Two Worlds

Two Worlds

"Ahh... bandits." The first time you hear this immortal line, spoken by the baritone lead voice actor, in response to meeting a pack of wolves, you will be a little perplexed. But by the time the mounting insanity of this game reaches its fevered pitch, you will be absolutely in love with the characters.

Let's get one thing straight: Two Worlds isn't good. Not in the traditional sense, where high production values and a smart script come together with novel gameplay concepts to make an instant classic. Two Worlds is bad. Insanely bad. Ostensibly an Oblivion-like RPG in a boring faux-Britannia peopled by badly-acted wooden caricatures handing out quests to your hero like candy.

There is a lot of content to explore. There are a dozen factions to curry favor with or betray, dungeons to raid, side quests and hidden areas, and taints.

Yes, the "Big Bad" in this game is "The Taint," and the characters say it out loud over and over, and it never stops being funny.

But with a bit of interpretation, the game becomes something amazing. It is the perfect deadpan, never breaking character or winking at the audience at all, but somehow reveling in its badness. It seems to be daring you to buy into its ridiculous hero, a John Freeman for the swords'n'sorcery set.

Your hero is never far from a non-sequiter; he's a chatty hero (though never to anyone in particular) and seems to be the natural, real-world expression of the sociopathic characters from D&D games from the 1980s that were all about loot and killing. He seems to be just trundling through the world, duct-taping katanas together and riding a skeletal horse around, causing mayhem, and if you buy into that conceit, the game really does shine.

Two Worlds also brings a lot to the table in terms of novel gameplay concepts. Their handling of inventory is pretty novel (though having 255 different sets of gloves is annoying when you're trying to combine matching ones), and the world is big and full of varied quests. It just takes a particular mindset to enjoy it.

Graphics: Brown and green everywhere, and every model is edged with jaggies. 2.
Sound: Howlingly bad dialogue reading and a very limited palette of monster/attack sounds. No soundtrack to speak of. 1, or 4 Ironically.
Controls: Competent until you get on a horse. 2.
Tilt: With the right mindset, incredibly enjoyable. 4.
Overall (not an average): 5

Ninja Blade

Ninja Blade

From Software's title Metal Wolf Chaos from a few years back had a little bit of a cult following due to the sheer absurdity of the plot - Aliens attack, so the President of America gets in his Mech Walker and shoots missles at them on the Washington Mall. Ninja Blade is a verrrry loose sequel (it's more a case of taking place in the same universe), where you are a ninja and also a member of a military special ops team who parachutes into Japan to fight giant mutated zombies using blade boomerangs that shoot fire when you're not manning a helicopter minigun.

If that sounds a little insane, you've got the right idea. From set out to make a game that plays like a balls-out action movie, and it straight-up delivers. Ninja Blade doesn't play around with twisting storylines or romantic subplots, nor are they particularly interested in character progression. The game is all about setpieces - and boy does it have some amazing ones.

Mechanically, the game is almost a clone of the God of War series - you use a variety of weapons to beat up mooks, get orbs, upgrade your gear and advance through the level. It does a good job of making movement a priority, making you feel suitably ninja-like as you swing across rooftops and wall-run with the best of them. The monsters look freaked out and suitably gross, and you have several customization options for your own character's appearance (which are carried over in cutscenes, thankfully).

The reason to buy a ticket for this particular ride, however, is the boss battles. If you've played the first hour of God of War II, you have a good idea what "epic battle against giant opponent" is like. But Ninja Blade blows that fight out of the water. The moment you fall in love with this game is when you are fighting a giant snail, who vomits the contents of a parking lot at you while you're in midair. You then fly down to a motorcycle, start it up and proceed to drive down the backs of other cars as they're thrown at you before hitting the snail with the motorcycle just as you throw a shuriken at the gas tank.

Basically, Ninja Blade asks the question, "Would a 14 year old boy think this was awesome?" and if the answer is "No," they leave it out of the game. It's a constant game of one-upsmanship that always leaves you smiling. Ninja Blade doesn't tackle any elements of the human condition; it knows what it is and does it very, very well.

It doesn't have the legs that an RPG or online fighter/shooter has in terms of replayability, and seeing the monster a second time when you're replaying a level for a time attack score lacks its initial punch, but the ride that is Ninja Blade is well worth the time you invest in it.

Graphics: Acceptable. The creature design is stellar, though the levels have a lot of "sameness" 4.
Sound: The weapons go whoosh and clink, and the monsters groan, but it isn't anything that stands out, for good or bad. 3.
Controls: The game piles a lot of options and it turns into a finger-contorting Simon once you're fully-powered. 3.
Tilt: Just fun as hell. A short ride, but time-attack modes gives it some replay value. You'll have a smile on your face start to finish. 5.
Overall (not an average): 4.

