'Splosion Man

'Splosion Man

When everyone involved with a project clearly loves it, it shows. Soulless cash-in movies and games are everywhere, and then there are labors of love that just radiate polish. I come here to praise 'Splosion Man, not to 'Splode him.

"A platforming/puzzle game with a heart of gold (and explosives)" is the phrase that best describes 'Splosion Man. But here's another look:

Jenkins swiped his card and the airlock hissed open. He stepped in and steeled himself for the rush of nitrogen-rich air pushing down on him from the vents above, smelling slightly of ozone today. The buzzer rang and the green klaxon spun, so he pressed the ‘open’ button and stepped into the facility.

He’d been working here for a little under a year, and still had no idea what the entire project’s goal was. His department, the one he’d been recruited from Celsius AB for, was working on new ballistic propellant systems. He imagined it was a top-secret government project, but found it odd he hadn’t met with any G-men to get his Secret clearance renewed.

The whole building was just a little strange – very high ceilings, long hallways to nowhere, strange L-shaped dead ends that required you to call a liftjack just to get to the area you needed, but the pay was outstanding and he was free to work in an environment that rewarded results instead of incremental advances tempered by safety precautions. He liked that about this facility.

What he didn’t like, was Dinkelman. That corpulent leviathan was trundling towards him even now, a bearclaw in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

“Huh heh, Jenkins what are you doing down here?” he said, an errant crumb tumbling out of his mouth and onto his white smock, where it settled on top of a fold.

“I need to talk with Abernathy about a theoretical emulsifier for my project. Is he in his office?”

“He’s around. Think he went in the break room. We got a new air hockey table!” Dinkelman was never one to talk shop when he wasn’t at his desk. Jenkins pushed past him and followed the glowing blue arrows to floor 1-13’s office wing, glancing up at the mounted smartgun as it trained itself on him. Security was a top priority here.

Abernathy was in his room, standing next to a large lever. Jenkins rapped twice on the blue force-field to catch Abernathy’s attention and the red-bearded scientist, eyes covered by a pair of slitted view-goggles jerked and looked over, pulling the lever to lower the force door and let Jenkins in.

“Ahh, Jenkins,” Abernathy said. “How good to see you today. How are things down in 2-3?”

“Not bad. The acid baths seem to be tempering the propellants the way we want them to. It’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. There’s a system subroutine that’s acting up and –“

Jenkins cut his sentence short as the floor rumbled slightly. Both men looked around for the source; subsonic vibrations were not uncommon, though it usually meant something had gone wrong somewhere and that there would be an announcement shortly. The two men turned their heads and listened, but the sound had stopped.

A moment later, though, the doughy scream of Dinkelman echoed off the walls, along with a high-pitched whine of the smartgun spinning up. The two men listened in horror as Dinkelman was apparently shredded by the smartgun’s caseless ammunition tearing into his flesh, and the screams were getting louder – as if Dinkelman was actually advancing on the gun’s position in spite of it barking fire at him. The screaming finally stopped, and Abernathy lowered his head. Jenkins followed; even though he despised Dinkelman professionally, he was still a human being.

There was a loud report, followed by two more from below, loud enough to spook Abernathy into raising a second, closer force field locking himself in with the lever and computer terminal. A bright glow came from the nearby junction, getting brighter and accompanied by an unconscionable cackle. As Jenkins turned in horror, the true purpose of the facility became clear – the munitions, plasma field research, augmenting intelligence programs, it all fell into place as the monstrosity came spinning over the lip of the column.

They were building a living bomb.

The thing - Jenkins didn’t know whether to call it a man or not – ran directly at him. Jenkins could feel the heat coming off its body, black Kirby dots crackling throughout its frame and giant optical receptors looking like two frosted bunt cakes turned on their side resting atop the pile of flames. He turned to pound on the blue force-field.

“Abernathy, you monster! Let me in! I’m out here with this…this creature!”

Abernathy shivered visibly and pointed at something directly over Jenkins’ shoulder. The heat was unbearable, but Jenkins managed to twist his torso and turn his head enough to put his eyes level with what could only be described as the creature’s mouth, gaping open with white textbook-sized square teeth.

It leered at him, the heat melting Jenkins’ pass-badge to his lab coat, and uttered a single word.

”Splode?”

It's just a great, fun game. Everyone should play and love it. The fact that there are literally two full campaigns, one designed specifically for co-op, is great. The achievements are perfectly done, there's not one but two ending credits songs, live-action setpieces and a delightfully off-kilter design ethic through the whole thing.

Graphics: Awesome. 'Splosion Man looks great, and the scientists are adorable. 4.
Sound: Better than amazing. Between the song about pastries and 'Splosion Man's Daffy Duck impersonation, you couldn't ask for more. 5.
Controls: The mappable controls from the menu are a highlight. 5.
Tilt: Completely endearing from start to finish. 5.
Overall (not an average): Tendrils' Top Pick.

Secret of Monkey Island

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

So you've got your gang in high school. You're all nerds, you play Magic at lunch, you get together for marathon D&D sessions that run from the last school bell on Friday until everyone passes out from O.C. (Cheetos Overdose) sometime Sunday afternoon. Life is good, and you are happy with your gang. Then something happens. You grow up a little. Puberty hits, you discover girls, start working out with the baseball team. Your friend in electronics classes starts taking early enrollment at community college to knock out his Electrical Engineering degree faster. Your computer buddy starts working tech support at an ISP. But one friend is still wearing ratty "WIZARD!" t-shirts and quoting Monty Python loudly in the halls at you. When he stubs his toe, he yells out "CROM!" instead of a normal swear, and you cringe a little. He still has his birth-control glasses taped together and a Terry Pratchett book sticking out of his back pocket. You don't invite him to your party, and slowly the gang drifts away from him.

Secret of Monkey Island is that friend.

People bemoan the death of adventure games all the time, and when they pine for the genre, make sure they ask a 13-year old today to play this game with no rose colored glasses. Guaranteed they won't make it past the "oh-so-hilarious rabid death poodles."

