But there's more here. My investment goes well beyond that of a book or a movie. I've logged well over a hundred hours in the three games over the past five years. In that time I became my Shepard. Now, in Mass Effect 3, this is completely my story, my conclusion to the fight, with all the ramifications of my actions and decisions come home to roost. Yet the immediacy of the action and the well-directed rhythm of its story make Mass Effect 3 not only the best of the three, but a game anyone could enjoy completely on its own.
If you’re not familiar with the original title (and you likely won’t be, considering that arcades in North America have long since gone the way of the Dodo), Tank! Tank! Tank! is essentially a Michael Bay movie filtered through the lens of a Japanese game. You and a teammate take on wave after wave of giant, mechanical foes, blasting your way through destructible environments to, ironically enough, save a city from destruction. Given its arcade origins, the gameplay is very simple, amounting to little more than shooting everything in your path. But it’s also a lot of fun, particularly when you have to do battle with one of its monolithic bosses.
Up for consideration as the saddest noise in the world: the sound Mickey Mouse makes when he dies/gets knocked out/whatever inEpic Mickey: The Power of Illusion.
It's a depressing, elongated "ohhhh " groan that immediately makes you feel disappointed in yourself for letting a beloved slice of your childhood keel over. Childhood—both personal ones and the younger days of the video game medium—figure prominently in this self-conscious platformer.
Power of Illusion harkens back to the kinds of richly designed platformers that thrived on the Genesis, Game Boy and SNES and shares a bit of DNA with the RPGs of that era, too. You control Mickey Mouse as he tries to rescue girlfriend Minnie and other famous toons from the clutches of evil witch Mizrabel. If these plot beats sound familiar, it's becausePower of Illusion is being positioned as a spiritual sequel to the 1990 Genesis gameCastle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. But, since it's an Epic Mickey game, players get the use of the series' Magic Paintbrush mechanics, which enables them to create and destroy objects with paint and thinner.
Five years pass - an age in video games - and in this time Activision's Modern Warfare series rises to prominence, knocking Halo down the most-played charts. A time of crisis; a time for an old hero to take back old ground. It's the start of Halo 4, and Cortana unsheathes Master Chief.
But while this one-man army has renewed purpose and a new crisis to tackle, that lack of humanity is hidden in plain sight. For a game so focused on saving the universe, the Halo series is curiously devoid of people to save. It's filled with others to destroy, of course, this time in the form of the Prometheans, an alien race of bipedal insect knights and exploding robot dogs that fight against (and alongside) Halo's more familiar enemies, the Covenant.
They provide the ingredients for the sprawling three-way battles the series is known for and - while their ability to warp and fly is an irritating combination - in their assured design new developer 343 Industries shows that it's up to the task of expanding the boundaries of the Halo universe. And it's a universe filled with weapons, more weapons than ever before, the Prometheans adding their armoury of esoteric rifles and machine guns to the already enormous array of killing tools. But people to save? You won't find many of those here.
Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.
The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.
The game spans some 30 years, which, with the Assassin’s Creed team at the narrative reins, lends itself to the epic story that ensues. Ubisoft has not only packed in the expected yet awesome fictional and historical stories and crossovers, they’ve redesigned the protagonist’s movement and combat mechanics as well as adding brand new environments through which emerges new game modes and mini games in each.
The first thing to leap into, or off, depending where you are in the world, is definitely the environments. If you’ve been saving yourself for the game and have resisted seeing any trailers and reading any previews, then stop reading here. If not, you’re already aware of the game’s setting and what that explores: Boston and New York, the Frontier and the Eastern Seaboard. All entirely unique, with the city settings the most familiar but still very different from the previous games.
Hell, by Painkiller's estimation, is other people running endlessly towards you. Mad axe-monks, skeletal WW1 soldiers in gas masks, children splayed in two by shotgun blasts and men eternally trapped in their duvet covers come laundry day: all desperate for a meet and greet with hero Daniel Garner's whirring blade.
