As Nintendo tries to take over the casual gaming market, one of the biggest complaints has been the excess of minigame compilations and brain training programs. While non-traditional gamers can more easily enjoy these types of games, the lack of depth turns many people off. In this regard, Professor Layton and the Curious Village comes as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Layton is, in essence, a collection of puzzles and riddles, but it is wrapped in the enticing shell of a point and click adventure game. The full review after the jump.

Read more

I am a strange person. I’ve heard it all throughout my life. There was nothing more fun to me as a child than getting up on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons with a big-ass bowl of cereal and then spending the rest of the day gaming on any and all systems that I had access to. Growing up a gamer in the early eighties has enabled me to see the rise of every game console except for the original Pong. I’ve been gaming since I learned to read at the age of three, when I learned how to run my old man’s Commodore 64 all because I wanted to play Time Pilot.

Many of you have been fervently reading and commenting on my other posts that I’ve done since my inception to MEGATONik, and I can’t thank you enough for your support. In thanks to you, the community, I’ve decided to put in a ton of work and bring you a special post that near and dear to my heart, my Top 50 Console Games of All Time.

I will try my damnedest to explain the reasons why I think why a certain game is deserved of it’s spot. Certainly many of you will disagree with the order I have put the games in but I always welcome your comments and suggestions. It is thanks to all of you in the community that I have been able to hone my craft by subjecting you to my subjective opinions about video games. Without any further ado… let’s get this thing started! Hit the jump to be defeated by a wall of text designed to titillate and please you.

Read more

I guess if one game a week is the exception, then two games a week is the norm. The problem with two becoming the norm, is that Nintendo doesn’t need to make one of the games great to make up for the missing game. This is evident of this week’s releases: OPERATION WOLF (NES®, 1 player, Rated E10+ for Use of Tobacco and Violence, 500 points) and Columns III™: Revenge of Columns (Genesis, 1-5 players, Rated E for Everyone, 800 points). Both of these games decidedly avoid blowing you away with any awesomeness.

Now, I’m not one to spread rumors, and I’m not going to download the game to find out if this is true or not, but I hear that the Wii’s light gun won’t work with Operation Wolf; despite the fact that it is a light gun game. This means you’ll probably be aiming with the D-pad. If that weren’t enough to dissuade you from seriously considering NOT downloading this title take a look at the press release’s game description after the jump. The game gets harder as you go along!? Grenades!? Bosses with weak spots at the end of a level!? Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything so original…ever. Well, maybe minature car racing.

Looking to Columns III for your dose of originality probably won’t help much either, as it offers the same puzzle gameplay involving organizing colors in groups as both Columns I and Columns II did, but now with mulitplayer and a story mode. It seems revenge is a dish best served stacked in organized, colored lines. I’d watch out, you don’t cross a column and live to talk about it.

All games go live at the same Bat time and same Bat channel as last week, 9 p.m. PST. Hit the jump to read the hilariously bad press release.

Read more

If you asked me what my favorite game of 2007 was, I would have to tell you Portal. That’s saying a lot considering ‘07 saw the releases of Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and others. But Portal was the only game that made me look at gameplay in a different perspective. As with any semi-successful IP, it was only a matter of time before we would hear of a sequel.

Well, it seems as if the matter of time has passed for Portal, as Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi, speaking to Eurogamer, confirmed, “There’ll be more Portal, for sure.” This is where I would step in and ask, what exactly do they mean more Portal? Because you just can’t throw in some more rooms and call it an expansion/sequel. Portal is a self-contained experience, with a definite beginning and end. But Lombardi goes on to assure us that it won’t just be “a bunch of new puzzles.” No concrete details are in place, but one can only hope that they’ll take it carefully with Portal 2, and give us another GOTY competitor.

This new video of Trauma Center: New Blood brings me back to last year’s holiday season when I was playing the DS to Wii port, Second Opinion. Needless to say, from what I’ve seen of New Blood thus far, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a worthy sequel of the first game.

While the gameplay may look painfully familiar, that’s actually a good thing. Why fix something that is certainly not broke? I’m definitely looking forward to getting into the OR with a friend to perform surgeries that otherwise could not be done alone. New Blood is now available, so look for it at your local game retailer.

Destineer has ported its popular online game, Word Jong, to the Nintendo DS, for all casual, and few hardcore, gamers to enjoy. The game combines the likes of Scrabble and Mahjong together to make for some pretty addicting gameplay and a great timewaster. The DS game includes many modes the online game didn’t have, as well as Wifi battles and multiplayer. As addictive as the gameplay is however, it probably isn’t going to be fun playing the 8th time through.

Read on for my full review of Word Jong.

Read more

I’ve pretty much grown a weakspot for puzzle games in the past few weeks, especially after picking up Meteos: Disney Magic. I came across WordJong, one of the best selling downloadable online games of all time. I decided to check the game out myself. WordJong, developed by Destineer, is pretty much an extreme version of Scrabble that’s being ported to the Nintendo DS with a ton of added features and Wi-Fi. This excites me quite a bit, seeing on how I’m loving the puzzle genre lately and I’m a huge fan of Scrabble, yet I never have friends to play it with (Wi-Fi totally solves this problem).

Be sure to stay tuned for my review of the game as soon as it comes out later this week. Read on for the press release.

Read more