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It was super weird going from Kirby’s Epic Yarn to Donkey Kong Country Returns at Nintendo’s PAX Prime booth. While both titles can sort of be viewed as reboots of their respective franchises, the contrast in difficulty and approach is startling.

With Kirby’s Epic Yarn, you are getting simpler controls — think New Super Mario Bros. Wii — and what has to be the least-punishing difficulty in recent memory. With DKC Returns, you’re getting a swift kick to the backside. It was certainly the hardest (but never unfair) game I played at PAX.

That was the first mental notch I scratched out on my list of must-haves.

As a long-time fan of the series, I’m no longer worried about what Retro Studios is doing with Donkey Kong Country Returns. Alongside many of you, I was cautiously optimistic during the game’s unveiling at E3. You see, I play Donkey Kong Country 2 to completion on a near-monthly basis.

Yeah. I’m one of those.

For someone like me, there’s a lot that can go wrong with DKC Returns. Stuff that most players likely won’t even pick up on or care about; that’s perfectly fine. For us veterans, we have an idea — based off of the original three Super Nintendo games — what this series should be.

• It should be tough enough that first-try playthroughs of a level don’t automatically result in a win.
• You ought to feel challenged — both physically and mentally — as a result of the level design and placement of hidden items.
• The music should sell you on the world, and warm your heart.
• Bosses need to be plentiful, diverse, and pose a serious threat.
• Animal buddies. ‘Nuff said.

There’s more, but my brain is struggling after a week of non-stop excitement at the convention. Based on what I played and saw of DKC Returns, I think Retro Studios is on the right track here.

Talking with the Nintendo rep responsible for looking over this demonstration, I got the feeling that they — Nintendo and Retro — realize what made the SNES titles so beloved, and how to adapt those ideas into a Wii game for 2010. We genuinely reminisced about the golden days of platformers, and openly professed our love for the genre. Bless your heart for employing these fine people, Nintendo.

Then there’s the new stuff: being able to jump between the foreground and background, simultaneous two-person co-op play, mechanics like ground slams and Diddy Kong’s jetpack, etc. While all of those bullet points are things I want, it’d be silly to go after those and nothing else. We have the classic games to go back to at any time, after all.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about DKC Returns was the startling lack of kremlings. Perhaps it’s best that not everything remain the same, though. Perhaps not. Also, I can’t help but think Rare has those characters on lockdown in some dust-covered vault.

Whatever — November 21 is going to be a day for Wii owners to remember; I’m positive of this.

After what has felt like an eternity of waiting, I have finally gotten my hands on Kirby’s Epic Yarn during PAX Prime. Both myself and the esteemed Jonathan Holmes took on the roles of Kirby and Prince Fluff for some co-op patchwork antics. So, here’s the burning question — has Nintendo just been stringing us along? 

The answer, from what I have played, is no. Kirby’s Epic Yarn is an absolute delight. It’s not a challenging game (losing points rather than dying is the penalty for getting hit by enemies) but it’s a game that just makes you grin from ear to ear. The co-op works surprisingly well, with Kirby and Fluff throwing each other around the screen and even combining to form ludicrous gestalt tanks that fire rockets and big fists. 

One thing that I really must emphasize is just how gorgeous this game looks. I’m not even going to say it looks good “for a Wii game.” It looks good, period. The wonderfully bouncy animations, the effects of the scenery being ruffled and pulled, and the beautiful bright colors make this a complete visual treat. 

This game is simply lovely. Fun and varied gameplay, adorable characters, and surprisingly appealing graphics makes this a definite Nintendo game to watch. I have a feeling it’s going to make gamers of all ages smile. 

Horror games can be a tough sell, because it’s hard to tell someone that a game is sooo scary without raising their expectations so high that they’ll never actually be scared. Thus, I’ll try to stick to the facts when I talk about Amnesia: Dark Descent.

It’s out on September 8th, and was developed by Frictional, who also made the Penumbra games, which were scary enough to be included in the Humble Indie Bundle. It’s a “survival horror” game in a truer sense of the word than has been applied to the likes of Resident Evil and Dead Space, which of late have been more about the shooting-dudes stuff than the being-scared-out-of-your-wits stuff.

It’s also got a demo, which you can download from many sources here. It’ll be available on most of the digital distribution-type places, and preordering gets you a discount off the already-low price of $19.99. And it’s available for PC, Mac, and Linux.

So go. Try it and get it. Or check out a trailer below. Low risk to everything but your sanity. Mwahahahaha!

Kirby’s Epic Yarn has a brand new trailer out of Japan, although it’s advised that you steer clear if you’re allergic to things that are cute and awesome and MADE OF STRING!

