Game zone-Games World-Playstation Game-Game Reviews

WarioWare D.I.Y.

2010-07-18T19:36:00.009+07:00

WarioWare D.I.Y.

Reviewer: Louis Bedigian

Game development is sort of like filmmaking with a much harsher learning curve. While anyone can grab a cheap camera and attempt to bring a story to life, it takes so much more effort to design a game. That’s not to say that filmmaking is easy, but it is definitely more user-friendly.

Occasionally, professional game developers try to remove the barriers to game design by developing a game with homemade creations in mind. This could be something as simple as a level editor, or something as complex as the RPG Maker series, which allows consumers to design their own role-playing games.
If those concepts sound intriguing, then Nintendo might have developed the perfect game for you: WarioWare: D.I.Y. This do-it-yourself adventure is packed with pre-made mini-games to play through, but players will quickly discover that those games are merely icing on the cake. The cake, as it turns out, is something you have to mix, bake, and frost yourself. And when you do, the results are quite amazing.

No Programming Required
During the training stages in WarioWare: D.I.Y., players will frequently encounter a common term used by game developers: AI (artificial intelligence). Unlike the AI they work with, which must be written from scratch using A+ mathematical skills, this game doesn’t require you to know much about the details of real-world programming.
Instead, WarioWare: D.I.Y. uses a deep (but easy to comprehend) system that involves a series of pre-programmed selections. With those selections, players can develop a five-second mini-game that features their own personal drawings, a few frames of animation, sound effects assigned to specific elements, an original score (which can be pieced together using instruments, quirky audio effects, or sounds from classic NES games), and basic touch screen interactivity.
If the five-second timeframe sounds crazy, then look no further than WarioWare’s other offerings: this is not a series that’s built on length. It’s a short-and-sweet, ultra-quirky franchise with challenges that will earn smiles from series veterans and baffle the minds of newcomers.
“Wait, so you’re telling me I have to tap the hand on screen to make it pick this guy’s giant nose?”
Yes, that’s exactly what WarioWare is telling you. But in WarioWare: D.I.Y., you don’t have to settle for silly and potentially snotty mini-games because you can make your own.

The Creation Process
After running through the first batch of pre-made mini-games offered in WarioWare: D.I.Y., I was a bit concerned about the process of making my own mini-games. It’s not that I didn’t want to, but having played with other creation tools, I was afraid it’d be an arduous process that was only fun when the game was complete.
That’s what makes WarioWare: D.I.Y. so different from the rest. The game provides a simplified Photoshop-style tool that lets you draw whatever you want. There are dozens of colors and background tiles (including one that paints a flame and another that paints Mario-inspired bricks). Three pen sizes are available, allowing players to draw (almost) as precisely as possible. To add even more detail, the image that you’re working on can be enlarged up to 16 times.
In addition to having a very well designed paint and drawing tool, the game contains a music creator that is really fun to use. Five audio tracks (four standard tracks plus one set aside for rhythm) are available. The drum set alone is pretty extensive: you can choose to use a standard percussion set, or use electric drums, toy drums (which is essentially an amusing set of sound effects), beat-box drums, Asian drums that provide an exotic jingle, or choose from 14 sounds made from pots and pans. My favorite is the 8-bit drums, which includes the fireball and death sound effects from the old Mario games.
The other instrument types are just as varied: piano, organ, harpsichord, melodica, flute, wood flute, trumpet, saxophone, acoustic and electric guitar, bass, banjo, violin, marimba, vibraphone, timpani, and more sound effects-based instruments than could ever be listed here.

Not For Every Wario Fan
The only downside to WarioWare: D.I.Y. is that it’s not technically a true WarioWare sequel. Since players are expected to have fun creating their own games, the pre-made content amounts to half (or less) of what it should be. WarioWare games are never long, and they rarely have the kind of replay value of, say, a Mario game. But if you were hoping this would be a true successor to WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii, you might be disappointed.
If, however, you’ve always wanted to make your own WarioWare mini-games – or have had the desire to create any game at all – WarioWare: D.I.Y. is an impressive package that won’t let you down.

By gamezone

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition:LeChuck's Revenge

2010-07-18T19:20:00.007+07:00

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge

Reviewer: Steven Hopper

Back in the bygone era of PC gaming, the adventure genre was at once a unique and flourishing one, allowing for experiences that you simply couldn’t find on consoles at the time. Publishers like Sierra and LucasArts were releasing classic games left and right, many of which would be considered the best titles the genre has to offer even today. Certainly at the top of the heap was LucasArts’ Monkey Island franchise. Combining classic point-and-click mechanics, great puzzles, and extremely funny dialogue, the Monkey Island series was a hit with gamers and definitely fantastic for adventure fans at the time.

Last year marked a great moment for fans of the Monkey Island franchise and its swashbuckling hero, Guybrush Threepwood, as LucasArts released an updated HD version of the classic first entry to the series. Now, LucasArts has revisited the original franchise yet again with the release of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition. Monkey Island 2: Special Edition applies the same model to the original game’s sequel, updating it for modern consoles and PCs with streamlined controls and high-def visuals while still keeping the original foundation of the game in place, including great puzzles and snappy humor. If you loved last year’s trip back to Monkey Island, then you should definitely check this follow-up remake out.
Monkey Island 2 finds our hero in a precarious position, dangling from a rope with one hand while holding onto a full treasure chest with the other. Your potential love interest Elaine Marley seems to drop down on a rope to assist Guybrush, demanding an explanation. It seems that following LeChuck’s defeat at the end of the first game, Guybrush has become somewhat of a blowhard, regaling his exploits and courageous journey to anyone within earshot. Sporting a sprouty pubescent beard and wearing fancy pirate regalia, Guybrush is searching for a mythical treasure, known as Big Whoop, when it appears that the once ghost pirate (now zombie pirate) LeChuck is back and champing at the bit for revenge against his one-time dispatcher.

The original game’s sharp wit and sense of humor return in fine form in this updated sequel. The characters are rife with snappy one-liners, and the game’s puzzles are pretty funny, often requiring you to think a bit unconventionally in order to complete them. This can mean enticing a rat into a trap with the clever use of cheese doodles, or positioning a practical joke above a bully’s door in order to proceed.
Instead of simply updating the game exactly the way last year’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition did, the crew at LucasArts did one further and updated the interface. The game is even more polished to work on the Xbox 360 controller, moving the control of the cursor to the right thumbstick, while controlling Guybrush’s walking with the left thumbstick. By pressing on the right trigger when highlighting an object of interest in the environment, you’re able to open up a menu of contextual actions, while the left trigger will open your inventory. The new control scheme is comfortable, and does a great job of modernizing the overall experience.
The new controls are definitely an improvement over the first Monkey Island remake, but they’re still not perfect. While it’s generally agreeable, using the analog stick to walk can cause you to get stuck on objects in the environment, can feel a little cumbersome at times. For some reason, Guybrush gets slow and twitchy when moving at an angle as well.

Graphically, Monkey Island 2: Special Edition has received a comparable update to last year’s Monkey Island: Special Edition, and looks even better. The hand-drawn environments and character models fit well with the overall humorous tone of the game, sporting a clean, cartoonish look. The music and sound have also gotten a once-over, with the soundtrack being updated very nicely and great voice work throughout. Additionally, Monkey Island 2 allows you to listen to the developer’s commentary, listening to the creators’ for a inside look at the game’s creation. Of course, if you’re an old-school purist, the game is playable in with classic graphics, MIDI-based music, and the original SCUMM interface, just like last year’s iteration.
Aside from some finicky movements, Monkey Island 2: Special Edition is another outstanding remake of a true adventure game classic. Whether you’re a gamer that missed out on this game the first time around (shame on you), or someone who simply wants to experience this hilarious adventure in a new light, this is your chance.

By gamezone

Spotlight On: Cities XL

2009-03-20T13:31:00.001+07:00

If you haven't played a good city-building game in a while, you may want to keep an eye out for Cities XL, which will try to combine the peaceful pursuit of building up a tiny virtual city with cooperative (and competitive) online elements and Web-based social networking. We've previously taken an in-depth look at the game and its unusual premise and have new details to report today.

To catch you up, here's a quick recap: Cities XL will basically offer an offline experience right out of the box and a continuing online experience should you want to pursue the dream of being the world's most successful architect. Like in many other city-building games, such as the SimCity series, the out-of-box, offline game in Cities XL will let you use editing tools to build up the virtual city of your dreams, using powerful tools that will include some 500 different buildings, so you can click, drag, copy-paste, and brush-paint tiny individual houses or sprawling roadway networks, then maintain your population's happiness and income while using your funds to build a bigger, better, happier city.
The online portion of the game will let you go beyond just puttering around in your own city; you'll actually be able to, for instance, putter around other players' cities on foot, as well as monitor the progress of your city online through the game's Web site, which will act as both an online scoreboard (which ranks all players' cities by their relative wealth, popular happiness, and other statistics) and a social hub. The Web site will let you create your own profile, write your own blog, post images, and maintain a friends list. You'll also be able to use the online interface to trade any excess resources that your city, or other players' cities, may have produced. All cities produce and consume resources (such as energy, power, and cash), and depending on how you've built yours, you may end up with a town that creates a daily surplus of this or that resource. This daily surplus will disappear from your city's coffers at the end of the day, each day, to avoid the dreaded practice of "farming"--in this case, repeatedly hoarding resources each day until you have an unreasonably huge stockpile. Resources will be traded in the form of "tokens"--one token will represent one unit of resources, and developer Monte Cristo currently intends to let the resource market regulate itself, rather then get too involved in the player economy. However, since you will have access to resource trading online, you won't necessarily need to create a well-rounded, self-sustaining commune. For instance, if you want, you can build an industrial wasteland that's nothing but factories and smokestacks--and just trade for whichever resources you don't generate.

Resource trading will be important not only for generally keeping your town running, but also for creating "megastructures"--famous wonders of the world that will grant powerful bonuses to whoever builds them. (Cities XL will ship with about 20 of these right out of the box, and more will be added at a rate of about five or so per month). In order to build one of these impressive monuments, you'll need the blueprints, which will randomly appear in the accounts of a handful of users every so often (and can be used to start construction immediately, or traded for resources, or given away for free...otherwise the blueprints will expire in about a week after use to prevent players from accumulating them in their accounts). Megastructures will be fantastically expensive projects that go through three different phases of construction (and each phase will require a different mix of resources). Successfully building one will grant serious bonuses for your city; for instance, plopping the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of your metropolis will grant your city powerful economic bonuses as tourists from your principality and from neighboring towns take a holiday to come see your wondrous new masterpiece. And the tourists will build up the local economy, presumably by purchasing cheap T-shirts and souvenir coffee mugs.
However, megastructures won't offer clear-cut, no-strings-attached advantages; they'll actually have their own set of realistic concerns that you as the city's mayor and chief architect must address. For starters, an attractive monument will bring in many guests and their big, bulky tour buses--and the buses may congest traffic and lead to noise pollution that creates unhappiness for any of the locals who live or work nearby. More importantly, if your city becomes too wondrous and begins drawing in too many of your neighbors' citizens, your neighbors (other players who are in control of their own cities) may become jealous that you're getting all this great tourist revenue and they aren't. In fact, this will be a real concern for all online land barons when they go looking to trade resources. Yes, you need four tokens of oil for your own town and you'd be willing to trade four tokens of water...but do you really want to give that water to someone who will just end up spending it on building an Eiffel Tower that will draw in your citizens and line your neighbor's pockets?

Cities XL is still in development and will likely go to a beta-testing phase in the coming months. The game is scheduled to launch later this year.

We Just Played The Last Remnant for PC

2009-03-20T13:24:00.001+07:00

Last year's The Last Remnant for the Xbox 360 tried to push console role-playing games in new directions by including larger-scale battles with battalions (or "unions") of characters massed to fight as a group. The game took place in an unusual alternate-fantasy world where talking cat-men with four arms routinely served as royal guardians, and where, like in many console games of this sort, many of the human males that served as main characters were young, slender, and had fabulous hair.

We got our hands on the PC version of the game and have played through the early part of it, and have found the game to so far be a faithful translation of the original console game. Like in the Xbox 360 version of The Last Remnant, the PC version of the game starts with the story of Rush Sykes, a plucky young lad who sets out to rescue his kidnapped sister, without the help of his workaholic parents (who are off toiling on a potentially world-saving project involving ancient artifacts known as "remnants"). Over the course of the game, he meets various characters (who may or may not be cat-men) to join him in his quest and eventually lead into battle as part of the game's larger-scale combat system.

Like with the majority of console role-playing games since the original Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior from the 8-bit NES, The Last Remnant's combat is turn-based, and alternates turns between your party's characters (and their planned attack abilities) and your enemies' turns. Each character in The Last Remnant will have various different abilities that will be specialized in such areas as casting magical spell effects or swinging a sword, and additional abilities that can be performed at a cost of "action points," or AP; but interestingly, you won't have direct control over them beyond giving general orders, so you'll effectively act as both a general and a soldier at the same time. However, by attacking and defeating enemies in sequence, you can perform longer and longer "chains" that will net you more experience points so that Rush and his buddies will gain levels (and the new abilities that come with them) faster.

The PC version of The Last Remnant seems to run just fine and we encountered no framerate hiccups or significant technical problems of any kind as we played. The game was built using the Unreal Engine and this powerful technology seems to do a good job of translating the colorful graphical look and intricate, cat-man-filled world that first debuted in the console game. The Last Remnant is scheduled for release later this month on PC.

Watchmen: The End Is Nigh Review

2009-03-20T13:18:00.001+07:00

The End Is Nigh serves up light beat-'em-up fare with a Watchmen flavor. Those hungry for anything substantial will be disappointed.

With all the critical acclaim for the Watchmen comic series and all the hype surrounding the new movie adaptation, it's possible that folks might have certain expectations for the new video game set in the same universe. However, if you are hoping to find some of the comic's depth and maturity here, or are looking forward to reliving your favorite scenes from the movie, you will be sorely disappointed. Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a shallow beat-'em-up game set years before the events of the comic. Its narrow scope may disappoint some, and the Watchmen veneer isn't very deep. Yet thanks to lively, brutal combat and impressive visuals, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a fun, fist-flinging romp for the few hours that it lasts. The $20 price tag is a steep one, but for anyone who enjoys a good old-fashioned beat-'em-up, The End Is Nigh delivers.

Pretty much all you do for the entire game is beat up bad guys, and the combat is good enough to stay fun throughout. Whether you're playing as Rorschach or Nite Owl (the only two playable characters), the fundamentals are simple: light attack, heavy attack, block, and throw. Peppering your opponent with attacks works well, and there are some nice animation touches that make even this basic combat enjoyable. Throwing enemies is particularly delightful, whether it be into a crowd, off of a ledge, or into a wall. As you progress, you'll encounter tougher enemies that block your basic attacks, so you have to use the various combos you learn along the way in order to stun them or knock them down. These combos add new animations to the mix and are generally a bit nastier than your normal attacks. However, the best animations are the finishers, which you activate by matching the button prompt that appears over the head of a weakened enemy. The camera zooms in during these brutal flurries, allowing you to appreciate every blow. While Nite Owl's no slouch, Rorschach is the clear standout here: his finishers are so manic and so vicious that you can't help but cringe and cackle with delight as he just keeps hitting a guy who is clearly unconscious.
Basic attacks, combos, throws, and finishers make up the bulk of your fighting move set, but Rorschach and Nite Owl have a few other tricks up their sleeves. They can each counterattack easily, disarming any armed opponents and positioning themselves for a strike. Rorschach will even hold onto these weapons, and his brutal finishers get even nastier when there is a crowbar involved, though watching him wield a knife like a bludgeon is a bit silly. Each hero also has two special attacks that drain energy from a meter in the corner of the screen. Rorschach can do a short bull rush or freak out and do more damage for a short period of time. Nite Owl's grenade stuns anyone nearby, and he can use the electric charge in his suit to zap a large radius of foes.
As you fight your way through the rough areas of town, you'll encounter a few different breeds of thug and lowlife, some tougher than others. It's easy to die if you get yourself surrounded and try to punch your way out, but judicious use of counterattacks and special moves should be enough to get you out of any tight situation. There are throwaway actions here and there, like lever-pulling or valve-turning, and an oddly tricky lock-picking minigame that seems a bit out of place in a game that's all about brute force. Despite these extraneous tasks, a creeping sense of repetition looms over The End Is Nigh, and it's possible you'll grow weary of pounding your way through wave after wave of goons. Though the game mixes up your enemies' fighting styles in order to make you use your entire arsenal, the action can often teeter on the edge of button-mashing boredom. Those inclined to revel in the perverse joy of cracking skulls will be able to keep repetition at bay, but the relatively simple gameplay will quickly wear thin for others.

For all its merits, the combat wouldn't be nearly as fun if it wasn't paired with top-notch graphics. The sharp character models are fashioned after the movie costumes, and the smooth, realistic animations make the action exciting and extremely satisfying. You'll chuckle when Rorschach jams his hands in his overcoat immediately after furiously maiming an entire biker gang, and both he and Nite Owl pack a wickedly pleasing punch. There are occasional physics-based oddities, especially when throwing your enemies, but the animation is still consistently impressive. The detailed environments provide a rich setting for your beatdowns, and stark lights and deep shadows (occasionally too deep) create a dramatic look. The quasi-animated cutscenes provide a few pages' worth of story across the six chapters of the game, and the sinister machinations at work fit nicely into the Watchmen universe.
Though you can have some split-screen fun with a friend, it's baffling that there is no online cooperative mode. That would have made the $20 price tag a little easier to swallow, but as it stands the price feels a bit greedy. Those inclined to tire of repetitive gameplay will find the price of entry too high, but there is some value here. The impressively animated combat is fun and brutal, and the sumptuous environments provide the perfect pugilistic playground. The many unlockable combos provide some replay incentive, and the combat is surprisingly fun to come back to even after you've beaten the game. Though it may be shallow, overpriced, and likely to disappoint anyone hoping for more weighty fare, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is ultimately a simple, well-crafted game that will please those looking to dish out some good old-fashioned beatdowns.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Hammerin' Hero Hands-On

2009-03-20T13:14:00.000+07:00

We smash the living daylights out of pretty much anything that moves in this wacky side-scroller.

As a title for a game in which you can unlock a variety of new occupations, Hammerin' Hero isn't entirely accurate. Yes, you'll begin this action-heavy side-scroller as a hammer-wielding carpenter on a quest to literally smash corporate greed, but the game's main draw is that you'll soon be crushing evil industrialists under such guises as a sushi chef, a professional baseball player, and a deep-sea diver. If that all sounds a little strange, it's because Hammerin' Hero is precisely that. But fear not: We've been spending some time with Hammerin' Hero in an effort to clear things up a bit before this PSP game's April 7 release.

The eccentric storyline goes like this: You play as a carpenter named Gen, a young man whose trade allows him to craft buildings with a ludicrously huge hammer. But when an evil corporation led by a man named Kuromoku comes rolling into town threatening to smash Gen's residential neighborhood in order to build more profitable structures, Gen takes justice into his own hands--by running and jumping from left to right smashing every bad guy he can. The Japanese neighborhoods that make up the game's environments are filled with all manner of evil construction workers, evil bulldozers, evil corporate helicopters, and so on. And your job is to smash them using a simple control scheme that allows you to jump, light attack, and heavy attack.
Every few levels, you'll unlock a new occupation that lets you do that job in a slightly different way. As a deep-sea diver, you can take out enemies from afar using an anchor on a chain, for example, while a DJ can toss records at people. More up-close-and-personal options include taking a full home-run swing with a baseball bat as a ballplayer or slapping enemies with a giant fish as a sushi chef. You commit to one occupation before the level starts, but you can visit your girlfriend and have her make you a magical bento box that gives you the ability to transform into another occupation midlevel, but only if you've picked up the necessary ingredients (for example, a tuna or a salmon) throughout previous levels.
The action in Hammerin' Hero is quick and challenging. The levels are short but are packed with a number of bosses for you to take on. And the environments are delightfully absurd, too. They start out ordinary enough, with levels taking place in Japanese residential neighborhoods and amusement parks, but eventually you'll get to a place like a live baseball game that requires you to fight your way through a demonic pitching machine and a spike-covered catcher who shoots missiles from his chest. Making things even more hectic is that you'll almost always see frantic civilians attempting to run from harm's way. The overall look of the game is chaotic, quirky, and thoroughly Japanese.
Hammerin' Hero is being brought to North America by Atlus. It may not fall into the strategic role-playing genre most people know the publisher for, but it's every bit as eccentric as their previous work. You can expect to see Hammerin' Hero released for the PSP on April 7.

By Shaun McInnis, GameSpot

New York Comic-Con: Unbound Saga First Impressions

2009-03-20T13:10:00.001+07:00

Dark Horse Comics gave us a first look at its upcoming PSP game, Unbound Saga a sidescrolling beat 'em up developed by Vogster Entertainment. The game takes the tried and true beat 'em gameplay and marries them to a self referential story rooted in comics. We got a look at a work in progress version of the game in the Dark Horse booth and were impressed by the game's Comix Zone flavor.You'll play as Rick Ajax, a self aware comic character who's resigned himself to a life of dealing with whatever "The Maker" throws at him. Rick's unique outlook on his life gets him branded crazy by those around him which prompts him to set out and confront "The Maker". The trip takes him through Toxopolis, a crime filled run down city that looks like it sounds. Along the way he teams up with Lori Machete, an equally surly lady who's big on kicking and stabbing, that you'll eventually be able to play as well.

The game may sound a little high concept but the bottom line is Unbound Saga is basically the closest we've ever seen to a Comix Zone update. You'll fight your way through levels broken up into comic panel stages. As you clear out enemies you'll advance to the next panel by jumping up or down. The action is complicated by The Maker, whose hand you see popping up onscreen and drawing in new enemies. The combat system lets you mix punches, kicks, throws, and grabs into a painful beat down for your enemies. You'll also be able to pick up a fair amount of the objects in the level and use them to beat your enemies senseless. The beat downs pay off as downed enemies give up health power ups and experience points you can use to upgrade Rick and Lori's special moves. The basic control is pretty solid although not as responsive as we'd like it to be. You can move up, down, left and right in the fighting plane which is useful, but not as fast as we'd like. Moving forward and backward is also a little sluggish, which makes double tapping forward to run a little tricky. Running at enemies is useful since you can lead into flying kicks and punches. The comic theme is helped along by artwork from comic artist Cliff Richards who supplies the animated cutscene images that set up the story. While the hand drawn art looks sharp in the cutscenes, Vogster is using 3D graphics for the game. Rick and Lori look big on the PSP screen and show a lot of detail. The environments are really detailed as well and have a nice distressed look to them. The enemies have all that detail plus the added flourish of dissolving into a flurry of paper when they're smacked down. We have to say we liked Unbound Saga quite a bit. The Comix Zone feel definitely won us over. The combat system is a little simplistic but there's a good amount of variety to the combos and how differently Rick and Lori play. There's also a survival mode to add some replayablility to the whole package too. From the look of things so far Unbound Saga should be a welcome addition to the PSP library this year. The game's price is likely to be more welcome as, given that it's going to a PSN only release with no physical disc, Dark Horse should be able to keep the price pretty reasonable.

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce Hands-On

2009-03-20T13:05:00.003+07:00

We team up and face new multiplayer challenges in Koei's upcoming Dynasty Warriors game.

A series that sticks to what it knows best, Dynasty Warriors has games on virtually every platform and continues to provide a venue for those who enjoy epic battles based loosely on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Koei does take a step in a new direction with its latest, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce, a PlayStation Portable game that lets you play with up to three friends via ad hoc to take on a variety of strategic but brief missions and challenges. This marks the first time that you can play a Dynasty Warriors game with a friend on the PSP instead of fighting legions of enemies by yourself. We were able to play an early demo of the game at the Tokyo Game Show, but Koei stopped by to give us another build to check out before the Japanese release in February.

Instead of the massive, large-scale battles that you are used to, the game is focused more on tactics and playing together as a team. We didn't learn too much about the story, but we know that there will be three storylines based on each of the Three Kingdoms. There will be 30 characters taken from the series that you can play as, even though our demo let us play only as Zhao Yun, Xiahou Dun, and Sun Shang Xiang. Instead of button-mashing mindlessly through the mission, you need to pay attention to your friends and find the best way to approach each challenge. In the two missions we've played, the Battle at Hu Lao Gate and Yellow Turban Rebellions, you take on well-protected strongholds filled with enemies, cannons, and other bothersome obstacles that need to be destroyed.
You will still fight against what seems like an endless wave of enemies, but you'll also have to take down challenging bosses in each of these missions to progress and build up your character. The strategy involves how you approach the final portion. In our experience, we had to have at least one or two people take out turrets and cannons so that we weren't constantly bombarded from all directions. You're also on a timer, which will put some pressure on you to figure out what the best approach is.
Even though each character has his or her weapon specialty, you can choose to wield any weapon that you like in the game and switch between your primary and secondary weapon. As you level, so will your village, which acts as a hub where you can purchase items, weapons, and accessories. You can customize your weapon by using orbs, which will beef up your current weapon of choice with an element. Another way to improve your character is to gather chi, which can improve your fighting skills and let you perform special moves, such as super jumps and teleportation.
Using the X button, you can hover in the air to attack enemies, and the square and triangle buttons are used for normal and strong attacks. The L button is used to lock on to enemies, and the R button lets you dash. It's unfortunate that you have no control over the camera, though the L button does reset the view. As you're fighting, you're building up a fury gauge, rather than a Musou gauge, at the bottom left corner of the screen. Once it's full, you can hit the triangle and circle buttons at the same time to enter into a fury mode, in which your character becomes stronger for a limited period or time. Or you can use up your entire gauge and hit the triangle and circle buttons again to do a more devastating attack, which came in handy when we were destroying surrounding cannons.

As much fun as it is to button-mash your way through a hoard of well-dressed foes, Strikeforce heads in a more interesting direction by letting you play cooperatively and in a more strategic manner. Although it looks and sounds similar to previous games, it's worth looking into if you have friends with PSPs. We were told that there will be downloadable content available as well, including new items and additional quests. Stay tuned for more Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce updates as they become available. The game is set to be released in early Q2 in North America.

By Sophia Tong, GameSpot

Dissidia: Final Fantasy Hands-On

2008-12-21T13:54:00.005+07:00

Who wins in a fist fight between Final Fantasy legends?

TOKYO--It's been a little over a year since Square Enix announced its all-star game featuring the heroes and villains of the Final Fantasy universe. While we've only seem CG trailers and very few in-game scenes up until now, we were finally able to get our hands on the game at Square Enix's DK Sigma 3713 Event.
To recap what's known so far, Dissidia is an all-star brawl game where you get to fight one-on-one with characters from the Final Fantasy series. The character designs are by Tetsuya Nomura who's been working on the series since FFVII, but the game includes many older characters starting from the first installment back in 1987. Though the complete roster hasn't been announced yet, it seems so far that the developers are releasing characters from almost every game. Here's a quick list of all the characters we could confirm at Square Enix's event:

FFI: Warrior of Light, Garland
FFII: Firion, The Emperor
FFIII: Onion Knight, Cloud of Darkness
FFVI: Kefka
FFVII: Cloud, Sephiroth
FFVIII: Squall, Ultimecia
FFIX: Zidane, Kuja
FFX: Tidus, Jecht

With Final Fantasy being Square Enix's most famous franchise, the developers are obviously paying a lot of attention to giving an authentic feel to the characters. In the new trailer, Squall and Sephiroth were quite calm even in battle, whereas Tidus seemed pretty heated up when he met his father Jecht for battle. Kefka was shown for the first time, and he's kept his infamous twisted personality from FFVI. While the Cloud of Darkness preferred to kill off her adversaries on the spot, Kefka stopped her so he could have "fun" with them.
The demo that we played allowed us to pick from four characters: Warrior of Light, Tidus, Onion Knight, and Garland. As you'd expect, each of them fights in different styles. For instance, Tidus from FFX is a well-rounded fighter who uses his sword and also fights with blitzballs; in fact, one of his moves is the Jecht shot. Garland, an armored antagonist from FFI, is bigger and more of a heavy-weighted fighter who's slow but powerful. The Onion Knight from FFIII may look dinky compared to the other fighters, but looks can be deceiving. Aside of being able to use magic, his sword attack hits multiple times in a brief second, very much like it did in FFIII. The game only uses two buttons for attacking, which we'll explain later, but you can perform different kinds of attacks by holding onto a direction when you press an attack button. The attacks also change depending on whether you're in the air or on the ground. We're told that you can gain new moves as you progress through the game and power up.
As is usual for a Square Enix game, you can grow your characters and make them stronger. Though the details weren't explained at today's sessions, we did see that our character would level up after battles and also gain ability points. We also saw that we earned a knife after beating one of the characters with Tidus, though we couldn't confirm if it was actually an equitable item because the menus were disabled.
Dissidia is essentially a head-to-head fighting game, but it's quite different from the traditional type, such as Tekken or Virtua Fighter. A better comparison would be Capcom's Power Stone; especially the way that you're constantly moving around in a 3D battlefield. However, the map is bigger and the characters are much more versatile when it comes to moving around. In fact, the way that you can float while in midair melee combat or run on walls and perform extremely high jumps or air dashes, feels like you're controlling the superhuman-like Cloud from the FFVII:AC movie.
Dissidia's battle system is pretty simple, albeit a bit unique. Each player has a life bar, and there's a number displayed on top of the bar called brave points that signify the player's attacking power. Similar to most fighting games, you win when you deplete all of your opponent's life. There are two buttons you can use for attacking, and they're both essential for winning. The square button (called the HP attack) does damage to your opponent's life and is based on your number of brave points. The circle button (called the subattack) does damage to your opponent's brave points and allows you to acquire your opponent's points.
The key to winning in Dissidia is to keep hitting your opponent with the circle button because that'll power you up and make your opponent's attacks weaker at the same time. What's more, there's a big bonus if you happen to drain all of your opponent's brave points. The game goes into "brave break" time, which is where your opponent's brave points don't recover for a short while. During the brave break, you get a massive bonus of additional brave points, which allows you to strike your opponent with a powerful hit.
When we played the demo, we were constantly trading brave points with our opponent in a seesaw fashion using the circle button. Once we got the upper hand, we'd attack with the square button to inflict damage. The battle was basically a repeat of that process because your brave points reset to default once you get a clean hit on your opponent with the square button (you don't lose any if you miss). However, the game is more than just simple button smashing. Some moves require precise timing to pull off, and you also have a number of methods to dodge them, such as guarding or quick evade.
Attacking your opponent also raises a meter on the side of the life bar called the EX gauge. While the EX gauge only builds up gradually when you attack, it can be accumulated faster by collecting items called the EX force, or even better, a huge item called the EX core that sometimes appears onscreen. When the EX gauge maxes, you can go into EX mode by pressing the R and square button together, which will make you more powerful. With the Onion Warrior, for instance, you can turn into a ninja, which powers up your sword attacks, or a sage, which makes your magic attacks more powerful. In the case of Garland, he'll become tougher and won't get knocked back by attacks while he's transformed.