Hell & Damnation is a modern reincarnation of what Polish developer People Can Fly, now responsible for Gears of War: Judgment, ushered onto our mortal plane back in 2004. Theirs was a deranged shooter that saw Serious Sam infused with equal parts of Hieronymus Bosch and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Lunatic fire-and-forget gameplay, back-flipping hoodlums, goliath bosses and some astoundingly beautiful panoramas of the underworld all conspired to create a game that was, arguably, a more direct successor to Doom than the (then forthcoming) Doom 3.
The Football Manager carnival is back in town, bringing with it hundreds of new rides and thousands of new employees. Sports Interactive has even gone to the trouble of making it look all different when you first enter. Those who've been here before will be in their element in no time, while first-timers will be eased into all the new attractions with handy guides and a bit of selective 'streamlining' to get them right to the heart of the fair.
Like with last year's Football Manager, large numbers of changes are being championed in the 2013 update, ranging from minutiae tweaks only the most hardened obsessive would notice to the addition of whole new modes of play for the first time ever in the series. Yes, I’m ignoring the handheld versions when I say that.
Let this be a lesson: if you’re going to try to make a Call Of Duty-alike, you’d better make sure it’s a good one. Medal Of Honor: Warfighter’s singleplayer campaign makes it clear that developer Danger Close has COD makers Treyarch and Infinity Ward lined up in its sights, but the abysmal end product merely highlights what their series does so well. Where COD maintains a smooth 60fps, Warfighter gets a nosebleed trying to put out 30fps. Modern Warfare boasts near-instant restarts after death; here, lengthy loading times merely add to the frustration.
Where Activision’s series funnels players from one bombastic set-piece to the next, Warfighter moves its audience from one stream of bad guys popping in and out of cover to another. There’s a chopper gunner section, of course, and a new world record for the number of slow-mo breach and clears. Warfighter’s campaign, by virtue of its naked aspirations, feels like a bad COD tribute act, touring the working men’s clubs with its stick-on Elvis sideburns.
he title actually works against Zombie Driver in this case, because it's a pretty good game. Not a great one, but a better-than-expected diversion that at least deserves a second look. It's a top-down shooter crossed with the citywide rampages of early GTA, set during yet another zombie apocalypse. Do we need more zombie games? Not really, yet Zombie Driver doubles down on the basic enjoyments you'd expect and justifies its existence through an endearing eagerness to please.
Starting out in a taxi, you begin running missions for the military as the undead fill the streets. Your objectives are never very complicated - drive here and kill everything is the motif that repeats across the 31 stages. Thankfully, it's a fun motif and a robustly presented one.
Originally released for PC in 2009 and now enhanced with more missions and gameplay improvements, Zombie Driver's visuals have the fine detail and granular physics you'd expect from that platform. There can be dozens of zombies on-screen at any time, explosions are plentiful and spectacular, and simply ploughing through a swarm of gutmunchers at high speed, reducing them to sticky red paste and meaty chunks, is a tangible joy.
Kids can be terrifying. I think we can all agree on that. After all, why else would there be such a longstanding tradition of creepy kids in horror stories? From Damien in The Omen to the Little Sisters from BioShock, it's safe to say that if you run into a cute little kid in formal wear with a predisposition for staring and talking in weird voices (or not talking at all), you should run far, far away. Chances are they aren't smiling because they want to play "Guess Who?" with you.
In these stories, the nightmare demon-child is usually cast as the antagonist or the innocent victim who must be saved from forces beyond their control. Similarly, the vast majority of horror games position you as the victim who must escape or fight back against the their assailants. Lucius, from the aptly named Finnish studio Shiver Games, has something different in mind. This game has the window-dressing of a classic possessed-child horror story and the structure of a slasher film, except that this time, you're the slasher.And that slasher is a six year-old child.
