The Good

Creepy but fun atmosphere
Collectible upgrades
Challenging platforming.

The Bad

Cheap combat
Sloppy controls.

Before it was a full-featured Xbox Live Arcade game, Scarygirl was a graphic novel by Nathan Jurevicius, and then it was a downloadable game for the PlayStation Portable. None of that history is required knowledge if you decide you want to give this newest platformer a shot, though. The only things you need to bring to the table are some solid gaming chops and an appreciation for the bizarre.

Scarygirl is an orphan who lost her parents at an early age and was raised by a wise, fatherly octopus. He built a lovely home for her, a cabin high in a gnarled tree, and he found clothes for her on the ocean floor. Now the unusual heroine looks a lot like a doll that lost a battle with a 3-year-old. Her unruly black hair, pale skin, and stitched-together lips might easily have come from the mind of Tim Burton, and her dreams are fittingly enigmatic. These nighttime visions finally inspire her to embark upon a journey, which is when the game begins.

Scarygirl is a visual treat. The world is pleasingly organic, with distinct and lively environments. Giant blades of grass sway in the breeze, thick weeds choke a path lined with clay, icy stalagmites rise skyward, and fetid pools of swamp water line rock basins. It’s a strange world populated by angry animals ranging from frogs and birds to spiders and snakes. Plus, there are lumberjacks who hurl axes or bellow and charge like they’re football players. You may find yourself pressing onward just to see how bizarre things get.

Audio sets a fitting, if unremarkable, tone and the delightful narrator is a highlight. His deep voice brings to life a number of lines that capture the game’s understated humor with the appropriate subtlety. There’s a vaguely menacing tone to everything he says, even the bits that sound cheery, which makes it all more interesting than it probably has a right to be. Clever narration and unique visuals can carry a game only so far, though, and Scarygirl also relies on more conventional methods to justify your investment. At its core, the game is a challenging but largely generic platformer that suffers for the inclusion of some cheap brawling sequences.

Most levels adhere to genre traditions. Scarygirl runs and jumps through varied environments, collecting crystals and defeating enemies as she goes. Her movement is imprecise, however, which makes for some awkward moments. If Scarygirl starts running to the right, she might well take a few final (and potentially fatal) steps after you stop easing the analog stick in that direction. Her jumps are also slightly abrupt, which can result in some awkward landings. Frequently, you need to take advantage of Scarygirl’s ability to glide. A tap of the A button produces her first jump, and holding the button causes her tentacle arm to whirl around like a helicopter rotor. Quick taps let you use this ability in short bursts, making for lengthy glides, while simply continuing to hold the button results in a shorter flight.

When she’s not jumping or gliding, Scarygirl is usually attacking with her rubbery tentacle arm. She has light and heavy attacks, the latter of which you can use to knock an enemy into the air and then juggle him a few times before he lands. Scarygirl’s scarymode meter fills as she proceeds, and she can unleash an extremely powerful attack that few enemies can withstand. A wandering merchant also sells special moves that enable Scarygirl to demolish her foes more effectively. Finally, she can grab stunned enemies and slam them around like an out-of-control yo-yo, or even hurl them as projectiles. Unfortunately, it’s surprisingly difficult to set the trajectory of such tosses. A number of puzzles throughout the adventure would be much simpler if aiming were easier.

Scarygirl isn’t a lengthy game, but there are reasons to replay stages. You’re scored based on the number of crystals found, weeds pulled, and enemies destroyed in a level. You receive bonus points for gathering every crystal and pulling every weed, so you’ll always know if your performance was less than perfect. You may also find yourself revisiting areas if you missed heart containers, which tend to be hidden well off the beaten path (or along one of two diverging paths through a given stage). Each container you find adds a quarter of a heart to your life meter, which becomes increasingly important as you near the end of the game.

While natural hazards that you encounter within stages can prove harmful or fatal, combat is the main source of difficulty. At first, only a few foes strike at once, and everything is manageable. Later in the game, Scarygirl faces whole mobs. At that point, juggling some foes in the air with heavy attacks becomes dangerous because it leaves Scarygirl vulnerable to projectile attacks from other enemies. Moving in quickly to try to overwhelm everyone with combos isn’t advisable, because some enemies are masters at blocking, and Scarygirl takes damage if she brushes against them. Vanquishing foes without taking damage becomes almost impossible, even when you’re blocking and dodging like a champion. Late in the game, one stage takes place on a floating airship. There are multiple waves of enemies that drop in on the airship from other floating vessels and attack with pikes and explosives, but there are virtually no checkpoints. It’s cheap, not fun, and other similar scenarios follow.

Fortunately, not every enemy encounter is such a failure. Throughout the game, you also find numerous boss fights that provide a nice change of pace because victory relies more on pattern memorization and intuition than manic combat. For example, the boss in one stage is typically impervious to any attacks, but Scarygirl can lure it into a danger zone and let the elements deal a blow that stuns her adversary. Then she can whale on the beast for a moment until it recovers. It’s a shame that such sequences aren’t more common, but they’re enjoyable when they do occur.

Another mark in the game’s favor is its two-player local cooperative mode. If you have a friend who takes a shine to Scarygirl, he or she can drop in during the middle of a level and control a secondary character with different moves. With a second target onscreen, enemies are more manageable. Naturally, you have the best luck if you play with a friend who also has ample experience with the game. Your friend’s fortune is tied to your own; you both go back to the last checkpoint if Scarygirl perishes.

Scarygirl has a lot of character, and that’s bound to attract players who won’t have much fun with it beyond the first few worlds. The more challenging platforming sequences that follow later are mostly fine, but the poorly executed combat system provides more frustration than thrills, and the spotty controls take some of the fun out of what otherwise might have been a grand adventure. Scarygirl is ultimately a game with more style than substance, and it’s crammed with so many frustrations that you might be better off reading the book instead.

The Good

Wonderfully evokes the sci-fi films of the 1950s
Ability to manipulate orbital rings keeps you occupied throughout levels
Constantly introduces new satellites, enemies, and other challenges.

The Bad

A bit short
Lack of multiplayer feels like a missed opportunity.

