Brawl Tourney on July 19th, 2009 at Full Sail University

2 Liter Bottle, creators of the upcoming Full Sail University Game Project game The Depths, will be holding a Super Smash Bros: Brawl tournament on Sunday, July 19th. I shall be assisting them in the tournament operations. The game will be played on the Nintendo Wii and players may bring their own controller.

There will be a singles and doubles tournament competition and the entry fee is $5 per player per tournament. Tournaments will be either single or double elimination brackets based on the number of competitors.

Matches will be 3 stocks and 8 minutes long.

Legal stages in the tournament include the following: Final Destination, Battlefield, Delphino Plaza, Frigate Orpheon, Yoshi’s Island, Halberd, Lylat Cruise, Castle Siege, Smashville, Jungle Japes, Pokemon Stadium I, and Rainbow Cruise.

Portions of the entry fee will go to the team budget of 2 Liter Bottle.

The event will be held at 2:30pm on Sunday, July 19th in the Dieselbean Cafe lobby in building FS4E. Sign-ups begin at 1:00pm. See you guys there!

Facebook Event Page

Winter looks very interesting, and the Wii could sure as hell use some interesting games. Unless things change, I feel like the Wii has nothing to offer after Madworld and The Conduit are released. Unfortunately, Winter does not have a publisher right now. The aforementioned games did not at initially either, but eventually Sega picked up the slack and both games are coming out this year. I seriously hope Winter gets a similar treatment; it totally reminds me of some of the point and click adventure games from the past, but with a darker tone.

There’s actually a Facebook group that was proposed for the purpose of trying to get this game published. Some key n-Space employees are on it so I think it’s something worth joining, so check it out yourself.

What I do have a problem with is what games they recommend to buy for kids and why. All Star Cheer Squad and a Nancy Drew game? High School Musical 3? Seriously!? The list of recommended titles has more hits than misses and has many notable omissions. So Mr. Ward here is going to help any of you blog-reading parents out with your game holiday shopping. Hit the jump below to see my awesome list of games you should buy for your kids this holiday season.

Mega Man 9 – Wii, XBOX 360, PS3
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Mega Man 9 takes the platforming series back to it roots from the 8 bit era of gaming. The game is challenging as there are a lot of obstacles and traps for players to avoid. These situations, in addition to boss battles, give players the opportunity to think and form strategies of their own in order to win. This is great because kids have it way too easy these days. For some reason, designers have felt having “accessibility for all” meant making many modern games brain dead easy to complete. To compliment the old school and challenging nature of Mega Man 9, the graphics and music resemble the best of what the NES had to offer many years ago. This game is just as good as Mega Man 2 or 3, and this download-only title is a great gift for your kids so that they can see how good you had it when you were their age.

Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix – XBOX 360 and PS3
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Ridiculously enough, MediaWise forgot to exclude Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe from their games to avoid. Normally the level of violence would be a good reason to not buy this for kids, and even though the violence and fatalities were toned down for a Teen rating, it’s still noticeable. Putting that aside, kids are going to want it because it has Batman and Superman and it. That may be nice and all, but the gameplay is actually trash; furthermore, the execution of many aspects of the fighting engine are heavily flawed. The game is ultimate crap(I will post at a later date specifically as to why) and it scares me that parents will their children their first foray into the fighting genre with this. Please don’t do that. Instead, be a good parent this holiday and download Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix for your kids so they can have one of the greatest fighting game experiences ever. I spent much of my Thanksgiving Break playing it. The graphics and sound have been redone(and you can choose to go old-school) and the game has been rebalanced for a much fairer competitive play. For a fourth of the price of MK vs DCU, you will get way deeper fighting game experience.

LittleBigPlanet – PS3
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
This is a cool platformer in which players can use teamwork to solve puzzles. The game is very aesthetically pleasing, with excellent level design and cute sackboys to control. This game also has the ability to create detailed levels and share them on the Playstation Network. Sony has been moderating player submissions as best as they can and so far the level of user-created content available is incredible. In addition to being a great game for the kids and family, this is one of the must-own titles for the Playstation 3.

Rock Band 2 - Wii, XBOX 360, PS3, PS2
Rated T for Teen
Don’t waste your money on Guitar Hero: World Tour. Get this game instead. I don’t care either way when it comes to the Simon Says music games, but everyone who is into them has told me that RB2 is the way to go. You can download songs in addition to the ridiculous amount of songs already available and on the PS3 and XBOX 360 versions, you can convert your old Rock Band songs for a small fee. Just make sure you have your kids play the classics so their musical tastes aren’t rotted by the emo scene!

deBlob – Wii
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Let’s face it, Nintendo dropped the ball hardcore with the Nintendo Wii this year. You probably have a good amount of dust on your Wii because nothing very notable has been released for it during the past few months. There is at least one good game this holiday for the Wii you should try out: deBlob. The game has you control a blob that has the task of restoring color to town that has had it taken away by an evil organization. The ways you can do this are very creative and overall the game is a fun and light-hearted experience. It has the visual appeal and warm nature that you would find in a Super Mario game or a Pixar film.

