Review
43 Comments
6.5

Defiance review: great expectations

Defiance is a game worth putting up with. Like so many massively multiplayer titles before it, Defiance is riddled with flaws, structural and otherwise. Not all its blemishes are attributable to shoddy networking and packet loss either. A stability update might make the game crash less, but it won't fix the clunky dialogue and inscrutable progression mechanics. But — not to put too fine a point on it — Defiance is goddamned fun. It streamlines and refines the blast-and-loot ideals of Borderlands and Diablo into a slick package. Its scarce online features give its gameplay loop focus. It does away with the intrinsic slowness of online games, replacing it with speed; with rocket-propelled grenades and rocket-propelled ATVs. Defiance is often fun despite itself — when its...
Review
4 Comments
6.0

Alien Spidy review: spider in sheep's clothing

Alien Spidy has a personality disorder. Enigma Software Productions has built a world of colorful forests and crystalline caves, filling it with giant insects. Alien Spidy's cartoon-spider premise matches its funky aesthetic. It's cute. It's quirky. And it's a real bastard. Alien Spidy presents players with a deceptive package. Underneath the friendly exterior is a score chase in the form of a 2D physics-based platformer, with a difficulty level that often sits on the wrong side of punishing and slippery controls. It looks innocent, but it might bite you. Mechanically, Alien Spidy is simple. You run, jump and shoot webbing, which you use to swing from objects in the environment. There’s also a limited set of power-ups (super speed, a super jump, etc.) that come in handy in...
Review
67 Comments
9.0

Guacamelee review: back from hell

Guacamelee proves that you can have reverence for the past without being consumed by it. With a structure pulled from exploration-heavy 2D classics like Super Metroid and references to other games from Super Mario Bros. to Castle Crashers, Guacamelee could easily have come across as pandering. But it accomplishes more than cloning the successes of older games. With Guacamelee, developer Drinkbox Studios demonstrates something greater than a love for its influences. It understands how they work, and explores how to pick apart a well-known formula and twist those pieces into its own unique creation.You begin Guacamelee as a poor Mexican farmer named Juan, whose boring life is interrupted when the woman he loves is kidnapped by a murderous skeleton named Carlos Calaca. Juan is killed...
Review
21 Comments
5.0

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 review: tunnel vision

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 sits atop a precarious perch. City Interactive's first-person shooter takes sniping, which is often reserved for one-off missions inside of larger shooter campaigns, and expands it to fill a retail disc. It focuses on ordered, precision-based encounters, not the bullet-hail chaos that dominates the military shooter genre. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2's willingness to ignore the FPS formula creates some unique situations and, despite a sniper's solitary nature, often fosters a sense of teamwork by casting you in a support role for distant AI partners. But like a scope at full zoom, its focus on a solitary target obscures other possibilities.Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 puts you right into the action. You play as Captain Cole Anderson, a soldier with a bad habit of...
Review
872 Comments
6.5

SimCity review update 3

SimCity has largely overcome the crippling server instability that plagued the game (and players) at launch, but not without some tradeoffs. Maxis and EA have added multiple new servers in all geographical areas (and some new areas) as well as an open "test" server where players can explore revisions still in the "flirting with" stage. Combined with what appear to be strenuous recombinations of how the servers handle overload, SimCity is approaching the playability we experienced during our initial review process. Players with existing cities on a server can generally access that server rapidly and consistently on a first attempt, regardless of server load. Players looking to start new cities on popular servers, however, may have to wait. The status of various servers is also now...
Review
16 Comments
8.5

BattleBlock Theater review: blocked and loaded

BattleBlock Theater developer The Behemoth has demonstrated a knack for 2D retro throwbacks. As ridiculous as it is, BattleBlock Theater's story fits its playful aesthetic. The story begins when your nameless protagonist — and his 300 best friends — crashes upon a deadly island overrun by thuggish, theater-loving cats that force you to endure their nutty obstacle courses. An announcer presents every story beat with character "puppets" and an almost unhealthy level of enthusiasm, not to mention a whole lot of poop jokes. It's often funny, and sometimes grating, in how over the top and juvenile The Behemoth takes BattleBlock's humor, but it's consistent. The wacky theater premise is played up at every chance. Worlds are organized into “acts,” each with nine...
Review
32 Comments
5.0

Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel review: hollow point

Developed by Visceral Montreal, Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel follows in the shuffling footsteps of two previous games that saw what I can only describe as a critical shrug of the shoulders. This is supposed to be strategic. At first, it seemed like Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel might build on the cooperatively tuned conceits of the prior two games. No matter what, you're always working in a team, third-person shooting your way through hordes of enemies as you build up "aggro," which can be triggered for Overkill. Overkill grants brief invincibility, increased damage, and a magazine that never runs dry. The wrinkle: You need to draw attention from enemies to build up aggro, which puts you in more danger. This is supposed to be strategic. The idea goes something like this:...
Review
320 Comments
10.0

BioShock Infinite review: above and below

Even if you've tried to maintain a total media blackout on BioShock Infinite, it would have been difficult to remain ignorant of the extended, torturous development cycle it's been through, or the number of major creative personnel who have come and gone during that time. You'd almost think it was hard to follow up the original game, which has been lauded and held up as one of the few conscious, authorial pieces of mainstream art that the video game industry has produced this millennium. BioShock's mechanics and general game design were often more inspired than they were functional. The last third of the game and its climactic final boss battle have seen indifference and derision. Still, BioShock has held up as a game that capitalized on the strengths of the medium that had something...
Review
71 Comments
7.0

