199 public written reviews
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From the launch of the PS Vita, the system has built itself up to be a portable fighting games machine. I’ve already covered the great port that Capcom provided for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but Arc System Works is also here from the get go and they have a fighter of their own gunning for your cash. Called BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend (calling it Extend from now on), this title is another exceptionally well…
“IT’S MAHVEL BABY!”, as the famous fighting game community and internet meme goes. Without a doubt, Capcom’s PlayStation Vita launch title, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (UMVC3), is an exciting title and one of the best fighting games available at a handheld system’s launch in recent memory. Since this is the Vita version we are speaking about, let’s just jump straight into what’s new. The first thing you’ll notice…
The PC version of Alan Wake has been through quite a ride to finally get a release on the platform. It was originally slated to be released together with the Xbox 360 version, but Microsoft decided that “ Alan Wake was a game that was best played from a couch in front of a large TV screen.” In other words, they were saying horror games can’t work on the PC because you aren’t set up to be in the right situation. An…
Wow… What the hell did I just finish playing! I’m not saying that in a bad way, but more in the vein of the stuff that happens in this game, it’s crazy, it’s mental and it’s INSANE! Asura’s Wrath is an epic adventure, it’s a game that’s more of an experience, and it’s done in such a unique way that it’s not like any other videogame I have ever played. This is both a good and a bad thing, and at the same time limits…
During a release of a new handheld system, the launch titles always seem to include some sort of port of a console sport title. The trend continues on the brand new PlayStation Vita , which is selling itself as a portable device that offers a home console experience on the go. What better way to sell you this idea than actually showing games that were on home consoles now running in the palm of your hand? Sega’s…
Before I start this review, I have to say I’m not the biggest follower of the UFC sport. I watch a few matches here and there, but I am certainly no hardcore fan who sits down with a bucket of popcorn every three weeks to watch the largest mixed martial arts (MMA) company in the world. That said, I have enjoyed the past two UFC games, just for the fact that they seemed to represent the sport wonderfully. THQ took a…
Since re-birthing with a burst of popularity due to Street Fighter IV , the gaming community has allowed developers to create new fighting games without feeling scared about them not selling. As such, it makes perfect sense for Namco to bring another SoulCalibur to the table. It’s been well over three years (and before the fighting genre grew again) since SoulCalibur IV , so what’s changed in that time? A fair…
It seems the game industry can’t get rid of zombies at the moment. They have infected nearly every type of genre. The development studio, Doublesix , also seems to be attached to zombies since they’ve developed a sequel to their PS3 and PC game Burn Zombie Burn . What sets All Zombies Must Die! (AZMD) apart from the previous game is that it features mechanics that try to evolve the simple twin-stick, top-down…
Apple’s iOS platform has become extremely popular in its years of availability. It’s a good service that allows for people who want to play bite size games on their travels. These games draw you in with simple addictive gameplay or the convenience of a quick five minute pick-up and play session. Not only that, the service allows for developers to create games with minor budgets; in the case of Denki , the developers…
When Final Fantasy XIII was released in 2010 it caused some concern for the series. Good and bad ideas were infused in the staple Japanese RPG franchise that caused fans to speak their disappointment with game. On one hand it looked brilliant, with the typical great Square-Enix art and one of the fastest battle systems to ever feature in the games to date. None of that was the problem though, what annoyed people was…
The Uncharted franchise has increasingly become one of the highlights of playing videogames for me. I love the sheer excitement those games build up as I immerse myself in an (almost) Hollywood action-adventure experience. Naughty Dog has kept building on the formula, with each version getting closer to their idea of a seamless representation of a cinematic and involving story. 2012 sees the release of Sony’s new…
Digital downloads have allowed developers to create arcade experiences without having to worry about that retail price tag. It has also permitted unknown smaller independent developers, such as Nemesys Games from Hungary, a chance to show off what they can produce. Ignite is a straight up arcade racer with the idea of being able to just pick up and play and have a blast. There’s nothing extravagant going on with…
