The first time I died I was crushed to death by an ugly club-toting prison guard demon.

The second time, death came to me as I was shoved off a cliff. The third time skeleton warriors wielding cleavers overran me. The list continues: I was burnt, impaled, frozen, pummeled, squished, eaten, poisoned, slashed open, cursed, stunned, bashed, stuck full of arrows, you name it.

And it was all a painful, aggravating but ultimately rewarding learning experience.

I was being educated.

Enter Dark Souls, From Software’s follow up to Demon Souls. And I can easily say it’s the hardest game I’ve ever played.

The third person action RPG dungeon crawler Dark Souls is a fickle beast, one that doesn’t care if you’re good or not, the epitome of hardcore and the gatekeeper of victory and happiness. Its tagline, “Prepare to die,” is no joke. Even in the tutorial, you will die.

Sounds terrible, right? Wrong.  Not only is Dark Souls the hardest game I’ve ever played, but also the most unique and rewarding.

Through death, a player learns survival. This doesn’t quite make sense, I’m sure. It can be compared to touching a hot plate. With your hand burnt from the contact, you know not to touch it again or, perhaps, to hold it with a cloth to reduce the heat. It is no different when dying in Dark Souls. When an enemy parries your attack and returns it with their own instant-kill thrust, driving a large sword through your torso, you now know you should not attempt such a route when fighting said enemy. It’s all a huge lesson on versatility and thinking outside the box, a game that will keep your mind spinning and your heart pounding with every encounter.

Dark Souls furthers the intrigue by its openness and lack of direction. Once out of the Undead Asylum tutorial, the world is open for you to explore and scavenge. Players are merely told to ring bells and “something will happen.” Pretty vague, right? The story is sparse and barely described, although the opening scenes and cut scenes are beautifully done and graphically stunning. The story is weak, however, as you find yourself wandering, sometimes aimlessly, through broken down churches, dark forests, poison swamps, tombs and underground villages. But that doesn’t matter. The story is far from important. Dark Souls is just one epic and massive adventure when it comes down to it.

The game will push you in a basic direction by the difficulty of the demons you encounter. I knew immediately that going through the poisonous Blighttown before I rang the first bell was not the smartest move, mainly because I was too weak to handle the beasts within. Then again, it’s completely arguable. Some may think one section is harder than the other merely based on the fact that their stats are distributed differently. It really is open for debate.

With its refusal to hold your hand, Dark Souls makes gamers’ hearts pump faster and sweat build on their brows. As they enter a dark unknown area with no idea what is around the corner, they’ll either march proudly and arrogantly or inch their way through with their shield up and a strong paranoia sinking in. The tutorial is brief and lacking in description, forcing players to figure it out on alone. Once brought to the Firelink Shrine, the official starting place in Dark Souls after the escape from the Undead Asylum, the world completely lacks a linear path. You are given a simple objective, how you accomplish it is up to you.

This beginning is vast and intimidating. Words like “overwhelming” don’t seem to do it justice. The start of your exploration will invoke awe due to its size. As you further your escapades and plunders, however, you’ll find small shortcuts, making each area interconnected. By the time you make it halfway through, you’ll have paths to so many areas around the Dark Souls realm, it will make travel easier. The realization of shortcuts were always a huge victory when I was playing, and I found myself rejoicing each time I found my way back to the Firelink Shrine. Being a safe haven, it was always comforting to know that the Shrine wasn’t as far away as it seemed.

Again, death is stressed to be the ultimate teacher. You’ll find through error and exploration what enemies are weak against and their attack patterns. You’ll learn that some enemies are weak against fire, while others are immune. You’ll find that divine forged weapons will halt the revival of skeleton warriors, opposed to struggling as you battle the reanimating bastards over and over again for no gain. There isn’t a moment that the game isn’t teaching you something. Players must be wise enough to take note when things happen, especially in combat and death.

