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SIMS 3 FOR MAC
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7. After installing game, go to c drive/program files/Electronic Arts/Sims 3/Game/Bin and drag the crack in
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9. Click on Ts3 to start the game
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Raiden Fighters Aces Review

Raiden Fighters Aces Review

Budget-priced and packed with options, this arcade shooter compilation is a decent game and a good value.

The Good

* Three solid arcade shooters at one low price
* Can be enjoyed by players of all skill levels
* Arcade-perfect emulation.

The Bad

* Only about an hour of actual game content
* No online cooperative play.

Originally released in arcades between 1996 and 1998, the three Raiden Fighters games were conventional but very solid vertically scrolling shooters. Now, all three titles have been compiled and released as Raiden Fighters Aces, and the quality of these games makes them as competent now as they were back in the day. With a low price tag and a terrific number of options for customizing the experience, Raiden Fighters Aces has a decent bang-to-buck ratio that makes it a worthy addition to the library of any shoot-'em-up fan.

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

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Each Raiden Fighters game plays out in essentially the same way. You pick from an assortment of aircraft of varying power and speed and then take to the skies to destroy an overwhelming onslaught of enemy planes, tanks, and ships, along with the occasional massive boss war machine, dodging the shower of bullets sent your way all the while. As you destroy enemies, you can pick up laser or missile power-ups, which determine whether your aircraft currently has its laser weapon or missile weapon available, and you can acquire slave ships that follow you around and increase your firepower. You also have a limited number of devastating bombs at your disposal. There's nothing innovative or unusual about these shooters, but they have an unflagging intensity and level of craftsmanship that make them memorable.

On the default settings--three credits, normal difficulty--the games offer a serious challenge, though not one that can't be overcome with plenty of practice, memorization, and sheer bullet-dodging skill. However, you can alter the settings to give yourself as few or as many credits as you'd like and choose from seven difficulty levels, so regardless of whether you want the relaxing satisfaction of tearing through the opposition effortlessly or a pulse-pounding one-in-a-million shot at taking down an overwhelming enemy force, Raiden Fighters Aces can deliver.

In addition to the three core games, there's a boss rush mode, an expert mode in which defeated enemies send bullets at you as they explode, a customizable training mode, and a time-limited score attack mode. You can also play a ranked game in the arcade, boss rush, or bullet-crazy expert game types, though you're limited to a single credit and to either normal or arcade difficulty. The leaderboards nicely rank you both against all other players and against only those who used the same ship. And should you want to know how those at the top achieved their high scores, you can view their complete play-throughs, which is a helpful feature if you're keen on improving your game. Sadly, if you want to play these games with a friend, you'll need to be in the same room, because online cooperative play is strangely absent. As you'd expect, taking on the enemy forces with a wingman is more enjoyable than flying solo. You can employ different tactics when coordinating your attacks with a buddy, and there are certainly more than enough enemies to go around.

Turns out shooting things and then seeing them blow up can be fun. Who knew?

The visuals for the Raiden Fighters games exude an imaginativeness and a flair for the dramatic that make them a delight, even today. You'll soar over fog-covered forests and snowy train yards, through lightning storms and blood-red skies, as your lasers or missiles fill the screen with your exploding enemies. The stars of the show are the bosses--huge tanks, screen-spanning battleships, planes twenty times the size of yours--which gradually get more and more damaged by your attacks until they finally blow up in spectacular fashion. The graphics here are arcade-perfect and offer as impressive an array of customization options as the gameplay. You can set the game speed to 60 frames per second or go with the 54fps rate of the arcade machines. You can choose from a number of smoothing options or leave the graphics in all their pixelated glory, and you can turn on a scanline emulation effect that will make the experience all the more nostalgic if you first encountered these games during their arcade heyday. If you're willing to stand your widescreen TV on its side, you can rotate the game screen to maximize the amount of space taken up by the action, or you can play it as a side-scrolling shooter, though it feels awkward to do so. There's also an assortment of options that more dramatically impact the visuals, mimicking how the game would look in a cabinet with a busted projector, in monotone or sepia, and the like, though these are more novelty options than anything else. The music can't be altered or customized, but it's terrific as it is. The catchy, exciting techno tunes heighten the intensity of the action. The sounds of weapon fire and explosions are standard fare, but they get the job done.

It's a good thing there are so many customization options, because there really isn't a whole lot of game to these games. Each of them can be completed in 20 minutes or so, but the quality of that time, and the variety of ways in which it can be experienced, make this compilation worth coming back to time and time again. Twenty bucks for three decent shooters from the arcades of yesteryear isn't a bad deal.

Help Wanted: 50 Wacky Jobs Review

Help Wanted: 50 Wacky Jobs Review

This vocational minigame collection provides some wacky fun, despite sometimes feeling like a chore.

The Good

* Bizarre, amusing presentation
* Great variety of minigames
* Random events stave off monotony
* Campaign is creative and lasts a long time
* Discount price.

The Bad

* Some minigames have control and design issues
* Campaign can get repetitive
* Frequent interruptions can drag on.

There are a lot of minigame collections on the Wii, but none are quite like Help Wanted: 50 Wacky Jobs. For starters, it's premise is pretty wacky. You have to save Earth from a meteor by working an assortment of odd jobs (read: minigames) in order to earn money so you can buy items from a television shopping network to postpone the meteor's impact and eventually destroy it. Every weird element becomes progressively stranger as you play the game, ensuring that the game's oddball charm holds up for a good long while. And surprisingly, Help Wanted is quite long. There is no shortage of intergalactic objects queued up to smash into Earth, and by working hard, you can level up in any of the 50 jobs and earn even more money. The result is a long-form minigame campaign, almost like the career mode in a sports game. This unique structure gives Help Wanted more longevity than many of its peers, but the exposition and activities between minigames can begin to drag. Though Help Wanted is still vulnerable to predictable pitfalls (even good minigames are fun only so many times), its robust structure and good-natured wackiness make it uniquely entertaining.

Celebrity interviews and skydiving. Just another workaday week.

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Like most teenagers living with their parents and grandparents in the suburbs, your primary concern is to save Earth from imminent peril. Your gung-ho grandpa is the only other person who seems to care much about this impending crisis, and he serves as your guide throughout the game. Through him you learn that the items needed to delay and destroy the meteor can be purchased from a television shopping network. The goofy presenters are happy to sell you a variety of merchandise, but the disaster-averting items can only be purchased with points. To earn points, you must use money to buy other items on the network, including uniforms that unlock new jobs, support items that boost your job performance, and mementos that go in your trophy hall. To earn money, you must work jobs by playing minigames. One job is one minigame that takes up one day of the in-game calendar. As the days and weeks pass, you fall into the rhythm of working and shopping, working and shopping, taking breaks occasionally to socialize with your family or to use a defensive item on the meteor. You will likely manage to destroy the meteor in a few short weeks, at which point you'll be greeted with a new threat from outer space. Back to work!

Though this cycle can get repetitive, there are a number of things that keep Help Wanted feeling fresh. First and foremost are the variety and availability of jobs. There are a whopping 50 different jobs in the game, but you can only unlock them as fast as they become available for purchase. This forces you to do some jobs more than once, introducing you to the concept of leveling up. The more money you earn in a given job, the closer you'll get to becoming a professional in that job. Pro-level jobs are tougher, but you can earn much more per day. You get a maximum nine job opportunities to choose from per day, so your favorites may not always be available. Your work week becomes a diverse mix of working brand-new jobs, leveling up in your favorite jobs, and taking the best of what's available. This helps keep you from overplaying one particular minigame, which is crucial, because like most minigames, there isn't much to them.

The road to global salvation is paved with 9-to-5 jobs.

This isn't to say the job minigames are bad, however. Some of them are quite enjoyable. Cruising around a well-stocked patch of sea and throwing your fishing net with the Wii Remote is fun, and running around the red carpet and interviewing celebrities is oddly amusing. The minigames don't last more than a few minutes, but each represents a thoughtful slice of activity from a given profession. You'll use the remote to iron out wrinkles as a Dry Cleaner, memorize and repeat a sequence of images as a Newscaster, spook timid visitors as a Haunted House Crew member, and yank rotten teeth out as a Dentist. There is a delightful variety of things to do, but not all jobs are created equal. There are a few that suffer from control issues (Line Judge will sometimes interpret remote motions incorrectly), while others are just poorly designed (the Action Hero controls are awkward and unrewarding). Some jobs are just plain difficult, and using support items to help you out is the only way to complete them. Fortunately, problematic jobs are usually avoidable thanks to the sheer number of other opportunities.

