The Calling plays on classic Japanese horror films like Ringu, with a mysterious website called the Page of Black. A simple black page with a counter in the center, rumor says that those who gain access to the linked chat room soon die after the onset of a mysterious, unexplained coma. The player wakes up in a strange room and receives a phone call from a ghostly voice. Soon they find themselves drifting in and out of a state of limbo known as The Border, where lost spirits roam, some communicating with the player, and others taking violent exception to their presence.

It sounds to me an awful lot like a Silent Hill title, with a mix of puzzles and exploration in a nightmarish world, but with Konami Digital Entertainment distributing the title in Europe next year, I doubt it's all that derivative. If anything it looks slightly scary, but we'll have to see more before we decided whether or not to run screaming.

We do know that Ultra will be out sometime in January, but we’re not sure exactly when. I would have pushed the issue with the producer, but right when I did, the demo build crashed trying to load the Big Top map in arena mode with bomb shelters turned on and I decided the poor guy didn’t need to be bullied.

Bomberman Ultra will feature all 14 arenas and 54 characters that you would have gotten should you have bought Bomberman Live and all of the DLC. It’s EyeToy-supported; which means you can use the PS3 peripheral to conduct voice chat or do a live feed of your victory dance at the end of a match. You can also take a snapshot of yourself to send to your opponents should you lose – middle finger extension optional.

There are some snags I can see with Ultra – for one thing, the computer isn’t very smart. This starts to feel like insult to injury if you’re playing a match with humans and CPUs and all the humans manage to kill themselves. Then you get to watch the AI move super-slow and walk into its own traps for a while ‘til the match ends (you can skip having to watch this by pressing X).

Only seven local players are supported; the producer says this was to minimize the possibility of lag. As it is, the game felt like it moved a little slow – at least until you got a power-up to increase your speed. You can change the settings before a match to make everyone go really fast (and to me, this is the only way to play), but I often forget that this is a game aimed at kids, not at sadistic competitive jerks who like hiding bombs in tunnels. So I shouldn’t be surprised that there are no tunnels in which to hide bombs in Ultra – only “bomb shelters” where you set bombs to go off after stepped on a certain number of times (hooray for ominous countdowns).

Bottom line: buy this game if you need Bomberman on your PS3. It’s no better and no worse than what you got on the 360, and it’ll probably cost less. My favorite part? The custom-made Hunter S. Thompson Bomberman guy; he was way cute.

If that’s the case, consider buying Tetris Party if it could pay for itself. Hudson is hosting a Tetris Party tournament, which begins in December and runs until April, where winners of the tourney will walk away with an undisclosed amount of Wii points – potentially up to 1200. Keep an eye on tetrisparty.com for full details.

I was pretty much sold after my first hands-on with Tetris Party at the Nintendo Media Summit. Stage Racer and Field Climber were my favorite modes; I like having to force myself to defy everything Tetris has ever taught me about not having blank spaces in the grid. I still get a little anxious when I see holes opening up in Duel Spaces, but then I remember that I want those spaces to remain open so I can score more points against my opponent when I close the gap from above.

It occurs to me that there is a generation out there that didn’t grow up with Tetris, so they can’t appreciate how new all the different modes feel after two decades of the same old game. Apparently that occurred to the developer, too, because they’ve included a beginner’s mode with a very basic grid and big, friendly-looking Tetriminos (blocks – we always called them blocks when we were kids). Playing this mode for even five minutes catches you up on about 20 years of gameplay (minus the “New Coke” experience) and gets you ready to defy everything you learn in that time when you set out to play Shadow or some other such mode that makes you leave blank spaces.

Once you’ve got the basics down (and gotten used to the idea that you have to rotate pieces both clockwise and counterclockwise in order to survive Stage Racer), you’re ready to take on the competition either against other people in your living room, or online, or against the AI – which can get pretty vicious depending on the difficulty it’s set to. You’ll want it to be hard, though, if you’re set on entering the tournament.

Each phase of the tournament will feature a different mode – you earn points for completing each phase which are then tallied on the website. Potentially, you could still rank high in the tourney even if you miss a phase (hard to imagine, but that’s what the PR guy tells me), but you’ll want to get in as much practice with all the different modes as you can between now and December.

Here, have some screenshots:

In its jump to WiiWare, Tetris has become Tetris Party. Multiplayer Tetris is not a new idea in and of itself, but the new game modes introduced in Party challenge everything we’ve ever learned by playing a Tetris game.

The most mind-blowing mode for me was Field Climber mode. The idea here is to use the falling pieces to build a structure up which a little stick figure can climb to get to the finish line at the top of the screen. This means – gasp! – there have to be blank spaces and you have to build little ziggurats so your guy can climb. It took me three tries before I was able to un-train my brain enough to not build a flat surface, and another two before I learned not to a) trap my guy in a place he couldn’t climb out of or b) squish him with a falling piece.

Shadow mode also forces you to unlearn your Tetris habits. You’re given an outline of a shape inside the the playing field that you have to fill in with pieces. You lose points for all the parts inside the shape you don’t fill in and for any pieces that fall outside the shape. As the levels get harder, the shape becomes more complex and you’ve got to get more creative with how you place your pieces to fill it all in.

Duel Spaces is the most hardcore of the “new school” of Tetris. The whole point is to take up as much room as you can by building around spaces on the field. You’re taking turns with other players to lay down your pieces, trying not to build a bridge for them to finish with one of their pieces, thus earning them the points. It’s like Blokus – you want to spread out early and cut the other guy off before he encroaches on the part of the field that you think of as “yours.”

The final mode I really enjoyed was Stage Racer – this was shown off at the Nintendo Media Summit to loud oohs and ahhs from the crowd. The field scrolls upward and either side of it is lined with grayed-out pieces that jut out, forming a maze. You play as a single piece falling through this level and your job is to constantly flip your piece and move it left to right, navigating the maze. At all levels of difficulty, the field moves as the same pace – but the arrangement of the maze gets more and more difficult and the pieces you’ve got to work with change to make it even more challenging.

The one lame thing about Tetris Party for me is the inclusion of the Wii Balance Board. You’re supposed to stand on it and move your body left, right, up and down to move and flip the piece. I guess the developer thought people wouldn’t be too into it, because they made this mode very easy, with big, kid-friendly pieces and a small playing playing field.

I’m actually surprised – I didn’t think I would like anyone messing with my time-honored Tetris. But most of these game modes were really fun for me, and I’ll be hard-pressed to find an excuse not to buy it when it comes out “sometime this fall.”

Bomberman Land DS Online Announced [Cubed3]

All three from Hudson Soft seem to let you use your stylus to play the game. The crossword puzzler looks like it lets you actually write your answers on the screen, very cool. I sure hope it comes to the U.S.

Hit the jump for screens.