All New Games Review

Mini Golf

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:47:00 +0000

Mini Golf ISO
So you think you can putt? Minigolf includes 10 holes and 10 challenge holes made up of sand traps, water hazards and unusual twists and turns. Popular with golfers and non-golfers alike!

Contains...
~The popular game of â€˜Minigolfâ€™ that will challenge your putting skills.
~10 holes and 10 challenge holes- with no more than 7 strikes per hole.
~Sand traps, water hazards and unusual twists and turns.
~Three difficulty levels.
~Rated E-for everyone.
~An easy-to-use interface.

Download Links
http://rapidshare.com/files/79621592/miniglf-silk.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/79622976/miniglf-silk.part2.rar

Red Ocean

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:38:00 +0000

Players take on the role of diving instructor and treasure hunter Jack Hard, who stumbles upon a secret Russian cold war research station deep underneath the ocean surface.

As he discovers, it is controlled by a terrorist organization â€“ and before he knows it, he gets caught in their nefarious schemes.

The unique twist: players will deal with water in all 3 states of aggregation: in liquid form it not only enables you to approach enemies unnoticed by diving but can also conveniently drown a baddie. At sub-zero temperatures it quickly becomes a dangerously slippery surface, and hot steam is nothing to mess with either. Players will have to use their wits in order to defeat the terrorists and save the day.

Download Links
http://www.filefactory.com/file/47cc18
http://www.filefactory.com/file/68d51c
http://www.filefactory.com/file/7bcfe0
http://www.filefactory.com/file/ea8606
http://www.filefactory.com/file/86c7f1
http://www.filefactory.com/file/c054f8
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a15765
http://www.filefactory.com/file/11974a

Motocross Madness 2

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:34:00 +0000

Motocross Madness 2 is the sequel to the very popular motocross racing game of the same name.

It adds more tracks, more gameplay modes, more bikes, and the ability to customize almost anything about your rider or bike.

The game lets you take control of the handlebars of a motocross racing bike as you compete in events like races, trick competitions, and Baja racing.

Download Links
http://rapidshare.com/files/59000800/Motocross_Madness_2.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/59016485/Motocross_Madness_2.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/59025129/Motocross_Madness_2.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/59033846/Motocross_Madness_2.part4.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/59042011/Motocross_Madness_2.part5.rar

Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube Videos

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:41:00 +0000

When Mario, Peach and an entourage of her loyal Toad friends set out for a tropical vacation on lovely Isle Delfino. A mustachioed maniac has mucked up the entire island, and Mario is accused of committing the crime.

Summary
The return of the Mario series and it was never so...wet. Most of Super Mario Sunshine takes place in water or around it. In fact, the only missions you aren't around water are the hidden missions. But I have to say, I still haven't even gotten every star. So this game is definatley challenging but fun and never frustrating. I think that games like this are simply a reason to own a Gamecube alone.

Sound
Bright, Evil, Mysterious, and Classic are the three types of music used in Super Mario Sunshine. I think that they did a great job remaking the classic Mario tune. They also did a great job setting the mood for boss battles, exploration, and triumphant and relaxing moments. I also think they did a wonderful job with the water SFX. I think that they had a great crew working on the SFX and music for Super Mario Sunshine and I hope they use the same crew in the future.

Gameplay
They really expanded on the gameplay in the next of the Mario installment. Now you can pull off wall jumps over and over with ease instead of timing it wrong and ending up swearing at your TV. It's also cool that you can ride Yoshi in this Mario, Unlike the last one. I mean seriously, who needs 100 lives after you beat the game. On Mario 64 when I saw Yoshi I was like, "awesome I'm gonna get to ride Yoshi" but then he just says a few words, gives you 100 lives, and jumps off the building and commits suicide(If you found him in Mario 64 you'll understand this joke. So when I picked up this copy and rode Yoshi early in the game I was like,"this is sweet". Seriously, the only reason I found all 120 stars in the last one was become some evil little kid said, "Oh yeah, if you get 120 stars you'll get to ride Yoshi whenever you want". So you can imagine how mad I was when Yoshi commited suicide. So throughout the entire Mario Sunshine I was so glad I was finally riding Yoshi in full 3-D. I also like how they added that cool water pack on you back. It allows you to reach higher places, get somewhere faster or jump across a gap that would otherwise be impossible. Another cool little gimmick is that there are many hidden items. For example when you see an open window squirt it and some coins will most likely fly out. You can also discover lots of mini quests and they often reward you with blue coins or shine sprites. It's also cool that you can acess the cities sewers.This allows you to get where you are going much faster. All in all, I think the gameplay is one of the top of any game out there.

Supreme Commander

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:36:00 +0000

Fitting Supreme Commander onto the 360 is a bit like squeezing a horse into a chest of drawers - even if you can, that doesn't mean you should. With the massive battles and sweeping strategic vision of the PC version already melting CPUs and warping motherboards on anything but high-end gaming rigs, trying to port this much sound and fury onto a console seems like an act of sheer bravery. And it undoubtedly is, but then so was the Charge of the Light Brigade. Sometimes, simple bravery is not enough. Sometimes, what's really called for is a little bit of judgement too.

The good news is that, the option to play on two monitors aside, almost all of the original game has made it across. From the choice of three factions, to the range of units, to the slow clamber up the three-level tech tree, all of the crucial elements are in place, as is the dizzy sense of scale that lies at the heart of the game. The control scheme is a success, too, although it can initially take a bit of time to get used to. Building, grouping, and issuing commands are all handled gracefully by a series of radial dials mapped to the d-pad, unit selection is taken care of by varying taps at the A button (stabs in my case, ever since I spilt chocolate milkshake on the controller), and the famous strategic zoom, which allows you to lurch from close-up action to a view of the entire battlefield in seconds, is controlled with the right thumb-stick.
The results can still be fairly intimidating - even with the on-screen stats slimmed down, there's a lot of information to take in at any one time, particularly when you've got a couple of factories chewing through some hefty build queues - but pains have clearly been taken to make Supreme Commander as simple to comprehend as a game with this kind of agenda is ever likely to be. Equally, although the lengthy tutorial possesses an almost Amish-like refusal to indulge in thrills and glamour of any kind, it provides a handy and much-needed introduction into the frightening wealth of tactical options available beyond.

And masochists will be pleased to note that, even on the lowest difficulty settings, the game is still fearsomely hard when it wants to be. From around the second mission mark, the multi-stage objectives played out across deviously designed maps will most likely see even seasoned RTS players running into trouble when fighting on more that one front. As with the PC original, the point at which the game truly clicks is when you finally comprehend the scale these particular conflicts are designed to play out at, and realise just how many units you're going to have to manufacture in order to achieve most of your goals. Supreme Commander doesn't just give you the option to think big - it demands it, and the game's focus on strategic large-scale warfare means those used to the handful of favoured pieces you'll need to keep most RTSs chugging along will be shocked by the often inhuman scale you have to think in here.

zBut those without a military degree from West Point will still be able to tank-rush the enemy and eventually win most encounters through sheer bloody-minded force of numbers. And that's not as bad as it sounds, as the tank rush in Supreme Commander is such a vast undertaking, requiring what can seem like hours of planning and building, that when you eventually send your units into battle for the last big push, their slow crawl across the huge map is a moment imbued with a real sense of nervous excitement. At times like this, the only way to see what's really going on is to zoom out to view the entire battlefield, and although the mass of squares, triangles, and diamond-shaped icons representing your units makes the game look like Geometry Wars for the Werthers Original crowd, it's hard not to get sucked into the mayhem as the exacting battles unfold.

It's not all good news, however, and it's the scale, ultimately, that causes most of the problems. Refusing to alter the game's design beyond installing a 500-unit cap per faction, the developer hasn't avoided compromise; it's merely shifted it elsewhere. As the game grinds on and the battlefields grow, the cracks inevitably start to show.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:32:00 +0000

In a JRPG landscape filled with identikit teenage protagonists, indistinguishable blacker than black antagonists and drab, clinical futuristic cityscapes, Dragon Quest IV is a deep breath of fresh air. This is, after all, a game in which you begin by assuming the role of a blue-mustachioed soldier in his fifties, a man who speaks in a thick, near-indecipherable Scottish brogue.

Ragnar McRyan is in no way a character designed off the back of some intense Japanese schoolgirl demographic focus testing. He is not aspirational. He does not wear a fussy, frilly shirt, unbuttoned halfway to reveal an over-designed amulet nestled betwixt stony pecs. He will never be a poster boy for a Dragon Quest Mountain Dew ad campaign in downtown Shibuya. He has a blue moustache.

A man approaching retirement, Ragnar is all tufty grey hair and regional accent, on a mission to catch a peeping tom and track down some missing children. And my goodness, for a game that was first released 18 years ago onto the NES it's a piece of anti-hero casting that feels braver and more interesting than pretty much any that's happened in the genre since. Doesn't that speak depressing volumes?
Better still, Ragnar is but one face in an ensemble cast that continues to buck expectation. The titular chapters exist beyond mere metaphor. This is a game literally divided into segments, each one focusing on a different character: the Russian tomboy and Tsarevna, Alena, the overweight trader Torneko, a man who decides late in life it's time to make his fortune as the greatest merchant in all the world and the twin sisters Maya and Meena, out to avenge their father's assassination.

Then, in the fifth and (almost) final chapter, each of these narrative threads string together as the chosen unite as a team behind you, the hero character. It's an excellent conceit, one that no doubt contributed to the diversity of the protagonists. After all, if you have the luxury of telling five different tales in your game, you can afford for one of them to be about Ragnar McRyan and his blue moustache.

At an hour or three apiece, the first four chapters are relatively brief, but this again contributes to rich and interesting feel: nothing is protracted so far as to become tiresome. The story is smoothed over by another solid translation from Square-Enix, whose recent localisation work on the Dragon Quest series has been exemplary. The diversity in accents (there are 13 dialects represented) lends the game world a real sense of geography, something that many JRPGs fail to do with their all-American voiceover casts.

Fable 2 Pub Games

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:29:00 +0000

The idea behind Fable 2 Pub Games is a Peter Molyneux special: gamble fictional cash and one day you can merge your Pub Games drunkard profile with your Fable 2 hero profile for a wodge of extra green on the streets of Albion. Or in this case gold. Pub Games will be bundled with Fable 2 - the standard and special editions - and is also available as a pre-order incentive for people who pick the game up at specific retailers, including branches of GAME in the UK. (Update: Lionhead now says something's up with this and codes aren't being distributed after all. We'll look into it.)

