I should have been a pair of ragged claws

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

Brilliant happy game but don't make me walk so much two visits is fine

OK, I was wrong . Pikmin 2 is great and is what the first game should have been. All that was wrong about the rushed, incomplete original is fixed in a beautiful, decadently polished experience. The thirty day time limit of the first game is gone; take your time exploring the worlds and collecting treasure. Once you get the original three Pikmin types, the game opens up to be a refreshingly non-linear experience. Go anywhere, do what you want to do, just get enough money to pay off Olimar's company debt. To replace the tension lost by removing the time limit, the overworlds in Pikmin now have a few dungeon entrances tucked throughout them. Only the Pikmin in your current group can be brought into the dungeon and you have to play it smart because you can't grow new Pikmin underground. The dungeon floors, in a surprisingly turn, are laid out randomly. Most of the time a floor contains a landmark puzzle or enemy encounter, but the position and order of the elements change each tim...

Arriving in Japan Winter 2004! Hopefully in the US by Summer 2005 if the localization can get done by then. There was some images of Japanese ads that I linked to, but they've been taken down, so I have to link to the lame ign galleries . The images aren't very clear. :( Edit: Some blessed soul translated the previous advertisement for us to peruse. Hurray!

Here's the 1up article outlining the Next Big Thing for Intelligent Systems. Can Nintendo R&D 1 do no wrong? Consider that Advance Wars 2 is the worst game they've made in the last 10 years, and Advance Wars 2 one of the best console strategy games. I think Bessie would like to send a special "thank you" to Intelligent Systems by developing two of the three biggest gaming time sinks in the last few years. (Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and Rise of Nations, natch.) Plus, there's supposed to be an announcement about the next Fire Emblem game sometime in April. Hopefully it'll be in the US by the end of the year. . . Here's some screenshots from IGN . Yeah, I know, Day 2 and 3 of GDC isn't up yet. So sue me.

What the heck is up with Pikmin 2? The first Pikmin game was an interesting take on a console RTS/puzzle game; flawed, but well worth playing. I played Pikmin 2 at E3 and it was so similar that I had to remind myself I was playing the sequel. Now a year later more screenshots from IGN and Pikmin 2 looks. . . almost exactly the same . I was hoping N would do something to turn this title around and give it more reason to exist than to fill up an increasingly vacant release schedule.

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...