Buy me Bonestorm, or go to Hell: New Releases for the Week of 2-20-11

Xenogears (PlayStation Network)

The classic Square RPG, now available for download. This is one of my favorite games of all time, and if you like RPGs I can't recommend it strongly enough. If you play only one game about badass martial artists, giant battling mecha, sci-fi Euhemerism, flying cities, reincarnation, love that spans millennia, lost ancient civilizations, dissociative identity disorder, and harvesting people to use as spare parts in a giant interstellar biotechnological superweapon this year, make it this one.

Bulletstorm (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)

Gleefully over-the-top first-person shooter. I'm looking forward to this one; I enjoyed the demo so much that I preordered it, something I almost never do.

(Though it also helped that I was able to get a $20 rebate on a future purchase for my preorder, effectively making it cost only $40. Also, after repeated exposures to the demo, I'm sort of afraid that Steven Blum will find out where I live, hunt me down, and bludgeon me to death with my own sundered limbs if I don't buy the game as soon as possible.)

Like my beloved Vanquish, it has something that I hope will become more common: a score. I like the idea of a game that pushes me as a player to play levels again and again so I can become quantifiably more badass each time, instead of just treating its main campaign as something to push through to see all of the game's content or as a glorified tutorial for multiplayer mode. I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer gaming, so it's nice to see games that will have to live or die according to the quality of their campaign.

Killzone 3 (PlayStation 3)

Continuation of the first-person shooter series. I played the demo for Killzone 2 and didn't much care for it. I haven't played the demo for this one yet, so maybe that will change my mind, but as things stand now I'm not really interested.

Also, while I'm aware that a “kill zone” is an actual concept in military tactics*, that doesn't change the fact that “Killzone” is probably the dullest, most generic-sounding name of any popular video game franchise. It's just barely a step up from calling it Game Where You Shoot People.

*(Albeit one that doesn't appear to have any particular relevance to Killzone's story or gameplay; the series seems like it could just as easily have been named Encirclement or Bounding Overwatch or Guys Standing in a Square Formation and Stabbing People With Huge Fucking Spears.)

I know that a lot of people really loved the last one, though, so your mileage may vary.

Dreamcast Collection (Xbox 360 and PC)

At long last, you can once again experience the magic of Sega's beloved but ill-fated Dreamcast with... 5 games that were already available as separate downloads, or soon will be. One of which is a game about fishing. Lucky for Sega that I just can't stay angry at the company that released Vanquish.

Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS)

RPG from Atlus, with a story based on time travel and the ability to change history.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and actually buy a Nintendo DS soon. Atlus has made some of my favorite games of the past five or six years, and there's a finite number of times the words “Another  Atlus RPG I can't play” can echo through my neocortex before a fuse blows and I wake up one morning with a bunch of inexplicable gaps in my memory and the words YENRUOJ EGNARTS IESNET IMAGEM NIHS written in blood on the ceiling.

Its Hour Come Round at Last: New Releases for the Week of 02-13-11

As foretold in cryptic and ancient texts- given the speed at which the media moves nowadays, I think a blog post from two days ago more or less counts as ancient, and my grotesquely Baroque clauses-upon-clauses-upon-parenthetical-asides-upon-semicolons-upon-still-more-clauses writing certainly counts as cryptic- the time has come for Pointless Side Quest's first weekly round-up of new releases.

Hyperdimension Neptunia (PlayStation 3)

Fantasy RPG published by Nippon Ichi. Apparently, the plot is based on the game industry itself, set in a world divided between between rival goddesses who are allegorical representations of this generation's competing consoles and inhabited by characters who are stand-ins for different developers.

I've been know to stretch the truth on this blog occasionally, so I can't really blame you if you think I'm just making that up. That arguably rivals Kingdom Hearts for the title of Game Premise Most Likely to Have Been Originally Conceived at 3:00 AM By People Sitting In a Huge Cloud of Marijuana Smoke. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, by any means. And Nippon Ichi usually doesn't disappoint, so this has piqued my interest.



Marvel Vs. Capcom: Fate of Two Worlds (PlayStation 3 and Xbox360)

The long-awaited continuation of the popular crossover fighting game series. Finally, a way to answer the question of who would win in a fight between Mike Haggar, Galactus, and Tron Bonne. (Though it leaves unresolved the far greater mystery of why a game with two characters from the Mega Man series doesn't  include Mega Man but apparently did have enough space for Tron Bonne.)

Hard Corps: Uprising (PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade)

Konami's new shooter, inspired by classic run-and-gun games like Contra. Has what is arguably the most unintentionally dirty-sounding title for a video game since the 1995 Sega CD classic Wild Woody.


LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (PlayStation 3, Xbox360, and Nintendo Wii)

 

The newest entry in the popular series of Lego-inspired action games. Insert joke about the relative acting abilities displayed by Hayden Christensen in the prequels versus those of an  inanimate plastic block here.

 Gears of War Triple Pack (Xbox360)


Collection that includes Gears of War, Gears of War 2, and the Gears of War 2: All Fronts expansion. Not bad for $30, especially if you're a newcomer to the series and wan to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the Gears of War universe without the commitment and expense of the more hardcore “injecting massive amounts of anabolic steroids directly into your eyeballs until your head connects directly to your torso” method.

Coming soon

Hey, all. My apologies for my recent dearth of posts; I've had business elsewhere tying me up lately. I've recently become a writer at the gaming site Robot Geek, which I heartily recommend to you. I've also been getting my other site, science fiction review blog Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic, up and running again after its hiatus.

Fortunately, this blog is about to pick up its pace again, so if you've been suffering from nausea, tremors,  hallucinations, impaired memory formation, or any other withdrawal symptoms, relief is at hand. Among other things, I'll shortly be starting a weekly feature looking at some of the games coming out each week. The purpose of this is twofold:

1. It gives me a chance to throw together lots of jokes and topics that aren't long enough or funny enough to justify a full post themselves. (Thus freeing me from my previous constraints , which limited me to only those that weren't funny enough.)

2. It provides an excuse to link to lots of games, now that the commission money I made when some guy bought Batman: Arkham Asylum through an Amazon affiliate link last year has almost run out and I find myself facing the prospect of having to give up the luxurious lifestyle those funds have made possible.

 

So, don't go anywhere. I mean that literally; just remain at your computer until the next post appears. There's probably some condensation on the nearest window if you get thirsty.