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This week, Split Second is pumping a ridiculous amount of adrenaline into the racing game genre. On May 25th, two more racers are coming out with very different approaches. Let’s just quickly compare the three.

Split Second: Race opponents and your friends over chaotic courses that anyone can blow to smithereens at any time, totally changing the course and taking racers out.

Blur: The only one of the three with real licensed cars, it’s more realistic than the others as well while still being arcade-y. Racers still try to perform stunts and use power-ups to take down the other cars.

ModNation Racers: Think LittleBigPlanet meets Mario Kart. It’s a kart racing game where you get to make the characters, the karts, and the tracks, all with incredibly detailed tools that anyone can use.

This week, we talked about the new FIFA World Cup game. Given my limited expertise in international soccer, I’m going to go ahead and predict the results of the entire World Cup, right here, right now. Not by simulating it in-game, no, I’m just going to guess. At least no one can really laugh at how terrible the picks are until July. Two teams advance from each group.

Read the rest of this entry »

You got the info on Final Fantasy XIII, Rocket Racing, and Muscle March in this week’s news post. Muscle March is, as I said, kinda really super unbelievably weird. But now, for your entertainment, I provide the Top 10 Weirdest Games I Have Ever Played *in no particular order* (with some awesome links!):

1. Bust-A-Groove 2 - Oh boy. I remember playing this when I was younger, and being just scared of this final boss. To begin with, he’s a tiny panda. Then he suddenly transforms into a creepy panda man, and it just starts getting surreal right there. *shudder*
2. Noby Noby Boy – You can read my review here on Kidzworld. The trailer released to sell the game was just gameplay, though it may not look like there’s any gameplay going on here.
3. PaRappa the Rapper – Awesomeness. Weird, but still awesomeness. Video for the best song.
4. Umjammer Lammy – Slightly less awesome than PaRappa. Slightly weirder, too, as you can tell from this level.
5. Katamari Damacy – C’mon, you know about this one, right? Still, it had to make the list for this kind of stuff.
6. Rez – Crazy rhythm/shooter game. Nothing makes a whole lot of sense, but it’s entrancing. Here’s a video.
7. Q-Bert – Arcade/Atari title. WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?
8. Taiko Drum Master – Another rhythm game, this one came with a taiko drum peripheral, rather than a guitar or something. Best yet, you could play the Katamari Damacy theme song in it!
9. Jade Cocoon – The most underrated RPG ever, and also a very odd one. This boss battle gives you just a taste of the oddities.
10. Super Mario RPG – If you think about any Mario game long enough, it becomes clear that they are REALLY REALLY WEIRD. Why is a plumber from Brooklyn in rather colorful clothes saving a kingdom of mushroom people who have a human princess from a spiky turtle who leads whatever goombas are? Also, why is Samus Aran sleeping in Super Mario RPG? Why?!

Over the next week, we get not one, but two baseball games coming out. There are tons of differences between the game we could look at for you to decide which one is best, but I just want to see how biased each game is toward specific teams! So here are the official rankings in both games of how good each team is. I was of course shocked to see the Atlanta Braves weren’t #1 in everything.

MLB 2K10 Team Rankings

1. Boston Red Sox
2. New York Yankees
3. Philadelphia Phillies
4. Los Angeles Angels
5. Los Angeles Dodgers
6. Texas Rangers
7. St. Louis Cardinals
8. Tampa Bay Rays
9. Minnesota Twins
10. San Francisco Giants
11. Colorado Rockies
12. Milwaukee Brewers
13. Chicago Cubs
14. Atlanta Braves
15. Arizona Diamondbacks
16. Chicago White Sox
17. Baltimore Orioles
18. Seattle Mariners
19. New York Mets
20. Kansas City Royals
21. Oakland Athletics
22. Florida Marlins
23. Washington Nationals
24. Cincinnati Reds
25. Detroit Tigers
26. Houston Astros
27. Toronto Blue Jays
28. Cleveland Indians
29. Pittsburgh Pirates
30. San Diego Padres

