Yes, the rumors are true. In Prototype (from Activision and Radical Entertainment) you can destroy a helicopter by leaping a million feet in the air and karate kicking it. You can also throw things at helicopters: air conditioning units, soldiers, cars, zombies and, of course, other helicopters. You can even disguise yourself as a civilian or soldier, sneak up on a helicopter, and ninja it out of the sky. As your powers grow, your strength and lethality increase, which allows for more efficient destruction (which is beneficial for as the game progresses so do the number of helicopters that attack you at once), and eventually you won’t even have to stop running or even slow down to pick up some vehicle etc. and fling it skyward. There are even indicators on the screen that tell you where the nearest helicopters are that require destruction, and that’s not even part of your powers; it’s just courtesy of the programmers. In fact, a large portion of the gameplay in Prototype and, lets face it, the reason I wanted to play it from the time I saw the first trailer, is geared towards savaging unsuspecting helicopters in increasingly horrific (i.e. epic) ways. After that, it gets boring.

The game begins with a fully-powered Alex Mercer rampaging around a New York‚  infested with zombies, infected with some kind of creeping tentacle mold and swarming with unfriendly soldiers from a branch of the military called Blackwatch. The commonality between all these bad guys is the subject of a conspiracy that drives the narrative of the whole campaign, but up front, the important thing is they’re all trying to kill you: is no mean feat given that you are powered by something very much like the tentacle creep that has infested the city, and can rip people in two, absorb them into yourself and take on their forms, and, naturally, ninja kick helicopters out of mid air.

The campaign is a series of flashbacks as Mercer recounts the events that lead up to an ominous final showdown and during which you grow progressively stronger, but the first level introduces you to the full range of powers Mercer possesses. you can hit things, run up buildings, hit things harder, and unleash huge blasts of tentacle creep that destroy all enemies over the space of a couple city blocks. These abilities are intensely fun to play around with, and the graphics and targeting system do a good job of keeping gameplay lucid and mostly believable, even in the midst of some of the more chaotic battles. The thing that really bugs me about‚  Mercer’s stock powers, however, is that I’ve seen them before. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for the old-timey Xbox ‚ and PS2 is also from Radical Entertainment, and operates on a very similar (by which I mean pretty much identical) system of breaking things for points, and it’s pretty obvious that the developers didn’t change the power set a whole lot between the two games. Now, a next-gen version of Ultimate Destruction is hardly a bad thing, but the new stuff that Prototype has to offer, the stuff that would make it more worthwhile than last generation game you could get for a fraction of the cost, is just downright uninspiring.

To begin with, Alex Mercer is the most emo superhero ever. Yes, even worse than Spider-Man 3. He walks around with his hoodie up all the time, only ever talks about revenge (with flat, only-for-exposition-purposes voice acting), and when he discovers that he can leap tall buildings in a single bound etc., his first instinct is to make the people responsible sorry, for no particularly well stated reason. He has lost his memory but he trusts his sister and ex-girlfriend unconditionally. He is mad at the evil corporation for infecting the city with the tentacle things, but he’s the one who set the zombie queen loose, and doesn’t seem to care if when he steals a tank it crushes a couple dozen civilians. He’s angry, un-compelling and really just an un-likeable character. And the rest of the narrative doesn’t fare any better, playing out a clichƒ© government conspiracy cover-up type thing that is exactly the same as every disaster movie plot ever. The mood of the game is too dark, and really just takes itself too seriously. It would honestly be more fun if it just dispensed with premise entirely, left a lot of unanswered questions, and just encouraged you to wreck helicopters for no reason. I mean, it’s really what you wind up doing anyway.

Now, my favorite games of all time are open-world sandbox-style games much like Prototype. Saints Row 2, Mercenaries1&2, anything Spider-Man, and of course GTA hold places of honor on the shelf above my Xbox. The reason is that my attention span is directly proportional to the number of clever jokes, explosions or shiny objects right in front of my face, and open-world environments allow for hours of endless tooling around with no specific goal but plenty of entertaining stuff to come across. Prototype didn’t live up to my expectations on this front, even with all the blowing-things-up there is to do. I am not knocking Prototype’s combat system even a little bit. The powers are sweet, there is never any shortage of bad guys to toss around, and there is there is a powerful satisfaction that comes from your awareness meter dropping to “anonymous” meaning there are no more baddies around because you crushed them all. The problem is that, if you stripped away the combat, there’s nothing interesting left.

Crazy combat is the definitely reason I bought the game in the first place, but the key to a good, engaging sandbox game is to have a rich environment to explore around all the carnage and helicopter-kicking. Sure, GTA IV is singular in its depth and the diversity of its NPCs and I certainly don’t expect every game to even come close to offering that level of variety, but they could at least try. In Ultimate Spider-Man, Spidey would crack jokes and race through Queens with the Human Torch. In Saints Row 2 there were more inside jokes than I could count, and the dialogue and premises for the missions were often laugh out loud funny. (Like stealing hos from one pimp to help another pimp. Hysterical.) The best Prototype has to offer is a dark, brooding, kind of confusing story about revenge or salvation or “¦.something, and a protagonist that is way too depressed given the crazy powers he has.

Blast Factor: Everybody can agree that if there are three things in the world that are fun to smash into the ground, they are zombies, evil SWAT teams and helicopters. Prototype does a beautiful job of making sure that you get plenty of opportunity to fight all three, usually at the same time. Once you get bored with the novelty of the battle system however, the game offers a moody, clichĩd narrative that fails to set it apart from other sandbox games out there.

Prototype is available on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for $49.99

Guitar Hero Smash Hits, from Activision, Red Octane, Neversoft and all our old GH friends is like any “best of” collection, and offers exactly what you’re expecting, no more no less. If you want a strong variety of solo rhythm game tracks, you would buy a solitary Guitar Hero game, and if you wanted a good, well balanced group rhythm game, you would buy Rock Band because those games are designed with those purposes expressly in mind. You buy Smash Hits for the reason you would buy anything with the word “Hits” in the title: you know what’s on the game already, you like it, and you want it all in one place.