In no way is Dark Souls a hack ‘n slash game. Running into a crowd of undead soldiers with your sword drawn may seem like a fun idea at first, but will lead to your inevitably quick death. The game is about patience and testing your limits. With an endurance bar acting as both your defense and your strength, players must truly come to balance with their actions. Swinging a heavy weapon could use up half your endurance bar, leaving you susceptible to an onslaught. To attack or not to attack, that is the question.

But the combat system is the heart of Dark Souls and is extremely unforgiving for beginners. I think I died far more in the beginning trying to get used to the combat than later. The learning curve is brutal, and can push players into fits of anger as they attempt to figure out their hero’s limits and the attack patterns of their enemies. But as time progresses, you’ll get stronger, level up and conquer. It’s all a matter of taking risks and knowing when to pull back from a fight.

The gamble is a huge playing point in Dark Souls. To act or not to act. Play it safe and miss out, or take a chance and risk annihilation? It’s a rush every time and players are faced with it frequently.

Scenario: There is an item on top of the roof a structure. The gap between you and the structure is quite large. Falling into said gap is a most certain death. Having no idea if the item is worth the jump, do you take a chance anyway, risking all your collected souls and progress in the area?

Let’s say you jump. You don’t make the gap and plummet to your demise. “You have died” shows up on your screen and then fades to black. You respawn at the last bonfire you rested at. This sucks, but is the norm. You can, however, try try again, which eventually will lead to success, and a swelling rush of pride.

Bonfires are a player’s saving grace, their haven, the light in the pitch black. Bonfires are scattered few and far throughout Dark Souls, acting as a checkpoint where you can level up, change your spells, replenish you spell count and safely re-arrange your inventory. You’ll recover your health and refill your estus flasks – potions that heal you out in the world. But it comes with a price, as does everything in the Dark Souls universe.

By resting at a bonfire, the enemies slain have respawned (except for some of the tougher enemies like the Dark Knights or bosses). After tirelessly clearing out an area of blood-thirsty beasts, it might not be worth the risk to rest a bonfire if you don’t need to. Then again, players will learn to expect death everywhere, so it may be worth cashing in on the souls you’ve collected.

Souls act as currency. Killing an enemy will yield a specific amount of souls. These souls can be used to level up at bonfires, where players can up their stats. They are also money, in the sense that you can use them to purchase items or services from merchants and blacksmiths. There, you can forge new weapons, repair weapons and armor or enhance your belongings with materials found throughout the world. The game is especially difficult and, at points, unfair, with it’s distribution of souls through victories.

Perhaps it was the developers’ way of discouraging grinding, but it is tedious and risky to attempt it. Even some of the (respawning) toughest demons only provide a few hundred souls, making it more and more difficult to level up or ascend weapons and armor as the game progresses. There are some areas of the game that seem to be made for soul farming, but they’re spread far and thin in between.

Not only that, but weapons and armor have durability stats, meaning that you can only hack away at enemies for so long before your sword breaks. Just adding to the difficulty, Dark Souls? Yeah, I’d say so.

Be prepared to die. A LOT.

Playing Dark Souls makes you feel small and insignificant. Your hero will face creatures 1,000 times their size, with a bleak chance of survival. But yet, it’s all possible. It makes the victories a million times better. I distinctively remember standing up and dancing after I defeated the Bell Gargoyles (giant stone creates with huge lances, axe tails and breathe fire) and rang the first bell. Winning has never felt so good.

But as small as you are, you are not alone. The most genius part of Dark Souls is the online world. Playing it on a PS3, I was always connected to the Internet, which made for a fantastic gaming experience. Often, players will see ghosts of other players briefly running through an area or fighting an invisible enemy, but then they will disappear. Glowing orange markings on the ground are also left by online players, which provide hints (or sometimes trolls provide fake hints) that help your hero prepare for the worst. Although the specific player who wrote the note won’t show up in your game play, their message will, creating a strong sense of unity.

Even better is the act of summoning. White writing on the ground can give players the prompt to summon spirits to aid their adventures. These spirits will be other heroes that are online, willing to provide their services to defeat difficult bosses. Together, you’ll work silently by the side of a stranger to face nightmares you’d hopelessly be crushed by if you were by yourself. Once you defeat the creature, the summon will disappear, and you’ll most often never see them again. Whenever I utilized this option, it gave me a warm feeling that I wasn’t alone as I thought I was.

