The Good

* Substantial difficulty.

The Bad

* Bland visuals
* Unclear field of movement
* Imprecise hit detection
* Buggy controller support.

Shoot-’em-up games draw on a fairly standard formula, and by pitting your lone ship against countless waves of enemies who shower you in a thick hail of lasers, Razor 2: Hidden Skies at least gets the basics right. But though the game demands quick fingers and sharp eyes, there is little incentive to play it beyond the inherent satisfaction of a challenge overcome. The visuals are crisp, but the bland art design makes the levels blend together in a blur of gray ships and pink lasers. The controls allow you to maneuver smoothly, but the unclear hit detection and strangely constricted field of movement keep you from feeling really comfortable in the cockpit. These foibles prevent Razor 2’s solid action from coming to life, making this a dull, unengaging experience.
The story in Razor 2 involves a threat as vague as the art style is bland. You (and only you) are embroiled in a war against endless metal ships, some with colorful highlights and sinister-looking pointy parts. Despite some variation, the visuals are a generic space cliche throughout. They are clean and serve their purpose of clearly showing your enemies and their projectiles, but you certainly won’t be distracted by any attractive sights. Poorly written pre-mission briefings are spoken aloud by a robotic female voice that is almost certainly a software program, complete with mispronunciations and awkward intonations. The sound effects are serviceable, but the sweeping score, while nice, doesn’t jibe with the feel of the game. While there’s not much that is actively bad about Razor 2’s presentation, there isn’t anything particularly good either.

The game fares only slightly better once your guns start blazing. You control your ship with the arrow keys using one hand, while firing and switching weapons with the other. The keyboard is responsive, but be careful about remapping keys; the game won’t overwrite their previous functions, so you may end up with some unwanted side effects. You can also plug in a controller, which is a lot smoother, but you’ll also have to deal with erratic movement bugs that occasionally shove you off course. Almost every level is vertically scrolling, but though your field of vision is rectangular, your field of movement is more like a trapezoid. It narrows toward the top of the screen, so if you try to surge forward to avoid threats, you will be shunted inward by invisible walls. It’s a bothersome effect that limits how precise you can be near the sides of the screen, and it doesn’t go away when your view zooms out during boss fights, even though theoretically your range of movement should increase. Once you get accustomed to it, this issue becomes manageable, and the fact that it’s localized to the side of the screen means you still have a good amount of room to maneuver.

Dodging enemy ships and projectiles is essential to staying alive, though it’s not always clear what parts of your ship register enemy hits and what parts allow projectiles to pass through. Keeping the center area of your ship safe is your best bet, as is blasting enemies as fast as your guns will fire. You have three primary weapons with unlimited ammunition that you can switch between on the fly: a straight-shooting pulse gun, a spread-firing spray gun, and a steady-streaming bendy laser. There are also four heavy weapons that you can acquire, depending on your ship upgrades and ammo capacity: homing missiles, homing energy blasts, a powerful rifle shot, and an area-damaging EMP. Saving the big guns for the big bosses is a smart move, though the EMP’s ability to clear the area of enemy projectiles can come in very handy in a pinch. There are also tougher enemies that come in midlevel that can be worth a missile or two, and the robotic lady voice is actually quite helpful in announcing their arrival. In later levels, every advantage counts because Razor 2 is definitely a challenging game.

Time to show this tank that size doesn’t matter.

To help prolong your survival, you can upgrade each of your weapons between levels, as well as your shields, engine, and energy cell (your shields keep you alive and your energy replenishes your shields). These upgrades are rewarding and effective, and along with the simple satisfaction of destroying your enemies, improving your ship is one of the only pleasures Razor 2 has to offer. The action is competent, yet flawed, and the visuals do nothing to distinguish the game from its countless peers. This is a bland, underwhelming experience whose eight levels struggle to justify the $9,99 price point, and even players hard up for a new shoot-’em-up should think twice before diving in.

The Good

* Lots of alternate routes.

The Bad

* Controls do not always respond to your gestures
* Frequent crashes and lengthy rag-doll animations disrupt the flow
* Unpredictable physics
* Only takes a few hours to play through.

This wacky action game doesn’t contain any of the fun hinted at by its goofy premise.

The mafia has been known to do seedy things to exert control over people, but even it would be ashamed of the line it crosses in Kung Fu Rider. Sharply dressed assailants leap from behind parked cars, jump down from scaffolding, and emerge from shadowy tunnels to physically attack the protagonists: an ordinary man and woman riding atop everyday office chairs. Your goal is to make it down the streets of this dangerous city while riding whatever wheeled contraption is handy, and the ridiculous premise does lead to a number of funny situations. But once you get used to the sight of a man being kicked in the face and turning into a limp rag doll, any bit of fun is quickly drained from this exhausting racing game. The Move controller is required to play, but the convoluted controls don’t always respond. The preponderance of wipeouts is even more troubling, either from cheap enemies or unpredictable physics. Kung Fu Rider is a lackluster addition to Sony’s Move launch lineup, neither showing the potential of the new peripheral nor providing an enjoyable experience on its own terms.

The setup is explained during the title screen but never fleshed out beyond the flimsy premise. For some reason, Toby and her boss Karin have angered the mafia, and they must make it to the safety of their mobile office van before extreme harm is done to them. Unfortunately, they don’t have access to a car, motorcycle, or any other vehicle that would easily transport them through these winding streets and past the thugs who are hunting them. Instead, these adaptable heroes use whatever wheeled device they happen upon at the beginning of each level, ranging from an office chair and a vacuum cleaner to a baby stroller and even a drum. Each makeshift ride has its own set of attributes, so you can choose the durable but sluggish drum if subtlety isn’t your specialty or the fast and nimble stool if quick reactions are more to your liking. It’s a preposterous situation that gives this game a wacky, anything-goes charm, but that goodwill is quickly destroyed once you start playing.

Controls are the first hurdle you have to leap over if you’re going to extract any enjoyment from this game. All of your actions are triggered by using the Move controller, whether it is with a specific gesture or button press. To keep your character rolling at a respectable speed, you must shake the controller up and down in a smooth rhythm. Not only does this become repetitive and tiring before long, but it also gets mixed up with your jump command, which requires you to flick the controller up. Because of this confusion, you frequently find your character missing jumps or crashing spectacularly, where more responsive controls could have easily averted the crisis. To perform a speed burst, you thrust the controller forward, but this often isn’t recognized, which once again leads to troubling crashes when it engages later than expected. To further complicate things, all six of the motion controller’s buttons are used. Ducking, attacking, grinding, and making quick lateral movements require a button tap (sometimes in conjunction with a gesture), and trying to corral your many actions while keeping your eyes peeled on the dangers ahead is far too complicated for its own good.

