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The Conduit Game Review–It’s Like Red Bull, The Game

That headline, of course, will require some explanation.  If you’ve ever drank a Red Bull before, especially if you don’t do it often, what you get is kind of a sweetish, cloying taste (that for me put me vaguely in mind of chewable vitamins) followed by an incredibly twitchy sensation as the sugar and caffeine goes burning its way merrily through your endocrine system.  And, either ironically or by design, this is EXACTLY how I’d describe The Conduit, the newest first person shooter for the Wii.

Basically, The Conduit asks you to believe that all those things you scoffed at as merely tinfoil-hat lunacy, stuff like chemtrails and 9/11 being an inside job and aliens and whatever it is they’re doing out at the Denver International Airport, are all in fact very real.  This is already tough enough, but then they’ll follow that up by asking you to believe that the shadowy figures behind all of them actually brought a tinfoil-hat type INTO the conspiracy, and said tinfoil hatter actually accepted his new role.  From there, he’ll be heavily armed with all the latest government hardware and whatever he can manage to pick up along the way from the race of alien marauders who’s looking to set up shop on Earth.  Their technology tends to focus on things that are grown rather than built–their weapons use biomass as propellant and their locks are organic–and the centerpiece of their tech tree is the Conduit, a kind of interdimensional warp generator that seems to be similar to the old Stargate design.  But, as you’ll discover as you go through the game, there’s plenty of sneaky shadowy stuff going on here, and you may not be able to trust your own handlers as much as you’d want to…or even as much as you hope.

I give them all the credit in the world for assembling a sharp, sweet storyline.  Seriously, they clearly put a lot into it and it really is a fantastic story that uses plenty of the things we might find roaming around the internet at this very second.  They’ve got the plot on lockdown, and even the graphics and sound weigh in nicely for a Wii title.  Though everyone TALKS about the so-called Wii Syndrome, in which a game is automatically docked by virtue of being on the Wii, let’s face one indisputable fact–graphically, no game for the Wii has yet been produced that can compete with an Xbox 360 or PS3 title.  This isn’t bias, this is sheer fact, and if someone actually CAN point out a Wii game that CAN compete graphically with, say, Prototype or Haze or Killzone 2 or Fallout 3, then I will cheerfully and publicly retract this statement in the comments section below.

There’s only one other problem with The Conduit, and that’s the twitchy control scheme.  A first person shooter depends heavily on the ability to get the firepower where it needs to go, whether it be into a tank or an enemy’s sternum.  And when I’m trying to line up a shot, it really doesn’t help that the Wiimote will periodically jerk halfway across the screen from one small twitch of the wrist.  This will take getting used to.

But the fact remains–The Conduit just might be, all things considered, the Wii’s best first person shooter.  And if you love a good first person shooter with plenty of action, then you’re going to be all over this game.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Game Review–Better Than You’d Expect

‘ll be honest with you, folks–you know I always am, but this time I have to be particularly blunt about what I’m saying.  I always get a little freaked out whenever I hear about an RPG for Nintendo’s Wii.  There’s just something so very…not right…about the idea.  See, an RPG, in the commonly meant sense of the term, involves a huge production and graphical overload and a story that goes on and on for days or even weeks.  And when you think of the kind of systems that can handle such a venture, “the Wii” is generally about as far down the list as, say, “Colecovision”.

But even I can be wrong–savor the flavor, kids, because this doesn’t happen very often.  I tried Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time and got a pretty good surprise out of it.

As for the plot…wow.  On RPG Cliche Day–okay, on a young man’s sixteenth birthday, he oversleeps, gets up late and dashes off to his Coming Of Age Ceremony.  Yes, they even CALL it the Coming Of Age Ceremony.  I’m both amazed and horrified.  Anyway, after completing said ceremony, he returns to the village to discover that his best friend’s little sister has contracted some kind of mysterious illness that resembles nothing so much as radiation sickness.  No, really.  And it gets better.  So now, on his sixteenth birthday, the boy has to violate the laws of his village and actually LEAVE to go find medicine to heal the “crystal sickness”.