The question we've got to answer today though is whether Fable 2 Pub Games is good enough to stand alone, which is what it does on Xbox Live Arcade: you may be able to get it for free elsewhere, but otherwise it costs 800 Microsoft Points, or the equivalent of GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60. Does it do enough to justify that?

Booting it up, you're presented with the choice of six playable characters, each with a fancy Robin Hood-style wanted poster avatar, and there are six "Hero" slots to fill as well, which is where your Fable 2 characters will be offered. Once you've made this initially arbitrary choice, you'd best head to the Tutorials page to get acquainted with the three gambling mini-games on offer.

Each of them is unique to Fable 2 Pub Games, but fairly familiar. Spinnerbox, for example, is a slots machine where you specify how much gold you want to bet and then spin the box to try and match symbols and bank prize money. The number of spinning symbols varies from box to box and there are a range of bonus variables, along with a winnings calculator to help you manage your bets.

Keystone, meanwhile, is a variation on roulette or craps. A keystone bridge is assembled over a semi-circular board, and each of the bricks in the arch is given a number between 1 and 18. You stack your chips on the bricks, and in segmented areas beneath them, and then win or lose cash based on the roll of three dice.

The third and final game is called Fortune's Tower, and is a bit more unusual. You place an initial bet and then three cards are laid out - one is face down, while the other two are face up in a row beneath it. You then blindly lay additional rows and get the option to bank the total number they add up to in gold.

The element of risk is that every time a card in the new row lines up diagonally with the same number in the previous row, it burns out and potentially ends the game. The only things that can rescue you are that single, face-down card at the top of the pyramid, which swoops in to save the day (providing it too isn't a match for a card in the previous row), and special hero cards, which save the entire row from any problems with diagonals.

There are a few potential pitfalls with all this. The obvious one is that, if you make tons of gold, it could unbalance Fable 2's difficulty curve - even in a game that hopes to be extremely open-ended. Of course, we won't be able to judge the impact of a pile of free money until Fable 2 itself launches on 24th October, but if our Pub Games experience (mountains of debt!) is anything to go by, only the lucky few will get to find out whether it breaks Lionhead's opus.

More worrying is that all three of the games are very simple once you've absorbed the windy tutorials, and that none of them boasts accompanying depth. There are a few strategies you can adopt to achieve greater gains (don't keep going in Fortune's Tower when you've used up the card at the top and you're already set to make a bit of money, for instance), but for the most part these are games of chance with the odds stacked against you. Just as it is down the pub.

There's a Tournament mode, in which you can compete against the AI over several rounds, but no online multiplayer. There are leaderboards (it's a technical requirement for XBLA games, remember), but whether you will be able to take much pride in achieving a big tournament total is debatable. The most fun we had was fluking a victory against the AI by placing ludicrously large bets in Fortune's Tower.

Virtually the only other things of note are the 200 Gamerpoints you can unlock by questing after the Achievements (in theory this means Fable 2 is worth 1200 out of the box, since Pub Games comes free - assuming that's the way it's bundled), and the 15 unlockable "unique" items you can then transfer into Fable 2. These include plaited hair, backflip training for your dog, some tattoos, a couple of weapons and a magical ring.

It's difficult to argue that these represent an 800 Microsoft Points value (the phrase "horse armour" springs to mind), and, overall, it would be impossible to argue that Fable 2 Pub Games represents value for that money. The marriage of XBLA and boxed game is a nice idea, but the Pub Games themselves are lightweight and boring, and the potential benefits for Fable 2 players are the sorts of things typically bundled on Collector's Edition bonus disks in the first place - and typically overlooked by the majority of players who can think of better ways to spend the extra money. Down the pub, for instance. If you're looking at this without an eye to buying Fable 2, definitely don't bother. If you're itching for Fable 2 and can't resist, make sure you take advantage of a pre-order deal. Either way its inoffensive composition isn't enough to escape censure.

Rock Band

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:28:00 +0000

In this godforsaken age of the TV talent show, we can find hope in gaming. The obvious reason for this is that if you've fired up a game on your Wii just before Pop Idol starts, the buffoon in your house who wanted to watch it will be unable to use the TV because you got there first (them's the rules).

In a rather more roundabout way, mass take-up of games such as Rock Band and SingStar could bring about the demise of the talent show altogether. Think about it: rather than terrorising the nation via X-Factor, people who think they've got talent could get a copy of the game and let the software decide whether they can cut it or not. That should either lead them to seek out a record deal or knock their dreams on the head accordingly, meaning us long-suffering viewers are spared weeks of ear-blinding squawking.
So that's one reason why we're recommending Rock Band: it could potentially weed out legions of tone-deaf no-hopers before they set foot outside their homes and shuffle onto your idiot box. The other reason why you should consider getting a copy is because it's a damn fine game.

Drop the beat
Choosing to play guitar, bass, drums or take to the mic, you can strive for musical greatness alone or with up to three friends. As in Guitar Hero, coloured blobs scroll down the screen and you have to hit the corresponding note/beat as they pass. If you decide to take the vocal part, your targets scroll along the top, denoting the correct length and pitch required for melodic bliss.

So far, so familiar, and the single-player is as good as anything you'll enjoy in Guitar Hero. But where Rock Band really comes into its own is the multiplayer Band World Tour mode, because when four of you are hammering your controllers (and, er, mic) - well, there's nothing quite like it. You play co-operatively, with band members able to bring failed colleagues back into the game by playing well enough to compensate for their harmonic inadequacies.

Passin' me by
However, Band World Tour mode on Wii is a shadow of its PS3/360 self. Gone are all the customisation options and the free-roaming structure - Wii players are forced to tackle songs in a set order. This shouldn't dent your enjoyment too much, but it's just one example of the cutbacks you'll find on the Wii.

Online multiplayer, character creation tools and downloadable tracks are all missing too. In this respect it's massively disappointing - why should Wii owners only receive a tiny portion of the experience that other consoles have on offer? Still, wallowing in self-pity never got anybody anywhere and, if you're prepared to overlook the disparity between versions, you'll have a lot of fun with Rock Band.

Songs for Europe?
Perhaps the most important element of a game like this is the songs, and there's a healthy selection to start you off. Orange Crush by REM, Radiohead's Creep, Paranoid by Black Sabbath - there are over 60 classic and recent tunes here, some of which you've probably never heard of.

Once you're bored of the songs you'll have to buy a $30 (£15) Track Pack containing 20 new tunes, which seems a little pricey and very unfair when you consider that 360 and PS3 owners can choose from hundreds of new songs to download. Sigh...

Rich man's world
Which brings us right to the thorny issue of cost, and there's no denying that the Special Edition is a costly game. It only includes one guitar, so if you want a full four-player experience you'll need to buy another at $60 (£30). You can get the game on its lonesome for a mere $50 (£25), but once you've factored in the cost of the drums, guitars and mic, this package works out cheaper.

Ultimately, whether you buy this depends not only on how much you're prepared to spend on a game, but on whether you own a PS3 or 360. If you do have one of those consoles, we simply can't recommend the Wii version of Rock Band - there's just too much missing to warrant a purchase. However, for Wii-only gamers, this is still a terrific title, even with all the 'extras' taken out. Maybe we'll get lucky with the sequel...

Digimon World Championship Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:20:00 +0000

Digimon World Championship attempts to shake things up with some interesting ideas, but these changes leave the game repetitive and unexciting.
The Good

* A nice variety of digimon to train and care for
* Does more than rehash last year's formula.

The Bad

* Virtual pet mode is boring
* Computer-controlled battling takes away much of the excitement
* Evolving your digimon is unintuitive.

Last year's Digimon World games for the Nintendo DS, Dawn and Dusk, were retreads of Digimon World DS that failed to improve upon the formula. Namco Bandai decided to shake things up with Digimon World Championship by revamping the battle system, introducing more involved Digimon hunting mechanics, and--strangely enough--reaching into the past by including the pet-raising mechanics of the original Digimon World for the PlayStation. Unfortunately, Digimon World Championship also completely eschews any storytelling and takes away some hands-on control from Digimon battles, resulting in a disappointingly tepid game.
Digimon World Championship puts you in the role of a tamer whose purpose is simply to hunt, train, and take care of multiple digimon for entry into a world championship tournament. There are no dungeons to crawl around in or plot twists to discover. As you win battles, you increase your tamer rank, as well as the level to which your digimon can evolve. Every day, you increase your digimon's abilities and stats by dragging them into different cages using your stylus. As the game progresses, you'll be able to purchase more cages that have unique effects on your digimon's development. You're given limited space with which to work, so you'll also have to manage the way your cages are laid out. Your critters will get hungry, tired, sick, and even cranky as they train. As such, you'll have to feed and medicate them appropriately. You'll even have to undertake the embarrassing task of cleaning up their digital "leavings."

At first, managing your cage layout and caring for digimon as pets are refreshing gameplay mechanics--at least in relation to recent games in the franchise. But as the population of digimon increases, all of that cleaning, dragging, and feeding becomes extremely repetitive and dull. With this in mind, trying to juggle around all the different cages also becomes somewhat frustrating as you try to mix up training regimens for the various monsters. Furthermore, it's hard to figure out how to evolve your digimon, and the game is no help. You will eventually discover that in order to advance your monsters, you have to repeatedly de-evolve them. This isn't just counterintuitive, it's also frustratingly repetitive.

You'll need to take some time out of your pet-care schedule to hunt for new creatures. At its core, this involves drawing a lasso around your prey with the stylus and then dragging it in the opposite direction from which it's running. This is perhaps the most enjoyable part of the game for two reasons. You won't be hunting often because you don't have that much room to keep digimon, so it doesn't get overly repetitive. It's also the only portion that really requires dexterity on your part because battling is an entirely hands-off affair.

During most days of the in-game calendar, events called "Title Battles" are available for you to partake in--provided that you register for them between 7:00 and 15:00 on the day of a given match. You can also participate in "Free Battles" on the side to further develop your digimon. These battles can be one-on-one, three-on-one, three-on-three, and one-on-three. Fights play out in real time, with participants running around an arena and wailing away on each other. Once you assemble your team, you're able to set one of three general strategies for each team member--but that's really it. You don't control any of your team members directly, you can't select which attacks to use, and you can't even switch up general tactics during the battle. This auto-battle system carries over to the multiplayer modes as well. Digimon World Championship provides DS wireless and Wi-Fi Connection multiplayer modes, but leaving your success to the whimsy of artificial intelligence just isn't as exciting as making the correct strategic decisions yourself.

