Review: Download Games Roundup

Bit.Trip Void, Shoot 1Up, Alien Zombie Death and Mega Man 10. Editor’s note: As you may have noticed, internet gaming is inconveniently big and untidy, with new digital distribution channels springing up all the time. Where it was once just Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, we now have to worry about the App Store, PSN, WiiWare, Xbox Indie Games channel, DSiWare… These days, all the cool kids have their own digital distribution racket. Good content is harder to find, and from the perspective of a website like Eurogamer, it’s now more resource-intensive to cover a smaller cross-section of games as a result. Whoops! That’s no excuse for not doing it, of course, so we’ve decided to embrace the fact it’s not practical to write big individual reviews of absolutely everything, and that it’s also not useful to you if we wait around for ages and then round up a bunch of old games. To this end we’re going to experiment with multiformat digital download roundups, and former Eurogamer.net editor and downloadophile Kristan Reed is going to write them. To kick off, er, here’s a roundup of a bunch of old stuff. Look out for more soon. One of the more impressively polished efforts to hit the Xbox Live Indie scene, Shoot 1UP is an enjoyable twist on the classic top-down shmup for a mere 80 Microsoft Points, which is less money than you probably spend on a can of Coke (unless you’re like Tom and drink 14 a day). Read more…

Follow this link:
Review: Download Games Roundup

Review: Download Games Roundup

Bit.Trip Void, Shoot 1Up, Alien Zombie Death and Mega Man 10. Editor’s note: As you may have noticed, internet gaming is inconveniently big and untidy, with new digital distribution channels springing up all the time. Where it was once just Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, we now have to worry about the App Store, PSN, WiiWare, Xbox Indie Games channel, DSiWare… These days, all the cool kids have their own digital distribution racket. Good content is harder to find, and from the perspective of a website like Eurogamer, it’s now more resource-intensive to cover a smaller cross-section of games as a result. Whoops! That’s no excuse for not doing it, of course, so we’ve decided to embrace the fact it’s not practical to write big individual reviews of absolutely everything, and that it’s also not useful to you if we wait around for ages and then round up a bunch of old games. To this end we’re going to experiment with multiformat digital download roundups, and former Eurogamer.net editor and downloadophile Kristan Reed is going to write them. To kick off, er, here’s a roundup of a bunch of old stuff. Look out for more soon. One of the more impressively polished efforts to hit the Xbox Live Indie scene, Shoot 1UP is an enjoyable twist on the classic top-down shmup for a mere 80 Microsoft Points, which is less money than you probably spend on a can of Coke (unless you’re like Tom and drink 14 a day). Read more…

Continued here:
Review: Download Games Roundup

Top 10 Video Game Controllers of All-Time

If there’s anything gamers usually judge about a video game console, even before its games most of the time, one can take a wild guess that it’ll be the controller. Controllers are the peripheral that we either love or hate with all our hearts, but at the end of the day has proven to be the most necessary over the past three decades. Our top 10 list of video game controllers is after the jump:

Read this article:
Top 10 Video Game Controllers of All-Time

Preview: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Tomb it may concern. Tomb Raider is my favourite game of all time. Of course, this is mainly because it allows me to live out fantasies of being intrepid, acrobatic, clever, rich, posh and chesty. But it’s also because of the classic third-person action-adventure gameplay, the emphasis on puzzles and exploration over gunplay and explosions, the detailed visuals and the sweeping vistas. Most of all it’s the atmosphere – the feeling you’re all alone in these lush jungles and echoey chambers, just you and Lara. So, two minutes into Crystal Dynamics’ demo of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, I want to cry. The game on screen doesn’t look like any Tomb Raider I recognise. The viewpoint is isometric and the camera is fixed. Lara, who appears as a small character model, is too busy shooting enemies to pull any switches. And she’s got a mate with her – some tall bloke who carries a spear, sports a ponytail and wears a loincloth. Together they run around a pokey temple, guns blazing, pausing only to smash the odd crate. ‘Oh Lara,’ I think, ‘What have they done to you?’ Little do I know that the next 28 minutes will change my mind completely. By the time the demo’s over I’ll have understood much more about Guardian of Light – that it’s a bold attempt to offer something different, that it’s being put together with real care and attention, and that it might well not be rubbish. But most of all, that it’s not meant to look like any Tomb Raider I recognise. Read more…

View post:
Preview: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Battle vs. Chess is Coming to Xbox 360 via the LIVE Arcade

Battle vs. Chess takes up the mission of adapting the time honoured classic for the 21st century, seeking to breathe new life into the beloved game without abandoning the essential concepts that have made it so enduring, for Xbox 360.