HORROR WEEK: The Darkness

The Darkness

Sometimes it doesn't pay to spend your time being a virtual hero, fighting against things that go bump in the night. Sometimes, you just want to do the bumping. For those times, there's The Darkness. Written by Garth Ennis, based on his own eponymous comic, The Darkness weaves a twisted underworld fairytale as only the master of gratuitous violence and hilarity can. If you're not a comic fan, you've probably never heard of the mad Irishman Ennis, but rest assured he's one of the most demented brilliant writers working today.

Our game starts out as a extraordinarily generic first-person shooter: you're a Mafia hitman whose boss set you up, yadda yadda. But then you come into possession of a demonic entity's powers, and you use them to slaughter endless waves of Mafia mooks, crooked cops and undead Nazis in creative ways, all the while smashing lights and shooting streetlamps to keep yourself in good health. The suitably creepy Mike Patton provides the voice of both the angry entity (the titular Darkness) and its minions, the goofy yet ultraviolent Darklings.

The sound design is top-notch, and the graphics are grim and gritty (though a bit overdark, like a normal FPS's bloom-fest in reverse), with the storyline pulling no punches as it drags you through hell and back for the love of your girlfriend. There are collectables aplenty, handled in a unique way as you collect phone numbers and call them in on a pay phone, and the wit of Ennis really shines as many of them are darkly hilarious.

I'll admit, a console isn't the best place to play a first-person shooter, and this game is no exception to that rule. The autoaim is frustration, and you move and turn very slowly compared to the badass assassin you're built up to be; the sense of speed and urgency is missing from your normal interaction with the world. But the creativity with which the game delivers all the standards of the genre (phone numbers as collectables, a subway station for a warp hub) and the endless chatter available from people who have no impact on the game shows a lot of care was put into this game.

It was slept on by most, but The Darkness is a great single-player experience that deserves a playthrough, especially at the used prices it can be had for nowadays. The game's replay value is low (an atrocious multiplayer offering doesn't help), but for that twelve hours or so, it's a thrill ride with a lot to offer in terms of a richly-realized world, with fantastic voice acting and a spit-shine.

Graphics: Standard for this generation. Face models and speech are beautiful, but play on an SD TV at your own peril. 4.
Sound: Mike Patton is an awesome foil for our "hero" Jackie Estacado. 5.
Controls: Wonky and unresponsive. 2.
Tilt: Great, dark fun. It's a monster movie where you play the monster. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4.

HORROR WEEK: Dead Space

Dead Space

I am a gigantic sissy-girl when it comes to horror games. I'm not ashamed to say it, I have a lot of trouble playing 'scary games.' Which is odd, because I'm the biggest gorehound I know, and have an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies and horror authors; I love the genre, but there's something about playing a game, where you are the one being chased, attacked or dismembered that makes it completely unnerving.

Dead Space is pretty much the scariest thing you will ever play. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say it is endlessly unsettling and outright terrifying. The irony is it is such a completely lame and overdone plot, but like the great horror films, it realizes the point is not an interesting storyline, but pants-crapping fear that matters, and the less "story" that gets in the way, the better. Horror and Comedy share these traits in cinema, books and games.

Issaac Clark (as in, Asimov and Arthur C., get it?) is a repairman who has to put together a drifting spaceship that has been ovverrun with the animated corpses of its staff, and his long-distance girlfriend is somewhere on the ship as well. What Dead Space skips in plot, it makes up for in jaw-droppingly gorgeous setpieces and extraordinarily intelligent design. The game's director very clearly takes influences from the standard tropes of monster movies, and learns his lessons well.

Shadows shift and change, monsters grumble and skitter even when they aren't attacking, and the ship groans and creaks like a dying behemoth you are trapped in the belly of. For the full experience, playing this game with the audio routed to a pair of headphones will set most over the edge.

The best touches are the little ones, what we call 'polish' in the games industry. Unlike a normal shooter, this game makes sure every time you have to go anywhere, there's not just one path. There's always an alternate route, one bathed in darkness, that even though your digital breadcrumb trail says is useless, you find yourself checking out "just to be sure." Whenever you walk up to a closed door, the icon reads "Open?", a question you don't really want to answer 'yes' to, since you know death awaits on the other side.

Graphics: The best you'll see this gen. Everything is coated in a layer of polish, showing off the details better that even Silent Hill's famously painted backgrounds, only in true 3-D. 5.
Sound: Better and spookier work than anything you'll endure elsewhere. Good luck playing this game after dark. 5.
Controls: Issac is just a bit too slow and lumbering, though whether this is by design or not is debatable. 4.
Tilt: White-knuckle thrill ride incarnate. 5.
Overall (not an average): The definitive survival horror game of all time. It's questionable that this game will ever bested in this gen, or even the next one. 5.