It’s a strange sense of unity that the online game play brings into Dark Souls. You’re all in this together, and you’re all just trying to survive the worst.

There is also the option to become a phantom yourself, helping out fellow heroes to take down bosses you’ve already slain. By writing on the ground with a white soapstone, you can be summoned by someone and reap the benefits of victory together.

Again, this wouldn’t be Dark Souls if there was not a yang to the ying. With online game play enabled, it gives gamers the option to invade other worlds. Being completely honest, invasions are terrible. Players will invade other’s games with the one purpose of massacring the other player. At one point, I was invaded four times within an hour, hopelessly fighting off much stronger foes, and dying with each invasion. It was probably the most frustrating thing I experienced.

But this leads to the idea of covenants, a brilliant side quest-like option in Dark Souls. Players will meet NPCs throughout game play, and can be offered to join different covenants. Each have their perks and their specific purposes. One secret covenant has the single mission of invading players who invade players. Every time a person chooses to invade another’s game, they are sinning. These sins are recorded in a Book of the Guilty by Dark Souls. It was quite the cool experience.

Dark Souls is truly a massive game that gamers can pour their heart (and many, many hours) into. It’s something I’ve never quite experienced in a videogame. Some of the battles gave me a sense of Shadow of the Colossus, where the enemies were just so massive success seemed out of the question. The victories were made so much sweeter because of it.

Graphically, Dark Souls has an incredible way to pull the gamer into the mood it’s conveying. There are moments where players will have a chance to gaze at a beautiful landscape and truly appreciate the texture and time put into their surroundings. Other times, players will be begging to see grass again as they crawl through the Depths filled with giant undead rats and cursed demon frogs. The game’s environment finds a way to dig under your skin and give you a feeling of loneliness, claustrophobia, fear, or, at times, comfort. Just another genius aspect, I suppose.

Not everything about Dark Souls is innovative and wonderful though. As said before, the learning curve is outrageous. The first 10 hours or so of game play is so harsh, it could make even the most hardcore gamer quit. Leveling up is especially difficult because there isn’t a marker telling you how many souls it will take to improve your stats. It’s impossible to know when you have enough, you can only estimate. Some of the scenarios breach the intense difficulty to the “completely unfair” zone too. Many times Dark Souls was turned off from my television in a flurry of cuss words and rage. Luckily, my controller is still intact, although it did fly across the room once or twice.

It’s a give and take kind of game that really is not for everyone. Those who expect a linear, baby-steps, simple game need not apply. It takes grit, patience and time to make it anywhere in Dark Souls. Not every gamer prefers that, and that’s fine, but for those up to the challenge, it’s beyond worth it. The adventure is epic and far too hard to turn down.

BLAST FACTOR: Dark Souls is only for the select few that want to put the time into it. It’s harsh on all levels and extremely difficult in the beginning especially. Getting past the amount of times death overtakes games is where players will find solace. It’s a genius learning game, forcing you to think outside the box. It defies the new wave of gaming that is all quick time events and only 12 hours of game play. Dark Souls is visually beautiful, terrifying and will completely take over your emotions. It’s an epic journey where only the bravest and wisest succeed. It would be a shame to pass up such an experience, but with its insane difficulty level it’s completely understandable. Dark Souls has breached my favorite game titles and definitely made it into my top five. I wouldn’t pass it up.

Just in time for the holidays, Namco Bandai Games brings us a heartwarming tale of one man and his quest to bereunited with the woman he loves. It’s a tale of love, determination…Oh, and blood – buckets upon buckets of blood.

There’s a lot wrong with the re-imagining of the classic game Splatterhouse – it’s shallow, and it features weak combat,  and a slew of embarrassing technical flaws but hey – you can use your own severed limbs as weapons, so it’s got that going for it. Splatterhouse may be enjoyable for a few moments, but when the novelty and nostalgia wears off, you’re not likely to go back to it much after.

