Did you fall for it twice? You didn’t? Good, glad to hear that. Heard that North American version wasn’t that good, but the hell would I know? As I said before in the other one I did as a joke, wondering whether a Nintendo Direct was good or bad is an easy way to get hits.

Isn’t that right, Nintendo World Report? You actually did a ‘real’ roundtable and made it into my shitty gaming media thread on Nintemple. Now if only the 3DS eShop would work for me so I can download the Zelda Oracle games tomorrow.

Iwata and that SEGA guy together was a much better video then the entire Xbox One conference. And that was only twenty minutes long.

Grubdog: It’ll have a shooter and a racer, and a shooter / racer hybrid. EA will reveal a big exclusive. Microsoft will make a big deal about Forza looking better than Gran Turismo 6 because it’s on PS3. Alan Wake 2 will be shown in the form of a logo on the screen for 5 seconds.

Infernal Monkey: Microsoft will start the event with footage of Rare’s previous games like Banjo Kazooie, Conker and Battletoads. It’ll end with Killer Instinct, and a question mark. The team at Rare is then invited on stage with a round of applause. But that’s it. They just awkwardly stand there for the entire presentation. Not a single new Rare game is announced.

Microsoft’s big new shooter for the new Xbox will be Mad Dog McCree 3: Smelly Crotch Factory. The system will require a monthly subscription, upon which a set of keys is mailed to you to gain access to the machine’s power button. Should you unsubscribe, the keys instantly self-destruct.

All pre-owned games automatically default to Minesweeper.

Matto: Well my prediction is–(our apologies, Matto was cut short by a RRoD. We sadly won’t be seeing a prediction from him at this time)

RABicle: I don’t really know what to expect tomorrow outside of everything we already know about the Xbox although I am hoping Steve Ballmer has a heart attack on stage. If anyone has the ability to kick out of a heart attack, it’s Ballmer. I’m now going to defer to the expert bookmakers, so I’d like to introduce our new sponsor, Tom Waterhouse.

Hi Pietriots! With 6 bets of generations in my Waterhouse, I’ll appear in anything. So here’s the odds we’re offering at TomWaterhouse.com for celebrity appearances. Double your payout if you guess which song they’ll lip-sync.

Pharrell Williams $1.80
Adam Levine $2.20
Sia $3.00
Usher $3.40
(Andrew Johns, if you’re reading, it’s off)
Taylor Swift $4.00
Jay-Z $4.00
Florence Welch $4.30
Justin Bieber $5.50
Kimbra $7.00
Susan Boyle $9.90
Tom Waterhouse $11
At least 2 kids from One Direction $11
Ringo Starr $11
John Cena $22
Mick Jagger $61
Madonna $61
Lewis Hamilton $61
Franki Valli $91
Freddie Mercury $151
Amy Whinehouse $151
All other celebs $91

LAUNCH TITLE ODDS

Forza 5 $1.50
Halo 5 $2.00
Destiny $2.00
New Shooter $3.00
New Shooter Day 1 Patch $3.50
Forza DLC $3.50
Just Dance 5 $5.00
Kinect Sports $5.00
Alan Wake 2 $8.00
Project Gotham Racing 5 $11
New Racer $11
Mad Dog McCree 3: Smelly Crotch Factory $11
Nike Fitness $11
Dead Or Alive 6 $11
Forza Gamestop Pre-Order DLC $15
Forza Target Pre-Order DLC $15
Kinectimals 2 $21
Sesame Street Fighter $21
Mass Effect Trilogy SmartGlass Edition $21
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge $21
Blinx Bash Party $51
Final Fantasy XIV demo $51

NAME ODDS

Xbox 720 $1.75
Xbox Infinite $1.75
Xbox $1.90
Xbox Durango $5.00
Xbox 8 $5.00
Xbox Revolution $8.00
neXtBox $11
Xbox Always Online $11
Nintendo Xbox $281

And remember, bet responsibly.

