I should have been a pair of ragged claws

It has taken me three attempts at playing Resident Evil 4 (twice on the Gamecube and now on the Wii) before I finally realized that everyone was right and I was wrong . Resident Evil 4 is a fantastic game. I love the aiming the gun with the remote. While Nintendo did a good job of translating Twilight Princess from a GameCube game into a Wii game, Resident Evil 4 gun battles feel like the game was designed from the ground up to be played with the remote. It's easy to switch between targets quickly and "juggle" a group of oncoming cultists/zombie/crazies through quick kneecap shots. Capcom plays the tension of "too many zombies, not enough ammo" like a violin. Other aspects of the game lack the elegance of the aiming; the inventory screen is obtuse and frustrating by using some rather obscure buttons (the + and the 'c' button). It certainly doesn't ruin the game, but it's a missed opportunity to not use the remote to drag and drop in the inventory...

I was going to write a reasonably big 2005 wrap-up post, but being mid-Feburary I don't see the point. I did write a couple of short reviews and I'd hate to see them go to waste. So here we go! Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney ds Who said adventure games are dead? There's not much game there really - Capcom avoids the dreaded adventure game "getting stuck" by making a linear path with limited choices. The amusement comes from great characters and dead-on comic timing. It's 3/4ths Matlock with 1/4th of wacky Dragonball Z thrown in. Don't expect to learn anything about law, but you're sure to laugh and have a good time. Yoshi's Touch & Go ds Maligned as a throw-away tech demo, YT&G is the most refined touch-screen arcade game I've played. There's none of the structure, the bosses, the fire/ice/jungle levels that players tend to expect of platformers, but there's a surprising richness to the game in balancing the needs of clearing t...

shuffling awkwardness "That's not scary. It's just dumb." same crap, different view

girlfriend, more puzzles first Joe thrilled, now indifference Crapcom strikes again

Clover Studio , responsible for the superlative Viewtiful Joe , has released footage of their latest project, Okami. (28 meg mpeg) While the movie reveals nearly nothing gameplay-wise, the game's amazing art style is gleefully showcased. Clover Studios is trying to render the world of Okami in the form of a moving classical Japanese painting. The environment in the game seems hand painted and, in a clever use of bump-mapping, Okami presents the "background" of the world is as piece of parchment. Most games attempt to develop an immediately engrossing visual style through photo-realistic rendering. To my knowledge, Okami challenges the player visually more than any game to date. The entire artistic conceipt is an attempt to make the player believe that they are looking at a moving parchment painting on a video monitor.

Capcom has tendency to make one amazingly great game every decade, sometimes even define an entire genre, then spend the next 10 years demolishing their accomplishment by flooding the market with cheap, quick follow-ups. Mega Man was Capcom's claim to fame in the eighties. Street Fighter 2 reinvented arcades in the 90s. Both games spawned dozens of sequels, and their brilliance dimmed with each ever-diminishing, apathy-inspiring release. And from about two hours of play time, I predict there will no fewer than three thousand Viewtiful Joe games by the year 2010. At the end of the decade will the gaming public be bored with Joe's immaculate art direction and fluid kung-fu battles against robot dudes? Who knows, but it's really fun to play right now. It is surprising to me how mature Joe is as a play experience. The game's controls are introduced in sandbox tutorials that allow the player to test out their abilities on a endless set of enemies without fear of dyi...