What's more, if you make a clean hit with the square button while in EX mode, you can follow up with another move called the EX burst by pressing the square button again. The camera zooms in on your character, and you can execute a devastating special attack. In the case of Tidus (who didn't seem to change his looks during his transformation), his EX burst was an overdrive attack from FFX. Similar to FFX, the camera zoomed in on him and a timing meter was displayed onscreen, requiring a precise button input to have the move succeed.
The demo only featured about two stages, but we saw that they're going to be themed after the FF titles. One was a beautiful crystal-like plane with streaks of light flowing all around, which was somewhat reminiscent of the crystal rooms in FFIII. The streaks of light could be used for gliding from one area of the map to another. Another stage was based on the last area of FFX and featured a lava pit with rocky platforms. Given how easy it is to avoid falling because you can double-jump and run on walls, the lava pits felt more like an aesthetic than a penalty zone. But if you fell, you'd be brought back to safety in Final Fantasy style: Warp (Dejon) magic.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy already seemed pretty solid in its current state. The graphics were top-notch as you'd expect from Square Enix and up to par with Crisis Core or perhaps even better. The game is slated for release in December in Japan, so it won't be long before we can get our hands on the final product. Square Enix has also announced that there's going to be a PSP bundle for the game. Square Enix is also collaborating with beverage maker Suntory to release another lineup of Final Fantasy potions for Dissidia.

By Hirohiko Niizumi, GameSpot

Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World Review

2008-12-21T13:34:00.006+07:00

DBZ: Infinite World fails to live up to the standard set by previous DBZ games on the PS2.

Dragon Ball Z games have run the quality gamut from terrible to very good. Infinite World lands somewhere in between. There are only three main modes in Infinite World: Dragon Mission, Dragon Duel, and Fighter's Road. Dragon Mission is the game's story mode, taking you through the Z and Dragon Ball GT sagas in a condensing of hundreds of DBZ episodes. This amalgam covers all of the major battles including, those versus Vegeta, Frieza, Cell, Buu, and more.

You guide Goku along an overwold map in order to trigger battles and minigames. You’re also free to replay earlier battles as an easy way to build up your bank account. Extra Zeni (money) can be used to purchase upgrades for you character in the Warrior’s Room shop. Short animated cutscenes from the anime play before and after every boss confrontation and give you an indication of what's going on in the story, but they won't make a great deal of sense if you've never watched the show. The bosses get increasingly difficult as you progress through the story mode, but for the most part they play similarly, and your strategy for taking down two different bosses like Vegeta or Frieza won't differ very much.
A smattering of minigames allow you to experience cherished scenes from the anime such as guiding Goku along Snake Way, capturing Bubbles the monkey, and other memorable moments that don't involve outright combat. Unfortunately, these side minigames are poorly designed and overly simplistic. The mission on Snake Way, for instance, has you running along the winding path moving from checkpoint to checkpoint. Another minigame has you training Goku in your space capsule by hitting a series of button combinations. It may be nice fan service, but these minigames really only serve to bring the combat to a grinding halt without being entertaining enough to justify the interruption.
Dragon Duel is the two-player versus mode in Infinite World. You can fight a friend or computer opponent with any of the game's more than 40 warriors. You have the option of playing as any of the fighters, either without their more powerful skills and attacks or with customized power-ups you can purchase from the Warrior's Room shop. Fighter's Road is a secret mode you can unlock after playing Dragon Mission, pitting you against more than 100 opponents across four maps. It's similar to Dragon Mission mode in that you guide a character from fight to fight on an overworld map, but it also provides you with an opportunity to unlock new warriors and earn more Zeni.

Despite the prevalence of minigames in Dragon Mission mode, Infinite World is still all about the combat. You fly around a battlefield with your opponent and exchange a variety of Ki beam blasts, grapples, and melee combos. You have a healthy variety of attacks, a Ki Burn ability that gives you increased speed and strength for a short period of time in exchange for Ki energy, and the ability to transform into a Super Saiyan. You can speed burst around the battlefield, but you'll have to use it wisely and avoid taking too many hits since they contribute to a fatigue meter. Once the fatigue meter reaches full capacity, it will temporarily stun you, leaving you defenseless against devastating combos and also downgrading you from an advanced form like Super Saiyan back to your default form. Overall, though, the battles are fast paced, the AI is relentless, and winning takes quite a bit of skill and strategy since not effectively evading attacks, Ki charging, or Ki burning will result in an easy defeat.
Those compliments aside, there are a few issues with the battle system. The AI is exceedingly difficult, even at the "Easy" and "Very Easy" difficulty settings. The computer opponents are just as fast and bloodthirsty, no matter what difficulty setting the game is set at. The only differences between easy and hard are how quickly your health depletes, how long it takes to recharge your Ki, and how long you stay fatigued. Still, you will have many fights that challenge your patience and tempt you to chuck your Dual Shock at a nearby wall.
Battles become more manageable when you buy advanced skills and abilities from the Warrior's Room. For each battle in the game--even those that you lose--you will earn Zeni that can be used to buy stronger Ki attacks, items such as Senzu beans that recharge your health in battle, and attributes like Fighter's Body that increase your base health. The system works fine, as long as you edit your character before going into battle and assign those acquired abilities to your few allotted slots.
The problem comes in knowing how to do this and in what abilities to purchase. At one point, Infinite World alerts you that you can purchase things from the Warrior's Room, but it provides no tutorial explaining how the system works or how the abilities benefit you. The Warrior's Room is also located on the main menu, forcing you to leave Dragon Mission mode in order to use the Zeni you earn. At first glance, you wouldn't think the two are so dependent on each other; but when your opponents in Dragon Mission suddenly possess twice as much health and strength the Warrior's Room becomes invaluable.

Infinite World will strike up feelings of deja vu for those who've played DBZ: Budokai 3. That shouldn't come as a surprise since both games were developed by Dimps. Unfortunately for Budokai 3 fans, Infinite World lacks a couple of the best fighting mechanics from its predecessor, namely the Beam Struggles and Dragon Rushes. Those two features were integral in making Budokai 3 a critical success because they helped re-create the intense power struggles that are so central to the drama of the DBZ anime. Considering how much Infinite World feels like a sequel to that game, you will likely get the disappointing feeling that this is a neutered expansion pack.
Infinite World looks as good as any other DBZ game on the PS2. The overworld map is a bit bland, as is the level design in the minigames that are scattered through Dragon Mission. In that battles themselves, though, the colors of the characters, transformations, and Ki blasts are lush and vibrant. The soundtrack is a bit ordinary, but you can choose between the English and Japanese voice tracks that DBZ purists will surely appreciate.
While its budget price may make Infinite World a tempting purchase, previous DBZ games on the PS2 have tread this ground already, and have done so with much more robust fighting systems. You would be better off revisiting Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, a superior game where the series' fast-paced combat was used to much better effect.

By Anthony Perez, GameSpot

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 Review

2008-12-21T13:14:00.003+07:00

SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 successfully returns to the fundamentals of intense, realistic WWE action and impressive, easy-to-use creation tools.

In the WWE, it's not uncommon for upstart new wrestlers to suffer a few humiliating losses before they earn their first victory. After a severely disappointing Wii debut last year, THQ's venerable SmackDown vs. Raw series has returned to the ring, having spent the year bulking up and working on the fundamentals. The work has paid off: There are more match types, the controls feel more responsive, and there are two new single-player modes that complement the multiplayer fun nicely. Though it's still hampered by a number of lingering issues, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 shows that the series can be a contender on the Wii.

The most notable improvements are in the single-player realm. The lackluster Main Event mode has been ditched in favor of a lengthy Career mode and the scripted Road to Wrestlemania. In the Career mode, you choose a superstar (existing or created) and enter a bracket to make a bid for the title belt. Each bracket has five opponents, including the current champion, and you'll have to earn stars by winning matches to get a shot at the title. You win up to five stars for each match by earning points in three areas: match results, technical, and excitement. These categories encourage you to get into the WWE superstar mindset by rewarding you for both pummeling and mocking your opponent. At the end of each match, your attributes will increase, and your health will replenish automatically based on how the match went--no micromanagement here. You'll also earn amusing awards for things such as striking your opponent 35 times or breaking a barbed-wire-wrapped plank over his or her back. It takes only a handful of successful matches to earn you a title shot, which is great because it keeps your career moving along at a good clip. This action-packed Career mode is the perfect complement to the Create a Superstar mode, and winning belt after belt as you bulk up your created character is satisfying and fun.
The other single-player mode, Road to Wrestlemania, features six unique story arcs that let you play as various WWE superstars (including The Undertaker and Triple H) and defeat numerous foes (and a few nemeses) on your quest for Wrestlemania glory. Matches are interspersed with story scenes packed with typical WWE action, so fans of outrageous melodrama will be pleased. In keeping with traditional SmackDown vs. RAW strengths, the superstar models and entrances are impressive, but these stand in stark contrast to the crowds that, though fine from a distance, look like Nintendo 64 rejects up close. Character animations are quite good, though they are prone to clipping and still lack fluidity when maneuvering around the ring. The audio remains a weak point, dampening the hard-hitting action, and though the dismal announcers from years past have been improved quite a bit, the sound design is still in need of an upgrade.
Despite how it may sound, the action is indeed hard-hitting. Flicking the remote executes punches, kicks, and the like, and doing so while holding A will trigger a simple grapple. Holding B and flicking the remote results in a strong grapple, one that requires you to move the remote when prompted to fully execute the move. Usually this can be accomplished by merely flailing the remote briefly (or sometimes doing nothing at all), but if you're more technically inclined, you can follow the onscreen prompts to do specific moves. These prompts also crop up when you perform a signature or finishing move. The camera adjusts to a cinematic angle and the action slows down as you grab, punch, elbow, kick, or slam your opponent by swinging the remote. Giving your foe Triple H's Pedigree is so much more satisfying when you can swing the remote up to lift him or her into the air, and then swing it down to send him or her crashing to the floor. The motion-sensitive controls also generate some extra excitement during character entrances, which are now interactive and let you throw up your arms in triumph or gesture to the crowd. There is still some imprecision to deal with, especially during uninterruptible animations, but overall the control scheme feels much improved and the motion controls spice things up nicely.

The wide variety of new match types range from ladder and table contests to a 30-man Royal Rumble, and cover everything in between. The under-the-mat arsenal is much improved, offering such implements as kendo sticks, sledgehammers, and fire extinguishers. Larger matches can get a bit tricky because the camera sometimes seems confused as to how to frame the action, and it's possible to walk off the screen in tag-team battles. Regardless, these improvements are a welcome change from last year's barren offering.
In addition to the Career and Road to Wrestlemania modes, the competent AI and unique wrestler abilities make playing single-player much more appealing in SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. No longer content to stand around drooling, computer opponents will actively attack you, tag their partners (you included), and use environmental elements reasonably well. Though the Road to Wrestlemania and early stages of the Career mode will seem easy to experienced players, it won't feel like you're playing against brainless apes. There are also new, unique wrestler abilities that existing superstars have and created superstars can earn. The effects range from attribute boosts (the ability to remove the belt in a ladder match more quickly) to enhanced abilities (the ability to regenerate a small amount of health). Although these abilities aren't particularly powerful, they can come in handy during tight matches.
You might not have tight matches against the computer, but you are sure to find tough competition online. You can use SmackDown, Raw, ECW, or created superstars as you face off against friends or strangers in any of the match types that support one to four players. (Six-man matches and Royal Rumbles are available locally only.) Against tougher players, any miscues due to bad position or odd animation are likely to cost you dearly, and once your opponent has you on the ropes, you'll be hard-pressed to reverse your way out of them. You'll also find yourself frantically spinning the analog stick a lot; it's the ill-conceived and thumb-fatiguing way to make you recover quickly. Impressively, the matches are generally lag-free, though you might have trouble filling a four-man match during odd hours.

Of course, SmackDown vs. Raw wouldn't be itself without the still-impressive Create a Superstar tool. Once again, with a little time and patience, you can create almost anyone you like, from famous celebrities to hideous abominations. You can then customize your character's move set to craft a fighting style and choreograph your ring entrance to truly strut your stuff.
WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 benefits greatly by increasing its scope. You can now participate in almost any type of match your heart desires, and even pull a wider variety of weapons from under the mat. The new single-player modes offer hours of entertainment, and online play further extends replayability. The tweaked motion controls add an extra bit of excitement to the proceedings, and though some elements still need improvement, SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 is ultimately successful because it embraces the dramatic fights and outrageous showmanship that are the heart and soul of the WWE.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Call of Duty: World at War Review

2008-12-21T13:04:00.003+07:00

Impressive controls, exciting multiplayer, and a dramatic campaign make Call of Duty: World at War a great success.

After getting passed over by 2007's stellar Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Wii owners get their first shot at the revitalized series with Call of Duty: World at War. Though World at War treads the familiar ground of World War II, the detailed, realistic locations and dramatic story elements make this trip to the past feel fresh. The remote and Nunchuk perform admirably in combat, despite a few missteps, and the well-tuned weapons make firefights intense and satisfying. Add in the engaging multiplayer system that made Modern Warfare a smash hit, and you've got one of the best shooters available for the Wii.

There are a number of great components in Call of Duty: World at War, but none of them would work without the fully capable control scheme. You move with the analog stick and aim by pointing the remote. As a handy aid to newcomers and veterans alike, there are plenty of options to tweak various sensitivities and movement speeds. In the default control scheme, you pull the B trigger to fire and use the Z button to look down your sights, which is a crucially important ability, especially in multiplayer. The C button toggles your stance, and the A button lets you sprint or, when stationary or strafing, lock the camera for steadier aiming. There are a number of slightly tweaked alternate control schemes, including a Wii Zapper mode that, if you can endure the frequent twisting it requires, is actually pretty fun.
The default controls feel balanced and well-mapped, but there are a few hang-ups. The fast and deadly melee attack is performed by shaking the Wii Remote or hitting down on the D pad. Unfortunately, shaking will shift your aim abruptly, often causing you to miss your target. The D pad is the better option, but melee attacks will still tend to go astray more often than they should. The D pad is also used for switching weapons, so resting your thumb in the A-button/D-pad area is generally advisable. Unfortunately, grenades are mapped to the + button, and shifting your thumb halfway down the remote can be awkward. It's a minor inconvenience, though, and all things considered, World at War's control scheme is well-suited for the rigors of war.
In the campaign, you split time between two soldiers in two offensive theaters: the Russian push out of their homeland and into the heart of Germany, and the American struggle to wrest Pacific islands from the Japanese. Though you'll alternate between them every few levels, the campaign feels like one solid progression thanks to the adept pacing. Each soldier's journey begins at a low point. Weaponless and surrounded by the enemy, you get a taste of the despair that many soldiers are never rescued from. Though the emotional tone eventually rises toward triumph, you never quite forget the fate you nearly met. The first few levels are a hard scrabble as you and your fellow soldiers try to gain a foothold for your country, whereas later levels are suffused with a sense of hard-won momentum as you fight bigger battles and push closer to your enemies' capitals. On your journey, you'll traverse a number of diverse, well-detailed environments that set an impressive and immersive backdrop for the action.

Throughout each level, you are accompanied by a superior officer who sets the emotional tone through well-acted dialogue. The vengeful, spitfire Russian pumps up your adrenaline to intoxicating levels, whereas the grim, determined American provides a sobering influence. This grim sobriety is further enforced by the actual WII videos, photos, and statistics presented in stylish interchapter cutscenes. The message is, by nature, a conflicted one: Though you may feel like an action hero, you are actually participating in the most horrid of human endeavors. How you ultimately feel about this message will depend on your personal disposition, but suffice it to say that the elevated emotional timbre makes for an exciting campaign.
Also exciting? Bayonets and flamethrowers, the two standout weapons in World at War. You wield both in the American campaign, using them to enthusiastically dispatch enemies in trenches and fend off the aggressive banzai raiders. These raiders snipe from the treetops, or pop out of holes and charge you with merciless determination, and this aggression makes the American campaign feel uniquely tense. The Russian campaign is slightly more predictable, but it remains vigorous throughout and ends in a spectacularly satisfying way. Though you'll spend a good amount of time hiding behind cover and picking off enemies, you'll find it somewhat tricky to snipe far-off foes. You may have the patience to become an ace sniper, or you may resort to bold charges shielded by smoke grenades; either way, the campaign is so exciting and well-paced that you're bound to have a blast.
Playing with other folks is a blast as well, and Call of Duty: World at War offers two ways to do this. The first is to play the campaign in cooperative mode. Instead of splitting the screen for two players, World at War relegates the second player to piggyback status. The first player does everything he or she would normally do: move, crouch, aim, shoot, throw grenades, melee attack, and so on. The second player is merely a second target reticle: He or she can shoot, reload, and switch between two guns, but can't control camera or movement. This offers a fun, casual way for a friend to join in the action (with the ability to drop in or out at any time), but it can be a bit disorienting to have your view controlled by someone else.

The other option is to take your skills online and dive into World at War's excellent and engaging multiplayer system. The hook here is experience points, which you gain by winning matches or completing one of the many in-game challenges (such as getting a certain amount of headshots with a certain weapon). As you earn these points, you'll rank up and earn access to new weapons, new accessories (such as sights and suppressors), and new perks. Perks are special abilities that grant you a wide variety of bonuses, but you can choose only three. This introduces an engaging element of customization: Will you choose to toughen up by increasing your health and bullet damage, or will you go the stealth route and increase your sprint speed while becoming invisible to enemy recon planes? Perks are well balanced, and you have multiple save slots that enable you to easily switch between your various pretweaked loadouts and fully take advantage of this deep, engaging system. There are eight maps, but only two game types: Free for All and Team Deathmatch. There are different lobbies based on player skill, and you can travel around from game to game in a party if you exchange friend codes with another player. Matches are fast-paced and rarely hindered by lag, and despite the limited mode options, this is one of the best online multiplayer experiences available to Wii owners.
All told, Call of Duty: World at War is a great first-person shooter and undoubtedly among the best that the Wii has to offer. The controls are smooth, responsive, and immersive, despite a few sundry hang-ups. The lengthy campaign is dramatic and exciting, and it's fun to replay levels with a friend along for the ride. The icing on the cake, the online multiplayer, is a great success despite its somewhat limited scope. So if you're looking for a reason to try a first-person shooter on the Wii, or you're a veteran remote-wielder looking for a new battlefield, look no further than Call of Duty: World at War.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Ghostbusters: The Video Game Updated Hands-On

2008-12-21T12:54:00.004+07:00

We came, we saw, we played a new level of Atari's new ghostbusting adventure.

Spengler. Stantz. Zeddemore. Venkman. And you. Welcome to your new job as the fifth Ghostbuster in Atari's upcoming video game adaption of the hit '80s movie series, Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The publisher, who acquired publishing rights to the game after it was sold off by Activision, showed off the latest build of the game at a recent press event. It was the first time we'd seen the game since E3, and, based on our time with the game, it seems like developers at Terminal Reality (and Red Fly Studio, which is handling the Wii version) have been keeping their heads down and focused on the ghosts, despite the game's publishing turmoil.

Unofficially billed by producers as the "third Ghostbusters movie," Ghostbusters: The Video Game is set two years after Ghostbusters II and finds the four original Ghostbusters in pretty good standing with New York City and its citizens. However, because catching ghosts isn't cheap, the city government decides to bring in some oversight to the 'busters operation in the form of Walter Peck, the quartet's bureaucratic nemesis in the original movie. Peck will be in charge of Ghostbusters oversight, constantly keeping the heroes aware of the ever-increasing costs of doing their particular form of business.
Atari was showing off both the 360 and Wii versions of Ghostbusters, and each version of the game featured a slightly different take on the same level. In the level, the Ghostbusters are in the familiar setting of the New York Public Library, investigating the elderly paranormal librarian (who happens to be the first ghost encountered in the original movie). Just as in the movie, it's only a matter of time before the ghost's calm demeanor turns ugly in a big way.
Before the librarian blew her top, however, we got chance to check out the basics of gameplay and combat. Ghostbusters is a third-person action game, with a camera that sits just over the shoulder of your character, giving you a view not just of the action happening in front of you, but also your proton pack, the nuclear-powered high-tech gizmo that serves as your weapons arsenal. As in the movies, the proton pack is used to fire a stream of energy with which you can wrangle rogue ghosts into a trap. The proton pack in the games is more flexible than the one used in the film, and you'll be able to upgrade your pack as you make your way through the game. These different weapon types include a stasis stream that you can use to freeze a ghost, or a shock blast you can use to defeat them. Your proton pack will also clue you in to your character's remaining health and other vital information.
You'll need to make full use of the proton pack in Ghostbusters because in addition to trapping ghosts, you'll also be fighting enemies as you make your way through the levels. As we made our way through the library level, we fought several spirits that took on physical presence by forming makeshift bodies with the many books scattered on shelves; a quick blast of the proton pack was all it took to bring them down.
Destroying ghosts is fun but your main goal in the game will be trapping certain spirits that are causing trouble. In the both the 360/PS3 and the Wii version, you'll first need to capture your ghost in the stream emanating from your proton pack. You can also stun the ghosts once they're caught by slamming them to the ground. The mechanics for trapping ghosts differes depending on the version you're playing. In the 360/PS3 game, you'll use a combination of the analog sticks and the triggers; over on the Wii, things get a bit more complicated. Aiming the stream is as simple as pointing your Wii Remote--but once a ghost is caught, an arrow will appear on either side of the aiming reticule, indicating which way you need to move the remote to wrangle your ghostly target. It took us several tries to get it right, and while it might get easier with practice, we wouldn't mind if the developer went back and re-examined this aspect of the controls.

Controls are the big differentiator between the 360/PS3 versions of Ghostbusters and the Wii game, but it isn't the only difference. Unlike the 360/PS3 game, which is going for an exaggerated realism, the Wii version has a more cartoonish presentation, with stylized characters and slightly less menacing-looking monsters. Even though both games cover largely the same territory in terms of levels and dialogue, the Wii game is obviously being aimed at a younger crowd. Both versions will also feature the impressive damage effects, where seemingly every wall, column, or piece of furniture you blast with your proton pack will suffer accordingly.
With full involvement from the original cast members Dan Akroyd (The Blues Brothers, Earth vs. the Spider), Bill Murray Lost in Translation, Garfield: The Movie, Ernie Hudson (Oz, Best of the Best: Without Warning), and Harold Ramis (Stripes, Orange County), there's little doubt that this game has the Ghostbusters cred. What remains to be seen is if the game makes busting ghosts as much fun as it seemed in the original movies. We'll know when the game makes its release in 2009, likely just in time to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original movie.

By Brian Ekberg, GameSpot

Disaster: Day of Crisis Review

2008-12-21T12:35:00.003+07:00

Wielding more Wii Remote-waggling moves than you can shake a quake at, Disaster's lack of clear gameplay focus has resulted in a game that is competent at best and never compelling.

In Disaster: Day of Crisis, spiky-haired protagonist Ray has to overcome floods, fires, a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, two volcanic eruptions, and even an attack from a bear. And there are as many different gameplay styles in Disaster as there are natural calamities. Practically every Wii Remote-waggling gimmick dreamed up for the Wii (so far) has been thrown into the mix, resulting in a game that's unfocused and scatterbrained.
If you think the laundry list of natural disasters Ray faces in Disaster sounds like a pastiche of bad Hollywood movies, you'd be spot-on. The game certainly has cinematic aspirations, with its over-the-top story told through long and frequent cutscenes interspersed amongst the action. And not only are there enough calamities to send Roland Emmerich into fits of ecstasy, but there's also a terrorist threat: Ex-Marine and now rescue team member Ray has to deal with a group of disgruntled army veterans who have stolen two nuclear warheads. Not that our heroic Ray cares much about that. His main motivation throughout Disaster is to rescue the sister of his dead rescue team partner from the terrorists. The game's dialogue is cheesier than a wheel of cheddar, and the big set pieces are straight-up Michael Bay fever dreams, but it is this relentless absurdity that lifts Disaster's story to "so bad it's good" material. After all, if you don't think an attack chopper getting taken down by a tsunami or our hero getting attacked by a bear as he's trying to escape a volcanic explosion is cool, then you need to redefine your sense of awesome.

What's not so awesome is the constant chopping and changing when it comes to gameplay. Part on-rails shooter, part arcade racer, and part a collection of Wii Remote-based minigames, Disaster is a disjointed experience that has some competent sections but no compelling ones. There are several good concepts here that are woefully underutilised--victims of Disaster's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. The most apparent one is Ray's health system. In addition to having the typical hit points and stamina bar, the system features a heart-rate meter and a lung indicator. If you run too much, Ray's heart rate increases, forcing him to stop. Hanging around in smoky environments will cause Ray's lungs to gradually degrade, and you'll have to find an area with clear air or risk having Ray collapse. Neither of these features is used to any effect in the game; the only time you'll need to be mindful of the lung indicator is late in the game in a level that's set in a smoky forest. The heart rate meter is even less relevant, because at no time will you need to worry about Ray running out of puff.
Most of your time in Disaster is dedicated to its on-rails shooter side, which has a Time Crisis vibe to it thanks to the ability to take cover from enemy fire. Taking cover by pressing the Z button on the Nunchuk makes you invulnerable to enemy fire, although large explosions (such as those from RPG-wielding baddies) can still hurt because of their splash damage. Aiming is as simple as pointing the Wii Remote at the screen, while reloading is done by shaking the Nunchuk. You can carry four different weapons into battle, which can be selected on the fly using the remote's D-pad. Weapon variety isn't a strong point--while there are more than 15 to choose from, many of those are just slight variations (such as firing speed) of the same weapon. Shooting sections are easy for the most part since red reticles will appear on enemies when they're about to fire (once again, like in Time Crisis). And just like in every other light-gun-based on-rails shooter, enemies don't seem to care much about self-preservation and will often stand in the open waiting for you to pop out and shoot them.
When you're not shooting, you'll be navigating disaster-ruined locales, avoiding dangers and helping out any survivors you find in your path. It's here that Disaster's mountain of mixed gameplay comes in, throwing in new controls seemingly every few minutes, many of which get used only once in the entire game. Running away from a raging fire in a subway, for example, requires you to rapidly waggle the remote and Nunchuk. Avoiding obstacles while being swept away in a flash flood sees you having to quickly wave the remote left or right. Using a parachute has the remote and Nunchuk acting as steering toggles to change the angle of descent. There are plenty of these events in Disaster, and none of them are tough. Dealing with survivors is handled in the same minigame style--running across a stranded person in Disaster starts one of several different games. One requires you to wash away dirt from wounds by pointing the remote at the affected areas and then to wrap the injuries in bandages by rapidly twirling the Nunchuk joystick. Another sees you mimicking CPR by rapidly waving the remote down in time with a person's heartbeat. Some are as simple as waving the remote once to reach out to people hanging from ledges or rapidly pressing the A button to lift a heavy object off a victim. All of these actions have to be performed within a set time limit, but the game is extremely forgiving, and you can simply try again if time runs out. The only challenge is in finding the survivors, because some are more difficult to reach than others.

Finally, Disaster also dips its toes into arcade driving. In several instances Ray commandeers a vehicle in order to catch or avoid bad guys or to flee from natural hazards, such as the blast wave from a volcano's explosion. These driving scenes are controlled by holding the remote sideways and using it to steer--the 2 button is for accelerating, 1 is for braking, and A is for handbrake turns. This control scheme doesn't allow for much finesse, so most driving sections are either too easy or too frustrating (particularly since the cars Ray drives have a laughable tendency to flip over at the slightest bump).
Disaster is not a great-looking game, even for the Wii. Textures and environments are rather bland, which is a pity since the game could have looked much more vibrant with all the explosions you'll encounter. Character models are fairly lacklustre and are more reminiscent of late-era PlayStation 2-quality graphics than the sharper, more vibrant visuals of many Wii games. Sound is also poor, particularly when it comes to the unconvincing effects you'll hear. The sound of Ray's shoes is particularly annoying--it sounds as though he's wearing tap shoes most of the time, and the awful clacking noise when his boots hit concrete is certain to drive you batty.
That's not to say the game is all bad in the looks department. Some scenes of immense destruction--such as buildings collapsing practically on top of Ray--are impressive. But that's the problem with Disaster: Day of Crisis. The good is generally overshadowed by the mediocre, leaving you with a game that has potential but never comes close to realising it. It's fun in parts, but as a whole, Disaster is no earth-shattering experience.

By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot

Rise of the Argonauts Review

2008-12-21T12:20:00.003+07:00

Jason spends too much time talking and not nearly enough time fighting in this Greek mythology-inspired action-RPG.

Loosely based on the same Greek myth that inspired the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-oriented role-playing game in which you assume the role of King Jason of Iolcus and go in search of the legendary Golden Fleece. All manner of monsters stand between you and your prize, and doing battle with them is a lot of fun. The same can't be said for all of the time you have to spend wandering around and talking to other characters, unfortunately, and the wildly inconsistent frame rate makes even the stop-motion special effects in the aforementioned movie look silky smooth by comparison.

Rise of the Argonauts gets off to a shaky start. The assassination of Jason's bride on their wedding day in the intro sequence ensure that the story is instantly compelling, but poor voice acting, awkward camera angles, questionable animation (Jason negotiating stairs is a must-see for all the wrong reasons), and numerous visual quirks waste no time in conspiring against it. Furthermore, there's not much combat early on, so much of your time is spent trying to navigate Jason's labyrinthine palace and conversing with guards who, save for their different-colored uniforms, all look identical. Iolcus, like the handful of other locations you'll visit after acquiring the Argo, affords very few opportunities for exploration, but it still manages to be confusing enough in its design that you need to refer to the crudely drawn map to locate mission objectives in a timely fashion.
The high point of Rise of the Argonauts is undoubtedly the combat; Jason is skilled in the use of swords, spears, and maces, and he carries one of each as well as a shield at all times. The controls are uncomplicated and responsive, and it's good that they're the same no matter which weapon you're wielding, because you're encouraged to switch between them on the fly. None of the enemies are particularly intelligent, but they're varied enough that you need to employ different weapons and strategies to get the better of them. Your spear can be used to keep overly aggressive enemies at a distance, while your mace is a good choice for destroying the shields of enemies attempting to hide behind them, for example. Putting your own indestructible shield to good use is crucial early on, but as you progress you become much more powerful and can spend more time on the offensive.
Interestingly, you need to go into the options menu if you want any kind of heads-up display for your health during combat. By default, you're supposed to look for visual clues such as blood on the clothing of Jason and his allies to know when they're in trouble, but the combat is so fast-paced that this isn't always possible. Adding the HUD makes it much easier to know when Jason's health is low, though it's not always important because, in keeping with his mythological status, he's a tough guy to keep down. When your health drops to zero you don't die; rather, you enter a "state of grace" in which the screen blurs and you have 10 seconds or so to avoid taking any more damage before you regenerate around half of your health. You'll die if you sustain a single hit during that time, but there are very few enemies who can keep up as you frantically run and roll around.

There are a number of ways in which you become a more formidable fighter as the story progresses. You'll be joined by a handful of allies who will fight alongside you two at a time, you'll be able to add more powerful weapons and armor to your arsenal, and you'll learn new abilities by gaining favor with the gods Ares, Apollo, Athena, and Hermes. Each of the four gods has a skill tree composed of around 25 different "aspects" arranged into tiers so that more powerful ones become available only late in the game. The aspects vary a great deal and include both passive abilities and god powers that must be triggered manually in combat. Passive abilities include things like regenerating health anytime you kill an enemy, doing more damage to shields, and making your allies more powerful. God powers, which are fun but rarely needed outside of the most challenging difficulty mode, include temporary effects such as increased damage, explosions, and the ability to turn enemies into stone.
To purchase any given aspect you need to earn enough favor with the appropriate god to unlock it, which can be an interesting challenge in itself. The most obvious way to earn favor with gods is by dedicating to them any deeds you've accomplished. You can do this at shrines scattered throughout the world or, less elegantly, via an option in the pause menu. When you dedicate a deed to one of the gods, you earn an amount of favor proportional to the scale of your accomplishment. Settling a dispute among two traders is unlikely to impress in the same way that lopping off the heads of 25 enemies is, for example. The second way to curry favor with a god is by selecting dialogue choices that are clearly labeled as being appreciated by them. This can make the act of choosing dialogue a mechanical one if you care more about pleasing a specific god than you do about your interaction with whomever you're talking to, but the conversations feel so unnatural anyway that this is as good a way as any to get through them quickly.
It's unfortunate that so much of your time in Rise of the Argonauts is spent in conversation, because much of the dialogue is poorly written and the voice acting is even worse. It's conceivable that one is the victim of the other, but certainly neither deserves any credit for keeping the story compelling. Even on the rare occasions that the script and the actors work well together, poor sound design results in unnatural pauses and in volume levels that compete with background noise or have you reaching for your TV remote. The lack of believable expressions on characters' faces doesn't help matters, nor do the load screens that frequently appear at the most inopportune times--occasionally so quickly after a piece of dialogue that there's some doubt as to whether or not the character talking was even allowed to finish.