Mists of Pandaria feels like the end of an era – not of World of Warcraft as a game, not by a long stretch, but of World of Warcraft as a cultural phenomenon. In most ways, give or take your tolerance for kung-fu pandas, it’s an expansion that just about any MMO would kill for. It’s not however the much hoped for shot in the arm that’s likely to restore the game’s flagging fortunes, or a sweeping update that makes it possible to forget how old both its design and basic game systems actually are.
Blizzard’s spent a decade refining and developing those ideas though, and even now, the king of fantasy MMOs has the power to surprise and impress. Can that be enough to keep players happy, bring some back to the fold, and even pick up a few newcomers with its practiced charm? Let’s find out.
What you get for your money includes five new levels,
though that’s largely meaningless at this point in the game, which take your character to Level 90; the ancient China themed continent of Pandaria made up of seven main areas and assorted dungeons; a new Pet Battling system; and the brand new Monk class. I won’t be talking much about that because my main is a Mage and I’ve only been able to put the Monk through its paces in the tutorial areas. They offer some interesting skills though, like the dynamic jump kick and the Touch Of Death, which one-hit kills non-bosses who have less HP than you.
Most video games are predictable. They are programmed to follow rules, and characters are scripted to say specific things at predetermined times. Rarely are games able to make you feel like you are matching wits with another person – much less one with hidden agendas and ulterior motives. This is the standout achievement in Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward; you must trust or deceive a group of strangers. Every time you make a choice, the doubt, paranoia, and angst surging forth are real.
You are trapped in a top-secret government facility, having been abducted to be part of a sick game that consists of locking you in puzzle-filled rooms and pitting you against eight other characters. The whole game functions off of a "prisoner's dilemma" system that forces you to cast votes to ally with or betray characters, resulting in the gain (or loss) of points. These points are critical, because whoever earns nine points can escape, and whoever falls to zero points is killed.
At its core, Just Dance 4 looks and plays like its predecessors. The neon-coloured, cartoon visual style returns, setting the tone for a game geared towards fun. Brightly dressed dancers carry out the outrageously enjoyable dance routines against backdrops recreating nightclubs, living rooms and even wrestling rings. It's an extremely vibrant visual style that's absolutely jam-packed with personality.
Users are encouraged to mimic the dance moves by following a series of on-screen cues below the avatars. The scoring system is extremely generous, ensuring that players with even less rhythm than a John Sergeant / Ann Widdecombe pairing can prosper.
It was only a matter of time. With the free-to-play model blowing up on the PC, raking in huge amounts of cash by way of microtransactions, the consoles were sure to follow sooner or later. The Xbox 360’s first foray into this Brave New World is Happy Wars, a sort-of MOBA whose charm is only outweighed by its numerous flaws.
By sort-of MOBA – a genre defined as an RTS with action-RPG elements in a multiplayer space - I mean that Happy Wars borrows heavily from its Dota-like cousins, but doesn’t fully embrace what defines the genre. There’s no creep here, replaced instead by a second 15-player team constantly spawning and running into battle. Towers also function rather differently. Instead of actively trying to destroy any towers in their path, Happy Warriors are working to build their own, where they can then spawn.
Beginning with a scene out of the as-of-yet unreleased Skyfall, 007 Legends shows Daniel Craig’s James Bond being struck by a sniper’s bullet while fighting on a moving train, causing the agent to stumble off the side and into the lake below. As he descends into the dark depths, his past adventures flash before his eyes, giving you an excuse to play through abridged climaxes of his classic spy movies. Even Bond’s near-death experiences are cool.
I bet voter turnout's unusually high in New Japan. In Liberation Maiden, when everyone's favourite futuristic superpower is attacked by some huge mechanical drilling things, the freshly elected President Shoko takes to the skies clad with huge robot wings and a devastating collection of lasers and missiles and sets out to avenge her murdered father and her fallen country all at once. (I suspect she's a shoo-in for re-election, publication of tax returns notwithstanding.)
