Chop their heads off with Munchkin Axe Cop

Don’t worry, I just double-checked, too: it’s March 11, not April 1.

Anyways, big announcement time from Steve Jackson Games as they have just thrown into the limelight their very first licensed Munchkin game. It’s Munchkin Axe Cop, based on that hilarious webcomic series that exploded on the Internet last year. Written by Malachai Nicolle (age 5) and drawn by his older brother Ethan Nicolle (age 29), Axe Cop has all the workings for a Munchkin game: it’s random, it’s erratic, it’s funny, it’s beyond belief, and it’s all about fighting enemies with whatever one can. I’m still a littled bewildered over this, but also curious to see it pan out. Munchkin Axe Cop will be a third quarter release.

This gives me hope that maybe one day, my very own webcomic (Supertown–please go read it!) could be turned into a Munchkin core set. I just need to fill it in more with crazy adorable characters…

For some strange reason, Netflix is coming to the Nintendo 3DS

Let’s clear this up at the beginning: I’m a huge fan of Netflix, and I’ve only had the service for about two months now. It’s wonderful and stocked with stuff to watch, and Tara and I use it more for TV shows than actual movies, but it works when we need it, perfect for background noise, and I’ve yet to have any kind of problems streaming media. For the first month free and then $8.00 every month thereafter, it’s a strong package, hard not to want.

That said, the fact that, according to this report from Kotaku, Netflix is going to be available on the Nintendo 3DS makes me laugh. And not like “ha ha I’m so happy I’m giggling” but rather “ha ha did you see that idiot stick his tongue to the frozen pole hee.” Sure, portable Netflix sounds dreamy, but considering the weak battery life of the Nintendo 3DS, as well as the teeny tiny screens and limited audio (unless using headphones), I can’t see much use for it. Oh sure, it’s biggest billing for the 3DS will be streaming 3D programming, but considering one has to hold the device in such a precise manner to get the full 3D effect, would someone really want to hold it like so for 30 minutes? An hour? A twelve-hour Lord of the Rings marathon? Methinksnot.

Sorry, Netflix. You can just stay on my Xbox 360 for now.

Nintendo 3DS launch lineup launches itself into facepalmery

Launch lineups are pretty important. They are the weapons console systems wield to club consumers into submission. They are limelight dancers. They are reasons for being. And alas, for the Nintendo 3DS, the launch day titles are weak beyond belief, and all that hype over the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, Starfox 64 3D, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Metal Gear Solid something or other, and a new Animal Crossing game were just that, hype. Sure, they’ll be released eventually, but so will every other great game being created. What matters currently is what is available at the time of purchase, and brace yourself, dear Grinding Down readers, it’s not looking good.

First, let me say that I’m 90% sure I’m going to pick up a Nintendo 3DS. I have a Christmas bonus burning a hole in my sock drawer, and I think that the updated hardware is gonna be great. There’s built-in minigames, a camera, a music thingy, a Street Pass function, Mii maker, and plenty more. I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a DSi for some time, but this is a much better jump. As a glasses-wearer, I’m also downright curious to see this 3D in action and love the fact that it can be turned off completely. Most likely…it will. As for the games I want to play on it come Day One, well…

Here’s the three from Nintendo itself, and yes, you’ll notice none of the titles contain the name Mario:

• Pilotwings Resort – Set on the same tropical Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort, players go on an aerial adventure by using airplanes, hang gliders, and rocket belts.
• Steel Diver – This is…a submarine game. Players will control the sub’s speed, depth, and pitch, as well as fire torpedoes at enemies.
• Nintendogs + Cats – Pet sim. Now with bonus kitty action!