There is a slight contradiction in the idea of a full band game filled solely with songs that were initially chosen for their prominent guitar parts, and because of the need to balance the fun across four controller parts instead of one, the songs that are on the game aren’t necessarily the most fun from Guitar Hero, but are all more or less the most fun for the most people. I was disappointed by the absence of songs like “My Name is Jonas” and “Cliffs of Dover” (both from Guitar Hero III), which have fun parts specifically for the guitar, but would understandably be less fun on the full-band set up. I was particularly disappointed that “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was not on the Smash Hits play list, but to be fair I wouldn’t want to be in a room with somebody trying to sing like Axl Rose. The songs that did make it on to Smash Hits are some of the more well-known from the Guitar Hero repertoire, as well as some of the more challenging (expert-level “Through the Fire and the Flames” is still mind-blowingly impossible, even with the addition of the new neck-slider feature), and most of the songs are pretty well balanced across all four instruments (a notable exception is “YYZ” which doesn’t have a vocal part, but is hella fun on every other count). Unfortunately, there is no downloadable content for Smash Hits to fill in any notable gaps that you might find in the set list, so read the back of the box before you pick it up so you make sure you know what you’re getting.

The game’s mechanics, graphics, and features are very much like a no-frills Guitar Hero World Tour, with comparable character customization, band creation and music studio features. Though the game’s tracks are all master recordings, there are no “celebrity appearances” or boss guitar battles as there have been in past iterations of the franchise (sadly, no Slash, but thankfully no Ted Nugent). Again, this is not the full Guitar Hero experience, just the major bullet points condensed into a single game. If you really want the CG chick from Paramore to play onstage with your Avatar, the other games are what you’re looking for. This game is for the Guitar Hero junkie (that is to say: me) who has “Killer Queen” and “Fire and the Flames” on his iPod and‚  really would like to try the vocal part for once.

With this in mind, Smash Hits does do us all a favor by dispensing with the trouble of unlocking all the songs in career mode before being able to play them casually in quickplay. All the songs are available in quickplay from the get-go, because Activision realizes if you buy this game, you just want to play with your rhythm game addict buddies and want to skip over the easy setting and pop songs and crank some Skynyrd on expert without all the hassle of having to think up a band name and play boring songs for an hour to get there. There is a career mode, but even that is streamlined; more complex set lists are unlocked according to a cumulative score from all available songs rather than just the last setlist you played. This means you can unlock a wider variety of songs through good performance on easier songs, and not just adequate performance on the hardest available setlist.

The gameplay itself the tried and true Guitar Hero model with no real differences. The songs have been updated with some of the more complex note patterns that appeared in World Tour, so there are some slight differences between these songs and their originals on the older Guitar Hero releases. The addition of a few neck-slider bars isn’t enough to make the experience of playing the same songs on a new game completely fresh and revolutionary, but it does keep things from getting boring, and the differences between songs are substantial enough that it shows that Activision didn’t just re-package some old games and try to sucker you in to buying them.

Perhaps the only new addition to the actual gameplay screen is a meter that tells you how many out of five stars you have earned so far in the course of gameplay, and how far you are to earning the next one. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Rock Band has had that feature from the beginning, though I don’t mind it when Guitar Hero tries to be more like Rock Band. There are some of the old Guitar Hero-related irritations like distracting designs on the note highway, or flashes of lightning when you gain star power, but these aren’t any better or worse than they were in World Tour, and have been greatly reduced in scale from earlier versions of the game.

Blast Factor: If you haven’t already decided whether or not you really want Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, you probably don’t. At a full $50 price tag, it costs probably about as much as a used collection of Guitar Hero I, II, and III, or a brand new Rock Band II or World Tour, all of which would offer a greater variety of songs and downloadable content, and would be better especially for newcomers to the rhythm genre. However, if you like what you see and have been dying to play some of these old songs with your rhythm game buddies, then by all means, grab it up, plug it in, and rock out.

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is available on Xbox 360 and PS3 for $49.99, and on the Wii for $39.99

Velvet Assassin is the new stealth game from SouthPeak Games, based loosely on the life of Violette Szabo, a French secret agent in World War 2. The strongest elements of the game involve stalking around in the shadows, stabbing Nazis in the back or face and switching the attractive protagonist in and out of various form-fitting outfits “" generally a pretty winning combination “" but offers little else to make the quality of the content match the strength of the concept. The writing is hammy, the story is not particularly compelling or well told, and the gameplay is drawn out and repetitive, all of which conspire to undermine the game’s purpose of getting the player to empathize with the historical figure at the center of the gameplay.

To be fair, historical gaming is a pretty unexplored genre. I know Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed attach names and dates to their gameplay that are accurate at least according to Wikipedia, but at the end of the day, the history isn’t what’s at stake. You don’t play Assassin’s Creed to learn about the nuances of geopolitics in the Holy Land during the Crusades, you play it to knife suckers in the back. Given this, the fact that SouthPeak is using Szabo’s life as a selling point for the game (it’s on the back of the box and everything) is a bold marketing move that will, ideally, open up a dialogue about the merits of interactive media in more highbrow contexts in the future. If Velvet Assassin had been executed perfectly, which, sad to say, it wasn’t, it could have been a high-minded, almost literary game, and I would like to commend SouthPeak and Replay Studios for taking a step in that direction.

Velvet Assassin has problems, but it does have some solid elements. The meat of the gameplay involves sneaking undetected between areas of light and shadow, and the cinematography is striking and organic. Twilight, moonlight and harsh floodlights cast plenty of natural looking shadows for you to stalk around in and hunt patrolling Nazis. The game does a good job of emphasizing the stealth gameplay over any shooter elements, making the form of gameplay fit well to the spirit of the story. You have a silenced Colt pistol for most of the game but it’s very little match for the German guns, and if you get spotted, you really have to work to get yourself back into seclusion unharmed, so you can’t just charge into a room guns-blazing with any realistic hope for success. Stealth take-downs are infinitely more satisfying anyway.

