Well, North American sites have joined in on the Final Fantasy XIII review extravaganza, but it seems that Edge has the most scathing review so far, especially since the majority of reviews have been fairly positive.
Full list after the cut:
The Ace Attorney series proved to western shores in 2005 that a game in which you play as a lawyer could be not only fun, but downright awesome at times. Sure it had a tendency to be silly and extremely over the top, but snappy writing and simple and intuitive gameplay made the original game a joy to play. Sequels followed almost yearly, culminating in this year’s instalment: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.
The original BioShock was considered a masterpiece by gamers and critics alike in 2007, and whenever something’s successful a sequel usually gets announced. Now the time has come to return to Rapture, but is this a welcome one?
BioShock 2 puts you in the diving suit of one of the prototype Big Daddies, the first one to be successfully bonded to a Little Sister. On New Year’s Eve, 1958, your Little Sister was forcefully taken away from you, putting you in a chemically induced coma. Now, ten years later, you have awakened to find a city in utter ruin, with a constant need to relocate your lost companion.
It seems to me like we’re living in the age of nostalgia, where many of us are almost constantly looking back to what we remember as a golden age of gaming, when all the games were great and no one was shouting “noob” at us from across an internet connection. The Xbox Live Arcade has slowly built up a library of remakes, reboots and upgrades of old arcade classics like Asteroids, Centipede, Pac-Man and Galaga.
Another such title just released is Qix++, an improved version of the old arcade game from 1981. Originally released by Taito, the point of Qix (pronounced /kɪks/) according to Wikipedia, is to fence off, or “claim” a majority of the level’s playing field. Every level is a large, empty rectangle containing the titular Qix, a computer virus according to the game’s back story.
If you’re a gamer and Star Wars fan, you’ve more than likely heard of LucasArts, the videogame developer side of Lucasfilm. Most of us associate LucasArts with the point-and-click adventure game craze of the 80’s and 90’s, when the company wasn’t just milking the Star Wars franchise for all it was forth. And for a time, it was good. But then adventure games sort of just stopped, their market value having fallen once full 3D and the Quake era had begun. LucasArts decided to make Star Wars games instead, which has obviously payed off despite some quality issues on certain games.
So imagine my jubilations when I saw an interview with LucasArts president Darrel Rodriguez on GTTV, who promised to bring LucasArts back to their old style of game developing. Star Wars was still their bread and butter, obviously, but he wanted the company to branch out and bring more quality games onto the market. The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition had just been released on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, and more LucasArts adventure games was coming to Steam. LucasArts shut down for a week in order to generate new ideas and concepts. One of these concepts was Lucidity, which they decided to make into a full game.
Rocktober is upon us, and you should all know what that means: Tim Schafer is back, with a game that could only rock harder if it was made out of stone. But that wouldn’t be a very great gaming experience. Brutal Legend has a lot to live up to considering Schafer’s history with LucasArts’ adventure games and his previous game that no one bought: Psychonauts.
Brutal Legend kicks off, where else, at a metal concert. Jack Black plays Eddie Riggs, the world’s best roadie who’s working for the world’s worst metal band: Kabbage Boy. They have a tween audience, which doesn’t sit well with Eddie. There’s nothing that Eddie can’t build or fix, except the band itself. After an on-stage accident some of Eddie’s blood spills onto his belt-buckle, in reality an amulet of Ormagöden, The Fire Beast, Cremator of the Sky and Destroyer of the Ancient World.
Stellar voice acting and a great script makes characters come alive. Jack Black is perfect for the voice of Eddie Riggs
Most superhero games have the same bad luck as most movie based games: they usually downright suck, with some exceptions here and there. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a bold attempt at the latter category, with characterisations, locations and overall theme ripped straight from the world of the comic books. Fans of Batman can rest assured that Arkham Asylum delivers, and then some.
The game kicks off as Batman, once again, has apprehended the Joker during his latest crime spree. As he brings the Clown Prince of Crime back to Arkham Asylum, he’s naturally suspicious about how easy it was apprehending him.