There isn’t a whole lot of new information in the footage, but there are some cool new clips of Kirby as a firetruck, yarn ghosts, and a fight with King Dedede. A duck with a mallet who is a king and is NOW MADE OF STRING! Yeah, this is going to be intense, son. 

Kirby’s Epic Yarn is out this fall, and it’ll be at PAX Prime, too. If there’s one game I intend to get my hands on this weekend, this is the one.

[Thanks, Plufim]

In an effort to make sure it’s playable on every portable platform known to man, Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD is coming to the iPad next week. It’ll be available on September 9, and will cost $9.99 on the Apple App Store.

What makes it any different than Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the iPhone? Well, it’s in “high definition.” That’s why it’s called Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD, dummy. Otherwise, it sounds like it’s the same game, with 50 missions, drug peddling, fast driving, and loud shootouts. Chinatown Wars on the iPhone wasn’t the easiest thing to play with its touch controls, but go ahead and spend $10 to find out if it’s any easier on the bigger iPad screen.

We reviewed Chinatown Wars when it came out on the Nintendo DS, which was a huge deal, and it was good. Because everyone was like, “Hey, the Nintendo DS is finally getting some love from Rockstar.” Then Rockstar realized it needed to make some money and released it on everything ever to recoup some of its development costs.

What platform hasn’t Chinatown Wars been release on that you’d like to see it make an appearance on?

Until we build up to the obligatory Fatality montage video, I suppose NetherRealm Studios wants to kick off the Mortal Kombat marketing machine with word of mouth from old fans who have since dropped off and some subtle — for MK, anyway — trailers.

Holy crap, that dude just got impaled! Oh, but don’t worry, the gore was all shadow-like and mysterious so it’s safe for your children to watch. The game doesn’t even come out until next year, so I’ll happily put up with a slow burn if need be.

And for those wondering about the song featured in this video, it’s Disturbed’s “Another Way to Die.”

Zombies, psychopaths, and questionable parenting skills all came to Xbox Live Arcade this week in the form of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. It’s a new main character, a new story, new survivors and the same old zombies all in a neat, focused package. 

Read on for our review.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (Xbox 360)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release date: August 31, 2010
MSRP: 400 MS Points

In Dead Rising: Case Zero, we’re given the first opportunity to play new series protagonist Chuck Greene. Case Zero doesn’t reveal new details about the character or really any details at all. The introductory cutscene sets up the scenario wherein Chuck’s truck is stolen with his infected daughter’s anti-zombie medication still inside and only twelve hours to go until her next required dose. That’s all. Hell, the only way you would know that Chuck was a famous motocross racer without foreknowledge is through a comment made by a survivor more than halfway through the game.

The only things we have to go on then are that Chuck is a man with a daughter that he loves enough to brave hordes of the undead to keep her alive. That’s enough. Cutscene interactions between Chuck and his daughter Katey are equal parts touching and cruel. Katey is convincing as a child, unaware and unable to understand what has happened to her world, serving her role well as the game’s main objective. Chuck is believable as well, if a bit melodramatic, and an easy character to get behind as a player. 

Beyond the initial situation there is very little resembling plot development in Case Zero, which is easy to understand considering its brief running time of about two hours (including cutscenes; there is, at the absolute most, an hour and twenty minutes of actual gameplay in a playthrough). The game is still effective at telling its story of a man and the lengths he’s willing to go to for his daughter, there just isn’t much story to tell.

That doesn’t prevent there from being a lot of cutscenes, however. The game seems utterly riddled with them and loading times both going into and out of cinematics feel a bit on the long side. This is fine for the first playthrough. But, by the third time you start over and have to skip through three cutscenes before being able to kill a zombie, it becomes annoying.

That’s what Dead Rising is all about, after all: killing zombies. Case Zero offers in the neighborhood of forty different items that you can use to defend yourself against the undead masses. Some items are only good for killing on their own, while others, indicated by a blue wrench icon, can be combined at workbenches to produce deadlier weapons or more potent items. Case Zero has nine of these combo items to build.

The combo items are the only practical way to earn experience points. Simply killing zombies won’t reward you with points. Significant quantities of points are only accrued through rescuing survivors and killing zombies in creative ways. Not that earning experience matters all that much in the context of Case Zero. You can progress Chuck through five levels of experience but there’s nary any value in it. You’ll only earn an additional inventory slot and a defensive move used when grabbed by zombies so there is not a whole lot of incentive to do so.

