The Gaming 5 & 1 08.30.10: Metroid Edition

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 08.30.2010

Metroid: Other M comes out this week, the PlayStation 4 will have discs, Denmark won't have EA Sports MMA, Kristanna Loken faces Eliza Dushku in Versus and Samus Aran is our Model of the Week!



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Happy Monday everybody! You'll be happy to know that last week's graphics intern has been fed to the Sharkticons. I sure hope he knows the universal greeting. I'm Chris Lansdell and this...is Gaming's 5 & 1.

For those of you living under a rock, the 5&1 started with the ever awesome Steve Gustafson in the Movies zone, with the original (and still the best) Hollywood 5&1. Steve brought the concept over to the Games zone and changed it to a crossover column called The Silicon Valley 10&1, now handled by the one and only Justin Weinblatt. The Music and Wrestling zones were next to try the format, and it has worked everywhere. Who am I to argue with success?

So now you know the history...let's rock and roll!



Welcome back folks. The summer is coming to a close and we're getting nearer and nearer to the big fall releases. Metroid: Other M is up first, with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions not far behind. What is with games and colons these days anyway?

UFC 2010 has been inserted back into my gaming rotation this week, and Nate Diaz has become the bane of my existence. Monday Night Combat is still my number one time-waster for now, though I am starting to get the urge to really put some time into Mass Effect 2. What are you guys playing?

VS

No, not like Aaron Hubbard's excellent Friday column. This is where we take two beautiful women (or sometimes cyber-women) and have you pick the winner. It's an interactive experience and a chance for YOU to decide who makes it into the Gaming Hall of Bang. In what I have to consider an upset, Kristanna Loken soundly defeated Angelina Jolie last week in the Lara Croft vs. Rayne battle. This week Rayne takes on the awesomely sexy Rubi Malone from WET, as played by Eliza Dushku.





VOTE BELOW!

VS.



VOTE BELOW!


I JUST WANT SOME RELEASE!!

Since video games don't do much tweeting, we're going to replace the Twitter section with a focus on the week's upcoming releases. Due out this week:

Super Meat Boy (PC) – You play a cube of meat and the villain's name is Dr. Fetus. What, that's not enough to make you buy the game? It has 300 levels and a four-player mode.
Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse – Episode 5 (PC) – LucasArts and Telltale have a warped sense of humour, but if you like Monkey Island this will probably be right up your alley.
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online (PC)
Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP) – People are still playing the PSP? Maybe I should grab one after all...
Combat Wings: The Great Battles of WWII (Wii)
Ace Combat: Joint Assault (PSP)
Dead Rising: Case Zero (360) – A prequel to Dead Rising 2 that also serves as a demo to the zombie-killing sequel. 400 MS points can't steer you wrong!
101-in-1 Sports Megamix (DS) – Baseball! Ping pong! Darts! Zorbing? Caber toss? For $20, I'm getting this out of sheer curiosity.
Metroid: Other M (Wii) – Ahhh, you don't care about THAT...



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So now Sony is working on glasses-free 3D? That really is the only way the tech will ever take off, and the more companies that are working on it the cheaper it will be for us when it hits.

And now, on with the show!



Super Metroid!

1. The game was universally adored in North America, with a 96% review score.
2. The game sold poorly in Japan, being released in the same years as the PlayStation and Saturn.
3. It is considered to have near-perfect level design for speed runs, and the method for going through the game is still being perfected.
4. As the game was so huge, it was on the verge of being cancelled three times during development.
5. Super Metroid appeared as a demo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, with three, 3-minute demos playable from different save points. It also shows up in the Super Nostalgic Entertainment System microgame in WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

And now you know...



I'm building up quite the list of must-plays, which I plan to share with you next week. I don't buy a lot of games, so this will be a top 10 games I want to play now. I'll be glad to take your suggestions...

The submission system in UFC 2009 annoyed me because it was all about button mashing. Now the 2010 version is all about stick-spinning. How is that better? There has to be a better way to do these things.





What? I am incapable of having a column run for this long without including that video. Oh OK, here's another one...



News me!



Playstation 4 heads back to Discworld
No, this has nothing to do with Terry Pratchett. Sorry to disappoint. In a complete shocker, Sony seems to have learned from the complete fuck-up that was PSPGo and have veered away from digital-only distribution. CEO Kaz Hayashi Hirai said this week that he thinks a digital-only format is at least 10 years (or $300 and a trip to GameStop) away.

