Gamma Testing

The umelaut stands for two extra dots worth of metal.

Brütal Legend is flawed, but -- depending on your perspective -- not flawed enough to stop you from playing it.

Listen to it now!

Annnnnd ... we're back.

After a month hiatus, Rick and Matt invite their parents in for a little retro-music recital courtesy of The Beatles: Rock Band. 

Listen up!

Can a licensed super-hero game actually be worth playing? Yep. For once, a studio actually nailed the fundamentals of a comic book character in atmosphere, game play and story. And, it's fun.

Don't like Batman? No worries, Batman: Arkham Asylum is still a great game.

Listen up!

Polish uber-man BJ Blazkowicz is back to kill Nazis in Wolfenstein, this time stopping Himmler's dreaded SS from harnessing the occult power of the Black Sun dimension. Or something.

Listen up!

Shadow Complex -- from developer Chair and the mind of author Orson Scott Card -- is the best-selling single-player downloadable Xbox game in history.

It's easily the most enjoyable, entertaining and well-made video game you should never buy.

Wonder why? Listen up!

Rick hates this JRPG Nintendo DS game -- cousin to the Persona and Devil Summoner series from Atlus -- but Matt and Brian are entranced by the compelling story.

Basically (heh), you play a high school kid who ends up with the power to kill God, become the messiah, destroy the planet, or affirm the power of humanity, all in just seven days of in-game time.

Listen up!

We had a lot of fun with Nintendo's new Wii Sports Resort, designed to showcase the Wii Motion Plus plug-in, even if there are a few games that we'll never play again. (Canoe? Really?) The heightened sensitivity of the controller is great, even if it made Matt and Rick disappoint their cute Mii doggies and toss a dozen frisbees into the water. They made sure to punish Brian during swordplay, however.

Listen up!

Rick, Brian and Matt realize just how far they are from semi-pro 2-D fighting game fanatics after playing BlazBlue. But even our clearly meager skills found some traction in the intricate gameplay of BlazBlue.

Listen up!

I've lived most of my life playing video games, 37 years that span the vast majority of video game history. We had a dedicated Pong console in my house growing up, and an Atari 2600 after that, and home computers after that. So, as an old hand, it's interesting to see everything old turn new again and nostalgia for the good old days become the new new thing. Thus we get the spiffy new, re-mastered version of the 1990 classic adventure game from Lucas Arts: The Secret of Monkey Island. It spawned many a sequel and many more fond memories amongst gamers, and its humor remains a touchstone moment in many gamers' lives. It's one of the classics. And until two weeks ago, I'd never played one second of it.

The less said about what happened with King's Quest and why I stopped playing point and click adventure games when I was in middle school the better. Suffice it to say, I missed the whole Lucas Arts adventure game phenomenon of the early 90's. But everyone said that Secret of Monkey Island is one of the best that's ever been, and so, always eager for something new to play (even when it's old), I downloaded the game to see what all the fuss is about.

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(Trailer Trash is an ongoing series where Gamma Testing's Brian Ries uses his extremely limited video game knowledge to mine trailers of upcoming games for info, with limited success.)

It's clear that mankind was unable to kick the collective asses of the invading aliens off of our planet at the end of Halo's last episode, which means there's plenty of material for Toei, Casio, Studio 4C, and BONES to expand upon in this series of seven short films due out in 2010.

Although, as is clear in the trailer, these anime-style shorts won't deal exclusively with Master Chief's attempt to stop the invading Invid from stealing Earth's precious protoculture: The episodes are planned to span the entirety of the Halo timeline. From the early days of Zentradi civilization, when complex cosplay rituals determined mating partners and bar tab payment, to the Spartans' early successes brutally stifling the Slave Gorilla Uprising of 2525, this series promises to have it all.

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