(Despite the Xbox 360 boxart here, the PS3 version is reviewed… there’s no PS3 boxart so I went with the closest thing)
Remember Cross Edge? It came out last year, and it was hated by critics and gamers overall. But I still thought it was a very fun game, there were just a lot of hurdles to jump over before really getting to enjoy it, hurdles which the average gamer or reviewer just didn’t want to bother with (which is quite understandable). And then there’s the fact that it was incredibly badly optimized, with pixelated/blurry 2D graphics and relatively long load times (even when the game was installed). It was still a fun game, with a really good battle system and lots of fun leveling systems.

This year we get Record of Agarest War. Made by the same company, and it has a lot in common. So maybe this is this year’s “Cross Edge” in a sense. It’s been out for a while now, I just took my sweet time playing it and finally getting to review it. But, from the little research I made, I found that it got more favorable reviews than Cross Edge did.

So read on and see if it really deserves the slightly more favorable reviews!

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jobocan Console, Games, PSN, Review, ps3, xbox 360

We’re still pretty much in the “summer drought” for August, but there’s still a few interesting/noteworthy releases. Even some that might be worth buying! I found 11 games to put in the list for August, obviously ignoring the crap/shovelware.

This month there are: 3 multiplatform releases, 1 PS3 release, 1 Nintendo DS release, 2 Xbox 360 releases, 2 Nintendo Wii releases, and 2 PSP releases. August is PC’s turn not to get interesting exclusive releases.

Read on and see what might interesting you in August!
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jobocan Console, Games, Handheld, PSN, XBLA, ds, games of the month, ps3, psp, wii, xbox 360

Well, just based on the premise of this game, the developers might as well have come to my house and taken my money, because it was 100% sure I’d buy it. I mean…a humorous Diablo clone, with a great graphic style and made by Ron Gilbert (one of the Monkey Island creators)? Sounds like awesomeness to me.

Read on and see if it reached my expectations!
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jobocan Console, Games, PSN, Review, XBLA, ps3, xbox 360

If there’s one genre that’s been slightly under-represented this generation, it’s the shoot ‘em up. I mean, in most previous generations you couldn’t walk into a video game store without being surrounded by shmups. They were everywhere. Now there’s barely any of them in stores, and the network marketplaces of PSN and XBLA just have a handful of them.

Gundemonium Collection is a set of 3 shmups featuring “cute” chibi anime girls, and tons of bullets on the screen trying to murder them. The 3 games are: Gundemonium Recollection, GundeadliGne and Hitogata Happa. The first 2 are side-scrolling shooters like Gradius, while Hitogata Happa is vertical-scrolling, like the Touhou series. The games can be bought individually at $6 each, or as a pack for $15 (saving you $3 if you get the bundle).

So since the 3 games come in a collection, I’ll do a quick review of each game separately, with a small section to talk about the parts that are similar.
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jobocan Console, Games, PC, PSN, Review, ps3

Sometimes games don’t need incredible budget and huge teams to be made. As proof, Joe Danger is a game that was made by a team of only 4 people. A very ambitious group to say the least.

The trailers for this game were quite interesting. Seemed like Excitebike, but with bigger jumps and various other obstacles. I waited a bit after it came out, but caved in and shelled out the 15$.

Read on and see if it was worth it!

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jobocan Console, Games, PSN, Review, ps3

Well the E3 conferences are done. Some of them sucked, one of them was fucking awesome, and here I am to give my impressions on them.

I’ll comment about both things that were announced, and my impressions about the conferences as a whole. There were 5 big conferences, and I’ll talk about all of them, though I will just skim through the less interesting ones.

And I know that E3 isn’t done yet, more could be announced, but this is just about the conferences.

So read on!
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jobocan Console, Games, Handheld, News, Opinion, PC, PSN, Rant, ds, e3, impressions, ps3, psp, wii, xbox 360

I LOVE old-school sport games. Rather than just trying to simulate the sport and make it as realistic as possible, appealing ONLY to fans of the sport, old sports games were made strictly to be fun, and enjoyable for both fans of the sport and people who just liked playing video games. They simplified the rules and gameplay, and as such ended up being much more enjoyable games, since they could be different enough from the actual sport to feel unique, and similar enough to not lose the feel of the actual sport. Oh and here’s a kicker: even Madden used to be fun to play! Crazy stuff.

Give me Ice Hockey over NHL 10. Give me the Mutant League games over any Madden or NHL games. As for baseball… well, seems like they always made baseball games as boring to play on consoles as it is to watch on TV, no change there… But anyways, sport games were generally a lot more fun in the old days than they are now.

Tecmo Bowl is a series that I completely missed in the old days, since I wasn’t interested in American Football at all at the time. So this release let’s me finally see why it’s so popular.

So read on and see if Tecmo Bowl Throwback has that retro sport game feel!
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jobocan Console, Games, PSN, Review, XBLA, ps3, retro, xbox 360

Everyone loves pinball, right? I mean, there’s nothing more enjoyable than skillfully aiming at ramps, hitting targets, and trying to prevent your balls from going to the bottom of the board. Since 1777 when primitive forms of pinball were invented (with “flippers” being added in 1947), pinball has always been fun and popular. It had some ups and downs, and people barely care about it anymore, but there’s one thing for sure: there’s really no way NOT to like pinball.

I’ve been out of the pinball scene for years now, with the last thing I played was a pinball game on Windows XP (3D Pinball: Space Cadet), though I have been wanting to play pinball for some time now. For some reason pinball machines aren’t very common around here, so actually playing pinball is rather rare. At time of release I didn’t see Zen Pinball when it came out, but after seeing some gameplay videos recently, I went and picked it up right away.

So read on and see if my thirst for pinball was satiated by Zen Pinball!
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jobocan Console, Games, PSN, Review, ps3

While it was a bit underrated, Rocket Knight Adventures was one of the top games on the Sega Genesis, and its sequel, Sparkster, was also a solid game. The idea of there being a modern day sequel sounded impossible since it’s not as widely known as other Genesis classics, but there it is.

This definitely hyped me up, with its side-scrolling gameplay and similar mechanics to the original, it looks very interesting.

So read on and see if it’s worth buying!
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jobocan Console, Games, PC, PSN, Review, XBLA, ps3, xbox 360

The first game in the series was awesome. I had tons of playtime and fun from this game which was original and deep. The game also had tons of replay value. When they announced that the sequel was getting localized, I was very happy.

The first game easily won a spot in our 2009 Games of the Year awards in the PSP category. The second seemed to keep the same gameplay, and added various gameplay elements, so there were high hopes for this.

Does it keep the same fun as the first game, or do the changes reduce the game’s overall quality? Read on and see!
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jobocan Games, Handheld, PSN, Review, psp