Sometimes the number of opportunities available may dwindle, thanks to the random events that pop up throughout the work week. Some days you will oversleep, leaving only a few jobs available. Other days you may be offered a mystery job for double pay, or you may be challenged to beat your earnings from the day before. Burglars, mischievous siblings, traveling gamblers, and grandparents will make helpful (or harmful) appearances and keep your daily grind from becoming too routine. The downside to all of these entertaining interruptions is that while there are many different varieties, they aren't so diverse that you won't see plenty of repeats. In addition to these events, you'll weather a parade of unskippable notices as you progress through the game. Notices of the date changing, package deliveries, paycheck tallying, and meteor updates pad your days and can make the downtime between jobs seem a bit too long. This isn't always the case, though, and generally Help Wanted moves along at a good clip, interspersing surprises with reasonable frequency.

Virtual crying babies are about as fun as real crying babies.

You'll also have to work some shopping time in to your weekly routine, because that's the only way you'll get the items you need to save the world. You can use items to delay the impact of the meteor or destroy it entirely, at which point you'll be faced with yet another doomsday object. There are a lot of threats to Earth's safety, apparently, and it will take you a long time to work through them all. Beyond the lengthy single-player campaign, Help Wanted offers some competitive multiplayer modes in which players compete to earn the most money in a particular job, or across a series of activities. These modes don't have as much charm as the single-player action does, but they are an amusing way to get a friend in on the action.

Help Wanted is a minigame collection that owes its appeal to its creative premise (the discount price doesn't hurt either). The vocationally themed minigames run the gamut from clever and enjoyable to awkward and boring. Fortunately, you can generally avoid the bad ones, and the fact that you're doing it all in an effort to save the world makes the whole endeavor more enjoyable somehow. The people you meet and the things that happen to you along the way create a bizarre sense of charm and community, which helps the game stay fresh even when you're hours into it and have already saved the world multiple times. The formula eventually does wear thin, the minigames grow tiresome, and the sometimes too-frequent interruptions can make it feel like a bit of a grind. Such are the pitfalls to which all minigame collections ultimately succumb, but Help Wanted is so courageously nutty in the face of this looming boredom that you can't help but enjoy yourself.

EA Sports Active Review

EA Sports Active Review

You can really feel the burn with this collection of exercises and sports-themed challenges.
The Good

* Wide range of exercises and sports that really put you through your paces
* Strict workout regimens keep you interested
* Can be very challenging, especially if you're not aerobically fit.

The Bad

* Resistance bands are a little weak
* Some exercises aren't great without the optional Wii Balance Board.

Keeping motivated is one of the biggest problems with any plan to get in shape. Countless aspiring exercisers have bought gym memberships that went unused, or treadmills that wound up next to the washer and dryer, doing time as the world's most expensive clothesline. Providing couch potatoes with enough incentive to get up and get moving is even more difficult for console-based exercise games. You've got to provide something very interesting for gamers, because flopping onto the couch and vegging out with a gamepad in one hand and a calorie-crammed soda in the other is never more than a click away. So you have to hand it to EA Sports Active, a personal trainer program for the Nintendo Wii loaded with a ton of innovative exercises and sports challenges that keep you coming back for more. Pro athletes aren't going to turn to the game suddenly to keep them in shape during the off-season, but the average Joe looking for a heart-pumping home workout should be more than pleased with this gym in a box.

The one-on-one sports challenges are very addictive.

Actually, "gym in a box" might be an overstatement. EA Sports Active comes with just the game disc, a Wii Nunchuk-housing thigh band that tracks running, and a stretchy resistance band for lunging and weightlifting (and making your room smell strongly of peppermint). However, the use of these two rather unassuming items lets the game replicate a wide range of athletic activities. Add in the Wii Remote, which is used for throwing, punching, and doing curls, and from the comfort of your living room you can take on just about any exercise that you can do in a gym or on a track. The game also supports the Wii Balance Board for a number of activities, although it isn't a requirement.

Exercises are varied and numerous. A lack of the repetition that makes so many people skip out on the real gym is the only common value shared between them. You can freely choose among dozens of activities geared to get the blood flowing, all divided into separate categories for cardio, lower body, upper body, and sports. It's an impressive collection that includes running on a track, squats and lunges, bicep curls, boxing with targets and a heavy bag, inline skating complete with jumping tricks, aerobic dancing, hitting and throwing a baseball, swinging a tennis racquet, shooting a basketball, and so on. All you do is watch a workout leader in an onscreen box and follow her movements, which are mimicked by your in-game avatar. The great variety of activities keeps the game feeling fresh even many days into working out. It's tough to get bored when you're constantly switching between exercises that hit all muscle groups. Whenever you feel a little repetition creeping in, you can just move on to something completely different. Sick of running on the track? Head to the baseball diamond. Tired of bicep curls? Move over to the heavy bag for a bit.

The primary thrust of the activities is aerobic. Most of the activities tend to focus more on speed and flexibility, rather than strength. Much of the running is combined with high kicks. Boxing is more about fast punches of the heavy bag than dishing out blows with serious oomph. And the resistance bands are so stretchy that they don't pose much of a challenge for larger men. Nevertheless, don't think that this is some lightweight pushover. The easy exercise routines push you through a grueling 20 minutes of running, stretching, and lifting. Be warned: If you're not in reasonably good fitness, at least from a cardio standpoint, the very first introductory workout will beat the crap out of you and leave you soaked in sweat. Don't go in expecting a cakewalk, especially if you're the average couch-potato gamer coming off a winter in which the closest you came to exercise was watching the kid next door shoveling your driveway.

Everything is heavily structured to keep you on course and following a regimen. So though you can simply fire up the game and pick a single exercise to mess around with, the design focuses on choosing a predesigned workout plan with easy, medium, or hard difficulty; setting up a custom exercise program that incorporates up to nine exercises of your choice; or taking on the 30-Day Challenge administered by Oprah Winfrey's aerobics guru, Bob Greene. There is even an option to work out with a friend, which provides an extra little bit of motivation. You can make EA Sports Active be nearly whatever you want it to be. Want a pick-up-and-sweat program for occasional exercise? You got it. Want a "whole life" journal that pushes you on a daily basis, keeps you fixed to a workout calendar, tracks calorie losses over long periods, and even asks questions about what you had to eat yesterday? You've got that, too.

Although the resistance bands aren't strong enough to allow for serious strength training, they're more than suitable to use in a rigorous aerobic workout.

About the only thing you don't have here is first-rate production values. The visuals are cartoonish, and the audio effects are restricted to a pretty limited selection of generic workout music. At least the workout leader is well animated, which makes it easy to follow along, and she also calls out lots of encouragement and instructions to keep you motivated. There are also a few minor issues with controllers. The cord between the Wii Remote and Nunchuk is probably the most serious annoyance. It is a bit small for some of the curls, forcing you to stretch it to its limits to register the movement successfully, and on other exercises you can easily flip the cord right over your head when moving forward. The leg strap could also be a little bit bigger to accommodate larger thighs.

Although it remains debatable how effective EA Sports Active--or any other video game-based workout program--will be at getting the masses into serious shape, the game's combination of exercises and motivational programs is undeniably catchy. It will get your heart pumping, help you lose a few pounds, and is certainly a lot more healthy than indulging in the usual, more sedentary video game alternatives.

Wii Motion Plus (Tryout By the parul)

Nintendo announced the Wii MotionPlus at the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and now we have a final version of the product in our hands. The MotionPlus add-on plugs in to the bottom of the Wii Remote and works with the Remote's sensors to make controls even more precise. Expect to find the MotionPlus in stores for $20 on June 8. We got to try out the MotionPlus with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and Grand Slam Tennis, both from EA. Both games will launch on June 8 for $49.99 and will later come bundled with the MotionPlus for $59.99.
Wii MotionPlus All by itself It's tiny

At E3 2008, InvenSense's Joe Virginia, VP of wireless business, was kind enough to explain that the Wii MotionPlus uses multiaxis gyroscopes to sense rotational movement, and combining the MotionPlus' rotation sensing with the Wii Remote's other built-in sensors brings new gaming capabilities to the Wii. The Wii MotionPlus has three gyroscopes to track rotational movement across all three axes in 3D space.

