Video game crazy

sims two university expansion pack

2005-03-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

There are three things you can count on: death, taxes, and Sims expansion packs. We can do without the first two, but we'll happily take the latter. The original The Sims received a whopping seven expansions, and now The Sims 2 receives its first pack in the form of The Sims 2 University. Cynics might argue that this is all overkill, but when a game is a huge creative and commercial success like The Sims 2, who wouldn't want more? The Sims 2 University sure gives you more. You get a whole new young adult life stage, plus a new influence system, new careers, new interactions, new items and decorating schemes, and, of course, a whole new experience: university life. That new life experience is something of a letdown, but the new items and strategic options more than make up for it.
The worst semester ever: Urele-Oresha-Cham House experiences its first frat fatality.
Many fans were skeptical when the theme of this expansion pack was first announced, but have no fear. Even if the college-lifestyle angle doesn't appeal to you, you'll still get plenty of features that apply to the core game, too. There's a new influence system that lets your sims make other characters do their bidding, from sprucing up the yard to picking a fight with someone to playing with a sibling. Your sims gain influence points by fulfilling "wants," which is akin to how the existing aspiration system works. Now, many familiar goals, like a sim's child making good grades, grant both aspiration and influence points. The maximum number of influence points your sims can store depends on the number of friends they have. In the past, sims who reached the top of their career paths could forget about the hard work of constantly cultivating numerous friendships. But if you want to use the influence system to its fullest, you'll need to keep a bunch of friends throughout the lives of your sims.
The new features in The Sims 2 University aren't just about points and strategies. There's a lot of stuff that's just plain fun. Tired of the same old TV shows and stereo tunes? Well, now there's a new sim sports channel, so your sims can laze away on a Sunday afternoon, munching chips and watching the game. You get two new styles of music for the stereos, too. You get catchy college rock and, for something more sophisticated, straight-ahead acoustic jazz in a number of authentic styles, like soulful '60s hard bop. As with the existing The Sims 2 music, the tunes are well played and filled with great hooks, regardless of the gibberish lyrics. The expansion sports catchy new menu music to boot.
Speaking of music, your sims can now play cool new instruments. You can buy an electric upright bass, a drum kit, and a guitar, replete with effects pedal board, and more. As ever, the animations for the new items are a kick to watch, so you'll see show-off guitarists playing behind their backs and drummers flipping their sticks into the air midsong. Not only can your sims practice to earn creativity points, but also they can perform for tips by playing rock, country, or jazz tunes, though you can't actually load the instruments into a taxi for a gig at a community lot. Oddly and inexplicably, child sims can't use these neat new instruments. (So much for starting your own sims Partridge Family.) For that matter, they can't use some other new items, like the pool table, which serves as a new solo or group activity. At the pool table, sims can not only play, but also perform tricks or hustle for simoleons.
Gig for simoleons with the game's new instruments.
Along with new items, like the pool table, a bonfire, treadmill, cell phone, MP3 player, and arcade games, such as Pimp Viking (quirky Maxis humor at work), The Sims 2 University also boasts new decorating schemes. There's a small collection of medieval-style items, a battered-and-tattered college dorm theme, and a psychedelic '60s theme with colors so garish you'll need sunglasses to look at them. One problem with The Sims 2 is that your interior design options are rather limited, so getting new chairs, wallpaper, and so forth is great...in theory. The new ones just aren't particularly practical, unless you're creating a swinging bachelor pad for an Austin Powers sim.
In addition to the new design elements, you get new gamewide interactions. Now sims can "hang out" (laze about and chat), introduce one sim to another, play a few new games, like pillow fights or "kicky bag" (Hacky Sack), and pull pranks. The pranks were supposed to be a selling point of the expansion, but they're a big bust. Coming from the fertile minds at Maxis, the pranks are surprisingly unimaginative and boring. Water balloons? Joy buzzers? That's just weak. It would have been better if Maxis had spent time fixing problems with existing actions, because it can still take ages to perform simple tasks, like getting kids off the school bus or accepting grocery deliveries.
A kegger with fruit juice? This is strictly a PG version of college.
As for the college portion of The Sims 2 University, it has to be said that it bears only a vague resemblance to the real thing. It's college as a 12-year-old might imagine it. The pressure cooker of rigorous course schedules and intense studying is replaced by fairly easy academic demands, though balancing those with a social life is realistically challenging. The alcohol-fueled adult antics that many students use to unwind are replaced by drinking juice and pulling those lame, PG-rated pranks. This is a bland version of college.
Nevertheless, the college portion of the game has interesting things to offer. The Sims 2 University ships with three ready-made universities, each with its own layout and vibe, though the differences are mainly just cosmetic. You can basically do the same things at any of them, and you can access any of these universities (or ones of your own creation) from your existing sims neighborhoods.
So how do young sims go off to university? There are three methods. You can pick ready-made young adult sims, fashion your own college-age sims using the usual "create a sim" method, or take existing teen sims from your families and send them packing. The option of sending a teen to college creates new strategic concerns. First of all, it's the only way to enter the young adult life stage, which seems unfair and makes little sense. It's also the only way to enter certain new careers, which, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. If you decide you want those benefits, timing becomes an issue. Do you want to keep your teen sim in the house as long as possible to build skills? Or do you pack the kid off to college as soon as he or she becomes a teen to free up space in the house for new sims?
Teens' grades, skill points, and job performances are doubly important now, because they directly affect how much scholarship money sims receive. That money can make the difference between living in crowded dorms or renting nice little two-story homes all for themselves. Early skill-building will need a new focus, too. Ambitious players often start grooming sims for specific careers as soon as the sims become toddlers and are able to boost skills. But now you'll need to consider not only the requirements for an intended career, but also for a degree program.
College grants sims many bonuses, like extra want slots, the ability to switch aspirations, and new job opportunities.
Once at college, sims will find campuses organized by the same principle as sim neighborhoods. Each campus is divided into separate areas, like dorms, libraries, student unions, and gyms, and these can only be visited by calling a taxi. In other words, they're like a collection of isolated community lots. That brings us to one of The Sims 2 University's major flaws. The community-lot implementation in the core game is already a big hassle. To go to a lot, you have to make your sim call a taxi. Then you have to wait for the taxi to arrive. Then the sim has to get in, sit through a loading screen, pick a destination, sit through another loading screen, and then repeat the process in reverse order when returning home. In other words, the core game discourages you from making sims leave their homes, and the expansion discourages you from making them leave their campus lodgings. 7.6/10

death by degrees

2005-03-08T12:01:00.000-08:00

You know, Nina, if you needed the money, you could have just called us. We would have happily lent you some cash if it meant that you wouldn't have to work in shoddy, uninteresting games like Tekken's Nina Williams in: Death by Degrees. But no, the deed is done, and Namco's Tekken offshoot is a reality. Death by Degrees is a half-baked attempt to combine a combo-based fighting system with some light stealth and puzzle-solving. Unfortunately, no one aspect of the game is done especially well, and the end result will be unappealing to all but the most diehard fans of Tekken's blonde bombshell.
Nina starts the game in a bikini, but you'll change outfits from time to time.
Nina's adventure opens on a cruise ship that is run by an underground organization. There's a fighting tournament happening on the ship, and Nina's poised to win it. But she's really there to do some covert work for a joint mission between the CIA and Britain's MI6. Two Brits are infiltrating the ship in an attempt to find...something. The game's never really too clear about what you're doing and why, but all you need to know is that things go wrong for your stealth MI6 associates, and you'll have to blow your cover and beat the heck out of a ton of different guards.
The Tekken series has turned out some of the best 3D fighting games around, so it's no surprise that Namco has attempted to bring over some of that fighting game flair here. But the fighting system is based off of hitting the right analog stick toward your enemy so you can attack in that direction. This system, used before in games like Rise to Honor, is capable of letting you take on multiple enemies at once, but it isn't up to the challenge of precision, fighting-game-like combat. The game gives you a handful of different maneuvers right off the bat (you'll be able to purchase more moves as you carry on), but simply mashing the analog stick in the direction of your nearest foe is really the only combat technique you'll need to know. Nina can equip firearms and melee weapons, but neither set of weapons is more effective than simply kicking bad guys in the face until they're dead.
Nina's other big attack is the critical strike. This special, high-damage attack brings up an X-ray view of the enemy you're attempting to cripple. Exposed soft spots glow red, and you need to move a cursor to the spot and push forward on the right stick. This then brings the game out of X-ray mode, where you'll see Nina do some sort of unimpressive-looking spin kick or other move. Then it goes back into X-ray vision, and you get to see the bones shatter. Some of these, like when you break an arm or a leg, look fine. But when you shatter someone's skull, the game shows a hokey, pulsating brain. Same deal with the ribs, which reveal a thumping heart behind them. What's worse is that after you get through the first few objectives and reach some tougher enemies, these attacks won't kill your enemy. So, instead, you're made to believe that a guy with no skull protecting his brain can still get up, fight well, and even take a shot or two to the head. The game isn't exactly striving for realism, but this still just seems silly.
When you aren't fighting, you'll spend a lot of time looking at your map and trying to figure out where to go next. Your objectives are spelled out pretty plainly, so you'll never question what you need to do next, even if the story doesn't give you an especially compelling reason to complete your task. But the map screen is sort of a mess, so getting from point A to point B isn't always the easiest thing in the world. The game has a Metal Gear-like security system, but instead of using numbered cards, you'll collect fingerprints with a print scanner, and each print has a security level associated with it. You'll then be able to use those scanned prints to unlock doors. The process of unlocking a door with the print scanner is as simple as hitting the X button, but you'll still have to watch Nina put the scanner up to the door, hit a button when a text message appears to let you know that the door is unlocked, and then watch her walk through. Little things like this add up over time and give the game a sluggish, stunted pace that sucks all the tension and suspense right out of it.
Death by Degrees seems like it's constantly pausing for a second to load something up. Every single thing you want to see on the menu has a brief, but noticeable load time associated with it. Load times for changing areas are also a lot longer than you'd expect from a PlayStation 2 game in this day and age.
Nina's game doesn't look bad, but it does have a slightly dated appearance. The humanoid models look decent, but don't move all that well, and much of the game's texture work is subpar. If you had to find a game to compare it to, visually, it sort of looks like Sammy's Spy Fiction, but with an overt breast-jiggle animation for Nina when she moves. The game's cutscenes are alright, but nowhere near the quality of the intro and endings commonly associated with the Tekken series. The game does have one clever visual trick, though, and that is when Nina gets into a big boss fight, she'll emerge from it with her clothes ripped and she'll be lightly scarred. This helps give the impression that the boss fights are tough, even though they're mostly pretty easy. Along the way, Nina will change into a few different outfits.
Critical strikes let you bust up a bad guy's insides.
Bad voice acting and horrendously repetitive music are the stand-out segments of Death by Degrees' sound. The voice actors put on a weak show here, compounding the dry dialogue with lifeless, deadpan deliveries. The game attempts to use its music in a cinematic fashion by having it swell up when combat starts and fade back to a more subtle level when things are calm. But you'll hear much of the same music again and again, and even worse, the track restarts when you exit one room and enter another. So you'll hear the first 45 seconds of a music track again and again. The menu track's weak, palm-muted guitar line tries to scream "intrigue!"; but it fails miserably. Sound effects like gunshots and the cracking of bones are passable, but there's nothing notable about any of the effects.
Death by Degrees tries to be a lot of different things, and it fails at all of them. The adventure is reasonably lengthy, and you'll even unlock a few additional minigame modes, but the game simply isn't worth completing, even if you're the sort of Tekken aficionado that wants to see some character development in Nina. The best thing that can be said about Death by Degrees is that it comes with a playable demo of Tekken 5, though the demo is limited to one player and two characters, making it too short and shallow to make up for Nina's failure. 5.6/10

Brother in arms hill to road 30

2005-03-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

We'll admit it. When we first heard about Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, a small voice inside our heads said cynically, "Just what the world needs...another World War II-based first-person shooter." Sure, it has some squad command mechanics, but it wasn't lost on us that those design aspects were rather similar to another military game, Full Spectrum Warrior. The big difference with Brothers in Arms is that it puts a gun in your hands and actually allows you to pull the trigger. And, oh, what a difference it makes! Brothers in Arms is paced more deliberately than other popular WWII shooters, such as Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. But the game more than makes up for any apparent absence of run-and-gun action with the raw intensity and realism of its battles combined with the added tactical considerations required in the challenging campaign. The online aspect is equally compelling, making for a complete and thoroughly impressive game experience.
Brothers in Arms offers a satisfying mix of tactical strategy and action thrills.
Brothers in Arms puts you in the role of Sgt. Matt Baker, a real-life member of the 101st Airborne Division. The game's 17-chapter campaign stretches over a week's time. You'll start out the night before D-Day, when you and the rest of the division parachute behind enemy lines into France, fighting your way into and capturing the town of Carentan. Each chapter and all the settings are based closely on actual missions carried out by Baker's platoon. As you beat each mission, you'll unlock extras, such as photographs and reconnaissance photos, which show you how closely the game's levels match what Baker's platoon fought through in the critical first days of the invasion.
The game's presentation is extremely cinematic, borrowing cues from popular World War II fare such as Band of Brothers. Every chapter begins with a simple screen and title in stark black letters, narrated somberly by Baker's character. You'll also watch some in-engine cutscenes before and after missions that not only summarize the previous mission in the context of the war, but also get you personally acquainted with the rest of your squadmates. These presentational aspects set the mood of the game well, but unfortunately can't be skipped. There is one thing that breaks the mood of the game, and that's when squadmates who die in the course of your gameplay all of a sudden appear fully healthy in the next mission. This is a minor gripe, though, and the game would be unduly difficult if you weren't allowed to lose any squadmates over the course of a mission.
The quiet, introspective thoughts that Baker and his squadmates share between missions is a stark contrast to the intense, chaotic battles you'll fight. The game's campaign offers an interesting mix of mission types. Some will have you assaulting small towns crawling with German infantry, machine gun nests, and snipers. You'll also explore hedgerows filled with hidden mortar teams and German 88mm guns, which are a menace to your tanks. Another chapter has you clearing obstacles off of heavily defended farms in order to make a path for gliders to land. You'll need to deal with enemy tanks on a couple of missions, and while you will often have access to a bazooka or your own armor under your command in these cases, it's much more thrilling and satisfying to sneak up behind the enemy tank, climb onto it, and drop a grenade into the hatch to take it out. You'll also be treated to shooting gallery-style missions later on, where you're defending a position while armed with a sniper rifle. The campaign should last most players about 10 to 12 hours on their first play-through. There's plenty of incentive to play on the higher difficulty settings, though, as this forces you to perform in a more disciplined fashion with sharper command decisions.
Depending on the mission, you'll command either one or two squad elements, each of which can consist of a few infantrymen or a tank. Infantry are either designated as an assault team or a fireteam. The former is usually armed with submachine guns and is better at charging and eliminating enemies, while the latter carry rifles and are better at establishing a base of fire on an enemy position for suppression. Like in Full Spectrum Warrior, you'll see icons over enemy positions to signify their condition. Fully suppressed enemies will not move or fire much, and when they do shoot, their accuracy is poor. Unsuppressed enemies are much more accurate with their shots and may actually move, either to get a better attack position, or to find more useful cover.
Tanks play a large role in the game, both as your allies and your enemies.
This design conceit gives you incentive to actually use established army doctrine to find, fix, flank, and finish the enemy. One or two of your elements hold an enemy down with a base of fire, while you can move yourself or use another element to flank around the side to take that enemy out. Players who are more hands-on will obviously want to take the finishing aspect into their own hands, while more strategic-minded players still have the option of sending in a squad element to do the dirty work. Either way is satisfying, and throughout the course of the campaign you'll find cause to use both methods. It's also worth noting that, unlike in Full Spectrum Warrior, enemies behind cover are not invincible to direct fire. If you're a good shot with a rifle, you can still pick off an enemy who pokes his head a little too far out from behind cover. That said, the game still offers you a big advantage to try to find an unobstructed line of fire.
To help you with the job of maneuvering, Brothers in Arms includes a mode called "situational awareness." It's basically a pause state that zooms out and gives you an overhead view of the map with limited rotation and zoom ability. From here you can examine your own position and the position of your squad elements relative to that of known enemy positions. This mode is extremely helpful, as it allows you to make more intelligent decisions about maneuvering and positioning. You can only see enemy contacts that you've already made, so you can't cheat to see what else might be lying in wait up ahead. However, it's still possible to use the situational awareness mode to confirm the number of enemies behind cover, so there is some advantage to always peeking at this screen every time you find a new contact 9.2/10