Battlestations: Midway

Battlestations: Midway

Battlestations: Midway is pretty much the most complete game that was released on the 360 in 2007. Lots of games did some of the stuff in it better, and some games did everything it did, but not as well. But Midway is the pinnacle of 3rd-person action blended with overarcing strategy and oh hey, howzabout some kickass multiplayer with a community that's as tight-knit as it is skilled. It says something when the demo for a game two years old still has lobbys filling up almost instantly.

There's a lot to like here. For the historical buffs, there's tons of pages of information about how the Pacific theater war was actually fought. For the strategists, plotting courses and commissioning your fleet's deployments just right is very rewarding. And of course the dogfighting/bombing runs are pure adrenaline. At its core, Midway is a strategy game; realistically the computer is as good or better than you at actually executing the attacks you request, but eff dat noize, bombing runs, bitches. The sparse, Horner-esque soundtrack lets the big war machines make their mark, and it's great fun listening to something as big as the Yamato rumble into life and start firing those big guns.

It isn't all nose art and sneak attacks, though. The learning curve can best be described as "up a greased brick wall," and the tutorial is well over two hours long - and necessary - as the sheer number of options weighs down on you. Skilled micromanaging players from days of Starcraft yore will have the full scale of choices baffling them with the sheer variety available. The controls, once you are used to them, never really feel comfortable, though they are more than servicable, and as noted earlier, the computer really is better than you at basic actions.

The controls aside, you really can't ask for more from a game. It's ambitious, unique and competent. If you're a history buff, the most famous battles are faithfully recreated for you to either win again or change the tide of history as the other side. I can't recommend it enough for anyone who has the patience for its difficult-to-master control scheme.

Graphics: The ships look great, though the water and skybox aren't the lush eye-candy you'd get from a true AAA title. Given the scope, that's acceptable. 3.
Sound: Great rumbles from engines, budda-buddas from guns and booms from bombs. 5.
Controls: They try and do a lot with just an XBox Controller, and succeed - but it isn't pretty. 3.
Tilt: Great fun, populous multiplayer, but the single-player campaign is quite short. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4

Alone in the Dark (360)

Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark tries to do a lot of ambitious stuff, and for the most part succeeds in doing what it wants to do. Unfortunately, what it wants to do isn't very much fun. The Alone in the Dark franchise was the progenitor of the entire "survival horror" concept, where a common man (Edward Carnby, in modern day New York City for reasons that are vague and best left undiscussed) once again battles back against forces of ancient, Lovecraftian evil. The game presents itself as several discrete, independent stages that can be selected like DVD chapters and played through in any order. Allegedly, you don't need to have played the game linearly to understand it, but that's bunk, especially in a game as convoluted as this one.

The game offers unparalleled freedom. Everything is a weapon, and you're free to find your own way (sometimes), shooting locks out of doors and bashing in the window and hotwiring any car you can find. Unfortunately, the game also wrests control from you and forces you into retarded jumping puzzles over and over again, or worse, forces you to drive anywhere. The combat controls are similarly unweildy, at once naturalistic with their pressure-sensitive "rear-back-and-swing" setup and idiotic with no lock-on and context-sensitive 'up' like the old tank-movement games from Resident Evil's ignomious past.

Edward Carnby looks suitably grizzled and unkempt, and the monster design is fantastic. The visuals in this game are top-notch, and the sound design is up there with any of its contemporaries, but the game is just... a chore. There's no other way to say it. It's less than the sum of its parts, which on their own offer a lot of good ideas, but just aren't put together well. One really nice touch that more games should do is subtle hints. In the first stage, you have to creep along outside a building ledge 20 stories up. At one point you're required to hop up and hang from your fingertaps and wiggle across a gap. Instead of a giant arrow, or a pop-up prompt (this is part of a long tutorial), when the scene begins the camera swoops in, and you can see a few rats running across this same ledge. It's an elegant, in-game solution that rewards careful observers. Unforutunately, this is also infuriating when the in-game hint is vague or you don't have the exact same thought processes as the designers.

Graphics: The character models are great, and the scenery lush (though not Silent Hill levels of creepy). 3/5
Sound: Equal to any of its contemporaries, though doesn't distinguish itself from the pack. 3/5
Controls: There's a button to blink your eyes, which you need to do when you're in a smoky room or just waking up from being drugged. Combat is a chore and doing all the things this game is capable of is just annoying. 1/5
Tilt: I keep using the word "ambitious" because that's what this game is. It overreaches and can't deliver, but there are repeated moments that make you go "Huh. That's sweet, I wish more games did that. 4/5.
Overall (not an average): 2/5

