Hold your nose, cork your buttocks and don a nice pair of fluffy pink earmuffs, because that creation is… Animal Crossing.

This bizarre little confection is best defined as a life sim. It was born in 2001, an obscure, cult little The Sims-like experience. The premise is that our adorable young girl/boy avatar moves into a peculiar village inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. They are introduced to the residents, the mayor, the functions of the shops and the tools you’re given, and then… cast off. Whereupon, you’ll either swim majestically through the turbulent waters of Animal Crossing or sink, handsomely and pitifully, like Leonardo DiCaprio weedily letting go of the big ol’ door at the end of Titanic.

It’s a social simulation which –a crucial difference from The Sims– affords you direct control of your avatar. You are free to wander about as you please, within the confines of your own small town (or as a guest in others’) and shopping district. Your only obligation is an ongoing home loan you owe to the famous entrepreneurial raccoon, Tom Nook. When he isn’t shuffling about dressed only in a tiny crotch-height apron like the naked chef, he is expanding and improving your home… for a heavy price. Which, fortunately, you can opt to pay off gradually by depositing money at the town hall ATM whenever you please.

Bug catching, planting trees to harvest their fruits, fishing, planting elaborate arrangements of flowers, all of these and more serve to both entertain and earn your keep within Animal Crossing. It all makes for a whimsical world, governed by the passage of time and scheduled festival celebrations of the real world.

As is the case with many of Nintendo’s much-ballyhooed first-party franchises, it is a formula that has altered very little. Call it ‘Pokémon syndrome’ if you will, but it must be said that New Leaf has taken a few tentative steps into the unknown. Your character, upon entering town, is declared the mayor. This isn’t a great imposition of duties on the game’s open-ended nature, but rather adds just the right sense of purpose (as well as various construction projects which allow you to tailor your village to your liking to a greater extent than ever).

New Leaf, then, represents an example of effective evolution over revolution. The series knows its own nutty niche, and is catering to fans while also being that bit less ‘aimless.’ The latter makes for an accessible starting point for those who may have been put off by this aspect of the eccentric series, and adds to the game’s status of next 3DS must-buy.

Yes. Of course you have. Well, you demented individual, today’s entry in the pantheon of holders of the not-even-remotely-coveted Game of the Week award is for you.

Men’s Room Mayhem is an oddity indeed; a little strategy confection which released on PlayStation Vita and the usual assortment of iDevices late last month (and was humorously described by gertlushgaming, prior to that, as ‘the much anticipated toilet gaming experience’). Its rudimentary line-drawing control system and flow of play places it squarely in Flight Control’s genre (if sweat-tacularly frantic touchscreen-flailing realtime strategy action counts as a gaming genre), but the foul-smelling premise certainly serves to set it apart.

You are the janitor of a guys’ public restroom. Tiny, oddly endearing and toon-tastic visitors will enter, and must be guided to the facilities they require –which come in one of two flavours. You’re probably familiar with the concept– lest they foul themselves in embarrassing and exuberant fashion. You draw another finger-flailing path, and they wash their hands at the sink (gaining you some extra points) or just stride through the exit door with a casual middle finger to such trifles as hygiene. Y’know, like men often do.

It’s an astoundingly simple, seemingly repetitive concept. Developer Ripstone, though, have ensured that there are constantly little bonuses to achieve and exploits to make for the cannier janitor. Should a would-be pee-er be left to wander about your toilet undirected for too long, a countdown will begin, at the end of which they’ll do their business on the floor and depart hastily. Getting them to the toilet just before this occurs with bolster your score with a ‘close call’ award, while two patrons passing in very close proximity gives you a ‘near miss’ bonus (should two visitors actually collide, a fight will ensue, which you must break up with some further touchscreen pokey action). A general score multiplier for the amount of people on screen at once exacerabates your problems further.

