I haven’t made “Biggest Surprises” and “Biggest Disappointments” posts yet, not sure if I will… So here’s what we have right now! Again, no overall GotY post, but I don’t think it’s really needed, I think all the posts as a whole display a large variety of awesome games we got this year. Sadly we had to skip over a bunch of great games, otherwise we would have had 5-15 winners per category (other than Wii and 360), and I just decided to highlight my personal favorites. I’m sure other people/everyone else have different winners, and that’s obviously fine too.

So here it is:

2011 DS winners
2011 3DS winners
2011 Wii winners
2011 Xbox 360 winners
2011 PS3 winners
2011 Downloadable winners
2011 Multiplatform winners

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To highlight the high variety of great downloadable games and genres that it represents, I’ll go with 5 winners (seriously, I had, like, twice the number of candidates than Multiplatform… so the extra winner is warranted )

Yar’s Revenge

This is an excellent Star Fox/Sin & Punishment style shooter. You get multiple weapons for different situations, fun boss battles, and very fun score-based gameplay. The basic goal is to survive to the end, but, to get high placement on the leaderboards, you have to get high combos and know when to kill enemies to extend your combos and which weapons to use at what time. It gets pretty fun and interesting. It kinda helps that it’s a sequel to Yars’ Revenge (note the difference in the title), which is actually my favorite Atari 2600 game, but it’s completely different gameplay-wise so that barely counts (though it DOES actually continue the story of the original and expand on that world’s mythos). Definitely the best Atari revival in the last couple years (compared to the terrible Haunted House and the passable Star Raiders).

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls

Here’s an interesting one. It’s a classic style dungeon-crawling first-person Computer/Western-RPG, as with older Wizardry games. You get multiple character classes and races with different skills and capabilities, quests to complete in multiple dungeons, simple turn-based battles, big dungeons to explore. It’s a challenging game, with slightly hard to figure out dungeons and really tough enemies, making grinding quite needed. It IS quite streamlined compared to the older Wizardry titles, but it does have that classic feel. It might not be for everyone, but it’s a solid classic Computer RPG.

Guardian Heroes HD

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Guardian Heroes is a great Beat ‘em Up on the Sega Saturn which has quite a cult following, but is fairly unknown outside of said following… partly due to the fact that it’s insanely expensive and rare on the Sega Saturn, costing over 100$ on Ebay and… well… everywhere else I’ve seen it (unless you get the japanese version). So the ability to get the game for less than a hundred dollars is already a great thing, but then there’s the fact that it’s a great game. The 360 version adds a new control option (with air dashes and a few other things), great HD graphics and removal of all lag from the Saturn version. The gameplay is fast and frantic, it features leveling, magic and a variety of moves for each character. Overall a very fun game.
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The Binding of Isaac

This is a weird one. Ignoring the “trollface” style of graphics which I just don’t enjoy at all, this is a surprising game. The game works similarly to a dungeon-crawler mixed with a twin-stick shooter (only 4 directions of fire though) mixed with original Zelda. The room placements are randomly generated, each actual room is randomly generated (with random rock/obstacle placements and random enemies) and the treasures you can find are also randomly generated, with each floor featuring a random boss. Isaac (and the few unlockable characters) can upgrade his stats with items he finds, in addition to changing his attacks (such as changing them from tears to lasers), and various other power-ups. You can use bombs to blow up walls and enemies (ALA Zelda), and various items can be found and used to varying effects. It’s a simple game with simple gameplay, but it IS challenging and fun. The randomness of it all does end up making each playthrough different (since the strategies change depending on which items you’ll pick up). In the end, The Binding of Isaac is a VERY replayable game (since playthroughs are fast, as you restart from the beginning when you die), and a fun one too.