Yeah, you heard all of that right.  An opening jam packed with cliches leads to a little girl getting radiation sickness that, if she survives it, will actually mutate her into being a super-strong entity with rapid healing powers, which turns out to be the exact same disease the hero had, and then the hero will actually break the law to go fetch medicine but no one seems to care about the legal issues here at ALL.

This may well be the most predictable and yet the most ridiculous game plotline I’ve ever heard.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many tropes in one place, only to be followed up by a ridiculous series of plot holes sufficiently large to drive a herd of chocobo through.

And yet, the game play isn’t half bad.  You’ll get some mini-games in the middle of this full-blown series of adventures, and there’s plenty of variety to be had here.  Sure, it’s all a bit cookie-cutter and plain vanilla, but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it.  It’s a fairly fun game, and with a little bit of excitement.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time isn’t exactly the greatest game ever, but it’s a far cry from the worst, too.  There’s reason enough to give it a try that it’ll make at least a decent rental, even if it won’t wind up taking over your life.  If you’ve got a yen for RPGs and a decent tolerance for half-baked plotlines, you’ll probably have a good time with this one.

Resident Evil Archives Game Review–Time For A Sleazy Cash Grab!

Wow, Nintendo–this might be a new low, even for you.  First you had the nerve to release the original Resident Evil on the Gamecube with basically just enhanced difficulty and call it Resident Evil Zero.  And now, you step it up a tick by releasing the original Resident Evil on the Wii with basically just enhanced graphics and calling it Resident Evil Archives.

Seriously, this is the second time you’ve rereleased a game from 1996 and called it good enough.  Is there no limit?

But okay, you’ve done it, and now we have to live with it, so off I go, to review Resident Evil.  Again.  Thanks, Big N. Thanks ever so.

Resident Evil Archives is about a group of special forces types, the S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) team, who’s gone off to investigate a rash of murders out in the wilds of the Arklay Mountains area just outside of Raccoon City.  And when the S.T.A.R.S team doesn’t report in, Alpha Team is sent in to track them down.  What they find is nothing short of horrifying, as genetically altered mutations now rule the Arklay Mountains region.  When Alpha Team takes cover in a sprawling mansion after being chased by a pack of mutant dogs, they discover that their night of horror has only just begun.  Now missing nearly half the team, the remnants of Alpha Team have to find out what happened to everyone else and get out alive, in the process discovering the truth behind what’s going on in the Arklay Mountains.

It’s no secret that the original Resident Evil was the start of something amazing.  It’s no secret that Resident Evil was a spectacularly fun game and if you’ve never had the pleasure of trying it out then you definitely should.  And I’ll even go so far as to admit that the Wii version really does have loads better graphics.  I only WISH the original Resident Evil looked this good.  But I’ve got serious problems with Resident Evil Archives.

One, there’s the obvious.  i really question the value of this game’s existence to begin with.  Considering that the PS2 is fully backward compatible with the PS1, and the PS2 is still selling like hotcakes, why would you need the Wii to play it in the first place?  This just reeks of massive sleazy cash grab.

Two, holy hell, the CONTROLS.  I don’t know where the nunchuk’s major malfunction was, but when it’s taking me a good three minutes to try to push the bureau into position in that damn sculpture room so I can snag the first floor map, I’ve got a serious problem here, and I don’t think it’s an issue of my own fine motor skills.

Three, there’s something very seriously wrong with the difficulty here.  I run into that first zombie, just off the dining room?  My first response has always been to back into the hall so I can line up my shot.  And I’m firing into this thing in as rapid a fashion as possible, but it just shambles up and starts chewing on me.  Next thing I know, I’m down two-thirds of my starting ammo capacity and my EKG’s blinking at me that I need a health powerup and bad.  Since when do these zombies absorb fire like that?  Oh, and you can forget about trying to take head shots.  That’s all apparently randomized now, even if you could get it to aim solidly.

So all things considered, this is a great game for anyone who hasn’t yet had the sweet joy of Resident Evil and longs to see it in brilliant clarity but not necessarily with the greatest control scheme.  If you’ve got a Playstation, or a PS2, or you’ve already played Resident Evil, there’s no reason at all to crawl through the Archives.