More:
Battle vs. Chess is Coming to Xbox 360 via the LIVE Arcade

Five Westerns You Must See Before Dying… [Survival Guide]

Western game Red Dead Redemption has been delayed from April to May. Those looking to bid their time productively with cowboys, read on. More

Splinter Cell: Five Biggest Changes Video Feature

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (Collector’s Edition) (X360) Sam’s faster, more lethal and has better toys this time around.

See more here:
Splinter Cell: Five Biggest Changes Video Feature

God of War III Review: Olympic Glory [Review]

Bombastic, titanic, brutally imaginative and even occasionally subtle, God of War III is the latest, best reason for a gamer to save money and skip action movies. The better thrills are on a disc on my PlayStation 3. Just five years since the first God of War comes God of War III, a game that sticks the landing of the grand technological leap beyond the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. Tortured mortal Kratos is back to conclude a narrative trilogy that has energized one angry man to wreak vengeance on the heroes and villains of Greek mythology. You’ve got blades on the end of chains, wrapped to this man’s wrists, a variety of moves to use and hordes of mythological beasts and beings to slay. At the beginning of this new game, in a moment set immediately after the end of God of War II, Kratos is scaling Mount Olympus on the back of Titans to eradicate the Greek pantheon, including its leader Zeus. That is an ambition quest, and ambition is the quality with which to measure this game — against movies, against games, against other God of Wars. This PS3 exclusive, a stubbornly single-player action game in this era of seemingly mandatory multiplayer, is vicious and violent and built not without risk. God of War III is a sequel that is less innovative than its predecessors and one recklessly indulgent in game design cliches and possibly unwise homages to other games. It excites the same synapses as the best and most macho action movies, a clash of the Titans. But it is as a video game that it best be judged. Loved The First 10 Minutes: The first minutes of Half-Life 2 intrigue. The first minutes of Super Metroid unnerve. The first minutes of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros. may represent two facets of perfect fun. The opening playable sequence of God of War III is equally wowing, perhaps the most impressive controlled combat sequence to ever start a game. Extraordinarily, this sequence, worth experiencing fresh if you haven’t heard about it already, is surpassed later in the game. Titanic Struggles: God of War III’s main innovation is the animation of some of its terrain. Some levels that would seem to take place in a forest or on a massive bridge actually are occurring on the backs and limbs of Titans, the largest characters I’ve ever seen in a game. They are sometimes our terrain, terrain the flexes and moves and turns our world upside down. They are sometimes, amazingly, background players, monsters in the distance that reach into the foreground to mess with us. They are also the best justification for owning a large and high-resolution a TV as possible. Witnessing spectacle at this scale is a reminder of how massive the mountains of reality and our imagination can be and how quaint the virtual worlds we’ve played in have been so far. Extra Weapons : There is little surplus in Kratos’ latest war of gods. This game presents a massive scale, but it has neither massive playtime other games may have nor the wasteful distractions its predecessor did. Kratos’ journey sends him up and down the strata of Greek mythology, down to Hades and up to the palace of Zeus. On that journey, even when areas are returned to, little time feels wasted. Everywhere, Kratos is tasked with something new and interesting to do, one challenge at a time. Kratos is also armed with an expanding arsenal of powers and weapons, all of which feel relevant to the fiction and interesting to use. Most action games that offer a large arsenal assume players will specialize and allow a gamer to neglect the variety offered. God of War III expects and justifies the player’s use of every last thing offered in the game, each square foot and each new blade or power worth experiencing. Those God of War Cliches : It’s a God of War, so Kratos will be growling a lot. He’ll have extraordinary off-camera, semi-interactive sex. He’ll have context-sensitive super-kills, doors that only open when the player mashes a button and experience points to gain and then spend leveling up weapons and abilities. I am not a fan of series cliches — trappings, as they can fittingly be called. God of War III adds far less to the series formula than it replicates. But, this time, it was hard to mind, because everything controls so well and passes so quickly. Plus, if you activate the sex scene for a second time (that’s what pro reviewers do, you know), someone involved in the scene makes an ESRB (games rating board) joke. Fourth-wall-breaking, sure, but I can stand a game that acknowledges which buttons it is re-pressing and moves on. Stuff That Shouldn’t Have Worked, Worked : Maybe video game design progress was another failed myth. Forget player-controlled cameras, God