The path to success has never been an easy one for Tim Schafer, as he has made some critically acclaimed hits, but none have ever reached a huge level of monetary success.  After having Brutal Legend toil through the Activision-Vivendi merger, we now have EA that swept in to pick up the pieces and give Brutal Legend the attention and advertising that the game, and Tim Schafer need to make this game a success.

Of course, advertising won’t make Brutal Legend any good, but thankfully, the folks at Double Fine have been working on every little detail to capture the true feel of what it would be like to be sucked into an 80’s heavy metal record cover.  After my time with Brutal Legend, I can say that so far it looks to be another critical success with a solid story, great action and quirky characters that we have come to enjoy in a Double Fine production.

My playtime centered around the battle against the nun that looks like a big ugly demon, as well as finding your female cohort in crime in the adventure series.  Right off the bat, you see the world that Eddie Riggs, our main character voiced by Jack Black, and it is has all the elements you would expect of a rocking action/adventure game.  Skulls litter the ground, there was a cathedrel where candles were strewn about, lighting up the place, and of course, we find a rock with a big ass axe sitting inside of it, similar to the way Arthur found Excalibur.  Eddie draws out the axe and finds it is christened “The Separator”.   Eddie also had his trusted axe for this section of the game, called “Clementine”.

The controls were simple enough to pick up, with one button assigned to your axe attacks, and another to strum out shocking riffs from your guitar.  You also have a block button and a block button to help defend you from the inevitable overwhelming attacks that you will receive at points in the Brutal Legend.  As tthe game transitioned from a cutscene to the actual batte with the Demon Nun, I noticed how well the animations for the characters looked very detailed, and the world gave a feeling of being in the bowels of hell.  At first I thought this would just be a button masher, but you cannot just wield attacks without thinking, as some attacks run out of juice, or have a cool down period.  Case in point is that I tried to strum my  way out of battle using my blistering guitar solos to electrify the demon nun, but after a few attacks, Eddie has to put the guitar away, as it is too hot to play.  The guitar starts to get red hot while he is playing it, so you cannot just continously use the attack to wipe out foes.  It is fun to watch Eddie riff to the point of a smoking guitar and then have him blowing on his fingers to cool them down.

Using a combination of slashing axe attacks and guitar solos, I did manage to take down the Demon Nun.  At this point, we get to see some classic Schafer humor as we need to use the Demon Nun’s travelling carriage to get me to the next part of the level, but it is powered by prayer.  So Eddie gets down on one knee and starts letting out with one of the funniest monologues I have heard in quite some time.  Pray is probably not suppose to be funny, but the things that come out of Eddie’s mouth are priceless and hilarious.

At the bottom of the trail, we gained a new attack, called the Earth Shaker, that allows me to jump in the air and slam down on to the ground.  The attack really helped with pushing enemies out of the way as they started to gang up on me.  I also noticed the environmental damage at this point in the game.  It seems that almost all of the environment can be destroyed.  I was not sure if the environment can be used to kill enemies, but one thing that you can use is your teammate and possible love interest, Ophelia.  After you meet Ophelia, in another funny cutscene, you can then use her to help you attack by pressing a button.  She launches herself off of you to attack an enemy, and is a capable fighter on her own.

My time with the demo concluded at this point, and I have to say that right now, EA has a true hit on their hands come October.  The game seems to mix up enough of the action and adventure elements, and Brutal Legend’s setting is something new and different, that should be golden with a touch of Schafer’s inevitable magic that makes his games so much fun to play.  Thanks to Ben Swanson for getting us some time on the demo, and look for Brutal Legend on October 13th.

I bring this up because it still seems that some of you haven’t yet ventured into this somewhat new arena. I know you may be shy or worried about your anonymity, but that can be helped by using the Ps3’s built-in voice changer to mask your real identity. When you set your mod to deep/evil no one will make fun of you for having the voice of a 5 year old. Also, in case you think you need an expensive and/or fancy Bluetooth headset, all it takes is a USB microphone/headset to use the voice chat. With combined sales numbers of almost 1.5 million copies, a few of you must have purchased Rock Band (1 or 2) with a microphone that could be used to allow greater interaction with your fellow players. Hey, if you have a USB microphone for your PC, you can use that as well.

How do I know that there seems to be a disparaging amount of people not using this feature? Because out of all of my random online gaming encounters, very few competitors have used it. Let me put this into perspective. During the beta for LittleBIGPlanet, less than 1/4 of the players I adventured with exploited voice chat. In all of my random battles in Street Fighter IV, including where I accepted random fight requests, no one has had voice chat enabled. This is discouraging, because after you choose to fight me, and I whomp you, I want to be able to rub it in your face… or congratulate you when you rub my face into the ground.

Either way, I reach out to you fellow PS3 online gamers: grab your microphone headsets and let your voice be heard online.

Mr. Smith Goes to the Hospital Fundraiser

Dead Again ( Performed by Possible Oscar)

Sam and Max have come back to the PC to finish up their second season, and Telltale Games has pulled out all the stops with this episode to make it the best of all the new Sam and Max games released.

After being abducted, turned into zombies, meeting Santa and visiting Easter Island, lovable Sam and Max have ended up in the one place that they should have figured they would go at some point in their lives – Hell. Yep, our two favorite freelance police detectives have come to find themselves living above the entrance to Hell, and all the leads on Bosco lead them to the Prince of Darkness’ lair. Through twists and turns, you slowly start to unravel the true identity of the culprit behind everything that has happened over the last two seasons, and you will be shocked.

