The more important part of this update is the mention of a great iPhone/iPad app called Tiki Towers. You have to build bridges, archways, ladders, and other types of scaffolding in order to get five monkeys from the beginning of the stage to the end, while gathering all of the available bananas. I didn’t do well in high school Physics, nor do I have any sort of background in construction and I think this combination is what made Tiki Towers so much fun. Instead of an actual problem solving game that would test my building know-how, I approach the game with a childish ignorance that results in a lot of trial and error and yelling at pixelated monkeys who tear up my bridges. You see, they’re monkeys. More than that, they’re video game monkeys. These little apes don’t just walk across bridges, they swing, jump, hoot, and holler their way across whatever it is you’ve built, destroying it unless it is structurally sound (see above comment about high school Physics). It’s original price was eight bucks, then it spent a week on the “Free List”, and now will only set you back a dollar. Simply put, this is the best bridge building game with monkeys in it that I’ve ever played.

The demo for Planet Minigolf promises all sorts of good things for the full version of the game like “over 100 challenging courses”,  “create your own mini-golfcourse”, and something revolving around the word “fun”. The demo itself only lets you do two things, customize one of around six goofy pre-made characters and play a pirate-themed 9 holes of frustrating putt putt golf. There are three different control schemes, one is actually called “easy”: push X, hold it until the swing meter reaches the desired point, and release. There is another “3 point” control scheme: Push X once to start the swing, again at the top of your swing, and a third time to actually connect with the ball. The third control scheme has you use the left thumbstick to pull back and push forward, mimicking some sort of a faux swing. I chose “easy”.

I was pretty much through with this game by the fourth hole, and not because I was losing, either. I manged to get 7 over par (not good) by the third hole and was only in second place. Once I got the hang of the swing meter, Planet Minigolf became an exercise in repetitive annoyance and frustration as inevitably some crab or seagull or something would wander into the path of the ball and interrupt my shot. I suppose I’d rather play this game as opposed to playing nine holes of actual golf, but that’s not saying much. I’d rather do a lot of horrendously tedious tasks before putting myself through that kind of torture. So if you wake up one morning and find yourself to be the above mentioned eight year old, get out the milk because you’re going to be eating a lot of cereal.

Summer break started with a four day marathon of graduation and going away parties before I was able to settle in and really enjoy all of the sugary goodness and bloody carnage (high calorie snacks and God of War, respectively). With a little bit of yard work out of the way and a couple months to catch up on some games and books ahead of me, I find myself at a loss for this week’s PSN installment. I’ve been too busy playing God of War, ModNation Racers, and finishing up Stephen King’s Dark Tower series to really get into what the Playstation Network has to offer.

With the story and vacation explained, we find ourselves staring pointblank at the poll. I’ve compiled a list of all of the demos that have surfaced on the PSN since my last real update and provided links to videos and reviews for each. The premise is simple: take a look at what’s available, then leave a comment with  your vote for which demo I should review for next week. If there is a tie, I’ll pull double duty and cover both. If nobody replies, I’ll stop spending so much time on these weekly posts.  Let the polling commence! Click more to find the polling information.

Iron Man 2:

Sega Blog featuring behind the scenes voice over work for Iron Man 2.

Iron Man 2: The Video Game

Rocket Knight:

IGN Rocket Knight Review

YouTube Rocket Knight Trailer

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11:

Official Website

TV Spot

Green Day Rock Band:

Official Site

Associated Press Game Promo

Hamsterball:

IGN Hamsterball Review

YouTube Hamsterball Trailer

PixelJunk Shooter:

IGN PixelJunk Shooter Review

PixelJunk Shooter Video Review

Planet Minigolf:

IGN Planet Minigolf Review

How-to Demonstration for Planet Minigolf

From a racing game’s perspective, ModNation isn’t really anything new. It feels a lot like the newer installments in the Mario Kart series with it’s item cubes, silly weapons, and speed-boosting sparks. Now imagine that there are two tracks worth of learning curve and then a spike in difficulty that jumps from 50cc to 150cc and all of the other racers seem to have unlimited blue shells. I’m not good at racing games, but some of these races are ridiculously frustrating.  In the game’s so-far predictable story mode, you play the role of an up-and-coming racer who catches the attention of a grizzled old timer who now spends his days in the garage instead of the race track. I think you can see where this is going. Every track in this story mode has three main objectives, each increasing in difficulty and each opening up a new set of customization options for making new cars and Mods. So the draw isn’t just to come in first, that would only net you the goodies from one objective – say one new hair style, sun glasses, and some outlandish new spoiler to put on your car. The goal becomes something like coming in first while making sure to blow up three competing racers (2nd objective) and get 300,000 points from drifting (3rd objective). If you can manage to do that, then you’re swimming in new stuff to use while making your Mods and cars. See the dangerous cycle this creates?

