The most important thing to understand about Tony Hawk Ride is that it's not a Tony Hawk game with a special skateboard peripheral. This is, in a very real sense, a completely new franchise that dispenses with the tropes of the series when they don't suit its needs. First, it's not an open world game, so those of you worrying about tuckering yourself getting from A to B can put those fears aside. Even when you're performing some limited navigation, it only take one or two foot pumps across your carpet to reach your top speed.The section that I saw was very much about traveling to a line and pulling it off, a mode developer Robomodo calls "challenge". You're assigned a specific group of tricks, say a manual into a grind into a flip trick over a ramp, and must pull it off flawlessly.

Continue reading Hands-on: Tony Hawk Ride

Permalink | Email this | Comments

There's a growing sect of Joystiq writers who are walking away from E3 2009 with the same title constituting their Game of the Show. Surprisingly, it's not a big-budget blockbuster, or a groundbreaking advancement in storytelling, or a bold new method of how we interact with our video games. It's Scribblenauts, an unassuming DS puzzler with a massive lexicon, charming gameplay and, as far as we can tell, a large infusion of impossible technowizardry.The premise of the game is simple -- you play as Maxwell, who must solve various puzzles to obtain Starites spread across 220 different levels. To execute the aforementioned solving, you write words to create objects in the world that your cartoonish hero can interact with. It's a simple concept that's bolstered by one astounding accomplishment from developer 5th Cell: Anything you can think of is in this game. (Yes, that. Yes, that too.)

Continue reading Hands-on: Scribblenauts

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Many of you likely remember the punishing gameplay of Astro Boy: Omega Factor. In fact, our first question to the High Voltage rep that demoed the game at the D3 Publisher booth was just that, if they played the game and whether they planned to follow in its footsteps. The good news is that High Voltage indeed did play through Omega Factor and took inspiration from the game, evident in the 2.5D approach of the Wii game and simplistic combat. The bad news is that this seemed less like a game inspired by Omega Factor and more a watered down version of one of the better GBA games out there.

Continue reading Impressions: Astro Boy (Wii)

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Listen -- not every game at E3 is a winner. The Joystiq heavyweights get to go play all the big games and interview all of the developer hotshots, and that's the stuff you love reading about. But some of us are down in the trenches, doing all of the demos that no one else wants to do, checking out all the games whose names are read around the schedule planning table, and answered only with the silence of bloggers who have better games to play.That's not to say that Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics is a bad game -- its audience will probably enjoy it. Just like the previous Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, it offers multiple Olympic sports-based minigames featuring popular Nintendo and Sega characters, controlled by various Wii and DS motions. People who like buying that kind of thing (parents wandering a videogame store looking for wholesome family entertainment) will probably enjoy it. But even though most of the Joystiq staff passed on this demo (and your faithful blogger bravely attended it), it was one of the more surreal things we've seen this week. Our strange experiences, let us show you them.

Continue reading Mario, meet Sonic (at the Winter Olympics)

Permalink | Email this | Comments