http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Semi daily fourhman.com newspost. en-us joe@fourhman.com 2008-09-03T20:50:26-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 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 2007-2008 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 2007-2008 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 2007-2008 2008-08-28T23:03:51-05:00