As with the best games of its type, then, the simplistic control method belies a rather hectic time management experience. Leaderboard enthusiasts are sure to enjoy it. Each of the crop of available settings (hotel, festival, circus, nightclub and such) have their own unique-looking cast of zany characters, and a ‘boss’ patron with exclusive behavioural traits (the drunk’s movement speed will change intermittently, while the woman at the nightclub will cause each leering man in her vicinity to stop abruptly). In summation, Men’s Room Mayhem has its tongue firmly in its cheek, and its… man-parts firmly in its hand (purely for urinal-using purposes, you understand). It’s a comical, compelling and very cheap title which is one malodorous toilet worth venturing into.

Source of images: venturebeat.

The game was released for PSN on PlayStation Vita earlier this month, by the wacky funsters at Frima who brought us A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks! As with this earlier title, there’s a tongue-very-firmly-in-cheek-indeed humorous spirit throughout; in this harrowing tale of sisters betraying sisters who are also… Sisters. If you follow me.

As the intro movie reveals, our four protagon-nuns (Eva, Rosy, Olga and Mandy) are four-fifths of a quintet of biblical badasses. The final member, Mortanna, strayed from their righteous, monster-groin-shooty path, and unleashed an array of hideous beasts from the depths of the devil’s underpants onto the world. This was, I need scarcely point out, not neighborly behavior at all. The goodly sisters, with mixed feelings about the whole ‘impending apocalypse’ situation, set out to send her legions back up Hell’s buttocks from whence they came.

Fortuitously, though, they’re well equipped for the job. In this strategic shooter, each of your four party members has an exclusive ability, which you can use at any time during the real-time battles. Olga, the portly ‘defense’ nun, can taunt opponents so that they focus their attacks on her, in time-honored tanky fashion. The rather more feeble Mandy, meanwhile, has a healing spell. Keeping the two in close proximity, then, is one of example of the subtle strategic nuances at work in the midst of the vampire/skeleton blasting craziness.

Each mission begins with a odd little touch-guided map for you to traverse between each encounter, flicking projectiles back at the portals that seem intent on murdering you right in the face as you do so. To fight, your perspective will shift to an arena shooter of sorts. Here, you’ll individually ‘drag’ your nuns to move them about the tiny battlefield, or to a foe to engage them (not in a romantic sense. Just so we’re clear on that). It’s a simplistic system, if a little ungainly when your forces are too close together.

The characters also have their own distinct weapon classes: twin pistols, shotgun, rifle and… something akin to a magnum. These are found in chests as you progress, and upgraded using the gold coins you accrue from fallen fiends. Along with ‘levelling up’ the nuns themselves, these things add another sense of progression to budget, arcade titles that don’t always have such factors.

With some entertaining boss encounters, amusing dialogue, accessibility and fun gameplay, Nun Attack is a fine -and very cheap- addition to any PS Vita library.

Source of images: chimerarevo.

What we have not been able to do, thus far, is strive to anihilate the entire population of the Earth by gleefully spreading horrifying diseases across land, sea and air. Huzzah for Plague Inc., then, the most cringe-ily evil, malevolent video game since Telemarketer That Calls When the Recipient is in the Bath and Must Answer the Phone Naked and Furious Simulator 2013.

One of my fleeting forays into the world of Android and iDevice gaming, Plague Inc. tasks you with nurturing an epidemic of your choosing (bacterial, viral and such) in its bid to destroy the world. At the beginning of the game, you opt for a specific type (each of which has wildly disparate characteristics and will give you a varied, easier/harder ride accordingly) and are thrust into a geographically-accurate world map. From here, the ghastly business of murderization ensues.

You simply -via the ACTUAL SORCERY that I assume powers touchscreen technology- poke the country in which you wish your outbreak to begin, and set to work strengthening it and spreading it. Your view of the globe does not change throughout your campaign, rather you will be cruising from assorted micromanagement menus and back to it constantly. There are a great number of these, as this is rather a technical title.

Your time is primarily spent purchasing upgrades for your virus/fungus/bio-weapon. It is crucial to ensure your disease is an ever-evolving organism, lest the scientists of the world develop a cure and prevent your entirely innocent plan of reducing society to a festering mass of corpses with alarming boils on their gonads. Because scientists, as we know, never allow us any fun at all.

