So of course, when Left 4 Dead 2 was released, not even a spinal chord injury could keep me from playing.  Much to my delight I found the gameplay mostly unchanged; you’re still controlling four immune survivors through five campaigns filled with Hannibal Lecter cosplayers.  The major changes are the new campaigns and an expanded library of weapons, medicines, ammunition, and enemies.

The South is a trendy setting, and luckily it jives well with the series sense of the absurd.  You’ll be fetching snacks for hillbillies in exchange for rocket launcher cover, driving through plate-glass windows in a stock car ala the Dukes of Hazard, mowing down killer clowns with your trusty banjo, and all-in-all enjoying a game that takes itself much less seriously than the average FPS.   From a carnival of death to a rainy swamp, the new environments are–frankly put–amazing.  They’re atmospheric and diverse, and are sure to provide hours of creepy delight.

The series displayed its flair for the cinematic in the Dead Air plane crash of the first release; moments like these are sprinkled throughout all campaigns, and my first play-through dropped my jaw more than once.  I never thought I could be so excited about fetch quests, but there are great strategic mini-missions that force you out of the “shoot everything that moves” mentality.  The levels are much less linear this time around, with multiple routes to the safe-house, adding another layer to strategy.  There are even moments where you benefit by breaking the cardinal rule of the Left 4 Dead Series: NEVER split up.

Multiple new weapons and items have been introduced to aid your zombie-killing efforts.  I’m very much a barbarian when it comes to weaponry: if it kills things, I’ll use it until it breaks or runs out of ammo, then I’ll just pick up whatever is closest.  Guns still fall into three categories: things that shoot a lot but hurt a little, things that shoot a little but hurt a lot, and sniper-type rifles.  Laser sights are fun add-ons, but they’re more flair than substance.  Incendiary rounds and Boomer Bile are best saved for big enemies, but as I stated, I’m a big fan of good-old-fashioned lead.  Defibrillators are an implausible but fantastic addition to your medical arsenal, allowing you to revive even long-dead party members.  Adrenaline, which will increase your speed, is only useful in very specific situations, and I find the pain pills to be a more practical inventory item.  While the expanded choices aren’t uniformly useful, they certainly increase your strategic capabilities.

Unfortunately, with increase in tactical abilities, the intelligence of your companions seems to plummet.  I remember fondly that I could count on Zoe to snipe the roof-top Smokers while I was busy spraying friendly shotgun fire onto Louis and Francis.    Man, those were the days!  Perhaps they gain competency when playing on easier modes, but on advance they felt a bit dopey, especially in the missions that required more action than just firing guns.

Of the new special infected, we have the Spitter, the Charger, and the Jockey.  I only really loved the idea of the Jockey, which will take control of you and steer you off of cliffs and into traps; the Spitter overlaps a bit too much with the Boomer for me, but perhaps he’ll grow on me.  The Charger, however, was a waste of programming.  It’s the annoying little brother of the pants-wettingly frightening Tank, and it fills no function that the Hunter doesn’t.

Perhaps the only disappointment I feel with this release is the loss of the feeling of simplicity and lightness that came with so few options.  You had health packs, pain pills, pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, and that’s was it!  Now with defibrillators, adrenaline, Boomer bile, laser sights, axes, crowbars, baseball bats, samurai swords, three more kinds of special infected, and multiple variants on common infected, the game has lost the simplicity that made its balance so apparent and so appealing.  Since it’s such an appealing party game, I regret that my more casual gamer friends may have difficulty keeping track of all these new toys.

I also detect a small downgrade in the intuitiveness of the game’s flow.  Music cues that both helped the gamer and enhanced their excitement have suddenly become as slow as the AI.  Character movement feel less vetted, and I found myself firing often at Nick, whose silhouette I found indistinguishable from the zombie masses.  Almost invisible features, such as auto-crouching to enter low spaces, has been done away with.  You know–small things that made the game faster, easier to learn, and gave you fewer scrambling-for-the-right-button moments.  I definitely feel some of the additions were superficial: padding added to justify the release of a new game rather than additional content for the first, especially when so many of the game elements are identical.

Blast Factor: Overall, I probably would’ve been happier with additional content for the first game, or a greater amount of time and thought put into balancing the sequel as well as its predecessor.  But despite some issues, this is still a great game, and I’m sure myself and my friends will be pouring as much time into this one as we did the last.  The new campaigns are the stars of the show, and they alone make this title well worth owning.

Left 4 Dead 2 is available on the Xbox 360 and the PC, and retails for $59.99 and $49.99 respectively. A copy of this game was purchased for the purposes of reviewing.

I wasn’t kidding when I described the gameplay above. That’s the bulk of the experience. You get missions to do from job boards in towns and settlements, or from talking to certain people scattered across the expansive game world. When you finish a mission, you return to wherever you earned it and pick up a reward, in the form of items, experience and money. You can take on as many quests as you want at a time, and can complete as many as you want before you ever return to claim your prize, so you don’t need to run back and forth constantly. These missions do fall into a somewhat small set of categories though–kill this thug, kill this beast, collect these items, kill this guy and collect these items, etc. You don’t really mind though, because each kill means experience, and experience means leveling, and that is the metaphorical crack pipe upon which addiction to this game relies.

Even within the first area of the game, there are certain sections you are not going to want to visit until you have sufficiently leveled. You may find some of these places in your random travels though, and when you do, you could very well be killed, and fast. You want to be very close to your enemy’s levels when you engage them, so the missions become important so you can always stay ahead of the curve, or at least with it.

Plus, you get more stuff. There’s a never ending supply of stuff for you to pick up. Some of it is better than your current stuff, much of it is worse, but it can all be sold so you can buy even better stuff. Certain characters use certain gun types better than others, meaning that when you play multiplayer, stuff should be shared for more reasons than just fairness.

The single and multiplayer experiences are similar in many ways. You still run around completing missions, leveling up and collecting loot, but now you get to do it with a buddy (or a stranger, but that’s not as much fun, especially in a game where picking up items is so pivotal). If you play with someone over Xbox Live, whoever hosts the game is going to be the one whose story is played, meaning you can replay missions you may have already completed in order to boost your character’s levels further. You can also keep multiple characters saved to your hard drive at once, meaning you can play online with a friend using one of the four character classes while playing alone on your own time with another. All of the items, experience and money you acquire in multiplayer carries over to your single-player experience, so even if you have to replay certain sections later, at least you will be well armed.

Each class is, at the simplest level, different thanks to their special skill. The Soldier drops a shielded turret, the Hunter has a war hawk that can attack far off enemies or those behind cover, the Siren can turn invisible and invincible for short periods of time, letting out a wave of energy when the shift occurs, and the Berserker, which, as you may have guessed, excels at being a damage absorbing tank that can punish enemies with melee.

There is more to the class differences than that though, as you earn skill points that can be used to differentiate them further. There are three separate paths to take, and you don’t need to stay within a single one–you can also cash in all of your skill points and re-align yourself however you wish, for a small cash fee. Let’s use the Hunter as an example. One path has him becoming more of a pistol wielding gunslinger, while another has him becoming more of a sniper. If you take the Sniper path, you will earn bonuses through skill points for things like experience bonuses on critical kills, faster reload times on rifles, or shield penetrating bullets. If you take the gunslinger route, you can get some similar bonuses, but also some very revolver/pistol exclusive ones, like chance to fire two rounds with one press of the trigger on pistols. You can customize them into all three groups and get an all-purpose blend, or you can focus heavily on one section–each time you upgrade a skill five times, it opens up the next level of skills for that designation. Shield penetrating bullets don’t come for the Sniper until you’ve used at least 15 skill points on Sniper related skill, which means 15 levels (20, really, as you don’t earn any skill points your first few levels) in a game with 50 tops. As I said though, you can get them back for a cost, so don’t fret if you change your mind 15 hours in.

That’s not to say anyone can’t play and enjoy being a virtual DJ here. The game caters to all skill levels, but to really get the most out of the mix table peripheral, you’ll need to master the higher skill settings. Regardless of which difficulty level, DJ Hero is amazingly fun.  Almost 100 mix tracks come with the game and it’s the first music game since Dance Dance Revolution to especially appeal to the techno crowd. The mixes cover the musical spectrum though—plenty of rap, hip hop, Motown, and pop from the last 30 years. But the magic is how the game mixes two tracks together to create something new.

Nowhere else could you hear Marvin Gaye crossed with the Gorillaz, the Beastie Boys and Queen, the Killers vs. Rihanna, David Bowie and 50 Cent, and an impressive and entertaining number of other great mixes. It’s not a stretch to say that this eclectic, dance-centric line-up is the best yet for a Hero game and it makes the color-coded button pressing gameplay feel more distinctive than ever.

The mix table controller is a cool new addition to any gamer’s stash. The main focus is on the turntable, which both spins and has three colored buttons. On the medium difficulty level and below, this is all you’ll really need, and the game plays just like any of the Hero/Rock Band games. Color-coded circles stream down three trails on the screen and the object is to hit the appropriate button at exactly the right time. At times, you’ll have to spin the turntable up or down based on the onscreen cues. The concept is simple, the execution is fun, and the presentation is bright, colorful, and quirky.

Once you get comfortable with the basic gameplay and switch to a higher level, the crossfader becomes a major part of the game. This slider bar is at home in the center, but at times, you’ll have to slide it right and left in time with the music trail, while keeping pace with the button presses and spins. The crossfade bar adds an interesting level of challenge in general, and adds some great variation to the music. On the downside, it can be a bit unruly. Despite have a bit of feedback, when the game is in high gear, paying attention to the current position of the bar without having to actually look at it can be frustrating.

There’s little in the way of onscreen prompts to keep track of the slider’s position as well, making the learning curve a bit steeper than it could have been. Another feature that is great in concept, but still in need of some work is the overlap with Guitar Hero. Some of the tracks allow for a guitarist, yet few of them felt particularly optimized for this feature. Usually the guitar tracks end up being painfully repetitive. Still, it’s a nice bonus feature that could use improvement in the sequel.

The overall presentation is much like other music game, with the moving gameplay tracks taking up most of the screen acreage, and stylized graphics of your on-stage DJ, the crowd, dancers—all reacting to how well you’re doing. The pumping soundtrack is especially awesome for home theater-equipped systems, but as expected, it sounds great in general.

Blast Factor: Without a doubt, DJ Hero is the most distinctive and original music game on the market. While the game is enjoyable for all skill levels, it takes on a whole new level coordination for the hardcore crowd. The packed soundtrack is phenomenal and mix table controller is responsive and fun to use. The  main problem for DJ Hero is the steep asking price. $119 is a lot to spend on one game with only a single controller. If you don’t mind the cover charge though, this is the coolest virtual rave in town.

Another Take — Bradley Ouellette

Activision’s latest Music game is an interesting new twist. They have taken the well-known style of the Guitar Hero franchise, and instead of playing a guitar, the player spins a record, and acts like a DJ mixing tunes. The Music in the game always consists of two pieces that the player has to mix together, fading between the two pieces and adding other effects including scratching, freestyling, and cross fading.

The game plays similar to any other Guitar Hero style game, moving the cross fader to select the track, scratching, or pressing the buttons to cause different effects to the music. When the player gets all of a lit up section correct the game gives a charge to the Euphoria button–this is the same as star power.

The scoring in DJ Hero feels different than the scoring in Guitar Hero also. The multipliers earned from rows of correct notes is very important since if you don’t hit 4x multiplier for a while in the game, you pretty much can’t score more than 3 stars. So hitting an extra note that isn’t there can kill your rating. Also if the player gets enough notes correct in a row, there is a rewind button that will show up in the display. This looks like the regular rewind button on a remote. When that’s on the screen, spinning the turntable back one full turn will rewind the song, and let the player replay a section to increase their score. This can be especially fun, if in Emode, when there is a bunch of cross fading back and forth, since it will allow the player to get a huge score with little effort. That being said, the rewind mode can also kill the score, since while it rewinds it’s easy to mess up a note and lose the multiplier.

Over all, I loved the game. I thought it was a neat new twist in the music genre; whereas the guitar band games haven’t had as much innovation lately, this was completely new. I found that game played smoothly, except for the cross fader. Even with the issues of the cross fader, loved the game, and will highly
recommend it if you generally like music games.

DJ Hero is available on the Wii, Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, and retails for $119.99. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Band Hero is Activision’s answer to LEGO: Rock Band and aims to corral and persuade the pop-loving, teen masses into grabbing a plastic instrument and rocking out with friends. The game features tunes from uber-mainstream acts such as Jesse McCartney, Taylor Swift, The Spice Girls, and loads more songs you likely never imagined you’d play in a Guitar Hero game.

There isn’t a heck of a lot about Band Hero that wasn’t covered in our hands-on preview, but now that I’ve jumped into the game for hours instead of minutes, there’s a little more to talk about.

First off, don’t expect anything different or significantly improved in the visuals department. Band Hero looks exactly like Guitar Hero 5. But this is not a detriment whatsoever. Guitar Hero 5 was the most phenomenal looking Hero title we’ve ever seen, and the minor tweaks Band Hero adds, only bring out the power of the engine that much more.

Band Hero’s menus are decorated with pink, popping, sparkly visual effects, and these adjustments clearly distinguish Band Hero from Guitar Hero 5. From a presentation standpoint, Band Hero just feels happier, if a video game could have emotions.

The game features every game-mode found in GH5, but has one significant addition- Sing Along. In this mode, Band Hero essentially morphs into a gorgeously rendered karaoke machine where up to four participants can simply sing along to any of the game’s tracks. The best part? Only one microphone is needed. Now, for me personally, this addition didn’t add anything. But, fill a room with little girls, and turn on “Love Story” by Taylor Swift, and well, it’ll be a different scenario.

The meat, however, of Band Hero, as with any music-game, is in its song list, and on this account, Band Hero excels. There are 65 on-disc tracks and all the downloadable content you’ve got on your hard drive also works in the game. For me it was rather comical seeing tunes from Metallica next to those of Dashboard Confessional, but hey, it works!

The tunes (here’s all 65), as previously noted, include radio friendly cuts from artists like Hilary Duff, Taylor Swift, The Spice Girls, Jesse McCartney and Fallout Boy. But the game also incorporates classics like “American Pie,” in all its nine-minute glory and “ABC’s” from the Jackson 5.

Personally, I feel that Band Hero is a “guilty pleasure” music game. It’s hard for me to admit I enjoy listening to Taylor Swift, but when I’m actually actively playing along to her tunes, it’s a little different. Maybe you wouldn’t openly admit to enjoying these songs per se, but when they’re wrapped into a video game, something changes, and they become very much alright.

Of note: What I’ve always found interesting when comparing the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises are the differences in note charts of the same songs in both games. For instance, Dashboard Confessional’s “Hands Down” is in both Rock Band and Band Hero. However, the song plays far more simply in Band Hero, and speaks to Activision’s determined effort of accessibility over genuine (as as much as can be expected) musicianship, a gameplay facet that Harmonix tirelessly works to effectively recreate in its game.

Additionally, if you can’t deal with censors and omitted vocal phrases, you might have a problem with Band Hero. In Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar We’re Going Down,” the line should that should read “I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song” is sung in the game like this: “I’m just a notch…but you’re just a line in a song”

Good job Activision, you prevented some kid asking his or her parent “What’s a notch in a bedpost mean?”

Blast Factor: Band Hero is a phenomenally fun music-game. It doesn’t add a heck of a lot to the genre, but it remains cemented in excellence in gameplay, and the addition of Sing Along mode is gem hidden in the game that Activision simply did not hype enough. The 65 on-disc tunes are very surprisingly varied and altogether comprise a very wholesome attack from Activision at creating more than just a “kiddy” Guitar Hero title. In-game appearances by Taylor Swift and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine add a level of “whoa cool” to the game.

Band Hero is available for the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation 2. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Of course, this was clearly an exercise of sarcasm as Grand Theft Auto IV was a perfect representation of how to develop a game.  Yet, it seems that the people at Rockstar went ahead and fulfilled my request anyway with their release of Episodes from Liberty City.

This stand-alone title, available for around $40, allows veterans and new fans of the series to play the add-ons for GTA IV, the critically acclaimed Lost and the Damned and the highly anticipated release of The Ballad of Gay Tony, without actually having to own a copy of the original game.  This set-up is perfect for those who played Grand Theft Auto IV as a rental or just never bothered to download the additional episodes, combined with the drop of The Ballad of Gay Tony and a fair price (costing as much as downloading the two separate add-ons in the Xbox Live Marketplace) make Episodes from Liberty City a very intriguing title heading into the holiday season.

First, let’s briefly go over The Lost and the Damned before we focus on The Ballad of Gay Tony and then review the complete package of Episodes of Liberty City as a whole.  (For our more in-depth review of The Lost and the Damned, check out this link). The Lost and the Damned allows players to take control of Johnny Klebitz, a member of the biker gang called The Lost.  Johnny, vice president of the club, is tasked with spending most of his time fixing the mistakes of the president, Billy, who has been in rehab for narcotics possession for a long while.  Of course, upon the release of Billy from rehab, the club is divided by those who prefer Johnny as their leader and those who prefer Billy.  Now, players must find a way to reunite the club, while also dealing with controlling Billy’s out-of-control behavior, gang wars, jail raids and other craziness.  Like The Ballad of Gay Tony, The Lost of the Damned has plenty of mini games and multiplayer modes unique to the add-on.  By itself, The Lost and the Damned is worth downloading due to its unique story and decent amount of gameplay, but how will it look when combined with another add-on?

The Ballad of Gay Tony is the newest release from the folks at Rockstar, which will be available both in downloadable and hardcopy format as found in Episodes From Liberty City, which we’ve been focusing on in this article.  This add-on has a completely different vibe than the previously described The Lost and the Damned episode, which should not really come as a surprise.  Instead of being centered around the gritty activities and conflicts of a biker gang, The Ballad of Gay Tony focuses on the not-so-glamorous life behind the velvet ropes and glitz of the Liberty City club scene.

Players take control of Luis Lopez, a juvenile delinquent turned club-owner body guard.  Luis is introduced as Gay Tony’s (AKA Tony Price) confidant, muscle and eventual business partner.  Of course, coming from a childhood of crime and mischief, Luis has plenty of profitable and questionable connections and opportunities with his life back home as well.  Throughout the game, Mr. Lopez will have to deal with the struggles of balancing business with family in order to become the biggest success he can be.  Plenty of in-game decisions will have to be made by the player, so be prepared to have to make some moral choices as you try to make it to the top.

The Ballad of Gay Tony begins with a funky intro; the term “funky” meaning filled with 70’s and 80’s style of music, complete with synthesizers and heavy bass slaps…. not strange or odorous.  Anyway, the point is that The Ballad of Gay Tony lets you know right from the start that this episode is not like any other Grand Theft Auto title that you’ve seen.  This installment will be filled with a new level of flamboyancy and classiness that players have only gotten mere tastes of in the previous games.  However, rest assured that there are plenty of drugs, swearing, murders and conflicts in this episode, which will surely keep the GTA purists satisfied to a reasonable extent.

There are a few new gameplay improvements that bear mentioning. For one, the animations have improved, so things look a bit more realistic now than they used to. Wrestlers react to being struck in specific areas more, and you can use things like the ropes to great effect in order to take your opponent out. Strong grapple transitions are now manually performed, which means you can switch from one grapple position to another without having to let go of the grapple first–considering that THQ wrestling games from 10 years ago made you do this, it’s about time this change came about. There are also new positions to attack from and grapple from, which gives you even more options per Superstar when it comes to your move set.

