http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Semi daily fourhman.com newspost. en-us joe@fourhman.com 2008-10-28T00:54:30-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/10/round-two.html As we enter Round Two of the 2007-2008 Cheapo Games Shootout, the following combatants stand ready for battle: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Something or Other (Wii) Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Wii) No More Heroes (Wii) Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (Wii) The Orange Box (PS3) Slide Adventure Mag Kid (DS) Pain (PS3) Which game will stand as Best Cheapest? In Round Two, we'll cut this list in half... only three games will advance to the Final Round! Each game will have to face off in six specific categories, with a potential three point maximum in each (although an effort will be made to limit the awards to a single 3 and a single 0, to name the best and worst in each comparison bout). The highest scoring trio will head to the judge's table. 3095@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-10-28T00:54:30-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/10/round-one-blast.html Not enough hardcore games on the Wii? Maybe, unless you consider shmups to be hardcore! Not only is the Virtual Console packed to the gills with them, but here comes Blast Works. A traditional shmup with an interesting hook: enemy ships, once killed, can attach to you, creating a giant ridiculous Katamari starship of death. Add to that a complete game editor, allowing you to design your own levels, enemies, ships and firing patterns - plus the ability to download other players' creations - and you've got uber hardcore. Original retail was $40; I found it for $20. Ragdoll physics demos have been popular for some time, but none have the polish or gameplay quite like Pain. Appearing on PlayStation Network for $10 - and marked down to $5 during a special sale event - Pain lets you launch hapless abuse-addicts into a thriving downtown area. By controlling the character mid-flight, grabbing objects and lurching around on the ground after landing, the goal is to chain combos and run up a huge high score. 3088@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-10-13T21:03:53-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/09/round-one-mag-k.html Nintendo of Japan is even more adventurous than Nintendo of America. Meet Slide Adventure: Mag Kid, a wholly new IP, based around a very intriguing DS peripheral. Play-Asia.com had a crazy summer sale where this game - plus the specialized add-on - was only $15. And now the Colonial Response: a modern version of the NES Zapper, reduced to solid state plastic parts since the Wii Remote already contains more than enough tech to simulate the simplistic light guns of yore. Although the Crossbow Training + Zapper bundle was originally $20 in the fall of 2007, it shot up to $25 after the holidays and has unfairly sat there ever since... except for at Walmart, where it has been normal stock at $20 for months. CONCEPT: Slide Adventure: Mag Kid has a fantastic peripheral-dependant concept. The ass-end of a laser mouse gets plugged into the GBA slot on your DS, simultaneously providing a way for the DS to track physical motion and raising the entire unit up to a comfortable reading angle. 3081@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-09-30T23:59:32-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/09/round-one-every.html Hero for the indie masses, Everyday Shooter puts an arty, musical spin on the moldy Asteroids concept. Sony marked it down to $5 during last year's Thanksgiving PSN sale. Ambitious by almost any definition, The Orange Box offers five games on one disk... Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, and two HL2 expansion episodes. By all accounts, not a stinker in the bunch - although this PS3 edition has become famous for being buggy and abandoned by the publisher. For a game this fully-featured and well-received, it's a little surprising to see it busted down to a Lair price level of $15. CONCEPT: I think I already described Everyday Shooter's concept. Arthouse Asteroids. It's a dual-stick shooter, meaning you use one to move and one to shoot, Robotron-style. But instead of the usual boring sci-fi theming, Everyday Shooter goes abstract, with blocky, pop art enemy types and level goals. Each board looks entirely different, so one single screenshot does not do the game justice. 3067@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-09-25T23:22:49-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/09/round-one-cooki.html Cookie & Cream... the unexpected DS sequel to a truly underrated early PS2 release. Found in the Please Shoplift Me section of Best Buy for a paltry $10. Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law... the unexpected point-and-click game straight from Adult Swim, brought to Wii via the tried-and-true Pheonix Wright engine. Now $20. CONCEPT: The original Cookie & Cream was built around two-player co-op, with each rabbit stuck on half of the screen. Rabbit A (Cream) would have to hit a button or pull a switch so Rabbit B (Cookie) could progress, and vice versa. The DS version adapts much of that overlooked classic into a single-player experience, with one person expected to control both rabbits. The second rabbit's play is greatly reduced, limited to single-screen mini-games that pop up whenever the first rabbit hits a stopping point. It's an idea that is flawed from the start. One person controlling both rabbits. Come on. 3 points. 