TSB Labs: Upcoming Namco Bandai Video Games

Mike Stoute, Laptop Jesse, and I were invited out by Namco Bandai folks to see some of their upcoming games.? We’ve never been to something like this before, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect.? Would it be a huge room filled with sweating nerds, pwning each other and drinking mountain dew? Dudes in suites sipping wine and deciding the future of gaming? Turns out it was neither of these….

We entered a fairly large hotel room (by NYC standards anyways) with several large LCD TVs all with difference systems hooked up to them. For the next 4 hour or so we were able to ask questions and play their video games while cleaning out their beer supplies.

Statement of the Problem: How do I know if future video games are going to be cool?
Hypothesis: Free Beer and Video Games from the future are awesome
Materials: Several Video Games that won’t be out till the future, Beers
Procedure: Drink Beers, talk to video game people, drink beers, play video games,? drink beers

Results (Data):

Katamari Forever

Hands down one of the most stoner-ish games I’ve come across.?? The primary story in Katamari Damacy deals with the aftereffects of the planet-sized King of All Cosmos’ binge drinking spree that wiped out all the stars and other celestial bodies from the sky. The King charges his 10-cm-tall son, the Prince, to go to Earth with a “”?a magical ball that allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow?and collect enough material for him to recreate the stars and constellations.

Basically you spend most of the game rolling your little ball around making it larger. You start out tiny,? like inside someones kitchen and before you know it your rolling sky scrapers and Godzilla sized monsters in to a giant ball.? Check out the trailer if you’re still confused with the game play:

Very simple game play and trippy music? makes me want to spend a rainy day inside chilling with this game.

: Retribution

If you’re not familiar with series, I’ll sum it up briefly. Jack Slate is a police officer in the K-9 division that has a bad ass wolf-dog named Shadow. Jack runs around kicking ass and shooting people in the face while Shadow tears out peoples throats. We got to play a few levels of the game, but I wouldn’t even call it a beta since the game’s not coming out for at least a year.? The first level you ran around as jack, great graphics, awesome lighting effects and some of the most gore I’ve seen in a first person shooter.

The game really shined on the second level. You got to play as the dog and I have to say it was a fair amount of awesome. I can’t put into words how entertaining it is to run around as an animal mauling people. One particularly awesome dog attack shall henceforth be known as the Testi-Kill. Shadow basically mauls a dudes genitals and while he’s screaming in pain, tears out his throat. Check out a video of the game play:

If there is some type of reward system were I can get a Testi-Kill trophy, I’m buying this game 😛

Conclusions:

Drinking beer and playing video games from the future is fucking awesome.