Each course is lined with tons of obstacles to ensure you’re constantly avoiding a danger or trying to land an impressive jump. Rails and ramps lead to branching shortcuts, and the expansive city is the best element of this game. There are many routes to the finish line, and trying to find the fastest (and safest) way requires a keen eye and deft hand. But there are a number of design issues that make this an arduous experience. The mafia goons attempting to thwart your progress are unbelievably cheap. They hide in dark alleys and around blind corners just waiting for you to cruise by so they can punch you in the neck or whap you with a stick. Once you memorize their positions, you have a chance to avoid them, but they’ll frequently knock you down even after you smack them with a karate strike. In addition to an overabundance of enemies, there are a number of issues that sap away any potential fun. First, there’s a prolonged crash animation every time you wipe out. It’s funny to see your rag-doll model fly the first time, but every subsequent viewing is just a drag. Second, you have a finite number of lives in each race, so you have to be more concerned with staying alive than nabbing cash icons or beating the ticking clock. Finally, because the physics are so unpredictable, you can wipe out in unexpected ways. At times, you may roll through oils drums unscathed, but at other times doing the same thing may knock you out.

Rigor mortis sets in soon after wiping out.

The punishing failure system of the main races is alleviated by the optional free tracks you unlock as you progress through the game. In these modes, the clock is removed entirely and you can crash as many times as you like without fear of losing. The challenge comes from finding the 20 tokens sprinkled throughout the course. This forces you to explore every nook and cranny, taking out-of-the-way shortcuts and grinding high-up rails to nab the prizes. The control problems still exist, and the mafia still doesn’t play nice, but at least some of the frustrations of the main races are removed. You unlock more vehicles by collecting tokens, so there are even tangible rewards for your efforts. There is also a two-player mode, though it’s little more than a novelty. A second player controls a disembodied hand that can nab cash icons, as well as pick up and fling objects to clear a path or take out the mafia. It can be fun to toss items to and fro, but the first player still has to ride atop an office chair and suffer through all the problems that go along with doing so.

Kung Fu Rider is a poor showcase for Sony’s latest peripheral. Even if all of the other issues weren’t enough to steer you away from Kung Fu Rider, there is one final nail in the coffin: its price point. Because of its wacky premise and novel control scheme, it would be conceivable to take a flier on it as a $10 downloadable game. But this actually retails for $40, and there isn’t nearly enough content to justify that price. With only a few different variations on the basic track designs, you can plow through the whole game in just a few hours, and there isn’t much reason to return. But that’s a moot point anyway; the significant problems in Kung Fu Rider don’t make it worth playing at any price.

The Good

* Solid turn-based formula may cause you to lose a few hours to its spell
* A nice amount of strategic flexibility.

The Bad

* Loaded with crippling bugs
* Terrible interface and player feedback
* The AI fails to put on the pressure
* Tactical battles aren’t worth the effort
* Plenty of slowdown in spite of the unimpressive visuals.

It’s never fun to purchase a game you’re excited to play, only to discover that it’s an incomplete mess. Yet if you purchase Elemental: War of Magic, whether from a retail outlet or developer/publisher Stardock’s own Impulse distribution service, that’s exactly what you’ll get. This strategy game boasts shades of SimTex’s classic Master of Magic, but any goodwill this similarity inspires is dashed by a slew of disastrous bugs, uninspired art, AI problems, bad sound effects, non-working multiplayer, and a shoddy interface. When it works, Elemental possesses that «just one more turn» factor that can keep you invested in your civilization’s advancement. But even if you somehow avoid the game’s penchant for crashing-often over and over again-it’s hard to get past the noticeable sloppiness that invades almost every element. At the time of this review, three patches have smoothed out the roughest edges, but it’s going to take a long time before Elemental: War of Magic fulfills its potential. Maybe at that time, this product will be worth your money, but for now, even the most adventurous gamblers should keep their funds safely in their own pockets.

Mounts like the ice warg come in mighty handy.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that you will run into bugs that others experience. However, on four different machines far exceeding Elemental’s recommended system requirements, we found that crashes were frequent, both before and after three patches. Before the second patch, we found that out-of-memory crashes and DirectX errors were common, often occurring several times an hour. We’ve still run into a few of these cases after that patch, which rendered saved games unusable. In two separate games, both hundreds of turns in, we reached a point where we couldn’t continue past a certain turn, as ending it caused the game to freeze. (Moving the save game file to other machines delivered the same result.) In another case, the game crashed to desktop whenever a champion’s army was defeated. In yet another scenario, selecting a particular city, either by clicking on it or cycling to it using hotkeys, would cause the game to lock up, rendering the city-and the units therein contained-unusable. And in some games, after spending many hours on Elemental’s large maps, the game seemed to buckle under its own weight; it would sometimes freeze when ending a turn, clicking on a dialogue button, or after having a sound effect indicate the appearance of dialogue-but before the dialogue actually appeared. And unless you want to chance a crash, don’t ever think of alt-tabbing out of the game.

Perhaps you’d be lucky enough to avoid these major obstacles, but even then, you’d still encounter any number of other usability issues. While some tutorial hints have been added since the game’s initial release, strategy newcomers shouldn’t give Elemental a moment’s thought. Few games explain themselves so poorly, and the best way to learn the ins and outs is to click on everything until you figure it out. The in-game help index, called the Hiergamenon, is of little assistance, failing even to outline all four victory conditions. (It tells you there are four, but then it explains only three of them.) The user interface is also bogged down by all sorts of issues. When a city levels up, you get to choose a reward, such as additional gold production or a boost to the pace at which the city produces arcane knowledge. But the dialogue window covers most of the screen and doesn’t allow you to view city details before making a selection, so unless you remember what resources that city is producing, you may select a pointless improvement. Should a champion’s army arrive at a quest giver’s location while you are focused on a different unit, the camera will briefly zoom to the quest destination and then back to where the camera was focused, giving you no sense of where the quest is in relation to your champion. Letters and numbers spill outside of their interface elements, misspellings are scattered about, camera position and minimap state are not remembered by the game when saving your game, the wrong minimap may get carried over when you load one game without closing out the current one-the list of essential elements seemingly delivered without attention to basic detail is exhausting.