Chantelise

Here’s one I really want to highlight. This is a japanese indie game, made by the same people who made the super-fun Recettear, and localized by the people who localized Recettear. This one features a third-person hack n’ slash gameplay style, but it uses sprites rather than 3D models. The controls start up a bit confusing, but quickly enough controlling the character and camera at the same time become second nature. You can use a variety of melee moves, jump and you can use magic by picking up and using gems (basic spells costs 1 colored gem, and you can mix gems for stronger spells and effects). There’s interesting boss battles, all with different strategies and weak points, and the plot isn’t bad at all either (helped by the excellent localization by Carpe Fulgur). There’s no actual leveling system, but you can get equipment and HP upgrades. This is a really fun game, though I don’t expect everyone to like it.

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So here we have: over 9000 Wii releases, 13 multiplatform releases, 4 3DS releases, 2 PS3 releases and 2 Xbox 360 releases… OH and 1 PC release (almost forgot that, silly me). Don’t forget this only includes games that will probably be good, or popular games. No shovelware here (other than Call of Duty), and no/very few downloadable games (since release dates rarely pop up early for these).

Read on and tell us what you’re getting!

WII RELEASES

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 11/20

Ah yes, a new Zelda, and holy shit does it look glorious. Nothing more to say here, buy it!

MULTIPLATFORM RELEASES

Goldeneye 007: Reloaded 11/01 (PS3, 360)

The Goldeneye remake on Wii was complete shit… by which I mean it was Call of Duty with the Goldeneye story with some messed up details and random stupid changes. This is looking to be the same thing… IN HD! Shit in HD is still shit though.

Sonic Generations 11/01 (PS3, 360, 3DS)

Ah Sonic, coming back with what might possibly be the second good Sonic game this generation! (note: Sonic 4 Episode 1 was the first) I’m not entirely sure what to think of this one yet. The demo that was set in the classic style of gameplay was really well done, though that can change if the level design starts sucking later on, and I’m not totally hyped up for the “new” gameplay style, but the demo at least convinced me that it’s at least not AS shitty as the terrible Sonic Colors. I’m picking it up, but I’m still very unsure if that’s a good idea or not. Good thing it’s so cheap on Steam.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North 11/01 (PC, PS3, 360)

Just saw it on some release lists, figured it might interest some people…. I have no idea what this game is like, and I don’t care.

Burgertime World Tour 11/02 on Xbox 360 (Also coming to PSN, PC and WiiWare later in the month, date currently unknown)

I rarely put downloadable games on here, but this one is worth it. How long has it been since a NEW Burgertime game anyways? And this actually looks really good from what I’ve seen. It keeps the classic gameplay philosophy but adds some new gameplay elements and level design gimmicks. Should be worth checking out.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 11/08 (Pc, PS3, 360)

Activision is once again releasing this game. This is the EIGHTH time they’ve release the same game this generation (ninth if you want to count “Call of Duty Classic” which is downloadable)… This is getting completely crazy guys (who am I kidding, it was already crazy at the third re-release)… Bah, who am I kidding, this will sell the inevitable undeserved millions and will make Actvision huge wads… of cash. Maybe soon people will realize they’re buying the same crappy game over and over… *looks at Madden*… Yeah, that’s not happening.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection 11/08 (Ps3, 360)

Strangely enough, this doesn’t contain MGS1… may I ask why? Instead it’s Peace Walker (unless you’re in japan, in which case you’re getting MGS1 (on PSN, so not in HD) but not Peace Walker)… just a bit weird. Either way, this is an interesting pack for people who didn’t get the same collection (minus HD, minus Peace Walker, plus MGS1) on PS2 a few years back.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 11/11 (PC, PS3, 360)

One of the most hyped game this year. I’m personally not too interested (I’ll just rent it), but it doesn’t look terrible by any means. I’m gonna say this is one to watch out for, it’s probably gonna have hundreds of hours of gameplay if you want do to everything/if you don’t get bored of it before doing everything.

Rayman Origins 11/15 (PS3, X360, Wii, 3DS)

Seems to be really cool. Graphically it’s beautiful, but it also looks really fun to play. And a new Rayman game that’s actually about Rayman himself and not those fucking rabbits? CRAZY!