CSI: Hard Evidence

CSI: Hard Evidence

CSI: Hard Evidence is terrible. Just, awful in every way. So instead of reviewing it, I'll be reviewing an imaginary version that exists only in my mind of what should have been a cool game. Differences between my imagined game and the actual game will be italicized.
****
CSI: Hard Evidence is the latest installment in the critically acclaimed, hugely popular series of investigation games based on television's #1 show. In the game, you're the latest recruit to the Las Vegas Crime Scene squad, and in the game, you'll have to solve five delightfully demented mysteries, following the evidence to a proper conclusion.
The graphics are passable, with crisp resolutions and detailed scenes, conducive to actually investigating the tiniest detail in pursuit of the criminal. The game looks great, natively rendered in glorious 1080i with several pre-rendered cutscenes showing the investigator's current suggested scenarios for how it went down.
After being introduced to each crime scene, you have to start collecting evidence. To do so, you use an intuitive interface, holding down the right trigger to bring up a wheel with the various tools of your lab kit, selecting the tool using the right stick, then releasing the trigger to start working on the scene. The left trigger brings up the cell phone you use to call the Lieutenant to request warrants or place APBs, or to call other members of the CSI who are specialists in their field (of course, at any time, you can take over for them and accomplish the task faster).
The brilliance of the game is that in each level there are a number of suspects (the suspect list is the same in every game), but the evidence will lead to a different culprit each time, using a series of rotating location and interrogation clues.
You are able to interact with and process a startling amount of information at each of the scenes, some of which is a total red herring, and some of which is vital to the case; however, what is a red herring this playthrough could be a vital clue the next time through.
The music and ambient noise is a fine complement all around, mixing slightly urban instrumentals with the show's actual soundtrack and effects work, and the voice acting is provided by all the principal cast members as well as a few "guest stars" just like the show (we won't spoil who they are, but one is a common haunter of the environs of Las Vegas).
While the different "mini-games" for processing evidence aren't terribly deep, they do require a bit of skill and a keen eye; thankfully you are able to progress at least to the next section without every single shred of evidence, though warrants and confessions may be tougher to come by, though there is the tiniest bit of wiggle room.
Most impressive, though, is the ability to reach a false conclusion. At the end of the case, there's a denoumant that explains (with classic CSI flashbacks) how the crime went down, although in some cases, there's an overwhelming amount of evidence against one person, and you are able to get an arrest warrant for them, because a piece of exculpatory evidence was missed. In these cases, you'll see a quick screen explaining how the killer was set free (and receive a poor review grade and miss the achievement). The scary possibility of sending innocent people to jail because you screwed up is integral to making CSI a winner instead of a boring point-n-click farce where the interrogations have no dialog trees, you're just required to press A every so often.

Graphics (Imaginary Good Game Score in Parentheses): Agressively bad - muddy textures in a pixel-hunting game, and often times completely black swaths with no way to illuminate them contribute to a painful experience (the crisp colors and ability to use blacklights or a traditional flashlight make the game challenging but not limited) 1 (4)
Sound: Great effects and music (the original cast and a few "stunt voices" make a cool bonus) 4 (5)
Controls: Mean-spiritedly obtuse, making no use of any buttons except A and LB, ever. (intuitive and clever, with slick animations) 1 (5)
Tilt: An unfun chore - you're better off just watching the show (expands on the show and puts you in the middle of the action) 1 (4)
Overall (not an average): 1 (4)

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

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.

skate.

skate.


skate. (yes, with the illogical period) is a breath of fresh air coming from the old, "press A to crank a 900°" school of skateboarding, and it represents a change in the very ethics of how skating games will be made from here on out. Tony Hawk already cancelled their 2008 offering, ostensibly to "retool" their scheme, but really it's because skate. so soundly kicked their ass that they are scrambling for some kind of answer, and it isn't coming from their dev team.

The central, defining point of skate. is its unique, analog "flickit" controls, 100% analog representations of your on-screen activities. Gone are ridiculous fetch-quests, 1000 foot grinds or "big air" measured in football fields. It's just street skating along the fictional roads of San Vanelona (San Francisco, Vancouver and Barcelona mixed together), with the occasional challenge thrown in as you take your created skater through the ranks to achieve super-stardom (and a cover shot on Thrasher magazine, natch).

While the graphics are perfectly servicable, with a full, real world to explore with no loading times, and the music and sound effects perfectly adequate (even through the stilted deliveries of pro skaters liberally littered across the landscape), it's the control sceme that will keep you coming back. Literally every move in the game is available from the moment you start the tutorial, and the only limit is your own ability to hit the exact placement on the right stick for any particular move.

With a beautiful online integration, and the ability to seamlessly share videos and pics (a personal favorite of mine being Clang Clang), skate. offers a full plate of interactivity and community to go along with the single-player mode. The challenge ramps up just gradually enough, and button-mashing will get you nowhere in the frenzied calm of a high-score trick contest. I literally cannot go on enough about the tactile sensation that comes from trying a trick twenty times in a row (easy as pie thanks to a genius checkpoint-maker that can reset you to the top of a hill to try that gnarly transfer one more time) only to finally nail it after a long string of bone-breaking crashes.