splinter cell chaos theory preview

2005-03-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that the original Splinter Cell hit the Xbox just over two years ago, especially since we're now facing the imminent release of Chaos Theory, the third and potentially best entry yet in the vaunted stealth action series. We've been spending some time plowing through the single-player story campaign, as well as testing out the new cooperative two-player mode, and we can say with confidence that Splinter Cell fans are going to be very pleased with Chaos Theory's gameplay additions and graphical upgrades. Some of the stuff we've seen is cool enough that it might just draw in some new fans, too.
At first glance, you might think that little has changed between Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory. On a fundamental level, you'd be right. In terms of basic controls and interactions with enemies and the environment, Sam Fisher's third outing plays quite similarly to his past ones. But Ubi Montreal has gone well beyond the call of duty in fleshing out your stock of available maneuvers and gadgets. In fact, before we'd even finished the first mission, we'd gotten the impression that while the basic similarities are there, the action and visuals are so much improved that this feels like a whole new Splinter Cell.
Somehow, Fisher's missions always seem to start small. It's 2007, and you're sent to Peru to rescue a computer expert who's been kidnapped by revolutionary forces. This particular expert just happens to hold incredibly sensitive information on specific algorithms that can be used to wreak a whole lot of havoc in the global economic and political spheres. Wouldn't you know it, the expert turns up tortured to death, leading Fisher and his superiors to believe that information has fallen into the wrong hands. And so the venerable secret agent must set out to track down the bad guys to whom those hands belong. While all this is going on, Chinese and North Korean naval forces have begun to threaten the coast of Japan, prompting the US secretary of defense to send in the USS Clarence E. Walsh, an ultramodern battleship equipped with weapons of both physical and electronic warfare. As the game progresses, the multiple plot threads will converge to create a serious threat to global stability. What a drag.
The best addition to Fisher's arsenal in Chaos Theory is also the least sophisticated. Somebody finally decided to give ol' Sam a knife, and he puts it to visceral good use in his latest mission. Stealth action games usually force you to dispatch enemies quietly with your bare hands, but Fisher isn't afraid to just creep right up and slit a guard's throat. Trying to grab a guard from behind when he turns around and gets ready to shoot you? No problem. Hit that attack button fast, and stick him right in the gut. On a basic level, it's empowering to have a lethal fast-action move that you can use to neutralize enemies like this, but the knife also comes in handy in less obvious situations. For instance, in one segment of the first mission, a guard you need to interrogate is hanging out inside a well-lit tent. How do you reach him stealthily? The solution: Use that trusty blade to slit the back side of the tent open, and then creep on in. We're not sure what took Fisher so long to realize how useful it is to have a knife along for the ride, but it's making the game a lot more exciting.
In the immortal words of Dr. Hibbert: 'Don't thank me. Thank the knife.'
This time out, Fisher also has a microwave emitter that's mounted on his silenced pistol, which lets him take aim at electrical systems and even light bulbs for the purpose of neutralizing them. Shooting out a light is a great way to attract the attention of the guards, but if you merely interrupt it, you can darken an area without raising suspicions, and then you can move through the area quickly...and before the lights come back on. You've only got a few seconds to get the job done, but at least the light will flicker a few times to warn you that it's about to come back on, giving you a chance to get back to the shadows before you're caught with your pants down (figuratively).
In Chaos Theory, Fisher's gotten more malicious about dispatching enemies once he's grabbed them from behind and extracted whatever information he can from them. You can now break an enemy's back if you want to make sure he's not going to get back up, which is pretty satisfying. But our favorite moves so far have all taken place at great heights. During one mission that takes place aboard a cargo ship, we grabbed a guard, escorted him in a rough manner over to the side railing, and pitched him right into the drink. A similar situation arose inside the ship, when we tossed a guard over a catwalk railing and watched him land on his back on a lower railing. This particular instance showed off the game's rag-doll physics nicely, since the enemy's back must have snapped, given the way his torso and legs were lolling over the sides of the rail. The hand-to-hand action in Chaos Theory has been good, grisly fun so far

god of war preview

2005-03-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

Currently scheduled for release next month, God of War is a PlayStation 2-exclusive action adventure set in fictional ancient Greece. We recently received a near-final build of the game from SCEA, and we have played through the first couple of hours in order to bring you some updated impressions. Assuming the role of a former Spartan warrior who has received training from various gods, your eventual goal in the game will be to slay Ares, the god of war. You'll be spilling plenty of blood before you even encounter him, though, and we've been pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of ways in which you'll do it. God of War might look like a mindless hack-and-slash affair at a glance, but it's really anything but.
You'll start the game with a number of relatively basic combat abilities at your disposal, including light and heavy attacks, a very effective block, and a grab. These moves can all be combined to perform some truly spectacular and devastating combos, and as you progress and learn new abilities you'll realize that they're only the tip of the iceberg. One of our favorite techniques through the early stages of the game was to hold down the heavy attack button, which, after striking an enemy a couple of times, throws him up into the air so that you can either jump up and hit him a few more times or stick him with your dual weapons (fat, deadly looking blades on the ends of lengthy chains), and then him them around at great speed--often hitting any nearby enemies in the process.
As we progressed through the early stages of God of War we encountered a number of different enemy types (minotaurs and gorgons, for example), and although all of them could be beaten with repeated hacking and or slashing if we hammered the buttons for long enough, they were each vulnerable (and immune) to certain attack types. Many of the enemies that we encountered, for example, couldn't be grabbed until they'd taken a certain amount of damage, and the snakelike gorgons were immune to the "Medusa's Eye" special attack that we earned for defeating Medusa and with which we were temporarily able to turn other enemies into stone.
Like many of the other enemies in God of War, gorgons can be killed using a special combo minigame attack (performed by pressing a random sequence of buttons and analog stick rotations as the relevant symbols appear on the screen) that not only looks great (the gorgon-specific combo finishes with you beheading your enemy), but also guarantees that you'll receive "orbs" at the end of the fight. The orbs in God of War come in three tasty flavors: green orbs replenish your life meter, blue orbs restore your magic energy, and red orbs can be spent on upgrading your abilities and learning new ones when you collect them in large enough numbers. We've generally found that we have more than enough magic energy at our disposal, but the orbs certainly aren't plentiful enough that you'll want to waste your magic on enemies that can easily be dispatched using just your blades.
As you might have guessed, the majority of our time with God of War thus far has been spent in combat, but we've also encountered some platforming action as well as some exploration-based puzzles, which haven't been terribly challenging but have done a great job of breaking up the various combat areas. All of the levels that we've played through have been quite linear, incidentally, but we've always been rewarded for exploring as much as the level designs permit us to. These rewards are usually in the form of chests containing one of the aforementioned orb types.
These orbs come in three distinct flavors, all of them equally delicious.
God of War boasts a very solid-looking visual style that hasn't failed to impress at any point, although there have been one or two occasions when we've wished that we could control the camera manually or at least reposition it directly behind us. We certainly wouldn't describe the camera as problematic, though, and the rare occasions that we've wished we could move it have often been the result of us unnecessarily backtracking through certain areas.
Basically then, God of War is shaping up to be something very special indeed. The combat is satisfying and varied, the puzzles and platforming sections aren't overly lengthy or taxing, and the presentation is of a consistently high quality. We look forward to bringing you a full review of God of War just as soon as we get our hands on a finished copy.

devil may cry three

2005-03-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

Get ready for some action that's so good it's liable to make you gnash your teeth and possibly smash your controller. Devil May Cry 3 is an appropriate about-face for the most memorable of Capcom's more recent franchises, one that started with a bang back in 2001 but flubbed its second outing two years ago. Now Devil May Cry is back, once again featuring the irreverent, inhumanly strong half-demon Dante in the starring role, and it easily presents the series' most challenging adventure yet. Devil May Cry 3 packs in a deep, outstanding combat system, plenty of spectacular story sequences, and lots of flair. Unfortunately, it's unbelievably, unreasonably difficult at first. Think of the most punishing game you played in the last several years. Now, imagine the second or third level of this game being even harder than that. Overcoming Devil May Cry 3's near-vertical learning curve could prove extremely frustrating, to the point where some players will justifiably give up after repeatedly failing the first few missions. That's really too bad, because anyone who perseveres long enough to learn the ropes will probably agree that Devil May Cry 3 is one of the best PlayStation 2 action adventure games since the original.
Fighting the forces of hell ought to be hard. But this is crazy.
The game's difficulty comes from a variety of factors, one of which is a fundamental disconnect between how Dante is as a character and how you actually need to control him while playing. In story sequences, Dante comes across as a reckless show-off who's practically immortal. In an early cutscene, he willingly lets a group of demonic enemies run him through with their blades, just to spite them. Unfortunately for you, such tactics don't actually work during gameplay, where you'll quickly discover that Dante is actually very easily killed. Another more important lesson takes longer to sink in: Throwing yourself at danger is going to get you killed 100 percent of the time. Again, this is especially true when first starting out, since besides not really knowing how to play the game, you'll start out with a short life meter (a few quick hits will kill you), none of the powerful weapons and abilities you'll acquire later on, and no continues. Devil May Cry 3, which bills itself as a "stylish crazy action" game, projects Dante's own carefree, incorrigible personality, suggesting a level of pick-up-and-play appeal that's actually nonexistent. It's debatable whether or not this is an inherent design flaw, but there's no denying the game drops you off in the deep end right from the start.
Other much more concrete aspects of gameplay also make the early going as tough as it is. For example, there aren't any difficulty settings to choose from at first, and, as a matter of fact, the default difficulty mode here is actually the Japanese version's "hard" mode, which could only be accessed after finishing that version of the game. Whoever at Capcom second-guessed the recently released Japanese game's design and made it even more punishing made a terrible choice that nearly ruins this version. Thankfully, after Dante gets killed a few times, the euphemistically named "easy" difficulty setting is unlocked. Do yourself a favor: Swallow your pride, and start over in easy mode, which you'll find really isn't that much easier but should be surmountable if you've finished other action games that are generally considered to be hard.
It'll initially seem very difficult to avoid getting hit in Devil May Cry 3. You can't withstand many hits, and unlike in similar games, you don't get some sort of invulnerability grace period after you've taken damage. So if five enemies attack you at once, you'll take all five of those hits and will probably die. You're going to die often, whether you like it or not, and at first, you might be inclined to blame this on the third-person perspective and the controls, both of which cease being issues eventually but are likely to give you some serious headaches in the first few hours. You can make Dante automatically attack nearby foes using his guns or his sword, or you can hold down R1 to lock onto a specific enemy. When you're locked onto and facing a foe, you can execute lateral rolls to get out of harm's way...but you must do so by pressing to Dante's left or right on the analog stick rather than to yours, which takes a while to get used to in the context of this game's hectic battles. If you don't perform the move correctly, you'll make Dante jump up instead of roll to the side, and you'll probably get hit. By default, Dante has no other defensive maneuvers to speak of, so any natural inclinations you might have either to retreat from attacks or try to guard against them will be brutally rebuffed.
Dante's different fighting styles lend more depth to the game. But do the right thing, and stick with the trickster style at first.
One of Devil May Cry 3's interesting features is that it initially lets you choose from one of four different fighting styles for Dante. These don't completely change the gameplay or anything, but they do encourage a different approach depending on which style you choose. It's possible to switch styles between missions and at certain points during missions, but since you gain experience and eventually new abilities as you keep using a single style, it pays to focus on one at a time. Specifically, it pays to stick with the default "trickster" style on your first play-through, even though it doesn't seem nearly as appealing as the tougher-sounding "swordmaster" and "gunslinger" styles ("royal guard," a defensive style, isn't a good starting choice either).
Again, the difficulty partly comes from simply not understanding the crucial nuances of the gameplay at first, which is something the game's optional tutorial screens do very little to address. You'll be inclined to either charge your enemies using the flashy slashes afforded by the swordmaster style or blast away at them using the gunslinger's fancy shooting. And in either case, you'll get murdered repeatedly. Instead, you should be fighting with utmost caution, keeping your foes at bay, carefully observing their patterns, and avoiding attacks by using the trickster style's incredibly useful starting ability to execute an invincible dash in any direction. Nothing says "trickster" like dodging a giant scythe
So, the question is, why bother with all this? If Devil May Cry 3 is such a chore to learn, then it had better make the effort worthwhile. The good news is, it does. Eventually, there comes a time when everything just clicks. Suddenly, you get it. You go back and retry those first few levels, even at higher difficulty modes, and you wonder how they ever gave you so much trouble. After all, by then you'll have noticed that all your foes, no matter how big or how powerful, never attack entirely without warning, giving you the split second you need to get out of the way...or strike first. You'll also understand Dante's tremendous potential for causing mass destruction using his ranged and melee weapons in combination. Using his fast, deadly slashes and his unlimited ammo, Dante can make fast work out of throngs of foes, who'll often keep spawning in to attack him from thin air.
Dante's signature handguns and sword are just the tip of the iceberg. Many powerful weapons await.
One of the game's excellent touches is that Dante can instantly switch between two different ranged weapons and two different melee weapons at the touch of a button (respectively, L2 and R2). This doesn't seem like such a big deal right off the bat, but you'll soon learn to constantly switch up weapons as you fight, facilitating completely off-the-wall combos that are limited mostly just by your imagination. There aren't a huge number of moves or weapons to choose from in the game, but most of them are useful and interesting, and the variety is very satisfying overall, especially since most of the weapons are uniquely effective both on their own and in combination with any of the others.
Ultimately, what's so great about the combat system is that it's all extremely fluid, responsive, and precise. For example, your initial tendency to hammer on the attack buttons will eventually give way to much more-deliberate actions as you figure out that the game gives you different combo options if you slightly mix up the timing of your button presses. Also, much like you're pretty much always vulnerable to getting mobbed by your enemies, so too are you able to fight dirty. A hard slash (or, say, a shotgun blast) can send a foe sprawling to the turf. Why wait for it to clamber back to its feet when you can just keep whaling away while it's lying there? Or, better yet, why not jump on its back and ride it like a skateboard, spraying bullets every which way before smashing your new ride into that wall over there? And, of course, you've got air-to-air, air-to-ground, and ground-to-air combat to think about. Smash an enemy up in to the sky, and pin it to the ceiling with a hail of gunfire, or jump up after it to continue your assault, and then spray bullets downward to slow your descent.
The game keeps track of just how well you're beating the hell out of hell's forces by means of a combo meter that keeps ratcheting up as long as you keep mixing up your moves and don't get hit. It serves as a helpful reminder that you really ought to experiment rather than keep using the same few slashes over and over. Best of all, though, the variety isn't there just for variety's sake. Many such games let you use an assortment of different moves and combos, but you end up relying on just a fraction of them, simply because they're more effective, and because there's no reason not to keep using them. In Devil May Cry 3, many different moves and tactics are viable against different foes and in different situations, and most of the weapons have different tactical benefits. So in practice, as repetitive as the action may seem, it doesn't get boring. Certainly not on your first time through the game, and after that point, you can go back in to earlier missions with all your new moves and abilities, or you can brave one of the higher difficulty settings. Some unlockable outfits and a few other extras are available, but Devil May Cry 3's real replay value comes from the quality of its fighting system.
Because hell has a sense of humor, Devil May Cry 3 occasionally throws a simple puzzle your way.
Of course, the game isn't just one nonstop battle after another, though that's kind of what it feels like. It's broken up into a good-sized number of fairly small individual missions, through which Devil May Cry 3 presents a cohesive narrative that pits Dante against his coldhearted twin brother, in addition to legions of infernal cohorts threatening the human world. Most of the game takes place in and around an evil tower that springs up practically in Dante's backyard, so he'll be traveling up and down the thing, chasing down his brother Vergil and Vergil's disturbing friend while occasionally running into a pretty demon hunter who has her own mysterious agenda. The level designs are pretty simple, and even though you don't cover much ground in the game, it still requires you to do a fair bit of backtracking. Some light, almost throwaway puzzle elements occasionally break up the action, and you'll feel encouraged to explore the nooks and crannies of the levels where helpful items are sometimes tucked away. However, you'll spend much more time battling foes than figuring out where to go next.
In turn, you'll spend a chunk of that time squaring off against Devil May Cry 3's numerous powerful boss opponents. These represent some of the toughest, most intense parts of the game, and long after most of the game's regular foes cease seeming to be that great of a threat, you'll still find yourself sweating bullets during these showdowns. For the most part, the boss fights are interesting and very challenging. The opponents themselves aren't always large in stature, but they're almost always fearsome and intimidating in their own rights. You'll have to exploit their few weaknesses while desperately trying to avoid their numerous ferocious, incredibly damaging attacks 8.5/10