Need for Speed: The Run 11/15 (PC, PS3, X360, Wii, 3DS)

A seemingly standard Need for Speed game… with completely stupid and random “parkour” segments which are controlled by QTEs (at least in the original trailer I saw, the demo didn’t feature any of that)… not interested, the demo was very unimpressive.

Saints Row: The Third 11/15 (PC, PS3, 360)

Why hello there weird GTA clone. I actually haven’t played any of these, and I won’t start here, but at least I can say the devs of SR seem to take the game less seriously than the GTA series of late, so this is full of wacky weirdness, making it at least more imaginative than what GTA.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 11/15 (Ps3, 360)

A bit of a kick in the balls to release a much better version of the game (12 more characters, bunch of new stages, a couple new modes, spectator mode, complete rebalance, etc.) for 40$ only 8 months after the original which cost 60$, BUT at least this is looking really awesome. The new characters (other than Nemesis and Frank West) look really cool (my favorites so far being Firebrand and Mr top tier…. I mean Phoenix Wright), the Heroes and Heralds mode looks interesting and there’s tons of rebalancing done too.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations 11/15 (PC, PS3, 360)

It’s Assassin’s Creed. And again it’s milking Ezio for all he’s worth, instead of going to a new setting or something. Anyways, you already know if you want this or not. I personally don’t like this series with it’s 100% mindless “platforming” (hold a button and a direction and the game will do everything on its own!) and button-mashy combat with no real strategy/fun… But a lot of other people clearly do (or at least enjoy the plot enough to suffer through the gameplay), so if you do, check it out!

The King of Fighters XIII 11/22 (PC, PS3, 360)

Didn’t really enjoy KoFXII… Not sure what it was about it, I just couldn’t get into it (though KOF as never my fighting game series of choice). Not planning on trying this one.

PLAYSTATION 3 RELEASES

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception 11/01

The Uncharted games, despite having rather uninspired gameplay (standard cover-based TPS with nothing that sets it apart from any other game in the genre), remains interesting due to being actually really good action movies in the vein of Indiana Jones. I’m sure this will continue the tradition of “fairly boring gameplay, good story/cutscenes”. I’m gonna rent it for sure.

Tekken Hybrid 11/22

Not a big Tekken fan myself, but for people who are, this includes the Tekken 3D movie, Tekken Tag Tournament HD and Tekken Tag 2 Prologue, so it should be a nice package for fans.

3DS RELEASES

Cave Story 3D 11/08

The original Cave Story is a very fun Metroid-style platformer. This looks… pretty much identical from what I’ve seen, but with 3D graphics (that do look quite good from what I’ve seen). Probably not a bad buy, but I question if 40$ is a good price point for it since you can still get the original for free… maybe if there’s enough new content…

Super Mario 3D Land 11/13

This will kick ass. Nothing more to say.

Shinobi 11/15

Not really sure about this one yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll at least rent it. It’s been a while since the last side-scrolling Shinobi game (I’d say Saturn off the top of my head (Shinobi Legions) but I might be wrong), so this is interesting on that premise alone, and the gameplay looks okay from what I’ve seen.

Nano Assault 11/22

The third in the not-acclaimed-but-still-really-good Nanostray series by Shi’nen. This one takes on various gameplay styles. The ones I’ve seen were twin-stick shooter and a star fox-style “space” shooter, but I’m guessing there’s going to be regular side-scrolling shooter levels as well. Looks very solid.

PC RELEASES

Serious Sam 3: BFE 11/22

Another FPS this year that I’m interested in, partly because it takes on an “oldschool” style of gameplay in FPS, with some exploration for secrets but, most of all, badass fast-moving action and awesome weapons. Looks like this could be really good… hopefully.