The rest of the launch titles for the Nintendo 3DS are third-party titles. See ’em here:

• Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition from Capcom
• The Sims 3 from EA
• Madden NFL Football from EA Sports
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D from Konami Digital
• LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars from LucasArts
• Ridge Racer 3D from Namco Bandai Games
• Super Monkey Ball 3D from SEGA
• Bust-A-Move Universe from Square-Enix
• Samurai Warriors: Chronicles from Tecmo Koei America
• Asphalt 3D from Ubisoft
• Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D from Ubisoft
• Rayman 3D from Ubisoft
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars from Ubisoft

A lot of remakes and ported games. A lot of titles with 3D tacked on the end. Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D sounds like perfect shovelware, and I can already see a hundred copies floating in those Best Buy “hey, whatever, man” bins they got from time to time. Yeah, it’s all a bit underwhelming. Go ahead and sit there for a bit, I won’t mind. I wonder who at Nintendo dropped the (Super Monkey) ball (3D) on this one? Tsk tsk. I mean, all we, as gamers interested in gaming, needed was one strong title, whether it be a new Mario sidescroller or maybe a different take on Metroid or Kirby or, y’know, one of those mascots Nintendo has in its vaults. But no, we’re reduced to slim picking.

So, which game am I gonna get to make my Nintendo 3DS even more enjoyable?

YOU WANT BREAD? NO GAME FOR YOU! NEXT!

I’ll just wait it out until the newest Animal Crossing drops.

Nintendo 3DS is now priced, dated, and overconfident

Long have we all wanted to know, and now that the day has come, I wish I could un-know all the details about the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS. See, before I learned that Nintendo’s newest piece of future tech was releasing on March 27, 2011 for a disgustingly gross $249.99, I was curious about the system. Genuinely interested in seeing how the glasses-free 3D worked, and whether any of the games were worth pursuing, in 3D, in 2D, in 1D. And now…not so much.

Alas, it comes down to price. No surprise there, as I’m always conscious about spending money and getting what money is worth. Two hundred and fifty bucks is about seventy-five to fifty bucks too much. I was very shocked to see a portable handheld gaming device priced higher than home-based consoles. The new wireless Xbox 360 is, I think, only $199.99 right now. I guess the 3D gimmick was enough to rack on some more dollar signs than needed. Also, analysts are suggesting that 3DS games could retail for $40 to $50. That’s sickening. Heart-breaking. I already feel grumbly enough buying a new Nintendo DS game for $35, believing that to actually be too much.

For the curious, here’s a list of confirmed launch titles:

• Pilotwings Resort
• Nintendogs + Cats
• Steel Driver
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked
• Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition
• Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
• Madden NFL Football
• The Sims 3
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
• Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars
• Ridge Racer 3D
• Dual Pen Sports
• Super Monkey Ball 3D
• Thor: God of Thunder
• Crush 3D
• Bust-a-Move Universe
• Samurai Warriors: Chronicles
• Dead or Alive Dimensions
• Asphalt 3D
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars
• Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3D
• Rayman 3D
• Rabbids Travel in Time

Yowza. A lot of pre-existing games with the 3D tacked on the end. Where’s Kid Icarus or that Zelda remake? Nothing there really shouts “launch title” or “killer first-party game,” demanding that this hardware being a must purchase. Least not for me. Maybe the world is full of closet Nintendogs & Cats fanatics, and all of them will buy out every Nintendo 3DS in every store in every state, starting riots and chaos and the end of the world sooner than predicted. We’ll find out in only a matter of weeks, and I’ll be watching very cautiously. I do hope to eat my own words.

No service for you!

EA is shutting down online servers for its older and less popular games, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II, Sims Carnival, and a great number of sports titles for various systems. The full list and killswitch dates can be found over at Giant Bomb.

I don’t own or play any of these games; this all-consuming shutdown does not affect me.

And yet it does.