That's the wacky premise behind this score-attack shooter, which brings together good old Suda51 and the people at Level-5. What have they made? A quietly likable blaster driven by a handful of smart risk/reward systems and punctuated with large, but fairly unmemorable, bosses. It's not a bad game by any means, but like President Shoko herself its nature is stoical rather than showy and - glorious anime cut-scenes aside - its chunky 3D environments make it feel bland and a little old-fashioned, too.
from time to time there are games that surprise you, games that you play and think they are full of innovation, filled with great graphics and a gameplay mechanic that sets it apart from the rest of the competition. Tryst tries to be that game, however for me it fails in every department and after a few hours play I felt that it could be any number of average games.
Tryst is your typical RTS game, developed by BlueGiant Interactive it features the standard features of any RTS game. It has 8 player PvP, two unique races and an Augmentation Research Mechanism. The game features a long an exhaustive story mode, plus multiplayer which is standard for these types of games these days. You can choose to be either the Humans or the Aliens who are known as Zali’s, and depending on who you choose this will give you different abilities and styles of play.
The Unfinished Swan definitely fits into that category, first seeing the light of day at the Independent Games Festival in 2008, after which Sony took it under its wing. What made it stand out back then was how beautiful and stark it looked; it sets you in a brilliant white and apparently empty game world where your only interaction is to lob balls of paint. These splatter against the unseen geometry of the world, revealing the shapes around you.
It's an absolutely charming effect. The first stage finds you carefully picking your way through an invisible rural landscape rendered piece by piece in jet black splashes against a white canvas. It is, quite frankly, stunning - all the more so when you turn around and see the path you've splashed through the void. Benches, reeds, rocks and trees all emerge from the emptiness, delicately textured and hauntingly melancholy. You could take any screenshot from this introductory section and hang it in a gallery. It's that wonderful.
It seemed like a good idea at the time: Take the popular Dragon Ball Z fighting games and put them in first person perspective with Kinect controls, allowing players to punch, kick, and Kamehameha their way through the series' popular battles, allowing players to be immersed in the Dragon Ball world like never before.
Wait... Kinect? No, I was wrong. That doesn't seem like a good idea at all.
From the outset, it looks like a solid attempt was given to ensure that the Kinect motions would be simple to execute to give the game some simple play control. And while that does hold true initially, once you venture into the realm of the more complex motions (i.e. your special attacks), you'll find frustration once again rearing its ugly head.
First off, if you're going to play this game (or any game on Kinect), you should prepare yourself to look like an idiot. Jumping in place has your character leap into the air for ranged attacks. When charging your Ki, you have to squat a bit, sort of like you're taking a hunching dump in your living room. Charging a Ki blast has you holding your hand almost to your shoulder while you build up a charge before thrusting your hand forward to throw it. Even simple moves have their faults, as punches look normal but kicking at your TV feels silly.
From beginners to professional ballers, this is one for everyone. Initially it can be easy and fun to pick up if played in the perfect setting. Mind you, in the “perfect setting”. In order to enjoy the full experience you need only a few things: a Kinect (mere 100 bucks), ball (comes with a full retail copy), plenty of space, secluded place to dribble (wouldn’t want to disturb anyone), most likely a big screen TV (got to see the patterns), and a whole lot of patience. Okay, so you need a lot of things. Once you’ve gathered all that, have at it and soon enough you’ll be trying out as a point guard for the Warriors (not likely, but we can dream).
Calling NiGHTS into Dreams a cult classic would be an extreme understatement: If you weren't around for its first release on the Sega Saturn in 1996, chances are you've still heard of it. And yet, despite being one of the most highly praised games that Sega has ever published, most gamers will tell you that they've never actually played it. This inconsistency has frustrated many fans of the series, begging the question of how good a game it really was. Fortunately, the game's recent HD rerelease on XBLA and PSN provides the perfect opportunity for a curious modern gamer to finally get to the bottom of this mystery. And rest assured, NiGHTS is a puzzle worth solving.