3061@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-09-15T22:22:53-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/09/round-one-no-mo.html Most likely, I would have picked up No More Heroes for full price about a week after it launched, but the idiot Toys R Us clerk laughed at my inquiry and said they would probably never get it in stock. When they did start selling it (about two weeks later, asshat), I was already deep into something else so I gave NMH a pass. Happy times ensued several months afterward when I found it languishing on a Target endcap for $30. It's brother disks are probably still there today. Ben 10: Protector of Earth was released on Wii in October 2007, but Clark didn't get into the show until July 2008. So there you go. A cheapie title on PS2 ($30), the Wii version was initially ten dollars more... due to adding in the code that demands you sit within four feet on the TV screen, I guess. But time has a way of evening things out: now both versions can easily be found for merely $20. 3056@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-09-08T20:43:24-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/09/round-one.html Sony's detestable Lair seems to be heading into this as an underdog, positioned against one of juggernaut Nintendo's Blue Ocean non-games... the Wii edition of Big Brain Academy. But don't count Lair out yet, as it was a mere $15 clearance compared to BBA's relatively beefy sale price of $30 (both courtesy Target). CONCEPT: Lair sounds like a winner on paper. Epic medieval battles with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and ballista, with you riding herd over the whole scene atop a giant dragon. Shame it arrived several years too late to truly ride Lord of the Rings hype. Plus, it comes from Factor 5, a team with some serious experience in action-flight games... the Rogue Squadron series. 7 points. Big Brain Academy, a first-party DS hit following in the shadows of Nintendo's own Brain Age series, was an early Wii release... with an emphasis on family multiplayer and Wii features integration (Miis, Remote tricks, sending challenges to Wii Friends). Several play modes frame a collection of brain teaser-themed minigames. 5 points. 3047@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-09-03T20:50:26-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/08/round-one-zack.html I bought Zack & Wiki during that famous Smash Brawl sale at Toys R Us... they had a short list of games that you could buy for half-off when you bought Brawl on launch day. Zack & Wiki was far and away the best game on the list, and also the cheapest, as Z&W was already busted down to $30 only a few months after its release. $15? A no-brainer. Nodame Cantabile was a similar deal... I picked it up as a super-cheap add-on to my $50 Ouendan 2 import through Play-Asia. Thank you, no-region-lock DS! To quantify the system by which one cheapo game will be declared Fourhman.com's Best Cheapest Game of the 2007-2008 TV Season, I will judge each game in four key areas... awarding one to ten points based on my near-random feelings at the time. Those categories are Concept, Gameplay, Value and Timeliness. The Concept judging area will discuss each game's genre, style, storyline, characters and methodology. Gameplay will analyze the controls, presentation and fun factor. Value will look at how great the discounted price was, in comparison to the original retail price. Timeliness will see how the game stacks up today, since discount games typically hit those prices some time after the original release, meaning that the title has to compete against an entirely different games marketplace... IE, does it still stand out? This initial round will largely judge the games on their own merits; I will switch things up for the finals as I pit the games directly against each other. On to the first battle of Round One! Fight! 3044@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-08-30T23:58:15-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2008/08/20-cheapo-shoot.html Since I do a fair amount of bargain hustling in my gaming, I thought I'd do a tournament-style shootout between all the cheap, discounted game purchases over the past year. My criteria for inclusion was that each game had to be on sale, preferably at a substantial discount from the original price. I widened the net to allow import games and downloadable games, resulting in a Olympic-level competition of fourteen games. This will likely take a week of weblog posts to soldier through. Or more. I'm tired tonight. I randomized the matchups and here how the initial seven bouts shook out: Critical favorite Zack & Wiki versus virtual unknown Nodame Cantabile! What a way to kick off the fight card! 3036@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Cheapo Game Shootout 07-08 2008-08-28T23:03:51-05:00