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Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon Game Review–A Warking Disappointment

Yes, I know that kind of punnage in a headline should probably get me shot by the pun police (whom as we all know are only permitted to carry chocolate guns for irony’s sake), but I do it because I CAN.  Now, that having been thoroughly exhausted, let’s wade into just WHY this game disappointed me so deeply.

But first, the incredibly confusion Square-Enix brand plotline.  A long, long time ago, before Cid got old and showed up with his airship in every Final Fantasy game EVER, Cid was just a young treasure hunter looking for a power source so he could build that airship.  And he, along with his partner, the titular little yellow bird, thinks he’s found it in the form of Timeless Power, a fist-sized jewel that seems to have a small galaxy inside it.  Anyway, just as he’s about to collect his airship battery, it’s stolen from him by a rival treasure hunter and he, his rival, and their pets are transported to an alternate dimension in which the ringing of a clock tower bell causes a vortex to open up behind a person’s head and steals their memories.

Still with me?  Good.  Because this hasn’t even gone off the rails yet.

That’s going to happen when the star baby named Raffaello falls out of the sky and lands in front of the clock tower.  He’s contained inside a rather large egg, and when it hatches, he emerges.  Raffaello has the power to open the memory-stealing vortexes, enter them, and start sobbing uncontrollably while clinging to a rainbow-colored floating puzzle piece (representing lost memory), thus forcing you (playing as the Chocobo) to follow him into the abyss and rescue him from what looks like nothing at all.  Repeatedly.

I’m only slightly kidding on that last part–you’re going to have to fight your way through a series of enemies to reach Raffaello on each level, but somehow floating star baby just wandered right through the horde of monsters you’ll have to fight.  Ah well, it wouldn’t be much of a game without the fighting, now would it?

I admit, that when I started playing this, I was pretty enthusiastic about it.  An action-driven RPG for the Wii? Sign me up!  And indeed, the gameplay was pretty solid and fun, and there was plenty of humor to be had in the dialogue, and the stories were pretty solid and compelling (except for the overarching one featuring green-haired star babies that hatch from eggs that are capable of surviving planetary entry but can be broken from the inside by a baby), but I rapidly found a flaw in the game.

Specifically, the sheer repetition.  I found myself dragging my Chocobo through dungeon after vaguely similar dungeon with only new monster types and new items to break up the monotony.  And sadly, the story wasn’t THAT compelling to keep me that interested.  I’m still trying to get my head around Raffaello.

I admit, this particular review is going to be highly subjective.  I was basically disappointed in how much of the game seemed similar to the rest of it.  I tired of doing the same thing over and over again.  And I’ll admit, the rest of the game was solidly done enough to make it a really good game.  So if you can stomach repetition, and don’t mind when things repeat themselves, and have a fair tolerance for redundancy (not to mention repetition and repetition), then you and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon should get along together nicely.

Broken Steel Game Review–A Perfect End To A Nigh-Perfect Game

And so, the last addition to the Fallout downloadable content block has emerged, and amazingly, it will change the way you play Fallout 3 forever.  It’s called Broken Steel, and what it’ll do to the game is create a series of changes that are vast and downright unnerving.

This time around, you’ll be able to resolve one of the most frustrating problems with Fallout 3—what happened AFTER you retake Project Purity.  You’ve just made the Capitol Wasteland a better place to live, and quite possibly killed yourself in the process.  Only now, even IF you were the one to take the poison pill yourself, you’ll manage to survive it and carry on the good fight, as our old buddy Three Dog would say.  And now, you’ll be assisting the Brotherhood of Steel (and not those Outcast putzes either—they got their chance in Operation: Anchorage and did they EVER screw it up!)  in three important overarching concepts.

1.    Help get the newly cleaned water out to the various ports and settlements of the Capitol Wasteland.

2.    Blast the godless heathen savage Super Mutants into insensate smoking oblivion, once and for all.

3.    While you’re at it, put paid to those miserable soulless heartless Fascisistic thugs known as The Enclave.

Sound like a plan to anyone else?  Oh yes.  Yes it does.

