Slime, Slime, Slime Everywhere. Dragon Quest Slime Is My Best Friend Ever.

The great thing about Pokemon was the ability to pick your favorite one and kind of bond with it throughout playing and interacting with everything the series offered. To like Squirtle over Pikachu was a liberty to a player and just made them more personally invested into achieving more in the game. They were symbols, characters, and mascots that gave us more to appreciate and take away once the game was long over.
Certain games attempt this with new creations and characters while other legacy companies resurrect time and time again their accomplished icons. Certain ones are far more popular and successful than others, where if you were to compare Mario or Mega Man to Davey Dire or one of the Snow Bros it would really be no contest.

One of those icons, the Slime from the Dragon Quest series, stands out beyond them for a few reasons.

Slime has been around since the inception of the series and has been involved in practically every Dragon Quest release from ENIX and Square Enix. In the beginning he was one of the first random encounters and easily defeated, thus making him pretty forgettable. He’d climb the ladder and eventually befriend the protagonist and his party.

Beyond that in his future would be a Slime Hidden Island with an entire Slime Community and appearances in party games like Fortune Street where he’d invest in stocks and markets.

He also got his own series.

And despite all his progress the character hasn’t really grown at all. He’s still a blue little bubbly goop with a smile on his face. He barely talks and the character has remained the same for over 20 years.

Slime isn’t a very cool mascot and I doubt when creating him they were going for a cute approach. He was just a tear drop with a face in it that the descendant of Edrick plowed through to reach Level 5 in Dragon Warrior, but he evolved into something incredible for ENIX and took off in his own simple and amazing direction.

He wasn’t built for greatness like Mario or Sonic, but a byproduct of it.

And that’s why he’s my best friend ever.

We’re Finally Excited for Nintendo’s Kid Icarus on Nintendo 3DS

It took awhile, but we’re officially excited for Kid Icarus to make us start playing with our 3DS’s again. Famitsu gave it a perfect score, Nintendo made over 5 million copies for their first shipment stateside, the game is visually stunning, and everyone is just drooling until Friday. We didn’t believe the hype at first. Here is why.

When the Nintendo 3DS originally came out there weren’t a lot of games to be that stunned about. In fact, everyone who had one stated that they got one for the onslaught that was coming in the future. That included Starfox, Zelda, Mario Kart, and they were all incredibly well done. The thing is that once that wave ended, nothing followed. So to expect greatness to come in short bursts is asking quite a bit, and who is to say that Kid Icarus would stand alone? Why aren’t 2 or 3 other amazing games coming out with it?

This reasoning isn’t necessarily fair since we’re not judging the game itself (once we did we decided it looked incredible and now we’re getting it – so cool it), but the fan base of the Nintendo 3DS seems to have gotten the short end of the stick most of the time. I, myself, received it as a gift – I lucked out hardcore and was immediately sucked into how incredible it was. Though what about the poor Nintendo fans who bought it at $250?

This really does equate to resentment for not delivering consistently in the end, and again, it isn’t justified since it’s not about Kid Icarus. Therefore I’ll get to the point in saying I wasn’t excited for this game because I was disappointed in Nintendo. I don’t like how they’ve been rolling out 3DS titles in waves with spurts of crap floating either before or afterwards.

That said – Kid Icarus looks very much NOT like a spurt of floating excrement. It’s gorgeous.

The handheld is going to shine with this title and people who have 3DS’s finally have a reason to get excited again.

We’re very excited. But Nintendo – if you ever pull that release-wave stuff on us again we are going to come to your house and eat all of your food.

All of it.

The Simpsons Arcade Game On Playstation Network Reminds Us Nothing Will Be As Difficult As The Arcade Age

Arcade Games are the most difficult games out there because they make us continuously invest into them, literally. They are designed to frustrate and have us over achieve. What happened to that?

Everything now is wrapped in tutorials, downloadable content at an extra price, and adjustable difficulty so that everything caters to the user experience. Games aren’t out to bust balls anymore and those that are are now infamous for doing so (I’m thinking of Dark Souls, but I’m sure there are more examples out there.

On the Playstation Network, the Simpsons Arcade game can easily be beaten on an adjustable difficulty scale. That said you can make it a survival quest on expert and you’d be lucky to make it past stage one, but the Simpsons of old has been long forgotten. The arcade classic was just that – a classic – for plenty of reasons beyond being a better than average brawler. It was an experience.

I’m not really a die-hard Simpsons fan and I can say the same about three or four different arcade games, but when I flew through this on the Playstation Network I didn’t feel anything close to when finally beating it with my Dad on the New Jersey Boardwalk. Where did that feeling go and where can I score some of that dope high?