To say that Rise of the Argonauts has pacing issues would be an understatement of Olympian proportions; so much of your time is spent running around and talking to people that combat feels like a rare treat rather than a focus of the game. It's a real shame that getting to the end of this adventure is as much a test of patience as it is a test of skill, because the combat gets increasingly satisfying as your arsenal of moves and equipment grows. It's true that only boss encounters will pose any real challenge on the default difficulty setting toward the end, but by then that feels appropriate because you're wielding godlike weapons and powers that can literally call down lightning from the heavens. With a greater emphasis on combat and fewer technical shortcomings, Rise of the Argonauts could have been easy to recommend. As it is, though, this is a great story poorly told.

By Justin Calvert, GameSpot

Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon Review

2008-12-21T12:07:00.002+07:00

If you enjoy tedious objectives, racially insensitive humor, and ugly graphics, the latest Destroy All Humans is right up your alley.

Developer Sandbox Games was shut down by THQ nearly a full month before Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon hit retail shelves, and the PlayStation 3 version of the game was canceled shortly thereafter. After a short time with the Xbox 360 version of the game you'll probably wish THQ had put it out of its misery, too. The game's visuals are dated, and its insensitive, stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese (among other ethnicities) is appalling. Add in repetitive objectives and played-out humor and there's no reason to waste your time with this shoddy excuse for a game.

As in previous DAH games, you play as Crypto, a curmudgeonly, smart-alecky alien with a dislike for the human race. The game takes place in the 1970s, and Crypto has his hands full dealing with the Mob in what's supposed to be Las Vegas. After a few unexpected attackers try to off him, he realizes someone or something other than the Mob wants him out of the way. Crypto sets off across five open-world environments that include faux Vegas, a poor man's Hollywood, and a pseudo China, among others.
While you're free to run or hover around the game's large worlds, there's not a whole lot that's exciting to do. If you're in your flying saucer you can destroy buildings, but rather than them crumbling to the ground after a huge explosion, they melt like a stick of butter left in the hot sun. You can zap humans and bad guys with a number of weapons including the not-funny-anymore anal probe. You can take control of peoples' bodies, make them dance, and use telekinesis to grab and throw them, but you're best off sticking with your default weapon and powering it up with the DNA you earn for finishing missions. Likewise, the many weapon options available to you while in your flying saucer are generally less useful than the default ray. You might have a bit of fun messing around with a few of the tools of destruction made available to you, but the large number of options is little more than a novelty.
It feels that rather than come up with interesting objectives, the developer made a bunch of weapons and occasionally forces you to use them in artificially constrained ways. Rather than allowing you to land your saucer anywhere, the game gives you only a few landing spots, most of which have to be unlocked by playing a minigame, which in turn forces you to use a gun or skill you likely wouldn't use. This is so contrived that the game even makes a joke about it. Yes, making the people who were foolish enough to buy your game perform unnecessary, cumbersome tasks is really funny. Mission objectives start off simple: shoot some guys, protect someone or something, blow up a building, use telekinesis to carry a person to a different location, and so on. As you progress, the game will lengthen these objectives and then chain them together. This means that halfway through the game--and for the rest of the game--you'll be suffering through long missions with objectives you've long since tired of.
The first few Destroy All Humans were amusing and relied heavily on parody and tongue-in-cheek dialogue, but Crypto's act has grown old. He rarely shuts up, and his incessant yapping and bickering grates the nerves. Thankfully, mission objectives are usually clearly displayed, so there's no penalty for skipping the game's painfully frequent and agonizingly long cutscenes. It's bad enough that the cutscenes are frequent and the dialogue constant; what's worse is that much of the game's humor relies on racial stereotypes. The dialogue and accents of many of the characters and citizens in the game's Chinese levels might have been "acceptable" 30 or 40 years ago, but today they're downright offensive and reason enough to avoid this game.

Path of Furon's visuals are also offensive, but in a different way. The game proudly proclaims to use the Unreal Engine, but you'd be hard-pressed to see the results in the finished product. Perhaps they licensed the original Unreal Engine and not Unreal 3. There's not much of the game that looks like it belongs on the Xbox 360. The frame rate is mediocre at best, textures are low-res, huge buildings will pop in right in front of you, and the backgrounds look blurry, as if there were Vaseline on the lens. It gets worse: many of the cutscenes have no lip-synching, camera transitions during cutscenes (which often feel unfinished) are choppy, characters are poorly animated, citizens skate around the city, and explosions are pitiful. Even Crypto looks terrible.
A few multiplayer minigames are available, but they add no value to this already miserable game. If you've somehow stuck with this tired series since its inception, you'll probably have some fun with Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon, but it offers nothing to anyone with a reasonable amount of taste.

By Aaron Thomas, GameSpot

Skate 2 Updated Hands-On

2008-12-21T11:58:00.002+07:00

EA Black Box draws inspiration from Burnout Paradise for Skate 2's new online features.

Now that EA has confirmed Skate 2 for a January 21 release, it feels like the sequel to last year's surprise critical hit is just around the corner. It's a good thing, then, that we've already covered the basic gameplay enhancements, from all the new tricks you can do, to your ability to get off the board and move obstacles around you. Last week EA took the time to show off some of Skate 2's new online features. These include an ambitiously Burnout Paradise-inspired collection of freeskate activities and an improved content-sharing service to make finding friends' videos much less painful than it was in the first game. In the process of checking these out, we also had our first chance to skate through the game's entire setting, the newly rebuilt San Vanelona.

The focus of EA's showcase was Skate 2's freeskate activities, the new bag of challenges you and five other online skaters can take part in by simply pulling up a menu while freeskating and electing to join. We spoke with several members of the Black Box development team, and they made no bones about the fact that fellow EA property Burnout Paradise was a big source of inspiration in this department. It makes sense when you think about it: Burnout Paradise made the idea of spontaneous multiplayer challenges work in a genre--open world racer--where most people would be inclined to fly around and do their own thing.

The process works like this: You can skate around the city at your leisure during the game's Career mode, but if you feel like getting into a session with a few other live players, you just hit the D pad and pull up a menu that lets you select the "freeskate here" option. Once you select it, you'll hop into a quick online match with room for up to six players. From there, anyone can use the D pad to pull up a list of freeskate activities unique to the parking lot or skatepark you find yourself in. Once a player proposes an activity, the rest of the players can then choose to take part or to sit it out and keep freeskating until the next suggestion pops up.
These freeskate activities vary from being as simple as collecting the most points while gapping between fallen street signs in a parking lot, to nailing all five massive gaps in Danny Way's mega ramp compound. Some have you working as a team to grind a set distance, like 1,000 feet, while some are more competitive, like a Hall of Meat challenge that awards you for receiving the most gruesome injury. Like in Burnout, these challenges will scale depending on the number of players, so you won't be stuck trying to grind for six if it's just the two of you.

One of the other new features we tried out was the sharing feature of the new Create-a-Spot ability. We've previously discussed how you can hop off your board and grab on to small objects, such as picnic tables, benches, and grind rails, and arrange them to your liking. What you might not have known, though, is that you can save these arrangements, assign a score objective, and upload them for other players to enjoy. Once that's done, you can go see the spots that your friends have uploaded or sift through the work of the public at large with the help of a five-star rating system. A similar system will be used for shared multimedia, like the videos you've edited in-game, the still images you've pulled from said clips, and the custom graphics you've created for your gear. The idea is to help you quickly find material your friends have made, the best stuff from the public, and featured videos that might not be getting the love they deserve--all through an intuitive in-game browser. We've also been told that a new skate.reel Web site will be launched along with the game, but we haven't seen that yet. However, anyone who tried uploading a video at the launch of the first game knows that the means of sharing can only stand to improve--it's just a matter of how much.

This was also our first opportunity to spend some quality time with the game in a nearly complete state--at least in terms of its overall layout. The new setting, a post-disaster San Vanelona that has been massively rebuilt, should feel both familiar and different all at once. Several of the neighborhoods are brand new, but a few, like the Res, are being carried over from the first game. However, it's mainly the street plan that has made the transition, because almost all of the objects are new. So there's a slight feeling of deja vu on certain roads, but everything you're skating on, from the benches to the ledges, is very much different. That's just the case for a couple of areas, though. Most of the city is new and far more diverse in terms of its landscape.

Skate 2 is looking a lot more polished since the last time we saw it. The animations for new moves, such as bonelesses, handplants, and wipeout-avoiding jumps off the board, all look a lot more natural. And the game is sounding great, too, especially when you're flying downhill--the sense of speed in this game already feels far better than in the first one, which was pretty darn good. There should be a lot to look forward to when Skate 2's release date rolls around.

By Shaun McInnis, GameSpot

Afro Samurai Hands-On

2008-12-21T11:43:00.003+07:00

We sever limbs with great panache in this exclusive look at Namco Bandai's upcoming action game.

It's hard not to notice Afro Samurai, the game in which the main character of the same name sticks out like a sore thumb in feudal Japan with his enormous hair and tattered clothes. Even harder to miss are the well-choreographed moves, copious amounts of blood, colorful commentary by Samuel L. Jackson, and never-ending number of enemies to slice through. We had the opportunity to play through several levels of a preview build and are impressed by the beautiful visuals, hilarious dialogue, and over-the-top limb-chopping violence.

If you haven't been following our coverage, we've been able to see and play through several demos, so for more details you can check out our other previews here. This is the first time we've been able to spend some quality time with Afro, the tortured samurai out to avenge his father's death. The titular character is actually rather quiet and stoic, and it's Ninja Ninja--Afro's imaginary antithesis, a perfect embodiment of Jackson--that livens up this bloodfest with expletives that flow naturally. Not only does Ninja Ninja provide humor with his obscenities, but he also acts as your guide if you're not sure where you need to go next. He talks a great deal, so consider yourself warned. When you press down on the D pad, he'll appear in the direction you need to head and then vanish in a puff of brown smoke. If you call on him often, he'll say things like "I ain't your GPS b****!" or find other delightful ways of expressing himself.
Afro Samurai is a button masher--a very elegant one in which you can pull off sweeping flourishes and acrobatic flips. Combos unlock as you progress through the game so that you don't grow tired of mashing the same combination of buttons over and over again. There are some moves you'll learn that are aptly named: Where's My Money, Pimp Hand, Hardwood Thrust, Oh That Hurt, and Dayam That Really Hurt. Using the left trigger, you can briefly enter a focus mode where Afro can charge up his katana and dismember with deadly precision. A line will appear so you can determine if you want to take off a particular limb, cut the person clean in half through the midsection, or perhaps just slice straight down the middle between the eyes. You'll eventually get a feel for how long you can stay in this mode and use it to optimize your attacks. In the early stages, you'll be able to instantly kill opponents by neatly slicing them in two in this mode. Against tougher enemies and bosses, the focused move will do additional damage, but it won't be a one-slice kill. Because the game is visually stunning and the moves are fluid and graceful, it's always a blast to watch your character do his deadly ballet routine. What wasn't so smooth, however, was the camera, which we hope will be fixed by the time the game ships. There were a few instances when we'd get a close-up of a wall or the side of a cliff face and couldn't see Afro unless we went into our focus mode.
In between the slicing and dicing, there is some light platforming. Running wall jumps can be performed with ease, and even if you slip and fall, you won't be bumped back very far. Afro generally won't fall off a cliff unless it's part of the platforming sequence, so you don't have to worry about tumbling over in the heat of battle. The game consistently provides you with hints on where to go, even though it's already straightforward and linear. In addition to Ninja Ninja's friendly guidance, points of interest will sparkle and the cutscene focuses on what you need to do next. Afro Samurai is relatively easy and accessible by anyone, though the profanity and gore will probably mean that only an age-appropriate audience will be able to enjoy the game.
One noticeable change from what we saw at Namco Bandai's pre-Tokyo Game Show event is that your health is no longer indicated by the dark tunnel-vision lines on the screen. The amount of blood on your clothes will indicate how much damage you have taken. Your opponent's health is also measured this way, and after you deal the finishing blow, the sound of gushing liquid also indicates whether or not you did a good job. Hint: The more blood the better. Statistics from the main menu will tally how many gallons of blood you've spilled if you want to get really specific--which is rather morbid. Achievement junkies should note that as long as you continue to brandish your sword and lay waste to your enemies in style, points will be earned.

The cel-shaded art style is gorgeous, and there's nothing like slashing through bodies like they're tofu, with the glow of the setting sun at your back and the deep blue ocean that bleeds out into the horizon. One of the new environments that we got to play through included a lush bamboo grove with cascading waterfalls, which was very different from the village rooftops that we originally started off in. The score is inspired by Wu-Tang Clan member, The RZA, which includes hip-hop mixed with some authentic-sounding Asian instruments. This interesting combination works well and complements the action and story.
Afro Samurai is not all blood and violence; it's about loss, revenge, betrayal, and even love. The game's events unfold as though you're watching a movie--from the cinematic opening to the cutscenes, gameplay, and voice-overs. Be prepared to wield Afro's blade with finesse, because the game is set to be released on January 27, 2009, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

By Sophia Tong, GameSpot

Sonic Unleashed Review

2008-12-21T11:32:00.003+07:00

Terrible level design, unresponsive controls, and a poor camera are just the beginning of the problems in this awful adventure.

Every new Sonic release carries a hope that Sega's blue hedgehog will be able to regain the form that made him a star in the early '90s. And most every venture into the third dimension has resulted in various degrees of failure. Sonic Unleashed was supposed to provide the unrelenting speed fans have been clamoring for, and it does finally offer a healthy dose of turbo-charged levels to burn through. Unfortunately, even with Sonic's trademark speed finally on full display, Unleashed lacks one very important element: fun. The imprecise platforming, absentminded camera, and poor level design make Sonic's levels an unplayable mess, while his baffling transformation into lumbering werehog comes with a whole new slew of problems. Put simply, there is no reason to play Sonic Unleashed.

The story begins with Dr. Eggman shooting the world with a giant ray gun. Predictably, the planet breaks apart, but there is an unexpected side effect as well. Innocuous Sonic gets transformed into a giant, mean-looking creature called a werehog. This abomination emerges only when the sun goes down, and the game allows you to play stages during the day and at night to make full use of your dual personalities. Even though there are an equal number of hedgehog and werehog stages, most of your time in Sonic Unleashed will be spent at night, since the arduous combat levels take far longer to complete than the sprint-to-the-finish-line hedgehog races.
The werehog levels are extremely tedious. The levels are evenly divided between platforming and fighting, but both elements offer more frustration than excitement. Even though you can unlock more combos as you progress through the journey, your combat strategy never evolves beyond mindlessly tapping two attack buttons with an occasional jump thrown in for good measure. You're given a shield for when things get too hectic, but it's hardly ever necessary. The enemies are stupid, blithely standing around until you take the fight to them, and their lack of variety becomes oppressively obvious after just a few hours. You’ll be given a few checkpoints in each level, but these are awkwardly placed, so you'll have to repeatedly mash through the same battalion of enemies if you can't properly navigate the woeful platforming sections.
As a werehog you're equipped with stretchable arms and the ability to grab onto ledges. This should come in handy when venturing around these stages, but a few arbitrary restrictions have been tossed in to make even simple navigation annoying. First of all, you can only grab onto certain surfaces. If you mistime a jump, you often won't be able to grab a nearby ledge to save yourself, resulting in a quick death. Second, your arms' stretchiness varies at random, so while it may be possible to grab a ledge from a certain distance at one point, from that same distance later on in the level, you'll find your reach stunted. The camera also hinders your progress. You are given free control over your view when standing in the middle of a large plot of land. But when placed on a precarious walkway where a perfect line of sight is necessary, your camera control will be severely restricted, allowing only slight shifts to either side of your character. Because the punishment system is so immediate and severe (falling in water results in instant death), these miscues will quickly steal away your precious lives, leaving only frustration in their wake.

The Sonic levels don't fare any better than the lousy werehog parts. Your goal is to run as quickly as possible to the finish line, but the camera is rarely able to give you an optimal view and the controls are far too loose to provide the pinpoint accuracy you'll need. These technical problems mean you'll have to memorize stages before you can breeze through them. The game is not responsive enough to allow you to consistently avoid obstacles the first time you encounter them, so you'll find yourself repeatedly plowing headfirst into spikes and falling down countless bottomless pits before you finally know where each obstacle lays ahead of time. Extra lives--something you’re usually happy to see in a game--actually serve as a warning in Sonic Unleashed. Particularly cheap sections are often adorned by these markers, ensuring you can play them repeatedly to memorize their cruel layout and hope luck is on your side.
Even after you commit these stages to memory, though, you'll still die over and over again because of the unresponsive controls. A few levels take place on the water, making you sprint at top speeds to keep from sinking below the surface. Moving laterally while blazing through waves is sluggish, but you'll still have to swerve to and fro to complete the missions. In other stages, you'll have to perform wall jumps to succeed. This ability only works on certain surfaces, but even when you find an ideal place to ricochet from, the finicky timing means you'll try and fail until you do it perfectly. Certain sections require you to slow down and perform precise jumps across tiny platforms. The controls are built for speed, though, so a slight push on the analog stick will send Sonic sprinting to his death. The game also tosses in quicktime events at random moments. Some of these will catapult you to different parts of the level, but other times you'll be hit with an instant death if you can't meet their strict deadlines.
Even the between-stage hub is a total drag. Though the professor is supposed to guide you to the next goal, he does little more than point you in a general direction and send you on your way. You'll have to talk to specific citizens to open some levels, and trying to track down the one person with pertinent information is an out-of-place burden. The level entrances are often hidden in random locations and hunting them down can be maddening. Worse, when you finally find one of these entrances, you'll often be kept from entering it until you collect a certain number of moon and sun pieces from previous levels. Collecting items in platformers is expected, but the loose controls and obstinate camera make searching for missing pieces grueling.

The boss fights follow the theme of the other elements in Sonic Unleashed. These battles are long and tedious, forcing you to play the waiting game for minutes on end until the giant beasts open themselves up for attack. The sheer length of these ordeals makes the fights far more aggravating than they would otherwise be. The attack patterns are easy to learn, so you'll spend more time standing around waiting for them to let their guard down than actually attacking them. Even worse, their attack patterns don't drastically change through the fight, so you'll be repeating the same basic dodge maneuvers until you can finally vanquish these oversized annoyances.
The lone bright spot in this otherwise painful mess are some cheery, bright visuals. The graphics are far from cutting-edge, but the frame rate stays high even when you're sprinting at top speeds, and the levels are pleasantly colorful. The game is at its best when your interaction with it is minimal and you're able to simply admire the view. The camera adjusts for cinematic impact while you tear through loops and grind rails as Sonic, and though you're doing little more than pushing right on the analog stick during these sections, it is entertaining to watch Sonic swoop by. It's sad that Sonic Unleashed is only enjoyable during the moments when you're hardly in control of it.
Pretty pictures aren't enough to make up for the miserable gameplay. Almost nothing else in this game even reaches the level of mediocrity. The Sonic levels are poorly laid out and have unresponsive controls, the werehog portions have monotonous combat and a wonky camera, and even the hub world is so difficult to navigate, you'll spend way too much time searching for the next level. There just isn't any fun to be had in Sonic Unleashed.

By Tom Mc Shea, GameSpot

King's Bounty: The Legend Review

2008-12-11T22:39:00.003+07:00

King's Bounty is a great modern rendition of an old-fashioned formula.

One thing you can say for King's Bounty: The Legend is that it fares a lot better than most resurrections of old games. While these digitalized archaeological digs generally reveal that you wouldn't want to go home again even if you could (Defender of the Crown, anyone?), the revival of New World Computing's fondly remembered role-playing/strategy hybrid is a vast improvement upon its 1990 predecessor. While King’s Bounty may not be the most revolutionary game of 2008, its refined gameplay makes it a treasure worth hoarding.
Actually, about the only fair negative comment you could make about King's Bounty is that there isn't really anything new here. Just about everything feels like a rip-off of Heroes of Might and Magic. As with that long-lived Ubisoft franchise, the core of this game is all about taking on the role of a hero in a solo campaign (there is no multiplayer option) and guiding parties of mercenaries across a real-time map to fight turn-based battles on hex grids. A strong RPG flavor is granted through character creation, which allows you to choose from warrior, paladin, and mage classes and then trick out your avatar with skills, artifacts, weapons, armor, spells, and assorted other Gygaxian accoutrements. You then explore the huge medieval fantasy world of Darion in the service of King Mark the Wise, plying the trade of a treasure hunter. A story slowly develops regarding the king's older brother and the standard evil threat to the continued existence of, well, everything, although you don't have to pay much attention to it. Essentially, you just wander around doing good deeds, guiding an icon of your hero through the usual D&D-inspired landscape to slay monsters, loot treasure, scoop up skill runes, mana crystals, and leadership banners, and solve quests handed out by your king and various passersby.

Despite that description, this isn't a hack-and-slasher. Instead of whaling on monsters with a small party of adventurers as in the typical RPG, you wage tactical battles with veritable armies of troops on turn-based battlefields. Mages, priests, knights, archers, monsters, and the like are hired at special buildings such as the king's castle for use as shock troops in your hero's party. You start off with a paltry handful of these goons, but soon wind up at the head of a tremendous force of killer Renaissance fair refugees. Stuff enough gold into your pantaloons and increase your hero's leadership skill as you increase in level and you'll be able to afford the services of loads of hirelings. The scale of battles always remains manageable, however, as each unit type is depicted by just a single character model on the battlefield no matter how many of those units you actually command. This keeps the focus on pure tactics and allows you to whip through battles lickety-split, while still letting you make use of each unit's special abilities. As just about every unit comes with some sort of skill involving spells or bonus attacks, cutting to the chase without dealing with hordes of units is vital to keeping the game straightforward and simple.
This should sound familiar if you have any experience playing a tactical RPG. The only real difference between King's Bounty and Heroes of Might and Magic or Disciples is a greater emphasis on role-playing. Story is brought to the fore here in a much more overt way, thanks to a sarcastic sense of humor and a ton of quests to be solved. True, most of these quests have been scooped out of the big bag of RPG cliches (find stolen property, remove a curse, kill the big bad whatever that's plaguing our village, and so on). But many come with multiple parts that force you to venture all over the map to solve them, along with a great deal of personality conveyed through idiosyncratic characters and a lot of text. You can't just skip around like you're filling in blanks; do so and you're liable to get caught not paying attention, as with the quest where you're given the words to a spell solving a peasant's zombie problem and then have to pick the actual phrase out in a multiple choice menu when casting the spell a little later. So even though these various tasks might not break any new ground, completing them is more involving than the map-clearing busywork that dominates the usual tactical RPG.
Difficulty is also scaled well. Starting off on easy knocks down monster hit points to something quite manageable, and cranks up the amount of gold awarded so that you never seem to run out of the coin needed to hire reinforcements. It's gratifying to see newbies getting let in on the action like this; too many games of this ilk seem to want to punish players, or at least present such a grueling level of difficulty that only veterans of the genre need apply. With that said, moving to normal difficulty is one heck of a leap. Enemy hit points take a huge jump and your gold gets slashed to practically nothing, turning what was a pretty fast-moving game into what can be a grueling slog through battles of attrition.

Visual design is impressive, if not cutting-edge. The game is a couple of years out of date, although the use of bright color and loads of details on maps means that everything still looks great in a Disney kind of way. Areas are intricately drawn and laid out in such a way as to increase the fantasy atmosphere. Every nook and cranny is filled with something D&D-ish, from urns and skulls in catacomb corners to webs and giant mushrooms in forest clearings. Spell effects are spooky and imaginative, too. Magic is generally underlined with special effects like clouds of brimstone, puffs of green gas, and even leering skull faces. All of these added details sometimes gets in the way of your simply playing the game, though. Pathways through maps are very twisty-turny and often obscured with foliage or other terrain obstacles. It can be tough to locate a way forward without rotating the map or zooming in. Failing to at least pan the camera around before galloping into an S-curve can also see you trot right into a killer encounter with powerhouse monsters hidden just out of sight. Audio, on the other hand, is similarly secreted away. The score is a generic triumphal blast that repeats so often during tactical engagements you will almost immediately tune it out, while battle sounds are tinny and there is virtually no voice acting in the game.
Forget about looking at King's Bounty: The Legend as a sequel to an oldie-but-goodie and take it on its own merits. Anyone with the nostalgia gene who played the original might get a special thrill out of this sequel coming along almost 20 years later, but you don't need a connection to this classic to enjoy this impressive take on the traditional tactical RPG.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Skate 2 Updated Hands-On

2008-12-11T22:28:00.002+07:00

EA Black Box draws inspiration from Burnout Paradise for Skate 2's new online features.

Now that EA has confirmed Skate 2 for a January 21 release, it feels like the sequel to last year's surprise critical hit is just around the corner. It's a good thing, then, that we've already covered the basic gameplay enhancements, from all the new tricks you can do, to your ability to get off the board and move obstacles around you. Last week EA took the time to show off some of Skate 2's new online features. These include an ambitiously Burnout Paradise-inspired collection of freeskate activities and an improved content-sharing service to make finding friends' videos much less painful than it was in the first game. In the process of checking these out, we also had our first chance to skate through the game's entire setting, the newly rebuilt San Vanelona.

The focus of EA's showcase was Skate 2's freeskate activities, the new bag of challenges you and five other online skaters can take part in by simply pulling up a menu while freeskating and electing to join. We spoke with several members of the Black Box development team, and they made no bones about the fact that fellow EA property Burnout Paradise was a big source of inspiration in this department. It makes sense when you think about it: Burnout Paradise made the idea of spontaneous multiplayer challenges work in a genre--open world racer--where most people would be inclined to fly around and do their own thing.
The process works like this: You can skate around the city at your leisure during the game's Career mode, but if you feel like getting into a session with a few other live players, you just hit the D pad and pull up a menu that lets you select the "freeskate here" option. Once you select it, you'll hop into a quick online match with room for up to six players. From there, anyone can use the D pad to pull up a list of freeskate activities unique to the parking lot or skatepark you find yourself in. Once a player proposes an activity, the rest of the players can then choose to take part or to sit it out and keep freeskating until the next suggestion pops up.
These freeskate activities vary from being as simple as collecting the most points while gapping between fallen street signs in a parking lot, to nailing all five massive gaps in Danny Way's mega ramp compound. Some have you working as a team to grind a set distance, like 1,000 feet, while some are more competitive, like a Hall of Meat challenge that awards you for receiving the most gruesome injury. Like in Burnout, these challenges will scale depending on the number of players, so you won't be stuck trying to grind for six if it's just the two of you.
One of the other new features we tried out was the sharing feature of the new Create-a-Spot ability. We've previously discussed how you can hop off your board and grab on to small objects, such as picnic tables, benches, and grind rails, and arrange them to your liking. What you might not have known, though, is that you can save these arrangements, assign a score objective, and upload them for other players to enjoy. Once that's done, you can go see the spots that your friends have uploaded or sift through the work of the public at large with the help of a five-star rating system. A similar system will be used for shared multimedia, like the videos you've edited in-game, the still images you've pulled from said clips, and the custom graphics you've created for your gear. The idea is to help you quickly find material your friends have made, the best stuff from the public, and featured videos that might not be getting the love they deserve--all through an intuitive in-game browser. We've also been told that a new skate.reel Web site will be launched along with the game, but we haven't seen that yet. However, anyone who tried uploading a video at the launch of the first game knows that the means of sharing can only stand to improve--it's just a matter of how much.
This was also our first opportunity to spend some quality time with the game in a nearly complete state--at least in terms of its overall layout. The new setting, a post-disaster San Vanelona that has been massively rebuilt, should feel both familiar and different all at once. Several of the neighborhoods are brand new, but a few, like the Res, are being carried over from the first game. However, it's mainly the street plan that has made the transition, because almost all of the objects are new. So there's a slight feeling of deja vu on certain roads, but everything you're skating on, from the benches to the ledges, is very much different. That's just the case for a couple of areas, though. Most of the city is new and far more diverse in terms of its landscape.

Skate 2 is looking a lot more polished since the last time we saw it. The animations for new moves, such as bonelesses, handplants, and wipeout-avoiding jumps off the board, all look a lot more natural. And the game is sounding great, too, especially when you're flying downhill--the sense of speed in this game already feels far better than in the first one, which was pretty darn good. There should be a lot to look forward to when Skate 2's release date rolls around.

By Shaun McInnis, GameSpot

Alone in the Dark: Inferno Review

2008-12-11T22:11:00.002+07:00

Thanks to some key improvements, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is a more playable, more satisfying version of this unique adventure.

When Alone in the Dark came out for the Xbox 360 about five months ago, its dramatic story and unique gameplay mechanics were hobbled by its pervasive technical shortcomings. For the PlayStation 3 release, the developer has made a number of improvements that make the game much less frustrating, and chief among them are the vastly improved character movement and camera controls. Though many of the graphical oddities and some control clumsiness remain, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is a much better way to experience this unique and rewarding action adventure game. As the gruff, amnesiac protagonist, you make your way through a disaster-struck New York City into Central Park, where you begin to unravel the many mysteries before you. Maneuvering through the various environments is much easier now that the main character moves with a light jog instead of a lumbering plod. Though he is significantly nimbler, he is still a bit clumsy; you'll still have to do some funky maneuvering to interact with oddly positioned objects, and you'll have to tread carefully during the precision platforming sequences. Fortunately, even this is much easier thanks to the easily controlled 360-degree camera that replaces the restrained over-the-shoulder camera of the Xbox 360 version. Driving controls are the same, and you can still do some neat stuff such as check behind the visor for car keys or slide into the passenger seat to ransack the glove compartment. The big improvement here is the car handling. Gone are the goofy motorboat physics of the Xbox 360 version, replaced with weightier, more down-to-earth mechanics. This makes driving much easier, though the still-finicky collision detection occasionally treats small cracks like major impediments. Despite the lingering limitations, the controls in Alone in the Dark: Inferno make locomotion much easier and let you more fully enjoy your adventure.
One of the most intriguing and well-executed elements of Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the inventory and item system. The game allows you only as many items as you can fit in your belt and jacket pockets, and, in a move that visually subverts the convention of the vast yet unseen inventory, you literally open up your jacket and look down to see what you've got. Although it's never quite groundbreaking, this subversion does appear in myriad ways throughout the game, and it creates the feeling that there is something novel about Alone in the Dark. You experience this feeling of novelty the first time you look down at your limbs to heal your bloody wounds with medical spray, an action that's a good deal more satisfying than just using a medkit and seeing your life bar grow.
The limited array of items that you can pick up as you move through the world belies the complexity with which they can be combined to serve your purposes. The explosive power of a plastic bottle filled with flammable liquid is obvious, but what if you wrap it in double-sided tape, stuff a bandage in it, light it, and stick it to an enemy? Then you've got a slow-burning Molotov cocktail perfect for blowing up the hive that your spidery foe is returning to. Tape a box of bullets to the bottle, chuck it at a cluster of enemies, and shoot it in midair to unleash a decidedly nasty explosion. Poured out all of your liquid while immolating downed demons? Grab your knife and puncture the gas tank on a car for a quick refill. There are multifarious possible item combinations, and though you'll generally stick to a select few for killing enemies (flaming bullets, midair explodables, spray-can flamethrower), the game makes you flesh out your repertoire by demanding specific actions to solve certain puzzles.