The 2010 version of Splatterhouse loosely follows the plot of its 1988 predecessor, but takes several creative liberties in the process. In both you’ll play as Rick in search of your girlfriend Jennifer who has been kidnapped. In the original, the plot begins when the two take shelter in an old mansion, here she’s summoned to the Dr. West, who practices necrobiology (sure, whatever). Long story short, Jennifer is kidnapped and you’re mortally wounded. When you awake, you find that you knocked over a sarcophagus and have awakened and ancient and magical mask – with a potty mouth. Together, Rick and the mask must brutally maim the nightmare creatures of the mansion in an effort to save Jennifer. It’s kind of like 48 hours, but here Eddie Murphy is a demonic mask.

For what it’s worth, Splatterhouse seems to know what it is, and plays its tongue-in-cheek card decidedly well.  It never takes itself too seriously amidst the blood and gore. The story is told in almost a pulp-comic sort of way. Yes, it knows it and the content it’s bringing is silly and the game handles it well. Truth be told, there are a few interesting story turns to be found buried within Splatterhouse, but none of them are anything you wouldn’t.

You’ve already played Splatterhouse, even if you’ve never touched the game. It’s the same as every other depth lacking beat-em-up you’ve ever played. Walk into a room, maim some killer clowns, demons and other atrocities, rinse and repeat. As you progress, you’ll rip off limbs, decapitate and splash the blood of your enemies on your screen, they’re pretty cool the first few times, but get old fast. Some of the splatter-kills (the game’s idea of really violent attacks) will make you giggle with gory glee, but those two will be repeated on an almost laughable scale. Combat is mostly of the button mashing fare, and you’ll be able to upgrade your moves or purchase new ones with the blood you spill (yes, Splatterhouse uses Blood as currency).

Technically speaking, Splatterhouse is an embarrassing mess. Save for a few visually interesting moments, the game is filled with muddled textures, boring backgrounds and broken animations. These few interesting moments, which are unsurprisingly some of the game’s more gory moments make it even more difficult to stomach the rest of the game’s muddled visuals.

The controls of Splatterhouse too are disappointing. The game features loads of classic horror weapons from chainsaws to machetes, but getting to use them is a complete pain in the ass. It should be easy, walk over to it and push a button, but it’s just not that simple. All too often, the game won’t recognize that you’re trying to pick up the object and you’ll be left grasping at air when you know that the item you want it right there. It’s made all the more frustrating by the fact that when you’re trying to do this – there’s always  a ton of bad guys ready to dish out damage to you. The controls are made all the more worse during the game’s disappointing and out of place platforming sections.

The Blast Factor: Horror diehards may find a bit of enjoyment in the love letter Splatterhouse writes to their genre, but after while it’s pretty obvious that it’s a rather thin experience. All of the blood in the world couldn’t hide this game’s embarrassingly technical flaws, broken mechanics and inconsistent gameplay. If you’re a fan of the original, or off the wall violence, you may like Splatterhouse, but everyone else should stay far away.

The “I think games are too expensive” sentiment is one we’re all familiar with. The going rate of new titles ranges anywhere from $39.99 for a new DS/PSP game to $59.99 or above for console titles. While gamers can whine all they want, prices aren’t ever going to drop…are they?

At least one publisher wants to see such a thing happen. Namco Bandai recently voiced its opposition to the hefty going rate of new releases in today’s gaming world and suggests a summit, with major international publishers, be held to tackle the issue.

“I feel all the big video game companies need to join together in a worldwide summit to discuss the future of our industry. I think we have to pull our thoughts together”, Namco Bandai’s Olivier Comte told MCV.

“I am convinced that in the future we must change the price of video games – they’re too expensive for the audience. With the cost of development and the retail margins, £40 is a fair price [to us], but for the consumer it is too much.”

“From September to December there are three new blockbusters every week, and consumers just can’t afford to buy all that.”

Everything the man has said so far sounds exactly in line with my thoughts and feelings, but where he loses me is when he says “a good price of a game should be around £20 — but for this price we can’t make a ten to 15-hour adventure. So for £20 we should offer consumers four to five hours of gameplay, then after that we can make additional money with DLC.”

