FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Game Night 13 at Giant Robot 2

Game Night 13 – Hotline Miami and Tuning
Saturday, March 9th 2013, 6:00 – 10:00 p.m.
Giant Robot 2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.Los Angeles, CA 90025
gr2.net (310) 445-9276

In conjunction with Meat Bun Apparel, Angry Bananas, Attract Mode and Giant Robot, we are proud to host Game Night 13, an event that takes place at GR2 about every two months. This episode of Game Night will feature two indie games.

Three games, including an appearance by Spelunky creator Derek Yu . We’ll also have his figures!

The Games: Hotline Miami and Tuning both games created by Jonatan Cactus Soderstrom.

Hotline Miami – Hotline Miami is a retro style 2d top-down action shooter game developed by Dennation games. Its fast paced, has weapons of all varieties for you to use, a lucid trippy art style, and an amazing original soundtrack.

Tuning – Tuning is a platformer in which the levels are gradually presented weirder and weirder, creating visual puzzles where the player has to figure out how what he sees relates to his own actions in the game.

Special Events:

Cosplay in a Hotline Miami outfit and you’ll get a free download code for Hotline Miami (limited)

The Game Night Raffle – always a hit

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based publication about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles.

Game Night 13 will take place on Saturday, March 9th 2012, 6:00 – 10:00 p.m.

For more information about Game Night, GR2, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact:

Eric Nakamura
Giant Robot Owner/Publisher
eric@giantrobot.com
(310) 479-7311

It’s a game, no it’s a robot! It’s only 1.35 million dollars. It’s Kuratas by Suidobashi Heavy Industry. The weapons are all in fun, except the gun does contain BBs. The aim has facial recognition, so it tracks humans. If you (the shooter) smiles, the gun starts firing! Want?!

videolink (it’s different than the Youtube video)

Biohazard

The proposal. They were up from San Diego, he had told her that one day they’d go to a Game Night. He wore a different GR shirt during the day and had a costume change at some point, since at Game Night, he was wearing his proposal outfit. He got the ring a couple of months earlier. After playing games, checking things out, he played Yeren in front of Shelby Cinca and Sean Chao, and that’s where he popped the question. She said yes. Romantic dude. She was near shaking and fiddling with the ring nonstop. The photo below is just a few minutes later. Eventually, we hope to see their Flipcam video that someone shot. Game Night is magical.

The photos below is Glorkian Warriors shot from off the parking lot wall at Giant Robot 2. The art is by James Kochalka, and the Game play, Pixeljam. This will be a hit game. The animation is smooth and it feels like you’re in the Kochalka cartoon world. This is a fun one.

Jeni Yang on the DS.

Hyperkin provided console. It’s looking like a Game Night fixture. People enjoy playing on the console. I wish the wireless controllers had more range.

Playing Tri Tri Obelisk which is was presented at GR by Shelby Cinca. It’s an iPad game.

Beau Blyth stands tall and answers a question while people played his Samurai Gunn.

More photos below!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Game Night 10 at Giant Robot 2

Game Night 10 – Glorkbot’s Mini-Adventure, Tri-Tri-Triobelisk, Samurai Gunn
Saturday, June 16 2012, 6:30 – 10:00 p.m.
Giant Robot 2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.Los Angeles, CA 90025
gr2.net (310) 445-9276

In conjunction with the Attract Mode, Meat Bun Apparel and Angry Bananas, Giant Robot is proud to host Game Night 10, an event that takes place at GR2 about every two months. For this tenth installment, we are teaming up with James Kochalka and Pixel Jam’s long awaited title, alongside Shelby Cinca and Erik Svedäng’s iPad game, Tri-Tri-Triobelisk, and Beau Blyth’s Samurai Gunn.

We will set up game stations both indoors and outdoors and in person will be Shelby Cinca and Beau Blyth. Also playable with be Cinca and Sean Chao’s Yeren board game and Beau Blyth and Jeni Yang’s Catburger.

Game Night 10 is taking place during the Game Over Exhibition, so it’s a great chance to see video game inspired art alongside playable games.

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based publication about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles.

Game Night 10 will take place on Saturday, June 16th 2012, 6:30 – 10:00 p.m.

For more information about Game Night, GR2, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact:

Eric Nakamura
Giant Robot Owner/Publisher
eric@giantrobot.com
(310) 479-7311

Dylan Sprouse is an indie gamer.

Shelby Cinca shows off Yeren, a game he designed with Sean Chao to Carlos Angrybananas Lopez. Shelby is a the DM.

Elizabeth Ito and Jeni Yang.

Yes, you can kind of see what it looks like, during a less packed moment. It was wall to wall people throughout.

We’re making it into a documentary.

Sarah Lee and Jesse Tise.

People playing Catburger. That’s Ana Serrano on the right.

Oh my. It’s chaos with Miso in the middle.

More pics below

That’s Ray Young Chu below who’d project is comprised of many paintings and wooden cut letters. It’s a game that could easily exist about the L.A. Riots. You can be a first person shooter, looter, or even a police officer. It’s as real as a piece can get.

Gary Musgrave – Joust (now corrected) action using acrylic ink.

Sarah Lee – Yes that’s inspired by Donkey Kong. It’s a great take of the game.

Sara Saedi – Crash Bandicoot. Who remember this game?

Mandana Ozlati, Albert Reyes, Aiyana Udesen and Matt Furie in artist pose.