Reversals have received a makeover too–now you have to press the right trigger to reverse everything, but it is timing based, so you can’t just spam the button and hope you reverse it. The window for reversals is pretty small, but with some practice it works effectively. Of course, if you aren’t able to reverse, you’ll take a beating; the good news is that now you will be able to see that beating’s effects on you and your opponent’s body. Give someone a hard chop to the chest? You’ll see their chest redden, which is a cool damage effect that mirrors real life. There’s also a lot of blood in this year’s edition–while the cuts start out small, the blood keeps on coming if you beat them down, so things will get messy.

The bulk of the Smackdown vs. Raw experience is the same as previous editions, but there have been some cool additions that make this much more than a roster update with a fresh coat of paint. The Road to Wrestlemania mode features multiple storylines that have been developed with the mindset of replicating a WWE experience. Copyright logos show up at the same time they would during the actual Raw or Smackdown shows, you go to the backrooms to talk to other wrestlers and view cutscenes, and there’s much more going on than just fight, fight, fight. They also do a very good job of harnessing these Superstar’s personalities–Edge is the kind of guy you’re going to love or hate, just like in real life, as he tries to take over Smackdown in his scenario. He’s presented as a twisted, sick-minded (but talented) wrestler who should not be given the reins to Smackdown, and even the announcers get in on that kind of information as they call his matches. These scenarios are well done and feel very much like a WWE experience.

The Royal Rumble has had some work done to it, as there are now different minigames for eliminating opponents. These change depending on where you try to throw an opponent out (or where you’re being tossed out). These are simple, like tap X repeatedly then tap Y repeatedly until you get back in, or sometimes they are more quick-time event oriented, but they are easy to grasp and make the Royal Rumble a more frantic and fun experience.

Maybe more interesting is the Championship Scramble though, a new match type that has five wrestlers going at it at the same time. You can put the different WWE championship belts on the line in these matches, which have an intriguing concept: two wrestlers start, and the three others enter the ring at set times. Each time someone is pinned or falls via submission hold, the wrestler responsible becomes the new champion; the twist is that there is a time limit, and the last one standing holding the belt is the champion. This becomes very difficult though, as there are five of you in there at once, meaning there are three people ready to stomp on your face every time you go for the cover. The matches are loads of fun though, especially given their difficulty–you aren’t just going to throw a few strong grapple moves around here and come away victorious if there are four others in the ring that all want to hurt you.

The create-a-wrestler mode has also seen improvements, with options for creating entrance movies using highlights that you have saved; you take these highlights, splice them together, and add sound and screen effects in order to come in to a badass theme. Taking a cue from the 2009 edition of the game, custom finishers are back, but you can now also create your own aerial finishers–those of you that love the high flying Superstars are sure to be pleased by this development. The obvious thing to do is to make everyone perform a hurricanrana, but you can string together your own preferences before the final blow. There is also a paint tool that you can use to create custom tattoos and the like for your Frankenwrestler, so you aren’t limited by what comes with the game any longer.

If you don’t want to create a new wrestler, then you still get to toy around with create-a-wrestler features, as you can now customize the Superstars that come with the game more, changing their colors. For me, that meant that John Cena had to wear girly colors, but you can mock or improve whichever wrestler you choose in the way you want to (P.S., make Cena like girly things). You also have the option of downloading other player’s created wrestlers, which means that you don’t need to struggle to create the legends of the WWE hiding in the costume designs if you don’t want to, because someone else already did.

While these modes are all well and good, with either improvements or totally new features that enhance the Smackdown vs. Raw experience, the meat of the game for many is going to be the WWE Story Designer. You don’t need to even make one yourself in order to enjoy this, which is probably its greatest strength–you can simply download other people’s scenarios over Xbox Live, which means you have a limitless supply of brand new stories to play through. While the chances that all of them are memorable experiences is slim, the fact that you will have some serious hardcore fans writing their own stories–this is basically a fan fiction generator–is great news for those who love their WWE.

You may be shocked at the breadth of options you have at your disposal in this mode. You’re basically scripting a 10-year show instead of just playing General Manager of either Smackdown or Raw, so you not only set the matches, but you get to create backstage scenes, start rivalries, create alliances, or, if you’re feeling frisky, create some Diva/Superstar relationships. You write the scripts, and you use the over 100 animations you have at your disposal to emote the lines.

You not only have the entire WWE roster at your beck and call here, but you can also use your created wrestlers, meaning there’s no shortage of talent for you. This also allows you to give your created Superstars some personality that can be played out somewhere besides your noggin. This gives you a lot to do after you’ve finished the story modes included in the game, and as stated, if creativity isn’t your thing, there is always other people’s work to play through. That shared content isn’t restricted to just created-wrestlers and the Story Designer though, as you can download pretty much everything from other people that you can create yourself.

Blast Factor: There is no shortage of things to do in Smackdown vs. Raw 2010. The game that comes packaged has loads of game modes, from the traditional career stuff to a more story-oriented Road to Wrestlemania, and let’s not forget about the enhanced Royal Rumble and the brand new Championship Scramble. Outside of that though, creation is the name of the game, from characters to entrances to your own WWE storylines–and of course, if you aren’t creative or don’t have the time, you can always download other people’s work to extended your Smackdown vs. Raw experience.

Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 is available on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Wii and Nintendo DS. A copy of the Xbox 360 game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

This game is one of the best racing games I’ve played. When I opened the box, I was surprised to see not just one disc of content, but a second disc full of extra cars, racing tracks and other tidbits to expand on the already immense experience. I booted up the first disc and immediately ran a race and was surprised by how the controls were more fluid than the controls for Need for Speed: Shift and Gran Turismo. The race wasn’t too bad and as soon as it was over, I sat back and thought about how the game looked.

Need for Speed: Shift had gone all out for realism, right down to first person driving and actual effects for crashes (blurred vision in black and white, a nice touch). Forza’s realistic nature stems from the controls and the graphics. When you play in first person, it looks sharper than the graphics for NFS: Shift. All around, everything was sleeker in this game. When you go through your cars, the menu highlights them in a glamorous fashion which accentuates the beauty of the car’s design and makes you want to own it. Numerous models are included in the game, from brands ranging from Ford to Bugatti (racing in the Ferrari was always a treat).  When you race, the graphics of the layout are amazing. In first person, you feel like you’re actually driving the car in real life. In third person, you enjoy the view as you race against beautiful cars on tracks which range from stunning to borderline perfect.

The Cars are the lifeblood of this game. The sheer number available from the onset is amazing. There are a few which have to be unlocked, but the cars which are already available are pretty good. So you won’t have to worry about driving crappy cars since you can choose a good one if you’re inclined. As you win races you’ll receive credits to customize, upgrade and unlock other cars which furthers the game play and gives you goals.  Once you’ve got a garage full of your favorite cars, just tear up the expansion tracks on the second disc to fulfill your every racing desire.

The difficulty of the game is like most games, easy at first with a proportional rise in difficulty as you go on. You can also control your handicaps by going into options and choosing what controls you want to be automatic and which controls you want to be manual. For a real driver’s challenge, go with change gears manually for an added dose of a realistic driving experience. Once races start getting difficult, the amount of skill needed to win increases as well. The handicaps allow beginner players to get in the game, and there are also features like rewind which allow players rewind the race if they mess up. It’s an interesting feature, which docks you some points in performance, but allows beginners not to get too aggravated if they mess up.

Graphics are also pretty impressive. I’ve mentioned tracks and the load of the cars, but when you play the game, the amount detail put into it is clear. When I hit barriers, it sounded and looked like I was hitting barriers. Every crash takes its toll on the car. I would cry whenever I scratched my car since I could see the damage done to the sides and the paint scratched off. It’s an impressive feat which makes NFS: Shift and Gran Turismo’s crash effects look childish. That’s no easy feat.

The whole game is damn near perfection. But I still have a few issues with it. It’s got a load of content and stunning visuals, but the game doesn’t push the line. It doesn’t really delve into groundbreaking territory. The rewinding features and the handicaps are creative but they’re not pushing the envelope, something I wanted this game to do very well. You can get too dependent on the handicaps, which is ok but doesn’t allow you to experience the full potential of the game. The sheer amount of content can be a little overwhelming and you can feel like there’s too much to do, but this is definitely a game that offers so much game play in return for the amount you pay for it.

Blast Factor: This is everything a racing game should be. Realistic, practical, sleek and well designed. Overall the gameplay is magnificent and will attract gamers who are casual fans and please those who are hardcore racing fanatics. Beginners have helpful automatic driving and rewind to help them through the beginning stages until they’re ready to fly solo. Players have a highly customizable experience and also have an absurd amount of cars at their disposal. This game is everything Need for Speed Shift aspired to be and definitely buries the other entries in the Forza series. If you’re looking for a great holiday game for racing fans, this is definitely the game you’ll want to get.

How do you address gameplay in a karaoke game? You use your wireless microphone to sing songs! Lyrics appear on the screen and you need to sing. Simple? Yep. Bars appear under the lyrics and as you sing, you fill up the bars. The points you earn allow you to grow and as you go through the game. You start out as a Shower Dreamer, the starting level. As you earn awards, you can increase your level until you peak at Superstar. In addition to matching the vocals and keeping up with the lyrics, you can earn bonus points based on how you move your microphone, so be sure to watch what your avatar is doing! You can customize your avatar to look the way you want it to look, so be sure to customize it to bring out the inner Rock Star or Pop Diva in you. Not only do you have a dancing avatar, but you also have a few options about what’s playing in the background.

The background changes depending on what you choose to play. If you want the song’s music video in the background, the game lets you play it in the background while showing the lyrics in front of the video. If you decide to play some of the mini games, the background changes to reflect the conditions of the game. One of my personal favorites involved having to save the world by singing, otherwise a bomb will explode. Corny, yet somewhat thrilling.

Now, the most important part of any karaoke game is song selection. I’m not big on main stream radio, but the game developers did a good job of balancing out the song list so that there’s a little of everything available for everyone. Karaoke classics such as The Cardigan’s “Lovefool” and Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” are joined with new hits like Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and The Plain White T’s annoyingly catchy “Hey, There Delilah.” The game also includes a redemption code for a genre pack. If you want rap, love songs or rock, you’ll have a chance to download them to expand your experience. You can check out the full list here.

Now, let’s be honest here. Karaoke is can only really be fun when you’re with a group of friends (and maybe drunk). My experience will probably be very different from yours depending on who you play the game with. If your friends love letting loose and going crazy once in a while, then this is a game you will probably enjoy since it’s cheaper/easier to play from the comfort of your home with a group of close friends than it is going to a bar and singing in front of strangers.

If you’re expecting a revolutionary karaoke experience, then be forewarned. The game is fun, but there are a few weak points. The loading times can get on your nerves. To shave off a few seconds, load the game to your hard drive so the songs and menus load a bit faster. Not too fast, but bearable. When you’re in the menu section (which is now like iTunes’ album Grid layout), you see more than the 40+ songs which come with the game, which can be a little confusing. Some of the songs, which were released in Lips, can’t be played without swapping the disc (so you need to own Lips as well). These are minor drawbacks which don’t make it any less fun, just a little annoying.

Blast Factor: So here’s my summary. If you like Karaoke and Pop music, you will love this game. It’s not very challenging, and while it attempts to build up a solid single player, the game really shines when playing with friends on multi-player. It’s a solid expansion pack and has an edge on the original. If you want more songs, all you need to do is purchase them from Xbox LIVE. All in all it’s a solid investment, considering the fact that the bundle comes with a microphone and a 45 solid starter songs. Expansion improves the experience, and each person’s experience varies on conditions, so the only way to find out is to get it and bring a bunch of your friends together and sing your hearts out. BYOB.

Lips: Number One Hits is available exclusively on the Xbox 360 for $59.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

The studio released “Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space” on the Xbox Live Arcade earlier this month, and the entire package, which contains all of season 2 (five episodes), is the same series you played in 2007 and 2008 on the PC, but don’t stop reading here.

With updated high-definition graphics, Achievement support, and many, many hours of gameplay, “Beyond Time and Space” is a truly excellent adventure game, and one that fans of the series cannot miss.

“Beyond Time and Space” consists of five original episodes, also known as Season 2 in the Sam and Max series. You play as Sam and Max, the oddest of odd couples. Sam is a suit-wearing, upright walking, canine, and Max, he seems to be a rabbit of sorts. The two embark upon numerous and varied quests in order to save the five chapters, and as crazy and nonsensical as the objectives may seem, the quirky and odd recipe works very well.

You might think making the transition from the ease of access PC controls (mouse and keyboard), to the singular Xbox 360 controller might cause a tad distress, but no, this isn’t the case. In the game you don’t play as Sam or Max, rather you point in the direction you’d like Sam to travel, and he walks there. Apart from a few finicky happenstances, this control method works just fine. Clicking on the game’s many tiny items call for a steady hand, and after just a very short acclimation phase, you’ll be ready to solve crimes with the best of ‘em.

Without getting into specifics, as this review would morph into 4,000 words, the five episodes, dubbed Ice Station Santa, Maoi Better Blues, Night of The Raving Dead, Chariot of the Dogs, and What’s new Beezelbub?, take our vigilante crime fighters to the ends of the earth and back. You’ll tackle a automatic rifle-wielding Santa, a Tourrettes-inflicted mouse, birthday wishing Mariachi bands, and cold, dead vampires, just to name a very few.  “Beyond Time and Space” is the epitome of adventure gaming. Anything is possible, and I was surprised, scared, and emotionally-stricken on numerous occasions throughout my play-through. For as crazy and nonsensical as the stories are, their respective plot-lines are surprisingly understandable and engaging.

You can play any of the five episodes from the beginning, and although I didn’t, you could play number 5 first and work your way backwards, but I wouldn’t suggest doing so. Characters and story elements learned in the beginning episodes bear importance in the latter stages, and come on, would you read Harry Potter 5 before the first four?

However, as has always been the center of Sam and Max games, and returns in “Beyond Time and Space” is the game’s comedic value. If I wanted a serious crime show, I’d watch “CSI: Whatever city it’s now on.” This latest Sam and Max game is downright hilarious and more adult-themed than what I expected.

Max, the quirky little rabbit, is the center of hilarity in the game. When not committed to a certain action, he’ll hop around or even begin making armpit fart noises. But he isn’t limited to mannerisms, the little guy also speaks, and these were a few of my favorite lines from the game. Trust me, to explain the context would only confuse you.

“I’ve seen teenagers stuffed in lockers less emo then these guys!”

“What the hell man!” –in response to anything

Sam- “Why do they always have bottles of water at raves?” Max- “Because of all the drugs, Sam!”

The comedy however is not limited to Max alone. The world breathes funny. From Santa’s emphatic line “The snow will turn red with the blood of the naughty!,” to the general cynicism and satirical nature of the episodes, the game will keep you laughing, again, and again, and then when you’re already giggling, the game will make you laugh again!

Voice acting in “Beyond Time and Space” is really very good, it’s not great, but it works. At first, Sam’s dry tone and Max’s incessant dialogue intrusion irked me a bit, but after a short while the duo’s voices became as familiar and loveable as anything. The game’s thousands of lines of dialogue (a guess), are spoken fluently, appropriately, and in manner that makes the player interested in just what the hell’s going on! Additionally, the multitude of finely crafted lines of dialogue can be fully skipped with a simple click of the B button, but this is a worse idea than entering a room full of zombies with anything less than an automatic shotgun. Additionally, an Achievement, worth 20G, is yours, provided you listen to every last line of dialogue.

Having played, loved, and praised Telltale’s later works, it’s obvious that Sam and Max acted as a stepping off point for those later endeavors, as the dialogue in the Tales of Monkey Island and Wallace and Gromit series, are some of the best, in any genre, I’ve ever seen and make use of the solid foundation laid in this game.

Furthermore, the game’s many characters grow and become known to the player through the extensive and well-crafted lines of dialogue. The game is, of course, centered on Sam and Max, but the game’s many side characters have a lot about them Telltale makes known. For this reason, the game truly extends beyond just Sam and Max and at times, almost feels

The puzzles! What would a Sam and Max game, or any adventure game be, without this integral component? Worthless garbage, that’s what, and this game is far from that.

The puzzles in “Beyond Time and Space” strike a great balance between gamers’ need for adventure, and difficulty. I feel that a game such as this, plays differently for almost every person. Yes, the puzzles are all solved in the same manner, but, based on the perceptiveness of the gamer, the puzzles can be horridly difficult or innocuously easy. However, Telltale crafted a wonderful and detailed guide on their Web site, with images included, for each episode, and admittedly I referred to the walk-through on a few occasions. Call me a cheater, I don’t care. I did what I had to do to enjoy the game, and I still thoroughly did!

Graphically, the game is beautiful, and though I never played the original PC version, I believe Telltale’s promise of updated high-def graphics, as the game looks beautiful on my HDTV. From Santa’s cold and snowy workshop, to the pits of Hell, Telltale did an amazing job animating these varied landscapes, and their attention to subtle detail is remarkable.

Of note: the game comes with “Special Features,” but don’t get too excited. These are only brief character biographies and concept art. The concept art is intriguing, mainly because of its usual appeal to gamers looking into the history of their game, but overall, there really isn’t much here.

Blast Factor: Sam and Max: Beyond Space and Time is a thoroughly enjoyable and wholly approachable game for fans of the series and newcomers alike. A strong and varied cast complemented by engaging storytelling, makes this the game that much more exciting. With a whopping five episodes packed in, each requiring more than a hour of your time, at $20 and around 10 hours, the game feels very monetarily worth it.

Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space is available today on the Xbox Live Arcade for 1600 MS Points/$20. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Here are the basics: there are various colored orbs hanging from the ceiling, and you shoot them down by blasting more of these colored balls from below. Chances are good you have played Bust-A-Move or one of its variants in the past (Snood, perhaps?) so most people should be familiar with the concept. Three of the same color orbs touching means you’ve cleared those from the puzzle–continue to do this to clear the entire puzzle in single-player, or do this as much as you can to stave off losing and outlast your opponent in multiplayer.

There are different orbs with different powers as well–the flame burns away whatever pieces it touches, while the rainbow turns into the color of the object it was touching when they are cleared–and they are simple to use, as you just shoot them like any other orb. The most useful may be the crystal, which when shot eliminates every ball of that color along with it–this is also a great piece for multiplayer, since your cleared pieces make their way over to your opponent’s screen.

There’s plenty of single-player fun to be had here. Start with one of a few puzzles (named A, B, C, and so on) which then branch off into different options, and continues that way until you reach the end of the alphabet. You can replay this mode a few times without repeating puzzles, but even repeating them is worthwhile as you can improve upon your scores and times–the game tracks this information for you, and as any puzzle addict can tell you, things like that add a lot of replay value.

Multiplayer is also great, as you can play locally with a friend or over Xbox Live. There are various game modes here–different object sets, different ways of attacking your opponent with cleared pieces (traditionally from the top, more annoyingly from the bottom)–and matches are not one off events either, so don’t be discouraged if you get wrecked online or have a bad match the first time around, as there’s another chance for you right around the corner.

The music can at times become a little annoying, though there are parts of the song that plays again and again I enjoy–these parts sound like they belong in Chrono Trigger rather than Bust-A-Move, but it’s appreciated just the same. Like the music, the graphics can be hit-or-miss; they are bright and colorful as they should be, but the menus are bland with giant, ugly font, and the inclusion of avatars in multiplayer is just a bad decision–their fat, exaggerated heads get in the way when you’re trying to make shots down in the corners. You know, in some of the most important areas for accuracy in an entire Bust-A-Move match.

Blast Factor: It’s hard not to like this game, as it is Bust-A-Move. The next-gen additions don’t add a ton to the title–as stated, avatar inclusion is more annoying than fun, and the bland presentation takes away from some of the graphical high points–but you’ve got a time-tested puzzler available for you with online and local play, and chances are good that some people out there have not experienced the addiction that is Bust-A-Move as of yet. Now’s your chance to fix that issue.