In the 1950s, alien-invasion paranoia reached a fever pitch. Films like the 1953 version of War of the Worlds and 1956′s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers pitted humankind against seemingly unstoppable alien onslaughts. The new tower defense game Unstoppable Gorg transports you back to this golden age of alien-related anxiety, putting you in control of orbital defenses as UFO armadas and other extraterrestrial attackers attempt to wipe humanity from existence. Unstoppable Gorg is both an entertaining tribute to the alien-invasion movies of days gone by and an enjoyable tower defense game that requires you to think on your feet to survive.

Somewhere beyond Neptune, an exploratory satellite discovers Planet X, the home of an advanced alien civilization known as the Gorg. Humanity’s overtures of goodwill are spurned by the evil Gorg, and the people of Earth are suddenly fighting for survival against an overwhelming alien attack. The black-and-white newsreel-style cutscenes that advance the story make effective use of a combination of archival footage and deliberately chintzy special effects; rocket ships are visibly borne aloft by strings, and the costume worn by the actor portraying King Gorg looks like something out of an Ed Wood film. But it’s not just the Gorg you fight. As you advance through the story’s 21 missions, humanity runs afoul of an alien seductress and her hideous brain riders, as well as a clunky robot and his mechanical minions. These adversaries perfectly capture the charms of the sci-fi films and television shows of the ’50s, and the care and reverence with which the whole thing is constructed make the B-movie story worth seeing through to the end.

Like so many tower defense games, Unstoppable Gorg is conceptually simple but challenging in practice. In each mission, your primary goal is to protect something–whether it’s an asteroid mine, a luxury hotel hovering near the moon, or the Earth itself–from destructive alien forces. This central object is surrounded by orbital rings, and there are a few points on each of these rings on which you can place satellites. Different satellites serve different purposes. Some attack enemies with bullets, lasers, rockets, or other weaponry; some generate money that you can use to build more satellites; and some support your other satellites by shielding them, repairing them, improving their range, or bestowing other benefits. Before each battle, you can see the types of enemies you’re about to face, and you have to decide which satellite types you want at your disposal and which to leave behind.

This is all typical tower defense stuff; weighing your options before battle is an engaging tactical decision, but it doesn’t set Unstoppable Gorg apart from the glut of other games in the genre. What does set Unstoppable Gorg apart is the way that you can manipulate the orbital rings during battle. As rows of sleek saucers, flying brains, or other assailants make their circuitous way to the level’s center, you can grab orbital rings with your cursor and wheel them around, which allows you to track nearby enemies with your attack satellites or move your more vulnerable satellites out of danger.

Of course, moving one satellite into a better position often moves another satellite on that same ring into a more dangerous one, and it’s this on-the-fly evaluation and decision making that make fending off the alien attackers an engaging and suspenseful pursuit. There’s a bit of trial and error involved in triumphing over your enemies; sometimes you may find that your satellite selection or placement just isn’t up to the task, and the destruction of the Earth (or whatever you’re protecting) sends you back to the drawing board. Unstoppable Gorg eases you into things, but even on the easy difficulty option, it eventually gets quite tough. Defeat can be frustrating, but you can learn from your failures and use that knowledge to formulate a new approach, and those defeats only make your eventual, hard-earned victory all the sweeter.

In addition to introducing new satellite types and new enemies as you advance, Unstoppable Gorg’s campaign frequently puts you in situations that change up the gameplay. You might have to worry about asteroids as well as enemies, and quickly swing satellites into position to take out rocks that are on a speedy collision course with the vital object at the level’s center. Or you might be surrounded by so much space dust that your money-generating satellites can’t harness the sun’s energy and do their work, which forces you to make do with the credits you start with and what little you earn from destroying enemies. Or enemies may use their psychic powers to lock most of your orbits in place, severely limiting your ability to respond to dangers on the fly. This variety of situations means you never know quite what to expect from the next mission, which keeps the campaign fresh from beginning to end.

That campaign doesn’t last terribly long, with its 21 missions typically taking about six or seven minutes to complete. But you’ll likely need to attempt many of those missions multiple times just to survive, and you may want to repeat some missions to complete optional goals, like earning research tokens which give you the ability to spend money to upgrade certain satellites on later missions. There’s also Arcade mode in which you try to last as long as possible against increasingly more powerful waves of enemies. And unlockable challenges introduce new conditions to the campaign levels that make them more difficult, like faster enemies or a central habitat that can be destroyed with one hit.

It’s unfortunate that Unstoppable Gorg doesn’t find a way to turn its exciting variation on tower defense gameplay into a competitive or cooperative multiplayer mode, but you get a reasonable amount of game for your $9.99. This endearing tribute to the future of the past is a rewarding game that challenges your wits and your reflexes. Despite the game’s title, you can stop the Gorg; and although it isn’t easy, it’s certainly worth doing.

The Good

* Great level design
* Excellent visual style that makes the most of 3D
* Switch puzzle mechanic is smartly implemented.

The Bad

* Time-trial aspect feels arbitrary
* 16 stages take very little time to play through.

Considering the Nintendo eShop was restructured around the 3DS, it’s disappointing to see that it still has a pitiful selection of new 3D games available. As one of the few non-retro downloadable games designed to make specific use of the handheld’s 3D capabilities, Mighty Switch Force makes a lasting impression with its creative switch mechanic. The ability to swap blocks between the foreground and the background turns basic platforming action into brain-bending puzzle chaos, and that’s a good thing-while it lasts.

Officer Patricia («Patty») Wagon just isn’t having a good day. When her ride gets ambushed and overturned, the futuristic constable finds all of her prisoners running for the hills. Each of Mighty Switch Force’s 16 short stages has you guiding Patty through a slew of monsters, traps, and puzzles to wrangle up a quintet of criminal escapees called the «hooligan sisters» who’ve scattered themselves in all directions. Uncovering their hiding spots and figuring out how to best manipulate the stage itself in order to reach them gives the game loads of unexpected depth. What looks like a side-scrolling action shooter on the surface soon melts away to yield thought-provoking, platforming puzzle work that tests your reflexes. It’s a refreshing and pleasantly upbeat combination. Despite a complete lack of a proper story setup or tutorial to explain its puzzle mechanics, Mighty Switch Force’s gameplay is accessible enough for you to hop right in and pick things up on the fly.