You'll play mostly as NiGHTS, a flying purple jester of somewhat secretive origin. NiGHTS is a resident of the Night Dimension, a dream world that millions of sleeping Earthlings visit each night as they slumber, and he's going to need your help to save both his world and yours. A great evil has spread across the once happy land of Nightopia in the form of a tyrannical ruler, Wizeman the Wicked. Wizeman wants to steal all the dream energy that human beings produce, a resource called Ideya that would make him powerful enough to spread into the waking world, spelling doom for Nightopians and human beings alike. Of course it's your job to stop this nefarious plot, so with NiGHTS as your ally you'll set off into the Night Dimension, bent on overcoming your Nightmares and taking back some stolen Ideya.
Its arcade focus is obvious from the outset, with default pad controls that clearly cater to the infrequent flyer. Despite a claim to historical accuracy in its authentic WWII Pacific theatre missions and aircraft,Damage Inc is no simulator. It’s about pulling off impossible, capillary-busting aerial manoeuvres while firing unlimited rounds at a sky full of enemies. Or at least that’s what it ought to be.
In reality, it’s a mess. What should be a fast-paced airborne thriller is so hamstrung by terrible handling and sub-par performance that it saps any excitement from the 12-hour singleplayer campaign. Aircraft control feels sluggish and imprecise (even with the stick) due to an unstable framerate that often drops dramatically, especially in the busier sections late in the game. As a result, dogfighting becomes a chore – though the game does offer a couple of conciliatory features to players.
Now that creating triple-A games requires similar levels of investment to making movies, we should all be grateful Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network offer an outlet for maverick developers with big ideas but little resources.
And developers don't come more maverick than Arkedo, a bunch of wacky Frenchmen whose Paris studio, so they say, includes a pop-up restaurant. Arkedo's latest opus, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, is as madcap as its name suggests, yet it manages to be quite unlike any game you'll have encountered, both in terms of visuals and gameplay.
Graphically speaking, it's pretty easy to describe – Ren & Stimpy meets Itchy & Scratchy. Primary and fluorescent colours abound and the setting – hell – supports all manner of surreal touches, such as a health-replenishing monster sporting 20-foot-long legs and an eyeball for a head reminiscent of The Residents. If you're prone to migraines, it might be a good idea to give Hell Yeah! a wide berth.
Let’s be clear, Shad’O is another tower defence game – but please don’t stop reading yet. Unlike other games of the genre, Shad’O does something unique – it tries to immerse you in a story.
Yes, there’s a story in here, one that centres on William: a young boy in his pyjamas who finds himself in a strange world overrun with shadows and darkness. William can’t remember how he got to this place, or, for that matter, much of anything at all. Luckily, his adorably British accented teddy bear is there to help guide him on the path to regain his memories, one at a time.
It may seem odd to focus so much on telling a tale, considering the genre, but Shad’O actually manages to use the story elements to give the game of tower defence an unusual twist. It weaves itself into the game effectively, counteracting the repetitive nature of the genre. And beating a level does simply dump you into the next one, but rewards you with beautifully drawn stills of William’s memories, and little by little, the game paints a picture of what exactly happened to him.
If a fighting game sequel is going to be a critical and commercial success, it has to offer tangible progression for a wide variety of players. For dabblers who tend to dismiss the online arena in favour of solo modes and local multiplayer, the new iteration needs to deliver an enticing range of new characters, a cosmetic upgrade and a weighted helping of single-player content that lasts more than an afternoon. For ardent fans, the mechanical changes need to strike an even balance between familiarity and innovation.
This last point is particularly tricky, because if you add something that's redundant, cheap or gimmicky, you risk unbalancing an otherwise stable foundation - but by the same stretch, if you release a fighting game that handles almost identically to its predecessor, you risk a backlash of apathy.