XBOX 360 RELEASES

Otomedius Excellent 11/01

It was delayed again? Seriously? Come on guys, just release the damn thing… there’s already DLC available for it, so why is the game not out yet? *insert blurb about how it looks to be a kickass gradius game*

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary 11/15

It’s Halo.

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1. It’s a movie tie-in for a children’s (and for children at heart) film.
2. It’s a 10$ downloadable game that’s a movie-tie in, thus it’s low budget and most people will think it sucks due to that.
3. It’s a boxing game.

Real Steel is based on a movie that I haven’t seen and probably won’t see until/if I rent the DVD/Blu-Ray. When I saw this on the PSN store, I almost ignored it but saw that there was a demo so I gave it a chance anyways. The moment I saw the “Yuke’s” logo in the start-up, I was expecting a lame game, since they’re the guys who make the crappy UFC Undisputed games. And then, after playing, I bought the game…

So read on and see what the game is like!

Developer: Yuke’s
Publisher: Yuke’s
Date of Release: October 18th 2011
Platforms: XBLA, PSN (PSN version reviewed)

Genre: Boxing
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Gameplay

The gameplay is very reminiscent of the Fight Night series (and surprisingly/thankfully not much of the UFC series). The controls are very simplified though. Compared to Fight Night’s huge variety of punches you can do with modifier buttons and the right analog stick+various button pressses, here you have on jab button for each fist and one stronger punch button for each fist, with changes to the punches depending on the direction you press to do it. You can assign up to 4 special punches as well, each to one of the face buttons, which you can do by holding R1 and pressing that button). Some tech moves are unblockable (meaning you HAVE to avoid it) and others are destruction moves (cause major damage to body parts or outright destroys them), while others are just stronger punches. On the defensiveside you can sway with L2+the analog stick, which is useless as far as I’ve tried, you have dashes in any direction with L1 which are by far the best way to avoid punches, and you can block with R2 (pressing it at the exact moment an attack would hit you does a parry, which leaves the opponent open to attacks for a moment). It’s actually very easy to play, the controls aren’t too complicated to adapt to, especially if you’ve played Fight Night before hand.

As far as actual gameplay goes, well, it’s boxing, but with robots. It uses robot designs from the movie, but your own robot is completely new and customizable (more on that later). I don’t think I have to explain what boxing is… So to get to the specifics, each punch removes some of the robot’s “full health” and a larger chunk of health that will regenerate over-time (similar to red health in the MvC games). The lower the health, the more likely the robot is to get knocked down (it’s automatic knock down if you get it down to 0). If a robot is not getting hit, he’ll regenerate some of this “red health”. In addition to health, you have a “power charge” meter. Punching and dashing will take away some of that power and, if your meter runs dry, your robot will stagger for a few moments, leaving him open to attack, and will remain in a weakened state (less defense, slower and weaker punches) until the power meter refills (punching while in that state slows down the regeneration and you cannot dash either). This gives good strategy snice you can’t just mash the opponents to death.

Another way to beat your opponents is to do something you won’t usually see in boxing games: by ripping their head off. You see, each body part other than the legs here are prone to damage separate from the normal health bar. You see your robot’s damage in the UI. When a body part gets lower in damage it changes color. Orange means that a destruction attack, or even just a storng punch, can knock that part off. You can lose an arm or 2 (I think the match is an instant loss if you lose both arms, though that actually has yet to happen to me), or a solid blow to the head can knock it off as well (resulting in a KO). I’m actually not sure if you can just rip out the body section of a robot, though it does have its own HP as well. You have to be careful with those arms though since, if you lose one of them, tech attacks are completely disabled.

The weak link here is getting knocked down. To get up, you have to spin the left analog stick to fill up a meter then press a face button (each button has its own meter) to fill up that button’s meter (said meter goes down over-time, by the way). Fill up each button’s meter before the 10-count and you’ll get up… I REALLY hate this system. It’s nearly impossible to get back up if you get knocked down twice in a round (though the opponent’s robot can sometimes get up easily if you knock them down 3-4 times in the same round (there’s no 3 knock-down rule in effect)). Maybe I’m doing this wrong, but I really hate this system.

