[REVIEW] A Lot of Games, Part 2

This the second part in a four-part series of multiple, micro reviews. Over the course of the past 5 months, there have been numerous games that have come out that I have not reviewed, save for Heavy Rain and Darksiders. I have sixteen games lined up for reviews, so get ready for a smorgasbord of reviews coming to your face-hole.

[RUMOR] Infamous 2 Teased in Portugal's OPM

ScrawlFX got a hold of the newest issue of Portugal's Official PlayStation Magazine, and there's a teaser image for Infamous 2, only showing Cole's eyes, and two tiny screens at the bottom. The text on the image says:

"The announcement of a great PlayStation 3 exclusive sequel in the next ROPS."

ROPS is Portugal's abbreviation for the magazine.

Head over to ScralFX's site for the image. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Smorgasbord of News

Here at Destroyed Controller, when your primary source of news is your RSS feeds - 18 feeds deep - and you have close to 100 feeds when you first open your computer, this is how you handle it: by throwing everything you read into one big ass post.

N3II: Ninety-Nine Nights Demo on XBLM - Yup, straight from the Major's mouth, N3II has a demo up on the Marketplace. I really hope this doesn't turn out to be as frustrating as the first one.

PlayStation Home Finally Leaving Beta...At the End of the Year - Ever since it's inceptional launch a year and a half ago to the adoring masses (the open beta, mind you), Home has been plagued with the "beta" surname, and it looked as if it was going the way of Gmail (ya know, in beta status for 5 years). It's coming out of beta, but honestly, that won't save it from issues, such as having to redownload a section every time you enter Home (at least I have to). Considering Kirk Ewing, a member of Home developer VEemee, says this little number, "Most people think that Home is sh*t. I'm here to say that it's not," well, I'd be one that's intrigued as how he thinks it's not.

Mark Hamill Done with Joker Voice Acting - That is, after Arkham Asylum 2. It will be hard to out-Joker Mark's Joker.

How Does Guild Wars Deal with Cheaters? They Send Death After You - You read that right. Guild Wars is now sending out their version of the Grim Reaper - Dhuum - and slays you (or your bot) in front of all the internet-gorging massing to see. Pure awesome. Video is beyond the link.

Traditional Final Fantasy Comes Home October 5 - Played Final Fantasy XIII? Missed playing a Final Fantasy game like it was IV, maybe even VII? Well dream no more! Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is coming to your DS in early October, and comes with "classic turn-based battle system with customizable commands," and a instant-class-changing feature called the "Crown System. You'll also have the ability to go at a dungeon with up to 3 friends. What say you now, Crystal Chronicles?

Cracked.com - You can't out yourself as a gamer because you have yourself to blame

I caught this at Kotaku, where a writer at Cracked.com - a Mr. David Wong - proclaims there are "5 Reasons It's Still Not Cool to Admit You're a Gamer." I call bullshit on a few of them - I can agree with some - and my distaste was displayed in Kotaku's comments, where they ask the question "Is It Cool To Out Yourself As A Gamer Yet?" My answer? A very emphatic "yes," purely because the people we're blaming - as Kotaku puts it below, obsessive nitpicking nerds - are downright idiots who are, what else, nitpicking over the most trivial things when it comes to game development, and the things they complain about are the things that hinder their multiplayer experience, not the story telling.

Kotaku's translation of the 2-page long article is "no," because of "developmentally retarded and over-sexualized "mature" video games, brain-dead stories, obsessive nitpicking nerds, and embarrassing entitlement issues," which are 4 of the 5 issues. The fifth? The virgin stereotype:

Why I Refer to the New Zelda Game as "Zelda XVI"

So, I've been talking about the new Legend of Zelda game, which all media outlets are dubbing it "Zelda Wii," whereas I'm the only kook on the Internet referring to it as "Zelda XVI," or for those who never bothered to learn the Roman Numerical System outside of the face of a clock or beyond what a Final Fantasy game tells you, "Zelda 16."