Sandwich-style review here, a piece of praise in between two complaints: the Special Edition of this game is a great update. I hope someone at Digital Eclipse plays this game and weeps silently in the corner for an hour. Even though you can play this game in all its pixelly glory, it has been repainted and updated with new sprites and full voice acting from everyone in the game, from real voice talent like Rob Paulsen. This is how you update a game: lovingly recreate everything in full HD with music and voice upgrades.

Unfortunately (bottom slice of bread here), Monkey Island's secret is that it isn't very good. While the writing can be clever in spots, it overall is just as groan-inducing as that friend from the first paragraph. While the game is good-natured and never strikes so wrong a note as to upset you, it just never appealed to my sense of humor.

The gameplay is what sinks this game, though. There is so much game-length-padding backtracking going on, and sadly you're forced to watch Guybrush walk through the same four environments over and over, especially the slow-zooming "just got here" part of the animation. You can try and queue up "go here" buttons, but it still is simply terminal how slow the game plays. Compounded with inscrutable puzzles that require you to "think like the developer" instead of having a sane solution may make you feel like the smartest nerd at the Star Trek convention when you get them, but are just annoying when you spend a half-hour trying everything and failing.

At one point you have to adjust a fulcrum and rock setup, then go up some stairs and drop another rock on it. If you miss your target, you have to go back down the stairs, push or pull the lever, then go back up and pick up another rock, set it down, then push it again. Pure trial-and-error gaming; Record your results in your copybook, now.

It turns what is a fairly smartly-written game into a slog of trial-and-error and kills any of the exploration joy you feel when you have to keep dealing with setbacks that are asinine and dealt with by game designers in the decades since this game's release.

Graphics: No complaints, this game is gorgeous. 4.
Sound: Again, hits the perfect note. Great and varied voice acting. 5.
Controls: Why can't you cycle through commands? Other than that, acceptable. 3.
Tilt: A breezy and fun game, sunk by atrocious, ancient gameplay. 0.
Overall (not an average): 1.

RISK: Factions

RISK: Factions

I want to talk about another game before I talk about RISK: Factions - the old '900 number' call-in games from comic books in the 1990's. "Help the X-Men beat Magneto," the double page spread would beg. Then you'd get a parent's permission and call in, ready to press 1 to use Optic Blast on Toad, and the announcer would talk as slow as possible to rack up the per-minute charges. Of course you didn't ask Mom's permission, you took the phone in your room, hid under the bed and hoped you could stop Magneto's plans in just a minute or two, but it never worked out that way. Keep that experience in mind.

First things first, this is a pretty fun version of RISK. They do a lot to change up the maps (though they aren't dynamically generated) and the different colors for team choice are realized in a fun way. Red (whose general is Commandant-64, an 80's toy robot) and Yellow (Generalissimo Meow, a tinpot dictator kitty-cat) are both highlights. The combat animations are fun and colorful, and the music, though obviously repetitive, fits the mood and doesn't get too grating.

The single-player campaign has a fairly funny storyline with fully-voice-acted and animated cutscenes attached to it, though it's just over an hour long.

But on to the flaws. First the offline flaw: the game's information delivery. While the combat is skippable, every time an objective on the map changes hands or comes online, and every award claimed at the end of a round, is meticulously mapped out and animated, which gets old by the second time you see it. When a hotly-contested property like the Temple gets passed around in a round, it becomes absolutely hair-pulling, and ultimately sinks local multiplayer, which - by the way - again does not support hotseat play, which is absolutely asinine for a game with literally no actions available for non-active players.

Secondly, online play is completely worthless. I've always maintained, despite others begging for a computer game RISK with online play, that it would be worthless. Locally, you're still in the guy's house when you throw up your hands and quit; online you just press a few buttons and you are gone, off to Call of Duty land. But RISK: Factions still lets you join another game right away, leading to endless ragequitting with pubbies, meaning you can only play online with your friends.

Ultimately, better matchmaking/ragequit penalties and customizable animation levels would make this a perfect arcade game, but unfortunately it ends up with a very few, but very critical errors that make it not worth its price.

Graphics: Very fun, bright colors and good animations. The "Domination" animations are a highlight. 4.
Sound: Full voice acting, and a score that never quites gets under your skin or on your nerves. 4.
Controls: Fairly intuitive. You can't abort a fast attack, but other than that, no complaints. 4.
Tilt: You will love playing this once, but ultimately the overlong and far-too-frequent "informative animations" just get annoying. 1.
Overall (not an average): 2

Worms

Worms

There's good and bad in the Worms port to XBLA. Worms as a game in general is a Top Pick; its combination of adorable avatars, cutesy weapons and over-the-top violence are a winner for all-time, but this is a review of the port, and as a port, it's lacking.

The number-one thing it lacks is weapons. Many of the most-fun weapons are completely absent, notably the Holy Hand Grenade. Ninja Rope is present in all its glory, unfortunately, taunting you with the moves you can cheese out of its use. There is also no level editor, a common absence because MicroSoft hates user-generated content (a snide person would point out that UGC means selling DLC becomes harder), but Team 17 could've forced it through.

Graphically, it's a mixed bag. The worms are expressive, but unfortunately the backgrounds are chosen from only 4 or so locales, and the pregenerated maps have only 3 configurations, limiting the creative carnage possibilites. Sound packs to customize your wormsclamations are free and fun, and the weapons sound nice for the most part, so no complaints there. Porting a mouse-based game to the console has a unique set of challenges, but Team 17 nailed it.

Allegedly, a remake of Worms World Tour is in the works for XBLA/PSN, and nothing would make me happier, but until it arrives, for just five dollars you could do a lot worse than owning this version of Worms.

Graphics: Nothing great, but nothing bad either. 3.
Sound: Worms are cute, guns go boom. 5.
Controls: Servicable. Some buttons are a little unintuitive, and no option to remap. 3.
Tilt: You could do far, far worse than this evolution of Scorched Earth. 5.
Overall (not an average): 2

Marble Blast Ultra

Marble Blast Ultra

Some games are just brilliant in their design, and require nothing else. Marble Blast Ultra is such a game, and yet they added tons of additional features. The basic concept should be very familiar to gamers: You are a marble, and must get to the exit as fast as possible. Dodge obstacles and collect powerups to do so. There are gimmick stages, as well as stages designed for skill and stages that have a "trick" to finishing them in a flash. There are endless pinball bumpers situated on ice terrain that are controller-busting infuriating, and you'll love every minute of it.

