In which we tell you about awesome things that you must look into and enjoy.

Ultimate Marvel v. Capcom 3

Do you enjoy battling with your friends and talking absurd amounts of trash? Well then, you will enjoy Ultimate Marvel v. Capcom 3. It gives the nostalgic essence of Street Fighter, but you will also learn to hate anyone that knows how to air combo or to block. When a round is won by decision, it’s probably because your friend who plays too many video games knows how to block and low block. 99 seconds isn’t enough to merc a team of three, and there is no way I’m going to play with infinite time and rope-a-dope the entire thing. Very few people want to play in this unsophisticated boxing match that can be best described as a “classy bar fight.” Of course, you can just mash all the buttons and hope for the best. — TA

Play a Side-scroller

There are lots of video games out there. It’s easy to get lost in all the open worlds and the first person shooters. As a Gamer who grew up in the 80’s, and never being someone with a whole lot of dough I was stuck in an 8 bit world for a long time, hell, in the 90’s I was still plugging in the Atari, if only to play Combat with a friend. There are RPG’s and racing games, simulators and sports games. A lot of my favorite games happen to be side-scrollers. Side-scrollers are perfect in their simplicity, just look at Super Mario Bros., Castlevania and Contra. In side-scrollers you run, usually toward the right of the screen, and destroy whatever monsters, punks or ninjas that may be out to kill you. If you haven’t played the aforementioned classics  above, download an emulator and seek them out; they are still fun and very addicting. In this article I’ll be talking about 3 of my personal favorite side-scrollers.

First on the list is Trojan. Trojan came out in 1986 and is a challenging beat ’em up, though you wouldn’t believe it watching the speed run on YouTube. The game is set in the post apocalyptic future after a nuclear war has blasted everything back into the dark ages. You play as a sword and shield wielding hero who must fight through six levels of post apocalyptic punks and bosses till you face the big bad, Achilles. This game was interesting to me because you could actually use the shield to deflect projectiles and block; most games just had you kicking and punching through everything. If you’re not careful you’ll lose both shield and sword and then you will have to use karate to win the day. It’s a fun game with a cool premise and clunky but fun gameplay.

Second on the list is a game I love to break controllers with. Life Force is a side/horizontal-scrolling space shooter that kicked so much gamer ass that the the developers put a code for 99 lives in the game manual. You take the helm of a Vic Viper spacecraft who must destroy Zelos and his home world, apparently in the arcade version called Salamander, you have to destroy a tumor inside a giant  alien life form. This game is tough and unless you do meth on the reg, you will die and die and die…….

My Final pick is a fairly new game called SHANK. Its a wonderful bloody mess of a game. You play as Shank of course; a bad ass bad guy with a sense of honor, whose only fault was to fall in love with a school teacher (guess what happens to her). The story is very Grindhouse and the soundtrack sounds like it was done by Robert Rodriguez, hell the whole game plays out like one of his flicks. Shank must unleash his furry on hordes of bad guys and he has many weapons in his arsenal to do so. The game is violent and silly and the graphics are top notch, with its cartoon 2D look. There is even a co-op side story so you can play with a pal.

So try a side-scroller , there are a lot of different styles out there so if hack and slash isn’t for you there are side-scrolling puzzlers as well, like Closure or Braid that make you really think out the levels. See you at the arcade, suckers.-GC