Yes, we're already at magical 16 in the Zelda series. Ocarina was number 5. Yes, 5. But, with recent rumors being thrown about, Zelda XVI could be a remake of Ocarina. I digress...

Zelda Wii/Zelda XVI, whatever have you, is the newest Zelda game, following Spirit Tracks. Most of the internet - save for myself - calls it Zelda Wii, and there's good reason for it: it's the first true Zelda game on the system. I, for one, consider Twilight Princess to be the first Wii-based Zelda game, purely because halfway through Twilight Princess's development, Shigeru Miyamoto decided to have a baby with the GameCube and tinkered with it's innards every so often, in between bouts of thinking of how the new controller would work. With this baby brewing, Nintendo's R&D1 Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD) Software Group #3 team - ya know, the really bad name for Shigeru's team - started to think about how the new Zelda game would work on the system, and started to make it for the Wii. Despite many people using the GameCube version of TP for their Zelda-story-canon material - purely because Link is actually left-handed in that version - I tend to say that TP on the Wii was the first Zelda game for the system because, let's face it: it was.

That, and seeing "Zelda XVI" invokes some sort of mind-frenzy that makes you think "Holy crap, what's this? Zelda with a roman number tacked onto the end? Surely you must be crazy; only Final Fantasy can do that! Blasphemy!" And that's purely the kind of emotion I try to invoke to get people to actually read this blog.

[REVIEW] A Lot of Games, Part 1

This the first part in a four-part series of multiple, micro reviews. Over the course of the past 5 months, there have been numerous games that have come out that I have not reviewed, save for Heavy Rain and Darksiders. I have sixteen games lined up for reviews, so get ready for a smorgasbord of reviews coming to your face-hole.

It's been a while since my last review, and I have honestly tried to write reviews for several games I've played recently (Splinter Cell: Conviction is one), but the reviews just didn't fit cohesively with my overall writing scheme (witty remark-serious undertone-joke at someones expense-build up-LOVE/HATE-go out with a bang). So, here's a bunch of games I've played recently, kind of like a micro review.

New Zelda XVI Theory: That Blue Thing in the Artwork? Navi.

As I'm perusing the internet on Zelda stuff, I take it upon myself to check out Zeldapedia to see if they have anything.

And they do.

On April 5, an update to the page for the "Blue Figure" hit, with a subcategory to "Theories," simply titled "Navi." My blood is boiling at this point.

The Blue Figure is the name given to the apparently Zora-looking person standing back-to-back to Link in the only artwork we have. It is here that a pretty wild assertion is made: the Blue Figure is Navi, and this is a remake of Ocarina of Time.

Gamer Milestone : 50,000 GamerScore

Just hit 50k on my 360 (even though the card above may show something different), thanks to Skate 3 and the "Park Apprentice" achievement.

Word.

[MY GAME] I figured out a new name

Now, bear with me, I just had this thought come to me. I've been playing God of War for a few hours now, trying to crank out the last few Trophies I don't have. I don't know how it came to me, but I have an idea for a new name. It's not definite, but I am liking it, and the idea behind it:

How Sony won the last-gen, and how they'll probably win this gen: rebranding

This title has been in the drafts since December 17, so it's not all too familiar with my growing trend of getting partway through a draft, saving it for months on end and casually finishing it.

Ever since Sony announced the PS3 Slim, I had a slight inclination to buy one, purely out of the new design. I grew out of it, and never looked back; I still have my 1st-gen 60GB PS3 that can play my PS2 games (suck it, Sony). Another thing around that time was Sony had changed the way PS3 game's slipcovers look:

As you can see, Sony got rid of the Spider-Man font, and threw everything up top. Hell, they even started to brand which games were PS-only for the first time ever. But, there is a certain...allure to the rebranding here that makes it more appealing. It almost seems, dare I say, less threatening than the original?