Sin & Punishment 2 reviewed, MonkeyPaw interviewed

Sorry if this trend is irritating you, but Eric pointed out to me that two more of my recent Joystiq posts might be up the various alleys of TC readers.

First is my super-long interview with John Greiner, who used to be the president of Hudson Entertainment and now runs MonkeyPaw Games, a company devoted to localizing and, in some cases, remaking Japanese games for Western audiences. I don’t think anyone noticed it when it went up on Joystiq, but I thought it was one of the least botched interviews I’ve done.

Second is a review of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, which, I’ve just discovered, is my first review to be listed on Metacritic as a result of Joystiq’s new score system. I’m going to be even more nervous than before about the validity of my reviews, but I’ll at least be comforted by all those moneyhats. Anyway, I thought the review came out not entirely terrible, and it’s a game that I figure hope a lot of you will want to read about.

tags / meta / sin and Punishment 2 / monkeypaw games / jc

Games missing from Nintendo’s lineup

With today’s DSiWare surprises and announcement that The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks will hit December 7th, Nintendo posted its consoles’ fall/winter release schedules. The list of upcoming games is too long to even skim here, so I’ll let you read the full tally yourself and instead talk about what wasn’t included in the roster.

Five first-party games I hoped to see on Nintendo’s late 2009 and early 2010 slate but were unaccounted for:

1. Sin and Punishment 2 - Ships in Japan on October 26th, but last I heard, this won’t reach the U.S. until the first quarter of 2010
2. Picross 3D - Originally scheduled for the third quarter of 2009, but now absent from the fall/winter schedule
3. WarioWare D.I.Y. - Announced for North America at E3 (which doesn’t guarantee release — e.g. Jam With The Band) without a set date
4. Another Code: R - Released in Japan and Europe but not in the States or Australia (sounds like another Disaster situation)
5. Game & Watch DSiWare games - It’s strange that Nintendo announced its Electroplankton minigames but not these, though it’s likely the company will throw these onto the service without any warning

Were there any missing DS or Wii games that you wanted to see on the list?

Buy: U.S. Matte White, Pink, Black and Blue DSi

Import: Japanese Nintendo DSi (White, Black, Pink, Red, Lime Green, Metallic Blue)

tags / dsiware / sin and punishment 2 / picross 3d / warioware diy / made in ore / another code r / game and watch / ec

Sin & Punishment 2 character art

This would be Isa, the male hero:

And here we have Kachi, the female hero:

These look great! I bet they’d make fantastic wallpapers — in fact, I made one for my desktop background:

Hopefully, Sin & Punishment 2 won’t suck. I’d hate to be that dude with a huge image from a crap video game on his monitor all the time.

See also: Sin and Punishment 2 trailer

tags / sin and punishment 2 / treasure / art / ec