The colors are bright, and your options for a ball include several fun options, as well as a few that show off their lighting engine in reflections. The music and sound effects get the job done, with subdued techno thumping and loud, brash sound effects that give audio cues when you use a power-up or 'blast' with your marble's ability.

Some of the puzzles require you to preform moves that aren't fully explained, and there isn't really a "practice zone" to try things without suffering through a long death scene, so it can be frustrating at high levels, but it's a minor complaint that is handled best by "play more, scrub."

But that's not enough. MBU also has comprehensive leaderboards and a pretty swank multiplayer component that features tense, gem-collecting, smack-talking elements while you compete to see who can knock their opponent off the edge the most (not the de jure goal of the multiplayer mode, mind you). They further kept their laurels un-rested by releasing even more DLC, more maddeningly-difficult stages to mess around in. Marble Blast is so good, I want to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant.

Graphics: Servicable. Bright colors and abstract landscapes get the point across, crucial in a puzzle game. 3.
Sound: Repetitive but non-annoying soundtrack and jarring (in a good way) sound effects. 3.
Controls: Responsive, but with enough play to make you keep going back to set a new best time. 5.
Tilt: Great puzzles, great action, great multiplayer, great developer attention. 5.
Overall (not an average): 4.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne

There's a certain subset of hardcore gamers, people who aren't quite to the point of detailed, Battle for North Africa-level wargaming but who refuse to play the standard fare available in the toy aisle of most stores. For this market, a small group of European companies full of creative folk basically invented and defined a genre almost a decade ago with the release of Carcassonne, which started the trend of "German Board Game" as a label for a style of play- highly conceptual math, bartering and trading, and a finite, usually tile-based system instead of moving tokens around a circuit.

Carcassonne is the granddaddy of this genre, and makes the transition to video game form flawlessly. The basic idea is to build castles with tiles that have either grass or castle edges, with the occasional road piece thrown in to mix it up. Your limiting resource is that you only have 7 "Meeples" to claim things with, and you get them back only when your road/castle/church is completed, forcing you to decide whether to finish the castle early to get your meeple back or try to expand it.

The music is typical, just generic middle-aged fife and bells, maybe a minute and a half long, and the sound effects are similarly cheap, but no one plays it for the graphics or sound design. With five-player multiplayer (including local multiplayer, though sadly no hotseat play.) the fun comes in politicking your cause, and enticing everyone else to try and screw their neighbors before they realize you've been playing them all along.

If it's even possible, the video game version is actually better than the original, since it eliminates all the bookkeeping and loose pieces that can make the game a bit of a chore to score at the end, though the as-you-go scoring makes it a little tough to build a commanding lead. The DLC for the game adds an eight-tile beginning set that puts a massive river through the middle of the board, but realistically it adds little to an almost-perfect experience. The learning curve on this game is steep, but highly rewarding, and since it was offered free last year for a week, online is suitably populated, making finding a game even today easy.

Graphics: Servicable. Zoomed in all the way, there's a lot of nice touches, but nothing groundbreaking. 2/5
Sound: You'll be plugging your iPod in for this one. 2/5
Controls: Simple, but the game makes few demands. High score for not trying to be too cute. 4/5.
Tilt: As a multiplayer experience, it eclipses everything that made the original the Origins Award winner for Board Game of the Year. 5/5.
Overall (not an average): 5/5.

Frogger

Frogger

Frogger is exactly what it has always been: a very-low-input game about patience and exactitude. Digital Eclipse, the company largely responsible for these no-effort ports onto XBox Live's Arcade, basically did a sprite-swap, and despite looking a thousand times better than its original blocky state, they actually managed to make it worse.

The gameplay is the same: You're a frog. A frog who can't swim, but still a frog. And you're on a highway median. You need to cross a highway that is extraordinarily poorly designed, with traffic flow reversed from lane to lane, and vehicles that are clearly not street-legal (like bulldozers and salt-flat racers) zipping along. Then, turtles attempting to qualify for a synchronized swimming team will assist you in getting from log to log, and if you play your cards right, you'll end up at home with a little lady frog to make you some hot cocoa.

Where Digital Eclipse goes wrong is in offering an upgraded graphics option. While it's nice to have more detailed backgrounds and pretty sprites for the various objects, high-level Frogger play is about very exacting jumps, weaving between traffic with only pixels to spare. The "upgraded graphics" add just enough blurryness, just enough questionability to the range which is "safely on the log" versus the range that qualifies as "in the water, start over froggy" that you end up having to simply turn off the upgraded mode. The most frustrating jumps relate to the Frog Homes, which now have rounded-off edges that make judging the center much more difficult.

Overall, the game is a fun diversion, and while depth was never the strong point of early-80s arcade classics, you and George Constanza would both be well-served in giving Frogger a shot in this millenium, if only to piss off Jeff Minter.

As a side note, this will be the last dailyreview article until the last week of the year, as I am going on holiday to play a whole bunch of games and refresh my opinions on a few before posting reviews.

Graphics: Upgraded graphics are prettier (at least SNES quality), but destroy high-level play. 2.
Sound: Chiptunes and public-domain piano licks were weak 20 years ago. 1.
Controls: The left stick stands in amenably for an arcade joystick. 3.
Tilt: Disposable and cheap, just like a true arcade classic. 2.
Overall (not an average): 2.

Boogie Bunnies

Boogie Bunnies

Boogie Bunnies is deeply, deeply flawed. It's unfun on a primal level, uses a common new technique in the exact wrong way, and sucks all the life out of what is supposed to be a puzzle game and injects it with insipidness instead. It's a chore to play or play well, and "multiplayer" essentially boils down to yelling at your buddy over and over because you think you know better.
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What? Are you waiting for the "but, it's fantastic!"? There isn't one.