Oh, and a minor annoyance: there’s invisible walls so you can’t get too far away from your opponent. You can’t  go to, say, one end of the ring while the opponent is at the other.

Customization/Grinding

A VERY LARGE part of this game is grinding. You get money when fighting other robots (you get money either way, but obviously more when you win, and sometimes extra parts or repair kits when you win). After each battle, it’s highly suggested to repair your robot (costs about 2000$ per battle from what I’ve experienced, less if you really kick the crap out of your opponent, and you can repair some parts for free with repair kits(1 part per repair kit)), and, with the left-over money, you can save up to buy parts for your robot. Different heads, bodies, left and right arms, left and right fists, legs, core parts (generator, motherboard, fluids for the hydraulic systems) can all be equipped on your robot. Each part affects different stats (core HP, sub HP(HP for that particular part), defense, durability, mobility, punch speed, attack power, movement speed, power charge, power recovery, health recovery, weight, energy use, and a couple more). The stronger you make your robot, the better chance you stand in higher ranks/online.

The grinding part comes partly from having to make money to buy better parts, but also from the fact that enemies get much stronger than you really fast. To get better parts for your robot, you obviously need money, which goes up fairly slowly and goes down really fast when you buy stuff. So a lot of the time you’ll just be re-fighting old opponents for cash and experience. Ah yes, the experience. The “problem” here is that you get a certain TYPE of experience depending on your actions. Dodging properly (and sometimes pulling off fast combos) gets you speed experience. Hitting the opponent effectively gives you offense experience. Guarding/parrying gives you guard experience. Knocking an opponent down gives you performance experience. Destroying body parts or at least damaging them heavily gives you destruction experience. Getting enough experience of each type will give you levels of that particular type. Here’s the weird part though: that experience does NOT make you or your robot stronger directly. Instead, getting more experience gives you access to locked equipment in the shop (so, even if you can see equipment in the shop, you can’t buy it until you’re leveled up enough). Each part has its own level requirement, so you have to work hard on getting those points up (For example, one may ask you to have 12 offense, 14 speed, 13 guard, 10 destructive and 11 performance, and if you’re low on one, you can’t buy the part). From what I’ve seen, Guard and speed were the tougher ones to build up at first, butI figured that fighting the scrapbot will make it easier to grind those up (just block/evade for whole rounds). Offense is actually the one that builds up slower. Also, most equipment is completely locked until you reach certain points in the “campaign”.

So you’ll be spending a LOT of time getting those levels up and gaining enough money to buy parts for your robot. It’s really quite a big grind. Some people might hold it against the game. I personally don’t, but I would understand if you do.

“The Catch”

This is actually a fairly high-quality release for a 10$ game, so what’s the catch? Well, the store has 2 options: a standard store where you use cash won from battles, and another “DLC” store where you can buy parts with actual money (and, from what I’ve seen, without level requirements). Each part is 2$, and you can buy a whole robot for 10$ (basically getting all the parts in it for half price). You can also buy money and repair kits. THIS is the catch in the game. You CAN totally ignore it, that’s what I’m doing, but if you’re willing to waste your money, you can get some of the best parts, or extra in-game money, without even playing the game. That certainly makes the game much easier though, and much less grindy (a robot with a “power level” of 6000 will walk over anything for a while in the “campaign” without even having a chance to lose). I think this option is a bit stupid, but frankly it’s not affecting my enjoyment of the game, so I won’t hold it against the game.

Presentation

There’s one aspect of the presentation that really annoys me: there’s no commentator! Frankly, the game sounds a bit bland overall, and adding an announcer or 2 would definitely liven it up. Otherwise, it’s what you’d expect: the robot models look fine but nowhere near as good as the same robots in the movie obviously (at least from what I’ve seen in trailers). The sound is metal pounding on metal, nothing really out of the ordinary here. Despite this being a 10$ game, there aren’t any glaring graphical problems or obvious “we had to cut back on this” parts, it’s just a few months of development more shy of full disc release quality.

