Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars................................Page 2 by Nicholas Puleo
Riddick..........................................................................Page 3 by Mike Katsufrakis
Lux Pain........................................................................Page 4 by Mike Katsufrakis
Devil Summoner 2.........................................................Page 5 by Jason Love
Wolverine......................................................................Page 6 by Nicholas Puleo
Defense Grid: The Awakening........................................Page 7 by Marc Allie
Amazon.com Widgets
Explanation of Scores:
- Golden Billy - This is a must buy title. Truly excellent in almost everyway.
- Silver Billy - A solid title with a few flaws.
- Bronze Billy - An ok title. You might not want to pay full price for this game
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo
Rockstar Games- DS
We already reviewed Chinatown Wars and its cooperative mode. And while we felt that was lacking a bit, it was the single player experience that really stood out to me. Rockstar has managed to squeeze an entire open world GTA game onto the handheld, and in doing so, has given a few throwbacks to the original top down games.
You'll follow the story of Huang Lee, a Triad boss's son sent to America to deliver a family heirloom to his uncle. Upon arriving you get ambushed and end up trapped in a car in a river. It's from here that Rockstar sets the tone for the game, classic GTA action mixed with DS style mini games, as you'll have to quickly tap the screen to break the glass and escape the car before drowning. These mini games range from hot wiring a car, to tattooing a gang member, and even searching a dumpster for weapons. There's literally dozens of these little things that break up the gameplay a bit and keep things fresh.
Rockstar managed to squeeze the entire city of Libery City onto the handheld, all with no loading times. Like any GTA game the cops play a big role in things, and the cop chases are really satisfying. A new mechanic to the game is the ability to take out a cop car to decrease your star level. I was really impressed with the variety of missions in the game, it's not all go here and kill that kind of stuff. And don't get me started on how addicting the drug trading system is in the game, this could be all you do for hours on end and not even touch the story.
When you combine all of this with the social aspects of the game; the online chat, trading and Social Club integration; you end up with such a full featured and complete package for a handheld game, that you almost forget it IS a handheld game. Hands down if you own a DS, you need to own this game.
Score:
Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Mike "pheriannath" Katsufrakis
PC/360/PS3 - Atari/Starbreeze
I'll preface this by stating that stalking through the shadows and brutally murdering an unsuspecting enemy never ceases to give me a visceral thrill. Less a shooter than a stealth/melee game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena succeeds where almost all other first person games fail: it has responsive and brutal melee combat. Once you pick up the Ulaks, you'll never stop having fun cutting up your foes in a whirling dervish of surgically placed blade strikes.
Dark, and at times claustrophobically so, Riddick tells a simple tale: you're stuck on a renegade Merc ship, and you need to get off of it. The game's at its best when you're able to make use of the shadowy corners of the Athena to prowl around and unleash a terrifying flash of violence against an unsuspecting enemy. The supporting characters are all brilliantly realized, and at least one of the villains' performance will leave you champing at the bit to rip his throat out. The voice acting is universally great, granted you can enjoy the fact Riddick speaks only in non-sequitur and no one bats an eye when having a conversation with him.
Unfortunately, the game's latter half takes you out of the relative safety of the Athena's corridors and into a ghost town filled with wide, brightly lit spaces. It is here that the game's melee focus becomes its greatest weakness - your enemies, armed to the teeth with firearms and remote turrets are able to riddle you with bullets while you have an ever-decreasing amount of places to hide and plan your attack. While you are able to use guns yourself, Riddick is far from the crack shot his foes seem to be. Combine this with an antiquated health system and some of the cheapest AI this side of the NES days, what started as an incredibly promising experience devolves into too much trial-and-error gameplay.
As an added bonus, a graphical facelift of the original Riddick game, Escape From Butcher Bay comes packed in. If you missed this gem, do yourself a favor and grab a copy.
Score:
Lux Pain
Mike "pheriannath" Katsufrakis
DS - Ignition Entertainment/Marvelous
Lux-Pain
1/2 oz Persona 3
1/2 oz The World Ends With You's "imprint" system
1 oz strong art style
2 oz awkward translation
Mixing Instructions:
Gently stir Persona into TWEWY, and serve in the most stylish glass in the bar. Serve chilled over stilted conversation.
In all seriousness, Lux-Pain is a game that pulls me in several different directions. It's more or less your standard DS adventure game of Japanese origin, much like the Ace Attorney series. The story borrows incredibly liberally from Persona 3 (an organization investigating strange/dark happenings, taking place mostly at a high school), and even cribs its art style a bit, which means it looks really great. There is an ASTOUNDING amount of voiceover work recorded for this game- every important character and scene is fully-voiced, which is a rarity for DS titles. Unfortunately, and this is pervasive throughout the game, the localization is inconsistent and at times, contradictory to itself. There are several instances where a voicover will say something like "Are you CRAZY?!", yet the text will read "Yeah, I can be a little bit crazy". It really seems as if the localization team changed their minds about how to translate something when they wrote the voiceover script. It's incredibly sloppy and it drags the entire experience down.