The first thing you’ll notice is the presentation of the game is not very traditional. It just starts and thrusts you into this setting. This is the “intro” which has you boot up a computer by interacting with a keyboard on the bottom screen. You don’t really know why, but the instructions are easy enough to follow, so why not? Once you’ve done that you can take control of a robot and this is how you explore the ship. The robot moves on a grid and you see everything from a first person view, using the circle pad to scan around and get descriptions of objects. The graphics are very basic but the production values are surprisingly high. The objects don’t have much detail and every computer and crate looks the same, but it’s nice and clean and the 3D effect is very good and consistent. Movement with the cursor is also very smooth, lacking any of the stiffness commonly seen in slow moving clicky-click adventure games.

The core “gameplay” involves exploring the rooms and corridors of the ship, and unraveling what’s going on. Is anybody alive on the ship? Where are we going, where did we come from? I’m not going to answer any of these. The game is completely silent apart from the robots clunky movement, because sound plays a key role. In fact, the game warns you to have the sound up otherwise you’re missing the point. I played this game in the middle of the night with all the lights off and I couldn’t imagine experiencing it any other way. You have to put yourself in the situation, the game does a really good job complimenting the feeling of isolation. It felt a bit like when I used to work in a giant warehouse, I’d sometimes show up to work really early and nobody was there. Empty, lifeless, but you know you’re there for a reason. Surely… there’s a reason?

The progression is very simple, the robot can carry one object at a time and you have to figure out what you need to enter certain doors or trigger events. The game isn’t very long or hard, I’d say it took me 3 hours total to complete everything. That’s probably my one complaint, and I hope the game does well so we can see more of this concept fleshed out. The difficulty is also trivial because I wasn’t in that mindset, this is not a challenging puzzle game it’s an exploration through the mind. I was too curious to be intimidated.

If you go in looking for reasons to give it Game of the Year you won’t find any. Everything in The Starship Damrey can be criticised very easily if that’s what your job entails, it ticks none of the boxes of a “quality” game. The graphics are basic, movement is restricted, puzzles are simple. It’s all just enough to display the world and put you there, and the minimalistic presentation ends up adding to the feeling that something bigger than you can imagine is happening. Most of the time when you look around with the circle pad, you won’t see anything. The starship is far from empty, but I find myself still looking into empty corners just because of what could be there.

If you’re looking for a new experience that involves exploring a new place in a non-traditional way, The Starship Damrey is perfect. If you’re looking for a good game with content, look elsewhere.

To save you reading that ancient review of the original, I loved it to bits. The BIT.TRIP games were some of the most fun I had on Wii, and to me it felt like the start of the “indie” scene when small games became a significant part of my gaming time. Since then we’ve also seen about a million endless runner clones pop up. Runner 2 uses the exact same gameplay as the original, he runs, jumps, slides and dances his way to the end of the level, never stopping. The biggest difference is the graphics; it’s a lot more detailed and sports a more realistic style that washes over the screen. It’s pretty nice in screenshots but in my opinion the original looked better in motion – because it wasn’t blurry. I don’t know if it’s because of the new graphical style, but I find Runner 2 an overwhelming game to start playing. It always takes me a minute to adjust my eyes to the action, and I sit further back from the TV than usual to take it all in. After that though, it looks great once peripheral vision control kicks in.

The sense of rhythm is perfect and I’m very sensitive to this in rhythm games. I struggled to enjoy HarmoKnight for this reason; even though I beat the entire game I didn’t review it because I felt like I was doing it wrong, occasionally missing beats when I swore I got them. I don’t know if it’s the Wii U GamePad or the sound design here, but Runner 2 absolutely nails the feeling. I’m leaning towards great sound design, because often my eyes lost track of the screen and I got swept away in visual explosions, but still somehow pressed the right buttons at the right time. The game feels magical in these moments and it’s almost like they overwhelm your eyes on purpose just to create this feeling.

Runner 2 is one of those rare score-chasing arcade games that doesn’t make me feel bad for not having a perfect score. I could die a million times and still have a smile on my face. A very aggressive “fuck you” kind of smile, but it’d be there. Sometimes I’d yell at the screen and find the yell would be in perfect pitch to the music, turning my anger into psychotic happiness. It’s relaxing against all the odds, considering the unrelenting pace has you playing the game 100% of the time. Like the original, it’s really easy to restart because you warp straight to the beginning after each death. “Giving up” is not in Commander Video’s vocabulary, because he doesn’t have one and because that’s two words.

Something I really like about the level design is how it doesn’t punish you for taking the wrong path (guilty again, HarmoKnight). The game has an equal amount of gold bars in different paths, so there’s no “wrong” way to go when it comes to completing the level. Before each branching path there are arrows pointing to each one, indicating whether it’s the “safe” way or the “hard” way, which could lead to an unlockable chest or simply a higher score. I really enjoyed the variety of levels, despite doing exactly the same thing they have very good pacing and the music is radically different in each of the 5 worlds.

The Wii U version is great. Runner 2 barely uses the Wii U’s features at all but I didn’t care one bit. In fact it made me realise how much I like the GamePad as a regular controller, comfortable and solid. Having the buttons on each side so far apart makes it easier to associate all the different buttons you have to press in this game. Another positive about the Wii U version is no achievement / trophy system, it has it’s own reward system inside the game instead. The “ding!” sound of a trophy when you do 1000 jumps would seriously compromise the rhythm. If you want to wave your dick around you can compare your scores to your friends instead. The coolest thing here is “total score” which adds your tally from every level in the game, rewarding patient players who like to explore every inch. Unfortunately not many of my friends have the game because like Nano Assault EX, I had to connect to the UK eShop to download it since it’s not out in Australia yet. It was fairly easy to do but with one downside. Now every time I start the system I have to pick the right user account (GRUBDOG or GRUBDOG2), it’s one more step between me and gaming. (If anyone knows a way to make a “default user” please share!)

A new feature in Runner 2 is the ability to dance to get points every time you tap ZR. I groaned at first because I thought this would break the game, like snaking in Mario Kart DS or spin-jumping in the Rayman Legends Challenges App. Spamming one button over and over becomes essential to getting the best score, but in most levels you don’t have time for it and I got over the urge pretty quickly. In fact some crazy levels have open parts halfway through, and I found it liberating to spam the dance button in complete freedom. I also came to the realisation that I don’t need the best score in the world, I just want to keep the music going.

Also new to Runner 2 are loops that involve twirling the analog stick and pressing the face buttons in a rotating order, they’re pretty easy to execute and add some variety to the rhythm. Another new thing is the jolly voice of Charles Martinet, most known for being the voice of the famous plumber Luigi. There’s no narrative during gameplay but he makes the (skip-able) cutscenes before each world entertaining, and his happy voice makes me smile every time I boot up the game. I also noticed the “item select” charm sound from the N64 Zelda games in menus. Maybe I’m crazy but this game reeks of Nintendo.

The game’s momentum must be rubbing off on me because I burned my sweet potatoes in the oven while writing this review. The words, THEY WON’T STOP COMING. Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien is simply a lot of fun and it improves on the original with 100 new levels, multiple difficulty settings, different characters and costumes (I haven’t used them, but they’re there) and a million reasons to keep playing. It also keeps stats of every jump you’ve done and seemingly every button you’ve ever pressed, which is a bit creepy but some people are into that. Most of all, the MUSIC is fantastic and keeping the melody going is worth every jump. I recommend this to any Wii U owners right now, it’s a great reason to be playing the console. Unless you’re Australian, but we have bigger problems.

So then today I opened up my internet communication device and burst out laughing at the news that EA are porting Frostbite to mobile. So then, let’s just make some alterations.

What was satire two years ago, is now reality. Thank you blessed Frank Gibeau for making me a prophet.

Enter the gameplay, so far so good. There’s a map and a quick weapon select on the bottom screen just like the 3DS game. Capcom already confirmed there would be no Wiimote aiming, so I got over that disappointment already. Unfortunately I was hit with a new disappointment, no motion aiming at all. Shooting and scanning are both done with the left analog stick. After playing ZombiU, this feels very unnatural. Every time I hit the R button to bring out the scanner I started moving the Wii U GamePad out of habit, and disappointment smacked me in the face every time when the reticule didn’t move. The analog stick is stiff and slow and we have better options now.