Graphics: The entire city is explorable with no loading times whatsoever, and even though the hats all look slightly 'off,' everything about the city itself looks great. 4.
Sound: Nothing fancy, and the soundtrack has too much of a mish-mash feel. You'll be plugging in your iPod very soon. 2.
Controls: The star of the show. It's never felt so good to try something twenty times in a row. 5.
Tilt: You can't get closer to skateboarding without grip tape and a truck key. 5.
Overall (not an average): 5.

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.

Fight Night Round 3

Fight Night Round 3

There's a lot of room on a control pad. EA Chicago makes the most out of the least with Fight Night Round 3 - its totally analog punching feels fantastic, and the demise of the studio is more the pity with weak iterations of the Sport of Kings prancing around the ring as if they owned it.

While it was very nearly a release title on the XBox 360, FNR3 has polish and slick appearance that even games coming out in the last few weeks fail to match. The boxers are fantastically detailed- of course the actual fighters look amazingly lifelike- and literally every bead of sweat is rendered and moves in a convincing fashion. I seriously cannot state enough how amazingly, jaw-bustingly gorgeous every hit looks, and the extra touches, from the round card girls who have visible C-section scars to the disturbingly busted-up faces of your opponents in the later rounds, bring a sense of realism to your TV. And the knockouts - oh, the knockouts! Lovingly replayed in super-slow-motion, to see the eyes roll back and the limbs go limp as you utterly crush some ham-and-egger in a dingy gymnasium are a sight that makes you cherish your high-definition television purchase.

There's a lot to like about the straightforward career mode, starting from the bottom and building your way up, a Cus D'Amato clone with you the whole way. The training minigames are occasionally unfair, but generally you'll be able to shape your fighter into something resembling the lights-out superstar of your dreams. The sound effects in the game are very convincing, and the grunts and smashes sound convincing, so there's no complaints on that front, while the soundtrack fits right in, neither being forgettable studio tracks nor out-of-place licensed music.

But you didn't come to the ring to see pretty boy prerendered cutscenes or listen to music, you came to box, and box you shall. With a "minute to learn, lifetime to master" wholly analog control sceme, you'll be alternating jabs, crosses and uppercuts quickly, as your character makes his way up the leaderboards. The left stick controls your footwork, while the right stick, moved in quarter-circles, half-circles or sweeping Hadouken-like maneuvers you can control the flow of the fight. Taking the life bars off the bottom of the screen does shockingly little to alter your play, as the visual cues in this game are so strong that you'll be able to tell when a feather will knock over the opponent. Counters are handled intelligently, as the computer will keep you from pummelling them into oblivion while you have to fight defensively to win.

Really, it comes down to enjoyability, and this game has so much to offer even someone who isn't a boxing fan. Moreso than an over-the-top world fighting game like DoA or Street Fighter, FNR3 hits the sweet spot of being easy to pick up, intricate enough to offer repeat playthroughs, and with a customizable Haymaker punch, allow you to inject some life into your created fighter.

Graphics: Top-notch. This game looks fantastic. 5.
Sound: Nothing offensive, but few high points. 3.
Controls: Revolutionary and familiar at once; a premonition of EA's analog hard-on perfected by skate. 4.
Tilt: You'll say "oooh, did you see me lay that guy out!" more than once. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4.

Iron Man

Iron Man

Movie Tie-In games are always a crapshoot; many times they get rushed out the door in a terrible, unplayable mess. Iron Man dodges this ignoble fate - barely. If you were jazzed about the movie (and let's face it, it was a pretty awesome movie), this game does a great job recreating several scenes from it, completely with original Robert Downey Jr. voice-over work (which is pretty classy for a tie-in game), while being a servicable mission-based beat-em-up.

The graphics are uneven - Shellhead looks great, but the backgrounds and enemies are repetitive, nondescript and brown. There's a lot of space to explore, and some locations are reasonably unique, but to capitalize on the game's strongest asset (flying), the stages are huge, and thus either bland and empty or just uninteresting as you go hurtling past them.

The music in the game is present pretty much only in the menus, and then is just a score, but the explosions seem resounding enough. The complete voice-over preformance by Robert Downey Jr is something I can't stress enough. There is almost no excuse in this day and age not to have the best voice-acting talent available. Mass Effect managed to have full voice-overs for a giant, branching RPG for both a male and a female character; no game should aspire to less.