2011’s holiday Need for Speed ( NFS ) title has a lot to live up to after EA allowed the guys are Criterion Games to make the brilliant NFS: Hot Pursuit . Black Box has the task of trying to beat that, but their last NFS game was the somewhat disappointing NFS: Undercover . This time around they’ve decided to do something different by ignoring their street racing racer boy scene, and instead picked more of an…
2011 has been pretty hard on Wii owners. There hasn’t been many great titles released for the system in 2011, but it’s good to know then that Nintendo are making sure Wii owners aren’t forgotten this holiday season by celebrating the series’ 25th anniversary in the best possible way… with a brand new Zelda game. In doing so Nintendo has made one of the best games to hit any of the consoles, and also promote why we…
Gust has been developing Atelier titles since the early days of the PlayStation. It wasn’t until the PlayStation 2 era that we English-speaking gamers could finally get a chance to play the series. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (EM) received the series’ first translation thanks to Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) America. To put it into context Atelier Iris: EM was actually the sixth game in the series, and this new title…
Read the full review Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland
Xotic is a bizarre first-person shooter that instead of focusing on wars, military and multiplayer deathmatch, moves your attention to something that isn’t seen that much in the FPS market these days; an arcade-style score-based shooter that just loves to throw points at you. There is actually a story to this game, which is told by a robotic voice during the intro. It explains how you, who is a scrawny looking grey…
What do you get when you put Hydro Thunder with a twist of Mario Kart into a blender along with Crimson Skies? The good folks at Digital Reality have created the answer to that with their latest arcade air racer, SkyDrift. SkyDrift takes all of the best mechanics of those games and throws them into an aerial-based combat racing game. The term aerial is used loosely as you cannot just fly wherever you want to. The…
Disney’s Cars 2 is from the team (Avalanche Software) that developed the surprisingly pleasant and fun Toy Story 3 videogame released last year. The story is loosely related to the film and uses the film’s general plotline, which involves Lightning McQueen travelling around the world to compete in the newly-announced racing series World Grand Prix. The film revolves around a spy plotline with C.H.R.O.M.E (Command…
The best independent games tend to be associated with simple, refreshing or unique gameplay mechanics or design, while normally restricted in scope. Dead Mage Studio on the other hand has gone for the ambitious challenge of tackling the action genre, drawing comparison with the epic series God of War. Garshasp: the Monster Slayer is inspired by Persian mythology, and follows the tale of a warrior. The game starts…
Yar’s Revenge is another attempt by Atari to probe into a large known library of old IPs and bring them back from the dead. The original Yars’ Revenge (remember the differently placed apostrophe) was released on the Atari 2600 in 1982. It merged the popular side scrolling 2D ship shooter with, for the time, innovative game mechanics and ended up being one the system’s best-selling games. Scroll on 30 years and you…
From first sight of Rift’s marketing campaign – ‘We’re Not in Azeroth Anymore’ – it’s clear that Trion Worlds are aiming Rift directly at the World of Warcraft fan-base. In fact, a quick glance at some of Rift’s screenshots might leave you with the impression that it’s just a shiny clone of Blizzards phenomenally popular MMO. And while that may sound like a death wish on Trion’s part, they’re packing a pretty mean…
Great Scott! I’m writing about a Back to the Future game without having travelled back to 1991. To be brutally honest, the Back to the Future games of the past weren’t something you would build a time travelling DeLorean for, they were all painfully dreadful. Telltale Games, the studio that strives on making great episodic adventure games, have picked up the license to make a season (five episodes) using the Back to…
Read the full review Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 1: It's About Time
In this day and age a company that wants to release a new first-person military-shooter either: a.) Has balls the size of a buffalo, to take on the big daddies of the genre. or b.) Has simply gone insane, prays to shooting stars and lives on another planet. It’s not an easy market to try and break into when you have gigantic titles like Call of Duty , Battlefield and the resurging Medal of Honor fighting for gamer’s…
The Disgaea universe is set in stone as Nippon Ichi’s most popular and memorable. Prinny 2 is based in the netherworld section and continues the same 2D side-scrolling gameplay from its predecessor, and of course it still features everyone’s favourite exploding penguins. Taking the original PSP game as its base, Prinny 2 builds upon the solid old-school platforming foundation and adds a few extras here and there and…
Read the full review Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood!
