Buzz Hollywood is the latest in the popular Buzz quiz show series, which drunk pandas, myself, and a Sony PR rep got to play a round of at Sony Media Day. Due to my rain-man like ability to remember useless facts I easily took first place (this is not something I’m particularly proud of…). From what we saw, Buzz Hollywood should wind up being a very fun party game.
The game has over 5000 questions and over 100 clips and pictures to test your movie knowledge. Like previous Buzz games, you can customize your player a bit such as choosing your character, what they’re wearing, your buzzer sound, etc. There were 3 rounds in the game we played, the first being general trivia, where the first person who answers correctly gets the most points, the next fastest answer gets less, and so on. The second round was fastest fingers where you had to put 4 things in order (for example put the movies made by a director in chronological order). In the final round you choose a specific category to answer questions in which can range from a category as specific as “Julia Roberts” to something more general like “Disney”. If the person going before you gets a wrong answer their points will roll over to you if you answer your question correctly.
Don’t mess with Kratos. Its a simple rule that everyone seems to forget, which fortunately for us means another installment in the God of War franchise with the Chains of Olympus. This is the first game of the series set on the PSP and actually takes place before the first God of War game while Kratos is still in service to the gods.
The level we played was a bit further on in the game than the demo released a few weeks ago. In it Kratos is facing some soldiers along with a mini-boss which looked like a giant minotaur. Just like in the previous titles, the regular mobs can be dealt with quickly with a few hits from your blades, and if you choose you can grapple them and do a finishing move that varies depending on the mob. Also you get an all new set of magical attacks to use on your enemies. As for the mini-bosses, after you do enough damage to the minotaur, you can perform the special finishing move on them which requires you to hit the buttons in the order they come up on the screen. In this case you wind up taking the sword away from the minotaur and impaling him through the head with it, and lets be honest…you’d be disappointed if Kratos didn’t right?
Echochrome was one of the downloadable games from the Playstation Newtork that were demoed for us at Sony’s Media Day, and from what I saw it looks to be a very tough, but creative game. The concept is really cool; take a 3-dimensional environment, and using the left and right analog sticks, manipulate your 2-dimensional view of it so that your character can pass through to different checkpoints. How does this work? Lets say for example that there’s a gap in the platform you need to walk across. One way to get across would be to turn the environment so that there is another object blocking your view of the gap. The game is all about perspective – it works based on the Object Locative Environment (OLE) coordinate system – which basically means that if you can’t see it, then it’s not there. If you can’t see the gap in the platform, then your character doesn’t know its there and will walk straight across. This is just one of several interesting mechanics used in the game. This preview has a few more:
The highlight of E for All was Rock Band. And after getting some hands on time with the game, this is definitely something I’m looking forward to. A pretty cool marketing idea is the Rock Band tour, where people can go up and play the game and be taped (the company is owned by MTV so it’s going to be used on TV at some point in time…not my performance…unless they do a blooper reel), so check out the Loot-Ninja Band (working title)
Yesterday the Digital Life expo began at the Javtis Center in NYC. Aside from some of the major companies that were there (Microsoft, Dell, Gateway, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba just to name a few) displaying new hardware and software there were a large number of other exhibitors displaying every peripheral and accessory for electronics and computers imaginable. They ranged from things like speakers, monitors, and wireless accessories to things like high-end gaming computers and a headset that you could wear that acts like a giant monitor that was being demoed with a 360. Hit the jump for more »
Today was the Launch Event for Guitar Hero III, held at Spotlight Live Night Club in New York City.
On hand were Kai Huang, president of Red Octane, as well as Jason Young, CEO of Ziff Davis. Young started off the event talking about how Digital Life had grown over the last few years, and spoke about how the first Guitar Hero had debuted at Digital Life four years ago. He then brought up an official from NYC to present Huang with a proclamation from the city declaring today Guitar Hero Day. Hit the jump for more »
My current phone contract expires in 3 weeks which conveniently coincides with the release of the new iPhone on Friday. And I’m not gonna lie…I’ve had a hard-on for this thing since I first saw the demos for it. And while I still really want one I’m starting to come to terms with a few factors.
1. The phone itself is going to set me back $600 bucks for the 8 gig model…buying the 4 gig for 100 bucks cheaper is like buying a 20 gig PS3.
2. Its first generation…you know that there will be newer models coming out soon with bug fixes, larger hard drives, etc.
3. You’re forced into a minimum 2 year contract. The rates are reasonable…60/month for 450 minutes is $10 more than I’m paying now for the same number of minutes on a regular phone (no web access, etc) but me and a lot of other people don’t want to be forced into a contract that long.
4. Entrepreneurial shit likethis
So despite all that I’m still thinking of trying to pick one up, however there are a lot of other options out there that pretty much do the same thing. What do you all think?
It’s been a pretty busy weekend for the UFC. Between another Ultimate Fight Night and the premire of the new season of The Ultimate Fighter on Thursday and UFC69 on Saturday there has been no shortage of action. Hit the jump for more »
Just a reminder, theres a new Ultimate Fight Night followed by the start of the new season of the Ultimate Fighter tonight on Spike. Also UFC 69 is coming up this Saturday. Whats the over/under on random Michael Clarke Duncan or Chuck Zito crowd shots over the next 3 days?
Most people have already heard about the first God of War, but if you haven’t here’s a quick recap:
Normal Game – Hit something with a bunch of attacks till it dies
God of War – Beat something mercilessly until you can do a finisher on it ranging from something as mundane (relative to this game anyway) as ripping something’s wings off and stomping its head in or ripping its arm off and beating it to death with it to the more spectacular using your swords to scale an ogre like a fucking mountain and ripping its eye out.
Which would you rather play? Yea. Gameplay
God of War 2 picks up shortly after the first one left off. After defeating Ares, Kratos is the new god of war, and quickly proceeds to piss off the rest of gods of Olympus by being his dickish Spartan self. The first level of the game sees Kratos become mortal and get chased across an entire city by a colossal statue. And after that it goes on at a pretty similar pace. I think this PA strip sums it up best. It has all the standard features that you have come to expect from this type of game, mostly combat and a few puzzles, but even the puzzles are pretty fucked up (I can’t get past these gears…better throw this guy in there to stop them). The controls have remained the same, and a couple of new moves have been added to Kratos’ blades. Also new in the game are a couple of new magic spells and weapons. Overall the game plays almost identical to the original, and has a really epic feel to it, which is appropriate since its Kratos vs Olympus.
Also, it comes with a second dvd, that contains a lot of behind the scenes extras. Graphics
The game manages to squeeze every ounce of performance possible from the PS2, and the graphics are even better than the original. There are virtually no load times, and the levels are huge, as well as plenty of cut scenes. The detail in a lot of the levels is staggering. It’s a great sendoff for the PS2…not that it’s the last game that will be made for it (they were still releasing games for the PS1 last year)…its just the lat one that anyone will buy. Sound
The soundtrack rocks, and the voice acting is very well done. Every battle sounds and feels like something out of 300 or Lord of the Rings. Overall Review
I dont have an arbitrary system for rating games yet, so lets just close on this…you need to play this game, unless of course you’re this douchebag.
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