The game's presentation is none too thrilling either, though it manages to stay inoffensive...mostly. Everything is presented in 2D, with some zooming effects taking place during battle. Almost all of the digimon are colorful, detailed, and easy to tell apart. However, there's some noticeable slowdown that occurs while training your digimon in their cages--something that shouldn't be an issue in a game with such simple visuals.
Digimon World Championship presents an interesting combination of gameplay mechanics, but it just doesn't take them as far as they could go. There are some nice little touches, such as when the game looks up your birthday on your DS and gives you a gift or how your digimon's hunting habits will have to change as the seasons do. In the end, though, the auto-battle system and repetitive virtual pet mode drain much of the life out of this game, leaving behind a tedious and detached experience.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Only slightly less painful than getting your brain removed through your nose.
The Good

* Decent sound effects.

The Bad

* Plain graphics
* Barebones storytelling
* Frustrating gun combat
* Timed levels can be maddening
* Not enough variety.

The film Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, with its tomb-raiding, treasure-hunting action, seems ripe for adaptation into a video game. Unfortunately, the Nintendo DS game based on the latest in the series of adventure films starring Brendan Fraser fails to capture any of the movie's spirit. You are cast as Rick and Alex O'Connell, father and son adventurers who must stop the evil Emperor Han from raising his Terracotta Army and conquering the world. That sounds like potentially thrilling stuff, but the storytelling is so thin that the tale it tells is barely even coherent, much less interesting. The game seems to assume that anyone playing it has seen the movie and therefore can fill in the gaps in the narrative. But even if you've seen the movie a dozen times, you're better off staying away from this game.
The action is presented from a three-quarter view and has you navigate your way through ancient tombs and across hillsides, fighting terra-cotta soldiers and avoiding shots from idiotic snipers. The first level maintains a decent balance between light puzzle-solving, trap-evading, and combat. The puzzle-solving is all very easy, consisting of simple block-pushing and using the touch screen to write ancient runes, but despite its basic nature, it does lend a modicum of variety to the action. Unfortunately, after the first level, the traps and puzzles fall by the wayside and the focus shifts largely toward combat, which is much less enjoyable.

The combat consists of fisticuffs and firearms. Brawling is done by tapping the Y button to make your character pull off simple combos and hitting B to dodge your enemies' attacks. More often than not, though, shooting is going to be your best option. That's because the game has a tendency to surround you with enemies. The action sometimes forces you into these situations by making your character stand still while the bad guys make their entrance and circle you, which feels downright cheap. And once surrounded, if you stop to punch one dude in the face, another is likely to shoot you in the back.

So the best tactic then becomes to run around in circles like a crazy person, cutting down enemies with your weapon while trying to avoid enemy attacks. Gun combat is handled in an unusual way that doesn't always work well. There's a crosshair on the touch screen, and by touching the screen in relation to the crosshair, you control the direction in which your character shoots. Rick's pistols lend themselves to this control scheme. They fire and reload quickly, and they have a nice, long range, conveniently leaving trace lines in the air so that you can easily determine if you need to adjust your aim to hit your target. Mowing down onslaughts of terra-cotta soldiers with Rick's pistols can actually be fun for a little while. Alex's shotgun is a different story. The gun fires slowly, and you'll spend about as much time reloading it as you will firing it. Your aim needs to be as precise with the shotgun as it does with the pistols, and considering that all you get when you fire the shotgun is a burst of smoke, it can be more difficult to determine if you need to adjust a little to the left or a little to the right to hit your mark. It's frustrating to seemingly unload a shotgun blast right in an enemy's face and see it stand there unaffected.

Tomb of the Dragon Emperor also can't make up its mind about difficulty. For the overwhelming majority of the time, it's very generous with checkpoints. However, a few timed levels need to be completed in one go, without the benefit of any checkpoints, and these can be maddening. A lengthy level near the end is particularly obnoxious, given that the first few sections are quite easy. It's not until a ways into the level that it really starts to throw the bad guys at you en masse, and having to play the easy sections over again each time you fail, just to get back to the part that's giving you trouble, feels overly punishing.

Visually speaking, the game is plain. Your characters animate well, but all of your enemies are featureless, and the environments, with a few minor exceptions, are drab and monotonous. The music and sound effects are somewhat better. The occasionally rousing score sounds like the stuff of cinematic adventure, and the over-the-top sounds that accompany the flying of fisticuffs sell the action pretty well. Nevertheless, the verbal cues are annoying. The voice actors don't sound like their movie counterparts, and hearing Alex's petulant voice whine "No" or "I can't do that here" each time you hit the climb button but aren't standing in precisely the right spot is enough to make you want to reach into the game and throttle him.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will take most players about five hours or so to complete. There's a harder difficulty level, but no built-in incentives to play through again. Certainly the gameplay isn't strong enough to make it worthwhile to play even once. If the game had continued to follow the more varied design formula demonstrated in the first level, the result might have been mildly engaging, but the poorly implemented gun combat quickly gets tiresome. Ultimately, its inconsistency and the plainness of its visuals make Tomb of the Dragon Emperor feel like a poorly thought-out, hastily thrown-together attempt to capitalize on a movie license, and that's probably exactly what it is.

Spore Creatures Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:01:00 +0000

Spore Creatures is pleasant and charming, but ultimately forgettable.
The Good

* Cute adventure across multiple planets
* Varied quest objectives keep things from getting stale
* Creature creator is surprisingly robust.

The Bad

* Some frustrating gameplay elements
* Various control and camera quirks
* Being forced into certain creature designs minimizes player creativity.

Spore Creatures for the DS isn't the far-reaching trek through evolution you may have expected--but don't take that as a reason to totally dismiss this charming title. It's still a cute adventure across multiple planets, and it features a pared-down version of the creature creation tool that helped make the PC release such a success. It has some annoying quirks, and it won't inspire an emotional connection between you and your digital doppelganger, but Spore Creatures is still a pleasant diversion and an appealing, if ordinary, companion to its bigger brother.
Your galactic journey is set in motion when your companion creature, Little Oogie, is abducted by an evil alien for reasons unknown. In response, you accumulate evolutionary improvements and apply them to yourself with a singular goal: rescue the little bugger. You'll visit various planets and continents, acquiring new spaceship parts--in addition to limbs for your own beastly body. You'll alternately befriend and alienate nests of other creatures as you explore the various planetside environs; and while the voyage is linear, it's easygoing and, at 10 hours, reasonably lengthy.

The creature creator you use to develop your avatar is limited, but it still lets you snap together a number of interesting limbs and other bits. Notably, your creature is a two-dimensional collection of parts and pieces rather than a full 3D model, though within these bounds, you can still resize and rotate the various appendages. This can result in a gangly mess of odd-looking eyes and tails tottering across the landscape, but there's still something remarkably charming about such paper-thin oddities. Moving pieces on and off of your beast can get a little annoying, since it's far too easy to grab the wrong piece if your creature is a busy mess of limbs. But all in all, the 2D approach works, and the creation tool offers the right combination of form and function.

Each body part confers particular attributes and bonuses, such as improved attack ratings and special abilities called bio-powers that you can use in combat. You need to be far more conscious of these factors compared to Spore PC because your mission objectives are often incredibly specific, forcing you to use a particular appendage to accomplish your goals. For example, you'll need to cross different types of terrain at certain points, such as desert, ice, or lava; And to do so, you need to attach very specific body parts. Or, you may need to prove your good intentions to another race of creatures by equipping one of their arms. Mission-required adjustments like this devalue the fun of the creation process, since it shoves aside player inventiveness in favor of arbitrary gameplay mechanics.

Many of your missions are fun, though, and there are a number of gameplay elements sprinkled in to keep things interesting. You can pick items up and throw them with a flick of the stylus, so at various points you will need to throw rocks at weather machines to break them, fling food at starving creatures, or water plants by throwing liquid-laden flowers at them. These activities are amusing--though not all missions are created equal. One annoying quest initiates a minigame, asking you to fling rocks at thieving creatures by tapping on them as they appear. The vague instructions and picky, pixel-perfect tapping required turns a fun diversion into a frustrating detour. In fact, simply navigating can be problematic: Stylus controls are a little slippery, and the camera has a habit of zooming in and out in various unhelpful ways, often keeping you from getting a helpful view of your surroundings.

Occasionally, you'll need (or want) to befriend other creatures, a facet that requires you to utilize one of two gameplay elements. To cuddle with other creatures (though we're not sure why anyone would want to cuddle with a scaled purple lizard), you send out a friendly call, which prompts a series of smiley faces above your prospective buddy's head. Then, you drag the smileys downward and rub them around on the creature. Or if a flower petal appears over its head, you drag it down to initiate a rhythm minigame reminiscent of Elite Beat Agents. This minigame works just fine (though the accompanying tunes aren't exactly memorable), and in the last hours of the game it gets surprisingly challenging.

You'll also fight other creatures along the way--sometimes because you have to, other times because you want to. Either way, combat requires little more than slashing the stylus across your target and perhaps tapping on an icon to initiate one of your bio-powers. Your battle prowess is related only to your equipped body parts, rather than any actual skill, though you may find that getting your slashes to register is sometimes a bit of a hassle. These battles are over quickly, though, and they are mildly fun while they last. Good thing, too, because if you decide to go the meat-eating route with your animal, you'll need to fight to get food. But this creates one of the game's real issues: You need the meat to heal, but to get it, you need to fight. If you're close to death, the best way to handle things is to let yourself die and spawn back at the nest.

Spore Creatures features a colorful, attractive visual design paired with cute sound effects and a laid-back, spacey soundtrack. It also features some of the PC version's online connectivity, albeit in an extremely stripped-down form. In this case, you can download other players' creatures, which then appear within your own game as you explore. This is a neat addition, though its limited scope doesn't give Spore Creatures much additional replay value. But no matter: On its own, Spore Creatures is still a cute--if not particularly memorable--adventure game.
By Kevin VanOrd

Little League World Series 2008 Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Ah, not since those after-school days in fourth grade have I felt so close to Little League. The small fields, the sound of aluminum on a hardball - those are good memories. And you can experience them too, whether you're still in the fourth grade or if those days are long gone, with Little League World Series Baseball 2008 from Activision. What's great about this game is that it captures the very essence of Little League. This is not a full-blown baseball simulation with complex detail and strategy. Nor is it too dumbed down and simple. It's somewhere in between, and that's what Little League is all about.