I’ve always been a single-player game kind of fella. Online gaming is something that I never thought I’d get into, and so I didn’t. A few times during college, after working out a lot of firewall kinks, I would play some Command & Conquer: Red Alert late at night with my best friend a few states away, but other than that…didn’t ever see the point. I also never had a gaming PC so-to-say or any consoles that thrived on online gaming, such as an Xbox at that time. Just a PlayStation 2, and I think you needed a special degree to get that hooked up to the Interwebz. There were, of course, a few games I would’ve loved to try playing online, namely Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Diablo II, but the stars were not meant to align.

So, how does server shutdowns for games I don’t even play affect me? It only makes me more bitter and cautious towards online gaming. I want games to last forever, and nowadays there’s a heavy focus on social gaming (hello, Facebook!)–and without actual people, there’s nothing to play. That kind of perspective is dangerous and insulting, especially for hardened RPG fanatics that have spent countless hours alone grinding characters to perfection. In fact, some games’ multiplayer trumps single-player campaigns in terms of length and content and love. Boo to that. I’ve dabbled in GTA IV‘s online activity and found it bland and annoying; so far, the only current online experience I’ve had that was pretty successful was in Borderlands. I purposely steer clear of online, multiplayer-heavy games, and with the constant threat of server shutdown, it seems, to me, a pointless thing to invest in.

Goodbye, EA Sports FIFA Manager 10. I hardly knew ya.

Lara Croft is the new Lara Croft

It seems that nowadays one can’t sneeze without getting a little snot on a videogame series reboot. And strangely, Tomb Raider has had…um, multiple reboots, all within a relatively close timeframe. Tomb Raider: Underworld, available on most current gen consoles, gave the game a new polish and set of tools. And then there’s the recent release of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which was a download-only game that focused on co-op play and did not look like a traditional 3rd person action adventure. Each one tried to better the previous version, and yet none seemed to really capture that awe and wonder of exploration and isolation that the original PlayStation title did so effortlessly.

And so the world is trying again with…Tomb Raider!

Yup, that’s the name of the new, forthcoming game from Crystal Dynamics. Don’t get it confused with Tomb Raider. That‘s the original one. So, there’s Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider. Easy enough to set apart, right? Good, good. Oh, and Lara gets a makeover, or rather a dirtyover:

More details about this new rebirth will be revealed in the next issue of Game Informer. I’m interested to see what changes are made to rewrite Lara’s origins, and whether it’ll be faithful to the original aim of the series and not an Uncharted clone, which, funnily enough, is in itself a Tomb Raider wannabe. Time will tell. Bonus points: bow and arrows are badass.

Dead Money, the first DLC announced for Fallout: New Vegas

Bethesda Softworks just announced the first piece of downloadable content for their bug-happy Fallout: New Vegas. It’s called Dead Money, is exclusive to Xbox 360 as of the moment, and sounds a little something like so:

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Definitely comes off as a bit ho-hum, especially considering just how different each piece of DLC in Fallout 3 strived to be. I mean, one took you to Alaska, the other to a slave factory in Pennsylvania, another to backwater hickville, and a fourth to freakin’ outer space. Granted, Dead Money does seem to promise new terrain and foes, but I have a stinky feeling that it will kind of be more of the same Nevada landscape and enemy types with new skins. Actually, maybe more like just an elaborated sidequest or something, rather than DLC priced at 800 Microsoft Points. We’ll have to wait and see. Hits Xbox 360 on December 21, 2010.

The full press release with corporate talky talk is available here.

Sly 4 sneaks in a teaser trailer

One of Grinding Down‘s most active posts is Sly Cooper 4…, wherein I ponder the existence of this game and talk a teeny bit about how much I need it sooner than later. Guess I’m not the only one in love with this series and wondering when it’s going to pop back into our collective gaming hearts.

Well, good news, dear readers! Turns out that the recently released Sly Collection for the PlayStation 3 also had a teaser trailer for Sly 4 included deep within the game, available only to those that unlocked all the Trophies. Well, the video has, naturally, hit the Internet, and here it is:

Not much to dissect, but the visuals look both impressive and about the same, which is a good thing; the cel-shaded look of the characters and world was what initially drew me in, and the great stealth and open-world gameplay kept me around for the longhaul. I’m also going to guess that Sly 4: Question Mark of Doom will still be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, which is bad news for me. Looks like I’ll have to start saving up for that system now too.