Neither my wife nor I have really done a whole lot with the tack creation mode, but it is equally as impressive. If you’ve got the time, I’d suggest taking a look at some of the work the ModNation community has done so far. Click here to see some of the most popular Mod creations and use the green buttons under “My Profile” to switch between Mods, cars, and tracks that some folks have made.

Here’s a link to the official website.

Here’s the obligatory picture:

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go start playing. See you next week.

SPLIT/SECOND is really nothing more than a racing game that allows you, the driver, to blow up portions of the track with hopes of somehow ruining your opponents’ chances of victory. Unfortunately, you don’t operate any machine gun turrets or harness any sort of rocket-propelled grenades. You gain a sort of “energy” by drafting behind other drivers or drifting around tight corners. This energy gauge is displayed on-screen just beneath your car, close to other important information such as lap information and race position. Once you fill your energy gauge, you can trigger disasters ranging from building implosions, roadside car bombs, even commanding helicopters to drop crates of explosives right on the track! This mayhem might crush your opponent outright or alternatively alter the track in such a way that the future laps will follow a different path. If you enjoyed Burnout, then you should probably take a look at SPLIT/SECOND. Though I only tried a couple of rounds, I did find myself enjoying the time spent playing this demo. However, I was constantly burdened by two things: First, this is a really silly concept for a game. Secondly, should there be a slash between the words split and second?

Before I engage Teacher Mode, I should acknowledge the fact that one of the reasons I love the English language is for its flexibility. I accept the notion that many rules that apply to Standard English are blatantly ignored and accepted as truth outside the realm of formal writing. The basic function of any language, spoken or written, is to communicate ideas. But what ideas are really being conveyed by using the slash this way? Journey on, intrepid grammarians.

One common way that we see the slash used is via different abbreviations (w/ for with, w/o for without, b/c instead of because, etc.) Another everyday slash sighting comes courtesy of different “initialisms”, or acronyms (R/C for radio control, A/C for air conditioning, or AC/DC for best rock group featuring grown men dressed as small schoolboys etc.) None of these implementations of the slash seem to make sense when combining SPLIT/SECOND. Since we can infer that the game’s title is meant to convey some sense of immediate action or precise timing, we might want to consider another function of the slash.

A second ability in the slash’s repertoire is the ability to embody the idea “or”, often seen used as “and/or”. For example, “You may use pencil and/or pen to complete this form.” We know that, as readers, we have a choice to make: use a pencil, use a pen, or use some combination of the two. This gets us slightly closer to what I think the developers had in mind when naming SPLIT/SECOND.

The slash can often unknowingly take the role of another punctuation mark: the hyphen. My favorite use of the hyphen is to join compound modifiers (rocket-propelled grenade for example). Black Rock Studios employed a similar idea when dubbing their creation SPLIT/SECOND. By replacing the hyphen with a slash and joining the words split and second into the capitalized behemoth SPLIT/SECOND, they combined two separate words into a single idea, thus creating the image of the game’s fervor. What might normally have read as a compound modifier “split second” (implied “split second reaction time” or “split second decisions”, both terrible names for a video game) now has this unexpected punctuation: SPLIT/SECOND.

I shudder to think that there were probably multiple meetings and focus groups devoted to assess the potential pros and cons of this decision. “Do we leave split and second as two distinct words? Will the gaming community get the message? What if we hyphenate them? Do they know what a hyphen is? What about a slash? It’s simple and edgy. Whatever we do, just make sure it all gets capitalized.”

The game should feel pretty familiar to anyone who has played an objective-based, extreme sports game before (SSX, Tony Hawk, heck, even Crazy Taxi). Your character is equipped with several different wakeboarding tricks, each assigned to a different button, or combination of buttons. Do these tricks successfully and you get points. And as we all know, points are good things in most video games.

Wakeboarding HD lets you choose your racetrack, each with a set of objectives to meet. These objectives start out easy enough: do five tricks, for example. They quickly ramp up the difficulty, requiring you to do something ridiculous like attain 5x score multiplier by doing successive, successful tricks, collecting stars and smiley faces (really, there are floating smiley faces that give you bonus points, but back to the ridiculous objectives), break 6 billboards, land 4 ramp jumps, keep a trick combo chain going the entire course, all the while avoiding the sharks that try to eat you.