Considering how many times I’ve railed against first person shooters in these pages, you might well wonder how I live with the hypocrisy of loving Fallout 3, which is a first person shooter itself.  And if you were to ask me that, I’d look at you sorrowfully, shake my head with regret and tell you that Fallout 3 isn’t JUST a first person shooter.  It’s a first person ADVENTURE.  Most first person shooters like to focus on that last word at the cost of everything else, but it’s the rare ones like Fallout 3 that open up a world to you and let you run riot therein.  You can be a hero or a criminal in these games, and the sheer variety of things to do holds my interest with every step.

And indeed, Broken Steel will, as I’ve said, change the way you play Fallout 3.  One, the level cap has been lifted from level 20 to level 30.  Of course, there will also be a collection of new items for you to lay hands on, and you’ll have several new plot elements to tangle with as well.  The already deep, rich story of Fallout 3 gets nothing but enhancement from Broken Steel.

However, as good as this is—there are still some problems here. For those of you thinking the broken level cap will be an opportunity to catch up on those skills you missed, think again.  For some strange reason, the game will give you new skills and perks when you reach a new level.  I’m not terribly pleased about this, but I guess it could be worse.  And there are many folks who will discover, seemingly randomly, that they’re unable to even play the game in the first place—but for those people, it’s not even that much of a problem.  While you’ll miss out on the new items and new plot challenges, from what I understand the level cap will remain broken, allowing you to try out the new features.

As fond as I am of Fallout 3, I’m of the mind that the downloadable content so far has added spice to the original as opposed to really opening up game experiences.  Broken Steel, meanwhile, has done a solid job of opening the world up even further.  All I can say is, after six months of fantastic gaming, great work, Bethesda…and see you in Vegas.

Sonic The Hedgehog Game Review–Sega, How Do You Sleep At Night?

Sometimes I wonder how Sega sleeps at night.

And then I realize it’s probably on huge piles of money.

This is the inescapable conclusion I reached after playing Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360. Looking back at that sentence I still can’t believe I typed it without having an embolism or something. Yes, I played Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Yes, I’m also amazed by this.

Because once again, good old Doctor Eggman (whom I can’t stop thinking of as Robotnik for some reason) is back for more action with far more robotic minions than he should have (where is he getting the materials for all these robots, anyway?), to this time harass the citizenry of Soleanna, steal their princess, and attempt to seize something called the Flames of Disaster. This continues on for some time, with Sonic grappling with Eggman’s robotic hordes, until eventually Sonic’s counterparts Shadow and Silver get involved and the whole mess gets even more ludicrous.

While the plotline is so sufficiently convoluted as to be unrecognizable without a score card handy, there will be plenty of problems with this game. One, they built a Sonic game around this, which means you will spend a lot of time running around collecting rings. A LOT of time running around collecting rings. That’s sadly most of what Sonic does, and you’ll be playing Sonic a good chunk of the time. The controls will be woefully inadequate, and you’ll spend more than a little time trying to stick a jump or angle your fall correctly.

The first mission does a fantastic job of illustrating just how lousy this game is. See, in order to reach the first full level, you’ll have to have a special move that allows you to run along a string of rings. To get that special move, you’ll have to roam around town until you find a man who needs a pair of shoes tested. Once you test those shoes, you’ll then be allowed to PURCHASE the special move that allows you to reach the first stage.

Seriously, what’s the deal with that? It’s like they were trying to artificially pad the game in order to make it less like a complete joke. Believe me, I was getting REALLY sick of trying to get people’s permission to go on to the next stage. And the next stage wasn’t really all that fun either, so more and more, trying to save Soleanna and its princess seemed less like an epic adventure and more like a lousy day job.