World of Goo – Windows, Mac and Wii
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
World of Goo won a couple of awards at the Independent Games Festival earlier this year. It’s a very unique physics-based puzzle game where you have to save a certain number of goos each level by manipulating them with the mouse(or Wii-mote) and using them to construct objects such as towers and bridges to get them to safe locations. One of the main strategies to win is to provide support as you extend your towers and bridges since the goos carry weight on them. This can cause for some interesting situations to happen as towers and bridges can topple and break or the goos can cling to surfaces you do not want them to. World of Goo is very addicting and the PC version has a demo you can try out and I highly recommend doing so.

Spore - Windows and Mac
ESRB Rating: E+10 for Everyone older than 10
This game was hyped for years and while many people didn’t have their expectations met(and certain gameplay features were cut from the final release), this game is still a great present for kids. It’s a very simple evolution game where you take the most basic form of life, evolve it into a customizable creature, build a civilization, and then travel and conquer the galaxy to your liking. There’s a lot more to that, but like the aforementioned LittleBigPlanet, Spore encourages players to be creative have some control as to how they play the game. There are more than several different stages of the game divided into smaller metagames that are based on existing genres like strategy games(Civilization, Age of Empires) and simulation games(Sim City). These metagames are nowhere near as complex as the full games they are inspired by, but I think that is good for younger players who made not be ready to handle games of such complexity and depth.

The winter looks good for gamers of all tastes and ages so do your best to go out and get some great games this holiday season!

Man, everything about this game is so awesome! I’m a big fan of games where you can just violently beat the crap out of everything you see in stylish glory. Older games like River City Ransom and Final Fight did this well and newer games like No More Heroes and Godhand take it up a few notches in the visual department. Speaking of Godhand, Platinum Games consist of developers that worked on that title and other Clover games such as Viewtiful Joe and Okami, and others have experience with the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil franchises. These games feature visceral gameplay and inspired art direction so with an awesome background consisting of some of my favorite games, I’m sure this game will be quite a delight.

I’m looking forward to lots of intense action as Jack goes around Varrigan City just annihilating people in so many ways just for the common people’s entertainment. This game shares something in common with the classic Smash TV where the protagonist(s) is trapped in a setting that is actually a game show that is filmed for television and the goal is to pretty much kill everything and everyone else. There will be lots of crazy special fighting moves and mini-games that will be absurdly violent and over the top, color commentary to go along with the carnage.

The game seems to be focused on fighting and killing and little else, which to me is good. I hope that will be no grinding, fetch quests, matching puzzles, quick-time events or any of the other bad design choices that ruin action games these days. The game is sticking to the point and even the mini-games shown extend the violent nature of the core gameplay. The man darts event in the trailer looks like it will be pretty fun as Jack smacks opponents into an over-sized dart board. The trailer also shows some really crazy fights and Jack himself has a chainsaw strapped to his hand, so I am expecting much more creative violence implemented in the final version of the game. Right now, the game hasn’t been shown in playable form but I am expecting good things and so should you. I’ll definitely be talking more about MadWorld in the future.

I’ve been playing games since before I could walk. I started with the Atari 2600 and moved through NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Pocket and Advance, Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Sony Playstation 2 and hopefully I can move onto the next-gen when I get the money saved up for it. I’m thinking of a PS3Wii combo. I also want to get a couple classic systems such as the Sega Dreamcast and Neo Geo Pocket Color whenever I can.

I love fighting games, beat-em ups, shoot-em ups, platformers, and action adventure games. I will talk more about those in the future, but for now I’ll let you know that I can go from Mega Man 2 to The King of FIghters XI and from that to Godhand within a day off dedicated to playing games. I play other kinds of games, and right now I think certain genres need a good kick in the ass. I’ll save that argument for another time.

I also like to play table-top strategy games like Puerto Rico and The Settlers of Catan and some team-based adventure games like Shadows over Camelot and Betrayal of the House on the Hill. Once in a while, when some of my friends and myself aren’t busy with work and life, wil spend roughly a whole day playing as many as we can. It’s a hobby I picked up back in 2004 thanks to Dave Arneson and I’ve kept it going since. With table-top games, you can really sit down and think about the rule sets of the game while playing it, which is something I don’t to do often with a lot of the games I play.

I hope that was a decent introduction to my blog and I hope to be able to give my thoughts on games when I can. Thanks for visiting while the site is in its early stages!