The game starts you off as an unnamed guest visiting Disneyland. You can pick your gender, your hairstyle, and your clothes before your adventure begins. Your first stop? Mickey Mouse! Much of the game can be spent interacting with walk-around characters, and you can talk to them (as long as you don’t mind stock replies), dance with them, give a high five, and even get an autograph or a hug. Mickey Mouse welcomes you to the park, gives you an autograph book and a camera, and sends you on your way. The game has a very passive mission system which has you seeking out characters for pictures, autographs and special items. If you like this sort of directed play, you can count on a satisfying campaign that will see you hitting all of Disneyland’s sights and attractions.

However, if you want to take a more self-guided approach, you can do that too. Though you get some cool items and spending money by doing the game’s little missions, if you want to take a break and go talk to Buzz Lightyear or take a spin on the “It’s a Small World” boat cruise, you can do that. The game gives players a great sense of freedom, which is really what the Disney experience is all about. And the best part? No lines!

But the biggest question in your mind is likely “What about the rides?” You can hardly replicate the feeling of Peter Pan’s Flight or Space Mountain in a game, and the genius of Disneyland Adventures is that it doesn’t try to. Instead of just watching an avatar tide a super-fun roller coaster, you instead transform into a character yourself and experience an interactive minigame based on the attraction. For example, if you want to hop on the Jungle Cruise, instead of being told the same old jokes by Skipper Dan you’ll have a water gun to squirt hippos and other creatures as they approach the boat. Space Mountain sees you putting on a high-tech space suit and blasting across an intergalactic highway complete with asteroids and hyperdrive jumpgates.

These minigames are extremely fun and give you the feeling you’re experiencing something new, which is a big deal to Disney aficionados who feel as though they’ve already done everything there is to do. Each minigame area has several chapters, complete with cute little cutscenes that will keep you coming back for more. If you do particularly well in a game, you can also collect Disney pins from each attraction, which is another nice little touch for Disney parks fans.

Another little touch that adds some authenticity to the experience is shopping for items. If you’ve ever been to a Disney park, you know that perusing the gift shop is part of the experience. And this experience is replicated rather interestingly here. Doing well on attractions and exploring the park will net you in-game currency, which you can then use at the gift shop to get memorabilia, autograph books, and more. Sure, you won’t get that sinking feeling that you get when your small trinkets end up costing a lot more than you thought, but I think we can all agree that this is a good thing.

As far as the motion controls go, Kinect: Disneyland Adventures definitely puts Kinect’s body tracking ability to good use. Moving around in the park is accomplished by holding your arm out like you are holding a marionette, and works flawlessly as you navigate the many pathways around Disneyland. Minigames generally involve simple gesture-based controls, and are never too difficult to figure out. The game also features an impressive set of vocal commands. Nearly every character interaction can be performed just by talking, and every single menu option can be spoken aloud. This makes interacting with your favorite characters and getting to the best attractions extremely easy, no matter where in the park you are.

Visuals in the game are also presented extremely well. The park is incredibly detailed, and visitors will recognize everything from the placement of the Emporium on Main Street to the Astro Orbiter floating high above Tomorrowland. Now, there are a few things missing from the game; the Indiana Jones ride, Captain EO, and Star Tours are all absent due to licensing issues. However, all the Disneyland staples are there, and are presented with loving detail. Characters also look great, with everyone from The Beast to the little green aliens from Toy Story looking their absolute best with plenty of intricate detail and superb animation quality.

I know that this holiday season many parents are going to get this game and tell children that it’s “just like being there!” Unfortunately, they are wrong, as there is nothing that can really duplicate the Disneyland experience. However, Kinect: Disneyland Adventures is a great virtual representation of the park, and works well as a companion experience. The game’s format is nice and loose, and the gameplay is simple but intuitive. For Disney-philes, this game is certainly a must-have, as it works extremely well and features plenty of “magical moments” that players young and old will appreciate.

Game Features:

Create Memories. Whether it’s your first time or hundredth time exploring Disneyland, relive your fondest memories or embark on a new adventures as you enjoy whimsical attractions and entertainment that has shaped the dreams of Disney fans, both young and old.

Discover Disneyland Park. Whether you want to go on an adventure in your favorite attraction or explore the entire Park, Kinect: Disneyland Adventures allows you to play at your own pace and customize your own Disneyland experiences right from your living room, whenever you want.

Explore the Attractions. Experience your favorite Disneyland attractions as immersive adventures – explore Neverland at Peter Pan’s side and take up your sword to fight Captain Hook, battle your way to the island in Pirates of the Caribbean, or partner with a friend to escape the Yetis in the Matterhorn.

Meet the Characters. Share magical moments with your favorite Disney characters – hug your favorite princess, high-five Mickey Mouse, collect autographs and accept quests.

Collect and Unlock. Collect Disney-themed items, rewards, and Xbox 360 Achievements as you make your way through the Park to discover new locations and game experiences, including themed parades and firework displays.

Here’s a litmus test for you: did you enjoy the first Modern Warfare and its oh-so-imaginatively named sequel, Modern Warfare 2? Still playing that multiplayer or, if not, have you moved on to the more recent Black Ops? If you answered yes, than good news: Modern Warfare 3 is right up your alley. You probably picked it up at midnight or will be buying it later today. On the other hand, if you’re the type who never understood the appeal of the post-WWII Call of Duty games, is Modern Warfare 3 the entry that will change your mind?

No. No it is not.

It’s not that Modern Warfare 3 is identical to its predecessors; though it certainly plays things on the safer side, it shakes up enough of the basics that players will have to find new class builds that fit their play-styles. but the core action is practically indistinguishable from that of Modern Warfare or Modern Warfare 2, retaining the fast-paced, instant-gratification multiplayer of its progenitors. Let’s step back for a moment, though, and jump to the single-player campaign, the part of every Call of Duty that many players probably don’t know exists.

Oh, but it’s there. I’m very aware of it, having barricaded myself in my room at the Activision review event for the just-shy-of-eight hours it took me to play through the campaign. I did so on Hardened (the difficulty right above normal), and came away with the following: Holy set pieces, Batman! While there isn’t really anything on the scale of Modern Warfare’s Ground Zero nuclear experience, or its sequel’s space station-destroying antics, Modern Warfare 3 follows the traditional formula of moving you along from enemy shooting gallery to set piece back to shooting gallery. So on and so forth straight up through the end of the game, when it suddenly springs quick time events on you for what I’m fairly certain was the first and only part of the game. It was jarring to see a button icon pop up in the center of the screen during what I was sure was a cinematic (I was so told by the fact that my character was moving and I was not pushing on the left stick). There’s nothing wrong with QTEs, but they either need to be apparent enough in the game design that players can reasonably expect them or entirely absent. The set pieces are impressive affairs, and even the enemy alleys have an increased sense of scale, perhaps due to the improved engine chugging away under the game’s hood. In particular, fighting in New York, down Wall Street, while sky-scrapers crumble with smoke both right above you and in the distance is a stunning experience. The stealth sections are somewhat more disappointing, as they’re heavily directed by your squadmates, which kills almost all of the tension they could have had. Stealth isn’t fun when you’re just being told when to move, where to go, and who to kill.