From the moment you turn on Little League 2008 you can tell that the game is all about fun. From the approachable art style to the inviting menus, the presentation is excellent - and easy to navigate through. There are numerous play modes available from the start, including Exhibition, World Series, Training, and Skill Challenges. This last mode includes such games as Home Run Derby, Horse, and even Bowling. Well, not that kind of bowling. Yes, you do knock over pins, but it's by throwing a baseball. Kind of strange, kind of intriguing, but it still adds to the overall product.

Thinking confidently, I jumped right into the World Series mode. I wasn't going to shy away from some Little League game after all. And, well, I quickly lost. This game is no push over, to say the least. It took me a few runs at the World Series mode before I was able to make any progress whatsoever. Unfortunately, however, part of the reason for this difficulty level is the gameplay. First of all, the batting mechanics are slightly awkward, and they change based on whether the batter is a righty or lefty. Add to this that you can seemingly swing on time and hit nothing but air, and you'll have a difficult time hitting. And then there's the problem that sometimes you'll perform the stylus motion to swing, and your hitter won't swing. The combination of these flaws lead to a sometimes frustrating experience.

Besides the batting though, the game is generally fun. The pitching mechanics are especially unique and interesting. They require you to quickly and precisely perform certain stylus motions based on what pitch you want to throw. And the more quickly and precisely you do this, the faster and more accurate your pitch will be. It successfully made the pitching side of the game fun, which is more than I can say for some other baseball games. Defense is taken care of automatically, except for throwing the ball to the correct base. A quick stylus stroke will instruct your player to deliver the ball to the base you choose. The problem is remembering to do this, as it is easy to be lulled to sleep by the auto-fielding.

Now, Activision, I apologize for the following, but as a baseball enthusiast, I feel obliged to point out a few shortcomings relating to the rules and mechanics of baseball. First of all, a runner should NEVER or at least VERY RARELY be thrown out at first base when he hits a ball into the outfield. It just doesn't happen in the game of baseball. Unless of course it's Oprah Winfrey running to first base. This happened numerous times in the same game, and it's just not acceptable. Secondly, when a runner scores, and the third out is then made by a tag-out (not a force play) the run COUNTS. Errors such as this might be overlooked by some players, but not those who know baseball. And I'm assuming this game is targeted towards baseball players.

In short, Little League World Series Baseball 2008 is a balancing act. It teeters on the brink of fun and frustration, just as it balances the arcade and realistic styles of baseball. But overall, it is an enjoyable game to pick up and play, especially if you're a baseball fan. Besides, who doesn't want to go back to Little League and hit a few home runs?

Review Scoring Details for Little League World Series Baseball 2008

Gameplay: 6.4
The pitching mechanics are unique and actually make the defensive side of the game interesting. That's a nice twist. Fielding is taken care of automatically, but throwing to bases can feel a bit clunky. On the offensive side of things, batting was often the most frustrating aspect of the game. I swear the ball must have been going right through my bat half the time. And I'm not a newbie when it comes to baseball games.

Graphics: 8.2
The dev team (NOW Production) has done a nice job with the presentation here, striking a perfect balance between caricature and realism. The characters are short and stubby renderings of baseball players, but in all fairness, they translate well as Little League Ball Players. Animations are a little less than fluid in some places, but overall the graphics create a fun, light-hearted atmosphere for a baseball game.

Sound: 7.0
For the most part the sound effects and music are well suited for the game. The metallic ping of Little League aluminum bats brought me back a few years to say the least. One strange - yet funny - aspect in the sound department was the crowd noise. After finally figuring out that it was indeed supposed to be crowd noise, I decided that it sounded more like a haunted house than a baseball stadium.

Difficulty: Medium
What seems as an easy game at first turns out to be quite a tricky customer. Unfortunately, part of the difficulty is due to the confusing and seemingly faulty gameplay. That said, it took multiple tries before I was able to advance deep into the World Series Mode. And I imagine the target market for this game (little leaguers) will have at least as difficult a time.

Concept: 7.5
The idea of a Little League World Series game was new to me at first. But Activision took the opportunity to create a not-so-serious, arcade-style baseball game for the younger market. It's a little less complex and perhaps a little more fun than your average run of the mill baseball game because of this.

Overall: 7.0
Little League World Series Baseball 2008 has a lot to offer in terms of depth - you'll never play the same game twice, and that keeps things fresh. There are plenty of modes to keep you interested, including Exhibition, World Series, Home Run Derby, and even a baseball-themed Bowling game. Little League World Series Baseball has its moments of greatness, but it is often plagued by gameplay issues that obscure its full potential.

BOMBERMAN TOUCH - THE LEGEND OF MYSTIC BOMB

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:20:00 +0000

Players have been in love with the Bomberman series for many years now. Each time a new gaming system is released it is inevitable that a Bomberman game will soon follow. Launching with the iTunes App store for the iPhone/iPod Touch, Hudson Soft released Bomberman Touch: The Legend of Mystic Bomb. Fans of the series will be delighted to know that the classic Bomberman gameplay that they have enjoyed for years has stayed intact in this latest game.

The story for this game is very simple yet effective. Bomberman John and a friend have crashed landed on a mysterious island while they were out looking for treasure. After the crash, players must fight their way to find the treasure buried in an ancient temple. Players must transverse though various levels searching for the treasure while avoiding hostile enemies to get to it.
The controls are very simple for the player to use. The entire touch screen acts as a d-pad for players to move around. To use it, players just touch anywhere on the screen and where they touch becomes the “center” of the d-pad. Then players must then move their finger in any direction (left, right, up, and down) to get where they need to be. While this isn’t as accurate as a dedicated d-pad, it does get the job done. To drop bombs, players can press the bomb icon on the screen.

This game follows the rules of the classic Bomberman games. Players are thrown into a maze where there are various obstacles in their way. Players must clear a path and avoid the bomb flames to stay alive. In order to get to the end of the level players must destroy the enemies on the screen with their bombs. Players must be pretty astute to catch the bad guys because they always seem to be aware of their surroundings and try to take cover when a bomb has been dropped. Throughout each level they are various upgrades that players can collect that will give them more lives, bombs, and even upgrade the power of their bombs.

The visuals for this game are pretty good and crisp. What players will really enjoy is that there is no slow down, especially after a bomb has been set off. The jungle theme works really well for this game as well, and has a few small tie-ins to recently released movies. The musical score for this game is good, but players would rather listen to their own music. Sound effects are also strong and have a nice sound to them.

Bomberman Touch: The Legend of Mystic Bomb can be purchased on the iTunes App store for $7.99

Review Scoring Details for Bomberman Touch: The Legend of Mystic Bomb

Gameplay: 7.9
Players will love the touch-screen controls and it works really well for this game. This is classic Bomberman gaming at its best!

Graphics: 7.9
The graphics are crisp and clean.

Sound: 8.0
Players will love the classic Bomberman music.

Difficulty: Medium
As with all Bomberman games, it starts off really easy and becomes more challenging as players progress.

Concept: 8.0
No gaming system is complete without a classic Bomberman game, and the iPhone is no exception.

Overall: 8.0
My only real complaint is the lack of a multiplayer mode in this game. Hopefully the developers will come up with a way to include it in a future release. Players should get many hours of great gameplay out of this title.

Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:44:00 +0000

I must admit that I have a fascination with wrestling. I’ve been a huge fan of wrestling twice now, once in the early 80’s and then again in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. My last infatuation with wrestling drove me to find out more about what really happened in wrestling. I made it a point to visit almost every wrestling Web site to read about the latest scoop and behind the scenes happenings of WWE, WCW, ECW and Japanese wrestling.

I even had a crazy dream at one time that I wanted to be involved in the inner workings of a wrestling company. There were a couple local independent companies (Ohio Valley Wrestling and IWA Mid-South) running shows that I would attend from time to time. I remember at one show thinking to myself that I would get some money up and “invest” in one of these companies. Now if you know anything about wrestling you probably realize just how insane that idea was at the time. You don’t just “invest” in a wrestling company and get a chance to run the show. I was naïve and sucked into a form of entertainment that I thought I knew everything about. Yet almost 10 years later the wrestling business is still going, with fans still having the same dream I did years ago.

Total Extreme Wrestling gives would-be bookers/owners a chance to find out just how complicated and involved running your own wrestling promotion can be. Almost every single aspect of running a wrestling show seems to be included in Total Extreme Wrestling (TEW). Now when I say “seems to be” I should add that since I’ve never actually been an owner or booker before I can only assume this game includes everything involved in running a wrestling promotion. From what I’ve read and heard from friends that were involved in the business TEW hasn’t skipped over too many details.

However, TEW isn’t just a wrestling game like the classic THQ N64 games or even the legendary Fire Pro Wrestling series. Total Extreme Wrestling is best classified as a simulation database instead of a wrestling game. You will never actually play a match by moving your character around the ring or performing moves by pressing buttons. TEW is completely focused on the backstage/business aspects of wrestling.

You start off by selecting an avatar for your character. There are only six avatars to select from so choose wisely. Next up you select which promotion you want to work for or you can select to start your own promotion. I chose the later because I had an idea for a promotion that I thought would work great. I wanted an intense show with great angles, great-to-decent matches and a rabid fan base that was quick to turn on a bad match. Honestly, I wanted to reproduce the early ECW (pre-WWE ownership) style and I thought it would be a piece of cake.

Once I started my promotion I had to sit down and face the realities that I was almost immediately in over my head. I had hundreds of wrestlers that I had to review to see who I wanted to contact to work for my company. Ever wrestler had their own history created for them ranging from how many years they have wrestled, which companies they have wrestled for to the number of titles they have held. It was up to me to fill a complete roster to run a weekly show every Saturday in the Southwestern United States. So I had to choose wisely because I couldn’t double book a guy for my show and somebody else’s show on the same night. I also had to take into account that some of the wrestlers had contracts with the bigger promotions and won’t be able to wrestle for me no matter how much money I could throw at them. So after looking over their availability and contract/employment status, I had sent out communication to probably 50 workers.

I say workers because I not only had to get wrestlers to actually wrestle I had to get referees, announcers and a road agent. A good referee should be invisible but still be able to visualize the action in the match by their body/facial expressions at key moments. The announcers have to be able to tell the story of the match by explaining the history of the wrestlers, their feud and what every move is doing to the wrestlers in the match. The road agent is the guy backstage that keeps everything together and will usually work with the workers on how a match will flow. So I decided that my first signing should be the announcer, who was going to be the Joey Styles of my company. Even though he was working somewhere else my offer was good enough to have him do one show a week for me.