In Elemental, cartoon dragons and cartoon spiders have learned to live in perfect harmony.

And yet, amidst all this technical chaos is a game with future potential in which some very patient veteran strategists will find value. At the start of each game, you select a sovereign from a predesignated list or create your own and select one of 10 kingdoms/empires; five of these roughly correlate to the forces of light (the race of Men) and five correlate to the forces of darkness (the race of the Fallen). Then, starting with a single settlement, you spread your influence and might across the land. Elemental utilizes the beloved 4X strategic formula: Turn by turn, you e(x)plore the land to discover strategic locations and other empires, e(x)pand the reach of your empire, e(x)ploit the map’s natural resources, and e(x)terminate your rivals. There’s a nice amount of flexibility in how you can approach the road to domination. You choose technological advancements from one of five broad categories and select spells from a number of different spellbooks. But just as the game is flexible enough to offer some strategic variety, so must you remain flexible and adjust to the whims of the map. Arcane and technological advancement depends on whether you have access to the resources that fuel them; it makes little sense to pursue certain military and magical enhancements if you have yet to encounter any crystal nodes, for example.

On the subject of flexibility, another nice touch comes in the form of the ability to create your own units using the various pieces of armor, weapons, and trinkets you unlock. You can even choose different poses for them on their unit cards. Making a custom unit is a pleasant side task, but doing so doesn’t have much gameplay impact: simply creating the most powerful unit you can afford at any given time is always the right choice. Also the right choice: auto-resolving your battles. You can play battles on the tactical map, but they aren’t particularly satisfying. At best, you can simply roll over an easy opponent and be on your way. At worst, depending on the statistics of your own units and those of your opponents, you might get stuck having to watch units miss each other over and over again. There are occasionally some environmental twists, such as patches of foliage that might offer a defensive bonus. But these are usually shoved to the side of the battlefield and enemies seem unaware of them, so they rarely come into play. These are grid-based tactical battles at their most basic, so there’s nothing to ignite your enthusiasm. Furthermore, these skirmishes don’t harbor any visual appeal. The battlefields are bland, and soldiers don’t look like they are marching across the tiles so much as they are floating while their legs move.

Some role-playing elements spice up the strategic gameplay and provide context and incentive to explore. You may recruit champions you encounter on your travels to your cause, and they can lead armies of their own. Your champions and sovereign alike can purloin loot scattered about the land, take on quests from inns, and even explore dungeons (that is, engage in a tactical battle with the possibility of earning extra goodies). This is a nice idea that allows you to level up champions and earn loot, and it’s an important facet of the domination/adventure trees. However, you’ll discover after just a few games that there is a remarkably limited number of quests. You see the same quest dialogues over and over again, which leads to repetition, and the simple, minimal text outlining the quest fails to capitalize on this new fantasy world. The interface may also interfere with your adventures. It’s easy to lose track of your quest destination, and there’s no clear visual marker in the main 3D view or any way to just zoom the camera directly to the location.

Careful: clicking that button might lead to a total game lock-up.

While your sovereign gallivants around, your cities grow in population, level up, and expand their geographic influence. Starting settlements in advantageous, resource-rich locations is important, and provided you follow the right research path, you can use transport ships to carry units to remote locations by sea. Just be careful: It’s possible to establish a settlement in the water-a settlement that can create invisible underwater units that you can’t use. Fortunately, not all attempts to expand and enhance your kingdom are so troublesome. You might utilize the magical properties of elemental shards, build schools to increase the speed of your technological learning, or construct inns and pubs to build up a resource called diplomatic capital. Diplomatic capital is a handy negotiation tool if you want to parlay with competing empires. You can create nonaggression pacts, trade treaties, and more, though the AI stringently sticks to its perceived value of the agreement at hand, which isn’t always sensible. For example, you may fence in a neutral kingdom’s few cities, making a nonaggression pact worthwhile to that kingdom-yet the leader will have no interest in this wonderful bargain, making it easy to roll over the kingdom’s underdeveloped realm at a later time with your inflated empire’s powerful troops.

In fact, the AI doesn’t generally have a smart sense of self-preservation. Though harder difficulty levels make it more challenging to exploit your dim-witted foes, enemy sovereigns in open conflict with you often wander about with a few odd units, making them easy to defeat. (And a defeated sovereign means a defeated empire.) Small sovereign-led armies may even attack a well-defended city, essentially winning the game for you on your behalf. Even if the AI does put up a fight, bugs might interfere with the proceedings. For example, an aggressive empire may demand more gildar (that is, currency) than you actually possess. But you might still click the option to pay the tribute without losing any gildar or encountering any noticeable consequences. The diplomatic route (or cooperation route, if you are playing as a Fallen faction) is still useful, though, mostly because it leads to the ability to recruit units like spiders and dragons. Should you avoid delving deeply into warfare/conquest research, you still gain access to effective armies.

In light of artistically striking games like Disciples III: Renaissance and King Arthur — The Role-playing Wargame, Elemental is disappointing. Its bright cel-shaded look isn’t unattractive, and there are some nice details if you zoom into cities. But the plain environments and ho-hum unit designs hardly inspire thoughts of grand fantasy adventures. Units like dragons should look imposing on the tactical battlefield, but simple animations and wretched sound effects make them seem no more special than any other troop. And for a game subtitled War of Magic, Elemental’s spell effects are downright pitiable. If you show up expecting fireworks, you’ll be disappointed that you barely got a single sparkler. After all, magic isn’t fun to use if spells don’t look colorful and grandiose. More surprising is how poorly Elemental performs in spite of its simple visuals. Turning up the shadows and the antialiasing can bring the game into single-digit frame rates on the most powerful machines, though the most recent patch has seen some improvements in this regard. No patch has yet to address the poor sound effects, however. Spells sound as weak as they look, attacking units land their hits with a feeble clunk, and the canned growls of various wild creatures sound as if they were emitted by robots rather than wolves. The soundtrack seems nice at first, but after hearing the same couple of looping tunes over and over, you realize you can turn off the game’s sound completely and not miss a thing.

Love and marriage are part and parcel of Elemental’s dynasties. Or at least, marriage.