The gameplay takes place within the fevered dreams of a bed-ridden Violette, recalling her missions while laid-up in a French hospital. This allows for an in-game power called “Morphine Mode” in which Violette doses herself with morphine, the Nazis freeze in time, and you can reposition yourself “" or kill a guard “" as you see fit. This isn’t a necessary component of the game, and really just an out for when you get spotted so you don’t necessarily get gunned down the first time. Also when in morphine mode, Violette’s costume changes to a scant night gown, which is as good a reason for a not-completely-believable video game gimmick as I’ve ever heard, and while it’s a fairly interesting facet of gameplay, it feels tacked on and is a little strange.

The controls are pretty simple, which makes for a very quick learning curve, but also makes most of the movement and standard assassination maneuvers pretty repetitive. You can drop into a crouch, which secludes Violette in the shadows and quiets her footsteps, allowing her to get right up behind the unsuspecting Nazi guards and take them out silently; provided none of his buddies are watching. There is some variation, like shooting explosive barrels or activating a patrolling guard’s grenade so that he will walk the active grenade over to another group of soldiers, but for the most part there’s a typical sneak-and-stab drill that it doesn’t take long to get good at, and then bored with. Don’t get me wrong, it can be incredibly entertaining and satisfying to deftly pull off a silent Nazi assassination “" my encounters with the first few groups of guards in the training level left my heart racing “" but the Nazi AI, while deadly enough once you’ve been spotted, is unrealistically stupid.

After sitting and watching a guy walk the same 20-foot stretch of hallway indefinitely without seeing the leather-clad British lady in the shadows at his feet, your enemies resemble less the ruthless soldiers of Call of Duty and more the moving platforms of Portal, where all that mattered was the right timing in a specific sequence to get from point A to point B. The game is pretty linear, so after you’ve got the movements of the next series of guards memorized you can just blow through them in less than half the time it took you on the first try, and if you’re on your second or third run through of a series of guards, the suspense of the game disappears completely and you’re just going through the motions for the hell of it.

While a compelling narrative might have seriously bolstered the repetitive gameplay, the game’s presentation of the story was very disappointing. There were definitely good elements to the story “" the character of Violette, Nazi antagonists, heartfelt letters home from Nazi soldiers you just assassinated “" but the presentation is so awkward and at odds with the rest of the structure of the game that it really detracts from the game more than it adds to it. All of the information about the story is conveyed via Violette’s not-particularly-well-voice-acted narration and occasional feverish hallucinations, but there isn’t really anything like cinematics, or character development, or any real connection between the player and the characters “" a real shame considering this is supposed to be based on real events and people. The story is certainly present if you care to piece it all together, but really, when you’re crouched in the dark waiting to stab your next Nazi, your motives or mission objectives won’t have any more or less meaning if you watched the story scenes or just skipped over them.

In the end, Velvet Assassin puts forth some solid, though occasionally mediocre, gameplay, that will appeal to stealth fans looking for some straight-up sneaking around. The story behind the game and the association with Violette Szabo, though selling points in the game’s advertising, are not its strength, so if that’s what you were looking for, try something else. At full price, with the low replay value, I wouldn’t recommend Velvet Assassin for purchase, but it wouldn’t be bad in your Gamefly queue.

Velvet Assassin is available for Xbox 360 and Windows and retails for $59.99

Imagine there is a world where you can play Mario and Tetris at the same time, on a single game system. Now imagine that Indiana Jones was there, and that he brought along his giant steampunk robot, and you were all drinking tea. The crazy scene you’ve arrived at is more or less the starting premise for EA’s Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure for the DS.

Henry Hatsworth is an aging gentleman adventurer from Tealand, who goes out into uncharted continents in search of a golden suit which, legend has it, is so dapper that it will bestow upon the wearer magical powers and allow him (or her, though it is a gentleman’s suit) to rule the world. Hatsworth doesn’t believe the legends but searches out the first artifact, a golden bowler hat, for the sake of a good adventure. After he finds it, however, he realizes that the hat was part of a magical balance keeping a magical puzzle world from leaking through dimensions and causing trouble in the real world. When Hatsworth puts on the hat, the balance of reality shifts, the puzzle world starts to impose on the real world and Hatsworth must quest around the world to locate the remaining pieces of the suit and restore order to the world. This is, of course, one of the most ridiculous premises for a game since “plumber rescues princess from dinosaur,” but the game approaches the matter with a fantastic sense of humor, and the story is established quickly and simply and then makes way for the hyper-active yet very high quality gameplay.

The operative gimmick of the game is that there are essentially two games operating on both DS screens at once. As you progress through the platformer on the upper screen, a scrolling screen of colored tiles rolls up the lower screen. Pressing the X button allows you to switch between screens more or less at will, though you have a limited amount of time to operate in the puzzle world. The puzzle screen functions a lot like a Puzzle Quest game, in that you have to match three tiles of the same color in a row, which makes them disappear and gives you energy or power-ups. In fact, the only way to access items dropped in the adventure world, like the bowler hats that represent extra lives, is by successfully lining them up with other tiles in the puzzle world. There is no penalty for allowing a regular or power-up tile to scroll up past the top of the screen, but once that happens the item will be gone forever.

Enemies that you kill in the adventure world also occupy tiles in the puzzle world (with adorable little confused faces) and if you don’t take care to delete them or shift tiles to keep them in the puzzle screen, they come back into the puzzle world as floating tiles that zip around the screen, trying to hit you. Essentially, unless you want to face a second round of much harder-to-kill enemies, you have to kill each enemy twice. Some enemies also turn in to power up tiles like health or energy, so some good comes of this too. Ostensibly, if you are really, really good at the adventure mode, you don’t have to take care of every enemy tile, and can power through the levels while ignoring the puzzle screen, but the game is pretty well balanced, and throws enough enemies and power-ups your way that ‚ playing in the puzzle world becomes necessary yet dynamic.