The Wii MotionPlus attachment plugs in to the bottom of the Wii Remote. It adds about an inch and a half to the length of the controller and includes a pass-though port for the Nunchuk. The MotionPlus' port cover folds into the Nunchuk's connector to stay out of the way when the Nunchuk is connected. The MotionPlus has a lock that keeps the add-on attached to the Remote. Plugging the whole affair together doesn't take too long. The connector for the MotionPlus has a lot of play, making it easy to connect to the Wii Remote while in the included rubber sleeve. Connecting a Nunchuk to the bottom of the MotionPlus is equally trivial.
All of it Underside Close up

The version of the MotionPlus we saw at E3 2008 looks quite similar to the final version aside from a few color changes.
E3 2008 Wii MotionPlus 1 E3 2008 Wii MotionPlus 2 E3 2008 Wii MotionPlus 3

Our first experiences with the MotionPlus were at E3 2008 with Wii Sports Resort. When you're throwing the Frisbee in the Disc Dog game, the MotionPlus' sensor detects how you're holding the disc in your hand. Rotating your wrists causes the Frisbee to rotate up or down onscreen in response. The Wii Remote, MotionPlus, and Nunchuk become handle bars in the Power Cruising Jet Ski racing game. Rotating the Wii Remote with the MotionPlus attached activates the throttle just like on a motorcycle or personal water scooter.

Grand Slam Tennis incorporates many new controls to better simulate an actual tennis match. The MotionPlus accurately represents both forehand and backhand shots. The added sensitivity gives gamers better ball placement on the court, and rotational controller movement adds spin to shots. Opinions varied from editor to editor, but most liked the added control schemes. Lazy gamers might have trouble though. The small movements you could get away with in Wii Sports Tennis definitely won't cut it in Grand Slam Tennis with the MotionPlus attached.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 makes use of the MotionPlus by giving you the ability to more precisely hit the ball. The game brings a new HUD element specifically for the MotionPlus that incorporates draw and fade capabilities. Twisting the controller either clockwise or counterclockwise determines which way the golf club head rotates in real time. While our golf skills aren't necessarily up to par, it wasn't difficult to take advantage of the new control scheme. Simple onscreen controls gave feedback on what we were doing (and more likely what we were doing wrong).

Those eager to get their hands on the Wii MotionPlus won't have to wait too much longer because the accessory is scheduled to ship in a scant few weeks.

Killing Floor Review

Killing Floor Review

This former Unreal Tournament 2004 mod is more fun than it has any right to be.
The Good

* Killing "zombies" is satisfying and fun
* Perks reward replay
* Stellar gunplay hits the spot.

The Bad

* Still looks like a mod
* Needs more maps
* Dialogue borders on sexual harassment.

Killing Floor is a cooperative survival shooter that pits you and up to five other players against wave after wave of genetically modified, humanoid "specimens" that have escaped the laboratory and are rapidly overrunning England. Although they are technically not undead, and the game consistently calls them "specimens," these creatures, which travel around in hoards trying to eat people, certainly won't be offended if you mistake them for zombies. These all-but-zombies come in a variety of breeds, you can kill them with a variety of weapons, and that pretty much sums up the game. Killing Floor is satisfying in its simplicity, though the lackluster graphics are a testament to its humble beginnings as an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod. Even as a full game, it forgoes accoutrements such as story, characters, and competitive multiplayer mode, yet where zombie-killing fun is concerned, it delivers in spades.

Please, don't feed the Patriarch.

Gameplay in Killing Floor is simple. Slaughter a batch of specimens, buy new equipment from the trader, and repeat until you have a boss fight with "The Patriarch," a nasty misanthrope with a rocket launcher, a chain gun, and the ability to go invisible. No verbose exposition, lengthy cutscenes, or half-baked attempts at character and story development are arbitrarily affixed to this pure first-person-shooter experience. From the beginning, you'll love the game's satisfying gunplay. Guns look and feel real thanks to convincing ballistics and iron sights, which make aiming both important and engaging. In addition, "pray and spray" is worthless on higher difficulty levels, and ammo is often sparse, so every shot counts. To survive the intense and often claustrophobic firefights, you must coordinate with your teammates and make good use of the environment, which you can accomplish by welding shut doors to create temporary choke points, forcing the creatures to fight on your terms. Furthermore, you need to try and complete each round near the trader, who moves her shop between waves (unfortunately she won't sell you her personal teleporter) and opens for business for only less than a minute each time.

At the start of each map, you must choose one of six perks that enhance your skills in certain areas and work like classes, minus the restrictions. For instance, field medics are faster at healing themselves and their teammates, whereas commandos do more damage with the assault rifle and are better at spotting invisible enemies. Regardless of which one you're playing at the time, you'll gain experience toward leveling up your perks every time you act appropriately in-game. For example, each headshot, with the right guns, counts toward the sharpshooter perk, and you earn experience for the firebug perk by roasting enemies to a crisp. When selecting a perk, you may want to look at your teammates, because although you can play with a squad full of chainsaw-wielding berserkers, a well-rounded team will increase your chance of survival.

Using an algorithm that factors in player achievements, such as long-distance kills and headshots, Killing Floor will occasionally send everyone into slow motion, aka ZED time. (The ZED stands for the same thing as the S in Harry S. Truman: nothing.) Although it can be helpful at higher difficulties, the slow motion kicks in all too often during uninspiring moments--such as when you're trying to turn around--and can become an annoyance, particularly on beginner difficulty. Another annoying situation can come up when you're trying to find and kill the final enemy in a wave. Though they generally succeed at navigating the map, creatures can occasionally become caught on something, and nothing is more frustrating than spending several minutes trying to find the last creature only to discover that it's invisible and stuck on a log 150 meters away from the trader.

Although Killing Floor technically has both single-player and multiplayer modes, the lack of any computer teammates means that single-player is good only for playing out your Rambo V: Zombie Apocalypse fantasies. Similarly, Cooperative mode is the only gametype (sorry, competitive players), and there are only five maps, which are, to be fair, all large and nonlinear, with plenty of corners to hide in, doors to weld behind you, and settings for heroic last stands. In multiplayer, your survival depends largely on your teammates, and coordinating with them is both fun and highly advantageous. Unfortunately, ample opportunities for griefing are also available. Mischievous, or simply misguided, teammates can weld shut the door to your escape route, forcing you to choose between going out guns blazing and trying to un-weld a door while fiends chew on your innards. Even more infuriating is not being able to visit the trader because some oaf is blocking the doorway, and given that friendly fire doesn't apply, you can't even execute him or her for it.

As in real life, a magic trail of red pixie dust guides you to the nearest arms dealer.

Visually, Killing Floor compares poorly with contemporary shooters, thanks to its five-year-old engine. Perhaps with this in mind, the developers went for a dark and gritty aesthetic, and when the lights are low, you won't notice how stiff the animations can be. Curiously, most of the specimens are nude, leaving you to wonder whether they rebelled against their masters due to a grossly inadequate clothing budget. The specimens come in familiar varieties, none of which look particularly great, including the zombie with the chainsaw; the zombie that goes invisible; the big, fat zombie that vomits acidic bile; and so on. The most interesting specimen is the fleshpound, a monstrosity with two meat grinders for arms and a giant yellow light on his chest that turns red when you provoke him, prompting a frenzied and deadly rampage. As far as gore is concerned, headshots provide delightful fountains of blood, and you can occasionally sever limbs, but the chainsaw feels anticlimactic. What's the point in having a chainsaw if you can't dismember zombies in a geyser of viscera that would fill the Roman Coliseum?

The sound effects are outstanding, especially for guns, and you can often use subtle sound clues to detect incoming enemies. Unfortunately, the voice acting and soundtrack don't achieve the same level of quality. To be fair, the problem with the voice acting is mostly with the script, except for the trader, who is just all-around bad. She constantly harasses you with repetitive and unappealing sexual innuendos, and the medics incessantly bleat that they are trying to heal you rather than "shag you." Meanwhile, derivative, generic metal music does little to improve the tone, though it does lend itself well to blasting zombies.

Killing Floor is permeated by a sense that you're having way more fun that you ought to be. It's absurd and crass, and yet you can't help but enjoy it. Maybe there is something inherently entertaining about gunning down hordes of zombies. Maybe the simple formula of fight, flight, or weld speaks to some primal part of the human brain. Whatever the reason, Killing Floor will have you gleefully decapitating monsters like the reincarnation of an ancient war god. It's just plain fun, and for only $20 you could do a lot worse.

Broken Sword DS Review

Broken Sword DS Review

Superior animation, an engaging story, and clever puzzles make Broken Sword well worth investigating.
The Good

* Engaging story
* Beautifully drawn
* Clever puzzles
* New scenes integrate well.

The Bad

* A couple of obtuse puzzles
* Some genre conventions now feel very dated.

Although the heyday of point-and-click adventure games may be long gone, Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars has stood the test of time. This Director's Cut is a carefully-wrought DS version that adds a host of new content to the original game and serves as an excellent demonstration of how good the point-and-click genre can be. The loss of the excellent voice-overs from the original is something of a shame, but this loss is more than made up for by the additional content and new puzzles that the Director's Cut moniker implies.

Silent but deadly.