Bust-A-Move Live! is available exclusively on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade service for 800 Microsoft Points. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Double Fine Productions, led by creative director Tim Schafer (Psychonauts), hoped to capture the root essence of metal in their latest body of work, Brutal Legend. Did they succeed? The short answer is yes, the team struck a resounding power-chord and shook the world.

Brutal Legend tells the tale of Eddie Riggs, a proud roadie who, when we meet him, works for Kabbage Boy, a rap/pop/metal band who don’t see metal the way Eddie does. Nevertheless, according to Riggs, “a good roadie stays out of the spotlight,” and so does his job without interruption.

Brutal Legend is an M-rated game, but in this first scene you’re given the option to hear swears or have them bleeped out as well as see all the blood, or skip it entirely. I, of course, went for all swears and blood possible, and to truly experience the metal world, you should probably too. Just be wary of children/parents/gnomes, in the next room who might not enjoy the cursing and flowing insides.

After a lengthy, detailed, and eventful opening cutscene, events finally come to fruition and Eddie is knocked unconscious and sent to a fantasy world embedded with metal at every corner and plagued by death by the domineering evil ruler Doviculous.

Brutal Legend is a third-person action adventure game with enough of a real-time-strategy element and open-worldliness to be noteworthy. Sound like too many genres at once? It’s not, and it works very well.

Where some games try to incorporate multiple genres and fail, Brutal Legend succeeds.

The game has three core game-play elements; open-world, mission-based, and large scale real-time-strategy battles.

At times you’ll be tasked with traveling from one end of the land to the next, traversing its hilly, sometimes barren, but always metal environments to get from mission to mission, and can easily do so in The Deuce, your upgradable and badass vehicle.

The mission-structure of Brutal Legend plays out in a “talk to this guy…start that level” kind of way. And the variance in mission tasks is phenomenal. In one level you’ll recruit literal head-bangers in a fiery mine to join your cause, and in the next you’ll be tasked with fending off Razorfires as they attack your precious tour bus. In the world of Brutal Legend anything goes and everything works.

The third facet of game-play in Brutal Legend is its real-time-strategy element. Admittedly, my knowledge and skill at RTS games is rudimentary at best, but this didn’t matter. Throughout the game you’ll recruit different allies into your rebel group and in the large-scale battles will need to employ them effectively to succeed.

In these RTS-moments called “Stage Battles,” your goal is to destroy the opposing “stage” while protecting your own. You do so by building merch-booths, which in turn grant you more and more fans with every booth built. These fans are “spent” on bringing more allies into the world to fight for you. And once spawned, a quick and simple manipulation of the D-Pad commands your troops to go there, kill that, stay here, protect this, destroy that, etc. Having spent very little time with RTS games, going into the game I thought I’d suffer and die often, but a great tutorial level and easy controls made me feel powerful and most importantly in control. Eddie can either control the troops on foot from the ground, or in the air via magical wings he somehow has. Control from the air was my method of choice. You can see the entire battlefield, how many and where enemies are coming from, where your troops are, and what artillery you have in use at any particular moment.

Eddie can also set foot into any battle he chooses and has two primary weapons available to him; The Separator and Clementine. The Separator is a two-sided axe used to slice and dice enemies with brutal force, and Clementine is Eddie’s guitar that yields paralyzing magic. If used too much though it’ll overheat and you’ll have to wait for a short but still noticeable cool-down period.

Eddie can also perform “double team” attacks. These are more powerful assaults that involve combining Eddie’s skills with those of allies for a true knockout punch. These range from climbing the back of a fire-breathing beast to scorch enemies to calling a group of head-bangers to circle around you and mosh enemies to death. These attacks are very important for “Stage Battles,” and you’ll always want to be “double-teaming.”

Additionally, Eddie can play a number of “Solos” as a buff to Clementine’s normal abilities. These range from “Face-melter,” which does to enemies exactly what it sounds like, to “Battle Cry,” which simply increases the damage dealt by Eddie and company. These solos are performed by successfully completing a mini-game where, like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, you’ll have to press the A, X, B, or Y buttons when the strike line passes over them. Now, when in battle you’ll have to choose wisely when, where, and how often to perform these solos, as the battle rages on, whether you’re busting out nasty fretwork or not. To learn and add more solos to your repertoire you’ll have to seek out the numerous “Tab Slabs” scattered throughout the world, and you’ll want to do this because at later stages, the battles really get tough and you’ll want all the power you can have.

Graphically, Brutal Legend doesn’t push any boundaries, but it doesn’t look bad either. Double Fine created a massive world of metal and the large scale imaginative environments and for the most part these locales look great.

Sound in Brutal Legend is better than phenomenal. When EA Denmark leaked a full song-list for the game months ago, my excitement for the title shot through the roof and after playing the game and experiencing the songs in action, I love the choices that much more.

Unlike most games where a publisher will seek out some award winning composer for a game’s score, Double Fine decided to use the melodies of “Black Sabbath,” “Dethklok,” “Dark Tranquility,” “Enslaved,” and so many more to set the tone of the world.

No other genre can heighten tension the way metal can. There’s something about listening to “Cathode Ray Sunshine” by Dark Tranquility that instills power within me to set out and slay enemies forces at a breakneck clip.

If you love mainstream radio and sing along to whatever the “flavor of the week” is, this game is not for you, at least thematically. In fact, I don’t think Schafer would even want you play and subsequently taint his game and its message.

That said, if you do love the metal music scene, as I very much do, this game is almost a necessary addition to your catalogue. Activision dropped the title after their merger with Vivendi, possibly fearing negative reaction to bands like “Rotting Christ” on the list, and while EA might have felt a twinge of that grief, they went through with it, and metal-heads will love it for sure.

The characters in Brutal Legend are some of the most memorable and interesting ones I’ve ever come across. The two main characters Eddie and Ophelia, voiced by Jack Black and Jennifer Hale respectively are executed wonderfully. Black provides hilarious spots of dialogue like “Please tell me I haven’t been killing hot girls this whole time” and Hale, who’s lent her voice to numerous projects including BioWare’s MMO “The Old Republic” and “Metroid Prime Corruption” as Samus Aran, performs remarkably in the game. There’s also a love connection between the two and their in-game chemistry is extraordinary.

Double Fine unleashed a total metal assault in Brutal Legend and recruited Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead) and Lita Ford (The Runaways) to lend their voices to the game. And from Ozzy’s abuse of the F-word to Kilmister’s sedated British tone, Double Fine did a damn fine job. Additionally, Tim Curry (the man who will forever haunt my dreams from his role as Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s IT) provides the voice work for the game’s villain, emperor Deviculous.

Once you’ve exhausted the game’s core missions you’ve “completed” the game, earned the “beat the game” trophy/achievement, and can gloat all you’d like, but I wouldn’t. Upon “completion” of the game, you’re actually only 48% done, leaving a whopping discrepancy. That void is made up in secondary missions. These range from hunting quests to racing challenges to even more huge-scale battles.

Playing these secondary missions and just exploring the vast world is something you’ll definitely want to do. You can unlock everything from more guitar solos to new parts for The Deuce and lots more. There’s an entire world of Metal out there. Why not explore it?

There’s also a significantly large multiplayer mode in Brutal Legend. It’s of the “Stage-Battle” flavor, and all your skills learned in the campaign tie directly into the multiplayer. There’s matchmaking, custom match, and AI Practice to play around with as well as new factions Drowning Doom, Tainted Coil all with solos and units unique to them. If you loved the Stage-Battles of the campaign, you’ll assuredly be logging hours and hours in the multiplayer, it’s a lot of fun.

Brutal Legend is just as much a statement as it is a game. It’s a tale of the power of music motivating those previously uninspired to conquer the evils both out there and embedded within. It tells the account of an unlikely band of rebels who, through their alliances, are able to attain the lofty goals they sought out in the beginning. Without getting too philosophical, I feel the message “Brutal Legend” conveys is one we should heed, or at least strive for, because without a unifying power (metal, or anything else), what do we have?

Blast Factor: With its abundance of metal, fantasy, and action, Brutal Legend is a truly phenomenal game. Born out of Schafer’s love of metal and executed damn near perfectly, the game is one every metal-head-gamer needs to play.

Brutal Legend is available on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for $59.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes.

Let me first address the graphics. Shift has great graphics and the driving is very smooth. The arenas are very realistic and the colors and ads placed on the side of the track are very well designed. Overall, the graphics are first rate and definitely enhance the experience. The graphics themselves are on par with Gran Turismo, and I’m very pleased by the amount of visual detail that went into making this game.

As I mentioned before, Shift is VERY different from previous Need for Speed titles, since there is no real story. You’re just a racer going around racing. The simplicity of abandoning the premise actually elevates the game. There are still cut scenes, but they are usually before the round begins and show other racers driving around. As you play, you earn money to buy more upgrades and new cars so that you can continue racing. There are 72 cars to unlock, which means hours of repeated game play–though that is far fewer than its competitor, something to note. As you race around the track arrows mark the path you need to travel to earn precision points. As you earn precision points, you can also brutalize the other drivers by ramming into them and knocking them off the road, earning yourself some aggression points in the process. The game’s Driver Profile tracks the player’s evolution as a driver from one event to another through Career and Online Play. As you improve and unlock more and more cars and upgrades, you start to experience the Total Customization system. Shift allows you to totally customize almost every aspect of the car so that you are in full control. Choose your car and bring it to the track to see how it does against your opponents.

There are numerous modes to play in when you start the game: Driver Duel, Manufacture Races, Series, Endurance, Race, Drift, Time Attack, Hot Lap and Lap/Time Eliminator. These various modes are similar but change the game play enough so that the game doesn’t get boring. As you win more and more rounds, you collect some badges which help with your stats and highlight your achievement levels. This makes adds an arcade like aspect to the game which is one of the few places where the original Need for Speed Series shines through.

When you race, you can play from a third person perspective or play from the first person. The first person view from the car’s cockpit is one of the highlights of the game. The developers put a lot of detail into the cockpit experience and it definitely pays off. Crashing into a barrier causes the screen to go grey and blur as you, and the in game driver, breathe in sharply. The stress on remaining realistic is noticeable, especially when crashing into another car. When you crash into your opponent you leave scraps and paint on the other car, and the frame becomes proportionally more damaged as you progress. When you drive at high speeds, the car speeds up to an extremely realistic manner which, at times, can be quite the shock. Even though you’re using a controller and not a wheel, you’ll certainly think you’re really driving the car. Another strong point is the soundtrack. We’ve known the track list for a month or so, but they way it is used in the game are very effective. The soundtrack is going to keep players entertained throughout their replays.

While the game itself is almost a love letter to simulation racing, there are certain areas which stood out as somewhat underdeveloped. I was disappointed to find that there was solely an online multiplayer mode and that I would not be able to go head-to-head with my friends on the same console. While this removes split screen problems, it also means that the only way you’re going head-to-head with a friend is if you’re online. When you are speeding down the track at high speeds, the controls can become a bit insensitive, especially when used in conjunction with the direction arrows on the track. When speeding, it becomes hard to judge turns, so you need to be aware that the controller won’t respond as quickly. That, in conjunction with the Auto correct feature, can be a hassle when you’re trying to win a level but the controls lock up and you’re not going as fast as you want to because the directional arrows indicate you should slow down. That will leave you fairly frustrated when you miss first place by a hair because of it. When you’re happy, this game can be the greatest game in the world, but it can definitely sour if the controls get in your way. And after a while, the announcer gets a bit annoying since his monotonous British accent is the equivalent of Michael Sheen saying the same thing over and over again until it gets ridiculous. The emphasis on drifting can also get annoying, but overall the game is solid.

This game is easily one of the best racing games I’ve ever played but it also calls into question the future of Need for Speed. Will they continue to make arcade based Need for Speed after Nitro comes out on Wii this month? Or will they continue making simulation racers along the lines of Shift? It’s a very interesting question which will probably be answered over the next few months.

Blast Factor: This is a great racing game. There are a few flaws, but the attention to detail and the racing experience all negate the few problems you’ll have with it. As a complete about-face from previous entries, this game stands up to Gran Turismo and Forza and definitely holds its own. It doesn’t have as many cars and tracks but the gaming experience will keep you coming back for more.

This version of Need for Speed: Shift appears on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and retails for $59.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes.

Enter Bubble Bobble Neo for the Xbox Live Arcade. In this remake, the gameplay remains solidly intact but its updated graphics, four-player support and newly three dimensionally animated character models really make it a desirable download for fans of the series and lovers of casual games alike.

The first thing you’ll notice in Neo is its full sensory overload of a main-screen. You’ve got a wondrous reprisal of the original’s soundtrack (which will be stuck in your head), as well as bright and popping colors to enjoy every time you fire up the game.

And when you actually start playing you’ll find three game modes, but they basically boil down to either single or multiplayer. Once you’re in the game your job is to kill every bad guy on the particular single-screen stage,in the same way you did 20 years ago. Playing as one of the dragon brothers Bob or Bub, you’re able to shoot bubbles out of your mouth and trap enemies.  Next you can either vault off the bubbles or pop them. The former allows you to reach higher heights, necessary on some levels, and the latter kills the baddie and earns you point multipliers in the form of anything from gems to bananas. Once you’ve mastered the art of jumping, bubble shooting, and popping, you know all you need to beat the game; it never gets more advanced in the control-department. That said however, there are over 100 levels in the game, and the latter stages are tricky, finger busting toughies to say the least.

This is where cooperative play becomes not only more practical, but a lot more fun too. As enemies soon become far more belligerent and starting shooting fireballs, someone in the room can quickly and simply tap the A button and jump in with you right then and there. What I did was say, “hey, I don’t really need you until level 15 or so, mind waiting?”

The other two game-modes are Arrange Mode and Versus Mode. In Arrange Mode the mayhem balloons to four players at a time, and even though I was only able to muster up two more to play with me for a total of 3, we had a blast and adding the fourth player would have been even better.

And the Versus Mode, my personal favorite, pits four players against each other in a game of survival. Basically, hordes of enemies overflow the screen and you’re tasked with surviving as long as possible while attempting to rack up the most points. And, as an added level of awesomeness, you can also trap those you’re playing with in a stream of bubbles to keep them from scoring.

There’s no online multiplayer support in Bubble Bobble Neo, and yes, that would have been nice. But the franchise has always been rooted in local multiplayer. I know I had one hell of a good time playing with friends on the same screen and fully expect you to as well!

Once you’ve exhausted the hundred levels, clobbered your friends in versus mode, and posted your highest score to the leaderboards, you might still want more. And if you do, you’re in luck. Taito released two additional maps as DLC for the game and each bring 50 more stages for a total of 100. Now, they’ll set you back 240 MS Points each, but you can’t put a price on nostalgic happiness can you?

Blast Factor: Bubble Bobble Neo is a quickly addictive XBLA title that will please followers of the franchise and entertain newcomers. Co-op and four-player modes are added benefits that will keep you playing for hours and hours. Updated graphics that pop and sizzle are great, but the core gameplay is what defines the title and everything feels great in that department.

Bubble Bobble Neo is available today on Xbox Live for 800 MS Points.

Shiny, expansive, and fun, these aren’t tactical or intellectual games. They cut right to the core of what most people think about super hero comics–Crash! Bam! Bang! If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, here’s the skinny. Four super-heroes run through a variety of levels beating the crap out of anyone and anything in their way, eventually encountering a much tougher boss battle, before moving on to the next level to do it all over again. Repeat this for about ten or so hours and you have Marvel Ultimate Alliance… one and two.

These games are essentially Gauntlet for the next generation of hardware, but with a focus on up close and personal melee combat. You can eventually choose around 30 heroes and villains of the Marvel comics universe to play as, and thanks to the clever use of the Civil War storyline from last year, heroes will be fighting each other as well. Which side of the conflict you choose affects who you’ll have access to–at least to some extent–though the opening and the final levels has everyone a bit closer together to deal with a greater threat.

The storyline is generally fine, if not exceptional, but the real draw is simply the ability to use so many familiar and obscure comic book characters. For the single player, you can switch between team member at any time, heal others in your group, and even revive them with health power ups. Also, you can switch team members in and out entirely at will. Certain team combinations have bonuses as well, so if you want to play as the Fantastic Four, they get special team enhancements for instance.

Another improvement over the first game is the use of fusions. Essentially a fancy name for team-up super moves, every character can perform a specific combo super attack with any other member of their team. Some of these attacks are a wide radius explosive blast, while others must be targeted, and still more have characters rushing through hordes of enemies cutting down everything in their path. Although some of these moves are truly spectacular, most feel like cookie cutter retread after a while, since most fusions are re-used through most of the characters.

Still, given how many enemies clog the screen, any room destroying move is welcome. The action is often so chaotic that it becomes confusing and you’ll simply be left wildly mashing the buttons because you can’t even see your character through the clutter of endless enemy drones. Another problem is that the characters often don’t feel unique enough. While stronger characters can lift heavier objects, there isn’t enough difference between the impact of Daredevil hitting a thug and the Thing. Characters who should be immune to gunfire seem to take as much damage as anyone else, and unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, the gameplay doesn’t convey enough sense of power to these characters as it should.

Thankfully, multiplayer action is what a game like this was really made for, and the game is much more fun when playing with others either in the same room or across the internet. You can run through the main story line as a group or take on the extra challenge levels, and playing Marvel Team-up with a real team adds a lot of value to the gameplay.

Finally, the overall presentation is excellent. The graphics are sharp and detailed, the character models look great for the most part, and while some of the voice acting and dialogue is really awful, the rest of the audio is good overall. Oddly, a lot of MUA2 is incredibly dark, which tends to make the already hectic action harder to follow.

Blast Factor: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 definitely takes a familiar path. There are no innovations here, and very few enhancements over the first game. It’s a straight-forward, meaty four-player beat ‘em up with plenty of great characters to choose from. Without a doubt, it won’t change anyone’s mind about the genre, and if you thought the first one was mindless and dull, there’s nothing to change your mind here. For fans of these games, however, it’s an impressive and expansive journey into mass destruction.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is available across all platforms; this review deals with the Playstation 3/Xbox 360 versions, and is available for $59.99

The two competitors in the genre; Activision and the Guitar Hero brand and Harmonix and Rock Band, have taken different approaches to creating and selling their respective titles over the years. But whichever side you personally favor, there’s another person out there disagreeing. So we’re not going to hype one side or the other, I mean we loved Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band for goodness sake.

Harmonix recently released the “Metal Track Pack” for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii and I played the heck out of in the past week. It’s a collection of 20 tunes highlighting the many shades of metal with one overarching theme: the songs are freakin’ hard!

Of the 20 on-disc tunes, 6 of them are brand new additions to the Rock Band universe and are not sold in the Rock Band Music Store. This means the only way to experience these songs is to buy the disc. Here’s the full tracklist with the exclusive tones denoted as such *

All That Remains – “Two Weeks”
At the Gates – “Blinded By Fear”
Black Tide – “ShockWave”
Blue Öyster Cult – “Transmaniacon MC”*
Bullet For My Valentine – “Waking the Demon”
Children of Bodom – “Are You Dead Yet”
Evile – “Thrasher”
Godsmack – “I Stand Alone”
The Haunted – “D.O.A.”
Hawkwind – “Master Of The Universe”*
I Mother Earth – “Levitate”*
In This Moment – “Forever”
Judas Priest – “Screaming for Vengeance”
Lacuna Coil – “Closer”
Lamb of God – “Laid to Rest”
Motörhead – “Killed by Death”*
Nazareth – “Hair of the Dog”*
Queens of the Stone Age – “3’s & 7’s”
Rage Against The Machine – “Bulls On Parade”*
Yngwie Malmsteen – “Red Devil”

The Rock Band Metal Track Pack adds nothing new, besides the exclusive songs, to the Rock Band series. No artistic redesign in a metal-tone or any digital likenesses of members of bands featured in the game, but Harmonix has never done this with their slew of track packs over the years.