Chuck and the zombies aren’t alone in Still Creek, either. Some humans are holed up and in need of rescuing. Only one specific survivor needs to be rescued in order to complete the game, though you will have to interact with others to achieve Chuck’s goals. A central survivor is Bob, who appears on a rooftop near the center of town after a short time of playing. Bob’s vantage point allows him to see people moving through the town and he’ll flag down Chuck if he has information on the location of new survivors. Thankfully, he has neither a radio nor an over-developed sense of helpfulness with which to annoy you.

Getting this information is essentially the same as receiving a quest, complete with an objective and a guide arrow to lead you to it. These missions are timed and their timers start whether or not you ever receive the quest. Because of the small size of Still Creek and the limited number of things to do in the short game, it is at no point a problem to rescue everybody. In fact, it’s easy to wind up with hours to spare for mindlessly killing zombies while waiting for Katey to be ready to take her next dose of Zombrex.

If you played Dead Rising, you can probably recall a moment at which you honestly wished the survivors would just get themselves killed before you got to them. The AI used for survivors was utterly wretched and treks across Willamette Mall became exercises in torture and babysitting. Things are much, much better in Case Zero. In playing through the game half a dozen times, in only three instances did I have to go and free a survivor from a zombie’s grip and, when told to go to a specific point, living people actually follow the instruction and don’t foolishly try to kill things along the way. 

Pyschopaths, however, have not changed one bit. These survivors were one of the most frustrating parts of the first Dead Rising game, as there was really no difference between killing a psycho and killing a zombie except that the psychos are faster, usually have ranged weapons and apparently have a greater resistance to pain than something which cannot feel pain. They were annoying before and that hasn’t changed, as evidenced by the sole psychopath encounter in Case Zero. There is no joy in fighting the game’s boss whatsoever, just frustration, annoyance and misery. 

I’ve tried to avoid referring to Dead Rising 2: Case Zero as a demo in this review. I don’t judge it as such. It’s a nice little slice of Dead Rising which stands perfectly fine on its own and I can honestly recommend it to people who want to kill zombies for a few hours but would not otherwise enjoy the time-based mechanics and rigid scheduling necessary to complete a longer Dead Rising title. And for those who are already planning to purchase, it’s an inexpensive and inoffensive way to slate your hunger for zombie decimation while offering something extra (though not much) to take with you when Dead Rising 2 comes out.

Score: 7 — Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)

Being one that writes about and reviews games for a living, I tend to hear the same kinds of questions from new acquaintances. One of the most common relates to what ‘good games’ are available for a particular system. Because of this, when people ask me what they should get, I always have a mental list prepared, ready to go.

My recommended games list for the PlayStation 3 has Sega’s strategy game Valkyria Chronicles at the very top. It’s a unique and beautiful game that I feel new system owners will really appreciate. While the shooter and racing blockbusters are the obvious choices for recommendations, I feel I’m doing gamers a great service by recommending this title instead. Besides, too many people missed this sleeper, and I am trying to push up the numbers so that Sega doesn’t leave us in the cold when the next franchise game comes down the line.

The game’s sequel, Valkyria Chronicles II, is now at the top of my recommended games list for the PSP. Read our review to find out why.

Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)
Developer: SEGA
Publisher: SEGA
Release date: August 31, 2010
MSRP: $39.99

Valkyria Chronicles II picks up right where the first game left off. Kind of. You play as Avan Hardins, a super-enthusiastic guy (we’re talking crazy gung-ho here) and a new freshman at the Lanseal Royal Military Academy. But while his enthusiasm is appreciated, it doesn’t get Avan very far in the academy’s entrance exams, and he finds himself in Class G, the “loser” class of Lanseal. This sets up the classic underdog school class story that Japan loves to use so much in their games, television shows and stories. As goes the story, Avan works to take the less-than-enthusiastic Class G and shape them up to be real heroes. Beyond this, Avan works to find out what happened to his brother, who was supposedly killed in the war before he enrolled.

Avan’s enrollment takes place about two years after the events of the first game. While peace has not yet returned to Gallia, the enemy was pushed back, and the country has begun to relax a bit. But now a new threat approaches with a pending civil war, which is being fought over the duchess of Gallia being revealed as a Darcsen — an unloved race of people. The resistance wants the Darcsen to be pushed out of the country. Avan and Class G find themselves caught in the middle.

At the heart of Valkyria Chronicles II is the same strategy game play that made the original PS3 title so great. If you missed it, this innovative adaptation of SRPG play lets you move your troops in a third-person view, in real time. You’ll still use an overhead map to make decisions and carry out many orders, but you’ll jump into that lovely third-person view when you take control of each individual troop member. In this view you’ll position, take cover, and even aim and fire weapons. This formula beautifully mixes strategy and action, and this manages to greatly increase the draw of standard strategy role-playing game play.