Most of the puzzles in the game involve vanquishing the evil beings that are now the main inhabitants of Central Park. Since your enemies can only be permanently offed with fire (unless there is a crevasse nearby), you'll have to find a way to make them burn, baby, burn. The most straightforward method is to grab a flammable object, such as a chair or a broom, and then walk over to any open flame and set fire to the object by inclining the analog stick toward the flame. Wielding the blazing object, you target your foe, set up your attack by tilting the stick in one direction, and then strike by flicking the stick in the opposite direction. It's a lot of fun to smack monsters with chairs, shovels, baseball bats, tree limbs, and so forth, and the analog-stick actions you must perform to do so are a fun approximation of your in-game actions. Alas, this fun is hindered by finicky controls and inconsistent hit detection, so you'll often find yourself merely repositioning your weapon instead of striking, or clanging it off of a wall that you could have sworn wasn't so close.
For practical reasons, you'll end up taking on most of the evil legion with your trusty handgun. Throwing an explosive bottle and shooting it midair is a cinch, thanks to the aim assistance in the form of a glowing trajectory arc and the slow motion that kicks in whenever you throw something. Alternately, you can pour flammable liquid on your bullets and fire flaming rounds at your foes. Sure, this combo is a bit improbable, and the gun should probably explode in your face, but flaming bullets will be the keystone in your monster-battling strategy so it's best to suspend your disbelief. However, firing these babies into monsters won't kill them unless you hit their fissures. These are the livid scars left on monsters by the evil that corrupted them, and hitting them can be a real pain. The combat certainly isn't anything to write home about, but there's definitely some satisfaction to be had in scourging your enemies with flame or smacking them off of a cliff with a heavy pipe.
The few non-combat-related puzzles are clustered early and late in the game. Some of these creative platforming sequences are part of larger, dramatic set pieces, such as your escape from a burning, collapsing building. It's generally pretty clear which path you need to take, but figuring out the necessary actions and carrying them out is still entertaining. Puzzles in which you set fire to things are particularly fun; the fire looks gorgeous and spreads realistically while the textures on the burning wood change accordingly. Indoor and outdoor environments are well-detailed, especially the vast and varied Central Park. The scenery is at its best when integrated with the aforementioned dramatic set pieces. During these events, the camera will often pull out to a wider angle, giving you a greater sense of scope and harking back to the fixed-camera roots of previous Alone in the Dark games. There are some missteps here as well, and the dynamic lighting can occasionally turn an immersive environment into a something's-not-quite-right environment.

These visual inconsistencies carry over to the numerous cutscenes, yet despite the occasional pop-in and imperfect facial animations, the cutscenes do a great job of adding weight to the already dramatic storyline. Playing as an amnesiac man who wakes up in the company of men who mean him harm, you manage to escape and make your way to Central Park, where the dark, far-reaching story begins to unfold in earnest. The story is well scripted and provides a few intensely dramatic moments, which are enhanced by mostly on-point aftereffects that imbue them with a filmic quality. The whole game is segmented into chapters and sections, so you can skip around to them as if it were a DVD, though feature will probably appeal only to folks who get stuck on a tough patch or want to go back to play a favorite sequence. Skippers need not fear too much missed content: Every play session and every skip treats you to a "previously on Alone in the Dark" segment that rehashes the pertinent story elements.
Alone in the Dark: Inferno is an ambitious game that features a lot of cool gameplay and bucks a lot of gaming conventions. Many small improvements eliminate points of frustration (enhanced AI assistance, an explosive new sequence, and a few other pacing tweaks), but it's the character movement and camera updates that really help the game hit its stride. Although it's definitely not without its stumbles, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is no longer hamstrung by the issues that plagued its predecessor, which means that owners can experience this adventure the way it was meant to be played.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Killzone 2 Updated Hands-On

2008-12-11T22:04:00.002+07:00

We take our most extensive look at Killzone 2's campaign by going a full six chapters deep.

Because so much of the gaming public's attention is focused on scrutinizing every Killzone 2 screenshot to see whether the graphics will stack up to that infamous E3 2005 trailer, it's all too easy to forget that it's a real, honest-to-goodness game with a real, honest-to-goodness release date not far off. Sony recently reminded us of this by giving us the opportunity to play through the first six chapters of the campaign. What may not surprise you is that, yes, Killzone 2 is an absolute stunner in motion. But if you haven't been following the progress of the game, you'll be pleased to know that it's also an intense and exciting experience with the potential to work alongside Resistance 2 to provide a serious one-two punch of PlayStation 3-exclusive shooters.

Whereas the first Killzone allowed you to play as a number of Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) members over the course of the game, Killzone 2 drops you into the shoes of a gruff soldier named Sev and keeps you there for its duration. Throughout the campaign, you'll follow Sev and his similarly rough-and-tumble Alpha Squad buddies as they push deeper into the Helghast home planet in an opposite scenario of the invasion that occurred in the first game. Sev isn't the most vocal guy in the world, but you'll hear plenty of quips from teammates like jokester Dante Garza and the perpetually vulgar Rico Velasquez. Most of the story unfolds in the heat of battle via dialogue delivered from these squadmates, though occasional cutscenes give you fleeting glimpses of what's going on deep within the Helghast quarters.
One thing becomes immediately apparent when you begin Killzone 2's campaign: This is not an easy game. The first chapter, Corinth River--an area Sony has shown several times before--drops you right into a heated firefight with no shortage of heavily armed Helghast soldiers trying to take you out from scattered perches. It feels like every balcony, bridge, and window has a pair of glowing red Helghast eyes staring down at you. Starting you off like this seems like Killzone 2's way of saying that running and gunning won't cut it; you're going to learn to be patient and deliberate with your targets, and you're going to learn right away.

To do this, you'll need to become good friends with the game's cover system. It's a sticky cover mechanic where you pull L2 to snap right onto nearby walls or low barriers. From there, you have the standard move set that includes leaning into a doorway or popping up over a barricade, with the ability to look down your gun's iron sights to help you get a bit more precise. What makes this system unique and challenging is that you remain in the first-person perspective at all times, so your vision is partially obscured as you stay out of harm's way. In a third-person shooter you can see almost every target thanks to a wide camera, but here you'll need to poke your head up fast and get to shooting even faster--making that initial moment when you leave cover that much more thrilling.
The cover system is less critical in close quarters when you don't have Helghast soldiers trying to kill you from every which way. The second chapter in the campaign, Blood Meridian, trades in Corinth River's expansive industrial shipping yards and warehouses in favor of tight urban alleyways. In this locale you can become a bit more mobile, charging through the narrow corridors with more close-quarters weaponry, such as shotguns, submachine guns, and your trusty infinite-ammo pistol. But before you get too comfortable, Killzone switches things up in the next chapter, Visari Square, by pitting you against a seemingly endless flood of Helghast in a series of prolonged standoffs. One of these is a small, desperate scuffle with you and two squadmates in a small alley trying to fend off incoming Helghast for 10 or so minutes. However, that's quickly followed by a huge battle in a wide-open city square where you and dozens of newly reunited squadmates need to hold down the fort as Helghast foot soldiers, tanks, and walking piles of metal and Kevlar known as "heavies" come at you in wave after wave.

These two moments are a nice little microcosm of the way Killzone 2 keeps you guessing by sharply switching up the scale and intimacy of battles. Later chapters perform a similar trick by quickly altering the setting. The first few hours of the game will be spent running through demolished cities, but later you'll find yourself in different locales like an elaborate Visari palace and a windswept mining town that wouldn't feel entirely out of place in a Star Wars movie. Fights tend to last a while due to clever AI on the part of the Helghast soldiers. They seem to have attended the same school of cover techniques you have, because they'll be spending just as much time behind crates and walls. What makes things interesting is that their behavior seems to change as the odds of their survival are whittled down. You'll see them get brave in a group and pop up quite often, but when they're in a bad spot they'll stay put and frantically blind fire while defiling your good name.

Of course, you do have teammates alongside to lend you a helping hand at nearly every point in the game. It can be anywhere between one and several dozen at once, but the ebb and flow of battle is something you determine on your own since you're generally taking the lead and letting the others follow you. You won't need to worry about any sort of squad commands, but a bit of teamwork is required when a buddy goes down. In situations like this, you'll need to pull out your trusty medic gun and zap him back to health with a quick spark of life. It's an oddly simple mechanic, but a critical one because your buddies are expert shots who help a lot in battle. Along with constant banter, this helps to provide a feeling of belonging to a greater group despite the fact that you're taking the fight into your own hands most of the time.
Finally, with this being Killzone 2, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the graphics--or more specifically, how awesome they are. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say Killzone 2 is the best-looking console game we've seen. The use of lighting is probably the most impressive of the game's technical feats: with so much of the game taking place in demolished urban centers with gray steel, concrete, and asphalt, those moments when you're flushed with color are extremely striking. This might include an orange street lamp, the blue glow of a faulty electrical tower, or the green haze in a sewer tunnel, but the way it all reflects off nearby objects like your gun and character models looks terrific. Add in sharp textures, great smoke and explosion effects, terrific depth of field, and an ominous sky that looks like the world might cave in at any moment and you've got a combination of technical and artistic brilliance that's hard to understate. Best of all: the framerate does a good job of keeping up, with the only noticeable hitches arriving during an autosave between checkpoints.
If you were to nitpick the presentation, most people's attention would probably fall on the audio. While the sound effects and music are both great, the voice acting could give Gears of War's Delta Squad a run for its money in terms of smoldering, manly rage. In fact, it can often be difficult to separate one gruff voice from another when your vision isn't fixed on a squadmate's face. It's not exactly an abrasive fault, but it does stick out when you consider how stellar the rest of the presentation is.
Small gripes aside, we had a thoroughly enjoyable experience with Killzone 2's single-player campaign. The combat is intense, the visual aesthetics are amazing, and the level of difficulty provides a rewarding challenge. It seems that PlayStation 3 owners will have a lot to look forward to when the game is finally released. You can expect that to happen on February 27.

Prince of Persia Review

2008-12-11T21:55:00.002+07:00

Prince of Persia's shimmering veneer and joyous platforming will cast a spell on you.

In many modern games, you rain death upon your enemies; how refreshing, then, that your main task in Prince of Persia is to breathe life into a darkening world. That doesn't mean that the forces of evil aren't on your tail in this open-world platformer, but the most indelible moments of this enchanting journey are uplifting, rather than destructive. Similarly, the latest iteration in this long-running franchise is a rejuvenation for the series, and it's an ambitious one, offering up a new titular prince and casting certain game traditions aside in favor of player immersion. And for the most part it succeeds, eliminating illusion-breaking mechanics like game-over screens and long loading times in the process. This re-imagining comes with a few caveats, however, and if you're a longtime series fan, you'll quickly discover--and possibly resent--that Prince of Persia is, far and away, the easiest game in the series. But if you can clear your mind and let the game's magic wash over you, its easygoing joy and visual beauty will charm you into forgiving a sprinkling of flaws.

In some ways, Prince of Persia represents a return to Sands of Time's storybook vibe, which had been somewhat lost in that game's two sequels. Yet our new hero isn't exactly Prince Charming, but rather a wisecracking nomad interested only in his donkey (named Farah, in one of several nods to previous games) and the riches she apparently carries. His royal status is referenced but never fully explored, though his companion Elika is clearly a princess, and as the game progresses, you'll become much more invested in her past than the prince's. Together, they seek to imprison the evil god Ahriman, who has been inexplicably set free by Elika's own father. To do so, they must restore a series of fertile grounds to their former fecund glory, thereby banishing the inky black corruption that has enveloped the land. Storytelling isn't the game's strong suit, and the dismissive, often unlikeable prince is hardly beguiling, a poor fit for the captivating journey ahead. Thankfully, Elika exudes enough charm for the both of them, and the relationship they slowly forge lends plenty of emotional impact to the game's final moments.
This relationship enriches the very core of the experience, given that Elika is not your standard game sidekick. She isn't just a helpless companion, but an important part of a number of gameplay mechanics. As the prince, you will pull off moves familiar to franchise fans: jumping, climbing, scaling, and wallrunning among them. There are also a few new acrobatics to play with, such as the aptly named roofrun, where the prince scuttles along the roof in a vaguely simian manner. But if the moves are familiar, Elika's presence enriches and enhances them. She will jump on your back as you scale across vines, reach for your helping hand as you climb, and perform an elegant pas de deux with you when you need to pass her on a narrow beam. In some ways, this relationship recalls that of Ico and Yorda in 2001's ICO.
While in ICO Yorda was totally dependent on her companion, here Elika is far more helpful to the prince than he is to her. She is, in fact, your constant savior, because she will not, and cannot, allow you to die. Should you fall, Elika will grab you by the wrist and whisk you to safety--meaning the last checkpoint. There is a checkpoint at almost every platform, so aside from possibly having to repeat a few seconds of gameplay, there is absolutely no penalty for plummeting to your doom. You will never see the words "game over," and you won't need to save and reload before difficult sequences. Nor will you need to ever puzzle over how to make it from point A to point B: Elika can fire off a magical homing orb that will show you the precise way of getting to your destination. Combined with simple platforming controls that require a minimum of button presses, these facets make Prince of Persia one of the easiest games you'll play all year.

This ease of use makes each individual action seem relatively meaningless as you string moves together. For many, this will translate to a diminished feeling of reward; aside from a few exceptions, there is no sequence that feels remotely challenging, certainly not for players familiar with the old-school difficulties wrought by the early games in the series. Yet while the unique satisfaction of overcoming hurdles is missing, it is tempered by other kinds of rewards. The platforming is fluid, and seamlessly chaining a number of moves together is simple but visually appealing, making for some silky-smooth motion that you'll get a kick out of. Additionally, as you progress through the game and explore some of the more intricate environments, you'll find some truly impressive level design. Each area flows organically into the next, and while the overall design feels a bit more synthetic than it did in Assassin's Creed, platform placement and other architectural features don't feel overtly artificial.
The stupendous level design becomes more apparent when you begin to unlock Elika's various powers--though calling them powers is a bit of a stretch. As you unlock new explorable areas by collecting glowing orbs called light seeds, you will be able to utilize the various colored plates that dot walls and ceilings. There are four types of plates, and each kind initiates a high-flying feat. Red and blue plates are functionally the same (though visually unique), propelling you automatically toward the next plate or platform. Green plates turn you into a sort of Persian Spider-Man, causing you to quickly scale up walls and ceilings while avoiding obstacles. Finally, yellow plates initiate on-rails flight sequences that give you limited room to maneuver around obstructions, sort of like a 3D version of Nights Into Dreams, the Saturn platformer. Many of the sequences combining plate jumps and standard platforming are exhilarating, and the manner in which some of them utilize all three dimensions make the level design all the more impressive. And amazingly, the camera is rarely a liability, which is quite an achievement. Unfortunately, the flying initiated by leaping from yellow plates is a clear weakness. The constant camera movement and overwhelming visual effect used here make for a few annoying sections, and it is never clear whether you need to go left or right, up or down to avoid certain objects. Given that most of the plate-initiated bits are terrific fun, it's a shame these particular flights of fancy were so poorly crafted.
There is some combat, and while it's hardly Prince of Persia's focus, it looks mightily spectacular. You fight only a single enemy at a time, including the four main bosses, which you'll take on multiple times. Battles are on the simple side: you have four main attacks--sword, gauntlet, Elika's magic, and acrobatic vault--that you can string into various combos. Enemies can change states, making certain attacks ineffective, and there are some other occasional twists. Yet like the platforming, it is on the easy side; even if Elika is bound by corrupted tentacles or rendered unconscious, she's always there to pluck you from death's cold embrace should you miss an important quick-time button event (of which there are many). But battles are still uniquely satisfying and look fantastic. The prince throws Elika into the air with ease, stringing throws, slices, and magic attacks together as the camera zooms in and out to showcase the slashes and backflips. The stringent enemy-focused camera and odd scuttling motions of the prince feel confining but work just fine in most of these battles, though they're a bit less successful during certain boss fights that require some environmental manipulation.

Combat's not the only thing that looks spectacular. Prince of Persia is beautiful to look at, thanks to vibrant cel-shading and some sumptuous environments. Tendrils of corruption reach toward you as you navigate the cold, colorless caverns of infertile regions. The contrast between these areas and the beautifully lit vistas and thriving vegetation of healed locales is palpable, and the transformation of a fertile ground from darkness to light may remind you of similarly impressive moments in Okami. There are a few rough spots here and there, in the way of glitched animations and tiny frame rate stutters, but they barely detract from the lovely visual design. While there are some minor differences, all three versions look great and well represent the capabilities of their respective platforms. And all three feature the same lovely ambient music, which sounds more Persian than the very American-sounding prince.
Most will be able to finish Prince of Persia in around a dozen hours, though if you want to collect every scattered light seed and avoid quick travel (you can teleport from one healed ground to another instantly), you could add a few more hours to the total. But while a few unlockable skins may not seem like enough reason to return, this game is so enjoyable and delightful that you may want to return to it as you would return to a favorite fantasy novel or film. While its lack of challenge may lull fans, its ease of use will delight newcomers and draw in anyone who appreciates a touch of magic.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Wanted: Weapons of Fate Updated Hands-On

2008-12-11T21:49:00.003+07:00

We check out the bullet-bending action in this Grin-developed game based on the Hollywood blockbuster.

Comic book fans might have been taken aback by the cinematic reimagining of the Wanted comic series from creators Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, but there's little doubt that the movie, which starred Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, had a vision all its own. Full of sexy assassins, global conspiracies, curving bullets, and bloody, bloody kills, the film was the kind of setting and story that just begs for a video game adaptation, and the developers at Grin have been hard at work on their latest project, Wanted: Weapons of Fate. We had a chance to play the game for the first time at a press event in San Francisco this week, and it seems like the game is bringing a good deal of the film's flair to consoles.

The press event featured three brief demo levels from Weapons of Fate, two of which starred Wesley Gibson, the weasely office-slug-turned-superassassin (played by James McAvoy in the film). The third mission starred Cross, Wesley's father. As it turns out, Weapons of Fate will have both Wesley and Cross as playable characters, and the plot of the game (which picks up where the movie leaves off) will focus on the mystery of Cross' background and what happened to Wesley's mother. The first demo level we played had Cross looking to rendezvous with an associate on the well-worn streets of a French village. Standing between him and his objective are a number of bad guys. As Cross, we had to wind our way through buildings and alleyways, taking down enemies in whatever way we could. Weapons of Fate is a third-person action game that makes heavy use of both gunplay and close-quarters kills. The close-quarters kills are vicious and easy to pull off; you simply sneak up on an enemy and press the B button (circle on the PS3) when the icon appears onscreen. If you pull it off, you'll be treated to a quick and bloody animation of a brutal takedown--a knee to the face, a knife to the junk, that kind of thing.

Close-quarters combat is fun, but the real meat of Weapons of Fate is when dealing lead. Both Wesley and Cross have the ability to bend bullets around corners, hitting enemies who otherwise would be safely tucked behind cover. As cool as this ability is, it takes some getting used to. First of all, the ability to curve bullets is mediated by your adrenaline level. To pump up your adrenaline, you need to make some standard kills. Once the adrenaline icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen turns blue, you can pull off your curved shots.
The mechanics behind curving bullets take some practice. To start the process, you press and hold the right bumper (R1 on the PS3), which brings up potential targets in red (even if they're behind cover). A curved arc also appears, showing you the general trajectory the bullet will take once you fire; the goal is to move the left stick until the red target turns white, which indicates that your bullet will hit its intended target. Once the target turns white, you simply let go of the bumper, and Wesley (or Cross) will fire his weapon with the familiar sidearm whip.
While the first demo level featured some good bullet-curving action, it was the second demo that really put our lead-twisting skills to the test. Here, Wesley was caught in a small courtyard, outnumbered by a horde of bad guys. The first goal was to grab an unwitting enemy and use him as a human shield while the rest of the bad guys poured into the courtyard. Once the guy was riddled with bullets, we had to guide Wesley around the ample cover in the courtyard--the game has a cover system similar to that in the Gears of War series--spraying bullets around corners and cover to take down all of the baddies. The most challenging of the bunch were soldiers who came complete with huge riot shields. Curving bullets around the shields was effective, though it sometimes took more than one shot to finish them off. We found that getting close enough for some close quarters work was also an effective technique

While the first two demos were fun, and the bullet-curving mechanic is undeniably cool, the stop-and-pop gameplay felt a bit derivative. The third demo, by contrast, was where Weapons of Fate came alive. It might have been because of the head-to-toe black leather assassin's getup that Wesley was rocking (a sartorial nod to the Millar/Jones comic series), or it could have been because of the large amounts of butt-kicking featured in the level. In this level, Wesley was invading a warehouse full of bad guys, and the gameplay cut between animated scenes of Wesley moving through the warehouse, causing mayhem as he went, and quick interactive bullet-time events, where we were tasked with taking out one or more bad guys or hitting a specific target with a bullet to set off a chain of explosions. Though the interactive sequence lasted for only a few encounters (followed by more straightforward action), it was a great change of pace that we hope continues throughout the entirety of the game.
The game is running off the same engine that's powering another Grin game, Bionic Commando, but while BC is focused on huge open levels, the action in Weapons of Fate is more personal and claustrophobic. With all of the great set pieces from the film (we're thinking in particular of the car chases and the fantastic sequence in the train), we're curious as to how the Grin folks will push the BC engine in different directions. Here's hoping that the combat action is mixed up with some great set pieces to give Weapons of Fate the momentum it needs to excel beyond a run-of-the-mill movie port. So far, the signs are encouraging, and we'll keep our sights trained on the game in the coming months to follow its progress. Wanted: Weapons of Fate is currently scheduled for release in 2009.

By Brian Ekberg, GameSpot

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Updated Impressions

2008-12-05T11:47:00.002+07:00

Starbreeze and Tigon show off the latest content in this half-remake/half-sequel to the original Vin Diesel-starring game.

With his pair of sharply curved knives in hand, Riddick stalks the halls of the pirate ship Dark Athena, looking to deal some pain. Creeping through the shadows in a room full of cargo crates, Riddick is hidden yet surrounded by a number of drone soldiers--mindless automatons that patrol the ship and that can be remote-controlled by members of the Dark Athena's crew. Skulking in the shadows, Riddick sneaks up behind an unwitting drone, takes him out, and tries to take his weapon from him. But wait--the gun is attached to the drone's hand. No problem for Riddick; he simply picks up the drone and begins blasting the other enemies to bits with the attached weapon. It's just one of the grimly enjoyable approaches to combat in the upcoming The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, which we had a chance to check out at a recent Atari press event.

Though the game was initially conceived as a fairly straightforward remake of the classic original Xbox game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, the developers at Tigon Studios and Starbreeze have pushed the project beyond a mere port to include both a remake of the original game and an entirely new chapter in the Riddick storyline, Assault on Dark Athena. Picking up more or less directly after the events in Escape From Butcher Bay, Assault on Dark Athena finds Riddick and his captor, the bounty hunter Johns, onboard the Dark Athena, a pirate craft that's led by a mysterious captain that Riddick might have a history with. After being locked in cryostasis for a good long stretch, Riddick--being the badass that he is--manages to wake himself up and begins stalking the corridors of the Athena, looking to escape.

During the demo, the developers at Starbreeze showed off the trademark multiple gameplay elements that began with the original game and certainly continue here. Stealth is obviously a big part of the fun here, with Riddick sticking to the shadows (complete with the familiar blue tint to the screen when Riddick is concealed), and either sneaking around, or sneaking up on, his enemies. Then there's the wet work with the aforementioned ulaks that Riddick acquires early on in the Dark Athena storyline. They're perfect for making short work of an opponent you've snuck up on, and they seem to be pretty effective even in a face-to-face fight.

But where Dark Athena really shines is with the drones. As mentioned previously, drone soldiers are mostly mindless, zombie-like humanoids that patrol the halls of the ship. In their unoccupied state, they seem to be easy enough to avoid; however, if a drone is being "piloted" remotely, it's a different story. They'll be more alert, and they appear to have quicker reaction times, too. You can capture a drone that you've taken down, but you'll only be able to walk backward while holding up a drone. As a result, if you want to use its attached arm gun and still stay mobile, you'll need to move quickly from one downed drone to the next.

Regardless, the best use of a drone is actually piloting one yourself, which we got to check out in the demo when Riddick made his way into the drone control room. After quickly dispatching of a crew member who was in the process of controlling a drone, Riddick saddled up and took a few for a ride. Although most of Riddick's gameplay is stealthy by nature, controlling a drone feels most closely akin to a run-and-gun first-person shooter. The kicker is that drones are expendable and, as a result, you can charge right in with drone gun blazing. That said, during the mission we watched, there was only a finite amount of drones available to Riddick and, once one went down in a hail of gunfire, Riddick simply fired up the next drone and continued on his way.

Given that the demo focused entirely on the new content in the game, we didn't get a chance to re-experience Butcher Bay for the first time on the Xbox 360. What we do know is that, even though the original game is being remade in Dark Athena, game upgrades will touch on all content in the game, both old and new. One example is that AI enemies will use improved team tactics to take you down. That's in addition to the stunning graphical upgrade that the original game is getting, completely remastered audio, and user-interface improvements such as a radial weapon-selection menu. Naturally, Vin Diesel will reprise his role as Riddick, with actress Michelle Forbes (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica: Razor, Al Roach: Private Insectigator) taking up the role as the captain of the Dark Athena.

When you add the fact that the content for Escape From Butcher Bay and the Assault on Dark Athena seems to be about the same length, as well as multiplayer features that the company has yet to reveal, it looks like the game will be jam-packed with features. We look forward to peeling back the new pages of Riddick's chronicles in the coming months and will keep you up to date on all of the latest developments until the game's release, due for spring 2009.

By Brian Ekberg, GameSpot

Heroes Over Europe Hands-On

2008-12-05T11:16:00.002+07:00

English biplane versus Nazi battleship? It's no contest in this upcoming arcade flight game.

A lone squadron of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers roams the skies above the English channel, patrolling for Nazi destroyers and a battleship that have laid claim to these waters. Suddenly 10, 20, maybe 50 German fighter planes fill the sky, their jet engines easily outclassing the British biplanes that were considered outdated in 1939. But it's 1941, and you're outmanned, outgunned, and, well, you know the drill. But you and your wingmen have three things going for you: this is Heroes Over Europe, the upcoming arcade World War II flying game; a slow-motion bullet time mode; and rockets...unlimited rockets. The Germans don't stand a chance.

Let's also give credit where credit is due. The Swordfish were unsung heroes of WWII and crippled the mighty German battleship Bismarck in 1941, so repeating such a feat in Heroes Over Europe is not outside the realm of possibility. The sequel to 2005's Heroes of the Pacific, HOE puts you in the cockpit of authentic Allied fighter planes in a fight against the mighty German Luftwaffe. American, British, Canadian, and New Zealand aircraft comprise more than 40 total planes, including such classic hits as the Spitfire, Mustang, B-17 Flying Fortress, and the de Havilland Mosquito, a British fighter bomber made mostly of laminated plywood, affectionately known as the "timber terror."

Each aircraft is rated in top speed, agility, and weapon power, and after playing with both the Swordfish and Mosquito, the differences quickly become apparent. Dive-bombing in, say, a B-17 is a bad idea because it will take you much longer to pull out of your dive and you'll likely dive right into the English Channel. At least your controls are fairly simple. Moving left or right on the left stick controls your rudder, while moving up and down climbs and dives, respectively. The right stick controls rolls by moving left and right, while up and down will increase and decrease your speed. Fans of Heroes of the Pacific or, more recently, Blazing Angels, will feel right at home.

HOE focuses mostly on dogfighting, though bombing missions will be sprinkled in. At first, the game doesn't do much to separate itself from previous arcade sims. You simply maneuver behind enemy fighters and fire unlimited bullets in their path. Against bombers, you dive in from above so as to avoid their gunners. But Aussie developer Transmission Games added a nifty adrenaline meter to spice things up. As you have an enemy in your sights, a meter will slowly fill around your targeting reticle. You can then press a left shoulder button to slow down time and target individual sections of the aircraft. It's still difficult to pull off as the reticle is quite shaky, but taking out a wing or the fuselage makes for a one-hit kill, and then you're free to move on to your next target. Currently, weapons are limited to guns and bombs. Ironically, our Swordfish torpedo bomber was armed with unlimited rockets rather than actual torpedoes. Though fun to fire, we hope that actual torpedoes will be added. Fans of Battlestations: Midway will recall the thrill of dodging antiaircraft fire to successfully deliver our payload, and we hope torpedoes are added before the game's release.

HOE still has a ways to go in development, but the view from the sky was a treat. There was a noticeable amount of texture pop-in and some of the plane models were unfinished, but the landscapes and cities looked as if they were pulled from a 1940s version of Google Earth. One notable omission is cockpit view--try as we might, we could only select between two different follow cams. Let's hope that feature is added before release, because nothing puts you in the cockpit of a WWII plane like a, you know, cockpit view.

The single-player missions will begin with the German bombing of London and finish with the final bombing of Berlin. The game will also have you play as three different Allied pilots in an attempt to immerse you in the story. As for multiplayer, Atari is promising 16-player online action and four different modes, though we have yet to see it in action. When we do, you'll be the first to hear about it. You can fly the unfriendly skies for yourself when Heroes Over Europe is released in 2009.

By Jon Miller, GameSpot

Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Review

2008-12-05T10:53:00.003+07:00

Storm of Zehir tries to be the square peg in Neverwinter Nights 2's round hole, with predictably lackluster results.

Obsidian Entertainment attempts to turn back the clock with Storm of Zehir, a Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion that tries hard to emulate the seminal single-player role-playing game Baldur's Gate. But even though nostalgia makes this notion appealing, this attempt to shoehorn an old-fashioned strategic RPG boasting a full party of adventurers into an engine built to showcase a story-driven tale about a single lead character hasn't really succeeded. So while taking a trip back in time might seem like a nice idea for an RPG vacation, the result is a clumsy affair that plays more like an above-average homebrewed mod than a full-blown official add-on.

Storm of Zehir feels different from the very beginning. The story is extremely stripped down, especially in comparison with the cataclysmic original Neverwinter Nights 2 showdown against the King of Shadows and the epic first expansion, Mask of the Betrayer. Here, you play as a pedestrian low-level hero not looking to save the world but to escort a trade mission on a ship heading from the overexposed Sword Coast to the never-before-seen jungles of Samarach. The game takes this concept so far that you can even sell goods between towns and set up trade routes to make a few bucks as actual merchants. The plot won’t necessarily grab you throughout its 20 hours or so of play, and the first few hours seem to have plenty of RPG clichés--you’ll lose all your gear early on in the game, for instance.

Instead of tackling the usual earth-shattering events of a Dungeons & Dragons game, here you take on the duties of a mop-up crew coming in after the party's over. The King of Shadows has already wreaked his havoc, and you're just some poor schlub out to try to make a buck by ensuring that merchants can once more ply their trade. The quests reflect this mundane storyline. You run a lot of lame errands to kill specific monsters and recover lost or stolen merchandise, and you clean out a bunch of formulaic dungeons, caves, graveyards, and the like. Most locales are fairly small, so they seem more like minor obstacles that can be raced through in a few minutes than the huge strongholds and lairs typical of RPGs. Trading feels more like a minor irritant than a worthwhile feature. Generally, you acquire the game's three goods--ore, lumber, and skins--in one place and then sell them at a profit somewhere else. Transactions are handled on simple menu screens when you enter a town, so you don't do anything more than hit a few buttons to add money to your coffers. And the concluding reveal and battle come up so suddenly and are so anticlimactic that you won't believe they're the ending of the game until you've exited to the desktop.

