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Several times today, the scary ghost chick tells me that stride and running endurance degrade as you get older. This is a tip that she feels compelled to reiterate, numerous times. Is it because I flubbed the balance exercise during my daily fitness test and was assigned a Wii Fitness Age of 47? Or does she know that I've been unfaithful to Wii Fit, doing some outdoor running on the side? She's as insecure and jealous as GLaDOS.
I really wish there were more audio option in Wii Fit. I'd like to turn off the ghost chick trainer's telepathic voice. I wish I didn't have to listen to this insipid corporate exercise muzak and could instead put on my own music. But then I wouldn't be able to hear the whistles that pace the different exercises, or the breath guide that goes with the yoga poses. Hey, Nintendo, do you know how people exercise? We like our own music. Also, we don't enjoy repeated sound bites. This isn't an RTS.
Dig this new trailer for the upcoming expansion/console port of World in Conflict, the superfast, supergorgeous, supermultiplayer action RTS from Swedish developer Massive. To quote John Carpenter's The Thing: "Hey, Swedes!"
The first thing you might think is, 'Whoa, sweet graphics!'. The World in Conflict engine, Masstech, is some of the most exciting technology since Valve's Source engine. This two minute clip of Soviet infantry charging through an artillery barrage on a snowy night under a full moon and an aurora borealis shows off how well Masstech does both detail and spectacle. The second thing think you might think is, 'Hey, what's that song?' It gives the trailer a haunting, pensive and languid quality, which is precisely what World in Conflict isn't. Their earlier "letter home" trailer is another sweetly sentimental bit of misdirection.
Disingenuous? Perhaps. Publisher Sierra and Massgate aren't the only ones doing this. There's the Gears of War trailer set to Gary Jules cover of Mad World or the Halo 3 trailer of a veteran reminiscing about the war as if he were something other than a disposable friendly AI soldier. And while these might not be an accurate portrayal of the game experience, that's not their function. These trailers were made to catch your eye and ear, to make you remember the brand, to stand out from the louder mundane trailers of gunplay and explosions. It doesn't matter of they're accurate when they're so effective.
And by the way, the song is Death of My Hometown, by Logh. Hey, Swedes!
I'm really feeling yesterday's lunges and side planks. My thighs and back are asking if we could just skip Wii Fit and play GTA4 instead. But I'm not going to disappoint the Balance Board ™, or the eerie ghost chick trainer or the Mii ™ that looks nothing like me. Besides, it's only ten lunges. Oops, it turns out I've unlocked the ability to do 15 lunges! So, 15 lunges it is, right?
Are there any history geeks in the house who are also strategy gamers who don't mind managing lots of numbers in real time to simulate medieval centuries around the world for hours at a time? Lemme hear you say, 'Aww yeah!' You know what time it is? It's time for another $20 add-on for Europa Universalis III! We're gonna party like it's 1399!
So Grand Theft Auto IV arrived. Well, "arrived" in the same sense that an asteroid colliding with Earth would "arrive". This particular arrival left a huge $500 million impact crater. Now it's kind of hard to see what with all the dust and hype. Plus, if you're like me, you're probably going to be busy until 2009 driving around Liberty City looking for all 200 pigeons to shoot. Eleven down, 179 to go! Someone check my math on that.
Lucky for the pigeons, 2008 is still young. Brace yourself for more arrivals. Here, for your consideration, are the five Best of the Rest of the Year, presented alphabetically, because, girls, you're all pretty.
(Safe Harbor: Judgments of "best" are forward-looking statements subject to changes and variations which are not reasonably predictable and which could significantly affect future results).
Ever wonder why it sucks to play Scrabble with your girlfriend, who can't seem to grasp the concept that you have to jealously guard the Triple Word Score squares from enemy Js and Xs, and especially Qs and Zs? Some folks at Stanford took a stab at explaining it.
If you love games enough to waste a little time on the internet reading and writing about them, you've come to the right place. Whether it's the latest news, the newest games, or the games you never got around to playing, it's all fair game for Fidgit. We write about stuff that goes beyond the latest press releases, and we're not afraid of stuff that's been out for a month or two, or even a year. You might even read about X-Com, The Dig, or Nethack over here.
We're simple, we're not too Flashy, and we get to the point. We're a bit more than a blog, but something simpler than a sprawling site. And most importantly, we're hands on. So drop in when you get some spare time during your day. See what we're playing and let us tell you what we've found. At Fidgit, we may not be able to spell, but we know games. Welcome!