Boogie Bunnies does pretty much everything wrong en route to a traveshamockery of an arcade puzzle game. Even the load screen is terrible, overindulgent and mostly way too long. The graphics (never a key point in any puzzle game) are agressively bad. They're about on par with an SNES game, and while that wouldn't normally be a breaking point, the game makes central to its concept that these bunnies, who apparently are Extremist Muslims, as they are ecstatic to be blown up and sent to their final reward whenever three or more of them are together spend half their time dancing, spinning and chirping. Due to the quasi-3-D design, this causes you to be unable to tell which bunnies are in which row, and the color sceme (various pastels and cool colors like blue, purple and teal right next to each other) does you no favors. This 'visual pollution' is all the rage nowadays in puzzlers, and while there's a correct time to use it, Boogie Bunnies proves that there is also a worst time to use it, and that time is any time you are playing Boogie Bunnies.

The music is somehow even worse than the dodgy graphics, as there's a romping, jovial side-scrolling game's music wedged in as the default music. This song is forty-five seconds long, and then it repeats, while squeaky-voiced bunnies chirp through three or four sayings endlessly. The "boogie" part of the game comes in when, at seemingly random moments, they start dancing to a eurobeat sound that crawled out of 1999's butthole to torture your ears. Best of all, the bunnies all "YIPPEE!!" whenever their ranks are thinned via a combo or two.

Controlling the bunnies, when they aren't dancing and actively confusing your attempts to fire, is actually not terrible, and it's the one place this game innovates in a good way. You can move your bunny along the bottom to the column you want, or up the sides and fire into the row you want. It's a neat trick and handy for generating the long combos you're looking for to fill up your boogie meter and move on to the next stage, each time hoping it is the end of our long national nightmare of boogeying rabbits.

Overall, I have to say, there is definitely a market for a breezy, light game about retarded bunnies that dance like idiots. But that market is solely occupied by Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Boogie Bunnies isn't even on the same plane. If you're looking to set ten dollars on fire, just put a match to a Hamilton, tape it, and put the video on YouTube. It will be far more entertaining than actually playing Boogie Bunnies.

Graphics: Alternatingly retarded and infuriatingly incomprehensible. 1.
Sound: You'll wish your speakers were broken. 0.
Controls: Has some signs of innovation. 3.
Tilt: It's like Sierra made doo-doo butter in your mouth. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1.

TMNT

TMNT

Ahh, a movie tie-in game. Fantastic, time to rip this game a new--what? It's not terrible in every way? Oh, well then I'll slag it down for late-era PS2 graphi-- eh? It's a joy to look at? Well then, time to rip it apart for its piss-easy challenge- what, not going to cut me off? Oh, it does take four hours to finish start-to-end with no replay. Well then.

The new TMNT movie was suprisingly good; not nearly as much so as the original Elias Koteas vehicle (which holds up shockingly well today, especially the puppetry), but an exceptional bright spot on the long, CGI-laden wave of 'kiddy flicks.' The game is no different- it's pleasant enough, above average with a few shameless nods to better games, but does nothing to really make it a hidden gem.

Graphically it moves like a Ninja Gaiden; most of the animations make you feel like a gimped Ryu Hayabusa, which is not the worst thing they could've shot for. There's great subtle color-coded pathing to keep you headed towards the path you need to be on (though it's mostly pointless as unfortunately TMNT is a game world where two-foot high bushes and chain-link fences make effective walls against masters of ninjitsu. The game employs a sort of quasi-cel-shaded effect for the characters, and bears a pretty effective likeness to the movie, which you basically replay over a few hours time.

The sound effects are pretty much canned through-and-through, and while Splinter's occasional voice-over hints are nicely done, the constant angsty internal monologue the turtles keep during gameplay is aggrivating. Music is straight from the movie's soundtrack, with no throwbacks to either the beat-em-up or cartoon that spawned it. This is a game determined to ignore its pedigree.

Controlling the turtles is actually pretty fun the first time through- they have wall-running, sheer-rock-face-climbing and nunchuck-wave-gliding down and it is fun to do. Unfortunately, you'll spend most of your time just holding up and running forward. Absent any real challenge (enemies only spawn at pre-set "Fight Scene" locations), you're left with a long slog through pretty and generally non-repetitive but completely useless hallways.

In the end, with about five hours of boring gameplay, TMNT ends up being a very pretty, very long interactive movie. I heartily recommend watching the new movie, but the new game gets a pass - unless you're an achievement grinder, as every achievement is storyline-based and you will get all 1000G from a single evening's gameplay.

Graphics: The game shines here, the locations are varied and well-integrated with the design ethic. 4.
Sound: Repetitive sword-swings and "hi-ya!"s when you jump get old fast. 1.
Controls: Actually pretty fun, but the lack of a chance to test your skills gimps it. 2.
Tilt: Challenge-free fun. Play it for a night on a rental or GameFly, never think of it again. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Arcade

TMNT 1989 Arcade

There's something about a well-crafted beat-'em-up that's just timeless. Endless goons, fun animations and a solid strategy that exists at a higher level if you want to find it, that makes for an excellent Saturday afternoon at the mall with a pocketful of quarters. Digital Eclipse get shit on a lot for no-effort ports to XBLA, but with the TMNT Arcade, they managed to get everything important right, and restore honor to this game after the terrible NES port all those years ago.

The plot is pretty straightforward, and should be familiar to any child of the 80's: Shredder has kidnapped April, and the titular turtles must rescue her and defeat Shredder. The colors are vibrant and there is no slowdown or clipping, remnants of the limitations of the NES port from days of yore. The sprites run around in 2.5-D, slashing and throwing Foot Clan soldiers on their way to the Technodrome. The bosses look great, colorful and oversized with their trademark voice samples intact.

The music is a faithful recreation of the original arcade's tunes, reworking the original TV series's thirty-second song into several compositions. Slashes and explosions are just as you remember them, too, but no mastering for surround-sound systems (a fault to hold against Digital Eclipse, I suppose). While the music is nostalgic and all, I can't help but wonder if another company with a little more effort might have created new arrangements to give each stage more of a personality.