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon review: lost souls

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon comes down heavy on the former half of its predecessor's action-adventure blend. All the constituent elements of 2001's original Mansion are represented here: hidden items, Boos with pun-filled names tucked into cabinets and vases, a protagonist who's afraid of his own shadow. But more of Dark Moon's focus is placed upon vanquishing ghosts, rather than figuring out what needs to be done to make those ghosts vanquishable in the first place. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon's emphasis on action gears it toward multiplayer, while its compartmentalized mission structure make it ideal for a portable platform. As a result of that tailoring, a lot of what made Luigi's Mansion such an unsung charmer gets lost in the shuffle. There's not much in the way of new...
Review
105 Comments
7.5

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate review: a mighty roar

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is fueled by patience. Full of tedium, stress and hours of meticulous planning, it's only in the upswings between these difficult moments that you can feel something resembling victory. Built on the foundation of 2010's Monster Hunter Tri, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate inches toward approachability at its own slow pace. It adds a few great user-friendly features while remaining inscrutable to anyone unwilling to sink several hours of frustration and confusion into learning the game. But here's the surprising part: Underneath that aggravating exterior, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate's challenging fights and addictive crafting prove worth the effort. Eventually. At the start of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, you create a hunter with humble beginnings. You've just...
131 Comments
3.0

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct review: human suffering

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct begins perfectly. There's the surprise death, the heartless brutality and the familiar, pensive strains of Bear McCreary's theme. It's precisely in line with the opening of the hit TV show the game is based on and promises all the heart-wrenching drama and desperate action the series delivers. It is The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct's last brush with competence. Did I mention that these unscheduled stops are often the same maps, over and over? In this crass, cynical piece of exploitation, players take on the role of Daryl Dixon, one half of the backwoods-dwelling Dixon brothers. A prequel, Survival Instinct follows Daryl as he tries to reunite with his elder sibling Merle and escape the zombie apocalypse sweeping through the South. As Daryl...
Review
18 Comments
8.0

Anodyne review: pixel logic

Anodyne is a beautifully designed indie action-adventure that works just as well as commentary as it does as a game. Created by two-person developer Analgesic Productions, it presents a haunting narrative about disconnection and game addiction, using the language of genre classics mixed with a hefty dose of modern ennui. Anodyne mostly succeeds at its lofty goals, failing only where the simple control scheme can’t keep up with the game’s ambitious platforming segments.You play as Young (that’s it, just “Young"), a silent protagonist with white hair, Coke Bottle glasses and a trusty broom in place of a sword. You are given a quest by a mysterious sage figure to search “the land," collecting cards and defeating foes as you go, in order to prepare yourself to meet the mystical...
Review
49 Comments
8.0

Gears of War: Judgment review: apocalypse now

Gears of War: Judgment represents a set of challenges for Epic Studios. It's the first Gears of War game released after a series of high-profile departures from the studio. It's the first Gears of War game developed by the staff of People Can Fly, formerly of the Painkiller series and 2011's raunchy first person shooter Bulletstorm. But since its original announcement, Gears of War: Judgment has also seemed like a game in search of a reason to exist. Gears of War 3 put a fairly firm end to the human-Locust conflict that's driven the series, and also felt very much like the fullest possible realization of the series' potential. Other than the awkwardly extended console generation, another Gears game seemed ... well, let's say opportunistic. But People Can Fly found a hook for Gears of...
Review
36 Comments
7.5

Etrian Odyssey 4: Legends of the Titan review: our retired explorer

Etrian Odyssey 4: Legends of the Titan captures the essence of exploration: fear, doubt and finally victory. As the latest addition to a franchise known for its difficulty and complex, sprawling mazes, Legends of the Titan is nothing new. It employs some of the most basic elements of role-playing: design your party, grapple with fearsome beasts, find your way to glory. That path to fame isn't always easy. The game's difficulty leaps from bearable to punishing with no warning, and level grinding is often the only viable strategy to continue. But Legends of the Titan surpasses the expectations of a generic dungeon crawler with its absorbing map-making mechanics. It's a bumpy journey, but one that rewards patience and willpower. Legends of the Titan has no intention of telling a...
Review
21 Comments
8.5

MLB 13 The Show review: come together

MLB 13 The Show hooked me like previous entries in the franchise, but that doesn't capture what's special about it. Developer Sony San Diego's vision for the series has never felt more clear or cohesive. Every new or tweaked feature feels designed to complement the other pieces of the game. The result is that many of my longstanding gripes with the MLB The Show franchise — hitting difficulty and online play among them — have evaporated this year. MLB 13 offers accessibility and depth without sacrificing either. The Show has always featured a plethora of control schemes to accommodate players of all stripes, but the series put the onus on players to seek them out and figure out the right combination. While it's still easy to get lost in the game's menus, the new Beginner Mode...
Review
43 Comments
7.0

Lego City Undercover review: the wall

Lego City Undercover sets up protagonist Chase McCain as a haunted man. Returning from exile, the woman he loved is in witness protection, he sacrificed everything for a bust for which his superior stole the credit and his nemesis Rex Fury is back on the streets. That's to say nothing of the fact that his head is detachable, and made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Chase McCain is the best damn cop in Lego City, an open world with scale that can go toe-to-detachable-toe with the biggest in the genre. But being a chip off the open world block, Lego City Undercover has picked up some of its bad habits. Lego City Undercover is simple enough for a kid to excel at, but older players may still find themselves charmed Despite my grittily-embellished setup, Lego City Undercover is not...
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