It's clear that one concept was emphasized throughout: "How Awesome would it be to fly around like Iron Man?" The team at Secret Level took that idea and absolutely ran with it, and flying feels great, although the controls do have a steep learning curve, but the aim-assist mitigates the difficulty involved in moving in three dimensions. But when the After-burners kick in and the Bronze Bombshell flies in to save the day, there's really nothing like it. Unfortunately, the missions he participates in do drag on pretty quickly, being barely interesting as it becomes checkpoint blasting at its finest. A little structure is never a bad thing, but this game takes it just far enough to be restricting, but not as far as, say, The Club, where the missions are tight enough to be endlessly replayable in search of a high score.

There's a lot to like about Iron Man, but it is in the end just shy of being a great game.

Graphics: Iron Man looks fantastic and his movement is slick. Still, the environments he plays in are lacking. 3.
Sound: Great voice-over work by Downey; everything else is so-so. 4.
Controls: Steep learning curve to getting Shellhead to do what you want, but flying feels great. 3.
Tilt: If it were a T-shirt, it would be sized "Extra Medium." 3.
Overall (not an average): 3.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Grand Theft Auto has assumed the mantle of "It's like X, but..." when describing games nowadays. Everything has to have the free-roaming, beat up anything, drive anything mentality to be a proper sandbox game, and yet most games fall on the wayside, championed by a few diehards while the main GTA franchise continues on unopposed. Not suprisingly, the most compelling GTA clone to come out in the last eight years was by GTA's developer, RockStar, and their "GTA, but in Boarding School" offering Bully. The version reviewed here is the much-improved Scholarship Edition, which uses the upgraded power of the 360 to touch up character models, sweeten backgrounds and increase draw distance.

What Rockstar did in Bully, though, was craft a great narrative. While they've always told stories, Bully pulls you through Jimmy's life as he tries to get by and earn the respect of his classmates, and with a unique and more importantly relevant timer/clock, and required missions, the game leads you through the sordid and Lord of the Flies-esque world of high school, and does it in an incisive and very funny series of missions.

The controls are standard fare for a Rockstar sandbox game; you'll recognize the configurations instantly and that level of familiarity makes actually playing the game relaxing. Music cues and dozens of unique voice actors are suitably distinctive and juvenile, and the game puts a lot of stress on not making itself so open that you feel lost. Missions have structure and fall organically into each other.

Bully is, most of all, funny. It has laugh-out-loud moments and is full of heart. The game will ring true to anyone who went through high school as an outcast, and the sweet satisfaction of the main story's resolution, despite the deus ex machina denoumont, will leave you smiling to yourself. The game does have shortcomings, though: Most alternate weapons in the game will be used solely to get their related achievements and then filed away. Collect-a-thons are back, unfortunately, a yoke Rockstar seems to never be able to get off its back, but thankfully escort missions are few and far between. No quick-warp between the world's four areas is a major letdown, as there's nothing to see in its "loading tunnels," and load screens are still present from time to time.

Graphics: Not the prettiest ever, but certainly competent for such a broad and deep game. 4.
Sound: The voice acting of the main character and the variations on the main theme are all fantastic. 4.
Controls: Breaks no new ground, but doesn't trip itself up with obscure configurations either. 3.
Tilt: Great story and acting come together in an idealized, predatory boarding school to paint a bitterly sarcastic take on growing up. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4.

King Kong

Peter Jackson's King Kong the Official Game of the Movie

I guess it isn't really fair to label this game an abomination. For its time, as basically a launch title for the 360, it does sport some impressive character models, not-atrocious acting, and it certainly has moments of greatness.

But, from the ludicrous full title on down, this game is a mish-mash of missed opportunities, poor design and outright bad play. The death knell to the game comes from the moment the first cut scene ends and you assume control of your player-character... and it isn't Kong. This game features completely straight-forward play, the worst of the worst in on-rails first-person action, with the occasional "get red key, open red door" action. The backgrounds are an endless sea of re-used backgrounds and flora, the worst I've seen since the Library in Halo. The game has survival elements in that you have to conserve ammuntion because the endless rib-bones available are more than useless (they cause no melee damage, only when thrown), but some enemies are mysteriously invincible to bullets and can only be hurt by native weaponry. Then again, every few stages your skillfully stored-up ammunition is all stripped from you, so why bother saving ammo?

The game becomes absolutely fantastic the moment you gain control of King Kong, though, offering a smorgasboard of racing-style tree swinging chases and brutal, violent combat (V-Rex assassinations are particularly satisfying), but you almost don't want to fight the bosses because it means you're about to return to playing as Jack, the worthless human. You're left wondering why the whole game didn't just eschew the humans and go for "GTA: Skull Island."

The controls are painfully slow: you walk at a snail's pace, you turn even slower, the unintuitive buttons are mapped badly and not adjustable. The gunplay is uninspired, hit location irrelevant, and melee nonexistant. The complaint that it is little more than an interactive movie is very apt; there's very little in the way of overarching goals or multiple paths to solve a puzzle, though occasionally you can brute-force a solution instead of following instructions, though this occasionally will cause the NPCs to ignore the trigger to advance the plot.