Exploring your options outside of one-off games reveals little of value. Most notably, Elemental’s multiplayer options have yet to be activated 10 days after the game’s release, in spite of the promises made on the retail packaging. The single-player campaign is at least functional, but it fails to take advantage of its original fantasy world. The game’s opening cutscene, starting with its initial cliched shot of a thick tome placed upon a desk and lit with a flickering candle, sets the stage for a generic backstory. The campaign’s scenes feature some nice 2D art, but the dull voice-over isn’t likely to move you, and the short text dialogues fail to give the characters much personality. Sovereigns fulfill their simple duties, moving the plot along without offering the player any reason to get invested. The campaign doesn’t function that well as an introduction to the gameplay either, providing many tutorial hints after they would have been most valuable and leaving basic mechanisms unexplained. Intrepid players may find the most value in Elemental’s modification tools, and there are maps and other mods already available for download. Most of these features are actually pretty simple to use, so if you’re the creative type, you may lose some time to them.

Elemental: War of Magic could have been a good strategy game, and given Stardock’s history of supporting its products long into the future, it may yet be one someday. But that day is not here. Perhaps your faith in a respected developer and your love of the 4X formula will inspire enough patience in you to see the solid game foundation buried amid all the smoking rubble and swarming bugs. Certainly, Elemental’s ability to make you lose hours at a time to an expanding kingdom in spite of its major problems is proof of many worthy ideas and ambitions. But ideas only hold so much value if they’re not executed properly. If you can feast on ideas alone, Elemental: War of Magic might have something to offer you. If you prefer finished strategy games that don’t actively impede your enjoyment, you should focus your attention elsewhere.

That has changed recently and has sadly left the younger generation of gamers without much of a footing in the sports world. That’s where Little League World Series 2010 (LLWS 2010) comes into the picture with its simple gameplay and easy-to-learn feature set. There’s no doubt that it’s lacking in many of the hardcore baseball areas, but as a casual title meant for newcomers to the sport, I think there just might be enough to warrant your time.

The two most complicated elements for the MLB 2K series — hitting and pitching — have been simplified significantly in LLWS 2010. They both hinge on you holding and releasing the right trigger at a certain time. For hitting, holding the right trigger starts a simple power meter that, if timed just right, will get you maximum power when you release the trigger. Pitching works in an almost identical way, but has been handcuffed further by the fact that every pitcher has the same offering of three pitches and you can only move the pitch’s location right or left. Fielding is automated, your only worry being to throw the ball to the correct base and making sure to wiggle the right analog stick to light a fire under your players’ butts (read: make them run faster). If you can’t tell by now, the gameplay in Little League World Series is extraordinarily simple with only the most basic of actions left up to the player. In other words, if you’ve never touched a baseball game before, this one is for you.

Adding a bit of spice to the mix is the inclusion of power ups and talent cards. Talent cards can be played at any time during the game to give your players certain abilities or detracting from the abilities of the opposing team. You can earn a binder full of more than 50 cards, five of which can be assigned to any one game. These cards do things like lessen the speed of the other team, increase your hitting power, and make your team run faster as well as other abilities. You can see that the development team knew that the gameplay needed some spicing up, but the talent cards don’t quite take the step needed to keep things feeling fresh after several hours of play.

The artificial intelligence could also use a bit of work, especially since the game relies on the AI of your teammates for so many crucial actions. Too often players will make bad decisions when running the bases and there’s an interesting issue when the opposing team hits the ball slowly down the first base line and pulls the first baseman from his post.

Another downer is the general lack of innovation since the game launched on Wii back in 2008. Many of the same mechanics make their way into the Xbox 360 version with little changes to speak of. At the very least the developers should have added online multiplayer support. Sadly all you get is leaderboard integration and the same offering of mini-games to play locally that we saw on Wii. That doesn’t take away from the fact that kids will find something to enjoy, but they could’ve done more to differentiate the two packages.

The only area that has seen a bump when making the transition to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the visuals. They’ve been nicely bumped up into the HD era and enjoy more detail, brighter colors and a framerate that holds strong throughout. Granted, nothing you’re going to see should push the system, but that hasn’t stopped other games in the past from experiencing technical issues for no real reason.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Villain made little effort in the porting process. This is a straight across port with only a few new features — but no new functionality to take advantage of the different platform. I cannot believe I’m using this word to describe Archetype on iPad, which is such an amazing iPhone game, but here it is: lazy.

For the general idea behind Archetype, read my iPhone review. Because the iPad edition is a basic port, not much about the set-up has changed. When you first begin Archetype, you create a login that stays with you — but only on that specific device. This is another crushing disappointment with Archetype for iPad. All that hard work you did to level up on the iPhone? Right now, it’s worthless. You cannot use the same login for the iPad game; you have to start over. That’s craziness — and immediately off-putting for Archetype fans that supported the game since the beginning and made it such a hit in the App Store. Villain promises an update for transferring your profile soon — so unless you’re brand-new to Archetype, you should just wait.

Down the barrel of a gun.

It’s not just the login issue that weighs down Archetype. The controls are fixed; you cannot adjust them. Why not? At least N.O.V.A. allowed you to move the buttons and sticks. I understand fixed controls on the iPhone where real estate is at a premium, but because the iPad is such much larger and heavier, you need to let the player reconfigure the controls so they are comfortable. The size of the virtual sticks are scaled up for the iPad, which makes sense in theory, but it doesn’t work well here. I don’t have NBA player hands. You fire by tapping outside of the look stick. My thumb barely gets across the stick, so it’s never easy to take a shot and return to looking — all while balancing the iPad and running around the arenas.

The iPad version of Archetype does have a new stage — Avarice — and an all-new mode called Rocket Arena. These are good additions and I do like that Archetype’s multiplayer works across multiple platforms. If you’re on iPad, you can play against somebody on an iPhone. That’s smart stuff.

Archetype runs quite well on the iPad. In multiplayer matches over WiFi, everything ran smoothly with no noticeable hiccups. I think Archetype pops a bit more on the iPhone 4, but this version does look very good. The weapons are nicely constructed and well decorated, especially the one-hit kill battle axe.