What I found out during the negotiations with the talent was every guy was completely different with their demands. As expected, younger workers just breaking into the business were willing to accept much lower offers than experienced workers. But some of the veterans in the business really tried to be a hard negotiator due to their demands. You can select from a variety of options when you make an offer to a worker. Besides their pay you can decide if they get a percentage of the merchandize or the gate. You can offer an actual contract or a pay per performance with different lengths to the deals. Would it be a one shot deal so you can bring in a huge name in the business to hopefully bump up the gate for a big show? Or do you want to lock up a promising rookie to an exclusive deal so he doesn’t sign with one of the bigger companies?

Besides the negotiations the amount of options you have control over in TEW is staggering. Once I had enough workers signed it was time to book my first show. I had two huge big men signed that I wanted to push by making them look like unstoppable monsters. I figured a couple of squash matches to start off their career in my federation were appropriate. Then I would have a match to determine our television title, even though we didn’t have a TV deal just yet, by booking a solid veteran against a big strong young talent who was getting recognized in another company. Then I booked the world title match with my character going up against a superstar wrestler from Mexico. I even did an advance booking schedule for the show so fans knew the matches before they came to the show.

Next up was to select a venue for the show. Now I thought to myself why am I selecting the venue on the day of the show? Wouldn’t I have already chosen my venue weeks or months ahead of time so tickets can be sold? Unfortunately I didn’t have an option to book a venue ahead of time but it really didn’t affect the game. I picked a sweltering venue that lacked air conditioning and always had a rowdy crowd in the Southwest from an impressive number of venues across the country. I could have gone with a huge arena that could fit 30,000 fans but I would have blown most of my budget just on one show. Instead my venue would hold 1,000 fans, which I thought was perfect since the pre-show analysis said almost 1,900 fans were expected. If more people wanted in for the first show I just knew I would have 3,000 fans ready for the next show.

However something happened by the time the show started and by the time it was finished. The fans didn’t like the show and the outcome of the matches didn’t meet my expectations. The game gives you a small breakdown of each match as the show progresses, such as who the winner is, how long the match lasted, the mood of the crowd and an overall ranking of the match. Almost every match brought the mood of the crowd down and was ranked as an E or lower. Somehow I skipped a whole section of the game revolving around the storylines and angles for the show.

Just because I booked the show didn’t mean that the show would go off exactly as I planned. I needed to dig farther into the game to actually tell the road agent who I wanted to win the matches. So instead of the insanely popular Mexican wrestler becoming the new champion I found myself in the position of Owner/Booker/Champion. On the day of the show you need to give notes to your Road Agent as to how you want the match to progress. You can select who wins, who interferes in a match, who to keep looking strong in the match and numerous other options in how the matches will be performed. You also get to book angles for each show which can be used for a variety of reasons. You can use the angle to interview a wrestler about an upcoming match, show a video package of a new wrestler coming in or have a tag team break up. Almost every angle that I watched as a wrestling fan looks to be included in TEW.

The other portion of the game that I didn’t pay attention to was the storylines. More post-show analysis said the fans expected more storylines and less action for my show. So when I selected the storyline option I was presented with a huge collection of storylines to pull off on my shows. Just like the angles, probably every type of storyline I watched in wrestling seemed possible with TEW. So I decided to run a tag-title tournament storyline at my next show.

The tag-title tournament storyline featured four teams. I booked my two huge monsters together on a team, two up and coming faces (good guys) as the second team, two low level wrestlers as the third team, who would simply be the squashed meat for the monster team. The last team was my character and the Mexican superstar. The storyline requires that you book each match in a specific way in order to keep the storyline progressing. This required me to tell the road agent exactly which teams I wanted to win so the computer wouldn’t decide for me. The story was for the two up and coming faces to win an upset match over me and the Mexican superstar. This way I thought it would make the two new faces look good in the process and get the fans into thinking they could defeat the unstoppable monsters.

Next up I had to book angles on the show at precise moments so the storyline will keep progressing. If I screwed up and booked the wrong team at the wrong time it would cause the rest of the storyline to fall apart. The first angle involved the big men talking about their upcoming match with the faces. The next angle had the two faces talking about the upcoming match against the monsters. Then the next angle was a video montage hyping the match one last time. Finally the match was scheduled and I told the road agent I wanted the big monsters to go over. But I included notes that I wanted to have an all-out match and I wanted to make the two faces still look strong. Then there was still one more angle to book a celebration angle where the new champions celebrated their victory in the ring.

Once again everything had to be planned to perfection or the storyline would fall apart. If I booked the wrong team to win or the wrong angle at the wrong time the storyline was useless. I would have to abandon the storyline for another one in hopes of building up hype for the workers. But I knew I messed up because I booked the entire storyline in one night instead of spreading it out over several shows. The post-match analysis of the last match included a comment that both of my big men were noticeably tired near the end of the match. My total show score was an E which is well below a C where I needed to be to keep momentum going for my company to succeed. Even the next show I booked, where I had all of the good guys winning still wasn’t enough to make the fans happy. That show was ranked an E+ which is a small improvement.

Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 really shined the light on me. It made me realize that there was no way I would have ever been a good booker for a wrestling company. There are way too many choices to keep your company producing a great show week after week. Thankfully the game does a good job of letting you try as many different options as possible to running your own wrestling show. This is without a doubt the most hardcore wrestling game I have ever played simply because of the almost limitless number of booking options. Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 can be your only choice if you want to find out just how difficult it can be to actually run your own wrestling federation.
Review Scoring Details for Total Extreme Wrestling 2008

Gameplay: 8.0
As I’ve mentioned TEW is more pure simulation than action packed wrestling game. Most of the game is easy enough to follow once you start clicking around at the seemingly endless menu options. Everything is point and click to get going in the game. I didn’t appreciate how the storyline options didn’t really connect with the advance booking on the day of the shows. If I did my advance booking I was never able to import those matches into the game the day of the show. So it was rather tedious having to schedule all the matches even though I already had them listed.

Graphics: 7.0
Just static head shots of the various wrestlers in the game. You can tell that some of the models were used over and over again for many of the wrestlers.

Sound: N/A

Concept: 8.7
Really it’s probably better to think of this as a wrestling database instead of a game. You get almost every angle, storyline and match type imaginable to book your own wrestling promotion. You decide who you want to push, who wins the titles or even how much they get paid.

Multiplayer: 7.5
The game does let you and three other players compete against each other to see who can run the most successful wrestling company. Each player is assigned their own spot on the database which can be password protected to prevent other players from stealing your upcoming angles and stories.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
This is as hardcore of a wrestling experience as you will find. Your head will probably be spinning at first just trying to figure out how you want to book a match, who you want to sign and the other countless options in the game. A slightly cumbersome interface in certain parts of the game will cause some additional confusion as well.

Overall: 7.8
If you’re still one of the die-hard wrestling junkies who just can get enough then you will fall in love with Total Extreme Wrestling 2008. You will probably find just the right combination of insane stories, unusual angles and hardcore matches to let you create your ultimate wrestling fantasy.

The Sims 2 Apartment Life Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:41:00 +0000

There are a few certainties in life … death and taxes are the two most often cited, but how about that as long as there is a Sims franchise, EA/Maxis will pump out expansions every couple of months.

Yep, it’s time once again and with Sims 2 Apartment Life, the supernatural gets a shot in the arm with the introduction of witchcraft. The element of witchcraft in the game is part of the new idea that Sims don’t have to own their own homes, but rather can rent. Of course there are rules for renting, like noise levels and making the rent on a timely basis, but the apartment element is surprisingly akin to the homeowners element. You will have visitors and develop social groups.
Part of the vampire element introduced several expansions ago allowed Sims to meet vampires and if they got friendly enough, that vampire might bite them and they would become a vampire. Werewolves got a similar treatment. Well, now it is time to give witchcraft a try. Sims can meet witches or warlocks and befriend them. If all goes well, they may be allowed to learn either the Ways of Light or the Path of Darkness.

When you head down that road, you get a spellbook and cauldron. The spellbook contains all your Sim will learn and the spells fall into three categories – good, neutral and evil. Good spells might include healing sick Sims, neutral allows for teleportation and evil includes starting fires and breaking up relationships.

And because there are witches, that means foregoing mechanical conveyances and riding on the broomstick.

The expansion includes a few new animations available in the radial menu (when at the right place) like a dance kiss, brushing teeth, washing the Sim’s face and jumping rope. A few new objects also enter the scene, like adding closet doors to a small room to create a walk-in closet, and there are also vending machines, a new spiral staircase, ceiling tiles for rooms, a new bed and bookcase and a silent ringer mode for phones.

Because some Sims do not make a lot of money, you can advertise for (and get) a roommate. The roommates are NPCs, and that means they operate under an independent AI. Sometimes the actions seem to make little sense, but generally they can work out fairly well.

As expansions go, Apartment Life adds some nice variety to the series. It does not add anything new in terms of the graphics engine but does bring in some nicer elements to the gameplay. The sound changes little.

Maxis (and EA) must be stretching it a bit to maintain viable content for the Sims 2 series – especially with Sims 3 releasing in 2009. But Apartment Life is a bit more robust than Free Time was in terms of behavioral modifications and that makes it a bit more fun.

Review Scoring Details for The Sims 2 Apartment Life

Gameplay: 7.2
This actually adds some entertaining elements to the game.

Graphics: 7.0
Some nice effects make this a bit brighter in terms of content than previous expansions.

Sound: 6.5
Typical of the franchise.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Concept: 7.5
The witchcraft element and roommates make things a bit more interesting, especially if you like to meddle in the lives in NPCs.

Overall: 7.2
This is more entertaining than Free Time and the apartment roommate element spices it up a touch.

Art of Murder: FBI Confidential Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:40:00 +0000

Nicole Bonnet is an FBI agent based in New York City. Her partner is killed suddenly, but instead of being allowed to work on that case, she is instead assigned to working a different case with a new partner. This new case involves several grisly, ritualistic murders that appear to be the work of a serial killer. The trail begins in New York, but eventually leads to South America.

The game begins with the murder of Nicole’s partner. Shortly afterwards (in game time, that is), she’s back at the office and ready to get back to work. In this big, dangerous city of New York, this branch of the FBI only has three desks for the rank and file officers and one desk for the boss. Nicole is the only regular officer here, as she prepares to investigate her partner’s death. The secretary is here, though, and Nicole chats with her and then tries to head out. Oh, wait, she has to write up the report, first, before she can leave. Drat, the printer is out of paper! This is too exciting.

