Kinectimals
Microsoft
There’s no denying that these cats are cute. But honestly unless you’re under 10-years-old and are obsessed with wild cats (see: me in the early ’90s) then you’re not going to be into this somewhat clunky virtual pet game. Still, many people can probably get a solid day and a half of adorable good times here, which is enough for a rental.

Adrenalin Misfits
Konami
I know that wolf and dragon look kind of cool. Trust me, they aren’t. If listening to the dumb ape announce refer to you as “my baby” isn’t enough to get you to turn the game off, the slow, boring gameplay will finish the job. You’re not missing anything here.

Sonic Free Riders
SEGA
I’m not sure why so many people are into the Sonic style of talking animals, but yeah. If what you want in a video game is to stare at Tail’s butt as he leans forward to turn on his hoverboard, then this is the game for you. It’s actually a pretty fun little hoverboard kart racer, assuming you can get the controls to work properly, which take a good deal of patience.

Dance Central
Harmonix
I know, it’s not actually a furry game, but I’ve been to enough fursuit dances to know you people need some new moves. And this game actually teaches you some pretty cool (and some pretty lame) dance moves. If there is any reason to get Kinect, this is it.

Note that most of these games work pretty well even in fursuit. Yeah, I do my fucking research for you people.

Looks like the lion has some blackmail fodder. Serves cheetahs right for being such sluts.

Amaterasu, star of the critically acclaimed and fan loved PS2 and Wii game Okami was officially revealed on Marvel’s website, and is being announced during Capcom’s MvC3 panel.

In Okami and the upcoming Nintendo DS game Okamiden, the wolf god uses the power of nature to defeat enemies. Capcom hasn’t shown Amaterasu in action yet, but we’re pretty psyched (can everybody say “Please be overpowered so I can kick everyone’s ass with a wolf”?)

Marvel also announced Thor, which brings the total character count so far to 16.

Known characters so far: Chun-Li, Trish, Doctor Doom, Super-Skrull, Chris Redfield, The Hulk, Dante, Captain America, Felicia, Wolverine, Morrigan, Deadpool, Iron Man, and Ryu.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is set to release Q2 2011.

Basically SEGA All-Stars Racing is Mario Kart with SEGA characters, which sounds like the worst thing ever. But, unlike other attempts to inject Sonic and friends into games (looking at you Tennis and Olympics!), this one is actually fun.

I’ve always enjoyed a good kart racer, but somehow Sonic and racing has never been a good match. But Sumo Digital did it. The racing mechanics are solid, despite some framerate issues. The tracks are gorgeous and fun, all based around famous SEGA games. There’s a ton of style, with the character animations and weapons. And the game is actually challenging, so it doesn’t feel like a kid game. If Sonic Heroes, or Sonic Riders, or that other Sonic Riders game were even half this good, I wouldn’t have thrown them in the garbage.

Calling these characters “all-stars” is a bit of a stretch for anyone who wasn’t a big Dreamcast fan. But since I was a SEGA brat until early 2000 I instantly recognized Beat, Ulala, Ryo, the ChuChus, and BD Joe. It’s all the bastard children that SEGA has forsaken, reuniting like a cheesy reality show.

And yes, there are a ton of Sonic universe characters, good and bad. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Amy and, for some weird reason, Big the Cat are all playable characters. Sorry you freakshow Rouge the Bat fans.

Xbox 360 owners get a bonus: Banjo & Kazooie and the Avatars are playable characters. PS3 owners get shafted. It’s out for the Wii too, but I rarely, if ever, recommend a Wii version of a multi-console game.

The best part of the All-Stars Racing, by far, is the annoying commentator who shouts at you as you race. He has “witty” comments whenever any player does anything. He would be terrible except half of the things he says sound sexual out of context (the other half sound sexual even within context). You get to hear a guy that sounds like Adam West shout things like:
–Tails took a real pounding there!
–Big, showing he can take as well as give!
–AiAi takes a bruisin!
–Sonic taking it where it hurts there!
–The big cat gets the cream!
–All Billy can do is just lap that up!
–Ouch, Amy takes a nasty one!
–Ulala, taking it like a champ!

Despite SEGA’s best intentions, there are still fans of Sonic the Hedgehog, and most of them seem to be in the fandom. It’s definitely worth adding to the collection for Sonic or kart racing fans. This is the first 3D game starring Sonic I’ve genuinely enjoyed in a decade. And yeah, I’m labelling this as a Sonic game. If him being a stretchy armed werewolf or a knight of the fucking round table count, then so does this.