more free games

2005-03-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

Java Games

Andrews Asteroids Asteroids Baseball Basketball Bee Mania BookwormFree Online Games Fill It Bounce Bugbuster Candy Train Crosswise (mp) Cubis Fill It Galaga Goggle Hoppit Insaniquarium Javanoid Luna Lander Mastermind Melt Down Multris 2 (mp) Pacman 3dFree Online Games Slime Volleyball Pass The Pigs Race 3d Radical Aces Reflex 2 Reflex 3 Rollercoaster SF Cave Sliding Puzzle Slime Volleyball Snake Jump Spogglitaire (mp) Tail Gunner Traffic Jammer Tick Tack 3D TrialsFree Online Games Turbo Tanks Turbo Tanks Warp Wire Hang Word Mojo Zombies
Java Fun

Celebrations Interface Merry Xmas (fast Comp) Sticky Baby
Flash Games

2D Paintball 233kb 2D Shoot Out 258kb 3d Netblazer 281kb 3d Shooter 52kb 8 Queens 91kb 6ixel 124kb Ant City 395kb Airballs 57kb Air Hockey 128kb A'Hockey Xtreme 287kb Alien Attack 425kb Alien Clones 293kb Alien Terminator 328kb Air Shot 25kb All Out 184kb Alpha Force 775kb Animal 100kb Aqua Energizer 474kb Archery 90kb Armchair Games ??kb Asteroid Lander 268kb Balloon Hunter 132kb Balls'N'Walls 112kb Barrow Ballance 47kb Balloon Landing 131kb Baseball 41kb Battle Pong 133kb Battleships 369kb Beach Tennis 514kb Beat Beckham 408kb Belter 529kb BIlliards Frenzy 40kb Billy Hatcher ??kb Bird Flight 411kb Black Jack 104kb Blasteroids 887kb Blobs 1 149kb Blobs 2 184kbFree Online GamesBlob Wars Blob Wars 139kb Blox 2 783kb Bomb Bandits 212kb Bomberman 197kb Bomb Squad 197kb Bongo Park 144kb Boom Volleyball 376kb Bow Hunter 365kb Bowling 457kb Bowman 34kb Boxteroid 80kb Breakout 34kb Breakout 360 249kb Bubbles 219kb Bubble Trouble 624kb Bug Buster 206kb Bug On A Wire 344kb Bungee Ball 116kb Buzzer 48kb Cable Capers 261kb Cannon Blast 281kb Canyon Glider 265kb Catch 33 39kb Cave Racer 89kb Chain Reaction 19kb Charlies C'breaker 620kb Chess 100kb Chinese Checkers 229kb City Jumper 173kb Clay Kitten 287kb Click'n'slide 267kb Clinic 1.17mb Connect 4 101kb Contact Curling 216kb Copter 44kb Cowboys & Engines ??kb Cow Running 307kb Crash Classic 174kb Crashdown 245kb Crazy Shooter 318kb Create A Ride 626kb Cricket Challenge 355kb Cubox 185kb Curling 202kb Cutie Quake 195kb Curve Ball 58kb Cybermice Party 363kb Daffy Jumper 106kb Free Online Games Darts Darts 48kb Detonator 172kb Disc Golf 193kb Disc Golf 706kb Donkey Kong 164kb Doomed 483kb Driving Mad 253kb Dr Stangeblix 106kb Eierwuppen 598kb Electro Hockey 111kb El Emigrante 115kb Emu Lander 237kb Eskiv 7kb Eskiv 2 8kb Escape 83kb Euro Headers 495kb Evil Cube 1.48mb Exit 113kb Exit 2 319kb Exit Dance 312kb Find Diff' Point 330kb Fire 76kb Flash Tiles 63kb Flickball 1.79mb Fly Guy 581kb Free Online Games Frogger Frogger 124kb Galactic Tennis 170kb Galaxians 95kb Game House Games Garage Door Tennis ??kb Gem Mania 466kb Go Marching 74kb Golden Arrow 467kb Golden Arrow 2 385kb Golden Gate Drop 868kb Gold Yard 420kb Golf 335kb Grain Strain 127kb Grand Prix2 192kb Gravity Ball 2 612kb Gravity Launch 91kb Gyro Ball 97kb Gyro World 485kb Hack Attack 377kb Hangeroo 619kb Hangman 210kb Heli Attack 487kb Heli Rescue 280kb Heptathlon ??kb Hexxagon 47kb Hishi 38kb Home Run 259kb Hostile Skies 409kb Hot Rocks 298kb Hypraspeed ??kb Inkanoid 202kb Invaders 106kb Invaders 2002 685kb Jet Pac Stan 195kb Jumpin Joe 134kb Kaboom 73kb Keep Ups 15kb Kendo 32kb King Ping Pong 34kb Kicking King ??kb Knockers 81kb Kore Karts 576kb Krassair 126kb Krazy Golf 625kb Kwikshot 147kb
Flash Games(Continued)

Flash Games(Continued)

Lander X 485kb Leaf Bouncer 121kb League Bowling 613kb Lemmings 5kb Lightning Break 347kb Lost Marbles 345kb Ludo 1.29mb Lunar Command 146kb Majong 137kb Mancala Snails 188kb Marble Mayhem 66kb Mars Mission 220kb Mastermind 3 88kb Max Dax 198kb Maze 116kbFree Online Games Mini Putt 3 Metaploy 147kb Midget Tossing 239kb Mile High Club 359kb Millionaire ??kb Mind Reader 186kb Mine Sweeper 29kb Mini Golf 343kb Mini Pool 230kb Mini Pool 2 109kb Mini Putt 844kb Mini Putt 3 77kb Mini Racing 243kb Missile Strike 290kb MJ12 222kb Monkeyball 420kb Monkeyball Games ?kb Monkey Curling 278kb Mouse Speed 50kb Mumu 12kb Nanaca Crash 1.4mb Neave Asteroids 19kb OAP Bowling 320kb Octopoids 66kb Paci 79kb Pacman 61kbFree Online Games Mini Pool 2 Pacman Advanced 37kb Pacman Killer 466kb Paintball Office 207kb Pandaf Golf 125kb Parking Master 49kb Pasteroids II 155kb Pearls 260kb Peanut 210kb Pedestrian Killer 256kb Penguin Push 171kb Penguin Smack 307kb Pepsi Pinball 618kb Pocket Soccer 143kb Poker 106kb Pool Jam 150kb Proximity 124kb Q-Beart 296kb Rabbit Killer ??kb Railroad Tycoon 3 257kb Rainman 76kb Rapid Motion 282kbFree Online Games Squares 2 Red Beard 210kb Reversi 96kb Rings 116kb Road Blocks 85kb Roadies 180kb Robotik 62kb Rocketman 377kb Rockface Rescue 122kb Rotation 116kb R-Shot 236kb Rubik Cube 60kb Rural Racer 416kb Santa's Ski Jump 212kb Santa's Snowballs 54k Saltacol 443kb Samorost ??kb Saucer Shoot 27kb Scissors Paper 96kb Secs of Madness 256kb Sheepteroids 156kb Shuffle Penguin 46kb Shove It 254kb Simon 21kb Simpsons Million' 101kb Simsi 104kb Ski Text 4kb Sky Attack 333kb Slaps 994kbFree Online Games Slingshot Santa Slingshot Santa 206kb Smashback 59kb Snake 374kb Snake 3D 10kb Snow Blaster 42kb Snow Globe 276kb Soakamon 1.35mb Soap Bubble 372kb Solitaire 157kb Sonar Challenge 239kb Space Explorer 340kb Space Invaders 111kb Space Invaders 2 160kb Space Maze 210kb Space Runner 147kb Splat Man 231kb Spear Toss 205kb Speedy Blocks 129kb Speedy Bubbles 165kb Squares 2 452kb Stan Skates 241kb Stan Ski Jump 181kb Stoke Park Golf 533kb Steak Grab ??kb Streak-O-Matic 498kb Super Fishing 131kb Table Hockey 137kb Tactics Core 2.87mb Tangram 81kbFree Online Games Tanks Tanks 416kb Tank Wars 56kb Tetris 485kb Tennis Ace 246kb TGFG Race 282kb Tic Tac Toe 8kb Tin Toss 222kb The Past 157kb Toboggan Jump 2.02mb Tobby 152kb Toon Marooned 292kb Traffic Jam 177kb Trail Blazer 537kb Trapped 221kb Trapshoot 436kb Tunnel Puzzle 26kb Turkey Shooter 69kb Twiddlestix 658kb Van TT 345kb Vegra Golf 104kb Vertigo 100kb'ish Wake Boarding 800kb Warthog Launch 293kb White Van Man 302kb Word Lab 272kb Workplace 259kb X 255kb X-Bound 237kb X-Slide 396kb Yahtzee 35kb Ylympics ??kb Wild West 484kb Zed 357kb Zoo Keeper 215kb
Shockwave Games

3D Air Hockey 146kb 3D Pong 32kb Air Attack 257kb Ant Run 111kb Arithmetiles 1.86mb Badaboom 1.98mb Baja 368kb Battleships 610kb Bomb Golf 371kb Catapult 454kb Cell Blast 223kb Cell Blast 2 185kb Checkers 166kb Couronne Training 276kb Crash Mini Golf ??kb Cube Buster 311kb Cyboard 339kb Da Number 1.04mb Downfield Strike 458kb Diego Smart 827kbFree Online Games Dukz Dukz 244kb Elvira 784kb Fan & Ball 74kb FireFly 328kb Final Drive 1.4mb Find The Worm 723kb Fowl Words 1.11mb Fowl Word 2 1.97mb Friendz 686kb Op Flashpoint 175kb Frenziriynth 161kb Gutter Bowl 1.11mb Gutterball 3D 1.3mb Harvey Wallbanger 1.7mb Havok Car 600kb Hectic 687kb Hummer Squad 363kb Hyperjet Racing 504kb IGPX ??mb King Putt 549kb Laffy Taffy Puzzle 384kb Lego Soccer 254kb Letter Rip 1.31mb

Shockwave Games (Conti
Lingo 149kb Milk Run ??kb Mini Hockey 484kb Mini Roundabout 1.12mb Njam 308kb Offender 802kb Pacman 3D 139kb Panda Ball 366kb Panda Buster 2 387kb Panda Hammer 429kb Free Online Games Pacman 3D Paintball 295kb Pipe Down 500kb Pipe Panic 166kb Pongling 147kb Paper Plane 39kb Pass or Perish 556kb Rally Trophy 353kb RC Racing 1.19mb Redline Rumble 839kb River Rapids 1.71kb Roll On 1.61mb Santa Balls2 1mb Save The Sheriff 206kb Shapion 211kb Ship Lander 357kb Shrunken Heads 3.44mb Simwork 750kb Sketchy 860kb Skybolter 500kb+ Sling Shot 620kb Snake 3D 69kb Snoopy Baseball 49kbFree Online Games Snowcraft Snowcraft 230kb Snowboarder XS 761kb Snow Trax 1.35mb Spank the Frank 984kb Swron 148kb Table Tennis 56kb Teed Off 545kb TI Collide 2.53mb Topsy Turvy 507kb UFO Pool Party 1.12mb Wipeout 257kb Wonka Block Party 619kb Wonka SweeTarts 1.68mb Wordo 2.04mb Word Up 969kb Zip Zaps 638kb
Shockwave Fun

Carrara 282kb Fly 10kb Free Man 131kb IQ Test 25kb Kaleido 17kb Legato 222kb Noctiluca 481kb Poke The Bunny 57kb
Flash Fun