At this point in the game, we don’t know anything about the story. Nicole’s partner was killed, but that’s all we know. This lack of story background, combined with the very mundane tasks that Nicole has to undertake, makes for a rather ho-hum beginning. Fortunately, the game does become more interesting later on when Nicole travels to Peru, but that’s not saying a whole lot.

The Art of Murder: FBI Confidential is a point-and-click adventure in the usual style, but one that relies on a police procedural approach, similar to CSI. This is a good idea, and one that should have worked well in this setting, but the way it’s handled is rather boring. The tasks don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, and often either items can’t be used or picked up until later in the game when they are relevant, or Nicole can’t move ahead in the game because of something not done. Fortunately, there is a hint system (needed items or places will light up) and the inventory puzzles aren’t very difficult.

The interface is the typical icon approach to interacting with the environment. It’s handled efficiently and easily. Right-clicking when the appropriate icon appears will trigger the needed event.

The music is adequate, but not very soul-stirring. The sound effects are present and do a decent job of emulating the activities in the scenes. Where the game falls down in the sound department is in the voice acting. Partly due to the random remarks that don’t have a whole lot to do with anything going on at the moment, but mainly due to bad voice-acting, the voiced conversations are bland and dull. There are some rather funny remarks pointed at pop-culture, but they don’t hit the mark very often due to the overall writing and voice-acting. There is also a lot of cursing, which may have its place in some scenes with an FBI agent, but here it’s as if these words were placed randomly for the sake of existence.

This game is fairly easy, and with the hint system it’s hard to get stuck. The puzzles become harder later in the game in South America, but then they often don’t make a whole lot of sense.

The Art of Murder isn’t a bad game, but neither is it a very good game. There are good aspects to it, but when mixed with the bad parts it’s a mediocre package. The game begins decently enough, but it never gets off the ground. The boring puzzles and bad voice-acting make it hard for players to get into the game while playing. Nicole has a hard time with her script; it’s all over the place. Her remarks often jar with the scene.

The Art of Murder is probably best enjoyed if purchased as a bargain for a weekend play.

Review Scoring Details for Art of Murder: FBI Confidential

Gameplay: 6.0
This game is rather boring and it’s difficult to get into the story. The interface is designed well and it’s easy enough to play, but just not very interesting.

Graphics: 7.0
The game looks pretty decent and the characters move smoothly. The environments are nicely drawn and populated.

Sound: 7.0
The music is not very memorable, but isn’t bad, either.

Difficulty: Medium
There isn’t anything that is particularly difficult.

Concept: 6.0
This game is just like all the other average adventure games out there.

Overall: 6.0
This game is a mediocre adventure game that may offer a few hours of enjoyment to some. Much of it is illogical or unexplained, and the voice-acting is hard to get past. There are lots of thing to do with the inventory puzzles, but they aren’t very interesting or challenging. This isn’t the worst game out there, but neither is it the best. Players who are looking for a few filler hours of CSI-like gaming may enjoy it.

Planescape: Torment Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:13:00 +0000

It's clearly the best traditional computer role-playing game of the year and is bound to be an all-time favorite for many of its inevitable fans.

Torment is a traditional role-playing game with an uncommonly detailed story and first-rate graphics and sound. It's set in the complex and interesting Advanced Dungeons & Dragons universe of Planescape, which is a patchwork of wildly different dimensions surrounding a sprawling city that connects them together. In Torment, you play as a nameless character who cannot die and cannot remember his past, and in uncovering his origin, you'll experience one of the year's most fascinating games.

Torment uses the same graphics engine as Baldur's Gate and will consequently seem immediately familiar to fans of the best-selling 1998 role-playing game. However, Torment's top-down isometric perspective is much closer to the ground than in Baldur's Gate, which means all the characters in Torment appear quite large onscreen. Each character is highly detailed, carefully animated, and cleverly designed above all else. Torment abandons the high-fantasy styling of most RPGs and instead uses the Planescape license's unique interpretation of familiar fantasy archetypes, which lends the game a wholly original appearance that defies expectations for fantasy and science fiction artwork. Even Torment's protagonist, who is heavily scarred, entirely tattooed, and dressed in bones and animal hides, seems nothing like the usual role-playing game hero.

Torment's scenery is more intricately detailed than the scenery in Baldur's Gate because of the close perspective, and much like its characters, the scenery looks good and looks different from what you're used to. The game has no pointless spans of wilderness; each area is carefully designed, and most areas are densely populated. The jutting blade-like architecture of the game's urban settings and the rough-hewn, almost alien tangle of its catacombs give Torment a well-defined, highly distinctive appearance, while the game's atmospheric soundtrack, good sound effects, and sparse but high-quality voice acting all help maintain Torment's style. The game has a consistently cold look that can even be unsettling and uncomfortable at times, but Torment's bleak environments seem to work intentionally to motivate the protagonist's desire to escape from the oppressive, claustrophobic confines of the city of Sigil. In spite of its harsh scenery, at times Torment is colorful and impressive looking, mainly because of its often-spectacular special effects. Powerful magic spells cause the screen to go dim and erupt in ghostly energy, which shakes and rattles the screen. Even the game's most minor incantations feature impressive effects and animations, although some of the more elaborate effects tend to make the game slow down.

The Baldur's Gate engine has other limitations, some of which are exclusively aesthetic, and some of which have a slightly adverse effect on Torment's gameplay. However, as in Baldur's Gate, Torment players will likely be quick to dismiss or disregard any such problems, like the limited screen resolution, bad character pathfinding, and the unattractive real-time-strategy-style fog of war shroud that covers each new area you visit. To allow for Torment's bigger characters, most of the game's interface is invisible until you right-click to bring up a circular pop-up window that lets you use items, cast spells, use special abilities, and so forth. Unfortunately, while the hidden interface does free up most of the screen, it is neither compact nor intuitive - you'll spend a lot of time fumbling for its little unmarked buttons or otherwise dragging it aside so you can see what's happening once you bring it up. At least the game automatically pauses whenever the interface is active, so you can figure it out at your leisure. Even though most of Torment's interface isn't onscreen most of the time, you'll find that the game's close-up perspective nevertheless has particular problems. There are virtually no ranged weapons in the game, if only because there's so little relative distance from one end of the screen to the other. Similarly, several of the game's powerful spells have a bad tendency to be just as dangerous to the caster, because by the time the enemy is targeted and the spell is uttered, that enemy has already closed the distance with the caster, who invariably suffers from his own magical attack. Torment also suffers from the game's unrefined menu screens and the unavoidably slow scrolling speed of its extensive dialogue, which, much like the interface, you will train yourself to ignore.

You will ignore Torment's technical problems because it's such a good game. Specifically, it's a long and involving game with an original plot, well-written, descriptive dialogue, and likable characters. It's fortunate that Torment's dialogue reads well, because there's a lot of it to read; although the game's graphics are evocative and often beautiful, the game's most vivid events are actually written out rather than portrayed onscreen. You might wish the game had a more frequent tendency to show-not-tell; however, its combination of great graphics and writing is generally very effective. As such, even though you'll be reading text half the time, you'll rarely feel as if the dialogue interferes with the game's surprisingly quick pacing.

That's mainly because the dialogue is actually one of the best parts of Torment, since it's one of the few role-playing games to ever make good on the promise of letting you play your character however you prefer. Torment's dialogue often lets you choose to make promises, bluff, or play dumb; the game lets you perceive small details if your character is intelligent, understand philosophical implications if he's wise, and intimidate or charm if he's strong or charismatic. Your character's moral alignment and his affiliation with Sigil's different factions are openly flexible and have a noticeable impact on the course of the game. Similarly, your character can readily switch between fighter, thief, and magic-user classes and can rapidly advance to a high level of proficiency in any and all of these, which is justified within the game as not so much an acquiring of new skills as a remembrance of latent centuries-old talents. In addition, your character's perverse incapacity to permanently die also helps maintain Torment's pacing by discouraging you from frequently reloading your saved games, although the game never seems easy or trivial in spite of the hero's immortality.

Yet it's easy to apologize for Torment's many programming flaws, which cause the game to become excruciatingly slow at times and some of its dozens of quests to become unsolvable on occasion. It's true that bugs in computer role-playing games seem almost as conventional as spells and hit points. Fortunately, Torment's aren't so drastic that they actually ruin any single part of the game. Nevertheless, you'll probably experience several glitches either in performance or in quest scripting that make portions of the game unnecessarily frustrating, especially in light of Torment's generally excellent quality.

In fact, it's evidence of Torment's impressive achievement that its problems, which would be detrimental to most any other game, seem so negligible. It's clearly the best traditional computer role-playing game of the year and is bound to be an all-time favorite for many of its inevitable fans. That's because it's a great-looking game that's lengthy but never boring, and it begs to be played through more than once, just as its unique hero and his story promise not to be forgotten.

Guild Wars Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:09:00 +0000

It's a very impressive game that's rewarding on many different levels and can be tremendously appealing for any number of reasons.

The Good

* Well-designed, interesting skill system and action-packed combat
* Tons of content--huge volume of cooperative and competitive activities
* Lavish presentation makes the whole world of the game look alive
* Technically marvelous--runs fast and smooth, loads almost instantly
* Has something for just about everyone.

The Bad

* It can be difficult to find a good group of willing players for cooperative missions
* The gameworld is beautiful, but lacks cohesion.

While it's tempting to compare Guild Wars to any number of other fantasy-themed role-playing games, there's really never been anything quite like it before. It innovatively and successfully combines many of the best, most addictive properties of action RPGs, online RPGs, and competitive multiplayer games in one beautifully produced package, which offers a tremendous lasting value yet none of the monthly fees typically associated with online-only games. The first title from developer ArenaNet, Guild Wars threatens the entire online RPG establishment with its bold design. More importantly, it's a very impressive game that's rewarding on many different levels and can be tremendously appealing for any number of reasons.

In the world of Guild Wars, the men are men, and the women are runway models. Oh, and it's awesome.

In Guild Wars, you play as a hero from Ascalon, your typical fantasy province that's fallen on hard times, thanks to relentless assaults from fearsome creatures called the charr. Ascalon seems huge and wondrous as you begin to explore it and its outskirts. But it turns out to be literally just a tiny portion of the richly detailed and shockingly gigantic world of Tyria, which you'll explore during the course of an adventure that's truly epic. Meanwhile, the other half of the game consists of competitive battles between teams of players, set in various types of arena events. It's action packed, it's tactical, and it's sporting. It's definitely more involved than a pick-up-and-play first-person shooter, but it's relatively easy to learn and certainly difficult to master. Unlike many other online RPGs, which often take a lot of flak from their audiences for lacking a definitive endgame, Guild Wars gives the impression that it was built with the endgame competition as a primary concern. However, one of its big surprises is just how much noncompetitive content there is. Even if you have no interest in player-versus-player battling whatsoever, Guild Wars will still provide you with more than 100 hours of quality gameplay, which you can tackle either alone or together with other players pretty much every step of the way.