Apparently those half dozen 2D Sonic games on the Game Boy Advance, DS, and PSP don’t count.

SEGA released a teaser trailer that conveniently skips all those years between 1994 and now when Sonic started sucking hardcore.

Sonic 4 will be an episodic downloadable title for all the major consoles. SEGA hasn’t said how many levels will be featured in each episode.

The best part of this whole deal is that the game is that Sonic is the only playable character. Kiss my ass, tertiary characters!

Realistic devil cock. (Here’s a picture!)

Below is a short excerpt from a behind the scenes video of the game. Of special note is the developer that remarks about how he wanted to make Lucifer’s wang so big it “dragged on the floor.”

Hot.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Get it, cause it’s Batman? Ok shut up, whatever. Point is Arkham Asylum is a really fun action game, and one of the best superhero games around. You get to kick ass as the Dark Knight, and yet it still stays true to the source material, something nearly every other game in the genre (especially Batman ones) fail to do. If you like anything about superheroes, you’ll love this game.

Dragon Age: Origins
Developer: BioWare
Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Furries and RPGs go together like, well, furries and porn. And when it comes to RPGs you don’t get a better one this year than Dragon Age: Origins. Yes it has dragons, so that’s a plus, but more importantly it’s long, deep, and has legitimate replay value. It’s BioWare, they make some good-ass RPGs.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Developer: Naughty Dog
PS3

I really cannot stress to you enough the need to buy this game. Everything about it is incredible. The action is intense, the story is interesting, Nathan Drake is super hot, and even the multiplayer is surprisingly fun. This is like a major Hollywood blockbuster that you play and it’s so fucking rad.

Critter Crunch
Developer: Capybara Games
PS3 (Downloadable)

It’s a puzzle game where you play an adorable little puffball thing that eats little critters, then makes other critters each other until they pop. And sometimes he barfs rainbows. Critter Crunch combines addictive puzzle gameplay with a weird as hell premise and a great animated style.

Rabbids Go Home
Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
Wii

The Rabbids are great characters, but their waggle fest mini-game collections are not. Luckily Ubisoft gave them a legitimate game this time around, a mixture of plat forming, racing, and item collecting. It’s got a cool art deco style, and it’s totally hilarious.

New Super Mario Bros Wii
Developer: Nintendo
Wii

As a single player game, New Super Mario Bros Wii is an awesome, side scrolling very old school plat former that brings back warm fuzzy memories of raccoon suits and fire flowers. Through in the four person multiplayer and it becomes one of those games you wanna punch your friends in the face over.

Klonoa
Developer: Namco
Wii

Hey kids, Klonoa is back, and he’s awesome! Klonoa Wii is a remake of the original PSX game, but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. It’s a stylish, colorful 2D plat former, and that bunny or whatever the hell is pretty cute.

Spectrobes Origins
Developer: Genki
Wii

You kids still like Pokemon right? Well Spectrobes is like 3D badass Pokemon. Yeah it’s published by Disney, but it’s created by the guys that did The World Ends With You. For those of you that are into the monster collecting RPG thing, get in on this before all the Spectrobes fursonas pop up.

Dead Space Extraction
Developer: Eurocom and Visceral Games
Wii

I was skeptical about Extraction, but it turned out to be a fun, and scary rail shooter. The Wii specific stuff isn’t all gimmicky and the game manages to stay frightening and intense. Plus it’s a great game to tide you over until the Dead Space sequel.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
Developer: Nintendo
DS

As I said before, Bowser’s Inside Story is the kinkiest game I’ve ever seen. Macro, paws, inflation, vore, this game is nuts. But on top of that it’s a really fun (and funny) RPG that finally let’s Bowser be the star of the show.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
Developer: Nintendo
DS

Professor Layton is one of the most charming video game characters ever. I have a huge crush on him. And his game is full of awesome brain teasing puzzles, and a great story with super cool animated cut scenes. Did I mention I have a crush on him?

Tekken 6
Developer: Namco
Xbox 360, PS3, PSP

Ok so Tekken 6 isn’t an incredible fighting game, but it’s pretty good. Its character roster features a kangaroo, a grizzly, a panda, and a dude that wears a jaguar head and tail, so it’s pretty much the furriest fighting game around.