ABC Song57kb Air Combat 119kb Arms 5kb Ask Joe 99kb Badger Song 434kb Box 87kb Bubble Wrap 160kb Card Pyramid 19kb Cat and Mouse 406kb Chocs 194kb Clocks Crazy Horses 143kb Cursor Snatcher 6kb Cute Bear 175kb Dead or Alive ??kb Dirty Baby 372kbFree Online Games

free games

2005-03-05T19:11:00.000-08:00

Paintball Proximity Curveball Squares 2 Pacman 3D Mini Pool 2 Turbo Tanks Slime Volleyball Sling Shot Santa

playstation portable

2005-03-05T18:08:00.000-08:00

The PlayStation Portable is Sony's first major push into the handheld gaming market which was previously dominated by the Nintendo Game Boy franchise. The Sony PSP is a complete handheld entertainment system that can play games, music, and movies. The PSP features built-in stereo speakers, a high-resolution, 4.3-inch TFT display, and can produce close to PlayStation 2-level graphics. The unit also has built-in Wi-Fi networking capability, and it supports the Sony Memory Stick Duo as well as a new Universal Media Disc (UMD) media format.
The Sony PlayStation Portable will hit store shelves in March 2005.
Sony released the PSP in Japan in December of 2004, and immediately sold 200,000 units on the first day of release. The PSP is set to hit North America on March 24, 2005. The PSP will initially only be available in a $249 "Value Pack," which will include the PSP unit, a 32MB Memory Stick Duo, headphones with remote control, lithium-ion battery pack, AC adapter, soft case and cleaning cloth, and a UMD demo disc that contains sample movies, music, and video game footage. The PSP accepts the Memory Stick Duo and UMD media formats. Users will be able to play music and movie files from the memory stick, but retail games and movies will be sold in UMD form. Sony has indicated that it might be possible for users to download games in the future, but that functionality doesn't exist yet. The UMD is a 60mm optical disc that can hold up to 1.8GB of data. This isn't quite the size of a single-layer 4.7GB DVD, but 1.8GB is still plenty, considering that it's more than twice the size of a normal CD-ROM. Sony has started the process of opening the UMD format to allow third-party content producers to release music and movies in the UMD format.
The UMD optical disc will have its own plastic case to protect the disc surface from dust and fingerprints.
Hardware manufacturers will also be able to use their own UMD-based media players, but Sony will still keep its bread- and-butter UMD game format proprietary. Opening the standard means we'll see more content coming out in UMD format, and this will help Sony, because a large media library will make the PSP more attractive to consumers.
The PSP has security settings that let you set the "parental control level," which can prevent the system from playing any UMD media rated above a user-determined threshold. For example, a parent can set the PSP parental control level to "5" to only allow the system to play UMD-rated "Teen" or below. We imagine that most young PSP owners will neglect sharing the existence of said feature with their parents.
SanDisk has released new translucent neon Memory Stick Pro Duo cards since studies have shown that gamers are irresistibly drawn to translucent, neon colored objects.
Memory Stick Duo
The Sony Memory Stick is one of the removable flash memory formats used in consumer electronics, such as digital cameras, MP3 players, and PDAs. Other popular removable flash memory formats include CompactFlash and Secure Digital. The PSP supports the advanced Memory Stick Duo, which includes the Memory Stick Duo, MagicGate Memory Stick Duo, and the Memory Stick Pro Duo formats. Unfortunately, the PSP is only compatible with the smaller "Duo" format. Regular, normal-sized memory sticks won't be able to fit into the PSP memory slot. Sony manufacturers its own Sony-branded Memory Stick Duo cards, but you can find less expensive cards from other manufacturers, such as SanDisk and Lexar.
You can transfer files onto the memory stick by either connecting the PSP to a PC using a USB cable, or by using a PC with a memory stick reader or built-in drive. The PSP has a built-in image viewer and it can play MP3 and ATRAC files directly from the memory stick without a problem. However, the PSP can only play MPEG-4 video files encoded for the Memory Stick format. We were able to get movies onto our memory stick by using a free software encoder and doing some fancy file renaming, but we advise users to wait for Sony to release its media software since it'll have easier drag-and-drop functionality designed to work specifically with the PSP. Sony's Image Converter 2 software package, currently available in Japan, can encode movies and images into file formats compatible with the PSP.
Networking
PSP Video Feature
Check out the GS Live video we transferred over to the PSP.

The Sony PSP has built-in 802.11b Wi-Fi support that allows up to 16 PSPs to connect to each other over an ad hoc wireless network. The PSP also supports an "infrastructure" mode that will allow the PSP to connect to the Internet through a wireless access point, such as a wireless router at home or a public Internet hot spot, but Sony hasn't implemented the infrastructure mode yet. Users can currently only play each other over local, ad hoc wireless connections.
Once Sony enables the infrastructure mode, it's virtually guaranteed that PSP owners will be able to play against each other over the Internet. Even though up to 16 PSP systems can see each other on a single local network, most PSP games won't offer full 16-player multiplayer support. Expect most multiplayer game modes to support between two, four, or eight players. It's likely that we'll see modes that support a larger number of simultaneous players once Internet support is enabled, since it'll be easier to get a large numbers of players together online. However, until that time comes, every PSP unit has a wireless LAN switch that allows the user to toggle the Wi-Fi networking on or off to save power.
UPDATE: Sony Computer Entertainment America has just confirmed that five of its upcoming PSP titles will feature multiplayer online support. The announcement indicates that the PSP will likely have online support when it launches in the US.
The first million PSP Value Packs will include a special UMD featuring the Spider-Man 2 major motion picture. Sony will manufacture 1 million units for sale in the North American market through March 31, so all Value Packs purchased during the first week of release should have the Spider-Man 2 UMD.
Sony PSP at a Glance
Release date: 03/24/05Price: $249CPU: MIPS R4000Display: 4.3-inch, 480x272, TFT LCDFeatures: Wi-Fi, MPEG-4 video, MP3, ATRAC, Dimensions: 6.7 in x 2.91 in x 0.91 inWeight: 8.36 ouncesBattery life: 2.5-8 hours
CHECK PRICES
Sony offers a PSP "Standard Pack" in Japan that includes no accessories outside of the power cable and carries a lower price, but Sony has not yet announced if or when the bare-bones pack will be available in the States.
The system itself weighs just over half a pound, but there isn't one square inch of fat on the machine--all of the weight is packed into a dense little package. The screen itself is a sight to behold. The 480x272 resolution may not look impressive on paper, but that's before you realize that all those pixels are stuffed into a bright, 4.3-inch widescreen display. The Nintendo DS may have dual screens, but they're only 256x192 pixels each. If you actually multiply out the pixel total, the PSP's 480x272 resolution screen has 130,560 total pixels while the Nintendo DS has 98,304 pixels, when you add up the number of pixels on both DS screens. That basically means the PSP display will look extremely sharp while the DS displays will appear grainy, but still touchable in comparison.
The translucent buttons give the PSP an extra level of sophistication--we sometimes feel inadequate just holding the system.
When it comes to controls, the Sony PSP comes with the standard input options instantly recognizable to anyone who is familiar with the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 console systems. The unit has the standard directional pad on the left-hand side of the unit, and the right-hand side has the usual triangle, circle, cross, and square buttons. The top of the unit has left- and right-shoulder buttons and the start, select, and home buttons are located just below the LCD screen. The PSP also has a small analog stick, more of an analog stub actually, right next to the D pad. The analog stub functions almost like a Dual Shock 2 analog stick, but the lack of a shaft means the stub doesn't rise very far above the PSP face.
Early reports have stated that users have returned about 4,800 Japanese PSP units (out of 800,000) to Sony due to problems with the square button. The internal contact point for the square input doesn't sit directly below the button itself, as the other three buttons do. Sony made the conscious decision to design the contact point slightly off center, since having a centered contact would have forced Sony to either shrink the screen or to make the device slightly larger. Most of our editors haven't had a problem with the button on the PSPs we have in the office, but one editor did notice that the square button can lag occasionally in a handful of games that require precise button inputsPower Consumption
As with any portable gaming device, power consumption plays a major role in hardware and software design. The PSP comes with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack. It snaps into the back of the unit and is easily replaceable. Battery life averages between two and a half to eight hours or more depending on the application. A game such as Ridge Racers with its graphics, physics, and heavy UMD access will run closer to the three-hour mark compared to a puzzle game like Lumines.
The Sony PSP's high resolution screen, like GameSpot's own Rich Gallup, looks even better in real life.
Game developers have designed games with power consumption in mind, since you can no longer get away with constantly streaming data from the media disc as with the PlayStation 2. Sony gives an ambiguous 1-333MHz CPU speed in all official specification lists, because the system throttles down the CPU speed to conserve power. Software developers tell us that 222MHz is the current magic number for the CPU.
Also expect a faster power drain if you play games over Wi-Fi. While playing MP3 music files, you always have the option to turn off the PSP backlight to conserve battery power. You can "hot swap" battery packs while the unit is on, but the system needs to be plugged into a wall adapter to keep any games running in the middle of the swapping process. It takes about two hours to fully recharge the battery pack.
Accessories and Games
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi has confirmed rumors that Sony is working on a device that will turn the PSP into a mobile phone. In early 2005, Sony inadvertently released a "dummy" PSP patch update that revealed the names of some promising new features, including e-mail, Web browsing, and Sonic Stage music-management software support that would greatly increase the usability of the PSP. Sony has not confirmed that any of the features are in the works, but the fact that they are listed in the patch indicates that the company is at least considering developing the additions.
Most PSP accessories will be carrying cases and other boring items, but those crazy kids at Nyko are brining out interesting gear like the PSP Theater Experience.
Third-party manufacturers such as Nyko, Madcatz, and Intec have all announced Sony PSP peripherals, and we're sure many other manufacturers are gearing up to jump on the PSP gravy train. As with the Nintendo DS launch, the Sony PSP accessories list will be limited to the basic carry case, media holder, and screen protector paraphernalia, but Nyko has a couple unique accessories including a PSP Charger Case and the Theater Experience PSP. You'll also want to get a 512MB or 1GB Memory Stick Duo flash memory card to get music, movies, and images onto your PSP.
The Sony PSP will have 24 launch titles ready for the North American "launch window." Sony hasn't yet specified the size of the window, but with 24 titles, it'll be safe to assume that you'll have several games to choose from on launch day. Game titles will range in price from $39.99 to $49.99.
PSP Launch Titles
Ape Escape: On the Loose, Sony Computer Entertainment AmericaATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails, SCEA Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower, Capcom Dynasty Warriors, Koei FIFA 2005, Electronic Arts Gretzky NHL, SCEA Lumines, Ubisoft Metal Gear Acid, Konami MLB, SCEA MVP Baseball, EA NBA, SCEA NBA Street Showdown, EA Need for Speed Rivals, EA NFL Street 2 Unleashed, EA Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory, Konami Ridge Racer, Namco Smartbomb, Eidos Interactive Spider-Man 2, Activision Tiger Woods PGA Tour, EA Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix, ActivisionTwisted Metal: Head-On, SCEA Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, Sony Online Entertainment Wipeout Pure, SCEA World Tour Soccer, SCEA
Check out our GameSpot Sony PSP platform page for information about all the Sony PSP launch titles, and watch the Sony PSP hardware product page for all the latest Sony PSP news and highlights.

lumines for psp

2005-03-05T18:03:00.000-08:00

Gamespots says.In a perfect world, Lumines wouldn't have been sold separately from Sony's slick, new portable gaming system. But the world is still better off now that Lumines is in it. This ingeniously designed, addictive, mesmerizing puzzle game from the creator of cult classics like Rez and Space Channel 5 may not seem as out-and-out impressive as some other PSP launch titles, but it's liable to be the one you keep coming back to. In fact, between the beautiful presentation, the innovative gameplay, and the excellent single-player and multiplayer modes, Lumines may very well be the greatest Tetris-style puzzle game since Tetris itself.
Lumines is pretty abstract, but its depth and quality couldn't be more concrete.
Lumines resembles Tetris on first impression, and it's similarly intuitive to pick up and play--though, the simple design belies tremendous depth. Squares comprising four smaller blocks, which can be one of two colors, fall from the top of the screen. The object is to form solid-colored rectangles of at least two-by-two blocks by rotating and arranging the falling squares properly. Solid rectangles instantly light up and get cleared away as a line (called the "timeline") intermittently passes from left to right across the screen, kind of like a windshield wiper and just like a timeline in a music sequencer program. Clearing blocks in this fashion is how you earn points and also how you prevent blocks from stacking all the way up to the top of the screen; your game ends if the blocks stack too high. Meanwhile, any blocks above the blocks you just cleared automatically drop down until they hit other blocks or the bottom of the screen, and this creates the potential for some big combos. Controls are tight and responsive. Despite having so much horizontal space to work with thanks to the PSP's landscape-style screen, you can just as easily fling a square all the way from one side of the playing field to the other as you can nudge it just a hair's breadth into the perfect spot.
This is all quite simple and basically fun like most Tetris-style puzzle games are fun--especially since Lumines looks and sounds wonderful. Its colorful, swirling backgrounds are clear and clutter-free, the audio cues are noticeable and appealing, and the soundtrack, featuring tracks by Japanese club music pioneer Mondo Grosso, is fun and vibrant. You'll surely notice a great little touch early on, which is that the music dynamically adjusts to fit how you're playing, so the more squares you're clearing in rapid succession, the more the music will swell. The visuals glow and respond to your actions, too. Still images certainly don't do this game's pulsating, dynamic presentation justice. For that matter, the PSP's stereo speakers don't do full justice to the audio, either. Listen to this game with headphones on for an audio experience that, in a way, rivals the surround-sound explosions and screams you might be enjoying with your video game consoles and your fancy home-theater system.
The game's depth doesn't take long to emerge. The main twist is that you'll occasionally get special blocks, which, when formed into a solid rectangle, cause any and all consecutive matching blocks to light up. This means you can sometimes clear a whole bunch of blocks at once, and since you're always given a preview of the next three squares that are going to fall, you'll learn to plan for these important occasions. With enough practice, not to mention a lot of forethought, a steady hand, and a little bit of luck, it's essentially possible to clear the entire screen in one fell swoop--something that's incredibly satisfying and drives your score through the roof.
It's not often anymore that high scores are something you care about in gaming, but this is one of those cases in which you probably will. Lumines has a well-designed scoring system that rewards risk-taking and tenacity, so you'll use your score as a measure of just how good you are at the game's single-player challenge mode. One minor issue with scoring is that you get a big bonus for completely clearing the board of any blocks, yet you'll sometimes get a single-colored square as your very first piece in challenge mode, which then gets wiped out right away, resulting in a freebie boost to your score. Still, unpredictable circumstances like this only add to the game's addictive charm.
The timeline washes away your handiwork while everything else falls into place.
Lumines' depth also comes from how its challenge escalates. In most Tetris-style puzzle games, increased challenge is directly proportional to increased speed. Sure enough, in Lumines, squares start falling faster and faster the longer you play, giving you less time to move them around and rotate them into proper position. However, a much more interesting and inventive layer to the challenge has to do with the variable rate at which the timeline washes across the screen. Even as the speed of falling squares increases from level to level, the timeline will often noticeably slow down. On the one hand, this enables you to rack up points faster and faster, because the more blocks you can clean out in a single wipe, the more points you'll get. On the other hand, this means you'll need to be able to hold out for longer and longer as the blocks start to stack perilously high...only to then get cleared out in bigger and bigger chunks. Then again, some levels have the timeline moving very rapidly, which brings about its own set of challenging considerations, since this forces you to act that much more quickly yourself.
Other puzzle games tend to just go faster and faster the longer you play. In short, what's so unique about the gameplay of Lumines is that it often takes on a noticeably and significantly different tone from level to level. 9.0/10