The core gameplay in Guild Wars is reminiscent of action RPGs like the Diablo series. It lets you navigate countless big, winding maps filled with enemies and treasure, and combat is frequent and fast. You can't climb or fall from ledges, so at times, the design of the maps feels pretty contrived. However, the generally linear layout mostly just helps to keep you focused. The game's interface is clean and intuitive, and offers a few neat perks like a minimap that you can scribble on to help you communicate with your team. You have free reign over the camera perspective, so you may choose to play from a first-person viewpoint all the way on out to a bird's-eye view. Although, a third-person behind-the-back angle seems to deliver the best of both worlds, because you'll get a close look at the game's gorgeous graphics and plenty of room to see on your character's periphery. When you see an enemy (whether it's a computer-controlled creature or an opposing player), you may target it with a hotkey or a mouse click, and then attack it with your ranged or melee weapons. Most of your combat will be focused on using your different skills, though.

You can have exactly eight skills readied at a time, which correspond to the number keys on your keyboard. Which eight skills you bring to battle and which skills you discover during your adventure is really at the heart of what makes Guild Wars such a compelling experience. It's what levels the playing field in PvP and keeps the action manageable even when things get really intense. Each of the game's six character classes has 150 unique skills, and each one has its own little icon graphic, description, and purpose. For the most part, skills are not inherently better or worse than other skills--they're just different. Depending on how you've developed your character or your role in a player team, the skills will be better or worse for your circumstances. Many skills have obvious uses, while many are much more specific to certain types of situations. Some will serve you better when exploring the role-playing portion of the game, while others will be better suited to PvP battling against real opponents. It's definitely an interesting selection process. It shares a lot in common with collectible card games, and similarly offers a very satisfying reward whenever you discover that great, new skill that makes you feel much stronger while also causing you to make significant changes to your overall strategy. Guild Wars' skill system is a resounding success.

Creating a character is a quick, straightforward process of choosing a gender, appearance, and character class. You'll quickly notice the game's striking character design right from this point. Even prior to that, though, you're asked to make an important choice: whether to build a standard role-playing character or a player-versus-player-specific character. If you choose the former, you start out as a first-level neophyte on a foreboding day in Ascalon's history. And if you choose the PvP option, you skip all the way through the 100-odd hours of questing and storyline and begin with a high-level character decked out with powerful equipment. He or she can then jump right into some competitive matches, but cannot participate in any cooperative gameplay.

An absolutely huge story-driven role-playing adventure awaits you, though you can cut straight to the player-versus-player skirmishing if you prefer.

The idea behind these two options is pretty obvious. Players who'd rather not muck around with leveling up and pretentious fantasy storytelling needn't even bother with it, and they can instead jump straight into the competitive game. Or, players who want to get their feet wet before diving into PvP combat, or who want to ignore PvP entirely, may do so during the course of the adventure. It's not quite this cut and dried, though, because Guild Wars wants you to experience both aspects of the game, regardless of whether you think you do or not. Specifically, if you cut straight to the PvP, you'll find that the vast majority of the different character classes' skills are locked away, waiting to be discovered during the course of the role-playing portion. Custom weapon parts can also be found in the campaign, which can later be used in PvP.

So, it's possible that players expecting Guild Wars to be a light and breezy experience will be disappointed, because this is a deep, enthralling, and potentially very time-consuming game. While combat in Guild Wars rewards skillful planning and coordination between players, many of the best Guild Wars players will surely be the ones who invest the largest number of hours into the game--not only honing their talents, but also seeking out the best skills and equipment in the role-playing portion. Fortunately, the role-playing portion is on equal footing with the PvP, so chances are you'll enjoy the opportunity to experience both, and appreciate the game all the more for it.

Ratchet & Clank® Future: Quest for Booty

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:10:00 +0000

The heroic lombax, Ratchet, returns this fall in an all-new adventure with Ratchet & Clank® Future: Quest for Booty exclusively for PLAYSTATION®3 via PLAYSTATION®Network. A stand-alone adventure for both fans and newcomers to the franchise, Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty offers up to four hours of gameplay in Ratchet and Clank’s debut on the PLAYSTATION Network. With all new wrench mechanics and light and dark illumination puzzles, Ratchet must manipulate objects and use his wits in order to succeed in his quest. New pirate-themed puzzles in four exotic locations will have gamers interacting with townspeople, manipulating shadows and playing pirate tunes, and mixing pirate brew to find hidden treasures.

All new wrench mechanics: Push, pull, and manipulate objects
Light/Dark gameplay: Illuminate dark areas and use your wits to survive.
Pirate Puzzles: Mix brew, manipulate shadows and play tunes to find hidden booty!
Travel to four exotic locations on Planet Merdegraw: Pirate Fleet, Hoolefar Island, Morrow Caverns and Darkwater Cove
Fight a motley crew of pirate enemies including Skull Walkers, Hot Heads, Giant Vipers (Pythors) and Undead Robotic Pirates.
Explore a small island town and interact with the townspeople to find vital clues to Captain Darkwater’s treasure.
Up to four hours of epic Ratchet & Clank gameplay for both fans and newcomers to the franchise.

Dracula 3 and Sinking Island from Encore released

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:08:00 +0000

Mystery Adventure Games Line Launches First Titles

Dracula 3 and Sinking Island from Encore released

Encore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Navarre Corporation, announced today that the first titles in their Mystery Adventure Games line, Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon and Sinking Island have shipped to retail. Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon is the newest installment in the original Dracula series and makes it’s North American debut with a $29.99 MSRP and rating of “T” for Teen by the ESRB. Sinking Island brought to life by acclaimed game maker Benoit Sokal hits US shelves for $29.99 MSRP and a “T” for Teen rating by the ESRB. More information, assets and trailers for these games can be found at www.mysteryadventuregames.com.

“With new game play elements and plot twists, the first two releases should create positive momentum around the entire Mystery Adventure Games line,” said Cal Morrell, president of Encore. “Dracula 3 introduces fans of the series to intriguing new characters and Sinking Island delivers the fast pace, puzzle solving excitement that Sokal fans have come to expect.”

Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon, a game produced by Microïds and developed by Kheops Studio, is the newest installment in the original Dracula series. Based on Bram Stoker’s universe, Dracula 3 takes players to Europe on a suspenseful quest to discover the reality of vampires and come face-to-face with Dracula. As Father Arno Moriani, players must travel to Transylvania to investigate a potential candidate for sainthood. Along the way players are submerged into a gripping storyline with numerous challenging and engaging puzzles to solve that leads to a final confrontation with Dracula!

The creator of Syberia, Beno�t Sokal, returns with Sinking Island, a gripping detective story that combines suspense and intrigue. As an investigator sent to a luscious tropical island to solve the murder of a multi-billionaire hotel developer, players must sort through 10 suspects to the crime as a storm rages on the island. In Sinking Island players have only three days to solve the mystery before the island and the mystery disappears into the ocean. A game by Beno�t Sokal, produced by Microïds and White Birds Productions, developed and designed by White Birds Productions.

DT Carnage

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:04:00 +0000

In DT Carnage, players will race on various tracks using any and every trick they have up their sleeves. From using items to slow down opponents, to crushing other drivers against the side of the track, to simply breezing past rivals using skillful driving maneuvers, racers will do whatever it takes to be proclaimed number one.

In RPG mode, players start off with training. Players will learn how to use various items and techniques to excel on the track. After players have finished training and leveling up their drivers through the growth system, they will send their drivers off to the tracks to battle against the best of the best.

Be prepared to get lost in the world of fast cars, talented drivers, and dirty tricks as Agetec, Inc. today announced that they are revved up and ready to “step on the gas pedal” with their upcoming game, DT Carnage, which promises to be the most cutthroat racing game ever seen, can be found in North American retail stores this summer.

“Fans of the racing genre will love this game. It features top notch graphics, amazingly realistic controls, and over the top action. With all of that and more, the game will really make players feel like they’re in the race of their lives,” says Mark Johnson, producer at Agetec. “DT Carnage also sets itself apart from other racing games by having a RPG like mode that allows drivers to live the life of a racer from start to finish.”

A Combination of Racing and Explosions Blast its Way onto Store Shelves

Agetec, Inc. today announced that its newest PlayStation 2, DT Carnage, has shipped to retailers in North America. This racing title combines intense racing action with down and dirty tactics in the quest for being number one.

“Players will definitely feel the pressure,” says Mark Johnson, Producer at Agetec. “Not only will they have to sharpen their driving skills, but they’ll have to master using the multiple weapons and explosives at their disposal if they want to survive the race.”

The DT Racing underworld is made up of violence and excitement. Indy racing teams have sectioned off their own turf and race one another for control. Compete in these underground leagues against the other teams to come out on top – but be careful. In the lawless world of DT Carnage, each Indy league you race will try to win by any means necessary. Learning to use their tricks and tactics against them is the only way to survive.

Along with the intense and violent racing action, DT Carnage also features an RPG mode where players can learn the tracks, gain experience to improve their skills, and learn to use their arsenal like a pro. DT Carnage also features over ten unique soundtracks to go along with the spectacular racing and intense explosions.

Red Alert 3 Hands-on

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:46:00 +0000

"Our dirty little secret on the dev team," whispers Amer Ajami, Red Alert 3 producer, "is that the Empire of the Rising Sun is the tool with which we pay homage to a lot of Japanese pop culture and Japanese games. We are, to put it bluntly, a bunch of nerds on the team. We watch a lot of anime and read a lot of manga, play a lot of hardcore Japanese games."

Amer has just summed up everything you need to know about Red Alert 3's brand new faction, a force that takes everything we know and love about Japanese culture, condenses it and injects it with Red Alert RTS juice. Take the Tengu unit, for example. Essentially the Veritech fighter from anime Macross, it can transform from a ground-based unit into an air fighter unit with a simple press of the secondary attack button, or the F hot key. On the ground the Tengu is anti-ground. In the air, it's strictly anti-air.