of War still doesn’t have one. This is a game with invisible walls that block Kratos from jumping and dashing to places it looks like he should go (but the designers don’t want you to take him to). In an era of immersive games, this game risks embarrassment for retaining the series’ use of the illusion-shattering appearance of button-prompts. Many millions spent on rendering Greek mythology, so convincingly that you think you can smell Hercules’ armpits, are potentially ruined by the appearance of PS3 thumbsticks on the TV. They are there to let you know it’s time to press them or twirl them, probably to provoke some brutal beast-killing move. Theoretically they and the lack of camera control and the invisible walls should be the archaic ruin of this game. No. They instead make the case that following the developers’ mandates, proceeding on the prescribed path and doing what one is told, can make for the most exciting of thrill rides. Choice and progress be damned to Hades. Subtle Touches : Once in a while the God of War III developers get so experimental you might think their artsy neighbors who made poetry-game Flower snuck in and added some grace to the grunt of this production. But let’s give the God of War III folks the benefit of the doubt that they are responsible for the game’s spare but impressive experiments with perspective and control. To give one vague example, there is a moment when Kratos needs to walk toward a blinding light. The game’s camera suddenly closes in tightly on Kratos’ back, one of his arms extended, palm spread, to block the light. The player will soon realize that the only way to make Kratos advance is to use a PS3 control stick to keep Kratos hand in front of the light. The controls of the game have been changed for this one sequence, the struggle redefined. Other, smarter moments like these appear just often enough to signal that God of War III isn’t just a game for manly men, but for manly men who can appreciate a dash of subtle artistry. The Best Bosses : I’ve not battled and bulldozed a more interesting set of bosses since I cleared Metal Gear Solid 3. Each of God of War III’s bosses, until its disappointing final one, are imaginative and impressive spectacles. Some are a test of combat strategy and endurance; others are semi-interactive cut-scenes. Most are superb and like little else you’ve played before. Something About Yourself: How angry are you? By the end of God of War III, you will know. Hated Reading: Occasionally, Kratos can stop and read. Why? To teach the player about where in the mythology he is. In these moments, the game’s voice-acting is replaced with text-reading and the player is finally given camera control, but only on a swivel so a vista can be observed from beyond a book where Kratos has stopped to read. These should be the vista moments, the time to stop the car, get out, stretch legs and smell the mountain air. Instead, they are the clunky moments that are begun and ended with unintuitive button prompts and turn our hero from a convincing man of wrath to a dull tourist. God of War III has much that is magnificent to look at; it is unfortunate that the designers couldn’t find a better way to compel gamers to pause and take it all in. Decline Of The God: God of War III peaks, but after an amazing ante-upping sequence of excellent action and puzzle-based levels, it leaves its best moments behind. The game, as svelte as it is and as clear of time-wasting tedium as it should be praised for being, nevertheless glides through a less interesting final third. Be prepared to be amazed by this game, but be prepared to be left a little hungry at the end. How thrilling can a summer blockbuster movie be for those whose hearts have withstood the rush of God of War III? Not very much, I think. Action games are at risk of seemingly equally outclassed. God of War III ends quickly and with a surprisingly artful finale, and, yes, it offers the ability to replay it in a harder mode or with new difficulty and power tweaks. It has a few tough new timed challenges too. But it does boldly risk the trade-in or the sell-back after its 10-hour adventure has been finished. It risks being a game you’d play once and then move on. But it is a game, more so than any I’ve played in a long time, that feels unforgettable — unforgettable minute after minute so that you won’t even forget the mid-boss you tackled in hour three or the block-pushing puzzle in hour eight. Credit the exclusion of repetitious sequences or uninteresting goals and the inclusion of well-controlled spectacle. This is a game that is so mighty in its expression, so loudly in your face, so boldly an advertisement of the power of the PlayStation 3, that it leaves its mark, punches its impression in your memory and seems too good to chuck. This game shows off and gets it right. It is an Olympic achievement, worthy of Kratos’ burning drive. God of War III was developed by Sony Santa Monica and published by Sony Computer Entertainment of America for the PS3 on March 16. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Yes, I played its sex game a few times. I also upgraded all but one of the weapons to the maximum and enjoyed slaying all but one of the gods. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

