- Wizard 101: Becoming a Subscription Service
- Wizard 101: How to Insult People and Circumvent the Filter
- Chapter One: A Chapter in Which There is Much Ado About the Ordinary
- City of Heroes Optioned For the Silver Screen
- Wizard 101: The End of the Semester
- Metal Wolf Chaos -- Vote for Your American Justice
- The Helvetica Venture
- Experience the World of Warcraft like no blood elf fanfic has before.
- The Warcraft Eye
- In a drunken stupor is a bad time to get caught undead in Azeroth.
Super Galdelic Hour — Brain Melting Madness from Japan
We here at Vox Ex Machina feel it’s our sacred duty shine a light upon the hidden corners of the gaming world, which is why I’m spending this time to share with you the inexplicable madness of Super Galdelic Hour.
Published by Enix in 2001 for the Playstation 2, this game involves what appears to be a genie hosting a game show that’s also on a space ship. With animal dolls that transform into girls. Wearing swimsuits. It doesn’t make much sense, but then again, do the Japanese really need an excuse to throw CGI girls in animal-themed suits and bounce them around the screen? Not really, and it could be worse. Here’s a six minute demo of the game, lovingly crafted to show off the various themes and game elements, while still raising up a big middle finger to such pathetic human concepts …
First Impressions: Dragon Quest Swords
A slime draws near!
We have been fans of the Dragon Warrior franchise since we first laid eyes on the pixilated visage of our hero from Dragon Warrior. We’ve even gone to great lengths to get translations of the non-released versions. There is a slime atop our monitor that graces our every waking moment.
Behold. Dragon Quest: Swords. A strange land of first-person view guided with the wiimote, sliding between flat landscapes, polygon castles, and people who look as if they’ve been made out of blown sugar and glass pipettes. In fact, talking to the prince of the kingdom makes us concerned that we might breathe on him too hard and break him.
The Experiment: First Impressions
Here we come with the next title from Dreamcatcher Interactive and Lexis Numerique. We do like these guys, they put out some of our favorite adventure games, and we do adore them for it.
The Experiment is no Johnny-come-lately when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of the presentation of adventure; instead it offers up a totally different take on the atmosphere of point-and-click by presenting instead a strange surveillance guided storyline. We walk into the middle of a devastated laboratory aboard a US Navy sea vessel, overrun by foliage, and are thrust immediately into the strange life of one scientist.
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! — Slightly Late Game Reviews
The breathlessly named Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! is a boxing game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System out in the heady days of 1987. Designed as a port of the popular Punch Out!! arcade game, it took advantage of one of the first celebrity tie-ins on that console. Of course, none of that means a crispy damn because you’re waiting for the cannibalism joke.
Fine.
In this game you take on the role of Little Mac, a half-baked boxer looking to sit at the table with the big boys. Standing in his way is a buffet of flavourful characters, all cooking up their own special ways to eat Mac for lunch. You must chew your way up through the Minor Circuit, Major Circuit, and World Circuit to face the champion, Mike Tyson.
The boxers in …
Spore: First Impressions
With the debut of the latest Sim game 2 weeks ago, many have gotten a taste of Spore and have found it pleasant. The gameplay is familiar to those experienced with world-building simulation games - not surprising, coming from Will Wright and Maxis, creators of “Sim” -everything games.
But some find it lacking the spice of SCIENCE they were hoping to encounter.
At least, that’s how it appears in the first phases of the game. Perhaps not every player wants to dig deep into DNA, RNA, genomes and evolutionary theory. But some expected more “edutainment” value from the gameplay itself. The first few levels seem to rush you through the evolutionary process, and feeding and reproduction play an arbitrary, although necessary, part of evolving your life form. The commercial featuring the term “creatio-lutionism” is not far from the mark. You are an active, (presumably) intelligent designer who decides what body parts your …
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1
Action. Adventure. Witty dialogue. Low brow humor! Penny Arcade’s offering to the gaming world has it all…and then some. This game stole our breath when we first heard it was coming out and then stole our hearts (and sat on them) when we finally played it. Precipice of Darkness has been one of the most enjoyable episodic gaming experiences that we have had in a long, long time.
“Four Gods wait on the windowsill, where once eight Gods did war and will. And if the Gods themselves may die, what does that say for you and I?”
You may like it too.
Wizard 101: Where There’s Smoke, the Fire School of Wizardry
“If the mind is a candle, then the heart is the sun.”
If you are looking for the burning heart of unfettered fury—if your deepest desire is to unleash devastating, meteoric catastrophe on your foes—if your closest held mantra is that the only defense is an overwhelming offense. Welcome young pyromancer. The Wizardry School of Fire has a place for you. Behold fire. And we say unto thee: SHEER FIREPOWER.
Weep for Wizard101
I loved Wizard101 from the moment I laid eyes on it. I had tried to play the MMORPG holy of holies, WoW, last year but it never clicked for me. Even after hours of questing, leveling, and whooping ass with my friends, I couldn’t get myself to care about my character or the world. The storylines seemed violent, fake, impersonal, and bland — all at the same time. I felt like a cog moving through a modern war zone. Though I had loved text-based MUDs as a teen, I came to believe that I just wasn’t cut out for MMORPGS.
Then I met Wizard101 during its beta.
Wizard 101: How to Insult People and Circumvent the Filter
People probably have already heard from us about the white-listed filter that exists in Wizard 101. It is not as badly implemented as similar for-tweens offerings in the market—things that often implode under their own weight as unusable. While it is nice that the filter is less cumbersome it is still a filter. It’s a form of censorship that doesn’t really add to the experience, it doesn’t offer any actual protections, and exists solely to damage the immersion for the players and make KingsIsle Entertainment look better to potential investors and overzealous parents.
Wizard 101: Becoming a Subscription Service
What is that strange blip marring our skyline? Why yes, it looks like Wizard 101 has gone to a subscription service with a first-world is free paradigm. It appears in order to access much of the last levels of Wizard City and any world beyond—and all of this happening before we voces were able to reveal our innermost darkest thoughts about the game’s largest failing.
Never fear, that post is coming regardless of the looming subscription service. Keep reading.
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- Game Politics - Where politics and video games collide.
- Mill Avenue Vexations - A gothic, occult thriller by Kyt Dotson—burning rubber where angels fear to tread.
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