One sick blogger

Someone’s sick, meaning someone can’t think straight, meaning someone can’t figure out a post for Grinding Down today, meaning someone is failing at this thing called life videogame blogging nonsense.

I’ll let you play detective and figure out who this someone actually is…

Back online, back in the know-how

I had to unplug my Xbox 360 from the Internet many weeks ago. It was sad, as if I was cutting off the very vein that pumped blood into my videogame baby’s heart. How would I know what games my friends were playing? How would my Achievements get tracked? How would I know what new demos and patches were available to make my gaming time that much better?

The short answer: I wouldn’t know anything.

That’s changed though as Tara and I recently got Internet set up in the Leaky Cauldron. However, we didn’t pick up a wireless Internet router yet–though we most certainly will soon–thus forcing me to constantly switch wires in and out from laptops and such to give the ol’ Xbox 360 online access. And so yesterday I took the time and patience to get online, and I’m glad I did because there’s been a small backlog of things I wanted to get done. You want a list? You like lists? Well then…here, have a teeny list.

New dashboard, ew dashboard: Before I could do anything, I was prompted with a notification that a new system update was available. I downloaded it and was treated to a very Wii-like tutorial on how to go through menus and push buttons; I quickly quit out as I’m not that big of an idiot. The style of the dashboard is very much in line with that of the new Xbox.com, meaning I don’t really love it. A lot of…white space. Oh well. Flipping between menus seems quicker though.

Fallout: New Vegas patch 1 of 4,506: Popped in the game’s disc and was quickly alerted that an update was available. Downloaded it rather quickly, and I’m not sure what exactly it fixed (or unfixed), but the game’s been playing about the same for me since I got it. Though last night my gun went invisible again on me. Grr.

Bonus content code confusion: So, I bought Fallout: New Vegas brand new a week or so after it was released at GameStop. I did not pre-order it. However, when I opened up the case, there was a postcard in there with a download code for the Classic Pack, which includes the following:

• Armored Vault 13 Suit – Extensively patched up and dotted with piecemeal armor, this outfit is an homage to the classic ending of the original Fallout.
• Vault 13 Canteen – This handy device is useful for staving off dehydration and providing a small amount of healing in the Mojave Wasteland.
• Weathered 10mm Pistol – A well-worn 10mm pistol that packs an extra punch despite its modest size.
• 5 Stimpaks – Food and water are good for long-term healing, but when the fighting is fierce, Stimpaks help keep Wastelanders upright.

So, yeah. Uh, I got a pre-order bonus buying the game brand new a week later. Good job, GameStop? Either way, the code worked fine, and the canteen is cool even though I’m not playing Hardcore mode just yet.

Expanding Borderlands’ lands: Had to also get the latest patch for Borderlands which gives players a brand new–and free–level cap, as well as rebalancing some of the enemies and fixing glitches with the last piece of DLC. Since I have the Secret Armory DLC, my new level cap is a crazy sexy 69. Sad, I’m still a mid-50ish Soldier, but I’m working on it. Nice to just have it though in case I can get back online and play some rounds with the First Hourers. What’s interesting is that I figured I should play a bit too and not just get the free patch, but I died horribly right away to some brutes because I was trying to play Borderlands using the control scheme from Fallout: New Vegas. Oi!

And that’s kinda it. Oh, and my Achievements finally updated so that I could correct my counts here on Grinding Down. Yes, very important. I know, I know. Pulled the Internet plug on the Xbox 360 again last night, but it felt good to be back, if only for a little bit. Got a lot done, too. This has not been a very exciting post, but I’m not gonna apologize for it; you either love my craziness or you go eat something harmful.