Hey kids. So, we seemed to have stumbled into a few preorder exclusive bonus codes for inFamous, and the Uncharted Beta. What's this mean? We want to get rid of them, and rather than give them to our friends, we're going to give you guys a chance to take them.

PRIZE: Uncharted 2 Beta voucher, inFamous Downloadable Superpower.

Since the prize isn't huge or anything, we're gonna make this relatively simple. I'll throw a question down at the bottom, and you guys submit your answers in the comments section.

For the sake of ease in giving the prize to the winner, you should probably give us a way to contact you (I.E., not posting as Anonymous...).

If there was an Internauts/Player Wins video game, what would it consist of/type/pitch the game?

Best/weirdest/funniest answers will have a better chance to win.


If this works out, chances are, we'll do some more contest type things soon.

When starting out on this venture, I decided to do some research to see just how many licensed games there were… Too many, is a very general (but true) answer. I knew there were a lot of god awful games too, and that’s why I decided to do this. So, to start out, I decided to do a few games in one shot, jumping right into some Spider-Man games. Some. I’m not really sure how many Spider-Man games there are out there, mostly due to the fact that I’m too lazy to count. So, I picked what I assumed would be the worst, skipping over classier picks like Maximum Carnage or Separation Anxiety.

First up? Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, for the NES. Now, I may be mistaken, but I’m almost positive there wasn’t a game previously that featured the Sinister Six, so the “Return of…” might be a little superfluous. This game would later show up on a few Sega systems, and I really wish I had ventured down one of those routes instead of this NES garbage. I understand that it’s probably a little difficult to make a Spider-Man game, especially one that doesn’t make the player suicidal. Return of the Sinister Six is one of the Spider-Man games that could leave you pricing razor blades. Initially, I thought the game was awesome, because never before had I realized the sheer power of Spider-Man. Like, I knew he was strong, but this game is the Wolverine: Origins of Spider-Man games in terms of violence… I tapped the attack button to knock out a thug…only to see him EXPLODE! Every comic book, movie and video game based on Spider-Man in the last twenty years has LIED to me. They never showed the destruction or utter disdain for humanity the ol’ webhead was really capable of.


He fucking OBLITERATED that guy.

Unfortunately, this is the only good thing the game has going for it. The controls are awful, which could be expected when you only have two action buttons to work with. One button is for jumping, one is for attacking…unless you’re jumping, in which the attack button may result in you flipping, or shooting a web shot, or web swinging. I assumed hitting the jump button twice might result in web slinging, but that clearly makes too much goddamn sense. Originally, I didn’t think that there was web slinging, but while trying to punch Electro into people-particles, I somehow found myself swinging from a white line. Let it be noted that this action wasn’t what I fucking intended to do. But listen, I’ve been playing video games for twenty some-odd years, I can adapt. So, here I am, adapting, then all the sudden Spider-Man starts climbing up the fucking back wall! WHY?! I’d ask how, but I’m fairly fucking certain nobody fucking knows!


I'm not entirely sure how or why you're fucking climbing that, but I guess that's what you're doing right now.

Team both of those curveballs with a goddamned swan-dive-back-flip-thing that serves no purpose and you’ve got a Spider-Man game that leaves you feeling like you’re playing as a retarded Greg Louganis with a “glandular disorder”.

Next up is Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, though if you try and Google it, you’ll find that the title is Spider-Man/X-Men…I don’t think I’ve seen a forward slash in a title since Face/Off. Judging from Arcade’s Revenge, and Face/Off, the forward slash in the title is pretty much a telltale sign of the caliber of the product (i.e., shit). The first level of the game is pretty abysmal, wherein you move around in a building maze collecting little gadget things. Why? How does this propel the story? It fucking doesn’t. It’s clearly just used at a device to weed out those –casual- fans, people who aren’t completely down with Spidey, or the X-Men. Only if you’re totally devoted to the merry mutants would you finish this bullshit.

You’d think after that stupid goddamned level that the game would get a little better (the smart people decided that it wouldn’t and turned off the console), but it doesn’t. The game really succeeds in making you hate Arcade as much as everyone else in the Marvel Universe does, he really comes off as an annoying asshole. Each character gets two or three levels, the most terrifying of which are left to Wolverine, which involves clowns. Overall, the game isn’t too bad, it just isn’t very good. Just when you realize how one character controls, you have to play as someone else. What’s with Storm suddenly only being able to swim? If you’re going to throw in water levels, why use Storm? She shoots out lighting…Elementary school science tells us that water conducts electricity, hence she would fucking kill herself when she’s shooting lightning bolts underwater. It just doesn’t make any sense, why not make it just a flying level? It really just seems like another game developed by LJN, which fails to satisfy anyone.


This guy is throwing fecal matter. That's what minions do.

After finishing both of these games, I’m left to realize that I should be drinking much more alcohol when I play (as well as noticing I wasted a Friday night). Next up on the docket is The Spider-Man Fiasco Part 2, where I’ll play through even more poorly realized and even more poorly controlled Spider-Games…See what I did there?

Ridiculous, I know. Real life has demolished us. I just graduated college and such, so my life's been in a flux. I'm not entirely sure where PJ is. Dead, most likely.

Or not, who knows?!

But To tide you over til I update the site TONIGHT, I have some questions, and request some input.

PJ and I established Player Wins for video game stuff, but I have some stuff floating around that doesn't pertain to games. Stuff that could serve as more frequent updates! Would people be interested in updates of that nature on blog? Do people read blogs? Let me know.

What's Twitter all about, anyway?