As has been a calling card of Call of Duty stretching back to the original PC game, players take the roles of multiple protagonists upon their journey, which takes them to all of the war-torn continents you’d expect. You’ll fight off a Russian invasion of the United States, visit Paris and Berlin, drop in on warlords in Sierra Leone, and struggle out into eastern Siberia. In doing so, you’ll wear many masks, but though you’ll be a member of the British SAS, a Russian FSO agent, and even a parent on vacation in London, the bulk of your time will be spent alternating between Delta Force operative Derek “Frost” Westbrook and Task Force 141 (disavowed) newcomer “Yuri.” Neither character is particularly developed, and the banter of the Delta Force squad does little to help it compete with the star power of the defunct-but-functioning Task Force 141, which has Soap, Price, and Nikolai to keep players entertained. Besides the personality present in Task Force 141 missions, there’s a deep-seated appeal to playing as an unsanctioned military force, men so driven to complete a task that they’ll do so with or without the approval of their government(s). That said, it also ties into the aspiration of latter day Call of Duty games to shock and unsettle players.

From the first Modern Warfare on, the series has always had at least one moment designed to create a powerful emotional impact in its campaign. In Modern Warfare, this was completely unexpected and played to great effect. Perhaps it was so effective, in part, because Modern Warfare wasn’t yet invested in its own characters’ narratives. While it laid the foundation for the later characterizations of Price and Soap as hardened, sarcastic commandos, it was in Modern Warfare 2 that they became almost legendary figures. This was perhaps best illustrated in an image of Soap standing atop a pile of rubble, firing a flare out of a hole in the roof of a prison as light streams down upon him and Price helps you, the player, to your feet. In the first game, Price and Soap were soldiers simply doing their jobs as effectively as they could. In Modern Warfare 2, their personal dogma seemed to override that. It might be at that point that the series became “over-the-top.” While Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t take its spectacle that far, it is a game that involves the destruction of landmarks, casual brutality toward captured and defenseless villains, and one heavily telegraphed moment clearly designed to evoke the sort of controversial response that “No Russian” did upon Modern Warfare 2′s release. Whether or not it succeeds is something we’ll know in time.

There’s a moment in the story at which it tries to tie everything together, drawing on the most memorable moments of both of its predecessors and linking them to Makarov, as though to better justify the characters’ intense, personal vendetta against him. It also plays as a way of saying, “Hey, remember those awesome controversial moments in our last two games? Here they are again!” I don’t know that it works that well, and it does a little to explain newcomer Yuri’s motivations. (He’s a Russian who wants Makarov dead, so he teams up with the disavowed TF141. There’s a bit more to it, but I won’t spoil that for you). The moment itself comes on the heels of a well-done, emotional sequence. The game has a few of those, times at which you’ll feel sorrow, sympathy, despair, or elation.

Anyway, enough about the campaign. It’s short and the story is a little overly “might makes right,” but it’s a war game. What do you expect? Everyone probably wants to get this game and hop into the improved multiplayer anyway. So, what’s new? Well, the maps, for one. There are sixteen of them, mostly inspired by locations in the campaign. They flow well and are quick to learn, but feel a little more compact than those in Modern Warfare 2. It’s good in that it forces players into direct conflict with one another very quickly, but ends capture-the-flag type matches far too soon.

The maps work very well, though, for the new Kill Confirmed mode, which is one of my favorite additions to the multiplayer. Kill Confirmed strongly encourages a buddy system. If you kill an enemy, a set of dog tags appears over the corpse. These must be collected for the kill to count toward your team’s score. If the enemy is smart enough to buddy up, however, they can collect their fallen teammate’s tags before you do, denying your team the kill. It’s an exciting and interesting game type, depending on more than just twitch reflexes.

The other main additions to multiplayer expand its versatility immensely. The addition of a Support package point-streak makes people like me, who can’t get more than a couple of kills before going down in a hail of gunfire, capable of assisting my team with some powerful abilities, such as an Osprey-guarded care package drop. The Specialist package, on the other hand, will likely be a favorite among the more skilled, since it provides perks in return for kills, increasing one’s potency over the course of the match. It’s balanced by the fact that dying wipes it all away, making it a high-risk, high-reward endeavor.

Further, progression is no longer a function of player level and completed challenges alone. Guns level individually through use, by which they unlock new patterns and, on the functional side, various attachments and proficiencies. These must be unlocked individually for each gun, which does create an issue wherein a player may feel compelled to continue using a weapon that he’s had for a while, since unlocking his favorite accoutrements for a new one would simply take too long. Also, since the secondaries level separately from the primary weapons, they, too, must be used frequently in combat. Your pistol will, undoubtedly, level slower than your assault rifle.

All of this is tracked on Call of Duty Elite, which is integrated directly into Modern Warfare 3 by way of a simple menu option. There are also mobile and web-based versions of the service, which allows you to study maps (even how those maps are affected by various game modes) and make changes to your custom classes that can be “pushed” to the console. It also institutes a full-on clan system. Worth noting: while one could easily hop from MW3 into Elite, the inverse was not yet possible. One had to exit to the dashboard and reload the game. Elite offers a lot in the way of information, and tons of player choice on how to view and interpret that information, but it will best serve those who are serious about their multiplayer experience, for whom a term like “K/D Ratio” means life or death.

If gaining experience and ranking up isn’t your main concern, Modern Warfare 3 also offers an expanded version of private match, with new gametypes to build on such as Infection, which begins with a team of soldiers taking on a “zombie” juggernaut (generally just armed with a riot shield) and usually culminates in a single survivor desperately fleeing from a horde of them. Between this and Gun Game, private match was some of the most fun I had with Modern Warfare 3′s multiplayer. The absolute best experience I had with another player, however, was Spec Ops mode.

I’m a sucker for cooperative play, and Spec Ops offers sixteen two-player missions that vaguely connect to the main campaign. They’re largely timed affairs, and at least one of them is imaginative enough to put you in the bad guys’ shoes for a few minutes. The best missions, though, either provide an asymmetrical experience, such as one player disarming IEDs in a Juggernaut suit while another snipes enemies and mans a Predator drone, or engage the players in free-form stealth. Spec Ops’ take on stealth is very fast-paced and engaging. It feels badass—it being incredibly satisfying to quickly pop an enemy in the head with a silenced pistol shot and impale his friend before he hits the ground. Completing missions garners experience, and one levels up separately in Spec Ops mode from the main multiplayer experience. While this has no functional effect on the missions themselves, it’s absolutely key to the Spec Ops Survival mode, wherein level-based unlocks are available for purchase using money one gains by defending themselves from wave after wave of enemies. The survival maps are appropriately compact, and seemed to be based on the multiplayer levels, soon filling with enemies. It was a fun diversion, but I found myself wishing that they’d used the time spent balancing out the survival maps to create more Spec Ops missions. Or maybe an entire Spec Ops campaign, full of asymmetrical moments organically chained together.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 largely feels like an iterative title. Its campaign has strayed from its roots as a believable war story to a personal tale of vendetta with a Michael Bay-esque cinematic flair. The core shooting action is very much the same, and feels satisfying in multiplayer, but oftentimes a bit anemic in campaign, when enemies seem to come in endless waves, serving as mere chum between you and your objective. The changes to Killstreaks feel like a tremendous positive, better balancing the game for team play, but the weapon leveling system seems a little gratuitous, with a lot of potential to completely lock out those who simply want to pop in and have some fun into the starting weapons. Spec Ops is brilliant, but leaves a gamer wanting more, and survival isn’t something I would play more than a handful of times. This isn’t to say that Modern Warfare 3 is at all a bad game—it’s an attractive and polished effort with tight controls, addictive multiplayer, and the sense that one is truly on a battlefield, rather than carrying on a miniature war behind the scenes. It is, in fact, an extremely high-quality, well polished, and all-around good game.

It’s just very much expected.

Game Features:

Prepare yourself for a cinematic thrill-ride as only Call of Duty can deliver. Engage enemy forces in New York, Paris, Berlin, and other attack sites across the globe. The world stands on the brink, and Makarov is intent on bringing civilization to its knees. In this darkest hour, are you willing to do what is necessary?

