I’ve been curious about The Club ever since I heard about it’s interesting “kill combo” concept. With many recent shooters combining top-notch story elements with inventive and fast-paced gameplay, it seems a little strange to have a shooter come out that just has you blast things as quickly and stylishly as possible. But if there’s one developer that could pull it off, it’d probably be Bizarre Creations, of Project Gotham Racing fame. Luckily, this week a demo for the game finally made its way stateside so I could see what the game was all about. Read the full article »

Recently I had the opportunity to preview Akella’s latest RTS naval simulator game PT Boats: Knights of the Sea, and if WWII games are your thing and you are tired of playing aerial or ground war titles; then this game was made especially for you. With the video game market overly saturated with WWII games, Akella wanted to produce something different starring one of the most under-appreciated heroes of that era, the Patrol Torpedo Boat. Faster and easier to maneuver than a large battleship, PT Boats were used when accuracy and speed were of the utmost importance and they got the job done. Being smaller did not mean that they could not cause serious damage to a larger vessel though, because they could take a tanker down with their torpedoes – and while they were indeed more vulnerable than their larger counterparts, they were essential to any maritime battle.

As the title of the game states, these unsung heroes are the boats you will be manning and your mission is to get the job done without getting yourself blown to bits. While that is the basic premise of any video game where you are in battle, PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a bit different than your standard war game. Your job is to not only join the battleships and carriers during battles, but you will also be called upon to escort convoys, do a bit of reconnaissance and protect strategic coastal points.

During the demo of the game, players can choose one of three sides, Allied, Germany, or the USSR in six different mission episodes and experience battles twice via either defensive or offensive mode. Now, please note that this was just a preview demo, so some of the graphics features were not running at 100%, so be rest assured that the graphics within the full game will be less banal. The map is very easy to navigate and can be viewed in 2D or 3D mode and the wonderful thing about it is that you can click on anywhere in the map grid and be taken directly to that point without having to get to your destination in real-time mode. While in map mode you can also pause the game and change your speed for up to 4x the norm.

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Omega Five
Developer: Natsume
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Price: 800 Microsoft Points (about $10)
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Category: Shooter
ESRB Rating: E10+ for Everyone 10 and older (Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes)
Release Date: January 2008

Every Wednesday, I log into my Xbox Live account and check the Marketplace to see if there are any new gaming goodies to try out. And almost every Wednesday, I’m disappointed by a re-release of a twenty year old arcade title or a strange puzzler that’s all flash and no fun. But every so often I can find one game that piques my interest enough for me to throw down the Microsoft Points needed to get it. This past Wednesday, that game was Omega Five.

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Sam and Max Season Two: “Moai Better Blues”
Developer: TellTale Games
Publisher: TellTale Games, GameTap
Price: $8.95 (free for GameTap subscribers)
Platform: PC
Category: Adventure
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Release Date: January 2008

Sam and Max, the adventurous Freelance Police have finally returned after a short hiatus to dive right back into their point-and-click shenanigans. TellTale Games has just released “Moai Better Blues,” the second episode for the second season of their popular episodic game series. This time the dynamic duo head off to the tropics in search of more adventure and setups for one-liners. And once again, it’s a veritable laugh riot. Read the full article »

Contra 4
Developer: WayForward Technologies
Publisher: Konami
Price: $39.99
Platform: Nintendo DS
Category: Arcade/Action
ESRB Rating: T for Teen (Blood & Gore, Fantasy Violence, Language)
Release Date: November 2007

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.” and “That which kills me makes me stronger” are two motivational chants that ran through my head over and over again when I fired up the latest game in the long running arcade series on my Nintendo DS.

I was one of the generation that grew up loving the Contra games on the NES. I was never good enough to get through the games without using the multiple life cheats and like most of the fans of the title that cheat didn’t bother me so much. I enjoyed the mindless run and gun, I fought my way to the next scattergun drop all in the name of obliterating the alien menace and trying to see just how few of those 30 extra lives I could complete the game with. Needless to say even at the peak of my Contra skill I never managed to do it with more than 20 lives intact.

Advance 20 years and we now have a new Contra title. Sure there have been a plethora of games called Contra released over the last few years – all of them with mind numbing difficulty intact – but none of them ever managed to recapture that initial joy of defeat I felt the first time Bill and Lance were killed 5 seconds into the first level of Contra by an alien soldier who managed to avoid a bullet and run right through me. Contra 4 is that nostalgic pain returning to torment my masochistic side yet again.