The puzzle world affects the adventure world too. There is an energy bar that Hatsworth uses for ammunition and health that is replenished by getting tile matches in the puzzle world, and power-ups will occasionally appear in the puzzle screen of their own accord, so if you’re being swarmed by enemies in adventure mode, jumping into the puzzle world for a little bit can offer a handy way out.

Unquestionably the most awesome aspect of the game is “Tea Time.” When the puzzle world’s energy bar is full, you have the option of activating Tea Time by pressing the lower screen. Time will stop, and Hatsworth will drink tea with Sherlock Holmes or his buddies from the adventuring club, cry “Good Show!” and leap into a giant indestructible steam-powered robot, who can fire its fists like missiles into enemies or fire huge lasers, obliterating anything standing in front of it. I firmly believe that every game I play from now until I die should have this feature.

Even when you’re not rocking our in a giant robot suit, the adventure mode makes for an excellent game on its own terms. Hatsworth runs around in his tweed suit hitting enemies with his cane and blunderbuss, or with a machete if the power bar is above a certain level. The worlds you can explore are clever by any platforming standard, and the enemies are diverse enough to not be repetitive, ranging from tiny purple blobs to axe-wielding beasts the size of bears, and challenging enough without being frustrating. There are occasionally simple puzzles to be solved within the adventure mode, and several levels offer multiple ways to get to the end of the level, including alternate ends that unlock bonus levels. Additionally, gaining new pieces of the golden suit will unlock new abilities and add new dimensions to the platforming segment of the game: for example, the golden pantaloons give the wearer the ability to stick to walls, a feature which the game forces you to make full use of.

The only parts of the game that fall short are the mini-boss segments of many of the levels, where there is no platforming and just straight up sword-swinging combat against several waves of enemies. While the reasoning behind this is understandable-that many enemies forces you to engage both the adventure and puzzle modes at a pretty frantic pace, whereas a single Mario-type enemy would gloss over the puzzle aspect entirely-it can be kind of overwhelming. At times, even jumping into the indestructible robot isn’t enough to make it through the onslaught.

Bottom line, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is a probably about as good as DS gaming can get. The gameplay is fast-paced and engaging, and the two very different aspects of gameplay are very well balanced and compliment each other perfectly. The story is ridiculous but presented with an endearing tongue-in-cheek humor that is actually a subtle satire on late 19th Century Victorian notions of civilization, technology and colonization-yes, this game would make a 19^th Century Literature class worthwhile. And, of course, it is worth saying one last time: tea drinking lets you rock a giant steampunk robot. At $29.99 from Game Stop, it’s worth every cent.

If one were to combine the sword and sorcery feel of a well-scripted D&D campaign, the strategic elements of a game of chess, and one super-dark game device prompts you to kill your best friends if you’re not doing well, the result would be developer tri-Ace’s Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume for the DS. The majority of the actual gameplay is dedicated to strategic combat elements, but there is also plenty of RPG style combat engagements and a very heavily developed (and incredibly mutable) story to keep any serious gamer engaged for hours.

The story is difficult to nail down (for reasons I will discuss in a minute), but the single consistent element is the protagonist, Wylfred, is deeply distraught by his father’s death in battle, and has vowed vengeance against the Valkyrie Lenneth, the goddess of fallen soldiers who marks which men are to die in battle and live in glory in Valhalla. Wylfred takes very little solace in the fact that his father is in heaven partying with history’s greatest warriors, particularly when his little sister dies because the family is steeped in poverty since his father can no longer bring in money. Wyl, like most angst-ridden teenagers, decides the best thing for it is to run away from home, earn money as a mercenary, and, at some point down the road, track down and wreak vengeance upon the goddess of death. And this is just the back story you get during the training level; things get even more depressing after this.

The game opens as Wylfred and his best friend Ancel, who insists upon accompanying Wyl on his adventures, gear up for their first big battle as mercenaries. One of the monsters defeated in the battle isn’t quite dead, and mortally wounds Wyl, who, as he lays dying, prays that any power at all be made available to him so that he might not die before fulfilling his quest to destroy the valkyrie. His prayer is answered by Hel, the ruler of the underworld, who also has it out for the valkyrie, and who gives Wyl command of one of the most innovative (and kind of messed up) narrative gameplay tools I’ve ever seen: the Destiny Plume.

The Destiny Plume is a magical feather that saves Wyl from the brink of death, and can “unlock the potential” of any ally, basically turning them into an uber-powered, unstoppable, one-hit-kill machine, who will tear through any and all enemies remaining on the battlefield. There’s a hell of a catch though: once an ally’s potential has been unlocked and they’ve ripped through everything around them, when the battle round is up, they die. And to make this very clear, they do not die the way a Pokemon dies, where you just get it healed up and you can use it again. They do not die the way Mario dies, where he just gets another green mushroom and tries again. No, they die the way Aeris died in FF VII: you can never use them again, there is a little death scene, the other allies cry, the voice actor sighs out a death rattle, and Hel congratulates you for being evil enough to sacrifice your friends for the purpose of your revenge quest. Oh, and you find all this out at the end of the first level when you have to use the plume on Wyl’s childhood friend Ancel. That’s right, you kill your best friend in the first ten minutes of the game.

As engaging as Valkyrie Profile’s story is, the strategic battle system will undoubtedly dominate gameplay. Each battle is between Wyl and his allies and several enemies spread out across a grid-based map. Turns are divided into ally phases and enemy phases, during which each combatant can move around the grid, attack enemies in range, use provisions on themselves or allies, employ tactical measures that will affect enemy units behavior, or, in Wyl’s case, turn an ally into a raging hulk for the rest of the round.