PSP vrs D.S

2005-03-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

The psp comes out in u.s in late march the and the ds came out in november. I have recently got the got the japenese version psp and the ds in december. I have fully reviewed both, first the grafics the ds grafics are on par with n64, but the psp grafics are variable let me explain some games like all ea games and mgs and all the well none developer games are like dreamcast/ ps2 grafics wich look so amzing on a handheld screen. But the psp on the other hand ds grafics dont look to hot. The screens on both are very different the psp screen is so big and beutifull 4.3 inches and the ds has two screen each 2.3 inches, yes two screens and the bottom is touch screen. See there both very different. Now the sound the ds sound is ok u now nothing special but the psp on the other hand is so great wich make u feel like ur are in the game so overall psp sounds a milloion times better. But the buttons on the ds the buttons are small so that was negative but the psp is sweet just loke ps2 controller even a analog stick. the only real promblems i had with the ds is theres now must have games u now nothing id like to play so these are some of psp and ds games. psp games are need for speed rivals, gta psp, spiderman two, mgs acid, code arms and many more. ds Goldeneye, warioware touched, tigerwoods, madden, mario 64 ds. so if ur are a yough kid buy ds and if u are an older more mature gamer u will get more bang for ur buck get the psp. So ds 8.0/10 psp 9.0/10

free flash games

2005-03-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

Verti Golf 2
Trials Construction
Table Tennis
Puzzle Pirates
Chain Reactor
Couronne De
Hamsterball
Rollercoaster
List luxe Mahjong Medley
Flip Words

fight night round 2

2005-03-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

Last year's Fight Night 2004 reinvigorated boxing video games, as boxing had become a sports genre that many people had written off years ago. After a sequence of mixed results in the Knockout Kings series, EA Sports' Fight Night came along and introduced entirely new mechanics to the boxing genre, creating a fast-moving and free-flowing style that better reflected the pugilistic arts seen on TV. A year later, the second version in the Fight Night series is here, and it does what it has to do: improves on an already winning formula.
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The plodding pace and an overly complex fighting system are what have hurt boxing games. When you enter the virtual ring, the last thing you want to feel is that your boxer has glue on the soles of his shoes, or that you won't be able to execute a simple three-punch combo without memorizing long strings of button sequences. Fight Night Round 2 directly addresses both of these concerns with controls that are responsive, subtle, and effective, giving you a real feeling of mastery over your boxer, even if you're picking the game up for the first time.
First of all, the boxers move across the length of the ring at a nice pace--neither lumbering across the canvas, nor moving too quickly at an unrealistic pace. You can close on an opponent quickly yet backing away from punches is just a tad too slow for comfort, which seems exactly right. On the downside, a fighter's movement doesn't seem to slow down even when fatigued, though punch speed and effectiveness do drop.
Movement, however, is only half of the formula. A great boxing game hinges on the effectiveness of both the offensive and defensive controls, and it's here where Fight Night Round 2 shines. Nearly everything is controlled with a combination of the right analog stick and the trigger buttons. Simple punches--jabs, hooks, and uppercuts--are at your fingertips with a simple flick of the right stick. The design of each control is even set to resemble the punch you throw, so that a quick stinging jab is executed with a single flick of the right stick diagonally left or right; a hook is accomplished by moving the stick to the right and then arcing up; and a devastating uppercut starts out diagonally down and moves up and around, much like the way your boxer's arm moves along the path of the punch.
If you're looking to deal some heavy blows to your foe, you'll need to wind up your punch a little and toss some haymakers into the mix. Controlling haymakers is simple and feels just as natural as regular punches. A haymaker hook, for example, starts out as a normal punch--moving the right analog stick directly left or right--but instead of letting the punch fly immediately, you'll need to wind up the power by pressing down and then up along the arc of the controller. Punches can only be fully wound up when a boxer is standing still, though power punches can still be thrown when the boxer moves. The most powerful punches are best reserved for those times when you have your opponent backed up against the ropes or, better yet, in the corner.
Body shots are executed by combining punches with the left trigger, and it's easy to quickly and effectively mix up your punch types between body blows and head shots. In fact, most combinations are easy to pull off with Fight Night Round 2's control scheme, provided you stay disciplined with your right stick movements. In the heat of the moment, it's easy to forget to let that hook you've wound up continue through its arc, as it's equally easy to simply switch to an opposite side jab. In fact, you'll often feel like your flailing punches at random. But with a little practice, you'll be stringing together one-two-three combos in no time. In fact, the controls in Round 2 are so subtle that slight movement of the right stick will let you pull off shoulder feints to fool your opponent into getting his guard up on one side while you pile on a flurry of damaging punches to the opposite side.

As flexible as the offensive mechanics are, Round 2's defensive controls are just as much so. New for Round 2 is the clinch, a last-ditch effort to regain some stamina just before you get hit with a knockout blow. It's nice to see an effective clinch control enter the mix, and it's even better that clinches can be shrugged off or avoided altogether, preventing the move from being an automatic fail-safe.
Other defensive options include blocks and parries, and these are executed with the right analog stick and right trigger. Parries are especially effective in the game because they leave your foe wide open for counterpunches, which, as you progress up the ranks, become one of the essential keys to victory. Like punches, blocks and parries can be executed both high and low. If you want to block a low hook on the right side, you'll need to make sure that your parry is set up to catch the punch when it lands. Because of this, effective parrying requires a lot of observation of your opponent's tendencies and animations, as well as a lot of practice to get the timing right. Once you do, however, you'll find parries one of the most effective weapons in your arsenal. Finally, the easiest way to make your opponent miss is by dodging, which is pulled off by using the left analog stick and the left trigger in tandem.
This control scheme, which is simple to pick up yet tough to master, makes for a huge variety of matches in Round 2. We've seen all-out slugfests where both competitors basically stand in the middle of the ring and pound each other senseless. We've been chased around the ring by head-hunting maniacs looking for first-round blood, only to outlast them later in the fight. We've introduced opponents to the canvas with the very first punch of the fight. About the only thing we didn't see in our time with Round 2 are fights that go the distance. Whether this is because of our preference for going with power fighters and looking for big-punch knockouts, or because of some other reason, is unclear. Certainly fights go longer the deeper you get into the game, but we have yet to see a fight go the distance and, because of this, we haven't won or lost by decision. 8.9/10

Mercenaries

2005-03-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

The near future, it seems, is a great place to have a pretend war these days. Mercenaries marks the second imaginary modern military conflict that Pandemic Studios has cooked up over the past six months, though Mercenaries is a much more action-oriented, hands-on experience than last year's Full Spectrum Warrior. It's also a much better game overall, partially because its rather grim premise comes along with a nod and a wink, and also because it provides fiery, visceral thrills at a breakneck pace.

Mercenaries looks an awful lot like a Grand Theft Auto knockoff at first blush. While it does share some elements with Rockstar's free-form criminal action series--such as the third-person perspective, the ability to hop in and out of any vehicle you see, and an irrepressible enthusiasm for explosive chaos--Mercenaries is much more linear and mission-based, though it's up to you to decide which missions to accept. Your abilities don't stray too far from the norm for a third-person action game, and the basic controls all feel pretty familiar and responsive. You'll be driving (or flying) a bevy of vehicles over the course of the game, and though there is a world of difference between how a light jeep and a heavy APC handle, most of the ground-based vehicles feel a little too floaty. The trade-off here is that the exaggerated physics that account for the odd handling of the vehicles also make the game's many, many explosions much more thrilling. The contents of the missions are pretty standard, requiring you to fend off enemy forces from tactically important locations, steal or destroy enemy equipment, assassinate enemy officers, level enemy structures, and the like. But the immersive nature of the game's world keeps things interesting, and around the time you find yourself getting comfortable with the game, it'll start cranking up the challenge, bombarding you with enemies and introducing multiple-part missions.
The game takes place in a ripped-from-the-headlines version of North Korea. After North Korean president Kim begins to see the upside of democracy, he's quickly assassinated by his son, General Song, in a coup. General Song then gets busy starting up a bevy of WMD programs and dealing the weapons they produce to terrorists. As soon as this comes to the attention of the rest of the world, North Korea quickly finds itself infested with Allied Nations forces looking to dismantle Song's dictatorship, Chinese forces looking to incorporate the war-torn country into the People's Republic, South Korean forces (under the unofficial guiding hand of the CIA) looking to reunite the halves of the fractured Korean Peninsula, and Russian Mafia forces just interested in getting paid.
You play as one of three mercenaries working for a company called Executive Operations, each of whom has a specialty--the lithe British agent prefers covert ops, the lone-wolf American can sustain more physical damage than the others, and the crazy, gruff Swede has a propensity for using excessive force. These differences can impact the action in a minor way, but a more interesting difference is found in the various languages they are able to speak, as this can affect whose conversations they're able to understand, and what you know can be a big factor in deciding how you'll align yourself with the different factions.
Though you're given the basic ethical guideline of not murdering civilians (it's bad for company PR), you're free to play the field however you see fit, doing jobs for the different factions--sometimes against North Korean forces, sometimes against another faction, and often a little bit of both. Your primary objective is to collect the bounty on General Song, though you'll need to work your way up through the "Deck of 52," a series of North Korean officials, military officers, and businessmen that the Allied Nations forces have assigned playing-card designations to, to get to him. It's amazing how close the game scrapes to reality without actually breaking through, and its use of a slightly fictionalized North Korea as a setting can be a little unsettling at times. But despite the game's commitment to a quasirealistic scenario, the action is fast and loose.

One of the more unique and interesting aspects of Mercenaries is the nature of your interactions with the different factions. Though you'll often be acting against North Korean forces, which are always hostile toward you, there are missions where you'll have to attack one of the four factions you've been working for. Your working relationship with each faction is represented by a "mood" meter that ranges from friendly to hostile, and a hostile faction won't be as interested in offering you assignments as it will be in riddling your body with shrapnel. Who you choose to keep happy will not only affect how you gather your intel on the Deck of 52, but it will also determine which missions will even be presented to you. Luckily, Mercenaries exists in a world of moral flexibility and short memories, and you can always put yourself back into the good graces of a faction that's upset with you with a healthy bribe. There's extra incentive in keeping the Russians happy, since they run the Merchant of Menace Web site from which you can purchase equipment and vehicles and have them air-dropped to you in the field, as well as heavy weapons support from artillery and bombers and the like. If they're mad at you, they'll cut off access. With three different characters to play as, four different factions to piss off, and 52 bounties to capture (many of which are optional), there's a great amount of replay value to be found here, though playing through the game once is a good 20-hour experience in and of itself 8.8/10

Gran taurismo 4

2005-03-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

Not many game series can be referred to as genre-defining, but in the world of console racing games, Gran Turismo fits the bill. Since 1998, the GT series has aimed to bring the vivid world of auto enthusiasm to your PlayStation and PlayStation 2 through a combination of realistic driving physics, massive car rosters aimed at pleasing the obsessive collectors in all of us, and courses from around the world, all topped off with state-of-the-art graphics and sound presentation that's redefined the technical capabilities of the console each title has appeared on. With the fourth installment in the series, the aptly named Gran Turismo 4, we find the franchise at the peak of its quantitative powers in a game that makes superlatives such as "big" and "sprawling" seem somehow inadequate. Yet beneath all the considerable content, Gran Turismo 4 remains remarkably similar to previous iterations in the series, which, depending on your point of view, may or may not be a good thing.

Gran Turismo 4 features more than 700 cars from more than 80 manufacturers. As you might expect, the lineup leans heavily toward American, Japanese, British, and German makes, though you'll also have access to cars from Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Korea, among other countries. This variety is not simply limited to country of origin, however. The cars found in GT 4 range not only in their power and prestige, but also in their ages. The game features cars from every major era of auto manufacturing: from 1960s muscle cars, to powerful Japanese turbo machines of the mid '90s, to one-off concept cars that won't see city asphalt for 10 years or more, to examples from the very dawn of the auto era (such as the Ford Model T and the Daimler Motor Carriage from 1886).
While the game's roster is impressive both in its size and scope, it must be said that a good portion of the cars, such as the aforementioned Daimler, won't be of much use to you in terms of progressing in the game. Indeed, as you move through the career mode, known as Gran Turismo mode, you'll quickly find your garage piling up with cars from race and series wins; their only value to you will be as resells. On the plus side, a dramatically improved garage interface will let you quickly and easily sort through your car collection, no matter how large that collection becomes. Sorting through criteria such as country of origin, drivetrain, manufacturer, or power-to-weight ratio is a huge improvement from scrolling down an ever-elongating list while hoping to spot your car of choice based on model alone, as was the case in previous GTs.
The available cars, of course, are only part of the attraction of GT4. The game also features more than 50 courses to drive, including a tantalizing mix of real-life racetracks such as Fuji Speedway, Suzuka, and Laguna Seca; a cosmopolitan array of city courses from metropolises such as Hong Kong, Seoul, and the Big Apple; rally courses on dirt and (new for this installment) snow and ice; and old fictional friends such as Grand Valley Speedway, Deep Forest Raceway, and Trial Mountain. Two particularly notable additions to the GT4 track roster are El Capitan, a three-mile behemoth designed around the imposing granite centerpiece of Yosemite National Park, and the Nürburgring Nordschliefe, which, at nearly 13 miles long, is imposing in its own right. The Circuit de la Sarthe, the annual site of the 24 Hour of LeMans race, makes an appearance in two flavors: the current track and the old configuration, which is thankfully free of the chicanes that currently mar the four-mile back straight.

Beyond these impressive stats, the first thing any casual fan of the GT series notices are the graphics. The earlier GT games defined the technical reach of the PlayStation across two consoles, and this reach extends here. Car models look fantastic, and though only six cars are on-track at any time, the game suffers zero slowdown, even when things pile up in the corners or during drastic elevation changes. Lighting effects that were impressive in Gran Turismo 3 are stunning in GT4, both in terms of technical achievement (such as in the real-time reflections on car doors) and artistic aesthetic (the luminous George Paris street track or the neon-drenched section of the Hong Kong city course). The game only features three points of view when driving--and there is no cockpit view--but a tangible sense of speed is conveyed by all three angles.
Small graphical touches this time around include 3D crowd models, which are most noticeable during the rally stages. Spectators will run out on the course to take pictures of your oncoming vehicle. Then they'll scurry out of the way at the last moment. Meanwhile, throngs of spectators will back up en masse as you speed by them on the dirt tracks. Though you can't hit these pedestrians, their collective presence on the courses adds a nice feeling of danger and claustrophobia to the rally stages. On the downside, an invisible barrier pervades the perimeter of many of the courses, which detracts from an overall feeling of immersion. As a result, it's impossible to careen off a cliff at the Grand Canyon, for example. In the absence of a damage model, GT4 now incorporates a blur effect when smacking into opponents or stationary objects. It's similar to the effect found in Colin McRae Rally 2005, but it doesn't last as long. Also, while the game supports both 480p and even 1080i resolution, its implementation does not prevent a few jaggies or blurring effects from appearing during replays. 8.9/10

metroind prime 2 echoes

2005-03-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

It was only two years ago that an upstart Texas developer named Retro Studios allayed an industry's worth of skepticism by delivering Metroid Prime, a sublimely rendered 3D take on Nintendo's beloved sci-fi adventure series. That game defied many gamers' expectations--it more accurately re-created, from a first-person perspective, the moody, exploration-based shooting action of past Metroid games than many doubting nostalgists thought possible. Prime was, in essence, an unexpected and unadulterated success. In the last two years, Retro has perfected and evolved the form of its previous game to bring us Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, a sequel that takes the established framework and builds on it with diverse new locales, innovative abilities, and inventive gameplay. Despite the addition of a middling and somewhat unnecessary multiplayer component, Echoes stands shoulder to shoulder with its predecessor, delivering absolutely everything you'd want from a new 3D Metroid adventure.