Controlling the turtles on the 360 is a breeze, but there is no button mapping available. Thankfully, the attack and jump buttons are all you use, so there isn't too much fault to be had (unlike, say, TRON, which tried and failed to emulate a dial-wheel controller), and while oddly the netcode is unforgiving to HPBs and their dial-up connections, lag is throttled by a full-party pause rather than clipping and creating more problems.

There isn't too much to say about this game: the tight controls, solid beat-em-up street cred and nostalgia for a simpler age of play does what it wants, and does it well. 'Drop in-Drop Out' play would be welcome, but doesn't jibe with the 20-credits-to-beat-the-game plan the game lays out for you. Fun Fact: TMNT 1989 was the first Arcade game to have Secret Achievements, with 1 for 0 G ("In the Dark"). I wish I could give this game a 3, but it just doesn't innovate enough. A faithful port, but at the end of the day, it is exactly the game you played as a kid.

Graphics: Exactly as you remember them; top-notch SNES level sprites. 3.
Sound: Faithfully recreated, but doesn't try to do anything fancy. 3.
Controls: No button-mapping and occasional laggy netcode. 2.
Tilt: It's a relaxing stroll through the Turtles world, but offers little replay. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.

Thrillville: Off the Rails

Thrillville: Off the Rails

Tycoon games are tough. Too complex and you drive off everyone who isn't a CPA; too simple and you make it boring for anyone with half a brain. Thrillville errs on the "too simple" side, making you the teenage grandchild of a scatterbrained theme park owner, tasked with bringing the many parks back up to code, building and researching new rides, and helping other hormonal kids hook up while they're at the park. The last part is just as creepy as it sounds.

Colorful graphics and a very nifty no-load-screen cheat bring a lot of charm to the game, and dozens of intricate animations are running at any time, while every single guest in your park can be interacted with, using fairly unique dialog trees. While cartoonish, the graphics are bright and fun, with a lot of diversity in the fifteen "worlds" spread across five parks to enjoy. The two dozen or so minigames feature PS2 launch-title graphics, but being minigames, you aren't forced to suffer through them more than once if you don't want to.

The music is atrocious- there are 3 three-minute long pop songs, and they unfortunately all have insipid lyrics, playing in a loop in every part of the game down to the starting menu. Reach for the iPod or streaming music from moment one, or these bubblegum songs will stick with you forever. On the plus side, every conversation and dialog tree is voiced by a convincingly different assortment of voice actors, keeping it from feeling like you're talking to the same voice actor with a different accent all game.

The many Financial screens are laid out in a decently user-friendly intuitive format for a console game, and engaging in most actions is straightforward; sadly the game (barely more than a port of the PS2 title from a year before) does not capitalize on the greatest controller ever created, and this 360 title's unchangable button-maps at times feel like they've been shoehorned instead of assigned more natural.

The game's breezy challenge level is clearly tied into it's target audience of tweens, and nowhere is that more obvious than the puppy-loving "dating sim" portions of the game, where you have to learn from previous responses what sort of things a particular teenager likes and dislikes before you run out of conversation options to get them to be a "Love Interest." If you succeed, a hug from the date is the reward. Since the game keeps firm to its "E" rating, you won't find any creepy lines, but the innocence is sickly in its own saccharine way.

Graphics: It's a PS2 port, with very little work done to hide that. 2.
Sound: Full voice-over work is fine, but the soundtrack is dreadful and mercifully short. 1.
Controls: Intuitive menu navigation, but the minigame controls are a mixed bag. 3.
Tilt: Absent of any challenge, but also lacking the charm of a true "chillaxin' and playin' games" game like Uno or A Kingdom for Keflings. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.

NBA Street Homecourt

NBA Street: Homecourt

Every sport it seems has a "street" variant released for it, which adds a hip, pick-up-and-play variant - usually spawned from a quarter-pounding arcade cabinet - that works to varying degrees. The NBA Street franchise has a solid pedigree, and EA Big went all out on their first next generation Street offering, NBA Street Homecourt. The results are nothing short of fantastic.

Rendered in full 1080i, Homecourt was one of the first true HD titles, and the extra work spent on character models shows through. With a game like basketball, where the players always play in full view of the crowds, with no headgear at all, minute details are immediately discernable if they are missing. Homecourt doesn't miss, though - every aspect of each NBA and WNBA star, as well as the unique local characters, hit every note, sport every tattoo and braid every hair just right.

The Create-a-Player story mode features the classic "pick up a player from the losing team" that we all remember from street ball, as well as hilarious RPG-like addition of "team discord," if you feed 'Melo the rock too much, eventually Rip Hamilton will complain and if you don't address his wants, quit the team! The sound effects and voices are breezy and forgettable, but the soundtrack is great. '80s breakbeats will have you busting out the refridgerator boxes, and entering the Gamebreaker mode triggers Herbie Hancock's seminal "Rockin' It."

The create-a-trick mode is perhaps ill-named, but you do use the face buttons in combination with the four shoulder buttons to individually direct your jukes and fakeouts, as well as (during Gamebreaker mode, filled up when you do enough tricks and reversals) breakdancing moves like up-rocks and UFO's. And of course, the jams. Oh dear, the double (and triple) jams, slam dunks that laugh at things like physics and world records for high jumps. The game playfull ignores all that nasty 'reality' stuff and offers over-the-top gaiden dunks if you've got the gamebreaker for it.

There is a very exploitable strategy when playing online, which only supports 1v1, that basically boils down to "camp Shaq under the hoop and goaltend like a motherfucker," and while doing so makes you win, it absolutely killed the online community for this game, and so unless you have a local buddy to co-op or VS with, the game's 8-hour long single-player career won't hold your interest as well as a fully-realized multiplayer like NHL 2k9's vaunted 5v5 season mode. Still, the beautiful character models, fluid animations and throwback soundtrack will make any time you spend on the blacktop with Homecourt worthwhile.

