Hey! You Can Play Psychonauts on a Mac!!!
Actually, was there a way to play it natively before Steam?
Ahhh, who cares! Double Fine’s Psychonauts is one of my favorite games. Top five, maybe top three. It’s now on Steam for Mac & PC, available with achievements, cloud saves and controller support. Yay!
Such a great game. Now when can we expect Grim Fandango?
Update: It’s also on the Mac App Store.
- Andy
The “Binding of Isaac” Has a Fantastic Soundtrack
The purposely disturbing, Zelda-esque roguelike, The Binding of Isaac, hit Steam yesterday. It’s a creepy, hard game. It’s only five bucks.
It’s soundtrack is awesome!
Composed by video game music genius, Danny Baranowsky, the artist behind the amazing Super Meat Boy score, Isaac’s soundtrack matches the game perfectly, fittingly moody and filled with an appropriate amount of edginess. You can get the soundtrack with the game for less than a buck, or head on over to Bandcamp and give a listen.
- Andy
Good Game Get! Kirby Mass Attack
I’m going to keep this short and sweet… because that’s Kirby. Not since I played through Bowser’s Inside Story have I experienced the extraordinary perfection of craft that is Nintendo game design… until now. Kirby may not be hard core, or even hard, but it is the epitome of a well made game.
If you’re not a fan of the series, or of Nintendo-style gameplay, then there’s nothing new here to bring you on board. If, however, the very mention of the word Nintendo makes part of your heart flutter and grow warm and tingly, then set aside an afternoon with your DS and a copy of Kirby Mass Attack. Like all the Kirby games I’ve played, making it to the end is pretty straight-forward with the challenge found in ramping up your high scores, earning all the gold stars and finding every last medal.
Along with the story mode, finding medals unlock extras (here’s a video) in the form of mini-games (and my favorite video game extra, the music player!) These mini-games are almost worth the price of admission alone, encouraging you to hunt down every single medal (all 186 of them, ack).
In short, it’s Kirby. I mean, it’s Kirby… what else is there to say?
- Andy
Great Week for Downloadable Gems
As this monster game release season continues to roll on, it’s easy to miss the smaller games so often over-shadowed by their A-list retail brethren. This week alone offers several unique and classic games across multiple platforms. Below are just three, but if you’re a fan of indies and downloadables, there’s no better time to revisit your platforms of choice.
Wizorb
Releasing this week onto Xbox Live Indies (and soon to PC) is a very old-school genre mash-up, Wizorb from Tribute Games in Montreal, which asks the question, why hasn’t any puzzle RPG’s every built their gameplay (video) around block-breaking, Arkanoid-style? We’ll find out on Thursday.
The Binding of Isaac
Next up, Edmund McMillen, one half of the team that brought you Super Meat Boy, releases the disturbing The Binding of Isaac onto Mac & PC through Steam on Wednesday, bringing SMB composer Danny Baranowsky along for the ride (here’s some free music, full soundtrack coming soon). This one is hard to explain. Check out this blog post or watch this video to get some sense of it.
Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
But the highlight of the week is Nintendo offering Zelda Four Swords free to owners of the DSi and 3DS, and the fact they’ve added a single player makes it an ultimate “must-have” for the platform. Seriously, I’m expecting a shaft of light to descend from the clouds while I download this… Nintendo is giving us a free Zelda adventure!
- Andy
“The Reports of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated”
As quoted from Mark Twain & the Nintendo DS…
I’m getting a little tired of stories referencing the death of the Nintendo DS. I’ve been seeing features on its demise since the 3DS was announced last year and, even now, with Nintendo’s latest handheld floundering under the weight of a dozen bad decisions, every article that mentions the DS points to the fact that “it’s on its way out.”
And yet, if you compare DS releases to 3DS releases for the next six weeks, you’ll find it’s the DS with the incredible line-up.
This is not a rant against the 3DS. Nintendo may have dropped the ball, but they don’t deserve the ire the noisy fanboys are drowning the company in right now. I have no doubt that 3DS version 2 will be a fantastic piece of hardware I’ll certainly add to my collection. Buying version 1 of any tech is always a crapshoot, has always been a crapshoot. No one should be surprised, or angry, especially with a company that has provided so much joy to so many of us. Not every Nintendo product is going to be a beam of light from heaven.
The real problem here is the “Cult of the New” that permeates all technology. Sadly, I believe the game industry suffers from it worst of all. It’s enthusiast press can only exist with the cooperation of the industry, so they have no choice but to propagate the notion of new is better — “go play the latest” and “crave the upcoming” is the message du jour. They even coined a term for the games you buy new but never play, the “pile of shame”. Why should I be ashamed of not playing a video game?
And there’s the dirty little secret. When we gamer’s buy into the hype and excitement, drool like rabid dogs on our laptop screens scrolling through each bit of news hand fed to us by the industry through the keyboards of the “independent” game press, that pile of shame begins to represent not a lack of time, but a lack of common sense. Why buy games we have no intention of playing immediately? Why not wait six months when the price has been cut by 50% or just wait and buy it when you know you’re going to play it? The “Cult of the New” is responsible for the backlash against Nintendo right now. The “Cult of the New” drove the 3DS hype right up to the front door of every Nintendo fan. It’s still laying there — go ahead and look — right there on your welcome mat like a dead bird dropped by your neighbor’s cat.
The truth is we didn’t need a new DS. It was already a mature, reliable technology, with a fan base that spanned multiple generations and, arguably, the best back catalogue of any game console and enough content to keep any gamer entertained for a lifetime. It’s hard to look at the DS and not say, “hey, that’s enough for me!” The DS’s “keep it simple” design philosophy made it a charming and extremely accessible platform (not to mention financially lucrative).
Then Nintendo broke their own rules, filled up their device with every bell & whistle they were comfortable with, took aim at a market they have no business jousting… and promptly fell on their face. I’m well aware of the arguments — “always move forward”, “plan for trends”, “adopt to the ever changing marketplace or die”, blah, blah, blah. All I know is there are 100 million six to eight year olds worldwide that don’t own smartphones, don’t need 3D or accelerometers, but do need something cool to carry around in their backpacks. A bit more polish, better screens, better online functionality, maybe a little social media sprinkled in there, that’s all a new DS needed and we, one and all, would have lined up on day one.
In the next eight weeks we get several amazing DS titles, any one of which deserves to be a bestseller. From Kirby Mass Attack, Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 for those who love the classics to Solatorobo: Red the Hunter and Aliens: Infestation for those looking for something new and even Professor Layton and the Last Specter & Bejeweled 3 for the broader audience. That’s an insanely great line-up. Can someone please explain, in the light of that list, why the DS is “on its way out”?
- Andy