Your flight path is distinctly pre-determined. You race straight ahead at mach speeds, playing tag with wave after wave of enemy fighters and ground vehicles. Tilting your device moves your plane around, allowing you to paint targets with missiles while holding down the missile button. In addition to missiles, your plane also has Vulcan cannons that are surprisingly effective at shattering airborne rivals. And each of the three possible planes has an ultra-effective secret weapon that recharges after several seconds, such as a wall of missiles or a tornado of Vulcan fire. You may upgrade all of your weapons with cash earned by surviving a mission, although don’t plan on maxing everything out in a single play. You must replay stages multiple times if you want to juice each fighter until you are Death Incarnate.

Thanks to each plane’s unique special weapons and gadgets (such as afterburners or shields), replaying missions with a different jet actually offers a fresh experience. This prevents me from harping on Top Gun 2’s seemingly meager seven stages. Plus, each stage is fairly long and puts up quite a fight. If you can get through each stage without crashing on your first play, you have serious skills. Because it is so easy to survive a stage only to fall against a tough boss, I would prefer twice as many shorter stages. Though so many people play the iPhone like a DS or PSP (longer gaming sessions), there is still something to be said for making sure your game can be enjoyed by folks with just a few stolen minutes to spare.

Now, though I like Top Gun 2’s change of pace, I do wish it was easier to pull off defensive moves. Because the flashing Danger Zone signs are gone, you have to watch out for each and every incoming missile yourself. When the action gets hairy, that’s not an easy task. The specials like shields and afterburners help escape some hits, but some basic maneuvers like a barrel roll would be useful, too. As it is, you can tilt your plane into the extreme left and right sides of the screen, but you completely lose the ability to target enemies while doing so.

As an arcade game, Top Gun 2 looks the part. It glides with zero hiccups. The stages are bright and colorful, your planes look dynamite, and the cheeseball rock — including a remake of the classic «Danger Zone» — are all appropriate. There are no iPhone 4-specific visuals, though.

Is this Grand Theft Horse? No, that’s an insulting comparison that doesn’t begin to describe Red Dead’s beauty. Is this a better game than GTA? Technically, atmospherically, visually: absolutely. Narratively? Too subjective to call. Will you enjoy it more than GTA IV? That depends on how much you like the setting.

We’re under no illusions that urban sells. Given the choice, people would rather shoot Uzis nd drive cars than gallop through canyons on a horse. True, Red Dead does its best to lure in the GTA demographic with the promise of bloody shoot-outs, animal-skinning, and Deadwood-grade swearing, but its biggest strength lies in how faithful it is to frontier life, and of course, the incredible landscapes that spill out from both sides of the US/Mexico border. You won’t find any ’teetee bars’ here…

Stay for the scenery
While the three distinct areas you play within are stunning to look at, Red Dead never outdoes other PS3-lookers, like Uncharted 2 or Killzone 2, in terms of sheer sharpness and obvious beauty. There’s no equivalent, for example, of the snow in the crashed-train section of Uncharted 2. There are scenes that stop you in your tracks and demand to be appreciated. For us, the biggest wow moment came half way through the main story, when we found ourselves on an isolated fort in the Mexican portion of the map, Neuvo Paraiso.

As we looked out from the top turret, the sunset bathed the whole canyon a brilliant shade of orange, accentuating the curves of the gorge below and highlighting the monolithic rocks that punctuated the valley below. Vultures flew overhead, picking at the spoils of our recent fire-fight, and the people in the fort went about their business. It was a perfect snapshot of what Red Dead is about: being the best, most atmospheric game it can be. That moment alone puts the concrete detail of Liberty City in the shade.

What impresses more, though, is that the world feels alive. And we’re not just talking about the town folk reacting to you, or the incidental events as you ride through the environment (like robberies, posses tracking down criminals, or men hunting). There’s wildlife everywhere, and although not the fully-fledged eco-system the developers were hinting at pre-release, it all feels like a natural extension of the scenery. Some you see — like armadillos darting between bushes in the Mexican desert, or bears lumbering through the woodlands in the northern territories — and some you hear, like crickets or crows overhead. The environments may seem like expanses of loneliness, but they’re teaming with life.

Easily distracted
And yet, strangely, Red Dead’s enormous scope and beautiful world is also its biggest enemy. To get the most out of it, to experience the fascinating story of John Marsden, you need to finish the main story. The pay-off at the end is worth the price of admission alone, but to get there you have to complete roughly 15—20 hours worth of missions, watch hundreds of typically well-scripted cut-scenes featuring characters that are both distinct and likeable, and not get lured away by all the treats the world tempts you with.

Can you ride past a man being chased by coyotes and not stop to help him? Can you resist the urge of checking ‘just one more location’ for a spot of buried gold? Can you gallop past a Grizzly bear without stopping to shoot it down and skin it for Trophies? Nine times out of ten, the answer is ’no’.

The upshot is an investment of 30 or so hours spent in the game to reach the climax. Even then, there are fresh missions to complete once the credits have rolled. Past experience with stable-mate, GTA IV, has taught us that the majority of gamers never actually reach the finale — even the more dedicated ones. Why? Because there are too many toys in the sandbox. Red Dead Redemption is more streamlined than GTA, and completing the story missions leads to new equipment and genuine progression, but the urge to wander is still strong.

Get stuck into the plot, and the main missions bring plenty of variety — much more than we feared from early hands on sessions. Although the most common scenario sees you riding to a point on the map, shooting up some bad-guys and then leaving, these are punctuated by some thoughtful and genuinely different tasks. Like herding cattle across the plains, or acting as a shill for a Snake Oil doctor, or teaching another character how to hunt wolves.

Importantly, though, each mission holds together in the context of the overarching story — there’s never a sense that Rockstar San Diego has crammed in variety for the sake of it, or that what you’re doing deviates from your overall goal of revenge. The only real weak-spots in the otherwise excellent narrative stem from the occasional bout of stupidity from Marsden himself; the various factions who claim to be able to help him find the members of his old gang (who he’s hunting on behalf of a shadowy government organisation) string him along for ages without coughing up any info, and it’s usually blindingly obvious to everyone but Marsden himself who’s planning to help, and who’s just taking advantage.

Show-downer
Another slight disappointment is the duelling. It feels too random. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and there’s little rhyme or reason to why. It’s down to a combination of poorly worded tutorials and controls that feel out of sync with the rest of the game. Not a huge problem — but as duelling is an iconic part of virtually every Western film, we’re disappointed Rockstar didn’t quite nail this aspect.

