I openly admit to being a Nintendo fanboy, and Super Mario Galaxy was one of my favourite titles of 2007, so I had some pretty big expectations for Super Mario Galaxy 2. The problem was only that it felt too sequely when it was first announced. While it did have Yoshi as well as some new power-ups, the title alone just felt less innovative than I’d expected from a mario game. In my opinion, Nintendo has always been able to bring in something new to the Mario series while still staying true to its core platforming mechanics.

Upon finally playing the game, I came to the realisation that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the culmination of everything Nintendo has ever done with the Mario series. Everything from the music, the graphics, level design and boss battles is a reference to an older Mario title, or a new spin on something old. It almost seems to wallow in nostalgia, but unfortunately it doesn’t really seem to move forward.

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To anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past few months, Justin Bieber is the annoying 15 year old “singer” who looks like he’s 12 and sounds like he’s 4. His one-hit-wonder “Baby” featuring Ludacris has been clogging up the airways of pop radio stations, not to mention the brainwaves of tweens everywhere. Yet somehow, someone’s managed to make Bieber’s song into something game related and quite heartwarming.

YouTube user AGentertainment has created his own cover version of Bieber’s song “Baby”, turning it into Yoshi singing about his comeback in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Fair warning, though, as the song is a massive earworm that will most likely stay in your brain for a long time.

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I read a lot of articles on gaming in order to gain inspiration and quite possibly pick up some tips on how to improve my own writing. And a lot of these articles inspire me to do things like the Evening Topic series, but this turned out a little longer than I first intended. I love discussing video games, and I love hearing other people’s opinions, so if you agree or disagree, feel free to have your say in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »

We love games. We love playing them, reading about them, talking about them and writing about them. Yet there’s always something about our beloved hobby that we just can’t stand. It could be anything from encountering obnixious players online, to undergoing fetch quests and experiencing an unexpected change of genre. This article is to honor those things

- What are some of the things about gaming you just can’t stand?

- What about these things annoy you?

- Have there ever been moments when your gaming pet peeve hasn’t annoyed you?

In these sandbox times established by the likes of GTA, Carmageddon and Sim City, it seems to me like linearity has become a sin when it comes to game development. Unless you’re making a certain type of game, a linear style of gameplay and story progression seems to have certain fans screaming for blood.

Final Fantasy XIII in particular has had to endure a lot of flack for keeping the first 25 hours of the game strictly linear, while other games that used to be linear like the Prince of Persia series are going for something more akin to a sandbox title.

I’ve always upheld that linearity is far from a bad thing. I grew up playing linear games and some of my favourite games of all time are completely linear. So I ask you

- Why is linearity considered such a pet peeve of certain gamers?

- Is a sandbox title inherently better than a level based, linear game?

I dunno about my fellow writers here at The Gaming Vault, but I am definitely excited about Funcom’s new MMO The Secret WOrld, which combines real world history with myths, urban legends and pop culture into a new and “exciting universe”.

So far we’ve seen two trailers and some screenshots, but actual in-game footage hadn’t surfaced until this week. This isn’t gameplay footage, but it does show off the game’s in-game graphics.

The trailer introduces us to the small town of Kingsmouth, which should sound familiar to those who like H.P. Lovecraft. Not to mention the fact that a streetsign appears to read “Lovekraft lane”. The black and white footage shows off the town post-destruction, with a narrator explaining what happened. How it fits into the overall story remains to be seen.

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It seems to me that a lot of gamers, not to mention game journalists, have gotten it into their heads that our chosen form of recreation won’t be taken seriously unless we recognise a landmark achievement within the history of gaming; the video game equivalent to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

Being both a film student and a gamer this is a concept that really speaks to me, but before I go into the basic gist of things I’d like to take a moment to explain what I mean by the Citizen Kane of video games.

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All of us here at TGV love us some Zero Wing, especially the amazingly humorous Engrish translation. My personal favourite is “someone set up us the bomb”, but most gamers are familiar with “All Your Base are Belong to Us”.

The guys at Too Much Spare Time Animation have made a hilarious mashup of Zero Wing’s opening scene and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The sheer amounts of awesome contained in this video can’t be described by words alone, so I’ll just let the video do the talking.

Guys, do you have girlfriends? Could it be you spend a wee bit too much time on your console rather than paying attention to your girlfriend? I would advise you to stop, put the controller down and give her more than a few minutes, or something like the following video just might happen to you.