Allies’ position on the grid is as important, if not more, to RPG elements like spells, weapons and stats. Each unit has a specific range of attack determining which enemies they can attack, which enemies can attack them, and which allies they can help. Attacking an enemy from behind can stun them, making it impossible for them to retaliate, getting inside an archer’s range means that their bow and arrow is rendered completely ineffective, and attacking with an ally in range means both units get to launch attacks against the single enemy target. There are also offensive and defensive bonuses to be gained for surrounding an enemy in a particular way (e.g. if you position an ally on either side of an enemy, their attacks to 30% more damage), and you can position a weak unit behind a stronger one, and as long as the units remain in line with the enemy, attacks targeting the weaker unit will hit the one in front of it instead.

There is a separate screen for an actual attack against an enemy, where the grid falls away and only the units attacking each other are visible. This stage is also turn based, but reaction time is still important to an extent. I found out the hard way that if an ally’s magic attack launches an enemy into the air, it’s no just for show and any physical attacks triggered before the enemy hits the ground will be completely useless. You also get a chance to trigger over-the-top but very satisfying finishing moves if you react fast enough (good for racking up Sin).

The graphics are pretty good: while the environments, dialogue scenes and finishing moves all look nice, the little avatars for the units on the battlefield can be a little goofy looking, especially when they get a triumphant close up at the end of a successful fight. I know DS graphics are capable of that last extra step, and while it’s refreshing to see a game privilege story over graphics, I’m still going to keep pushing for games that achieve both in equal measure.

All in all, Valkyrie Profile is a very technically sound game. The story and gameplay are strong, and while using the Destiny Plume may have triggered some slight psychological trauma over the course of gameplay, I definitely count that in its favor, and cannot advocate strongly enough that games follow Valkyrie Profile’s lead and make story innovation an active part of gameplay. For fans of the strategy genre, it is definitely worth the full forty dollar purchasing price.

Did you know how many Sonic games have been released in the last five years? Discounting re-releases of old arcade titles, and any game that also had Mario in them, there have been at least eight, and their quality has ranged from sort of okay to just plain bad.

For some reason, Sega seems content to churn out a bunch mediocre Sonic games to keep the franchise alive long enough to get its characters into Smash Brothers while it could put the same amount of time and manpower behind an actual quality endeavor you would be proud to put on the shelf next to Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess. With Sonic and the Black Knight, exclusive to the Wii, Sega continues this fairly disappointing trend, using the beloved blue speedster in titles that are, frankly, beneath him.

Thankfully, Black Knight is on the higher quality end of the spectrum, but it is a far cry from the quality gameplay and genre that made Sonic a landmark franchise. It’s mostly ‚ hack-and-slash game with a few speed-based and platforming elements at odd intervals, featuring a sword wielding Sonic in the kingdom of Camelot. For purists of the Sonic franchise (and scholars of Arthurian legend), the very idea of this might seem offensive, but when you put those details aside, and accept the fairly high level of ridiculousness as just entertaining, it makes for a pretty decent game.

The game opens with Merlina, granddaughter of Merlin, being chased by a huge scary looking King Arthur, who is the titular Black Knight. Merlina, being a wizard like her grandfather, casts a summon spell when faced with an army of dark soldiers from the underworld. A hole is torn in the sky, and out falls a blue hedgehog and two chili dogs. Sonic rescues Merlina, but can’t defeat Arthur because he is in possession of the scabbard of Excalibur, which grants the bearer the power of immortality. Sonic and Merlina go off to find the lady of the lake (who is Amy acting in that role) and Arthur dispatches his Knights (Knuckles, Shadow, and Blaze), and from there on out the very basic objective is to run fast and smash stuff with your talking sword, Caliburn. Yes, there is a talking sword.

Once you take the plunge and accept that you are playing an Arthurian legend game with a hedgehog protagonist, the game actually starts to get fun. The principle mode of gameplay is running in a mostly straight line, steered occasionally with the nunchuck, and hacking with the Wiimote to swing your sword. The combat elements are a little repetitive, but the fun comes in at fighting at as high a speed as possible. The sword swinging graphics aren’t great if you slow down and really scrutinize them, but you shouldn’t be doing that because you’re Sonic; RUN! When combat is at its height, you are charging into thick groups of enemies, sword swinging, and you can barely see anything but the crush of soldiers and demons until the dust settles and Sonic moves on to the next battle. The combination of speed and swordplay is a fairly novel one, and, I think, worth a lot more exploration, though it’s done fairly well in this game.

At its worst, which occurs in the somewhat-to-very awkward boss battles, the combat expects an aggravating amount of precision timing in your Wiimote swings: swing half a second too late, you get hit, swing half a second too early, you get hit (yes, there are instances where this Sonic game will punish you for being too fast). However, the satisfaction of leveling an entire phalanx of underworld soldiers makes the frustrating bits worth enduring, and ensures a strong replay value.

Unfortunately, the other aspects of the game do not play out as well as the combat. If you’re looking for a Sonic-style speed platformer, you will not find it with Black Knight. There are definitely platforming elements, and some of them are very cool (near the game’s end you run across the back of a beam of lightning), but they are few and far between, though the levels in which they are most prevalent are definitely the most satisfying to complete. These platform-intensive volcanoes and dragon’s caves are, unfortunately, mostly towards the end of the game, and don’t completely make up for the bland environments of the castles and villages. Sure, there’s lots of jumping from one stone structure to the next, but most of it is just progression down a line of enemies and can quickly get repetitive if that’s not why you invested in the game.

The game also has a few, very weird glitches. There was one instance in a boss battle where, as Sonic was running towards a fire-breathing dragon, he came to an abrupt halt and attacked a stone pillar on the side of the battlefield for no apparent reason; it had no bearing on defeating the boss, and Sonic’s attacks seemed to do nothing more than waste time and attract fire balls.