The perpetual spit quickly hits the fan as Joker breaks free from his shackles, beats up some guards and promptly takes over the entire Asylum, with a little help from Harley Quinn and his goons newly shipped in from Blackgate penitentiary. Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, as well as the asylum’s warden, Quincy Sharp, are kidnapped and it’s up to Batman to rescue them, defeat the Joker and find a way to survive among the rest of his rogue’s gallery in the veritable hellhole that is Arkham Asylum.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled
The original Turtles in Time is regarded as one of the best beat-em-ups of its time, and after the success of the previous XBLA TMNT game and re-releasing the most popular of the Turtles games from their heyday seemed like an obvious choice to both the consumer and the companies involved.
Less obvious is the decision to completely remake the game graphically when for many fans a mere port with online play would’ve sufficed. Even stranger than this is the decision to base this remake off the inferior, less popular Arcade version rather than the SNES version that had grabbed the hearts of so many.
An entire stage is gone, as are several characters, and the sections where on the SNES primitive Mode-7 gave us a glimpse at 3D are gone too, with few of the crazy camera-twisting maneuvers Mode-7 enabled in the game.
The gameplay is solid, but there's just something missing.
It’s not all bad – the game is in true 3D and additions such as 8-way attacking instantly makes the controls more refined. Online multiplayer is in, and all the basic, fun gameplay elements that made the original a smash are in place.
In spite of still having solid game mechanics and controls, Turtles in Time Re-Shelled seems to lack something. The graphical overhaul in particular feels charmless compared to the original sprites, and through that the nostalgia factor is gone.
With the fan service gone, all that Turtles in Time Re-Shelled has going for it is its gameplay, which while serviceable now feels tired and outdated.
- 6 / 10
Trials HD
Trials HD is a difficult game to describe, but here goes – it’s a physics-based motorbike racing and stunt game that draws its addictive qualities from leaderboards where the game challenges to beat out those on your Xbox Live Friends List.
In a nutshell, that’s this game – out of the box you’ll have over 50 tracks and you’ll be challenged to get from one end to the other as fast as possible without breaking any bones, setting yourself on fire or generally causing the rider any damage.
Not that it matters for the poor driver – he gets totaled at the end of every level anyway. A nice touch.
Each level will likely take several attempts to complete and again it’s clear how long each level took and how many respawns everybody used on the leaderboards – everything is tracked here. You can even see your progress against others whilst playing via a handy meter at the top of the screen, so you know if you can afford to slow down or if you need to put your foot down.
There are bronze, silver and gold medals for every level – merely surviving will net a bronze, but silver and gold are significantly more difficult to get. Stuck players can watch replays of the top 500 people on each task’s leaderboard and see exactly what buttons they pressed and when via icons on the screen.
Sometimes frustrating - but great.
Sometimes the game can be frustrating, but the feeling of accomplishment when you pull off an incredible jump or a death-defying stunt far outweighs the anger you felt when you failed it 50 times prior.
The addition of several fun challenge modes and a level editor further increases the value of the game and makes it one of the more condensed but complete experiences in XBLA. Levels can be shared with friends and everything – everything – is leaderboarded to foster competitive driving.
All of Trials HD is meticulously designed and well presented. The game also has controls as tight as they come – important for a game like this. While I found myself wishing for more options in game and some sort of actual online game mode, there’s still a fair amount of depth here.
It’s a great example of how to integrate Xbox Live without gameplay actually being online, and it’s a master class in how to create a very simple, condensed but stunningly addictive game.
- 9 / 10
MetroidVania is an interesting genre name to be sure. Named after the two series’ that birthed this particular gameplay style, Metroid and Castlevania, the genre is defined by 2D gameplay across sprawling maps with progression controlled by the items and moves you have access to at any given moment.
The genre isn’t dead, but it’s certainly a bit of a wasteland right now with portable Castlevania titles the only viable option and the last 2D Metroid released way back in 2004. Here to save the day for fans is Shadow Complex, a new, original, sizable adventure for Xbox Live Arcade.