Though the original game started in Paris with a seemingly random cafe bombing--albeit one performed by a clown--the Director's Cut opens the day before, with one of the series' two main characters, journalist Nico Collard, suddenly called for an interview with a prominent French industrialist. He ends up dead at the hands of a mime, and a global conspiracy slowly unfurls. The rest of the tale is seen primarily through the eyes of hapless tourist-cum-investigator George Stobbart, as it was in the original game. The story is engaging, spanning five countries and a variety of locations. The unsolved murder quickly becomes part of a much bigger problem, revealing the existence of a shadowy group seeking to revive the powers of the Knights Templar, continually sucking you further in the ever-deepening mystery. The new scenes serve to flesh out Nico’s character, which wasn’t really dealt with in the original, giving the main narrative a little more resonance to modern history, rather than just the middle ages. They also introduce one of the darker elements of this great plot, tying them into French colonial brutality in Africa.

The new animation work from Dave Gibbons--best known for his work on comic classics Watchmen and 2000AD, as well as the original game--bring the game’s diverse scenes and characters to life. Even incidental characters have been drawn with care, from the expressions of a mute Syrian barman to the detail lavished upon the Parisian skyline. Despite the lack of voice acting in this version, the rest of the sound is still top notch. The music serves to build tension at the right moments, the incidental sounds for each scene set the tone perfectly

Even without the voice-overs and with its fairly dark and involved plot, Broken Sword still manages to be funny. Some of the laughs are played at the expense of Les Americains, whereas others target one's own assumptions about seemingly stereotypical characters, be it thanks to a quick-witted but lazy Gendarme, or an aristocratic British lady with a mischievous streak. Despite the game's age, this character-based humour ensures that the narrative never feels dated.

Unfortunately, the same can't really be said for the mechanics. The rigid linearity and inventory-based problem solving take a little getting used to and have not aged particularly well--but the strength of every other aspect of the game makes this fairly easy to forgive. Very occasional enigmas have deeper problems, based as they are on genre conventions that are not as familiar as they once were. One such example involves a puzzle wherein the solution involves using an item on yourself, but the only way to do this is to talk to the correct person, who then suggests using it, which opens up a conversation option with another character further down the line that lets you progress.

The background detail is high throughout, bringing areas from Paris to the Syrian desert to life.

That said, despite the occasional quirk, the vast majority of the puzzles play out in a pleasantly logical--if occasionally lateral--manner. Of the new puzzles, a substitution cipher and a chess-based puzzle are the most satisfying, and all of them integrate well with the more traditional point-and-click conundrums. One of the new additions is a tiered hint system, so if you do get stuck, help is a stylus-tap away. These tips start with a general piece of advice on where to look next, and they range all the way up to full instructions on how to progress. This system works well on the whole because it lets you progress when stuck without resorting to being fully walked through, and it carries no in-game penalty--though the number of hints taken is listed along with the time played for each save game.

The clever puzzles, when combined with the excellent story and new hint system makes for a game that is as engaging and accessible as it is funny and visually appealing. While sequels may have dulled the lustre of the Broken Sword franchise, for the ten hours or so that this director’s cut lasts, you will remember why the genre had such huge success.

Hammerin' Hero Review

Hammerin' Hero Review

Silly costumes are not enough to cover for repetitive gameplay in this formulaic platformer.


The Good

* The visuals are cute
* Different costumes have their own unique charm.

The Bad

* The combat is far too repetitive
* Little difference between the occupations
* Only 12 levels.

Hammerin' Hero's title leaves very little to the imagination. As a heroic young man named Gen, you wield a novelty-sized giant hammer and fend off waves of humans, robots, and anything else stupid enough to stand in your way. If only an adjective stressing how utterly forgettable your adventure is could have been added to the title, it could have perfectly captured this cartoonish adventure. Although you change into a variety of unique outfits during your quest, your different weapons don't change the combat much, making the game too bland and uninspired to entertain you for long. It can be fun to bash your angry pursuers for a few hours, but by the time the credits abruptly roll, you'll be hard pressed to remember anything that happened in this cute, unremarkable platformer.

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The most enjoyable aspect of Hammerin' Hero is the ability to unlock different occupations. You start out as a humble carpenter, using your mallet of justice to strike down people who dare oppose you. The wackier jobs you earn as the game progresses don't deviate from the bash-bash-bash gameplay, but they offer a silly distractions from the monotonous combat. The stinky sushi chef uses a rock-hard fish to club angry attackers, while the sharp-dressed Man in Black relies on his trusty baton and blistering-fast kicks. There are 10 different costumes to unlock, and you can play through most of the 12 levels in whatever style you choose. The one exception is the underwater level, where you must don the oxygen-giving suit of the deep-sea diver. Although fighting underwater is different from fighting through a TV station or on a merry-go-round, the slight variety actually takes away from the fun. You move so painfully slow in the blue abyss that it lessens the simple joy of thumping your enemies in the face.

The platforming portions of your quest are rudimentary, so the focus is on the combat. You have two different attacks--a weak swing and a powerful one--as well as a super move you can pull off only a few times per level. Although your move set is limited, you won't have any problem mowing down enemies, because they are completely devoid of artificial intelligence. They weakly swing their weapons or toss slow-moving projectiles your way, but their telegraphed attacks are easy to avoid and they take only a few hits before they fall down. The bosses are far more interesting, and though they are just as easy to dispatch, they are clever enough to serve as worthwhile rewards for clearing a level. For instance, at the end of the amusement park level, you grow to mammoth size to take on a Godzilla-like balloon. You can see his tail swipe coming from a mile away, but there is a certain joy in taking down this inflatable beast.

The combat doesn't change much from the beginning of the game, but the quirks in each level give them each a unique appeal. Bystanders will frequently stand in the background, begging you for help. If you can bash the speech bubbles coming from their mouths, they will jump into the foreground and help you finish off foes. It's pretty amusing to have a few angry amusement park goers chuck soda bottles at the hulking robot ruining their fun or an umpire escorting a surly Mr. Met look-alike from the baseball diamond. There are also food items to harvest from fallen enemies that can be combined afterward into tasty recipes, souvenirs to collect for completing certain level requirements, and letters of thanks for helping distressed denizens. These touches add some personality to the adventure, giving you a reason to mindlessly bash through another wave of untrained attackers. The multidisc multiplayer has two players race to finish a level the quickest, but because you can't interact with each other, it doesn't add much to the experience.

Evil Mr. Met is being escorted from the stadium.

The charming visuals add a lot to the adventure. Unlocking the outfits is fun and spices up the action a bit, even if the combat doesn't drastically change. The disc jockey, for instance, has a smooth walk that shows not only that he isn't going to take guff from his attackers, but that he's going to dispatch them in style. The backgrounds are colorful and enticing, with neat 3D touches that let you interact with objects that seem out of your reach initially. Some of the levels are also quite clever. As a baseball player, you run around a diamond. Your angry opponents slide at you with their metal cleats, and when you connect with a powerful swing, they fly into the stadium lights, shattering them like a scene from The Natural. When you reach home plate, an overgrown umpire stands in your way, and you have to bash him with your bat, acting out the fantasy of every disenchanted baseball player. It's a shame more levels don't follow this design, though; most of them are as bland as the combat.

The cute aesthetics and charming costumes in Hammerin' Hero go a long way toward masking the inadequate gameplay, but it's hard to ignore just how mindless and repetitive the combat is. Although bashing enemies with your bat or fish can be fun for a while, there isn't enough variety to make this interesting for long. A few of the levels offer some unique twists, and a couple of bosses are quite silly, but the gameplay is mostly unremarkable. Hammerin' Hero has a few interesting moments, but it's ultimately an uninspired, forgettable platformer.

Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World Review

Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World Review

DBZ: Infinite World fails to live up to the standard set by previous DBZ games on the PS2.
The Good

* Fast-paced, intense battles
* Well-executed art style.

The Bad

* Very challenging, even on easier difficulty settings
* Lack of instruction for the skill management system
* Not as good as previous DBZ games on the PS2.

Dragon Ball Z games have run the quality gamut from terrible to very good. Infinite World lands somewhere in between. There are only three main modes in Infinite World: Dragon Mission, Dragon Duel, and Fighter's Road. Dragon Mission is the game's story mode, taking you through the Z and Dragon Ball GT sagas in a condensing of hundreds of DBZ episodes. This amalgam covers all of the major battles including, those versus Vegeta, Frieza, Cell, Buu, and more.

Infinite World is a serviceable fighting game on its own but doesn't live up to its predecessors.