There was also the instance where I was somehow able to completely bypass a story-relevant cut-scene, where Sonic and his new wise-cracking sword go visit Amy, the Lady of the Lake. I know this scene exists because I saw my roommate play through it, but I somehow just played around it, and was surprised to find myself completing the mission Amy would have otherwise have set before me. It wasn’t really detrimental to the game overall, but just keep it in mind if parts of the story don’t seem to flow together the way they should.

Definitely the strangest thing about the game-yes, even stranger than Knuckles, the flying echidna in knight’s armor-is that after you defeat the knights of the round table and find a way to bypass King Arthur’s Scabbard of immortality, the credits roll. What makes this strange, and this is crucial to your gaming experience, is that the game is only half way over at this point. There is only about 3 hours of gameplay up to that point (it’s a short game), and there are at least 3 more much, much better hours afterwards, but there is also a full credit sequence dividing the two. There’s a chance I would not have caught it and gone on thinking I had just finished the shortest game ever. If your gaming experience does not sync completely with the rest of this review, check your game status: you may have only just started.

Sonic and the Black Knight gets off to a rocky and somewhat ridiculous start, and is likely not what a lot of us are looking for in a Sonic game, but give it time and it will grow on you. It definitely picks up in the later levels, and without giving too much away, there is the requisite Super Sonic level, which is one of the better boss battles. The story and the characters aren’t subtle, and the world isn’t particularly imaginative or worth exploring, but the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, and can provide several hours of good solid fun. It’s probably not worth the full $49.99 price tag, but it’s definitely worth playing if you get the chance. It’s by no stretch the corner stone game the franchise really needs to stay afloat into future generations of gaming, but it’s more fun than not, and in the end not a bad game. It just doesn’t live up to the expectations attached to the name Sonic the Hedgehog.

Blue Dragon Plus, published by Ignition Entertainment, is a fairly entertaining and very, very long combination real time strategy and role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. Developers Mistwalker and Brownie Brown did a good job of addressing elements from both strategy and RPG genres, providing lots of maps, abilities and combat units for the strategists, and plenty of stats, story-motivated gameplay and back story for the approximately one-bazillion party members for the RPG-ers. Unfortunately its combination of the two genres falls flat overall, ultimately leaving you with un-innovative, though technically sound gameplay. Blue Dragon Plus boasts a story campaign of over 30 hours, which is a lot of time to spend hunched over your DS, and to really appreciate it, you would have to sort of meet it halfway and show it a certain degree of patience.

Blue Dragon Plus is the sequel to Blue Dragon, a 2007 RPG for the Xbox 360, and its story picks up a year after the events of that game, with very similar premises. Shu, a generic spiky-haired anime hero must set out to save the world from certain doom in the wake of the destruction wreaked by purple-skinned super villain Nene through the course of the first game. For those returning to the franchise, a good chunk of the heroes and villains in this game are familiar faces from the original, and for those newcomers, everybody’s talents and place in the story are explained at length and easy to pick up. The most relevant common element are the Shadow powers the characters have, which are big animal spirits that each party member can summon to unleash special abilities in battle. Shu’s manifests itself as a big, blue dragon-hence the game title.

The game takes place on a big mechanical space cube infested with hostile mecha-robos programmed for wanton destruction. Shu and company must investigate the old technology on this cube and shut its down while preventing the robots from escaping and bombing their home city. Also, Nene comes back to life and you get to fight him all over again. There are twists, turns, friends become enemies, enemies become friends…a fairly standard RPG story.

Progression through the game is broken into two parts: individual combat stages and a map screen connecting all the stages and showing how your parties move around between them. The combat stages are where the RTS elements come into play, and generally where the story unfolds, and the map stage is where all the RPG stats tweaking, character adjustment and item organization happens.

Because combat is RTS-style, every combat encounter is a wide stage with a pre-set number of enemies against the members of your party, the number of which changes according to the story and to your adjustments. Now, as anybody who has ever fallen victim to a Zergling rush will tell you, there is strength in numbers in any RTS game, and what this means for Blue Dragon Plus is that there are a lot of playable characters (up to 16 at times). This is mitigated some as the story forces you to split your party up into 2-4 groups to explore different areas of the map, but while a good group size is three or four party members, if the story leads two groups to combine, you can suddenly have 9 characters in a crowded hallway all trying to be part of the boss battle and all getting in each others way. ‚ At its best, its like watching a 16-bit 3 Stooges routine, but at its worst, your best attack units will not be able to reach a monster because they’re stuck behind your healers who are on the front lines for some reason, taking all the damage.

The combat is a pretty basic point-and-click system with the stylus. Characters will automatically engage nearby enemies with a physical attack, and the player can activate more powerful Shadow abilities. These abilities need to be recharged between uses (so you can’t just spam over-powered ones) and are type-sensitive, (so, for example a ground type attack is more effective against flying type enemies). The system is pretty intuitive, but the game still does a thorough job of walking you through the finer points of RTS combat, even giving you tips on how to arrange your units in battle and which ones to pair together for optimal results.

These beginner tips and simplicity of the combat system mean that Blue Dragon is really more an introductory-level RTS game, and doesn’t have some features more advanced players would expect. The stylus isn’t the most precise instrument in the world, and will often select the ability or location just next to the one you were trying for, which, mid-battle, can be a little frustrating. Also, there’s no way to influence a characters point-to-point movement, which means occasionally a unit will decide the best way to get across the map is to wander through enemy territory, unintentionally leading all your enemies right to the rest of your party. And, if you are gearing up for a fight, there’s no good way to ensure that the first person who reaches the battle isn’t your low-defense healer and not the high-defense attack unit it’s supposed to be. The gameplay isn’t rigorous enough that these missteps ever become a real problem, or cost you more than a few HP before you correct them, but they do limit the quality of the RTS elements to a point so that the novelty wears off long before 30 hours have elapsed.

