Boop Boop Bap! Bring in the Techno! Up and coming RichGameMake has added another title to their small yet interesting collection. If you like awesome, only-beat-once kind of games Pineapple Smash Crew will definitely keep you in the zone for a while. PSC is an over-the-top-shooter on Steam which puts you in the cube shaped pants of space marines sent into the heart of battle to accomplish missions. This game may sound like an ordinary every day sort but there are a few details to this game that makes it different and a lot more fun.

The gameplay is pretty darn exciting for a while but it starts to dwindle down at the end. As you control 4 mercenaries simultaneously through randomly generated stages you move from room to room kind of like a reenactment of “Smash TV” killing monsters and blowing things up. On the floor are boxes and machines that you can blow up to get points or to destroy your surroundings. You will find in each room explosives, boosts, etc in which you equip only one to each mercenaries.

One of the explosives that you will receive when playing are the trusty ole grenades. The way that they have set up the use of grenades is very simple and fun. The player aims and right clicks to were you want to throw the grenade. Once the grenade is deployed it will bounce in the direction until the player right clicks again. If you do not click to make the grenade explode you have about five seconds until it blows up by itself.   There are additional types of grenades that can shoot through walls, shield you, or even heal you.  This game is a bit tactile with the fact that you have to play very carefully most of the time. Most of the monsters usually take a while to destroy so you must conserve ammo.

The characters and monsters in the game are designed in a manner that will remind you of the “dawn of 3D pixelation”. The marines are drawn in a bulky box design that gives the game a bit of a childish look. When it comes down to the character design, the marines in Pineapple Smash Crew are pretty freaking adorable.. Just saying, the way that they’re boxy legs look as you run around the map is kidnappable. The monsters on the other hand look very familiar with not much effort put into them from the grub looking creatures down to the robot rovers. Even though the artwork isn’t too creative, they still give you a difficult time if not handled correctly.

Like buttons on a controller, games need stages and maps. All of the maps in Pineapple Smash Crew are randomly generated with each play which would lead you to believe that the game should never get too repetitive but, it does. The layout of the maps over time all start to blend together sometime feeling like everything is happening all in the same place which will eventually take its toll on your gameplay experience.

RichGameMake did an amazing job with their music choices for this game. All of the background music is a kind of dub step video game havoc that really makes you just want to buy the soundtrack. Through out the game the music alone will keep you entertained. The controls of PSC are very simple like any other game of this genre, with the exception of changing between characters. ‘A’ ‘S’ ‘D’ ‘E’ are for your movements, the mouse is to aim and ‘W’ ‘R’ are reserved for switching between characters.

Pineapple Smash Crew was a fun game for the most part, with the upbeat music and cute mercs. Even though it was fun it did start to die down as I got towards finishing the game. The controls were simple enough so that anyone can hop on and stay interested for some time, and the music is so good I’d even consider buying the CD. The soundtrack is available for sale on Bandcamp. The thing about this game though is once you beat it your never going to have an urge to play it again. There’s really no point. This is a great game to kill time with, but past that I wouldn’t expect much.

Borderlands 2 has an official trailer and a release date of September 18th, 2012. There are no true words to explain the happiness that this creates in my heartspace. Enjoy. Original Borderlands fans will notice some upgrades to the skill tree menu and that there’s 300 times more sexy in this game. Can it be September already so we can shoot some bad dudes?

Young Justice is a DC Universe animated series created by Warner Bros.  In the show a couple of the sidekicks like Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Speedy what to prove themselves and therefore they secretly take on a Justice League mission.  In the end the group of teens negotiate with Batman and create the Young Justice.

Now with the help of Little Orbit, Young Justice: Legacy will be coming to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and Nintendo DS in early 2013.  Fans of the TV series can look forward to a new storyline, as the game is set to take place between season one and two.  It is said the game will be filled with over 180 DC Comic characters, and will have both an online and local multiplayer mode.

Folks are already amped up about the upcoming release of the highly anticipated trilogy ending game, Mass Effect 3, and Microsoft just gave us one more reason to get excited.  We’ve all heard of launch day DLC, but have you ever seen pre-launch DLC?  Surely, it’s happened before, but that isn’t any less reason to get excited.

The revealed DLC in question is the ‘From Ashes’ DLC, which has since been removed from this link right here.  According to Kotaku, attempting to download the DLC resulted in an error message.   The description for the DLC read: ”Unearth lost secrets from the past and recruit the Prothean squad member.”