Dead or Alive 5 appears to understand this dilemma without finding a conclusive way to solve it. It doesn't tarnish the series' solid and sassy reputation - far from it - but it falls short of an evolutionary leap in terms of combat mechanics and a substantial expansion in terms of single-player distractions.
Realms of Ancient War (orR.A.W. for short) might look likeDiablo from the outside but it certainly doesn’t play like it.
R.A.W. is an old school styled, loot based hack and slash game, with typical class archetypes you'd expect to find in an Action RPG. You choose your basic wizard, warrior or rogue and start your adventure. While it’s seen as more of a throwback to games like the firstDiablo, it certainly has way more problems.
The lack of voice acting in game is apparent right from the beginning as the first mission is to talk to someone in the first town. A box of dialogue will pop up on the bottom of the screen making the story seem like an afterthought. A few minutes in, I didn’t care what people had to say, as there was nothing exciting or interesting about the story.
Enemy Unknown isn't a simple remake of the original X-COM: UFO Defense, but like that game, it cannily instills a sense of fear. Earth is under attack by aliens, and the game makes no attempts to humanize the attackers. This isn't District 9--it's The War of the Worlds, and extraterrestrial invaders are to be annihilated, not welcomed or bargained with. This might be a modern rendition of an older game, but developer Firaxis relies on old-fashioned fears to drive its narrative. Almond-eyed greys and floating saucers ripped from popular culture need no explanation: they're clearly not of this world, and they're clearly out to destroy us. And so it's up to you, the commander of the super-secretive XCOM organization, to make Earth a safe haven once again.
Mugen Souls is the latest Japanese RPG offering from NIS America, and one that will look instantly familiar to those who have followed franchises such as Disgaea. Scratch beneath the art style, however, and players will uncover a few novel ideas, albeit ones that perhaps don’t fully pay off.
The game’s protagonist is Chou-Chou. Despite looking like a ten year old girl with pink hair, Chou-Chou has declared herself an “Undisputed God”, and is on a mission to conquer the seven worlds. Accompanied by interstellar ship pilot, Ryuto, and demon-turned-angel, Altis, Chou-Chou must tackle both the hero and demon lord of each world and turn them into her Peon. We will get around to discussing Peons a bit later on.
The story is interesting enough to keep you going, although the humour is rather risqué. When I first saw the PEGI 16 rating on the box I was surprised – surely such a bright and cheery looking game shouldn’t command such a rating? Within a few minutes I understood perfectly; the first scene shows Chou-Chou and Altis dancing, with plenty of boob and knicker shots. The innuendo can also be off the charts, so this is definitely not one to play whilst the kids are about.
The titular heroine is, as you may have guessed, a sexy pirate lady on the hunt for some legendary loot. She leaves most pirate stereotypes behind for a kind of peppy determination, and once you join her search, her casual mentions of how she will inevitably betray you make for some amusing moments. There are also two lonely weirdos with whom you converse, each consumed by his own obsession, as well as some entertaining audio-log-only personalities. There are hearty chuckles and witty moments, but Pirate's Booty's humor starts to run dry a few hours in, making it feel like a tepid scion of the main game.
Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is pretty much identical in concept to the original. This time around, the ever-cuddly bears have booked themselves into an island resort for a tropical vacation, and once again decided not to invite the titular Naughty. As ever, Naughty is unhappy with this arrangement, and decides to punish his peers in a variety of violent and murderous ways.
The original game's conceit was amusing on paper, but the charm soon wore off. With a sequel that does nothing to expand the core premise, Naughty Bear doesn't even have the initial humor to work with. Paradise jumps right back into familiar territory, as Naughty murders bears in the same fashion he did last time. He sneaks up on victims and uses environmental objects (many of which are just cloned from the original) to skewer, burn, or otherwise mutilate them. Weapons can be used to beat or execute enemies, and traps can be used to injure, distract, and terrify. Committing atrocities in front of crowds can eventually drive victims insane, make them attack each other, or inspire suicide.
