Wii Preview - 'Monster Lab'
by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008
Genre: Action/Role-Playing
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Backbone
Release Date: Q4 2008
Who doesn't love mad scientists? From their crazy hair to their bizarre fixations on anything from raising the dead to launching someone into space to watch terrible movies, they're the crazy nutbags that everyone loves. That's why it's so surprising that so few games actually put you into the role of a mad scientist. It seems like the perfect thing for video games: tons of innovation and the lack of morals or common sense to question if said innovation might, say, doom mankind. Thankfully, Eidos is
Three-dimensional Castlevania games have always been a bit lackluster than their 2-D counterparts. While Symphonia of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow are considered among the best games on their respective systems, Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: 64 are generally held to be mediocre at best and borderline unplayable at worst. There's just something about the trip into 3-D that makes Castlevania lose its magic. Perhaps this strange curse is what made Konami decide to make the first Wii Castlevania title into something completely different. Castlevania: Judgment)
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With the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV and BioShock in Take-Two's second-half lineup, it would be easy for a Wii-exclusive title like Carnival Games to get lost in the spectacle that is E3 (even in its weakened state). In fact, we weren't totally sure that we were going to see it, but after our brief look at Civilization Revolution, we were whisked into a curtained-off section of a nearby room at get a quick hands-on look at the late-August release.)
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To call Civilization console-agnostic would be a misnomer. In actuality, it's just been a long damn time since Sid Meier's turn-based world-beating sim last made a console appearance. Almost a decade, in fact — Civilization II for PSone popped up in 1998 (following the original Civilization for Super Nintendo in 1994), and since then, the closest the series has come to escaping the clutches of computer gaming is an N-Gage version that quietly shipped early last year.)
Nintendo came out of E3 2009 much stronger than they did in 2008. They started off our booth tour with their big announcement of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and I got to squeeze in some play time with the game.