WiiWare has officially taken XBLA’s place as the clearing house for DLC crap — not that everything to appear on Microsoft’s service is cast in gold these days, either. Honestly, who buys some of this stuff? It’s garbage, worthy only of scorn. So scorn it shall receive! The very scorn I once reserved for Sony’s policy of releasing DLC on the PlayStation Network at a drunken, lame snail’s pace. I’m sorry, Sony. I realize now that there’s something to be said for quality control.
[[image:jh_081209_dlc01.jpg::left:0]]WiiWare: Bruiser & Scratch
Steel Penny Games | Wii | Puzzle
Between the crappy-sounding title and the crappy-looking screenshots, I can’t muster any interest in this puzzle game whatsoever. Who knows — maybe it’s a diamond in the rough when it comes to gameplay, but without a dang demo, who can tell? Dear Nintendo: Get with the program.
[[image:jh_081209_dlc02.jpg::left:0]]WiiWare: Hockey All-Star Shootout
Big Blue Bubble | Wii | Get it by the goalie
Those misleading WiiWare titles strike again: Here you will find no all-out gun battles between Wayne Gretzky and, uh, whoever else is a big hockey star. Nope, just a series of shots against a variety of goalies. It’s like hockey, but without all that pesky hockey!
[[image:jh_081209_dlc03.jpg::left:0]]VC: Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Sega | Wii via Master System | 8-bit blast processing!
It’s Sonic … the second one. Which is different from the second one on Genesis, but still similar enough that you should definitely know what you’re getting. You don’t really need me to tell you anything else about it, right?
[[image:jh_081209_dlc04.jpg::left:0]]XBLA: Meteos Wars
Q Entertainment | Xbox 360 | Asteroid-Launching Puzzle Action
I’m not sure how exactly Meteos’ asteroid-launching puzzle action will play without the ability to wildly scrabble at a touch screen with my stylus, but hey. Lumines, Every Extend Extra and Rez all worked pretty dang well on the Xbox 360…even if Lumines’ pricing structure was a filthy scam.
[[image:jh_081209_dlc05.jpg::left:0]]XBLA: PowerUp Forever
Namco Bandai | Xbox 360 | Two-stick shooter
Destroy your enemies and absorb their power in this shooter, then take on even larger foes as you grow in size. It sounds sort of like flOw or the first stage of Spore, but done as a proper action game.
[[image:jh_081209_dlc06.jpg::left:0]]PSN: Soldner-X: Himmelsstürmer
eastasiasoft | PS3 | Shooter
This one looks like a typical modern scrolling shoot-em-up — lots of enemies and bullets, power-ups and explosions. Hard to tell more without playing it — gonna beat that demo drum again on this one. How about it, Sony? Otherwise, the only notable thing about it is that it was originally designed as a PC title for import retailer Play Asia, apparently. So, uh, yep.
Sonic 2 for MS/GG is actually nothing like its Genesis counterpart. Its complete crap!
For some reason I did not realize that was the SMS Sonic. I’ll fix that when I get home tonight. Sorry!
You didn’t know it was the SMS Sonic, but you wrote the entry as if you did know! Mind-bending stuff, here.
About drunken snails: my mom used to protect her plants from snails by leaving ice cream carton lids full of Budweiser for the poor things. Apparently, alcohol poisoning affects even the slowest of creatures.
No, Parish rewrote it a bit. Thanks be to him. Been kind of distracted this week.
I’m tempted to try some 8-bit Sonic, but given what I’ve heard, I may just have dig up a ROM for it. Hey, it can’t be as bad as those Game Gear games right? (Probably wrong).
Play Asia was pushing Soldner-X pretty hard, at least last year. Every time I ordered stuff from them the package came with a flyer adverting it. Sounded pretty interesting, but there are very few horizontal shooters that I’ve really enjoyed.
Nintendo regularly puts up video trailers for all WiiWare games the same day they come out, on the Nintendo Channel. Poorly selling games are usually shuffled out in a week or so. Bruiser & Scratch looks good in the sense that it has shiny “cut-scenes”, but the gameplay does look like just pushing different kinds of blocks around on grids.
Now that I say that, there was another game with a similar type of gameplay, and its name was Kickle Cubicle…
On the other hand, the video showed the hockey game to be some real Newgrounds crap.
Your bitter, grizzled approach to DLC is exactly what these publishers need to hear. Well done, sir.
Lumines hits PSN this week! Now we can all resurrect our Lumines vs Meteos arguments from two years ago.
It does indeed! I’ll have that one in next week’s piece.
If Lumines is broken up into chunks again then Meteos automatically wins.
No download-size cap on PSN means chunkifying Lumines is unnecessary.
I thought they did it for the money, last time? All the bits amounted to like a $40 game.
Well, a lot about XBL is centered around separating you from your dollars. But as I recall download-size limits at the time meant Lumines couldn’t have been released whole regardless.
I tried to be objective about this, but 15 minutes into it, and I really want to take a couple of Advil.
Soldner-X is pretty terrible, and I can say this as someone who got it from Play-Asia back in the day. Don’t get it if you want a decent shmup.
Aw man, Kickle Cubicle! I haven’t thought of that game in years, but now I want a DS sequel/remake.
Lumines hits PSN this week! Now we can all resurrect our Lumines vs Meteos arguments from two years ago.
Octo Prime and I actually had this discussion on MSN Messenger last night.
Lumines 4 Life.
“Sonic 2 for MS/GG is actually nothing like its Genesis counterpart. Its complete crap!”
So you mean it is EXACTLY like the Genesis game? ;)
@TheSL: Disney Meteos: Game of the Forever!
(okay, maybe Lumines is better… but it doesn’t have Stitch or Jack Skellington in it, now does it?!?)
@ turkish101
The SMS Sonic games ARE those lame Game Gear Sonic games. (Though I have to admit I did enjoy Triple Trouble)