GamerVania: Your Week in Video Games

The Sims
WW
Best Game of the Week
The Sims 3
(PC
The Sims
How do you explain the appeal of a life simulator where you have to dedicate roughly 1/3 of the game to making sure your character gets enough sleep?
“it rubs the lotion on its skin, or it gets the hose again.”
The Sims
The Sims 3
The Sims
The Sims 3
Worst Game of the Week
Damnation
(360, PC, PS3)
damnation
Hannah Montana
Ninja Blade
so far the worst game of the year award goes to Damnation.
look
So who knows, maybe it defied logic and became rad.
Bioshock
DLC of the Week
Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2
(360, PC, PS3)
Call of Duty: World at War
1/5 of all games on the market are WWII based
Call of Duty: WaW
a new map where you and up to three others work as a team to kill Nazi zombies.
WaW
HOT COFFEE AND NEWS
  1. In a sad bit of news, Yahoo reports that video game sales are down for the third month in a row. Whether it is the economy, or the fault of crap games like Damnation is open for debate. Once some of the high profile games come out later this year, like Bioshock 2, Halo ODST, and God of War 3, the industry should pick back up.
  1. Straddling that thin line between ironic and just simply dumb, Gamespot is reporting an unusual story of stupidity from EA. Or maybe from Christian groups. Again, thin line. To promote their new game Dante's Inferno, EA hired fake Christian protesters to picket EA with signs like “My high score is Heaven," apparently under the impression that any news is good news. That alone borders on dumb, but what really pushed it over the edge is that the LA Times blogged on it thinking it was real, which then got the attention of Catholic bloggers, who were channeling Queen Victoria and essentially said “we are not amused.” No wait, it gets dumber. Margaret Cabaniss of InsideCatholic wrote, "It's been clear for a while now that the entertainment industry views Christians on the whole as priggish, thin-skinned fun-killers.” Hello can of worms. Open!
  1. My new found crush on the Natal is quickly becoming a fetish as it turns out that I am not alone. Jimmy Fallon recently featured the technology on his TV show, and it looks just as cool as it did last week. How long do you think until the porn industry gets a hold of this? Weeks? Days?
  1. Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo says it actually had the technology for Natal, long before Microsoft introduced it at E3, or Sony announced their own version. Nintendo claims that they considered the technology for the Wii, but ultimately went with the Wii nunchucks currently in use. They also announced that they were the first to discover music, they created the Internet, and they invented oxygen, but decided to pass on it in favor of other stuff.
  1. This is one of those stories that you read and just scratch your head and say, really, Japan? Really? I am all for freedom of speech, and I believe the Market will determine what games will continue and what won't. People will either buy it or they wont. That being said, even I have trouble getting behind the Japanese game RapeLay, where you, and I am quoting from the Fox news story I first saw this on, “In the game players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including following girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and then forcing them to have abortions.” If you follow the link, there is a decidedly disturbing picture of a pair of illustrated Japanese girls near tears as a hand moves in on them. The game will probably only be sold in the US through the developer's website. Which I will not provide, sicko.
  1. PS3 has decided to drop the price of the PS3, and it is about damn time too— is reporting that the system will drop by $100, which makes me like the system a little bit more.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.