CO-OP

CO-OP arrives on Revision3! The show's premiere aptly focuses on just why the video game has reached such heights of appeal: variety. Is it merely an insurmountable task or is it nigh impossible to find two games that are more polar opposites than Killzone 2 and Noby Noby Boy? From the creator of the universally beloved Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy is such a simplistic experience that it defies explanation save by complex sentences. Luckily, the always brilliant Tiff Chow was available to raise the level of discourse which would undoubtedly have ensued (see: immature jokes involving the words "stretch" and "length") had Cesar and Matt been allowed to carry on the conversation alone. Rainbows, eating, and pooping may not be your thing (just watch the Noby segment, you'll get it), but perhaps gritty, realistic, eye-meltingly gorgeous first person shooter, is? Our friends John Davison and Will Tuttle join Ryan in our critical assessment of what may be the PS3's largest contribution to the console FPS pedigree. Of course before we did all this we had to get the band back together! Being the first of the month, half our team--Jason, Rob, and Cesar--went on to find new jobs in order to pay their rent. Can we convince them to come back in time to land the deal with Revision3? The fact that this show description exists at all is probably spoiler enough on THAT front. Sorry about that.

The latest attempt to prevent the Zombocalypse is proven successful. GameSpy's Sterling McGarvey traverses Resident Evil 5 entirely in single player while Ryan and Matt, appropriately, instigate their infected extermination co-op style. The Real Time Strategy genre of gaming usually gets short shrift in the console sector. Some say it's impossible and you shouldn't even try. Halo Wars calls that out for being the dirty, dirty lie that it is and JayFresh brings over Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Patrick Klepek, and Anthony Gallegos for the exposè. Any new company, of course, must sell itself in order to expand it's brand identity. This was the task set forth for Jason, Rob, and Cesar this week and boy did they...um...deliver?

This week, it's all Wii. Yeah, surprised us, too. It started with the emergence of Mad World, a thoroughly adult title on a console most of the hard core have dismissed as a toy for the elderly and exclusively for the "family friendly." David Ellis and Kat Bailey share with Ryan their concern over the corruption of today's youth through violence in the media (not really). It's not usually our "thing" to cover games that were released several months ago, but World of Goo is worth making an exception for. While we know we're a bit late to the party on this one, we felt we had to bring it up just in case you might have missed it. It's just that good. Tiff Chow agrees. She, Ryan, and Matt settle over some delicious, gooey ice cream to celebrate the game's finer points. And, also in the might-have-overlooked category is the just released Bit.Trip Beat. No, that's not a typo--the extra period belongs there. It must be seen to be believed as any description is inadequate to the experience. It's pong, but for this generation with elements of rhythm gaming grafted on that pulls together the modern and the retro in an even keel of gaming awesome. We knew we had to at least give it a quick first look in this week's show. Of course it took some effort to find our Wii's and dust them off for this episode. Adventures documented within!

One may ask oneself if it is indeed possible to wrap up an entire weeks worth of game announcements and industry news in one, approximately half-hour show. It ain't easy. Fortunately we had the help of X-Play's Adam Sessler, The Totally Rad Show's Jeff Cannata, WhatTheyPlay's John Davison, formerly MTV's Patrick Klepek, and GameSpy's Will Tuttle and Sterling McGarvey. In a discussion literally of the round-table variety they all join us to boil down GDC into a delicious, spicy reduction sauce of what's important to all of us as gamers. Contained within: Infamous, the OnLive announcements, Fat Princess, PixelJunk Eden: Encore, Punch Out!!, ExciteBots, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and wrap-ups on the notable moments of the Keynotes, the GDC award ceremonies and a shout-out to some Independent Games Festival favorites.

As per the usual, the majority of the excitement coming out of GDC stems from the life and energy of the Independent Games Festival. It's a menagerie of clever ideas executed with a polish and precision some established game studios even have a hard time hitting. Made with love and passion--and a desire to win the $20,000 grand prize--the IGF showcases the best of the best in this generations' indie development community. We start out by crawling the IGF with Phil Fish, one of the winners of last year's IGF competition for his upcoming game Fez and a judge in this year's competition. It must have been tough to pick a winner! After you watch our show, you'll see why. Amongst the games he had to choose from: TAG: The Power of Paint. A unique, FPS puzzler where the colors of paint you spray on the surfaces of the environment cause your character to run, jump, and climb walls to reach your destination. The Unfinished Swan. Again, a paint or ink metaphor where you being in an entirely white world and must splatter black ink around in order to reveal the geometry through which you must navigate. Cortex Commabnd. In intensely complex, real-time game of programmable bots and war machines. Highly customizable and backed up by eight years of development, this is one to watch. Feist. As beautiful as they come, it's a charming side-scroller reminiscent of a Miyazaki film. It has to be seen to be believed. Blueberry Garden won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the IGF netting the creator, Erik Svedäng $30,000 (Mountain Dew popped on an extra $10k) to finish up his delightful project. Exploration and discovery are the themes here and let's hope that cash is put to good use to getting the final game out the door. We also need to thank Attract Mode for throwing a video game art party where art inspired by and on the subject of video games is featured prominently in the Giant Robot store/gallery here in San Francisco. The event featured pairings of Giant Robot