Graphics: Stellar character models in beautiful 1080i. 4.
Sound: Nothing crazy in the sound design, but the soundtrack is a fantastic throwback. 4.
Controls: The create-a-combo system is fun and rarely gets old. Context-sensitive AI directions mapped to the D-Pad are a welcome addition. 5.
Tilt: In co-op or VS this game is great; solo play is fun but limited with no online community. 3.
Overall: (not an average) 4.

NFL Head Coach 09

NFL Head Coach 09

While Madden's gameplay has been increasing in quality only incrementally over the years, their front-office options have been exploding. Finally, in 2006 NFL Head Coach was released, and was a steaming pile. While it's unfair to boost a game's score based on previous iterations, NFL Head Coach 09 is pretty great if the following phrase describes a game you'd like: "It's like D&D for the jocks who beat up the kids who played D&D back in high school."

While graphics aren't at the heart of this strategy game, they are entirely servicable. The create-a-coach feature, however, is awful. Instead of perhaps 4 sliders for hair, eyes, skin and beard, instead you are forced to cycle through all 130+ configurations, each taking over a second to load. Once you select your team (a clever way to disguise selecting the difficulty level), you're off to the races, training players, scouting collegians, and occasionally playing a game of football.

I hate to keep bringing up Head Coach, but this game really is so far beyond it in pretty much every aspect. The game goes through real time, without artificial restrictions on when you can do specific activities like hiring and firing, but allows you to advance to the next "forced" event (like training day) on the fly. Quests are handed down, and you have to manage your support with the quest-givers (Owners, Fans, Players, and Media being the concerns you need to juggle) without weighing any one too heavily.

The actual on-field elements are competently handled, with an interesting "Emotion Selector" allowing you to respond either with passion or logic. The personnel you have on the field determines which choice was correct, whether players need an even keel or a warrior on their side. Playcalling itself is identical to the more-interactive Madden companion game.

While it isn't really a football game, I can't recommend this strategy game to a non-football fan; there is just too much that is predicated on an intricate familiarity with football knowledge and front-office machinations, but if you're the kind of person who simmed whole seasons of Madden just to get to the meat-and-potatoes of the offseason, Head Coach 09 is pretty much exactly what the box describes, no more, no less.

Graphics: Nothing outstanding, but then, there isn't much asked of it. 3.
Sound: You'll need your iPod for this game, as most of the time you're listening to a short looped clip of the same music. 2.
Controls: Most of the clickthroughs are fairly intuitive and consistant within each menu's context, but the game doesn't take any chances. 2.
Tilt: For a fantasy football nerd, this game is Nirvana. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2.

NFL Tour

NFL Tour

At some point, you have to just roll up a newspaper, smack every game on the nose and yell "No! Bad Video Game! We do not do that in the living room!" With NFL Tour, that moment happens about six minutes into the game. It's just terrible in every way, an attempt at a street-ball style that fails on every level, despite having its puppy heart in the right place.

NFL Tour starts out hopefully enough, with slick graphics and character models- the face models look great and even zoomed out to field view you can easily recognize the faces of the NFL's biggest stars. But then you realize the backgrounds and repetitive fields have the confetti-crowd repetition of, at best, an end-of-generation Playstation 1 game. The fireworks shows are canned and superimposed, lacking any of the dynamism of next-gen physics-based effects that are the hallmark of high-quality games.

The players chatter and trash-talk with appropriate voice work, and Trey Wingo snarks through the play-by-play, but unfortunately there's not a whole lot to hear. After one game, you'll have heard everything the announcer has to offer - twice. It's just depressing because Trey Wingo's lines are actually funny, but unfortunately there are so few of them that the laughs stop about halfway into the second quarter. Scott Van Pelt's work on Zombie Ninja Pro-Am is much better, and both are eclipsed by Frank Caliendo's absent-minded Madden impersonation in Blitz II, which is leaps and bounds better than Tour as a street-ball game.

The controls and playbook both take a massive step back in the name of "simple, arcadey play," nailing the simplism and completely forgetting to offer any arcadey action. Running is worthless and passing is mindless. The 'one-touch passing' feature is the worst possible scheme, where you key in on a receiver before the play, and have to manually cycle if he can't get open. To make the game tolerable, you'll have to switch to classic, Madden-style controls before starting. Once you have control of the ball, absent the truck stick you'll be forced to mash on the A button to bust through tackles. Of course, in the time you aren't running, another tackler will appear to knock you down anyway, so it's a moot quick-time event.

When there's only 9 total plays to pick from, though, you don't have to worry too much about picking the wrong play. They're all the wrong play, except "All Go." Just live by "All Go," and score on every posession. The game has a few extra atrocious minigames you will play once for the Gamerscore and then never look at again. It's just depressing because EA has the exclusive NFL license, yet because of that feels the need to innovate is completely absent. Hopefully Blitz II will put up the sales on the scoreboard to make EA come out with a true streetball game, but NFL Tour is definitely not that game.

Graphics: The characters look great, but the backgrounds and crowds are atrocious. 2.
Sound: Genuinely funny commentary - for about six minutes. Then, it's just grating. 1.
Controls: Weak, and the default setting is unplayable out of the box. 0.
Tilt: For about ten minutes, it's kinda fun, but you very soon regret the purchase. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1.

Tron

Tron

Tron is another movie tie-in game, but this one actually makes sense, since the movie it's tying into is based on playing videogames. It's circular logic at its best, but unfortunately the chiptunes and nostalgia don't hold up under the withering gaze of today's discerning gamers.

There are four minigames to play, each of differing levels of interest, representing the different tasks in Tron. In order, their enjoyability is thus: Light Bikes, Tanks, Spiders, and MCP Core. Light bikes are just plain fun, and although the computer is predictable and beatable, it's still fun to zip around on the board. Tanks takes a little strategy but has its moments. Spiders is not a terrible difficult game, but neither is it fun. MCP Core is completely inoffensive, simple and quick.