There have been some interesting Ubiannouncements from Ubisoft's Ubidays over in UbiParis. The twist in the new Prince of Persia: Assassin's Creed (not its real title) is that it will be a lot like Assassin's Creed, but with a female sidekick. EndWar will let you play a real time strategy game on a console system using voice commands. Uh huh. Sure it will. And Far Cry 2 seems to be coming along nicely, promising free-roaming, open-ended action in Africa (hi, Resident Evil 5!).
The Far Cry series has a bit of an awkward history. The original game was published by Ubisoft and created by Crytek, a German company founded by three Turkish brothers. The game was built from a bleeding edge engine, but it famously spiraled downhill at the halfway point, when it was overrun by mutants. The lead character was a wisecracking tough guy in a Hawaiian shirt. He'll be played by German action star Til Schweiger in an upcoming Uwe Boll movie. No joke.
But then something unpleasant happened with contracts and whatnot. Ubisoft took the Far Cry name and gave it to their Montreal development studio. "Here," they said, "see what you can do with the words 'Far' and 'Cry' and the number 2." We'll see how that turns out later this year. Meanwhile, Crytek slinked off with their fancy engine to make Crysis, which was pretty decent for the way it didn't famously spiral downhill until the end instead of the halfway point.
Finally, Ubisoft confirmed what everyone already knew: Michel Ancel, the French version of Miyamoto, is making a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil, one of those rare games with a female protagonist whose eyes command more attention than her breasts (a.k.a. the Cate Archer Club). Here's a link to the wonderfully understated teaser.
So you've gotten to the end of GTA 4 and now - wait, you are done, aren't you? If not, you have to stop here. This is spoiler country.
Is he gone, that guy who didn't get to the end yet? Okay, as I was saying: So you've gotten to the end of GTA4 and now you're wondering what you missed when you chose to kill Derrick instead of Francis. Or was it vice versa for you? You're wondering what happened to those targets you spared and how the ending would have changed if you opted for revenge instead of a deal. Well, you can play through the game a second time, or you can read on.
Thanks to Keith for the Youtube links to Nintendo's latest ad campaign for the DS, featuring Carrie Underwood and Liv Tyler. Maybe you've seen these on TV. In which case I just busted you for watching Oprah!
Actually, I don't know if the ads are on the air or not. Really, I don't. They're promoting Nintendo's new iplayforme.com site, which asks that you leave your Y chromosome at the door. Here you can see higher quality versions of the ads. In one, Liv Tyler is Nintendo's showcase for the efficacy of Brain Training. In another, Carrie Underwood mostly ignores her real dog to play with her Nintendog. There's also a teaser for an upcoming ad in which America Ferrera plays New Super Mario Bros.
Nintendo has a long tradition of these kinds of ads, starting in Japan. Here's one for the UK where the DS tells Nicole Kidman she's old because she can't pronounce the word 'scissors'. I was going to link to a Rickroll and claim it was Amy Winehouse playing The World Ends With You, but we like to think we're above that sort of thing here at Fidgit.
Seriously, though, I would be glad to see women targeted by a videogame advertiser if it weren't Nintendo, a company well on its way to transcending videogaming and becoming its own wildly successful hobby, leaving the rest of us in the same old boy's club, swinging swords, shooting guns, and taking the odd break to enjoy a little Rock Band with our girlfriends. Or "girlfriends".
File this under: Noooooooo! Someone at THQ tried to quietly inform Reuters that the release of Saints Row 2 was pushed from mid-August to mid-October. We're not about to let that go unnoticed, particularly since playing Grand Theft Auto IV has us really psyched for Saints Row 2. The original Saints Row was, in many ways, a far better game than any of the Grand Theft Autos. So we had the August release marked on our calendars. Does anyone know how to erase red magic marker?
With the release of two embarrassing videos and increasing competition for space in your house where you keep a fake plastic drum kit, yesterday was not a good day for Guitar Hero.
When you're doing the yoga and strength training exercises, Wii Fit gives you an instructor who demonstrates the moves and then performs them while you follow along. You can choose from a dude or a chick. Being a dude, I choose the chick. Duh.
Paris, Rome, Fiji, the Taj Majal? Pshaw. Yeah, sure, the graphics are pretty good and the back stories are great, but the fees are huge and you can't save your game. Plus, they won't yet run on any gaming system you own. So instead, here are five virtual places you must visit before you die, and you don't even have to leave your house to do it.
Wii Fit came out in Japan over the holidays. It has sold nearly one and a half million copies. That's a lot. However, Nintendo expects to sell twice that number here in the US, because we're fat and lazy. They didn't actually say that last part about us being fat and lazy, but I'm sure it's what they were thinking.
