No it's not, it's Mike Patton, who owns Trent's voice anyday. Actually I'm not sure if he did the voice for the main character, too lazy to check.
Looks like a nice game anyways, too bad I have no 360/ps3. =( 

an old native from our flat brought in an xbox a month or so ago, and people have been playing some nhl hockey games. It's quite dull. The Sega 2k5 version isn't any better than the EA one.

I guess all hockey games since NHL 94 for PC or so have just required one-timers for instagoals and never any from breakaways or straight shooting.

I guess I'll buy more memory for my comp and start playing ufo2000 again some day. When the internet starts working. The apartment company fucked it. Well, it's summer anyway so who needs it. 

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21742.html

Nice and high-res video showing mario galaxy gameplay. Looks cool, and the video is nice and high-res.

P.S. Why do the narrators of these videos always sound like morons? The guy is basically describing the game in the terms of a 5-year-old. "That is colorful." "I can jump from place to place." "I want the shiny thing."

I wonder if it's the same problem as when you try to have a conversation with someone playing a video game, where most of their brain is paying attention to the game, so they aren't able to put any real thought into what they're saying. They should probably get a second person to do the talking while the first guy plays. Maybe an actual designer instead of some associate-producer-drone guy that doesn't really understand WHY the game was designed the way it is.

"I wiggle my hand to climb the thing. It's real real intuitive and feels real good." How about "Older consoles have arbitrary commands mapped to buttons that all interact the same way, but the wii controller allows us to finally break from that and create a system that involves more muscle memory. So we use as much gestural input as possible, and tried to map distinctive hand motions to the most analagous in-game activites." Or SOMETHING. 

Yeah Mario Galaxy looks really nice, can't wait.
About commentators (that a word?), yeah they always sound silly, some of the presentations for E3 this year have been really bad, like the girl describing Assassin's Creed, just bleh, where do they get these people? 

what does look nice about it? the 2001 5-year-old-style?

ps. metl, that age group seems to be the target audience? :P 

What looks nice about it is the gameplay mechanics, the level design, the amount of imagination present, etc. The general stuff that makes mario games good. I like mario games.

Oh and just the fact it isn't a super-lossy-compressed 200x120 youtube clip, that's nice too.

The target audience for press shows at E3 is adults. Also, just becuase a game is designed for kids (i'd say more like 10-year-olds in this case) doesn't mean it can be designed by kids. I'd rather hear about the philosophy and the decisions that went into the product that the most superficial play-by-play of what we're already seeing. 

i was just provocating a bit. i never had fun playing the mario games, so im in the 1% that's not the target audience.

but seriously? Gameplay mechanics? it looks like it's still:
-jumping on top of enemies to kill them
-dodge/avoid enemies
-08/15 jump and run

but they added a flying mode� YEAH! ;) (no doubt everything will be finetuned to play nice and all) [wasn't there something with a feather that turned you into a flying fox in earlier games?]

Level design? ok, i guess the goodie/secret stuff might be interesting, and maybe how they use that kind of a setting to pull off attention spots.

imagination? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_the_Bee

hehe, guess this is just a matter of taste. 

It looks like most FPS games are still about shooting rockets on enemies... can you give some better arguments? In my mind there are lots of similarities between the mario games and quake like games - both have a simple physics based ruleset that allows for complex scenarios and interesting ways of moving around the game world. 

Super Mario World levels, that is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TED_JqcRaVE 

here's a link to a "playlist" that makes youtube play them all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TED_JqcRaVE&feature=PlayList&p=DBA0F1B3B93370D5&index=0&playnext=1 

0.o 

"Automated Mario. Uncredible!"

laff 

^_^;; 

Ok, I just got this and played it for an hour today during my lunchtime (the only free time I have left now :{ )

Some of you may have noticed the ludicrous hype and obviously bought out/biased review scores this game is getting in the press.

All I can say from my first hour is that it seems quite cool and fun, but graphically it does look pretty dated for a 360 game (it's basically Halo 1/2 in hi-def with HDR and a few pixel shaders). The surprisingly sub-par character modelling/animation is quite apparent in the opening cutscene.

More impressions to follow I guess, but it looks initially like quite a bit of simplistic fun even if it doesn't exactly look cutting-edge :) 

Sat down with my roommate, and completed it. Total playtime: around 6,5 hours. Either it's very short, or we're very, very good. Or both.

It was fun though, and a blast in coop. Not really different from the previous two games, but I didn't really expect it to be. However, it really could've used one more level in the campaign, with a more climactic ending and a better ending cinematic. "That's it?" we asked, as the credits started rolling. There was much better stuff in Halo 2 near the start, with a real sense of awe.

The Covenant were cool enemies, as usual, environments were varied, as usual, Flood quickly became dull and repetitive, as usual. It's a true sequel. 

I just finished Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the DS. It's a standard "metroidvania" game in terms of the world exploration and using items to unlock new sections of the castle. There is also a "soul" system which I am told was already used in a previous castlevania game, but basically it is this: you get new abilities by collecting souls from the monsters and bosses. Some enemies have a very low chance of dropping a soul, so you either have to get lucky or farm the soul (which i did in some cases.) Boss fights were good.

The game is set up so that you don't have to collect all souls, explore all rooms, etc. In order to beat the game, but those goals are implicit in the "percentage complete" stats, so you have an incentive to collect everything. It sounds tedious, but they give you some items near the end of the game that makes it easier to clean up loose ends rather quickly, such as a ring that makes souls drop more frequently, another one that multiplies the amount of gold dropped by enemies, and some movement speed-increase souls.