Modern Warfare 3 delivers a multiplayer experience that continues to raise the bar by focusing on fast-paced, gun-on-gun combat, along with innovative features that support and enhance a large variety of play-styles. Now, you can truly define your approach with a toolkit more expansive than any previous title.

Special Ops returns with a bevy of additions, including 16 new objective-based missions and the all-new Survival Mode. Team up online, locally, or play solo and face endless waves of attacking enemies throughout every multiplayer map. Purchase and customize your weapons, air support, equipment, and abilities to stand up against increasingly difficult forces and land a spot on the leaderboards.

The premise of the game doesn’t matter a whole lot, but here it is anyway: Rabbids have invaded your domestic living space, and they make crappy roommates. The majority of the game is played in augmented reality. Your play space appears on the screen, and the Rabbids spy on you, pop through the floor, and do any number of awful things to you. And, of course, you fight back by playing plenty of minigames.

Alive & Kicking still retains all of the goofy charm of the Rabbids’ Wii days, and you can expect plenty of over-the-top animations and ridiculous minigame premises. In fact, it almost feels like an entry from the WarioWare series with the insane variety in its offerings. In addition to the plethora of AR games, there are also games with tasks that range from deflating an inflatable horse to saving San Francisco from a giant Rabbid while in the shoes (or perhaps “wetsuit” is a better term) of a jet-pack-equipped scuba diver. The breadth and creativity of the various activities definitely gives this game some unique appeal, and even if you’ve never played a Rabbids game before, Alive & Kicking lets you jump right in with very little hassle.

Fortunately, the experience is bolstered by some great uses of the Kinect. One of the AR games tasks you with literally dancing behind the Rabbids’ backs. The more you move while their backs are turned, the more points you get. However, when the Rabbids turn around, you’d better be out of sight. If the Kinect even sees one of your feet, you’ll be found out and lose all those precious points you just earned.

Not every game uses the AR, and those that rely solely on gesture-based control work well also. Kinect owners have become rightly concerned about control in Kinect’s third-party library, but the folks at Ubisoft have done their homework and figured out how to use the Kinect Peripheral in all the right ways. Even while playing the game’s massive multiplayer offerings, control won’t falter. The only time I noticed a hiccup is when players left the game’s recommended play space (which is admittedly narrow). I didn’t get the chance to try out the 4-6 player modes, but I don’t quite see how that many people would fit into the tiny little play space the game affords you. Though you can leave the play space, the game’s accuracy level drops precipitously when you leave the recommended rectangle. However, I can’t really knock Alive & Kicking too much for this, as Kinect owners are already used to only being able to play with a maximum of one other person.

In addition to all the insane minigame content, Raving Rabbids has a bonus virtual pet mode where you can interact with (and abuse) your own little Rabbid. As you play through the game, you can earn in-game currency, unlocking toys, costumes, and other interactive items you can use with your Rabbid. Sure, this mode isn’t as deep as something like Kinectimals, but it is a nice add-on, and younger players will love playing with and interacting with a little Rabbid. This mode also supports two people, so if you want to take turns putting the Rabbid in wacky costumes or playing “kick the Rabbid,” you

Technically speaking, Alive & Kicking is a sound title. Visuals are nicely detailed, and the AR effects definitely have that “magical” feel. Watching Rabbids pop up outside your window or cut through the floor is an experience that can’t be found anywhere else, and Alive & Kicking pulls off its many AR tricks masterfully. Sound in the game is satisfactory, with enough inoffensive tunes and sound effects to show that some effort went into the game, but not enough to be overbearing. Alive & Kicking is intended to be a party game, and a pumped-up soundtrack would probably just get in the way of what will probably be some interesting conversations.

It’s easy to dismiss Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking as just another Kinect minigame compilation. However, even though Kinect owners may be tired of the minigame grind, Alive & Kicking feels fresh enough to warrant your attention. It may not be incredibly deep or meaningful, but it’s incredibly fun, and its plethora of AR content is a new take on Kinect-based minigames. This fact helps separate it from the glut of content that is already out there for the Kinect and even the Wii. If you get one Kinect game this holiday season, it should probably be Dance Central 2. But if you are shopping for another Kinect game that is fun at parties with adults or for small children, I would strongly consider Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking.

Game Features:

Rabbids Come to Life – Rabbids become real, emerge from the floor, and interact with players in unique experiences and augmented reality.

Rabbids Take Control – Swim, jump, dance, roll and slap freely, all in the hope to halt the Rabbids from invading. Square off with them in the craziest mini-games, in the most insane situations ever imagined!

Rabbids Redefine – The party game genre has been redefined with the ability to play with up to four players simultaneously; a first on the Kinect. Time to turn the living room upside down with friends and family with an abundance of customizable game types.

Join the Rabbids Community! – Capture and share online photos, accomplishments, and high scores with friends and family.

I was dead wrong.

Instead, it seems that Snowblind has a different audience in mind: those who have seen Peter Jackson’s films and said, “Remember that part where Aragron cuts the head off that scary dude with the bow and arrows? There should have been more stuff like that in the movies.”

You see, War in the North takes pride in the fact that it’s the first ever M-rated Lord of the Rings game. It allows players to kill orcs with more gratuitous violence than they’ve ever been allowed before. The thinking behind this was that war is dark and vile, and the M rating finally gives Snowblind the license to actually show that side of the War of the Ring. However, Mr. Tolkien was a veteran himself, seeing combat in World War I, and his stories specifically and intentionally focus on the glimmers of hope rather than the overwhelming darkness that surrounds them. In my opinion, War of the North’s fascination with violence is something of a disservice to the works it draws inspiration from.

Either way, you will spend your time in War in the North chopping orcs into several pieces and watching their black blood stain the landscape. There are three characters to select from here: Eraden, a Dúnedain Ranger; Farin, a Dwarven champion; and Andriel, an Elvin loremaster. You will choose one to play as, and the other two will be your companions, either controlled by A.I. or other players à la Left 4 Dead. Now, players are allowed a fair amount of customization with whichever character they choose—hair color and style, eye color, etc.—but this customization isn’t available from the get-go. Instead, you’ll have to seek out a mirror in the game, which will allow you to change your character’s appearance. That means you’ll spend a bit of time playing as the stock character models before you’re ever given the option to customize your look. This feels completely counterintuitive, and I see absolutely no reason this option isn’t available the second you pick a character from the start menu.

And this isn’t the only thing that feels counterintuitive. The menu system is completely awful. It does what it needs to, for the most part, but unlike pretty much every other RPG ever made, the menu has no consistent button layout. You’re asked to “confirm” any of your menu choices before they are applied; in some cases, you need to hit the X button (PS3) to confirm your choice, in others you’ll need to use the Start button, and in one specific case you’ll need to use the square button. Why there’s not one single button that you can consistently use to confirm your menu selections is completely beyond me. It seems almost like each sub-section of the menu was designed by a separate person who had no communication with the other members of the design team.

But War in the North is all about the combat, and at least the in-game controls are button-mashingly smooth. However, as you progress through the game, you’ll encounter enemies with more and more health, requiring longer and longer battles. You won’t get very deep into the game before you’re facing absurd amounts of enemies with ludicrous amounts of health. And this means combat gets extremely tedious. When it takes you two or three minutes to take down a single orc, and you see a group of six of them running toward you, it’s hard to see this as anything but an inconvenience. It feels like War in the North was designed as a completely solo endeavor, and in the later stages of development all the enemies had their stats beefed up to absurd levels in order to counter the fact that there would now be three players instead of one.