Rock Band: Unplugged/LEGO Rock Band (DS)
Developer: Backbone Entertainment and Harmonix
PSP/DS

For the portable renditions of Rock Band, Backbone and Harmonix went back to their roots. The games play like Harmonix’s early rhythm games, Amplitude and Frequency, but have the music and World Tour mode of Rock Band.

Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Developer: Insomniac Games
PS3

Sure, the Ratchet and Clank series has gotten a little stale, but it’s still a solid platformer with tons of fun weapons. More importantly Ratchet is awesome. He’s way hotter than any Pokemon out there, and possibly hotter than Star Fox (blasphemy, I know).

Granted, these aren’t all the good games that came out this year, but in the interest of keeping the article somewhat brief I’ll have to leave them out. Obviously games like Beatles: Rock Band and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks are awesome games too. I’m sure you’ve got your favorites as well, and I love to hear from you, so fucking comment for once and let me know what they are!

Don’t get me wrong, “ODST” is a good game, and in some ways I like it more than “Halo 3”, but for $60 I expect a little more game in there. The development team, comprised of a fraction of Bungie’s main team, did some interesting things with the title, mostly in the way the story is told.

The ODST, that’s Orbital Drop Shock Troopers are a special ops type of group on a secret mission. Things go bad and the team gets separated, and you get your ass knocked out for six hours. Most of the game centers around The Rookie, a nameless filler character you play, as he searches the ruined city of New Mombasa for his missing team. As he finds clues, the game switches perspectives to fill in the missing time. So you keep switching characters, and jumping around in the six hour timeline, playing different roles and unraveling what went wrong. There is also a side story, told through audio recording found throughout the city, that explains a little more about what happened before you arrived on the scene. The voice acting is great (though the character models look a bit funky), and the story is compelling and interesting, even if you’re not a fan of the series. It’s a very character driven story, without as much of the alien governmental religious bullshit from the main games.

Much of the game feels like a toned down version of the main game, a “Halo Lite” if you will. All the normal villains from the previous games are here — Grunts, Brutes, Hunters et al — but the scale of the battles has been pulled back. Sure there are a few huge fights, but nothing to the scale of “Halo 3”. The fact really hits home when you fight a Scarab, the massive spider looking tank that was stomping and blowing up shit left and right in “Halo 3”. In “ODST” you shoot its butt a few times from the safety of the air, and it’s toast.

If you don’t die a bunch, the story mode is around five hours, which is about as long as it took me to beat “Disney/Pixar’s Up”. That’s just way too short for a first party title with this much hype behind it. Sure, you can go back and try to find more audio files, but that’s not really a compelling reason to replay the same levels. There is a co-op multiplayer mode called Firefight, where you defend against waves of enemies. It funny because this is the closest thing that comes to the scale of the original games, and it seems like they could have worked it into the campaign, since that supports co-op anyway.

If you don’t own “Halo 3” there is a significant bonus in that “ODST” comes with a second disc of “Halo 3” multiplayer. It allows you to play online in one of the most popular games on Xbox Live, with all the maps, including the DLC ones. But chances are anyone who bought this game was a Halo fan anyway, so it’s just a useless extra disc.

It’s hard to recommend a purchase for “ODST”. The game is solid, but nearly everything good about it is the same stuff Bungie has made for three other games now. The storyline is interesting, the voice acting is great, and the gameplay is good, though mostly just an easy version of Halo 3 with limited environments. But it’s also only a few hours long, and most of the multiplayer is literally the same as the last game. If you need a little Halo fix before “Halo: Reach” comes out, or you have hard on for Nathan Fillion (and who doesn’t?), go for it. But maybe just a rental.

The gameplay is standard “Rock Band“. (I’m not going to elaborate because if you’re reading this website you should know what that game is and have an opinion on it.) Some love it, some are sick of it. I still like the game, and don’t mind more of it.

It’s all about The Beatles, not you. No character creation, no naming a band, no customizable anything. This is an interactive documentary of the boys from Liverpool.

The Beatles are one of the only bands that can carry an entire music game (sorry Metallica, Aerosmith, Queen, and ABBA games, but it’s true). And with 13 albums, there are hundreds of tracks to choose from, so the fact that there are 44 on the disc is kind of bullshit. I get that the developers and publishers want people to buy the upcoming DLC, but there could have easily been 60 songs with no problem. Hell they didn’t have to be all of their Top 20 singles, load some of those B-sides and lesser known songs in there and educate people! You think anyone under the age of 40 is going to spend money on those random unfamiliar tracks from “Revolver” or “Abbey Road” anyway?