Rather than playing as a solo hero chosen for some great destiny, you roll up a party of four average joes just like you did way back when in D&D classics like the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale franchises. While you start off with a single lead protagonist meant to be your alter ego, you add three adventurers to the party roster almost immediately and can then add two more cohorts as the campaign moves along. You can take total control of all of these characters and fight battles in a style similar to the quasi-tactical struggles of old-time strategic RPGs, which makes the campaign ideal for multiplayer adventuring online. Where both the original campaign and the one in Mask of the Betrayer didn't seem to do much with the outstanding multiplayer options in the Neverwinter Nights series, this one seems almost designed to be played with friends, even though, oddly, Obsidian doesn’t recommend the scenario for multiplayer games.. The atmosphere is different from that in the previous Neverwinter Nights games; the emphasis on a single hero and a heavily scripted story has been dumped in favor of more traditional, more wide-open role-playing. If you pause the game enough or play with some friends, you can almost pretend that you're back in a turn-based game circa 1989.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine wasn’t quite up to the task of making this experience consistent. Artificial intelligence is a big problem. You can switch between having full control of your party members and letting the AI handle things, but neither option works all that well. If you go for total control, you're constantly pausing the action to wrangle with an interface geared for looking after just one character. The pull-down menu that never worked smoothly for the original Neverwinter Nights 2 is far worse when dealing with at least four characters. A proper turn-based interface would require a lot less messing around and investment of your time. You can turn on the AI to automate party decisions during combat, though this can lead to even worse results. Leaving the game on its default settings leads to suicidal melee attacks and all-out magic assaults that can empty your spellcasters' arsenals in moments, often in battles with piddly opponents, such as a swarm of bats. Actions can be thoroughly customized, but it's tough to come up with a formula that works in all battle situations. You can find yourself fussing with the settings so much that it makes more sense to simply shut the AI off and do everything manually.

Additions to the main aspects of Neverwinter Nights 2's gameplay are sort of adventurous, if not entirely successful. The best and worst new feature is an overland map used for traveling between quest locales, like towns and dungeons. This is a simple, old-fashioned interface where you pick a party leader and he or she then leads your adventurers into the wilderness. The good news is that this map allows for open-ended exploration that adds a sense of venturing into the unknown that hasn't been incorporated into a D&D RPG for years. You can discover loads of hidden goodies just by wandering around, from secret lairs to magical artifacts to bundles of clothing you can use to make an impromptu health kit. The bad news is that this map is loaded with a crazy number of random encounters. Unless you have a party leader like a ranger who has serious points dedicated to skills like hide, move silently, and survival, you can't help but stumble into one pack of monsters after another every time that you hit the overland map to head to a new quest. One moment you're set upon by skeletons, then it's a gang of gnolls, then zombies, then earth elementals, then spiders, and so on. Monsters can hit so hard and so often that you can never rest, which turns map travels into tedious slogs that wear you down over time. Still, the overland map could be a great feature with some serious tweaking. It will be interesting to see what modders do with it.

The expansion’s other extras include tweaks to the game engine that hardcore fans of the series may appreciate, but more-casual players may gloss over. Conversations have been tweaked to enhance the use of character skills that often go ignored. A menu featuring all party members now appears in the dialogue window, allowing you to change speakers on the fly to open up different conversation options and best use abilities such as intimidate and bluff. Parties are further emphasized with teamwork benefits that can give you bonuses such as fearsome roster, which can scare off enemies on the overland map, and circle of blades, which hits opponents with extra damage whenever you can flank them. You also get two new races (Gray Orc and Yuan-Ti Pureblood), a trio of new prestige classes (Doomguide, Hellfire Warlock, and the Swashbuckler), some minor changes to crafting, and the usual handfuls of new items and spells.

The visuals do a better job of building a believable setting than the plot does. Many scenes are gorgeous, and the jungle is the most realistic-looking terrain presented by the Neverwinter Nights 2 franchise. Just about everything is green and covered with lifelike lichen. Lighting effects and spell pyrotechnics are also spectacular. The voice acting, however, is awful. With the exception of the subtly slimy take on Forgotten Realms' ne'er-do-well Volo, the actors here seem to have just two gears: way over the top and dull monotone. It's a long way from the stellar acting found in the original Neverwinter Nights 2. On the other hand, the soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. This subtle, sweeping score is right up there with the best that Hollywood has to offer, giving you something to hum long after you've shut down the game.
Storm of Zehir isn't a terrible addition to the D&D gaming canon, although it is a lot less refined than you might expect. You have to suspect that this is the result of straying too far from the original Neverwinter Nights 2 formula, and ultimately this expansion pack isn't as enjoyable.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ Review

2008-12-05T10:40:00.002+07:00

Pesky controls and irritating slowdown curtail the fun you'll have in this zombie shooter.

If there is anything that can turn even the most banal of arcade shooters into a grotesquely adorable slugfest, it's zombies, and Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ is loaded with an impressive array of undead. It also boasts a great sense of humor and combines fast-paced shoot-'em-up gameplay with twisted fairy tale characters to create a more unique experience. Unfortunately, control issues, frequent slowdown, and a slew of other quirks often undermine your joyful zombie slaying, reducing Zombie BBQ to just another mediocre shooter on the DS.
Little Red Riding Hood's latest adventure opens in Fairy Tale Land, where a devastating zombie plague has turned the lovable denizens of folklore, such as Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio, into gruesome flesh-eating zombies. You'll assume control of either Riding Hood, who is deeply fond of her machine gun, or Momotaro, who riddles his enemies with ninja stars, as you search for the source of the infestation to save the world. Though the simplistic, disjointed plot barely holds the game together, it still emphasizes Zombie BBQ's refreshingly dark humor, which should be a treat for fans of classic zombie films.

Gameplay is straightforward, spanning both screens with an isometric perspective and challenging you to plow through zombies as you advance through a stage. Zombies appear on either screen and slowly shuffle their way toward Riding Hood, who is positioned on the bottom screen on a horizontal, seven-panel movement field that you tap to dodge enemy attacks. You simply select a zombie or touch the screen in the general direction you wish to fire and hold the stylus down to shoot, while lifting the stylus reloads; if you get touched by a zombie or level obstruction, your health meter depletes, and if it diminishes entirely, the game is over. The lack of objectives, character ability growth, or even weapon modification is disappointing, but there is sufficient weapon variety to keep things interesting. Weapon icons are conveniently displayed on the bottom screen, which you merely tap to select, making weapon cycling fast and efficient--a necessity when a horde of zombies is stumbling your way.
The game's most fun aspect is its healthy zombie variety and inclusion of minibosses, which are steadily introduced as you progress. You'll encounter spitting zombies, slimes that cover the field in goo, creatures that lob objects at you, and even flying skulls and laser-projecting nutcracker men; you'll also notice creative, if simple, boss design that forces you to pummel zombie bosses while quickly memorizing their attack patterns in standard arcade fashion. Though defeating bosses can be exciting, there is very little depth or strategy involved other than memorizing these attack patterns or shooting the occasional exploding barrel, which is often oversimplistic and dull.

While slaughtering zombies should be quite enjoyable and extremely entertaining, poor controls can make it frustrating at times. When you tap Riding Hood to instruct her to duck, for example, the game will sometimes register the command as shoot and you'll end up as zombie fodder. Similarly, when you target a zombie that has approached your movement field, the game will often misinterpret this as a movement command and position you in the path of imminent danger. The poor controls are accentuated by a drastic leap in difficulty that occurs about a third of the way through; at this point, disposing of zombies requires more luck than skill due to cheap enemy attacks that block you into a corner, where you're forced to take damage from other foes because you're unable to move out of the way. Furthermore, some boss attacks or even environmental objects significantly obscure your field of view.

Despite the game's control errors and steep difficulty jump, its most vexing problem is frequent slowdown, which occurs whenever multiple enemies are onscreen in conjunction with gunfire or explosives. This slowdown is highly disruptive when you're dodging attacks, cycling between guns, or dispatching a large zombie horde that's dangerously close to surrounding you, because it slows the action to a crawl. It's also incredibly frustrating when the slowdown causes you to die, because the game only autosaves between stages, which forces you to restart the level from the beginning. The slowdown is also often accompanied by bullets that go through zombies without dealing any damage, or even by the occasional freeze.

Graphically the game's 3D environments are rather primitive, but they're adequate for a DS title, with colorful, slimy dungeons and moderately detailed enchanted castles to blast your way through. Zombies are usually 2D with 3D bosses and are sufficiently grotesque; they spout blood as they take damage, and you can easily spy beating hearts and fresh zombie brains spewing everywhere. Very peppy, exaggerated rock music supports the action without being too annoying, while ambient sounds, such as explosions and zombie gurgles, are sufficient if not spectacular.

You should find yourself soaring through Zombie BBQ's 21 stages in a few hours since each stage is about three to four minutes long, but this will depend on how much bad luck you're having with certain bosses and what difficulty setting--normal, hard, or extreme--you're enduring. You could go back through the game on a harder setting, but you may find anything other than normal mode absolutely grueling considering the rate at which you experience slowdown or die from poor controls. Three additional modes--Survival, Boss Attack, and Stage Select--offer a bit of fun if you enjoy slaying bosses in succession or revisiting a favorite stage, but they don't add any new gameplay aspects. There's also no point in completing the game a second time to achieve a high score because you aren't awarded points. While there's no denying that Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ is an occasionally fun shooter with a good sense of humor, its low replay value, finicky controls, and frequent slowdown may make it a more frustrating than pleasurable experience.

By Shiva Stella, GameSpot

Chrono Trigger Review

2008-12-05T10:15:00.004+07:00

This perennial time-travel adventure is worth falling in love with all over again.

It's been more than 13 years since SquareSoft first released its time-travelling epic Chrono Trigger on the SNES. With an endearing cast of characters and a fantastic story that took place throughout the ages, it went down in history as what many would call one of the greatest games ever made. It was later rereleased as a part of Final Fantasy Chronicles on the PlayStation, and though it included several new features such as anime cutscenes and a detailed bestiary, it suffered from long and frequent loading times. The Nintendo DS rerelease includes new areas to explore, an all-new ending that better ties into its sequel, Chrono Cross, and all of the additions of its PS1 predecessor (minus loading issues), making it the definitive edition of Chrono Trigger.

When the Kingdom of Guardia gathers to commemorate its millennial anniversary, the young Crono celebrates by sleeping in. Roused out of bed by his mother, he rushes to the festivities to catch the public demonstration of his inventor friend Lucca's latest creation, and in his haste literally runs into Marle, a hyperactive girl who looks more than a little familiar and insists that he show her around. With little choice in the matter, Crono brings his new companion to Lucca's show, where an experimental teleportation device malfunctions, sending Marle through a rift in the space-time continuum. Armed only with a wooden sword and dangerously spiky hair, Crono follows Marle into the past to attempt a temporal extrication, only to begin a long and arduous journey to prevent a tragic future from unfolding.

Along the way, Crono and his friends encounter an exceptional cast of allies, including the heroic Frog, a medieval knight sworn to defeat the sinister Fiendlord who turned him into an anthropomorphic amphibian; Robo, a humanoid robot from the future with a penchant for gardening; and Ayla, the hotheaded and enormously strong chieftain of a prehistoric tribe. Together, these time trotters face down a memorable cast of villains, from the cold and calculating Azala, queen of a race of hyperintelligent dinosaurs, to Magus, the scythe-wielding sorcerer supreme better known as the Fiendlord, in their quest to defeat the evil entity known as Lavos. From beginning to ending (all 14 of them!), Chrono Trigger offers a deeply satisfying combination of storytelling and character development that few games have managed to top, and that even the most stone-hearted will find emotionally stirring.

To this day, Chrono Trigger is a fairly nonstandard role-playing experience due to a number of innovative design decisions, but this was especially true at the time of its release. Its combat system allows for your three party members to attack separately or to combine their skills to create double or triple techniques of enormous power. Given that enemies are not randomly encountered and instead appear to wander the various dungeons that you explore, it's very possible to skip the vast majority of your fights should you choose to. As a result, the world map, which is represented by an extreme birds-eye view of your party, can be peacefully explored without fear of ambush. Considering that Chrono Trigger deals with the concept of time travel, any decision you make can have world-changing--and often not immediately noticeable--effects on the future. For example, your every deed at the Millennial Fair in the very beginning of the game may potentially come back to haunt you not long afterward. This cause-and-effect gameplay forces you to consider the short- and long-term consequences of your actions, and is also used to great effect in completing side quests.

In addition to all of the bonus content originally added as part of the PS1 port, the DS version of Chrono Trigger includes an optional touch-screen control scheme, the Lost Sanctum quest hub, the Arena of the Ages monster battleground, a series of dungeons called the Dimensional Vortices, a revelatory new ending, and a polished-up retranslation. The touch-screen controls move battle commands from the top screen into the bottom to free up more space, and the new translation maintains the charm and gravitas of the original while reinterpreting some words and lines to give them a bit more meaning. The Dimensional Vortices and new ending offer additional challenges, new items, and story closure on several ambiguous issues directly relevant to Chrono Cross. The Lost Sanctum is an isolated region that exists in two different eras and is ultimately forgettable thanks to its unimportance to the story and the frustrating fetch-quest nature of its missions. The Arena of the Ages is a new area that lets you adopt a monster and train it to battle against other monsters for potentially useful items. As with the Lost Sanctum, the Arena serves no story purpose, and even the ability to pit your monster against a friend's via local Wi-Fi isn't enough to make it worth accessing regularly.
Visually, Chrono Trigger hasn't changed one bit throughout the years, and its rich, sprite-based graphics, beautiful vistas, and colorful spell effects actually look better than ever on the DS. Similarly, the epic and moving soundtrack brilliantly crafted by famed composers Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu continues to amaze years later.
Chrono Trigger is a fantastic synthesis of excellent storytelling, game design, music, and gameplay that has withstood the test of time and should be considered required playing for any fan of role-playing games. Though its extra content is hit or miss and it's essentially a direct port of a game released 13 years ago, the DS version is easily the definitive edition of this masterpiece, regardless of whether Chrono Trigger is one of those games you've only ever heard of before or you're a dedicated fan who has played through it dozens of times.

By Lark Anderson, GameSpot

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia Review

2008-12-05T10:09:00.002+07:00

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia improves upon its predecessor just enough to make it a fun, solid addition to the spin-off series.

Just over two years ago, Pokemon Ranger gave Nintendo DS owners an unorthodox spin on Pokemon with its unique touch-screen capturing controls. It turned out to be an enjoyable game, eschewing the franchise's traditional evolution and "Gotta catch 'em all!" tenets. With Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, Nintendo gives more of the same, though with a few small but welcome improvements that add a little depth to the experience while keeping its quick pace.

You start out as a fresh-faced student at a ranger school, where you learn about the various aspects of taming and helping Pokemon in the wild. Like in the original Pokemon Ranger, there's no battling here: rangers and students instead strive to keep the peace between Pokemon and humans. You capture the critters as in any other game in the franchise, but in this game you do so by expressing friendly, benevolent feelings through a device known as a styler, and once you use the Pokemons' special abilities to help you, you kindly release them back into the wild. There's no Pokemon leveling up or evolution here. As you progress from student to full-blown ranger, you take on the job of stopping the fiendishly named Team Dim Sun criminal organization from brainwashing Pokemon to do its nefarious bidding. The entire concept sounds a little trite, and many of the story's surprises are predictable, but it's got just enough lighthearted mystery to satisfy a younger audience.

In any case, the real star of Shadows of Almia is its refreshing capture system. The core idea entails drawing a circle around the Pokemon you're attempting to capture. If it bumps into the line you've drawn, it gets destroyed and you have to start drawing again. If its attack hits your line, you take damage. However, where the last game required that you draw a certain number of consecutive circles around a creature (without interruption) in order to succeed, in Shadows of Almia you need to fill up an empty friendship gauge. One complete circle fills up the gauge a little bit, with the catch being that it gradually depletes if you wait too long in between scribble attempts.
These changes make the capture process a bit easier because you're not forced into an all-or-nothing situation, and they also add a hint of strategy. Instead of just scribbling circles as fast as you can, you're now employing an exciting stick-and-move strategy in some of the tougher encounters--lifting your stylus just in time to avoid a series of attacks or catching an especially quick Pokemon when it pauses briefly. Each Pokemon has different attacks and movement patterns (though a number of them are similar) such that almost every new monster encounter brings a unique capture experience and a slight level of intrigue and uncertainty. Save for the large boss encounters, each capture instance can be completed in tens of seconds. Therefore, capturing rarely gets boring thanks to its brisk and varied nature.

Any Pokemon you capture can be used for its special ability during other capture sessions. For instance, you can use a fighting-type Pokemon to enhance your capturing power or a grass-type Pokemon to slow down your target by causing it to sprout foliage. You can also use special abilities on the field as you explore Almia. Like in the last game, the exploring portions are less exciting than capturing, and they employ the same obstacle-clearing mentality. For example, you can't clear a stream without a Pokemon that can swim; if there's a boulder in your way, you'll need a Pokemon with a high-level crush ability to smash it. These parts get progressively intricate and sometimes require a little use of your noggin. But you'll also quickly learn that in many cases, either the Pokemon you need for especially taxing obstacles is close by or a unique-looking Pokemon encountered for the first time will come in handy later in whatever dungeon you're in. This takes away some of the challenge, but at least it saves you some of the frustration of backtracking just for one little critter.
Exploration has changed too: Shadows of Almia includes optional (but highly recommended) side quests. Bystanders will ask you to help find, rescue, or calm down their Pokemon, among other similar tasks. It's nice to take a break from your main Team Dim Sun-thwarting duties to wander around a bit and fill out your catalog of monster encounters, but the quests also offer you the opportunity to meet partner Pokemon--those that never leave your side until you substitute in another partner--and to power up your capture tool with a variety of offensive, defensive, and elemental bonuses. These additions help flesh out the game a bit more, and leveling up your styler might satisfy those who would miss leveling up their Pokemon. The only slightly annoying factor here is that the quests must be taken one at a time, forcing you to backtrack to clients before taking on new quests instead of just queuing up quests as you encounter them.

The world of Almia is presented with vivid 2D graphics and large detailed sprites. Each area you travel to has a distinct feel, with colors that pop off the screen and its own collection of inhabitants. Though this variety is primarily due to the predictable use of lava, snow, desert, and underwater environments, the world is no less pleasing to the eye. What should have been improved upon are the Pokemon calls that you hear whenever you pass by them. They reek of 8-bit audio, and hearing a Ninetails or Shieldon in this game roar at you is incredibly grating, though not in the intimidating way a roar should be.
Nintendo hasn't made sweeping improvements on the original Pokemon Ranger, which is a slight disappointment given the two-year gap between entries. All told, however, the improvements do make for a more complete experience overall that provides the same invigorating mechanics introduced in the first game. With a meaty adventure that could easily take you past 25 hours, the return of downloadable side quests thanks to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and the same core that made the original game so refreshing, Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia is a worthy addition to the series.

By Austin Shau, GameSpot

Neverland Card Battles Review

2008-12-05T10:00:00.002+07:00

Neverland Card Battles gets off to a poor start and goes downhill from there.

Turn-based strategy and collectible-card gaming collide in Neverland Card Battles, the latest release in the little-known Cardinal Arc franchise from Japan. And when we say "collide," we mean it, because this strategy-card hybrid is awfully close to a train wreck. Breaking out a regular deck of cards for some 52 Pick-Up is a better use of your spare time than firing up this exercise in frustration, which is afflicted with an obtuse tutorial, brutal difficulty, tedious gameplay, and eight-bit visuals.

Even with all those negatives, Neverland Card Battles could have been a contender. Developer Idea Factory certainly starts from an interesting place. The single-player campaign's backstory (there is also a storyless ad-hoc multiplayer mode) is based on tales told in the Japanese anime-influenced Neverland universe, which gives the game something of an exotic vibe from the very beginning. You play Galahad, a human gambler blessed with the ownership of a pack of magical Spectral Cards, shards of a gate that imprisons the evil god Hellgaia, who wants to destroy humanity. Given that this gate is in the process of breaking down, you are summoned to do battle by Egma, the leprechaun-like teen guardian of the gods, with the survival of the entire world of Neverland at stake. Or so it seems. Making sense of the story developed here relies on you already knowing something about the world on which everything is based, and we don't, so some of the finer details may be a bit off-kilter.
Game mechanics are also mildly innovative. Play is based on an oddly fitting mishmash of the classic board game Othello and traditional collectible-card gaming in the style of Magic: The Gathering. Instead of building decks and throwing down cards in straightforward duels, you earn the points needed to play cards by taking control of spaces in checkerboard battle arenas. In each turn, you move both your hero Galahad and any summoned allies to change the color of the board and thereby gain more card-playing power. The idea is of course to take control of more boxes than your opponent and use the points earned to play and maintain the most formidable card army on the board. Combat itself plays out in a fairly conventional fashion for a collectible-card game, with each card representing warriors, mages, monsters, and spell effects. All have various special attributes: stats such as hit points and attack damage, costs for use and maintenance, and so forth. As with every other card-based game out there, battles involve a mix of strategy and luck. You need good fortune when drawing cards and solid tactical thinking when it comes to determining the right time to play them.

Sound simple? It sort of is, although Neverland Card Battles sure doesn't take it easy on you. The tutorial is more of a sample battle than an actual primer on how to play the game. Your supposed teacher, Egma, tosses off a couple of brief comments about the fundamentals of play, but then simply settles in to a duel that is awfully tough for a novice to win. No actual tips are provided regarding card selection, movement strategy, when to play specific cards, or even how to move. You're just stranded in the middle of a match and have to figure out what to do by watching your opponent's moves. Expect to lose this opening "tutorial" battle a couple of times while figuring things out. You can't skip this fight, either, because the campaign isn't unlocked until you emerge from it with a victory. Even a draw isn't good enough.
Things don't get any easier when you progress to the actual campaign. Battles are extremely tough, considering that you have to face a computer-controlled opponent that not only knows the deck inside and out, but also seems to get some incredibly favorable draws while you get stuck with underpowered crap that you don't want to play or overpowered crap that you can't afford to play. The learning curve levels off somewhat as you move through the dozen or so matches, but it still takes many hours before you learn the deck well enough to feel like you're on a level playing field. The game's checkerboard battlefields tend to be huge, too, which drags out the frustration early on because it takes so long to stumble through each match. Even after you've mostly sussed everything out, the big maps still put too much territory between you and your enemies when duels begin. Limiting you to drawing just a single card per turn throughout games, even when you're down to holding one card in your hand, also slows everything to a crawl. Almost all of these irritants would have been avoided with a more thorough and comprehensive tutorial, which could have at least explained the card limitation and the strategy that you might employ when starting at such a long distance from your opponent. It's hard to imagine why the developers didn't make more of an effort here. A proper walkthrough of the deck and the strategic concepts behind play is sorely needed, especially for those without collectible-cardgame experience.

You don't need to have any experience with other collectible-card games to know that this one is ugly. Aside from the close-ups of the oft-beautiful card art displayed when you go into battle or pull up a card to check its numbers, everything here is blurry. The battle visuals are so rough and indistinct that it is just about impossible to tell one summoned creature from another; they're all little more than colored blobs on a checkerboard. Dueling screens are even worse, with slightly larger blobs duking it out via simplistic animations that you would normally need a time machine to see in this day and age. Audio is similarly old-timey. The soundtrack is the same old triumphal ode that has been featured in games going back to the Sega Genesis, and the voice acting is the standard sub-Saturday-morning-cartoon junk depressingly common to anything inspired by anime. Vocals are at least unintentionally hilarious at times, especially when characters start yelling in the middle of sentences for no reason whatsoever.
A sense of promise wasted is what lingers after giving up on Neverland Card Battles. Combining turn-based strategy with card-based combat is certainly an intriguing concept, but a series of terrible design decisions blows any opportunity of blending these concepts into a successful game.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Midnight Club: LA Remix Review

2008-12-05T09:52:00.002+07:00

Almost as much an RPG as it is a racer, Midnight Club: LA Remix would be a very good addition to any patient car nut's portable library.

The last PSP version of Midnight Club, Dub Edition, was plagued with frame rate problems, insanely long load times, and hammy acting during its crummy story bits. The only issue that remains in its newly released sequel, LA Remix, is the duration of the loading screens. Actually, there are still some over-the-top trash-talking and too-extreme-for-you characters, but the thin story serves its purpose to motivate you to demolish the competition. With its big list of varied vehicles, a substantially sized city, and great visuals, Midnight Club: LA Remix is a surprisingly dense PSP game. Remix is packed to the brim with hours of intensely fast racing as well as addictive aesthetic and performance upgrades, making for a well-rounded racing experience. Its crushing difficulty will have you agonizingly restarting races during anything tougher than the easy-rank challenges as you arduously advance through a slow career--but even that won't deter you from having a good time behind the portable wheel.

Intricate shortcuts litter the metropolitan playground and you'll be forced to find and exploit them to get ahead of the overly talented competition. Whether you're sprinting to reach a goal or doing laps around the city center you'll immediately notice that the AI competitors are a tough crowd. Opposition suddenly becomes violently aggressive when you graduate beyond the easy-class matches, forcing you to restart races at a constant and aggravating rate. Though you can easily be smashed off course and into a wall by the annoying trash-talkers that burn past you, they will barely budge when nudged, slammed, or grinded against. It's almost as if they are immovable on a preset course. Blasting by the competition at almost 200 miles per hour after a turbo boost or drafting an opponent's rear-end slipstream to finish first is an immensely satisfying feeling, though it rarely happens without you limping through the city in a dozen tries as you attempt to figure out the critical path to the finish line.
In spite of this punishing career challenge, Midnight Club: LA Remix is ridiculously fun. Tearing across cities, launching over freeways, and drifting through tightly woven Los Angeles traffic is surprisingly exhilarating on a portable screen. The sense of speed, heightened by a subtle screen shake, makes for intense and exaggerated driving with surprisingly tight vehicle controls on the PSP's analog nub. And whether you're rotating in midair or dipping between lanes on two wheels, you'll find that you're almost always able to navigate your ride exactly as you intend.
When you're not in the middle of one of the high-octane races you'll be navigating the shrunken version of Los Angeles in a free-roaming mode in search of new events or rival racers. When you approach one of them, flashing your headlights with the D pad initiates the race, or a minigame-like race to the starting line that can earn you a little bit of reputation before the real deal kicks off. The reputation, or rep, is very similar to a role-playing game's experience system. Each win earns you a certain amount of experience with increased difficulty yielding more rep as you build up your name as one of LA's finest racers. Once you've earned a ridiculous amount of rep, you can take a trip to Tokyo for an entirely new layout with all the same fun and frustrations. Since you're earning so few rep points at a time, however, you might start to feel like LA Remix is a little too like an RPG at times. Though it never stops being fun, the repetition of driving the same routes in the city's racetracks begins to irk as you grind your way to a better rep with repeated matches. It's a slow burn, but you'll feel the reward when you unlock delivery or payback missions to break up the standard competition.
Vehicular customization is also a rewarding process, and it's where Midnight Club shines. Pining over which hood would look best with your brand-new Camaro concept car is something you wouldn't expect to have such a profound effect on you, but detailing your vehicle with personalized parts and paint jobs allows for incredible aesthetic tailoring. While it's not quite as deep, performance customization offers an incentive to save some of your earned scratch to drop on better engines or exhaust instead of patterned paint jobs and side skirts with boosts in acceleration and handling to help you in your rep-race to the top.
You'll definitely see advancement in your own skill as you progress, but it seems to do little against the previously mentioned crushing AI. You'll find yourself relying on your vehicle's special abilities and power-ups when you're in a tight squeeze: slowing down time with the Zone ability allows you to focus on sharp turns or slaloming between pedestrian traffic, while Roar sees you blasting traffic out of the way with a deep pound and Agro allows you to simply smash through it without consequence. More special abilities like the vehicle-launching Pulse or slick-controlling Ice are available during the four-player competitive ad hoc multiplayer. You can take any of your 58 tightly tuned cars or bikes against a few friends in standard races as well as a few other unique game types: Capture the Flag is full of ramming and slamming as you try to steal the flag marker from your opponents to score points; Paint is a trial of checkpoints as you try and paint the city in your colors before the clock runs out; and Tag is exactly as you remember it on the playground--except you're T-boning and fishtailing opponents' rides instead of tapping their shoulder.

Midnight Club: LA Remix is an extensive game with loads to offer, but the difficulty might hamper your experience. You'll spend plenty of time retrying and redoing races as you attempt to rack up your rep, but the grinding rarely becomes a problem because you're enjoying the intensity of kicking off of ramps for crazy hang time, drifting around tight bends with the help of automotive super powers, and creaming your pals in the crash-heavy multiplayer modes. As one of the better-looking and best-controlling PSP racing games on the market, LA Remix is a must-play for portable racing pros thanks to the variety of game modes, substance of the city, and a mess of great customizable rides.

By Mitch Dyer, GameSpot

TGS 2008: Musou Orochi: Maou Sairin Hands-On

2008-11-29T20:47:00.002+07:00

We report for duty in the second Warriors Orochi game to come to the PSP.

It's no secret that developer Koei has found a specific niche with its many Warriors games, and Musou Orochi: Maou Sairin is no exception. When Warriors Orochi first came to the PSP earlier this year, it brought with it the familiar one-against-many combat scenarios and a rich character roster. We hunted down the sequel at Tokyo Game Show 2008, grabbed our halberd/sword/staff, and waded into the fray.
Like its predecessor, Musou Orochi: Maou Sairin is all about combat. You choose a team of three characters from the quasi-historical roster and do battle in samurai keeps, open plains, mountainous passes, and a variety of other environments. Though you represent a team of three warriors, you use only one of them at a time, magically switching between them with the press of a button. Each warrior has a handful of attacks, varying in strength and range, and you'll find yourself employing them all during the course of a battle. In addition to the legions of cannon-fodder enemies, we also encountered stronger foes whose attacks were more varied and powerful. As we cut our way through the demo levels, we found that making use of our full range of attacks was the best way to slaughter hundreds of hapless foes, and was downright necessary when facing stronger opponents.
The battles you engage in are spread across a variety of game modes, ranging from the relatively forgiving Story Mode to the brutally difficult Dramatic Mode. The latter mode grants you but one life, and succumbing to the swords of your enemies will end your game straight away. There is also a Survival Mode that lets you take your favorite characters into one-on-one combat, and a versus and two-player matching mode for online play.
As you might expect, Warriors Orochi's second outing feels a lot like the first. We got a glimpse of a wide variety of game modes, but each seemed to play to the series' strengths: giving players control of a powerful warrior and setting them loose in a densely populated battlefield. Koei isn't reinventing the wheel, but the company seems to have dialed in on what Warriors fans want, and is continuing to deliver with Musou Orochi: Maou Sairin. Keep an eye on GameSpot in the coming months for word on a possible North American release, as well as updated impressions of this hack-and-slash-apalooza.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

TGS 2008: Final Fantasy Agito XIII Trailer Impressions

2008-11-29T20:25:00.003+07:00

Don't be agitated: Square Enix showed off a brief teaser of its upcoming role-playing game for the PSP.

TOKYO--More CGI goodness was on display today at Square Enix's remarkably dark Mega Theater on the TGS show floor. All three Final Fantasy XIII games were represented by trailers, including the PSP iteration, Final Fantasy Agito XIII. The trailer was remarkably similar to the one we'd already seen earlier this year, but in case we missed a detail or two, we thought we'd bring you a quick look at yet another promising game in the famed Final Fantasy series.