The movement and camera all function well, just like they did in the 3DS game. By camera I mean the standard view, the camera controls themselves haven’t changed. They abruptly shift the angle all the way to each side with no real balance or adjustments possible. Effectively there is no camera control, just a few different angles. It’s a bit of a shame because it makes it hard to peruse all the new detail in the objects. The graphics are fantastic even though it’s simply the 3DS game with a better resolution and more detail, but you can say that about any game. The game has a good style and they didn’t ruin it.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing here that makes it a Wii U game. They had 6 months to put Wii U features in and they’ve done nothing at all. The game doesn’t even use the GamePad speaker for voice transmissions. What’s the point? Are we really going backwards on Wii U’s potential already? I know it’s a port, but they are charging full price for it just like the Wii upgrade of Monster Hunter. I really don’t want this system to be like Wii, where Wii Sports and Red Steel were still the best examples of their genre three years later. This game is a lazy effort and gives me mixed emotions because I was looking for any excuse to play through the game again, and I can’t justify this. It’s a more expensive version of the 3DS game.

The demo is very short, there’s only about 8-10 enemies through the entire thing and it’s over in 20 minutes. Based on how barebones it is, I’m hopeful there’s some kind of upgrade in the full game that lets the scanner actually be a scanner. Otherwise, I’m happy with the 3DS game. The 3D effect is just as good as the graphical upgrade to me.

Really, it wasn’t ready. I don’t have the Circle Pad Pro attachment and this game depends heavily on it, finding out I had to use a 4-button layout in a twin stick shooter was a big letdown. You can only aim in 8 directions and diagonal shots are awkward to execute this way. I was also greeted with a sluggish framerate and the worst screen tearing I’ve ever seen (and the first time I’ve seen it on 3DS). It feels like the screen is crying in pain as it splits into thirds and tries to put itself back together, creating a weird wave on the screen in 3D mode. So here I am barely able to control my ship and I can hardly see anything; a really bad first impression. If I worked at IGN, Edge or Gamespot I’d call it a day right here and give the game a 3 out of 10.

Thankfully the game has another type of gameplay level, StarFox-style flying where you aim with the traditional Circle Pad. These levels look absolutely stunning, and while the framerate still isn’t perfect it’s much better than the twin-stick levels and has no screen-tearing except for one level with a watery surface (in fact the screen-tearing is so bad it makes me wonder if it’s some kind of splash effect gone wrong). Huge lively enemies swim around with robust animations, and obscure looking growths stick out of the cells surface and wiggle around. Bullets launch towards the screen in 3D and it looks incredible, the bullets themselves have depth. Then each level is topped off with this game’s crowning achievement – the boss fights.

Some of the boss fights are absolutely phenomenal, this is where Nano Assault EX takes a giant shit on the Wii U game. Instead of simple bosses that can be destroyed in 5 seconds with the right attack, these bosses put up a real fight. They have multiple stages of evolution, different attack patterns and they run through destructible environments daring you to keep up. There’s also a Boss Rush mode; which would have been my favourite mode if you could actually play all the bosses. Instead it’s split up into Boss Rush A, B and C with only three bosses in each option. There’s also one cool mid-game boss missing from this mode for some reason. Nevertheless, it’s still nice to play the best parts of the game without going through full levels in story mode to get there.

While the framerate in the twin-stick surface levels takes a big hit and the controls suck, the level design is quite interesting. The levels feature mazes, switches, moving objects, sliding doors and cells so big they have warp points. To counter any possible confusion on these huge cells, they’ve added some data on the bottom screen telling you how many enemies are left and how many regions remain unpurified. Unfortunately the map itself is frustrating, you have to pause the action to see it unlike the Wii U game, and it’s hard to figure out which way your ship is facing because the directional arrow is wrong. When you rotate the angle of the map it ALSO rotates the direction your ship is facing so you have no idea which way to go. When most levels are round surfaces this creates a huge headache, there’s often 1 final enemy remaining that takes a long time to track down. I found myself having to identify landmarks on the map, then going there in the game just to get a point of reference.

While there are some cool sights to see, the gameplay itself never really has a chance to shine. There’s just too many things to blame while hunting for high-scores.

“Oh, the framerate died and the enemy teleported into me”

“My ship was in between those bullets and I still got hit?”