Patty is armed with a basic blaster and can jump around a bit, but gunning down baddies is secondary to overcoming obstacles and tracking down the escapees. Thankfully, Patty’s fancy noggin topper adds a lot more to her resume than keen fashion sense. Every tap of either the left or right shoulder button makes the heroine’s hat blip and switches any moveable blocks in the background to the foreground and vice versa. At first, it’s just a simple way to cross gaps and climb to higher ledges, but later stages grow in complexity and challenge as the game adds new block types and introduces more elaborate puzzles to tackle.

Block variety and creative level designs force you to figure out advanced techniques like smashing foes into the foreground with well-timed switches (creating a cool 3D screen-cracking visual effect in the process) and launching yourself through the air with catapult blocks. Pulling off crazy stunts like cannonballing across the screen while rapidly triggering blocks in your path to phase in and out with perfect precision to let you pass takes some serious practice. The trial-and-error nature of some stages grows frustrating toward the final stretches of the game, particularly because there’s an ever-ticking timer that pours on the pressure.

The fact that you’re timed gives Mighty Switch Force a speed-run element that feels counterintuitive to its more thoughtful puzzle nature. Being timed in and of itself isn’t so much the problem; it’s that the game compares your level time to a target par completion time that’s often very hard to match. Charging through a level, collecting all of the escaped prisoners, and hightailing it back to the rendezvous point is rarely a smooth process on the first few attempts, and the more complex stages get overwhelming when you’re worried about shaving seconds off of your run. Beating a level while going over the par time unlocks the next one, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying a victory if you don’t beat the par score. While this adds a reason to replay the short 16-stage run to perfection, it also negatively impacts the flow of the game at times. Make too many time-consuming slipups, and you have to restart mid-stage if you want to hit the target.

Mighty Switch Force’s concept of moving blocks into and out of the foreground makes it a natural fit for 3D, and the game’s layered visual style benefits significantly from the capabilities of the 3DS. Wayforward’s pixel art skills also shine bright throughout the character and stage designs, which is no surprise when you look at the studio’s recent past excellent work on Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Aliens: Infestation, and the previous «Mighty» DSiWare games. While they stick to their hiding spots, your sassy prisoner adversaries don’t just sit around staring blankly; they do stretches, dance to the music, blow bubbles, and exude their own little personalities. Monsters are equally animated too, and there’s an impressive amount of charm to them.

You can easily blow through Mighty Switch Force in a few hours or less, and the game’s 16 stages will inevitably wind down with you wanting more, though the modest $5,99 price makes the game’s brevity a bit easier to swallow. While you may be inspired to revisit old stages to better your time, it’s a bummer there’s little reason to do so. Still, it’s a short, fun puzzle romp with just enough action to keep an upbeat pace. If you can ignore the irritating, poorly implemented timer, then you’ll find plenty to enjoy in this pint-sized download.

The Bad

* Awkward controls
* Clumsy combat
* Frustrating stealth
* Appealing ideas wasted.

Amy’s eponymous infant is psychic, mute, and immune to the mysterious plague that has turned the people of Silver City into zombies. She is also a tiny fool who dashes from a safe hiding spot through a patch of zombies if you leave her alone for a few moments. If you think a frightened little girl deserves your unending patience, you haven’t played this game. Amy (little girl) isn’t nearly the biggest problem with Amy (downloadable survival horror adventure), however. The game stacks frustration on frustration such that you resent its rudimentary puzzles, shoddy stealth sections, and awkward combat far more than the kid you’ve led through it all. It’s not without decent ideas, but any goodwill they earn the game burns through early and fully; tension and horror quickly give way to exasperation, punctuated by the occasional fake-out jump scare.

You play as Lana, who has busted Amy out of a shady research centre and is escorting her to a hospital when their train crashes into zombie central. Luckily, Amy can’t be infected by these ghouls, and radiates an improbable immunizing field; when you hold hands with her, you can’t be infected either. In addition to her decontaminating aura, Amy has psychic powers, harnessed by sketching glowing glyphs dotted around the levels. One glyph enables a shock wave that knocks down enemies and barriers; the other creates a dome of silence, used for masking sounds from enemies within earshot. The intriguing premises of the infection system and psychic powers, however, are wasted in the execution.

When you leave Amy’s side, the omnipresent infection gradually zombifies Lana. As the contamination sensor on her back goes from green to yellow to red, her skin turns pale and veiny, and her vision becomes red and hazy. When Lana is contaminated enough, zombies mistake her for one of their own, as long as she moves slowly and leaves Amy behind, maybe stuffed in a cupboard somewhere. Despite all the supposed visual cues, it’s unclear when Lana is infected enough to pass as a zombie (somewhere between veiny and very veiny). For maximum annoyance, couple that with a city street stealth section with an instant game-over on being detected by an enemy.

The kid has the psychic powers, but when it comes to shimmying, Lana can’t be beat.

The kid has the psychic powers, but when it comes to shimmying, Lana can’t be beat.

In addition, Amy can be on her own for only short spells; if you spend too long sneaking around alone, she comes looking for you, trailing nearby zombies like an undead conga line. The added time pressure generates frustration, not tension, especially because when Amy blows her cover it’s tantamount to another game-over. There are frequently no weapons to grab, and there is no unarmed combat; Lana can swing a stick or a crowbar, but nothing else. Amy’s commitment to de-emphasising combat also means the sticks and crowbars shatter after a few thwacks. Sometimes mid-fight. And you can’t carry more than one. Amy, we get it: you’re not about fighting. But this punitive, enforced pacifism isn’t fun or scary; it’s irritating. When that’s layered on top of flaky controls for moving and bashing stuff, plus an aggravatingly heavy camera, Amy does a grand job of discouraging combat by encouraging you to set down the controller and walk away.