Even worse are some of the game elements—for instance, playing as Sonic and carrying the princess with you allows you, somehow, to access some kind of force field. Carrying the princess of Soleanna around in your arms allows you to generate energy sufficient to deflect objects. Is she some kind of dynamo? A mutant, perhaps? Spending a little too much time near the large hadron collider in her hometown? Or just really craptacular Sonic setup? I’m going with the craptacular, myself.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin is how, as you’ve probably heard, Sonic and the princess will be carrying on a quasi-romantic relationship, despite the fact that she’s a human being and he’s an anthropomorphic hedgehog. When asked about it, the princess’ voice actress Lacey Chabert gave us this little gem: “Ha! No, you’re just being silly. It’s not an inappropriate relationship. Let’s just say Sonic and Princess Elise have an attraction for each other.” Um…Lacey…that would be exactly the problem. The human being is attracted to the anthropomorphic hedgehog.

That’s bestiality. The textbook definition, in fact.

This is just sad, really—unless you’re absolutely desperate for a Sonic game, you can do vastly, VASTLY better than this.

Army of Two Game Review–Of Mice And Men, The Shooter Game

Playing through Army of Two is an experience that’ll leave you sad, in a way.  You’ll want to enjoy this game–you really will–it’s just that the game won’t actually give you very many good reasons to do so.  And yet, when it actually DOES, you get your sense of hope back, only to have it quashed once again by virtue of having no further reason to enjoy it.

The plot of Army of Two, sadly, won’t be a huge help either in terms of making you love this game.  You follow Army Rangers Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem as they become disenchanted with the army and leave to join a private military contractor outfit called SSC, Security and Strategy Corporation. From there, they’ll be running various missions over the course of fifteen years, and even be indirectly involved with a scheme you may have seen recently in theatres—to privatize the military.  And they’ll even work to bring about the downfall of said scheme, which is kind of weird considering they’re working for a company that would directly benefit from such a scheme.  And, even better, after fifteen years with SSC, they start their own company, Trans World Operations.

Yes, that would be the pun…two guys who make an army of two, who eventually become the army of TWO as an acronym.

This is actually a pretty fair storyline, and will send you all over the world doing a whole bunch of awesome stuff in an effort to keep organizations like yours, and the one you’ll found, strictly on the sidelines.  Of course, the problem with Army of Two is that you’ll have almost nothing to DO with any of this awesome stuff because you’ll be too busy running around and shooting stuff.

Much has been made over the fact that, if you’re playing alone, you get an AI partner.  This definitely qualifies as an interesting development, if it weren’t for the fact that your partner has mental candlepower somewhere in the crustacean range.  Seriously—I was holding a car door to use as a shield for this brain-dead troglodyte in Somalia so that he could get behind me and shoot.  I figured he’d be able to aim easily since I had my car door held in a fashion that suggested that every car in Somalia has somehow been reinforced with some kind of steel plating (seriously, folks, if you’re ever in a gun fight don’t use the car door as cover.  Any round of any serious power will blow right through it.  You’re MUCH better off ducking behind the engine block, because that thing requires a chain hoist to move.  But I digress.).

Wait…where was I?  Oh yeah, moron with the car door.  Anyway, I’m holding this thing, and I discover that my partner is so brain-damagingly stupid that I not only have to hold the cover up but I also have to walk him in FRONT of the enemy I think he should shoot because his skill with a rifle marks him as a CLEAR graduate of the Spooky Mulder School of Firearm Use (motto:  We’ll empty an entire fifteen-round clip into a swamp but we STILL can’t hit an alligator the size of a small car from a range of eight feet.).  And don’t even get me started on what happens if you give your partner a boost up to a ledge or overhang or some such and he gets shot before you can get pulled up to join him.  That’s just annoying.

You’ll also get to dress up in costume, including wearing patently ridiculous skull-shaped face masks (yes, that’s a brilliant move…nothing like going into combat with absolutely ZERO peripheral vision!  Clearly, their time in the Rangers taught them this.) and when you do a whole lot of killing you’ll be allowed to give your colleague a congratulatory fist bump to let him know he done good, because otherwise this knuckledragger would have nary a clue that he was doing something right.

Special side note: Army of Two must have some kind of problem with the military because they make it ABUNDANTLY clear how much more awesome it is to be a private military contractor.

