bigredcoat: Wallet Abuse Wednesday 10-28-08

An abbreviated WAW today, as I spent most of Tuesday wandering around Manhattan in the pouring rain and I think somewhere outside the Citigroup tower I was able to pinpoint the exact moment I contracted pneumonia.

So if you're concerned about not seeing Disney Faries: Tinker Bell, Singstar Country, Rubik's Puzzle World, Six Flags Theme Park, High School Musical Three, MySims Kingdom or Scene It Office Smash, I assure you they came out this week, and they're all crap. And then there's this crap:

All Star Cheer Squad (wii) ASCS has me excited for two reasons. One, there's this:

And secondly, Nintendo has created a situation where it's become fiscally feasable to sell videogames to cheerleaders, and I like anything that further justifies my seething hatred for Nintendo and all it stands for. It's sort of like being excited when hearing that the Dallas Cowboys signed Roy Williams simply because you know it'll piss off TO and make everyone involved look like even bigger assholes than they already are.

Bella Sara (DS) Research reveals this to be a Nintendogs-clone based on the popular girls's equine ccg Bella Sara, which leads us to the question-- what the fuck is Bella Sara?

Oh, that's Bella Sara. Not wishing to do too much research into Bella Sera and wind up with Chris Hansen knocking on my door, I'm left to wonder exactly what differentiates a girl's collectible card game from something like Magic the Gathering. I mean, we can assume that your horses don't actually fight each other, because a game centered around unicorns impaling nightmares would be something that'd have appeared on my radar well before now.

Fallout 3 (360, PS3) aaaah, there we go. I'm not going to be the most unbiased opinion on the merits of Fallout 3, seeing as how I've already ordered the CE despite, you know-- not possessing a working 360 console-- But do you really need an unbiased opinion to tell you you need to be playing this game, right now, despite whatever laws of physical reality and your own local police jurisdiction may unfairly impose?

Okay, so at worse it's going to be Oblivion with a Mad Max skin. I don't think there's any real reason to think it'll work out that way, but that's your baseline. Bethesda doesn't make bad games, and provided you're willing to pretend Brotherhood of Steel was never produced, there's never been a bad Fallout game. And really, even if it's not a hundred percent faithful to the Fallout universe or ethos, isn't it about time we had a western RPG that broke free of high fantasy?

Y'know, one not already made by Bioware. What I'm saying here is that, at worse, you're still looking at what's probably going to be the best WRPG of the year. If it can live up to it's promise, then it's going to be very, very special.

Guitar Hero World Tour (Everything) Guitar games are like Madden games to me at this point-- I can't play them worth a damn, I like seeing other people play them, I'm sorta baffled as to why people keep buying incremental updates every six months.

Imagine Party Babyz (Wii)

You have to admire the breadth of vision with Ubisoft's Imagine series-- not only is it a full-on assault against good gaming, but it also actively reinforces gender roles by convincing young girls that their proscribe career paths involve babysitting, tending house and little else. Now we have Party Babyz, in which Ubisoft makes the argument that babies should be used as personal combatants in frenetic party games. I can't say I'm disappointed with this development, as the next obvious step is Imagine: Baby Cockfights, where you strap kitchen knives to infant foreheads and the the little runtlings scoot about until one baby is left crawling.

Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ (DS)

Now here's the sort of stereotype-shattering title that only hardcore gaming can deliver:

Yeah, it's a good thing no one at NOW owns a DS, otherwise we'd be fucked. Still, there's nothing about this game that's convinced me I can't not buy it.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift

As much as I've enjoyed the antics of lolSony over the past two years, I gotta admit to indulging in more than a bit of fanboy jealousy over the Motorstorm franchise. It's simple, well-constructed arcade rally action, something that Sega just can't get right anymore and Codemaster's Colin McRae games simply aren't interested in doing. Plus, it looks simply fucking stunning in HD, one of the few titles that you can point to as being unquestionably PS3-like as far as graphics are concerned. Pacific Rift looks particularly neat, as it's taking Motorstorm's formula and adding evolving track design that features paths that can be each be exploited in thier own way by Motorstorm's varied vehicle classes. I want to play this, and am annoyed at the utter lack of an analogous title on the 360, especially with with no recent news on the horizon of the Rallisport followup Turn 10 is supposedly working on.

Moto GP '08 (PS3,PS2,360)The annoying thing about Moto GP '08 is imagining how cool a bike racer by Capcom would be if it were played out like a traditional Capcom game instead of a sim racer. You could have Isabella from Dead Rising show up on her Harley, instigate bike-mounted knife fights, have The Tyrant appear as a boss battle atop a pocketbike-- It'd be like Mario Kart, but with tits and evisceration. Y'know, pretty much the best game ever.

Ninjatown (DS) Sorry, Random Child's Play kid. You're never going to get a copy of Lego Batman because Shawn Smith is an asshole who made a tower defense game about chibi ninjas and took all my money.

Neverland Card Battles (PSP) Yeah. I don't know either, man.

Out of the Chute (Wii, PS2) For some reason I keep mixing up Crave the shitty budget-title developer with Cave shooters, the guys who keep making shumps for the Dreamcast. I think this is mainly due to the Cave brain squishy I picked up from the last Atlanta E3, and for whatever reason the company has managed to insinuate itself in my head as a quality developer, and I'm shocked whenever I remember they make stuff like The Bible Game or Hard Rock Casino or this blight upon our hobby.