Jon Lau doing some Tekken

Sana Park Katamari

Full disclosure before I begin: I was not actually able to complete this game. Every time I sat in front of my TV, controller in hand and ready to play, it wouldn’t take long before it got the best of me, and I had to turn it off. I don’t mean to suggest that this game is so inconceivably difficult that it makes TMNT 1 (NES) look like TMNT 2 (NES), but it’s just that there is so little to like about the game that the experience was just excruciating. Developer CyberConnect2 may have just created the first of a new genre in which I’d like to lovingly refer to as a ‘Snooze Button Masher’ (that’s right, you’re hearing it from me first!), because every nine minutes, you might actually get to hit a button. I’m referring to the overabundance of cutscenes, of which there are some that contain simple quick-time events. Now before any of you fans of the game out there start losing it (it’s hard to believe that they exist, but I’m sure even E.T. has its share of die-hards), of course I’m not being literal and there is a certain degree of exaggeration here, but only some. Let me explain…

As a big fan of Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Castle Crashers, TMNT and other such brawlers, I actually had some hope for this game, because who doesn’t think unceremoniously maiming lesser mortals as a Demigod sounds fun? So you can imagine my disappointment when the first 15 minutes of the game (though it felt much longer) was essentially a poorly-executed rail shooter, frequently interrupted by cutscene after cutscene introducing the different demigods. As Asura descends to Earth, the objective was to blast away the Gohma, which were these red asteroid-looking things.OK, not so bad yet, I guess I just have to arrive on Earth first before I start obliterating everything. No problem. But after destroying a few Gohma, there would be a cutscene (well that was a short sequence, but I suppose we can move forth with some narrative). The scene ends and it was back to the rail shooter bit, then another cutscene, then shooter bit. These cutscenes lasted longer than the shooter sequences did, and that’s the way it progressed until all of the demigods had been introduced and the player properly detached and thoroughly disinterested.

I could already see that the story was going to be your typical Japanese romp, with the infinite weirdness that comes with it. Usually I’m someone who can look past a bland story as long as the gameplay is good, but it quickly become evident that this wasn’t going to be the case here after finally getting on the ground for some brawling combat. Essentially the only attack you have to work with is mapped to the B button, which comprises your basic melee attacks. The player can use Y for a powerful attack, but it has a refresh timer after each use, so you’re still mostly hammering away on B. Pressing and holding X is your range weapon (shooting balls of energy out of your hands), which will put the player in shooting mode and disables them from moving around. This is not very useful if you find yourself being mugged by numerous foes at once as you would expect to happen in a brawler, so this told me that either I was in for a very boring action game that never gets too intense (a blah-ction game, if you will), or it’s just a badly-designed move that seldom serves a purpose…it was a little of column A and B. You have your jump and evade, as well as a button (can’t recall which one it was now) that you could push immediately after getting hit to bounce back quicker, which I actually thought was kind of cool. Finally, there are two gauges that, when full, can either be used to unleash an ultimate attack or allow a period of time where Y doesn’t have to refresh. But as I fought through the ground battle areas of the game, I found myself really only needing to hit B, and occasionally Y after each time it refreshed (and yes, I was on the hardest difficulty). When you boil it down, B is your only real offensive attack, while everything else was just passive or needed to be built-up. I like brawlers (like the ones I already mentioned above) that have multiple attack buttons to give you more options and possibilities for combos, it’s more active and fun this way.

The whole game is episodic with multiple story arcs, which I wouldn’t normally mind, but the way it was done in this game didn’t seem to work so well. Every beginning chapter (which are all consecutive) shows intro credits as if they are each the start of the game. The stories are not interesting and this whole structure is confusing at first, since it seems to keep starting over each chapter. And if you are already quickly becoming bored of the game during its action sequences, it certainly only makes it worse as these non-playable parts just drag on.

So what, you may be asking yourself, did I not absolutely loathe about this game?

• As it has come to be expected from Capcom games, there are plenty of unlockable things to acquire (mostly concept art and such), which is always enjoyable in my book.

• When facing a boss, you sometimes have an option to cut them off in the middle of their “you can’t defeat me because I’m so powerful” speech; this was pretty badass.

Overall, Asura’s Wrath is an “Action” game that relies on being filled to the brim with flashy sequences to attempt to distract the player from being aware of the very limited gameplay and interaction they have. The best way to put it is that it feels more like an interactive manga, which, if you’re in to that sort of thing, might still be entertaining for you, but it definitely won’t entertain the majority of action game enthusiasts.

Now that video games is an art form (yes we knew this ages ago Pixel Pushers, GR and friends Game Night, GR’s Game Over Art Exhibition) in the Smithsonian (Washington Post – Art of Video Games), they invited Hideo Kojima to speak and here are excerpts as dealt with by the Atlantic – Hideo Kojima. He says great things and perhaps this one quote says a lot.

“Why the Japanese have been great game designers:

What’s really important is what we call in Japan, the spirit of Omotenashi which is a spirit of hospitality or wanting to give something to someone, or to share an experience with someone. I think it’s that spirit of hospitality and wanting to share an experience and give that experience to someone else, that’s very important.”

The interview takes place in the bathroom at GR2 post event.

Play the game, experience the fever and enjoy. It’s simple to have a video game, but it’s hard to create a movement around it. Rhythm Heaven Fever is one of those games that can grow a cult ala Katamari and Parappa. It’s a cute game, rhythmic, and released originally in Japan and the hardcore fans came out to iam8bit space in Echo Park to play. We saw quite a few GR “Game Night” faces including the first few in line. Here’s a set of photos from the evening. Free T shirts, photo booths, Portos food, drinks, live painting by Yoskay Yamamoto and Mari Inukai and more. Visits by artists throughout the night included Kent Williams, Audrey Kawasaki, Luke Chueh, Carlos Ramos, Korin Faught and even more. Yes, it was a cross over type of night – which usually are the best.