The trailer begins by showing us an enormous crystal lighting up as the famous Final Fantasy arpeggios set the stage for the coming drama. We then see imagery that is bound to give most viewers a chill: a Hitler-esque leader stands on a dais, calling out propaganda in a commanding speech to the legions of apparent soldiers ready to cater to his every wish. The placement of the leader and his subjects, as well as the scratchy, black-and-white visual style, hark back to the heyday of the Nazi regime, and it's chilling to see such imagery, even today.
In an even-more chilling twist, the buildings lining the street around the soldiers transform and then fly into the air. They are, in fact, enormous battleships, and they fly across the sky en masse, a terrifying sight to a peaceful nation. The view then changes, and we see a tall, thin spire rising into the air. The camera moves downward toward the crystal that we saw at the beginning of the trailer. The crystal cracks and shatters, and the camera pulls away to reveal its island residence. The entire isle then explodes, perhaps taking all of its residents with it.
But maybe there is a survivor after all. From chaos, a shrouded figure emerges and is soon surrounded by the regimented troops so ready to commit to their apparently evil cause. The troops aim, but our hero isn't a single renegade after all. As the camera rotates, we see that more caped silhouettes join the lone rebel, until there are a dozen or even more. The trailer also cut to something that we didn't see in many of the other trailers in Square Enix's shadowed theater: gameplay footage. Although there wasn't much, we did see that the game will let you command a party of four, and based on that footage, it seems that each party member is assigned one of the four face buttons.
And in a final gasp, the trailer informed us that Final Fantasy Agito XIII will be released for the PSP, but it indicated no release date. Of course, we'd rather show you the footage than describe it, but for now, it seems that there is plenty to look forward to where Agito XIII is concerned, and indeed, for all of the upcoming games in that crystal-themed collection. Keep your eyes open: We'll bring you more news as it becomes available.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Resistance 2 Review

2008-11-26T20:57:00.002+07:00

Resistance 2 is bigger, better, and broader--everything a stellar sequel should be.

Almost two years after Resistance: Fall of Man gave PlayStation 3 owners their first great exclusive shooter, Resistance 2 has arrived bearing more great news. No, humanity hasn't gained an edge in its desperate fight against the alien Chimera (quite the opposite, in fact). The news is that Resistance 2 takes the grand apocalyptic setting and tight, fast-paced action of its predecessor and improves upon it in almost every way. Bigger battles, richer environments, and an outstanding new eight-player cooperative mode elevate Resistance 2 above almost every other shooter on the PS3.

From the first moments of the single-player campaign, Resistance 2 proclaims its dedication to grandeur. As you crawl from the wreckage of your transport helicopter, you look up to see a sinister, towering machine laying waste to your surroundings, its shiny black bulk standing in stark relief to the smoky blue sky and green Nordic scrub. Environments (and enemies) like these, vividly colored and remarkably big, are prevalent throughout the campaign. Your journey will take you across North America, where you'll visit a fantastic variety of rural, suburban, urban, and alien landscapes. You'll see attention to detail in the plants under your feet, in the towering skyscrapers above your head, and everywhere in between. The scars of the Chimeran invasion clash dramatically against the technicolor mid-century American backdrop, setting a superb stage for exciting action.

And make no mistake, the action is the real star here. The protagonist, Nathan Hale, and his fellow soldiers are run-of-the-mill characters, and the functional story is a bit too vague to be interesting. Intel documents scattered about each level provide intriguing background and foreshadowing, but most of them are hidden away and require too much errant exploration to find. The only time you'll feel any emotional connection to the proceedings is when you stop to listen to the radio. The scattered monologues from radioman Henry Stillman provide a wrenching window into the despair of a nation overrun, and they're the lone narrative highlight.
Despite the lackluster story, Resistance 2's excellent single-player campaign is a thrilling roller coaster ride across dozens of varied locales, each infested with Chimera. Your horrible alien foes run the gamut from tiny chittering scorpions to fanged foot soldiers, from shielded two-story titans to lumbering forty-story leviathans. They come at you in waves of increasing size and intensity; they are quick, aggressive, and accurate, and dispatching them will take skill and persistence. Resistance 2 isn't an easy game, but that just makes your hard-fought victories sweeter.
To achieve these victories, you'll need to stay alive. You can fully recover your health by ducking out of the line of fire for a few seconds, a tactic you'll need to use often. While you usually aren't too far from a checkpoint, you're often far enough to make death very unappealing. This is particularly true during the massive boss battles and the large-scale conflicts that pit you against legions of increasingly nasty Chimera. These are the most exciting encounters in the game, and though the former are less challenging than the latter, there's nothing quite like squaring off against a beast the size of the Chrysler Building.

The 12 guns you wield throughout the campaign are also quite satisfying. Some old favorites have returned, like the workhorse M5A2 Carbine, and there are a few great additions, like the .44 Magnum that shoots bullets that double as remote-detonated explosives. Secondary attacks like this one are a feature on every gun, and they effectively double the destructive options at your disposal. Though the weapons don't feel particularly realistic, they are so uniquely deadly and fun to use that you'll hardly notice. You can only carry two guns at a time, but the game does a good job of making sure you have a chance to use them all. There are also a few different types of powerful grenades at your disposal (notably the fiery air-fuel and spiky hedgehog), and they round out your very effective and very gratifying arsenal.
While the campaign is a lengthy (about 10 hours) and satisfying endeavor, the online cooperative mode is what really sets Resistance 2 apart. In this mode, up to eight players fight their way through hordes of Chimera to accomplish a set of objectives. Each player must choose one of three specific classes, each with its own guns and special abilities. The Medic drains enemy health and passes it on to teammates, an essential function because no one can regenerate health. The Special Ops uses a battle rifle of sorts and is the only source of ammunition refills. The Soldier carries a gatling gun that can generate a protective shield, defending his teammates and shredding the Chimera simultaneously. This interdependency binds players together and creates a frantic, engaging team dynamic.
As a further incentive, each player earns experience and currency throughout the mission that can be used to unlock more weapons, special abilities, and stat-enhancing gear. These powerful bonuses aren't easy to attain, which makes earning them all the more satisfying. The action plays out on a variety of sizable multiplayer maps inspired by the campaign levels. These maps each have a bevy of objectives, and every mission takes a few objectives at random and strings them together, so subsequent playthroughs of the same map feel different. This is a good thing, because you'll have to run a number of successful missions on the first map before you unlock the next, and so on. Each map is designed so that enemies can (and will) come at you from a number of directions. Missions are hard and demand teamwork and skill, so each time you vanquish a wave of enemies it feels like a small victory. Add this sense of accomplishment to the addictive and rewarding experience system, and you've got a game mode that's truly excellent.

If you're not feeling cooperative, Resistance 2 boasts a robust competitive mode as well. Maps accommodate as few as two and as many as 60 players, and do so with virtually no lag. The usual Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag ("Core Control") modes are available, but the best of the bunch is Skirmish. In this mode, teams are divided up into squads, and each squad receives on-the-fly objectives to complete. Objectives are updated often and can change the flow of battle drastically, so each match has a unique, frantic feel. Unlike in the cooperative mode, you have all the abilities and weapons in the single-player campaign readily available to you, so everyone is more or less evenly matched. You can also play ranked matches to earn experience and upgrades, and even though it's not quite as engaging as the cooperative mode, the competitive multiplayer is still a blast.
All in all, Resistance 2 is an excellent game. The stirring scale of the single-player levels is impressive and the pervasive details make them truly awesome. Despite the squandered story, blasting your way through the campaign is electrifying, thanks largely to the deadly weapons in your arsenal. The cooperative multiplayer is a resounding success, and the competitive modes are terrific in their own right. Anyone looking for a superb shooter experience need look no further than Resistance 2.

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Review

2008-11-26T20:38:00.003+07:00

The MK and DC crowds are a surprisingly good combo, but questionable roster balancing keeps this enjoyable fighter from achieving greatness.

In a way, it feels as if many fighting game characters have stepped right out of the pages of a comic book. They wear bizarre costumes, spend a lot of time punching and kicking other people, and possess inexplicable powers. Pitting fighting game characters against comic book heroes and villains has been done before, and in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the meshing of Raiden's crew and Superman's posse makes for some pretty exciting action--especially online. But even as the game moves the series back toward the fundamental strengths of Mortal Kombat in some ways, it departs from the series' essence in others. As a result, longtime fans may be left with mixed feelings, and newcomers drawn to the series for the first time by the inclusion of DC characters may find it hard to get a handle on things.

The story that explains just how these two distinct sets of outlandishly attired, superpowered beings clash is such pure, unabashed comic book silliness that you'll have a hard time not being won over. Simultaneous mishaps involving Darkseid in the DC universe and Shao Kahn in the MK universe result in these two evil beings merging into the exponentially evil Dark Kahn. Dark Kahn's power causes the two universes to begin fusing, and the heroes and villains on each side of the universal divide mistakenly blame the weirdos from the other side for invading their land. This merging of universes also causes severe imbalances in the powers of some characters, and serves as a convenient excuse for how the Joker can go toe-to-toe with Superman and have a fighting chance. As you play through the game's two story mode offerings, the flimsy excuses that cause the unlikely matchups almost become something of a running joke, and help make these modes fun for the few hours that they last.

Unless you've somehow managed to avoid playing a fighting game for your entire life, you'll immediately grasp the basic concept of MK vs. DC: punch, kick, throw, and otherwise bludgeon your opponent into submission before they do the same to you. While some Mortal Kombat games have offered two or three fighting styles per character, MK vs. DC does away with that, creating a back-to-basics feel that switches the emphasis back to the special moves that really differentiate the characters. And while the action takes place in 3D and you can move left and right in the environment as well as back and forth, sidestepping is slow and only occasionally useful. The majority of the action takes place on a 2D plane, which also contributes to the game feeling very much like a solid return to the roots of the Mortal Kombat series. The action is fast-paced, controls tightly, and is just a lot of fun.

With a total of 22 playable characters, the roster may be a bit short compared to what fans of the series have come to expect, but it makes up for that by making each character play very differently from the others. The 11 Mortal Kombat warriors on hand are all top-shelf, and while one or two of the DC characters may seem like odd choices the majority of them mesh surprisingly well with the MK crowd. While the powers of some DC characters have been toned down a bit as a result of that darn universe-merging fluctuation of energies, the characters themselves have been created here with a great deal of loyalty to the source material. Their personalities are intact, and the arsenals of special attacks at their disposal are impressive.

While the core gameplay is largely a return to the feel of the early Mortal Kombat games, there are some elements here that are pretty minor when taken individually, but add up to make MK vs. DC distinctly different from its predecessors. There are a few minigames that pop up when certain circumstances occur, and they all blend in to the action seamlessly. For example, if you're close to your opponent, you can attempt to grab him or her and initiate Klose Kombat. If you're successful, the camera will pull in, and for a short time, you can perform a variety of painful-looking moves by pressing one of the four face buttons. There's a great risk-versus-reward dynamic at play: your button presses are displayed onscreen, and if your opponents match them, they'll counter your attack with powerful blows of their own and escape from Klose Kombat in the process. It's a cool system that gives the attacker a decent advantage but still offers the defender a pretty good chance of turning the tables.

A very similar minigame is initiated any time one player knocks another to a lower level of the arena. As in Klose Kombat, the attacker can pummel the defender by pushing face buttons, and the defender can turn the tables by matching the attacker's inputs. In Free Fall Kombat, the attacker is able, after a damage meter has been filled to a certain point with standard attacks, to execute a special move that sends the opponent flying into the ground below in a particularly painful, damaging way. Like Klose Kombat, there's a good risk-versus-reward principle at work here, and the fact that these fisticuffs are taking place while the characters dramatically plummet through the air gives the action a larger-than-life, comic book feel.

Last and least among the minigames is Test Your Might, which occurs in certain areas when one combatant lands a powerful attack on the other and sends the opponent flying back against a wall. The initiator then charges at the defender and propels the latter through the walls of the office building or dungeon. Both parties then pound on the buttons as furiously as they can. If the attacker out-pounds the defender, more damage will be done, while the defender pounds buttons in the hopes of reducing the amount of damage he or she suffers. The simplicity of this minigame makes it less compelling than the other two, and only three of the game's 14 arenas have the horizontal arrangement for it, so it occurs far less frequently.

One final, important addition to the action here is the rage meter, which fills up as you take damage or are blocked by your opponent. Your build-up of rage can be used for one of two things. If the meter is halfway full or more, you can spend one full segment of it on a combo breaker, immediately putting a stop to the flurry of attacks your opponent is unleashing. If both sections are full, you can opt to spend the whole thing to enter rage mode, which allows you to pummel your opponent uninterrupted by his or her attacks and fight your way through his or her blocks, though you'll still take damage from any blows he or she lands. Either of these can turn the tables in a fight if used well, and since using rage for one purpose sacrifices your ability to use it for the other, this seemingly simple feature calls for some significant and often split-second decision-making.

On the default difficulty setting, the game seems to adjust dramatically in response to your skill level. Lose a match in the story or arcade modes a few times and it suddenly gets a whole lot easier, which means that players of just about any skill level can fumble their way through these modes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the game feel more like a brawler in which you can button-mash your way through just about anything, rather than a well-tuned fighting game that rewards precise, skillful play. This impression is deceiving, though, and upping the difficulty of the AI, or better yet, playing against other people, reveals the depth of a fighting system that's sure to please veteran fighters. With precise timing, you can chain together combo attacks that juggle your enemies in the air helplessly for a bit, but these are extremely difficult to pull off. Neophytes drawn to the game by the DC characters may find themselves a bit out of their league, and while there's a standard practice mode in which you can attempt attacks at your leisure, the finer points can be difficult to pick up without a proper training mode.

Of course, past Mortal Kombat games have been known as much for their over-the-top gore as for their gameplay, and for those fans who feel this is an intrinsic part of what makes Mortal Kombat what it is, MK vs. DC will be disappointing. While there are still ridiculous amounts of blood that go flying each time you so much as punch your opponent, you won't see any comically grisly beheadings, dismemberments, and other bombastic acts of violence that have characterized the series. The victor still gets the opportunity to pull off an extremely painful fatality or, in the case of the good guys on the DC side, a heroic brutality. Many of them are clever and funny, but they're still far tamer than what we've seen in the past. Ultimately, this change doesn’t impact the gameplay itself, but that gore is part of the MK experience, so the way it's been toned down here may turn some fans off.

A more material issue is the surprisingly limited amount of content you get in this package. There are the two stories that don't take you long to complete, and after you finish them, you'll have unlocked only two additional characters and seen just about everything the game has to offer. There's an arcade mode which, in typical Mortal Kombat fashion, has you fight your way to the top of a ladder, and in a nice touch, you can choose to have your opponents made up of exclusively Mortal Kombat characters, DC characters, or a combination of the two. But the short, disappointing endings you get for finishing arcade mode with any given character provide little incentive to come back to it much. There's also a mode called Kombo Challenge in which you pick a character and choose one of 10 combo attacks to attempt to pull off. At first glance, this looks like a useful mode to help newcomers pick up the finer points of the game's combat, but the timing required to successfully do even the easiest of the combos in Kombo Challenge is unforgivingly precise. With only 22 characters, 14 arenas, and no special costumes or anything else worth unlocking, the single-player experience dries up a little too quickly.

So ultimately, whatever longevity the game has lies in its multiplayer offerings, and playing the game with others, either locally or online, is great fun. There aren't any special modes available online. It's all just no-frills, one-on-one matches, which is really all you need. Xbox 360 's online setup is a bit more fleshed out, with options to jump right into a ranked or unranked match, and a TrueSkill matchmaking system for ranked matches. On the PlayStation 3, you need to enter a lobby where you'll see a list of everyone else hanging out in the room, and you can challenge or accept challenges from the other players. In both cases, once you're actually down to the business of punching and kicking each other, the action plays smoothly, provided both parties have a steady connection. The only caveat about online play in our experience is that a disproportionate number of players are currently trying to rack up wins using the same few overpowered special attacks by The Flash (and a couple of other characters) ad nauseam, and while this isn't impossible to defeat, it sure is annoying. You might prefer to quit a match than bother with it when you come across such a cheap competitor, but doing so counts as a loss, and in the case of ranked matches on the 360, hurts your TrueSkill ranking.

The game looks great. The characters animate well, their attacks look powerful, and there's a consistency of design that helps make the bizarre crossover seem natural. There's an especially great detail to the game's presentation in the way that damage isn't just reflected in the energy bars across the top of the screen. As characters suffer attacks, their skin gets bruised and bloody, their costumes get torn, and by the end, if the loser put up a good fight, even the victor will look much worse for wear. Of the 14 arenas, most of them look pretty cool. There are a few Mortal Kombat arenas, but the majority of locales come from the DC side, or reflect a merger of the two universes. There's a devastated downtown Metropolis and a high-tech Batcave, among other noteworthy locations, and they're packed with details that will please fans of the characters. Dynamic elements such as the elevated train you see rattling below you as you plummet from one level of Gotham City to another also help bring the environments to life.

The game’s audio isn’t amazing, but it gets the job done--matches definitely sound like those in previous Mortal Kombat offerings, and the voice acting for the characters is solid, but sadly you rarely hear them outside of the cutscenes of the story mode. The music doesn't draw much attention to itself and isn't exciting enough to match the action. If you're trying to decide between versions, it's a bit of a toss-up. They both look and play pretty much identically. The Xbox 360 's online system makes it more convenient for just jumping into a match, but the PS3's D pad is better suited to fighting games and feels more precise. The PS3 version has trophies to match the 360's achievements.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe feels a bit like a mutant of a game. On one hand, the fighting mechanics are solid and fun and represent a refreshing return to the fundamental strengths that made Mortal Kombat's gameplay so compelling in the first place. On the other hand, the shift in tone from completely insane amounts of gore to only outrageous amounts of blood will put off some fans of the series’ usual ultra-violence. Newcomers, on the other hand, will have little trouble button-mashing their way through the game's single-player offerings, but may find it difficult coming to grips with the more technical aspects of the gameplay necessary to get the most from the multiplayer. If the idea of beating the hell out of Liu Kang with Lex Luthor (or vice versa) appeals to you and you don't mind going online for serious competition, you'll find a satisfying fighting game in this strange but enjoyable crossover.

By Carolyn Petit, GameSpot

Phantasy Star Zero Impressions

2008-11-22T19:36:00.002+07:00

Sega's Phantasy Star franchise is finally making its way to the DS, and we've got the first peek straight from Sega's TGS stage show.

TOKYO--It seemed like just a matter of time before Sega would make a Phantasy Star game for the Nintendo DS, and today, the game was finally announced. Titled Phantasy Star Zero, the game will be hitting Japan on December 25. To give details on the game and explain how its name came about, producer Satoshi Sakai appeared on stage at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show.
"With the decision to make a completely new Phantasy Star, we've started out with a new world view, storyline, and characters. We decided to give the game this name to symbolize that we're starting back from the roots again", said Sakai.
Sakai then showed off some gameplay to explain the new systems in Phantasy Star Zero. Communication has always been a big point in the series, and with the shift to the DS, the game takes advantage of the hardware's stylus with its new "Visual Chat" system. Rather than type messages to comrades, you'll be able to write and draw on the bottom screen much like Pictochat. It'll then appear on dialogue balloons in the main top screen where the game is played. The drawings can be recorded onto shortcuts, so you don't have to rush on your writings in the middle of battles. The game also allows you to copy other users, which will come convenient if you're not good at drawing.
Phantasy Star Zero takes place on two locations: the Earth and the Moon. You start off the game by creating your character out of three races (Newman, Human, Cast) and their three professions types. Sakai commented that there are a total of 14 different types of characters you can make. Similarly to previous Phantasy Star games, you can customize the look of your character using different body parts. Up to three characters can be saved.
Phantasy Star Zero will feature three gaming modes. Story mode allows you to enjoy the game alone. A demo showed a scene from the flourishing Dairon City, where the main character meets up with his/her teacher, Kai. The game plays in 3D like previous Phantasy Star installments, but the conversation scenes are in illustrated 2D graphics, and there are also anime clips in event scenes.
In wireless communication mode, you can play with three other friends close by and go on missions, communicating with each other using visual chat.
In Wi-Fi mode, you can select three ways to play online: friends play, free play, and single play. Friends play, as the name suggests, will allow you to type in friends codes and play with people you know; visual chat is supported. Free play lets you play with other users though matchmaking; but communication will be done through preset sentences rather than visual chat. Details weren't given on the single play.
In terms of battle, Phantasy Star Zero seems similar to previous installments albeit with some new additions. The game adopts the action palette system from Phantasy Star Online, and you can customize your own actions. As a new element, you can now dodge roll to quickly evade enemy attacks. There's also a charge attack, where you can hold on to your attack button before letting go to pull off powerful photon arts that consumes some photon points. Charging also works for technique moves.
According to Sakai, Phantasy Star Zero will have more than 300 weapons. This time, there will be shields that allow the player to defend against enemy attacks with the use of photon points. There's also a new weapon category called gun slash. As a hybrid weapon, it acts as a sword in close range and as a gun from a distance. Stay tuned for more on the game as it becomes available.

By Hirohiko Niizumi, GameSpot

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 Impressions

2008-11-22T18:58:00.002+07:00

If you threw your favorite Tales characters into a giant pot and brought them to a boil, you'd get something like this sequel for the Sony PSP.

TOKYO--Tales series enthusiasts, brace yourselves: Another Radiant Mythology game is coming to the PSP, and it will be overflowing with all of the fan service that the first one provided. We talked with Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 producer Hideo Baba on the Tokyo Game Show floor this weekend and asked him some questions while getting in some hands-on time with this PSP role-playing game.

The most important facet of the original Tales of the World was its cast. It was the video game equivalent of fan fiction, tossing a crowd of well-known characters along with a few original creations into a stew of random quests and a standard Tales combat system. Baba told us that the sequel's structure will remain essentially the same. If his statement applies to the mission structure, it means that you will take various unrelated quests from a local guild, and be able to recruit up to three other characters into your party at any given time. Baba did confirm that the friendship system from the first game will remain mostly the same, so to recruit people, you will want to remain on his their good side. We were more curious about the full cast, but Baba didn't wish to share details, and told us that this information hadn't yet been passed on to the Japanese press either. We also asked if Tales of Vesperia, the most recent game in the series, would be represented, but Baba would only confirm that Tales of the World 2 would include more than double the number of characters as the first.

However, it's unclear why Baba was so tight-lipped regarding the character list. By accident, we were flipping through some Tokyo Game Show promotional material, and a two-page ad for the game showed a complete list of playable and non-playable characters that will inhabit the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 story. They include Zelos and Presea from Tales of Symphonia, Bruiser and Rutee from Tales of Destiny, Chat and Reid from Tales of Eternia, and Suzu and Arche from Tales of Phantasia. Other characters are ripped from Tales of Destiny 2, Tales of Rebirth, Tales of Legendia, and other games that, as you can guess, all have titles that begin with the same two words. It's a huge and familiar cast, numbering more than three dozen, so if you're a franchise fan, you'll be quite pleased with the selection. However, the biggest news in the ad is that Yuri will represent Tales of Vesperia, and due to the way that the page is laid out, it seems that he will be a playable character. This is good news indeed for those who enjoyed the most recent entry.

As for the story itself, no surprises sprung from the pages of the ad, and Baba didn't have much to say on the subject. He did tell us that the story will be completely different from the first game and will take place in a totally different world. Like in the original, you will create a character from scratch and choose a profession, though we don't yet know what the job choices will be. You can also choose from other options, such as clothing and voice-over styles. From there, your goal is to find out exactly who you are, which leaves things rather vague. But for now, that's all we know.

As for gameplay, combat should be familiar to anyone who has ever played a Tales game. You take control of a single party member, and battles take place in real time within the combat arena. Pressing the attack button will automatically target an enemy, at which point your character will run toward it and perform the move. You can also perform spells known as artes, and though you can have only a limited number of them mapped to the PSP's buttons at a particular time, you have a good variety from which to choose, so you have a certain amount of flexibility in customizing party members to your own style. The three characters you don't control will attack, heal, and use items as the artificial intelligence sees fit, or you can customize their behavior in various ways.

The one play mechanic that we were curious about was a third gauge at the bottom of the screen. We wondered aloud to Baba about what that meter indicated, but like with other facets of the game, he didn't want to get into specifics and indicated only that it related to additional party skills. Nevertheless, we assume that it's the overlimit gauge of the first game, and screenshots confirm this assumption. Perhaps it's just as well that Baba has been so cryptic; RPGs are at their best when we let them surprise us as we play. Regardless, the one thing that we will spring on RPG fans is the release date--when one is announced, that is. Keep your eyes on this space for future updates!

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

TNA iMPACT! Review

2008-11-21T23:40:00.002+07:00

Professional wrestling has long been maligned as a place where spandex-clad ogre-men go to act out contrived rivalries and pretend to actually wrestle. While these derisions certainly hit on some truths about "sports entertainment," the remarkable talents and impressive athleticism of its practitioners cannot be denied. If you're the kind of person who enjoys the high-flying, hard-hitting spectacle of pro wrestling in spite of its myriad absurdities, then TNA Impact may be the game for you. It has some aggravating problems, but it does a good job of translating the excitement of TNA Wrestling into fluid action and visceral fun.

A wrestling game is only as fun as the moves you can perform, and in this regard, TNA Impact does quite well. You ratchet up your basic punch and kick attacks by holding the strong modifier or by performing them from a run or in a grapple. This simple layering allows for a wide range of moves without requiring complex button combinations, so it's easy to unleash your nastiest attacks right from the get-go. You can also reverse almost any attack with a well-timed button press, and many reversals can be reversed again. The accessible variety of attacks and the ever-looming possibility of reversals make the action fast and furious.

The more you mix up your moves, the more likely you are to come across some of the game's many technical hitches. When the animations run smoothly, they look good and produce satisfying impacts. When they don't quite line up, you see fists and feet clipping through torsos, as well as apparent misses registering as hits. These oddities are a minor distraction, though, because at least you are still performing the moves you want. The more frustrating glitches cause your character to perform an unintended maneuver, often with disastrous results.

The glitches are prone to surface in a few situations, the most frequent of which are transitions, such as when your character is getting up off the mat, climbing a turnbuckle, or exiting the ring. Because your attack changes depending on your opponent's position, you may often find yourself aiming to punch an enemy as soon as he stands up, only to execute an elbow drop and lay yourself out at his stomp-happy feet. You can also dodge grapples or attacks when you're near the edge of the ring because the animation of rolling out of the ring will often negate incoming moves. Then, there's the particularly tricky situation when your opponent is down near the edge of the ring. Climbing up on the turnbuckle, rolling out of the ring, and pinning an opponent are all mapped to the same button, which makes it very difficult to figure out how to position yourself to execute the action you want. In this case, you're better off avoiding those three actions altogether.

When you're playing against other human players, these hang-ups don't feel so frustrating because you are all subject to the same pitfalls. In the single-player Story mode you can suffer a few miscues and still scrape out a win a win early on. You'll hit a wall when the foes get tougher, though, because the room for error diminishes so much so that a missed move or missed opportunity can cost you the match. This is vexing enough when it's an honest mistake, but it becomes downright infuriating when it's an animation glitch.

The punishing difficulty in the latter part of the Story mode isn't its only weak point. The voice acting feels flat in contrast with the vigorous banter featured on the actual show, and the actor who voices your character is just terrible, dragging every other character down with his lifeless tone (the closest thing you'll find to personality is in the training videos featured in the extras menu). The only incentive to play the Story mode is to unlock new characters and arenas. With each victory, you earn style points, and the more various and risky your moves are, the more points you'll earn. Unlike in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, these points don't actually appear to earn you anything, given that you don't actually customize your character or move set. As if to compensate for the puzzling lack of character creation, there are a lot more unlockable wrestlers in the PlayStation 2 version, though many of them are no-name goons.

Multiplayer is the best way to enjoy TNA Impact, and there's a full array of match types available. One-on-one matches, three-way free-for-alls, tag-team brawls, handicap contests, and the signature Ultimate X matches are all playable, though only two players can actually compete at a time. Ultimate X matches, while dramatic on television, often feel less exciting than normal matches because the focus becomes staying aloft on the cables rather than pummeling your opponents. There's nothing unexciting about that per se, but the hanging combat is awkward and limited. Actually grabbing the X also requires you to tap a button when a moving cursor lines up with a target area--an action that could be diplomatically described as "anticlimactic."
So, TNA Impact is not without its flaws. The character models are good, and the animation is fluid and lively, but the unpolished physics of fighting can create some frustrating situations, and the lo-fi audio often sounds flat. Yet despite these technical shortcomings (and silly costumes), it's still good fun to clothesline, drop-kick, and power-bomb your friends all around the ring. And, ultimately, isn't that what pro wrestling is all about?

By Chris Watters, GameSpot

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Review

2008-11-21T23:30:00.004+07:00

You hear the big chord and the brass fanfare, and you know what's coming. It's easy to get excited when you hear the rousing Star Wars theme, though the franchise has hardly been known for exceeding expectations in recent years. If you're interested in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for its story and theme, you won't be disappointed: It supplies a weighty plot with a few stunning surprises. If you're more interested in the action, you'll find that the game is a mixture of fun and frustration that you'll get some enjoyment from, but ultimately fails to live up to its potential.

You're cast as Galen Marek, aka Starkiller, Darth Vader's secret apprentice. The Clone Wars have ended, and Vader orders you to hunt and destroy the last of the remaining Jedi. Exploring the universe from this dark perspective is remarkably compelling. The story is brief (expect to finish the campaign in about seven hours), but it contains multiple twists, features some friendly and not-so-friendly faces, and is both explosive and remarkably intimate. You'll interact with Vader, of course, but Starkiller spends most of his time with an android called PROXY and his female pilot, Juno Eclipse. Sharing the details of the trio's adventures would spoil too much, so suffice it to say that you'll grow remarkably fond of Starkiller and his companions, and their moral conflicts carry a lot of weight.

Unfortunately, the game's limited visual capabilities somewhat soften the story's dramatic impact. The cutscenes are rendered within the game engine, and are undercut by stiff animations and abrupt, jarring transitions in and out of gameplay, as well as some odd-looking character models and occasional glitches, such as blinking geometry. Audio also takes a hit, which is odd, considering that much of the voice-over work is lifted directly from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version of the game. Poor compression is the culprit here, and it makes the dialogue sound as if you're listening to it on an old record player.

That's not to say that Force Unleashed looks and sounds bad, considering the aging hardware pumping these elements out. The moderately sized environments are fairly detailed, and the saber action and powerful-looking Force abilities produce flurries of particles and other special effects. However, there are some brief moments of slowdown not seen in the Wii version, which uses the same graphics engine (and looks essentially the same). John Williams' music and some original tracks, as well as the familiar swooshes of sabers, sound like you'd expect, and they only occasionally suffer from the poor compression to which the voice-over was subjected.

The star of the visual parade is the robust physics engine that powers your most impressive moves. Using Force grip, you can grab and fling any number of objects, including your enemies; with Force push, you can shove items and foes out of your path. These skills and their variants deliver the game's best moments. Whether you're flinging Felucians into each other or offing swarms of rebels with a burst of energy, there are a number of "did you see that?" moments that will have you grabbing your friends to show them your saber-slinging prowess. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that these moves can't be strung together more easily. The controls can be unresponsive and sometimes lack the fluidity of the other versions. At times, you might be mashing on the square button and wondering why you aren't swinging your saber, or tapping X but not making the corresponding jump. Additionally, it's odd that the triangle button does double duty, activating both Force push (if you tap it) and Force grip (if you hold it). The other versions use separate buttons to perform these powers, which is a more logical choice and feels more intuitive.