Graphically, it's very faithful to the arcade it came from in 1983, representing a massive missed opportunity. Digital Eclipse is known for its, shall we say, "faithful" ports, and they don't disappoint. Nothing is missing, and nothing is added. This is definitely a 25 year old video game. There's nostalgic beeps and bloops around, but nothing to stir the heart on the sound side, either.

In the original, which I spent at least $50 on when I first encountered it, the control scheme was unique and fun- you were given a flight stick that glowed blue and a spinning wheel like Arkanoid to work with. Unfortunately, the XBox 360 controller, for all its positives, has nothing that can remotely support this, and so playing certain stages (notably Tanks) is a chore because you aren't fighting the enemy, but the control scheme itself. The "half-spin, then directions reverse" setup is the reason Tempest is an unplayable mess on the Arcade as well.

For $5 Tron is a fine addition to the Arcade - it stokes nostalgia, offers a quick diversion with local and online multiplayer (although lobbies are expectably dead) with a unique "Pressure Cooker" game mode that allows you to pile on the difficulty to a faltering opponent to knock him out of the match. But you get what you pay for, and Tron is unashamedly a bare-bones port of a 25-year old quarter pounder.

Graphics: Servicable, but Digital Eclipse upgrade nothing from the 1983 original. 1.
Sound: Nothing of note here. 1.
Controls: You'll fight with the lack of a scroll wheel, but it's not too damning if you select control scheme "C" (Absolute) from the Menu. 2.
Tilt: A trip down memory lane, but also a sober and welcoming reminder that things have gotten better and there wasn't a halcyon day when every game was good. 2.
Overall (not an average): 2.

Sneak King

Sneak King

Given the tragedy of Yaris as an adverware disaster, you have to give Burger King credit for making their charming trilogy of games, and the best of the three is undoubtably Sneak King. The game is pretty straightforward: There are hungry people out there, you are the Burger King, go give them food. But don't get caught!

The game is $3, so you really can't expect much, but it does have its moments. There are three unique areas, full of marginally-interactive environmental events and hungry people. The graphics are honestly not that bad, as good as a mid-range PS2 game, and the missions (while all obviously based around delivering food) have challenges that are varied enough that the game doesn't get more stale than the one-note stealth game it already is.

The main complaint here is the camera, which is non-intuitive and you will find yourself fighting with it far more than the hungry denizens of Cul-de-Sac, Mill or Construction Site. This is overcome by the absolutely ridiculous animations for surprise deliveries and the administration of Whoppers and Chicken Fries. There's enough Dadaist humor here to overcome every complaint except the shallowness of the gameplay.

A school of thought goes thusly: People are stupid, but like to think they are smart. Sneak King grasps this conceit totally, and instead of trying to subtly work in Burger King references, goes in the entire opposite direction, becoming so blantant and obvious that people will think themselves clever as they mutter "Ha ha, they think they are advertising, but I see through their tricks." And thus, the subvertisement occurs in earnest.

Graphics: Nothing fancy. Backgrounds are generic and there are few characters in the world. 2.
Sound: Weak to nonexistant. Audio cues are distinct, but that's about it. 2.
Controls: The game's shortcoming. You'll fight with a camera that is unnecessarily free-floating as you deliver food to the masses. 1.
Tilt: The overexuberance of the hungry and the ambient creepyness of the King lend a certain charm to the game. 3.
Overall (not an average): 2

Star Control II

Star Control II

There's a definite rose-colored tintings in effect for a lot of games journalism. The medium is so young that its main proponents were impressionable kids when playing some of the seminal classics that informed a generation of game designers. While by no means "bad games," some of the classics do not hold up to scrutiny by today's standards, even adjusting for hardware limitations.

Star Control II is most emphatically not one of those games. It is fan-fucking-tastic.

It starts out fairly generic- the pride of a human science outpost on Vela V returning home to find Earth enslaved, with you being the last, best hope for rescue. And then the game goes blank on hints. Explore nearby stars, pick up hints, and wander your way through the entire galaxy, meeting new races and either befriending or blasting them to smithereens.

While the graphics hold up - barely - today, the sound is what makes the game. Each race has its own musical cues, unique voice and speaking style, each gloriously realized with full voice acting and a chiptunes score to go along with it that reinforces each race's unique outlook on the galaxy.

As an RPG, much of the control issues are bypassed, since there are very few moments where precision maneuvering is asked of the player, though space combat can be depressingly brutal as the AI never has issues with using the cumbersome keyboard to preform what would be child's play on a modern game system's control pad.

Standing on the cusp of the graphics arms-race that is the last 15 years of gaming, looking fondly back towards unforgiving, open-ended 'watch it, berk!' text adventures, Star Control II expertly straddles the line and delivers the most complete storyline experience ever. Not "one of," not "possibly the greatest," this game earns its accolades as the pinnacle of storytelling in games. Your actions have a real, definable effect on the world around you - you can raise or raze whole species by your actions, or your inactions. The tragic villians are some of the most wholly realised in video game history, and make for fabulous antagonists to spur you on to adventure.

Graphics: Rough. The character models are great, but with only three total frames of animation it can leave you wanting. 3.
Sound: Top-notch. Music, voice-acting and ambient scores are all evocative and great. 5.
Controls: Competent for an RPG, but the combat sections feel gimped. 3.
Tilt: You'll never play in a universe more dynamic or predicated on your actions. 5.
Overall (not an average): Tendrils' Top Pick

Galaga Legions

Galaga Legions

It was a crazy summer for the Xbox Live Arcade. A lot of AAA titles came out, one after the other, week after week. Consumers were inundated with two dozen must-have titles across every genre imaginable, and one title in particular seems to have been completely glossed over: Galaga Legions. Developed by the same team that made Pac•Man: Championship Edition, itself one of the best titles available on the Arcade, Galaga Legions takes the main tenets of Galaga and stands them on their head.

Princpal in the conceits of this update is that Galaga Legions is at its heart not really a shooter; it's a puzzle game, requiring the combination of quick reflexes and future planning based on quick glances of information of a Tetris or Dr. Mario. While the main gameplay of shooting at waves of enemies that arrive in a predetermined series remains, pretty much everything else has been updated.