Overall

Real Steel was a huge surprise for me. I mean, how often do you find a very good and very cheap downloadable game BASED ON A KIDS MOVIE? I have no clue how this happened, but there it is, probably the only good movie licensed game on an HD console this generation (I’m not counting Ghostbusters since that’s more like a sequel to the movies than a movie-based game), and it’s a cheap 10$ DLC game. Congrats, Yuke’s, con-fucking-grats.

The game has fun boxing gameplay with simple controls (it may have less depth than Fight Night Round 4, but that doesn’t make it less fun), lots of customizing, it looks quite good considering it’s a 10$ game that actually takes very little space on the hard drive. The grinding may be a drawback to some people, but I frankly didn’t mind. The presentation lacks polish (no commentator, what?), but that’s understandable for a low-budget game. My only really big problem with the game is how you get up from getting knocked down (I counter that problem by not getting knocked down as much as I can, even sacrificing an arm if need be).

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, definitely check it out.

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I sort of reluctantly bought it when it came out, and… well, read on to see what I thought about it! (This should be quick)

Publisher: SQUARE ENIX Co., LTD.
Date of Release: August 30th 2011
Platforms: PS3 (PSN)

Genre: Action
Rated T for Teen

Presentation

The presentation takes a very simplistic approach, going more or less for a 3D version of the original game (while keeping the side-scrolling point of view). You character sports a rockin’ blond pompadour, everything that’s not human looks like blocks,you have the color-coded doors from the original… This admittedly doesn’t look really great, but it does great in regards to showing the player what’s going on, and that’s what really matters, regardless of the game. And it’s not horrible to look at, it does look nice just… decidedly average.

There’s not a whole lot of music in the game, just a couple tunes, nothing really great. Each enemy and gun has a sound effect, but it’s all very basic. It’s never annoying, but it’s never really memorable or terribly interesting. It’s just… there.

Gameplay

The gameplay here takes the basic idea from the arcade original, but it actually improves on the original by quite a bit. The controls are nearly identical to the first, with a shoot and a jump button, with pressing up taking care of just about everything else. The thing is that the controls here are super smooth, so you never have trouble moving around. The goal of every level is to get all the documents in the part of the building you’re in (marked with red doors) and get to the exit, where you use escalators and elevators (thus the title) to get to different floors.

Of course, enemies are here to try and stop you. You can shoot them, hide behing a door and smack them with the door by opening it strongly (you can only go in blue or red doors), shoot lights on the ceiling to have them fall on enemies, any explosions will kill them (even from rockets and bombs that they shoot) and finally there’s the elevators, that you can use to squish the enemies with (which I never manage to do).

One interesting element here is that most level sets will introduce new gameplay elements or enemies, with the difficulty increasing at every level. Some levels will introduce stronger soldiers, or sneaky enemies that place bombs, or robots, and place them in more and more difficult positions for every level. This makes the level design genuinely interesting.

And it’s tough too. In every level you can die as many times as you want, but you do have a time limit, and dying too much will lead to you not having enough time to complete the level. You have multiple grades for each level: bronze is when you complete it, silver is when you get a certain score (you get points for finishing levels quickly, for each kill, and there’s bonuses for stealth and pacifism… and of course you lose 5000 points for every death you got in the level), and gold is when you accomplish a certain objective in addition to getting the required score. Getting high in the leaderboards will be super tough.

Overall

I actually really like this. It feels like this is how Elevator Action should have played from the start. The smooth control and ever-increasing challenge make this a super fun experience. The leaderboard will be hard to conquer for even the most hardcore of the hardcore. Overall, really good stuff.
Oh and it includes the original if… you like that. And multiplayer, but I didn’t try that…. yeah.