Visually, the Metal Track Pack is 100% similar to Rock Band 2, nothing more, nothing less. This isn’t a terrible thing, but with Guitar Hero 5, and Beatles: Rock Band both on the market, I’ve come to expect a much higher level of aesthetic fidelity and the Track Pack simple doesn’t deliver in that department.

However, as a lover of the metal music scene, and anyone who does purchase this game need be, I found the selection of songs to be utterly fantastic; you won’t want to skip anything. The tunes range from the hardly metal “3’s and 7’s” by the Queens of the Stone Age to the in your f*cking face anthem “Laid To Rest” performed by none other than hardcore thrashers Lamb of God.

Most of the songs in the Track Pack are very difficult, but we’re talking about the metal genre here; to expect anything less would be silly. Additionally, no one is forcing you to play through the tour on Expert. I had to dial down my ambitions a bit, suck it up, and play a few tunes on Hard to get by. I didn’t enjoy doing so but now I have a thirst to get back and conquer those few songs on Expert.

Additionally, if you’re a drummer, the Track Pack will set your feet ablaze as the metal genre demands a light-footed, proficient stick-wielder to get by. The drum part in “Waking The Demon” on Expert? Yeah, it’s a little tough.

Living-room rockers looking to score a quick Gamerscore boost will be hard-pressed to do so with the Metal Track Pack, as the achievements are mighty beasts to slay, and includes tasks like “5-Star “Blinded by Fear” on any instrument… with your eyes closed.” Good luck.

The Track Pack is a standalone piece of software meaning you need nothing but instruments and the disc to get rocking. Additionally, all 20 tunes import into either your Rock Band 1 or 2 libraries, and is really the right thing to do to avoid rampant disc-swapping.

Blast Factor: The Metal Track Pack is for fans of the circle pit, lovers of face-melting, finger busting solos, and those who aren’t afraid to scare the girls next door by playing At The Gates at 2 in the morning. If you haven’t downloaded any of the on-disc tunes already and love the 6 disc-exclusives, this purchase is an absolute no-brainer.

Played all songs, mostly on Expert guitar. Played drums on Expert and Hard. Tried singing, failed hard, but still had fun.

The Rock Band Metal Track Pack is available today for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, and Wii. It’ll run you $29.99.

The story has something to do with armored super soldiers who fight each other across a variety of huge, bland landscapes for very nearly indeterminate reasons. The soldiers look like a cross between Halo’s Master Chief and Warhammer 40k space marines… with less personality. In fact, the whole game manages to provide one of the most generic sci-fi universes you’re likely to see all year.

The single player campaign puts players in the shoes of one of the said generic, parachute jumping space marines, as he struggles against the evil forces of red. These levels task you with plowing through enemy soldiers with your fellow team, hacking computers, stealing data, shutting down planetary defense systems and other tried and true objectives of sci-fi action. The single player campaign actually uses the same maps as the multiplayer mode, though they unlock sections at a slower pace. In multiplayer, the whole area is open from the start.  This gives you an easy way to get used to the gameplay and the maps while burning through the otherwise short and throwaway story.

While the single player action is generally lackluster, the AI of both enemy and ally troops is truly awful. Don’t expect much help on the battlefield, but then again, there’s not much in the way of intelligent opposition either. If you do happen to die, you just respawn in the air again, which is one area of originality. At a certain altitude, you can apply air brakes that give you limited control over where you land. This makes it easier to get right back into the action or close to your current objective.

The multiplayer aspect of the game fares much better. The game has only one game mode, called Conquest, but the scope of the maps and support for 32 players makes for surprisingly hectic and charged battles. In Conquest, two teams earn points by not just killing your enemy, but capturing control points, and completing “dynamic combat missions”. There are six different, timed DCMs, and any given game can feel like a variety of play styles thanks to this design element.

Section 8 has six different weapons and seven gadgets to play with. The guns are entirely standard fodder–a sniper rifle, shotgun, machine guns, rocket launcher, etc–and you can, as usual, only carry two at a time. You can also change load-outs at certain stations, but this is far from ideal in the heat of combat. The gadgets allow you to repair vehicles, heal teammates, become invisible to radar, use remote control mines, and knife people.

Earning money by completing objectives enables you to purchase vehicles and turrets in Section 8. The turrets are a nice idea, and give the game a vague RTS nod since the stationary guns help defend a specific area. The vehicles, on the other, are amazingly bad. There is a tank and a mech up for grabs with enough cash, and both are executed so poorly that you’re better off avoiding them. On foot, your normal pace is sluggish, but your armor allows for super-powered sprints and rocket pack high jumps. At full speed, you can plow through an enemy killing them instantly, and the ability to jump several stories in the air makes navigating the huge maps a little easier.

Blast Factor: In every sense, Section 8 is a mediocre shooter, and had it been released at a budget price, this might have been just fine. PC gamers are used to plenty of cheap alternatives to big name releases, so why not consoles? Unfortunately, this isn’t a budget-priced game–though it’s almost a certainty that it soon will be. The single-player game is utterly forgettable, yet the multiplayer portion holds enough interesting concepts to make it worth a look once it hits the bargain bins.

Section 8 is available on the Xbox 360 and the PC, and retails for $59.99 and $49.99 respectively

Halo 3: ODST, as we now know it, released today exclusively on Xbox 360. In the box you’ll find two discs. One containing ODST’s campaign and new multiplayer Firefight Mode, and the other with all 24 multiplayer maps for Halo 3’s uber-popular adversarial component.

Consumers, even Bungie-faithful Halo-heads have been skeptical of the project since it’s unveiling. Bungie and Microsoft have been touting the game’s value based on the inclusion of every single Halo 3 multiplayer environment to date. But what if you’ve purchased every piece of downloadable content, as so many have? Is the game still worth it?

In short? Very much yes.

In ODST you play as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, “The Rookie,” during the events of Halo 2. As you and your squad-mates drop into the African region, all hell breaks loose. A Covenant attack knocks you off course and you’re left unconscious and stranded, by your lonesome self, in the dark, cold, and grief-stricken city of New Mombasa, a city whose secrets are numerous, and a locale you’ll grow to love.

Playing as an ODST the first thing you’ll notice is a lack of super-human strength in combat. Gone is your precious regenerating health shield making the balance between gun-wielding fury and strategy a defining aspect of your success.  Health packs, scattered through each level, will do the trick, but you’ll have to dial down your Rambo ambitions at least a bit, as ODSTs feel the pain of enemy fire much more than Masterchief. Additionally, the fan-favorite and powerful Battle Rifle is nowhere to be found in ODST, but the headshot thirsty need not fret as the Magnum Pistol makes a triumphant return and is a quick and simple way to pick off grunts. Furthermore, a familiar weapon, though augmented, the silenced SMG, debuts in ODST but the game does not allow dual-wielding, seems Bungie doesn’t like that idea anymore.

New Mombasa, the city you’ve dropped into, acts as the game’s hub, one at which all story elements originate, and one that has danger around every corner.  New Mombasa is the largest single environment Bungie has ever created, and one that breaks from the normative linear model Bungie has been known to follow.

Bungie, in non-Bungie fashion, chose to tell the story of ODST not as one epic journey, but rather in fragmented pieces. As “The Rookie,” you are undeniably the main character, but the story unravels through flashbacks in your squadmates’ shoes. The clues you find in New Mombasa trigger flashbacks of events. They are memories relived, and through these memories the story begins to make sense.

Because Bungie was not tied to one hero and one story arc, a la Halo 3, the tale feels extremely memorable through its brevity. Think of each flashback as an episode of The Office; each is different but still a piece of the overall feature.

Voice acting is superb. Corny lines of dialogue are nowhere to be found, and I found myself more than generally interested in learning the fates of my digital counterparts. Cinematic intensity? You betcha.

Graphically, ODST looks superb. The dark, gloomy colors in the urban settings and the gorgeous outdoor environments are welcome changes to the normative purple and gray color tones of Halo 3.

Additionally, ODST’s are equipped with a VISR. This Visual Intelligence System Reconnissance is a new Halo functionality and allows you to see enemies highlighted in red and allies in green all with the simple press of the X button. This tool is particularly helpful in dark, shadowy environments, and in outdoor and bright locales you’ll want to toggle it off, as the scene becomes too bright. As a more vulnerable ODST you’ll need to strategically consider how to tackle a fleet on incoming enemies, and the VISR is an invaluable tool to help do so.

ODST was built on the same game engine as Halo 3, and yes, you can tell, but what the environment artists pulled off in the latter stages of the game is truly remarkable. You’ll want to stop and stare (if you aren’t being shot at), to take it all in, at least once.

Where ODST truly shines though is in its seemingly frenzied yet ultimately strategic combat. Enemies come at you harder than ever. They’ll only rush when they have a clear advantage, and with waning health, you’ll truly have to pick your battles.

Bungie did a great job setting up for this in their level design. Environments range from close-quarter shotgun alleys to multi-level, large-scale sniper arenas. You may be a headshot honcho with the Sniper, but if you can’t wield a Spartan Laser, or effectively flank a group of Covenant with a Carbine you’ll be dead in seconds.

And where Halo games have always stood out and continue to in ODST is in land and air vehicle-based combat. Maybe I was a space pilot in a former life because when I jumped into a glowing purple Banshee I felt nothing but confidence as I rained down fire on a massive Scarab. In ODST you’ll drive Tanks, Ghosts, Warthogs, Banshees and more, all of which feel comfortable, familiar, and wholly workable.

Random Note: The Sniper Rifle has been updated. It’s now Hollywood-ized and pops and rings with heavy authority. You’ll notice for sure. And the soundtrack, also available today, is beautiful, always fits the mood, and can both heighten tension and trigger emotional release, speaking to composer Martin O’Donnell’s musical range.

FireFight Mode:

Halo 3: ODST, in addition to the aforesaid campaign, came with a new multiplayer avenue under the hood; FireFight.

In this survival mode, wave after wave of increasingly difficult Covenant Brutes, jackals, Grunts, and the rest come at you guns blazing, plasma-grenade lobbing, and won’t stop until you and your mates are dead. Often compared to Gears of War 2’s “Horde Mode,” the Halo-flavor tastes a lot different.

The game-mode allows for up to 4 players to band together and slay incoming Covenant in ten different environments on foot or in-vehicle and best of all, as with Halo 3’s multiplayer, your full stats are tracked both in-game and at Bungie.net.

Skull modifiers up the ante in difficulty, as you can select anything from the hilarious “Grunt Birthday,” where a headshot on a Grunt makes confetti emit from their dome, to one which makes enemy AI that much smarter.

If there is one lesson I took away from FireFight, it’s that going it alone sucks. Hard.

In order to truly enjoy FireFight you’ve got to play with friends. Whether that be locally on the same screen, or with your pals in California. Not only is FireFight exponentially more fun this way, you’ll be able to talk about, and revel in past glory the next day.

The heart of appeal in ODST for me, and likely for you, lies in Disc 2 of the package. Halo 3, to this day, continues to be the most played game on all of Xbox Live. Recently eclipsing 1 billion matches played, the multiplayer component of the 2007 title is a daily ritual for hundreds of thousands of gamers. And so Bungie, in a true fan-service move, put all 24 Halo 3 multiplayer maps together on one disc including the brand new Heretic, Citadel, and Longshore environments. After playing all three multiple times on Xbox Live and locally, outside of original gems “Last Resort,” “Guardian,” and “The Pit,” these are three damn fine multiplayer environments and will excite the seasoned Halo-head for sure.

Citadel

Longshore (personal favorite)

Heretic

Wondering about that promised “Halo: Reach” multiplayer beta access? “Reach” was announced at this year’s E3 convention, and is Bungie’s next first-person-shooter Halo-themed project. It’s due out Fall 2010, and that’s pretty much all we know. The beta access will likely begin in the months preceding its release date, so don’t worry, you’ll have more than enough time to play ODST again and again, and then again, before Reach arrives.

Blast Factor: Halo 3: ODST is more than an expansion to Halo 3. Updated graphics, innovative storytelling, a fresh multiplayer experience in FireFight, all 24 Halo 3 multiplayer maps and a stellar soundtrack make ODST a serious contender in the FPS genre heading into the fall and holiday season. The campaign is short; only about 6-7 hours, but the combination of FireFight and the now definitive and complete Halo 3 multiplayer component, sends the game’s replay value through the roof.

Halo 3 ODST is available today exclusively for Xbox 360. It carries an MSRP of $59.99. Played through entire campaign on the suggested Heroic difficulty. Played multiple matches of FireFight both alone and with friends, and played multiple matches of Halo 3 multiplayer on Longshore, Heretic, and Citadel.

Beyond the navigational issues, the first “level,” of Wet is fun, and it really brings you into the game, leaving you wanting more–then it all stops. Instead of continuing the action, getting bloodied up, and listening to Eliza Dushku, the voice of Rubi,  tell some Asian cowboy to suck his own [this is a coarse and vulgar game, mom] we’re thrust head first into … an hour-long tutorial, in Rubi’s “boneyard hideaway,” made up of “challenges” like an obstacle course. There are some serious ADHD issues going on here. The game spends the first 10 minutes teaching you how to perform Rubi Malone’s acrobatic moves. Then you get 15-20 solid minutes of action. Then an hour of boredom. Then the game starts up again, and it really seems to get good again when Rubi makes a cargo plane blow up midair and is falling to the ground. But you’ll spend another hour, or about 50 of your unlimited “lives” trying to navigate through a maze of plane parts, boxes, and miscellany, because if anything hits you, you die. Considering this is kind of a short game with a sliver of story as is, that seems like time wasted.

The game is about a gun-for-hire who agrees to find a wealthy man’s son, but when he finds the son and brings him back, he kills the son and sends a sword-swinging goon to kill you.

The game has diversity. The acrobatic moves are edgy, and there’s a good mix of swordplay and shooting. There’s a great mix of gameplay styles — walking/fighting, jumping, acrobatics, vehicles and even the aforementioned free fall from the sky. The pace picks up with “rage mode” where everything goes red and Rubi starts killing everything in sight. The problem with “rage mode,” however, is that it’s much harder to navigate through the already puzzling levels with the screen all red. And you don’t get any additional health. You die just the same as you would normally. The “rage mode” we played at E3 put Rubi in a more enclosed space where she just went nuts and started swinging the sword, killing dozens of baddies like they were nothing. It felt more like a bonus level at E3, but it’s actually a much more difficult gameplay style in the actual game.

The cinematic elements are good. The game’s post-modern feel is matched perfectly with cutscenes featuring 50s drive-in “let’s go to the refreshment stand” montages.

But essence isn’t the problem. Neither are the graphics or the voice acting, also featuring actors Malcolm McDowell and Alan Cumming. It’s straight gameplay that hurts Wet, nothing more.

The game should be more intuitive. The acrobatic moves are fun, and it’s awesome to slide down a ladder shooting baddies in slow motion. It’s even more awesome to jump from moving car to moving car on a freeway while shooting baddies in slow motion. It’s wicked awesome to slide under a pipe and catch a baddie with an uppercut of your sword. But the acrobatic nature of the game means you’re going to fall a lot, but rather than die and wait for the load screen to start the checkpoint over, the developer should shoot you right back to where you fell from and let you keep playing. Nothing kills momentum and fun like bad platforming, and Wet has its share of that.

The game gets lost in bursts of fun, followed by waiting, followed by more bursts.

The Blast Factor: The frustrations don’t always outpace the fun. Wet is a good game that’s fun to play in moderation, but the sum of the its parts just isn’t enough to make you want to keep playing for long.

WET is available on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 for a retail price of $59.99

If you don’t count the Metallica, Aerosmith, and Smash Hits departures from core installments, Activision has plugged the franchise for five major rehashes since its inception, culminating today, with the release of Guitar Hero 5.

Does this latest revision strike a resonating chord with fans of living-room rock or does it continue to fall behind Harmonix and Rock Band on the music-game scene?

First, and most importantly, Guitar Hero 5 was built with totally accessibility in mind. Gone are the confusing and finicky menu screens of World Tour in favor of simple, manageable options, all leading to getting you in the game rocking out as fast as possible.

There is zero story in Guitar Hero 5. No longer do you have to sit through drawn-out and nonsensical cartoony plots. That said however, the game’s “career” mode lives on, and actually works quite well. As you’d expect, you can create a rocker, name your band, customize your logo and can even utilize your Avatar as a playable character (they look hilarious next to Judy Nails and Co.) You progress through a series of “gigs” where most songs need be completed to move on to the next. So to finish the game, not every song need be beaten. This is a welcome game tweak because, as with any music game, there are songs what you just don’t want to play. I mean some of us like Bon Jovi, but not everyone.

Beyond the career mode lives the familiar “Quickplay” option, where, thankfully, all 85 songs by 83 artists are available from the game’s onset. You want to play Weezer’s “Why Bother” right now? No problem, because you can. As with World Tour, the option to select multiple tunes to play in sequence without reaching back to the menu, returns in GH5. This time however, each song’s length is displayed and when you select multiple tunes, will give you a running count of time to-be elapsed.

The track-list in Guitar Hero 5 is definitively the most varied to date. One minute you’ll be playing Bob Dylan’s melodic and heartfelt “All Along the Watchtower” and the next you’ll get funky with “Feel Good Inc.” by the Gorillaz. The tracklist hits nearly every genre. Children of Bodom, the Finnish metal act, have their face-meltingly difficult “Done with Everything, Die for Nothing” in the game but right next to it is the radio friendly and poppy “Sex on Fire” by the Kings of Leon. Guitar Hero 5 is like my iPod on shuffle, you never know what you’re going to get, but you love (nearly) every song regardless. Moreover, in an awesomely fantastic move, Rammstein’s “Du Hast” made the cut, and is balls-out fun to play.

Additionally, Guitar Hero 5 allows you to import 152 of World Tour’s 158 (everything except Jimi Hendrix songs) downloadable songs into the game. And on top of that, 35 of the on-disc “World Tour” and 21 “Smash Hits” tracks can be imported into GH5 for a small licensing fee. When all was said and done, my Guitar Hero 5 complete song-list ballooned to over 150. Nice!

Visually, Guitar Hero 5 is stunning. Everything from the main screen, to the now wider note-chart, just bleeds aesthetic intensity. Notes raining down the digital fretboard glimmer and pop in a way they never did before. Character models, including the game’s real-life likenesses, Muse’s Matt Bellamy, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana, and Shirley Manson are presented in a freakishly perfect manner. Without doubt this is the best, and most appropriate looking Guitar Hero to date.

Carlos Santana

On top of Career and Quickplay gameplay options, Guitar Hero 5 added some competitive modes, some of which are actually quite fun. In “Momentum” you and your opponent start at the medium difficulty and as the song progresses, based on how well you’re doing in terms of note streaks etc, the level of difficulty will either ramp up or fall back, depending on your level of success/failure. Additionally, the “Streakers” mode pits you and your fellow rocker against one another vying to achieve the longest correct note streaks, with point values increasing with continued success.

Where Guitar Hero 5 reaches the epitome of accessibility is in its “Party Play” mode.  This game-mode allows for anyone, at anytime, to join in (or drop out), without stopping or halting the song already in progress. So if you don’t want to play the intro to a certain song, you don’t have to! Join in whenever you want. Likewise, if the phone rings and you have to answer it, simply drop out, while your bandmates continue at no score cost.

World Tour’s “Music Studio,”once pegged to be the next “Garageband,” appears in Guitar Hero 5, but really, we haven’t seen or heard a reason to mess around with it. It’s a fun time-waster, yes, but with the Rock Band Network soon to be front and center, GHTunes will want to crawl in a corner a die.