That said, what is on the disc is gold. These songs are great, and despite being bombarded with them for the past few months, I still love listening to, playing, and singing them. The dreamscapes are really cool, and actually make the game fun for parties of more than four. Watching the world shift and transform based on the song is more interesting than any part of that stupid “Across the Universe” movie.

I never bothered to figure out which Beatle sang what, or when the songs were recorded, and “The Beatles: Rock Band” does a good job of educating me. The story mode follows the career of the Fab Four, and is broken up into different venues and song sets from their brief but illustrious career. It’s nice to know that my favorite years for the Beatles are 1967-69, and that I have a soft sport for George Harrison tunes. I thought I hated that guy.

A few other notes. Three part harmonies are harder than they look, but fun when you do it right. And “Realistic” mode makes the crowds scream so loud that you can’t hear anything. No wonder these guys stopped touring.

This game really is a must buy for anyone that enjoys “Rock Band” or The Beatles. Of course you’ve got to be a sourpuss of monumental proportions to dislike either of those. It’s out now, so go get it.

I’m not saying these are going to be amazing. But when you’re burned out after a long day at work. Or really really high so you can’t play “Street Fighter IV”, pop in one of these with the comfort of knowing they don’t suck major ass.

“G-Force” – 360, PS3, Wii
I know, it’s not like Guinea Pigs are at the top of the list for fuzzy animals you want to play as. As it turns out though, “G-Force” isn’t half bad. It’s a third-person action adventure game. You run around as Darwin, shoot up shit, solve some puzzles, and even get to experience some gimicky video game 3D. Plus your small, so it’s kinda micro too, you those people.

“Up” – 360, PS3
I popped this game in solely because I wanted even a smidgen more Dug in my life. And while he is in the game (though not quite as adorable), most of it centers around Russell and Carl Fredricksen. “Up” is a colorful little co-op platformer that differs from the movie’s plot enough to keep it interesting. Plus you get to beat up dogs in it.

“Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian” – 360
I saw a picture on FurAffinity once about a skeleton of a dinosaur eating someone. So I have to assume someone will get a boner when the t-rex tries to eat you in this game. Also the rest of the game isn’t half bad either. I think there’s a sabretooth tiger in there somewhere too.

“Princess Debut” – DS
See that bunny there, in the tux and top hat? If you play through all the game’s endings you get to date him. The game is about being a princess and having to learn to ballroom dance, while going dating princes. If you can play through dozens of hours of classical music based touch screen rhythm gameplay, you’re a better furfag than I.

“Neopets Puzzle Adventure” – DS
Remember when Neopets was cool? And by cool I mean popular, since it was never “cool” that any of us were playing it. “Puzzle Adventure” takes the concept of “Puzzle Quest” and adds Neopets. It’s Othello, with RPG elements, and talking dragons and tigers. Need more? You can also earn items for your Neopets.com account, if you still do that.

“Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals” – DS
Take the guys behind “The World Ends With You”, the money of Disney, and a concept designed to undermine Pokemon and you get Spectrobes, a 3D action RPG with a lot of spiky, oddly colored anime monsters (which I oddly enough haven’t seen porn of). It’s also has fossil excavation, which is way more fun than it sounds.

“Kung Fu Panda” – 360, PS3, Wii, DS
You know “Kung Fu Panda” is solid because Microsoft started packaging it in with its systems. Think “Ninja Gaiden” minus the difficulty or shitty camera. Plus add in a whole village of snow leopard ninja. Even the DS one is fun, using the same engine from the Spider-Man games to make a stylus flicking kung fu platformer.

“Disney Friends” – DS
Take some of Disney’s most mischievous, or mentally retarded, characters, and stick them in a “Nintendogs” game. You can feed, talk to, and play with Stitch, Dory, Pooh and Simba through the touch screen and DS microphone. Actually… I’m not sure why I’m recommending a game that let’s players give belly rubs to a cub Simba.

“Surf’s Up” – 360, PS3
Sure this game is about two hours long, but it’s old enough where it’s probably super cheap used. “Surf’s Up” is actually a fun game that takes the concepts of stylized snowboarding games like “SSX” and sticks them in a tropical island setting. I’m hoping for a movie sequel just so I can have a sequel to this game.

“Neopets PetPet Adventures: The Wand of Wishing” – PSP
Hey more Neopets! “PetPet Adventures” is medieval action RPG. The best part is that when it gets to the point where most RPGs get tedious and level grindy, this one ends. Yay for kids games, right?