The imprecise controls extend to the kid’s magic brain powers. You can’t control Amy directly-though you can command her to stay still and occasionally send her to a designated spot-but you can clumsily aim and steer her two psychic spells. The most creative sequence based on these powers has Amy positioned high on a walkway, psychic-blasting enemies onto motion-sensitive electric mines, clearing the way for Lana, who is unarmed, as usual. But this, like all of Amy’s sound ideas, is undermined in the wobbly execution. Amy can’t climb ladders but can crawl through small gaps and press elevator buttons, giving rise to the preponderance of basic elevator puzzles (stand on elevator, make Amy push remote button). Old-school coloured key cards for locked doors are another puzzle staple. The most novel puzzle-like element comes via DNA-based locks; Lana has a hacking device that leads her to possible DNA samples (read: corpses) that might unlock the way forward.

Locations are plain and predictably gloomy. A busy screen with high-speed movement invariably nets you a juddering frame rate. There are a handful of pleasing visual touches; Lana’s and Amy’s character designs are believable and detailed, and Lana’s gradual zombie transformation is reasonably creepy. The latter is accompanied by a red fog that dims the screen and a garbled, sinister murmuring. Elsewhere there are similarly eerie flourishes of sound, but the game’s occasional spot of music is nothing special.

Everything is red and grainy; must be a survival horror game.

Everything is red and grainy; must be a survival horror game.

Amy isn’t a short game, but its length will vary hugely according to your talent and tenacity for mastering Amy’s lethal foibles, since checkpoints are infrequent, and there’s no way to save mid-chapter. You could clear it in six hours, but you’ll more likely take 10, and if you don’t finish a chapter in one sitting, you can’t even restart at a checkpoint-you are whisked back to the beginning of that chapter.

The sixth chapter ends with only a minor plot payoff and sets up the story for Amy II with a baffling optimism you won’t share for Amy’s future. Amy has some interesting ideas, not least the pairing of a fight-averse female lead with a fragile but powerful little girl. It’s a pity these aren’t enough to sustain it through hours of substandard survival horror.

The Good

* Leaderboards are a good fit 
* Early levels rekindle what made the originals appealing.

The Bad

* Poorly balanced difficulty in latter stages
* Lame dialogue
* Bland mission types fail to mix up the pace.

A product of the early 1980s, the acclaimed Choplifter name has been out of action for quite some time. This downloadable HD reprisal retains many core elements of the series and stays true to its classic formula, but it’s also saddled by some tonal issues, as well as uneven swings in difficulty and pacing.

Zombies infect the world of Choplifter HD.

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This update of Choplifter retains the core gameplay for which the series is known. As a pilot commandeering an armed rescue helicopter, your primary goal is to swoop down to rescue stranded hostages, defend against a tide of enemy gunfire and rockets, and then safely deliver the hostages back to your starting base. The game is essentially a side-scroller, and firing back at the swaths of combatant ground troops, tanks, and AA guns is akin to a twin-stick shooter with lock-on targeting. You can orient your helicopter’s viewing angle to the left, right, or foreground, the latter of which is usually used to take out bothersome rocket-propelled grenade troops perched on rooftops. Not only do you have to deal with the enemy attacking you from several angles, but you also have to be cautious of your helicopter’s fuel supply and health. There are fuel stops dotted at certain points in each level that will restock your chopper should you start running low. Or you can alternatively head back to base to replenish your helicopter’s health and munitions, as well as its fuel supplies.

Avoiding hostage deaths, taking out foes, and being expeditious in your rescue efforts will net you higher scores and more stars. Your performance post-mission is scored and rated on a five-star scale, and the more stars you gain per mission, the sooner you gain access to upgraded helicopters. Better helicopters grant perks like stronger firepower and armor, as well as room to ferry more hostages at once. Prioritizing your rescue efforts and finding the most efficient pattern to take during a mission is a key consideration, as is reattempting different scenarios to work out the least-hazardous approach in the shortest amount of time. Alongside other factors, such as your ability to boost (at the expense of more fuel consumption) and learning to be conservative with your limited rocket use, the game preserves the distinctly tactical nature of its forebears in spite of its simplicity.

However, problems begin to arise as you progress further into the game’s missions. For instance, as you advance, you’re forced to contend with greater numbers of targets simultaneously, and the aiming isn’t quick and precise enough to let you adequately deal with these onslaughts. The most debilitating pitfall is that, by necessity, you tend to find yourself meandering in midair and taking a barrage of costly hits as you slow down to deal with all the immediate threats. This ultimately destroys the game’s momentum; you will eventually hit a wall with the difficulty that robs you of all desire to continue. Overcoming these predicaments is certainly not impossible, but the process of doing so leans more toward delving into unruly masochism as opposed to enjoying a pleasurable and balanced challenge.

Rescuing reporters and saving soldiers is all in a day’s work for a Choplifter pilot.

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Similarly, waiting for hostages to herd themselves into your helicopter after you’ve swooped down to save them can create some particularly annoying situations. Common sense often dictates that clearing out the surrounding groups of enemies before picking them up is a good way to go, but when a previously unseen tank rolls in from the backdrop and endlessly fires at you offscreen as you vulnerably wait for hostages to pile on, the game starts to feel cheap. On top of all this, each mission comes fully quipped with some seriously cringeworthy «comedic» mid-mission dialogue between the pilot and his passengers. The only real laugh you get from Choplifter HD is watching your helpless passengers rag doll from the side of your helicopter when you accidentally slam into some large obstruction during your attempted rescue. Other mission types, including those that revolve around battling zombie hordes and carrying passengers from one drop-off point to the next, are uninspired and don’t mix up the formula in any meaningful way.

Visually, the game looks fine if unremarkable-the lack of detail in the environments becomes all too noticeable when the camera pans in to show you picking up hostages. Leaderboards are a nice addition and complement the game well, highlighting specific scores for each level, although the absence of any adversarial or cooperative online modes is a missed opportunity.

A considerable portion of Choplifter HD’s content is diminished by a series of unfair moments that crop up too often to be tolerable. The decent length of its mission catalog is hamstrung by its misunderstanding of uneven difficulty versus genuine challenge, and when it’s too easy, it’s too dull. Choplifter HD does occasionally get your rotors spinning, especially for fans of the original, but balancing issues and uninspired missions conspire to make it a mediocre experience overall.