You guide Goku along an overwold map in order to trigger battles and minigames. You’re also free to replay earlier battles as an easy way to build up your bank account. Extra Zeni (money) can be used to purchase upgrades for you character in the Warrior’s Room shop. Short animated cutscenes from the anime play before and after every boss confrontation and give you an indication of what's going on in the story, but they won't make a great deal of sense if you've never watched the show. The bosses get increasingly difficult as you progress through the story mode, but for the most part they play similarly, and your strategy for taking down two different bosses like Vegeta or Frieza won't differ very much.

A smattering of minigames allow you to experience cherished scenes from the anime such as guiding Goku along Snake Way, capturing Bubbles the monkey, and other memorable moments that don't involve outright combat. Unfortunately, these side minigames are poorly designed and overly simplistic. The mission on Snake Way, for instance, has you running along the winding path moving from checkpoint to checkpoint. Another minigame has you training Goku in your space capsule by hitting a series of button combinations. It may be nice fan service, but these minigames really only serve to bring the combat to a grinding halt without being entertaining enough to justify the interruption.

Dragon Duel is the two-player versus mode in Infinite World. You can fight a friend or computer opponent with any of the game's more than 40 warriors. You have the option of playing as any of the fighters, either without their more powerful skills and attacks or with customized power-ups you can purchase from the Warrior's Room shop. Fighter's Road is a secret mode you can unlock after playing Dragon Mission, pitting you against more than 100 opponents across four maps. It's similar to Dragon Mission mode in that you guide a character from fight to fight on an overworld map, but it also provides you with an opportunity to unlock new warriors and earn more Zeni.

Even at the budget price, you would be better off skipping Infinite World for an older DBZ entry such as Budokai 3.

Despite the prevalence of minigames in Dragon Mission mode, Infinite World is still all about the combat. You fly around a battlefield with your opponent and exchange a variety of Ki beam blasts, grapples, and melee combos. You have a healthy variety of attacks, a Ki Burn ability that gives you increased speed and strength for a short period of time in exchange for Ki energy, and the ability to transform into a Super Saiyan. You can speed burst around the battlefield, but you'll have to use it wisely and avoid taking too many hits since they contribute to a fatigue meter. Once the fatigue meter reaches full capacity, it will temporarily stun you, leaving you defenseless against devastating combos and also downgrading you from an advanced form like Super Saiyan back to your default form. Overall, though, the battles are fast paced, the AI is relentless, and winning takes quite a bit of skill and strategy since not effectively evading attacks, Ki charging, or Ki burning will result in an easy defeat.

Those compliments aside, there are a few issues with the battle system. The AI is exceedingly difficult, even at the "Easy" and "Very Easy" difficulty settings. The computer opponents are just as fast and bloodthirsty, no matter what difficulty setting the game is set at. The only differences between easy and hard are how quickly your health depletes, how long it takes to recharge your Ki, and how long you stay fatigued. Still, you will have many fights that challenge your patience and tempt you to chuck your Dual Shock at a nearby wall.

Battles become more manageable when you buy advanced skills and abilities from the Warrior's Room. For each battle in the game--even those that you lose--you will earn Zeni that can be used to buy stronger Ki attacks, items such as Senzu beans that recharge your health in battle, and attributes like Fighter's Body that increase your base health. The system works fine, as long as you edit your character before going into battle and assign those acquired abilities to your few allotted slots.

The problem comes in knowing how to do this and in what abilities to purchase. At one point, Infinite World alerts you that you can purchase things from the Warrior's Room, but it provides no tutorial explaining how the system works or how the abilities benefit you. The Warrior's Room is also located on the main menu, forcing you to leave Dragon Mission mode in order to use the Zeni you earn. At first glance, you wouldn't think the two are so dependent on each other; but when your opponents in Dragon Mission suddenly possess twice as much health and strength the Warrior's Room becomes invaluable.

Minigames are sprinkled about Dragon Mission, the game's story mode. Unfortunately, they don't add much to the experience.

Infinite World will strike up feelings of deja vu for those who've played DBZ: Budokai 3. That shouldn't come as a surprise since both games were developed by Dimps. Unfortunately for Budokai 3 fans, Infinite World lacks a couple of the best fighting mechanics from its predecessor, namely the Beam Struggles and Dragon Rushes. Those two features were integral in making Budokai 3 a critical success because they helped re-create the intense power struggles that are so central to the drama of the DBZ anime. Considering how much Infinite World feels like a sequel to that game, you will likely get the disappointing feeling that this is a neutered expansion pack.

Infinite World looks as good as any other DBZ game on the PS2. The overworld map is a bit bland, as is the level design in the minigames that are scattered through Dragon Mission. In that battles themselves, though, the colors of the characters, transformations, and Ki blasts are lush and vibrant. The soundtrack is a bit ordinary, but you can choose between the English and Japanese voice tracks that DBZ purists will surely appreciate.

While its budget price may make Infinite World a tempting purchase, previous DBZ games on the PS2 have tread this ground already, and have done so with much more robust fighting systems. You would be better off revisiting Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, a superior game where the series' fast-paced combat was used to much better effect.

Warriors Orochi 2 Review

Warriors Orochi 2 Review

Warriors Orochi 2 elevates hack-and-slash action to amazing levels of repetitive boredom.
The Good

* You can share the boredom with a friend .

The Bad

* Painfully repetitive action
* Idiotic AI in both enemies and allies
* Horrible voice acting
* Bland visuals.

Since the release of Dynasty Warriors 2 in 2000, Koei has churned out a remarkable number of games in its Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series of hack-and-slash action games. Yet over the years, for all these sequels, the gameplay has hardly evolved at all. A year ago, Warriors Orochi brought these two series together, but aside from its unusual crossover concept, it did nothing to differentiate itself from its predecessors. Now, Warriors Orochi 2 is here, and it continues the trend of delivering all the excruciatingly repetitive gameplay, as well as lack of innovation, for which the series has become known.

In Warriors Orochi, the titular serpent king decides to merge third-century China with 16th-century Japan, conveniently uniting characters from the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games. The brave heroes ultimately put aside their cultural and temporal differences to thwart Orochi's plans to conquer this strange new world. But it's not long before violence and unrest again befall the land. There are a total of five stories to select from in Orochi 2's Story mode: one for each of the three kingdoms of China, one for the Samurai Warriors of Japan, and one about Orochi along with his followers, which serves as a prequel to the first game. Each story is equally awful. The use of static character portraits is lame while the dialogue is clumsy and full of awkward anachronisms like "Breaking news!" The voice acting is also appalling. The narrator sounds like he's reading the news on NPR, and the broad characterizations of the warriors, who sound like pompous aristocrats, dumb oafs, or valley girls, don't endear the characters to you one bit. On the contrary, just spending time in their company is unpleasant.

Beware this army of evil brain-dead clones!

The action takes place on large battlefields. You choose three characters to take into battle, and you can switch among them at any time. The concept of fighting in the midst of a raging battle as armies clash around you sounds ripe with potential, but Warriors Orochi 2 utterly fails to deliver on it. Rather than viciously attacking each other, enemy soldiers seem to be trained to run up to you and wait calmly for you to kill them, giving you the occasional gentle poke with their spears or swords to nudge you on. In addition to being identically stupid, all the soldiers in any given unit look the same, which may have been forgivable at one time, but now makes the series look as dated as it feels.

As you hack your way through your enemies, there's no sense of impact or resistance. Your weapon seems to just go right through them. You'll lay waste to several-hundred enemy soldiers in a typical battle, just by pressing the attack button over and over again. This is about as dull as hack-and-slack action gets. To be fair, you have a modest variety of attacks you can employ, and there are three basic types of heroes, each with his own unique abilities. There's also a new type of attack--the triple attack--in which all three members of your team attack the enemy at once. But in practice, this variety doesn't matter much. The enemy soldiers go down very easily, regardless of how you choose to dispatch them, and using the occasional special attack doesn't make it any more interesting.

A bigger threat than the enemy is the ineptitude of your own allies. Each scenario has conditions for victory and for defeat. Victory generally comes when you kill certain enemy captains, while defeat is typically the result of losing a captain on your side. Throughout each battle, you'll constantly be updated on events taking place all over the battlefield, and if you see that a crucial captain of yours is being attacked, you'll want to rush to his aid immediately because captains can't hold their own against the enemy for very long. Having to babysit your allies only makes the action that much more tiresome.

You earn experience during each battle, which makes your characters stronger. In between battles you can fuse your acquired weapons together into more powerful ones, as well as equip your characters with a range of special abilities, such as stronger defense or a gradually refilling life gauge. But all this growth and development is hard to get invested in when the action it serves is so tedious. At least leveling up means you can cut through your foes faster, and anything that makes the game go by faster is a good thing.