[Via Kotaku]

This year’s Xbox Live House Party kicks off with Warp.  Your first moments of Warp will be begin with you, an alien creature, waking up on Earth.  No explanation of how you got there is given.  All you know is that you’re being hauled off by humans; down to a secret lab in the ocean to be experimented on.  Your power is stripped from you, but you do get your power back shortly and that’s when the game really begins.

If you couldn’t tell by the title of the game, your primary power is warping (or teleporting) from place to place.  Security is pretty tight in this facility, so for the most part you will be warping through walls, doors, and vents to get around.  You can also warp inside of objects such as canisters, computers, power cells, gun turrets, and even people.

As you progress through the game you will pick up additional abilities.  Echo lets you create a non-tangible version of yourself that can walk through walls and be used as a decoy.  Later, that ability gets upgraded further with Swap which allows you to instantly swap places with an object using Echo.  Lastly, there’s Launch which allows you to fling an object you are inside in any direction.

While controlling an echo is easy, I did have my issues with warping and launching.  You have a reticule that shows you in what direction you’re going to warp or launch , but sometimes it was a little off.  When I would launch some items they may veer left or right a bit.  This may not seem like a big deal but a lot of the scenarios in the game require precision, and it can be extremely annoying to die because your warp was slightly off or a launched object didn’t go where it was supposed to.

You can further enhance your abilities with upgrades obtained by using grubs found around the lab.  Some grubs are pretty easy to get but most will require extra effort.  None of the upgrades you buy with grubs are necessary to complete the game but they definitely make it easier.  There are upgrades that affect each power;  If you’re trying to be stealthy, you may want to purchase the upgrades that make your movement and warping inaudible.  On the other hand, you may want to buy upgrades that beef up your echo so you can stun guards.  Your choice depending on how you play.

Your character is a small guy, so stealth is your friend.  Going head to head with a guard, turret, or laser beam will mean instant death.  You can warp inside of objects to hide while danger passes, but if a guard sees you warp into a canister he won’t hesitate to destroy it.  Also, if you warp into a human and a guard walks up on you, he will notice something is off and kill the human, which means you die too.  You can always launch an object at a guard to stun him, but if you want to completely eliminate the threat you only have one option: frag ’em.

While inside of an object you can cause enough friction for that object to explode.  This includes humans, and it’s marvelous.  The easiest way to paint a room red is to frag human.  If you want to make it a bit worse, warp inside of a human, make an echo, and then swap an object inside of that human.  One word: satisfying.  As much fun as it is to take revenge on scientists, you will also use frag as a puzzle solving technique; power cells that control doors and other obstacles must be destroyed with these explosions.  There are scenarios where scientists will try to sound an alarm if they see you.  If you frag the security computer before they sound the alarm, there will be no one to come to their rescue.

Warp is as much of a puzzle game as it is a game that relies on speed and reflexes.  Some rooms may have you using your powers to move objects to different positions, navigating your way through laser-filled mazes, or trying to find a way to make it past some pit or other hazard.  Other rooms will have you using speed and reflexes to get past obstacles, tricking guards into shooting each other, or launching a barrel across the room so you can swap to it just in time to avoid being killed by something else.

While the game does bring a welcome challenge, sometimes it can be downright frustrating.  I mentioned the clumsy aiming earlier, but when you combine that with the near instant death you receive by being in a guard’s or turret’s line of sight, it can be enough to make you want to turn the game off at times.  Some of the laser puzzles are very tight-knit and even the smallest mistake will mean death.  I can deal with dying due to a mistake I actually made, but when a mistake occurs because the warp was a little off, it puts a frown on my face.

To add to that, every time you die the game has to reload from the previous checkpoint.  The checkpoints are abundant but the time it takes to load is what becomes frustrating.  As you are trying to figure out certain scenarios, you will die a lot.  The added frustration of the long load time associated with each death can be a turn off.  The final sequence of the game is truly a death machine and if I wasn’t reviewing the game for Mash Those Buttons, I may have just turned it off and forgotten about it over time.  The developer should have seen this as more frustrating than challenging and addressed the issue.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for an easier game; I just want controls tweaked and the reloading of the game to be minimized.