Anyway, if you ever wanted to play a first person shooter from third person perspective and thought it would be awesome if Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men could handle the action, then Army of Two is the game you’ve been spending long nights awake for.  Otherwise, just walk on past and maybe try ANOTHER first person shooter.

EA Unveils MySim Agents for the Sleuth Gamers

Gamers have their share of people wanting to play investigators or some socialite adventure and with Electronic Arts new game, MySim Agents, expect a lot of plot twisting tales to come forth. EA Play Label of Electronic Arts Inc. today announced MySims Agents, an original IP, mystery-solving adventure game for the Wii and Nintendo DS where players are the heroic agents who must stop a sinister plot that threatens the fate of an entire city.

“We’re thrilled to bring you MySims Agents, the next game from MySims, and something completely different than any MySims game before,” said Tim LeTourneau, General Manager of the MySims franchise. “Its mystery-meets-adventure theme allows players to hone their problem-solving skills while still enjoying all of the beloved MySims charm; characters, customization and humor.”

• In MySims Agents players take on the role of a special agent hired to foil the sinister plans of Morcubus, lord of the criminal underworld. By recruiting different MySims, each with their own special characteristics, players can build up their very own crime-busting dream team. From tracking footprints and using forensics to picking locks, hacking into computers, following leads and collecting clues, players must rely on their wits, skills and trusty gadgets to piece together the clues to solve the mystery. Jump aboard the jet to reach an ancient temple, a spooky mansion or an icy mountaintop chalet in search of clues that lead players closer to the sinister Morcubus. Return from the adventure with cool treasures that players can use to construct and customize their headquarters and make it their own.
• In MySims Agents on the Nintendo DS players are agents assigned by their agency to help the mayor stop a notorious thief from stealing an ancient treasure. By searching for clues, solving intricate puzzles and matching wits with the thief, gamers can protect the treasure and the town! Along the way they can talk to their favorite MySims, sharpen their agent skills with 10 different mini-games, and search through underground caverns for clues to the thief’s undoing!

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Sonic Unleashed Game Review–A Good Try That Just Doesn’t Hit

I’ve got to hand it to Sega, I really do—they’re trying.  While their efforts aren’t always successful, they’re at least taking a run at things, and that says a lot for them.  And their recent release, Sonic Unleashed for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii, shows that they’re at least making an effort.

Again, not always successful, but again, an effort.

So once again, in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic is taking on his old nemesis Eggman, who must have some really deep pockets because this time he’s managed to assemble an entire deep space fleet of heavily armed attack ships to go after Sonic.  Naturally, it doesn’t take long for Sonic to turn them into hulls with massive holes in them venting atmosphere into the big empty that is space.  But the gigantic space fleet was just a gigantic distraction, as Eggman uses Sonic’s presence, and the Chaos Emeralds that power Sonic these days, to charge a weapon that manages to shatter the planet below and yet NOT kill everyone on the surface.  But this incredibly unlikely event also releases a beast known as Dark Gaia, whose power Eggman covets for his own to construct his dream empire, Eggman Land.  This in turn launches Sonic and friends into a whole new globe-spanning adventure in a bid to, once again, defeat Eggman and return Dark Gaia to its prison.

This is a whole lot of storyline, and you’ll be seeing it build throughout the game through lots and lots and lots of talking.  Occasionally, you will be allowed to participate in action sequences, but these action sequences almost feel as if they KNOW they’re being ignored, so they try to pack as much as possible into themselves.  It’s a lot like that old Mad TV sketch—I’m pretty sure it was Mad TV—where the divorced father gets custody of his son for only a few short minutes every six months, so he tries to do everything possible while in the confines of the small apartment he calls home.  There’s an impromptu birthday party, he teaches him to shave, and so on right down the line.  That’s what Sonic Unleashed feels like—you’re with your boring chatty mother three hundred sixty four and ninety-four / ninety-sixths days of the year, so when you’re with Dad, suddenly it’s a frenzy of activity before Mom takes you back.