And to make this tedium worse is the fact that almost every adversary you’ll be asked to slice apart is a goblin, an orc, or a troll (Uruk-Hai show up in the later portions of the game.) Eventually, you’ll fight armored versions of these baddies, which is pretty much just a poor excuse to give the enemies even more health so the battles last even longer and become even more exhausting for the players. In a few places, you’ll see a few different enemy types. For example, in Mirkwood, you’ll be thankful to finally see a group of spiders instead of the same old orcs. But even the spiders come at you in such overwhelming numbers that you’ll grow tired of them very quickly.

It almost seems like the developers knew how repetitive the game was and began intentionally tormenting their players. There’s one cutscene in which a massive fell beast attacks, and you’re elated at the possibility of finally fighting something this incredibly awesome. But then you’re rescued before you ever have the chance. A similar thing happens a little later with a warg. You’ll be excited to fight a group of these vicious wargs after seeing one in a cutscene, only to be thrown into yet another orc camp instead.

War in the North had full use of the Lord of the Rings movie license, and thus the visual elements draw heavily from the films. Even the characters look just how they did in the films; Elrond is Hugo Weaving, Aragorn is Viggo Mortensen, and Arwyn is Liv Tyler (sort of.) However, this makes it incredibly awkward when the voice actors sound nothing like their film version counterparts. To make things worse, too often the dialogue is buried in digital reverb and echo effects to the point of sounding almost robotic. Oh yes, and the words aren’t synched with the characters’ lips very well, which can be additionally off-putting.

And though many of the landscapes look great—seeing the Barrow-Downs for the first time is incredible, as is descending into the orc-infested halls of Mount Gundabad—there are visual glitches everywhere, pretty much killing the experience. I played the PS3 version of the game and experienced several places where the animations got choppy to the point that it felt like I was playing a PC game on an incredibly underpowered system. The worst offenders happened during outdoors scenes when it was snowing; perhaps the detailed snow, when coupled with the large quantity of orcs and trolls, was a bit too much of a strain on the PS3′s processor.

Audio was a bit glitchy as well. There was one scene in particular where a sound of a chain on a pulley system got stuck in an infinite loop, increasing in volume until it drowned out everything else in the game. I had to restart the game in order to fix it (and give my poor ears a rest.) A similar thing happened with some warg howls later in the game; the audio got stuck on a loop and required a restart before the wargs would stop their obnoxious yowling.

War in the North had enormous amounts of potential with the Lord of the Rings license. The fact that it wasn’t set to correspond with any film release meant that the development team had a little more leeway to stretch their legs and make a product superior in to any generic movie tie-in. However, it feels like the developers grinned like giddy schoolchildren after acquiring the license, then just couldn’t think of anything at all to do with it. War in the North could have succeeded if it had a decent story, some interesting characters, a deep Diablo-esque loot system, epic boss battles, or even some decent enemy variety. It has not a single one of these things.

The game shares a launch month with two of the highest profile RPGs of this console generation (Skyrim and Skyward Sword), and is here only a month after The Lord of the Rings Online released a major expansion that took players to iconic Isengard. Considering the games it’s contending with right now, War in the North doesn’t even deserve to be on your radar.

Game Features:

• Create your own Fellowship ‐ Together, players and their friends will experience an epic, story‐based adventure through vast Middle‐earth to experience storylines and characters going beyond what has been seen in the feature films and previous games.
• Play as a team or perish! ‐ Social play is redefined through groundbreaking online, interdependent co‐op gameplay which enables three different gamers to play as a complementary group where individual skills enhance the success of each team member.
• Brutal Gameplay ‐ The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is the first M‐rated The Lord of the Rings game on the market, authentically derived from The Lord of the Rings lore and delivering on action RPG principles.
• Intricate Character Customization from RPG Powerhouse – Players choose from three playable races: Human, Elf, or Dwarf. Extensive customization allows for meaningful and rewarding RPG gameplay including established loot and reward systems. Snowblind’s history and credibility as an action/RPG gameplay studio makes them the perfect choice for creating an epic LOTR RPG.
• Original Social Storyline ‐ Players will experience an original storyline created especially for the social, collaborative three‐player experience established within J.R.R. Tolkien’s lore and approved by the J.R.R. Tolkien estate.
• Challenge Missions ‐ Special missions consist of defensive positioning and group raids for up to 3 players, built especially for co‐op challenges and not tied to the story.

Now, bear in mind that these games are relics from a past age, and this fact is going to be pretty obvious from the get-go. The first thing you’ll have to get used to is the lengthy cutscenes. Sometimes it’s hard to sit through entire half hour stretches where you don’t have to touch the controller once, but this is just how Metal Gear Solid has always told its stories. And if you actually pay attention, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here.

Also, MGS 2 and 3 have antiquated control schemes that may have felt alright in the PS2 era, but they’re a little hard to get used to now. This fact becomes especially obvious when playing the first-person VR missions in MGS2, then comparing that to Peace Walker’s more intuitive controls. In fact, Peace Walker actually feels like a modern game, with dual-stick movement/camera controls closer to those of current gen hits like Uncharted 3 and Gears of War 3 than the PS2 Metal Gear titles on this disc. Since the PS3 has two analog sticks instead of the PSP’s single stick, the PS3 version of Peace Walker has greatly benefited from the HD translation. I do have one issue with Peace Walker’s controls, though: aiming a weapon without the assistance of the auto-aim feature is just plain awkward.

Now, even though these games are remastered in high-definition and looking better than ever, the low polygon counts of the character models become even more apparent when the visuals are in HD. Low-res textures, as well, often show the age of these titles, and the low-quality water effects of MGS2 wouldn’t be tolerated in a modern game. Personally, I think Peace Walker suffers the worst for this fact, as its images weren’t originally intended for viewing on TVs. Even so, this is obviously a visual upgrade, and considering the age of these titles, they’re looking better than we would have dreamed possible when they originally came out.

Aside from the enhanced visual quality and Peace Walker’s upgraded control scheme, the only real addition to these titles is trophy/achievement support. Now, normally, HD remakes suffer from poorly implemented trophies, since the games were never designed with them in mind. Shadow of the Colossus, for example, was a great game, but aside from what you earn by bringing down each of the sixteen colossi, the trophies in the HD re-release didn’t feel all that meaningful. Metal Gear Solid, on the other hand, has always been a series filled with Easter eggs; the trophies almost feel like they were meant to be here. For example, MGS2 awards you the “Kissing Booth” trophy for kissing a poster while hiding inside a locker, and MGS3 awards you with the “Snake Eater” trophy for actually eating a snake. These particular examples are pretty simple to earn and encourage you to try out things you may not have thought of on your own. And some of the trophies even play off the adult humor that seems to always underlie the Metal Gear games. (There’s a trophy called “Snake Beater.” I’ll leave the interpretation of that title up to you.)

What about the audio? Well, Metal Gear Solid was never about super realistic sound effects. Don’t expect to find the meaty sounds of bullets hitting flesh you’d expect of a Call of Duty game; MGS takes a more stylized approach. But Metal Gear’s sounds are iconic. The exclamation sound of a guard discovering your whereabouts, the distinctive ring whenever Snake’s companions page him on his radio, and Snake’s echoing death cry are unmistakably Metal Gear. The music in the game is equally as iconic; at this point, you simply wouldn’t mistake the Metal Gear theme for anything else. And the voice acting is phenomenal. Mind you, these games come out of an era in which video game voiceovers were expected to sound fairly bad. David Hayter, though, is Snake, and his raspy voice portrays the character as a hardened, well-trained killing machine, yet one who also has some personality.

