Auritech stops by, fresh from PAX, to tell us about the show and a whole, whole bunch of games he saw and played. Dana tells the tale of a cataclysmic pre-Cataclysm World of Warcraft experience. Everybody but me noshes on the addictive brains of Plants vs. Zombies for both the iPad and Xbox Live Arcade and I am still playing Nier! Here’s a slightly more complete rundown:

• PAX roundup: Bangai-O HD, Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, F3AR, Torchlight 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 3
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Plants vs. Zombies
• World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online
• Nier
• Dead Rising: Case Zero
• Pac-Man C.E.
• Sega Superstars Tennis
• Treasure Treasure: Fortress Forage extra edition

Listen to the latest episode right here or head over to our Talkshoe page to rate and review the show, subscribe via RSS or iTunes, and check out all of our past recordings! Thanks for listening and letting us know what you think! Leave a comment here, e-mail us at podcast (at) gameluv (dot) com, hit us up on Twitter @GameLuv, or give us a ring at (646) 504-GAME. We hope you like it!

Just take this all in for a minute

Unaffectionately coined as Find the Shit games by Katy, you could immediately write off The Ultimate Alphabet as another of those photo hunt/hidden object games that are increasingly popular these days, but you’d be missing out. Sort of an intelligent photo hunt in reverse, The Ultimate Alphabet presents you with an image of hundreds of things that all begin with the same letter and lets you tell it what you see. And though it may seem like a perfect educational game for little learners, The Ultimate Alphabet is definitely an app for adults. The clues are horrendously cryptic, many of the words are esoteric or simply extinct and some of the imagery is borderline erotic or at least potentially disturbing to younger viewers.

The Ultimate Alphabet by Toytek is a collaboration with Mike Wilks, the Englishman who first created the illustrated book of the same name in 1986. For those who missed it 24 years ago (myself included), it was a coffee table fad that was later followed by books like Where’s Waldo? and The Magic Eye. What the app may lack in oversized, hardback appeal, it more than makes up for in simple interactivity and general gaminess while retaining the same smirk-inducing satisfaction of the original format.

Thank you Final Fantasy for that one!

At the outset of each letter you’ll feel like a genius for spotting so many things so quickly. Apple, ant, aardvark, atlas, apparition, aquifer. But the hidden words go much deeper as each piece of imagery typically contains numerous clues. That atlas also holds several continents and oceans and you’ll also want to think in broader terms. I beat my head against the iPad for a good hour before realizing that the archaeopteryx, adder and anteater are all… Animals. The game does a good job of lending a hand when you get stumped via a layered hint system. You get a cryptic clue for each word and can then tap the question mark for a more sensible definition. Tap the ? again and you’ll get to see and unscramble all the letters that make up the word. Sometimes it’s obvious from just seeing the jumbled letters but other times, like with antimacassar, I still didn’t believe what I was reading. That’s when the globe icon proves useful as it pulls up a web page (usually Wikipedia) that proves that the game isn’t cheating and making up fake words. They thought of everything, and then some.

Similar, of all things, to Katamari Damacy, The Ultimate Alphabet catalogs and details every one of the thousands of objects in the game. You can look at all the Dinosaurs you’ve found, for instance, or marvel at your knowledge of Mineralogy. Guessing a word without using any hints nets you a gold star while using each clue knocks you down to silver and then bronze. Individual word stats add up to category ranks which track across all (eventual) 26 letters. Every one of these statistics is viewable in the catalog and there’s even OpenFeint achievements for the ultimate intellectual bragging rights. “I’m smarter than you noobz!”

It's not all tea time and monocles

Initially, The Ultimate Alphabet (for all iOS devices) features only the letters A through D of the full 26-letter alphabet but it’s more than enough to keep you guessing and puzzling for months. The free version now gives you the letter A in its entirety (so grab it already!) with the other letters for sale individually or as bundles. I paid the full $6.99 when it was released and it’s proven to be one of the few apps that I don’t regret paying more than $0.99 for. You’ll feel smart, you’ll feel dumb, and then you’ll actually get smarter! Well, at the least you’ll be able to totally wow people with your knowledge of dead languages and, honestly, can you even put a price on that?

I just bought Sega Superstars Tennis for about $4 at Half-Price Books on ‘Everything 20% Off Day‘. No kidding, it was even the double-disc package that includes an Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc! I haven’t tried the Arcade disc yet to see how that DRM mess works (or doesn’t) but a friend and I just played an introductory round or two of Singles competition and it’s a decent bit of fun! Sorry, Auritech, that I ever doubted you when you found it on the cheap yourself. The Sega nostalgia and fan service also doesn’t hurt. Now, let’s see what kind of mileage fanboy unlockables and Achievements gets me!

Time Warner tried to stop us. Electricity tried to stop us. 0kb files tried to stop us. But they couldn’t! We rise again this week to talk about Japanese developers and how their game is changing (or not, depending on how you feel about Nier), some zombie dismemberment, a few new Big Fish games, and news of the week!

• Crackdown 2 DLC is Broken!
• Dead Rising 2: Case Zero
• Vanquish demo
• Epic Citadel on iOS
• Mafia 2
• Spa Mania 2
• My Kingdom for the Princess II
• Rock Tour
• Nier
• News of the Week!