Your head is left spinning by the sheer speed of Sonic’s daytime mode, and at night, as part of a weird unintended consequence, Sonic turns into a “werehog”, which is much large and musclebound than the original hedgehog, but also much slower, so these sequences are largely brawler action.  Also, you’ll get to ride on the back of Tails’ plane, the Tornado, and work the guns in a largely unimpressive button mashing sequence made all the more frustrating by the fact that you’re required to press buttons that appear on-screen, but generally won’t appear until it’s ALMOST too late to do anything about it.  So unless you couldn’t get enough of playing Dance Dance Revolution with your controller, you’ll hate these sequences.

And that’s the really sad part about this—I did have a lot of fun during the “dad’s time” action sequences, but I found myself so neck-deep in “mom”’s ridiculous chatting that I just got bored with this game.  If you can stomach a whole lot of chit-chat and like some pretty sweet action sequences, then Sonic Unleashed should be at least worth a rental for you.

Crystal Defenders Game Review–Tower Defense, For Your Console!

I really love Square-Enix.  I really do.  I tell you, they can take what should be the worst crap imaginable and make it fun, engaging, and really, really pretty.  Take, for example, the concept of desktop tower defense games.  A dime a dozen, right? Exactly.  But let Square-Enix put one on, as they did with their game Crystal Defenders now on Xbox Live Arcade for eight hundred Microsoft points, and it turns out to be a fun experience that looks really, really good.

The plot is pretty much as advertised–you defend crystals from being captured by various monsters, and you’ll do so by stationing various Final Fantasy figures like soldiers, black mages, monks and archers along paths leading to your crystal storehouse.  Then, a series of monsters will walk those paths, and you’ve got to lay enough firepower out to make sure that the monsters can’t reach your crystal storehouse.

I know, you’ve already played this kind of game several times before, and sometimes you’ve even played it at work when you were supposed to be doing something else, but I definitely don’t remember ever being able to play it on my Xbox 360.  So for the shockingly cheap price of eight hundred Microsoft points, you too can have an extremely pretty good time with a game you’ve played before, but never with one that’s looked this good.

Rise of the Argonauts Game Review–Chatty But Still Some Fun

Greek mythology has always been a fertile source of inspiration for game designers, especially considering the massive success of the God of War series.  But Kratos isn’t the only one who’s dealt with Ares and Athena and Zeus and such–in Rise of the Argonauts, you’ll be able to get a whole new side of the whole Greek mythology inspired action-adventure sort of thing.

Rise of the Argonauts puts you in control of King Jason of Iolcus, who was about to get married when his bride to be was suddenly assassinated by representatives of a supposedly dead assassin society called the Blacktongues.  King Jason, of course, didn’t take this lightly and went on a killing spree of everyone in the palace who wasn’t supposed to be there.  But after the blood was mopped up and the corpses were dragged out of the palace, King Jason was still left with a dead fiancée.  Thus, he set up a massive quest above the most technologically-advanced boat of all time, the Argo, to go forth and recover his fiancee’s soul and get it jammed back into her body before it boils off into a kind of metaphysical sludge throughout the cosmos.

In order to do this, you’re going to have to proceed through a series of quests to bring the earthly descendents of Ares, Hermes and Athena to the island of Delphi, where the descendent of Apollo, the Oracle, is already waiting.  Doing other side quests will also allow you to gain bonus traits and powers, giving you advantages in attack and defense as well as resistances and health bonuses.

There is, actually, a ready comparison for the gameplay on this one—it plays a LOT like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with multi-level dialogue choices and customizable team-building with AI controls over your teammates.  It’s actually kind of fun in this way, but only kind of.  This allows for a pretty nice story to be instituted, and give you a lot of interaction sort of challenges to do.  How do you handle a situation?  Do you try and convince your conversation target to agree with you?  Do you appeal to their sense of justice?  Or do you just bludgeon your way through the conversation and hope for the best?  These options are available to you on almost every conversation, and will help determine how you progress through the game.

