God Mode is a four-player horde shooter that can be played alone, but only in the sense that Strip Solitaire exists and can be called a game. Each of the five levels, all simple but beautiful in design, is made up of a series of linked arenas. Monsters pour in, and it’s your team’s job to make them regret having bothered. The basic action is exactly that, with weapons that feel a touch weak (unless you’re using a controller that adds a shot of rumble to every action,) but otherwise landing between "solid" and "decent" from the moment you blast your first skeleton into bones. The main annoyance is that character movements can be sluggish, which isn't too bad when getting around, but can be a matter of life and death when a big monster decides to try swinging something heavy at your face.
This island dungeon harbors many fears, and is the main new attraction in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, a rerelease of one of 2012's best role-playing games, with new content added to tempt the faithful back to the city of Gran Soren and beyond. Strangely, Bitterblack Isle isn't available to you any other way, though it would seem to be a prime candidate for release as a downloadable add-on. In any case, if you're a Dragon's Dogma veteran, seeing this new content means buying a new version of the game, though the extensive dungeon is no small morsel, which makes it an intriguing proposition for returning adventurers. What a pity, then, that much of the new content gets in its own way, sometimes making it difficult to enjoy the story's hushed mystery and the undeniable thrills of felling a gargantuan winged cockatrice.
Your imagination is tasked with translation and embellishment: mapping the game's top-down mazes to the bright arc of the French Riviera and transforming this brisk steal-'em-up's elegant 2D blueprints into lavish museums, hotels and casinos ripe for raiding. That's a neat trick, and it's a testament to the cues that Pocketwatch Games provides that it works as brilliantly as it does. What's even more astonishing, however, is that the developer has the guts to try such a strategy in the first place.
You know what kills you in a zombie apocalypse? We all like to imagine it's the blaze of glory at the end of a hard day's survival - gravely wounded, sacrificing ourselves to trigger the explosion that lets our friends live to fight another day. But Dead Island Riptide holds the truth. The thing that gets you killed in a zombie apocalypse isn't holding them off while someone you love sprints for the chopper - it's losing your footing on a walkway or rooftop, or getting slashed to death while you're doing a three-point turn in a boat. When it comes to the end of the world, it's the boring stuff that really kills you.
That wasn't always the case with Dead Island, though. Techland's first stab at an open-world survival RPG - where players joined with friends or fought alone through a holiday island overrun by zombies - was light on smarts and heavy on smacking things with a modified shovel, but its biggest problem was the bugs and glitches that killed your enthusiasm more effectively than the undead. The developers belatedly patched in some dignity, and sales were tremendous thanks to canny marketing, but a lot of us felt burned by the experience.
Few moments in a competitive first-person shooter feel as good as nailing someone with a rocket from across the map. It's a satisfaction that comes from knowing that you not only had swift reflexes and precise aim, but that you out-thought him and knew exactly where he planned to be before he did. That's the sensation that ShootMania Storm is built around. Its humble graphics are deceptively simple, as its modes incorporate some really clever ideas that make it a tense and unique experience, at least for a little while.
While all fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series will likely find something to like about its latest release, Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers -- it is, after all, cut much from precisely the same cloth as contemporaries Persona 4 and Devil Survivor -- the folks most likely to fully appreciate its unique quirks are gamers of, shall we say, a certain age. Namely, those old enough to remember when Soul Hackers was new, way back in 1997.
The latest incarnation of Motocross Madness has its share of visual surprises scattered across its Egyptian, Australian, and Icelandic vistas, but none leaves so great an impression as a daredevil in the Elite Knight armor from Dark Souls flipping his dirt bike 30 feet above the Egyptian desert. Is this the titular madness? Hardly. Rather, it's just Motocross Madness' use of your Xbox Live Arcade avatars to serve as the actual racers, and it's but one way that this entertaining dirt bike racer maintains its emphasis on fun all the way to the finish line.
As welcome as it is to have a use for Xbox Live avatars, however, they sometimes seem out of place. At heart, Motocross Madness is a fairly realistic racer that doesn't shy from moderate challenges, and the sight of your gangly avatar on an almost photo-realistic bike occasionally emphasizes the game's awkward juggle of realism and cartoony aesthetics. Not one for racing in whatever crazy getup you display on your XBLA social panel? Fear not: Motocross Madness also awards you with in-game helmets, T-shirts, and other assorted cosmetic goodies for leveling and completing some achievements so you can look more like a professional racer and less like Skyrim's Dovahkiin in a Portal shirt.
I didn’t hate the dozens of hours I spent shooting generic aliens and mutants in Defiance, but I know I’m not going back to it, either. Rather than the addictive, "Where did the day go?" sort of experience I had when I started out my adventures in World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Defiance doesn’t do anything special enough to hook me, even for the short term.
Decent story missions and well-designed dungeons are too few and far between, and the vast intervening stretches are filled with some of the dullest and most repetitious quest design I’ve experienced in an MMO, punctuated by polish issues in the form of a poor mouse-and-keyboard UI, occasional broken quests, and crash bugs. The competitive multiplayer entertains for a while, but that and a few other redeeming features ultimately aren’t enough to make Defiance worth spending more than a short time with.
Black Adam streaks towards Earth, wreathed in golden-hued lighting. He touches down on the streets of downtown Metropolis with a simple proclamation: "I have returned." Cut to its guardian, the son of Jor-El, tearing his suit off to reveal the iconic “S” beneath it. After being slammed through a skyscraper, Black Adam rears up and shouts, “SHAZAM!” rending Superman with a massive thunderbolt. Supes responds by punching Black Adam into the atmosphere, flying up past him, and sending him crashing back down to Earth with a towering overhead smash.
