Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
With its stunning, hand-painted scenery and animation, lovable characters and Studio Ghibli feel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Whispered World was a children’s animated film, bringing back memories of watching Disney classics with your Grandma and crying at The Lion King (That wasn’t just me, right?).
A homage to classics in the point-and-click adventure genre, The Whispered World has the potential to become a classic in its own right. A modern fantasy set in a nostalgic world, the game follows the adventures of Sadwick — melancholy clown — and his pet caterpillar Spot, who turns out to be infinitely more useful than your average everyday bug.
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Like Christmas coming on the 25th of December or Independence Day on the 4th of July, you can set your clock to the release of EA Sports’ latest Madden football title. Every 2nd Tuesday in August not only marks the beginning of the NFL season for many fans, it also signals the onslaught of autumn video game releases. Madden’s certainly a big deal; gamers buy new consoles for the next edition of Madden, for goodness’ sake.
There’s no question that EA Tiberon cares just as much about the game of football itself as they do their famous simulation based upon it, but the short development cycle usually allows for only a handful of small touches and refinements to be made over last year’s title. The question that arises every August is a simple one: is it better than the previous Madden, or should I skip this year?
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Despite being published by Activision, Singularity was released with more of a whisper than a bang just over a month ago — but that doesn’t mean that this game isn’t worth shouting about. Singularity is a sci-fi, first person shooter experience, where you destroy mutants in increasingly creative ways and solve environment puzzles with the aid of your shiny gadget/weapon, the Time Manipulation Device (“TMD”), whilst jumping between eras in time.
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There are few game series with a longer and more distinguished pedigree than Castlevania. Many now-adult gamers fondly recall playing the first game on the original NES when they were but wee vampire hunters. Decades later, a string of exceptionally well-crafted titles bearing the beloved Castlevania name graced the more portable screens of the GBA and DS and captured the hearts of old school gamers again. And of course, who could forget Symphony of the Night, the seminal entry that gave rise to the “Metroidvania” sub-genre. Simply put, Castlevania games carry lofty expectations.
Unfortunately, not every game in the franchise quite lives up to the prestigious family name (especially when they try to go 3D). So where does the Xbox Live Arcade exclusive Harmony of Despair fit into this large (and often dysfunctional) family? Hit the jump to find out, and fear not, gentle reader — I won’t bite.
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In case you missed it, Hydro Thunder was a motorboat racing game from 1999 that Dreamcast owners still use as proof that there were good games for the system. A decade later, Microsoft has released the sequel Hydro Thunder Hurricane in the unenviable position of following up Limbo in their “Summer of Arcade.” How could Hurricane possibly live up to the expectations of the critically-acclaimed Limbo? I don’t think you’ll find anyone calling Hydro Thunder Hurricane an “experience,” but as a game, I believe it stands up incredibly well.
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Hi kids! As a special treat for our Wild West Week, I went back to my parents’ house and searched an old box of my stuff. Under some empty Surge bottles and my Darth Maul lightsaber, I found it: the first video game review I ever wrote! Here it is, all typed up. I edited out some of my nine-year old misspellings for the sake of clarity and because I was only willing to go so far with this conceit.
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There are so many apt comparisons and analogies I’ve considered throwing at Red Dead Redemption, yet I seem to find myself repeatedly returning to one in particular.
Chances are that when you were a child, you pretended to be things that you were not — someone and somewhere exciting and spectacular. Red Dead, in many ways, feels like a modern-day realization of such childhood fantasies, a fulfillment of what the imagined “future” of video games often was for me, and may well have been for you. I don’t want to imply this in a hyperbolic sense. No, I mean simply that the way Red Dead Redemption allows and encourages immersing yourself in the nooks and crannies of its Western “world” often feels like the consummate you-are-in-this-place-and-it-is-yours sort of experience that I yearned for from games as a child.
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Unlike a certain other Western-themed game, Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West makes no attempts at being overly serious or realistic. To put it in simpler terms: Lead and Gold is basically to Red Dead Redemption what Team Fortress 2 is to Half-Life 2, in the sense that they’re each marginally related to a bigger game but choose a more lighthearted approach. In fact, Lead and Gold and TF2 have quite a few similar qualities. Both are multiplayer-only shooters, class-based, and make a point of being cartoony and unrealistic. With so much in common, it’s easy to go in to Lead and Gold with a more open disposition, and for the most part, this game delivers the things you’d want and expect from such a shooter.