Blast Factor: Guitar Hero 5 is a phenomenally fun music/rhythm game. The combination of stellar graphics and extremely solid game-play make the title a wholly playable and deeply enjoyable experience for both the casual living-room rockers and the seasoned fan. The setlist hits every genre, with pure-fun tunes scattered throughout. And the ability to import on-disc and downloaded tunes from World Tour and Smash Hits, though now expected, is still great. Guitar Hero 5 is by far the best Guitar Hero game yet.

Guitar Hero 5 is available today for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS2 for an MSRP of $59.99 and $49.99 on Wii and PS2. Review is concerning the Xbox 360 version.

Already one of the greatest comic book characters of all time, Batman has had a bit of resurgence in the last 5-10 years, accruing massive popularity deriving mostly from the latest installment of cartoons, merchandise and, of course, films.

Still, other than the super-cute Lego Batman game, the Caped Crusader has yet to leave his mark on the video game world, especially in the 21^st century.

Until now.

Say hello to Batman: Arkham Asylum, one of the newest releases from developers Rocksteady Studios and publishers Warner Brothers and Edios Interactive.  This multiplatform action adventure title has had a lot of hype surrounding it leading up to its release in late August.  So, the big question about Arkham Asylum wasn’t if the game was going to be highly anticipated, but rather if it could live up the excitement.

Having getting a chance to demo it at Comic-Con this year, I felt the heat that Arkham Asylum was generating even with the most casual of batman fans.  Yes, even I decided to join the Arkham hype-machine with my hands-on preview, hoping and praying that somehow this major release from a small, independent developer could live up to all I had come to expect from it.

Would Arkham be that great title everyone has been craving or would it end up being just another over-hyped letdown?  I guess you’ll have to read through and find out…

What would any video game review be without a short overview of the plot?  Batman: Arkham Asylum takes place on — wouldn’t you know it? – Arkham Island.  This island is home to Gotham City’s most famous maximum-security correction facilities where Batman has recently delivered the Joker.  Though he is being processed and surrounded by many security guards, the Joker’s actions still seem suspicious to Batman.  Unfortunately for the Dark Knight, everyone’s worst fears are confirmed when the Joker escapes the clutches of the Arkham security personnel and creates total chaos.  It is up to players to use Batman’s strength, tools and allies to stop the Joker and his plans to destroy Gotham City.

The very first thing one notices when playing Arkham Asylum is its very effective cinematic approach to the game’s cut-scenes.  Driven by Mark Hamill’s incredible vocal portrayal of the Joker, Arkham Asylum really set a new standard when it comes to incorporating quality voice acting in games.  The dialogue was well written for every one of the characters and the visual aspects found a perfect blend between comic book stylization and realism.  Furthermore, the in-game music for both the cinematic and action portions of the game coupled well with Arkham’s tremendous thespian endowment.

However, though most of the verbal talent was quite impressive, some of the most dry and uninteresting acting came from Batman himself.  Whether this is tribute to Batman’s stoic nature or just more proof that the Caped Crusader’s enemies are just much more interesting and complex than he, I wish we could’ve gotten a little more out of the protagonist’s lines.  Still, no one should be surprised if Arkham Asylum is used as a prime example of how effective direction and acting can help a great game become legendary.

Arkham Asylum did not only look good, but it felt good too.  Running on Unreal Engine 3.5, this title ran smoothly and beautifully.  Like many games that use the engine, Arkham Asylum has many characters that have an “epic” look to them.  That is, many of the character models are large, muscular and overall physically fit.  With this in mind, the folks at Rocksteady made a great choice with the Unreal Engine.  As I discussed in my preview for Batman: Arkham Asylum, Sefton Hill, director at Rocksteady games, told me that the developers wanted to make sure Batman looked and played like he was someone who was in chief physical condition.  Batman’s (as well as other character’s) sturdy, brawny build went well with the graphics engine without looking too over-the-top in terms of physique.

Batman would need to use all of that strength of his if he wanted to survive the high-intensity third-person gameplay that Arkham Asylum features.  Most of the combat involved an easy, free-flowing hand-to-hand fighting style.  With an Xbox 360 controller, a few taps of the X button would string together impressive and dynamic bone-breaking combat combinations that could be effective against many enemies at once.  When one of the Joker’s thugs is about to strike (as evident by attention-grabbing stripes protruding from said thug’s head), pressing Y will perform a jaw-dropping counter-attack, which can also be used in massive fighting combos.  When armed foes arrive, pressing B will make Batman spin his cape, disorienting anyone in range, turning potentially dangerous enemies into exposed and vulnerable beings.

However, though it can play like one, Batman: Arkham Asylum is not your simple brawler.  In fact, it is more of a stealth game (albeit a VERY aggressive stealth) than a fighter.  Being the world’s greatest detective, Batman has to do a significant amount of snooping and sleuthing during the game’s campaign.  This is where Detective Mode comes in handy.  This mode, toggled by the LB on 360 controllers, accentuates key details in environments necessary to solve puzzles, find clues and identify proper courses of action.  For instance, say you want to determine how to attack a group of enemies in the next room.  Simply activate detective mode to see where the thugs are, how many of them have weapons and even how scared they are (based on BPM).  This information will be key in determining how and when to attack.

Detective mode also comes in handy when following or tracking NPCs and completing the Riddler’s numerous and very addicting challenges.  Batman also has many tools at his disposal, progressively adding more and more to his repertoire throughout the game.  Look forward to using Batarangs, Batclaws and Explosive Gels to your advantage.

Finally, no review of Arkham Asylum would be complete without an overview of the extra goodies that are in the game.  First, Batman: Arkham Asylum rewards players who complete tasks and find clues with Character Bios.  These bios give each gamer deeper insight into the Batman Universe.  Each bio includes background stories and physical details of each enemy, friend and family member of Batman identified throughout the game.  This is a great way to get hardcore Batman fans and newcomers involved in the same game.  Also, players can find recorded audiotapes of therapy sessions and interviews from supervillians like Scarecrow, Poison Ivy and even the Joker himself.  Again, this is just another way to add depth and intrigue to an already interesting game.

While all the previously mentioned features were very entertaining, Arkham Asylum is not without flaws.  There are two main problem areas that come to mind: Boss Battles and Riddler Challenges.  Both of these aspects were both fairly lackluster in my very humble opinion.  Though the boss battles were challenging, they often got repetitive and came to unspectacular conclusions.  Similarly, the Riddler’s challenges were solid, but also become more tedious than entertaining at times.  I would have been more satisfied with my experience if my reward involved more than a few gamer points and a sense of achievement.

Blast Factor: Still, all things considered, Batman: Arkham Asylum is probably the best game of the year so far.  In fact, I think it would be fair to say that Arkham may be one of the best 5-10 games you can get for Xbox 360 and possibly the PS3, as well.  It is beautiful, addicting and, most of all, very fun.  It is not often that a ultra-hyped game can truly live up to the excitement that surrounds it, but Arkham really broke from the mold here.  Batman: Arkham Asylum is a title that every gamer should own and, coming from an independent developer in Rocksteady Studios, it’s a title that every gamer can feel good about owning.  I’m glad to give Arkham Asylum the highest grade I’ve ever bestowed on a game.  Go buy this one ASAP.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for a suggested retail of $59.99

Since “Inglourious Basterds” came out, there’s been a renewed interest in killing Nazis. But let’s face it: there are numerous games about killing Nazis. So luckily we have Wolfenstein to add a burst of creativity to the mix. Straight forward first person shooters can get a bit boring after a while, so the addition of the medallion helps with the game play. Initially, the game seems like a typical “stop the Nazis” shooter, with normal weapons and normal adversaries. As the game progresses, you gain more interesting science fiction based weapons (such as the particle cannon) while fighting more supernatural enemies, such as skeletal Nazis which shoot green flames.

The game play is pretty straight forward. The town of Isenstadt serves as a hub in between the main missions. You can purchase upgrades, ammo and weapons from the Black market with the gold found through the missions. While the main storyline only takes a few hours to complete, if you snoop around Isenstadt you can meet numerous characters who provide interesting side missions for B.J. as he continues his quest. Now, while fighting through the main campaign B.J. utilizes the medallion to use Veil powers. The Veil powers are incredibly useful, but aside from the times when the game requires you to use them you can make it through the game using only your weapons (on normal). The difficulty levels directly affect how often the Veil powers must be utilized. On the hardest level, the Veil powers must be used a lot if there is to be any chance of making through the levels alive. This prevents the Veil from being a gimmick on the hardest setting and helps it retain its necessity.

The overall visual appearance isn’t amazing, but it definitely fits well with the mood and plot. Compared to the original Wolfenstein and its sequels, this game has blown them all away graphics wise. While there are numerous games with better graphics and more fluid transitions between cinematic cut scenes, game play and Veil use, Wolfenstein’s graphics suit its content. The dark atmosphere is accentuated by the dark hues which are used in most levels and the soundtrack is decent. It leaves a bit to be desired, but is enough to get you in the mood to fight Nazis.

Once you complete the game, multiplayer expands the game play by allowing you to fight up to 12 players online. However, game play drastically changes once you enter multiplayer. Players can play as the Resistance or the Axis in one of three modes. Team Death match allows players to battle to the death and the team with the highest score at the end of the time period wins. Objectives mode requires Axis and Resistance to defend or destroy Nazis experiments respectively. Stopwatch mode forces players to complete objectives within a specific time limit. Throughout the multiplayer experience you can choose from three classes: Soldier, Medic and Engineer. With eight maps in the multiplayer mode, it allows for a varied experience. However, the quality of the graphics and experience itself suffer from a poorly strung together multiplayer. The Veil powers which make the campaign mode fun are severely toned down in multiplayer which takes away from the overall experience. After a couple of hours of online play, most people will probably stop playing since it’s just not that rewarding an experience.

When it comes down to it, Wolfenstein is a good game, but it doesn’t quite hit the level of epic-ness you want when killing Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, this game is an excellent sequel but as a standalone game it doesn’t quite stand up to other games. When I looked at Wolfenstein’s box art, my first impression was that it would be an epic realization of the Call of Duty: World at War zombie level. Unfortunately, my standards were not met in that department. The supernatural enemies are definitely a plus, but when faced with plain old Nazi troops, the game gets boring.

The biggest drawback of the experience was the fact that it takes a little while to grow on you. Instead of instantly being drawn in, the game play needs to be broken in like a pair of good jeans. However, this is pretty much resolved once you’re familiar with the controls and find the medallion to use the Veil powers. One drawback, which could also serve as an ingenious means of discouraging continued use, is the greenish hue of the Veil. Whenever I used it to excess, a part of my vision (and possibly soul) would crumble away into nothingness. Extended exposure would force me to rest my eyes with occasional breaks, which were a pain when fighting difficult enemies.  These and the barely adequate online multiplayer bring the game down a bit.

Blast Factor: The verdict is this: while the game is good, and a worthy current-gen sequel, some parts shine better than others. If you are a fan of the original series, this game is definitely one you should pick up, even if the multiplayer kind of hurts the replay value a bit relative to other first-person shooters.

Wolfenstein is available for on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, and retails for $59.99. It is also available for PC.

I realized recently that I’ve probably spent more time listening to the voice of Paul McCartney than I’ve spent listening to any other person on the planet, save for immediate family members (who have the rather unfair advantage of knowing me personally). Friends come and go, but the music of the Beatles (in both their Beatle and post-Beatle guises) has been with me since infancy, and might very well play me off the stage when it’s all said and done.

For that reason, I’m torn between tailoring this review to two types of readers: those for whom the Beatles are just another band (I know you’re out there), and those for whom they’re something akin to a religion. Of course, you don’t need to know all the words to “Revolution 9” to find something to like in Beatles Rock Band, but your level of attachment to the band will largely determine whether you consider the game a worthwhile purchase.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Seth Schiesel of the New York Times recently suggested that Beatles Rock Band “may be the most important video game yet made.” While that lofty claim might have some validity in light of the game’s potential status as a “cultural watershed,” the title that started the franchise — the original Rock Band — was far more important from a gameplay perspective. Beatles Rock Band merely tweaks the established formula. You’ll still be strumming or pounding plastic instruments in time with “gems” scrolling down on-screen note charts, and while “Overdrive” has become “Beatlemania” and “Awesomes” have been replaced by “Fabs,” the core mechanics remain the same.

A three-second count-in before resuming play after exiting the pause screen and a more extensive drum trainer (“Beatle Beats” allows you to mimic 80 of Ringo’s signature strokes at reduced speed) are welcome additions, but Beatles Rock Band’s most notable innovation is its inclusion of three-part vocal harmonies. The Fabs were known for employing the sweetest harmonies this side of the Beach Boys or Zombies, and Beatles Rock Band capitalizes on the public’s familiarity with their songs to capture this essential element of their sound. Although the band bonuses conferred by activating “Beatlemania” encourage a degree of cooperation, the addition of vocal harmonies necessitates some planning and coordination, and goes a long way towards making each player feel like a part of a cohesive unit.

When harmonies are activated prior to starting any song that supports them, each player with a microphone can sing any of the vocal parts, with no penalties resulting from a failure to sing anything but the lead correctly. The vocal trainer in the practice mode allows you to isolate each vocal part and repeat each section of any song as many times as you like, and you might find yourself resorting to it when some of those peskier Double and Triple Fab scores prove elusive. As creative director Josh Randall noted, the Beatles rarely “shred,” but while Beatles Rock Band offers few instrumental challenges on par with those of the most difficult songs found in previous incarnations of the franchise, playing on expert while singing complex harmonies represents a feat that only the experienced can master. If you’re especially sadistic, you can activate “Super Speed” in the game’s settings, increasing the rate at which the note charts scroll, or enter “Performance Mode,” in which the notes themselves are hidden.

Is There Anybody Going to Listen to My Story?

In a nod to user-friendliness, Harmonix made 44 of the game’s 45 songs accessible from the start in quickplay mode (in previous iterations of Rock Band, one had to progress through a lengthy career mode to catch ‘em all). However, in order to unlock the final tune (it’s worth the effort), you will have to play through the story mode. Story mode divides the assembled fragments of the Beatles catalog into discrete historical periods, introducing each through an artful montage of animated archival material. Simply complete every song in a given period to progress to the next.

Once you complete each section, you’ll also have the opportunity to complete a “Chapter Challenge,” which tasks you with five-starring each of that section’s songs without interruption, but Beatles Rock Band’s story mode is far less involved than those in Rock Band and Rock Band 2. You won’t be forced to replay songs countless times in pursuit of riches, mostly because there simply wouldn’t be anything to spend them on.

You Can’t Do That

That brings me to one possible source of frustration for fans of the franchise: Beatles Rock Band features a notable lack of customization and interactivity in comparison to the previous Rock Band titles. In the interest of historical accuracy, you won’t be able to create your own character, design your own logo, play dress-up with the Beatles, or tinker with their instruments. You’ll also find that freestyle drum fills and crowd participation have disappeared, whammying sustained notes no longer produces an audible effect, and butchering a song results in a failure message, rather than an inglorious exit from the stage.

Notice that I didn’t say that Beatles Rock Band suffers from these changes. There might be a certain segment of the game-playing public that laments these omissions, but I found the commitment to historical accuracy and the core Beatles experience far more rewarding than the ability to scour the sunglasses rack in Rock Band 2. Fortunately, the Beatles’ array of iconic outfits keeps things from growing stale on stage, even without the player’s intervention.

Every Little Thing

Beatles Rock Band positively oozes with Beatles-specific audio, imagery, and extras. In days gone by, I yearned for downloadable Beatles tracks to appear in the Rock Band music store, but now that I’ve witnessed the power of this fully armed and operational Beatles-station, I’m glad that the folks at Harmonix resisted the urge to drop the Beatles bomb before they were prepared to deliver the maximum payload. The game’s breathtaking intro and outro videos, produced by Passion Pictures, convey some sense of the Beatles’ cultural impact while drawing upon elements of the band’s visual legacy, and shorter animations, prepared by graphic design studio MK12, accompany the introduction of each new venue. Selecting menu options even elicits a chord that sounds straight out of “Getting Better.” In-studio chatter from actual Beatles recording sessions, some of which had never been officially released prior to appearing in the game, both precedes and follows the playing of most tracks, and helps to foster an immersive experience.

If strumming along with some of the best songs ever written doesn’t sound like an ample reward for your $60 outlay, you’ll be happy to learn that Harmonix has included a selection of photographs and videos of the band which can be unlocked through the story mode. The photos and their accompanying captions were vetted by Macca himself, and the videos, consisting mainly of excerpts from preexisting Beatle documentaries, offer a glimpse of the game’s principal characters in action. There’s little here that hardcore Beatlemaniacs haven’t seen and heard elsewhere, and it’s hard not to wish that Harmonix had managed to cram more of this material onto the disk, but what there is does offer a powerful incentive for players to master all of the game’s tracks, and should provide a handy primer for those new to the band’s history. In addition, a long list of achievements provides a host of more specific challenges which can be undertaken for Beatle bragging righties.

All These Places Had Their Moments

Although the music is the headliner, the venues in which you’ll find yourself playing it certainly qualify as co-stars of this show. As you advance through the story mode, you’ll find yourself playing to screaming crowds in a number of immediately recognizable settings, including the Cavern Club, the set of the Ed Sullivan Show, Shea Stadium, the Nippon Budokan, and the rooftop of Apple Records. Each of these locales was meticulously researched and recreated, and only the somewhat generic appearances and recycled animations of the crowds subtract from their overall effectiveness.

If you turn on “Realistic Mode” in the game’s settings, your every action will be accompanied by the high-pitched hollering of an adoring crowd. It’s exhilarating initially, but after struggling to hear yourself sing for a few songs, you’ll understand why the band decided to call touring quits after playing Candlestick in August of 1966. Fortunately, rather than retiring, the band retreated to the studio, and that’s where you’ll head after completing the Budokan set in story mode. Beatles Rock Band’s selection of songs that the group never performed live is set in Studio Two at Abbey Road, where you’ll be treated to an intimate look at the Fab Four in some of their quieter moments. However, Studio Two merely serves as a launching pad for the centerpieces of Beatles Rock Band’s graphical gallantry: several song-specific “Dreamscapes,” psychedelic landscapes through which the virtual Beatles meander in mid-performance. The Dreamscapes draw upon the band’s artistic endeavors, the imagery inherent in their lyrics, and the creativity of Harmonix’s design team to conduct a visual symphony which non-playing observers might appreciate more fully than the frenetic fretters locked in concentration beside them. Only when the Dreamscapes dissolve at each song’s conclusion to reveal oddly motionless Beatles sitting in Studio Two does the spell dissipate.

Harmonix went to great lengths to perfect the looks and animations of John, Paul, George, and Ringo in a slightly cartoony form, and for the most part, they succeeded. Motion-captured movements and extensive research yielded in-game models through which the essence of the Fab Four shines. Catching a glimpse mid-play of a merrily bobbing McCartney or a collectedly crooning Lennon undoubtedly enhances the excitement to be had.

Money Don’t Get Everything, It’s True

The original Rock Band shipped with 58 tracks (albeit with only 45 that anyone had ever heard of) while Rock Band 2 raised the bar by hitting the shelves with 75. More importantly, an ever-expanding catalogue of downloadable tracks awaits anyone who procures either title. If you purchase Rock Band 2 today (for less than the price of a fresh copy of Beatles Rock Band), you’ll have (at last count) as many as 832 songs at your fingertips. In contrast, Beatles Rock Band offers you the prospect of only 45 (46 if you count “All You Need is Love,” available online on release day), with a relatively limited number of downloadable numbers in the pipeline. Of course, you could regard the package in another light: at an MSRP of $60, you’re paying only two thirds of the price of an imaginary 45-song Beatles downloadable track pack offered at the going rate of ~$2/song, and you’re receiving significantly more than the songs alone.