Ouch. That’s not what you want!

via MCV

The Tekken series has had a long and illustrious history on Sony platforms and in dank, dark arcades the world over. The latest in the line is cross-platform, but doesn’t make too many other deviations from the strict formula the series has been sticking to for years. For fans of the fighting series, that’s not a bad thing, and as far as Tekken games go, the sixth time is certainly a charm.

The endless stream of fighters that hit during the 90′s have managed to either steadily evolve or perish. Tekken has long been a mainstay on Sony’s platforms, starting with a killer port of the original arcade hit on the PSOne. Tekken 6 was built to take advantage of the latest uber-hardware and as expected, it really does look great and the animation is stunning. That’s not to say it’s visually perfect. The game still has a few unwanted last-gen leftovers like slight jagging outlines of the character, bit overall, Tekken 6 is easily the best the series has looked and certainly competitive with the latest Virtua Fighter, DoA, and Street Fighter IV. The game sounds great as well, with some surprisingly powerful surround effects.

Beyond the presentation, however, there’s not a lot of major upgrades. Although many of the old characters have been tweaked in some fashion, there’s no earth-shattering changes. There are several new characters such as the beautiful Zalina who uses a bizarre style, crazy school-girl android Alisa, and Bob, an amazingly fast far guy. The new characters are surprisingly fleshed out and refined, and add more than just a few more headshots to the 41 character roster.

Veterans of the series and hardcore fighter fans will get more out the more subtle gameplay enhancements, yet Tekken remains a remarkably novice-friendly affair as well. There’s an in-depth training mode to learn the ropes, and the classic four-button layout still makes for fast, fluid combat. That said, like most Tekken titles, Tekken 6 has a couple amazingly cheap boss battles in the arcade mode, which will cause even advanced players frustration.

Tekken 6 also tries to alleviate a major problem in all the Namco fighters—one dimensional arenas. While the fighting zones are still flat planes, there’s some real creativity in their presentation including a parking garage covered in flames. New to the series are multi-level arenas. Set up your opponent right through the use of new juggle and ground pounding techniques, and you can smash them through some arena floors. Granted, Mortal Kombat 2 did this in the mid-90′s, but given how slow these games can be to evolve, it’s a welcome gimmick. Now they just need to learn how provide elevation and contours to their arenas like Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive…

Beyond mere one-on-one fighting, the Tekken Force mode makes a resurgence in the form of the scenerio campaign mode. This single-player, story-driven mode takes the classic side scrolling beat ‘em up gameplay of previous games in the next gen with sharp graphics and plenty of action. Unfortunately, the mode has a terrible camera and no way to manually adjust your view. The enemies and action are also incredibly repetitive, but the mode does allow fans to delve more into the nearly incomprehensible  storyline. More importantly, it lets you earn bonus objects to accessorize the fighters with. A real sore point with this mode is despite the fact that you always have an AI companion, there’s no actual cooperative play option.

Online action comes in two different forms. The first is standard online matches against live players. While Namco has announced patches, at this time the online play is noticeably spotty. Although not unplayable, it’s hard to imagine why this is still an issue for Namco given how smoothly Soul Caliber IV works online. The other net-based feature is the ability to download player ghosts, which gives the illusion of fighting a real player without actually having to deal with one.

Blast Factor: Tekken 6 is, without a doubt, a great fighting game. It’s the most expansive Tekken yet, with a great roster, impressive levels, and plenty of gameplay tweaks. That said, it’s hard to outright recommend it to casual players or newcomers to the series, since Tekken Dark Resurrection is a far cheaper download and still a remarkably solid fighter. The $60 price tag here seems a little steep for anyone other than a diehard fighter fan, but price aside it’s a worthy addition to any fighter’s collection.

Tekken 6 is available on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for $59.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Little is known about the latest Tales game. We know it’s named Tales of Graces and is coming to the Wii in Japan later this Winter, but we can only hope it sees a stateside release. For now, we’ll have simply have to enjoy these screens IGN dug up for the title.