The game begins simply enough, placing you once again in the hefty cybernetic boots of noble interstellar bounty hunter Samus Aran. Following a simple Galactic Federation directive to investigate a missing squad of troops, Samus tracks a signal to the remote planet Aether and descends to the surface to find the missing detachment. From here things become anything but simple. Within minutes, you'll find yourself being drawn into a bizarre civil war between the luminoth, a benevolent, mothlike race that inhabits Aether, and the ing, a vile host of dark creatures who reside in an alternate-reality version of the planet referred to as Dark Aether. The ing have a nasty habit of popping into the light version of Aether at will to possess other beings, which you'll discover early on. And wouldn't you know it--your old friends the space pirates are also on Aether, working to further their nefarious ends. Soon, the mission to discover the missing soldiers is replaced by a battle to defeat the ing and destroy Dark Aether, restoring the once-tranquil planet back to the beleaguered luminoth. To top everything else off, there's a dark and seemingly malevolent version of Samus running around, causing havoc for everyone. Our favorite bounty hunter certainly has her hands full here.
Retro has done an outstanding job of bringing Aether's opposing halves to life. The light side is full of organically designed, varied environments ranging from arid wastelands to rain-soaked marshes to a stunning futuristic fortress located high up in the mountains. Dark Aether, on the other hand, is a hellish, twisted mirror image of the light world, with a generally identical layout and much of the same actual topography. The relationship is actually quite similar to the one in another Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Super NES. Like in that game, you'll travel back and forth between worlds using portals scattered around the map, and many of your actions in one dimension will have specific effects in the other. Dark Aether engenders a truly ominous sense of mood, with its predominantly dark-purple color palette and grotesque denizens. The atmosphere itself is caustic to Samus early on and rapidly bleeds your energy away, forcing you to seek refuge in small protective bubbles of light energy, which really helps establish palpable tension while you're forging ahead in the dark world.
For a Metroid game, Echoes goes to pretty impressive lengths to develop its storyline, though like its predecessor, most of the plot development comes through the discovery of textual logs and ancient lore. You'll find the relics--and the corpses--of the luminoth and ing war scattered liberally throughout the world, and these provide both interesting backstory and valuable information to help move you along. Despite the presence of so many factions--the Galactic Federation marines, the space pirates, the luminoth, and the ing--you'll rarely interact with friendly characters throughout the game, so Echoes effectively re-creates the feeling of solitude in an alien world that's so integral to the Metroid experience.

If you've played Metroid Prime, you've essentially played Metroid Prime 2. Retro hasn't mucked with the original, winning formula, so veterans of the first game will feel quite at home resuming their position behind Samus' computer-enhanced visor. The heads-up display, in fact, really hasn't changed at all--you're literally seeing through the eyes of Samus, viewing readouts on the curved inside of her helmet. Nor have the controls, for that matter. You can still lock on to enemies and relevant background elements, which makes aiming a nonissue and frees you up to concentrate on exploring the enormous, complex environments. Samus' trusty scan visor once again comes in handy--you'll automatically scan every new room you enter to gather valuable clues about your surroundings and also discover new elements of the intriguing story.
Echoes dispenses with some of the standard Metroid equipment that fans have come to know and love, most noticeably the ice and wave beams and the X-ray and thermal visors from the original Prime. It's hard to miss that stuff, though, when you get a load of all the new toys that the sequel offers. In addition to the trusty charge cannon, you'll soon receive the light beam and the dark beam, two weapons that naturally tie into the light-and-dark theme of Aether's opposing dimensions. Many of the game's enemies are light- or dark-aligned, so you'll be able to use the weapon with opposite properties to deal extra damage. Furthermore, there are a lot of puzzle-oriented scenarios in both dimensions in which the ability to wield light and dark energy comes in handy. Later in the game, you'll obtain the annihilator beam, a weapon that combines both light and dark energies and has its own specific uses. If you've played previous Metroid games, you may be a little surprised that the three secondary beams have limited ammo, which requires you to use them judiciously and rely on your standard charge beam fairly often. Of course, Samus' impressive array of equipment doesn't consist of just guns, and Echoes delivers a host of useful secondary equipment as well. 8.9/10

tekken 5

2005-03-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

It seems hard to believe, but the Tekken series has been around for about a decade now. In that period, Tekken became one of the premier 3D fighting games in arcades, but its real fame was found at home. The PlayStation, and later the PlayStation 2, has been the Tekken series' stomping grounds for the past 10 years, and traditionally, the home versions have managed to outperform their impressive arcade counterparts. That grand tradition holds true in Tekken 5, which offers additional modes not found in the arcade original, but even more importantly, it offers fantastic 3D fighting and stunning visuals.

Tekken 5 sort of pretends that Tekken 4 never happened. The previous installment introduced a handful of position-change moves that weren't terribly well received. Tekken 5 takes a back-to-basics approach and removes those moves, making for a game that feels and plays more like the classic Tekken 3 did. The uneven floors you'd sometimes find in Tekken 4 are also gone. Some arenas do have walls, however, and you can still use these to set up some interesting combos. In short, Tekken 5 might not be a total reinvention of the series, but considering just how well it plays now, if Tekken had been rebuilt from the ground up it would likely have been a huge mistake. The fighting in Tekken 5 is some of the best fighting available in 3D or 2D, and its multiple levels of depth give beginners enough flashy moves to quickly feel comfortable playing it, while intermediate and expert players can dig deeper and deeper to find more interesting (and damaging) techniques.
The main single-player mode of play in Tekken 5 is the story mode. This mode takes you through a handful of fights, starting with some still frames and voice-over to help you understand what each individual fighter is fighting for. Along the way, you'll square off with some fighters that are tied to that story, giving you some pre- and post-fight dialogue. When you reach the story's conclusion, you are given some static screens with text and a full-fledged, prerendered ending for each character. Tekken's prerendered endings have always been one of the most memorable aspects of the series, and this collection of occasionally serious but often hilarious endings are among the series' best. It's a fun look at the characters that you don't normally get in the context of a fighting game, and helps give the impression that whoever made Tekken 5 must have had a lot of fun along the way.
Tekken 5 has many of the same character-customization options found in Virtua Fighter 4. You can alter most of the characters (the inability to customize the wooden training dummy Mokujin seems like a missed opportunity for comedy, though) using currency you earn as you keep playing. Some of the changes you can make are simple color tweaks to the characters' outfits, but you can also pick up accessories, such as sunglasses, necklaces, or a basket full of fish for kung-fu master Wang's back. Each character has unique customization options, and the options are different for each of a character's two primary costumes. Some characters also have a third costume that can be purchased, and some of these are just new outfits. Capoiera mistress Christie's third costume is an entirely different (though obviously familiar) character, who gets his own story mode intro and ending when selected.
The arcade mode is where you'll earn your gold, and it's sort of an endless arcade-style battle against the game's artificial intelligence. Much like Virtua Fighter 4 did before it, Tekken 5 pits you against AI players of different ranks that have actual ring names, as if they were based on actual players. As you play arcade mode, you'll rank up each individual character through multiple classes. The ring name and character rank stuff is neat, but it isn't implemented in a very user-friendly manner, as only one player per memory card can enter a name and track his or her player rank.
While you probably won't mistake Tekken 5's AI for another human being, the fighters do take on slightly different styles and are generally more competent than the average computer-controlled fighter. With five difficulty settings to choose from, fight fans of all skill levels should find something that tests their capabilities here. The strong AI helps make up for Tekken 5's lack of online play, but the lack of network support is still a disappointing omission, especially considering that Tekken 5 packs in pretty much everything else.
The character roster in Tekken 5 contains a great mix of old favorites, some of whom haven't been seen for years. The obvious entrants, like Kazuya, Paul, Law, Yoshimitsu, King, and Nina are present, and they're joined by other occasional players, like Bryan, Lei, Hwoarang, Bruce, Baek, Anna, Lee, and Xiaoyu. Tekken 4's new introductions, Steve, Marduk, and Christie are back, and three new characters make their first appearance here: Raven is a Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix-like assassin that combines powerful moves with shifty, tricky behavior, up to and including the ability to teleport in some moves; Asuka is a schoolgirl, and she's also a Kazama, making her Jin's cousin and a master of the Kazama style and similar (though definitely not identical) to Jun; Feng is an evil kenpo master that enters the tournament to find some sacred scrolls that the Mishima Zaibatsu controls. The roster is diverse and exciting and it hits all the bases. The new characters fit into the action very well, and the old characters have all received enough new moves and changes to feel fresh again, though not so many that the move list will feel unrecognizable. 9.9/10

Burnout three

2005-03-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

As driving games continue to flood the market, the genre seems to be splintering apart further and further. It used to be easy. Driving games were either attempting to simulate actual driving, or they were eschewing realism in favor of a more accessible, more instantly gratifying game. But now there are even more subsets to choose from. You've got the hardcore simulations that attempt to model cars and driving as accurately as possible. There are the open-road, "choose your own route"-style of racing games, which usually give you an entire city to race in. And, more recently, there are games that focus on the import tuning scene. With all these vastly different styles of driving games to choose from, it might be hard to figure out which type is the right one for you. With the release of Burnout 3: Takedown, developer Criterion Games makes the choice surprisingly easy. Put it this way: Even if driving games aren't normally your thing, Burnout 3 is still right for you. It's that good. It ranks among the best racing games ever made.

The original Burnout, released back in 2001, was a great arcade-style racing game. It delivered a sense of speed that most games lacked, and it also showcased some pretty spectacular crashes. In fact, the crashes were so cool that they were spun off into their own mode of play in Burnout 2. The crash mode in Burnout 2 was totally separate from the main racing game, but the puzzle-like challenge of wrecking your car in the right spot and at the right time caused the most spectacular, most damaging multicar pileups, which represented an amazing addition to the game. Burnout 3 expertly combines the two main elements of the series while also adding some great, new gameplay modes, a career mode that ties all of these different modes together, good split-screen support, and online play that supports up to six players on the same racetrack. These changes and added features drastically improve a series that was already very impressive.
Burnout 3, like the previous games in the series, is mainly a racing game that rewards you for living dangerously. The game features simple, extremely responsive controls, so you can accelerate, steer, brake (around corners), and boost for a burst of speed. The courses in the game are open-road tracks on winding freeways and city streets, and, naturally, the streets are populated with a good amount of traffic. Driving dangerously comes in the form of driving in the wrong lane, getting close to (but not hitting) other cars, catching air, drifting around turns, and so on. When you pull such risky maneuvers, you're rewarded with boost. But the quickest way to fill your boost meter in a regular race is to make your opponents crash. Takedowns, as you might imagine from the game's subtitle, are a major part of Burnout 3. When you knock another car out, not only is your boost meter filled, but also it's extended up to a maximum of four times its original size. The downside is that you'll expose yourself to some pretty dangerous situations to earn all this boost, and crashing will eliminate much of your boost, chop off one of your bonus meter segments if you have any, and, more than likely, cause you to fall back one or two spots in a race. For an easy-to-play racing game, Burnout 3 actually gives you a lot to consider.
The other big gameplay mechanic in Burnout 3 makes the crashes much more exciting and interactive. When you crash, you can drop the game into a slow-motion mode called impact time, which makes for a very interesting and even innovative dynamic where the pacing of the game can drastically shift for a few moments if you crash. While this slow-motion look at cars getting mangled is beautiful in and of itself, you can actually make light adjustments to your car's trajectory using the left analog stick or d-pad, which is something the game calls "aftertouch." By applying aftertouch when you crash, not only can you stack your car into trucks, tankers, and other cars--just for the heck of it--but also you can attempt to knock into your opponents during a race. If you're successful, you'll earn an aftertouch takedown, which refills your boost meter and prevents you from losing any bonus meter segments. Basically, it functions as a recovery move. The fact that Burnout 3 makes crashing--which is usually the most undesirable part of competition in a racing game--a completely enjoyable part of the game is remarkable. Burnout 3's crash mode has also been completely redesigned to take advantage of aftertouch, so you'll have to do more than just wreck into the right spot this time around. Instead you'll need to maneuver your vehicle's carcass around for best results. It's a strange and surprisingly well-thought-out addition to the game.
There are several different types of events in Burnout 3 that build on the basic concepts of driving dangerously and making the most of your wrecks. Many of them can be played on their own or in an offline or online multiplayer setting, but a few of them only really come up during the game's world tour mode. The most standard mode of them all is the single race. A single race puts you and five opponents on the track, and, as the name suggests, you race. Some tracks feature multiple laps, while others are long enough to be one-lap affairs. The game has a good variety of environments, and multiple tracks are set up in each one by using the old Ridge Racer-style system of opening up certain paths while closing others to make the most of each section of road. The career mode occasionally strings three races together into a grand prix event, where you'll earn points at the end of each race based on your finishing position. There's definitely a good amount of variety here.