It’s incumbent upon you, then, to ‘level up’ your germ’s antibiotic resistence, the better to penetrate richer regions with sophisticated medical care. You can also purchase new, increasingly sadistic and alarming symptoms, and infect animals, water supplies and such, so as to increase your infection rate.

Success requires a deft balancing act. A disease that is too dangerous (in terms of mortality rate) will destroy carriers before they are able to spread their ailment, and increase the rate at which the governments of the world fund cure research to stop you. Both of which will end your game. Conversely, highly-infectious can equal too ‘weak,’ which will similarly see you fail your objective. A considered approach is key.

In summation, there’s great bang for your strategic buck (literally) in Plague Inc. The macabre subject matter is handled with a dash of dark humour, but not enough to prevent it from turning off some players; it’s a maudlin affair indeed. Even so, the numerous kinds of germ available, the differing characteristics of each and the range of playstyles you can develop make for a compelling and intellectually stimulating little game. Hold your nose, cork your buttocks and prepare to infect the world, mobile strategists.

Source of images: androidgamesreview

The deft mix of accessibility and deceptive combat depth has encouraged all ages to indulge in the sport of kings (to wit: coercing lumpen mutated wildlife to pummel the groins of other lumpen mutated wildlife), and it is also this very quality that has earned this specific entry in the series the not-even-remotely-coveted Game of the Week award.

Pokémon Pearl was released for the DS in 2007. As is the wont of the series, it was joined by a negligible-differences-so-as-to-promote-trading (and extra cashtacular for Nintendo, of course. They’ve got to pay the bribe Satan demands to allow them to shove all their unsold Virtual Boys into that Underworld landfill somehow, after all) companion piece, Pokémon Diamond. Neither of which troubled to lend any befuddling Da Vinci Code-esque plot twists to the familiar poké-premise, of course.

Our protagonist’s sprite has changed a little, the names and the geography of the towns are new, but otherwise paradigms remain distinctly un-shifted here. Fans have long grown accustomed to the interchangable ‘bad guy teams’ (which come in Rocket, Magma, Plasma and Galactic varieties, to name but a few), town treks and pain-in-the-posterior rivals that are an integral part of every installment in this RPG franchise.

But let’s not mock Pokémon’s steadfast aversion to change, like the mocking mocksters of mock that we are. Pearl did lend a few substantial additions to the formula, mainly to the battle mechanics. Now, attacks would be split into physical, special or status categories, on a move-by-move basis (instead of ‘all ground attacks are physical’ and so forth). It also utilised the Nintendo Wi-fi connection to enable handheld online battle-age without ludicrous cables or chunky Game Boy. Huzzah!

Most pertinently, though, Pokémon Pearl was my introduction to competitive battling. Shenanigans with EVs, IVs, pokémon natures and breeding and suchlike opens the true potential of these simplistic-looking titles, and accounts for the several hundred hours of gameplay I eked out of Pearl. The games are remarkable because they are as strategically nuanced as you wish them to be, and there’ll always be a place in my crusty heart for this edition for teaching me so.

Source of images: pokemon.wikia.com

This odd little application is another entry in PlayStation Vita’s series of peculiar lifestyle downloads (alongside such strange shenanigans as Travel Bug and Ecolibrium). It is, quoth the developers on the game’s loading screen, an alarm application which allows club members to help each other wake up… a new way of communicating with others around the world. Because who hasn’t wanted to ‘communicate with others’ by prodding at their PSN avatar the very second you awaken, bleary-eyed and with an all-pervasive need to urinate right now? WHO?

Nobody, that’s who.

Wake-up Club can function as a conventional immediate morning wake-age device. When setting an alarm, you opt for Standard Alarm mode. Here, you’ll set whether it reoccurs and on which days of the week, the volume, the suitably cretinous tone itself… everything a non-peculiar alarm on a mobile phone or suchlike will offer you. But you can forego that in favour of the Wake-up Club Alarm mode. Which is where that anus-cork you inserted earlier comes in. Read on (if you are of steely sinew and manly heart) for a tasty meal from Cafe Crazy.