Tales of Graces is a Wii-exclusive role-playing-game and is reported to contain a staggering 70 hours of gameplay. Not too shabby, especially for Wii RPG gamers looking for their fix between Zeldas.

Never has being dumb been so fun.

Thanks to Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima, a new brain training iPhone app released by Namco Bandai, no longer do I need to pretend that I know how to read in order to seem like I have a single iota of intelligence.‚  Nope, instead all I have to do is turn on my handy iPhone device and start playing the various games that Brain Exercise has to offer, boosting the power of my frontal lobe in the process.

However, with the ever-growing number of apps available, can Dr. Kawashima’s latest creation validate its price tag?‚  Let’s take a look.

The first thing you notice when booting up Brain Exercise is the very clean and colorful presentation found in every menu within the game.‚  If I was told that a sophisticated, educational game heavily used pastels and metallic color schemes throughout its menus, I would have been very skeptical.‚  Nevertheless, Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima makes it work.

After admiring the aesthetics, players must create their own personal, reusable account to login to the game.‚  Each of these profiles allow players to track the progress of their brain training and their improvements “" or regressions, as the case may be “" throughout certain mini-games within Brain Exercise.‚  Account holders can measure their progress through charts, graphs or even by use of a calendar.‚  If you end up deciding to download Brain Exercise, expect to be visiting your profile page religiously.

Once logged into a profile, players can begin their brain training.‚  There are two different ways to do this: either through Brain Training or Brain Age.‚  Each of these modes has their benefits and unique quirks as they test the different regions of the brain with their diverse collection of games.

When starting a brand new profile, I suggest starting with Brain Age.‚  This mode challenges players to complete a certain mini-game at the best time possible.‚  Players will only get one attempt at the game.‚  The more accurate and swiftly one can complete a game, the lower their brain age will be.

The difficult part of Brain Age mode is the fact that a player cannot attempt to lower their age more than once a day.‚  This offers a challenging experience to any player with a competitive, self-improvement mindset.

However, because Brain Age only allows one attempt at a single, brain area specific game each day, a player’s brain age is only determined by testing a single brain region.‚  This would lead to me scoring a low brain age when tested on a certain region, but a higher age when tested on another.‚  It just seems like something as all-inclusive as a brain age should test all regions of the brain, not just one.‚  I would much prefer a “brain region age” with this format.‚  However, I don’t have a PhD and leave much of my education up to the completion of games on iPhone Apps, so I’ll leave the decisions up to Dr. Kawashima.

Once you have established your brain age, it is time to get to work with Brain Training.‚  This is the mode where players will probably be spending most of their time in. ‚ Brain Training lets players complete three different games per day in order to condition their brain for success in their next Brain Age attempt.

Using the Brain Training mode is a great way for players to learn all of the different games that Brain Exercise has to offer such as: Inverted Numbers, a game in which players must type in which upside-down or backwards number they see on the screen, testing the Parietal lobe of the brain; Rolling Shapes, a game in which players must decide position a shape is lying after its silhouette is rolled, testing the Temporal love; and Add 3, a game in which players must do simple math problems while also adding 3 to the resulting answer, testing the Frontal lobe.

The great thing about Brain Training is that it is able to test more than a single brain region at once by letting players complete multiple games.‚  Brain Training also collects all the data from your attempts and adds it to your progress tracker in your profile.

Brain Exercise is full of extra goodies as well.‚  First, Brain Exercise will keep the casual Sudoku player satisfied with an additional bonus game.‚  Also, players can enjoy a multiplayer experience by using the Challenge function, which allows players to duel their friends by playing a certain game on the same iPhone.‚  Finally, players can also download high scores from around the world and also upload their personal profile to the web.

There are very few negative things to say about Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima.‚  Sure, the price might be a little higher than a lot of Apps available for the iPhone.‚  But, given that Brain Exercise is a game that can be used every day, the price is justified.‚  Another potential negative aspect of Brain Exercise is the lack of clarity within the game instructions.‚  The presentation of the instruction screens is great, but it usually takes a run-through or two before a game is fully understood.