Instead of having to force the capture and recovery of your ship for an extra set of lasers, you have two satellites to direct with a flick of the right stick, and their placement can lead you to an easy victory, but one mis-flick will have you scrambling to make it to the next wave. While the game lacks any sort of multiplayer, the leaderboards are your multiplayer buddies in this game, as you have to maintain an accuracy count while blasting everything onscreen.

I can't talk enough about the graphical updates to this game. The backgrounds are suitably spacey, and the enemies glow, pulse and flow with the sort of visual pollution that is the hallmark of other Arcade shooters like Space Giraffe and Geometry Wars Evolved. True fans of the series will of course get a kick out of the "Vintage" skins available that harken back to the space bugs of yesteryear.

The challenge in this game comes in buckets; it is not for the faint of heart as it combines the agility necessary for a true shmup along with the puzzle-managing elements of a block-falling game. You will die in bunches, and fail a lot of stages before you begin to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the game and the best placements for your satellites. Still, the game is such a joy to play, both as a simple challenge to beat, and as a mechanism to get another, higher score. For ten dollars, you really would be hard-pressed to find a better game.

Graphics: Suitably space-aged, with glows, sparks and stars where they need to be. 4.
Sound: Booms, zaps and plinks with the best of them, and the soundtrack is suitalbly alien. 3.
Controls: Unique scheme reduces most events to simply flicks and button pushes. Elegant. 4.
Tilt: Offers two genres expertly mushed together. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4.

The Bigs

The Bigs (Wii)

Growing up, there was an arcade in my town that had a virtual baseball game. It let you step into a cage, swing a chintzy aluminum bat with cracked and peeling reflective tape wrapped around it at baseballs hurled from a cartoon character on screen, and you swung the bat in a home-run derby style game. For $1.25, you got 10-12 swings of the bat, and I pumped a lot of tokens into this machine.

With the release of The Bigs last year, that entire experience is completely blown away. When people talk about the revolution of the Wii, this is what they are talking about. You actually play a major league ball game, swinging the bat with velocity through the strike zone, contorting your arm to make the ball dance as a pitcher, fielding with... well, just leave auto-fielding turned on, trust me.

The Bigs is arcadey as hell, and completely unashamed of the fact. Players have gigantic arms, pitchers throw baseballs that actually erupt in flames, and the game features Bullet Time. No joke, bullet time. There's, I guess, a single-player mode, where you create a hitter and take him through training camp and a series of challenges, but this game is all about local multiplayer. Getting off the couch and actually swinging the Wiimote like a bat is pretty much the most awesome feeling I've had with my Wii yet, and I truly feel like this is what they meant when they said "next-gen gaming."

Not that The Bigs is flawless. Obviously if you don't have a roommate or spouse to harass into playing against you, the single-player modes are lacking. Fielding ranges from "low-A ball" to "atrocious." The graphics look like high-end PS2-era pixels, ameliorated by the cartoony art design. And it almost doesn't seem worth complaining about in sports games anymore, but the announcers are repetitive and annoying.

Since pitch speed and hit placement are controlled by the 1-micron-wide accelerometer in the Wiimote, you will find yourself actually going through Major-League-level pitching and batting movements. Keep an ice pack handy for extended play sessions; this game takes at least a moderate amount of physical skill and ability, and you will wear out if you play all night - which leads to the other problem. Since there is physical baseball skill involved, the learning curve is somewhat steep; people with no concept of baseball may struggle their first few games, while you - the owner of the game - soundly thrash them. Not the biggest deal, but this isn't quite the party game that a WiiSports or WarioWare is.

If you like baseball, or trash-talking with your friends, this is a good game. If you like trash-talking your friends about baseball, you need to buy this game immediately.

Graphics: Good for a PS2-era game, but not exactly next-gen. 3.
Sound: Crowd roars and inane announcers ahoy. 2.
Controls: These are who we thought they were, pretty much a baseball simulator. 5.
Tilt: Fun against a competent human opponent, but not a party game or a single-player experience. 4.
Overall (not an average): 3.

Age of Booty

Age of Booty

Yarr! If ever t'was a game stumblin' up from the briny deep to make other online experiences walk the plank, this here be that game, matey!

No, but seriously, if this game can accomplish the same feat as Uno and Marble Blast Ultra and establish itself as "one of those Arcade games everyone gets when they buy an XBox," it would be in esteemed company. Or, more likely, Marble Blast and Uno would be in esteemed company. The multiplayer component of the game is seriously that great.

The basic idea is that, as a pirate, you need wood, gold and rum to continue to extend your piratey reach, and to that end you take over towns while other pirates, emanating from their own lairs on the other side of the hexagonal map, are doing the same. The art direction is great, not too cartoony, but still with flourishes (Cadillac fins appear on a fully-upgraded Speedy pirate ship) that remind you this is a game about sailing the high seas. Tilting the right stick up zooms the game in and drops the perspective from overhead to a gorgeous side view that really shows off the art direction. Sounds are sparse, but effective. Cannons boom deeply and resources fill up with a satisfying *ka-ching* or *glug-glug* depending on their type.

The singleplayer experience does have its faults. The friendly AI is worse that useless, and completely undirectable, so it becomes you versus the enemy fleet in most missions, which gets frustrating quickly, but this is a minor quibble, as there are only 21 total stages in the single-player game to complete before you're ready to either hop online with a crowd of scurvy sea-friends and tackle online, which is infintely more interesting as ships will coordinate attacks and defend appropriately (since they're helmed by humans who are working together), or start messing around with the all-but-forgotten in today's games Map Editor.

You heard me right: This game has a map editor, and the ability to take these maps online. That means, literally, infinite replayability as you challenge friends to conquor your own devious inventions. Yo ho ho, indeed.

Graphics: Colorful, creative and elegantly expressive. 4.
Sound: No catchy pirate songs, but clear audible cues for off-screen activity. 2.
Controls: The pathfinding is great, and most activities are automated. Minimalism at its best. 3.
Tilt: Avast, ye dogs! This be the greatest pirate-based game of 2008. 5.
Overall (not an average): 4