MTV’s Multiplayer game site has done a quick round-up of the best of the Fallout 3 mods they’ve spotted following the release of the G.E.C.K., showing that, of course someone’s already created Dogmeat armor. Unfortunately, the mod doesn’t deck the dog in full regalia, so much as set him to invincible.
A quick look around the rest of the site doesn’t yet show too many outright amazing things, though MTV did also notice a separate mod that tweaks experience earned so that exploration and discovery nets you the biggest bonuses and helps stave off that level 20 cap for much longer than usual.
It’s always a bit surprising to see exclusive new games show up for the standard iPod these days, but Hudson’s done just that with the release of a robust version of classic platformer Lode Runner. Apart from the standard stages and a puzzle mode, the iPod version’s also got a smart new ‘gold rush’ mode in which you try to dig and collect gold downward — vaguely Mr. Driller style — to stay apace in a constantly upward-scrolling level.
It’s a bit of a touchy beast: you don’t click but rather gently press the clickwheel to move and dig, which lacks the proper feedback you need in stressful surrounded situations, but it’s growing on me. And, I’m satisfied to see, it retains the look and feel of Hudson’s excellent 3D GameCube version Cubic Lode Runner, making it a very welcome addition to the iPod’s Phase, Peggle, Star Trigon and Song Summoner family.
[James Kochalka‘s Monster Mii is a regular Offworld feature, with a new Mii monster each time for you to bring home to your Wii. Once there, they’ll give you creepy stares from the sidelines of your Wii Sports, lap you rudely during your Wii Fit jogs, and in general liven up your Plaza and gaming day.]
For our second and special office holiday themed edition of Monster Mii, we bring you Zex, who’s only ever just one bummed smoke away from an HR-alerting inappropriate advance (you may want to keep him isolated in the Mii Channel).
To bring him home to your Wii, enter the Check Mii Out Channel’s Posting Plaza, click ‘Popular,’ then the ‘Search’ button at bottom. After that, hit the arrows at top right and enter in the code: 3266-4323-7259.
As a sexy Xmas bonus, James has also recorded an original Game Boy theme song for Zex, which you can download here, or listen below:
[James Kochalka‘s daily diary strips, which run at AmericanElf.com, have just entered their tenth year and been collected in three print volumes. He is also the author of more books and comics than you can count on both hands, including some that are excellent for children, and others not so much. All are excellent. James also plays rock and roll and Game Boy rock as James Kochalka Superstar, and recently exhibited artwork at Giant Robot’s GR2 gallery.]
There maybe be spoilers ahead, but while there’s volumetric-lighting, and Love and romance…
1. Not having enough time to play it all. If there was nothing else to remember 2008 by, there was at least the sheer fact of there being too much to play. In the past few months I’ve struggled to even know what to boot up, let alone what to persist with, what to bin, what to save for the dark months after Christmas, and what to avoid lest it eat my entire life. It was easier to sit there, paralysed by indecision, reading through everyone else’s experiences of these games in internet forums.
Clearly I’m too lazy to perform any kind of accurate metric study here, but I’m fairly sure this has been the single busiest fourth quarter in the past fifty seven years. The variety has been refreshing too: from Saints Row 2 through to Mirror’s Edge, from LittleBigPlanet to Dead Space. The mainstream has been hitting its stride and delivering convincing, intimidating monoliths of game timesink. I mean, I think it was a good thing the Fallout 3 story is so short. It meant I had time to buy Christmas presents for my loved ones… (more…)
Wired blog Game|Life’s (frankly quite good) new entry to an ancient NeoGAF thread of game title anagrams deserves a re-mention of the original. It’s a quick race to the probably-NSFW gutter wallowing bottom (not too terribly worse than your average b3ta/Something Awful challenge), but there’s a few sparkling gems in amongst the mud.
So right, that bit I said before about letting the jealousy fade might not last for long: Nintendo of Japan has announced that its DSi Ware campaign — which gives the upgraded Nintendo DS downloadable software as with WiiWare — will launch on Christmas Eve.
And if I understand the trailer correctly, and I do believe that I do, Nintendo’s holiday gift includes 1000 Points (the rough equivalent of $10) to spend on launch day, which means I’ll have just enough for the star-in-your-own-minigame Utsusu Made in Wario, and Art Style: Aquario, the first in the downloadable art-game series that extends those on WiiWare and the Game Boy Advance’s bit Generations series (and the game with the best soundtrack of the bunch).
Siliconera has collected media for all the launch titles. The DSi is expected to launch outside Japan in mid 2009.
Just slightly embarrassed to appear to have been a little behind the curve on this and just now noticing the new incredibly named iPhone shooter Space Deadbeef (surely a flubbed translation of ‘dead meat’?). As Meat Bun adeptly point out, the game is from Polyphony Digital programmer Yuji Yasuhara, and carries that same ultra clean Gran Turismo look into sidescroller shooting.
But more importantly, Yasuhara was also behind Polyphony’s PlayStation shooter Omega Boost, and one look at that game in motion, compared with one of Deadbeef itself should be enough to convince you that its lineage is pretty clear.
Best of all, Yasuhara’s added it to the App Store for free, and it’s honestly one of the best attempts at an iPhone shooter yet, knocking off all of the tilt- or virtual-d-pad nonsense for a tap and swipe lock-on mechanic that, with practice, becomes a graceful little finger ballet amongst the bullet hell. And, even if nothing else, it’s fully convinced me that a 3D Rez could absolutely work on the device with the same interface.
The earlier jealousy fades as Nintendo quietly (and perhaps prematurely) launches its stateside Club Nintendo campaign. As with Japan, the Club lets you earn points by entering the registration code found in Wii and DS games, which can then be put toward real actual prizes.
For its inaugural year, Nintendo is offering a grand prize of the exclusive DS Game & Watch Collection, which includes faithfully remade original LCD games Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House. It’s quite obviously the pick of the litter, but I can also see die-hard Nintendo enthusiasts enjoying their first opportunity to own a deck of hanafuda cards — the trade Nintendo was originally in before entering the world of games.
And, even moreso, the Mario hat DS game rack is quite nice, and those three game-card and stylus wallets, especially in the stately Club Nintendo black, are very, very handsome. Back of the envelope calculations from around the forums says the 800 points it costs you for the DS Collection equates to registering some 16 first-party Wii games or 27 DS games, though there are also opportunities to earn more points via online surveys.
The site’s still struggling to keep up with all this attention, and login problems abound, but you can at least have a closer look at the prizes while the backend sorts itself out.
Though we’ll have to wait just a touch longer for the improvements Mac users recently received, Bit Blot and Valve have made it that much easier to experience their underwater adventure game Aquaria with its release on Steam. Unlike the standard PC version, this one includes new Steam achievements, and, as is Valve’s wont, is offered at a debut discount until the end of the year.
David Rosen returns again with his Design Tour looks at indie games, this time with Chronic Logic’s PC platformer Gish and how its indirect controls (finding momentum to get into the air, rather than explicitly jumping) can be initially offputting, but eventually let you move like “a tar-ball ninja.”
MTV’s Multiplayer game site has done a quick round-up of the best of the Fallout 3 mods they’ve spotted following the release of the G.E.C.K., showing that, of course someone’s already created Dogmeat armor. Unfortunately, the mod doesn’t deck the dog in full regalia, so much as set him to invincible. 