Some girl decided that she was fed up with her boyfriends video game addiction and decided to take action. So she promptly smashed his Xbox 360 with a golf club, hoping this would send a clear enough message. But not only that, she decided to post it online, allowing all of us to enjoy her rather feeble and girly, but heartfelt(?), attempts at destroying an Xbox 360.

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This is one of the most far out, yet most awesome thing I’ve seen on the internet all day.

For those not in the know, a YouTube user have been creating his own versions of Super Mario World levels that plays themselves and makes music as a result. They’re fun, crazy and at times kinda confusing to watch, but the final result is a pretty awesome experience.

This time it’s Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” being played by four different Mario levels running simultaneously. I’ll be quiet now so you can watch it and behold the awesomeness.

If you’re a gamer and Star Wars fan, you’ve more than likely heard of LucasArts, the videogame developer side of Lucasfilm. Most of us associate LucasArts with the point-and-click adventure game craze of the 80′s and 90′s, when the company wasn’t just milking the Star Wars franchise for all it was forth. And for a time, it was good. But then adventure games sort of just stopped, their market value having fallen once full 3D and the Quake era had begun. LucasArts decided to make Star Wars games instead, which has obviously payed off despite some quality issues on certain games.

So imagine my jubilations when I saw an interview with LucasArts president Darrel Rodriguez on GTTV, who promised to bring LucasArts back to their old style of game developing. Star Wars was still their bread and butter, obviously, but he wanted the company to branch out and bring more quality games onto the market. The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition had just been released on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, and more LucasArts adventure games was coming to Steam. LucasArts shut down for a week in order to generate new ideas and concepts. One of these concepts was Lucidity, which they decided to make into a full game.

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Rocktober is upon us, and you should all know what that means: Tim Schafer is back, with a game that could only rock harder if it was made out of stone. But that wouldn’t be a very great gaming experience. Brutal Legend has a lot to live up to considering Schafer’s history with LucasArts’ adventure games and his previous game that no one bought: Psychonauts.

Brutal Legend kicks off, where else, at a metal concert. Jack Black plays Eddie Riggs, the world’s best roadie who’s working for the world’s worst metal band: Kabbage Boy. They have a tween audience, which doesn’t sit well with Eddie. There’s nothing that Eddie can’t build or fix, except the band itself. After an on-stage accident some of Eddie’s blood spills onto his belt-buckle, in reality an amulet of Ormagöden, The Fire Beast, Cremator of the Sky and Destroyer of the Ancient World.

Stellar voice acting and a great script makes characters come alive. Jack Black is perfect for the voice of Eddie Riggs

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It seems to me lately that video game developer are doing their best to bring us back to what man consider the golden days of gaming; the 80′s.

Now that the video game children of the 70′s and 80′s have grown up, they too are making games for current-gen consoles, which leads to a slew of titles that reference or follow up on older titles.

Bionic Commando and Street Fighter 4 are both sequels to classic games from the 80′s, Castle Crashers and MadWorld pay tribute to good old arcade style beat-em-ups, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game takes us back to a film franchise established in 1984.

- Are these blasts from the past a good thing?

- Wouldn’t original content be better than repeating older formulas and merely tread new skin over old games?

- Are you pining away for the golden days of gaming?

For today’s evening topic I decided to bring up the games we all love to hate: Video game adaptations of popular movies. Whenever there’s a huge Hollywood blockbuster in the works, it’s fairly certain a video game adaptation will be made out of it. And it usually means the title will suck, though some have proven the cynics wrong.

The first video game adaptation to ever, hrm, grace consoles was E.T. on the Atari 2600, which certainly was a taste of things to come. Though not always… Some, Spider-man 2, GoldenEye, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to name a few actually got it right. But why?

- How is it some video game adapations can suck so terribly? (I.E. The Incredible Hulk, Spider-man 3, E.T., 24 (though technically not a movie)

-And how is it someone can manage to get it so right? (Previously mentioned Spider-man 2, GoldenEye, etc.)

Edge magazine’s 200rd issue features a list we’ve often seen before, but with a twist. In stead of merely stating the 100 greatest games ever made, they decided to list the “100 best games to play today”.

Edge magazine poses the question “if you had every game ever made at your fingertips,‭ ‬which would we play right now‭? ‬What are the games,‭ ‬shorn of nostalgia and presumption,‭ ‬that we would actually want to spend time playing‭?”

The list is quite a good readthrough, but the number one game is easily guessed.

Can you guess what it is without looking?