Listen to the latest episode right here or head over to our Talkshoe page to rate and review the show, subscribe via RSS or iTunes, and check out all of our past recordings! Thanks for listening and letting us know what you think! Leave a comment here, e-mail us at podcast (at) gameluv (dot) com, hit us up on Twitter @GameLuv, or give us a ring at (646) 504-GAME. We hope you like it!

SALE info!  Big Fish Games is having a sale through Monday, September 6, 11:59 PM PDT!  Enter the code ENDLESS to get standard edition games for only $4.99!

Beyond the simple fetch quest that wound up advancing the story by 5 years I am surprisedly in Baldur’s Gate land, playing from an isometric view.

The writing (or english adaptation) is just another part of this game that I’m lovin’.

I had played through the side scrolling stuff and the top-down Zelda stuff in the demo. That kind of framing has cropped up more than a few times throughout the game so far but I was not at all expecting a text adventure as a major story mission! I had to GameFAQ it because I’m nearly late for work but they’re fairly clever puzzles… even if they read like juvenile fiction.

I’m not a huge cowboy fan but I appreciate the change of pace from the typical bro-love of space marines and Earth toned fantasy characters every now and again. Red Dead Revolver came along at just the right boiling point in 2004 and although there have been plenty of titles to marry a controller with the Wild West, none have ever done it as well as Red Dead Redemption.

Set at a boiling point of its own, John Marston heads back West at the behest of an expanding government agency that’s blackmailed him into a corner. A former bandit on the path of redemption (cue title card) he enters the fictional world of New Austin just as modern civilization catches up. Horse paths are well worn, wagons and wannabe gunslingers race back and forth while townsfolk talk of new technology and the Capital’s looming shadow. I expected to be all alone out in in the wild and seeing a lot of similar sun-baked terrain but given the setting and the talent of the environment artists there’s only a lull in the scenery when it’s well planned.

read this whole thing I wrote or just watch the beauty unfold above

The atmosphere is what continually impressed. The rippling heat, the stark shadows cast over the terrain at noontime and the glowing blue-white hue of a full moon night. But the storms! Oh, how amazing storms are in this game! It’s the kind of powerful display I wish every storm could be like in real life. Flashes light up the sky and the individual raindrops falling in front of you while the peeling thunder always sounds imposing; so much so that it sometimes spooks your horse. Little details like the shimmery puddles that last through the day or the extra-bright sunshine following a storm really show an attention to detail and mood that very few games can match.

The wildlife is another highlight that keeps the vast barren spaces alive and imposing. Dozens of creatures roam the world, some only at certain times of day, and many of them easily provoked and more powerful than you might expect. The press materials promised a realistic food chain but I never saw much animal-on-animal action. Rather, it was a random hunter whose approaching gunfire almost always had my pistol at the ready. I could go on for days about this amazing, unpredictable and gorgeous world but I’ll suffice to say that it’s the one thing that pulls this game above the ‘Grand Theft Horse’ expectations and makes it truly special.

That’s not to say the gameplay or story are a disappointment. Without all the terrible, modern pop culture to cull from, Redemption’s story is pretty basic and, given the setting, even the most despicable actions are easily justified. Many of the missions involve random strangers you’ll meet and some unfold over the course of the game without a single bullet being fired, others are wrapped up after hunting down specific plantlife or animals. ‘Random acts of Honor’ pop up regularly as you explore the world and let you decide how to deal with fleeing convicts, stagecoach hijackers, kidnappers, and assorted ruffians. For as forward-thinking as all that stuff is you’ll still be gunning your way through a large chunk of the Wild West’s population. The writing does a good job of explaining John’s motivations no matter how many times you hear it repeated but in the end the story stuff feels too much like Grand Theft Auto.

That would’ve been a selling point in 2002 but here it was almost the last thing I wanted to do. It starts out strong with story missions that see you wrangling wild horses and herding cattle but soon enough it falls back on cover-based, slow-mo enhanced gunfights against armies on obvious setpieces. Rockstar has definitely pushed way out ahead of GTA4 but this isn’t quite the new standard in open world gaming. Maybe that’s why there’s so much ambient, ancillary stuff to do. I’ve already put in over 80 hours and I’d guess less than 1/4 of that was spent on the story, even less in Multiplayer. So come for the experience of an honest-to-god Wild West wonderland and stick around for the quality storytelling. Just be sure to wander well away from the familiar mission structure as often as you can.

Thanks to these guys on Twitter I just saw this awesome trailer for The Creature which, not to downplay the game itself, may be the most memorable thing about it. Ya know, it’s like how Chu Chu Rocket was a beloved game but the first thing I think of is that classic Japanese commercial for it.

Anyways, The Creature looks like a mix of those things in the title. Kirby for its puffball hero and its ability to suck things up and gain abilities and Trine for its 2D-on-3D visual style, tricky physics-based puzzlery and swinging action (accomplished here with The Creature’s tongue). It’s a student project and will be released for free on PC at the end of September so keep this link handy for another month.

THIS is why I like this game! It’s so far in the future our world is the basis of this fantasy land and every now and then you spot something familiar.