XBOX 360

I do not have high expectations based on movie licenses games, Especially in terms of depth. So It Was a pleasant surprise When 2 Cars started off with a tutorial telling me how to drift and trick to fill up the turbo gauge. Avalanche Used in Tried and true recipe to make a kart racer with weapons Good, short-cuts, turbo boosts, and well-rounded multiplayer. While the game Is...

Magic: The Gathering has been around for many years. I was first introduced to the world of powerful spells, big beasts, and deadly dragons during my middle school days and have had an on again off again relationship with the game. Not being much of a tournament player I would often have a very hard time finding matches. That was until I saw Magic: The Gathering Duels of the...

The changes made to Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition are minuscule. The addition of Evil Ryu and Oni as well as Yun and Yang, who first appeared in Street Fighter III, are the major differences between the versions. The roster of 39 characters is absolutely huge and tournament players are shivering at the army of Yuns that is likely headed their way. Just take a look at Daigo...

F.3.A.R. is a first-person horror shooter developed by Day 1 Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive. While the shooting is competent and being able to play as the Point Man’s brother, Paxton Fettel, adds variety to the experience, F.3.A.R. does little in the way to elicit any actual fear in the player. The series has always been about tactical shooting, and it’s something that this game does well. The series...

I usually try to avoid unnecessary profanity while writing reviews, but there’s only so much I can do when the protagonist’s full name is Garcia Fucking Hotspur. Then again, that should tell you everything you need to know about Shadows of the Damned. The new game from Suda51 and Shinji Mikami is essentially one long penis joke wrapped in an Umbrella Corporation prophylactic and if you’re disgusted at the...

Alice: Madness Returns takes place eleven years after the events of American McGee’s original Alice, and the titular heroine is now out of the asylum and working in an orphanage for similarly wayward youth in London. However, she’s still in therapy and her job is as much a charity as it is a responsibility. Her wards all make snide comments behind her back and most everyone else regards her...

Another Early Crest In The Diablo WaveThe big tsunami for an entire genre, Diablo III is still gathering momentum somewhere out in the sea of game development, but there are plenty of titles attempting to fill the dungeon crawling void until it comes in. The indie hit Torchlight is one example, the recent Dungeon Hunter: Alliance was another and now, with mild surprise, we have the arrival of Dungeon...

The Game. The Legend. The 12 Year Production Cycle.There’s really not much to say about the infamous Duke Nukem Forever at this point. Originally conceived by 3D Realms in 1997, the game has passed through the hands of at least two complete engine changes, and three separate developers. An astounding 14 years and immeasurable amounts of angst, hype and scepticism later, the game is finally out on shelves for...

Operation Flashpoint: Red River not for everyone. It’s closer to a military simulator than your average holiday FPS and the pace, structure, and gameplay reflects that more tactical approach. There’s not even any competitive multiplayer, so if you’re expecting Call of Duty or Battlefield, you will be disappointed. However, Operation Flashpoint is nonetheless an incredibly deep game with a lot of strategic nuance, and it’s worth a glance if...

I’ve always wanted to learn how to drive, and it’s one of my greatest personal failures not yet having my driver’s license. It’s come back to haunt me on several occasions and my predilection for racing games is not without a sense of irony. DiRT 3, from Codemasters, is a stylish, varied and detailed rally car racer. The game gives you a sense of speed, a sense of control...

Pirates In PiecesTraveller’s Tales has turned “LEGO-fying” major movies into something of a cottage industry, and they are back with yet another obvious turn. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is popular, family friendly and tackles one of the current popular caricatures of recent years, the eye-patch wearing, peg leg toting, parrot feeding pirate. Throw in some big budget action sequences and Johnny Depp, and you’ve got a potential...

Just The Facts, Ma’am.If there’s one thing that games haven’t done a whole lot of, it’s a good old fashioned murder mystery. In recent times, there have been titles like Heavy Rain and even the Phoenix Wright series on portables that have tackled the question “whodunit” but the genre is greatly outnumbered by games that prefer straight up shooting rather than bringing a criminal to justice. Now Team Bondi...

Bad Pun #1: It’s Hammer TimeOh movie-tie in games. You are the videogame equivalent of that one extra drink at the bar. It seems like a great way of continuing an experience you enjoy, but the decision to circum to temptation always ends up being filled with regret and the occasional spew of vomit. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule like the excellent PS2 Spidey sandbox experience Spiderman...

BRINK, developed by Splash Damage and Bethesda Software, is a derivative first-person shooter with an emphasis on multiplayer. What was promised is far from what was received. We were fed lines about how BRINK was going to revolutionize the way gamers played online and offline, how it would be a streamlined experience built upon revolutionary technology. The game, I will admit, looks...

Atmospheric drop-in manoeuvres are by far the most intense part of Section 8: Prejudice. Watching the ground move closer and closer, dropping in behind enemy lines, taking down enemies before running out using an Overdrive boost. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, yet when you rinse and repeat the formula with an insubstantial story, derivative gameplay and a general lack of anything revolutionary you find yourself playing...

In late 2009, Capybara Games released Critter Crunch, a much talked about gem of puzzle gem games, which not only showed an imaginative force in the small studio but also that the old genre still had a lot of kick for the imaginative. Within the same gasp of time they also gave us Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, which altogether signed off that perhaps Capy had a secret...

You’ll Be Abused & Like ItPortal 2 is better than the original. It is also probably a safe shoe-in for funniest game of 2011, if such a category existed for game awards. It is smart, it is cruel, it is witty and it will, at every turn, constantly tell players that they are awful people who are fat and orphaned. Not only will you pay for the privilege of...

Mortal Kombat has always been a fighting game for the mature audience, but in recent years the series has lost much of the luster that the fatalities used to provide. Now, however, the series is back with the rebooted Mortal Kombat (MK), and this time they did it right. NeatherRealm Studios took the game from the past, added a story, a challenge tower, and a solid tag team mode...

Rush’N Attack: Ex Patriot is ostensibly a sequel to the Rush’N Attack arcade game from the 80s, although at this point most people will regard the follow-up as a fairly standard 2D platformer. That’s not necessarily a problem. Rush’N Attack isn’t the most technically proficient game, but it’s cheap and the gameplay mostly delivers so it’s about as enjoyable as any other recent budget download.In Rush’N Attack, you play...

Hothead Games spent most of 2010 bringing us multiple versions of DeathSpank, but that particular development chapter is closed and Swarm, the studio’s latest project, yields far more disappointing results. Swarm simply lacks focus, so while there are plenty of interesting ideas it never amounts to anything coherent.The basic premise behind Swarm is simple. You control the swarm, an amorphous blue mass composed of fifty independent swarmites, and your...