I'm throwing up the first installment of the Licensed game Horseshit tonight (early morning), But where should I go next? Submit your response in the survey below, or if you want to suggest more, comment away.
Click Here to take survey

Not only does this game have one of the longest titles I’ve seen in a licensed game, but I’ll go on record now and say that it’s one of the best licensed games ever made. I’m a fucking nerd, through and through, and this game has given me everything I could have ever hoped for in a Wolverine game. I say that not only as a comic book nerd, but also a videogame nerd. This might be a deterrent for you. I can understand that.

From this point forward I’ll be referring to this game as “Wolverine,” because I don’t feel like typing out the fucking 8-word title, nor am I a fan of acronyms. I’m 22 years old, and I refuse to start liking acronyms now. It’d just be inconvenient…and strange.

So, where to begin? Wolverine is an amazing game. Its even more so amazing when you’ve previously played X2: Wolverine’s Revenge. For those of you unfamiliar with Wolverine’s Revenge, let me give you the lowdown: It was pretty awful. Mark Hammil played Wolverine, and the story had little to no connection to the X2 movie (why it had the X2 moniker is obviously only for tie-in purposes). There were cameos left and right, with Beast and Spider-Man, but neither of those characters could make that game any easier to wade through. It was obscenely difficult, with no real pay off. But why does this matter in regards to the new Wolverine game? In X2 (and any other game in which you play Wolverine) you pop your claws and proceed to bop and smack people around. Never once do you slice a goddamn thing. No one seemed to care (most likely due to the lack of people playing it), but then what should come along? An M rated Wolverine game.

I’ll be the first to say that I was more than skeptical when I first saw ads for this game. It looked lame, and I wasn’t about to be let down again by my favorite mutant. But like a battered girlfriend, believing what he said about not hitting me again, I was drawn back in.

I’m weak.

Raven, the company responsible for the Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and X-Men Legends, had been working on this game for quite some time. When asked how they could produce an M rated game based on a PG-13 movie, the developers responded with “We started first.” And it shows. Considering how the movie ended up (not good), most people wouldn’t expect much from the game. But what shipped was a bloody brawler reminiscent of God of War, with a story that makes far more sense and leaps and bounds superior in every possible way.

With the length of the development cycle, the developers had a chance to polish up the game quite a bit. So, the game looks really decent. It’s not the best looking game out there, but it’s quite obvious that a lot of time, precision and care went into making this game. When shot or cut up, the damage shows on Logan’s skin (which allows for some close-ups on his insides), and stays on his clothes after his skin heals. It’s pretty spectacular. I want to say that there’s never been a game where Logan has looked this good, but with only one very specific gripe: the opening cinematic. The cut scene is violent and great, but Logan has the weirdest hair, and comes off as looking incredibly awkward. Aside from that? Wolverine is pretty pleasing to the eyes.

The game play isn’t challenging, but beat’em up games usually aren’t. Nor is it extraordinarily long; you can finish it around 8 or 9 hours, which is long enough with a game like this. I doubt most people looking into a game like this are looking for something that’s going to revolutionize the videogame world. What Wolverine is, is an example of one of the better licensed games ever produced. You get an incredibly violent brawler, with a story that tops it’s Hollywood counterpart (this happened previously with the Spider-Man 3 game, in which the reason why Sandman helps Venom makes far more sense in the game than in the film).

Going back to Wolverine’s Revenge, wherein you played Wolverine with what could only be rubber claws… It never made sense, to be playing a game as a visceral, violent animal, and only ever “knock out” enemies. The “real” Wolverine kills people; he slices, as well as dices, them. There should be blood, entrails, and massive amounts of gore. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers on all of those fronts. You play Wolverine during the most painful part of his existence, a Wolverine who wants to share that pain with everyone who gets in his way. If the message I’m trying to send is unclear, there’s an achievement for dismembering enemies… awesome.

The game is immensely entertaining for what it is, and it never attempts to be anything more than it is, which is commendable. Some people might find the game boring, and nothing to write home about, but anyone who is a fan of Wolverine (comic books or otherwise) can find some enjoyment from the game, if for nothing else than finally taking the reigns of Marvel’s greatest animal. Raven wanted to make a brawler with Wolverine, where he’s the best at what he does…and what he does? Well, it isn’t very nice.

Hey, kids! I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is the podcast is going to be delayed. It's still coming this week, but there were unforeseen circumstances. Those circumstances involved Ken and I marathon running 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand when we should have been recording.

We apologize, but you'll still get the podcast this week, so no worries. You'll also probably get a rather interesting look at our co-op play-through of BotS.

We know we've been a little slack since last week, but it's mostly because there are simply no games to be played! We've solved some of those problems by coming up with ideas to circumvent the terrible release schedule, so we'll have stuff ready to go very soon. We'll still have a couple updates this week (such as the podcast!), but we'll be in full swing next week.

Considering this is shaping up to be the summer of movie-licensed games, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some other licensed games. I’m planning to do this as a regular feature, possibly two “reviews” per article. Clearly this could prove to be extremely painful for me, but I’ll muscle through it. Right now, I’m finishing up X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and have to say that its one of the best movie licensed games since Spider-Man 2.

What I need from you guys is some suggestions. I know there are a TON of movie games, and cartoon games. But I can’t keep track of them. In the comments section, drop a few suggestions for things I should try, or things you’d like to see me review (make fun of). I’ll obviously be reviewing Wolverine, Transformers 2, and other new licensed games, but the feature shouldn’t be too new. I wanna play some retro shit!

Suggest away!