What you’re really paying for here, though, are the stories. These games have exceptional storylines filled with unexpected twists and turns, as well as anime-style over-the-top details. Revolver Ocelot having Liquid Snake’s arm grafted onto him, allowing Liquid to possess his body? Yup. That’s Metal Gear. Now, many have called the Metal Gear stories convoluted and hard to follow—some going as far as to say nonsensical—and I guess those are fair accusations. But that doesn’t mean these plotlines aren’t incredibly well-written, or that they won’t entertain you from start to finish.

The big question now: “What’s in the box?”

Well, for starters, the HD Collection comes with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. MGS 2 and 3 are the Substance and Subsistence editions, respectively, meaning each is bursting at the seams with extras. In fact, MGS2 alone comes with enough content to justify the $50 price tag. It includes the entire Sons of Liberty story, more than 350 alternate and VR missions, and Snake Tales, a non-canonical series of side stories for Solid Snake that attempt to make up for his diminutive role in the main story. MGS3 isn’t as beefy, but it includes the original two MSX Metal Gear titles: Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

Peace Walker is the skimpiest here, but it does include co-op missions and a deathmatch-style versus mode. However, considering this collection launched the same day as Modern Warfare 3, and just a week after Uncharted 3, it’s going to be pretty hard to enjoy Peace Walker’s multiplayer. It’s nice that it was included, but it’s a far cry from any of the other multiplayer offerings on the shelf right now.

The bottom line: If you’ve never played these classics, you owe it to yourself to run out and pick up a copy this instant. If you’ve played them before, this is a budget-priced return to some of the most influential video games ever made. Either way, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection is $50 you won’t regret spending.

Game Features:

The MGS franchise is one of the most important game series of all time with multi-million unit sales globally, and countless awards honoring the vision of Hideo Kojima, a true video game icon.

The first time these groundbreaking MGS titles are availablein full High-Definition with revamped graphics, menu systems, and much more.

Play as a new fan or a veteran of the Metal Gear Solid universe and experience some of the greatest gaming design, storytelling, and presentation of all-time.

Three full Metal Gear Solid games featuring endless hours of gameplay within the single-player campaigns.

Online multiplayer modes featured in MGS Peace Walker for even greater replay value to extend the experience further. Go online in multiplayer modes, as well as Co-Op mode.

Enjoy smooth, precise controls with right analog stick formatting and Force Feedback.

See the games like you never have before, with the frame rate boosted to 60 fps and graphics enhanced to 720p.

This is the theory on which Saints Row: The Third is predicated. Whereas previous entries told multiple, parallel-yet-distinct stories and then tied them together in an ending sequence, Saints Row: The Third tells one story with a large cast of important characters, intermingled and interspersed. In servicing this story, the game’s illusion of choice is severely diminished. There are usually fewer missions from which to choose at any given time than in past games, and many of them are very short offshoots of the main tale. The fact that the game offers more real choice than either of its forebears is just one of the game’s many paradoxes.

What do I mean by real choices? Saints Row: The Third gives the player either/or decisions at the ends of some of its grander missions. These choices don’t influence an arbitrary morality meter, each instead offering immediate, pragmatic benefits for having chosen it. When I play a “moral choice” RPG, I have trouble taking the renegade/closed fist/dark side route, and will immediately gravitate toward options that are clearly good or neutral. Saints Row: The Third gave me genuine pause, while I considered not only the gameplay benefit of any given choice, but also what that decision would mean to the Saints in the context of the story thus far. They’re well-planned choices that have a definite and understandable effect on your relationships with other characters in the world.

That said, there are only a handful of such decisions in the game and, while there are multiple endings, which of them a player gets hinges entirely on one choice made very close to the end of the game. In fact, after finishing the story, the game automatically saves prior to that choice and informs the player that it has done so specifically in case they want to see the alternate ending. It’s unfortunate that more wasn’t done to create distinct paths through the game based on one’s choices, or to create a truly dynamic mission infrastructure based on factors such as these key decisions and city control. That, however, would have run counter to the game’s tighter focus on its story.

Saints Row: The Third is primarily a tale of revenge, but one told in the Saints Row fashion: over-the-top and filled to the brim with violence and mayhem. There’s a new city—the city of Steelport—for the Third Street Saints to explore, and a new overarching enemy (referred to by the incredibly generic nom de plume of “The Syndicate”) to spur the Saints to conquer it. The Syndicate is composed of a stable of three gangs: the Morningstar, the Deckers, and the Luchadores. However, while the game is initially centered around this big baddie and the damage one does to it, the focus softens considerably in the second act as gang activity, as a whole, comes under fire from a government-supported occupying military force. Soon enough, you’re not entirely sure which villain you’re fighting and why, or even who is working with you or against you. Allegiances shift with little question from the protagonist as to the veracity of his newfound allies’ loyalty. It’s made all the more disappointing by the sharp writing, which has some incredible gems and does a lot to flesh out the key individuals in the Saints.

The story of the game doesn’t have to be superb, though, it only has to provide a framework for the bombastic action, and excuses for some of the most ridiculous set pieces in gaming history. There are multiple instances in which a player is free-falling at thirty-thousand feet after having vacated a jetliner, gunning down incredibly persistent enemies as they all plummet toward the earth in unison. The game opens with a bank heist that culminates in airlifting the vault via chopper, the player hanging from the lines that secure the vault to its conveyance while shooting down SWAT team members and other helicopters . All the while, the SWAT team demands that the Saints surrender, but not without signing their guns. It only escalates from there, though the fame of the Saints is downplayed more over the course of the game, their public image addressed in only a few missions and throwaway lines.

But, I’m sure you’re wondering how it plays. Well, it’s very similar to the last game in actual gameplay, though the controls have been remapped a bit and the aiming feels a little looser. That may actually be a result of the frame rate, though.

The trimmings of combat have been altered: gone are fighting styles, but heavy, barehanded melee attacks now provoke beatdown sequences. These are accompanied with pseudo-quick time events that increase the Respect—which is used to earn upgrades from an extensive upgrade tree, all of which have the additional cost of cash money—gained from the beatdown, but apparently not its damage. Further, these can’t be used against the major new enemy type: Brutes. They’re massive, thuggish men who take an obscene amount of punishment, shrug off bullets, and knock you around like a rag doll. Some are outfitted with Gatling guns or flamethrowers, the latter of which are probably the most frustrating enemies in the game, though the Brutes in general simply aren’t fun to combat. Since they soak up damage like sponges, only a few of the game’s varied weapons actually have a noticeable effect on them other than to bring their life bars down.

That selection of weapons is, by and large, the game’s bread and butter. While there are the standard pistols, assault rifles, and shotguns of any good shooter, the special weapons are where Saints Row: The Third truly goes for the absurd. Reaper drones, mind-control squid launchers, a baseball-bat-sized purple “marital aid,” and a sonic blaster are just what immediately come to mind. The last, in particular, if charged up, disintegrates enemies immediately in a burst of blood. When the military shows up partway through the game, they bring with them additional vehicles, including a number of VTOL aircraft and powerful tanks that players can hijack and joyride, all of which control tightly (unrealistically so, but that’s to the game’s benefit).

The side-missions, on the other hand, seem to have been pared back from previous entries. While there are some truly standout concepts in the main story arc (http://deckers.die and Murderbrawl XXXI are personal favorites), most of the other activities just task players with driving to a location and shooting some people. Sometimes the people come to you, instead. Also, when the game first gives the impression that it’s opening up, it takes the opportunity to introduce you to its entire retinue of side-missions, few of which are of any lasting value (though Mayhem missions return and Trail Blazing is a blast, as is Dr. Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax, a game show that involves shooting mascots and avoiding flames and electricity).