In addition to the game's Story mode, there's a Free mode, in which you can play any unlocked scenario with any character. There's also a Dream mode, which features a number of scenarios that fall outside of the main storylines. Those with a deep knowledge of the history and lore of the characters may get a kick out of seeing Yoshimoto Imagawa, Xing Cai, and Ginchiyo Tachibana fight alongside each other, but for most of us, there's nothing that sets these levels apart from those you encounter during the Story mode.

Playing the game cooperatively with a friend makes it a bit more bearable only because then you have someone to commiserate with about how boring it is, though the split-screen makes the already cruddy graphics even less impressive. There are also a few competitive modes available, including Tag Team and Elimination modes. These play out like a typical fighting game, and because your human opponent is invariably more intelligent than what the game throws at you, they're some of the more interesting offerings here. But they don't come close to offering the depth and intensity of most dedicated fighting games, so even this won't hold your interest for long. There's also a game mode called Tower, in which the object is to knock more brain-dead enemies off of a tower rooftop than your opponent, and one called Steeplechase. This last mode, a race on horseback, has items you can pick up and use much like in a typical cart racer. However, you're limited to just one uninspired track, and the horses control so loosely that just getting them to go where you want is a challenge. There's no online support for these or any of the game's modes, but considering how poor they all are, that's really no big loss.

At least in the game’s competitive modes, your opponent has a brain.

The graphics are very disappointing. Aside from being considerably sharper than the PS2 version, the 360 version doesn't look significantly better. In both versions, the environments are bland and lacking in detail. The visual glitches, such as fences popping into and out of existence, are also commonplace. The sound is even more dreadful than the visuals. The voice acting is heinous, the sounds of battle are lifeless, the music is forgettable, and you'll hear characters constantly repeat the same few obnoxious phrases.

At least the first Warriors Orochi game had the novelty of the crossover concept, which was a clever bit of fan service. By now, that novelty has worn off. With each subsequent iteration of the Warriors series, the gameplay feels increasingly tired. Warriors Orochi 2 has a whopping 92 playable characters, which is 13 more warriors than in the last game, but just tossing more characters into the mix does nothing to correct the fundamental problems with the series.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Review

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Review

Overhauled visuals and overloaded features makes this redux a top-tier Street Fighter game.
The Good

* Stellar new art and music
* Fantastic fighting is cleverly balanced
* Smooth online multiplayer
* Ludicrous variety of options, features, and additions.

The Bad

* AI can be ruthlessly difficult
* No online skill-matching.

If Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting tickled your quarter-popping nostalgia with its Xbox Live Arcade release in 2006, then Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will light it on fire with a fierce dragon punch. The arcade classic's fast and fun one-on-one fighting translates brilliantly into HD Remix, seamlessly blending with the beautifully redrawn and wonderfully balanced cast of classic Capcom characters. The challenging single-player story mode and refined online multiplayer are both playable with the classic Super Turbo rules or in the entirely revamped Remixed mode. By tweaking the attack damage and move sets of each character, Remixed makes for a wholly refreshing gameplay addition that changes the way you'll play the timeless 2D fighter.

In motion, HD Remix looks like a gorgeous anime--wicked special effects and all.

The straightforward concept of punching and kicking people on a 2D plane is easy to grasp, but the addition of complex combos, special moves, and devastating super combos brings depth to the satisfying gameplay. Because longtime fans have already known the mechanics of Super Street Fighter II Turbo inside and out since 1994, the alterations to each of the 17 uniquely powered characters' move sets within the Remixed mode gives them a fresh feel almost 15 years later. For example, attack enhancements encourage you to use moves that you might have otherwise ignored: Chun Li's ground spinning bird kick has a new movement arc, allowing her to escape corner traps or fireballs. Similarly, Guile’s flash kick now travels forward rather than straight up. Other notables include E. Honda's ability to dive through energy attacks, as well as Ryu's fake fireball and M. Bison's psyche-out sliding kick, both of which can dupe an opponent into jumping or opening themselves up.

With superior gameplay comes advanced AI, and casual players will be obliterated by the professional-level computer opponents on any of the three difficulties above beginner. You'll have to learn the speed and specials of your favorite fighter if you're going to stand a chance against the brutally tough opposition. The challenge is worsened because the controls simply aren't precise enough with a control pad. Sure, you can use the D pad or analog stick to brawl, but neither--especially the Xbox 360's lousy directional pad--is preferable to an arcade stick. Remix attempts to compensate for this by simplifying many of the attack inputs; some complicated super combos have been reduced from frenetic arcade-stick waggling to painless analog arcs. This accommodation is something you'll appreciate if you're using a controller or are easing yourself into the series for the first time, but veterans will probably be irked by the ease of executing some of the bigger attacks.

But it's this batch of dedicated Street Fighter nuts that will absolutely adore the deeply customizable Dip Switch settings. These allow you to tune the game's minutiae to suit your personal preference by enabling or disabling a seemingly innumerable list of options, in addition to regulating variables. For example, if you don't like the idea of your opponent tossing you again after a throw-induced daze, you can restrict it. The Dip Switch settings even go as deep as letting you adjust the percentage that dictates whether or not the first frame of an attack can be blocked or not. Obviously, these thoroughly thought-out features won't serve you any purpose if you're not rooted in the game's core mechanics, but picky players will love tinkering with the finer points of Street Fighter's foundation.

Even the most hardcore purist can't deny the smoking-hot widescreen, high-definition visuals. Each character sprite has been crisply redrawn by comics publisher UDON, who manages to make them look terrific. The stage backgrounds were also subject to an artistic overhaul; the memorable Brazilian shanty huts, moonlit Japanese dojo, and chicken-choking merchant are all radically repurposed with vibrant colors and wonderfully painted textures. As an added bonus, you can disable the 1080p bliss of the anime-style fighters in favor of their old, pixelated sprites if you're looking for a blast from the past. Adding to the phenomenal visual delight is an energetically enhanced soundtrack. A fusion of heavy metal guitar riffs and groovy electronica will pump you up with retooled versions of classic jams in the menus and during fights. While the clear star of HD Remix is the audiovisual upgrade, the smaller touches give developer Backbone a reason to gloat about its attention to detail--the annoying announcer from Turbo been kindly redubbed; Guile's laughable Turbo voice has been replaced by an older, better version; and the training mode lets you look behind the curtain and scope out the hitboxes that accompany the collision detection.

Online multiplayer runs stupendously, and is packed with players who are ready to wipe the floor with your face.

The three online multiplayer modes--friendly/unranked fights, leaderboard ladder matches, and bracketed tournaments--are packed with potential opponents, so at the time of this review you'll have no problem finding somebody to play with. There's no way to get matched up against similarly skilled opponents online unfortunately, so depending on your skill level you might get destroyed or struggle to find challenging opponents. Mercifully, the lag that plagued Hyper Fighting is practically nonexistent in both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. You'll find yourself totally engaged during your buttery-smooth matches, and completely captivated as the rotating roster of up to eight players puts you in the spectator seat between bouts. In traditional arcade fashion, you'll be booted to the back of the line while the next player tests his or her mettle against the current champ, but you'll never be bored because Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is almost as entertaining to watch as it is to play. The amazing combat makes for quick, entertaining matches that are filled with ecstatic cheering, intense comebacks, and shameful defeats.

It's hard to gauge whether the characters are as meticulously balanced in the Remixed variant as they are in Turbo, simply because there hasn't been enough time to test the tweaks. Still, the overload of edits are welcome additions to an already great game--and since you can drop back into the original Turbo at any time, you aren't forced to relearn your preferred fighter. The extensive alterations are wonderful, giving HD Remix the feel of a straightforward 2D brawler with all the sheen of a brand-new game that's capped off with Street Fighter's venerable depth and lavish presentation. Despite its minor issues, this is one of the finest iterations of Street Fighter to date, and one that any fan of fireballs and fisticuffs shouldn't miss.

Resistance 2 Review

Resistance 2 is bigger, better, and broader--everything a stellar sequel should be.


The Good

* Fantastic eight-player cooperative mode
* Large, vividly detailed environments
* Smart, tough enemies and huge, huge bosses
* Lag-free online matches with up to 60 players
* Varied and powerful weapons.

The Bad

* Weak story with uninteresting characters.

Almost two years after Resistance: Fall of Man gave PlayStation 3 owners their first great exclusive shooter, Resistance 2 has arrived bearing more great news. No, humanity hasn't gained an edge in its desperate fight against the alien Chimera (quite the opposite, in fact). The news is that Resistance 2 takes the grand apocalyptic setting and tight, fast-paced action of its predecessor and improves upon it in almost every way. Bigger battles, richer environments, and an outstanding new eight-player cooperative mode elevate Resistance 2 above almost every other shooter on the PS3.

Welcome to the bigs.

