Substance TV – Video game reviews with substance

It’s fair to say Blaster Master Overdrive lived up to the hype, since it was released merely two days after it was announced. The verdict? Well, Overdrive turns out to be a failed experiment and feels very much like an unfinished game. Here is list of fundamental issues I had with the game:

1. The tank’s main gun overheats. (The gun has it’s own bar that drains with every shot, but refills). This means you have to wait for the gun to cool down before you can use it. What now?

2. The tank jumps half as high as the original NES game. Not nearly high enough.

3. The BLAAHHHH looking enemy explosions.

4. Walking outside of the tank in the sidescrolling areas feels like you should be using a walker.

5. You no longer can throw grenades, instead you have a rocket launcher that fires a shot every 2 seconds.

6. THE FLIPPIN’ TANK’S GUN OVERHEATS!

But, the enemy’s are in full color instead of monochromatic. Hmm… I guess that’s game’s biggest plus. As a no name freebie Flash game, it may work, but as a Blaster Master game, it fails. So please, spend your hard earned money on anything but this.

- Erik

There’s a lot of awesome new coming out of this years CES. At the moment, I could care less about any of that because Capcom just announced Final Fight Double Impact; An Xbox LIVE arcade DLC of not only Final Fight (yes), but also Magic Sword (yes and yes). Details are sparse, but Capcom has confirmed new HD graphics in the vein of Super Street Fighter HD. Thankfully there will also be an option to play with the original visuals. The standard leaderboards will be present, alongside the most important aspect these games desperatley need:

ONLINE CO-OP!

Even sweeter it’s drop in drop out. Just like to old arcade. Capcom stated the game will be released sometime in March of this year. I myself cannot wait to download this goodness. Both Erik and I are huge fans of both games making this a no brainier.

Now, if Capcom could just do some IP maneuvering like they did with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and re-release Alien vs. Predator.

Link to video footage

Have you ever imagined fighting all the bosses from Mega Man 2 with all the weapons from the original Mega Man? Madness you say, well then you’ve come to the right place. Our crazy neighbors to the East made a freeware PC game called Rockman 2 de Ippatsu Neta. Of course you could download the game. Only problem being it’s all in Japanese. But who cares, it’s Mega Man right? You don’t need no stinkin’ English patch.

Well evidently someone was drinking their daily recommendation of awesomesauce and decided to translate this little gem into English. Even more awesome, they retitled the game “Rockman2 Boss Battle Extravaganza Thing”. A work of art I tell ya. I haven’t played it yet myself, but I plan on downloading it and trying out this twisted experiment.

ENJOY!

If anyone else had played it, what did you think?

BTW: Thanks to Duece from the Neo Geo forums for this tasty tidbit.

Pursuing around my Twitter feeds, I noticed the announcement from DICE that Battlefield 1943 will be only 600 points (a measly $7.50) on December 31st only.

Hey followers, please help us spread the word, this Dec 31st on XBLA BF1943 is only 600 MS Point!

I can’t tell you the number of hours I’ve put into this game. Well I guess I could, but I’m too lazy to check and partially scared of how much actual time I’ve spent on this game. This is an amazing game and worth the original $15 price point, so it’s certainly worth half of that. I bought this game not only for the 360 at full price, but for the PS3 as well so I could play with Erik and other friends on PSN making it the first game I own on more than one next gen console.

For those of you who own a 360, and you don’t have this game already, get to it. You won’t regret it. I know Modern Warfare 2 is all the rage now, and I love that game to pieces, but this is still worth the purchase.

- Brian