All of this is powered by a new engine that looks, for lack of a better term, glossy. It’s a good thing, in that the graphics have character and don’t appear overly staid, and the darker color palette of Steelport feels appropriate (though the crumpling effect on damaged vehicles is a little hit-or-miss.) But the engine sometimes seemed to be too much for the hardware to handle. On the Xbox 360, at least, the game would consistently chug when driving at high speeds, never to the point where it seriously affected gameplay, but it became apparent during less visually demanding sequences, when the game’s frame rate spiked, that aiming was definitely affected by a sort of visual lag.

Sound-wise, stuff blows up well and gunfire is satisfying; melee attacks have a meaty crunch to them, to the point where it can draw a wince when the protagonist delivers a particularly deadly soccer kick to a downed enemy’s head. The soundtrack is mostly composed of licensed music, all found on the radio except during specific mission sequences that just seem to call for a certain song. At those times, the developer’s choices generally adhere to the title’s absurdist nature. Joe Esposito’s “You’re The Best” while chainsawing through hordes of Mexican wrestlers at a pay-per-view event? Very Saints Row.

Lastly, there are the multiplayer options. No competitive play, here, unless leaderboards count. The Whored mode offers wave-based enemy slaying, but it feels pretty bare when compared to the tower defense-infused Horde mode in Gears of War 3. It’s good for a laugh or two, though. The crux of multiplayer in Saints Row: The Third, however, is its co-op campaign. Besides being jump-in/jump-out, and allowing players to bring their own characters along for the ride, it consists of the entire single-player campaign, played with a partner. Players aren’t forced to stick together, able to go wherever they wish in the open world, though they are given the option to tackle missions together when one player activates them. It’s a lot of fun to just run around with a buddy and wreak unchecked mayhem and destruction. Or, you know, play through the missions.

The big issue I have with Saints Row: The Third is that it doesn’t feel like its content, varied though it may be, has much of a purpose outside of the main campaign. The open world really seems to exist more as a way to prolong the experience by forcing a player to travel to the origin point for the next mission rather than simply having it begin outright. While it can be enjoyable to unwind by just cutting loose in the sandbox, the world isn’t densely packed enough with compelling, secondary content to draw the player’s attention while they’re traversing the city from point A to point B. Saints Row: The Third is still a lot of fun to play, and it absolutely takes its story-telling and presentation to the next level, but it feels like a step backward for the series with regard to justifying itself as a sandbox experience.

Game Features:

Return to the streets of Stilwater and discover how fame and fortune as the kings of the town has affected the Saints—for the better and for the worse.

Take the fight to Steelport, a struggling city of sin where you must battle it out with the dangerous Syndicate gang.

Take on a Mexican wrestling gang in a satellite-targeted airstrike.

The first thing anyone cares about when a new version of a fighting game comes out is the roster, and UMvC3′s roster has gotten much bigger. If you include the two DLC characters, UMvC3′s roster has been inflated to 50 characters, a mere eight less than the whopping roster of MvC2. Capcom has also promised us more DLC down the line, so, with any luck, we could very well surpass MvC2′s roster count in due time.

The new characters are all a blast to play, and they all fit into some niche that wasn’t filled in the original MvC3 lineup. Phoenix Wright and Frank West are both characters that have subsystems that power them up, while Ghost Rider and Nemesis are characters that zone you with long range normals (Ghost Rider on the fast end and Nemesis on the slow end.) Nova uses red life to power up his attacks, Rocket Raccoon is incredibly small and controls space with traps, Firebrand’s moves are entirely aerial in nature, and Iron Fist spends most of his time on the ground without ever launching the opponent. Finally, the cast is rounded out with Strider and Vergil, who are low-life characters with low damage outputs that depend on powerful mobility options and resets to deal damage, and Dr. Strange and Hawkeye, who are both highly mobile characters with a variety of projectiles that can control space.

If you aren’t into any of these new characters, the returning roster has received numerous changes as well. Several characters have had totally new moves added to their repertoire. Magneto, for example, can now alter your momentum by magnetizing you, while Ryu has a new power-up super, the Hado Kakusei, which makes all of his supers and ki-related attacks gain new properties. Even if your favorite character didn’t gain a new move, his old moves probably gained new properties. Zero, for example, can now cancel just about anything he does into a charged Level 3 buster, though it only causes a soft knockdown now.

Granted, many characters were hit with the nerf bat as well. Phoenix can only perform one air fireball before landing, and they disappear if she’s hit, while the invincibility on Wolverine’s Berserker Slash has been removed. The list of changes is long and varied, and would take another entire article to explain. Suffice it to say the entire roster has become much more balanced. Even rarely used characters like Arthur and Modok are finally getting some high-level play.

The overall game system feels a bit better as well. Meter gains a bit slower, while the minimum damage scaling has been reduced making combos do less damage overall. The DHC trick and all other game-changing glitches have been removed, and X-Factor bonuses have been leveled across the board and lessened in strength overall. That being said, X-Factor has gotten a bit more flexible. It can now be used in the air, and the boost lasts for a variable amount of time depending on which character you play. Slow characters, like Nemesis, get incredibly long X-Factor boosts, allowing them the extra time they need to get in and land that one hit that might give them the match.

Online mode has gotten a much needed overhaul this time around. First and foremost, spectator mode has been added. So now when you are in a lobby, you can watch your friends fight rather than sit there watching their stat cards bump against each other. Granted, the game is still in its youth, so the smoothness of online play might change as more and more people crowd the servers. That said, I didn’t notice an appreciable drop in quality, even with four other people watching my match. You can turn spectating on and off say, if you need to leave the room for a while, or if you just don’t feel like watching a match, so pretty much everything is covered here.

Speaking of connection speed, the overall netcode has just gotten better. Button delay has been seriously reduced, and I find myself dropping combos due to lag far less often. Playing with people in my own area is very smooth, and even games against my buddies on the other side of America are playable. You now get put into tiny micro-lobbies before participating in a ranked or player match, which shows you your opponent’s connection quality and location before you fight them. This way you can avoid any poor matchups that might cause you a loss due to lag.

The promise of DLC is another big selling point for this game. The much advertised Heroes and Heralds mode was not available at the time of this writing, but is something to look forward to nonetheless. This “casual only” mode allows you to equip your team with trading cards which you find by participating in online battles. These cards, which feature Marvel and Capcom characters that weren’t added to the playable character roster, impart special abilities to your team such as strength or speed boosts, bursts, parrying, and projectile invincibility. Every week, gamers will choose which side to be on in an attempt to either save the world from Galactus or destroy it with the power cosmic.

Granted, the game isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The new levels strike me as a little bit lazy. They are mostly just slight tweaks or re-colors of levels that were already in the game. The new colors and costumes are actually pretty cool, but you still have to buy any costume that features a whole new character model via DLC. The new character themes are a treat to hear, but the announcer is starting to get annoying.

Oh, and there is one big gripe I have with the game that Capcom still refuses to address: There is no tutorial mode!

Capcom still expects newbies to jump into the game cold, and most likely get wailed on. But at least the mission mode has become slightly more useful. All the knowledge of vanilla MvC3 went into its creation, making many of the combos you have to perform more practical from a match perspective. Only the last few combos in a character’s mission list are flashy “combo video” type pro-combos. Pretty much everything before is just fundamentals. In addition, you can now scroll through the entire combo without going into another menu. This is a great addition that alleviates a lot of the frustration people had with the original mission mode.

In the end, there are three types of people who might want to get this game. The hardcore gamer has probably already pre-ordered it, so that’s a no-brainer. The newbie who didn’t get vanilla MvC3 gets to have all that and more for twenty bucks cheaper, so that’s also a no-brainer. Then there’s the casual gamer who already has a copy of vanilla MvC3. Make no mistake, you are buying the exact same game again, just with a lot more stuff added to it. If that’s worth 40 bucks to you, then pick it up.

