When I saw the teaser trailer for the Oneechanbara movie, I immediately knew it had potential, since putting boobs, violence, and zombies together in one epic movie seemed like the best idea since putting boobs, violence, and machines together. While the premise is almost flawless, my excitement was only based on a brief, unrevealing teaser and speculation. Now a longer trailer (embedded above) has been released, and it’s definitely looking awesome. It has all the scantily clad cowgirls and over the top, campy, bloody, violence I was hoping for and the combination of boobs, violence, and zombies should make for some good old fashioned mindless entertainment.

Cruis’n USA (Nintendo 64, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points) is literally the greatest racing game ever made. I have absolutely no idea how this game became one of my favorite racers of all time since it really isn’t that great, but it is. Maybe it’s because I only owned an N64 so the variety wasn’t that great to begin with, and I played this game non-stop over and over. Now that it is out on the VC will I be downloading it? No. I think the fond memories I have of the game need to stay that way as I’m 100 percent positive that playing it now would only ruin them. Alas, time is a harsh mistress and I do not think that Cruis’n USA has aged well at all. Oh, for the days when race tracks weren’t made of real city streets and national monuments and landmarks were all closely grouped together on fictional race courses.

*wipes a single tear from eye while looking wistfully out the window*

Sigh. Well the other game is Wonder Boy (Sega Master System, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone—Comic Mischief, 500 Wii Points) which is just Adventure Island on the Master System. Legal stuff happened. Same game made twice. What’s the point. I’m too depressed to go on.

Download these games at 9 a.m. Pacific time. More after the jump if you can bring yourself to read.

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This past week saw the release of what I expected to be the most awesome Rock Band tracks of all time. Did they live up to expectation? Hit the jump.
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Rockstar has just released the final trailer for the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, titled “Everyone’s a Rat.” It shows a lot more varied locales and vehicles than previous trailers, and I’d wager that all of the graphics are in-engine. This is going to be one good looking game. The game hits stores on April 29 for the 360 and PS3.

[UPDATE: 1UP has already posted their frame-by-frame analysis. Hit the jump for the video]
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Word of a very pretty tech demo on the PS3 hit the internet a few days ago and a bit of buzz started swarming around it. Of course, pretty and PS3 go hand in hand as we’ve seen with plenty of games coming out for it. Good, complete, non-glitchy and best version are all totally debatable descriptions of games on the system, but pretty is something that the PS3 has down pat. Still, this tech demo was rumored to be truly impressive as all the graphics were gorgeous and totally in game. Today we get some video of it, which you can see above, courtesy of Youtube and Gametrailers, and a name to go along with it: Linger in Shadows.

As a tech demo the thing is pretty impressive. Graphically it looks strikingly good and the physics are spot on. The dog looks a bit funny but it still seems really interesting. But rumor now has it that this is more then just a tech demo and is actually a game itself. If that is the case…What!? I don’t even know what could possibly be going on here to make a game. My best guess is you’d play as one of the characters shown in the beginning of the video and that the dog and the cat were just there to show off how well the system can handle hair (a true sign of any great game). Otherwise would you be battling shadows the entire time, or just robots who can’t seem to stop bumping into things? I guess it doesn’t really matter, tech demos are set up to show stuff off not make sense and the reliability of the source for this being an actual game is a bit in question. Nothing wrong with watching a very interesting tech demo though and hoping it turns out to be a truly interesting game.

When lawl first clued me into the fact that a new Battlefield beta would be arriving on the 360, I was immediately skeptical. I had never before played a Battlefield game, and from what I had heard, there was nothing special about the series. Regardless, I applied for a beta and was accepted. How does the Battlefield: Bad Company compare to other war shooter games out there? Hit the jump to find out!

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Following the recently unsuccessful bid by EA to buy all outstanding shares of Take-Two’s stock at $26 a share, the company has received offers from a few third-party companies that are now interested. However, you can rest assured that there won’t be any buying or selling of Take-Two stock until after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV at the end of April.

According the chairman of Take-Two Strauss Zelnick, “Our Board, after careful review, has unanimously determined that Electronic Arts’ offer continues to provide insufficient value and remains opportunistically timed to capture the value of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV launch at the expense of our stockholders.”

To put it bluntly, screw you and the horse you rode in on EA, after GTA4 comes out, you can’t afford us!

Zelnick continues his verbal pwnage, “We are effectively working toward a process to review all available options to maximize this value, either as an independent company or in combination with a third party, and are open to beginning informal discussions starting now. Our stockholders’ interests would hardly be served by accepting an offer from EA at the wrong price and the wrong time.”

So in short, it doesn’t look like EA planned on their offer to buy Take-Two backfiring as much as it did. Fortunately the shareholders of Take-Two are smart enough to realize that the release of GTA4 is going to make the stock surge as long as there isn’t any “hot coffee” included.

A while back it was announced that the Japanese hack-and-slash game OneeChanbara was being made into a movie, and now we have a brief trailer (embedded above). It may not show much, just some dark shots of the decidedly hot protagonist tilting her hat, doing expressive dance in a field, and staring at the camera, but it’s only a teaser after all.

While video game movies are notorious for just sucking in general, this one has potential. First, there’s no Uwe Boll in sight; and second, the game’s plot seems simple enough that it can’t be ruined by scriptwriters who think they know better than the people who created the game. Which brings us to where the real potential lies: the game is about a Japanese cowgirl who runs around in a bikini gorily killing zombies and other creatures with her katana.
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HEY GUYS! Want something to play?