I did run into a few bugs, some of which halted my progress.  I had not one, but two instances where doors that were supposed to be open for me were closed.  One time it fixed itself when I died, another time I had to go all the way back to a certain area before returning to find it magically opened.  Another glaring issue was a platform that moved back and forth during the final sequence of the game.  The problem was the difficulty to time the platform because it moved sporadically, and at any given moment may or may not have used its full range of motion.

While there is a lot to explore, sometimes if you return to an area you will find that you may not be able to get back into certain rooms because, due to blowing something up or moving an object, you no longer can swap or warp in.  For a game that is supposed to be open, this discourages back tracking.  If you are the type of player that enjoys picking up all of the collectables in a game, make sure that you get what you can while you can in case you can’t get back to that room.

Despite its shortcomings, however, I did find Warp enjoyable for the most part.  If you enjoy a challenge and can bare a little frustration from time to time, Warp offers a good action puzzle game.  The cost of entry is only $10 so I thought it was worth it.  This is Trapdoor’s first game and I think it shows a lot of promise.  If they tweak it in a few places, I don’t see why Warp couldn’t make a great franchise.

Prima Games has released an app for iOS devices via Apple’s app store, but because it’s Prima you can expect that it isn’t actually a game or anything like a game.  That’s because Prima Games are the lovely people who bring you strategy guides.  The app in question is actually really just a map of the world of Skyrim, which is great because it isn’t like there is an in game map or anything for folks to bring up on screen any time they want.  Oh, there is?  You’re right.  So, this is awkward Prima.

It’s useful in theory, if you want to keep track of where you’ve explored and show your friends.  This app isn’t totally free though.  The map itself and the nine hold cities are available for free, but everything else needs to be payed for.  There are reportedly over 1,000 points of interest on the map, and most of them cost something.  Wow, Prima.

[Source: BethBlog]

[Image via Joystiq]

PROTOTYPE 2 is bigger, badder, and look like it will restore my interest in the series. Heller has a background and areal purpose. He’s a product of his environment, a good guy that may have bad intentions. But in the end it’s all for revenge and ultimately a greater good. Not only will you be bigger and badder in the sequel, but so will the graphics. PROTOTYPE 2 uses Radical Entertainment’s Titanium 2.0 engine which allows this open world sandbox to be sexy as hell.

Radical and Activision have put together a great collector’s edition for PROTOTYPE 2, featuring so much that it feels like a steal for only $79.99.

• PROTOTYPE 2 RADNET Edition Content
• Free PROTOTYPE 2 DLC Pack #1 — Colossal Mayhem
• Official PROTOTYPE 2 Soundtrack CD
• Exclusive PROTOTYPE 2 Hardbound Art Book
• Dark Horse Digital Comic “PROTOTYPE: The Labrinth”
• 20% Discount Voucher at PROTOTYPE Merchandise Store

The trailer above showcases everything listed in the Blackwatch Collector’s Edition. This is a limited edition so act fast. The standard $59.99 edition of the game will have a limited first run that will receive the RADNET Content (challenges and events for extra hours of play). If this limited edition is anything like the Battlefield limited editions, after the initial first run this content is usually released as paid DLC. The RADNET edition is an additional 55 pieces of content, so if that is of interest to you get it during the first run to avoid all of this silly micro-transactions.

Finally, what would a grab bag of information be without at least 30 images to check out. In these images you’ll see Sgt James Heller tear shit up and show off what it takes to hunt, kill, finally become and get closer to his ultimate goal of taking out Alex Mercer.

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The CG trailer for Mass Effect 3 premiered last night during AMC’s The Walking Dead. The “Take Back Earth” trailer presents what’s at stake… Which is, well, Earth; but also the entire galaxy. Still, nothing gets me more fired up to protect all of the planets than the announcement trailer.

The Reapers will launch their all out attack on March 6th in the US and will continue it on March 9th in European territories. Earth has been taken, so has the little girl in the cornfield, you are Commander Shepard. Save often.

Klei Entertainment has decided to put out a comic that creates a bridge between Shank and Shank 2. The entire comic was created in house with art by Jeff Agala and Vangelis Christou. They mentioned on their blog that the best part of being independent and owning their property is that they can do whatever they want with it. So, you don’t have to worry that the story is some smorgasbord of chaos that means nothing but dollars to suits somewhere. Speaking of dollars; it’s free. You can download it from Comixology or read the PDF version. (I would also recommend the Comixology version, the action will be better animated on the screen of your choice whether it be iPad, Android or Kindle Fire.)