The Good

* Opportunities for perverse mayhem.

The Bad

* Flawed movement mechanics
* Terrible AI 
* Unpleasant visual presentation
* Poor attempts at humor
* Technical instabilities.

Almost 15 years ago Postal was released on the PC, giving players a chance to go on a virtual murder spree and setting off a wave of outrage from concerned parties. A few sequels and expansion packs later, Postal III has arrived with a fresh new slate of gory gameplay and gross-out humor. Though the ragged limb dismemberment delivers on the gore front, the game falls short in every other respect. Stilted controls, terrible AI, and poor level design make playing Postal III a chore, while an utter lack of wit or cleverness causes the humor to fall flat. When you add in a suite of disruptive and game-crashing bugs, you’ve got one dismal download.

SWAT members are remarkably resistant to nail bat assaults.

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Postal III begins with a lengthy cutscene chronicling Postal Dude’s sordid past, which involves a whole lot of violence and strange characters. None of it is necessary to follow the plot of Postal III, which is just a long string of bizarre exploits motivated by Dude’s need to get paid or get out of bad situations. Your first two jobs offer a glimpse of the vulgarity and irreverence to come. First, you must vacuum up soiled tissues from a porn video arcade and shoot them at protesting hockey moms who have invaded the store under the leadership of a Sarah Palin look-a-like. If you hit one with enough dirty rags, she will vomit profusely and then leave the store. Success! The store owner/mayor/presidential candidate/human slave trafficker (played by porn legend Ron Jeremy) declines to pay you, so it’s out on to the street where you get a gig rounding up murderous cats. These feral felines are infected with AIDS and are therefore driven to maul human beings. They are also the primary meat supply for a local Mexican/sushi restaurant, so soon, you are beset by machete-wielding, gun-toting Asians in aprons and conical hats.

The cutscenes help chain these bizarre scenarios together (narrated in bored tones by Postal Dude), but the whole game continues in this scattershot manner. The disjointed flow creates the feeling that Postal III is the result of an attempt to brainstorm a bunch of wacky and offensive scenarios and then stitch them together into a game. The rogue’s gallery comprises tired stereotypes, including bungling police officers, gay cowboys, dirty hippies, obsessive nerds, angry moms, cranky Asians, and belligerent Taliban. Each group either plays its stereotype straight (nerds demand rare action figures!) or does the opposite of what you’d expect it to do (Taliban does business with American fast food joint!), but neither option is ever funny. Postal III aims for some «I can’t believe they said that!” shock, but the things they are saying became cliche years ago, and relentless repetition encourages you to tune out most of the chatter. Without a spark of wit, a clever twist, or a sense of comic timing, the writing and dialogue in Postal III remains depressingly humorless.

The perfect crime.

The perfect crime.

Laughs you do get from the game will likely come from the action itself, but it might take you a while to get there. After the intro cutscene, you begin with a tutorial sequence on a zombie-infested bridge. This acquaints you with the basic movement and shooting mechanics, which are fine if you are using a gun in an open area. If you maneuver around environmental elements, though, you’re likely to get hung up on corners or uneven terrain. And if you try to melee attack an enemy, your swings might miss despite being directly on target. Throwing a grenade is straightforward, but pouring gasoline onto enemies and lighting them on fire is finicky and inconsistent. Postal III is shaky on the basics, which gives rise to countless frustrations and awkward situations as you progress.

Once you’ve come to grips with the stilted gameplay, it’s time to learn the limitations of the AI. Allies and enemies behave similarly; they meander unevenly around the conflict zone, stopping to shoot the nearest enemy or simply standing around while the fight rages around them. A single headshot from any gun decapitates your foe instantly, so it’s possible to run through dozens of foes with point-and-click ease. But playing as a straight shooter is dull, so you may want to experiment with your large arsenal to spice up things. Molotov cocktails, psychotic cats, a pepper spray flamethrower, and a fart gun are just some of the options, but the more creative you try to get, the more likely it is that you suffer an untimely death. Accidentally killing an ally will double your enemies instantly, and setting yourself on fire is practically a death sentence until you realize that peeing straight up into the sky will save you.

Ah yes, peeing. Once again, you can unzip your fly and pee on anything at any time. This kind of vulgar mayhem has some mischievous appeal, but it soon gets old as you become preoccupied with the numerous deficiencies that block your progress. After enduring some frustration and being bombarded with unfunny dialogue, however, you might find yourself with a bit of a grudge toward the game. At this point, you can take your anger (or any spare anger you have lying around) and perhaps find an outlet in the dark reaches of Postal III.

If you’re not careful, your feline ammunition will turn on you.

If you’re not careful, your feline ammunition will turn on you.

The vigorous dismemberment mechanic allows you to sever heads and limbs, leaving ugly, ragged wounds that spurt blood. Shredding a body on the ground and then throwing the bloodied appendages at passersby offers a certain perverse appeal, as does the subtler mischief of peeing into a policeman’s computer fan. Killing a dog with a badger may not be something you discuss in polite company, but it’s less creepy than knocking pedestrians out with your Taser (be sure to hold the trigger until they’re unconscious), drenching their bodies in gasoline, and then standing over them with a lit match. Even the game’s bugs create amusing situations from time to time, notably when you shoot someone with a previously vacuumed turd and it hangs in midair, radiating poop waves like a small fecal star.

Though you can get some depraved enjoyment and mild catharsis out of such villainy, it is small consolation for the aggravations you must endure while playing Postal III. On top of the defective gameplay and barely functional AI (which makes the few escort missions excruciatingly bad), this is an ugly and unstable game. Homely character models, rough textures, and ungainly animations paired with visual bugs and intermittent crashes add technical deficiency to the long list of flaws. Although there’s an alternate ending for going the peaceful route, there’s too much wrong with Postal III to make it worth playing even once.

The Bad

A few noticeable changes to core gameplay may annoy some
Some vocals removed due to licensing reasons
Wacky Workbench level isn’t fun.