From the first moments of the single-player campaign, Resistance 2 proclaims its dedication to grandeur. As you crawl from the wreckage of your transport helicopter, you look up to see a sinister, towering machine laying waste to your surroundings, its shiny black bulk standing in stark relief to the smoky blue sky and green Nordic scrub. Environments (and enemies) like these, vividly colored and remarkably big, are prevalent throughout the campaign. Your journey will take you across North America, where you'll visit a fantastic variety of rural, suburban, urban, and alien landscapes. You'll see attention to detail in the plants under your feet, in the towering skyscrapers above your head, and everywhere in between. The scars of the Chimeran invasion clash dramatically against the technicolor mid-century American backdrop, setting a superb stage for exciting action.

And make no mistake, the action is the real star here. The protagonist, Nathan Hale, and his fellow soldiers are run-of-the-mill characters, and the functional story is a bit too vague to be interesting. Intel documents scattered about each level provide intriguing background and foreshadowing, but most of them are hidden away and require too much errant exploration to find. The only time you'll feel any emotional connection to the proceedings is when you stop to listen to the radio. The scattered monologues from radioman Henry Stillman provide a wrenching window into the despair of a nation overrun, and they're the lone narrative highlight.

Despite the lackluster story, Resistance 2's excellent single-player campaign is a thrilling roller coaster ride across dozens of varied locales, each infested with Chimera. Your horrible alien foes run the gamut from tiny chittering scorpions to fanged foot soldiers, from shielded two-story titans to lumbering forty-story leviathans. They come at you in waves of increasing size and intensity; they are quick, aggressive, and accurate, and dispatching them will take skill and persistence. Resistance 2 isn't an easy game, but that just makes your hard-fought victories sweeter.

To achieve these victories, you'll need to stay alive. You can fully recover your health by ducking out of the line of fire for a few seconds, a tactic you'll need to use often. While you usually aren't too far from a checkpoint, you're often far enough to make death very unappealing. This is particularly true during the massive boss battles and the large-scale conflicts that pit you against legions of increasingly nasty Chimera. These are the most exciting encounters in the game, and though the former are less challenging than the latter, there's nothing quite like squaring off against a beast the size of the Chrysler Building.

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The 12 guns you wield throughout the campaign are also quite satisfying. Some old favorites have returned, like the workhorse M5A2 Carbine, and there are a few great additions, like the .44 Magnum that shoots bullets that double as remote-detonated explosives. Secondary attacks like this one are a feature on every gun, and they effectively double the destructive options at your disposal. Though the weapons don't feel particularly realistic, they are so uniquely deadly and fun to use that you'll hardly notice. You can only carry two guns at a time, but the game does a good job of making sure you have a chance to use them all. There are also a few different types of powerful grenades at your disposal (notably the fiery air-fuel and spiky hedgehog), and they round out your very effective and very gratifying arsenal.

While the campaign is a lengthy (about 10 hours) and satisfying endeavor, the online cooperative mode is what really sets Resistance 2 apart. In this mode, up to eight players fight their way through hordes of Chimera to accomplish a set of objectives. Each player must choose one of three specific classes, each with its own guns and special abilities. The Medic drains enemy health and passes it on to teammates, an essential function because no one can regenerate health. The Special Ops uses a battle rifle of sorts and is the only source of ammunition refills. The Soldier carries a gatling gun that can generate a protective shield, defending his teammates and shredding the Chimera simultaneously. This interdependency binds players together and creates a frantic, engaging team dynamic.

As a further incentive, each player earns experience and currency throughout the mission that can be used to unlock more weapons, special abilities, and stat-enhancing gear. These powerful bonuses aren't easy to attain, which makes earning them all the more satisfying. The action plays out on a variety of sizable multiplayer maps inspired by the campaign levels. These maps each have a bevy of objectives, and every mission takes a few objectives at random and strings them together, so subsequent playthroughs of the same map feel different. This is a good thing, because you'll have to run a number of successful missions on the first map before you unlock the next, and so on. Each map is designed so that enemies can (and will) come at you from a number of directions. Missions are hard and demand teamwork and skill, so each time you vanquish a wave of enemies it feels like a small victory. Add this sense of accomplishment to the addictive and rewarding experience system, and you've got a game mode that's truly excellent.

With enemies like this, you'll need all the friends you can get.

If you're not feeling cooperative, Resistance 2 boasts a robust competitive mode as well. Maps accommodate as few as two and as many as 60 players, and do so with virtually no lag. The usual Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag ("Core Control") modes are available, but the best of the bunch is Skirmish. In this mode, teams are divided up into squads, and each squad receives on-the-fly objectives to complete. Objectives are updated often and can change the flow of battle drastically, so each match has a unique, frantic feel. Unlike in the cooperative mode, you have all the abilities and weapons in the single-player campaign readily available to you, so everyone is more or less evenly matched. You can also play ranked matches to earn experience and upgrades, and even though it's not quite as engaging as the cooperative mode, the competitive multiplayer is still a blast.

All in all, Resistance 2 is an excellent game. The stirring scale of the single-player levels is impressive and the pervasive details make them truly awesome. Despite the squandered story, blasting your way through the campaign is electrifying, thanks largely to the deadly weapons in your arsenal. The cooperative multiplayer is a resounding success, and the competitive modes are terrific in their own right. Anyone looking for a superb shooter experience need look no further than Resistance 2.

SBK Superbike World Championship Review

SBK Superbike World Championship Review

This no-nonsense motorcycle racing simulation is punishing and inaccessible, but it's still fun.

The Good

• Realistic racing physics
• Great sense of speed
• Challenging, exciting races.

The Bad

• Useless tutorials
• Uncompromising difficulty and a cruel learning curve
• Sparse track environments
• Problematic online play.

If you're serious about motorcycle racing, chances are you're familiar with the annual international competition known as the Superbike World Championship. If you're not serious about motorcycle racing, SBK is probably not the game for you. This racing simulation's dedication to realism is admirable, and it delivers an experience that can be gratifying, once you get a handle on it. But even racing devotees may be put off by the steep learning curve and the unforgiving difficulty that result from this game's intense, no-frills approach to the sport.

You may experience a thrilling sense of speed, if you can manage to stay on your bike long enough.

That's not to say you can't customize SBK's level of realism to suit your tastes. There are so many customization options available that it can initially be a bit overwhelming. This is compounded by the fact that it's not immediately apparent what all the options mean. You can select from five overall realism settings that range from basic to extreme, or you can toggle each of the 15 individual settings to your liking. These include whether or not you must manually shift your rider's weight, whether your bike can get damaged or your rider can be injured, whether the front and rear brakes are controlled jointly or independently of each other, and many others. And prior to hitting the track, you can fine-tune each aspect of your bike. This can be done via standard menus that provide a single slider with which to adjust your bike's suspension, steering, gears, and so on, or via advanced menus that let you make miniscule adjustments to each aspect of the bike. There are eight sliders for the suspension alone, for instance: two each for the preload, spring stiffness, compression damper, and rebound damper.

Unless you come to the game already familiar with the physics of motorcycle racing, it's difficult to get a sense of how each of these settings affects you out on the track--when to lean your rider's weight forward or back, when to use both brakes or to use just the front or the rear--and you'll likely fall off your bike dozens of times before this stuff starts to sink in. Talking to your engineer before a race will let you read some short and simple tips on each of these issues, but the physics are so complex and just staying on the bike is so difficult that it can all be daunting. A bit of instructional handholding might have gone a long way in helping new players acclimate themselves to these fine-tuned racing machines.

Even if you choose to forgo most of the realism and set the handling model to basic or arcade, SBK is not an arcade-style racer. Maintaining a smart racing line and properly braking before turns is always a must. Maneuvering past your opponents and making your way up through the ranks without colliding with them requires patience and finesse, and even a slight misstep can result in a disaster from which recovery is difficult or impossible. The game is challenging, even against the easiest opponents, and the laughably misnamed tutorial is worse than useless. It does no tutoring of any kind. It just drops you into a series of situations that will try your patience as well as your skill. You're better off bypassing the tutorial and jumping right into some time trials or races to try to get a feel for proper handling and braking on your own.

After heading into turns way too fast time and time again, you'll naturally start to get better. Though the lack of a helpful, detailed tutorial makes the game feel downright unwelcoming, once you start getting comfortable with the handling and the physics, you'll find that the precision racing machines of SBK can provide quite a thrill. Races often have you constantly jockeying for position, weaving through the pack, pulling ahead and falling behind your competitors, and victory is made all the more satisfying because you have to race well to earn it. You'll never feel that rubber-band AI made you lose the race or helped you win it; these races are hard-fought and hard-won.

Rain makes your life a lot more difficult, but hey, at least it looks awesome.

