MEGATONik readers rejoice! We’ll be recording the first episode of The Mushroom Cloud tonight around 7 PM EST.

Here’s what will be up for debate on the first show:

• Introduction (or why we’re awesome)
• Games We’re Playing and Recommend
• We discuss games that made us want to cry out of frustration.
• Reviews of Battlefield: Bad Company and Dragon Balls Z: Burst Limit by Wonko
• Mega Man 9 (and other releases this week)
• E3 impressions
• Quick babble about an upcoming contest

Be sure to leave your most frustrating game, E3 thoughts, or anything else you’d like us to know in the comments. We may use your comments on the show!

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Remember the old days when first-person shooters were a fairly uncommon occurrence? I’m talking about the early 90’s when a game like Doom was able to garner tons of attention and an adoring fan base because of its graphical prowess and innovative gameplay. Sadly, those days are over. Go to your local GameStore and look on the shelves; you’ll find that they’re cluttered with FPS titles, and most of them are half-assed attempts to earn a buck. Sure, you’ll occasionally stumble on the likes of Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, but for the most part the FPS genre has become tired and played-out.

While Bad Company goes a little beyond the multitude of half-assed FPSs, it still falls short of a full-assed game. Hit the jump for the full review.
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[Note: This review may reveal a few plot points in the Indiana Jones franchise. If you would prefer not to have any part of the story spoiled, I would recommend not reading this review. Also, you should be ashamed for not having seen the films.]

Legos are awesome. If there is one toy that defined my childhood, it would be Legos. That’s why I was immediately attracted to Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. It seems like a perfect equation: Legos + Indiana Jones = Adorable fun. Obviously released to coincide with the newest theatrical sequel in the George Lucas franchise, is the blocky version of the trilogy awesome or did I choose… poorly?
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Let me begin this review of one of this past week’s new Xbox Live Arcade releases with a quick disclaimer. Sea Life Safari, developed by WildTangent Game Studios, is less of a game and more of an experience. The game pits you as an underseas photographer bent on shooting animals with film instead of bullets to provide research material for a crotchety old professor, who then rates your photographs based on different criteria. These three major criteria are as follows: whether or not the animal is in the middle of the picture, the relative size of the animal in the picture (I guess he doesn’t like negative space) and whether or not the animal is doing its special movement, which can be elicited by heaving a glowstick or flare at the animal by hitting the B button. The professor then ranks these pictures on a basis of zero to three stars (three being the best) which are then needed to move on to the next level. This type of system seems natural for the type of game that it is, and the professor’s continual dissidence with you will have you hunting for three star photos for quite a while.

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Developer Natsume is best-known for its farming sim franchise, Harvest Moon, but that doesn’t mean they don’t convert other mundane tasks into video games. Released in late April of this year, River King: Mystic Valley is a fishing game for the Nintendo DS that takes all the fun of sitting and waiting in real life and lets you do it in a game as well.
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Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipe of Darkness is the first installment of what developer Hothead Games promises to be a four-part series surrounding the world of the popular webcomic, Penny Arcade. The creators of Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, took a major risk in jumping their strip from relative cult success to mainstream Xbox Live Arcade media. Has the risk payed off for us gamers? Hit the jump to find out!

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When Aces of the Galaxy, an Xbox Live Arcade game developed by Artech Studios and published by Sierra Online, touted itself to be a “non-stop, old-school arcade thrill ride,” I was somewhat skeptical. How many times have we heard awesome descriptions just to discover the game is worth less than the surprise my dog leaves in tightly-coiled piles in my [neighbor's] yard? Does this game live up to the picture the description paints, or will this be just another mediocre Xbox Live Arcade title? Hit the jump to find out!

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After owning a Wii for a little over a year now, and playing a fair amount of the absolutely horrid titles available on the system, I initially had very low hopes for Battle of the Bands, Planet Moon Studios and THQ’s entry into the recent hit rhythm-music game genre. However, the track record for rhthym games on the Wii has been and looks to be very solid, what with Guitar Hero III already released and the upcoming Rock Band and Samba de Amigo to release on the system later in the year. How does Battle of the Bands fit into the equation? Quite messily, in fact.

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The Xbox Live Arcade is a unique creature. Most of the time, it spits out dreck and crud with the frequency of a sewage plant. But on rare occasions, a hidden gem will shine through at just the right time to restore our faith in the service. One such game was the original Assault Heroes, a two-stick shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars. What set it apart was that on top of such simple gameplay, developer Wanako Games provided a unique presentation with the use of multiple vehicles and realized enemies, rather than simple shapes.

The game was such a fun, little experience and so well received that Sierra released a sequel for it a few weeks ago. But does Assault Heroes 2 provide anything new, or is it just more of the same? Keep reading to find out.
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Let’s face it, there’s a ton of skins out there for your consoles and electronics that are extremely ugly, bulky, and cliche. I’ve tried several skins in the past, but I was never satisfied with any of them. Then I found a product called GelaSkins. Out of all of the lame skull, flame, and flaming skull designs the market carries, finally, I found something worth checking out.

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When reviewing Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz for the Playstation 2, it was damned near impossible not to continuously compare it to the other major quiz show type game of the year, Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action on the Xbox 360. Surprisingly, however, Buzz! seems to do many of the things that Scene It? could not.

Taking this into consideration, is Buzz! worth a play or a pass? Hit the jump for the rest of my review!

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When it comes to purchasing Xbox Live Arcade games, I am always quite frugal. Personally, I won’t pick up an XBLA game that is anything short of stellar. (I like to save my money for the big retail games … and booze, too, I guess.) Unsurprisingly, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is one of those games that I would not buy … never in a hundred years.

Why is Rocketmen so utterly horrendous? Hit the jump for the rest of my review!

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Ok, to be honest, we’re not one of those fancy-schmancy sites that was given a copy of GTA IV in advance so we could put a review up on release day. Well, you know what I have to say to that? Not much, actually. To be honest it’s really quite reasonable. Still, I feel that we have a great little site here at MEGATONik and I didn’t want our loyal readers to think that we were going to be the ONLY ones to let this momentous occasion just fly by without putting in our own two cents on the game. After all, our forums are literally abuzz with the release of this giant of a game! Obviously, with the game only having been out a meager 24 hours it would be impossible for me to have actually beaten the game. However, I did end up spending the majority of my day on my couch playing this damn game until my eyes bled with nothing but a bottle of Dew and a bag of Twizzlers for sustenance.

So, how does GTA 4 stack up after about 7 hours of gameplay? Is it worth it? Does it live up to the hype? Is this really worth sixty of your hard-earned dollars? Without further ado, I present to you MEGATONik’s very own review of Grand Theft Auto IV! All you have to do is hit the jump!
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The Nintendo DS is obviously geared toward a more casual crowd than its portable competition, the PSP, but that certainly doesn’t mean that hardcore games can’t thrive on the platform. With Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Swords, Team Ninja has taken their franchise on the go, but can a series known for its intense difficulty and precision work on the DS? Keep reading to find out.
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What do you get when you cross an alcoholic homeless man who runs around slashing at street junkies with lollipop-shaped razors and spends his time shooting at exploding girly dolls that just can’t seem to die? Condemned 2: Bloodshot, of course! The first game in the series, Condemned: Criminal Origins, was hailed for its amazing first person horror style, giving gamers many shocks and scares, superb visuals, and an overall frightening environment. But does the sequel to this fantastic first person horror game really stack up to the original title?

You bet your ass it does.
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