Even the usually divisive soundtrack is well done. There are no radio stations (duh) or hastily shoe-horned Country and Western themed tracks playing here — just the sporadic snippet of an instrumental track played on guitar. Music fades in and out to complement the scenery, the time of day, and the on-screen action; so while you’re aware its there, the soundtrack is never intrusive or game-breaking.

There are a couple of moments where you actually hear a song (performed by Jose Gonzales — his track Heartbeats was on the Sony Bravia advert with the coloured balls bouncing down the hill) kick in, as they mark special moments in the game. With such scarcity of music, we desperately wanted these particular vignettes to last longer — but that’s precisely the point. In sharing the experiences of our hero, Marsden, we can empathise when the bright flashes in his otherwise murky world seem to fade all too quickly.

This refreshing restraint is evident throughout the game. It’s not just in the soundtrack — it’s in the scenery, it’s in the dialogue, it’s in the missions. There’s nothing over the top or try-hard about Red Dead Redemption — you never get the feeling the developers have taken aim at a specific rival, or made deliberate strides to avoid being pigeon-holed as GTA Wild West.

Sure there are similarities between the two Rockstar games, but Red Dead stands aside from and — even though the office is split, with some preferring GTA’s scuzzy urbanity — arguably taller than its urban cousin.

Real-world college football has risen to a point where it’s as dramatically rich as a Hollywood sports movie. Last year, there was rarely a weekend when an underdog didn’t topple a ranked team and it usually happened with unexpected performances from unheralded future stars. How could a college football video game possibly live up to the drama of the actual thing? The team behind «NCAA Football 11» have found a way to take a medium that uses a «controller» and still make it feel spontaneous, enjoyable, and «uncontrolled.”

The perfect balance in «NCAA Football» starts by giving the player an unbelievable amount of depth into the world of their favorite sport. There’s not much to the structure of the title that won’t feel familiar to those who have played previous annual editions. Once again, the title is seamless in its presentation and incredibly customizable to the player’s individual experience. «NCAA Football 11» can be something different for everyone.

This player built his experience around the University of Michigan Wolverines through the two major sections of the game — «Dynasty» and «Road to Glory.» In the «Dynasty» mode, you progress through a relatively standard season based on the real-life schedule of your chosen team but you also get access behind-the-scenes with a very deep recruiting process. Every week, you’ll have to check your recruiting boards, make phone calls to potential players, and build for the future. The combination of keeping one eye on the current season while using the other to look to the future makes for a very enjoyable Dynasty experience. And players who enjoy broadcasting their customizable experience will love the «Dynasty Wire,” which allows stories for your own gaming experience to be shared not just through your console but even on Facebook and Twitter. «Storybuilder» takes it a step further, creating summaries and photo displays of highlights from your own game that you can upload to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Win your «Online Dynasty» and shove it in their faces.

In «Road to Glory,” you move from the office to the field, taking on a position as an indvidual player. My chosen QB worked his way through his high school playoffs (based on real high schools…my kid went to Andover in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, like his creator…yes the game is THAT deep), losing in the final round but performing well enough to be offered several scholarships around the country. I went with second string at U of M but did well enough in practice to move up the depth chart to a starting job by week three.

Obviously, «Dynasty» (which can also be played online with real friends taking on other teams in your conference) and «Road to Glory» are deep gaming experiences that require more than casual gaming, but the title works just as well as a «pick up and play» title — something you can grab with a roommate or friend and play for 20—30 minutes before you go out on a Saturday night. Those players will be most concerned with game presentation and control, two elements that have been slightly tweaked in this incarnation.

Much has already been written about the «Gameflow» system that will be used in the upcoming «Madden» title. It will apparently offer a drastically simplified playcalling system for players who merely want to run and pass. «NCAA Football» doesn’t go that far but the default system does offer up a limited number of situation-specific plays instead of the deep playbook. With a few clicks, you can open the massive selection, but I found the offering of the dozen-or-so plays that I would likely choose cut some of the fat out of the game, streamlining the experience into something even more enjoyable. And each team’s playbook feels distinct as the developers have made one of this year’s focuses «120 unique ways to play and win.”

As for graphics, each of the school stadiums, mascots, and even cheerleaders for 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools have been lovingly recreated through something EA calls the «TruSchool» system (something that not only impacts graphics but brings program-specific offensive styles and coaching tendencies to the gameplay as well). This year places an emphasis on the home team’s pre-game rituals and mascots. So, even if the Wolverines are your team, when you play in South Bend, expect to see a lot of shots of a cheering Notre Dame Fighting Irish mascot. Overall, the graphics are even smoother than last year, although some load times between highlights and at the start of games seem a little longer than they should be.

When it comes to in-game graphics, a few small additions make a big impact. The game now includes sideline toe-dragging as receivers try to stay in-bounds along with a very successful new locomotion system that incorporates more realistic running mechanics. Every element of the passing and running game not only looks better but plays more authetically.

The audio of the game is, once again, typically strong with ESPN reporters Kirk Herbstreit, Brad Nessler, and Erin Andrews bringing their A-game. The commentary is surprisingly fluid and much less repetitive than most sports titles, although Herbstreit made a few situation-specific mistakes that surprised me. More than once, I would pass to an open man who then dropped the ball and would be reprimanded for passing into coverage even though there wasn’t a defender anywhere NEAR my intended receiver. A patch could conceivably fix this minor timing glitch by the time you read this review.

Complaints about «NCAA Football 11» are so minor — brief announcer glitches, a few so-so player models, some lenghy load times — that they are all easily overwhelmed by the overall entertainment of what the title does right. Other sports games should take notes.

Singularity is a first-person sci-fi shooter that puts you on a mysterious island that it appears time forgot. Of course, nothing is as it seems, but unfortunately, the game’s tension and potential are ultimately squandered. If you’re looking for a fairly mindless shooter, you could do worse, but it never lives up to the superior games that it liberally borrows from to contruct its mechanics.

Singularity begins when a US patrol helicopter, investigating the source of a powerful surge that destroyed a military satellite crash, lands near Katorga-12, a mysterious island that seems to have been devoid of life since 1955. It’s a striking intro, though unashamedly, the Bioshock comparisons will flow freely, as your character spends the first part of the game in a pseudo-survival horror nightmare fighting the hideously mutated denizens of the island while collecting audio recordings and self-upgrading with the scientific breakthroughs that are clearly the reason everything went to hell in the first place.