Captain Smiley is Twisted Pixel’s latest video game character creation. He’s also the star of Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley . He’s a dude that dresses like a super hero, with an emoticon face that looks like it’s jacked up on steroids. It’s no wonder he looks a little funny, the people at Twisted Pixel are no strangers to unique and amusing character designs and personalities. Take their last game,…
If I were to say the word ‘cat-girls’, what would you think of? Something to do with Japan? Anime characters, maybe even Felicia from the Darkstalkers series? Either way it’s not often you can throw around the word cat-girl in relation to something created by a developer from an English speaking country. That has all changed. If you have a PC, 360 or PS3, Krome Studios’ Blade Kitten is now out and ready to claw you…
The Tomb Raider series is a franchise that needs no introduction. Pretty much everyone who is a gamer knows of the game’s heroine, Lara Croft. She’s probably more remembered for her famous ever-growing breasts every time a new Tomb Raider game hit the original Playstation in the nineties. Also not to forget the legendary nude cheats that gamers would desperately try to input only to find out it was bogus and break…
It was inevitable that Toy Story 3 would spin off a videogame. It’s a huge movie that’s a smash-hit at the box office and videogame publishers usually eye this up as a chance to make some quick cash from the films popularity. Normally when this happens, the video game representing the movie usually turns out to be terrible, or at best mediocre. There is, however, the occasional game that breaks the mould and this…
Gamers might remember the title Hydro Thunder from 11 years ago when it arrived for the launch of Sega’s Dreamcast. If you never had a Dreamcast then you might have seen it in the arcades, if you were lucky to have one near your area. Hydro Thunder was a popular Midway-published speedboat racer that would let players select a boat, track, and then race on some very creative water-based courses. Back then, Hydro…
The fight between the two giant music game franchises, Rock Band and Guitar Hero , still rages on. There is one thing certain that we can say about the fight is that right now Rock Band has a much more vast amount of songs to play, and you can buy them to suit your taste. It’s the crazy amount of music DLC that takes Rock Band above and beyond what Activision does with the Guitar Hero series. It came as a surprise…
It’s been quite an attractive couple of months for JRPG fans. We’ve had interesting titles like Resonance of Fate and Nier after the release of the big one that everyone was looking forward to, Final Fantasy XIII . Among all these releases was a little unknown JRPG called Last Rebellion . Set in the world of Junovald, a place where two gods, Meitilia (god of death) and Formival (god of life) govern, the story is set…
The Sakura Wars franchise is a series that I’d heard plenty about, but have never been able to play because the entire series was exclusive to Japan. It’s a strange predicament because the franchise is developed and published by Sega, but it’s Nippon Ichi Software USA who are bringing the latest game to the English market for the Nintendo Wii. It has taken over 13 years and five main games in the series for a chance…
Did you know that since the franchise started, there’s only been two years where there hasn’t been a release of a Dynasty Warriors game? Only 1998 and 1999 did not see a title after the release of the first Dynasty Warriors on the Playstation back in 1997. Long gone are those days because in Japan the series is quite a seller. Over here the games don’t quite have the same success because people see the series just…
One of the reasons why you’ve clicked on this review is probably because you have an idea of what Bleach is. If you’ve clicked thinking that this is a game based around cleaning dirty areas in your bathroom or colouring your hair to get that golden yellow look, then I can safely say this game isn’t for you. On the other hand if you know that Bleach is a very successful anime and manga property from Japan then this…
If there's one thing in the videogame world that people can't get rid of, it's those undead walkabouts called zombies. They've populated all sorts of genres and the poor sods are always receiving punishment because they just wouldn't give up trying to eat the player's brains. Team Tachyon on the other hand is out to prove that zombies can make great team players with their release of Undead Knights on the PSP.…
In 2007 Nippon Ichi released a very well done port of the original Disgaea for the PSP with bonus extras. Now Nippon Ichi is using the same tactic again for Disgaea 2. Its PSP release, Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days, also comes with added content. Disgaea 2 first made its appearance back on the PS2 in 2006. All the content from the original release is all here, including the same story. New things that have been added…