History has not been kind to the Sega CD add-on, which has largely been regarded as a failure. Still, the console did have several excellent exclusives, among which was an ambitious time-hopping adventure in its most popular franchise. Sonic CD was one of the games that made a Sega CD worth owning. While its cartridge-based brothers saw frequent rereleases, Sonic CD’s reissues on the PC and GameCube (via the Sonic Gems Collection) were clunky and inaccurate, as well as missing features. So it is with great celebration among Sonic series fans that Sega has rereleased Sonic CD on modern platforms as a download game, but what makes it even sweeter is the care and effort that has gone into the conversion.

You’d move quickly too if your legs could morph into a Mobius strip.

Sonic CD is very much a game in the classic Sonic vein. As Sonic, you run, spin, and jump around colorful, themed areas; you collect rings, smash enemies, and interact with varied environmental gimmicks. Whereas Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 favored more open stages with lots of speed-boosting contraptions, Sonic CD’s stages reflect the more cluttered feel of the original game, with elaborately designed backgrounds and decorations littering the landscape. It’s incredibly difficult to simply speed directly through a level in Sonic CD because various traps, enemies, and deviously placed obstacles can send a careless hedgehog reeling.

This approach to stage design has its advantages because Sonic CD is laden with odd little one-off gimmicks and hidden surprises (see if you can find the hidden goddess statue-it even gives you an achievement!). It also influences the overall stage design in interesting ways: Collision Chaos is filled with more high-speed springs and bumpers than any other Sonic zone, while Metallic Madness is a maze that can loop endlessly if you don’t pay attention to where you go. Some of the stages, however, have experimental elements that prove to be more frustrating than fun. The much-despised Wacky Workbench level features a magnetized floor that sends Sonic soaring up to the stage’s ceiling at the slightest touch, which practically destroys his ability to run for long distances.

In fact, running long distances anywhere in Sonic CD is quite challenging, but there’s a design reason behind it. Sonic CD’s major selling point in its day was its time-travel feature, which greatly increased the size and scope of the game. Each stage has four variations: a past, present, a good future, and a bad future. And each one has different graphics, music, stage elements, and designs. Travelling through time is accomplished by touching a specially marked «Past» or «Future» signpost and then keeping up a consistent high speed for about five seconds to initiate a time warp. This is often easier said than done. Though some stages have areas well suited to time travel, others require careful obstacle dodging and knowledge of level layout to maintain a consistent speed. Figuring out where and how to initiate time warps is part of the game’s challenge.

If Sonic knew what the future held for him he might not be so eager to get there.

Time travel yields many benefits. Going into the future, for example, means that enemies will be worn down from years of use and less of a threat to Sonic. However, by default, the future is ruined by Dr. Eggman’s pollution and incredibly unappealing from a visual standpoint, with broken and malfunctioning machinery spoiling the landscape. To fix the future, Sonic can instead travel to the past, where Eggman has set up a robotic control machine. The past is often the most difficult of the level variations, but destroying the machine in the past changes the default future into a good future, which is bright and colorful, entirely free of enemies, and often features fewer traps and obstacles. Running through the default future might be the fastest way to finish the game, but taking full advantage of the time-travel system to restore the future is the more satisfying way to play.

The interesting level design and the time-travelling gameplay have long made Sonic CD a fan favorite, but the superb port of the game to the Xbox 360 makes an already excellent game even better. The port has been codeveloped with longtime Sonic fan Christian Whitehead, and it’s a fine showcase for his custom Retro Engine. The game supports full widescreen display on HDTVs, and a variety of filters allow you to choose between smoother, modern-looking 2D visuals or authentic-looking pixel art that looks practically flawless in high resolution. Other varied visual enhancements show up throughout, ranging from the smoother scrolling of the once notoriously choppy special stages to cleaned-up and polished background elements and enemy motions. You can also select between the original Sonic CD spin-dash (which increases Sonic’s speed based on time spent holding the buttons down) and the Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 spin-dash (where rapid button presses increase speed).

Hang on tight, it’s gonna be a twisty ride!

What makes the package even sweeter are the copious extras included. You can freely choose between the Japanese and US soundtracks to the game, though a few of the vocal songs have sadly excised the lyrics due to rights reasons. The original Sega CD edition of Sonic CD offered a host of hidden goodies and unlockable bonuses, such as staff artwork and sound tests. These are all present in the port, along with a major new feature: After completing the game once, the ability to play as Tails is unlocked. Tails’ flight ability adds a wholly new element of exploration to the stages, allowing easier access to difficult-to-reach spaces.

While Sonic CD is an amazing conversion, there are a few minor issues that keep it away from port perfection. Some rare bugs rear their heads here and there, leading to odd camera shifts and occasionally falling through solid objects. Most players will not encounter these issues in a typical playthrough, however. A few areas where Sonic is forced to travel at high speeds for a lengthy period of time have also been altered so that they no longer trigger time travel to prevent players from warping by accident. While it’s nice to not have to worry about inadvertently warping, experienced players may be angered that these places are no longer usable when an easy time warp is desired. Finally, a feature of the Sega CD original that allowed you to restart at the beginning of the current time zone at the expense of one life is completely missing. Because certain areas in some levels become blocked off after proceeding past them (and Sonic CD has next to no instant-death pits to voluntarily kill oneself with), the lack of this feature makes it hard to reach and see certain portions of levels.

Despite a few minor issues, Sonic CD is among the more impressive retro ports seen on modern platforms. Not only is the game faithful to the original, but it’s also just plain better in many ways. And at a mere $4,99, it’s a tremendous value to boot. If you remember Sonic CD fondly, there’s no better way to enjoy one of the most treasured games in the series. And if you missed out on this one entirely before now, this is a superlative way to experience a beloved classic for the very first time.

Is it a long lost Tolkien story that has mysteriously resurfaced after all these years? Nope, in fact poor old JRR would be spinning in his grave if he found out about this version.

Ok so it’s quite a brief to come up with, a game that is based on such a classic story and old JRR isn’t around to pen one, so what do you do? Judging by what I see here nothing! It just looks like they hoped to wing it with a very vague and mediocre story. Let’s face it folks, if you are going to make a follow up to what was originally a pretty dull game, at least try and make it better, not worse.