All these complaints ignore the most important detractor: length. This game is 6 hours long, with next to zero replayability (though a welcome level-select screen did allow me to replay the Kong chase scene, which again is really the highlight of the title). As a $60 title, this would leave a terrible taste in mouth; thank God it was only a GameFly rental for me.

Graphics: Backgrounds and common enemies are repetitive, but Kong himself looks great, as do most NPCs. 2.
Sound: Mostly absent. Appropriate hisses and rustles abound, but it's unmemorable. 2.
Controls: Atrocious. Everything is slow and plodding, and you're either button-mashing (Kong stages) or endlessly fighting a slow-moving, slow-turning Jack. 1.
Tilt: It's just like the Peter Jackson movie: Long, boring, occasionally aggrivating, with a few awesome scenes mixed in. 1.
Overall (not an average): 1.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect

Remember all that stuff I said yesterday about StarCon 2? Yeah, Mass Effect blows it out of the water on almost every level.

As Commander Shephard, you use your unique skill set to bring a rogue cop to justice and eventually save the galaxy from a threat beyond time. Along the way, you make some friends, make more enemies, and learn more about Krogan testicles than you probably wanted to. Saren, a galactic James Bond-type, has gone missing and stolen some pretty valuable information, information you too accidentally came into posession of, a warning of doom from beyond. The race is on from the very first scene in the game to save the galaxy, though the shape of that galaxy once the major crisis is averted is up to you and your actions entirely.

First, here's everything that's wrong with Mass Effect: Needless wandering across planets in a difficult-to-control MAKO all-terrain tank, squadmates that require constant supervision, an occasional chugging framerate, repetitive "dungeon" assets and a storyline that honestly isn't all that branching, compared to Star Control II.

I'll address these in turn:

• I personally loved the MAKO sections and running across the different planet types. With hundreds of detailed descriptions on everything, there's so much going on it's ridiculous. Planets have their own identity, even minor ones with little or no quest-related activities.
• Your squadmates are actually a lot more competent than people give them credit for- Mass Effect is the first game ever that I felt comfortable letting my teammate operate a sniper rifle on.
• The chugging framerate is the price for such a dazzlingly beautiful game; Mass Effect is what people mean when they say "next-gen game." There's so much going on, with so much intricate detail the game occasionally simply demands you stop a second and just take it all in.
• The repetitive "dungeons" I thought were sufficiently explained by the economies of standardization that would be required for any sort of interstellar colonization, and besides any "storyline-centric" planets got their own, fully-realized designs.
• The non-branching storyline is due to Mass Effect being the first of a planned trilogy, and now that the engine and many art assets are already banked, the sequel should be beyond fantastic.

The music is so far beyond anything we've had in games before; it's evocative of Vangelis (composers of the Blade Runner soundtrack) as well as the brooding of more menacing sci-fi films like Aliens and Life Force. Each area has its own permutations, but like a great opera, they all tie into the main theme.

Gameplay-wise, it's a testament to the game's quality that the only bad things people have to say are about bugs, which are present in every game, and far from game-crippling in this one. It's so easy to get lost in this game, running around, visiting with people who have interesting tidbits of information for you, none of which is integral to the plot. I've spent hours in the Codec just reading the various entries into species' histories and triumphs.

Combat in this game is satisfyingly visceral, and there is a real learning curve to it. Fortunately, right around the time you get the hang of it on your first playthrough, you become an unstoppable killing machine assuming you're paying attention and specializing your squadmates for their normal roles.

I'd like to take a quick aside here and bemoan the death of the Instruction Manual. With the notable and thankful exception of RockStar games, the art of a well-crafted, in-universe and evocative instruction manual that comes packaged with a game has fallen by the wayside, and in this case, it's a glaring omission. Most times, a game has a ham-handed tutorial shoehorned into the first half-hour of gameplay; Mass Effect does nothing of the kind, and without a manual that really breaks down your options, most common complaints I've seen of the game are from players who don't know how to wring the most from it. Mass Effect is ironically one of the tighter and more interesting squad-based third person shooters out there, despite being firmly in the RPG camp.

I sunk more hours into this game than any other in all of 2007; it really was simply the best thing you can possibly play on the system up until the release of Fallout 3. The ending was suitably satisfying, whether you were playing as a paragon saving the universe or a renegade just getting by and surviving the best s/he can.

Graphics: Perfection. Enemies, locations, vehicles, all had a strong and evocative design, from the top down fully realized. 5.
Sound: The best score in video games easily since Silent Hill 2, although some NPC chatter can be inane, and the Male Shepherd voice-actor, while not bad, is demonstrably worse than the female one. 4.
Controls: Slick use of all the buttons on the controller, though the menu system is abysmal. 4.
Tilt: This is a sci-fi epic, and I have never had an experience as glued-to-the-screen fantastic as the last three hours of this game, a rollercoaster of epic proportions. 5.
Overall (not an average): Tendrils' Top Pick.