Sometimes — History Needs a Push

No pun intended, I was enraptured by the iconic Communist-era Russia motif, which colors Katorga-12, where scientists discovered a new element dubbed E99 to be used for Cold War weaponry and ultimately, time travel. Though graphically, the game’s nothing to call home about, the world presented in Singularity is eerie, has spectacular audio and helps the plotline grow more fascinating through ghostly images of the horrible past that unfold as you progress through the schools and living quarters of its previous inhabitants. The image I carried with me for the duration of the game was that of little children crawling under their desks in the way we were all taught to do in case of nuclear annihilation, only for the real world to reveal their corpses still tucked carefully away for future explorers to discover. Furniture? Not as safe as we all were taught.

Clearly, something is very wrong on Katorga-12 and you discover very quickly that the warring scientists on the island have (inadvertently?) re-written history in a rather unpleasant fashion and it is up to you to make things right. It’s a bit like the lesson we learned from «Back to the Future,” but with communism and crazy weapons. Your guidance in the game comes from a mysterious organization called Mir-12 and their operative, Kathryn. After completing the game, I’m still not sure the origins of Mir-12 or why there was a British lady waiting for me in the basement of an abandoned Russian mining facility, but she did bring along a convincing PowerPoint presentation and wasn’t trying to shoot me, so I accepted her mission. After all, the only thing warning me against Mir-12 was hastily scribbled chalk messages on the walls. I think I made a good choice. You’ll also collect notes from the island’s inhabitants, some were so funny that I couldn’t help but collect more — I tip my hat to the writer who came up with these. As far as the rest of the plot, it’s best you discover it on your own.

Political Power Comes From the Barrel of a Gun

As you’d expect in any sci-fi shooter, Singularity has quite an arsenal. The Seeker allows you to control its bullet trajectory, though sadly, it stops upon contact, negating any double or triple kills, though it contacts with glorious slo-mo, limb-exploding gore. The time-toying TMD, also used in puzzle solving sequences, can revert enemies into mutated monsters (though not into easily squish-able infants, sadly) or age them into ash. I was initially afraid its main use would be to revert broken boxes back into box form (which happens), but it lends itself quite handily to combat.

Most of Singularity’s standard weapons (i.e. shotgun, assault rifle, pistol) become fairly useless once you acquire the auto-cannon (mini-gun) and the high-tech weapons. One of Singularity’s biggest shortcomings is that it never provides much incentive for you to use cool and creative ways to dispatch of your enemies; instead, you’ll often go for the simplest and most rote kill methods, since there’s nothing encouraging you to do otherwise. On a related side note, I was never sure how «in the know» the game’s silent protagonist was, but at the point, early on (pre-delving into the time travel aspects of the plot), where he picks up a sniper rifle that slows time, that would have been a good point for him to say «What the ****?”

Your in-game technological advancement doesn’t just come from weaponry. You can upgrade your TMD device to trap enemies in balls of stopped time, push them back with the item’s melee and acquire perks that enhance its capabilities. I’m usually very reserved in upgrading weapons in shooters, saving resources for when they’re needed, but I found it wasn’t necessary in Singularity. You could probably upgrade nothing, save one point when you’re needlessly forced to, and still complete the game on normal with little difficulty. The most shameless annoyance is that restocking ammo in your guns costs resources, even though ammo is plentiful in the world and you probably won’t run out.

After some tense and fascinating hours and one clearly programmed scare that is rather clever (plus another where I’ll admit I screamed), Singularity seems to lose its momentum. Potential is clearly established from the onset and the TMD allows tantalizing glimpses into how weird and twisted Singularity could get with its time travel mechanic. However, it feels underutilized and the game takes a turn for the generic. It never gets downright awful, but it never does anything special, either. With the elements inarguably borrowed from core action and shooter titles like Bioshock, Dead Space, and Half-Life 2, you’d expect the plot to turn into something mind-blowingly fantastic. Instead, you run through buildings and kill things (and if you forget where to go, there’s a Dead Space-ish ability that shows you). The enemies never get too impressive and the end-game, which is the first time choice is introduced to the player, belies what could have been with a bit more time, money or more importantly, creativity, whichever of those crippled the latter part of the game.

I’ve read gaming statistic reports indicating that many times, only 20% of people finish a game and that seems what Singularity is banking on. I actually like the pay-off, but nothing the main character does in the game, even if he’s just a grunt used to further the plotline, actually lends any weight to the final moments. For a game that is so initially engaging, it’s solely due to the world and not the characters. Ultimately, it is the mindless shooter fun (and abbreviated length) of Singularity that encourages replayability and not the alternate endings, which you can experience by loading the last save of the game three times.

Each According to His Abilities

It’s always gratifying to see a shooter take a deviation from the standard auspices of FPS multiplayer, mostly because practiced players only recognize the strongest of contenders. Singularity offers two modes, both class-based: One is straight deathmatch — soldiers vs. creatures — and Extermination is a «capture the points» objective-based mode with the same premise.

Off the bat, there needed to be some tutorial regarding the Creature classes, as you don’t play them in the single-player campaign, but the learning process is quick. It’s rather barebones. There’s no stat-tracking. It’s a lot less like Left 4 Dead and a lot more like The Darkness’ tepid multiplayer mode. As a soldier, you can choose from weapons available in single-player with various mild perks and the creature classes, though far more interesting, are relegated to vomiting, throwing explosive barrels, and functioning as a Headcrab or a Tank. I’m very drawn towards healer classes, which exist on both sides; It ended up being the weakest selection, point-wise, but the most gratifying personally. There is some mindless potential in all of it, but it’ll never take you away from your main multiplayer shooters of choice. Given more time, or just some slight alterations to lobbies, class selection (which trying to change mid-game failed multiple times for me) or an attempt to flesh it out beyond «tacked-on» would have furthered its longevity, but as it stands, Singularity’s single player campaign outstrips its multiplayer.

I’ve Run Out of Short-Winded Quotes About Communism

Singularity takes great cues from popular FPS titles and a significant portion of the experience is tense, intriguing and makes you feel like something spectacular is around the corner. Unfortunately, the opposite happens as you start to hit the finish line. The environments become blander, the gameplay more repetitive and the potential is ultimately squandered. The rifts in time and playful nature of the game makes it seem like Singularity could have taken a far more ambitious path but never does. That also goes for its multiplayer, which doesn’t do much to pull you away from your favorite online shooter. While I personally felt cheated by Singularity’s failure to deliver on its promise, if you’re one of those aforementioned gamers who never play to completion, you might not be disappointed. What Singularity does right, it does very well, but it needed to evolve into something far more unique and interesting than what it ultimately is.