This is a poor show by SNOWBLIND studios and Warner brothers interactive, I mean what is going on here, the action, story and game play are consistently boring, I don’t usually yawn whilst playing a game but I really lost interest after a about an hour of play with this one .

The characters aren’t even one dimensional and I felt no affinity towards any of them, the dialogue is laboured and dull. We have no idea why they are on this quest, there is no interaction between the characters, and even the voice over artists sound bored.

The game is an action RPG  with plenty of fighting to be had, but the characters limited movement makes for a rather uninspiring experience. They have increased the blood and gore, but I am afraid it doesn’t compensate for the what I would regard as lack of effort put into this game.

In the previous Lord Of The Rings games we had a similar thing going on, and it was sort of OK to play. At least the characters had more depth to them and it was an altogether better experience. This game has actually been rated as a 15 by some! But apart from the gore, I doubt even a 5 year old would find it interesting. I don’t know whether SNOWBLIND are trying for a sort of retro feel with this game or they just wanted to make a quick buck.

Some bits are interesting and could have made for a great game. I like the way you can call on a great big eagle to help you out when times get rough. Of course the characters do have different abilities, it’s just the limited moves let the game down ,

There are only a certain amount of Orc killing you can do before boredom sets in. There are of course opportunities to collect stuff and upgrade your outfits, weapons and abilities. But to me with the likes of SKYRIM and the up and coming ZELDA on the market, this game’s only chance is to end up in the bargain bin. There should be plenty of them around soon as it doesn’t take long to complete and I doubt anyone would want to play it more than once.

Not to be completely negative, there are some nice ideas within the game. But the overall mediocrity of it all tends to overshadow these parts. I mean a classic pain in the backside is that you can play as each character; an ELVEN MAGE (?), a HUMAN RANGER, and a DWARF… but you can’t switch between them as you are playing. Instead you have to quit the game and restart, then change characters Another irritating thing is when you get to a checkpoint and you upgrade your character. If you get killed it goes back to the original checkpoint so you have to upgrade again…,what a pain!

Summary

I think you have already worked out that I don’t rate this RPG very highly, so I will cut to the chase and give it 5 out of 10. Bit of a poor show all round I think. If you are a dedicated LOTR fan, then you might be into this game. Then again you could likely feel insulted by it. If it had less gore, then I am sure the younger generation who are just getting their first Xbox will enjoy it for its simplistic gameplay. As for ages 15 and upwards, I don’t think so.

* Lord Of The Rings: War in the North
* Role playing game(RPG)
* Release date: 25/11/2011
* Xbox 360
* PC
* PS3
* Publisher: Warner Brothers. Interactive
* Developer: Snowblind Studios

The Good

* Intense, high-speed demolition racing
* Numerous play modes
* Large selection of crazy vehicles to unlock.

The Bad

* Steep difficulty and aggressive AI hampers early races
* Main racing mode gets off to a rough start
* Cars are too easily sent out of control during collision.

There’s something infinitely satisfying about causing a 15-car pileup at 80mph that produces fiery explosions, sends twisted scrap metal rocketing in all directions, and flings drivers through the air like rag dolls. The FlatOut series has never been much for realism and instead has favored physics-heavy vehicular carnage at high speeds. And that’s exactly what you find in FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction-only it’s amped up to the third degree. True to its name, this arcade-style demolition racer is over the top in every way. Slamming into rival cars and smashing through the scenery en route to the finish line is packed with adrenaline-pumping thrills, yet all the chaotic fun unravels when it starts to get in the way of achieving the staunch precision that’s needed to win races and progress.

Larger races breed chaos and pileups.

Without any kind of campaign or story to speak of, FlatOut 3’s main racing mode seems the most obvious choice for diving into the gameplay. What’s mind boggling is it’s the least accessible place to start. Here, you’re meant to work your way through small groupings of tracks, unlocking new courses and cars as you progress from one location to the next. It’s all very straightforward. But the meager selection of cars available from the get-go is wildly unbalanced, and none of them are a good fit for the surprisingly demanding first few courses available. You’re either able to steer well but are prone to exploding at the slightest touch or built like a tank but about as maneuverable as an aircraft carrier.

Tuning up the cars doesn’t help much either. There’s nothing in between «flimsy toy car» and «clunky tank» at first, and it makes muscling through the early stretches of the main racing mode an exercise in sheer aggravation. It can take an awfully long period of teeth-clenching frustration to make it through the first small track only to discover you have to start over because you didn’t rank in first place out of the 15 psychotic drivers. After spending time in the game’s other play modes-which range in difficulty from being equally unforgiving to downright easy-unlocking new vehicles with better handling makes returning to the main game a lot more reasonable, but that’s not the end of FlatOut 3’s woes.

A big issue is the large number of racers on the track at a given time and their asinine level of aggressiveness. FlatOut 3’s demolition aspect is great fun when you’re in the mood to smash things up. It’s not so hot when you’re trying to win a race. Even the better rides have a floaty feel to them, and the slightest bump from a nearby car at any speed can send you spinning out of control or flying end over end into the scenery. If you don’t explode outright and get forced to restart the course, recovery is still slow enough that it botches your chances of getting back into the race most of the time. On their least-aggressive setting, AI opponents seem more interested in slamming into you or one another than actually racing. On their highest setting, it’s nearly impossible to stay on the road. This produces spectacular wipeouts and ridiculous pileups that are awesome to watch unfold but are frustrating because they tend to ruin the race.

The tracks are nicely varied, elaborately designed, and beautifully depicted at times, yet they too seem custom crafted for maximum frustration. You can plow through explosive barrels, debris, fences, and many other obstacles with destructive ease, but tiny saplings will stop you like a brick wall. Some courses throw other impassible hazards at you as well, placing them in the worst, most unavoidable spots to spur maximum vehicular annihilation. Adding that to the questionable driving skills and apparent road rage of your opponents yields a combination that makes it tough to enjoy the fast-paced racing action because you spend more time stuck on the scenery or upside down on fire than burning rubber the normal way. The unavoidable, constant crashing and restarting gets old quick.

Expect to see this sight often early on.