Transformers: The Game

Transformers: The Game

Movie Tie-in games are almost universally awful. There are rare exceptions, and when they are good, it's usually in spite of the movie license, not because of it. Guarenteed sales because of well-meaning but clueless parents/grandparents make it a dicey proposition to devote any more resources to a game than the bare minimum, and it shows.

Transformers: The Game is sadly not one of those exceptions. The average gamer's age is hovering in the late 20's and rising - these are your core game-buying demographic, and they grew up on the Generation 1 Transformers. Even if you were going to slavishly base your game around the atrocious 2007 eponymous movie release, failing to include the ability to switch to Generation 1 skins (at least, switching without disabling achievements) is a major failing of the game. While the animations are slick and the game looks nice (although with a painfully short draw distance, especially for an open-worlder with so many tiny collectables), there's nothing more cringe-inducing than trying to enjoy a game where you play as a hideous exoskeleton robot.

While that's a lot of fanboy whining, there's a lot to dislike about the game otherwise. Your protagonist is always silent, even for characters that voicework was provided for in other scenes, and I desperately wanted something to attach myself to the robot on screen, just a simple "affirmative" or "on my way" would do the trick. The game does feature some nice destructible environments, but also ball-busting difficulty out of nowhere on certain missions, usually due to the game's sad choice of making your weapons into pea-shooters that will not fire straight unless you use your lock-on skill, which is locked to the speed and angle your camera can turn - not the direction your arm could aim. Driving (and flying, which has no altitude, pitch or yaw control, so basically driving without roads) is a mess top to bottom.

The most frustrating thing about this game by far is that it could have been that Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or Chronicles of Riddick that ends up being one of those "WTF" titles on your shelf that people laugh at when they come over and you get to lord your "Diamond-Finding Rough-Searching Skillz" over them as you explain why this tie-in was a blast.



Graphics: Everything is very, very pretty, when it's not totally pitch-black because there's no gamma control to lighten up things when you're indoors or after dark. 4.

Sound: Things crash and explode with appropriate booming resonance, but there's a startling lack of voice acting, especially since they clearly had people do voice work for the characters you control in the game. 2.

Controls: Abysmal. Getting to do the things that make this game fun are a chore. 1.

Tilt: There's a lot to like in the potential of this game, but in the end it falls flat. 2.

Overall (not an average): 2.

The Club

The Club

The Club is the most ambitious shmup of all time. Or possibly the most creative third-person shooter of 2008. The basic premise is that shmups don't have to be horizontally-scrolling with spaceship sprites to be called a shmup. The Club takes all the conventions of R-Type, Ikaruga and DoDon Pachi and instead applies them to a "Most Dangerous Game" storyline with gritty and worn-down environments.

In an FPS, you'd be able to dispatch a few enemies and then stop to appreciate the work that's gone into these pretty-nice-looking backgrounds and environments. But that sort of thinking belongs in another a game - The Club only cares about one thing, the constantly-draining score multiplier. You take one of your over-the-top caricatures of killers through the cunningly designed on-rails paths, using whatever weapons are available to mow down endless mooks in search of the ultimate combo kill, using fancy moves, death rolls and the tagging of hidden skull icons to keep your precious, precious meter full to the brim.

There's a visceralness to the game, as the grinding soundtrack, grunts and heaves of straining enemies and crunches and crashes of shattered entryways and windows as you make your way through a level. Apparently the Announcer from Unreal Tournament was on vacation, as announcements such as "Penetrator" and "Rico-SLAY!!" are exulted upon your avatar for shooting people through walls or bouncing bullets off of surfaces into their brainpans.

There's a few balance issues, as certain guns are more than useless since 99% of the time the various SMGs available are always going to be the best weapon for the job. Characters have three stats, but they all play almost identically unless your choice has the most extreme splits in statistics, so realistically the only thing that matters is which character's appearance you prefer.

While not necessarily the greatest game of the year, especially in the same year as Dead Space, GTA IV and other luminaries, this game is certainly the most ambitious title of the year, mashing up third-person tactical shooters, classic shmup play and a dash of arcade racing into The Club. The constant yearning to beat your last high score will always be there, offering infinite replayability even though the online community has dwindled.

Graphics: Travel to interesting, varied locales, meet highly-detailed enemies and environments... and kill them all, with style. 4.
Sound: Over-the-top announcer voices never get old, and the grimy scenery is matched with appropriate screams and crashes. 3.
Controls: A slight stutterstep, some placements of buttons are cumbersome, and the game feels like it should have a cover system that it lacks. 2.
Tilt: Great, trashy fun with a good amount of replayability. 4.
Overall (not an average): 3.