There is a sharp contrast between the amount of time the game dedicates to introducing the player to the fairly simple RTS combat system (a tutorial and most of the opening few chapters) and the arguably much more complex stat and item system (almost none: read your manual). There’s not necessarily anything there that is new to any RPG player, but it’s a familiarity the game assumes of its players, sort of like it’s an introduction to the RTS genre specifically tailored for RPG fans. Items can only be equipped in the map stage in-between combat, which means if you forget before starting a fight, you can back yourself into an unpleasant corner, but once you do start playing around with stats modifiers, healing and attack items and mixing and matching types of party members for streamlined combat, it’s hard to stop. Like any good RPG, there are a slew of stats to be built up (though when there are 16 characters in play, this can get maybe a little out of hand) and plenty of items that can boost your weaker areas, and even unlock shadow abilities of a different type to round out your party (healers can learn powerful attack spells, etc.).‚  There are also plenty of opportunities for exploring the map and power-leveling in between story missions, and, if 30 hours of story and a zillion playable characters aren’t enough, there are side-quests a plenty and the option to construct robotic party members with parts you find on the map. So, if you are the kind of gamer whose favorite thing to do is wander through the tall grass in Pokemon, endlessly capturing and levelling up, you’ll find plenty to play around with here.

Blue Dragon Plus isn’t a bad game; it’s just that at times there’s too much of it. The story relies too heavily on our interest being hooked from the previous game, and it’s difficult to really develop a character well through dialogue boxes, let alone when he or she has to share the stage with 12 to 15 other players. The RPG and RTS elements are for the most part pretty solid representations of the two genres, but the game doesn’t do anything creative with them beyond just throw them together (which was innovative two years ago when FFXII: Revenant Wings came out, but is now just sort of copy-cat). There are some good elements here, and if you have 30 hours to kill, there are certainly worse ways to do it, though there are definitely better ones too. The $30 price tag seems reasonable given just how much game there is here to sink your teeth into, but do some soul searching first, and make sure you have the patience for it.

The premise for Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad is incredibly simple: sexy, bikini-clad girls slaughter a huge number of zombies. The game, from D3 publishers, is exclusively for the Xbox 360, and was released in conjunction with Bikini Zombie Slayers on the Wii. The gameplay, while diverting at times, is exactly what your low expectations would predict, if not worse.

Through a series of text expositions accompanied by Japanese voice-overs, and very few cut-scenes, you piece together the pretty straightforward story: the protagonists-a mostly naked woman, Aya, and her little sister, Saki-possess a special kind of blood, Baneful Blood, that an organization, called The Organization, wants because it gives people superpowers. The best way to go about getting this blood, apparently, is to fill the city with zombies.

Of course, you don’t really care why there is zombie slaying, you just want to get to it, and while the game may be seriously lacking in many areas, zombie killing is not one of them. There is something immensely satisfying in simply pressing a few buttons and watching a legion of undead literally torn to shreds in front of you. Even more so when it’s done by a bikini-clad supermodel assassin. There are times in this game when the hallways in front of you are literally crammed full of shotgun-toting undead, a few of which may be on fire, and you just tear through them with grace, ease, and a little unrealistic bouncing.

Aya and Saki both wield samurai swords, which easily slice through the endless waves of zombie assailants, though a “clean sword” function does mean that you have to pay some attention to what you’re doing. An unclean sword deals less damage, and can get even get stuck in a zombie torso, so every dozen kills or so, you essentially have to reload your sword. There are combo modifiers, which allow you to release wide-range “ecstasy attacks” after a certain number of kills in a row, or send you into rampage mode, which increases damage, but depletes life. A third playable character is Anna, the blond, also-scantily-clad police officer, who uses hand guns, shotguns, Uzis and grenades for a little welcome variation.

Typically in the single player campaign, two of the three characters are available to the player per level, and tag out in the middle of a fight. This allows for some minimal strategizing: Anna is better at ranged attacks, for example, but you’ll want a sword for close-quarters combat.

And yes, because I know you’re wondering, you can dress them up. Or down. There are “dress up” and “view” modes on the main menu, so you can play around with and ogle your characters’ costumes. However, new costume options are only available after specific achievements are unlocked, so costume alteration is really geared towards the more serious bikini-genre gamers out there.

An added little bonus is the charming 8-bit quality mini-game that pops up during the load screens, in which you play a tiny bikini samurai and can slaughter adorable little zombies that make sounds like chickens when they die.

Beyond that, though, the game kind of falls apart.

The zombies are many, and their designs and weapons more varied than I was honestly expecting (some zombies have hand saws, some have miniguns), but there’s never anything to them that really forces you to alter your strategy, not that you could if you wanted to. Sure, there are a few variations on the standard sword slash, like you can slash standing up, or slash while jumping, or…the others will come to me, but the game is lacking a few notable functions like, for example, a way to defend yourself.

There is no actual way to block any incoming attack other than not being in its way to begin with. The only way to stave off potential damage is to kill everything in sight before it has a chance to move. A good offense is the only defense. It’s less of a problem with the slow, dumb zombies, but in the boss battles, of which there are many, you can get frequently trapped in a seemingly endless enemy combo with no way to escape taking damage.

The co-op mode does take the intense edge off of the boss battles, and allows for communal sharing in the glee that is zombie massacre, but is not without its problems. The game is clearly meant to be a single player experience, and having a second player on hand doesn’t compliment the gameplay so much as just cut the fun in half. The screen splits vertically, rather than the now traditional horizontal, which allows for a full view of the lovely protagonists, but severely limits the range of vision for people actually trying to find zombies to kill.

Furthermore, there are levels where co-op just isn’t an option. Occasionally, in the story, the protagonists are separated from each other, and you can only play through the ensuing levels as one or the other character. In single player mode, this is motivation to diversify the usage of your characters to keep their levels up, but in co-op it is an abrupt end to the fun for whoever is player two. The story is nowhere near good enough to warrant the sacrifice in gameplay.