“My thumb slipped on the circle pad”

“My bullets can’t penetrate that angle“

None of that is an issue in the Wii U game, which runs at a perfect 60FPS at all times with two responsive analog sticks. The framerate takes a huge hit mostly when there’s a ton of bullets on the screen, which is precisely the worst time for it to happen. Furthermore, half the levels require a Circle Pad Pro to play with precision. It’s impossible to even use the combo system in this game when you can’t aim for specific enemies and chain them together, instead it’s all about positioning. By the time you’ve rotated around an enemy to line up a shot the combo-counter has expired. It would be a different story if you have a Circle Pad Pro but I have no interest in turning my 3DS into frankenstein, and I played Resident Evil Revelations just fine without it. This is the only impression I can give, and it rubs me the wrong way that a game was designed to use this so heavily when it’s not part of the 3DS. The system has a touch screen that developers seem to have forgotten.

Overall I’d say this game is worth it just to see the most incredible texture work done on 3DS and some really fun boss fights. The graphics are such a mixed bag; some levels blew me away with textures that wouldn’t look out of place in a Wii U game, but the 3DS just can’t handle it and some parts are almost unplayable as a result. It also has a deeper 3D effect than most games, it looks great but I had to hold the 3DS further away to appreciate it. The level-design is inconsistent but I still plowed through story mode with excitement just to see how crazy the next level was. I might sound disappointed but it’s still an amazing game. It screams “look at all this cool shit!“, and some people might prefer that (most of you, considering nobody on my Wii U friends list even bothered to set a score in Nano Assault Neo’s Survival Mode) but I was hoping for a meatier gameplay experience. Despite having significantly more content I don’t see myself playing this as much as the Wii U game. Nano Assault EX is such a wild, unfocused experience that you have to ask yourself; can your 3DS handle it?

Operators are standing by. [the emergency exit]

The gameplay has fun aspects but gets off to a really bad start with an hour of Uncharted-style button mashing QTE’s and auto-climbing “dynamic” gameplay where you just hold a direction and Cole slots effortlessly into every nook and cranny. Wherever you jump Cole will always spaz out in midair at the last second to make sure you land perfectly, and if you land on a rail you start auto-grinding for 10 seconds without even pressing anything. Shooting is also run-of-the-mill with a bad cover system and too many enemies – I’ve already done this a million times. One thing I like is the health system, your life is powered by electricity which means every electrical object can refill your health. This gives meaning to many objects that are normally useless in games like lights, phone boxes and street poles. Clicking down L3 shows all the electrical objects in the area and you hold L2 to absorb it. Feels good. The small downside is you die whenever you touch water.

The city feels wrong, something supposedly happened to cause explosions, debris, knocked-over bins, soldiers patrolling around and news reports about the country (America) being under attack; but I don’t get that feeling as I’m playing and I’m struggling to piece it all together after not playing the first game. Civilians casually chat about coffee and cars drive around honking like the traffic jam is the most important thing going on. The atmosphere is non-existent.

The good / evil aspect already feels broken. When cops start shooting at me what am I supposed to do? Jumping around taking bullets doesn’t make me a good person, it makes me dead. Cops even shoot you when you’re healing people, shattering the purpose of the situation into more incoherent pieces. I want to be evil because I hate everything in this game, was that the message the developers wanted to send?

“I’m not Human… Or Am I? Maybe… I think.”

The characters may as well be robots, I haven’t heard a single thought-provoking or funny line in 4 hours. Cole’s one attempt at a “joke” so far made me want to smash my TV, something about a woman dating her father. It’s not Resident Evil-style awkward, just plain empty and offensive. Cole is the least inspiring superhero I’ve ever seen, he begrudgingly jumps around killing enemies and throwing shit like he doesn’t want to be there. The NPC’s somehow care even less about their own existence than Cole as they just seem to serve as waypoints, teleporting onto rooftops around the city for the convenience of a mission. Sure, it’s an open-world game so it’s all about the gameplay right? Not when cutscenes are unskippable. In fact when you pause the game there’s a “Watch Movies” option staring you in the face so you can watch cutscenes while you watch cutscenes.

I can see I’ve still got a lot of powers and fun things to unlock, but the gameplay is based on exploration and manipulating objects which pretty much requires an engaging playground. inFAMOUS 2 has amazing graphics, fast movement, solid jumping and intuitive controls but still somehow fails to be interesting. Right now I’m having fun jumping around collecting orbs which is pretty much all I did in Crackdown as well.

Here’s a real superhero open-world game. The Hulk doesn’t need 100 different animations to climb a building – he just runs straight up.