As April Fool’s Day looms ever closer, things seem to be popping up everywhere that one would assume are clever pranks. For example, on THQ’s website recently it was announced that they would be venturing into the unexplored realm of cheerleading games. This, however, is no joke and THQ is hoping that it will take advantage of, as they put it, “the explosive growth of the girls gaming market in recent years due to the continued success of Wii and DS.”

All Star Cheer Squad for the Wii will follow a year in the life of a cheerleader from learning cheers to creating new routines and eventually become captain of the squad. You’ll use the Wiimote and the nunchuck to perform real cheer and dance moves and to ensure real cheerleading authenticity THQ has even signed on Tony G, who is best known for his work in the Bring It On movies. (more…)

Posted by Dennis | 23 Comments »

THQ has announced plans to finally dip back into the well and complete the Red Faction trilogy of games. If you don’t feel that excited, don’t worry. No one is.

The original Red Faction was note-worthy for its destructible environments. At the time of its release it was a pretty innovative graphical technique and really showed off what made the PS2 superior to the PS1. However, in the years since the release of Red Factions 1 and 2, gamers have discovered that they really don’t want to blow up entire worlds.

The truth is that destructible environments within a game basically only work within a large-scale destruction game, such as Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. That sort of carnage set free into just about any other genre and at some point the game will break. First-person-shooters, such as Red Faction, especially need some sort of structure and guides through a level. Allow the gamer to break those entirely and you end up with someone shooting a wall for thirty minutes just to bust through and see there’s nothing on the other side. That’s not much fun for a game. (more…)

Posted by Justin | 2 Comments »