The DTOID Show: It's our 200th episode, let's
celebrate!

Happy Wednesday, Destructurds! Max and I are back with another edition of The Destructoid Show - our 200th, to be exact. Feel free to send us cards with money in them.

On tonight's totally un-special birthday episode, I run down the latest Nintendo controversy while Max gushes over Renegade Ops before finally unveiling the first trailer of Max Payne 3. Meanwhile, it looks like Xbox LIVE is coming to Windows 8, Monster Hunter 4 is coming to the 3DS, and Red Dead Redemption GOTY Edition is coming to North America on October 11th. Oh yeah, TGS is happening in Japan right now but I DON'T CARE because I didn't get to go.

Last but not least, special thanks to Twitter user @knightrider1919 for my awesome gift of Clueless: The Game for PC. I shall cherish it forever!

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Live show: The Backlog struggle gets desperate
indeed

_{[Backlog is the ongoing quest to rid Conrad Zimmerman's collection of unfinished games. As voted on by the Destructoid community, Conrad plays each game from start to finish live on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel every weeknight at 8pm Pacific]}

We continue to move up the ranks in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, but things are about to take a turn. Shinobu has just made her appearance on the scene, which can only mean that I will now be faced with the stage which turned me off to the entire experience of playing this title. It may have been a cheap boss that forced me to ultimately quit, but it was the horrid jumping and camera in the Shinobu stages which planted the seeds of abandonment.

Hopefully, with you rooting me on, this won't be such a trial this time around. I'll be playing No More Heroes 2 live and hanging out with the goons in our live chat. Come and join us over on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel!

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Cursed Memories: Secret of Agony Creek Review
(PC)

Gamezebo Rating:

A mine explodes! Somebody drags you out to safety - but then shackles you to the floor! The police arrive to save you - or maybe to kill you! Where are you? Who are you? And what's going on in this weird, empty little town of Agony Creek? It's an interesting set-up and through the early stages of Cursed Memories: The Secret of Agony Creek, I was anxious to get to the bottom of the mystery. But my enthusiasm dimmed somewhat as I played and discovered a game that just isn't quite up to snuff.

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Snackjack Review (PC, Mac)

It doesn?t take much time playingSnackjackbefore you realize that if you?re going to have any success at the game at all then you?re going to have to start doing some math in your head... quickly. Wait! Come back! It?s not that bad! Actually, once you get into the groove it?s a lot of fun, I promise!

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Snackjack Walkthrough (PC, Mac)

Welcome theSnackjackguide on Gamezebo.Snackjackis a card game played on PC created by Masque Publishing. This walkthrough includes tips and tricks, helpful hints, and strategies on how to get the most out ofSnackjack.

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TGS: The first 30 minutes of Dark Souls

From Software are some real, tough dudes. Not in that they can kick my ass (probably), but in that their game design philosophy and dedication to their craft make other developers look like complete pants-pissing wimps. They don’t give interviews, because they rather have the games speak for themselves. They don’t make easy and simple games, because they WANT to play hard and complex games.

Seeing the evolution of the Demon’s Souls series (alongside Armored Core V) is seeing the evolution of From Software turning into an innovative Japanese developer that finds ways to appeal to a wider audience without sacrificing what makes their games so memorable.

I say all this because the opening 30 minutes of Dark Souls is as close to hand-holding as From Software have attempted. After awakening as a dead soul in a grim prison cell, the game throws you into a beginner’s tutorial that also serves as an initiation into the game’s relentless difficulty. What follows is a introduction to the controls (via written messages on the ground) and Dark Souls' sh*t-hard difficulty (via dying a lot).

Although the game’s lengthy opening cinematic and cutscene lasts a little too long -- killing the atmosphere rather than setting it up -- once you enter the game’s world you feel familiarly uncomfortable in its mysterious, Gothic setting where either death or a new item awaits around the corner. Finding out which is half the fun, yet the new bonfire system (read: checkpoints) makes retreading ground much less of a hassle.

After killing a couple weaklings, you enter a small room with a boss designed to make players poop themselves inside out and immediately die. With nothing but a broken sword handle to fight with, you don’t stand a chance against him and must learn the first lesson of Dark Souls: Run like hell when you must. Shortly after, you are placed in the way of an oncoming boulder and a couple other horrid endeavors you’d expect out of any other game’s final hour, not its first.

The character creator is improved from the original but it is still limited. That being said, its still lovable mostly due to its quirks. Not unlike The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the game’s greatest challenge comes with making a hero that doesn’t look like an ass-troll. There are many options, but some highlights are the dark-skinned Pyromancer -- who, for whatever reason, has a giant cartoon grin on his face, while all the light-skinned models have a frown -- or a “Deprived”-class female character that can easily be mistaken for a starved meth addict.