The Beatles weren’t given to writing songs of extraordinary length, so most of the 45 tracks supplied on the disc, which span the group’s career, will fly by. In essence, you can see all that Beatles Rock Band has to offer in a single evening (or, if you’re like me, you can see all that it has to offer three or four times, in three or four successive evenings). Harmonix is banking on the fact that you’ll want to revisit those offerings over and over again, just as any self-respecting Beatles fan regularly revisits the band’s oeuvre.

By the standards of previous band-specific offerings, Beatles Rock Band’s set list is an unqualified success. Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Guitar Hero Metallica padded their selections with tracks from related bands and included even fewer masters from the titular groups. However, Beatles Rock Band was not intended to be a greatest hits collection, and those expecting one might be slightly disappointed. Out of the box, the game features only 13 of the 27 mega-hits collected on the One compilation in 2000; instead of “Help!” “A Day in the Life,” “Hey Jude,” “Let it Be,” or “Strawberry Fields Forever,” you’ll find the likes of “Boys,” “Good Morning Good Morning,” and “Birthday.” The latter cuts add some musical variety and make up in playability what they might lack in renown, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Harmonix decided to hold some of its most potent weapons in reserve to serve as the highlights of future downloadable offerings.

I Can’t Get Through, My Hands Are Tied

We took the Beatle-branded custom guitars for a test-drive at the Harmonix offices, but we haven’t yet gotten our mitts on the replica of Ringo’s Ludwig drum set, and we didn’t spend enough time with the replicas of Paul’s Höfner bass, John’s Rickenbacker 325, or George’s Gretsch Duo to produce authoritative judgments.The new instruments have been modeled to give fans a heightened visual and tactile sense of being Beatles, but they play very similarly to the older Rock Band models.

Fortunately, Beatles Rock Band is compatible with a wide array of preexisting fake instruments, so you really only need to pick up the Beatles-branded gear if you just don’t feel fab enough without them (I don’t). Because the game’s servers hadn’t yet gone live, we also weren’t able to sample its online offerings, but Rock Band 2’s online quickplay, Tug of War, and Score Duel modes have all returned for another showing.

Come and Get It

In the end, the love you’ll take is equal to your affection for the music you’ll fake, so you might be wise to steer clear of Beatles Rock Band if you’ve already proven resistant to the band’s charms. However, the multiple generations of would-be Apple scruffs who have come to cherish the music of those four lads from Liverpool should greet the game with nothing less than the love with which Harmonix clearly labored. Best played with a bandmate or five, Beatles Rock Band is perfect for parties, but it’s also an ideal solution when you’re craving a more interactive alternative to yet another listen. Now, just wake me when I can mangle the medley.

The End

Now that you’ve read Blast’s review, be sure to peruse our previous coverage of one of this year’s most engaging games:

• Oct. 30, 2008: Blast reports Beatles Rock Band under development
• March 5: Beatles Rock Band gets 9/9/09 release date
• June 3: Blast interviews Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos at E3
• June 10: Blast ranks Beatles Rock Band among the best games seen at E3 2009
• Aug. 18: Most of the track list is revealed
• Aug. 25: TV Spot
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix lead artist Dare Matheson interviewed
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix audio lead Eric Brosius interviewed
• Sept. Issue: Harmonix creative director Josh Randall interviewed

The developer’s goal was to make Madden NFL 10 look and feel like Sunday. We’re used to watching football on television, and we have an idea about what we should be seeing when a game is on–EA took those ideas and put them into the game’s “telecast”, so playing has a much more authentic, NFL feel to it than it ever has. In past Madden titles this generation, you had the realistic visuals, but there were plenty of areas that the game could be improved upon graphically so that while in motion it could be mistaken for a real-life NFL game and not just a video game. For starters, they added in half-time reports with highlight reels and scores from around the NFL, just like during an actual half-time. As long as you’re playing well, this should be fun, as you get to revisit some of your great plays from earlier in the game from different angles, just like you would if a television station was replaying events.

There’s much more than just that though, as the focus was to make the players and coaches also act the part of “real” NFL players in a real game. You’ll notice a lot more attention to detail with coaches on the sidelines, as they do more than just stand around now, and players will react to plays, either vocally or with some mini celebrations–for instance, after a huge gain with a running back that saw him shed a few pursuers and pick up a few first down, he screamed out, “That’s what I’m talking about, baby!” as he ran back to the huddle. EA also cut down the size of the playbook on screen so that these animations–players, coaches, fans, etc.–could be enjoyed while you make your next move.

Graphically, Madden has changed a bit as well–as I said before, in stills, Madden during the HD generation has always looked realistic, but now the game looks better in motion than ever before. The camera work is very fluid, and switches between various camera during play much like during a telecast of a game. Players react to hits by cringing, they look totally bushed when they are fatigued, and they do a much better job of being aware of their surroundings not just in their movements and routes, but visually–you’ll see player’s heads follow the ball and ball carrier, and because of things like this even something like blocking looks more realistic in action.

This realistic look stretches to some of the gameplay changes as well, such as the new Pro-Tak animation system. Pro-Tak allows for gang tackles, with anywhere from three to nine players. You can create a pile that moves with the ball–defense and offense can both push the pile–and depending on the player holding the ball, the pile can stand up for quite some time. If the gang tackle pile stands up too long, the refs will call the ball dead, just like in real life, which is just one of those little changes that serves to make Madden feel that much more realistic. This, along with the ability to fight for fumbles in a button mashing mini-game make the gameplay more interactive and realistic in 2010. The enhancements to gameplay go on and on–your controller will rumble when a defender gets near your QB in the pocket, which has already helped me curb my bad habit of getting sacked as I wait for an opening in the defense, the ratings have been given a makeover so that players are more true to their real life counterparts, you can now assign your best defenders to the best offensive players on the field to help “Lockdown” the offense, you can now choose to play injured players, just like in NCAA, or even just use the accelerated clock so that those of you that pick a play in two seconds can still feel like the clock is moving along at an acceptable pace. The accelerated clock knocks 15, 20 or 25 seconds off of the play clock, making long drives and killing time a breeze, and again, making a game of Madden more realistic than before. Best of all though, are the changes made to the AI–the game is designed to keep you from just running the same plays over and over, as the defense will adjust to your successes. The key then becomes to react to them, so for the first time, when the announcers talk about how running success early leads to later passing success, you can see this happen in real time as the linebackers start to close off the running lanes and leave your tight ends and wide receivers open over the middle.

EA didn’t just stick with the core game when it came to revamps, as the online modes also had some work done to them. For the first time ever, there is now two-player online co-op. There is also a “Madden Elite Status” purchasable add-on for Madden ($4.99), which will allow you to access VIP lobbies, leaderboards and a new mode, Elite Gametype. It’s setup in All-Madden difficulty and is meant to appeal exclusively to the most hardcore, die hard Madden fan out there. Best of all though is the Online Franchise mode. You can draft live with friends, there are message boards set up for your league, and you can manage it from either a web browser or through a brand new iPhone and iPod Touch application that went live earlier this month. This is basically like a fantasy version of fantasy football, except you get to play the games. This is honestly the biggest single addition to Madden in quite some time, and it’s very promising; it’s the kind of thing that should make people stick with the game longer. Each new copy of Madden NFL 10 comes with an activation code for online franchise mode, but those who buy the game used can also purchase an activation code from the Madden Shop.

Blast Factor: Madden NFL 10 is the most realistic and in-depth version of Madden yet. The game no longer just looks realistic, it plays and sounds that way too, which makes all of the difference in the world. It’s the best version of Madden that has been produced because of this, and with additions made to online modes like two-player co-op and online franchise, you will be playing it plenty.

Madden NFL 10 is available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles, and retails for $59.99

The main missions are a good time, and just like with the full game, you need to clear a certain number of side missions or drop the Earth Defense Force’s control of Mariner Valley enough so that the next mission becomes available. You can do this by either completing side missions or blowing everything EDF-owned on Mars to hell using rocket launchers, mines, remote charges, and of course, your trusty sledgehammer. Each time you complete a mission, be it main or side, you unlock new abilities, like carrying extra charges, holding more rockets, etc, so by the end Samanya is a walking force of destructive nature, much like Alex Mason became.

This is not a quick batch of DLC either–if you want to spend time blowing up each and every important EDF target (there’s even an achievement for doing so) and completing every side mission (ditto on that) then you will put a good 4-5 hours into Demons of the Badlands. If you want to beat the Pro times on the transporter missions, it will probably take you a bit longer than that, and there are also 75 power cells hidden throughout the world that need to be collected–considering I picked up just 25 or so during my first playthrough, you could say they are hidden well and will take time to acquire. There are 250 achievement points in all, and since the other DLC packs will focus on multiplayer and wrecking crew, this is your best shot at adding to the single-player Red Faction Guerilla experience.

There’s very little to complain about with Demons of the Badlands–even on the normal difficulty, there are loads and loads of EDF for you to take out, and they actively hunt you down just like in the full game. My one issue is that there isn’t much variety in the side missions, as most of them are Demolition ones. I will say though that these will require a lot of thought put into them, as they are set up like puzzles rather than as the kind where you just throw a bunch of explosives down and hit go.

There are a few new vehicles to try out, including a walker with flails on its hands–there’s an accompanying mission to use that in, so you will get to blow up plenty of EDF with this fancy mix of old-school and new-school weaponry. The game does load you up with tons of remote charges and a rocket launcher early on as well, meaning once you get to an area, you can stay there until you’ve blown everything in sight up or get shot down. This cuts down on the backtracking, and since you don’t need to collect scrap, also lets you do a bit more hit-and-run style guerilla warfare. You could complain that this makes things too easy, but you could also just ramp up the difficulty and see how that works for you.

Blast Factor: If you’re a fan of the full game, then you will also like Demons of the Badlands. You’re paying $10 for a condensed Red Faction Guerilla experience that takes place in an all-new area, using a character that was formerly an NPC, and you get 4-5 hours of gameplay, making this almost like a mini-expansion rather than just a new map with a few new vehicles and missions. It’s worth your time and money, so if you’ve still got the itch to blow the EDF away, get downloading.

Demons of the Badlands is available on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for 800 Microsoft Points and $10, respectively.

You play as Jason Fleming, who is out on a date with a woman he met named Claire. Claire takes him to go for some hiking and spelunking out in an area she says she is familiar with from her earlier years, but things go awry almost immediately as Claire is kidnapped by an unknown organization that has built an underground base. You know, your typical date gone wrong. What Jason doesn’t know is that this organization, just a few minutes earlier in the game, assassinated the Vice President of the United States in order to start a second civil war–the game runs parallel to events in Orson Scott Card’s Empire novel, and also helps setup the sequel, Hidden Empire. They are a bit uptight about people snooping in their business, given what it is they do, so Jason is caught up in the middle of this all because some cutie hit on him at a bar, not because he’s some trained NSA agent like they think he may be.

Like in the games Shadow Complex is inspired from, you start with nothing except the most basic of tools, and find more as you progress through the levels–hiking gear, a pistol, grenades, and eventually, a lightweight cybernetic suit that turns you into a fearless killing machine. The game is also very non-linear, as you will see areas you need to travel to hours down the road almost immediately, but you will have no way of accessing them at that time. You can see these areas by shining your flashlight on them; they will glow a certain color, and you will know which item or ability you need in order to get through the obstacle. Thankfully, your map keeps track of all of that stuff for you, so that you can just go about your business finding alternate paths to Claire in the meantime.

That exploration is the driving force behind the game, as the level design is so fantastic that you can spend hours just running around unlocking upgrades and items and wiping the floor with the baddies in your way. Unlike in Super Metroid though, your character can level up through exploration and killing, so you may even get to a point where you are so strong that you do not need all of the upgrades scattered throughout the game. Your level also sticks with your character even when you begin a new game, so you can get a bit of an assist when trying to beat the game faster or dig deeper into the facility.

In addition to replicating the classic gameplay style almost perfectly, Shadow Complex has a few other things going for it. The backgrounds are 3D, so even though the action is on a 2D plane, you can shoot into the background to take out the enemies coming at you from hallways or from side doors. While games on the SNES could (and did) this kind of thing using Mode 7 in order to simulate 3D, Shadow Complex is capable of using actual 3D thanks to advancements in technology and the use of the Unreal Engine, and it looks and plays great (with a little help from aim assist, for those of you that can’t hit a target with the right thumb stuck). The story is also very good, and adds to the game without intruding on what is ordinarily a very isolated feeling experience. Acclaimed comic book author Peter David (Spiderman, Dark Tower) collaborated with ChAIR on the script and story, and the end result is concise but productive dialogue that gives Shadow Complex the extra personality it needs.

If you want to collect 100% of the items, it should take you about 9-10 hours. That’s the first time, of course, as you will want to play again. And again. There are multiple levels of difficulty, as well as an achievement for speed running the game collecting just 13 percent of the items–figuring out how to be so good and fast at the game that you can beat it without collecting almost anything is half the fun, and gives this game the ability to suck hours and hours out of your life. It’s possible to beat Shadow Complex with just  four percent of the items, meaning you need to figure out how to get by with say, just the foam (which can be used to build platforms for you to stand on if you use it right) and the pistol–in addition to your now very high level character. That makes each playthrough of Shadow Complex different than the previous one, and despite your experience with it, it also makes it more difficult for you. Now that is replayability.

In addition to the campaign, there are also leaderboards so you can see how much faster and how much more violent you are than everyone else on Xbox Live Arcade. There is also a Proving Grounds mode, which acts as a tutorial but also acts as Speed Runs 101. You get to use a variety of the items in the game, trying to run through hallways quickly, wall jump effectively, kill large numbers of enemies without taking a scratch, and a many, many other things that will teach you skills you can utilize in the campaign. This challenge mode is a welcome addition, the kind of thing that is missing from many games today, but was so prevalent (and so much fun) generations before.

Blast Factor: Shadow Complex is a throwback to the glory days of the sidescrolling exploration game, and it fuses those elements with some of today’s in order to create a game experience that is both fresh and loads of fun to play and replay. Don’t be fooled by its Xbox Live Arcade status, as it is a deep, difficult and engaging game that will suck you in for hours, and all at a $15 price point. Shadow Complex is a wonderful tribute (and evolution of) the games it was inspired by, but it’s also so good that those oblivious to the past it draws from will still love it too.

Shadow Complex is an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive, and the last of the “Summer of Arcade” titles for the service in 2009. It is available for 1200 Microsoft Points. For more on Shadow Complex, check out our interview with ChAIR.

Now, Fallout 3’s protagonist has one more frontier to conquer: Space!

Mothership Zeta, Fallout 3’s fifth and final Downloadable Content, takes the Lone Wanderer on a galactic adventure filled with Aliens, spaceships and, best of all, advanced weapons.  However, with many other DLCs to compete with, how will Bethesda’s most recent Fallout 3 add-on stack up against the competition?

Mothership Zeta opens like most other DLCs; with a mysterious radio signal that ultimately reveals a new location on your map.  The location, aptly named Alien Crash Site, is where a small round ship called Recon Craft Theta had crash-landed in the Wasteland.  Upon arriving at the location, the Lone Wanderer will notice that there is fairly heavy radiation surrounding the ship.  Eventually, when players approach the ship, the Lone Wander is beamed up to Mothership Zeta.

Once the Lone Wander teleports to Zeta, players find themselves trapped (and stripped of all armor and weapons) in a holding cell with a Waster named Somah.  Somah doesn’t know much more than you when it comes to general information about the ship, but she has learned that your Alien captors would prefer to keep their human specimens alive.  With this in mind, Somah suggests that you should fight her, making the Aliens have to open the cell and break up the scuffle.  Once you agree to the plan, it is executed perfectly and the escape begins.

One of my favorite parts about Mothership Zeta is the unique cast of characters you meet during your attempt to escape.  First, the Alien enemies on the spacecraft were very cool.  Each Alien looks similar to what we all imagine an extraterrestrial would look like: small, green and with a big head.  Still, even with this classic interpretation of extra-terrestrials, the natives of Mothership Zeta are quite interesting because of their beautifully animated armor and masterfully recorded voices.  These aspects alone were probably two of the best things about this DLC.

Also, the Aliens of Mothership Zeta seem to have been in the abducting business for quite a while, judging by the types of folks you encounter.  The Aliens cryogenically froze many different types of NPCs, good and bad.  Some of the frozen enemies that are frozen (and possibly unfrozen) include Slavers, Super Mutants and those ever-pesky Feral Ghouls.  The allies you meet on Mothership Zeta are from Earth’s present and past.  Characters such as a cowboy, a little girl who survived the Great War (and is very helpful throughout the DLC) and a medic from the liberation of Alaska.  My favorite NPC was a cryo-frozen Samurai, complete with ancient Japanese armor and weaponry.

Speaking of weapons, the Aliens on Mothership Zeta really know how develop some tools of destruction.  In addition to the massive device called the Death Ray (useable only at the end of the DLC), the fallen Aliens usually leave behind impressive loot.  Items such as the Shock Baton and Electro-Suppressor serve as viable weapons for melee characters.  The Alien Atomizer and Disintegrator are found often throughout the DLC and do considerable damage against your extra-terrestrial adversaries.  My favorite weapon in Mothership Zeta was the Drone Cannon.  This weapon, which is found on the Aliens’ security robots, fire large spheres of energy that bounce around and eventually explode.  This was especially helpful when I wanted to eliminate enemies who were hiding around corners and behind objects.

Sadly, the characters and the weapons were the only things I really liked about the Mothership Zeta DLC.

The great thing about Fallout 3 is the fact that it is driven by such an interesting storyline.  Unfortunately, Mothership Zeta fails to provide anything resembling an intriguing plot.  I found myself becoming bored with this DLC very quickly, not caring about whom I talked to or what information I uncovered.  Instead, I seemed to just be playing Mothership Zeta so I could get my character to level 30 and be done with it.  Though I was able to get to that pinnacle level, I still wasn’t happy with the story that got me there.

Similar to the plot, the quests in Mothership Zeta were quite bland.  Many of the tasks that the Lone Wanderer must complete tended to be tedious and uninteresting.  There was no real problem solving during the quests.  Instead, the Lone Wanderer is forced run from one location to another, having no say in the way he or she completes the task.  Fallout 3 is all about making the right or wrong choice.  However, for the developers of Mothership Zeta, it seems that this DLC is all about making *their* choice.

Not helping the entertainment value of the quests was the confusing nature of the spacecraft’s environments.  Though each room and hallway on Mothership Zeta looked clean and futuristic, I found it very easy to get lost while trying to find important points of interest.  The use of teleportation pads came in handy quite often, but they often made things much more confusing than they needed to be.  I applaud the effort by Bethesda, but they just didn’t do anything for me.

Blast Factor: Overall, Mothership Zeta was a real letdown for me.  Though the characters and advanced weaponry in this DLC were a pleasure to interact with, important aspects such as the plot, quests and environments were either flawed or just plain boring.  If $10 means little to you, Mothership Zeta may be worth purchasing if you have all of the other Fallout 3 DLCs and would like to reach level 30.  However, if you’re still lacking any of the previous DLCs, I suggest you invest in those first.

Mothership Zeta is currently available exclusively on Xbox Live and Games for Windows for 800 Points / $9.99.

The difference between MvC2 and many other fighters, like Soul Calibur IV or Tekken or Virtua Fighter (there are many), is that each player is allowed to pick three characters for each fight.  Once you’ve selected your characters and their assist type, which means that with the tap of the left bumper or the right bumper another character you’ve chosen who isn’t on the screen fighting at the time will jump in and shoot something or heal you or grab your opponent and jump back out, the battles ensue.

