KDR_11k

Well, I just golded the whole beach and got nothing for it. The only things I've unlocked through mission mode were the endboss looks (which can only replace your whole character, not be mixed into your design).

All of the online modes can be played both free-for-all and in teams, and have various customizable settings, which is nice.

What options are there for the multiplayer modes? The only options I've seen were bot count and difficulty, neither of which applies to online.

Well, here in Germany the recommended games list is pretty much the list of new releases.

They said in an interview that Nintendo didn't allow them to use Miis. Maybe Nintendo doesn't like the idea of a game about shooting people you know, even if it's just with toy guns.

Megaace: Yes. The zoom button won't be easy to hit then but zoom is absolutely worthless anyway because it forces you to aim with the analog stick instead of the pointer.

I doubt they're going to release more than 4 games a week since the recommended games list on the front page can only hold 4 games.

I think I've got some fairly high lag but it behaves strangely. Shooting works fine, hits seem to count but "killing" someone won't register until a second later, also there's some delay on weapon pickups and sometimes item uses.

gladiator: It does vary the maps randomly. Not a lot but in many cases it means you won't immediately know where which item is located.

100th WiiWare has been announced to be Bit Trip Core, didn't you pay attention?

The bots are dumb as bricks in all difficulties, I think they only fire their weapon more often at higher ones (they shoot at reduced rates normally).

You didn't mention how (non-team) battle royale tends to devolve into raincoat spam and assault is plain broken by the availability of invincibility items that last exactly long enough to perform a full capture. It doesn't matter that much if you avoid those two modes but still sucks.

Should've let Corbie review this if you're going to 7/10 it anyway

Dark Lord is a simpler game than King AFAIK, that's why they're charging less.

I bet this is going to turn into Naruto shadow replication vs Rei cloning facility soon.

Water Warfare is nice. It's a bit low on damage, even the sniper rifle takes several hits to down one target which I suspect may be pretty bad for assault and CTF. I've only played one set of online matches which were against Japanese players so it was pretty laggy, it's regular online lag though, not Nintendo-style (i.e. actions and responses are delayed but no reduced framerate).

I have no idea what the POW hammer is meant for though, makes you invulnerable and gives you a melee weapon that stuns but since you can't use another weapon while it's in use that strikes me as pointless outside of team matches where your teammates could finish the stunned enemy off.

PALgamer: The schedule was april-june so this was the last update in it. It's just one big lie.

Hm, seems that splitscreen can't be combined with online in WW... The manual also says there are some restrictions in splitscreen regarding maps and bots. Still better than no splitscreen at all.

The missions seem to be more than just specific setups for bot matches, I've only played through the training but the first regular mission is apparently a timed target shooting range.

I wouldn't be surprised if half the players online tried to make their characters look like characters from popular animes...

Meh, there are plenty of games that have only English text, since that translation already exists it'd only be a matter of shipping copies and figuring out how many copies you need to ship where.

You get Core, we get Water Warfare, everybody's happy?

Germany:
(1) 1 My Aquarium
(-) 2 Icarian: Kindred Spirits
(3) 3 Texas Hold'em Tournament
(4) 4 World of Goo
(2) 5 FF4 The After Years
(7) 6 Fun Fun Minigolf
(9) 7 Onslaught
(6) 8 TV Show King
(8) 9 My Pokemon Ranch
(5) 10 Swords & Soldiers
(16) 11 Cocoto Platform Jumper
(11) 12 Bomberman Blast
(10) 13 Tetris Party
(12) 14 Brain Challenge
(13) 15 Pop-Up Pirate
(17) 16 Snowboard Riot
(19) 17 SAMEGAME
(14) 18 Bubble Bobble Plus
(15) 19 Equilibrio
(-) 20 Let's Catch

This week's goners are FFCCMLAAK and Fish 'em All. I suspect Icarian will do a spike and drop.

Dunno, the Icarian name did seem weird to me considering Icarus is the boy in distress, not the main character. NyxQuest sounds more generic but at least it doesn't sound like an attempt to cash in on the constant "Kid Icarus!!!" rumormongering.

Should probably say "earlier this year", not "earlier this month".

In Rosy Rupeeland Tingle was just a regular 35 year old virgin, he got the suit from Grandpa Rupee when he started on his quest for big money and profit.

What I hope is that the sequel will use full touchscreen controls because the dpad plus touchscreen scheme was tiring on the arms. Also for newcomers a tutorial on haggling could help, one that sets out to give you a feel for the values involved. I developed one after a few areas but before that I tended to miss out on money.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Heh, we don't get The Conduit this week but we get Water Warfare... I wonder how WW will fare though, on one hand the theme's an advantage for younger players and the family demographic, on the other hand the traditional FPS audience might not like it (then again you've probably already decided not to worry too much about that when you decided to buy a Wii...). Also it's going up against fairly strong competition with Icarian just having stormed the charts.

I recall hearing summery games sell better in the winter though...

I remember SimEarth from the PC. It's a fun toy but I'm not sure how much you can really do with it game-wise.

Machu: AFAIK yes. They initially planned for an ARPG but realized that people buy Dragon Quest precisely because it is still an old-style jRPG.

I don't think people will miss the challenge of broken controls...

It has some similarities to LostWinds with the pointer mechanic but it plays pretty differently.

And still, all 9/10 and better WiiWare games are released in Europe...

"Frontier Boss"? I think most people would recognize the name David Braben, moreso than Frontier Development.