Crash mode returns to Burnout 3 with the same goal as in Burnout 2--to create the largest, most expensive pileup possible. The crash junctions still have a puzzle-like quality to them in that you'll have to figure out the most efficient crash spot in each level. However, with the addition of aftertouch and a series of on-track power-ups, the mode feels totally different from how it did in Burnout 2. Controlling your crash brings a lot of depth to the mode. Some power-ups are merely cash bonuses, whereas others are score multipliers, which are very important. Also, you won't have infinite boost right out of the gate here. You'll have to pick up a boost icon, at which point you'll boost whether you like it or not.
Crash mode also benefits from a new function called the "crashbreaker." This basically lets you make your car spectacularly explode on command. However, you can only trigger it after a certain number of cars have become involved in the wreck. There are also instant crashbreaker power-ups on the track that, as you might expect, cause an instant crashbreaker, effectively letting you blow up twice in the same level. This makes the basic progression much deeper than simply wrecking you car and watching the fun unfold. Now, a common crash junction has you getting the boost icon, maneuvering to wreck into something big, then aftertouching over to a score multiplier or other bonus. Once you reach the crashbreaker threshold, pop that sucker, and use your second wind to aftertouch over to both some cars you may have missed and another power-up. And if you're really looking to break stuff, there's an instant crashbreaker power-up. The junctions get pretty elaborate, and you really have to think on your feet to cause the biggest wrecks. The results tend to be immensely satisfying in ways that are unique to Burnout 3 in particular, since its crash mode is so bizarre and yet so good. 9.5/10

resident evil 4

2005-03-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

Since its debut on the PlayStation in 1996, the genre-defining Resident Evil series has had its ups and downs, though it's always remained at the forefront of survival horror games. Yet it's not enough to call Resident Evil 4 one of the high points of the series, because this is probably the single greatest horror-themed action game ever created. Resident Evil 4 is an amazing achievement in a variety of ways, especially in how its inspired, state-of-the-art cinematic presentation works so well with its relentlessly exciting, white-knuckle action, all of which is wrapped up in a decidedly lengthy adventure chock-full of hidden secrets and bonus extras. It obviously isn't for the squeamish or for those otherwise not qualified to play this gory, mature-rated GameCube game, which is too bad for them, because it's hard to imagine anyone else not being consistently thrilled and impressed by what Resident Evil 4 has to offer.
In case it isn't abundantly clear, you don't need to be a Resident Evil fan to appreciate Resident Evil 4. However, Resident Evil fans will recognize the game's well-groomed protagonist Leon S. Kennedy, a wisecracking government agent investigating an inconspicuous European village where the US president's missing daughter was supposedly sighted. Experiencing the events of the game without really knowing what else to expect is a big part of the fun, so suffice it to say the story is filled with surprises, and it further does a great job of continually ratcheting up the sense of danger and tense excitement you'll feel right from the get-go. The story unfolds through some beautifully rendered and choreographed cinematic cutscenes, as well as through occasional notes you'll find. Yet these aren't the game's strongest suit, nor are they the focus of it, since the dialogue is hammy and thankfully brief. The story's there to give fans of the series something new to ponder, though it mostly exists to create a context for all of Resident Evil 4's action sequences. Basically, it helps make the game suspenseful and entices you to keep playing just to see what happens next.
Resident Evil 4 is being appropriately billed as the game that takes the series in a bold, new direction. This seems immediately apparent just minutes after the game begins, when Leon is confronted not by the sorts of mindless zombies that typified previous Resident Evil installments, but by a haggard man who seems decidedly displeased by Leon's presence and completely ignores the threat of his 9mm pistol as he menacingly approaches, axe in hand. The cover of the box depicts these sorts of torch-and-pitchfork-wielding disgruntled natives whom Leon will be dealing with in Resident Evil 4, so the question you'll be wondering is, what exactly are these Spanish-speaking folks' major malfunctions that cause them to want to murder Leon by any means necessary, and without any concern for their own safety? The game's humanoid enemies seem much more unsettling than your typical zombies, since they show basic signs of intelligence, yet their hatred for Leon far eclipses their own survival instinct. Still, it'll take just one slash of a sickle or one pitchfork gouging to teach you to terminate these savages without hesitation. They're creepy, memorable foes. And, without spoiling anything, they're just the tip of the iceberg.
Despite Resident Evil 4's unique controls and perspective, it's easy to come to grips with how the game is played. In fact, it might leave you wondering why it took someone so long to pull off a game in this fashion, because the controls and perspective work so well. Resident Evil 4 is presented in cinematic widescreen, so if you have a standard television set, you'll view the action in letterbox format. This not only contributes to the game's movielike feel, but it also gives you some much-needed peripheral vision of your surroundings. You view the action from behind Leon, and the perspective zooms in to a close, over-the-shoulder view when you ready a weapon, which you can easily aim using its laser sight. Realistically, Leon doesn't have a perfectly steady hand when aiming, but since most of the combat occurs in brutal close quarters, you don't usually need pinpoint accuracy to get the job done. You cannot move and fire at the same time, nor can you strafe from side to side as you can in a typical shooter, though Resident Evil 4 plays very much like a shooter otherwise. The zoomed view while aiming works great for drawing a bead on your enemies, but you naturally lose some of your situational awareness in the process, because you can see more of your periphery when you're not aiming at what's in front of you.

This dynamic has an exceptional way of heightening tension, since your foes love trying to surround you. They move and behave with frightening realism in the context of the game, and overall, the enemy design in Resident Evil 4 is truly outstanding. There are many things that look terribly lifelike and will send a chill down your spine, making you desperately want to kill them before they kill you first, in some sort of horrible fashion. Fortunately, the controls feel like they're tuned just right to give the game the same sort of pacing inherent to an action horror movie. The absence of the ability to sidestep doesn't hurt gameplay and instead accentuates the toe-to-toe confrontations, while the ability to quickly turn around using a simple controller command is more than welcome. The game expertly makes you feel that you're both watching a freaky, nail-biting movie about Leon and actually walking in his shoes. In fact, despite the high quality of the action, some of the best moments are the purely suspenseful ones when you're exploring while knowing full well that things aren't going to remain this quiet for long. 9.8/10

gta san adreas

2005-03-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

How do you follow up a runaway success like 2001's Grand Theft Auto III? Rockstar North responded a year later with GTA: Vice City, a game that took the gameplay of its predecessor and expanded it considerably. At the same time, Vice City gave the series an extensive and amazing stylistic makeover, drenching the experience in the sights, sounds, and attitude of Miami, Florida from the mid '80s. So where do you go from there? You take it statewide. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas expands the series' concept to encompass three entire cities, as well as the countryside between them. The gameplay similarly expands, packing in some explosive set pieces and amazing action-movie-like thrills while maintaining that same remarkably fun, freefom GTA feel. In short, Rockstar has done it again. San Andreas definitely lives up to the Grand Theft Auto name. In fact, it's arguably the best game in the series.
Carl Johnson is going (going) back (back) to Cali (Cali).
This latest installment takes place in 1992 in the West Coast-themed state of San Andreas. San Andreas is an island containing three cities. You'll begin the game in the city of Los Santos, which is based roughly on Los Angeles and consists of a mixture of ritzy downtown areas and the gangland ghettos of South Central. San Fierro is based on San Francisco, reproducing the real city's hilly terrain and ever-present fog. The game's third city is Las Venturas, which is a great take on early-'90s Las Vegas, complete with a strip full of casinos and the surrounding desert. While one-to-one measurements against previous games in the series are difficult in practice, San Andreas definitely feels like a much, much larger place than Vice City ever did, but at the same time, the growth is handled intelligently. There are plenty of things to do both in and out of the cities, which makes all this real estate matter.
While Grand Theft Auto III was inspired by movies like The Godfather and Vice City took several pages from the Scarface playbook, San Andreas draws its inspiration from the ghetto and gangsta struggle films of the early '90s. Movies like Menace II Society and Boyz N the Hood are the clear influences here. In San Andreas, you play the role of Carl "CJ" Johnson. The game opens with Carl returning to Los Santos after spending the last five years in GTA III's Liberty City. But his homecoming isn't a happy one--he's returning home because his mother has been killed. Carl isn't on the ground for more than an hour before he's picked up by a pair of crooked cops and thrown right back into the middle of the street life he left Los Santos to avoid.
Your first order of business in Los Santos is to put your set back on the map. Your gang, the Grove Street Families, has fallen into disarray over the last five years, and their influence is minimal at best. So you, along with the three other leaders of the gang--the long-winded Big Smoke, the dust-smoking Ryder, and your stubborn brother, Sweet--set out to take back the streets from your rivals, the Ballas, who have turned to dealing crack to earn money and gain influence in the hood. You set out on a series of missions to take back your territory, starting small with things like spray-painting over other gangs' tags (which is one of the many new types of actions that replace previous GTA games' more-generic hidden package collecting here), but quickly moving up to drive-bys and other acts of extreme gangsterism. But there's a whole lot more to San Andreas than just set tripping.
Just when you think you're getting used to gang warfare, everything goes sour. We're certainly not interested in spoiling the game's many interesting plot twists, so we'll leave out the details, but it should suffice to say that you'll eventually need to get the heck out of Los Santos. You wind up in the country outside the city, where you'll encounter many more great characters and officially embark on your quest to put right what's gone wrong. Once you get out of Los Santos, you won't really have to worry about gang warfare for a while, and the game settles down into a more GTA-like feel.
The San Andreas story is well written and packs in some really great surprises that tie this game to the previous GTA games.
Like the previous games in the series, San Andreas features a fairly linear story that takes you through the game's areas. You'll start off restricted to Los Santos--something the story justifies by claiming that an earthquake has taken out the bridges and roads that link Los Santos to the surrounding area--but it doesn't take long to unlock the other two areas. The game also throws in some pretty great surprises in the form of characters from previous entries in the series. These characters tie the GTA games together really nicely, so while San Andreas feels pretty different from the other games in the series, it still feels like you're playing in the same universe.
As in the previous games, most of your progress is accomplished by completing missions for a variety of individuals. These missions are oftentimes similar to missions you've seen in previous games in the series. You'll drive people around, take out specific individuals (an early mission gives you the straightforward objective of beating up a crack dealer, for example), do drive-bys on your enemies, and so on. But as you proceed through the game, the missions get crazier and crazier. Along the way you'll pull off a daring casino heist, steal some wicked military hardware, "take care" of plenty of Mafia bozos, and much, much more. The missions in the game are a lot more exciting, on average, than they have been in some previous GTA games. Additionally, the game is a lot better at spelling out what, exactly, needs to be done. It does this with onscreen text that color-codes each specific piece of a mission differently. Yet while the basics of the gameplay--taking on and completing missions--are similar to past GTA games, there are plenty of details to uncover, and plenty of new things to try. 9.6/10

Halo 2

2005-03-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

Halo 2, the long-awaited sequel to one of the most widely praised, most influential first-person shooters ever created, has a very tough act to follow. Fortunately, it's built on a foundation that's as strong as they come. The game's success was preordained--publisher Microsoft tallied more than 1.5 million Halo 2 preorders in the weeks leading up to the game's release, which demonstrates just how confident Halo's fans are in the sequel's quality. But how is it, really? The good news is, the sequel to the Xbox's defining action game is an absolutely superb, fully featured game, boasting an excellent presentation, a highly replayable campaign, and the greatest, most complete online multiplayer component in a console shooter yet. A surprisingly disappointing story and a fairly short single-player portion are noticeable shortcomings, but there's just so much breadth of content in Halo 2, and the action itself is so outstanding, that there can be no denying its quality. Overall, it's one of the very best action games available.
It's good to see you, Master Chief.
There are several reasons why the original Halo ranks up there with a very small number of other first-person shooters as one of the definitive games in the genre. For one thing, Halo succeeded at establishing a cohesive, memorable, and original science-fiction universe. For another, the Master Chief, Halo's cybernetic protagonist, made a great hero. A fearless, enigmatic man, the Chief could succeed where pure flesh-and-blood humans could not, and guiding him to victory against the alien menace known as the Covenant, as well as the parasitic creatures called the Flood, made for a gripping story and an intense and satisfying gameplay experience.
Halo's gameplay was amazing in that it seamlessly integrated top-notch first-person shooting with incredibly fun third-person vehicular sequences and outstanding friendly and enemy artificial intelligence. The game's subtle innovations--the tactical consequences of such things as having recharging energy shields, being able to carry only a couple of weapons at a time, the ability to throw powerful grenades in between shots, and the option of dishing out fierce melee attacks--also did a lot to differentiate Halo from other shooters, and proceeded to influence subsequent games. Halo's multiple, well-balanced difficulty settings, two-player cooperative campaign option, and assorted multiplayer modes also ensured that the game had tons of lasting appeal. All these factors contributed to the game's well-deserved success, and they're all back in Halo 2. For the most part, the sequel takes an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to its gameplay--everything that you loved about Halo's action is back in full effect here. At the same time, the handful of new additions in Halo 2 are well thought out and well implemented, enriching the gameplay and making it seem fresh but still familiar.
Everything that you maybe didn't love about Halo is pretty much back, too. Let's face it: Halo was an incredible game, but some aspects of it were relatively weak. Most notably, many players felt that the game's occasionally repetitive level designs undermined the action, such as when the Master Chief squared off against the Flood in the infamous Library level. Also, though the game's visuals were terrific in the heat of battle, Halo's cinematic cutscenes using the game's 3D engine left a lot to be desired--they looked decidedly rough when compared with the rest of the game. These shortcomings rear their heads again in Halo 2, at least during the game's campaign. Some of the in-engine cutscenes are kind of ugly, though they're much better than those of the original. Meanwhile, the action itself is as dynamic and intense as ever, to the point where it can be tons of fun to replay the same sequence over and over, since you'll find that the friendly and enemy forces you'll be battling with will never act quite the same way twice. However, Halo 2's campaign--though it features a number of memorable, spectacular set pieces--frequently boils down to straight-up run-and-gun corridor crawls, one after another.
Halo 2 plays much like its three-year-old predecessor, and the gameplay's just as fun and intense as ever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
All your attention tends to get concentrated on the action itself, partly because the action is just so good but also because there's often little of interest in the game's environments. The level design is quite striking at times--you'll find yourself stopping just to gaze at the architecture--but it's occasionally monotonous enough to be confusing. You'll sometimes wander aimlessly for a few minutes, unable to tell which way is forward and which way is backward, until you happen upon the next signs of enemy resistance. Basically, the campaign is still a linear series of shootouts, some of which are open-ended enough to afford you the ability to choose from multiple weapons or vehicles, and some of which are more rigid. If the Flood levels of Halo didn't bother you, then you probably won't mind the similar sequences in Halo 2. If you don't fondly recall those bits of the first game, though, you might find yourself frustrated that Halo 2 follows a similar formula.
Even the content of Halo 2's campaign isn't significantly different from that of the first game. Prepare to take on many of the same foes in many of the same types of situations and locales. Of course, the game does take you into some new territory and pits you against some new threats (such as some hard-to-hit flying enemies and an enormous spiderlike Covenant battle tank), and sure enough, these sequences turn out to be some of the best bits of the campaign. Early on, for instance, you'll be defending Earth itself from a Covenant assault, rampaging through the war-torn streets on foot, at the wheel (or the mounted turret) of a Warthog 4x4, or in the belly of a devastating Scorpion battle tank. All this is thrilling. Yet while it's hard to imagine a better setup for Halo 2's action than putting the fate of Earth's defense in your hands, the game turns out to have other intentions, and rather suddenly changes gears after just a few hours. 9.4/10

