Crash of the Titans

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

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

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