Follow this link:
God of War III Review: Olympic Glory [Review]

News: MS reveals Lips: I Love the ’80s

Out in April. Amazing songs. Another Lips game is being cranked out on 2nd April, this time in the shape of Lips: I Love the ’80s. And we do, because there are some absolute monsters in here. Duran Duran’s “Rio”, Erasure’s “A Little Respect”, Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Hello! They do not come any bigger than this. Try on Wilde’s “Kids in America” or Spandau Ballet’s PA melter “Gold”, and then sound the siren and charge your glasses for “Roxanne”. Read more…

Link:
News: MS reveals Lips: I Love the ’80s

MLB 10 The Show Review: The Game for All America [Review]

The game of baseball was brought to video game consoles long ago. The total experience – the Pastime – represents the next frontier of simulation, for a public delighted by every stat and detail, no matter how small. This is the direction in which MLB The Show now strives most noticeably. Having nailed the essential acts of baseball, it is refining itself for immersion – either as a player trying to make the majors, or a television viewer who happens to control his team in the field. But as such artistic touches are difficult to measure objectively, and compete with the established brilliance of the series, we’re left wondering if MLB 10 The Show is last year’s stunning picture painted in prettier colors, or another must-have title. Loved Catching Up: This year, Road to the Show deepens its singleplayer experience by incorporating pitch-calling into created catchers. Trying it out, I was struck by how invested I was in the success of an AI teammate. When I called a pitch whacked for extra bases, I felt responsible even though he’s the one who threw it. I’m not sure I’ve ever played a sports game where I worked this hard on behalf of a CPU teammate, and that’s where this innovation truly lies. As a catcher, you’re going to have to study the hitters and also examine where and how bad your pitcher is missing in the zone, and with which pitches. In the minor leagues, dealing with raw guys, it can get a little hairy. If you call a lot of stuff in the strike zone, expect a lot of hits, so don’t be afraid to have your hurler huck it wide or high. Hitters do chase, and sometimes the pitcher ends up nipping the corner. Really, as Bruce Dickinson says, explore the space. Also, as a catcher, you can do the Pudge Rodriguez thing of throwing down to first behind the runner. Scoring a pickoff this way is nearly orgasmic. I do have a few complaints with the catcher mode, but they do not spoil the experience outright. One is that you don’t get much feedback on the effectiveness of how you called the game, other than the damage (or lack thereof) done to the pitcher. Another is how long a game takes, because of the pause the AI pitcher takes between throws. You also don’t have any communication with your pitcher. His nods and shakeoffs seem to be preprogrammed gestures. At most he’ll make a wind-the-clock motion when you’re taking too long to get that signal down. Overall, though, San Diego Studio built a career mode that offers plenty of incentive to try something new – and to stick with it. The Very Fine Points: MLB 10 The Show is such a comprehensively detailed game, you’ll find yourself in many “Hey, did they have that last year?” moments. The dugouts, for example, are now fully manned in real time, and you’ll see them interacting in between plays in ways that aren’t just standard cutscenes. (I’ve read that the game will even show players giving each other hotfoots in the dugout, but I don’t know if it has C.C. Sabathia leaning over to tell a teammate “I just farted.” ) At the end of a play, players don’t go into mannequin mode. They greet each other at first base, shake their spikes out and adjust their caps. Fans lean over the railing at foul balls. Boston’s Victor Martinez flexes his bicep at each base on a home-run trot. I saw an umpire get blasted by a foul tip and drop to his knees in agony. This isn’t core gameplay. But just like doubles off the wall and diving catches, this also is what happens in baseball. Look Into Their Eyes: MLB The Show has always been lauded for its strong visuals but this year, upgraded shading and lighting really brings out some exceptional detail in the players and the textures. I realized, as I was facing Texas’ Ian Kinsler in a critical at-bat, that I was staring into his eyes and wondering what he was thinking. Then I noticed his jaw moving and realized he was muttering something to himself. Encouragement? Cursing me? Whatever, it was a remarkable feeling, and it exemplifies how superior graphics become connected to gameplay. Know the Drills: I’m a big advocate of tutorial modes and it’s something sports titles don’t spend as much time on as they should. MLB 10 The Show does, adding pitching and fielding drills to both offline gameplay and your Road to the Show experience. The pitching drills are a welcome opportunity for skill points and faster advancement, and connect the individual results to specific pitches or skills depending on your success within them. In the strike-zone knockout drill, for example, (throw a ball through eight targets in 