Love is a 200-player, persistent world in which players have complete control over the very landscape. Follow that by Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and Henry Hatsworth and we've truly run the gamut of gaming. Eskil Steenberg is the sole developer of the game Love. He dropped by the week of GDC to give an extended demo of this 200-player, persistent, and uniquely beautiful game world in which players have complete control--even over the very landscape. Created with tools of his own making, including a 3D modeler and renderer, Love is an incredible example of just how far a solo project can go. Of course that doesn't preclude the incredible outcome that can be achieved with a dedicated team delivering the latest and greatest in heart-stopping visuals. Motorstorm: Pacific Rift fits that bill and then sucker-punches you with a visceral racing experience that is just so damn good we felt it was worth bringing up just in case you missed it in the holiday crush of last year. Ryan, JayFresh, and Matt relive their previous week's harrowing journeys over the rivers and through the volcanoes. In a deceptively simple stroke of genre-bending, Henry Hatsworth is likely to tickle that retro-loving vibe in all old-school gamers as well as remind them of a fundamental fact: old-school games are hard! Still, John Davison, Tiff Chow, and Patrick Klepek were kind enough to come by and share their Hatsworth-y experiences with Ryan and make the case as to why this one shouldn't be missed. Difficulty, though, doesn't seem to be something Jason has all that much patience with and he's forced to make a deal with the devil (in this case, Cesar) in order to progress onward with Rhythm Heaven on his DS.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena has a lot going for it. 1) It's two, two, TWO games in one! The package comes with an updated, widescreen version of Escape from Butcher Bay. 2) It's the best movie-to-game license, ever, and 3) we had some great guests come join us to talk about it! Brad Shoemaker from Giant Bomb joins Philip Kollar, Matt, Ryan and Cesar to worship and the blood-stained shrine of Riddick. In what many thought would be a return to form, Grand Thef Auto: Chinatown Wars proves to be a grand adventure in it's own right, with lessons learned from it's big brothers on the big screens and nostalgia born of the series' storied past. John Davison, Sterling McGarvey, Ray Barnholt, and Matt gave it a go and found it largely able to stand up proudly amongst its pedigree. It's CO-OP's first foray into the amazing world of iPhone gaming! There's an ocean of content we could cover, but we've chosen a few of our favorites to highlight in this episode: Karma Star, geoDefense, Topple 2, Drop7, Eliss, and Field Runners. Making CO-OP isn't cheap, so its makers have to be! Fortunately, the Mission District in San Francisco affords a multitude of cheap eats and cheaper desserts!

It's Rhythm Heaven, Battlefield Heroes, Flight Control and we take the extra effort to import the Final Fantasy XIII Demo straight from Japan! Chris Kohler of Wired.com's Game|Life is the featured guest this week in our chat about Rhythm Heaven for the DS. Just as avid a fan of the game as Jason and Matt are (and much better at it to boot), Chris was kind enough to hang out with us in our hallway (it was the only way to avoid the heat) and go over the game's many finer points. We also continue our coverage of iPhone favorites and Jason gives Chris a quick demo of Flight Control. Final Fantasy fans everywhere have probably heard of (or at least made fun of) the animated feature Advent Children. Given it's rather lackluster reception, why would we take the trouble to import it from Japan? It comes with a playable demo of Finaly Fantasy XIII, duh! Actually, it's more like the FFXIII demo comes with Advent Children, if you catch our drift. Ryan, Cesar, and JayFresh battle the bewildering heat snap in San Francisco to enjoy the demo's splendors. The free-to-play model is one that we here at Area 5 can get behind, but it may have a few pitfalls to overcome in the US Market. Still Battlefield Heroes is a fantastic experiment to start with and JayFresh and Matt both seem to agree that it brings back the fun of DICE's original Codename: Eagle while not throwing out the best parts of the Battlefield series. We're anxious for the final release, but we had to tell you about our impressions of the Beta! San Francisco is known for it's freakishly weird weather, and this week was no exception. Suddenly jumping up to 90-degrees for a few days, the only place to escape the heat was in the hallway leading up to Matt, Ryan, and JayFresh's apartment. We know it's a bit echo-y, but for our sanity--nay, our very lives we had to make use of the space!