Game Features:

The ultimate roster: Twelve new legends from Marvel and Capcom join the fray, bringing the total roster of characters up to 50.

More legends: Includes the first fighting game appearance of some of the most iconic and celebrated characters from the Marvel and Capcom universes, including Strider and Firebrand from the Capcom side and Ghost Rider and Hawkeye from the Marvel universe.

Newly Balanced: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 offers re-balanced gameplay that will provide accessible depth for both newcomers and pros alike.

Enhanced modes: After many fan requests, Spectator Mode is now available as part of an overall improved online experience, along with other new modes and enhancements.

The first thing you’ll notice about Ultimate Tenkaichi is that every character controls pretty much exactly the same. They can all fly, throw flurries of punches, throw energy blasts, and blast huge craters in planets with special moves. Some are slightly faster and some are slightly slower, and, of course, every character’s special attacks have different animations. In the end, though, there’s no real strategy to picking which character to play since there’s not a whole lot of difference between them.

The controls are incredibly barebones here. You can block, attack, throw projectiles, and charge your ki. Your health is at the top of the screen and a secondary spirit meter fills up below it, which is separate from your ki. (Your ki is used for mostly defensive maneuvers, while your spirit is used to execute your special moves.) That is about as intricate as the game gets. Everything else is pretty much a coin flip.

After every series of strikes, you can continue your combo into a rush or smash attack (essentially those quick teleporting punch flurry maneuvers you see in DBZ fights.) You do this by pressing a button in a cutscene that is suspiciously similar to a quick time event, but your opponent has the opportunity to counter you. The same holds true for any other attack in the game. Press left or right with correct timing to dodge projectile volleys, or counter with your own projectile volley and win by mashing a button quicker than your opponent. In fact, most of the game is spent in quick time event-style scenes rather than actual combo-based gameplay.

The gameplay in Ultimate Tenkaichi is extremely shallow, and I haven’t particularly had the urge to take the game online and prove that I am better at mashing buttons than the rest of the world. But halfway through my time with the game, I stopped looking at it as a fighting game, and instead started looking at it as a cinematic experience. It’s mostly quick time events with a side of cinematic banter, and the cinematic banter is actually the best part of the game. As you fire off special attacks, your characters will converse with each other, shouting out their attack names, grunting about how they hope their body can take it. A successfully landed super attack will blow huge holes in the earth, leaving permanent craters, shredding opponent’s clothing, and, in typical Dragon Ball Z fashion, leaving them clutching their arm.

The camera will swing between multiple angles as you go in for rush attacks. Your character will monologue as they fire their planet-destroying beams to finish off each villain. Every fight looks like a scene from the anime, and that’s actually why I think I enjoyed the game so much. In fact, I’d say the game looks even better, graphically, than the anime itself. Even though there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the game, it actually feels (through the use of quick time evens and rampant button mashing) like you are in a real DBZ fight. And since there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the anime either, the game certainly gets points for staying true to the source material. All in all, it feels as if the gameplay was developed to specifically target the nostalgia centers in our brains.

Considering the main draw of this game is nostalgia, the multiplayer is just a nice bonus. The single-player story modes are actually where most of the fun is, as they walk you through the entirety of the Dragon Ball Z story arcs, movies, and even parts of Dragon Ball GT. There are in-fight dialogues, anime cutscenes, and even boss battles in the story mode. And these boss battles are some of the most fun parts of the game. Here, you will have to fight characters that are many times the size of you—for example, Goku battles the giant ape Vegeta—and these fights also have special cutscenes and quick time events that mirror the actual events of the anime.

But if you’ve seen the DBZ story far too many times, Ultimate Tenkaichi gives you the chance to create your own. You basically get to create your own DBZ character, which then travels throughout the DBZ world, leveling up, learning new techniques, and saving the world. It actually feels more like an RPG than a fighting game, as you tweak your health, power, speed, and so on in a quest to become the strongest fighter out there.

Unfortunately, this mode has its flaws. Other than hairstyle and skin color, you don’t have a whole lot of options when it comes to creating your characters. You earn your clothing as you play, and every face looks like the same generic Akira Toriyama-drawn face. In fact, you can’t even make a female fighter. (I was dying to make my own version of Android 18.) It also takes forever to grind up your stats, and your special abilities are really just alternate versions of the special attacks other characters have. In the end, all this matters very little considering everyone pretty much fights the same, but it also reduces that personal touch of truly creating a character of your own. Once you successfully create a character, you can take him online and use him in vs. modes, but without a lot of grinding, your character will be less powerful than most of the stock characters.

In the end, the entire game can be described as fun but flawed. While the anime cutscenes are awesome, the story is more often told through extremely slow moving walls of text. While the characters all have their original voice actors (or very similar voice actors in the case of some of the villains), the music is very generic. While the battles have lots of satisfying quick time events and cutscenes, the load times in the game are absolutely criminal. In fact, I’d say the load times are the biggest flaw in the game by far. I have literally booted up the game to play a single match, and, out of sheer boredom, turned it off before the match loaded.

So that’s my final verdict on the game: it’s a fun cinematic experience with several flaws, but if you are a DBZ fan, you might as well check it out.

Game Features:

• Complete Character Creation & Customization – Appearance and attributes can be customized such as model body, face, hair, attire, fighting style and more! Additionally fighting style and special moves can be selected.
• Enhanced Battle Mechanics – “Impact Break” system allows large scale environment destruction. Improved mechanics allow for faster long-to-short range fights. There is also an added health recovery system and a vast collection of more cinematic camera angles.
• Deeper Brand Representation – Fight presentations more closely mirror the animation series. Battle against a new group of giant bosses as in the animation series. Experience 15 animated scenes with bosses up to 15x the size of playable characters! Also enjoy bonus level from movie and Dragon Ball GT series!

Need for Speed: The Run has a story. While it’s admittedly not the first racing game with a plot, nothing has been attempted like this before; it’s a full-on action movie with racing mixed in. It’s a Fast & Furious game without the cheesy plot devices and actors. Simply put, this is a cross country race that is both illegal and has a large sum of money awaiting the winner. As my colleague Josh Engen pointed out in his preview, this plotline is more Cannonball Run than anything else. However, the ill-fated Nathan Fillion Fox television show Drive might be an equally apt comparison, as The Run takes this simple formula and adds the Michael Bay sense of movie making—i.e. tons of explosions—to deliver a winning formula for action junkies

The opening immediately drives home the point that this is not your typical racing game. You play as Jack Rourke, someone who went left instead of right, or, as the opening scene shows, found himself mixed up with the wrong people. Fortunately, Jack has a friend who knows a way for him to make a load of cash. Just like any action movie involving a racer with something to run from, Jack takes the “job,” getting thrown headfirst into one of the most exciting racing experiences I have had in a long time.

One of the reasons this is so much fun is that it doesn’t feel like a racing game. You don’t select a race type and a car, followed by choosing automatic or manual and all that. Instead, you select your car and hop right into your cross country race from San Francisco to New York. A word of caution though: The car you select in the beginning will be the car you drive for some time. Choose carefully, because it will be a while before you can change your car without restarting the entire campaign. While this can be a bit annoying, the fact you are locked into the car for several race events comes with some benefits. It forces you to get good with the car you’re driving. If you decide to be a hotshot and race with a challenging car, you’ll have to either figure out how to best control this vehicle or restart entirely. Not to worry though; you will eventually unlock gas stations that allow you to change to a different car. These gas stations don’t appear very often though, so, again, be sure the car you choose is one you can handle.