Although the environments aren't totally cluttered with useful objects, this actually works to the game's advantage, considering that the targeting problems prevalent in the other console versions are diminished as a result. There are still some moments when you'll grab a different object than you intended, but given that there are fewer objects to grab, these moments will provide only the occasional frustration. The annoying camera of the Wii version has been leashed and tamed a bit on the PlayStation 2 thanks to the right analog stick, which gives you the full camera control that you would expect. However, many of the levels are claustrophobic, which makes it difficult to move the camera into helpful positions, especially when you are fending off multiple enemies.

Nevertheless, the game moves along at a relatively quick pace, so between droid encounters and boss battles, you'll always be in the thick of the action. You won't find much challenge here; there are plenty of health drops scattered around, including respawning ones during boss battles. Should you die, you'll restart at the most recent checkpoint with all of the damage you've already done to your enemies still intact. This is probably for the best because it keeps the pace moving. Some variety comes by way of Force Unleashed's God of War-style quick-time events, which result in some terrific, flashy-looking moves, whether you're smashing on an opposing Jedi or defeating a rancor in a series of thrilling acrobatics. And it's a welcome sort of variety, given that you'll be visiting the same exact levels several times over.

Unlockable costumes and other extras won't give you much reason to return, but some extra levels lengthen the playtime over the mostly similar Wii version. So if you're in the mood to slash up Jawas, this is your chance, though The Force Unleashed may not be as raucously entertaining as you may have expected. Nevertheless, if you've got six or seven hours to kill, this is a fair way to spend them, particularly if you're a Star Wars devotee looking to fill in the gaps between Episodes III and IV.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey

2008-01-16T21:44:00.000+07:00

Mix the Wild West with the high seas and you get Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey, an action adventure game about pirates during the Civil War. However, the gameplay isn't as innovative as this offbeat premise, considering that Russian developer TM Studios has just duplicated Sid Meier's take on buccaneering from his Pirates! Games, right down to the arcade minigames. There isn't any amusement to be found in the derivative, go-through-the-motions gameplay that mimics a vastly superior predecessor. Ancient production values boast nonstop loading screens and outdated graphics, all of which nicely hammers home the bottom-drawer philosophy behind this second-rate rip-off.

Nevertheless, there are enough interesting aspects to the story to make you wish that Swashbucklers had been more ambitious with its gameplay. You take the role of Abraham Gray, a pirate plying his trade in the Caribbean and along the southeastern seaboard of the United States during the Civil War. Dropping the usual 16th-17th century piratical escapades for a more modern era is a great idea, especially given how the game dresses up the period with cowboy touches. Gray dresses more like a Texas Ranger than a buccaneer from Havana, what with his beat-up cowboy hat and twirling six-guns. City ports look like refugees from an old oat opera as well, with dirt streets, sheriffs' offices, and saloons. Another nifty touch is Gray's mental state. He's a schizophrenic who hears voices, which comes in handy when this hallucinatory alter ego provides tips on how to play the game. Not much is made of this during play, although the concept is at least an interesting way to handle the pop-up instructions provided during game tutorials.
Depressingly, that's about it for the positives. For starters, everything about Swashbucklers screams bargain bin. The PS2 version's visuals are dated across the board, although they at least look comparatively better to other games on this system than the PC version does compared with similar games on that platform. However, graphical elements of the game are often repeated, which means that every port features the same dirt streets and the same sheriff's department. Every section of the game needs to be loaded, too, despite the dated look and content. Most loads are nearly instantaneous, but they still break up the flow with continual screen fade-outs and transition screens. A comic-book vibe to the visual flair makes the archaic stuff a bit more tolerable, but you're still playing a game that looks as if it came out five years ago. Furthermore, the interface is a bit clunky, although at least its big "designed for a TV set" style is more at home here than it is in the PC edition of the game.
Audio is an even bigger advertisement for yesteryear. Presumably to avoid the costs involved with recording dialogue and then translating it for different markets, characters in Swashbucklers grunt conversations like angry, drunken versions of the adults in Peanuts cartoons. Unfortunately, this half-baked attempt at simlish doesn't work here, given that you're trying to make sense of a storyline, not groove on the cutesiness of virtual dolls expressing emotions without uttering any intelligible words. You can't get much out of this grunting, either, because it all sounds like a cross between a snore and a belch. Thankfully, there are captions for all of this snorted dialogue, so you can ignore these annoying noises and just read your way through conversations while listening to the pretty good Wild West-style musical score.
It's a pity that you can't similarly disregard the gameplay. This is a clone of Pirates! in every imaginable way, but without the depth and sense of fun that permeated that 2005 remake. Character development has some role-playing game aspects, although they're pretty rudimentary. You level up fairly quickly, but can apply the points gained to only three skills: fencing, shooting, and defense. Perks that provide special melee attacks, defense bonuses, and the like can also be chosen, which gives you at least a little more freedom to build a character. Regardless, there isn't enough choice here to let you really customize Gray. The arcade-style combat is equally straightforward on both terra firma and on the high seas.

Gamepad controls are much more fluid than the mouse-and-keyboard interface in the PC version of Swashbucklers, so you're better able to handle the fast-paced combat on the console. However, there isn't much depth to battles here regardless of the control method used. Gray is an expert swordsman with the skill to slash gangs of opponents to ribbons, and the vessels at his command are able to rip off cannon fire at Gatling-gun speeds. It's only when dueling enemy captains at the conclusion of boarding sequences that you're required to do any thinking, and this really just requires you to pace yourself by taking breathers every now and again or blocking nonstop as you run out of energy.
Quests are generally pretty basic delivery runs where you drop off supplies, hand over prisoners, sink vessels, and so on. There is little interaction with non-player characters, and no need to fuss around with loading ships or dumping off cargo. Consequently, with the many Fed Ex quests you simply land in a port, talk to someone to accept a job, sail to another port, and talk to someone about taking your delivery. Wash, rinse, repeat. You can make cash on the side by auctioning off captured vessels, or by running goods from one port to another and doing the old buy-low, sell-high thing. But there isn't any strategy here because the auctions are conducted automatically, and the prices for cargo remain static even when you're buying up tons of stock. You know you've got a pretty simplified market system when it doesn't even recognize basic supply and demand.
Earning money from ship-selling and trading isn't really necessary, either, given that you can make just about all of the cash that you want by taking on all comers in the boxing minigame on offer in various ports' bars. This is a bare-fisted version of the captain duel described above that is incredibly easy to win. All you have to do is pound away for a few rounds and occasionally pepper your opponent with a roundhouse special attack to walk away with as much as a thousand bucks.
If you're looking to recreate the Pirates! experience, just replay that fantastic game. Don't bother with this dull copy unless you've got a fetish for mentally ill buccaneers.

By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Wipeout Pulse Hands-On Impressions

2007-11-03T22:29:00.000+07:00

Studio Liverpool is no stranger to the Wipeout franchise, having created 2005's well-received Wipeout Pure, a game that helped the PlayStation Portable establish a foothold in the handheld market. Two years on and Liverpool is back at it again with a new game for the PSP: Wipeout Pulse. We got some early hands-on time with the new title and took it out for a thrash in anticipation of the game's December global release.
Just in case you're new to the series, Wipeout is a futuristic driving game with high-speed antigravity vehicles which race above increasingly convoluted tracks--usually accompanied by a thumping dance soundtrack. Regardless of what kind of racer you are--whether your penchant is time trials, competitive AI slog-fests in the single-player campaign, or just blowing stuff up--Pulse seems to have all the major bases covered. Several different modes are available to play, including head-to-head, which sees you and another AI-controlled competitor race to be first past the post. There's also the obligatory time trial mode that lets you race the clock and break your own personal best times. Then there are speed laps, which are almost identical to time trials except that you receive one "boost" power-up per lap to be used at your discretion. Speed laps also allow you to do up to seven laps of the same circuit per attempt, and experience tells us that even on well-known venues, the last few tend to be your best as you Zen out and hit the perfect amount of airbrake per corner.
Zone and eliminator make up the last two modes. In the case of eliminator, players will try to destroy fellow drivers' rides while staying on course and protecting themselves from attacks. Zone is much like a crossover between speed lap and time trial mode in that you race it solo and without power-ups, but you race for as long as you can survive. This mode is particularly useful for first-timers to the Wipeout series or those who want a quick indication of their skill level. A dynamically generated rank flashes up above the vehicle as you do laps showing you what level you should be competing at. All the weapons and power-ups you've come to love from the Wipeout series make a return, with energy shields, machine guns, rockets, and mines randomly assigned once you drive over a power-up panel on the track's surface.
The single-player racing campaign in our demo included 16 grids, with each grid made up of between eight and 16 stages. These include various challenges from the six types listed above, and while you'll race across only three different tracks in the first grid, there's enough variety in the modes to keep it interesting. The mixture of time trials and races also helps you quickly learn the acceleration, braking, and power-up points of each track--skills that become invaluable when you take on other AI-controlled players.
Based on our race times and general progress through the demo code, completing each of the challenges per grid and then all the grids themselves means you won't blow through this game in one afternoon. Once the game is completed, you have the option of replaying to unlock more high scores and gold medals, or you can simply bump the difficulty and start all over again with faster vehicles and smarter AI. If after all that you're struggling for things to do, Wipeout Pulse will also offer both ad hoc and infrastructure wireless modes and Internet play. Sony has also said that it has plans to offer new tracks and vehicles via download once the game goes on sale, and while we have no idea what the intended release schedule looks like for this content, it's nice to know there will be extra content straight away as well as further down the line.
As always, music plays a huge role in the Wipeout series, and Pulse is no exception, drawing on licensed music from known DJs and artists such as Dopamine, Stanton Warriors, Aphex Twin, and Kraftwerk to provide the game's soundtrack. The range of tracks contributes to the gameplay, and we found ourselves dodging and weaving through traffic in time with the music on more than one occasion.
Wipeout Pulse will include a photo mode, allowing drivers to snap a couple of photos once their race is finished. Simply hit the select button after your race is done to enter the mode. From here you'll be able to cycle through internal camera, external front, and above-vehicle views, as well as shots of the track. You can use the PSP's analogue stick to cycle around the camera or zoom in or out depending on which view you're in.
So far, Wipeout Pulse doesn't present any significant departures from the games that helped make it a PlayStation identity. Fans of Wipeout won't be disappointed by the franticness and pace of the driving, while the arsenal of weapons at your fingertips means if you can't outrace your fellow competitors, you can always just blow them away. There's plenty here for both returning gamers and those who may have missed the boat earlier on in the series.

By Dan Chiappini, GameSpot AU

Burnout cruising to Paradise

2007-11-03T22:21:00.000+07:00

At first glance, the term "burnout paradise" conjures up images of a coffee shop in Amsterdam--or a plush drug-rehab clinic in the Carribean. However, it's also the title of the next installment in Electronic Arts' destructive racing series, which will mark its PlayStation 3 debut. Burnout Paradise will arrive on the Xbox 360 and PS3 "this winter," which typically means a December or January release.
As evidenced by its first trailer, Burnout Paradise will feature the same sort of urban racing as previous Burnouts. However, its developer, UK-based Criterion games, has greatly improved the game's graphics. In the trailer, they are noticeably more detailed than those of Burnout Revenge for the Xbox 360, the only next-gen Burnout to date.

Though none of the series' trademark car crashes are present in the trailer, the accompanying press release promised the game would have more of them than ever before. That's because instead of the series' traditional event-based gameplay, Burnout Paradise will sport an open-world environment where players can "explore the city and discover events," according to EA. They can also run amok, committing random acts of wanton destruction with their cars, earning points that can eventually be used to acquire newer, faster cars.
"We have been working towards Burnout Paradise for quite some time," said the game's executive producer, Pete Hawley, in a statement. "Next generation consoles have opened up a raft of new gameplay opportunities and the Criterion team has leapt at the chance to innovate." Hawley boasted that EA had some "big surprises" in terms of new features and online capabilities," but promised the title's gameplay would remain true to the series."

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot

Crysis DirectX 9 VS DirectX 10

2007-11-03T22:07:00.000+07:00

Crysis, the poster child for modern PC gaming and DirectX 10, will arrive shortly. Crytek has tortured us for years with screenshots and short hands-on experiences showing off the game's wide-open world, with picturesque tropical battlegrounds, perfect for sipping Mai Tais or peppering random bad guys with automatic rifle fire. Crytek released the single-player demo late last week, and we set up a few test systems to see just how the game looks under Windows Vista compared to Windows XP. We also took some in-game benchmarks to see how the frame rates compare in DirectX 9 and DirectX 10.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to claim that the environments in Crysis come mighty close to photo-realistic. The beaches, sky, and rocks all have a gritty, real-earth feel to them. Crytek took plant matter to a new realm--a botanist would have a field day in Crysis. The palm trees, shrubbery, and grass create the feeling of tropical jungle more so than any other game we've come across.
The game officially limits in-game settings to "high quality" in Windows XP, while Windows Vista gets an additional "very high quality" graphics setting. Crysis still looks good at high quality, but it's a noticeable step down from the very high quality settings. Some ingenious users managed to enable very high quality on the Crysis demo in Windows XP through a clever bit of configuration-file editing. The second image in each set of comparison shots demonstrate what the hacked very high quality settings look like in Windows XP.
As far as we can tell, the difference between very high quality in Windows XP and Windows Vista is quite subtle. We noticed some extra shadowing on the rocks in the Vista version, and while there are differences between the hacked XP shots and the Vista shots, we can't really say that one looks better. Developers have gotten very good at working around hardware limitations to fake great graphics, so we wouldn't be surprised if the DX9 effects were good enough to simulate the results of a more "accurate" DX10 shader.

By: Sarju Shah

Empire Earth III Faction Preview -The Far East Region

2007-10-31T09:35:00.000+07:00

Far East factions rely on sheer numbers to overrun their enemies.

With Empire Earth III shipping next month, Sierra and developer Mad Doc Software are revealing more details about the three key regions in the game. The geographical regions each contain separate factions. For example, the Western region will have English and French factions. However, the English and French are going to be fairly similar to one another, particularly when it comes to visual identity and gameplay. We previously covered the Middle East region, and now we'll cover the Far East faction.
In Empire Earth III, you'll be able to experience all of human history, from the Stone Age to beyond the Space Age. The series, which is sort of like the classic Civilization series but played out in real time, will require you to build an economy and structures to research the scientific advancements that advance you from one historical age to another. As you move into a new age, you have access to more powerful military units and technologies to use in your struggle to survive, as well as expand.
The Far East Region Factions based on the Far East region have a simple philosophy: Quantity is a quality. Thanks to their huge populations, the Far East factions like to rely on large amounts of relatively cheap units to offset any technological advantage their opponents might have over them. Who needs expensive units when you can swamp them with sheer numbers? As such, though, Far East players must play aggressively to take advantage of their numerical superiority. In general, the Far East must play to these strengths because it lacks the mobility of Middle Eastern armies and the technological edge of Western ones.

Far East players also have an advantage when it comes to the economy. Basically any Far East infantry unit can build structures, which means that a Far East army can take over a territory and immediately get to work constructing improvements in it. On top of that, structures can churn out units quickly because the build time for Far East units is faster than Middle Eastern or Western ones. That helps provide a steady stream of reinforcements to the front. Of course, considering that Far East units can fall in battle a lot faster, you're going to need a constant supply of fresh units to replace losses. Another downside is that Far East buildings are a bit more fragile than most, and they are easier to destroy.
Heroes will play an important role in propping up any Far East army. These hero units tend to have powerful abilities that augment the fighting abilities of the armies around them. If the game goes into the future historical ages, then the Far East can develop genetically engineered units. These include the genetic armored personnel carrier, which looks like a giant, prehistoric crab come to life.

By Staff, GameSpot

Harvey Birdman grounded until 2008

2007-10-27T21:55:00.000+07:00

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law needs some room to soar. That's the basic reasoning Capcom gave this weekend for delaying the release of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Wii until next year.
Capcom's senior director of strategic planning and research Christian Svensson responded to a message board post on Saturday asking why online retailers were listing the game with a 2008 launch date.
"The game is and has been finished, submitted and approved," Svensson wrote, "however we felt releasing the game on the same day 112 other SKUs released was not ideal for its chances. Retail buyers agreed."
"As such, we've opted to move the title out into a slightly cleaner release window. This will allow us to get on more shelves, do a bit more outreach to the media and hopefully get the fans in on the action a bit more."
Some of the competition Capcom hoped to get away from is actually going to be joining Harvey Birdman in 2008, as Electronic Arts today delayed Army of Two until next year as well. Both games had previously been scheduled for release on November 13.
A Capcom representative has narrowed the new release window for Harvey Birdman, telling GameSpot that the title is now expected to ship in January.

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot

Manhunt 2 Producer Q&A

2007-10-27T21:13:00.000+07:00

The Wii Remote should really come into its own with Manhunt 2. The Wii Remote should really come into its own with Manhunt 2.

Manhunt 2. The road to retail has been anything but smooth for Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2, but next week fans of the first game and attention-seeking suits alike will be able to get their hands on the game. Fascinated by both Manhunt 2 and by all of the work that has gone into earning it an M as opposed to its original AO rating, we caught up with producer Jeronimo Barrera and made with the questions.
GameSpot: So before we get started, can you fill us in on who you are and how long you've been with the company?
Jeronimo Barrera: Since the beginning. I help oversee game production.
GS: Take us back to when the game was being discussed? Why another Manhunt?
JB: Obviously we're very proud of the original Manhunt and we didn't hesitate to start working on another Manhunt when the opportunity presented itself. A big motivation was the fans. We've had games that have sold more copies, but Manhunt did well and gained a very loyal following. That, coupled with the fact we love the horror genre, made it a no-brainer for us.

GS: Why did you guys take the all-new character approach? Where did you look to for inspiration?
JB: Manhunt 2 is not a true sequel to the original story. It expands on the theme of the original. The approach was to put the player in a similar situation of having to make very hard choices about survival, but where in the original the overall goal was very clear, in Manhunt 2 we introduce a heavy psychology that makes the choices to the player much more difficult. I don't want to give out any spoilers, but let's say that Manhunt 2 offers many twists and turns to keep the player on the edge of their seat.
We didn't really draw from any one source for inspiration. We're all very proud of the original game and we were in a unique situation to draw inspiration from our own work. With making sequels to games, sometimes we continue the stories of previous games, but often we feel the story itself is more or less complete and instead we want to expand on the narrative themes and gameplay mechanics and style, which leads to sequels that are related, but not necessarily narrative sequels. We've done this with GTA--where the games are related but not but not sequels--and we will continue to use this approach.
GS: Can you give us an idea of how the game came together? Was there a set plan, or was it more organic and collaborative? How long was development?
JB: There's always a plan and it always ends up getting changed massively as the game takes shape and it's always a collaborative effort. We had the story in place early, and then it was a matter of fleshing out the game using the story as the core and building upon it. From the start we knew we had to really surpass the first game's narrative, so there was an emphasis on having the story in place before we started building the game. One thing that isn't mentioned often is that Manhunt 2 is a very story-driven game. The writers needed to work very closely with the designers to ensure that the game mechanics fit within the world we were creating and that the actions onscreen were being complemented with strong dialogue and audio. Things tend to get more organic once you have all the pieces in place, and then you have to really start critiquing your work, and sometimes that means going back to the drawing board.
GS: There have been a number of survival horror games and quite a few successful stealth action games in the last couple of years. But the original Manhunt really presented something unique in terms of combining the best of both stealth and horror gameplay. What was the motivation to continue in this vein, and what were you looking to improve on with this second installment of Manhunt?
JB: First, the original Manhunt has a very loyal fan base, and when we decided to start working on Manhunt 2 it was immediately decided that we had to stick to certain themes and mechanics to keep the original fans happy--but we also wanted to expand and surpass what the original accomplished so well. That was very difficult, but in the end we created a piece of horror fiction that is not only terrifying at times but incredibly thought-provoking in the themes that we explore.
GS: The first Manhunt went to extraordinary lengths to craft unforgettably creepy--and sometimes very funny--dialogue. The audio experience of Manhunt was quiet memorable. Care to discuss what you have going on this time regarding the audio in Manhunt 2? What have you done to surpass expectations?

JB: The real star of the game is the audio. Not only does it play an important part of the gameplay, it sets the tone and mood for every single experience we throw at the player. We learned so much from the original Manhunt and knew going into writing the dialogue what works well in the game. The emphasis [is] on making the interactions (especially of the Hunters) seem real but so twisted that we blur the lines and it truly comes off sounding psychotic and at times very funny. We hope we have surpassed expectations by maintaining the production quality all Rockstar games have and at the same time increasing the variety of situations people speak in, which aligned to improvements in the AI that should lead to a game world that feels more "alive."
But the PS2 version still has headset functionality! This really helps to enhance the experience. You'll hear Leo, and you can use the mic to make sounds that attract the Hunters. On the Wii, we use the speaker on the Wii-Mote in interesting ways too.
GS: As it was taking shape did the violence stand out at all? Did it raise any flags for anyone?
JB: Since we started out making a horror game, we knew this would be a pretty violent game. The vision for the game was very clear to everybody that was working on it. We wanted a game that created the same feelings as watching a horror movie, similar to the original game but with a greater focus on psychological horror.

GS: How violent is too violent for a game like that?
JB: Of course, that's a matter of opinion, but we always knew the game needed a truly mature storyline that wraps the whole package together and makes the player recognize what's going on. Games are all about choices regardless of content. In Manhunt 2, the question is: What decisions are your characters going to make, given a particularly dire situation, not to mention your inability to trust anyone, including yourself? We are very much of the opinion that games should be judged by the same criteria as movies as they are part of the same culture, and in terms of the horror genre the game does not strike us as particularly violent.
GS: As things were coming together how did the Wii come into the equation?
JB: The Wii version was decided on quite early on. We are excited about the Wii in general, and it's a cool way of making new experiences, although there are still a lack of story-driven games that really work well on it. We hope Manhunt 2 will help to change that.

GS: Were there any concerns on how Nintendo would react?
JB: We're a licensed Nintendo developer. They knew what we were doing. We (Rockstar) are known for our award-winning, cutting-edge adult content. I'm pretty sure Nintendo knew what to expect when they announced that we would be making games for their system.
GS: How was it working on controls for it?
JB: Incredibly fun. It wasn't an afterthought; we were developing it simultaneously to the PS2 and PSP. We couldn't be happier with the results.
GS: To dwell on the executions for a moment, can you elaborate on the new weapons and environmental executions--how does that work?
JB: The player is presented with more options than in the original. Not just by variety of weapons but also how to best use the environment. There are what we call "environmental executions"; these can be very useful when you don't have access to a weapon. For example, you only have a tin can and you can see an open manhole just off in the distance. You can throw the tin can near the manhole. The noise from the tin can will cause the Hunter to go and investigate. You can then sneak up on the Hunter and...well, I'm not going to tell you what happens next but you get the picture.
Truly shocked. I know that sounds strange since the media has played this up as the most violent piece of media ever! We still believe that the original submission was well within the bounds of an M rating.
GS: Did you ever think it would go where it did?
JB: Not at all. We made a horror game, the contents of which are more interesting than any contemporary piece of horror fiction available on any medium. We're very proud of that. If this was a book, graphic novel, or a movie we wouldn't have this conversation.
GS: How do you all feel about the focus on the game? Is it good to get the word out or are you all cautious?
JB: I'd love to have us just focus on the gameplay. It's an amazing game. In a genre were few people get it right I think we've got something really special. I think the game now is going to be an unjust target. Who knows what people's expectations are going to be now that so many strange things have transpired? But we're very proud of it. We made a compelling horror game for a mature audience. The fact people still want to pick on video games is a strange and unfortunate reality.
GS: Tell us about what the mood was when the word came it was going to be AO?
JB: We were floored. We really couldn't believe it. There seemed to be no logic behind it, given other ratings decisions they have taken recently, and given the kind of content in other contemporary media.
GS: About the changes, was there talk of simply scrapping the game? How difficult was it to agree to edits? How did you end up cutting it without affecting storytelling and pacing? How much extra work did that process entail?
JB: It never crossed our minds to scrap this. Never. The challenge became how we were going to get the game out with the vision and story intact. And I think the team did an amazing job in the end.

The problem was that we didn't really get any direction. You don't get a list from the ESRB. We stuck to our vision, and we are happy with the outcome. All the levels stayed intact. And we originally came up with the effect for the executions to show how Danny's psychosis would affect his vision during violent moments.
GS: At any point, did you all see this coming?
JB: Not at all. I knew there would be one or two out there that would be offended by this game, but we aren't making this for everybody. This is a mature title and was designed as such.

GS: Now that this is all done and the game's shipping, can you tell us about the aspects of the game you all don't want overshadowed by all the controversy?
JB: There are so many things that need to get mentioned. We've elevated every aspect of the original and added so many new cool things. The interactions between Danny and Leo. The story of these two is the stuff of nightmares! The stealth gameplay is as great as ever. The environments are very dynamic. It doesn't look or feel repetitive. The animations are top-notch. Manhunt evolved out of a weakness we felt in stealth games--that people were hiding, but they weren't afraid of the people they were hiding from. For us, the most compelling reason to hide from someone is because you are frightened of them. This was the inspiration for the original Manhunt and it remains true for the sequel--to make the player feel like they are cowering in the shadows.
GS: Given the hassle on this title do you think this might mean the end of the Manhunt series?
JB: We enjoy making them, and if you enjoy playing them there is a good chance we'll see more in the series, but only time will tell. If we feel like we can make another compelling stealth game, we will.
GS: Thanks for your time.

By Staff, GameSpot

Medal of Honor Heroes 2

2007-10-27T14:24:00.001+07:00

Heroes 2 supports a whopping 32 players in online multiplayer matches.

The EA Nation login should help simplify getting up and running online.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2. The online-shooter category may be dominated these days by the Xbox 360 and, to a lesser extent, the PlayStation 3. But that hasn't stopped Electronic Arts' studio in Vancouver from bringing frantic, large-scale action to the Wii and PSP with the forthcoming Medal of Honor Heroes 2, which is due to hit both platforms in the second week of November. The game supports 32 players in-game across six maps, which are set across a number of World War II-esque strongholds and crater-pocked battlefields. We went a few rounds online with both versions to see how things are shaping up.

On the Wii, the game has a pretty robust control model that seems as if it will afford you precise shooting when you get past its learning curve. You move with the analog stick and aim with the remote, as per most Wii shooters. You can also go to a view that zooms in through your weapon's sights, and when you're in this view you can twist the Nunchuk left and right to subtly lean in those directions, which will naturally come in handy for firing around corners. In the single-player campaign, you'll have a powerful melee attack that requires you to thrust both controllers forward simultaneously. That attack is still available in the online mode, but as you'd imagine, it can be hard to pull off while you're engaged in a firefight. So the designers have also added a weaker one-button melee attack that won't kill in one hit but is much easier to execute.
You'll get an exceptionally large crosshair in the multiplayer game, which sometimes makes it tough to gauge where exactly you're shooting at when facing an opponent. At first, it felt as if we were emptying entire clips at our opponents and hitting only air, but after a few minutes we were able to figure out where we ought to be aiming to score effective hits. However, even a headshot won't necessarily guarantee you a kill. Often when you get a headshot, you'll see your enemy's helmet go flying, accompanied by a satisfying metal clang sound. Once your opponent is bare-headed, your shots will certainly kill, but that helmet can sometimes make the difference between life and death when the action is moving quickly.
New to the Wii game's single-player campaign is a number of gesture-based control mechanics intended to enhance the realism of the combat experience. For instance, when you want to use the bazooka, you'll have to actually hoist the Wii Remote over your shoulder before you fire, as you would the real weapon. (The Wii will look for the remote to be upside down to verify you're doing it right.) There's also a pump-action shotgun that you actually need to pump to reload after each shot--by making a pumping motion with the remote, naturally.
These gestures have made their way into the multiplayer, but in a modified form. In a multiplayer match, you're permitted to fire the bazooka from the hip for a quick response time, but you'll lose some accuracy. On the other hand, you'll have full aiming precision if you hold it up over your shoulder. You can similarly disable the shotgun-pump requirement via a menu option if that seems too laborious for you during a fast-paced multiplayer match (as it did to us). There's also a motion-based grenade-toss mechanic that has you arm the grenade, then hit the fire button to designate a rough target, and finally make a throwing motion with the remote itself. The strength of your motion here will ultimately determine the grenade's trajectory.

There will be three modes--deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag--that will occur on the game's maps, and all of them play out exactly as you'd expect. Luckily, getting into a match will be much easier than with most online Nintendo-based games. No friend codes to be seen here--instead, you'll use EA's "EA Nation" Web portal to set up an account and then log in through the game's front end itself. The EA Nation login will let you browse for running games online, and you'll be able to jump into or out of games that are running at any time, rather than being required to join a game's lobby before it starts. The PSP version's matchmaking works the same way, though it's inherently less noteworthy there because Sony's online multiplayer strictures are less severe than Nintendo's.
It looks as if EA Canada has made a real effort to get solid multiplayer into Heroes 2, especially given that the game is on two platforms that don't typically excel at online multiplayer. We'll bring you the final verdict for both the multiplayer and the game's story-driven single-player campaign when it ships in mid-November.

By Brad Shoemaker, GameSpot

Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2

2007-10-26T00:13:00.000+07:00

Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2. Namco Bandai's unrelenting barrage of Naruto-licensed games continues with Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2. It's been roughly nine months since the original Uzumaki Chronicles hit the US, and though the sequel features a few new bells and whistles, these do little to mitigate the fact that the combat's too simple and too easy to be particularly entertaining.
The threat faced in Uzumaki Chronicles 2 stems from the Shirogane clan, a nearly extinct group of ninjas that specializes in puppet mastery. In an attempt to release their master puppet from an ethereal prison, the remaining clan members have been savaging the countryside with their puppet army while looking for a set of mystical orbs. It's not a bad setup for a brawler like this, given that the puppets are basically robots, and robots are some of the finest cannon fodder you'll find. However, once it's up and running, you'll be constantly tormented with cutscenes of characters standing around and talking, all of which seem to drag on forever. Nothing terribly exciting ever happens during these cutscenes, and even the voice actors sound bored. Fortunately, you can skip these sequences without much consequence. Your mission objectives are always spelled out for you, and they usually just involve beating everyone up anyway.

Uzumaki Chronicles 2 establishes a pattern very early on in the story mode. You start out at your base of operations in the Hidden Leaf Village, where you'll be given a mission objective. Once you leave the village, you'll be shown an overworld map with paths connecting various points of interest. As you travel toward your objective on the map, your journey will be regularly interrupted by surprise attacks from puppets or bandits, and you'll have to beat up everyone before you can continue. Once you've reached your destination, you'll more likely than not have to beat up more puppets and/or bandits. Some light puzzle-solving and platforming are peppered into the missions, but they're either too straightforward or too unclear to add much to the experience. After that, it's yet more random encounters as you head back to the Hidden Leaf Village to take on a new mission and do it all over again. Occasional boss fights mix things up a little, but not much.
The simple, repetitive structure of the story mode wouldn't be so oppressive if the combat itself were more interesting. You can lock on to enemies, perform a few different jump and dash maneuvers, and juggle opponents with combos, but your basic ninjitsu abilities--which include an energized dash attack and the ability to generate a quartet of aggressive if short-lived clones--prove so potent right from the start that most fights don't require your full attention. You can goose your power levels to make the fights even shorter in a few different ways. Enemies drop copious amounts of virtue orbs, which can be used to boost character attributes. They also drop money, which can be used to buy health- and chakra-restoring items, as well as chips that can be placed on the skill plate. Chips can raise attribute levels, imbue you with new abilities, and more. Like the original Uzumaki Chronicles, one of the most engaging aspects of this game is organizing the chips on the skill plate so that you can fit as many on there as possible--and when inventory management is a game's high point, look out.
The game makes a few ineffective gestures to differentiate itself from its predecessor, all of them flawed. In addition to playing as Naruto, there's a rotating cast of other ninjas that you can tag in and play as on the fly, but it's a totally inessential feature, considering that it's rare to find a situation that you can't easily handle with Naruto alone. Pouring all of your virtue orbs and cash into Naruto is simply more effective than spreading it out across multiple ninjas, especially because you don't always have access to the same support characters from mission to mission. There are side missions you can take on for various rewards, but their actual content isn't different enough from what you'll be doing in the main missions, and the rewards are unnecessary. There's two-player co-op support in the story mode, as well as some self-contained, one-on-one brawling, but both are sabotaged by the game's inherently disengaging combat.