BTW guys, Red Steel 2 is NOT a core game. It's a game for us, yes, but that doesn't make it core.

That's Japan anyway, not the US.

Hm, hard to say... I don't think I'd even need a revival of some old Nintendo franchise, much less using a third party. I'd like if Capcom made a sequel to Gotcha Force but that doesn't involve Nintendo much. Sandlot is already working for Nintendo... Chou Soujuu Mecha MG seems to belong to Nintendo but I wouldn't want to see that passed to another developer, all it might need is a western release.

I'd like to see another '94 style Donkey Kong game but I don't know any third party I'd trust with that.

Nintendo vs Capcom?

Wait, didn't you preview Overturn?

That's a lot of DSiWare...

Oh and I still demand impressions of Water Warfare from our Japanese Wii owners.

Might be cool, might be not, we'll see.

Well, Icarian's good. It's mostly about physics puzzles so far, enemies are pretty much moving obstacles most of the time though you can sometimes kill them with the environment.

Yeah, as long as the USK remains calling PEGI the standard across Europe is wrong.

Oh! LKS! I completely forgot about that and picked up NPC Pikmin 2 instead (never played Pikmin 2 before).

Wow, that was horrible. Pure, undilated incompetence.

Germany again:
(1) 1 My Aquarium
(4) 2 FF4 The After Years
(3) 3 Texas Hold'em Tournament
(5) 4 World of Goo
(2) 5 Swords & Soldiers
(6) 6 TV Show King
(7) 7 Fun Fun Minigolf
(8) 8 My Pokemon Ranch
(10) 9 Onslaught
(9) 10 Tetris Party
(11) 11 Bomberman Blast
(12) 12 Brain Challenge
(17) 13 Pop-Up Pirate
(16) 14 Bubble Bobble Plus
(13) 15 Equilibrio
(-) 16 Cocoto Platform Jumper
(15) 17 Snowboard Riot
(18) 18 FFCCMLaaK
(-) 19 SAMEGAME
(14) 20 Fish 'em All

Cue Sports and Bit Trip Beat say bye bye while this week's only new game Cocoto makes an entry at 16 while SAMEGAME returns to #19. Fish 'em all is about to disappear.

longtimegamer: From the videos I've seen it looked like it's more about environmental hazards than regular enemies.

Well, good news at least. Let's hope this one's not a lie like the release list... If I wanted to get my hopes up to ridiculous levels I'd say something about hoping for three WW games like the US got but that's so unlikely it'd automatically come true on the Discworld. Water Warfare is probably very unlikely as well.

Calculon: It was present at E3 IIRC.

The screenshots look like the DS game with new graphics. The game is interesting but very hard. You basically play on both screens at once (the intro level only has one screen) and collide with stuff from both screens. You can split the two screens though I haven't really figured out how that works (I'm not very far into the DS game). Movement is a bit like Megaman, you walk, jump and shoot/chargeshoot.

THREE games and we only get one?

Finally a videogame Homsar can play.

Fantasia: I guess, I never really looked at the Dark Assembly options since I figured that'd only be useful much later. Then again most of my higher level characters are very low quality because I figured those 3-4 stat points less wouldn't have any noticeable impact, didn't know that gets amplified on levelups. I certainly will not bother with grinding up new characters just for that. Then again I'm already so tired of the game I'd probably only bother with reading a script of the storyline.

As long as it's not a boring slog like Odin Sphere...

To be fair the only SRPG I liked was Dawn of War 2.

Dunno, I played Disgaea on the PS2 and found it pretty boring because of the need to grind a lot and the biggest features of the game being basically the ability to grind even more than in other games.

Well, if they're given the money... That's a LOT of money though and I doubt a publisher would really demand it because it would require redoing almost the entire game.

2D GTA was pretty fail but anyway, DSiWare probably doesn't have to do numbers like a retail game anyway.

Meh, I'd rather have more WiiWare than an obsolete fighting game like that...

Sony and MS have the advantage because their stuff is just speculation at this point and imagination will always produce greater results than reality.

100 levels sound like there's some meat to the game other than the level editor so I'd be willing to buy it. If it had been just a tutorial and then "go make your own game" I would have ignored it.

People are surprised by the Texas Hold'Em jump? Haven't you guys paid attention to the European charts?

Anyway, on to the German charts...
(2) 1 My Aquarium
(1) 2 Swords & Soldiers
(3) 3 Texas Hold'em Tournament
(-) 4 FF4: The After Years
(4) 5 World of Goo
(6) 6 TV Show King
(5) 7 Fun Fun Minigolf
(8) 8 My Pokemon Ranch
(10) 9 Tetris Party
(7) 10 Onslaught
(11) 11 Bomberman Blast
(9) 12 Brain Challenge
(13) 13 Equilibrio
(-) 14 Fish 'em All!
(14) 15 Snowboard Riot
(17) 16 Bubble Bobble Plus
(15) 17 Pop-Up Pirate
(19) 18 FFCCMLaaK
(18) 19 Bit Trip Beat
(20) 20 Cue Sports

My Aquarium reclaimed the top spot. FF4 goes straight to #4 and Fish 'em All finally appeared at #14. Crystal Defenders R2 and Defend Your Castle got wiped off the charts though.

With Onslaught dropping spots like that maybe it's finally time to release Water Warfare (I wonder if it's dropping because of waning interest or because of The Conduit).