One of the more surprising titles released last year was an update to a timeless classic.  Space Invaders Extreme gave the old game some new life with symphonic techno beats to go along with an abstract look in order to freshen the game up for a lively and hectic experience.  With the success it had, it’s no wonder Taito has come out with a sequel so quickly, but unless you’ve never played last year’s entry—this game falls short of really ..read more

In the middle of last year, Nerf guns became all the rage again for some reason or another.  Some laser tag outlets offered hours where they became Nerf gun battle locations, and everyone from little kids to even college students got involved with the foamy fun.  It wouldn’t be long before EA got involved with the fun with a game for the Wii by the name of Nerf N-Strike, and much to everyone’s surprise, the game was actually pretty solid, ..read more

Remember those rainy days where you’d stay home and play board games with your family?  … Yeah, neither do we.  But the fact of the matter is board games still hold some sentimental value, even though sales have dropped drastically over the years—mostly due to the fact that they cost at about $30 a pop.  EA Play is taking advantage of this situation by releasing a compilation of games that are actually updates to American favorites, and if you can ..read more

Left 4 Dead 2 revives the zombie apocalypse with a breath of fresh air, new excitement and plenty of nonstop action.  Last year’s multiplayer zombie killing bloodfest was plagued with dull level designs, lack of gameplay modes and an affinity for utilizing glitches to achieve victory in Versus mode.  Thankfully Valve has fixed all of those problems, to great effect, and made Left 4 Dead 2 one of the best multiplayer games of the year.

Unlike Left 4 Dead that saw ..read more

LittleBigPlanet did a great job of bringing the traditional side-scrolling platform to the high-def generation with a great community of level creators to add a lot of replay value to the package. That’s why the announcement of a PSP version of LittleBigPlanet earlier this year garnered a lot of interest, but has the final product lived up its predecessor’s excellence?

Coming from Sony Cambridge with some help from Media Molecule, LittleBigPlanet managed to fit onto the PSP fairly well ..read more

It’s about that time of year again. Publishers put their pistols away and pull out the big guns. Now is the time where the wallets stop emptying, and the latest edition of Call of Duty marks of the signaling of the season. Modern Warfare 2 is one of the biggest releases of the season (arguably THE biggest release), and for good reason. Its predecessor was a smash success when it released in 2007, selling millions of copies and still ranking ..read more

Getting into a groove is definitely a must for any good episodic series, especially when you’re being sold the whole season at once. Sam & Max’s first season didn’t really start getting good until the last two episodes, which seems to have to their second season, Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, starting off with a bang. While Sam & Max is quality throughout this season, it still lacks a good control scheme that fits the Xbox 360.

Beyond Time ..read more

Buzz tried to take over your TV last year, but this year he’s kicking it up a notch to take over the world with his latest quiz game on the PS3. Buzz! Quiz World takes the Buzz style of quiz show and adds more customization and control over the kind of game you want to play. Buzz! Quiz World improves greatly in a lot of areas but stumbles in a few others that seemed to be ..read more

C.O.P. The Recruit is a bit of an odd entity. While it doesn’t stand out as anything terrific, it doesn’t feel like much of a letdown in what it is trying to do. It’s a relatively expansive game for the DS, taking both New York City and Jersey and squeezing them into a playground for your 50+ missions. We can’t go this far in the review either without mentioning its similarities to GTA: Chinatown Wars, so much in fact that ..read more

Forza Motorsport set out to become Microsoft’s flagship racing franchise. Its first incarnation on the original Xbox showed that developer Turn 10 was very much up to the task. In 2007 a sequel was released for the Xbox 360 and that took what worked in the original and expanded upon it in just about every way. What Turn 10 has done for Forza 3 is very similar. Unlike the progress from Forza 1 to ..read more

With how clichéd stories in RPGs are these days, it’s a pleasure to see a game that does something unique with its gameplay to really set it apart from the pack. XSeed’s Half-Minute Hero breaks up its story and levels into 30 second chunks that fits the portable it’s on very well. The result is easily one of the best and most unique games we’ve seen on the PSP this year.

Half-Minute Hero has an interesting way that it handles an ..read more

With talks already circulating about the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto series possibly releasing sometime in 2010, Rockstar has given its highly popular Grand Theft Auto IV title its signature swan song in Liberty City.  The Ballad of Gay Tony as a standalone title is an enjoyable, adrenaline-filled adventure filled with colorful characters, intense missions and some of the most exciting moments that rival even those of the main game itself.  Coupled together with The Lost and Damned ..read more

With major platforming releases being rare these days, it’s nice to see companies like Insomniac Games and Nintendo continue with their own series to give fans of the genre something to look forward to from time to time. Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time completes the Future story arc that they started two years ago along with adding some new things to help change up the usual pace that Ratchet & Clank games tend to ..read more

Some teenagers use a school trip to see the sights or buy cool souvenirs, but a bancho uses it as a means to find new people to fight. Atlus is giving you a chance to see what it’s like to be a bancho on a school trip with Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble, which is our first taste of this Japanese series. There is some entertainment to be had with this beat-‘em-up RPG, which is undermined by its own price.

Kenka Bancho ..read more

Last year’s New Xbox Experience update was a fundamental shift for Microsoft’s console. It not only brought in a brand new user interface and a bevy of new features to go along with it, but it laid the groundwork for a more modular platform that could more easily be evolved and extended. That has become evident over the past year with features simply appearing in the dashboard without having to do anything.

Recently Microsoft has released a ..read more

Episodic gaming so far in the past few years has been confined to the world of adventure games, but Ukraine developer Boolat Games is taking a chance with their episodic puzzle platformer on PSN. Topatoi: The Great Tree Story tries to set up the first part of a three-part story while introducing you to the mechanics that make it an interesting game.

The Great Tree Story starts with Raph and his friends flying through the clouds with their dirigible ..read more

While thousands of fans are signing a petition forcing themselves from buying the latest sequel to Left 4 Dead, the rest of us will be jumping into the new levels come November 17.  Valve has never released a sequel to a popular franchise this quickly (less than a year!), leaving many to doubt if Left 4 Dead 2 is just a glorified expansion (hence the petition).  But after seeing much of what is being changed, enhanced and more importantly added ..read more

Nine years after the last South Park game we were “blessed” with, doublesix games has stepped up to take on the challenge of making the first quality game based on the popular animated series. We definitely weren’t expecting to see this Xbox Live Arcade game turn out to be a tower defense game, but South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play does a great job of pulling the right things from the show to make for a compelling ..read more