The writers of the Sam and Max episodes have always had a knack for hitting topics with great humor and sarcasm, but they really hit their stride in this episode. The whole idea of Hell being run like a business, complete with outsourcing labor just has to be seen and heard to get the full extent of the joke. Subtle touches include a landfill of cartridges from a game that was deemed terrible, and an Esperanto bookstore to show what ends up in Hell are great references of items that have been deemed horrible.

Puzzles have been another solid point in this ongoing series, and this episode is no different. While playing the game, I never really came across a puzzle I could not figure out. Every puzzle has a logical item that can be used with it, so you are never bound to get stuck. And the in-game help system works on a slider, so you can get as much, or as little help as you deem necessary.

Telltale has strived to give this season more of an identity, having you go to new and unique locations, and episode five is no different. The vision of Hell comes almost completely out of most corporate office workplaces, including twisted motivational posters and corporate workers that have been salvaged from the souls of people that Sam and Max have killed over the years.

All the voice work is at its best in this episode, with no one slouching on their performaces. Of particular note is the Devil himself. Nothing like seeing the Devil as this large ominous figure only to hear his haughty British voice talking about middle management and corporate takeovers.

If there was one complaint I could come up with, it would be that the game is a bit on the short side, but it is less of a complaint, and more along the lines that the season finished on such a high note, that I wanted it to keep going.

So if you are looking for a game that will make you laugh and work your brain all at the same time, Sam and Max Episode Five: What’s Up Beelzebub will definitely fill the bill. And if a good game is not enough to get you motivated, Telltale has put the extras disc online for anyone that has purchased or purchases a full season, so there you go. Look for it today at Telltalegames.com or Gametap. Sam and Max Episode Five: What’s Up Beelzebub gets a 5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Is there anything to be learned within its dog-eared pages? Probably not, so let’s just make fun of it…

I’m just assuming this is the April release since it spotlights a lot of “COMING SOON” releases in April and May, like cover game Grand Theft Auto IV. I love the little RP, like there’s any question what GTAIV will be rated. I’m sure the ESRB is dithering between a T and an M as we speak.

The Guide kicks off with eight pages of DS product, because it probably just makes a ton of money-sense to frontload the DS right now. Of course, I’m immediately irritated because of this:

Mario Party DS was released in November 2007. New Super Mario Bros, May 2006. Mario Kart DS was November 2005. All three are still retailing for $35. Nintendo is just so incredibly stingy about letting their games slip in price (unless they shift a console game into the Players’ Choice category, which has no analogue on the DS). Throw us a frickin’ bone here, Nintendo!

There is nothing to be proud about on this page. Unless you’re Ubisoft, I suppose. I won’t buy into this franchise until they enable WiFi link play and I can feed the smaller animals to the Tigerz. And yes, that needs to includes the Babyz.

Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship is inevitably going to end up in one of those annual Worst Box Art Ever weblog posts that crop up at year’s end when the game sites want to take off early for the holidays so they pre-schedule a lot of articles they can easily write ahead of time.

I mean, why the visual conflict here? Either you’re appealing to the casual crowd who might recognize this as a video game version of a favorite board game… or you’re, you know, about steambots.

This seems telling. The trend everywhere else in the catalog is to list the game or product, and then follow it with a byline for the company or publisher. For all the first party Xbox stuff, the byline reads “by Xbox.” As in, not “by Microsoft.” Obviously we have an exceptionally pedantic graphic artist here, which explains the needless redundancy of “Xbox 360 Arcade – by Xbox,” but maybe there’s some subtle spin at work as well, as Microsoft attempts to mask their own bad reputation?

Now that we’re into the Xbox section, the Game Guide assumes we can read, because more of the featured games have explanatory text boxes. (Seriously, almost none of the DS and PSP games have text with them.) Of course, this doesn’t mean the text will read well, as we can see in the ridiculous turn-of-phrase of Iron Man being “one of Marvel’s most durable super heroes.” He’s not invincible. He’s merely durable.

Our anal retentive layout designer didn’t catch this… two of the three Smash Bros Brawl screenshots are completely borked. Whose Final Smash is that? Mr. Scrambled Cable Porn?

Whatever text you can read there for Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit can equally apply to any DBZ game ever made.

Ah, the PlayStation2 Memory Card (8MB). Still $25 after all these years. I think the profit margin on these puppies single-handedly fronted the entire PS3 development.

And one last weird bit of marketing before we run out of pages…

Let’s watch the concentric circles grow progressively smaller (all values to be defined in “number of people”): Bought Rock Band > Bought PS2 Rock Band > Bought Non-Bundle PS2 Rock Band > Bought Non-Bundle PS2 Rock Band and Drums > Bought Non-Bundle PS2 Rock Band and Two Sets of Drums > Bought Non-Bundle PS2 Rock Band, Two Sets of Drums, and Actually Clicked the Multiplayer Options “Score Duel” and “Tug-of-War”

That one person left at the end of all that is precisely who this blurb is targeting. Or perhaps the ad is trying to create that person.

I enjoy a good RPG every now and again, but it’s pretty clear that there hasn’t been a whole lot of innovation in the formula in quite a while. In an effort to diversify from the “spiky haired hero saves the universe from a horrible fate” storyline, developers have flooded every peripheral possibility, and as much as I and others still enjoy these tired clich?