We check out life on the farm in Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands.
Harvest Moon is no stranger to handheld platforms, and Sunshine Island represents the latest step for the series on the Nintendo DS. The core is the same as always: try to run a farm while balancing an active social life. However, Natsume has tweaked some things and added a few new features that should appeal to fans of the series.
We feast on greasy meat in this fast-paced cooking simulator.
Everyone loves to cram buckets of fast food into their gaping maw, but the real dream is to make it yourself. Fast Food Panic gives you a chance to put on your hairnet and deep fry the nearest hunk of dead cow in a desperate attempt to satisfy the hungry masses always yearning for more, more, more. We had a chance to stick our hand in the fryer earlier today and came away feeling like we just needed to lie down for a few minutes.
We delve into the belly of the beast in Nintendo’s upcoming action role-playing game.
The two famous mustachioed Italian brothers have traveled all over Mushroom Kingdom and beyond, but it’s likely that they never thought that they’d end up in the tummy of their archnemesis, Bowser. In their latest role-playing adventure, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, they must navigate through the bowels of Bowser, who is congested with goombas–at least from what we could tell of our demo. The game was announced during the Nintendo press conference, and we were able to play through a short demo to get a feel for this action RPG.
We scare the neighbors in this kid-friendly action game.
A monster is tearing down the neighborhood! Don’t be alarmed, though, because you’re controlling that hulking beast. In Monster Mayhem: Build and Battle, you design your own hideous being in your secret laboratory and then introduce him to your neighbors by smashing their cars and tearing down their fences. It just goes to show that even if you create sentient life out of nothing more than discarded graveyard scraps, you still can’t teach the thing manners. The kid-friendly action game is scheduled for release this August for both the Wii and DS.
We didn’t get a chance to build our own monster today, but we did get to take him around the peaceful suburbs, smashing everything in sight. You can scoop up people walking around the street and pop them in your mouth like they’re living popcorn, as well as knock down the various objects that you encounter. When you destroy something, you can collect whatever it dropped and use that to make your monster even stronger. Different objects have different properties, so you can get wood from a fence or metal from a car. We were told that you can combine these elements in your laboratory to make tonics, though we didn’t see this feature in action.
When you grow weary of tormenting tiny people, you can pick on someone your own size. Other monsters are knocking down walls and houses in other parts of the city, and you have to show them who the real monster boss is. These encounters are all turn-based, rock-paper-scissor fights. You have three different attacks–strong smash, weak slap, and a blocking move–and each move is strong against one attack but weak against the other. For instance, your defensive move can counter a weak punch, but will lose to a strong bash. Every opponent has its own pattern, so you have to figure it out to damage it. The monster that we fought selected its attacks in a clockwise motion, which was easy to learn. Harder monsters will be more complex, though.
Monster Mayhem isn’t a very complicated game, so it should appeal to younger players who wish they could have their own hideous buddy. The game is scheduled for release this August, so check back later to see how it turns out.
We found out what it’s like to be the Overlord controlling his minions using the stylus at Codemasters’ E3 booth.
It’s clear that June is officially Overlord month, with three games across three platforms all arriving in a few weeks’ time. We checked them out at publisher Codemasters’ E3 booth, focusing on Overlord Minions on the Nintendo DS.
Overlord Minions can be thought of as a side quest to the upcoming Wii title, happening alongside the story of that particular game. Codemasters promises that there will be a lot of subtle hints to the first game and the Wii game in Overlord Minions, but it won’t be necessary to have played them to get the most out of it.