The ‘club,’ it transpires, consists of those who have set a Wake-up Club alarm at the same time as your own. Upon activation, the avatars of said players will be spinning around the screen in a demented fashion (akin to birds flying around the head of somebody recently struck by a heavy, blunt instrument in a cartoon). As will your own, and you must touch it to confirm you’ve awoken. If the colour of your fellows’ avatar bubbles hasn’t changed, they haven’t yet arisen from their comfy, comfy slumber pit. To rectify this, you can poke at it to cheer them on. When everybody is fully conscious, that day’s ‘club’ is deemed a success, and everyone shuffles upright to put their underpants on amid a chorus of gleeful fanfare from the Vita.

Yes, that is all entirely true. You can even send friend requests to the rest of your Wake-up Club Wake-up Club (if you follow me), for reasons largely unknown. Dude, you also awaken at 7:25am? Awesome. Do you have a prompt morning bowel movement at 8:15 too? We just became best friends, right here.

In summation, this is just the sort of peculiar little novelty I appreciate. It has, unfathomably, made my oft-neglected-of-late Vita an essential element of my morning routine, if only for that fleeting moment. Poking awake PSN strangers in Zimbabwe is, quite plainly, not an experience you want to deny yourself. There’s a trophy for waking with the club every day for a year (well, 365 days in total), and it must be earned.

Source of images: ps3site.pl

There can be no doubt that the console has been floundering almost as ineffectually as a simpleton fish after a fin-ectomy of late. This is largely due to the great dearth of balls-out, only on PlayStation Vita mighty wonder-games. Is Soul Sacrifice a true ‘killer app’ for the Vita? Join us for a look at this creepy tale.

This youthful, spritely title was released this very week by Marvellous AQL. It’s a loosely-defined action RPG (loose enough to damn well drop right off and roll under the desk, never to be seen again, come to that, but let’s not get pedantic), in the same vein as Capcom’s much-ballyhooed Monster Hunter games. The premise, though, is entirely unique; one of the most disconcertingly macabre in the Gamingsphere.

You are a harried slave, about to be a human sacrifice to serve the maniacal whims of a formidable sorcerer. Just before the Grim Reaper strides over to embrace you (perhaps without his pants on, whereupon the ‘embrace’ becomes a needlessly literal, homoerotic affair in a seedy motel room with suspect stains on the sheets), an odd, sentient demon-book appears before you. It professes to detail the way out of your ghastly predicament in its pages.

As you read, the book’s contents are revealed to be a series of anecdotes depicting past struggles between warlocks and ‘foul beasts’ and/or ‘archfiends.’ Having customized your character, they become your avatar as you play through the scenarios detailed in the stories.

Combat with these monsters is a remarkably multi-faceted business. Every enemy dispatched can then be either sacrificed or saved, which is where the ‘levelling up’ notion comes in. Sacrificing opponents will augment the strength of the myriad magic spells in the game, while sparing their lives will bolster your HP and recovery. Essentially, you can opt for such strategic staples as the glass cannon or tank/healer, or maintain an equilibrium (raising both stats equally will see you neither excelling nor deficient in either area).

A great scope to cater to your chosen playstyle is Soul Sacrifice’s greatest strength. Do you want to play a support role; freezing opponents, buffing allies and lending deftly-aimed shots at weak points? Would you rather forego defensive abilities to repeatedly thrust your gigantic, fiery fist into beast-groin? Cast a spell which will lure your fiendish foe to attack you alone, raise a shield and allow your more fragile allies to pummel away unimpeded? With an array of stat boosts to equip and hundreds of spells to experiment with, the options are almost frightening.

The titular sacrificing lends a further nuance to the gameplay. When an ally is downed, the remaining players can opt to revive them -at a cost of their own remaining HP- or sacrifice them. The latter will see them ‘die’ (reduced to traversing the battlefield as a spectre and lending attack boosts to the remaining players), but will also unleash a vast, explosive death spell of furious death with death on upon the archfiend’s delicate facial region (the lost player is granted an additional ‘martyr bonus’ item at the end of the quest for their trouble).

Forbidden spells dubbed ‘Dark Rites,’ meanwhile, can only be used when your health is low, and have remarkably powerful effects. The caveat being that you must pay a cost after their activation, which remains after the fight until you reverse it (severe burns that halve your defence, for instance, is something you’re going to want to rectify).