A further quick list of grievances includes:

The eccentric targeting system, which is really only necessary when using Anna, targets less what the camera is centered on and more whatever the hell it feels like.

Rampage mode, which depletes your life and can only be turned off by, and I’m not kidding, statues of the Virgin Mary, of which there are only three in the entire game. The only other way to avoid dying once in rampage mode is to finish whatever level you are currently playing.

The level maps almost seem intentionally confusing, with many paths leading to dead ends or other whole map sections irrelevant to progressing through the level, with no indication of what direction you should be going. You signed up to kill zombies, not to get lost in a sewer. To make matters worse, several levels are played on the same map.

The motorcycle level, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is possibly the least involved video game level ever conceived. Aya hops on a motorcycle and drives in a straight line for a couple hundred feet, slashing at a some zombies wolves while in transit. ‚ The only thing necessary to pass the level is to hold the “go” button and mash the “sword” button. You don’t even need to use the joystick. Pong is a more stimulating game, for heaven’s sake.

To be fair, nobody expected a lot from any game called Bikini Samurai Squad, and nitpicking isn’t going to help anything. While this veritable cavalcade of glitches makes for frustrating gameplay at times, it ultimately doesn’t impede the amount of zombies, blood, or bikinis. However, the $39.99 asking price is still too much for the shoddy gaming experience. Onechanbara isn’t something you want hanging out in your gamer library, corrupting the innocence of your more impressionable games, but it might be fun for a night of drunken gaming if you have Gamefly or see it in a bargain bin somewhere.

High-end gaming hardware and social networking software have taken a big step towards perfect integration. On Thursday, Razer, the high-end PC-gaming hardware company, announced a partnership with Raptr, the high-end gamer networking software company. This partnership of course brings us ever closer to a universal gamer-run computer network, which will eventually become the Matrix/Skynet and enslave humanity, but in the interim should be pretty sweet.

Raptr is a social networking program specifically for gamers, integrated with all those social networking sites for everybody else. It can be hooked into your PC, Xbox, etc. to alert your friends via Facebook or Twitter that you are online, there is epic gaming afoot, and they should join in. Razer, the manufacturer behind mice and keyboards intended for hardcore gaming, is hoping to use Raptr to tap into the general vibe of the gaming community and get a better feel for user preferences. Razer can then tailor its production to consumer needs and desires, and Raptr in turn will have a wider pool of gamers on its network.

Raptr will now come bundled with Razer’s better selling products, and the networking site will host gaming contests to promote Razer gear. So hopefully, until it becomes sentient and destroys us all, the Raptr/Razer union should allow gamers to enjoy a new accessibility to both hardware and other gamers.

From Razer:

RAZER AND RAPTR PARTNER TO ENHANCE MILLIONS OF GAMERS’ EXPERIENCE

Leading Gaming Peripheral Company Razer Leverages Raptr’s Social Platform For Deeper User Connection

Carlsbad, California – Jan. 29, 2009 – Razer^TM, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming and lifestyle peripherals, today announced a new partnership with Raptr, the first social platform that allows users to know, in real-time, what games they and their friends are playing across multiple platforms. When combined with Razer’s precision keyboards and mice, the joint offering provides Razer’s millions of customers the opportunity to seamlessly join Raptr’s community and build friendships, compete and connect while gaming.

The partnership will also enable Razer to communicate directly with its fan base and better understand their gaming habits with Raptr’s innovative unique social network integrations. Razer will be able to reach their fans wherever they are and forge a deeper user connection. With Raptr, users can also automatically broadcast this information via the Internet’s most popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, thus extending users’ ability to reach their friends.

In addition, Raptr and Razer plan to hold contests that give Raptr users the chance to show off their gaming skills and win special Razer gear. Raptr will be bundled with three of Razer’s most popular products: the Razer DeathAdder mouse, the Razer Lachesis mouse, and the Razer Lycosa keyboard, with more products to be added over the coming months.

“Razer’s products have traditionally been created and marketed for hardcore gamers and with this new partnership, Raptr is providing us with the best way to build a deeper connection with our existing gamers as well as reach new gamers in a consumer-friendly and innovative way,” said Razer president Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff. “We feel incredible synergy with Raptr, specifically in our goal to continuously engage new gamers and introduce them to the very best gaming products and services available.”

“With this partnership both companies are embarking on an exciting new growth opportunity. By making Raptr accessible through Razer’s products we’re able to reach additional gamers who may not yet be members of Raptr,” said Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr.

About the Razer Group

Razer^TM is the world’s leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming products and peripherals that are designed “For Gamers. By Gamers^TM“. Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, Razer’s award-winning lineup of products includes desktop speakers, headsets, keyboards, mice, software, and gaming surfaces. Since 1998, Razer has collaborated with leading professional gamers to develop, manufacture and market cutting-edge gaming peripherals using proprietary technologies that give gamers the competitive edge. Razer products offer the best in precision, sensitivity, usability and distinctive product design and have a reputation for being leaders in gaming peripheral technology. For more information, please visit www.razerzone.com.

About Raptr

Raptr is a free service that helps connect people who like to play and discover games and is available at http://raptr.com. Our goal is to make playing games more fun and social by letting

you:

* Know when your friends are playing

* Share your achievements automatically

* Discover new games you might like

* Update your games automatically

* Display your gaming identities in one place

Raptr is the first service to automatically let you know when your friends are playing games in real-time across multiple platforms and the first service to automatically allow you to share your gaming activity with your friends on Raptr and other popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, the Raptr client software is distributed through a variety of channels in the gaming industry that include Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War, Lighthouse Interactive, NHN USA, and Razer. Raptr was founded in 2007 by Xfire co-founder and world champion gamer Dennis Fong. The company is made up of people who love to play games and has raised over $12 million dollars in funding from investors that include Accel Partners and The Founders Fund. For more information, please go to http://raptr.com.