Games of the Now

Shadow of the Colossus

Well, this is actually a bit of a lie; I just finished playing this. So why put it on this list? Because if you own a PS2 and you’ve never played this game, you should take that PS2 and give it to me to sell on eBay for myself, because you were not using your console correctly. This is a game that needs to be played, and in all seriousness is probably one of, if not the, most important games of the last decade.

I know I’m 5 years late on it, and I was kicking myself for not getting Shadow of the Colossus earlier. Playing it through now though is utterly sublime, awesomely powerful and passionate, and evokes so many emotions that –if you’ve ever questioned gaming as an art form– question no longer. I’m not here to make that argument; I’m here to tell you that you take down a flying quarter mile long sand-worm with nothing but arrows, a sword, and your trusty steed. It’s intense.

They’re remaking this game along with Ico for the Playstation 3 as a part of a collection, due out this year. If you own a PS3, get it.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Anything from Top Tier Tactics rocks ultimate

Alright, so if you’ve never been able to guess up to this point, I’m a huge Scott Pilgrim fan. I have the graphic novels, the movie DVD*, and the game for the 360. The game was released a long while back, and I finished it then with a bunch of friends. So, why go back to it? Well, a few weeks ago they released new DLC for it, that’s why! This DLC, and the game patch that goes along with it, does a couple things.

First, it tones down the difficulty a bit on the Average Joe setting, which is a rather welcome change; they’ve also added jump-in/drop-out to the multiplayer, a much needed feature. Next, Knives Chau is now unlocked as a playable character. And lastly, there are a few new multiplayer modes, such as Death Match and Dodgeball. This is by far one of my favorite beat-em-ups ever, alongside River City Ransom and Castle Crashers** and the DLC just makes it all the better, so I’m happy to go back and revisit it.
Plus the music is still AWESOME.

Pac Man Championship Edition DX

Pac Man CE DX is a lot better than its predecessor. That’s not to say the first CE was bad, quite the contrary. It took a very old, well known and much beloved game and gave it a modern face lift, making many many great innovations. It took Pac Man and not only made it flashy, but also updated the its competitive nature with the timed Championship modes, challenging you to see just how many points you can rack up in the rather short allotted time. And thanks to the Xbox Live/PSN Online Leaderboards, life has been restored to the High Score mentality of the old arcade days (something I’ve mentioned before).

The new DX version brings all of this back and adds a ton of new boards and modes. You start off with the Championship II board in the 5:00 Score Attack mode. Once you complete that, you begin to unlock more boards and modes. There is a ton to unlock, such as Time Trial modes, where you must collect a specific number of fruit pieces as fast as possible. There’s also Ghost Combo, where you see how many ghosts you can eat during a single period of ghost vulnerability (which can be extended when you eat another power pellet, just like any other Pac Man game). Each board has all of these modes, meaning there is a ton to do, as there are lots of boards.

Now, as both WiNG and I have both recently acquired this game, we are about to enter a High Score duel. Now, I don’t think the two of us should hog this battle to ourselves, so I’m giving out an open challenge to anyone else who has the game: let he with the best high score be champion! My 360 gamertag is SergeEXE, so send me a request. WiNG’s gamertag should be obvious, plus he’s given it out before. Stop being lazy and go look it up.

Cthulhu Saves the World

By now, you should know that I’m a rather large RPG fan. After all, I’ve sunken over 100 hours into Dragon Quest IX†. Now, when I began to hear about Cthulhu Saves the World online, I must admit I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it. However, looking back, I see that I was stupid. I should have been a lot more excited, because I’ve played humor RPGs before and loved them. This one has all the right ingredients as well: very silly premise, charming graphics, almost no fourth wall, etc. The writing is hilarious, and Cthulhu acts like any other maniacal villain out to destroy the world…except he has to save it first! It really starts to get funny when the game starts making not-so-subtle commentary about the RPG genre, to the point where you have to fight against a standard RPG party of a pretty-boy Hero, a standard female Healer, and a shadowy Thief.

It’s super-cheap on the Indie games section of the XBLA Marketplace (240 MS points, the equivalent of $3) and you should at LEAST try the demo, which of course is free. If you’re not laughing within 5 minutes of starting the demo, then you have no sense of humor.

Red Dead Redemption

Not much to say about this game past the pointers I gave out in my last article. I like it, it’s fun, it’s a Rockstar game.

Mega Man Zero Collection

Probably the most difficult GBA game I've ever played.

Probably one of my favorite series’ for the GBA, all collected into one little cartridge with lots of extras and previously Japanese-only features. They were rather notorious for their difficulty, being some of the hardest games on the system, but also much beloved. One of the extras this compilation brings is an Easy Scenario mode for whiny little babies, which basically is one step under God mode as you start the games with full health, full subtanks, and max weapon strength along with other upgrades. There are also modifications for Mega Man Zero 3, which were previously Japanese-only eReader cards which did small things like change bullet sprites or increased damage slightly. They’re not a huge addition to the game, but some of the changes are kinda neat and fun to mess around with. The games have aged pretty well, and are awesome not only for Mega Man fans, but action-game fans in general. Plus you’re getting 4 full games for less than $10 a game, that’s like Orange Box value right there.

???????????

Now, here’s why I mentioned the new video series. There are a bunch of 8 and 16 bit games that I’ve been meaning to play or replay, but can’t decide which. So, that’s where you come in! I’m bringing this to a vote. Here’s a list of some of the games I’m looking at, pick which game I should play and record myself playing.

Zelda
Zelda 2
Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
Earthbound (SNES)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (Ancient Cave)

Now, I can’t do this for any higher-end games because I don’t have video-capture equipment like WiNG does, so I can’t make things like his Assassin Creed: Brotherhood videos. But, I do have the means to capture games like this, and to record my voice††. So, pick which game I take off the shelf and play for you!

You have until next Friday, January 21st to cast your vote in the comments section of this article.¶

*A rather rare occurrence, actually.
**I like both of these games more than Turtles in Time, crazy I know.† Luckily, I have not played DQ9 for a while now…the addiction is on pause for now.
†† Beware, my mics are pretty shitty.
¶ A-ha! WiNG, I REBEL against your standard footnote format!

***What do you mean “you people”?! Also, just for the record, Castle Crashers is a pale imitation of Guardian Heroes, the greatest beat’em up of all time, no questions asked. ~WiNG