The combat is fast and frantic, but with only four main buttons:  Low Punch, High Punch, Low Kick, High Kick, and the two assists, the battles are all about button combinations and timing.  By offering players the ability to select three characters, the variety in teams is wide.  Even the best players can be beaten if they pick an un-unified team whose assists don’t work well with their move set.

If you’ve missed the jazzy theme song that guides players through the game, you’re in luck.  The song still sings above all of the action in the game, on repeat, which will probably grow on your nerves after the 10^th “I wanna take you for a ride.”  I can’t complain, the song is nostalgic and something fans of the game have to deal with.

The display options offer to pretty up the game and smooth out some of the pixels, but if you’re a purist and insist on playing MvC2 in it’s original pixilated form, the option is also available.

The real charm of the whole purchase is in the online play.  With Ranked and Player matches of up to six players with four spectators per round and minimal lag, the throwback fun of standing around an arcade cabinet while you wait your turn returns.  There’s nothing like basking in the smell of teenagers sweating around a machine in a dimly lit room, but MvC2’s online play is still incredibly fun.

Fingers crossed for some downloadable content for this package.  Although all fifty six characters have six costumes, some more wouldn’t hurt.  Some new levels and characters (a new theme song?) would surely help keep MvC2 at the top of gamer’s minds in terms of fighting games.  As is, the package is no different than the Dreamcast version, excluding online play.  But that’s good enough for me.

Blast Factor: A classic fighter, with everything unlocked from the beginning, now available on Xbox Live Arcade with the online play that never made it over from the original Japanese release. If you loved it before, get it, but if you’re new to the series, be sure to give this a shot.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is available on XBLA, as part of the Summer of Arcade, for 1200 Microsoft Points.

SNK, and especially their Neo Geo console system’s fighters, have always had a special place in the hearts of fighting games fans. Since the early 90’s, SNK’s fighters for their super-priced super system were the main competition to Capcom’s Street Fighter II reign as coin-op and home fighting champ. When SNK decided to create a game that combined a huge portion of their roster (and throw in new characters as well), the King of Fighters was born. It was and remains a team-based combat game, with three fighters on each side.

That legacy continues in KoFXII, but the game has finally made the jump to next gen, HD glory. This was no easy task for the developers, as it meant carefully re-drawing every single character and frame of animation to compensate for the new, much higher resolution. The results are, overall, good, but certainly not as exceptional as fans might have hoped. In direct comparison to BlazBlue and Super Street Fighter II HD Remix, the graphics are noticeably more jagged and less detailed. The animation is excellent though–better than the SF2 Remix–and the action itself is amazingly smooth.

The action is also incredibly retro. If you’ve played a 2D fighter in the last 15 years, you know how to play KoFXII. It’s the same half- and quarter circles, and a few other familiar motions, that have been making rounds in every fighter since the original Street Fighter 2. While most of the Grade-A competition have found ways to evolve, there’s very little here that feels at all different than any other KoF.

Indeed, there’s actually a lot less here than in past KoF games. Though previous iterations often had over 30 combatants, KoFXII offers a paltry 22, and several key favorites are completely absent (notably Fatal Fury 2 hottie ninja, Mai Shiranui), and the two new characters–two female brawlers named Mature and Elizabeth–just aren’t that interesting. It doesn’t help that there’s no story mode whatsoever to help flesh out who these characters are.

In fact, there’s really only one main single player mode–the arcade mode, which is simply a series of five timed bouts and no boss characters. Other than that, you have a training mode and on- and offline versus modes, which makes the game an incredibly hard sell for people who enjoy fighters alone. Online gameplay has its share of issues as well. Though Ignition and SNK have released a patch to smooth out the online play, it’s still not as smooth as other fighters, which is a serious problem for a game where timing and precision are important.

It’s true that KoFXII adds a few new wrinkles to its combat system. There’s a stronger focus on juggling your opponent in the air by stringing combos together. There’s also the new critical counter system that lets you stun an opponent with a perfectly-timed counterattack. A lot of the characters have been retooled for the game as well, and diehard fans might not like the results since some old favorites have actually been toned down.

Blast Factor: The biggest problem with the King of Fighters XII is that there simply isn’t enough of it. There’s a pitiful lack of meaty game modes, the arcade mode is poorly done, the character roster is light for this series, and the presentation isn’t great. For the price, it’s impossible to recommend a game that should and could have just as easily been a $15 download. KoFXII essentially feels like a half-done fighter, where the developers focused purely on the HD graphics and decided to leave the rest of the work for the inevitable sequel.

King of Fighters XII is available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and retails for $59.99

I have owned and played with more G.I. Joe and Cobra toys than I care to admit, so when I received a copy of G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra for review, I tried to do away with the nostalgic bits for a time, to see the game for what it was rather than what I wanted it to be. It turns out that this wasn’t necessary though, as the game has a surprising amount of that Joe character, even with its many faults in place. The story is not based on the movie entirely, despite the sharing of a title; instead, it pulls from G.I. Joe’s long history in both the use of characters and story, and delivers an entertaining–if somewhat drawn out–game experience.

G.I. Joe plays somewhat like a 3D Contra: you spend the bulk of the experience holding down the fire button and dodging incoming enemy fire while everything around you explodes. In that sense, it’s a good bit of fun, as you don’t have to worry about much besides making sure everything is destroyed except for you. Vehicles are just as ridiculous as they were in the cartoons and the toy line, with lasers and an infinite number of missiles and rockets firing from 37 places at once with each press of the right trigger. Every character in the game–of which there are 16 total (12 Joe and four unlockable Cobra)–has their own play style thanks to their special move. So you may like Duke a lot, but find that there’s a similarly playing Combat Soldier with a better special move that helps you more. There are three classes in all to master–Combat Soldiers are balanced, Commandos are great close range fighters, and Heavys are your big, cannon and mini-gun wielding Joes.

Co-op mode can be fun, especially given the game’s over-the-top nature, but if you don’t have a pal to play with, you can just switch between the two characters on your own, which allows you to build teams of classes you love. Putting Snake Eyes and Heavy Duty together was my favorite, as you got a close-range melee attacker with a katana mixed with a big dude holding a mini-gun to take out structures and cannons.

So those are the good parts of Rise of Cobra, but there’s a lot holding this game back from being a success. The camera is atrocious. I hate complaining about cameras, because I feel like it’s something we as gamers can adjust to if we play the game for more than five minutes, but you can’t adjust it in this game. If you’re going to take control of the camera away from the player, you have to make sure it works perfectly, and it doesn’t in Rise of Cobra. There will be times where the camera pans or switches direction on you, and there will still be enemies behind you–or worse, newly spawned enemies will come up from behind you from where you can’t see. You take fire, you start shooting in a random direction, but you don’t know if you’re hitting them. The targeting is supposed to be done automatically, but it also targets barrels, structures, and point bonuses in addition to enemies, so if you left any of those behind you could be shooting at those while you get shot to death by a foe you will never see.

Because of the way the difficulties work–on casual, you respawn when you go Man Down in exchange for some points, on advanced you are revived at a checkpoint, and on hardcore your character is out of action until you complete the level–this camera problem is significant. Dying on the harder difficulties because of the camera is frustrating, especially because of the checkpoint system that isn’t really a checkpoint system at all. Sure, it’s called that, but it’s basically just a loading area for the next portion of the level. If you fail a mission, you restart all the way back at the beginning, not at your previous checkpoint, which is a great feeling if you made it all the way to a boss fight or were killed because invisible foes hidden by the faulty camera took you out. This makes it so the game isn’t fun on the harder difficulties at all. I love punishing difficulty levels, because there’s nothing more satisfying in gaming than beating something that seemed impossible, but when it isn’t intentionally designed to be difficult, and is instead difficult due to poor design choices like the camera and checkpoint system, then I’m not as pleased.

The character design is also poor, though that is not Double Helix’s fault; that one is on the people who made the movie. These characters, originally designed in the cartoon in a way that made you instantly aware of what their job was, are all clad in leather or fatigues now, and this similarity in look takes away from their personalities. It’s even more obvious when someone like Wild Bill–who isn’t in the new movie–shows up, because he’s just like you expect him to be in both look and sound. This isn’t a problem with the Cobra leaders–Firefly, Destro, and Baroness all look like they are supposed to–but for the Joes…well, they look like a generic team of heroes fighting a much cooler opponent. The problem is exacerbated when the Accelerator Suits from the new movie are worn as well, because no matter who you use, the voice screaming, “YO JOE!” is the same, and all of a sudden even your female characters are bulked up and about six inches taller than they were.

There aren’t very many cutscenes in the game, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say they remind me of things I saw in the old Command & Conquer games from the late 90s. They look worse than the in-game graphics, are very fuzzy and blurry looking, and add nothing to the game experience. Since the in-game environments and character models are somewhat bland and unappealing, you can imagine how bad these scenes look. I’m a gameplay over graphics guy for sure, but their inclusion, based on how they look, is just baffling.

Last, the game is too long. That sounds like a strange complaint when you’re talking about whether something is worth your money or not, but it’s true. There is not enough variety in the missions to justify the length of the game–at one point, the game even said what I was thinking when it was time to destroy yet another generator to open up a laser-defended gate. Normally I would be all for replaying levels to collect more items for unlockables and to find all of the missing Joes, but the levels in the Jungle are the same as the ones in the Arctic, except without snow. Sure, you’re geographically in a different place, but you wouldn’t know it by the way you play the game. So maybe it isn’t that the game is too long, but instead that there aren’t enough ideas in place for you to want the game to be as long as it is.

Blast Factor: While G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra didn’t do anything that offended my nostalgia or made me regret loving the cartoon series during my childhood, it did offend me as a gamer with its poor level design, awful camera, and occasional lack of personality. There are redeeming qualities though–the story is a perfect fit for the Joe universe, some of the unlockables (like the PSAs from the cartoons) are good a good time, and it can be fun with friends–but I have a hard time justifying the price tag.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is available on all major platforms. This review was written based on the Xbox 360 version, which retails for $49.95.

Where BlazBlue excels, much like Guilty Gear XX before it, is diversity. There are only 12 characters, which might seem small compared to Street Fighter IV or the newest King of Fighters, but unlike most fighters, this cast covers the gamut of styles with no character copying another. Mastering one or two shouldn’t be a problem for most players, but all 12 will require countless hours of playtime.

As expected, all the characters are of decidedly Japanese design—weird, anime-styled, with the occasional effeminate male thrown in. Combatants range from an uber-sexy, pole-staff-wielding lady doctor, a gun-toting military girl, a boastful ninja, and a huge tank of a man, to a slender samurai, giant-sword-wielding vigilante, a monstrous creation made of insects, a boy and his creepy mannequin, and even a vampire girl. Each character is completely different from the others and go far beyond normal fighting game stereotypes.

Some characters work with special moves that are essentially traps, where timing and strategy are key. Others are familiar brawlers that are easy to jump right into. All have specific super moves called drive attacks that further differentiate them from each other, and the result is one of the most entertainingly eclectic band of fighters ever.

Beyond the great cast, the game modes offer an incredibly in-depth and satisfying amount of play value. For single players, the main modes are the arcade and story modes. Both modes actually carry some semblance of a story line, though following the overarching and individual character threads will prove challenging for anyone. The polite thing to say about the writing in BlazBlue is that something was lost in the translation from Japan to the US. More realistically, the plot is just a muddled mess.

That’s not to say that none of the storytelling works. Some of the plot lines are interesting and reasonably easy to follow, though it would have been nice had Arksys put more emphasis on all the writing in the game. On the plus side, the whole game is structured for replayability. To unlock all the extra moves and character variations, you’ll need to play through both modes multiple times with each character. Even getting the complete story for each character will require multiple passes through their story mode. It’s a great system that continually rewards the players for just playing.

Of course, fighting games aren’t usually about playing with yourself, and BlazBlue delivers a solid multiplayer component as well. Like most multiplayer games, you can compete against the internet in ranked and unranked matches, congregate with like-minded players in six-player lobbies, and even watch matches being played. As you fight, you’ll earn experience points (called rebel points) that accumulate to increase your overall level. This lets you see how experienced opponents are and select matches with other players your level.

Rounding out the game modes is a training mode for practicing and the score attack mode that tasks players with surviving an onslaught of AI opponents purely for high score purposes. Beyond game modes and characters, the actual gameplay of BlazBlue is a great mix of old and new. Hardcore players will welcome the inclusion of new moves like counter assaults, instant blocks, barrier bursts and blocks, rapid cancels and other intricate maneuvers. Newbies, on the other hand, and more casual gamers will appreciate the easy playability of basic moves and the option to use the right analog stick to effortlessly perform special moves.

Finally, the presentation of the game is topnotch. The 2D, anime style of the characters is gorgeous and colorful, if not quite as sharp as the recent Super Street Fighter HD remix, and the 3D rendered backdrops are amazing active and attractive. The audio work is very good as well, with zippy, dramatic music and great fighting sound effects.

Blast Factor: There’s very little to find fault with in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Sure, the story is nearly incomprehensible, but beyond that this is simply a great fighting game. There’s tons of replayability, amazingly diverse characters, smooth and refined controls, and gorgeous graphics. If you like fighting games at all, BlazBlue is a must buy.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and retails for $59.99

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 cliché 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, clichéd 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

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

The basic football works well, and due to its being designed after the college rather than pro game, allows for some differentiation in gameplay elements from its NFL cousin. There are more opportunities for trick plays, and they also seem to have a higher rate of success–it’s easier to pull some of this stuff off when a 350 pound lineman who can inexplicably run at high speeds isn’t cutting you off on a reverse. My favorite feature from the games themselves though has to be the “setup”, which tells you what percentage of “setup” the opposing team’s defense is for a particular offensive play. If you’ve run a few running plays in a row for instance, using say, the basic I-formation, then you want to run a playaction in the I, the game will tell you that the opposition is 35% setup for being fooled on the play, or 60% fooled, or whatever the number is based on just how ready to be tricked they are. It’s also easier to fool your friends and the computer now that the strategic elements of gameplay have been enhanced, like being more aggressive on defense but at the expense of possibly giving up a big play.

NCAA is all about the game modes though, especially since by now EA certainly has the core football game experience down. Besides your standard Dynasty mode, there is also an Online Dynasty, which allows for 60 years of continuous play, and the best part is that it can be done with friends or for everyone to see, rather than just at home by your lonesome. New to this year’s game is the Road to Glory mode, which has Erin Andrews and Kirk Herbstreit following your college football career. In addition to listening to those two talk about how amazing you are, you can also check out your career accomplishments in a virtual dorm room full of trophies, the latest NCAA news and photographs of your favorite plays and accomplishments, all of which can be taken from the highlight reel following the completion of a game.

While you can just jump into Dynasty or Play Now, you can also take some time to fully customize a team online beforehand. Use EA’s Teambuilder to edit the school of your choice; you are not just limited to tweaking the roster to your content, but you can also fiddle with logos, stadium design, and all of the different parts of the uniforms. If you don’t want to mess with a current school, you can also create your own from scratch and then use it in Dynasty mode or in exhibition games. That’s very appealing to someone like me, who doesn’t have a school they instantly gravitate to in these towards of titles.If you’re lazy or just want to populate your game with various created teams, you can also download other people’s creations. Have a bunch of creative friends and want to mooch, or just want to make sure that their stuff is on your console for when they come over? You can do that, which is a neat feature.

One thing that I could not test, given it does not start up until the real season begins, is the Season Showdown. It’s an NCAA Football competition of sorts, where fans play NCAA to prove that their school is the best. You earn credits for your college of choice by playing games online or even against the computer, and these credits go towards your school’s total, added up with everyone else who picked that college as their team. You don’t have to choose the team you plan on using, so if you want to pick Boston College but then use Ohio State in order to wipe the floor with people, then go for it. You can earn credits by playing the computer, playing online, taking on your weekly Showdown opponent (who is a real person), by utilizing the Allies & Rivals online poll, or by answering some trivia questions online.

You also earn credits for your in-game performance. NCAA keeps track of your user tackles, picks, forced fumbles, etc., and you can earn credits from those. Running successfully setup plays (remember the above feature, and use it to your advantage) also nets you credits, as does not beating your opponent’s face into the ground–sportsmanship counts folks, so don’t run up the score just to show off. You also get more credits if you do play with your selected Showdown team, so let’s hope your taste in schools isn’t questionable. If you’re considered the underdog, you will also get some credits for taking on that game.

My favorite way to earn credits though would have to to be the ESPN Instant Classic. That’s mostly because I love the idea of designating games as ESPN Instant Classics; play a few rivalry or conference games and have them turn out to be great games, and you will see your game designated as an ESPN Instant Classic. You can upload highlights from the game to the NCAA Football 10 servers as well, so everyone else can view your accomplishments if they desire.

Those are the noteworthy features in this wonderful edition of NCAA Football, and they help keep the game interesting and give you plenty of reasons to hold on to your copy of the game even after Madden NFL 10 comes out. Given that has always been one reason that I never got into the series in the first place–just wait a month and you get Madden, after all–I have to give credit where it is due to EA Tiburon for designing a product that should stay on your shelf even after its pro rival is available.

Blast Factor: NCAA Football 10 provides a strategic football experience that is accessible to all levels thanks to its All-Play feature and the use of different play styles on both offense and defense. There are enough game modes to keep you in the game much longer than just the summer, especially with Season Showdown and an Online Dynasty mode. Even with Madden coming out in a few weeks, this one comes recommended.

NCAA Football 10 is available for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable systems. This version, reviewed on the Xbox 360, retails for $59.99

For those who need more than my concise blessing to influence their purchases, Battlefield 1943 is a lot like its predecessor in that it captures the spirit of the original, but it’s also entirely its own experience. Sure, you play on three maps (four, now that Xbox 360 users have unlocked Coral Sea) that appeared in the original, but despite looking the same, they play differently. DICE used Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Wake Island, but made sure they looked the part of a south Pacific island this time. Lush jungles were added, which can be used as cover for scouts or as a shielded road for traveling infantry. All of the buildings, towers and fences that dotted the landscape in the original are there–at least, until you blow them up. Yes, that’s right, the environments are now destructible thanks to the Frostbite engine, used in Battlefield: Bad Company. This makes the last 10 minutes of a match very different from the first 10. Sure, you hid inside of a building to capture a spawn point when you first landed on Iwo Jima, but that building can be taken out by explosives, tank shells or bombs dropped from the sky, which means you can’t hide in it anymore. Bridges can be blown up, making moving across maps difficult for tanks and jeeps, but be warned: if you were to lose the spawn point that you were trying to defend, you won’t be able to drive tanks over the empty expanse to take it back. Once blown up, structures are gone for good, and it adds a layer of strategy to an already strategic shooter.

The reason Battlefield 1942, and by design, its sequel 1943, are so strategically based is because of the scoring system. You don’t win a match by having the most kills, you win by depleting your opponent’s progress bar. Think of it like a health bar–every time you kill an opposing soldier, blow up a tank or shoot a plane out of the sky, the bar gets a bit smaller. There’s a faster and more effective way to get that bar to disappear though, and that is by capturing more spawn points than your opponent. Stand near a flag long enough, and the current flag will go down in favor of your own; once it’s raised, your team can use that as a spawn point, and also as a forward base once your tanks, jeeps and planes appear. The team with fewer of these forward points is the one that is continually taking hits on their progress bar; capturing bases back will slow this to a crawl and cause the other team to begin their descent towards a loss. It’s a constant back and forth, especially with just 12 players per side. You may be ahead one moment, with five of the six spawn points under your control, but that also means the enemy can come at you from their one spawn point with most of their team working in concert against you. This makes each battle its own unique experience, even if you were to load up any of the maps multiple times in a row.