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Set two years after the events of the successful Xbox 360 exclusive Blue Dragon, and a year after the Nintendo DS follow-up, Blue Dragon Plus, the next in the series, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow makes an attempt (albeit small) to move away from the stereotypes of its predecessors and the RPG genre in general.
For the first time in the series, Blue Dragon features a customizable player character, reserving the original characters of Shu, Jiro and the others as friends and party members. It also showcases some fun new gameplay mechanics to really shake things up. At the very least, it’s nice to see some risk-taking going on in this game, but it’s tough to say whether or not this is enough to make this sequel shine.
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An epic tale has ended. The vile Archdemon has been defeated. The Blight is over. Ferelden has been saved. One would think now would be the time to kick back with a wench, a frosty mug of ale and just relax, right? Oh, silly Grey Warden – a hero’s job is never done! But is Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening worth strapping on the chainmail and taking up the longsword again? That all depends; what’s your tolerance for floating teeth and phantom models?
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The early ’90s were a pivotal time in my game-playing development. While I enjoyed the likes of Mario and Sonic, and the home consoles they championed, I was also strangely curious of these “Pee See” games I had heard so much about. The rumored better graphics, excessive gore, and digitized breasts sold this pre-teen boy on the platform at once. However, outside of our old Windows 3.1 machine, my family never obtained a computer with which I could enjoy these games. Sure, I was able to play a few minutes here and there at friends’ homes when fathers would wander away from those glorious giant white and off-white boxes, but I was never quite satiated. Doom, Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem: they were nothing but words to me.
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The days of Evel Knievel may be long gone but the daredevil stuntman’s spirit rides on in Hello Games’ PSN-exclusive Joe Danger. One difference between Joe and Evel? Besides the whole “reality” thing, Evel never saw the absurd Trials HD-style obstacle courses Joe needs to navigate.
Most comparisons to Joe Danger do often bring up Trials, and for good reason. Those familiar with the spirit-crushing difficulty of the latter will find refuge in Joe Danger, as the same basic premise (and controls, to an extent) are present in Trials without the obscene and frustrating ramp-up in difficulty. There’s always the same goal in a Joe Danger track: finish by any means possible. Moving from left-to-right often accomplishes that quite nicely, though a number of ramps, traps, springs, walls, buildings, and explosives may stand in your way.
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I like to think of Nintendo as suffering from split personality disorder, resulting in two very distinct beings. You have the slow-to-evolve, unabashedly complicated Nintendo, whose iron will is reinforced via friend codes and the downright determination to ignore its clients (how long did it take before Nintendo allowed SD card storage?). But, there also exists a whimsical, curious child in Nintendo who tends to push boundaries in the most peculiar yet beautiful ways. The dichotomy can be unnerving, but don’t fret; Super Mario Galaxy 2 is most assuredly a product of the latter.
The original Galaxy let players see Mario in a whole new way, while redefining 3D platforming by simply breaking some very basic rules. Direction became a matter of perspective as Mario navigated round planetoids, and gravity became a toy, not law. At the player’s will, Mario could long jump himself around an entire mass of land, finding himself either orbiting half way around it before landing or being ensnared by the gravitational pull of a now closer planet. Hidden beneath a bright coat of typical Nintendo-shine were the underpinnings of a rather complex platformer. Yet, it is with this sequel that Nintendo has brought the ideas and principles it introduced in 2007 to complete fruition.
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Welcome to Crush! Frag! Destroy’s! inaugural edition of InterReviews! — a supplementary podcast and article that will go up along with certain game reviews. Basically, how this will work is Mr. Scott Thompson and myself, Sage Knox, will be asking each other questions about the game (in this case, Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii). We’re going to talk about what we liked about the game, what we didn’t like particularly well, and what we’re looking forward to in the future. If you want to listen along with us or take this article on the go, you can find the mp3 here.
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Beautiful and bizarre. Dreamlike and disturbing. Gorgeous and grotesque. All of these adjectives and more describe the sweet alien fruits of Chilean development house ACE Team’s labors. Indeed, it may sound like cheap, boilerplate hyperbole to say that there’s nothing on the market today quite like Zeno Clash — a nice splash for an advertisement or the back of a retail box — but that makes it no less true. And now, with the help of Atlus, (never a publisher to shy away from fringe titles) console gamers can finally step into the world of Zenozoik themselves.
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Rob Thomas
Rob Rich
Sage Knox
Beki Sutcliffe
Dustin Stevens
Jason Smith
Scott Thompson
Aubrey Klanecky
Zuri Grimm
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