Leon S. Kennedy's reference to the first town overrun by zombies in Capcom's long-running survival horror series is pregnant with meaning. At face value, it's the eye-rolling incredulity of a zombie-thwacking protagonist thrown into the familiar peril of a sequel: 'This again? Really?' But as Kennedy and his new partner-in-uniform Helena Harper creep their way through an abandoned American university, its creaking halls resounding with the thunderclaps and rude flashes of a nighttime electrical storm, at times it does feel just like Raccoon.
Rabid dogs smash through glass panes while bug-eyed cadavers turn their heads to glare back at you over rotten shoulders, just as if you've wandered back into Spencer Mansion's woodworm-infested corridors. The fixed camera angles and boat-like character steering of the series' formative days have been consigned to history. Nevertheless, the scenery in these early stages of Resident Evil 6 - from the set dressing to the instant deaths to the quicktime events - is pure Shinji Mikami - even if the gifted designer is long gone.
Do you love the wacky adventures of Straw Hat Pirates Monkey D. Luffy? Do you enjoy pummeling wave after wave of mindless enemy soldiers in Dynasty Warriors? Namco Bandai and Tecmo Koei have teamed up to combine the two and give you a beautiful anime beat-em-up with this PSN release. Though it's an extremely popular series, One Piece games are somewhat rare in every territory but Japan, so it's nice to see an adaptation show up with such excellent production values and graphical polish. It's a shame that the excellent source material and beautiful paint job can't save the game from being a Dynasty Warriors derivation with very little change or fresh ideas, but there's still plenty of fun content for you to enjoy.
When you mix The Punisher, Joe Danger, Odell Down Under, and wrap them all up in a nice bundle of arts and crafts, what do you get? Why, you get Derrick The Deathfin of course – The product of a two-man indie team collaboration, Different Tuna. Now available on the PlayStation Network, Derrick The Deathfin tells the story of a little shark on a journey of revenge and destruction – all told through the creative art styling of papercraft. With so many large AAA titles hitting retail at this time, it is easy to miss some of the downloadable titles that hit our gaming systems. Will Derrick The Deathfin be the catch of the day? Or will it sink before it can even swim?
Humans have drawn the last straw for the little shark Derrick. If it wasn’t enough that they were destroying nature – Earth’s natural environments – they went and killed the little shark’s mother and father too! Now nothing will get in his way for revenge! This is the premise of Derrick the Deathfin – an orphaned shark who has nothing to lose and will eat anything and anyone who gets in his way from exacting revenge on the ones who took it all away from him, humans. While the story isn’t of central importance to the game, it gives reason to the actions you play out in Derrick the Deathfin. Opening with a brief papercraft cutscene of the demise of Derrick’s parents, the story progresses as you move through different levels of the game taking out key targets that Derrick has his sight set on. The story isn’t a strong focus of the game and it really doesn’t need to be; After all, does a shark really need an excuse to chomp down on stuff?
Choosing to forgo a 3DS debut, Black and White 2 rely on the laurels of their forbearers in the continued absence of big changes. Set two years after the original Black and White, the sequel kicks off in predictable fashion. You’re plucked from the comfort of your mother’s bosom in Aspertia City and thrown out into the wild as a Pokemon trainer - travelling, battling, and 'catching them all' over the space of a 25-hour pilgrimage to become Unova's champion.
This is, without a doubt, the best soccer sim I've ever played. Kicking off with First Touch Control, FIFA 13 adds shades of unpredictability that I'm not used to in a sports game, even after setting the tone with last year's introduction of the Player Impact Engine. First Touch Control adds more weight to the initial touch players put on the ball, thanks to added elements of physics in players' actions. As a result, every play feels reasonably risky, and none of your passes are certain to hit their mark to a point of predictability. The ball might take a hard bounce if you attempt to volley it instead of safely settling it when receiving a pass.
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