Red Faction: Guerilla, Fat Princess, and Phantasy Star Portable. David Ellis graced us with his presence for the Fat Princess discussion and the crew spends the day in the park. The more things change, the more things stay the same. It's another year in gaming which means more capture-the-flag, multiplayer gameplay. Luckily for us there's Fat Princess; a downloadable title for the PS3 which mixes that ancient (in terms of gaming history) concept with some RTS and throws on bit of cute and a lot of violent on top of some beat-em-up to give you the most unique multiplayer experience so far this year. David Ellis steps out of the 1UP offices for some lunch-time discussion with Matt and Cesar about the great time they're all having with the Beta. In another early look, the demo for Red Faction: Guerilla has hit and JayFresh finds the rampant destruction too exciting to contain. He immediately calls Rob to share. Finaly, thanks to GameFly, Matt and JayFresh get Phanatasy Star Portable delivered and it lives up to it's legacy with some classic, collect-a-thon gameplay. And even if the story and characters leave very much to be desired the rest of the experience is solid enough to recommend

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Demigod, Excitebots: Trick Racing, Trixel. We make it up to Jason for leaving him behind last week whine reminiscing about our recent gaming conquests. The movie may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but at least the game version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine serves up all the delicious violence fans of the comic have come to expect from their indestructible hero. G4TV.com's Sterling McGarvey joins JayFresh to share tales of rampant decapitation and Wolverine's Limb Removal Service. Demigod may look like an RTS, but it has more in common with Diablo and the venerable Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. Current.com's new online gaming figurehead Philip Kollar laments the game's utter lack of a tutorial or in-game help with Matt. The Wii seems to be hitting it's stride this year with yet another non-Mario, non-Zelda, non-Metroid release that may serve to pull in a wider audience of kart-racing enthusiasts. Excitebots: Trick Racing is what Excitetruck should have been and is ROBOTS on top of that! Dan "Shoe" Hsu comes along for the Area 5 BBQ and hashes it out with Ryan over whether this game is all it's cracked up to be. This week's iPhone shoutout goes to the brain-meltingly difficult puzzler Trixel. Matt takes a few minutes out of stuffing his face to explain it to Shoe.

Bionic Commando, Plants vs. Zombies, Zeno Clash, and Sway for the iPhone. Jeff Green, Brad Shoemaker, Tiff Chow, and David Ellis are the featured guests while the Area 5 team drills for E3. Generally, we can get behind this phenomenon of the "series reboot," and Bionic Commando is latest to receive the treatment, but is it the greatest? There seems to be some dissension in the ranks! 1UP.com's David Ellis hashes it out with Ryan. PopCap is a powerhouse developer that is far too often overlooked by the "hard core" gamer. EA's Jeff Green lays it out, rightly, that it's time for that to stop as Plants vs. Zombies is something even the most tenured of game developers should weep over having not made it. Unequivocally, JayFresh, Tiff Chow, and Cesar agree. Another title that would be tragic to overlook is the first-person brawler Zeno Clash. Dripping "unique" from its very core, it's a game that Brad Shoemaker, Matt, and Ryan all agree should be experienced in it's entirety by anyone with the means to do so. The iPhone has plenty of unique offerings all it's own, but only a few really feel suited exclusively for the platform and Sway is definitely in that category. Jason and Cesar share their love with one another. For the game, that is. E3 is the fist week of June and as it's the largest video games expo on the planet we will be there in force! Or will we? Not unless JayFresh can whip the crew into shape in time! It's just like Friday Night Lights but with pasty gamer-critics instead hard-bodied football stars.

