Trine

Before I wrote this post, I decided to do something I hadn’t done yet with Trine - which is to go check out it’s Meta Critic score and surprisingly it did great and at the time of writing this has an 82 with generally favorable reviews.

Fellow gamer, let me tell you, do not pay twenty dollars for Trine. Save your Playstation Network money in your wallet for something else.

In case you’re wondering what Trine is, let me explain. It was meant to be this beautiful medieval platforming game where you co-operatively played with one or two other players. You all have different powers and use them to help each other manipulate the level and pass through it. It’s quite cool, and the gameplay videos I watched before purchasing the game sealed the deal with me.

However, my girlfriend and I have been playing the game and it is so buggy, so unplayable at times, and so absolutely frustrating that it’s the first game I’d consider attempting to get at least a partial refund from Sony for. That is, of course, impossible, and I’m stuck with the purchase. Why can’t you return games if they’re shit by the way? You can return almost anything else if something is wrong with it, and I’m positive that something is wrong with Trine.

Now, what if all those fancy pants Meta Critic reviewers are right and Trine is awesome and I’m really terrible at video games. Sometimes I do wonder.

We have seen boxes fall through solid floors, enemies jump on our heads and send us flying into a bottomless pit, a stupid ass fucking Knight that can’t swim, and a game that doesn’t regenerate objects that may have been destroyed or lost if you die and respawn, and even worse, a game that actually has a menu that fucking freezes up and requires multiple button presses to escape form. It is the worst game I’ve played in some time.

The platforming and combat components are terrible and EXP is given out with fucking phials of green potion instead of automatically assigned to whoever made the kill, and the only enemies in the game are skeletons, big skeletons, fat skeletons, and un-balanced swarms of bats which will ruin you especially if you’re the wizard and have no physical attack whatsoever.

Jumping in the game is awful, and I assure you that the platforming of the ancient Mario Bros. is substantially tighter than this train wreck of a game.

Such potential Nobilis, what the fuck were you thinking? Did you play your own game, and also what copy did you send to the press, and what copy did Sony release on the PSN?

- Kyle

Good Game Get! Critter Crunch

I don’t have an iPhone, and I had a BlackBerry Storm, but the data plan was getting too expensive to justify always looking and checking my phone for email that I really didn’t give a shit about, so now I have a Nokia Twist, and it’s pretty awesome, and doesn’t have a data plan which is nice, and now I can use that extra thirty a month to save and to buy awesome seven dollar games like Critter Crunch.

Now, let me clarify, if I did have an iPhone, I might justify the data plan, just to play the wonderful critter crunch on the go. Actually nah, it does look better on our TV than a fucking telephone.

So Critter Crunch is the puzzle game you wish you would’ve came up with back in 2008 when you had decided that developing an iPhone app could be insanely profitable, but ending up giving up because you had decided that all good puzzle ideas had been taken.

Wrong. Critter Crunch is incredibly unique and like most falling block games, a line of block-esque creatures are falling and you have to destroy them. The catch is that you must use an idea of a food chain to swap critters inside of your mouth and into the mouths of the critters that want to eat the particular saliva drenched monster that was just inside of your mouth.

You even have a rainbow barf meter that you fill up and then feed your son with.

He burps afterwards. It’s cute.

Overall it’s a wonderful game, it’s one of the prettiest games on the PSN, and the multiplayer critter crunchin’ is joy. Even the ambient jungle music is great.

I give it two rainbow barfs up.

- Kyle

Space Invaders Extreme Coming to the Playstation Network

Yes!

One of my favorite games on the DS will be coming to the PSN! I really hope they keep the multiplayer.

the psn holiday sale

Starting this weekend and through next week; Sony has slashed prices on five select PSN games. The games which normally sold from $9.99 to $14.99 will be sold for $4.99!

The five games are The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, echochrome (PS3), Novastrike, and Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3.

I can say without any doubts that PixelJunk Eden is an awesome and original multiplayer platforming game with a lot of replayability, so it’s definitely a good deal. I’ve also played the demos of The Last Guy and echochrome and my first impressions of those games left me smiling; so I’m definitely thinking about picking up The Last Guy.

The sale ends on December 4th, so hop to it.

The New Playstation Network TOS Hates You

“You authorize and license SCEA a royalty free and perpetual right to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your User Material for any reason without any restrictions or payments to you or any third parties.”

Sony has updated their PSN terms of service obviously in anticipation of the release of Little Big Planet. While I think the above TOS quote is corporate bullshit speak, I will say this about the matter.

First, I don’t think users should make money off of Little Big Planet content. I wouldn’t enjoy paying for user generated content and that has not been my intention when planning on purchasing the game.

Secondly, Sony must never ever sell user generated content back to the community even if they compensate the creator.

Thirdly, If Sony does use your work in LBP or in other PSN stuff, you should at least have attribution rights and Sony should note that you’re the creator.

Often times I think that companies like Sony tend to forget that the internet exists, and that fans of Sony don’t want this kind of behavior from a company that has been sinister in the past and have since appeared to have cleaned up.

We’ll see what happens with LBP and I’ll give Sony the benefit of the doubt, but I hope they don’t do anything stupid.

We’ll see.

Thanks to I Have The Princess for pointing the new TOS out.

marvel vs. capcom 2

PS3 Fanboy is reporting that a poster on the NEOGaf forums has discovered Marvel VS. Capcom 2 is coming to the Playstation Network by looking at the ESRB backlogs.

My girlfriend and I have played the Dreamcast version extensively and it’s our favorite 2D fighter, however it’s a burnt copy so getting a chance to buy an HD version of the game for the PSN would be awesome. I also think that the game would play more comfortably with a Playstation controller than a Dreamcast controller.