Gundemonium Collection may be over a year old, but it just released on Steam with a few new features. This package of doujin shmups contains Gundemonium Recollection, its sequel GundeadliGne, and their vastly different prequel Hitogata Happa.

The most obvious changes in the Steam version are the remixed soundtracks. They’re quite a step up from the originals thanks to the talent of DM Ashura and Woofle (Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania IIDX). You’ll also find a new online co-op mode for GundeadliGne allowing you to play with your Steam friends.

But I’m sure many out there haven’t had a chance to check out these games in the first place since they are a niche within a niche.

Both Gundemonium Recollection and Gundeadline are horizontal shooters with unusually large sprites. This allows for a lot of personality to be put into each character and enemy design. They often approach Cute ‘em Up territory with their goofy pumpkin enemies, Parodius-like women in bunny suits, and other equally wacky things. Of course, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets cut in half. (more…)

It takes a certain special something to get me to play most iPhone games for more than a few minutes. I’m not saying that to be antagonistic, I just don’t find enough meat on most of them to hold my interest.

But sometimes in even the simplest of games, all the elements come together in a magical way that initially captures your attention, then progresses into a soul eating hell-beast of gaming addiction that just won’t let go no matter how hard you struggle. This was the case with Jetpack Joyride.

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With a site named “WingDamage” and a podcast called “Barrel Roll!” it shouldn’t come as any surprise that many here on the site grew up adoring the first couple of Star Fox games. As I’ve written about in the past, the series really hasn’t been able to find a clear direction that works after Star Fox 64. Each game after that point has been a mess of ideas that fail to satisfy the way the core, rail shooting gameplay of the originals did.

Perhaps it’s because of this lack of confidence in the future of Star Fox that I was so eager to revisit the glory days of its past. Star Fox 64 3D may be a remake of a fourteen year old game, but it’s also a remake of the best the series has to offer by a large margin, and one of the greatest gems you’ll find in a genre that barely exists anymore.

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You know that moment in gaming where you’re no longer making conscious decisions and instead find yourself relying on pure, razor fast instinct? This is how I felt for almost the entirety of the time I spent with SkyDrift. Much like the fantastic Split/Second, SkyDrift‘s brand of racing puts you on the verge of death constantly, and everytime you manage to narrowly escape certain doom at the hands of the track’s terrain or your opponent’s weapons it feels like a miracle.

It’s amazing how much the concept of flight changes how a racing game plays. The added verticality of racing in an airplane instead of a car allows for a sense of freedom that really makes every race play out differently. This is also helped by some really superb track design. There aren’t a ton of tracks, but the ones that are there are filled to the brim with branching pathways, a ton of variety, and plenty of extra dangerous obstacles that reward players willing to take risks.

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It seems I have reviewed quite a few pirate themed games during my time here on WingDamage, from ones that fought zombies to ones on monkey related islands. They are a recurring gaming mascot that lends itself well to interesting and colorful character designs.

In Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games’ Pirates of Black Cove, there is certainly not a shortage of wackiness or crazy characters. There is a level of cartoonishness in the writing that lets you know right out of the gate that they were there to have a good time with this RTS/RPG/Navel Combat hybrid (or as the game’s site calls it, “Light Strategy Adventure”).

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As an overall experience, the OnLive MicroConsole asks quite a bit out of me as a user. Not the service itself, I have no beefs with the service. The OnLive MicroConsole is a box roughly the size of a DSi. It is designed to bring PC gaming to your television or monitor without the need of a computer with reasonable specs, or a computer at all for that matter. There is a lot the OnLive MicroConsole has to offer the world in terms of a cheap and affordable PC gaming experience brought straight to your living room. It’s hard to imagine a world where they could even live up to a fraction of such lofty goals and promises

All it asks is that you have a TV or monitor with an HDMI port, an Ethernet port to plug into nearby, and at least 2 MBPS out of your ISP to experience their service. This is where I ran into some issues. I’ve got power sockets and death squids all over the place, so that’s no problem. My TV is HDMI ready, so no need to drop 30 bucks on a component adapter, and I can handle the MBPS needed. But I’m clearly not the person they had in mind for the MicroConsole. The service allows for computers to connect via WiFi, however the console does not. The console requires you to connect either with an Ethernet cable or through various bridge techniques.

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I would say I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with strategy games, but I’d be lying to you. We just met. I don’t want to do that. No, I’ve never liked strategy games much. Just couldn’t work ‘em. Too many buttons.

I only started playing Starcraft 2 with any regularity over the past couple of months, and my skills are shaky at best. Some would say that this makes me an awful candidate to review King Arthur: Fallen Champions. I would say it makes me the perfect choice. After all, if I can figure it out and enjoy it, so could anybody!

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I was never a huge comic book nerd growing up, but I always had a soft spot when it came to Spider-Man. I ate up the cartoon like the sugar injected cereal that accompanied it’s viewings. I dumped a small fortune of birthday money on action figures and playsets. When all the parental planets aligned and I was able to rent a game from our local Hastings, I would usually pick up Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage.

To give you a brief overview, Maximum Carnage is a early 90’s beat’em up out out by LJN/Acclaim that features Spidey and Venom as they try to put a stop to the serial murder Cletus Kasady, better known as the symbiote infused supervillain Carnage.

While I had some really great games for the SNES, Maximum Carnage still stands out to me as the most memorable. Since we were a Nintendo town for the most part, and only one of my friends even had a Genesis, I didn’t know this game came out on anything other than SNES. That being the case, I still hold it among my top favorite SNES games of all time. When I found it recently at a used bookstore, I decided to pick it up to see if it actually was any good or if my memories were blurred thru the lens of nostalgia and youthful fanboy-ism.

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Back in the SNES era, one may remember a title Interplay and Visual Concepts developed that bears the word “Clay” in it. Probably to most, the first game that will pop in your head is the memorable Clayfighter fighting game. But there is another lesser known “Clay” gem they both produced in the same year called Claymates, a colorful platformer that hid under the shadows throughout the console’s life.

Claymates is about a boy named Clayton who one day is in a laboratory with his father, who has created a serum that can transform clay into animals. Apparently witch doctors fiend for this stuff because one magically appears out of nowhere and demands that Clayton’s father hand over the serum. He denies him and the witch doctor then strikes Clayton with lightning, transforming him into a blue ball of clay, then proceeds to steal the serum and Clayton’s father away in a flash. Clayton vows to rescue his father and the serum, even if he is just a ball of clay.

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"A psychological thriller about relationships... and block pushing."

In an industry saturated with shooters and sandbox games, the best word to describe my feelings on Catherine is “refreshing.” Part puzzle game, part choice-based story game, Catherine is almost two separate entities. Yet somehow this odd mixture ends up working wonderfully together as each side enhances the other.

One of the great things about Catherine is that its story isn’t one you would typically find in this medium. I was reminded more of movies like Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue than anything I’d experienced in a video game. Like all good psychological thrillers, Catherine is hard to put down. Combine that with the addictive nature of the puzzle stages and I can tell you I had some pretty long sessions each time I sat down to play.

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