See, Rise of the Argonauts has a LOT of problems to it.  One, it’s going to focus heavily on that dialogue, and the voice acting is not that great.  Two, there’s not a whole lot of fighting to be had here.  I spent way too much time running around between goals and not nearly enough time busting heads.  And when I get into a game like this I expect to be busting a lot of heads from the moment I walk in the door.  I shouldn’t have to be waiting to start the beatdown for everyone to stop talking.  That’s just not right.

However, if you’re into a good story, Rise of the Argonauts will definitely provide plenty of that.  You just have to be willing to accept that you won’t have a whole lot to DO with that story, and if you can handle that, then you’ll likely have at least a rental-grade good time with this game.  Otherwise, you’ll probably want to go find a game with a lot more action in it..

Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child

Playfirst, Inc. has announced the official release dates of Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child, the third installment to the popular Dream Chronicles adventure game. PlayFirst PlayPass members will have exclusive access to the game for both Mac and PC download from Tuesday, April 14 and the title will be widely available on Thursday, April 16.

The upcoming release introduces a more open world experience for the series which for the first time, allows players to explore the game world in a non linear way. Through the introduction of a new nexus feature, players are now able to travel back and forth to various parts of the dream world as part of an ongoing quest which reveals critical clues and challenges.

The Dream Chronicles series traces the story of Faye whose overarching mission is to find her husband and child after they mysteriously disappear. Set in an ethereal dream world, Faye has trouble recalling the circumstances of their disappearance – a mystery which is gradually unraveled though a series of player quests and hidden object puzzles.

Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child is developed by KatGames and published by PlayFirst. Dream Chronicles, the first game in the series will be available for the first time on iPhone this April. Both Dream Chronicles and Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze are also available in major retailers. For more information on the game, or to purchase any game in the series.

(Source) Press

Assassin’s Creed Video Game Review–Specialization Is For Insects

A lot of people had fun with Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox 360. I am not one of them.

In a mindbender of a plotline, you play as the distant descendant of a legendary assassin, Altair.  You’re stuck in the middle of a lab in 2012, having memories extracted from you on the genetic level about all the stuff your legendary assassin great-great-great-many times over grandfather did.  Your character will be remembering these events, but you’ll be the one playing them.

Altair did a whole lot of damage to the so-called Assassin’s Guild, breaking all three of its cardinal rules on one mission, and thus getting demoted all the way down to novice.  This means, sadly, that all the sweet things you can do in the first level will be off limits to you until you can re-learn them.  I can’t even express how ludicrous this is–demotion equalling loss of ability is too preposterous to even try and refute.

So you’ll be going about your business, trying to regain your former status (and ability, somehow) by carrying out a series of missions related to finding something that will end a war permanently.  Worse yet, further complications will come around by introducing the now-popular Mayan end of the world date of December 21, 2012.

On a visual level, Assassin’s Creed is patently top-notch.  And all the bells and whistles are present with great sound and level design and the like.  Indeed, whoever compared Assassin’s Creed to a giant parkour run wasn’t just whistling in the dark.  And the plot is massive, if confusing in more than a few points.

But the biggest problem in this game is its lack of substance.  The missions are mostly information gathering runs, without a whole lot of fighting or action.  This makes sense on some level–it’s not Warrior’s Creed or Soldier’s Creed, it’s ASSASSIN’S Creed.  If you get in a big rolling fight then you’ve probably done your job wrong from the word go.  This makes the problem a structural one—if you don’t want to play the stealthy assassin, then you don’t want to play Assassin’s Creed.

Specialization, folks, is for INSECTS.  Robert Heinlein said it first and best.  The best games may well require you to be the most versatile.  Look at some of the greats—where you have to gather information, act on that information, and see it through to the end.  You’ll have to plan your approaches, fight your way through a legion of foes and solve some puzzles to get where you’re going.  You get to play on every conceivable level at once—strategic, tactical, and operational.  Games where you do the same thing, over and over, seldom offer as much fun as those games that offer variety, no matter how pretty they look.

So if you love the parts of the various games out there where you have to sneak around, then you’ll no doubt love Assassin’s Creed.  It’s a beautiful game with a storyline so dense that light cannot escape from its surface.  But if you want something fast-paced with a more comprehensible storyline, you’ll likely turn this one down.