I’ve been a little bit out of whack this week so I don’t have a full feature to share. Hopefully a short status update will suffice!

I have been playing a lot of LEGO Batman, mainly. You may recall that it is one of the games I was looking forward to most this year. It’s very fun and has more content than I could have anticipated. On the RPG front I have started playing Rogue Galaxy on PS2 and on my DS I am continuing to chug along in Luminous Arc. Somewhere along the way I seemed to trip and fall into Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, also on my DS. I’m enjoying all of these but with the distractions of home renovations happening all day and the anxiety of soon-to-be-due school work I have not been able to shift my focus to DoSu this week.

I do have a short video to share, however. Running through various levels in Free Play mode of LEGO Batman for red bricks and canisters (gotta collect’em all), I came across a fun glitch. It involves Mr. Freeze, an innocent bystander and an inifinite supply of LEGO bits. If anybody else is playing, I’m curious to know if this can be duplicated on the console versions (I play on PC, of course).

Video game lore that extends beyond the games themselves, specifically through comic books, has traditionally been disastrous. With the high volume of video game comics these days, however, there are bound to be a few hits. For instance, I found that The Darkness Levels comics released just prior to the video game’s console debut in the summer of 2007 complimented it nicely and enriched my experience when I played through the game. Conversely, I had a bad run-in with the World of Warcraft comic and its lack of substance. Then again, as evidenced by the Halo comic, sometimes a venture into the wonderful world of sequential art can fail simply by being tardy; Issue #1 released in August of 2007 with #2 arriving that following November. We didn’t see issue #3 until August of 2008, a year after the series started. Disaster!

Unbeknownst to me until very recently, a manga based on the Ace Attorney series of video games have been coming out in Japan since 2007. Fortunately for us fans, Capcom has a hit on their hands and in September of 2008 they, along with Del Rey Manga, brought it to the western world under the name Official Casebook Vol. 1: The Phoenix Wright Files.
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A game can turn out to be a failure for any number of reasons. Maybe a game is like Beyond Good & Evil where it gets lost in the shuffle of bigger releases for years before being properly appreciated. Maybe you’re a developer who’s too close to his game to recognize fundamental flaws in certain aspects of its design, as was reportedly the case with Lair. Or maybe you’re like today’s cheap game, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and you just got a bad rap.

Originally released by Ubisoft in October of 2006 and developed by Arkane Studios, Dark Messiah didn’t have the luxury of blaming its less-than-stellar reception on other, more hyped games coming out along side it. 2006 wasn’t bad for games, but I don’t think Splinter Cell: Double Agent or Marvel Ultimate Alliance were what kept people from playing Dark Messiah at the end of October. No, Dark Messiah’s failing was primarily due to little more than a buggy launch that earned it a bad reputation. Alas, even the demo was plagued by bugs, so the game was leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths before it was even released. Despite what must have been a very frustrating launch for Ubisoft, DMMM has since been patched up quite nicely as well as had some hefty price reductions.
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Third party Wii titles are a dime a dozen. Many don’t succeed, mostly due to quality, but also in no small part due to underexposure and Nintendo’s failure to properly promote them. A couple recent examples are Zack & Wiki and Boom Blox. Fun, well executed games that just didn’t have very stellar sales. One game I am hoping will not fall by the wayside is the Wii version of De Blob. You may remember this as one of the first cheap games featured here as Downloadable Suicide.

In my original article I mentioned that THQ is bringing it to Wii and DS sometime in 2008. The Wii version dropped a week or two ago and seems to have been met with critical success. It’s currently the 17th highest ranked Wii game on Metacritic with an average score of 82. Worthplaying gave it a 90 and said “It is a rare game that can appeal equally well to both the casual and hardcore crowds, yet de Blob does just that.”. EuroGamer had a grim comment that I hope won’t turn out to be true, “Probably the best and worst thing about de Blob is that it’s got ‘Destined For Cult Status’ written all over it.” GamePlayer felt De Blob worthy of a perfect 10 saying that it is “The first third-party Wii game that would have Mr Miyamoto bowing in awed respect.” Nice.

Reviews aside, the purpose of this post is simply to remind you about De Blob and its roots as a student project on the PC. While the breadth of its gameplay has evolved significantly during its transition to the Wii, its whimsical spirit and aesthetics appear to have stayed intact. Check it out on PC and consider giving it a look if you happen to own a Wii. The DS version looks like it’s going to bake a bit longer before it’s ready for consumption; it’s the version that I’ll be giving a try.

Though a simplistic platformer it may be, it is clear that Love was crafted carefully and arduously from top to bottom by developer Fred Wood. Boasting twenty levels of pure platforming goodness and an eleven track original music score by James Bennett, not to mention a smartly implemented checkpoint and lives system, Love is honestly a joy to play.

Simplistic controls eliminate a barrier to entry. After adjusting the game window to an appropriate size with F5 and F6, you’ll use arrow keys to move left or right, A to jump (hold for a longer jump), S to set your checkpoint and D to recall to that checkpoint at the cost of one life (of one hundred). The game’s difficulty is dependant on your patience, timing and reflexes.
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I’ve played Trials 2: Second Edition for well over four hours, cumulatively. In fact, this week alone I have played for just over five. I keep finding myself coming back to Trials 2 because the developer, Redlynx, seems pretty intent on keeping it up-to-date and filled with brand new content in the form of free updates. Since I first posted my original Trials 2 article, it has been patched twice from 1.06 to 1.07, and finally this last week to 1.08. With these updates comes engine improvements and optimizations, stability tweaks and most importantly, new downloadable tracks.

Version 1.08 of Trials 2 was delivered on September 18th with netbooks like the ASUS Eeepc and MSI Wind in mind, featuring a slew of graphics engine updates including a low graphics mode and VRAM usage optimizations. Trials 2 has also been certified for triple-display gameplay at resolutions up to 5040×1050 (somebody do that and send us pictures). Additionally, 14 new tracks were added for free. As a result of the graphics engine additions, changes and optimzations, Trials 2 also has a new set of minimum recommended system requirements. Those revised requirements as well as the rest of the lengthy 1.08 patch notes can be viewed at the official Trials 2: Second Edition forums.

In spite of rumors of its impending demise, Dungeon Runners – a free-to-play MMORPG featured here at DoSu – continues to be supported by the remaining developers of NCSoft Austin. A major update was released today that adds guilds (called “posses”), player blogs (pages that track character progress similar to the service that SOE offers for their games), as well as several engine updates, including a refinement of their shader system and the addition of specular lighting. Full patch notes are available at the game’s official website.