I should have been a pair of ragged claws

After wrapping up core development a few months ago, Civilization Revolution (CivRev) is finally being released in the US this week on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo DS. I have been thrilled by the response to the demo on various message boards; CivRev is quite a different game than most console experiences and it was never completely clear to us how the public would respond. Thankfully, most have understood what we've tried to with the series and embrace it as its own thing rather than Civilization 5. I've been particularly proud of the responses of players who have never played a strategy game like this before. The sort of wide-eyed "there can be games like this?!" response makes me feel like we helped expand what people think of games by a little bit. Developing CivRev was quite a challenge for me because it was the first time that I was a lead in charge of other developers, the first time I developed a console title, and the first time we used Scaleform's GFX...

Picross DS was just released in the US, and if you like puzzles like Sudoku it's well worth your inspection. I've been playing the UK version (thinking that it would never come out in the States) and there are tons of puzzles and a surprisingly good online competitive mode. Picross (officially known as nonograms ) have been around a while; it's frequently part of Games Magazine. Here's a free flash version to try out!

A few of co-workers have gotten Nintendo DSs for themselves or their family and some have asked me what I recommend. Well, how about recommendations in haiku form? Everybody loves that! Elite Beat Agents Male cheerleaders? Huh?! This comic music game grooves even with Believe [ 1 ] . Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime Look what's on my head! I'll fire it from my huge tank! Hope you like mad puns. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Has Metroid-vania [ 2 ] ever been done better? No. Take notes, Nintendo! Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Nethack [ 3 ] , lose no sleep; It's a puddle to your lake. Still, fun in the car. [ 1 ]Yes, Cher's Believe . While some may question the track list , Elite Beat Agents remains a fun game no matter how many hundreds of times you've heard the songs. [ 2 ] Metroid-vania is a sub-genre of 2D platformers defined by their maze-like non-linearity and the collection of abilities that open up new areas to explore. The first Metroid-vania was Nintendo's Metroid, a...

Just when I think that I'm somehow less nerdy that I was before, I do something that not only fastens the geek badge to my chest, it shines it up and makes me puff my chest out. That's how I felt at 8 a.m. this (Sunday!) morning driving around to various Targets and WalMarts trying to get my hands on Nintendo's revision of it's workhorse handheld. I wouldn't have felt the nerdiness as pronounced if I didn't have company. When I wandered into Target, there're four other people awaiting the system's release. A father and his 10 year old kid, and a young Asian couple. The Target said that it would release on Tuesday instead of Sunday, despite people arguing that Nintendo's own website listed it as releasing today. (I heard the manager say that they sold some of the systems early, and Nintendo may have fined them and forced them to release it at a later date. Who knows.) So I headed back home, called around trying to find the system somewhere. Called a W...

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...

I love the Nintendo DS and it has been blessed with a growing mountain of great, interesting games, but it has lacked a killer app to point to and say "here's why this is such a great system." Mario Kart DS is the system's Halo. Its Soul Calibur. It's the best in the series and its new tweaked rules and weapons, incredible track design, and multiplayer content make a stunning package that no DS system should exist without. Slipstreaming, the most substantial addition to the core gameplay, introduces an excellent risk/reward component to the series. Tailing another driver is typically a dangerous practice in Mario Kart games; most items can be dropped behind characters to force any tailgaters to spin out. In Mario Kart DS, driving in a character's wake provides a moderate speed boost. Remain there a few moments, and you're rewarded with a larger boost that often slingshots you in front of the character you were tailing. There aren't many changes to the ...

Q Entertainment's Lumines has become the outstanding game of the PSP launch, and their Meteos looks to deliver a complimentary experience on the DS. Where Miziguchi's Lumines creates Rez-like synesthetic epiphanies by merging sight, sound, and gameplay, Sakurai's Meteos appears to be a more workman-like piece, true to the designer's Nintendo heritage, that looks to be a faster, more tactical puzzle game. Both titles are distinctly appropriate for their platform; Lumines provides a spectacle on the PSP, Meteos utilizes the DS touch screen for its main game mechanic. 1up has a lengthy preview of the title and a Tokyopia interview with Miziguchi provides a bit of insight into the development of Meteos. I've also dug through Meteos's Japanese web site to get more information. These translations are using Google's translation tool; while it could hardly be considered readable English, the combination of images allows you to get an idea of how the game works. Te...

With Nintendo's recent revealing of the DS lineup , Miziguchi's Studio Q released screenshots for its upcoming title, Meteos. While I was willing to give Lumines the benefit of the doubt, the studio announcing another handheld falling-block puzzle game has erased all my optimism. Take a look at the screenshot below; it is frankly embarassing. And the knife to the belly: the lead designer is none other than Kirby creator, Masahiro Sakurai . Oy vei.

A recent WalMart faux pas showed that the Nintendo DS is releasing at the end of November with a retail price of $199.99. Regardless of the validity of this specific information, several industry analysts agree the Nintendo DS is launching by the end of the year. The trouble is, in this most crowded of Christmas seasons, Nintendo hasn't brought the hype. There's no "gotta-have" flagship title announced that tend to drive these sort of launches. (Then again, the last Nintendo system to have one was the N64's Mario 64.) The noise generated from E3 has subsided and there has been an acute silence on the PR front for one of Nintendo's most important hardware launches to date. Sending a clear message to gamers that the DS is cool and desirable will be difficult to convey with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by other game companies through the typical media formats this Christmas season. Convincing gamers that they should spend $200+ on new hardware...