Instead of giving you individual races to compete in to advance, The Run gives you specific points you must reach by the end of an event. Sure, it sounds like the same thing, but it is not. For example, most of the events require you to move up a specific amount of positions, make up time by passing through a set number of checkpoints in the time given, or take down or opponents in special you-against-them events. There are even rival races, where you can potentially take ownership of your opponent’s car. Oh, and did I mention the cops will be chasing you too?

What has been a large part of Need for Speed’s success is the notorious trouble you can cause as you progress through the game. Officers of the law will chase you through some of the most ludicrous road conditions imaginable—icy roads, desert storms, waterfalls; the list goes on. Black Box really plays off this longstanding staple of the series, with the aforementioned police officers taking center stage. However, the weight of your vehicle, as well as sound and design of the vehicles, is some of the best I have seen in a racing game of this caliber.

Through the course of the game, you’ll naturally progress and unlock special “abilities,” leveling up your drive with experience points earned in each event. These abilities allow you to become a better racer all the way around, while letting you make some glorious explosions.

A lot of the visual prowess is due to the fact that the Frostbite 2 engine is pumping out some of the best environments we’ve seen this generation. The framework on the vehicles look spectacular and the characters models also show off the graphical power behind this phenomenal first-person shooter engine. While there are only a few small hindrances in the character models (the occasional stiff, blocky movement), their faces are very impressive, modeled after their respective voice actors and actresses. This was so impressive, in fact, that my wife even noticed that Sam Harper had the face of Christina Hendricks, who provides the voice. While there was never anything visually unsatisfying in prior NFS titles (considering their respective time periods), it is impressive to see Black Box taking that extra step to showcase the power of the engine and get another step closer to reaching their ultimate vision for the franchise.

This also comes across in the audio department. Sure, we heard how authentic Gran Turismo and Forza could sound after all the painstaking hours they put into the vehicle sounds. However, it’s not just the engine sounds that impressed me in The Run; it was the simple crunching of sand under the tires, or the sound of the tires desperately trying to hold onto the road as you spun around a corner. Even the gruesome glass shattering sounds of a head-on collision were so satisfying that I “felt” that crash more than I have with any other racing game.

Need for Speed: The Run does so many things right. It’s an action game for people who like cars, or perhaps a racing game for people who like action. In fact, it’s both of these things at the same time. Too often racing games get repetitive and lose their luster about halfway through. The Run takes a simple formula and amps it up to appeal to junkies of both genres. Do yourself a favor; pick up The Run and unlock the demon inside you. What demon? The one that has a Need for Speed!

Game Features:

Get involved in an illicit, high-stakes race across the country, from San Francisco to New York.

No speed limits. No rules. No allies.

Battle hundreds of the world’s most notorious drivers on the country’s most dangerous roads.

Weave through dense urban centers, rocket down icy mountain passes, and navigate narrow canyons at breakneck speeds, all the while evading a relentless police force prepared—and willing—to use lethal force to take you down.

Right from the outset, something about the game feels a bit off. You “wake up” as Desmond on a weird island with some floating structures around, with Subject 16 hanging out and looking like a menace to society. So what exactly is going on? The game is short on real answers that make sense, even by Assassin’s Creed’s whacked-out technobabble standards. Apparently Desmond has too many Assassin memories in his head, so he’s stuck in the Animus’ “safe mode” (thanks Microsoft!) and his real-world brain is mush.

So, how do we fix this problem? Subject 16 has some guidance: finish Ezio’s memories so that he can reboot and become Desmond again. Yeah, the logic doesn’t make sense to me either. Anyway, once we pass through the magic time gate that peers into Ezio’s silver years, we see our favorite Italian stallion doing some travelling. Apparently, his final quest is taking him to Constantinople, where he is searching for Altaïr’s library. He needs it to gain wisdom, or something.

Realistically, the story is weakest element of this game, and it was where I found myself the most disappointed. Assassin’s Creed has always had a compelling narrative, but Revelations just seems lazy. You pop in and out of Desmond’s, Ezio’s, and Altaïr’s consciousness, and events happen with little to no explanation. The only part of the story that makes any sense is Ezio’s individual narrative. But overall, the story is the weakest in the Assassin’s Creed series to date.

In addition to the story, the gameplay is also a bit underwhelming. The game features the same basic formula. You take on missions, kill baddies, and take out bosses. The game also includes the town upgrade feature that was first introduced in Brotherhood. It’s kind of cool, but lacks weight without the threat of Borgia influence.

Like the Assassin’s Creed games before it, Revelations introduces a singular new gameplay element into the mix. Yet unlike the team-based missions of Brotherhood and the town features in Assassin’s Creed II, Revelations’ new element actually slows things down and is a real drag. This new gameplay element turns big battles into RTS-like affairs. You will have to place troops, team leaders, and obstacles on the battlefield, and then you can watch as the enemies fall. You are stuck the whole time as a spectator; you can’t intervene at all, as much as you’d like to.

While I would like to applaud the development team for doing something different, the experience is just a little too dissimilar to the rest of the Assassin’s Creed universe for me. Assassin’s Creed is all about stealthily killing people up close; just kicking back and watching while other troops go out and have all the fun is a bore. The whole experience lacks the depth that you would expect from an Assassin’s Creed title.

The single-player campaign is certainly the game’s bread and butter, and though it is fairly underwhelming, most players are picking this game up to continue the saga of our three heroes. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the game’s multiplayer mode, which has really come into its own. Brotherhood’s deception-based multiplayer mode wasn’t exactly that deep, but it was surprisingly addictive. In Revelations, the premise is nearly identical. You’ll need to use NPCs, your environment, and your own skills to take out targets using earned and inherent character skills.

The big difference this time around is that there is a greater sense of purpose. Team-oriented missions, greater varieties in match types, and all-new abilities make the multiplayer much better; it’s certainly worth your time. Even if you abstained from checking out the multiplayer last time, I would definitely give it a shot in Revelations.

However, that’s about where the good news ends. Visually, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a bit of a wreck. I don’t know what went wrong with this entry in the series, but the graphics have seriously been downgraded since last time. Character models feature an unfortunate amount of jagged lines, pop-in is a constant problem, and even the camera suffers from some serious malfunction. Though the world of Constantinople comes to life rather vividly, many of the structures have repetitious design. However, to be fair, Italy has also had its fair share of repetitious structures as well. To top it off, Revelations has an unfortunate amount of visual glitches. Floating weapons, characters that spontaneously freeze, and disappearing body parts are all sadly common in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

I really wanted to love this game. As a huge fan of the series, I was beyond hyped for the last entry featuring Ezio and the first to blend the three heroes’ stories together. However, the game lacks a coherent story, visual polish, and meaningful new gameplay elements. Though running around and stabbing people is still fun, Revelations has lost some of the spark that made its predecessors feel so amazing. I hope the series can get itself back on track soon, because I know the Assassin’s Creed series can do better than this. I’m just sad to see that Ezio’s last story was not his finest hour, because he deserved a better exit than this.

Game Features:

• Become Deadlier Than Ever – Wield the lethal skills of a wiser, more efficient and deadlier Ezio. Swiftly eliminate your adversaries by deploying a new arsenal of weapons and abilities, such as enhanced free-running and hook blade combat. Experience new levels of gameplay customization with bomb crafting, and use heightened Eagle Vision to overcome your enemies and the environment.

• Herald the Return of a Legend – Experience the return of Altaïr, the hero of the original Assassin’s Creed, as a playable character.

• Journey to Constantinople – Discover picturesque settings, from Masyaf, the mountain stronghold of the Assassins during the Third Crusade, to the vibrant and exotic Constantinople, the jewel of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century.