I Knew It!

HIGH Crossing the vast, sprawling rooftops of Terra Verte.

LOW Limping through a boss battle while painfully low on ammo.

WTF Potted meat factories… For the sick and elderly?

A Shadow of Its Former Glory

HIGH I never expected another game of this type from these developers.

LOW It's awful! How could it possibly be so awful?!?

WTF how anyone could consider this fit for sale.

Second Time's the Charm

HIGH Eight lasers firing at once, annihilating everything onscreen.

LOW Where are my Golden Guns, MBG?

WTF This time around, I'm going to say... dynamite-powered unicycle.

At the recent DICE conference which just took place in Las Vegas, David Cage gave a speech which outlined nine points supporting his message that "the industry needs to grow up." Predictably, his comments angered many people and I've been seeing comments across the gaming spectrum disagreeing with him or trying to prove him wrong in various ways.

King of Chinatown follows professional Street Fighter IV player Justin Wong as he competes both worldwide and in his local Chinatown arcade. In about an hour, the film features Justin and his then-manager Isaiah Triforce Johnson (his actual legal name) attempting to make Justin the best Street Fighter IV player in the world. At the same time, they try elevating Triforce's fighting guild "Empire Arcadia" to the next level.

Today I had the chance to visit Signal Studios located in Kirkland, Washington, and I spent about three hours talking with the good people hard at work on the upcoming free-to-play Ascend: New Gods coming to XBLA and other platforms to be announced.

Gladiator Ends

HIGH Knocking the sword out of a skeleton's hand, then crushing its skull with a mace a moment later.

LOW Oh good. Let's fight three guys in the crumbling courtyard for the sixth time. That never gets old.

WTF Why does this boss obey none of the game's rules? Why am I fighting him twice?

On this episode, we talk about what we are FINALLY going to be clearing from our backlogs this year. We also answer some listener questions that you have always wanted to know, but didn't know you wanted to know. Join us for this informative episode of the GameCritics Podcast! With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik and Dylan "I finally spelled everyone's name correctly" Collins.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
Subscribe: iTunes | Zune | RSS

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

We Battle Together with Friends… but Why?

HIGH Replaying classic Final Fantasy moments with the accompanying soundtrack.

LOW Having to play the same tracks over and over to unlock new features.

WTF The nonsensical phrases characters say before a stage begins: "Friends, now we joke eternally in vain…"

Heck Sorta

HIGH Our hero gets freaky with a toy duck.

LOW Please, please, please make insta-death spikes visible!

WTF Our hero gets freaky with a toy duck?!