Soul Sacrifice is an intriguing prospect for any Vita owner. Its format (embarking upon ‘quests’ to bring a stabby, blood-leaking end to a boss monster with 1-4 players) is a wonderfully addictive one, as any MonsterHunterholics can attest. Nevertheless, the narrative interwoven between these missions is dark indeed, and utterly compelling; quite distinct from anything superficially similar. This is one doomed journey you shouldn’t hesitate to undertake.

Source of images: godisageek.

This extravaganza of parodies was released by Vblank entertainment last year, for each of the consoles’ download services. It brings us the story of an anonymous, mulleted (this being a mockery of eighties and nineties culture as well) miscreant, dubbed only ‘The Player.’ As you would expect of the game’s Grand Theft Auto mocking sensibilities, there is a sandbox city at your disposal, with missions to access as you wish to advance the plot. Which is rather unhinged, as it goes.

The Player, at the game’s outset, has taken a job as a henchman for The Jester, Theftropolis kingpin (with a canny, purely-coincidental resemblence to the Joker). In the line of duty, he encounters a Tardis-esque time machine. Which, naturellement, he instantly steals, and is propelled into an unspecified future (the year 20XX). Inadvertently destroying the device on arrival, you’re accosted by ‘Doc Choc,’ who owns a hilariously familiar DeLorean-aping mode of transportation. Your primary objective, as such, is to help the grey-haired, demented looking professor gather the pieces of the machine so as to restore its functionality.

The mission system is loosely imposed (loosely enough to drop right off and roll under the sofa never to be found again, come to that), with icons on the map to follow to the next as the whim takes you. As with Rockstar’s revered efforts, though, there is much to undertake away from these objectives. A vast array of collectibles are spread liberally throughout Theftropolis, ensuring several hours of searching to unearth every loot bag and prank call every payphone. After this, there’s a great number of sprees to take part in. These grant you unlimited ammunition for a certain weapon, and a strict time limit to cause as much sweet, juicy highscore-flavoured carnage as possible.

An assortment of shops also grant you the ability to customize your tiny, blocky homunuculus of a character, by means of hats, hairstyles and… plastic surgery. Oh yes. Disguising oneself as the staff of other assorted indie games isn’t an option I’ve ever seen anywhere else in gaming, so huzzah for that.

Should you wish to, y’know, actually do what you’re supposed to be doing -you mad renegade from the depths of Satan’s balls, you!- you’ll find a pleasing variety of gameplay styles in the stages. They take the many-but-brief route, and further re-emphasize Retro City Rampage’s status as an homage to the fledgling years of video games. There’ll be Metal Gear stealth sections, fetch quests, something very much akin to Smash TV, a salutation to Bionic Commando, and a dizzying amount more.

You don’t have to be a crotchety old gamer (head full of fond, Game Boy Tetris marathons, trouser legs covered in urine from the incontinence that has set in of late) to revel in the imaginative, relentlessly nostalgic aesthetic created here. The cheery design, the addictive nature of the throw pursuing cops into lakes or ride a tank along the high street, just because you can sandbox gameplay… this is a real testament to old-fashioned fun in every sense. But it’s also replete with pop culture references of the era, a humorous nuance which deserves to be appreciated.

It didn’t attain its much-ballyhooed status for its story, that’s for sure (not that any fighting game ever has, but we shan’t get pernickety there). Another Iron Fist Tournament is afoot, against a demented backdrop of the Michima family’s antics. This time, Heihachi is cruising about in an ancient ruin in Mexico, from which his men recently liberated the hideous abomination from the depths of the devil’s buttocks that is Ogre. To lure the furious green machine out, so as to utilise its abilities, Heihachi announces the King of Iron Fist 3.

It’s as melodramatic, craptacular and bizarre as a gothic German soap opera, as expected. But it’ll suffice as an excuse for innumerable combatants from across the globe to strike each other about the skull, and that’s all we ever asked.