For those not keeping up with our Dark Souls updates, Deprived is the new class that lets players experience a new level of self-loathing by taking on the role of a character in a loin cloth with a wooden plank for a shield who has the attack damage of a level 1 rodent scurrying around the opening area of an MMORPG. In contrast, many of the returning classes have been rebuffed. The Knight and Warrior are no longer the default recommended class for newbies anymore.

In many ways, Dark Souls is the logical continuation of Demon's Souls but it's also an excellent place for new players to start. The opening tutorial, cinematic and bonfire system make the game much more welcoming to new players or players who felt a bit too bewildered by the original's opening hour.

This being said, playing the first game definitely weakens the impact of Dark Souls’ surprises since most are just rehashes of scenarios from the first game. However, exploring the game’s world is the real appeal of Dark Souls, along with turning your weakling of an avatar into a "decent but still kind of useless" weakling of a survivor.

I can’t wait to be frustrated, frightened and fascinated with a From Software world again, come October 4.

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TGS: Tekken Hybrid is looking good in 3D on the
PS3

In case you forgot, Tekken Hybrid is a 3-in-1 combo for the Tekken fans on the PlayStation 3. The set comes with the Blood Vengeance CGI movie, a remastered version of Tekken Tag Tournament from the PlayStation 2 era and the demo of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue to tease the 2012 release. 

Namco had the Prologue demo playable and it was, well, it was Tekken. It's the Tekken you know and love, but with some tweaks here and there. Specifically, you can perform team tag attacks called Tag Assault. It's basically you and your tag team partner ganging up on your opponent for maximum damage. Every character can do team attacks, but specific teams will perform special moves (like say the two Kings ganging up will be better than a King and Law duo, for instance.)

Visually, Tekken Prologue was looking pretty good. It wasn't quite at 60 frames per second, but it was pretty fluid, even in 3D. While the combat is the core Tekken experience, the environments aren't quite what Tekken players will be used to. Players can be knocked through walls and kicked around as fights can take place in multi-level environments.

Sadly, there won't be any online multiplayer with Hybrid. But there is a 3D Model Viewer mode where you can pan a camera around one of the four characters in the Prologue demo as they perform moves and stuff. It's no online, but hey, upskirt views! Yay?!

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TGS: Off-screen footage of Soulcalibur V

It seems like all the major fighting franchises are making a revival in some form or way. One of the biggest in the fighting genre, Soulcalibur V, is on the way back too and I got to go hands-on with it. I really suck at fighting games, so here's some horrible shaky cam footage of me playing as Astaroth. I was doing good until the last match!

Thankfully, we sent out Wesley Ruscher in San Francisco earlier this month to preview Soulcalibur V who brought us a proper preview. I will at least say the game handles pretty well and looks pretty good visually. 

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TGS: Namco teases the new Katamari Damacy for the
PS Vita

KATAMARY DAMACY!!! We already knew the series was heading to the PlayStation Vita and Namco Bandai was finally able to let out some info about the new game. Don't get your hopes up too high though, as the only thing that was revealed to us was a simple little teaser video.

The teaser sees the Prince rolling his Katamari along until he comes up to a human character. The person then grabs the Katamari from the Prince and starts to expand and squeeze the Katamari around like a crazy maniac in varying sizes. The teaser then ends with a still image of a GIGANTIC Katamari full of things it's rolled up.

So it looks like we can expect some kind of cool touch based controls thanks to the Vita. That's pretty much all we know at this point. In fact, Namco hasn't even settled on the title of the game. Namco did at least state that they are targeting to release Katamari Damacy around the launch window of the PlayStation Vita. Fingers crossed we hear more soon!

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TGS: I'm not sold on Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

Namco Bandai invited us out to their offices in Japan to see the Tokyo Game Show line-up before the show opens today. There was a lot to see, so we didn't have too much time with all the titles, which sucks since I really want to play Ace Combat: Assault Horizon again. Not because I enjoyed it, but because I have no idea what happened in my hands-on. We were dropped into the newly revealed Capitol Conquest mode where it was basically a domination-like multiplayer gametype. The eight-player battle saw us attacking the opposing team while attempting to take over points and gain stronger weapons.

After each death, we were able to get different jets or helicopters before jumping back into the match. The airships' controls were pretty standard, and you have a new control feature that assists in dog fights when needed. My problem with the game was that the action was too fast-paced. I've played past Ace Combat titles before and never could get fully into them because of how slow they were.

So you would think I'd enjoy Assault Horizon. Nope. The action was so fast and so hectic that I really don't even know how to feel about what I played. I want to give the new Ace Combat another whirl as I'm not happy that my first hands-on experience was so jarring. Plus, I want to check out the standard deathmatch and co-op focused missions before completely writing this one off.

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