MarkM

Square Enix have made a DS game so bone chillingly scary that you're WAY too chicken to even go near it, it's called "Nanashi no Game" which translated somehow comes out to "Nameless Game". Apparently this game is so frightening that 12 people have already been hospitalized in Japan after playing it due to shock, heart attacks, fainting and as reported by some newspaper, one man literally shit himself while playing this game on the subway on his way to work. If you've ever seen how cramped Tokyo subway trains are then I don't have to tell you how terribly awful that must have been for everyone involved.

Sadly Europe and North America are without an English localized version of the game. However, Square seem to be doing alright for themselves with all the other english localized games they've released on the DS so far so the precedent is there. If I really wanted to I could get my hands on a Japanese version of this game but I wouldn't understand any of the story. Honestly though, I can barely comprehend the storylines of most games from Japan even when they're in English.

From what I can tell, Nanashi no Game is a point-and-click adventure game somewhat inspired by The Ring whereby your character comes in to contact with a mysterious role-playing game and seven days after playing....you die! The great thing is that you actually play the cursed RPG in the game! So it's kind of like a game inside a game. I'm not clear on whether or not the RPG in the game is a fully realized thing that you can play or if you just play little parts of it during the story. I have to say though, seeing the little clips of the in-game RPG is pretty creepy, especially the seemingly stock and innocuous music.

This is, at least conceptually, one of the coolest fucking things I've ever seen. Beyond the cool premise, the game has some impressive technology behind it. Judging by the trailers and videos this is probably one of the best looking Nintendo DS games out right now. The game is played storybook style kind of like Hotel Dusk and you use the stylus to get around. Oh did I mention it was reported that a lady in Osaka was playing the game while riding her bike and her heart exploded from the psychological horror she experienced.

I haven't played a genuinely scary game in a while, probably since Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. I should mention that "scary game" by my standards is something that makes me jump at least once during the entire time it takes me to finish it.  While playing RE:DS I think I was spooked about 3-4 times. While it was creepy I mostly knew where all the crazy stuff was, having played the game 28 years ago on the Playstation. That isn't to say that I'm by any means impervious to scary imagery, it just has to be done right. Too many games attempt to deliver scares but get too caught up in style over substance. Case in point: F.E.A.R - I mean really, how the hell am I supposed to be scared of anything when I have a Armacham Type-7 Particle Weapon that can instantly turn a walking solider in to a fucking SKELETON! Wait, okay that part of the game was pretty awesome.

It doesn't look like this game will get any English translation anytime soon so if someone knows a way for me to lean Japanese in like, fifteen minutes, let me know.

So apparently a "remake" of V8 will be hitting XBLA soon. Is it actually a remake or is this based off of the original game code and assets? Nobody knows. I suppose this is good news, I mean I could probably go for some driving-and-shooting-dudes-with-cars-that-have-rockets-and-stuff-attached-to-them gameplay but let's be honest, V8 will always be a poor man's Twisted Metal.

To be clear, I'm referring to Olde Twisted Metal of years past and not whatever the hell those 989 sequels started becoming. On the Playstation you could probably do much worse than V8 when it came out, not only were the graphics both totally awesome and mega outrageous but the gameplay worked and you couldn't really fault that game for much else then the standard criticisms one commonly has of games in that sub-genre; mostly the fact that there was no real story and any attempt to come up with an excuse for a bunch of people to drive around a ski resort with rocket launchers welded to their bumper probably won't end up making much sense.

I don't want to hate on V8 too much but honestly, if you're reading this, V8, I wish you were Twisted Metal instead, there I said it.

I think there is already at least one TM game on PS Network which doesn't help me much because I don't have a PS3, not because I can't afford one but because I didn't crudely carve the Xbox 360 logo on my arms in the school bathroom for no reason...seriously though I'm horribly poor.

Financial woes aside, this got me thinking about the ULTIMATE CROSS OVER GAME EVER....are you ready?



                                                                


Yeah, I went there. Now I don't want anyone getting upset that I came up with this idea before they did. I'm pretty sure this idea has never even been conceived of before I went ahead and mocked up this sweet image in the photoshop but some of us are just trailblazers by nature. Frankly, I don't think the world is ready for a game like this yet. Modern game technology simply isn't up to where it should be in order to finally even consider developing this game.

Here is the basic premise:

You take all the best characters/cars from both franchises and pit them against each other in a Battle Royale of biblical proportions. Obviously some incredible story would stitch this entire thing together. Something along the lines of Sweet Tooth attempting to find the truth about his identity by seeking out Calypso  who was his real father and he reveals to him the horrible truth about his origin. He was a regular Ice Cream truck driver who one day crashed in to a truck filled with a secret government chemical used in experiments to see if Ice Cream truck drivers could somehow be transformed in to menacing super villains whose very trucks would become their weapon of destruction. It's like a military thing.

Then Calypso probably disowns Sweet Tooth again for plot convenient reasons and sides with the dudes from Vigilante 8. I don't remember any of the actual characters from V8 so let's assume they were all villainous in nature. So basically Sweet Tooth (who is a good guy now, remember) calls up all the guys from Twisted Metal to go on some revenge mission against the V8 guys. I mean, that just makes sense.


There'll be a whole bunch of gameplay mechanics that'll be introduced such as the ability to fight in mid air while falling. Also, when two cars get really close, the camera zooms in and there is a mini-game style mechanic where one guy shoots the other and the other guy has to counter it at which point the roles are reversed.

I'm a pretty laid back guy so I mean, if EA wants to call me up or whatever that's totally cool. I've got design documents.

I have just set up my profile here on Giant Bomb and as I type this premier blog post I feel like one of those folks on "Extreme House Makeover" after they finally get to open the door to their brand new home and are given a tour of all the amenities. I've walked through the front door and.... look at this in the corner...a fully functional community based content editing system! I've always wanted one of those!

I don't know how much actual site content I'll be fooling around with so I'll wait for others to test the waters first and then I might jump in. Perhaps I'll spend some time editing the content in the Monkey Island series sections as I'm pretty much the authority on the subject. Not because I know a lot about the series but because I totally bought that game from an old electronics store in the early 90's when I was a kid and I remember using that little code wheel that came with the game which was used to circumvent piracy. I could totally upload a picture of that code wheel.

That's what makes Giant Bomb so amazing, if I wanted to I could upload a picture of the code wheel from Monkey Island just because. That in itself is huge to me...you might even say Giant...perhaps you could even go so far as to say it is...Giant Bomb....which is the name of this website....think about it, man.