Sports games have become so cyclical these days that roster changes just aren’t doing it. Small updates aren’t doing it either. You have to really put an effort into your game to get it noticed today, which is why I haven’t purchased an NCAA Football game since NCAA Football 07. Remember your dorm room from that game, and the photo of your girlfriend who was prettier depending on how well you played? Classic.

But the reason I didn’t get the subsequent game was because I didn’t feel like the game was that much different from the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Get the picture? I don’t know if I’m suggesting that you build in a four-year gap between the games you pick up (I’m sure Electronic Arts doesn’t want you to do that), but there’s a very noticeable difference between NCAA 07 and NCAA Football 11. In fact, going back to brush up on last year’s game, there’s a good improvement over NCAA 10, too.

Everybody’s Doing A Brand New Dance Now

That dance, in case you weren’t listening to music in 1962, was the Loco-Motion. Locomotion is single-handedly the biggest gameplay change to this year’s installment, and it dramatically changes the running game. While Madden NFL 11 is getting rid of the sprint button this year, NCAA keeps that intact. Combined with the «Truck» move via the right stick, it turns your running game into a formidable weapon.

Neither trucking nor sprinting are anything unseen before, but the locomotion system makes them feel brand-new. Your runners and receivers now turn and dig much more realistically and in a fluid fashion, making it easier to break away from tackles, turn the corner, and push yourself forward for an extra yard or two. You’ll also find your runners stumbling and even crashing to the ground if you truck too much.

The Madden Hand-Me Downs

For several years, it’s felt like Madden has been the proving ground for porting features over to NCAA; it’s as though EA Tiburon was saying «if it works in the big game, let’s put it into junior as well.» The advantage of this is that these features are usually more fine-tuned by the time they make an appearance here. Pro-Tak is the best addition to NCAA from Madden this year, allowing for realistic gang tackles and dogpiles.

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In addition to locomotion, ESPN integration is a huge shot in the arm for NCAA Football 11, and it’s the most noticeable difference in the presentation of the game. It’s all done broadcast style, with swooping graphics and heroic fanfare that announce the start of every game. Kirk Herbstreit and Brad Nessler are back as announcers, as well as Erin Andrews and her sideline reporting (basically talking to you about injuries), and the entire package feels slick. You can fool yourself into thinking you’re watching a Saturday game with amazing insight from Herbstreit like «I feel it’s very crucial that they get the ball in the endzone on this possession.» You mean they need to score? Amazing.

Online Means More Than Multiplayer

It’s a given that a sports game will feature online multiplayer these days, but NCAA 11 incorporates more of your bandwidth this year by offering Online Dynasty, where you can build, recruit, and manage your teams remotely. You can also post stories around your Dynasty or specific games that are complete with text, photos, and videos, and you can reach out and talk smack to other players as well.

Teambuilder makes a return as well, which includes a fairly robust editor for team uniforms and stadiums. Like last year, you can post your teams online to share with the world, so if you’ve been dying to play as the G4 Nerd Army, this is your chance. Don’t expect us to win any BCS games, but feel free to make us your opponent and try to bury us deep in the backfield.

Glitchy, Glitchy, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Glitches have plagued football games since they moved from the realm of a few pixels on a screen to the more realistic gameplay models, and unfortunately, NCAA Football 11 is no different in some spots. During the course of one session where I played about seven different matches, I witnessed more glitches than I’d ever want to see in a retail release. Granted, I’m not sure how many people are going to play seven games in a row, but even so, a glitch is a glitch.

Most common was the «magnet catch,” in which a receiver magically zooms at comic book-like speeds around the defender to meet up with the ball perfectly. It’s fairly comical to watch in slow-motion, but why is it happening in the first place? My favorite glitch (for amusement’s sake) happened as I lined up for a field goal, and when I initiated the play, the camera zoomed back, back, back until I was next to a midfield referee who was standing next to … my mascot dancing up a storm. There was no way to get the camera back, so I missed the uprights and was ready to pummel a cheerleader.

I’m also hoping that one day video games will look upon clipping as something as a relic of game development days past. I don’t mean the penalty in football, I mean one character passing through another, or through part of the environment. Too often in NCAA 11, you’ll see character’s arms and legs passing through each other, or watching them run through ghostly referees. The game is now complex enough that players cast shadows on other players, but devs still can’t clip the clipping?

Artificial Intelligence

Chess masters always thought that a computer would never be built that could beat a human world championship level player, but that happened back in 1997 when Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov. I’d like to posit that no computer A.I. player will ever play as well as a human opponent in football, either college or pro. You probably think I’m crazy, especially because football is much less complex than chess. You don’t have to think 20 moves ahead, and your players aren’t governed by arcane movement rules. Seems easy, right?

Wrong. The A.I. in NCAA 11 definitely feels like an improvement over previous games in the series, but it still makes extremely simple mistakes. Case in point: calling a timeout on second down when there’s still a minute and forty seconds left in a quarter. Or never learning how to run the option properly. Clock management and the option shouldn’t be a stumbling block for your computerized opponent, but they are. You can definitely take advantage of the A.I. when you’re in the final seconds of a close game. In fact, if you’re on offense you can simply take as long as possible to launch a play. They won’t call a timeout on you. The load times are a bit steep as well, based on my play time. You should consider installing it to your hard drive if that’s an option for you.

A Solid Run Into the Inzone

NCAA Football 11 definitely benefits from being the only kid on the block when it comes to college football games, but that doesn’t mean that the game only has a few cosmetic changes so that EA can make a quick buck. The development team obviously has a deep love for college football, which is evident in the new team runouts (Notre Dame taps the sign on the way down the tunnel, etc.) and the accurately modeled stadiums. With the addition of the locomotion system and the ESPN presentation, the game finally feels like it’s settled in on the current generation of consoles, and marks a step up from the prior efforts. We might have to wait years for the processing power to eliminate clipping and give us less creepy looking fans in the stands, but right now this is a top-notch gameplay experience that brings the college football experience into your living room.