As a standard racing game, Excite Truck would fail. It would simply be a showcase for the new Wii Remote controller and a nice game engine that looks half-decent but pales in comparison to the "other" off-road game on the horizon (MotorStorm). But Excite Truck is more than just controls, visuals and racing; it's a game that firmly has a grasp on the Excite series and shows us that win or lose, it's really about how many stars you can accumulate along the way. Read More.
One thing is becoming more and more apparent as of late; while the two Big Boys of gaming are fighting tooth and nail to wage a console war based on power and graphics, Nintendo has spent its time releasing consoles that are simply fun to play. The DS, while no power house, has the touch-screen, the dual-screen and the microphone going for it. Read More.
The question of purchasing expansions is a difficult one for most gamers. Since most expansions usually fall short of expectations, one can usually find them in the bargain bin half a year after their release. For real-time strategy games like Microsoft's Age of Empires series, the expansion formula usually involves slightly incrementing the game's time span by adding a single-player campaign or two, and increasing the replay value with a new civilization or new map types. Read More.
I remember Bubble Bobble. I remember I was terrible at the game, and I also distinctly remember being absolutely terrified of the ghost-thing that would appear as you ran out of time. But I had a lot of fun, even if I completed every level just so I wouldn't have to meet the hideous apparition. Read More.
As to be expected, many budget titles fall short of an enjoyable experience, something seemingly incomplete or lacking in polish. Legion Arena, however, is different in this respect. While there isn't a whole lot of game within it, what is there is fairly robust, and I found the hours whizzing by as I took on the enemies of my legion. Read More.
While it may look like a GTA clone and will inevitably get compared to Rockstar's revered series, if we get right down to it, Crackdown is in no way, shape or form a GTA-type game. This will both please, alienate and disappoint many depending on your expectations. Read More.
When EA Sports bought the exclusive rights to the NFL license, many gamers felt they had lost a home. While both the Madden and NFL 2K franchises were great for various reasons, they were also different enough to warrant separate purchases. A month into the 2005 football season, I needed my 2K fix and bad. Read More.
The so called next-gen is now the current-gen, and the PlayStation 3 strives to set itself apart from the pack. Eager gamers finally have the system and one of the launch exclusives is Genji: Days of the Blade. The game is a sequel to the original Genji: Dawn of the Samurai, which graced the PS2 with plenty of action and Japanese myth. Read More.
Like many other football fans, I love my stats. Sure when friends are over it's nice to take the action onto the actual playing field, but when I'm alone with most football games, I like to spend more time with the numbers. It might sound odd, but the numbers are generally the most compelling point of football to me and anyone who's seen a Monday Night game knows that if it wasn't for statistics, there sometimes wouldn't be a point to watching certain games: "Well football fans, it's well documented that Tom Brady has never lost a Monday night's game against the Colts following a Sunday night's sirloin steak diner, eaten at a restaurant beginning with a vowel preceded by a game of dominoes in which he won 5 out of 9 times facing an opponent who's age was divisible by 3 and who's mother's sister's maiden name began with a consonant. Read More.
After a seemingly endless wait, it's finally here, the long-awaited expansion to the most successful MMORPG to date. World of Warcraft has over eight million players around the globe, a number that was steadily increasing long before The Burning Crusade hit stores. Read More.
The gaming community has seen dozens upon dozens of games set in the WWII era, and traditionally they are set with the European background, as the Allies wage a land battle against the Axis. Very few games focus on the conflict in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and the United States. Read More.
SCEA has come out with several "non-numbered" SOCOM games as of late, with the Fireteam Bravo franchise on the PSP, and now Combined Assault on the PS2. That's not to say that they aren't full-fledged products, but is seems almost such that they exist to answer the need for SOCOM titles on other platforms, and provide a few new gameplay features not found in the core iterations of the game. Read More.
The Dawn of War series has always been a little different from other real-time strategy games. Based on the Warhammer 40K strategy board game, Dawn of War tries to shift the focus away from resource collection and management, and instead focuses the gameplay on your units and of land control. Read More.
Mercury and Mercury Meltdown for the PSP were both fairly innovative games that followed the vein of destination-based puzzle games like Marble Madness. Only this time, you were a ball of mercury, and that meant a whole new slew of challenges and new ways to look at problems. Read More.
When EA bought the exclusive rights to the NFL license, it spelled disaster for a few football game makers. While Sega seems to have taken heart in trumping EA in every other major videogame sports game, Midway has simply decided that a license shouldn't spell fun for everyone. Read More.