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Fantasy Wars (a.k.a. Mythic Wars)
Developer: Ino-Co
Publisher: 1C Company/Atari
Price: $39.99
Platform: PC
Category: Strategy
ESRB Rating: T for Teen (Blood, Fantasy Violence, Mild Language)
Release Date: October 2007

Fantasy Wars is a turn-based strategy game set on a hexagonal combat scheme with RPG elements throughout the game. When I first heard about it, my initial thoughts were the standard “great… another run of the mill turn-based strategy game”. You know what? I was correct. On the surface, you have your usual suspects fighting it out for supreme dominance of the land – elves, humans, and orcs – and while this may seem like just the “same old same old”, the pleasant surprise with Fantasy Wars is that you get a turn as each. Also, with most hex-based strategy games, not much is given in the way of presentation and variety – untrue with this particular game. Fantasy Wars is a vibrant 3D game and having played this type of game numerous times, I was very pleased with the amount of detail on everything from the buildings and trees to the characters themselves. Usually, your units will look like blurry pixilated blobs running around on green blocks of grass; therefore I was extremely impressed with the amount of focus dedicated to the overall look of the game. While indeed I was impressed with the graphics, the rest of the game’s features are clearly lacking; therefore the esteem I originally felt vanished like oatmeal cookies at a Weight Watchers meeting.

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Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure
Developer: Off Base Productions
Publisher: Capcom
Price: $50
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone (Cartoon Violence)
Release Date: October 2007

“Not another Wii game based on the odd control scheme!” I thought to myself. We’ve had enough of those already and the only thing worse is a Wii game littered with mini-games and a bad story to string them together. Shortly after firing up the game though these trepidations faded and I found myself enjoying the puzzle aspect of the game and much to my own amazement the odd controller based gameplay.

Zack & Wiki Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure is a game that would not work on any of the other consoles. Despite being at its core an adventure game, this is an adventure game designed around the motion sensing nature of the Wii remote and it gets just about everything right in its attempt to involve players in the telling of its story.

The game revolves around the two title characters – the pirate in-training Zack (who reminded me, heaven forbid, of Luffy D. Monkey of One Piece fame at first – minus the poor translation) and his golden sidekick Wiki. Wiki is some sort of golden Incan flying monkey demon, and his origins play a big part in the mostly coherent plot that follows between puzzles and adventure segments in the game. The two stalwart characters find themselves stranded on a mysterious treasure filled island after a run in with a rival pirate and the cursed talking skull of the pirate king joins them in the search for his scattered bones and treasure.
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Xbox Live Arcade was in desperate need of a more diversified list of genres. Dungeon crawlers are definitely a type of genre needed to boost appeal for the arcade. Wanako Studios delivered us a winner with Assault Heroes, so the bar was set high for this game.

Wanako’s description of the game follows. Read our full review to see if it’s a realistic description.

Ready to release the warrior within?

Arkadian Warriors, the action-adventure game that spans treacherous dungeons where players embark on a trek of unimaginable proportions filled with countless enemies and powerful bosses has just been released for Xbox Live Arcade. Developed by Wanako Studios, the award-winning creators of Assault Heroes™, Arkadian Warriors allows players to fight in epic solo battles or join forces with a friend in the intense multiplayer co-operative mode – online over Xbox LIVE® online entertainment network or locally on the same system.

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The Unreal series isn’t really considered the grand-daddy of gaming; in fact, it’s more like the middle-aged uncle. But as some of you may know, a middle-aged uncle (who, in my case, lives out in the backwoods and has a surplus of guns and fireworks) can still be a lot of fun. The newest installment in the franchise, Unreal Tournament III, is finally out; and while it may show of the series’ age with its simple FPS gameplay, it can still provide an endless source of entertainment. Full review after the break.
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Word on the street is that the PS3 version of WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2008 suffers from serious frame rate issues, so I decided to sample the Xbox 360 version which has been reported to be the best by most I have talked to concerning the title. If anyone has played the Wii version, feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments below. I’m definitely curious what gamers think about that version as well.

The first thing I should mention is the fact that I have yet to play a wrestling game that I came out of with a positive feeling about. I was a big fan of wrestling when I was little and have some fond memories of the sport even though I am not much of a fan these days. I continue sampling wrestling games through the years in hopes of a truly great one, but always feel let down.

WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2008 is another let down in my book. The character creation options are last generation if that. The other noticeable problem I have with the game is the insane load times. You will spend more time on load screens than actually wrestling someone. The game does look fairly nice; the movements are a little more fluid than past WWE games and some of the new moves and controls were welcomed. If they could get rid of the long load times, add a tutorial mode or two and then just lightly polish the rest of the game and possibly throw in a detailed character edit mode, we’d be looking at something really nice. Right now it’s simply an average game at best. If you are a die hard WWE fan and have tons of patience for boring load screens, drop $60 on the game. For anyone else, this could be a fun game rental for a couple days, but much past 3-4 hours of gameplay, it gets really old. I look forward to the 2009 wrestling game to see if they made the necessary tweaks to finally give us a wrestling game worth writing home about.