Wakeboarding HD isn’t in the running for “Creative Title of the Year”, or “Best Extreme Sports Hybrid Game of the Month”, or “Best Way to spend 35 Minutes on a Rainy Day”, but hey, at least the water is pretty.



The demo starts out with a fairly straightforward menu, offering you the choice to either select from a list of previously established games, or to create a private game, inviting friends at your leisure. The total time it took to find a game to join, wait for enough players to fill the map (most games were between 4/16 players to 8/16 players), and get started was roughly 3-4 minutes – not bad at all. Once the action got started I had to play the “I Wonder What This Button Does” mini-game familiar to most demos that don’t offer any solid map for the controller before launching you into the fray. I quickly found the grenade button, then discovered what the respawn screen looked like. I’d be seeing this screen again very soon.

Having eventually figured out which buttons did what – and making a mental note to not push the grenade button ever again -  I set out on my quest which was to, well…that much really wasn’t made clear either, but I assumed it involved shooting as many moving targets as possible. During this timed match, I ran across these strange antenna-looking contraptions which invited me to run up to them and repeatedly mash the Circle button. Doing so seemed to activate it to further my team’s cause. I could only assume that there were many of these devices scattered across the jungle terrain. Also conveniently located at key strategic points on the map were large turret guns, manned by people who I’m sure had spent more time in the demo than I. Cue the respawn screen; it was considerate of the developers to let you choose where you would like to return to life, as this was apparently the main way I was to find my path along the map.

Sadly, large-scale boss fights aren't a part of this multiplayer demo.

Graphically, the game should meet the expectations of anyone currently playing a top-notch action/adventure game on a next-gen console. The terrain is stunning, lighting effects are well done, and the attention to character detail is, well surprising. Yes, the character models look good according to today’s standards, but I’m talking more about the wardrobe decisions, here. I was able to find a “Character Customization” screen at one point, which showed my digital avatar as a muscular guy, clad head-to-toe in an advanced battle suit, ready for whatever combat may come his way. Upon loading into the game’s demo, I was surprised to see that I wasn’t that grizzly war hero, but instead a tawdry girl in this strap-and-buckle get up who was in dire need of some…support, one might say. Someone on the design team had a bit too much fun with the game’s physics engine, as everyday action video game elements such as running and jumping had to be taxing on this poor girl.

Some other news surrounding Lost Planet 2′s release date of May 11, 2010 is the inclusion of some other Capcom icons. Rumors, verified and otherwise, say that players can expect to see Marcus and Dom from Gears of War (360 exclusive), The Guy From Monster Hunter With That Great Big Sword Gun Thing from, well, Monster Hunter (PS3 exclusive), Frank West from Dead Rising and most importantly, Wesker, from Resident Evil. Do some of these character choices seem a bit out of place? Sure. Does this openly proud Capcom fanboy care? Not one bit.

This is reason enough to give Lost Planet 2 a chance.

Unless bodily humor is a sin, don't read too much into the title.

The gameplay is pretty simple; it’s still a point and click at heart. You spend most of your time walking around as Sam, investigating the scene, looking for clues, making off-color jokes suited for a junior high cafeteria, when suddenly you see that something actually needs doing. Cue Max and his ever-growing list of physic abilities. Oh yeah, he has those now. Instead of pointing with a computer mouse, you use the left thumbstick to look around your surroundings and view different items. Clicking has been upgraded to an assortment of buttons, square to view inventory, X to take a closer look at a highlighted item, or triangle to activate Max’s latent physic powers.

No good can come of this.

In the demo you get to see two of these talents: teleportation and, well, rhinoplasty. Teleportation is simple enough, Max just needs to know the cell phone number of a nearby character and he can zip right over to them. Because that’s exactly how teleportation really works. When you fire up Max’s Rhinoplasty ability, he whips out a nose-shaped container of what I hope is Silly Putty, slaps it on any picture or non-living item, and presto, changes into whatever it was he copied.

The combination of just these two physic powers was enough to fill the 15 minute demo with enough puzzles to make me walk around, double checking everything to see exactly what it was I had overlooked. In doing so I was reminded on numerous occasions exactly why it was I was drawn to the Sam and Max franchise to begin with: the witty banter between the crime fighting, detective duo. As fun as the games are to play and as inventive as the story lines can be, I still appreciate a good fart joke from time to time – Sam and Max don’t disappoint.

Click the picture to check out TellTale Games' Sam & Max website.