There are several modes, including a few that do a fine job of replicating actual SBK race events. You can jump straight into a race or time trial on any of the game's 12 real-life tracks, or, for a more authentic SBK experience, you can participate in a race weekend or a full-scale championship. Each race weekend consists of an hour-long period of free practice on the track, followed by two hour-long qualifying practices, then another hour of free practice, and then two races. You can play all of this in real time or skip through it as you please, and you can make the races full-length (around 20 laps, give or take a few, depending on the track) or shorten them to just a single lap. The championship takes you through an entire SBK season, consisting of a race weekend for each of the 12 tracks. You can also try to race online, though there are few people playing this game online at the moment. When we did manage to get into races, our competitors' bikes would often pop from place to place, making the skillful maneuvering for position that's so satisfying against the AI all but impossible. Regardless of the mode you're playing, there are 12 actual SBK teams to choose from, and the actual riders from each team are on hand. However, none of the visual customization options common to many other simulation racing games are included.

Visually, SBK is a bit inconsistent, but it's got it where it counts most. The asphalt of the track smoothly zips under your wheels and the bikes and riders are equally convincing. Camera options include a few first-person selections that do a remarkable job of putting you in the rider's seat, giving you a great view of the bike's gauges and making you feel the lean into each turn. And should you have the misfortune of racing on a rainy day, you may curse the rain for making the track slipperier even as you appreciate how good it looks. If you look beyond the track, though, the illusion starts to fall apart. Flat trees, simple buildings, cardboard cutout people in the audience, and a general sparseness of environmental features make the world beyond the track lifeless and empty, though you'll probably spend most of your time too focused on the action to notice. There isn't much to the game's sound outside of the authentic roars and whines of the bikes, but then, realism doesn't dictate anything more than that.

SBK is an unfriendly game. It assumes that you come to it with a high level of familiarity and comfort with realistic motorcycle racing, and if you don't, it punishes you again and again until you start to learn. It's a shame that it isn't more welcoming to new players, because if you've got the patience to learn how to handle these bikes on the track, you might find yourself having fun. There are certainly less sadistic motorcycle racing games available that make their complexities more accessible. But if you're a serious gearhead who doesn't mind learning things the hard way, you may find that getting comfortable with this game's deep tuning options and realistic racing physics is worth all the scrapes and bruises you'll pick up along the way.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Review

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Review

The hack-and-slash role-playing game Sacred 2 may feel more at home on console systems than it does on the PC, but the game design still leaves something to be desired.

The Good

• Solid action RPG game design
• Lots of quests
• Good variety of enemies and monsters
• Gorgeous visuals and offbeat audio.

The Bad

• World map is massive and convoluted
• Poorly developed main plot.

Hack-and-slash role-playing games have long been better fits on the PC than they have been on consoles. There have been exceptions to that rule of course, and now Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is making another appeal for genre fans to kick the mouse to the curb. The Ascaron Entertainment game makes its debut on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 just over six months after it first arrived for the PC, but this doesn't seem like a port. This is actually a slight refinement of the earlier game, and the improved interface and the often overlooked couch-comfort factor make it easier to enjoy the epic length of the adventure. There are still too many problems with the monotonous quest design and the unwieldy size of the game world for this to be a top-shelf action RPG, but it's a little closer to that status than its PC cousin.

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With that said, developer Ascaron Entertainment isn't reinventing the wheel here. Sacred 2 is a Diablo double in every possible way. As is typical in action-first RPGs, there isn't much of a plot. You take on the role of the usual muscle-bound warrior or kooky mage in the medieval fantasy land of Ancaria, playing as a hero in the light campaign or as a villain in the campaign of shadows. No matter which side you choose, though, the gameplay is all about slaughtering thousands of monsters, looting their corpses, and leveling up. Trouble is being caused by the high elves and T-energy, a glowing magic fluid that serves as Ancaria's oil and is pumped all over the land in pipelines. But beyond that, you're marooned between vague plot quests and odd jobs.

Without a worthwhile narrative, you're left too much on your own, juggling a diverse array of quests. A lot of time is spent hoofing it around the huge map, because quests are spread far and wide and the teleportation system is lacking in gates. All of this exploration can be very intriguing, however, as it immerses you in what seems to be a living and breathing fantasy world. Getting hit with a rat-a-tat-tat succession of assignments keeps you rolling, too. Since just about every guy on the corner needs an errand run, you get offered jobs every time you turn around. Granted, a lot of quests involve stereotypical chores like rescuing some hapless wanderer, finding magical herbs, and killing set numbers of monsters. But even then, the sheer number of them hook you into a "one more quest" vibe that is almost hypnotizing.

Game mechanics are typical for the genre. There are six pre-rolled characters to choose from when you're starting your adventure, including standards like the high elf mage and the seraphim battlemage, as well as the decidedly weird temple guardian warrior, which is a robot version of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis, who clanks around Ancaria with a melee weapon and a laser blaster. Basic character stats and skills are handled in the same way as in any other RPG. So you gain experience, level up, dole out points to attributes like strength and charisma, and pick from a skill tree that branches out to deal with everything from proficiencies with specific weapons to foot speed to ability regeneration times. Each character class also comes with special abilities, and you can choose a god at the start of the game that bestows an added attribute. The latter powers function a lot like souped-up smart bombs. They come with big-time pyrotechnics and effects that can instantly end battles against even the largest hordes of enemies. The Will-O-Wisp, for example, can incinerate dozens of foes at the same time that it heals your friends.

Sacred 2's lush outdoor scenery comes at the price of too many "can't get there from here" dead ends.

However, some aspects of Sacred 2 have been tweaked so it stands a little apart from the crowd. Most noteworthy is the new interface that shifts the game from mouse-and-keyboard to gamepad. Character-building, interface, and special-ability functions have been perfectly mapped to trigger buttons and the D pad on both the 360 and PS3 controllers. Even if you're accustomed to playing with a mouse-and-keyboard you'll likely prefer the gamepad after an hour or so of play. Multiplayer is also enhanced in comparison with the PC version of the game, since single-player is seamlessly integrated with the Net over both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Solo campaigns can be set so other players can drop in and out at will when you're online. And you can also wander the game world with buddies in a free-play setting or take on all comers in competitive play.

Other innovations have been held over from the PC edition of the game. Unlike in most action RPGs, there are no magic points or mana to manage. Special abilities revive over set periods of time based on skill levels and the use of magic runes found throughout the game. Loot drops can be scooped up with a single button push that instantly gathers everything within a set radius, making battle cleanups a snap. Mounts can be purchased fairly early on in the game to crank up the offensive abilities of character classes.

Sacred 2's look has been carried over intact from the PC. Both the 360 and PS3 versions of the game are gorgeous, although the latter has a slightly choppier frame rate and is a little more jaggy. Most of the game takes place in picturesque sylvan scenes that include flower-strewn fields, dense forests, and bubbling brooks, along with mountain and desert terrain reminiscent of postcards. It's a shame that the world wasn't cleaned up somewhat for the consoles, though, because the landscape is still so meticulously sculpted that you run into many "can't get there from here" dead ends. Impassable cliffs, uncrossable rivers, and impenetrable forests force you to check the full-screen map constantly to avoid getting stuck. Character art and animation are superb. Many creatures in the game are given distinctive touches that separate them from fantasy archetypes. Kobolds, for instance, are wizened gnomes with massive schnozzes, not the little lizard-goblin things of Dungeons & Dragons fame. Earth elementals are muddy flying spirits. Even generic fantasy monsters tend to show off at least one distinctive design element, like the weird spiky helmets on skeletal undead. Each type of creature also generally comes in a half-dozen or more varieties with differing appearances and abilities, from grunts all the way up to bosses.

With this sci-fi blaster, the robotic temple guardian is one of the most unique protagonists to ever hit an action RPG.

The audio adds some personality as well. Background music and battle effects deal in the usual string-plucking and sword-clashing, but the game also has a unique take on some tunes and character voices. Part of the soundtrack consists of licensed songs from German hair-metal band Blind Guardian, which works well in the headbanging opening but isn't quite so enjoyable during the game itself, since you're forced to listen to the same three-chord combat theme every time you get into a fight. Character lines are rarely serious. Droll commentaries continually break the fourth wall. Dying enemies will mutter things like "I knew it, I'm nothing more than an extra" and "I know where you parked your car, player!" And heroes shout typical battle cries and make in-joke comments such as "My statistics continue to improve."

Sacred 2 isn't the greatest hack-and-slasher, but it's a slickly put-together one with tons of quests that will give you dozens of hours of playing time both online and off. Even with its repetitive missions and other design issues, like so many other reasonably well-crafted kill-loot games it has a way of getting under your skin and keeping you entranced for hours at a time.