If you dial back the number of racers to a more manageable number, trim down the number of laps, and adjust the aggressiveness to a lighter setting, FlatOut 3 becomes more playable. Beyond the main racing gameplay, there are numerous other modes to explore, though they vary in quality. Some options, like a linear Challenge mode, a tougher night-racing mode featuring limited visibility and inclement weather, and a fun-but-short series of open off-road maps, aren’t that entertaining beyond the first few tries. Other modes, like new monster truck courses and the returning Stuntman mode that has you smashing your car to rag doll your driver through the air at a target, have more staying power. And when you can find a match, playing multiplayer against other folks online in arena battles and demolition derbies is a great way to blow off steam.

FlatOut 3’s attention to destructive detail is commendable, but it overshadows the racing aspect to the point that it threatens to derail the gameplay altogether. Loose and explosive wins out over tight and controlled throughout many facets of the game design, and the chaos it creates doesn’t always make for an enjoyable experience. It’s not that the game doesn’t have nuggets of fun hidden in its debris-strewn tracks; you just have to work way too hard to find them.

* Compelling narrative
* Great voice acting and dialogue
* Masses of NPCs make Liberty City feel alive.

The Bad

Touch-screen controls make even simple tasks a chore.

There’s a certain novelty to playing a game on a mobile that was as widely lauded on consoles as Grand Theft Auto III. The sheer scale of the open world, the complex narratives, and the excellent voice acting are all as great as you remember. And it’s all right there on a device that’s as much for telling your other half to pick up some milk as it is about games. Yet, while GTAIII was a seminal and highly influential release for the PlayStation 2 and PC back in 2001, the same cannot be said of its 2011 incarnation on the iOS and Android. Yes, it’s as clever and action-packed as ever, but it’s hampered by touch-screen controls that sap the fun out of your on-the-go crime sprees, so you’re likely to be as frustrated as you are enamoured with the beautiful mobile version of Liberty City.

For the uninitiated, GTAIII is a 3D open-world action game set in a fictional metropolis known as Liberty City, which is loosely based on New York City. It’s not the kind of place where you’d want to wander the streets alone at night or even in the middle of the day. Crime is widespread, fuelled by a corrupt police force and government that turns a blind eye to the city’s vast criminal underworld. You play as a small-time criminal who is betrayed by his partner in crime in a bank heist. After being freed in an explosion-filled action set piece you’re set loose on the city, looking for work and aspiring to rise up the hierarchy of the criminal underworld.

How you go about that is largely up to you. Scattered throughout the city are missions in which you take on tasks for a criminal gang. These include performing simple fetch quests, tailing rival gang members in a car, and assassinating foes. Though there’s some repetition in the latter half of the game, there’s a huge variety of missions on offer, with excellent narrative and voice acting that’s as much about love and romance as it is a gritty crime drama. You won’t be working for just one gang, either. Multiple crime bosses seek out your skills as you progress, and you can complete their tasks in whichever order you please, giving you a host of options. The story does a fine job of keeping the disparate missions tied together, with your job as a gun-for-hire giving you an inside look at how each gang operates and the mounting tensions between them.

You need to play through certain missions to unlock other sections of the city or new items, such as guns and vehicles, but because this is an open-world game, you can choose to ignore them and simply use Liberty City as your destructive playground. Fancy jacking a car and mowing down a bunch of helpless pedestrians? How about grabbing a rocket launcher and watching stuff burn? Or maybe you’re just in the mood for a quiet drive through the city, watching its many citizens go about their daily business as you listen to the excellent radio? It’s all yours for the taking, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It can be even more fun when the fuzz gets involved. Outrunning the cops or revelling in a five-star wanted rating and watching an ever-increasing squadron of tanks and helicopters attempt to chase you down is immensely satisfying.

The folks at CSI won’t have much trouble solving this one.

Sadly, enjoying these elements to their fullest is hampered by the touch-screen controls. While the solution Rockstar has implemented tries to make the best of the situation, it highlights how easily a great game that wasn’t designed for a touch interface is made less enjoyable. Overlaid on the action are virtual touch-screen buttons, which change depending on whether you’re driving or on foot. Each action is represented by an icon, such as a car door for jacking a car or a bullet for firing your weapon. On foot, there’s a virtual analog stick for controlling your character. When driving, it changes to simple left and right buttons for controlling your car. It’s straightforward enough, but in the heat of the action, the lack of physical feedback makes completing missions unnecessarily difficult.

For example, in one mission, you have to chase down a gang member, shunt his car with yours, and then get out to finish the job with a pistol to the face. The multiple button presses required mean you have to take your eyes off of the action to see what you’re pressing, which more often than not results in crashing your car into a wall (a problem exacerbated by the floaty handling of GTAIII’s cars) or taking too long to fire your weapon. The lack of an extra analog stick for controlling the camera is also a problem, particularly in a firefight. While you swipe across the screen to position the camera, you have to take a finger off of the analog stick or fire button (or perform some mightily impressive finger gymnastics), making it difficult to keep your eyes on the action in the middle of a shoot-out. The system does offer some flexibility in that you can customise the position and size of the virtual controls to make things more comfortable, but it’s not enough to make up for the game’s shortcomings.

Cool guys don’t look at explosions.

Fortunately, the visuals are much better. Whether you’re running the game on an iPhone 4, 4S, or iPad, the game runs admirably, with crisp visuals and bags of detail, along with a smooth frame rate. It’s not going to challenge the likes of Infinity Blade II for sheer graphical accomplishment, but even 10 years after the game’s initial release, the visuals still look impressive. A lot of that comes down to the little details that make you feel like a small part of a larger world-the taxi drivers picking up passengers, the cops patrolling the streets, the hookers on the prowl for their next clients. To see such levels of detail running on a phone is very impressive.

The underlying game still holds up extremely well, but is it enough to make GTAIII a great mobile game? Sadly, the answer is no. The control issues keep it from achieving the same level of greatness as its console predecessors and keep you from enjoying everything it has to offer. Not even a visual wow factor is enough to counteract it. The novelty is great while it lasts, but you’ll be craving a controller long before you’ve settled into Liberty City.