"We do business in parts of the world where network infrastructure isn't as robust as one would hope," Hirai said. "There's always going to be requirement for a business of our size and scope to have a physical medium. To think everything will be downloaded in two years, three years or even ten years from now is taking it a little bit to the extreme."

So we have third-world countries to thank for not putting GameStop out of business? Thanks, Burkina Faso! Of course, Kaz Hirai hzs shown time and again that he and his PR people hardly have their fingers on the pulse of the gaming public. Remember this shit?


Riiiiiiidge Racer! Oh give up Kaz, go be Suicide again.

Big fat install option for Gran Turismo 5
So you like real driving simulators? You're going to pick up GT5 on November 2? You want the best possible gaming experience, right down to 3D gaming? Well you'd better have 10 gig free on your hard drive then bucko, because that's what Kazunori Yamauchi says you'll need. Although you CAN play with just a 256 meg install, he's recommending you hold back the full 10 gig. Why? Nobody knows. If you've got a nice beefy HDD from one of the newer models, this will likely be a minor inconvenience. If you're still struggling along with a 20 gig model...boy is it ever going to suck to be you.


Riiiiiiidge...oh wait. No it isn't. But if the cars look that good, it's worth 10GB.

It's starting. Just as I sensed it would.
Aside from a buttload of shovelware and a whole ton of waggleware and a metric fuckton of family games that offer little for a hardcore gamer, the Wii is beset by ridiculous WiiMote add-ons designed to "improve" your gaming experience when playing things like Wii Sports. Because nothing says "I'm playing tennis ma!" like a fucking plastic half-sized racket condom slipped over the rectanguloid phallus of your controller. As if the Move didn't look bad enough, and as if it wasn't already being called a Wii rip-off, Hyperkin has decided that we need a Sports Victory Set of a dagger, shield, bow and table tennis paddle for $30. You know, to "enhance" the Sports Champions experience. And their income statement.


Who ordered this shit?

How the hell are they getting this past the patent lawyers?
File this one under "doomed from the beginning." Lenovo is working on something called an eBox, which the company is openly touting as a Kinect rip-off. "We are the world's second company to produce a controller-free game console, behind only Microsoft," said Jack Luo, the head honcho of the spinoff company working on the console. It's said to be launching in China (where the Big 3 have yet to get a firm foothold doe to government restrictions) as early as Q1 2011, and the company is bragging that 16 "global video game developers" are already on board. The price point will be between the Wii and the 360, and the focus of the system will be similar to Nintendo's "family" approach.

Seriously? The eBox? I mean, the guys at Microsoft must be rubbing their hands together, just waiting for Lenovo to blow a ton on promoting and marketing this thing before firing off the mother of all cease and desists. How incredibly stupid do you have to be to think you can get this through? I know, I'll release the GameStation 3 and the Wintendo Nii! Actually, that last one would be fucking awesome...


Yeah, you can bet there's gonna be one

Can You Top This, WHAT THE FUCK Edition
I've seen some things man, and some stuff. I wouldn't recommend it. This is right up there with some of the crazier stories. It turns out that there's a law in Denmark that prohibits the advertising of energy drinks. EA Sports MMA, which features heavy in-game advertising for things like Rockstar Energy Drinks, would therefore not be able to be sold in the country as it stands.

That's bizarre enough, but EA sports has decided to scrap the game's release in the area completely, rather than change it from the game they made. According to EA, removing the energy drink ads would damage the authenticity of the MMA experience in the game...and their ad revenue.

I really don't know which part of this is more asinine. I don't recall this sort of issue for UFC 2010, and I'm pretty sure Xyience is an energy drink. Would anyone really notice if Rockstar was changed to Harley Davidson? And is EA really going to nix an entire region because they don't want to change some ads around? What does Randy Orton think of this?



That was the news, and now...



Here's the hotness!

Welcome to the & 1 Model of the Week! This is the part where we search the interwebz to find a buxom wench to ogle, admire, drool over and fantasize about. With any luck we'll make it game-related. This week, we're sticking with the zone-wide theme



Ladies and Gentlemen, I present...SAMUS ARAN!



I'd love to see her with zero suit on...

Join me next week for another & 1 Model of the Week!

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That does it folks. Your last life has been lost, you are out of quarters and by the time you get back from the change machine, it will be next week. Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to cast your vote for Versus in the comments below.

Lansdellicious – Out.