We’ve been having fun with Pushmo throughout the office since triketank’s glowing recommendation and we made you a puzzle of our beautiful Game Usagi logo. Do you have Pushmo puzzles of your own to share? You can post them in the comments and we’ll be happy to try them out. This is the first puzzle we constructed, so it isn’t fiendishly hard, but it should be enjoyable none-the-less, enjoy!
Developer: Ubisoft Montréal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Adventure/Platformer
Players: 1
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC/Mac
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Hours Played: Less than 12
Game Progress: Finished main storyline
Ubisoft Montréal, famous for hit titles like Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy?s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and many more came out with a blockbuster title yet again with 2008’s chapter of the Prince of Persia saga. Prince of Persia includes many of the timed attacks and wall running that the series is known for with the addition of new and exciting battle techniques, a fresh graphic style, and an epic story-line with excellent voice acting. Is the new Prince of Persia an instant classic that will entertain you for hours on end or a classic Ubisoft money-grab to play off gamers’ affections for an older series? Read on to find out.
Well, there we have it. While it wasn’t the most flamboyant of April Fools on the Internet, there were a couple of gems to be had (and a whole lot of content from Google). We hope that you enjoyed our breaking of tradition with a bunch of seriously handled April Fools jokes in the stead of a fake website overhaul. If you missed them, here’s a list of our fake news stories for you to read, plus a link to our original look back at April Fools past where we denounced this frivolity in favour of proper journalism in a thinly veiled mockery of some of the less personable video game news/review website out there (you know who you are).
Now we can get back to our mildly serious-cat lives and continue to bring light news and reviews to you, from gamers like you.
If you have ideas for what we could do next year, the planning has already begun. Drop me a line at miyamoto@gameusagi.com with any thoughts on how we could improve your April Fools merriment.
-Miyamoto
Nintendo announced today that Virtual Boy games are finally coming to the 3DS eShop. Due to the very limited run of the Virtual Boy not many people have been able to experience the 22 games that were available for the system. They also announced that Nintendo Club members who reach the Platinum level in 2012 will be able to choose as their prize the Official Virtual Boy 3DS Viewer, a classic Virtual Boy-shaped shell that will allow you to slide your 3DS inside. Far better than the hats, pins, and statuettes available to Platinum members in the past, things are looking up for Club Nintendo in North America.
I personally own a Virtual Boy and I would be very happy to be able to play Virtual Boy Wario Land or Galactic Pinball (two of my favourites) again on the 3DS. While I understand that people had qualms with the system’s monochromatic graphics, I have enjoyed every minute of playing with the Virtual Boy and have never completely understood why it failed so terribly. Here’s to the Virtual Boy living once again through its grown-up ancestor the 3DS.
Sony did have some good news today to counterbalance the rather shocking PS Vita news. Via their corporate blog Sony both announced and launched a new VAIO Ultrabook. What makes this Ultrabook special is that it is by far the smallest laptop ever mass-produced. With a screen size of only 1.25″x0.75″, the VAIO Q can easily fit in pretty much anybody’s pockets. The specs that they managed to pack into this device (as listed above) are also astounding and almost blow my huge custom gaming computer out of the water. Needless to say, such a capable, 3D-enabled computer of such miniscule dimensions is really putting the heat on portable video game consoles, as why would you want to carry around devices with bulky 3″ screens when you could play Crysis 2 at Max DirectX 11 settings anywhere you wanted?
I’m going to have to drop by my local Sony store pretty soon to check this out because I still have a couple reservations. The monocle that they show that’s used to make the screen appear larger looks slightly uncomfortable. I hope that they had the foresight to put padding on it or something to reduce strain when gaming for a couple hours at a time. The keyboard and trackpad are also so small that they’re basically mutually exclusive, meaning that you could probably only manage to use one of them at a time. There is a dock that allows you to attach regular USB peripherals to the VAIO Q and I hope that it comes with it for free, because I can imagine that most people that will but this device will probably want to supply their own keyboards and mice to ensure that they can be used at the same time, especially for gaming purposes. Make sure to check out the announcement video or the official product page to see a few of the different ways in which this clever piece of tech can be used.
We’ll have an impressions article about whether or not this will end up being a good gaming device in the next couple of days when we get a chance to visit a Sony store and try it out.
Apple has continued its series of lawsuits against just about everything with a multi-touch touchscreen, this time targeting the PS Vita. The lawsuit, which has apparently been in the US courts since the announcement of the system as the NGP but kept quiet in the media by both sides, shows Apple claiming the PS Vita’s menu “is a flagrant and shameless imitation of our iOS interface”.
Apparently the courts have granted not only an injunction against the importation of new PS Vita units from Japan, but also the removal of remaining units from store shelves and online retailers within the next 48 hours. Sony is still hopeful that they can beat the pressure from Apple as Jack Tretton, Sony USA President, posted on his Twitter feed, “We hope to see the Vita back in production and back on sale within the next seven days”.
So, if you were on the fence about getting a PS Vita, now would probably be your best (and perhaps last) opportunity to get one. Just be sure to pay extra for overnight shipping if you’re ordering it online, because if your order doesn’t get processed in time you’ll be out of luck like Sony themselves.
We’ll keep you posted on any further developments in this unprecedented dispute.
[cp_youtube id=”7NufHsmITjM” points=”20″ width=”525″]
Ubisoft announced an Assassin’s Creed Kinect game today without a solid release date. It seems that instead of being a spin-off of Assassin’s Creed 3 that it’s going to be another chapter in the already much too long Ezio saga surrounding Assassin’s Creed 2. We still don’t have a Kinect for the Game Usagi office and this new entry into the Assassin’s Creed series isn’t really making us chomp at the bit to get one either. The controls, like in many other Kinect games, look too involved to be engaging or fun even in small amounts. If Microsoft wants the Kinect to be taken seriously, this is certainly not the way in which to do it.
