years.
What really surprised me actually is just how many of the fails on here come from the XBox 360 (faceplates, the hard drives with only half the space, Too Human, etc.), but really it shouldn’t have caught me off guard. Microsoft had a ridiculously rough start, and one only wonders if they’re repeating themselves with Kinect. One other addition I would make would be DRM attempts for PC games.
So what do you guys think? What would you consider to be the biggest failures of the last few years, on both console and PC? Do you agree/disagree with anything on the list in particular?
The GamerSushi Show is back, and this time in a newer, more awesome format. You see, while we enjoyed all the podcasts of old, they were starting to become large and scary monsters. At 2 hours plus, it gets harder and harder to find the time to not only record, but also edit and get them ready for release. On top of that, we felt that every 2 weeks was not as fun for you guys. Ideally, weekly content is better.
So as a result, we decided to shorten the podcast down to 1 hour, and attempt to release it for you guys each and every week. This is much more manageable, and I think the product will be much better for it. It forces us to move from topic to topic, and doesn’t allow us to get too bogged down in one particular discussion.
In honor of this new format, and the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in theaters, I’ve titled this week’s edition “Reducto”. In it, you’ll find discussion about Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Fable III, a new game from Nick where we grade industry events (such as Diablo III heading to consoles) and a bit more. What stinks is there won’t actually be a follow-up next week because of the holidays, but you can expect one the week after.
Since I always ask, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!
Boom, sucker! Coming at you like a whole week’s worth of cliched masculine programming, it’s the list of nominees for the 2010 edition of the Spike Video Game Awards. All joking about Spike TV’s lineup aside, the VGAs are gaming’s only legitimate awards show and we need to lavish it with our praise, hoping that it will one day become less of a gong show. Hopefully this year they won’t troop out the troglodytes from the Jersey Shore again.
This year’s list of contenders is actually very solid, with some impressive choices filling out each category. While the big names fill in most of the lists, Spike gave due attention to all walks of gaming from the big Triple-A titles to the indie darlings that captured our cold, jaded hearts.
The Konami Code. The Blood Code. Debug mode in Sonic 2. Great relics of my youth, tall bastions of gaming greatness. These are a few of my favorite things.
Or at least they were, back when cheat codes were still the cool thing to do. Growing up, finding ridiculous cheats was like taking the shackles off of a game, making it some feral beast that could do what it willed. Why, you could see Lara Croft’s pixel jubblies. Or spawn a tank in GTA III. Or become completely unstoppable and play Doom on Nightmare with God Mode turned on (my personal favorite).
Anyway, seeing the news that Goldeneye 007 has a big head mode stirred up whatever center of my brain produces nostalgia. Seriously, whatever happened to cheat codes? Are they still a part of games and I’m just missing them, or what?
What are some of your favorite cheat codes in video games?
Alright fanboys, it’s time to polish off your sticks. I know that we all just love to argue until we’re blue in the face about the lists that other game sites come up with, so I thought I’d bring a new one to your screaming attention.
You see, ScrewAttack just recently released a video that goes through what it considers to be the top 10 online multiplayer console games. They cover everything from Call of Duty to Phantasy Star Online, and manage to have a few other surprises on there as well. One only imagines how much different this would have looked if they had included PC titles on here as well. In fact, I think only a couple of these titles would have made the cut if they opened up the criteria in such a fashion.
So what do you guys think of the list? What other games would you include on there if PC games were added? Go!
A couple of years back, we did a feature about the Gaming Fortune Teller, in which we interviewed Gamestradamus, who sees into the beyond when it comes to the future of gaming. He is blessed with a unique ability to see gaming events before they happen. Rumor has it that he ran into Bobby Kotick when Bobby was but a wee lad, and saw the dollar signs in his eyes even then.
Unsurprisingly, Gamestradamus was accurate in most of the predictions he made two years ago about motion control and Bungie, so we thought we’d pay him another visit this week. Specifically, we wanted to get some insight into his knowledge about the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo’s new 3D handheld with unprecedented 3rd party support and a huge offering of classic games we know and love.
After all the months of speculation, ridicule and “is that actually what I’m going to look like playing that thing”, the launch week of Microsoft’s Kinect has finally arrived. The hands-free motion control system will be out tomorrow in North America, prompting all of its purchasers to get their Wavy McJiggleArms swinging. I jest, but I am actually interested to see what this thing does, especially considering that it is Microsoft’s big horse, on which it is pinning many of its gaming dreams.
So how do they feel about it? If you ask Aaron Greenberg, head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, he thinks it will do just swimmingly. He feels so strongly about this, he believes it will sell units even in the face of negative game reviews for Kinect’s launch titles.
Welcome to GamerSushi!
It’s a brand new year, so it’s time for a brand new edition of Would You Rather, that game where you answer questions and give us awesome rants and diatribes about life, gaming and what you had for dinner. 
If everyone else gets to make “Best of the Year” lists, then by golly, so do we. Only, instead of the trite awards that every other site dishes out, we try to be a bit more creative with our end of year awards, bestowing unique honors that bring both shame and glory. That’s right: it’s time again for the annual Sushi Awards.
Boom, sucker! Coming at you like a whole week’s worth of cliched masculine programming, it’s the list of 
A couple of years back, we did a feature about the 
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