Everything before this paragraph sounds like I'm condemning the game, but there is something compelling about the way the story does unfold. If you can look past the severe localization issues, the story has been interesting and it really is a treat to look at, especially considering the expressive character sprite work. If I were Ignition, I would definitely look to Atlus' titles for ideas on how to translate a niche Japanese title for American audiences.
Score:
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon
Jason "OrigamiPanther" Love
PS2 - Atlus
Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei series of RPGs are well known for the unique feature that allows the protagonist to recruit a variety of demons from a great many cultures’ mythoi. While several variations and spin-offs of the series have surfaced over the years, they typically fall in the traditional RPG or tactical RPG realm. The Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner series, however, represents Atlus’ (successful) outing into the action RPG genre.
SMT: Devil Summoner 2 places you in the shoes of Raidou Kuzunoha, 14th in a long line of prestigious demon summoners. Raidou lives in 1930s Japan and fills his days by working for a detective agency doing all of the typical things a typical detective does: take on cases, look for clues, use demons to read peoples’ minds… . Unlike the other SMT games where demons are typically used in combat situations only, Raidou must enlist the aid of the demons to help him solve cases by performing such actions as changing Raidou’s appearance, reading the minds of townsfolk, or inspecting an area for clues. In combat, the demons provide Raidou with all of the abilities that are typical in an RPG (i.e., elemental spells, status ailments, and special attacks) and can be issued specific commands or set to auto-attack his foes. Raidou, then, is left to run about the field shooting and hacking the enemies into submission. Of course, fighting isn’t always the answer and Raidou can opt to negotiate with the demons to try and bring them over to his side.
While the graphics aren’t quite up to par with Persona’s, gamers seeking a good action RPG should find Devil Summoner 2 quite enjoyable and longtime fans of SMT games will not be disappointed.
Score:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo
360/PS3 - Raven/Activisionlus
According to X-Men Origins: Wolverine developer Raven Software, this is the version of Wolverine that everybody wanted to see. And while the movie of the same name took on a PG-13 rating, the game is most definitely for mature audiences. Loosely based on the movie of the same name, Wolverine isn't your typical licensed game.
You'll follow the story of Wolverine's origins, shocking I know, as you jump back and forth through time to a fateful mission in Africa and various locales like Alkalai Lake, New Orleans (OMG GAMBIT!) and The Island. The game immediately gets the "God of War Clone" tag, but really, you'll find it does enough of it's own to set itself apart from the numerous other titles out there. There's the ever present character upgrade system, the glowing orbs, and unlockable attacks.
You'll hack and slash your way through enemy upon enemy, lopping off limbs and appendages faster than a meat grinder at a midget factory. Early on in the game you unlock the ability to "lunge" at enemies. This lock on ability allows Wolverine to fly through the air and knock an opponent down. It quickly becomes the most satisfying move you'll do in the game, and one that really can never be forgotten. Other unique moves include a cyclone spin, environmental kills, and a cork screw style attack. These moves are charged up by collecting glowing Rage orbs from fallen enemies, once your meter is filled enough, you can unleash one of these devastating attacks.
Honestly there's rarely any downtime in Wolverine, my only gripe being the boss battles are fairly consistent in the patterns of attack and patterns in which you attack. Just jump on their back and take em down. With that minor fault, Wolverine is one of the best movie license games to come out in a long time. If what I hear is correct, the game is actually better than the movie.
Score:
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Marc "djinniman" Allie
PC - Hidden Path
Tower Defense is quickly becoming its own genre. From Rampart to Warcraft 3 to Desktop Tower Defense, placing towers in order to kill bad guys is addicting. Most Tower Defense games are browser based, or mods for existing games. Defense Grid: The Awakening is a highly polished standalone game, with crisp graphics, excellent menus, and even a storyline, quite atypical for the genre.
If you are familiar with Tower Defense, you will feel right at home here. You are presented with a series of mazes, with alien robots running through in waves. You can place weapons along the maze, maximizing your damage potential. If a baddie breaks through, they steal energy cores, and then retreat off the map. If you lose all the cores, the game is over.
For the most part, the mazes in Defense Grid: The Awakening are premade, and you must find the most effective placement of towers. Guns, lasers, rockets, missiles, lightning, even a time-slowing pulse of energy are all available. Each has strengths and weaknesses; for example, meteor towers have amazing range and area effect damage, but have a minimum range and cannot hit airborne targets. Lasers cause targets to burn, taking further damage over time, but cannot penetrate shields. There is plenty of variety in weapons here to keep a compulsive tower builder occupied for hours.
One aspect I'd like to have seen more of in Defense Grid: The Awakening is creating your own mazes, a la Desktop TD. A few levels allow players quite a bit of freedom to build snaking paths out of their towers, but they are few and far between. To me, this is one of the most compelling features in any Tower Defense game, and I'd love to have seen more of it. Still, the game is enjoyable as it is.
The initial playthrough was only moderately challenging, but there are many replay options. You can earn different medals based on your performance, though I found the jump from bronze to silver a bit steep. A challenge mode with tougher opponents and sandbox modes with unlimited amounts of resources provide more reasons to keep coming back. Defense Grid: The Awakening is easily worthwhile for fans of the genre.
Score: