Week: End Game: On: 05.21.2011

Welcome back to the weekly roundup of what games the staff here at Nintendojo have been getting their sweaty mitts on. Please let us know what you are playing, and recommend anything you feel has been under appreciated and should be played. We won’t beat around the bush, let’s get straight to our weekly gaming updates!

James Stank

Well, this past week saw my first game of League of Legends. I’m pretty awful at it right now, but once I get better I hope to team up with Noah and destroy everyone. I’ve also been playing a ton of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, along with some Magic: The Gathering on the side. But as far as other games go, Donkey Kong Country Returns on Wii along with Triple Play ’96 on Sega Genesis are the only games that I’ve played on consoles.

Lewis Hampson

Despite having a particularly heavy week at college and work, my slightly worrying addiction to Mario Kart Wii continues unabated. Online is always full of people, and (in my experience at least) always lag free. Besides this I have been getting through Metroid: Other M at a slow but steady pace. We have a break coming up soon from college so I’m hoping I can use this time wisely….by playing more games, of course.

Nicolas Vestre

My gaming attention has primarily been focused on two games this week: Chibi-Robo! for GameCube and Mega Man Legends for PS one. Thankfully, these games really compliment each other well, and taking turns playing them has kept me from feeling overwhelmed by one or the other. Chibi-Robo! has a great sense of exploration, and just when it appears there’s nothing left to do, a whole slew of things open up. The game’s open world definitely rewards curiosity and provides very interesting characters and humor. Mega Man Legends is a fast-paced action RPG with plenty of action and weapons upgrades. Story-wise, it’s pretty good, and for some reason, it’s very addicting. I look forward to Mega Man Legends 2 (and its Dual Shock support, for sure) as well as Mega Man Legends 3: Prototype Version. I’ll get that last one the moment I have a 3DS in my hands (after June 6, of course).

Smith Stuart

I finally finished shipping all my 490+ Pokémon from my Pokémon Pearl over to my Black version, tried out a Professor Layton game for the first time and am getting ready to start (and review) the copy of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean I just recently received!

After playing an hour of Layton, I can attest to the fact that it rights every puzzling wrong I found with the awful Trace Memory back in ’05, and that it is brimming with a grand localization of character (an aspect I care very much about that often goes unnoticed by the masses, as best it should). Indeed, Layton makes me desire even more the longed-for expansion of new Nintendo franchises and personalities.

Greg Wampler

This weekend, I’ll be playing a bit less on Nintendo’s consoles due to a little game known as L.A. Noire. However, I’ll still be playing more PES 2011 3D and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition for Nintendo’s 3DS. I also just picked up Fling Smash (mainly due to wanting a third Remote) and plan on finally opening that up and playing it on Wii. Here’s to a great weekend of gaming!

Andrew Hsieh

I’ve had barely any time at all to play games this week, since I’m busy literally from morning till morning (of the next day), but with any luck at all I’ll be able to squeeze in a game or two of Super Street Fighter IV 3D on my friend’s 3DS. (It’s called “borrowing.”) And this doesn’t really count, but it’s video game-related so– during downtime at my job-intern-whatever-this-is thing, I’ve been reading the latest issue of Kill Screen, which is a sweet video game magazine that isn’t afraid to shy away from talking about video games as a new medium of expression. What I’m saying is, the good folks at Kill Screen don’t necessarily review games so much as they discuss them in relation to themselves, which coincidentally isn’t a far cry at all from what we’re doing here. It’s pretty cool and when you’re not busy playing games or reading Nintendojo maybe you should check it out!

Andrew always plays as the female character in Pokémon games so we assume it’s the same for Animal Crossing?

I’m also thinking about buying a used copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World and starting a whole new town just for shizzles and giggles. That or I’ll buy a used copy and make my own villager within someone’s old town. It’ll be like I’m moving in when everything’s already set for me. Everything, that is, except the weeds. Those darn weeds …

Kevin Knezevic

I did not have much in the way of spare time this week, but I was still able to sneak in a couple of gaming sessions between responsibilities. Pokémon White once again saw the most play, with more attempts at the Battle Subway than I care to remember. It is an evil, evil institute, far more dangerous to humanity than even the most insidious of Team Plasma’s schemes, but I cannot stop playing it. If only the prizes weren’t so alluring…

I also enjoyed a session of Metroid Prime in– ahem– preparation for my latest article. I wasn’t able to play it for too long but I did manage to complete my favorite portion of the game, the sunken frigate. I can still remember the awe I felt when I first stepped through its flooded corridors, underwater areas have always filled me with a sense of dread, but the music and atmosphere of the frigate made every trip through it a hauntingly beautiful experience. Though brief, the ship remains one of my favorite areas in the entire trilogy because it is so perfectly realized in terms of atmosphere, and it is one of the reasons why I have such a hard time choosing between Prime and Echoes as my favorite game in the series.

And now it’s your turn! What are you playing this weekend? Let us know in the comments’ section below.