If Uzumaki Chronicles 2 offered some flashy visuals, it might've made the low-impact combat more fun to watch. What you get instead are stiff and blocky characters in small, repetitive environments, and an occasionally squirrelly camera. The sound is boilerplate Naruto, with some phoned-in voice acting and background music riddled with Japanese woodwinds.
With less than a year between the release of Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 and its predecessor, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the game hasn't changed very radically. At the same time, the proximity of the releases, and the consistently middling level of quality, make this sequel feel that much more superfluous.

By Ryan Davis, GameSpot

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

2007-10-23T19:34:00.001+07:00

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. While some games don't withstand the test of time, others, like the commonly praised Final Fantasy Tactics, exist in a state of pristine stasis: never changing, yet standing proud at the head of the class, and rarely bested by legions of pretenders to the throne. In other words, you won't need the rose-hued goggles of nostalgia to appreciate Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, since it's a great game even by modern standards. If you're new to Tactics, you'll find a strategy role-playing game with plenty of deep gameplay and one of the finest stories in a Final Fantasy game to date. If you've already experienced the 1998 PlayStation original, you'll enjoy some nifty additions in this enhanced port, including terrific cutscenes, new character classes, and new playable characters. There are some noticeable issues in the presentation, and some lurking frustrations in the gameplay remain. In the context of such satisfying gameplay, though, the annoyances are easy to forgive--especially considering you can squeeze 60 or 70 hours of quality entertainment out of it.

One of the original's many strengths was its complex, moving story. Almost 10 years later, Tactics expresses more excitement and romance in a single moment than many modern games can manage in their entirety. It helps tremendously that the awkward localization of the original has been replaced with realistic dialogue devoid of grammatical errors (well, except for a few famous ones). There's also another major storytelling enhancement: beautiful, fully acted cutscenes that provide an even greater sense of atmosphere. Calling these scenes cel-shaded wouldn't do them justice, though, since they have a grainy texture to them that resemble a painting more than a cartoon. Suffice it to say, it won't take you long to get caught up in the internal struggles of Ivalice's House of Beoulve, the binding ties of friendship, and the social stigmas of the lower classes.
But if the story ropes you in, it will be the gameplay that keeps you coming back for more. A word of warning to new players, however: War of the Lions throws you into the fire, expecting you to figure out the convoluted class and character systems on your own. As a result, you may find yourself getting your butt handed to you until you get used to the mechanics. Once you do, however, you'll find an engaging character development scheme that will keep you constantly reevaluating the makeup of your adventuring party. Every party member begins as either a squire or a chemist, but can ultimately evolve into a monk, mage, assassin, oracle, and more. But you also have a secondary job slot to equip, as well as other ability slots that can be lifted from other classes.
As you gain experience in battle, not only do your characters level up, but so do your job classes. In turn, you are then able to purchase new abilities within those classes. It's a terrific system, for while it gives you the freedom to customize characters in endless ways, your party members still retain the core strengths that lend them to certain roles. There are two new classes to play around with, too: Onion Knight and Dark Knight. Experienced players will probably get more use from the Onion Knight than new players will, since its jack-of-all-trades nature requires some patience. Dark Knights, on the other hand, are deadly from the start, though you have to master multiple classes before you gain access to this profession.
Battles are generally intense, though the downside of the class system's flexibility is that the level of difficulty can vary wildly, depending on how you set up your parties. You may find some early battles almost impossible to get through without a bit of grinding first, while you will absolutely breeze through others. Still, most battles are quite challenging, requiring you to closely examine each move before committing to it. It's perfectly plausible (and if you aren't careful, downright common) to waste a spell because you don't have enough mana, or damage party members in addition to enemies. In light of this, it's too bad you can't take back your move orders once committed, as you can't always tell if a square will put your enemy in attack range until you occupy it.
The Final Fantasy I & II Anniversary Editions released earlier this year featured more striking visual upgrades than does War of the Lions. Yet the graphics hold up remarkably well, using familiar (and charmingly noseless) 2D sprites on 3D maps. The presentation has been enhanced to take advantage of the PSP's widescreen resolution, yet there are some awkward moments during scenes in the game engine where the map is cut off to the right or left, since it wasn't created to fill the wider screen. Some spells and attacks have new effects to go along with them, though the slowdown that accompanied some attacks in the original is still present in War of the Lions--as is the lack of synchronization of certain sounds that accompany them. The soundtrack is slightly enhanced, yet even without the tweaking, it remains one of the finest Final Fantasy scores to date, featuring tracks by both Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata.

War of the Lions adds both cooperative and competitive ad-hoc multiplayer options, accessible from taverns within the game. One-on-one matches are fine provided you have a buddy with characters of approximately the same level, though we don't recommend exploring the inherent frustration of imbalanced battles between a weak party and a strong one. Co-op play fares better, but even then, a player with a less experienced party may not enjoy the relatively strong monsters that spawn in, thanks to the other player's higher level. Two players on equal footing, however, should have a blast, especially because there is new equipment up for grabs.
There are other small annoyances that the new version retains, such as its camera, which can be rotated and tilted, but may not always give you the most helpful view. But by and large, Final Fantasy Tactics remains a great game even by modern standards, thanks to its finely tuned character development system and challenging battles that will have you using every trick in your arsenal. Whether you are a newcomer to Final Fantasy Tactics or an experienced fan, you will lose countless hours falling to War of the Lions' insistence that you take just...one...more...turn.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Sega Rally Revo

2007-10-23T19:21:00.000+07:00

Sega Rally Revo for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 brought the years-old Sega Rally franchise into the current generation of consoles, crafting a fun, though sometimes overly challenging arcade rally racer around the series' trademark powerslide-happy gameplay. Revo was also released for the PSP, and it attempts to do the same thing as the console games, albeit with far less enjoyable results. In a sense, Revo on the PSP suffers from opposite issues of its console counterparts. Whereas the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions featured overly tough computer opponents that you couldn't bump off their racing lines to save your life, in the PSP game the opponents are total pushovers. There is next to no challenge in this game, and what little there is has more to do with the off-kilter controls than anything else.

Your first impression of Sega Rally Revo is likely to be the one you'll keep all throughout your time with the game because for as much as things change in the game, they ultimately stay the same. The second you get on a track, you'll know that this is pure arcade driving. Cars are incapable of going off track, with invisible barriers causing vehicles to bounce off everything from trees to minor shrubs. Powerslides are the name of the game, no matter the surface on which you might be driving. And there is a wide variety of surfaces on display. From mud-bogged jungles and sandy beaches to the icy, snowy mountains, you'll encounter all manner of terrain as you drive.
Maintaining tight, accurate powerslides on the PSP, however, is something of an exercise in futility. Whether you try to use the D pad or the analog stick, cars have an innate tendency to slide out and spin you too far in whatever direction you're turning. The amount of precision needed to make accurate powerslides just isn't there with this control setup, and you'll find yourself sliding every which way far more than you'd prefer. It's not impossible to keep a handle on the controls, but it requires more babysitting than it should to do so.
Granted, no matter how much you slide around like butter on a skillet, you'll probably still end up winning most of your races. The opponent drivers in Sega Rally Revo don't have much interest in keeping you from victory. Oh, sure, they'll try to cut you off when you steer around them, but that's not much of an issue because you can just bowl right into them and send their cars flying. All the cars in this game feel like tin cans on plastic wheels. A simple rear bumper tap will send the bumped car flying into the air for a second, and most times, the rear section of an opponent's car will fall down on your car. Simple taps from the side will send cars spinning like crazy. Granted, such wrecks will often lead to you losing some control of your car as well, but usually, you can get by without any other cars sneaking up and passing you.
Sega Rally Revo offers a few different modes of play. Apart from the standard quick race mode, there is a time trial mode, as well as a championship mode. There are three championship tiers, each tied to the three car classes in the game. You start out with the premier league, which consists of standard rally rides, such as the Subaru WRX STi and Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. Then you move on to the modified league, with such cars as the VW Golf GTI and Grande Punto Rally. Then finally, you hit the masters league and drive rally classics, such as the Lancia Super Delta HF Integrale and Lancia Stratos. Each league also has several unlockable cars, many of which are often much faster than the default rides (though at the same time, often more challenging to handle). With such a limited number of tracks, you end up repeating a lot of them again and again as you progress through each championship, though with the differences in speed between car classes, each step upward often results in a race that feels somewhat different.
Finally, there is multiplayer. Up to four players can play wirelessly via both ad hoc and infrastructure. The online play is functional, though we hardly ever found anyone playing. There is also a game sharing option, though only two cars and three tracks are available.

Graphically, Sega Rally Revo looks pretty solid, though it is a bit on the grainy side. This version of the game does have the dynamic track deformation that the console versions did, though not to quite the same degree. You do tear up the tracks as you go, but it doesn't really seem to have any effect on how you drive one way or the other, so it's more of just a visual trinket in this version--and not all that great of one either. Car models look great, and as each race goes on, you can cake them up with dirt or mud pretty nicely. In terms of performance, the frame rate holds steady, though the load times are pretty lengthy.
There are elements of Sega Rally Revo that provide some enjoyable moments, but too many irritations and issues get in the way of those moments. It might look good, as well as offer up a number of ways to play, but the suspect controls and relative ease of the gameplay prevent this from being a particularly captivating racer. When you factor in how many better and more interesting driving games there are on the PSP, you're ultimately better off skipping this one.

By Alex Navarro, GameSpot

Crash of the Titans

2007-10-18T15:28:00.000+07:00

Crash of the Titans. Ever since series creator Naughty Dog said goodbye to Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, the series has floundered. While the reasons for the inconsistent quality are myriad, one of the key problems has been an inability to establish a tone that is consistent and compelling on the part of the short parade of developers who've tried their hand at the series. There's just no signature Crash Bandicoot feel anymore, which has made for a trail of indistinct, forgettable games. Now Radical Entertainment is at the helm for Crash of the Titans, and though it's a solid effort--arguably better than the past few Crash games--it still kind of feels like Yet Another Mascot Platformer.

Crash of the Titans doesn't overexert itself with its story, which is pretty boilerplate. After teaming up in 2004's Crash Twinsanity, Crash Bandicoot and his nemesis Dr. Neo Cortex are back at each other's throats at the beginning of Crash of the Titans. The game kicks off with Crash and friends relaxing at home, attempting to recycle butter, when the quaintly insane doctor shows up in a blimp to kidnap Coco and Aku-Aku. It's unclear how the kidnapping figures into his plan to take over the world with hulking, mutated monsters and seems like a force of habit more than anything else. Still, Radical manages to tuck some good humor into the proceedings, which, more often than not, is thanks to some strong readings from a cast of veteran voice actors.
A solid but predictable setup gives way to some solid but predictable platforming action. Although it's not as microscopically focused as the first three Crash games, the path you walk in Crash of the Titans is still pretty narrow. In terms of volume, there's not a great deal of actual platforming here nor is it terribly challenging, but a physics system that causes platforms to wobble precariously at least makes it interesting. There are also a number of hoverboard sequences wedged in there, which seem totally random both in terms of placement and length. There's certainly a greater focus on combat, and every level contains several sequences where you have to take out a large group of enemies before you can progress. As you defeat enemies and smash environmental objects, you'll pick up mojo orbs. These orbs can earn you ability upgrades and new moves, though the combat never gets more complicated than three- or four-button combos.
The big twist in Crash of the Titans comes from your ability to jack the giant freaks that Cortex has deployed against you. When you start wailing on one of these monstrosities, a star meter will appear over its head and begin to fill up as your attacks connect. Once full, you can hop onto the shoulders of the monster and ride it around, like some kind of fleshy tank. You'll find that there's a good variety to these monsters because they have wildly different suites of attacks, as well as their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. Certain monsters are impossible for Crash to successfully attack on his own, requiring you to jack another monster first. Having to daisy-chain a series of monster-jacks during boss fights represents some of the most satisfying action in Crash of the Titans.
The game does a pretty good job of introducing new monsters at regular intervals to keep you guessing, but once you've figured out the basic tactics necessary to jack all the different enemy types, it loses a lot of its steam. Crash of the Titans tries to compensate later on with larger numbers of enemies, though this can lead to frustrating moments where you're being pummeled from all sides and unable to defend yourself or retaliate. It should take about six or seven hours to play through Crash of the Titans on the default difficulty level. The game naturally tries to lure you back with hidden items and secondary goals that can earn you some unlockable extras, as well as a cooperative mode. But you'll probably have had your fill of double-jumping, hoverboarding, and monster-jacking by the time you reach the end the first time through.

Crash of the Titans offers pretty much the same experience on the Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 2. The Xbox 360 version is naturally the best-looking, with the cleanest textures, as well as the nicest lighting and particle effects. However, the motion-blur effects can get a little carried away on Crash, which have the odd effect of making him look prerendered, like he was in a Donkey Kong Country game. The Wii and PlayStation 2 versions are pretty comparable from a presentation perspective. However, the Wii version's particle effects look nicer, and it also looks better on an HDTV. Crash of the Titans shows some restraint when it comes to the Wii motion controls, which the game only really uses for performing some of the monsters' special attacks.
Radical has created a reasonably fun experience here that's frothy, intermittently funny, and a breeze to play. The big underlying problem with Crash of the Titans is that you could swap Crash out for any number of other cartoony platforming heroes and not really know the difference. Without much of a distinct style to call its own, it's hard to get too excited.

By Ryan Davis, GameSpot

Warriors Orochi

2007-10-17T01:08:00.000+07:00

On the scale of exciting crossover fights, Warriors Orochi ranks somewhere just below Lawrence Taylor wrestling Bam Bam Bigelow, and just above the Gobots fighting the Rock Lords.

There are 77 warriors that you can use to fight the same five enemy types over and over and over.

Warriors Orochi. Koei's Warriors games are essentially critic-proof at this point. You are either in love with the games' utter unwillingness to evolve, or you aren't. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than with Warriors Orochi. A mash-up of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises into a single product, this is pure, unadulterated fan service for the squadron of hardcore fans that both brands have amassed over the years. We can sit here and tell you that this is yet another mediocre beat-'em-up that rehashes the same haggard-looking graphics, the same tired mission objectives, and the same "so old it should be in a museum for crummy combat systems" combat system, but we probably don't even have to do that. A single look at a screenshot for this game is probably all you need to decide one way or the other. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like, and vice versa.

If you're one of the few out there who's never encountered one of these games in any form, here's the lowdown. Dynasty Warriors takes a bunch of ancient warriors from Chinese history, dolls them up in severely colorful costumes, gives them gigantic novelty weapons, and then has them fight each other in addition to scads and scads of mouth-breathing grunt soldiers over the course of a bunch of beat-'em-up levels that kinda, sorta mimic historical battles, but not really. Samurai Warriors is the same thing, except that it swaps out ancient China for Japan's sengoku period. The premise for Warriors Orochi is that an evil serpent/sorcerer/king/demon...thing, named Orochi, has ripped a hole in the fabric of time and space and kidnapped all of the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors. OK, we'll bite, why exactly would someone do this? Well, because he's bored and wants to "test his strength" against the world's mightiest warriors. Hey, why not, right? If you're so powerful that you can rip open time itself, what else would you do for kicks?
Let's face it: Koei and developer Omega Force have never been great fiction writers, and though the old Dynasty and Samurai games were all steeped in the same historical scenarios over and over again, at least this is something different. Certainly, longtime fans of these games will take some delight in some of the scenarios that have been built out. For what it's worth, the game doesn't take its premise remotely seriously, and instead is content to try to create any fan's dream match-ups and fights--provided that there is such a thing. Seeing Nobunaga Oda jokingly get mistaken for Cao Cao, or watching Zhao Yun team up with Yukimura Sanada is probably enough to send some fans into hysterics. There seems to be a lot of that stuff on offer.
There are four different main story campaigns in Warriors Orochi, three of which involve the Wu, Wei, and Shu factions from Dynasty Warriors, and one of which is an all-purpose Samurai Warriors group. The storylines are obviously different from faction to faction, though the missions and combat are just as repetitive and dull as they've ever been. Like in every other Warriors game of the last decade, you drop into battle against hordes of the stupidest soldiers on the planet, fight off a few boss and sub-boss officers, and move on to the next stage. All you need to do is mash on the two main attack buttons while periodically tossing in a special attack, and you're pretty much good to go. The game tries to dress things up a bit by having you escort certain officers to safety, capture specific points on a map, or make alliances with other officers, but none of this really does much to quell the sensation of monotony.
To be fair, there are a couple of small differences to the gameplay in Orochi. For one, the game has something of a team-based mechanic where you can play as three different warriors within the same battle. Unfortunately, you get only one warrior at a time, and you simply switch between them on the fly. As you play through each stage, you'll unlock more warriors that you can swap into your group. There are 77 in all, so at least fans will be kept busy. The other change is to the prebattle setup. After each battle, you'll have likely collected a few different weapons on the battlefield, each with different bonuses and attacks attached to them. Now you can actually merge two of these weapons into one superweapon, if you so desire. You just hop into the menu, pick two weapons, and merge them. It's as simple as that. The tangible differences between the weapons aren't ever that great, but hey, at least the option is there.
Outside of the story campaigns, there's really not much to Orochi. There's a free mode in which you can pick any three warriors and take on a battle outside of the story, as well as a few gallery unlockables, but that's basically it. You can play through the story cooperatively if you find a willing friend, but the game really isn't much more interesting in multiplayer than it is in single-player.
Graphically, Warriors Orochi maintains the same level of quality of the last few games that hit both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360. The game is very clearly built off the old PS2 engine, and then ported upward to the 360. As a result, the 360 game looks more like an original Xbox 360 game than anything else. Sure, it's a great deal more colorful than its PS2 counterpart, and there's more visual flair with the special attacks and whatnot, but otherwise, this is a rather ugly game. Both versions' primary character models are at least detailed, but the battle environments are plain to the point of drab. Likewise, even though this game has a totally different storyline, it's still recycling the same battlefields from previous games.

At least all the dialogue is new, though it's not exactly well written, and the voice acting is predictably horrific. Furthermore, there's no Japanese language track, so you're stuck with the overenthusiastic and underenthusiastic English actors. Also, the thumping techno soundtrack and the hyperrepetitive shrieks of the warriors on the battlefield are enough to give someone a seizure.
If all that's been said previously isn't enough to dissuade you from taking Warriors Orochi for a spin, this probably means you're one of the dedicated faithful who would play anything with the word "Warriors" on the box. In that case, this game is clearly designed for you, and by all means you should take it for a spin. For the rest of humanity, Warriors Orochi can safely be ignored.

By Alex Navarro, GameSpot

RealPlay Puzzlesphere Hands On

2007-10-17T00:09:00.000+07:00

Hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea.

Three lives, many drops.

RealPlay Puzzlesphere Hands On. In2Games has long been attempting to get motion-sensing controls into its PlayStation 2 games. After its Gametrak system for the PS2 won critical acclaim but failed to achieve serious commercial success, the company is back for what could be one last crack at the PS2 market before the launch of its PS3 and Xbox 360 products in 2008.
The company has a number of RealPlay-branded titles out in the UK this Christmas, which all ship with their own bespoke motion-sensitive controllers. The games coming up include what is essentially a follow-up to last year's Real World Golf 2007, a racing title, and a pool game.
The standout game among those we've seen in the series so far is RealPlay Puzzlesphere. The game presents you with the familiar premise of a ball--in this case called a Xorb--traveling through a treacherous three-dimensional course to a target area.

What makes Puzzlesphere different from others in the genre is that you control it not with your DualShock 2, but with a wireless sphere that will ship with the game.
The internal hardware of the sphere is very similar to the Wii Remote's--we're told that the tilt chips are marginally more sensitive than those in the pointer for Nintendo's console, but other than that the principle is the same.
The control scheme seems at once both very simple and amazingly difficult. You tilt the sphere in any direction to increase the momentum of the onscreen Xorb in that direction...and that's it. The sphere picks up speed very quickly, and commensurately with the degree of tilt, so delicacy is most definitely the order of the day.
The various courses feature checkpoints along the way, which both ensure you don't take any unauthorised shortcuts as you progress toward the goal and act as respawn points if the Xorb does fall out of bounds. The number of attempts you get at each level before being forced to start over is relatively small, at least for the moment, which adds to the game's overall difficulty. To help out, the Xorb has an air brake that applies a force in the opposite direction to your current motion. This allows you to bring the Xorb to a fairly sharp halt, and even allows you to stop yourself from falling over the edge if you catch it in time. It's not of much use once you've fallen, though.

The courses are challenging from the get-go; unguarded spiralling ramps, precise deliberate blind drops, jumps that require a certain speed to be maintained, and fans installed to blow you off course all present obvious challenges across the levels we saw. Power-ups such as improvements to your air brake should make things a little easier, if you can reach them without coming a cropper.
In its current state, the game is fairly difficult and unforgiving, but it's rewarding when you do complete courses--although this can take quite some time. Toward the end of our brief hands-on we found ourselves feeling as if we were edging into the zone where the ball's motions started to suddenly make much more sense, but it's possible this was just due to the onset of madness caused by having seen our Xorb plummet off the edge for the umpteenth time.
The game promises a large number of courses--the menu system we saw showed at least 50 levels over four different environments, which included a futuristic cityscape and a sunburnt desert.
There are still improvements to be made in terms of the way the aerial camera pans around as your ball moves in certain areas, but the developer has a while before the game hits the store yet. We hope to get a bit more hands-on time nearer the game's release to look at the environments and the later levels, so watch this space.

By Alex Sassoon Coby, GameSpot UK

Guitar Hero III Developer Diary #2

2007-10-16T22:43:00.000+07:00

...to the rock-ready final product. Hey, anyone got a light?

From a computer model...

Guitar Hero III Developer Diary #2. Sure, most rock clubs smell like a strange mixture of alcohol and body fluids, but as any fan can tell you, the right atmosphere can make a good concert great or turn a bad show into something you won't soon forget. The same goes for the virtual spaces you'll be rocking out in the upcoming Guitar Hero III. In our last developer diary, we got to learn about the process of transforming the music into guitar-shredding gameplay. This time around, two Neversoft venue artists--Jake Geiger and Ryan Magid--talk about what it takes to bring the rockin' dive bar from concept to (virtual) reality.
Rock This Joint
By Jake Geiger and Ryan Magid, Neversoft
Jake Geiger, venue art lead, and Ryan Magid, senior venue artist, here to tell you a little bit about the venue art that went into the latest version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
The Guitar Hero franchise has such a huge fan base already that you want to make a seamless transition into the next installment of the series. Thankfully, with a group of talented artists and wonderful programmers, we were able to exceed even what we thought was possible. We knew from the start that we wanted to keep with the general style and look of the previous games, but we wanted to add a certain spark to push the concept even further.

Typically, our process starts with a brainstorming session. The environment art team will get together and throw around ideas for venues. Some are good, and some are not so good. Once we have a good list of potential candidates, we'll head off and gather reference for each one of the ideas. After finding reference for each, we will usually meet again to whittle the list down more until we have the final list of venues that we want to have in the game.
Now is when the concept stage will begin. Our concept department will take the ideas and flesh them out into 2D concept paintings of each venue. Once the concept paintings have been approved, the venue moves into what we call the "pop up" stage. We call it that because once done, the venue resembles a large pop-up book.
At this stage, the concept drawings are taken, cut up, and placed into the 3D scene as rough draft of what the final 3D geometry will be like. This helps us to visualize placement and layout of stage props and gear so that the animation department can start to put in cameras, band members can be placed, and lightshows can be started. It also provides a general feel for what the final venue will be like.
Once the "pop up" has been approved and any logistical problems have been worked out, the venue moves into the final art stage. This is the time when all of the 2D pop-up elements are fleshed out and made into fully realized working stage props. Various scripts and animations are used to make them move and give life to the stage. Our concept team works hand in hand with the environment artists. Most objects will be broken down and the concept artists will paint textures for an object while the environment artists build it in 3D.

The goal is to make all of the geometry, textures, and lighting look as much like the approved concept work that was done in the initial planning stages as possible. In the end, we made a game that we are not only happy to have worked on but also love to play, and it takes lots of guys coming together at the same time to pull this off.

By Staff, GameSpot

MX vs. ATV Untamed Hands-On

2007-10-16T01:18:00.000+07:00

MX vs. ATV Untamed Hands-On. Recently we brought you an exclusive first look at the next-generation versions of MX vs. ATV Untamed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game seems to be tracking well for Rainbow Studio's first next-generation MX title, with a raft of new features, tweaks, and in some cases, total rewrites in the form of AI and physics.
Untamed is an incredibly ambitious project, not only transitioning to more powerful console hardware from Microsoft and Sony, but also being developed for two handhelds and two other home consoles--the Wii and PlayStation 2--at the same time. Rather than offer a simple dumbed-down port of the top tier version, the four remaining games have been outsourced to other development teams. In the case of the Wii and PS2 versions, THQ studio Incinerator Studios has been given the nod to create the title. The studio is probably best known for their Cars game based on the Disney movie, and while they've made vehicular-based games before, MX vs. ATV swaps out cute for grunt.
Instead of being the same game as the Xbox 360 or PS3 version with a reworked control system, the Wii and PS2 versions offer a completely different gameplay experience. For a start, the heavy vehicles such as monster trucks and offroad buggies have been stripped out in favour of focusing on the core MX and ATV dynamic. In both versions of the game you'll be limited to 250cc, 550cc MX bikes, and a choice of four ATV quads. Given the generally harder nature of steering trucks, it makes a lot of sense to focus on smaller agile vehicles as you flail your arms. The Wii version uses the A button on the Wiimote to accelerate, and the analogue thumb stick on the nunchuck to steer your rider. After playing the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, the Wii game seems to be much less twitchy and as a result more forgiving when landing tricks. The Z button on the front of the nunchuck is used to engage the trick mode, and once activated simple hand gestures perform tricks like the Superman and Lazyboy.
The mini-game selection has also been changed, swapping out the 360 and PS3's section racing, graffiti, snake, tag, and hockey for more gesture friendly games like hill-climbing, gap jumping events, and our favourite, the downhill ski jump. The ski jump requires you to build up speed, drop onto the ramp, and perform your most insane trick combo in the air. The tough part is landing it, but if you can stick it clean, there's a second hill you can use for another crack at increasing your score.
The PS2 version of Untamed is a bit of an oddity, combining the interface and gameplay of the Wii title with the analogue control system of the Xbox 360 and PS3 games. Graphics are typical for a PS2 title, and the control pad actually makes pulling off the big combos slightly easier. We found we had more fine control than with the Wiimote since stunts only required a button press and the left thumb stick movement.
Both versions feature staples of the MX series, with clutching, power-slides, and pre-loading allowing you to get big air off the edge of jumps. Inside you'll find six series to play: supercross, nationals, opencross, supermoto, freestyle, and rally. Unfortunately there are none of those badass little 50cc minimoto races that seem perfect for the Wii audience. These are limited to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version.
Both games will include online multiplayer, with the PS2 offering six player online competitive racing, and Wii sneaking two more in per game for a total of 8. Both versions of the game are set to ship this holiday season.

By Dan Chiappini, GameSpot AU

NBA 2K8

2007-10-16T00:49:00.000+07:00

Though he'd sometimes dribble the clock away last year, Kidd will get a shot up before time expires in this version.

Big Ben points out how many new game modes there are in NBA 2K8.

NBA 2K8.If you're a sports fan stuck with a PlayStation 2 as your only option, you're probably used to reading the phrase "it's the same as last year" with regard to this year's crop of sports games. If not, this should help--NBA 2K8 on the PlayStation 2 is basically the same as it was last year. It's a decent game, but none of the new features from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions made it to the PS2 edition, which is extremely disappointing.

There's no shortage of ways to stay busy in 2K8--there's just a shortage of new ways to stay busy. The series has had a street-ball component for a number of years, and it's back again. You can participate in full- or half-court games, one-on-one, and even 21 using real NBA players. The slam-dunk contest from the current generation is MIA. The street-ball mode is OK, but if you're looking for street ball there are much better games out there. In addition to that, you can create your own playoff scenarios. This option isn't all that useful or interesting, but it's worth mentioning because it's one of the only new features. Once again, the NBA 2K series sets the standard for online play. There's something for everyone to enjoy here. Hardcore fans can participate in an entire season, complete with online draft. You can create tournaments, as well as play ranked and unranked matches. We had some problems with drops and disconnects, but when we did get to play, the game ran smoothly.
The association is the bread and butter of the series. It's still the deepest basketball sim out there on the PS2, but not a whole lot has changed, and it's starting to feel a bit stale. The menus have been redone, but they are still a chore to navigate. A lot of the tasks aren't much fun either, such as scheduling practices and scouting future draft picks. All of these options may make it seem as if going through a season of the association is a lot of work, but the effect the options have on your team is minimal. It's possible to never schedule any practices and scout very little, and yet still do just fine. But you get what you put into the mode. If you really immerse yourself in the life of an NBA GM and coach, there's a lot to enjoy here. The new hoopcast simulator lets you monitor a game as it's simulated. You can watch text play-by-play, view team and player stats, check out a shot chart, and most importantly adjust team settings on the fly. Should you decide to worry only about the rigors of a single season, you can do that in the aptly named season mode.
Save for a few tweaks to the artificial intelligence and some new dunks, 2K8 performs just like its predecessor on the court. The games are generally up-tempo, and there's usually plenty of scoring. AI opponents are better about getting shots up before time expires, which will be a relief to anyone who watched it dribble out the clock instead of attempting a game-winning shot in 2K7. However, players still walk out of bounds and toss up shots from behind the backboard on occasion. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game have a significant problem with missed layups. It's an issue here, but to a lesser extent because characters are much more inclined to dunking the ball, even in situations where they probably couldn't dunk the ball in real life. Is it unrealistic? Yes. Is it better than missing an absurd amount of layups? Yes. Although it's good the PS2 version didn't inherit that "feature" from the current generation, it would have been nice if it had received at least something worthwhile. Neither the new dribble controls nor the defensive-lockdown feature made it over.

NBA 2K8 looks so similar to NBA 2K7 that you have to wonder if even the developer could tell the difference between screenshots from the two games. There are some new animations, and the signature-style moves look nice, but they're nowhere near as extensive as on the Xbox 360 and PS3. The frame rate is steady, which is impressive considering just how much is happening at once onscreen. Player models are still pretty good. They're all super-shiny during replays, but you can tell who most players are with little problem. The announcers do a nice job of calling the action, and they mix in a fair amount of game analysis as well. They do occasionally miss some big plays, and there are a few situations where you'll repeatedly hear the same call, but they're generally good.
If you own last year's game, and you're cool with dropping 30 dollars for what amounts to little more than a patch and some new rosters, you'll be reasonably satisfied with NBA 2K8. Just don't buy the game expecting any of the new features from the Xbox 360 and PS3--they aren't here.

By Aaron Thomas, GameSpot