Overall, Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima is a great App.‚  It is fun, addicting and, most impressively, educational.‚  This is a great release and has already become one of my favorite Apps.

Brain Training with Dr. Kawashima is available in the iTunes App store for $5.99.

You would be hard pressed to find gamers who admit they did not at least crack a smile when they saw the Katamari Damacy games. You roll a katamari (ball) around and collect stuff to make it larger; it was simple, quirky, and weird, but most importantly, a load of fun. So when I heard the creator of Katamari Damacy was making a brand new original game, I, along with plenty of others, planned to buy it regardless of how ridiculous the concept may have seemed or look.

So the famed creator of Katamari Damacy along with Namco Bandai, released his latest creation for the Playstation Network, known as Noby Noby Boy. Not to be confused with actually being a game, Noby Noby Boy is best described as an original interactive experience, which may be why it holds that $4.99 price tag; it’s low enough to take a risk on, which should be good enough for many intrigued PS3 owners.

So what is Noby Noby Boy exactly? To put it simply, you play a four-legged creature, Boy, that will stretch, eat things and, well, poop them back out in the same manner they were originally consumed. You can combine different objects together as well, like eating a fruit and a creature and eventually ejecting a creature with a fruit head; this experimentation is meant to give you something to do as you attempt to build up your growth. As simple as the premise may be, there is more to Noby Noby Boy from my hours of meddling around the past few days with this “interactive experience.”

You control Boy who eats and will comically poop out what he eats. Control of Boy takes place through a randomly generated flat environment where people, creatures and objects exist solely to interact with. Boy’s house is placed somewhere in the environment and will be the only consistent thing you will ever see throughout the game. Boy’s house allows you to change to a new map giving you a new random assortment of people, creatures and objects to interact with.

You control the front two legs with the left analog stick and the hind two legs with the right analog stick. Jumping and flying are both controlled by L2 and R2, while shrinking is controlled with L3 and R3.You can move both parts in opposite directions with the analog sticks to cause Boy to stretch. The longer Boy is means more space in his worm-like body for consumed objects to stay. Otherwise, if no space is available, Boy will automatically (insert favorite euphemism for bodily functions here) out the objects.

Boy will stretch and report his lengths to Girl, who is like Boy but on a much larger scale. Girl will consume your length data and grow longer. As she grows she is actually moving away from the planet Earth to reach other heavenly bodies. In the days since Noby Noby Boy’s release, the combined length of all the PS3 players in our real world was able to help Girl reach the moon! This opened up, literally, a whole new world to play around in. This brought about exciting times for all who have been delving into the Noby Noby Boy experience, as they now had new environments and objects to interact with and experiment upon.

We, meaning the Noby Noby Boy community, now had a brand new set of people, creatures and objects at our disposal. This time all the humans and dogs were now in space suits. You would see people driving around in satellites. There were yellow moon crescents with legs walking about–I assume this was a bad joke showing what moon people would look like. Flying fish would now be floating about, and mushroom tops floating around like flying saucers.

This was whole lot of weird but also a whole lot of new. The physics on the moon appeared to have less gravity but with more experimentation I was able to create some awkward situations for Boy.

The level of Noby Noby Boy’s fun will be determined by the player. You will find endless supply of creatures like dogs, cats, camels, flying fish and even people ranging from all kinds of professions. You can choose to eat them, or at times they will jump on Boy’s body for a free ride throughout the town, and as mentioned you can also experiment to create new objects through digesting multiple objects.

From my experimentation, I was able to make Boy stretch so far that his body snapped into two. This created two separate bodies no longer restricted by Boy’s elasticity. I enjoyed eating animals and sadistically hearing the animal’s last echoing cry as entering Boy’s body. Also there were the numerous failed attempts to tie Boy in a knot or entangling him in a cloud, but it’s certainly possible to get tangled up, as you are harder to control the larger you get.

As expected by the type of gameplay, the overall music is very soothing and calming. It has yet to get irritating as more time was invested.