Half life 2

2005-03-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that, prior to Half-Life 2, Valve had really made only one game. Of course, it was a masterpiece. Half-Life single-handedly reinvented the first-person shooter, putting the emphasis on cinematic pacing and complete immersion in the experience. As a result, it paved the way for many of the outstanding first-person shooters that have followed. And while there was little question that there would eventually be a sequel, no one could have imagined the long and torturous development process that led to Half-Life 2. Well, it's time to forget about that, because Half-Life 2 has arrived. And, in many ways, this big-budget sequel does what it sets out to do: Half-Life 2 is a technically amazing, sharply honed first-person shooter that pulls all the tricks that made Half-Life such a beloved experience. With that said, many of those tricks feel more than a bit familiar now, and the game itself is saddled with a disappointing story. Still, that doesn't stop Half-Life 2 from being a very impressive and engaging shooter, and a faithful follow-up to one of the greatest PC games of all time.
It's time for you to once again take up your submachine gun and take out all the foes threatening humanity.
In Half-Life 2, you once again assume the role of Gordon Freeman, the theoretical physicist and dimension-hopping commando who saved the world from an alien invasion at the end of Half-Life. Or did he? Half-Life 2 starts you off facing the infamous G-Man, the mysterious blue-suited character from the first game. At the end of Half-Life, the G-Man offered you a choice: work for him or die. Since there would be no sequel if you chose the latter, Half-Life 2 assumes you chose the former, and you start the game in a train entering City 17 for your introduction into this new world.
City 17 is a run-down urban center that's the equivalent of the Warsaw ghettos during World War II, but instead of Jews being rounded up to live in City 17, it's all the remnants of a defeated humanity. Half-Life 2 takes place an untold number of years after the Black Mesa incident, but it's clear that much has changed. A mysterious enemy known as the Combine has conquered the planet and installed a human puppet government to carry out its rule. Black-clad security forces patrol the streets, while propaganda blares endlessly from omnipresent video screens. If there's one thing that Valve does extremely well, it's capture a sense of atmosphere--this vision of a dystopian police state is chillingly effective. But you won't spend a lot of time soaking in the scene before you're thrust into the struggle to defeat the Combine and free humanity.
As soon as the shooting begins you'll join an essentially nonstop battle that will last the remainder of the game. Like the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2 is presented as a nearly seamless experience--you play entirely from Gordon Freeman's perspective, there are no cutscenes or perspective changes to take you out of the moment, and are there no narrative jumps that skip ahead in time. (At least, there are none from your perspective.) There also aren't very many long loading times to interrupt the flow of the game, as all the levels are discreetly broken into sections, and when you transition from one section to another, there's only a slight pause for the new section to load (at least, on a high-end PC). Put it all together and the game's single-player campaign, which will probably take you between 15 and 20 hours to complete, comes off as a very long day in the extraordinary life of Gordon Freeman.
In case of alien invasion, find Gordon Freeman and break glass.
The original Half-Life was highly cinematic in nature, the virtual equivalent of starring in your own blockbuster sci-fi action movie. Who could ever forget the first time a headcrab leapt out at you from a dark corner? Or the moment when the commando tossed a satchel charge into the sewer pipe you were hiding in? The movie analogy is apt, not only because Half-Life 2 packs a few cinematic moments of its own, but also because, like most movie sequels, it plays it safe and doesn't deviate much from its storied predecessor. Half-Life 2 doesn't revolutionize the genre, instead sticking with the familiar formula of run-and-gun action, occasional puzzle-solving, and scripted sequences established by Half-Life. And it's an effective formula, for the most part. The game gets off to a rousing start, as the opening levels combine these three ingredients masterfully. You start off on the lam from the Combine, armed with only a pistol and your wits, and embark on a chase through a train yard and tunnel system that's filled with all sorts of hairbreadth escapes. The sense of pursuit hurtles you forward so quickly that you don't have much time to admire the cutting-edge graphical prowess on display. 10./10

Star wars republic commando

2005-03-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

When you think of Star Wars, the first two things that likely come to mind are probably Jedi and space combat in X-Wings and TIE fighters. So logically, a Star Wars game that features neither element would feel like it's missing something. Right? As it turns out, Star Wars Republic Commando's laserlike focus on squad-based, military-style combat makes it a refreshing change of pace for Star Wars games. Its well-paced, albeit brief, single-player campaign will keep adrenaline junkies thrilled from the first dropship landing to the final dust-off. A pedestrian and unimaginative multiplayer mode is the only notable flaw in a game that otherwise plays, looks, and sounds fantastic.
You lead an elite squad of commandos on a variety of covert-ops missions.
Star Wars Republic Commando, as the title suggests, puts you in the shoes of an elite trooper during the height of the Clone Wars. You don't have a proper name, aside from "Three-Eight," but nonetheless, you're tasked with commanding Delta squad on tough covert ops stretched across three different campaigns. The three other commandos of Delta are also numbered. They are: 07, 40, and 62. Despite the impersonal monikers, each member of your squad has a very unique and likable personality, and this comes across through the entertaining chatter each will dispense over the course of the game.
While you're a clone, like the millions of other republic soldiers, you and your squadmates have been trained to be a little better than the other photocopies of Jango Fett. This means you'll also be outfitted with better weapons and armor than the regular soldiers you'll be fighting with periodically through the campaign. You'll start out with a standard assault rifle, but over the course of the game, you'll be introduced to special attachments that turn this same weapon into a sniper rifle and a grenade launcher. You'll also be able to pick up weapons from fallen enemies, ranging from heavy repeating blasters to submachine guns to rocket launchers. Should you run low on ammo, there's a laser handgun that recharges and never runs out of shots. But what's more fun than this is getting up close and personal with melee attacks. Melee strikes are powerful, and they count as one-hit kills on most standard opponents. So even if you do have plentiful ammo, you'll find yourself frequently stabbing Geonosian bugs and Trandoshan mercenaries in the face, mainly because it's both fun and extremely effective. Rounding out your armament is an array of grenades, like thermal detonators for soft targets and electrostatic grenades for mechanical enemies.
The interface and gameplay conventions in Republic Commando borrow some of the best elements from excellent games like Metroid Prime, Halo, and Freedom Fighters. There a visor overlay onscreen, for example. This gives you useful information, such as the position and condition of your squadmates, instructions on your next objective, and the obligatory ammo counts and health meters. You can also switch to low-light mode to enhance dark areas. The helmet conceit isn't just an excuse to have all these meters onscreen, however. You'll get some nice graphical effects to remind you that your character does have a bit of glass in front of his face. So you'll see blood spatter on the visor when you engage in close combat. There are also situations where droids or jammers will cause static to appear on your screen, reducing visibility.
Like Halo, you and your squadmates are protected by personal shields that will deflect a certain amount of incoming damage. This lets you step into the line of fire for a while before forcing you to duck back into cover to wait for a recharge. Should you take any real damage, however, there are plentiful bacta stations scattered along your campaign routes that you and your squadmates can use to restore health. Their placement can feel contrived at times, such as on a separatist droid ship (Why, exactly, would droids need a substance designed to restore health to organic life-forms?), but the game even manages to poke fun at itself there. From time to time, your teammates will remark, "Whoever left that bacta station there deserves a medal!" In the event that one of your squadmates goes down, he or she's never dead...just incapacitated. You or one of your other squad members can revive your fallen comrade with a device that acts much like a defibrillator, shocking the person up off the ground and returning the person's health status to half. What's great is that the game doesn't end if your own character gets incapacitated. Your screen goes blurry and red--and you can't move--but as long as at least one of your teammates is still up, you can command him to revive you.
Blood spatter on the visor is a great effect in close combat.
Despite that creative aspect to the game, Republic Commando's most important design conceit is your ability to command your squad. There's a single command button to keep things simple, and it can be used on contextually sensitive areas on the battlefield. These include rock piles or debris that can be used as protected sniping positions. Or you may direct a teammate to hack a computer console to open a door or shut off automated defenses. Turrets can be manned by you or your squadmates, and you can also have your team breach doors or blow holes in walls with explosives. You'll also command your teammates to make use of bacta stations or revive fallen comrades on the field. There are also other commands that let you both direct your squad to concentrate fire on a single enemy or form up. The squad command controls work great on either platform, with the PC version getting some commands mapped to function keys for easy access.
It's comforting to note that the inclusion of these squad commands doesn't mean your teammates act like idiots without you ordering them around. On the contrary, they are fairly intelligent about following you around, finding their own cover, and, most importantly, killing the enemy as you encounter him. Certainly, taking advantage of your squad commands and asking your teammates to man turrets or sniping positions makes every encounter easier. But in many cases, you can get by without doing so, at least on the medium difficultly level.
9.0/10

Goldeneye roque agent

2005-03-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

With Pierce Brosnan vacating the role of James Bond, Electronic Arts has been put into an interesting situation. How do you make a James Bond game when there's no James Bond? Well, a hero is only as good as his opposition is bad, so there's certainly room to tell a story from the other side of the tracks. That's what EA has done with GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, but an uninteresting story and lackluster gameplay, both online and off, leaves this latest adventure feeling rather flat.
This ain't your father's GoldenEye.
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent bears a similar name to Rare's Nintendo 64 first-person shooter, GoldenEye 007, which was a first-person shooter take on the Bond movie, GoldenEye. GoldenEye 007 is remembered as a classic, as one of the best early games for the platform. Yet this new game has absolutely nothing to do with that game, apart from belonging to the same genre, and it only has passing references to the film (namely the inclusion of the character Xenia Onatopp). By resurrecting the name, but not referencing much of the GoldenEye material, the whole game feels like a cheap attempt to cash in on the nostalgic feelings that many have for the Nintendo 64 hit. It's perhaps the most "evil" thing about GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.
GoldenEye's single-player campaign spans across eight missions, putting you in the role of a former secret agent that has been booted out of her Majesty's secret service for being too ruthless for the job. This sends you into the waiting arms of Auric Goldfinger, who takes you in and fixes an eye injury you received while fighting Dr. No by giving you--wait for it--a golden eye! The story then pits Goldfinger against Dr. No. However, the cutscenes that feed you plot points don't really keep you in the loop very well, and the menagerie of returning Bond villains make the whole "what if?" scenario feel like second-rate fan fiction.
Your eye implant has some helpful powers that become available as you progress through the campaign, and this is GoldenEye's only gameplay feature that makes it conceptually different from other recent shooters. You start out with the ability to see through walls, and then you quickly get the abilities to hack machines (specifically, to hit switches or to prevent guns from firing) from a distance, create a shield that blocks all damage, and unleash a telekinetic attack against enemies. All of these draw from an eye energy counter, which slowly rebuilds after use. The bullet shield is really the only truly useful tool in the set, though, as it always comes in handy. The X-ray vision and hacking are effective in a few specific spots, and the toss attack takes way too much energy to be useful in a crowd.
Playing as a bad guy is meant to be the main focus of GoldenEye's gameplay, but the extent of your evil deeds is pretty much limited to grabbing stunned guards, using them as human shields, and then tossing those same enemies into other guards. The storyline has you performing some objectives that aren't really something a good guy would be doing, but the fact that the game pretty much plays out as Goldfinger versus Dr. No in a "who is the evilest of them all" competition keeps the game from feeling any different than your average Bond game. If the developers truly wanted you to be evil, you'd be kicking puppies and taking actual hostages, not merely defending yourself from other evildoers.
Being bad has never felt so...uninteresting.
GoldenEye plays sort of like a low-rent version of Halo 2, and like that game, it contains both dual-wielding and a health meter that recharges to 100 percent if you stay out of the line of fire for a few seconds. Given the game's abundance of cover and the artificial intelligence's lack of drive when it comes to flushing you out, the meter recharge makes the game a simple matter of having enough patience to pop out, shoot a few guys in the face, then duck behind cover again to let your health and shield recharge. Enemies will slowly close in over time, but this just opens them up to a head shot, which is an instant kill when you do it right, and doing it right is awfully easy, especially on the standard enemies.
The game's levels are poorly paced. Eight levels might not seem like a high number, but most of them are long to the point of being tedious. The rooftops of Hong Kong seem to go on forever. Escaping the underwater facility, known as the Octopus, also takes a lot longer than it should. Part of this is because the game's environments are pretty bland, but most of the blame falls squarely on the lack of variety. You'll only encounter a few different types of foes, and almost all of the game's enemies are just soldiers wearing varying degrees of body armor. You'll occasionally bump into a bad guy that actually has a name that appears when you target him. While this would have been a cool way to give the enemies personality or to include some tougher foes, these commanders just have shields that make them take more shots before keeling over. Better AI would have made the game's combat much more interesting. At least there's a pretty good variety of weapons to work with. 6.3/10

Project snowblind

2005-03-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

Project: Snowblind started its life as a Deus Ex spin-off, with the purpose of capitalizing on that universe's rich fiction and distinct style by pairing it with a more visceral gameplay experience. Despite the fact that Project: Snowblind bears no official Deus Ex ties now, the game brandishes an almost identical near-future cyber-thriller feel, right down to the eerie blue circuit-board highlights on the hero's skin. Crystal Dynamics doesn't reinvent the first-person shooter with Snowblind, but that doesn't seem to be its aim anyway. Rather, it delivers a solid, fast-paced experience that provides a nice balance between the fresh and the familiar.
Pagodas and robots: two great tastes.
Project: Snowblind borrows liberally from highly recognizable sources, an ethos which might as well be written in the design documents for most modern first-person shooters. As mentioned before, the game's look owes a lot to Deus Ex, though because the action's set in a war-torn near-futuristic Hong Kong, there's a bit more overt Asian influence, both ancient and modern. Still, the philosophy of contrasting the old and the new is hard at work here, creating a look that's a bit more steely and streamlined than what typified Blade Runner. Expect to see a lot of near-futuristic military hardware couched in dilapidated industrial complexes, blown-out urban centers, and--in one of the game's more visually stunning pieces--in a massive domed opera house that's been hastily converted in to a POW camp.
The game's unwavering devotion to this specific aesthetic goes far in establishing Snowblind's overall vibe, as does an almost fetish-level concentration of filtered lighting effects. There's a soft-glow effect at work for virtually the entire run of the game, which cleverly smoothes out the hard edges while creating a tangible atmosphere. There's a unique effect associated with every one of your special abilities, each of which can change the entire look of the game. The titular "snowblind" effect is especially well done, though considering the harrowing situations when it usually comes up, you'll likely be too freaked-out to really sit back and appreciate it.
By limiting the size of the levels, Snowblind is able to keep the visual quality high, often lending a claustrophobic feel to portions of the game. There are some repetitive pieces, and some of the enemy death animations start getting tiresome almost as soon as you see them, but this is still a really sharp-looking game...especially for the aging PlayStation 2 hardware. Surprisingly, the Xbox version carries no visual advantage over the PlayStation 2 version. In fact, we noticed a less-stable frame rate on the Xbox, though the Xbox hard drive made much shorter work of load times and game saves.
Project: Snowblind reminds you that PlayStation 2 games can look legitimately good.
Wrapped around all this glimmer is a by-the-numbers backstory, complete with a grimly stoic hero, unwelcome invasions, vaguely defined military coalitions, and everyone's favorite deus ex machina, a doomsday device that could go at any second. Some story gets crammed in to the margins during in-game cutscenes between levels, and these sequences are brimming with plenty of gravelly, hard-boiled dialogue. The game itself is peppered pretty freely with the idle conversations of bystanding characters, à la Half-Life. It's an old trick, but it's an effective one for fleshing out the world in a casual manner. Moreover, the quality of the voice acting helps sell it.
The build of the sound isn't quite as unique or specifically designed as Project: Snowblind's visuals, but it's still a solid foundation of gunfire and explosions, accented by a variety of electronic pips, chirps, and hisses produced by machinery both inside and outside of your cybernetically augmented head. Music comes in when it needs to, whether it's to build tension during a quiet stealth mission or to add some extra punch to a firefight. Again, there's a distinct Asiatic feel to the music, so you can almost anticipate the falling of cherry blossoms when the score kicks in at some points. 8.7/10