The roster is, indeed, remarkably plentiful. Tekken stalwarts like Jin, Jack the robo-freak, Paul Phoenix and his absurd cylindrical hair are all accounted for, as you would expect. This third iteration, though, is notable for being the greatest departure yet into novelty, comedy character territory (which is quite a feat, when its predecessor brought us boxing kangaroos/velociraptors). I am, frankly, still of the opinion that stumpy-armed midgi-dino Gon is the greatest unlockable character video games have ever bestowed upon us. I will engage in a vicious fistfight in the streets with anyone that disagrees on this score (no I won’t).

Then there was the dastardly, nefarious and hilarious Dr. B, a wizened old scientist with the combat capacity of a one-legged kitten with a limp scrotum. His repertoire of attacks includes such horrors as fall over backwards and twitch spasmodically on the spot, which makes it so egregious that these guys were never invited back to the Tekken party after this venture.

In tandem with the great wealth of perky pugilists to choose from came a generous array of play modes to match. Tekken 3 was the product of a bygone era, when fighting games were bestowed with time attack, survival and other such classics (largely curtailed today in favour of a meagre crop of single-player options and the online portion). Here, for our delectation, was the wonder of Tekken ball mode, like beach volleyball combined with a ballistic missile full of ANGRY VIOLENCE. Force mode, the Streets of Rage-esque scrolling beat ‘em up? That’s here too.

In summation, the game was a generous package indeed, replete with content. I, and many other nostalgic fans, have my/our fingers, toes and gentleman’s parts crossed that it makes the transition to PSN, to join the previous two outings.

Source of images: tekken.wikia

After a decade of prayer, general internet whining and flaming sacks of dog crap left on the doorstep of Nintendo’s HQ in Kyoto, the sequel has arrived on 3DS. Dubbed Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (or merely Luigi’s Mansion 2 for us European types), it provides the green cowardice machine and his decrepit, presumably incontinent sidekick Professor E. Gadd with another spectre-saturated home to liberate. Or, indeed, five of them.

The original was largely derided for its brief length, with is rectified here with the introduction of Evershade Valley. This region was inhabited by benevolent, friendly ghosts (such as, y’know, Casper), until the shattering of the eponymous Dark Moon. After this event, they turned back to their nefarious and mischievous ways. Luigi is recalled from his quiet, lonely gaucho-esque existence (his hobbies include sobbing sad, sad tears of sadness into a motel futon because his brother is infinitely more famous and successful than he is and consuming baked beans straight from the tin with the curtains drawn) to strap on his ludicrous Poltergust device and recover the pieces of the moon -one of which is held by the ‘boss’ of each mansion- to restore the ghosts to their pleasant selves.

Image source: www.gamepodunk.com

The manner in which you go about this has been radically revamped from the first installment. In Dark Moon, you will traverse each mansion in a series of brief stages/missions. After five of these, there will be the boss encounter, which will grant you access to the next ‘world’ (they’re aesthetically varied enough to warrant the title). Beyond this, each area will yield an additional, optional mission, a timed ghost hunt minigame of sorts. This you can attempt after locating every Boo hidden in the five previous stages.

As such, there’s a hub -E. Gadd’s laboratory- which you pass to and from between levels. There are also a couple of new technological doohickeys to lend subtle nuances to the ectoplasm-vacuuming gameplay of Luigi’s Mansion. Your Poltergust 5000 has been augmented with a ‘Strobulb,’ a strobe light with which you must stun the ghost before proceeding to suck it, ghostly-buttocks first, into your hooverbag (the torch no longer has any effect on your non-corporeal foes). Your darklight device, meanwhile, reveals otherwise invisible elements, from doors to pathways to furniture; greatly enhancing the puzzling element of the game.

Luigi’s latest venture, I’d say, is a worthy sequel. It’s replete with more visual humour (generally slapstick pratfalls and jump scares at the green machine expense) and endearing animation -friend and foe alike- than the original ever offered. It’s not an especially long title, but is certainly a rather more substantial package. With an enhanced single player campaign, four online cooperative ghostbusting modes in the ‘Scarescraper,’ a copious helping of upgrades and collectibles to earn/find and perhaps the finest-looking 3D on the system thus far, this is another great choice for Nintendo’s portable.