Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid

Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling.

Source // Apple

The iPhone, iPod Touch, and later iPad did absolute wonders not just for mobile gaming, but for new ways of playing games using accelerometers and touchpads. While you could thoroughly enjoy playing LocoRoco on the PlayStation Portable, nudging shoulder buttons to rotate the planet you're playing on just isn't the same as rotating an entire device to solve a puzzle involving similarly circular childlike blobs in Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid.

The Kingdom of Rolando has been infected by the Kilgorean Flu, and only the Golden Orchid can save the day. Enter Sir Richard and his skilled underlings, and you, some sort of overlord that manipulates the world around them so that they can platform their way to success.

Have you got what it takes to help Rolando out?

Rhythm Heaven

How many times will I mistype Rhythym?

I'm not terribly in sync if this 1001 list is any indication. There have been many different must-play rhythm games for me to practice with, some I like, some I hate, and pretty much none that I'm skilled enough to get anywhere with.

And so Rhythm Heaven sounds like it's going to be a challenge, but as its 1001 write up mentions, it's done by the same folks as the later WarioWare titles, and the accompanying screenshot looks like it's welcoming enough for fools like me, so I am feeling quite positive about it.

How long will that positivity last? At least it looks more interesting than Guitar Hero.

EyePet

What is that thing?

Source // PlayStation

I definitely remember thinking "wouldn't it be cool if every other footballer in this game was actually controlled by a human somewhere else in the world" when I was younger, and clearly before I knew what the Internet was. We're not there yet with 22-player online football, so far as I know, but the point is that in the future, technology could lead us anywhere.

But never did I think that "one day I'm going own some kind of augmented reality digital pet". Technology can't do pets, can it? Tamagotchi's aren't pets. Furby's aren't pets. They're both a pain in the arse, whereas a pet is a companion.

Other folks - smarter folks than me - thought otherwise, and with camera tracking and motion controls, something like EyePet could finally be unleashed upon living room floors the world over.

Should it have been is a question we're about to find out.

The Path

What big teeth you have?

Fairytales can make for dark narratives when told with a twist, and video games can make stories of all kinds more interactive and approachable to many people. They don't even have to be gamey in the traditional sense of having challenges to overcome and enemies to defeat. They can be works of art in their own right. Or walking simulators, if you prefer.

The Path, on the surface, is simple. Walk a girl through the woods to grandma's house. But it's more than that, right?

Punch-Out!!

Working up a sweat here.

Source // Nintendo

A long time ago, I praised Super Punch-Out!! for being one of the best-looking boxing games I was aware of. Admittedly, the number of boxing games I was aware of was quite low, and there is something about pixel art that shines above even the most glistening of HD sweat effects, but the statement still held: it was a looker, even if I wasn't any good at it.

In the many years since Super Punch-Out!!, boxing games grew to become slobber knocker simulators for the die-hard fans of the sport, but a controller can only go so far. A motion controller and balance board can go much further, and a console that can't put out all those droplets of blood, sweat, and tears needs to shine differently. It needs Punch-Out!!.

Whether you see it as a remake or a series reboot, what matters is that Punch-Out!! has returned to the ring. Can it make the knock-out blow so that it can be crowned the champion?

[PROTOTYPE]

"My name was Alex Mercer, and my work is almost done."

Source // Steam

It's easy to compare games to each other, especially when they share the same kind of DNA. Open-world American city besieged by viruses and plagues and a huge military presence, watched over by a single white man with no memory of how he got all these powers or why he was chosen to have them in the first place - because surely they are behind this, right? Whoever they are...

Are we talking about inFAMOUS or are we talking about [PROTOTYPE], another comic-book-like story of a guy with a lot of questions capable of causing an insane amount of damage to everything that stands in his way of the answers?

The two games were compared to each other a decade ago and it's easy to see why. While it took me a couple of years to get around to playing inFAMOUS, it has taken me more than a decade to get around to [PROTOTYPE] - should I have tried to save Manhattan sooner? Or are we just in this to save ourselves?

Plants vs. Zombies

Lawn of the Dead

Would it surprise anyone by now that I haven't played Plants vs. Zombies, at all, ever, in any form, on any device, since the 12 years that it has been out? I've not exactly got my finger on the pulse of what's hot or not, even when living right in the middle of it.

I guess I always cast it aside as little more than a mobile game, tower defense with silly characters. A game I just didn't want to play, no matter how easy it would be to do so. But here we are, finally seeing whether I was wrong or not. Again.

The living dead are approaching, and our last lines of defence are a bunch of plants. We're doomed.

Swords & Soldiers

"Oh no, our Meat!"

Can you make an RTS for consoles? Yes, of course you can. It'll just be a little lite to account for having to support inputs from a controller.

Can you make an RTS for the Nintendo Wii? Well, now you're just being silly. That'll be a right pain in the arse to get up and runni-oh, Swords & Soldiers, no, I've not heard of that one at all. Real-Time Strategy, you say? Doesn't look it, but let's see...

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010

Biscuits and Gravy

Source // Giant Bomb

Now we're talking. The UFC might be entertaining to you, but the weird world of professional wrestling is entertaining to me. Or was. Still sort of is, but not so much the WWE.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that ever since WWF SmackDown! on the PlayStation (yeah, that's right, too late for the N64 greats), I have had, on and off, a damn good time with WWE video games. Professional Wrestling doesn't make sense, and so neither do the video games based on it. Whether you're making your own superstar, picking the coolest of finishing moves, or smashing your opponent through all the announcer tables in every single match, these games are about having fun.

I've not played them all of course - as my interest in the 'sport' comes and goes, so does my interest in the video games - and one of the (lengthy) lulls in my attention meant missing out on WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010.

What was happening in the WWE at this time? Who were the main eventers? This is as much a trip through video game history as it is wrestling history, and after my poor performance in UFC 2009, I'm ready to dive right in.

UFC 2009 Undisputed

0-2-0h no, please, no more.

Source // PlayStation

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is, I hear, pretty big. It's quite popular. If boxing isn't exciting enough for you, you might want to check out the UFC where the ring is now a cage and one of the boxers isn't even a boxer, but a martial artist, or a wrestler, or whatever.

Boxing isn't exciting to me, and neither is the UFC. I can name four people to have stepped inside the octagon for a fight. Three of them I know from the world of professional wrestling, and the other is Conor McGregor.

But there's potentially good news here, as UFC 2009 Undisputed comes to us from Yuke's and THQ, who are pretty much synonymous with the WWE games for the better part of a few decades. This will be a different experience for sure, but they must have learned something down the years.

The question is, will I learn anything?