Game Reviews (OMG OLOL!1!!eleventyone)

I'm bored on a Saturday, so I thought I'd sink some time into my "new hobby," and also go for a bit of a joyride in my "new wheels." Seeing as I spent the morning playing video games, I thought the best thing to do would be to give a couple of quick reviews of games I've been playing recently.

Mario Tennis
Pretty much what you'd expect from Nintendo when it comes to four-player goodness on the cube, and that is to say "fun" with a capital F-U. Easy to pick up in a couple of minutes, great for two or four players. It's still a fine game by yourself, and I suppose you could play with three, but why? There's really not a lot else to say, because it's a really simple game. Just fun. We still love you, Nintendo.

God of War
In a word: visceral. Fairly straightforward third person beat-em-up. Quite fun. The camera is good most of the time, but there are a few places where it gets notably bad. If you want to sit down and just beat the crap out of things for a while, and I really mean beat the crap out of things, give it a shot.

Kingdom of Loathing
This game is a hoot. Probably best desribed as a web-based MUD, here are a few notable features:

• The currency is "meat."


• You can only do a limited number of "adventure" type things per day (killing monsters, exploring dungeons), but you can get more by eating food and drinking booze.


• Features classes like "Seal Clubber," "Accordian Thief," "Pastamancer" and "Sauceror."


• Has an incredible art staff, resulting in lots of stick figures and the occasional animated gif.

If you find yourself with a few free minutes here and there in front of a web browser, check it out. It's guaranteed not to suck up your life, since you can burn up your daily allowance in about thirty minutes or so. Imagine if someone took Progress Quest and made it actually interactive.

Into the Groove
If anyone is still playing any form of DDR, you owe it to yourself to check this out. It's a third-party DDR game for the PS2, and unlike Konami they show some genuine innovation with this release. The most immediately obvious are "mines" (steps you must avoid) and "hands" (a third direction you have to hit while already holding two others). To my surprise, they actually used mines and hands pretty well. The best thing though is the choreography. They do a lot of genuinely new and intersting footwork, and the best of it is what I'd call "accessibly difficult." No, that's not excessively difficult, it's accessibly difficult. Complicated step patterns that you don't know how to read at the start of the song, but if you're playing right around the limit of your ability, you will know it by the end. Great stuff. The best example is a ten-foot song (my current project, still a bit out of my league) that makes strange use of holds. I was losing terribly on my first try, and then I screamed, "you devious BASTARD!" when I realized what was going on. The holds are the only thing that make the song doable--they're cues for you to keep a certain footedness, because if you go into certain sections backwards, they're pretty much impossible. Anyway, much fun.