Imagine a scenario in your head. There’s Legend of Zelda in one hand and God of War in another. If you put those two in bed together (Zelda and Kratos sex, ewww), what would you spawn out? The answer is Darksiders, created from a rather new studio called Vigil Games. Taking control of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you are summoned to the final battle on Earth between the race of Men, Hell and…
If you are a PC gamer, then you'll probably know Shattered Horizon's developer Futuremark. They are well known for their 3DMark computer benchmark software, which determines how much of a monster your PC really is at gaming with the latest graphic technologies. Futuremark are now having a stab at making a full game. It's no wonder then that Shattered Horizon requires a DirectX 10 compatible graphics card, so you're…
You are probably wondering "what the hell?" right about now, but you did indeed just read the title right. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is probably this year's wackiest named game. I can't even pronounce the first word correctly as it's difficult to get the right amount of A when saying it. Alas, from now on I shall just name the game Disregard for Gravity. Flowing smoothly down to the…
Read the full review AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
To understand the concept of Blood Bowl the videogame, you need to look back to 1987 when Games Workshop released the dice-based board game of the same name. It took America's favourite sporting event, American Football and turned up the brutality to eleven while mixing in Games Workshop's races from games like Warhammer. Everyone's favourites are included with the likes of Humans, Orcs, Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Goblins,…
A lot of surprisingly distinctive games are now coming from indie developers through the medium of digital distribution. Osmos is a new indie title from Hemisphere Games. It's one of these games that tries to sooth your soul as you play, something that flOw did back in 2007 on the PS3. The creators of Osmos have introduced a more videogame-orientated experience, but you still need to get that comfy chair, sit in it,…
Videogames with a Western theme are pretty rare. What exactly goes on in a development studio when the team is thinking about designing a new first person shooter? No doubt loads of guys would shout out "World War 2", but what happens when some guy shouts out "Spaghetti Western"? Do the rest of the team look at him and think "Wha… what? Are you insane?" well luckily for us the team working at Techland, the guys from…
If you were living in Japan right now, then you'd most likely know of the Monster Hunter franchise. It's a huge phenomenon over there, with something like 8 million copies in the franchise sold. What's even crazier is that the latest edition for the PSP, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G as it is named in Japan) has already clocked over 3.3 million sales in the land of the rising sun. Not…
The GameCube never really had that much of a selection when it came to RPGs. There were a few, but nowhere near the amount the Playstation 2 was getting. When Namco announced that their next major entry in the Tales series was coming to GameCube, owners of Nintendo’s console were ecstatic, which included me. I am a huge role-playing game fan, and using my acquired freeloader I imported Tales of Symphonia as soon as…
Read the full review Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Nintendo’s Wiiware service is a bit of a mix bag at the moment, it doesn’t always bring great hits, but from time to time the occasional fantastic game pops up that is worth getting attention. The latest title to shout about is Ronimo Games’ Swords & Soldiers. A real time strategy game that is out right now to buy on Wiiware for 1000 Nintendo points. Real time strategy games don’t always get the best of praises on a…
The Harvest Moon franchise has been going for over 10 years now. It first featured on the Super Nintendo back in 1996. It has appeared on pretty much every major Japanese console from the likes of Sony’s Playstation to recent consoles such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Every Harvest Moon to date has had a basic premise. You play as a character and are given a piece of land that you have to turn into a farm, which…
The Phantasy Star series has been around for over 20 years, but it did not start out as a game that was heavily focused on online play. The first title came out in 1987 on the Master System, which played like a traditional Japanese Role Playing Game. Since then the franchise has spawned numerous sequels. Then in 2001 the series took a huge turn when SEGA released Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. It was no…
There’s no doubt ninjas are cool. Just look at some of the video gaming ninjas like Ryu Hayabusa, Strider Hiryu, Rikimaru, Gray Fox and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All these ninjas, even though some don’t play by the stealth rule, all show some sort of awesomeness about them. From Software is helping the cast of remarkable video game ninjas by adding their hero, Ken Ogawa from Ninja Blade, which is From…