Platform & shoot your way through the game world...
The release of Ashes Cricket 2009 right now may seem strange – it’s a funny time to release a game, slap bang in the middle of the summer gaming slowdown, but in the case of Ashes there’s definitely no better time for the game to land.
Right now, the actual real Ashes Tournament is taking place and Cricket has actually been promoted to be important enough to be front or back page news, rather than a sport sitting in the shadow of the Premier League.
Indeed, Cricket’s return to the front of the public consciousness explains the existence of Ashes completely – some might wonder why after years without a new cricket title it’s suddenly showing up – it’s all about the timing.
The previous Cricket game was in the form of the Brian Lara series from Codemasters and Ashes is based off the Brian Lara experience and from the same company.
England is fully licensed...
From the moment I booted up ‘Splosion Man, I knew I was in for something special. The last time a mere menu and intro caused so much interest and intrigue on Live Arcade was in Braid, and we all know how well that came out.
‘Splosion Man tells the story of ‘Splosion Man, an escaped experiment who has been given the power to explode without causing any damage to himself – and is now determined to break out of the facility that created him and out into the world.
Looking like a whacky version of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, ‘Splosion Man is easy to control – you move with the stick, and every single 360 face button makes him ’splode. Simple.
The Virtua Tennis series hasn’t changed much since its birth, really. Like many sports games, there’s a career mode, several training exercises and matches against both real-life and originally created tennis pros across the globe until you are crowned the greatest in the world – and then it’s as good as game over.
The core design of Virtua Tennis 2009 is very much the same – you create a player and train them while also heading onto the court in tournaments to raise your ranking until you’re one of the best. You can buy new equipment in addition to train and then take your created character online – a first for the Wii version.
Training exercises consist of everything from the simplistic to difficult mini-games that test every aspect of your tennis playing skill including your accuracy and power. Everything will feel very familiar – perhaps too familiar – to those who played the previous entry, Virtua Tennis 3.
I remember quite vividly when Guitar Hero first burst onto the scenes here in the UK. I’d never seen it before, and it was launching here sometime after it had already become hugely popular in the US – so I’d heard all about it on gaming message boards, with the US hardcore raving about the new, revolutionary rhythm game.
At first I found it fiendishly difficult, but after some time I’d worked my way up to hard and then even expert – and I was having amazing fun. I was in love from there, and I’ve been with the rhythm genre for many years since.
In recent years my allegiance has switched to EA, MTV and Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise – but perhaps a collection of the tracks I love most from the first three Guitar Hero titles is enough to draw me back?
The Ghostbusters are back, and they are better than ever. While most movie based video games have a large amount of suckage, Ghostbusters isn’t bogged down by the release date of a massive summer blockbuster.
This is an official entry in the franchise, a movie in video game form if you will. The boys in grey have a lot of fans both young and old, and all those fans can rest easily, as Ghostbusters: The Video Game delivers on many accounts.
The game kicks off as a wave of ghostly energy emanates from a museum housing a Gozer exhibit. At the same time the Ghostbusters have hired a new member to the team, the Rookie, who’ll be working as an “experimental weapons technician” or Egon’s guinea pig. The team is reluctant to get to know the new recruit as half the equipment he’ll be testing can send him flying halfway to New-Jersey in case something malfunctions.
Resident Evil 5 is a strange creature. It has all the flash and graphics of a next-gen game, yet the gameplay itself feels as if it’s years old.
This isn’t that warm nostalgia feeling you get from playing an old game again after many years. It’s that feeling where you played that type of game years ago and realise that, while it was fun at the time, those conventions have evolved into better, more intuitive play and controls since.
That’s the feeling I get from RE5.
While this conflict of evolution is present within the game, Capcom tailored the experience towards that conflict. They understood that moving is clumsy, so the infected can only run till they are 30 feet from you. At which point they slow to a shuffle. This tailoring helps alleviate what would have been a killer to playing the game. While they help most of the issues, a few still go unchecked.
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