MLB 10: The Show Team Rankings

1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Phillies
4. Dodgers
5. Rays
6. Braves
7. Angels
8. Rockies
9. Cubs
10. Rangers
11. Diamondbacks
12. Twins
13. White Sox
14. Giants
15. Blue Jays
16. Cardinals
17. Mets
18. Brewers
19. Reds
20. Orioles
21. Mariners
22. Astros
23. Athletics
24. Tigers
25. Padres
26. Marlins
27. Royals
28. Nationals
29. Pirates
30. Indians

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is the biggest kids’ release of the next week, and because maybe the coolest thing about kart racing games is all the characters, here’s a full list for you:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog – No surprises there.
2. Miles “Tails” Prower – Side note: It took me years and years to get the joke on why his name is Miles Prower. Do you get it?
3. Knuckles – Again, not too surprising.
4. Doctor Eggman – His real name is Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I guess “Eggman” was just a bad nickname he got in school.
5. Amy Rose – She was introduced in my favorite Sonic game ever, Sonic CD, for the SEGA CD. As a kid I had a combination Laserdisc/SEGA CD player, and I swear those are both real things.
6. Shadow the Hedgehog – I realize he’s the anti-Sonic and everything, but it still seems odd that a hedgehog can have a gun, like Shadow does.
7. Big the Cat – Another Sonic side character, and he looks about as much like a cat as Sonic looks like a real hedgehog. I mean, look at him.
8. AiAi – He puts the “Monkey” in “Super Monkey Ball.” Otherwise, the game would just be “Super Ball,” which actually might be trademarked already.
9. Amigo – From “Samba de Amigo.” For those keeping score, that’ s Monkeys 2 – 3 Hedgehogs.
10. Ryo Hazuki – The main character from the Dreamcast cult hit, “Shenmue.” Yeah, don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it.
11. Beat – From “Jet Set Radio,” another cult hit for the Dreamcast.
12. Alex Kidd – Oh boy, this is even more obscure. He was SEGA’s main man until Sonic took the stage, and hasn’t been in his own new game since well before you were born.
13. Billy Hatcher – From “Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg” for the Gamecube. He, uh, wears a chicken suit. Hm.
14. Zobio and Zobiko – A zombie couple. Too early for Halloween and too late for Valentine’s Day.
15. Ulala – From “Space Channel 5,” another Dreamcast game you’ve probably never played, but should. I miss the Dreamcast now.
16. Jacky Bryant and Akira Yuki – From the “Virtua Fighter” series.
17. B.D. Joe - From “Crazy Taxi,” which hopefully you’ve seen in an arcade or something. Do arcades still exist?
18. Robo and Modo – Now here’s one I hadn’t even heard of. They’re from “Bonanza Bros.,” which apparently came out in 1990. Ooooookay.
19. Opa-Opa – A living spaceship. Cool.
20. Chuih, ChuBei, ChuPea, and ChuBach – All from “ChuChu Rocket!,” another awesome game for the Dreamcast.
21. Banjo and Kazooie – Xbox 360 version only. Sorry, Nintendo fans like me who played the original “Banjo-Kazooie” on the N64.
22. Avatar – Not like James Cameron’s Avatar or the animation show Avatar, but your New Xbox Experience one. Obviously, also Xbox 360 only.
23. Mii – For the Wii.

Level-5 is the developer of our latest featured game, White Knight Chronicles. They’re an often overlooked RPG dev, with some amazing games for Sony systems in particular over the years. Here’s a quick rundown of them, and why you should pick them up if you see them for $5 in a bargain bin somewhere.

