Previews

A small group organized by @PNWJournos was invited to the Fuelcell Games studios for a sneak peek at upcoming DLC for one of the 2011's best titles, Xbox Live Arcade's Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

Activision hosted a preview at a local hotel near PAX Prime 2011, and my wife and I got a sneak peek at their lineup. On display were Goldeneye 007: Reloaded, Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, X-Men: Destiny (holy cow, that’s a lot of colons…) and Prototype 2. There's not really much to report about most of those titles, or at least, they didn't catch and hold my attention for more than a minute or two. However, Prototype 2 was the one I was most interested in, and thankfully, it looked great.

Continuing the coverage from last week's visit to Sony Online Entertainment, here's a rundown of the upcoming Magic: The Gathering—Tactics for the PlayStation and PC.

I freely admit that I've got next to no experience with MMOs. I rarely play games on the PC, and my schedule is so busy and erratic that trying to coordinate with other people is next to impossible. As a result, I had only cursory knowledge of what DC Universe Online had to offer. However, after the thorough walkthrough provided by one of the game's developers, I'd be more than willing to give this one a shot.

UFC Undisputed 2010 is set to be released May 25, but I was fortunate to get an early hands-on preview as part of a THQ media event out in Las Vegas. After getting a crash course in Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing and Kickboxing as part of a mini-bootcamp, all of the attending journalists were given extensive time to play through the enhanced Career mode with latter part of the evening devoted to an elimination style tournament between the journalists. How did yours truly do in that tournament? I'll get back to that later, but first let me give my impressions of the gameplay changes and new features. 

So, Capcom was gracious enough to invite me in to get a sneak peek of Lost Planet 2's multiplayer the other day. I'd never been to Capcom before and there were a ton of great review/journo people as well, so it was truly a double treat to attend the event.

Way of the Samurai 3 came about back in November, but sadly it remains the best game I haven't played yet. Why? Because it was only released in Japan, and although PS3s are admirably region-free, the Japanese language's stubborn refusal to transform magically into English has transformed the prospect of importing a copy of it from a delightful dream into an utter waste of money.

So, until some publisher spends the absolutely minimal amount of money required to turn the menus and text into English, I'll have to be satisfied with a brief preview of a game that may never see a North American release.

(sigh)

With the recent spate of demos released over Xbox Live, I thought it was a good time to take a look at what they have to say about the products they’re marketing to us!

This time around, I'll be covering UFC Undisputed 2009, Red Faction: Guerilla, Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Bionic Commando, Up, and Battlestations: Pacific.

I try not to whore myself out too much, but I'm a sucker for a good Atlus game in general, and doubly so for Shin Megami Tensei games in particular. In lieu of my regularly-scheduled blog content, instead nibble on this preview for the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor coming to the Nintendo DS.

Developed by Sting Entertainment, Dokapon Journey is a "friendship-destroying RPG" (slash board game) where up to four players can compete to save towns from monsters and to make themselves rich. It can also be played single-player with CPU-controlled opponents, but where's the fun in that?