15 pitches or less) you can focus entirely on one pitch, boosting both its effectiveness and your control overall. Because some pitch break animations in a live game can be a little subtle, two sessions with your breaking ball can really connect you to its behavior. Fielding drills I didn’t spend as much time with, but they’re based on correct decisions and reaction time; their usefulness is in training you to take better routes to the ball, especially on line drives. If you played as an outfielder in last year’s Road to the Show, you only figured this out the hard way. Screw It, We’ll Do It Live: This year the game adds a Real-Time mode to its presentation options and while it’s overall a little more subtle than I’d been anticipating, it’s still going to be my preferred way to play the game. Real-Time essentially takes all that time between plays and make it productive – the camera follows players as they run back to the dugout after an out, celebrate a home run, agonize over a strikeout, whatever. The only problem I have is that they’re done largely in silence – you won’t hear commentary until either the replay kicks in (if you enabled the option) or the next sequence begins (a hitter coming to the plate.) But it’s much better than watching the game reset with generic animations from a fixed camera position, stuff you’re likely to X out of anyway. You don’t have to watch all of it, but if you want to take your time and enjoy the game, the Real Time broadcast justifies the decision and even lends some measure of role-playing to the experience. If It Ain’t Broke: The game adds tons of functionality but wisely doesn’t screw with what makes the whole thing work – realistic, predictive and repeatable in-game action and reactions. There’s no new gimmick to how you get the job done – the new pickoff controls notwithstanding, but they’re easy to learn and comprise a very specific act within the game. Even the tuning applied to your fielding, meant to deliver more accurate outcomes, simplifies the act without going to a conspicuous onscreen visual. You’ll see a concentric meter light up under your guy’s feet, but you can also throw by feel, based on how long you hold down the button. In summary, the whole experience will be very familiar to those who spent plenty of time with MLB 09; there’s nothing I hate worse than spending a year with a sports game only to jettison some part of that body of knowledge when the next edition arrives. The result is MLB The Show remains a very consistent experience that uses its new versions to deliver polish and detail. That has nothing to do with this game itself, but I did feel like singling out a measure of the franchise’s excellence. Hated Minor Quibbles: I have to work to find something I out-and-out dislike about the game, but no one’s perfect, not even The Show. There still seems to be a disconnect between your pitching command and the actual result, especially for inexperienced pitchers, even when they aren’t in pressure situations. But that’s baseball on a pitching meter, with background calculations necessarily overturning what becomes an easily mastered physical act. While we should be grateful for the fielding and pitching drills, baserunning practice should be addressed next year. This game teaches you how to steal second and third (carried over from last year) and that’s it; a set of exercises to help you master baserunning in a team-controlled game would be a breakthrough, as switching from a batting task to running the bases is one of the most displacing experiences in team sports sims, and there’s no way to improve other than by playing full games. Speaking of baserunning, the bots are always off within a millisecond of bat contact, suffer from no indecision on the basepaths and have a tremendous advantage on the fielders, helping turn innocent mistake pitches into two-out, three run adventures. Batters still don’t chase pitches as much as they should, even when set up appropriately, and foul off too many good pitches thrown in the strike zone. Finally, manager and general manager decisions didn’t get much of a tune-up. You’ll occasionally wander into some real head-scratchers – battering the opposing pitcher for five runs with no mound visit or a warm-up, being left in too long in RTTS, or seeing some screwball “how’d-he-end-up-there” trades midseason. If there is any sports game capable of selling a console, it has to be MLB 10 The Show. Maybe it can’t deliver numbers to make analysts sit up straight, but seamheads who want the top-flight baseball sim have to have this game, and for that they have to have a PlayStation 3. Despite being the younger franchise released on one platform, MLB The Show ceased being a boutique product a while ago. And with all that the latest game does exceptionally well, it’s apparent that this game truly is the standard bearer for console baseball. MLB 10 The Show was developed by Sony San Diego and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 on March 2. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in both single and multiplayer modes. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

Link:
MLB 10 The Show Review: The Game for All America [Review]

Next Page »