Most brawlers these days have more in common with God of War and Ninja Gaiden than they do traditional 2D beat ‘em ups of yesterday like Turtles In Time or Double Dragon. Vanillaware’s latest Wii effort, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, takes the core concepts that fuels today’s action games, and blends them seamlessly within a classic 2D environment, while at the same time manages to throw in a large helping of JRPG, and even a dash of Metroid to keep things interesting.

Since the game is mainly about fighting, you’d hope that it better be good, and in this case I believe Vanillaware nailed it. The game opens up with a quick tutorial showing players every single move available to them. At first it seems a little overbearing, but considering they’re showing you everything (minus special attacks that differ from sword to sword) it only takes a little while to adjust. Within a few hours, most players will likely be whizzing around the screen slashing up ninjas and monks in style. In an effort to add a bit of depth to the actual battles, players must juggle between three swords of choice, each with their own “health” meter. General use of the blade, by either attacking or blocking, slowly wears the meter down, and once it drops, the sword breaks. Thankfully the swords heal on their own, but there are plenty of times where bad guys will snap your blades with a single blow, rendering you almost useless in battle. It takes a bit of time getting used to checking on the different sword meters, but it adds a fun strategic variant to the fights.

The swords themselves all have different strengths and weaknesses, and come in either an easier to use lightweight blade (my personal choice) or a heavier long blade (which takes a bit more skill and patience to use). Outside of battles, which happen randomly like in a JRPG, players have the ability to forge new swords on the fly. Forging said swords uses a combination of souls, which are earned from fallen baddies, and spirit, which is gained from eating and cooking delicious food from items that are either picked up during play or bought from merchants.

Monsters vs. Aliens – a Dreamworks animated film with voices by Reese Witherspoon, Rainn Wilson, Seth Rogen, Stephen Colbert, and many more. When Earth comes under attack by an alien race, the government is forced to unleash monsters they have captured over the years to protect the planet.

Management – A traveling saleswoman (Jennifer Aniston) meets a motel manager (Steve Zahn) who begins to follow her across the country after she has an ill-advised fling with him. Also starring Woody Harrelson and Josh Lucas.

Away We Go – John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph play a couple who are expecting their first child. They find out their grandparents are moving overseas before the baby is born so they set out on a nationwide search for the perfect place to raise a child. Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road).

Surrogates – in the future humans never leave their homes and instead live their normal lives and interact with others through surrogate robots. When someone finds out how to kill surrogates and make the human controlling them die, a cop (Bruce Willis) must venture out into the real world for the first time in years to investigate.

Fame – a remake of the 1980s musical telling the story of students and teachers at the prestigious New York High School of Performing Arts. Starring Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally, and a ton of kids who can sing, dance, and play instruments.

All you Frankensteiner fans will be pleased to know that on October 24th of 2009, yours truly will be hosting a 12 hour living stream event for the next episode in the series, titled “Frankensteiner: Biceps & Triceps.” Taking place on a Saturday around noon, I’ll guide watchers through the entire process of the making of this short. Unlike last year, I most likely will not be using Mario Paint for the creation process, but instead will be using Flash. However, I do plan on taking a bit of a different route this time and most likely presenting Frankensteiner in a bit of a different way. So mark your calendars because this episode of Frankensteiner will be the most insane, over the top, ridiculous and vicious episode seen yet.

You won’t want to miss it.

Oh, in case you need a refreshing on Frankensteiner, the version I cooked up last year is after the jump. BA-BAM!

Observe & Report – Seth Rogen plays a mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt who is called into action to stop a flasher from terrorizing customers. When he can’t close the case, a police officer played by Ray Liotta comes to lend a hand. Ronnie then gets his crew and steps into high gear to finish it himself. Written and Directed by Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down).

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – Matthew McConaughey plays a womanizer who catches up with an old flame (Jennifer Garner) at his brother’s wedding. Then he is haunted by the many, many girlfriends of his past who are trying to teach him a lesson about love.

Battle for Terra – an animated film about a space explorer who crash lands on the planet Terra where he makes new friends but finds himself in the middle of a war between their planet and his own. Voices by Luke Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood, Justin Long, and more.

This was a really fun bit from well over two years ago. I guess Jim was feeling really inspired by G4’s Ninja Warrior and decided to come up with his own take on it that we could play during the show. The idea was that we each had a minute to run through a series of “challenges” including stuff like inputting the Konami code and chugging an entire Red Bull. For those that are fans of the show, this is where the infamous “Solidicry” song came from, after Steve failed to even make it past the first step of the challenge. For those that watch Ninja Warrior, he was basically like that guy that shows up with the Octopuses around his neck and falls into the first water trap on his first step. Another funny thing I caught this time through is how Frank refers to the Contra guys as “Bill & Rizer” and “Lance & Bean” on two different occasions… when its really just Bill Rizer and Lance Bean. I laughed. Also, I noticed at some point we reffer to the people on the “vent” server, this was obviously way before we started streaming these live on UStream, which kind of sucks, because this would have been fun to watch.

Maybe we can do it again sometime with some new challenges.

Part 2 is after the jump!

The Informant – Matt Damon is Mark Whitacre. He is high up in ranks at an agricultural company but decides to flip and turn mole in order to give evidence to the FBI about price fixing. The FBI soon find out that Whitacre isn’t the easiest person to deal with due to his bending of facts. Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Trilogy).

Jennifer’s Body – the hot, popular cheerleader (Megan Fox) at a small Midwestern high school becomes possessed by a demon and sets out to kill off every guy in the town by seducing them… and eating them. The nerdy girl (Amanda Seyfriend) is on to her though. Written by Diablo Cody (Juno).

I was going to bring this up at the end of the last show, but we were laughing and having such a good time and I didn’t want to bring the mood down. So I figure now is as good a time as any to do it. Unfortunately, this week’s BAC is going to be the last episode for a while.

This has been something that I’ve been considering for the past few weeks as my schedule is just crazy right now. My daughter recently started school and on top of that she’s involved with activities like Karate and Soccer which we’re going to many times a week. Also, her school has weekly extra-curricular activities that we’ll be participating in which will give me even more to do in the evenings. On top of all that I’ve become a partner in a new company earlier this summer which has required a lot of extra work on my part.

As a result of this insanity, I really haven’t even been playing many video games lately which makes it even harder to come up with stuff to talk about every week.

We’re not really sure what this means for the show at this point. Phil and I have talked about it quite a bit and tried to come up with a way to keep it going. Right now, doing a weekly podcast is just too much for me. We may end up doing the show more like SRP, once a month or something like that.

Once in a while we produce some pure gold during our monthly podcasts, so I figured I’d start going through some of the episodes and picking out some of our better moments and uploading them to YouTube. I thought Jim’s story from SRP #26 back in June would be a pretty good starting point. It’s a short clip, but it’s pretty funny to listen to. I was going to put up Slap Chop Trivia first, but the game is longer than a half hour! YouTube only allows for 10 minute clips, and I’m not sure cutting it up into 4 parts would be worth it. I don’t know, we’ll see. In the meantime, whenever I upload one of these, I’ll probably post them right here on the front page.

Come out and join us!

Live TV : Ustream