How about access to the closed multiplayer beta of Battlefield: Bad Company on the 360? In the comments, tell me why you think you deserve to win and I’ll pick whomever I feel gave the best response and get them hooked up with a key.

Entries are closed at 10 PM EST tonight and I’ll pick a winner soon after.

UPDATE: I’m extending the deadline till 12:00 AM EST and since I honestly can’t decide which one of you to give it to, I’ll be taking the responses I like most and picking randomly out of those.

UPDATE 2: The winner is…… Hellraiser! Send an email to lawl@megatonik.com or talk to me on AIM (screen name is xl4wlx) and I’ll give you the code.

Just for the record I assigned 8 of you guys a number and put it into a random number generator to decide.

[Thanks iRaf for offering up one of his extra keys]

The gist of it: Coming out on June 22, it’s the special edition, $170, comes with the drums, mic, and a wireless guitar. Unfortunately, no DLC has been announced yet, which really blows, yo. Looks like Nintendo fans are finally going to be able to get a chance to play one of the best games of 2007 though. Hopefully the GHIII guitar will be compatible, eh? Hit the jump for the full press thingie.

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Bleck, bleck and triple bleck. You would think the day after Easter would be the perfect time for Nintendo to celebrate the second coming of a great game. You know, bring back some hard to get game from death and let it rise from the ground to walk the earth once more, much like the Christ purportedly did way back when. But instead of raising Christ, who for the sake of this metaphor is representing Mother 3, the lord (Nintendo) seems to have accidentally raised the two thieves crucified along with JC: KING’S KNIGHT (NES, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 500 Wii Points) and POWERBALL (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone - Mild Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points). I think that metaphor worked out pretty well.

King’s Knight is a landmark game in that it was Square’s first release in the U.S., but the game is more of a sign of the greatness to come than greatness itself. It’s a shooter (yes, another shooter) with RPG elements and leveling up but it never really jumps out at you in any way. Powerball on the other hand jumps out by being a totally made up sport about the power of balls. Never played this one but from the youtube videos it isn’t looking like a must buy either. Pretty damn uninteresting week if you ask me.

If you like to read press releases hit the jump.

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For those of you who recall, you may remember a post back in October we did that covered Kotaku’s take on game reviews. It is a very good read and I highly recommend you run through it, beings that it’s one of the few places that have taken on the notion that gaming reviews nowadays frankly suck. But most importantly, if you look in the comments of our post, you will see that I mentioned I would touch on this subject myself once I got around to writing. And here we are.

Game reviews and ratings have always been a funny thing. At the individual level? Well if you give any one person internet access he/she will instantly spew pretentious as though they’re an editor for Pitchfork, with a handy bookmark to Dictionary.com and Microsoft Word open to check for synonyms. When the ability to publish some sort of art, whether it be writing, music, imagery, video, etc., becomes cheap and accessible enough for the masses to get a hold of, you can expect some low quality material. A case of “yeah, it’s great they can do it, but they shouldn’t.”

However, at the professional level, there isn’t any source out there that I can say I can trust with one grain of salt any more than the everyday blogger. The review and evaluation process from these sources, which are supposedly reputable, are typically inconsistent from title to title, lacking in a fair review based on full completion of the game, biased towards their advertiser’s preference, focused too much on technical individualities such as graphics/sound/online, or ‘aided’ by large yet completely meaningless scores.

Hit the jump for my take on these problems, and if I feel like posting them, solutions.

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While the game hasn’t been technically announced yet, all of these delicious, high-resolution images have been found on SEGA’s ftp site. Hit the jump for all of ‘em, plus a few other details that have surfaced.
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Update: 1Up has some doubts as to whether or not this video is real or phoney. The site says:

“But after polling a few folks in the know across the industry — none of whom, unfortunately, were keen on attribution — we’re not believing our eyes. It all comes down to the branding. In the video, a logo for Rockstar parent company Take-Two pops up before the Rockstar Games logo. But Take-Two does not publish the GTA games; Rockstar Games publishes them. Take-Two confirmed to 1UP that it is not suddenly taking publishing credit for GTA IV. A real GTA game, or any Rockstar Games intro for that matter, starts with the R* logo for the studio, followed by the classic yellow R* logo.”

Not officially fake, but it really looks like it is. If it IS totally real, I’m disappointed in the boring and non-GTA-traditional intro.

Original: Someone seems to have leaked this video onto GameVideos. It showcases the PlayStation 3’s intro to the upcoming and highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, while also showing off the fact that someone already has the game in their hands right now. April 29th couldn’t come any slower…

OH MY GOD! I KNOW IT’S NOT CORRECT INTERNET ETIQUETTE TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS, BUT I CAN’T CONTAIN MYSELF!!!!! Here are this week’s Rock Band tracks:

* “More Than a Feeling” (Master)
* “Peace of Mind” (Master)
* “Smokin’” (Master)
* “Rock & Roll Band” (Master)
* “Something About You” (Master)
* “Hitch a Ride” (Master)

That’s right. It’s a Boston mega pack of sheer and utter awesomeness compressed into digital format. I honestly think that I can die happy as soon as I play all of these songs, back to back. Just like the Gratedful Dead release from a few weeks ago, the songs will be $2 each or available in a $10 pack.

Excuse me, I think my bowels just released. This is the greatest thing to happen to games… ever. Hit the jump for exactly what I imagine Tuesday will be like.

[Via Harmonix]
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