Guess Who’s Back?!?!

Hey friends! It has been a while since I last put something up on here. Sorry to all the fans who hate me and want to bash me some more. Actually I probably don’t have any fans at all so there goes my dream. Sigh. I digress.

So, as the boss said quite some time ago. We are taking everything we have come up with and throwing it out the freaking window. All of our new ideas are created by throwing them at a wall and seeing what sticks. Literally. Hope you all like it!

Now, until I come up with something cooler to write about let me just vent for a moment. I am a fan of Call of Duty, Battlefield and just about any first person shooter that is out on the market. What I am tired of is seeing all these damn videos about them. The fad needs to die down and something new needs to take its place. I will leave you with this REAL video of what a firefight in a combat zone actually looks. Oh, they are using “noob” tubes as well you freaking noob tube calling babies. Enjoy the video.

The New South Park Game Shows South Park Still Rules

It seems more and more of the digital download titles are leaning towards some side scrolling action. Just a few days ago we thought uncovering Scary Girl (which we were late to the party we admit) was a gift, but here we are getting something new from the South Park Team, Tenorman’s Revenge.

South Park Tower Defense Play was a pretty solid release, but got a bit repetitive being a tower oriented game. No worries here on the new South Park: Scott Tenorman’s Revenge. Looks like we’ll be revisiting some fun South Park moments with a final showdown imminently awaiting us.

Silent Hill Downpour Is Apparently Awful – What A Bummer

The new Silent Hill game, Silent Hill Downpour has just come out and its getting some terrible reviews. This is bad news considering Silent Hill is a survival horror classic. Silent HIll HD Collection is right around the corner so can the Silent Hill reviews hold water to up the sales of the HD collection?

Apparently not.

IGN tore it up in a review telling the entire world over and over again that the gameplay is garbage, but the story is intense. Last time I checked the game play of a survival horror game, though important, is not everything. If the story is solid and its got Silent Hill in the title, why so quick to judge?

We’ve yet to play the game but we have high hopes. If people are really churning it out so quick then we’re going to be the guys picking it up used. When we do, we’ll let you know how it goes, but if the trailer is any accurate representation than we’re going out on a limb here and saying these bad reviews are pretty exaggerated. Have you all played a Silent Hill? Will you play Downpour?

War . . . War Never Changes – Well Maybe A Little Bit

After a lengthy legal battle, Bethesda Softworks’ parent company ZeniMax Media recently acquired the sole rights to produce and distribute the upcoming Fallout MMO from Interplay.  With Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls series and Rage under its belt, Bethesda has defined itself as an FPS/RPG powerhouse.  But with World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic dominating MMO subscriptions, Fallout will need something special to make it stand out.  Hey Bethesda!  If you’re reading, consider…

Applying Skyrim’s attribute system

One of my biggest complaints of FO3, FONV, and any lengthy open-world game, is selecting key attributes in the beginning and then being pigeon-holed into one set of attributes through the whole game.  There’s nothing quite as frustrating as getting 10-20 hours into a game and realizing you REALLY love heavy weapons but haven’t backed any of the stats.  Skyrim’s system of “it levels up as you use it” nailed it.  I can go from a light armor sneak thief to a heavy armor battle mage without having to restart the game.  This kind of character flexibility would be excellent paired with…

Letting players change between classes/factions midgame

Much like your ability to befriend or reject (befoe?) factions in New Vegas, the Fallout MMO needs to give players the option to join The Brotherhood, NCR, Enclave etc…, and change sides mid game.  This will take graying the lines between good and evil to a whole new level and (hopefully) lead to epic backstabbings on a level we haven’t seen since Benedict Arnold and Leroy Jenkins.  Even better, don’t limit factions to just one class.  Think of it, supermutants in power armor!

Realms? No.  Cities? Yes.

I spent last weekend in Washington D.C.  Much to my delight (my girlfriend not so much) I was able to navigate the city on my memory Capital Wasteland maps.  Now take this idea and apply to other cities and regions of the US/World.  No area was spared from the Great War of 2077.  Show us how New York City, Los Angeles, London and Beijing fared! Anchorage and The Pitt were good starts but there are plenty of other cities worthy of Fallout mythology!

The Fallout MMO is the most anticipated games on my list.  Don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Bethesda will do anything that will make me regret dressing up as Pip Boy at this year’s Comicon, but as long as they’re making games before producing real Pip Boy 3,000s, I will continue telling them what to do.

Editors Note –

Bethesda, I’m available for any future Fallout related recommendations  :-D