"Project Runway" hosts Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn may both be involved in Atari's latest reality-TV-to-gaming project. Weinstein Co. will collaborate with Atari to bring its seminal fashion-design competition to the Nintendo Wii, using the Remote Controller and that Balance Board that Beyoncé is so fond of for its interface, and that game may be out as soon as next spring.

Read more...

"The Beatles: Rock Band" is more than just a game. It's also perfect for adding ambience to house parties, even if you're not willing to break out the miniature plastic instruments. By combining "Rock Band"'s Performance Mode (turns off the HUD) and No-Fail Mode (pretty self-explanatory) with the Make A Setlist option in Quickplay, you can essentially build your own Beatles video playlist.

This is especially appealing because of all of the work Harmonix put into crafting virtual counterparts for the legendary quartet. The Beatles stopped performing live concerts after their 1966 United States tour, focusing instead on studio work. A large chunk of their catalog, including classics like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "The Beatles" (aka the "White" album, for its distinctive cover art), was never performed in front of a crowd. Since this was also before the age of the short-form music video, fans have never had a visual aid for the later psychedelic work and its evocative lyrics. Read more...

I have this weird thing with rhythm games. I love music and I have a blast playing them, but it's a rare day that I pick up my fake plastic instrument and play by myself. And microphones? Fuhgeddaboutit. Solo or in a group, I don't sing. It's just how things work.

A funny thing happened last week though. Frushtick sent me home with a copy of "The Beatles: Rock Band," a game I've been looking forward to tearing through as a long-time Beatles fan. I popped it in after work, fired it up and played through a couple of songs on guitar. When I got to the Ed Sullivan Theater, the game's second stage space, I quickly highlighted "A Hard Day's Night" as my next selection. That's when the funny thing happened-- I spied my "Rock Band" microphone, collecting dust in the corner, and suddenly felt inclined to use it. Read more...

Ever since I heard that Sony was planning on launching "Heavy Rain" alongside the likes of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," "Splinter Cell: Conviction" and "Guitar Hero 5" I knew something needed to give. Sony learned a very important lesson last year, when "LittleBigPlanet" failed to reach sales expectations: Don't put your new franchises up against dozens of already-popular ones. "Heavy Rain" would undoubtedly be drowned in the crush of the holiday gaming season.

And thankfully someone's come to that very same realization, as the game has been pushed to 2010. I know it's disappointing that you won't be playing this unique, non-linear adventure game this year, but consider something: What was the last unique non-linear adventure game that game out in the peak holiday months and actually succeeded?

Read more...

There aren't too many ways to describe the launch of "Battlefield 1943" other than clusterf*ck, so we'll just go with that. I played right when the game launched with little-to-no problems, but once more and more people starting signing on the servers quickly hit capacity and everyone was just left helplessly hitting "Join Game" with little to no effect. Last night at around 11PM EST things seemed to get more manageable, I was able to get into a game with friends on my first try, but that first day was a mess.

Despite all the issues, a lot of people still played that first day. According to EA's ongoing forum post detailing the tech efforts to get the game fixed, 29.45 years (or 258,153.19 hours) of gameplay were experienced. Hopefully that doesn't count the time you spent sitting the menu.

Read more...

Having spent a fair amount of time with "Fight Night Round 4," I gotta say, I prefer the lack of face button punch controls. Fighting games are all about putting everyone on a level playing field, and once you have one side on analog and the other on face buttons, it kinda throws things for a loop. Not to mention face button punching encourages punch spamming, which really has no place in boxing.

EA is, however, considering adding the face button controls back in with upcoming DLC. Giving the player more controls options is always a good idea, just so long as there's an ability to, say, turn off face buttons in multiplayer games (if you so choose).

How 'bout you guys? Any preference on control schemes when you're playing "Fight Night"?

I'm sitting on the 29th floor of MTV's offices in Times Square, watching the city get absolutely pounded by rain, which one thing: I'll be playing a lot of video games this weekend! Here's what's on the docket.

Prototype
About half way done with this one, and I think I can finish off the rest this weekend. While it's not without some quirks, specifically on the controls front, the scale definitely feels bigger than Infamous, and I do enjoy causing havoc in my home town.

Fallout 3: Point Lookout
Still digging deep into Bethesda's newest DLC pack, trying to find all of the locations and unlock that elusive achievement. Strange how walking around a post-apocalyptic wasteland doesn't bum me out in the least. Maybe the giant tesla cannon on my back has something to do with it.

Worms
"Worms 2: Armageddon" is dropping next week, so it's probably a good time to brush up on my grenade-tossing skills.

That should fill the weekend nicely...how 'bout you guys?

All of the games that support Wii MotionPlus have you holding the Wiimote in one hand like a wand, and it works great (depending on the software, of course). But what about the games that allow you to turn the Wiimote sideways like an old school NES controller? Say, for example, "New Super Mario Bros." The game, which was developed to be approachable to gamers of all skill-levels, can be played just like an old school Mario game...but not if you have Wii MotionPlus attached.

The best part of "Red Faction: Guerrilla" (which I'm playing catch-up on, since I missed its release while I was out at E3) is the destruction system. But that's what everyone's talking about! I wanted to discuss something a bit different: Infinite sprint.

Yes, "Red Faction: Guerrilla" features infinite sprint. You can run at a pretty good clip for as long as you want, with the only penalty being that you can't fire while sprinting. It's a feature that should be included into every open world game from hereon out, including "GTA."

The inclusion of infinite sprint really goes to show how much the developers were trying to develop for the player, not for themselves. At it's heart, "Red Faction: Guerrilla" is a fun action game, not a Martian space drama. While the story is interesting, the meat of the game lies with getting somewhere, blowing stuff up and then going somewhere else to find more stuff to blow up. The developers took great strides to take the "work" out of exploring their world (fast travel, which you unlock later, helps this as well), even if it breaks some of the realism factor.
Read more...

If "Rock Band" isn't the best role-playing game of the year, then I might have to nominate "Little Big Planet" for that award. Or "Guitar Hero." Or "Spore."

Many years ago, words started to fail fans of video games. Three words, in particular, that seem to be doing a poor job describing the games they are attached to are "Role Playing Game."

Or maybe the games are failing the words, because the games that everyone else calls RPGs -- the "Final Fantasy"s and "Oblivion"s and "The World Ends With You"s aren't making me feel like I'm playing a role nearly as well as the games I mentioned up top.

"Little Big Planet" is a role-playing game? Allow me to explain:

Read more...