While the strategy starts out as simple as moving, taking cover, and firing, it slowly escalates into a fairly complex list of variables to keep mindful of. It seems that each of the game’s key battles adds a new aspect to your strategy playbook, but it also adds new enemy powers and complications at the same time. This makes for a game that has an addicting level of challenge that never overwhelms, but slowly builds up in you, making you shake your fist at the sky with fire in your eyes, as Avan often does in the game.

In perfect complement to the gradually escalating challenge is the steady story progression and character development. You’re never bored at Lanseal Academy as there are always new students (and new troops), student drama, and story bits. In between battles you’ll have the ability to freely pop around campus, chatting with classmates and visiting locales. These actions slowly unlock more bits of the story, and you’re free to trigger them at any time, though some scenes are required to progress to the next key battle. Most of these interactions are presented with nicely animated character portraits, some coming with full voice over work. Most are text based, though, and are only occasionally accented with a fun one-liner. Other key events unfold via top-notch anime cutscenes. Both do a fine job of fleshing out the feeling of campus life, and all are voiced very nicely. Overall, you’ll find that this sequel is a bit more lighthearted than its predecessor, but I found that this fits the portable format of the game a bit more.

Those that played the first game will be showered with guest appearances in this sequel. While the feel is a bit different when it comes to the overall story, you’ll feel right at home with all the old faces you’ll run into. That being said, new players should feel free to jump right in, as no prior knowledge is required to enjoy Valkyria Chronicles II.

I’ve been asked several times about the challenge level of this sequel already. Let’s just say that the game provides a stiff challenge. It’s not snap-your-PSP-in-half hard, but the later key battles will really test your strategies. Overall I’d say that the game is a tad bit less difficult, but maybe requires more out of you as far as pre-battle strategy is concerned. Believe it or not, there’s more troop leveling and customization options in this sequel, which requires you to really think about how you’ll level and improve your people and gear before you go into battle. To ensure a win, you’ll need to spend ample time tending to your troops, gear and vehicles. It’s only when you get a feel for how deep the battle system is that you appreciate that this may even be a bigger game than the PS3 predecessor. Oh, and there’s an Easy Mode. You could always go that route. Know that you’ll take no story hit for the choice.

Gone is the watercolor painting look from the battlefield. It’s still there in all the cutscenes, animations and character art, but it’s just a shadow of what it used to be on the actual battlefield. That’s not to say that the battle scenes aren’t nice; they really are. It’s just that the PS3 game was so lovely that it left you wanting more of its unique look. The replacement here is nice, soft and pleasing to the eyes, but it’s not quite what series fans are used to. The rest of the presentation for Valkyria Chronicles II is fantastic. The character art and design is of a very high standard, the voice work is brilliant, and the music is some of the best that has ever graced the PSP’s speakers. The game is perfectly polished, and that’s apparent in everything from the multitude of options settings to the refined autosave functionality that avoids the stock PSP save menus. This is a portable game with console production values.

Valkyria Chronicles II is one of those so-good-you’ll-lose-all-track-of-time games. It’s a big, shiny, AAA-class game in a tiny little package, and despite its small size it still does a fair bit of justice to the franchise name. A new story, battle improvements, new troops, and a ton of missions are exactly what Valkyria Chronicles fans were asking for. And while they may have not asked for it in a portable package, I don’t think they’ll mind too much. The good news is that you won’t feel that there were any compromises made to make this sequel a PSP game. This is the real deal, folks. Don’t miss this game.

Score: 9.5 — Superb (9s are a hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won’t cause massive damage to what is a supreme title.)

Nintendo’s E3 2010 press conference was hailed by many (myself included) as a true message that Nintendo hadn’t forgotten the so-called “core” gamer. One of the big highlights was Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and while chatting to Nintendo about the game, I asked if that title, and others, were designed for people like us. 

“Thank you for your assessment of Nintendo’s lineup,” says Nintendo PR manager Kit Ellis. “We don’t set out to create some games for traditional players and other games for casual players. Instead, with Kirby’s Epic Yarn and all our games, we aim to make games that will satisfy longtime fans of the series while also appealing to new players. We want to make games that appeal to everyone.”

There’s no doubt that several of Nintendo’s offerings since the start of this generation have not really appealed to certain demographics, but this year looks like it’ll change all that and truly offer a diverse library for a diverse set of people. That’s what I’m keeping my fingers crossed for, anyway.

In any case, Epic Yarn has appealed to me and I think anybody who hasn’t fell in love with the concept is inherently evil.