Think Robotech meets RTS. The Shogun Battleship is a nod to the real-life WWII naval unit the Yamato. Bubblegum Crisis makes an appearance, too. The Scionic Schoolgirl, like Gogo from Kill Bill spliced with Tetsuo from Akira in some mad Japanese lab, can lift up any vehicle, even an aircraft carrier, with her mind and crush it in one hit. And then there's hardcore 2D shooter Ikaruga, which has directly influenced the Seawing unit. It has two modes, black and white, and can flip between the two. Normally white on top and anti-air, it can flip upside down revealing its black underside and go anti-ground, following the Ikaruga formula of switching colours depending on enemy fire.

"If you can pay attention to your battle and can quickly transform your units you can really manage your forces very well," Amer explains. "If those Tengus in air mode run into a bunch of anti-aircraft fire you can trigger them into their ground mode and now the anti-air can't touch you and you can take them out. If you pay attention you can really do a lot of damage."

Red Alert 3 is in fact the first Red Alert game in seven years (the last being the 2001 expansion Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge). So it's been a while. The question on our mind, as we sat down with Amer for an extensive hands-on of the PC version of the game, is what has EA's LA studio come up with to make the C&C spin-off series relevant after all these years?

The answer, either reassuringly or disappointingly, depending on your point of view, is not much. Red Alert 3 feels very Red Alert 2. The trademark tongue in cheek tone remains (infantry units will get down and give you 50 if you leave them alone for a bit), the vibrant, saturated "not quite cel-shaded" look is intact and expanding out from your base quickly, scouting the enemy and reacting to your opponent's force is still the focus.

Changes are more about providing better graphics and streamlining the Red Alert 3 experience, making things quicker, easier and smoother. Naval gameplay, a Red Alert trademark, is expanded upon. "Naval gameplay is a very important part of RA3," says Amer. "That doesn't mean just make more naval units. That means making units that can transition from water to land. It also means amphibious structures." Move amphibious units from land into water and they will automatically change form, with no input from the player. Power stations can be built in the sea, as well as other structures. In RA3, unlike most other RTS', you'll need to keep one eye on the land and an even keener eye on the sea.

In-game economy has also been simplified. In previous C&C games resource, whether it be Tiberium or Ore, was strewn about the land and players were able to move an arbitrary number of harvesters into a resource field and generate an incredible amount of money very quickly, which would invariably be used to build as many tanks as possible to spam the enemy with. EALA has tried to combat this by employing 'resource gating'. Amer explains: "When I went to place down my refinery I was presented with a ghosted image of the ideal location. As this harvester travels back and forth between my refinery and this ore node that time is the exact amount of time it takes for this ore node to reset and be ready to dump a new node from its little shovel. It has to go back, pick up more ore, bring that ore up to the front of this line and as soon as it does that the harvester is ready. It's running as efficiently as it possibly can."

EA says 360 and PS3 Tiger Woods 09 graphics identical

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:44:00 +0000

There will be no graphical difference between the 360 and PS3 versions of upcoming EA sports game Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, EA has confirmed.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an interview published here, EA Tiburon associate producer Greg Rinaldi said that the development team took "great pains" to work on the PS3 version and with Sony this year and that he can't personally tell the difference between the two.

Some PS3 versions of multiplatform EA Sports titles have in the past angered gamers because of frame rate and graphical issues. The PS3 version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, however, did not suffer from similar problems, and EA looks set to achieve parity once again this year.

Rinaldi told VideoGamer.com: "There's no difference this year. We took great pains to really work on PS3 and work with Sony. Visually, I've seen the two side by side and I couldn't tell the difference. I know there were some issues last year on some of the titles, frame rates being different, but that's not the case with Tiger Woods. Tiger has always been consistent on both platforms.

"It's especially important with stuff like GamerNet, you know where we're exploiting the power of the PlayStation Network, allowing users to be constantly online, constantly able to connect to GamerNet and their friends. I think, European gamers especially, will appreciate that."

Rinaldi agreed with comments made to VideoGamer.com recently by David Rutter, the producer of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of FIFA 09, that PS3 development had now "caught up" with 360 development following Microsoft's console's head start.

"I know at Tiburon we developed Madden 06 on 360 and it gave us a lot," said Rinaldi. "The fact that Microsoft was first gave us a lot of insight into the hardware. We kind of hit the ground running on that. When the PS3 came out, for the first iteration of the titles that we were doing on PS3, I think we had a lot going on at the time. We still had to ship a 360 title and we had to get up to speed on the hardware for PS3. I think it's taken us a cycle or two, but at this point we're really at the same level on both and that's what people need to see."

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:40:00 +0000

My fingers still bear the scars from a competitive gaming childhood. While I tired my hardest to beat my brother at every game, it was Track and Field and its many copies that saw the most fevered competition. During my younger years I was innocent to the ways of button mashing. It wasn't until International Track and Field on the PlayStation that I discovered a technique using a penny and two shoulder buttons. My controller and fingers were never the same again. With this kind of pedigree I eagerly anticipate every new contender, with SEGA's officially licensed Beijing 2008 being the latest game to have my hands screaming for mercy.

With the Olympics being such a grand affair, the game includes 38 events set across 10 sports. If you follow any of the main events then chances are they're included, but if you watch the Olympics for the football and tennis, look elsewhere. The majority on offer here are score or time based, but a few almost random events have been thrown in to spice things up a little.

ck and Field events are quite obviously core to the game, with the expected array of sprinting, throwing and jumping events. A classic is the 100m sprint, known by many as the finger decimator. Beijing 2008's new twiddling analogue stick technique (optional two-button alternation is available) is perhaps an even bigger killer though. My hand is still bruised from a heated set of races which culminated in a blistering 9.73 seconds photo finish. The longer the distance the more gruelling things become, but it's pain you'll want to live through - especially on Xbox 360 where records are often accompanied by Achievements.

Throwing and jumping events vary in the required technique, with some using the typical speed and angle approach, while others are based on timing a series of button presses or stopping a marker within a set zone. They're not all brilliant, but the majority are good fun and challenging enough to offer a degree of progression. Swimming events are always good for a laugh too, mainly because of their length in comparison to track events. Here you once again have the option to use a two-button tap technique, but it's far better to use the dual rotating analogue stick method, with each stick being rotated in a different direction. It's incredibly tough when competing in two-length races and will almost certainly result in hilarious controller grips and contorted facial expressions.

Things sadly take a turn for the worst when you move away from the track and pool. Numerous shooting events simply aren't fun, the various gymnastic events fail to excite and Judo and Table Tennis are simply odd. The key to fun in games like this is speed. You can introduce as many events and control options as you like, but when the dust settles after a few rounds of playing through all the events, it's the sprint events that reign supreme. The lacklustre events in Beijing can be forgiven though, especially as you can even go online and compete against others and check out where you appear in the world rankings. Appearing in the top 100 is reward enough for the permanent damage you've done to your hand.

Swimming is extremely tough on your hands and controllers

Despite what you might think, Beijing 2008 isn't all fun and games with your friends. When playing alone you're able to effectively become your nation's entire Olympic team. You'll train them, improve their stats and eventually go for gold across the line-up of events. It's a decent effort at a solid solo experience, but not really enough to recommend buying the game for on its own. Multiplayer is where you'll get the majority of enjoyment.

Being the official game of this August's Olympic Games, and seeing as it's only arriving on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, you can expect some impressive production values. Everything looks very nice and the menus have a next-gen flair to them that we simply didn't get on previous consoles. Some stiff animations aside, we can't ask for much more. If there's one area that really could have been tightened up it's load times. The loading between events becomes quite grating, especially when trying to play through a quick game with friends.

At the moment Olympic fever hasn't really hit, yet we're still quite partial to a few sprint races in the office during our lunch break. Once the big event starts in August, being able to take part in the events from the comfort of your living room will be even more enticing. Make no bones about it, Beijing 2008 isn't doing anything all that new, but there's just something undeniably addictive about going for high scores and fastest times. If you've got an urge to twiddle an analogue stick faster than any human knew was possible you can do a lot worse.

Iron Man - Xbox 360 video game review

noreply@blogger.com (MR) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:59:00 +0000

Based on the comic book series and major motion picture from Marvel Studios, Iron Man immerses gamers in hardcore shooting action and explosive combat from the film. Exclusive content created just for the game makes it even more interesting for those who want to know more about the Iron Man story. With freedom to move anywhere in the open world environment, customize your Iron Man suit, and seamlessly transition between ground combat, and open air flight as you battle against armies of fighter jets, tanks, armored Super Villains, and more. You are a One Man Army. You are Iron Man.

Features:

* Become a Devastating Weapon: Iron Man alone battles armies of fighter jets, military tanks, armored Super Villains, and more.

* Beyond the Movie: The game includes additional plotlines and characters from the Iron Man Comic Universe that are not featured in the movie.

* Open World: Players have complete freedom to move anywhere in the environment and make seamless transitions between ground combat and open air flight.

* Power Control : Players will direct power to different parts of Iron Man’s suit, creating a variety of unique attacks.

* Chaotic Battlefields: Open-ended battlefields create adrenaline-packed combat filled with unpredictable challenges.

Gameplay:
There is the rare moment of joy playing as Iron Man–which is a shame because the movie is so good. One of the rare bright spots is your ability to tweak your suit. You get to mess with everything from the weapons to the abilities of Iron Man.

Then there is the bad–and there is a lot. “Iron Man” is the definition of repetition. The enemies couldn’t be lamer. If I didn’t have to review the game I’d have bailed on it much sooner. Another pisser is the fact that you either make it through a level or you don’t. There is no halfway point where you can die soon after and restart there–its back to the beginning if you burn through your lives. There were numerous occasions where you are asked to be a hero but can’t because its impossible. Either you are so massively under attack which makes it near impossible to complete a mission or you just can’t sort through the chaos to save a nuclear plant from exploding. Sometimes its just easier to pretend the bad guys aren’t blowing things up.

Graphics:
“Iron Man” is all over the graphic map. Occasionally some of the scenes are great and others just move awkwardly. The cut-scenes should be great and yet they are lackluster.

Audio:
Robert Downey, Jr. and Terrance Howard are actually voicing the characters and yet it doesn’t matter. Not because the game isn’t good–they just sound like two guys going through the motions.

Finally:
“Iron Man” is an exercise in frustration. Not only because the game isn’t good–but because it could have been great. Flying around as Iron Man is cool. It’s when Iron Man has to react to a problem that the game falls to pieces. “Iron Man” is the type of game where you wish it were more “Grand Theft Auto” with a massive world where you can explore everywhere. How cool would it be to fly across the ocean to Europe just because you can? Well you can’t fly forever and that is forgivable, but little else is. The lack of AI and other important details kill “Iron Man.”