DICE cut down on the number of classes, making your options a Rifleman (anti-infantry, long-range) Infantry (anti-tank) and Scout (explosives, sniper). You don’t need a medic anymore, because health regenerates. I’m not talking bald space marine health regeneration here–you’ll still get killed if you run out and do something stupid and someone sees you doing it–but if you lay low behind a big rock or inside a building for a moment, you’ll regain your health. If you don’t feel like running on foot, the tanks, jeeps and planes are all fun and easy to use, even in the transition from keyboard and mouse to controller. Jeeps and tanks are especially entertaining, as one person can drive while another mans the machine gun, making you doubly effective at repelling your enemies.

You earn points for, among other things,  kills, kill assists, destroying vehicles, capturing flags, and defending flags. These points, rather than kills, are how you are ranked at the end of a match. You can join a squad when you start the match too, in order to compete for the best squad in the map. There have been matches where my team lost but I was on the best squad, and vice versa, so there’s a lot to play for besides just shooting everyone that moves. You move up in rank based on your actions and score, and also earn medals for certain things, like killing X number of enemies in a tank, or taking out X number of planes, in addition to the Achievements and Trophies. This also extends the replayability, as it gives you different ways to approach each map and game; anything that keeps a multiplayer-only game with just a handful of maps feeling fresh is good by me.

Blast Factor: Battlefield 1943 is a great experiment by EA, as it tries to blend classic features from one of their top series along with some of the newer innovations and advancements it has seen. For just $15, you get a first-person shooter with excellent controls, wonderful environments, and tons of variety and depth despite its bite-sized nature. DICE wanted to create a game you can go back to in between all of your larger game purchases, and with Battlefield 1943, it’s safe to say they succeeded with their goal.

Battlefield 1943 is available on the Xbox 360 for 1200 Microsoft Points and on the Playstation Network for $15

Essentially, you control a paddle at the bottom of the screen, and use it to reflect a bouncing ball back up to destroy a pattern of destructible blocks at the top of the screen. Arkanoid added a sci-fi motif and power-ups to the simple gameplay. It was never a complicated game, but offered a surprising amount of challenge. Playing Arkanoid today, however, it’s hard to image too many people taking it seriously. Even with the addition of lasers, aliens, rocket-propelled balls, and bizarre techno backdrops, the game is still incredibly primitive and, frankly, boring.

Even the presentation is remarkably spare. Although the game sports a plethora of overly busy and sometimes intrusive backgrounds, the game screen is just colored blocks and a simple ball. Even the aliens are basic geometric shapes. Some of them are balls that break up into more balls, thus confusing the action further. And adding confusion to the playing field is never a good thing here. The speed of the ball deflecting off blocks can be harrowing, and the game tends to add challenge by forcing you to try to navigate around unbreakable blocks.

The developers wisely included the option to turn off most of the extraneous elements. You can toggle aliens and the backgrounds off if you like, giving the game a purist feel. It also makes the action easier to follow since there’s not as much eye candy on the screen.

Since the game is entirely based on simple physics, some of these levels can be absolutely maddening, and it’s a bizarre design choice that the Arkanoid doesn’t have any save functionality. There are four “episodes” in the single player story mode, each with 31 levels, and you have to finish all 31 in one sitting. This might have been fine in olden times when you were plugging quarter after quarter into an arcade machine, but is a ridiculous oversight now.

The inclusion of multiplayer is the shining part of the game. Basically offering a competitive puzzle game feel, two-players try to either clear all the blocks off their respective screen first, or just certain colors of blocks. There are multiplayer specific power-ups meant to thwart the other player, and a huge array of levels to compete in. In terms of casual multiplayer gaming, Arkanoid Live! isn’t a bad choice.

Blast Factor: At 800 points, Arkanoid Live! seems over-priced for what it offers. For fans of the arcade classic, it’s certainly a solid revamp, but the game simply hasn’t aged well since the 80’s. The multiplayer adds a definite value boost, but overall this one is strictly for the retro crowd.

Arkanoid Live! is available exclusively on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade service for 800 Microsoft Points

However, like eating sandwiches and sex, the end result is rarely good when the two are combined.

With this in mind, there is no surprise that I was a bit skeptical when I heard there was going to be a new Ghostbusters game to be released for the Xbox 360.  Yet, upon hearing about how this game was going to have a good distributor and all of the same main actors and writers from the original movies on board with the project, my skepticism quickly turned into cautious optimism for the title.

Ghostbusters takes place in Manhattan just two years after the events in the movie Ghostbusters 2.  With all of the main characters present, the stage is set perfectly for players to seamlessly jump into the post-movie action.  When starting a new game, players take control of a recently hired Ghostbuster team member.  While some of the members have a hard time trusting you at first, you quickly become a major cog for the team.

After completing a quick tutorial, your rookie character jumps right into the action when a Manhattan hotel calls to complain about some paranormal activity within its walls.  When the team arrives, it is revealed that your old friend Slimer is wreaking havoc in the hotel.  Following the clues and slime piles left behind, the team is locked in an adventure that expands far beyond the presence of Slimer and the premises of the hotel.

The main Ghostbusting function within the gameplay is utilizing the “Sap ‘em, Cap ‘em, Trap ‘em” technique.  Resembling the actions from the movies, your character must drain a targeted ghost’s energy (AKA sapping), prevent the ghost from running away (AKA capping) and put the ghost in one of the high-tech, Pokeball-like trapping devices (AKA… well, you get the idea).

Sapping involves some eye-hand coordination, as this part of the technique requires some quick and accurate shooting.  Upon finding a powerful ghost (some small ghosts can be eliminated without the use of the entire three step technique) players must follow their ghastly enemy manually with their sapping ray by pressing the RT button.  Once you have sapped enough energy out of the ghost (as indicated by a small meter located on or near your target), it is time to trap it.  If your proton pack hasn’t done so automatically, press the left bumper to activate your capture stream.  When this ray is being used, players will be able to crash the ghost into the ground and walls in order to further weaken and eventually daze the enemy.  Once that is accomplished, players should throw out a trap and slowly drag the phantasm into it.

The control scheme is pretty much as difficult as it sounds.  Even with the very helpful tutorial portion of the campaign, it seems like most of the controls are not quite as intuitive as many gamers would like (tracking ghosts and even sprinting seems like a bit of a chore).  With this in mind, it is no surprise that combat can be a little longwinded and repetitive.  Expect to be methodically learning and relearning the different processes, especially the Sap ‘em, Cap ‘em and Trap ‘em technique, for a slightly longer period than most games.  If you are having much more trouble than you would like, consider customizing your control scheme through the in-game settings menu to accommodate your style of play.

What is really cool about this game, especially to fans of the films, is that the game stays true to its roots.  From the actors to the original music from the motion pictures, Ghostbusters really impresses with its attention to detail and continuity.  With the game being written by the original writers, comedy legends Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, it is no surprise that the dialogue in Ghostbusters is full of wit and sarcasm.

The voice acting is not without its flaws, however.  Though Ghostbusters’ cast has returned in full force, there seemed to be some volume issues with the in-game dialogue.  While the sound effects would come through crystal clear, I would have a hard time hearing some of the characters’ voices, especially Billy Murray’s character, Dr. Peter Venkman, whether it was due to overpowering background music or action.  This is especially unfortunate because it really leaves the player out of the loop when it comes to hearing the surely priceless comedic value hidden within the inter-character conversations.  This problem could surely be solved within the in-game the audio settings, but it would have been nice if the default settings worked a little more effectively.

The attention to detail in Ghostbusters doesn’t end at the writing; the game is filled with little visual features that will make even the most critical gamer pleasantly surprised.  The first thing that stands out is the highly functional proton pack located on the back of all of the Ghostbusters.  These proton packs are probably as intricately designed as any piece of equipment I’ve seen in recent games.  They are covered in bright, flashing lights with dark, well-textured crevasses and curves.  When cooling down the proton pack after a good Sap ‘em, Cap ‘em and Trap ‘em session, flurries of steam are emitted beautifully from the lower part of the pack as the energy rods are extended out of the pack and exposed to the air.

Beyond its visual beauty, the detail in the proton pack also comes in handy because it serves as a replacement to a traditional HUD.  So, even though the lights make the pack look pretty, they also have a real purpose to them as well.  Complete with health and energy meters, players will have no trouble appreciating all of the intricate and useful doodads and wiz bangs attached to the always-trusty proton pack.

The impressive visuals continue throughout the level designs.  Each level’s environment is colorful and full of outstanding shading.  A player’s surroundings are almost completely interactive, making even the simple act of walking through the game a pleasing experience.  Furthermore, a player can use their capture stream to change the environment around them.  A piece of furniture in the way?  Use your stream to pick up the annoying chair or table and toss it to the side.  Players will also quickly notice that the capture and sapping streams will tear holes in walls and even destroy some items, leading to some good clean fun involving scribing words and messages on ceilings.

Another fun feature in the game involves the customizing and upgrading of your equipment.  By capturing ghosts and finding hidden treasures, your character will acquire money throughout the game.  This expendable cash can be used to buy more powerful gear for a stronger, more effective ghost wrangling experience.  Weapon improvements are always loads of fun, however it seemed like one could max out the upgrades without having to beat the entire game.  Perhaps a character leveling system could have been utilized to fix this problem.

Blast Factor: Ghostbusters is not a flawless game.  However, it is far from a worthless game, as well.  Ghostbusters is one of those rare games where all of the main aspects of the game are solid but, for the most part, are somewhat removed from spectacular.  While that may not be great news for most games, it is really the best-case scenario for a movie-based game such as this.  Ghostbusters stays true to its roots and is visually impressive, making it at least a solid rental for the casual gamer and close to a “must have” for the serious Ghostbuster fan.

So, if you are looking for a movie-based video game that actually worth playing, who you gonna call?  Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is available for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for $59.99

Containing six separate but related episodes, Save the World is a fairly meaty adventure. Each episode ranges from two to four hours, making this downloadable $20 title longer than most full-priced releases. That said, those 20 hours (give or take) only really work if you can buy into the gameplay style offered here.

For those not familiar with what most refer to as a LucasArts-style adventure (the original Sam & Max Hit the Road was one of the shining stars of the late 80’s/early-to-mid 90’s LucasArts adventure collection), here’s the rundown. Basically point and click item hunts, these adventures task the player with moving from location to location, hunting for items, checking out every interactable thing on the screen, and enjoying a plethora of snarky comments along the way. Sam & Max in particular is billed as an interactive sitcom, and these episodes certainly play out for absurdist humor.

All those collected items inevitably form the basis for solving the various puzzles in the game. You’ll find eclectic, often nonsensical use for tear gas, Swiss cheese, bowling balls, video tapes, and a wide array of other oddities. Combine objects or use them on the characters and environments to advance, thus providing fodder for new gags. And make no mistake, Sam & Max is really about the gags and the dialogue.

Sam is a big dog and your controllable character. He’s the straight man to the psychotic rabbit-thing Max. Together they’re a pair of freelance police (private dicks really) in a surreal cartoon landscape of brain-washed child actors, conspiracy-theorist inconvenience store clerks, crazy psychotherapists, cops, robbers, and other bizarre takes on noir stereotypes.

Save the World is essentially a direct port of the PC version — only with all six episodes available right from the start — and this is perhaps the biggest problem. You move Sam around by clicking the area of the screen you want him to go, which is a clunky control system on a console. The game doesn’t exactly scroll from location to location smoothly, and having to use a mouse cursor to interact with everything simply doesn’t work well with a game pad. The exception being the occasional mini-game, such as a really awful driving sequence that feels completely pointless and plays even worse.

The other issue is that the dialogue is mostly amusing, but often seems to be straining. It’s clear the writers were trying to be clever and take on not just private detective clichés, but also modern topics like the Internet, child stars, work-out videos, and apparently any random thoughts that crossed their minds. Unfortunately, the dialogue isn’t nearly as clever as it wants to be most of the time. The game is still fun, but after a while, the characters become a bit too predictable and cliché in their own right.

Blast Factor: For classic adventure game lovers — especially past fans of the series — Sam & Max Save the World is a must-have addition to any gaming library, but most of those gamers probably already played the PC version two years ago. For console gamers, Sam & Max is a welcome opportunity to try something very un-console like, but it will certainly take some patience to put up with the out-of-date control scheme and hit or miss comedy. Still, it’s cheap, good looking, and charming, and there’s hours of bizarre item hunting awaiting the curious gamer.

Sam & Max Save the World is available on Xbox Live Arcade for 1600 Microsoft Points.

However, in the video game world, mainly in the Fallout universe, it doesn’t mean just any carnival.  Remember, this is Fallout 3, where only the creepiest of carnival settings will suffice.

Welcome to Point Lookout, the newest addition to Fallout 3’s downloadable content.

Point Lookout takes the Lone Wanderer on a foggy, swamp filled adventure to the previously-unknown-to-me bayous of Maryland’s marsh country. In this DLC, players will encounter interesting quests, interesting characters and one very cool psychedelic drug trip.

Like most of Fallout 3’s DLCs, Point Lookout begins when the Lone Wanderer receives a radio transmission indicating that a ferryboat called the Duchess Gambit has docked at the Riverboat Landing location in the Capital Wasteland.  Upon arrival, you meet two non-player characters named Catherine and Tobar. Catherine reveals that her daughter, Nadine, recently stowed away on a ship to travel to the mysterious settlement of Point Lookout and begs for you to find and return her.  Tobar, a coastal trader and owner of the Duchess Gambit, provides safe transit to Point Lookout for the price of a ticket… running at $330 a piece.

Still, even with the hefty price tag, traveling to Point Lookout is well worth the cost, as the action begins right away. As you travel to Point Lookout for the first time, you watch a cinematic cut-scene (a medium I feel is underused in Fallout 3), which shows smoke rising from a mansion, later revealed to be a major location in the DLCs main quest. Once landed on the docks at Point Lookout, the Lone Wanderer talks to Tobar and the adventure begins.

Point Lookout has no lack of intrigue within its storyline. Once the Lone Wanderer lands at Point Lookout, he finds himself in the middle of a conflict between a surly ghoul named Desmond Lockheart and the native people of the region called Tribals. From there, players are called upon to complete quests for both sides, eventually evolving the storyline into one of the most morally gray adventures available in the world of Fallout.

One of my favorite moments in this DLC is when the Lone Wanderer goes on an incredibly bizarre hallucination after collecting the seeds from a giant plant. In this psychedelic trip, the Lone Wanderer walks through the mysterious swamplands of Point Lookout, having strange and sadistic visions of some familiar faces of his past. The environment is turned upside-down (literally) in this short offshoot in the plot, creating an important time of reflection for both the Lone Wanderer and the player himself.

There is no lack of side quests in Point Lookout either. In fact, some may argue that some of the side quests are actually more fun than Point Lookout’s main quest. Though I wouldn’t necessarily agree, I do feel that Bethesda really went above and beyond when it came to writing the plot for this DLC.

Point Lookout is unique in that it has a very unique ambiance when compared to the other available DLCs. There is a certain old Louisiana feel to the environments, full of haze, swampland and, of course, mutated hillbillies. The NPCs have a different crusty flavor to them, delightfully contrasting themselves from your basic Fallout Waster.

The folks living in the tattered carnival region of Point Lookout are as diverse as the services they offer. In the belly of the swamp, on the other hand, is where a few new breeds of characters reside. Some of the most interesting and unique enemies you will find are called the Swampfolk. These radiated marsh dwellers resemble your classic country bumpkin stereotype, complete with buckteeth and aggressive behavior. Whether or not they are inbred is still unknown (take a look at an attacking Scrapper in the screenshot below). Also, keep an eye out for the previously mentioned Tribals: a group dedicated to the growth and preservation of Punga Fruit, a crop with precious healing properties that is exclusive to the region.

The variety does not end at the citizens’ local flavor, however. Point Lookout also offers an abundance of new weaponry as well. Basic arms, such as the double-barreled shotgun, axe, and lever-action rifle add to the already strong country feel to the game. Unique items like moonshine, fishing poles, and workman’s coveralls will make you feel like you are a real backwoodsman.

Blast Factor: Point Lookout’s plot is as interesting as it is different. Along with the diverse characters, weapons, and environments, Point Lookout is definitely one of the most creative DLCs available. With that said, however, I couldn’t help but ask myself how necessary this add-on was to the overall Fallout 3 storyline. With the base Fallout 3 game combined with Broken Steel (my favorite of the DLCs, which extends the level-cap from 20 to 30), there are definitely enough quests to get to level 30 without spending another dime. All things considered, Point Lookout is a fun addition to Fallout 3, but should only be downloaded by those who have already bought Broken Steel and are ready for some new, exciting content.

Point Lookout is available first on the Xbox Live Marketplace and Windows PC for 800 Points.

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

That is not to say that the new content found in Assault on Dark Athena is bad; it’s just that after replaying an improved version of one of the last generation’s gems, the issues stand out and take away from the experience. In the end, depending on your level of tolerance, you’re going to end up with a fantastic remake that has yet to really show its age coupled with either a decent sequel in Athena or one that ultimately disappoints.

As Richard B. Riddick, you help out some prisoners by doing them some favors — favors which often involve killing other prisoners — and they help you get on your way to escaping from Butcher Bay, a prison in the desert that no one has ever escaped from. You hide in the shadows, shoot out lights, snap necks, drop from the rafters — all of these stealth kills are highly satisfying, and if you limit your gun play to involve shadows, even that is fun as the AI struggles to find where you are versus where you were when you fired. The AI is not stupid in this game, as they will find you and come after you once they sense you are in the area. They will turn if they hear you coming as well, so you need to be sneaky and quiet, not just unseen. Luckily, Riddick has a stealth mode that allows him to walk quietly, and also lets you know if you’re in anyone’s line of sight; blue vision means you are unseen, while a return to regular vision means someone has the potential to catch you. You do have to be careful in making sure that guards are not hiding in the shadows like you were, as once you pop out they could converge on you. Like I said, the AI is not stupid.

Escape from Butcher Bay is a game that had tons of attention lavished on it in the past, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here given that there’s an entire other game to review; just know that if you loved the original, this remake is fantastic, and is worth revisiting just for the visual upgrades, given that it comes in a package with another game.

That game is not up to par with Butcher Bay though; Assault on Dark Athena tries to mix run-and-gun gameplay with stealth, and it doesn’t do a great job of either. Here are some issues you need to deal with: there are tons of weapons and ammunition available, and the level design is set up in a way where there are tons of open spaces — that means there isn’t anywhere to hide. Combine those two together, and you realize the game is telling you to shoot first and hide in the shadows later, which takes away from Riddick’s core gameplay. When you move from the confines of corridors into a more open world, this is magnified. Fewer places to hide, more shooting to be had, and as you will realize, that AI that is not so stupid is now also nearly impossible to kill with ease.

They could sense your presence in corridors when you weren’t visible if you made too much noise, but now you can’t even hide effectively. They have better accuracy and range than you do with Riddick’s limited (and imperfect) gun play, and they have far more health than you do as well; the imbalance between the number of shots you can take and the number you need to fire shows that this is meant to be a stealth game, but it’s tough to pull off when the level design screams run-and-gun. This is not a one-on-one thing either, as Athena often pits you against groups of enemies, or against a turret that can maul you in no time.

Again, this is a worthwhile package, even if you’re just buying the remake of Butcher Bay. You get two games for the price of one, and now Riddick gets to experience multiplayer as well, which is a neat addition to the series when you’re talking about the Pitch Black mode. If you have never experienced Escape from Butcher Bay before, you’re in for a wonderful game, while the remake is worth owning just to play through it again in it’s prettier form. The greatness of Escape from Butcher Bay is quite an experience (let’s say it’s a 9), while the disappointment that stems from playing  Assault on Dark Athena is unavoidable (let’s give this one a 7), but at least you purchased both for the grand total of $60.

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC, and retails for $59.99.