One thing they didn't do much of, which is unfortunate, is making the new movement abilities create shortcuts through old areas in addition to unlocking new ones. Usually even after getting a new ability which unlocks a few areas, you still have to trudge through old areas at the same pace. 

I just picked up the new Zelda DS game over the weekend. Not much to say yet, but:

1. The game actually uses ONLY the touchscreen for all control, with the select button for the item menu. The dpad and B button do have a use, but it is redundant with an icon on the corner of the touchscreen, so you don't need them. You could actually play this game one-handed if you didn't have to hold the DS.

2. Unfortunately, I wish I didn't have to block my own view of the screen with my hand/stylus. Mario 64 solves this by putting the main 3D view on the top screen. Zelda can't do this because you're actually tapping on THINGS on the screen, drawing boomerang routes, etc, which requires drawing on the screen with all the action.

Anyway, seems cool so far, but it's too early to really judge it. 

the game takes place inside an abandoned hospital. on a rainy night. the player wakes up without any idea of whats going and so far (i'm on chapter 4) i still have no idea whats going on. hopefully something will start soon.

so here's a small list of what i think so far:

*atmosphere: the 1st time playing through it was very "whoaa!" but then, it gets very repetitive. its very typical horror stuff anyway. the music, the sounds, the setting...

*levels: they are wolf3d styled maps. corridor after corridor... and closets with boxes and such, and monsters sometimes inside of them. and if you hear a zombie and there are two closets on the corridor, you know he is in one of them.

the coolest part was so far was chapter two. going to the roof of the hospital was a nice break from corridors. but i am back to that.

the levels are detailed. if you ever been inside an abandoned building with lots of stuff left behind, you know its messy shit. and this is messy. with lots of blood. and very dark. oh yes, there is a flashlight, like doom3, i find myself using it a lot.

gameplay: so far puzzles are easy, and there was a very cool one (not story related but spolier maybe?) where you have to play keys on a piano, and the hint to the melody you have to play is written on the wall (with blood of course). and if you know about music notes and such, its easy to figure out.

the levels are populated with zombies or zombie looking creatures (they remind me of hl2 zombies) and they are not hard to fight once you get used to the movement.

the shit thing about this game is that every time you die, you start at the beginning of the chapter! say you are at the exit of a long level, you die and you have to start all over again. it sucks because every time you open a door to go inside a room, it saves the game! so why do i have to start from the beginning if the game was saved before i entered the room with the boss dude? gah. this is the only frustrating thing so far that i can think of.

music/sounds: well, again. very typical horror stuff. the piano melodies... the rain.. the kids voices on the dark deserted corridors... it still gives the game a cool atmosphere.

anyway. i am stuck on chapter four. there is a boss battle and i keep dying. the dude is too strong, and there is no health (that i haven seen) on the room i am suppose to fight this fat monster. :-(

if the level design was more varied, or at least, wasn't just corridor after corridor, it would be pretty awesome. i mean, there is a port for doom and it looks to run pretty smooth, so why cant they have at least levels that way? but whatever, it doesn't suck. and i am curious to know why the player is on this abandoned hospital, and what happened and blah blah. the atmosphere, even though is very clich� horror stuff, is pretty cool too. though i cant say its scary.

i just wish one wouldn't have to start from the beginning of each chapter (or level) every time one dies. and damn this boss battle! the dude is tough! gah.

if the review sucks or its confusing, then i blame lack of sleep. :)

man, wrote so much. hehe. 

http://dementium.com/enter.html link to the game's website.

there are tons of things i didn't say and you can look at screenshots and all that stuff. 

You have to tell what the game is LIKE not tell about the plot and atmosphere. Is it a shooter? An RPG? 3d? 2d? Realtime? Turn-based? Sigh. 

haha, i suck at reviews. :D

its a horror fps. 3d. real time. not turned based. and a few sighs too. its slow, lots of exploration which i like in games, but its very linear so far. what i hate is that it takes place in a hospital, and i never knew hospitals had so many storage closets! gah. 

Might have to get that, as soon as I complete all the battle maps for Advance Wars. 

Stranglehold (360):

Clunky, unpolished, and a complete rip-off of Max Payne and the whole Matrix bullet-time thing, but bugger me with a fire hydrant if this isn't more fun than a bag of weasels.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360):

Whoa, this is more than a little bit more impressive than previous COD offerings. The gulf (no pun intended) in quality between this and last year's COD3 makes me wonder exactly how they managed to bang this one out so quickly. (Ah, nevermind, they were different teams working in parallel no doubt sharing assets and a codebase).

Medal of Honour: Airborne (360)

Well you see the interesting thing here is that you start each mission on board a plane and have to- ooh hey is anyone using that copy of COD4 over there? No? Mind if I have a quick... 

Super Mario Galaxy: Simply the greatest game ever made.

Nintendo has made pure, concentrated awesome here. Every level is filled with varried challenges, great visuals, and well designed mechanics that are used very well throughout.

Go buy it now. If you don't have a Wii, get both. Now. 

Better than Mario

Its soooooo much better than Oblivion I could cry, Oblivion team probably are crying.

Similar roof-to-roof antics as Crackdown, jaw dropping graphics, etc, a lot like Theif otherwise...