E3 2009 Predictions, Patapon 2 and the Punch-Out!! rebirth round out this week's show! Next week CO-OP will have THREE shows and THREE live shows from the floor of E3! E3 is the biggest, most action-packed convention of the year! It's every gamers' dream to go and a nightmare for every member of the gaming press. Still, we love it! And we're going to do everything we can to bring you with us! Next week CO-OP will have three recorded/edited shows and three LIVE shows! Check out the full schedule for both us and the Totally Rad Show guys at http://revision3.com/e3. We take a bit of a breather at The Napper Tandy again, this week, and talk with G4's Patrick Klepek about what we're most excited to see at E3 next week. The big three, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are on everybody's lips, but there may be a few surprises in store! Follow our predictions and then share with us on our blog or on the Revision3 forums what you're most excited about seeing! Patrick was also kid enough to hang around after our E3 chat and talk with Matt about the enigmatically difficult Patapon 2. They both agree that it may be too much for the typical adult life to handle, but there's still real genius there! It's not every day you get to have a conversation with 1UP's David Ellis and Scott Sharkey! They do us a solid and come by to share the love over Nintendo's latest nostalgic rehas: PUNCH OUT!!. And, yes, those two exclamation points are in the game title, we didn't just add them for emphasis.

It's CO-OP's first E3 special! We document our road-trip down to LA and our impressions of Microsoft's impressive showing at their press event on Monday. There was almost too much to remember: Modern Warfare 2, Shadow Complex, Left 4 Dead 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Forza Motorsport 3, Halo: ODST, Final Fantasy XIII (with a quick look at the Odin Summons!), and Project Natal, the code-name for the new, controller-less interface Microsoft R&D has been cooking up and for which Lionhead Studios's Peter Molyneux had an impressive demo of an interactive AI, Milo, capable of voice, face, and motion recognition through the Natal stereoscopic camera. Whew! And E3 hasn't even officially BEGUN yet! We'll be appearing on the RevisionE3 Live Stream starting today and every day of E3 starting at 4pm and we'll have two more special episodes of CO-OP before the week is out! For the full schedule of our coverage, go to http://revision3.com/e3/. And remember to come back at 4pm, PST!

Now both Sony and Nintendo have had their say and we follow it up with our say about their say. Or something. Dan "Shoe" Hsu from BitMob joins us for some thoughts on Metroid other M, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and, of course, Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion from Nintendo. Sony, of course, dealt a full hand with God of War 3, The Last Guardian, Uncharted 2, Mod Nation Racers, Assassin's Creed 2, Gran Toruismo PSP, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Maker, Sony's new motion controller for the PS3, and the worst-kept-secret of E3: the PSP Go. Keep an eye out at http://revision3.com/e3 for updates on our joint CO-OP and TRS live streams happening today and tomorrow and the final E3 CO-OP special going live tomorrow!

Finally we had some time to look at the E3 show proper! Hands-on time with the Sony PSP Go, God of War 3, Soul Calibur: Broken Destinies, Gran Turismo PSP, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Scribblenauts, Split/Second, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. There are some big names in there, but E3 always has some great surprises and Sribblenauts and Split/Second are exactly those. Also, it's usually dangerous to just let Jason run free with a camera on him.

Before meandering our way up the desolate (and yet amazingly beautiful) 5 freeway from San Francisco to California, we had one, final, incredible day at E3. Getting to play some Left 4 Dead was certainly a highlight, but the impromptu Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins hands-on experiences pretty much blew our pants off. Yes, in front of Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, the two heads of BioWare that, prior inviting us to come spend time with ME2 and DA:O graced us with a solid interview surrounding both those products and their upcomming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Tony Hawk: Ride introduced yet another plastic peripheral you'll likely have to find storage space for and a couple of XBox Live games, Shadow Complex and 'Splosion Man surprised us with strong showings from out of nowhere. Next week's show will be a compilation of some of the best moments from the live streams we had at E3 and then the following week we'll be back with our premiere of Season 02! Hard to believe we've already gone through a complete season of CO-OP. We couldn't have done it without you!

For those fans that may have missed our joint CO-OP/Totally Rad Show live shows at E3, we bring you the two biggest highlights, live demos of HALO ODST and Splinter Cell: Conviction. Can you believe there's already been a full season of CO-OP? 16 full episodes of gaming awesome! We're on a break for one, brief week to recover from E3, but that doesn't mean we can just sit around gaming! Together with our friends at The Totally Rad Show, we pulled together some live shows at this last E3. Those of you subscribing just to our RSS/iTunes feed might have missed some of the highlights, so while we're taking our mid-season break, we thought we'd bring you the two live demos we had on-set: HALO ODST and Splinter Cell: Conviction. The Bungie guys even took a few extra moments to show off some of the HALO ODST multiplayer for us! Big thanks to everyone that made all of our E3 coverage such a success! In case you missed any of it and would like to check it out (including the full, archived versions of the live shows), go to http://revision3com/e3/ and partake! We'll be back next week our with premiere of Season 02!