Gaming News
 Insert Actor Here
Ricky Gervais writing partner Stephen Merchant, AKA “The Oggmonster” from The Office (UK), has been confirmed as joining the voice cast of Portal 2. He’ll be playing the role of Wheatley, a robot who travels with you during part of the game dispensing advice that may actually be entirely useless if not potentially lethal. Which certainly fits the nature of AIs in Portal.
Now With Less Jaggies
While the classic series of build-your-own-A-Team games of mercenary management, Jagged Alliance, is being continued with an online version, the last game in the franchise is also being revamped. Jagged Alliance 2: Reloaded will give the 1999 game a facelift that includes improved graphics and a new interface as well as a set of tutorial missions to ease you into the game.
 Spankable
Loot-em-up fantasy comedy DeathSpank may have only come out last month, but a sequel has already been announced. DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue will have the titular hero questing across the world to recover six magical items of underwear and destroy them, possibly by throwing them in Mount Doom. It will be out on PSN and XBLA in late September.
City Of Half-Elves
The fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons will see its first computer game adaptation in Neverwinter, an online co-op multiplayer game being developed by Cryptic. How it differs from the massively multiplayer model they followed on games like City Of Heroes remains to be seem, but since the name harks back to the classic Neverwinter Nights series it may follow a similar model, with one player taking on a moderator/director role, creating levels as the other players experience them.
 In Brief
Plants Vs. Zombies continues to lurch from platform to platform, devouring all that stands before it. Next will be a Nintendo DS version.
Doctor Who is coming to Nintendo consoles in a Wii game called Doctor Who: Return To Earth and a DS title called Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth. These might be two Nintendo games we actually get before the US.
Paradox Interactive, publisher of games like Mount & Blade, are planning to launch their own online networking service a la Steam.
The developers of Fighting Uncaged, which will use the Xbox 360 Kinect motion-control system, say they’ve had to drop the game’s multiplayer as it was too dangerous, and players were too likely to hit each other for real.
In the interest of fairness, and to discourage players from sitting down at Final Fantasy XIV until they collapse from exhaustion, the game will include a ‘fatigue’ system that limits players who devote more than eight hours a week to the game by reducing the amount of experience points their characters earn.
Game Review
 SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD: THE GAME
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platform: PSN / XBLA
Genre: Beat ’Em Up
Rating: Awesome G
A Pilgrim’s Journey
It’s fitting that Bryan Lee O’Malley’s cult comic book Scott Pilgrim, which combines an awesome 4-hit combo of music, movie, manga and video game culture, be adapted by an equal. Director Edgar ‘Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz’ Wright’s attention-deficit-disordered movie was pitch perfect down to details like Beck providing tracks for Pilgrim’s band Sex Bob-omb.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game is a simplified scrolling beat ’em up for those gamers among us who want to take a stroll (or a scroll in this case) back through gaming’s heyday. If you who don’t know what a Bob-omb is? Shame on you. A Bob-omb is a mobile wind-up proximity bomb that first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 2 and I am afraid to say that SPVTW: The Game is not going to make much sense to you if you didn’t know that. It’s an absolutely delightful overdone mess of gaming references and seizure-inducing colour and sound, like a gamer’s equivalent of an acid flashback. Mashing up bits and pieces from Mario, scrolling beat ’em ups like Final Fight and Streets Of Rage, Zelda, Sonic, Street Fighter, RPG level ups and item collection, infectious 8-bit midi sound, purposely placed graphical glitches, manga-styled animation, for some reason Log from Ren & Stimpy (although I might be confusing that with another log), flying oversized piggy banks… and it goes on.
 The game features four selectable characters: Scott, Ramona, Kim and the ‘talent’ Stephen Stills (with two unlockable secret characters), each one capable of a weak and strong attack, a jump, special attack and a special summon attack. As the game progresses each character unlocks additional moves and becomes considerably more awesome with experience points building up the more emo, goth and scenester ass you kick while, of course, defeating Ramona’s evil exes. While the game is retro in its delivery, there have been considerable tweaks, additions and improvements to the beat ’em up elements so that the game doesn’t simply feel old. Sure there are faults, purposeful or accidental, but because this is a game that tries to be simple mindless fun (and succeeds), to pick it apart would be superfluous. I want to make it look like I’m doing my job by acknowledging that there are faults – I just don’t care about them.
Scott Pilgrim has made the transition from comic to film and now game with the its mash-up of pop culture references remaining consistently crazed and being handled expertly, albeit with a very heavy hand wearing a golden gauntlet. For those who feel the Scott Pilgrim phenomenon is an insider’s party that you weren’t invited to, I wouldn’t really recommend Scott Pilgrim Vs The World: The Game if it weren’t available for download at only $10 – well worth checking out at that price. One 10th of the price of regular games and 10 times more awesome.
*****
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