It’s not often that I review a game where I struggle to identify the genre. With Sang-Froid – Tales of Werewolves though, I find myself at somewhat of a loss. What kind of game is it? I don’t know. Is it any good? Most certainly!
As well as being difficult to categorize as regards its genre, its also hard to say whether Sang-Froid – Tales of Werewolves is an indie game or not. Certainly it’s from a smaller studio, and there are elements that reflect lower production values (like the voice recordings), but other aspects of the presentation are slick and impressive. For example, the music is fantastic, with a celtic influence throughout complete with pipes and flutes. It’s the sort of music I have never heard in any game before, and it’s amazing to see it work so well. These Irish/Scottish ditties are present from the opening moments of the game, and later the addition of more haunting orchestral pieces and some brilliant ambient audio make Sang-Froid – Tales of Werewolves one of the best sounding games of the year so far.
Retro-game-homages are as popular as ever, but too many fail to capture the magic of their inspirations. To call Guacamelee! anything other than an homage is downright uninformed. However, it's surprising just how well it manages to both cite its source material and use those inspirations to form a game with a fresh and distinct identity. Those in the know will quickly recognize hints of Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and even Portal, but these references never quite dominate the unlikely setting of a dimensionally disturbed re-creation of rural Mexico. They've inspired parts of the world, and to a larger extent, the gameplay, but Guacamelee stands tall thanks to its brilliant art style, witty writing, and a steady pace, of which the biggest flaw is that the fun comes to an end sooner than any game of this caliber should.
Imagine what minecraft might like be like if it had been made with pixel art sprites and released in the super nintendo era. That sums up the overall vibe of Terraria pretty well. This devious little indie sandbox game borrows so many ideas that it essentially is Minecraft in 2D but it also beefs up the familiar gameplay in exciting ways. There's a lot more creepy-crawly stuff to kill, and the staggering number of deadly doodads you can MacGyver together to slay them with is mouth-watering. There's some gnarly fun to be had in these uncharted depths.
The Behemoth is growing up. You're over halfway through Battleblock Theater, the indie developer's latest, before you get to see someone poo themselves to death. Considering the team's previous game, 2008's Castle Crashers, had a variety of woodland creatures suffering from varying degrees of terminal diarrhoea within the first few levels, this clearly represents a significant stride towards maturity.
Thankfully, such restraint doesn't mean that Battleblock Theater has abandoned the studio's goofy, surreal sense of humour. Quite the opposite. This is by far The Behemoth's funniest game, with a laugh-out-loud narrator spinning a barking mad tale about weird little puppet people with interchangeable heads, shipwrecked on an island ruled by sadistic cats who force the refugees to survive deadly gauntlets in a shabby theatre for their feline amusement.
There's that classic problem with trilogies: after the intrigue and excitement of the first instalment, the follow-up must wrestle with moving the plot forward in a meaningful way, while avoiding those grand revelations so often saved up for the third and final entry. It's unfortunate that The Tyranny of King Washington - The Betrayal (Ep. 2) is the very epitome of a plodding second act. It makes no effort to expand on the mysteries raised by its alternate-universe setting, nor does it offer up much in the way of action from its dull assortment of characters. And worst of all, there's little to be seen of the enigmatic and evil George Washington, the very villain who brought The Infamy (Ep. 1) to life.
Instead, you're introduced to a few familiar faces from the Assassin's Creed universe, most notably Benjamin Franklin. He's not his old self initially, but he soon reverts to the same slightly odd character who never really sparked much interest in Assassin's Creed III. Indeed, many of the cast members of The Betrayal fail to capitalise on the alternate-reality setting and instead spend most of their time standing around conjuring up plans and sending Connor out on errand missions around misty Boston. There's a hope that it's all for the greater good of Episode Three, but when you're faced with waves of repetitive missions and seriously dull dialogue, it's hard to see the bigger picture.
From the beginning, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series has shouldered the genetic burden of its unique lineage. It combines two long-running RPG franchises, which would seem to make it a shoo-in for easy success. In this case, however, the two series in question (Pokémon and Mystery Dungeon, just like it says on the box) operate under radically different premises that don't seem to play well together.
Rhythm games may be an uncommon breed, but thankfully there are developers who keep the dream alive through reworking traditional means of player interaction with music. HarmoKnight, Game Freak's latest non-Pokemon endeavor, is one example, eschewing licensed top-40 tunes for light orchestral arrangements and cheery colors in a world where every beat counts. This lighthearted adventure's friendliness is initially refreshing, but the delights are worn down by HarmoKnight's simplicity and repetitiveness.
Tempo is your avatar in HarmoKnight, and he's more of a carefree child than a revered hero. Though he has been diligently training under former esteemed Royal Guard Woodwin, he's still very much an amateur. But when the world of Melodia comes under attack, Tempo must be quick to defend the land and its royalty from the tyrannical Noizoids, who wish to take over in typical evil monster fashion. Alongside Tappy, the rabbit who provides helpful guidance, and new friends he meets on the journey through Melodia, Tempo harnesses the power of rhythm to conquer the forces of evil.
Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel. Games about which there is almost literally nothing to say. This is gaming as a plain cheese sandwich; blockbuster action as supermarket muzak.
It has always been thus. Army of Two is a franchise that has made its way to three games without generating much passion, urgency or momentum. Gameplay is functional but, after the passably decent first game, no extra effort has been spent to give the series anything that might resemble a personality of its own. Beefy men in hockey masks shoot hundreds of bad guys across hundreds of rubble-strewn courtyards, drop a few macho quips, then stomp off to the next shoot-out. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
There can be entertainment in such a well worn template, and The Devil's Cartel sticks so slavishly to what's expected that it can't help but deliver basic point-and-shoot amusement. Yet despite explosions and headshots and bloody melee kills galore, it never musters enough energy or character to pull you all the way in. It's the world's most violent interactive screensaver.
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