• Dark Cloud (2000) – PS2. Actually very similar to White Knight Chronicles in that it’s a regular RPG with city-building elements. A real under-recognized gem.
• Dark Chronicle (2002) – PS2. Sometimes it’s called Dark Cloud 2. It has the same city-building stuff combined with RPG stuff, and then adds in this odd photography system. It has awesome, stylish graphics.
• Dragon Quest VIII (2004) – PS2. Again, great cel-shaded graphics. Japanese magazine Famitsu called it the fourth best game of all time at one point.
• Rogue Galaxy (2005) – PS2. It’s pretty unfair to say it’s a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2, but I don’t have a lot of room to talk about it here, so I’m just going to say it’s like a sci-fi version of Dark Cloud 2.
• Jeanne d’Arc (2006) – PSP. A tactical turn-based RPG instead of an action one like the others, plus it’s (loosely) based on the story of Joan of Arc. One of my favorite PSP games.
• The Professor Layton series (2007-today) – DS. Not an RPG, but rather a game of puzzles set around a storyline, with some adventure-y elements. Definitely a must-have for DS owners, unless you’re really ticked off by brain teasers.

Another week of only three games coming out, but still some neat stuff. Pixeljunk Shooter is getting some insanely good reviews. The first thing I think when I see the game, though, is that it’s not exactly a “shooter” at all. It involves shooting, but that’s totally not the point.

It turns out there was a contest to decide the name of the game, back when it was a prototype and was only being called “Pixeljunk 1-4.” People got a look at this video, and got to decide what they thought it should be called. The leading name by votes on their website was “Pixeljunk Elements,” by a long long way. But the developers were afraid that the name wasn’t action-y enough, and that people might think the game was about the weather. Other leading contender names were “Pixeljunk Caves,” “Pixeljunk Depths,” “Pixeljunk Atlantis,” “Pixeljunk S.O.S.!,” and “Pixeljunk Blaster.”

The developers were planning on calling it “Pixeljunk Depths,” but they said that the name was too hard to say. So anyway, they picked “Pixeljunk Shooter,” which received only 8 votes, and said that that name won the contest, which ticked a lot of folks off, and me too a little bit. It’s not that much of a shooter, it’s more about the water/lava puzzles.

Regardless, great game, definitely worth trying for $10 on the Playstation Network.

There are four different cars you can get as a bonus for pre-ordering  Gran Turismo, and I’m going to give them all to you at once here, so you can decide.

• Amazon.com – 2002 Enzo Ferrari
• Gamestop – 2009 Bugatti Veyron
• Game Crazy – 1974 Lamborghini Countach
• Best Buy – 2008 Citroen GTbyCITROEN

I truthfully can’t decide which is my favorite out of those, but I think I’m going to go with the Ferrari anyway.

E3 2009 was a resounding success in everyone’s mind. While previously downsized for various reasons, it has now fully returned to its former glory, much to the excitement of gamers everywhere.

However, it is important to calm down and sit away from the edge of your seat. After all, the vast majority of the really cool stuff shown at E3 this year won’t be released before the new year. And that’s not including the delays and other complications that games are heir to.

During the Nintendo press conference, many games were announced, but of the video games previewed, those that we can expect this year are: Super Mario Bros Wii, Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Wii Fit Plus, and Mario and Luigi DS. These are the only upcoming games that we can hope for before Christmas. (Gift ideas guide: lots of great games come out around Christmas, so keep a close eye on them if there is a gamer on your list!)

Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M, Golden Sun, and the mysterious Zelda Wii game are far off in the distant future and will probably get a reprised role at E3 2010. Remember that Nintendo is nefarious for delaying game releases, so curb your enthusiasm even more regarding Big N first party games.

As for the motion capturing trend that was demoed this year, Sony is hoping to bring it to store shelves by next year while Microsoft has yet to even release a projected date (but it can be assumed to be sooner than Sony as their presentation featured a nearer-to-completion demo). At the very least, as far as hardware goes, we can expect to see the PSP Go this year.

While all the announcements are very exciting, it is important to not burn yourself out and become desensitized to the hype surrounding these products. After all, you will want to save some of that giddiness for when you actually have the product in your hand.

Be sure to check our safe kids website for our video games guide to third party games shown at E3 2009.