The most important question: Is Noby Noby Boy worth your time and money? For $4.99, you bet it is! This is one of those casual time waster games, similar to that of Wii Sports or Nintendogs. You would end up jumping back into it every time and again to see if there is anything new, and with the community pushing Girl ever forward, chances are good that there will be. Noby Noby Boy is charming, silly and will give you a smile, and for $4.99 that’s all you can ask for.

Namco Bandai recently created a new publisher within their holdings empire, and they named it Surge. This publisher was formed with the goal of catering to western gamers’ tastes, and for their first game, they went with a fitting meeting of east and west in Afro Samurai. The game, which is based on the manga and anime series, takes place in feudal Japan, but a feudal Japan with hip hop music and samurai robots. Mission accomplished, Namco Bandai.

While it seems like it should be difficult to mess up a formula like that-especially one from an established series that plenty of people already adore-Namco Bandai did just that while developing the video game version of Afro Samurai. Now, that’s not to say that no one should go out and buy this game, because it has some excellent moments, ones that oftentimes more than make up for the problems, but the issues are also too much to just overlook outright.

Let’s start with the positives. The gameplay is more than solid, with a simple yet deep battle system in place. You have light hits, heavy hits and another button that kicks; string those moves together to form long combos to take out your foes. You will know you have a combo working when blood splatters on your screen; the more blood, the more effective your combo has been. You can also perform these same attacks whilst in the air, which makes for some nifty looking moves.

You need something besides combos and a few different ways to whack the bad guys though in order to make a brawler worthwhile, and Afro Samurai delivers with its focusing system. ‚ You essentially slow down time in order to charge up a powerful vertical or horizontal slash (or a leg sweep to set up one of those two), and the effect is very satisfying. You can aim with the left stick in order to take out bellies, hands, limbs, heads, and even go for fingers or toes. That kind of control over what you do with your sword keeps things fresh and entertaining throughout. The game keeps track of those kinds of things for your Achievements as well, so those who follow their gamer score’s will want to start aiming.

Another neat addition to the battle system is the ability to mount your foes after performing a successful parry. Just hold down the A button after you parry, and Afro will hop on the shoulders of his adversary; follow that up with a finisher, performed by pressing the left stick along with one of the attack buttons, and you’ve got yourself some entertaining ways to clear your path of foes.

The battle system is a success, which is good news, because it’s the thing you will be doing the most of. There’s some platforming, but for the most part it isn’t anything difficult. The occasional wall run, wall jump or basic hop from platform to platform makes up most of the platforming experience, though there are occasions where these will be strung together for a more difficult experience. They can be more frustrating while trying to fend off enemies, but this is a rarity as well.

The presentation for the game is another strong point. The art style is gorgeous, as it’s a mix between a comic book and an anime, with the hefty horsepower of this generation’s consoles behind it. You will not tire of looking at the backgrounds or the fluid animations of Afro as he slices through everyone in his path. There are two minor downfalls graphically, though: enemy animations when not in battle are stiff, ‚ and there is also slowdown when the screen fills up with enemies and action. The latter isn’t a huge deal, given you do have the ability to slow down time after all, but it does detract from the fast-paced action on occasion, and is a major pain when someone is shooting at you while you’re surrounded by swordsmen.

In addition to the looks, the sound is superb. Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of Afro’s traveling buddy Ninja Ninja-he’s basically the polar opposite of Afro, who himself gives off the air of a quiet, deep thinking samurai-and Ron Perlman is the antagonist, Justice, the man responsible for the death of Afro’s father many years prior. Both do an excellent job of voicing the characters, so you won’t be too upset that you can’t skip the cut scenes. The music was inspired by the work of The RZA, as he put together the soundtrack for the Afro Samurai series. Howard Drossin composed the tracks this time around while RZA worked as musical director and contributed vocals on two tracks; just like in the series, this portion of the project shines. There aren’t a ton of tracks though, and they do loop quickly, but what you hear is done very well, and given the fast-paced nature of the fighting, you will feel like you’re swinging your sword and kicking to the beat of the music behind you.