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Just like Pac-Man before it, Galaga recently got an upgraded version (called Galaga Legions), one that added new and fun elements to the Galaga concept and brought it to the modern age in a fun but still classic package that anyone can love. And now comes the upgrade to the upgrade. Pac-Man Championship Edition was a great Pac-Man game with a nice twist on the old gameplay, but the DX edition did so much more and was so much more fun, so I couldn’t wait for the DX edition of Galaga Legions, since the normal Galaga Legions, while sort of fun, was missing a certain something.

So read on and see if DX gives Legions what it needed!

Developer: Namco Bandai Games
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Date of Release: August 2nd 2011 (PSN), July 13th 2011 (XBLA)
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: Twin-stick shooter
Rated E for everyone

Gameplay

At its basics, Galaga Legions DX is a twin-stick shooter. Move with the left analog stick, aim with the right analog stick. The only other control here is the R1 button, which changes the formation of your guns and the way you aim.

The basic goal of every level is simple: kill enemies as fast as possible to rack up a high score. Each “Area” is split in 5 “Levels”, each having its own amount of “Waves”. Almost every wave will eventually just leave the screen if you give it enough time, so really you can clear any area in the game by just surviving for a few minutes. But that’s no fun! You might as well be shooting stuff for those 5 minutes.

So here you have a few enemy types: classic Galaga enemies, blocks, Galaga Leaders, bombs and a variety of mid-bosses and bosses. To clear out each wave, you have to kill every enemy. There’s the classic “just shoot everything” way, but that’s time-consuming. The better way is to target the high-rank enemies. Galaga Leaders are stuck to a set of galagas, and destroying the leader will destroy the pack. Midbosses and bosses are interesting, as killing all the ones on-screen will destroy every normal enemy as well. Sometimes getting TO the bosses/midbosses isn’t clear-cut, but some waves have bombs coming in, which can either blow up vertically or horizontally, killing every enemy in the explosion (you’re immune to that though). Another option is to stay really close to enemies, since the closer to your guns the enemies are, the faster your guns will shoot (a standard classic shooter gameplay mechanic). Sometimes enemy formations are placed in such ways that you might want to shoot at multiple angles at the same time. By pressing R1, your guns will shoot at different angles (or reset back to shooting in the direction you’re aiming only), which can help clear out certain waves faster. Also, if you’re close to getting hit, the action will slow down (though the timer won’t), so you can get out of the way fairly easily. This is a great feature, since you’d probably die a lot otherwise.

When you’ve cleared out a level’s last wave, the time you have remaining goes to level 5, so, the faster you clear out each level, the more time you have to build up a high score in level 5. Level 5 is always pretty interesting. It always starts up with a black hole-like object, that enables you to capture Galaga to aid you, and adds 2 more guns to your ship. The galaga go behind you and will basically act as extra guns, though they can be destroyed by bullets or by touching enemies. If you set your guns to shoot at an angle, you can pretty much have bullets covering the screen (though the damage output on single targets is lowered a lot). Since you have more firepower, you can clear out more waves at a faster rate, racking up more points, up to a maximum of 99 waves (which I’m convinced isn’t possible, or maybe I just suck at the game, despite being placed number 50 in the rankings at the moment of this writing).

Presentation

This game looks great. It’s generally really easy to see what’s going on and to see everything on screen without any of it being obscured. There’s tons of stuff going on at all times, but it’s almost never overwhelming, other than in the final area where it SHOULD be a bit overwhelming, and even then a bit of practice will get you through. One thing I love here is that, like in Pac-Man CE DX, you can choose the visual style of the game, and there’s a nice amount of choices, including the obvious classic sprites. The backgrounds could be a bit more varied though, most levels just look the same.

The sound is nice too, the sound cues are pretty good at helping the player out when it comes to knowing what’s going on. There’s also a lot of music cues reminiscent of the classic game. No problem here either.

Overall

I love this game. The score-oriented gameplay gives it near infinite replay value especially if you want to reach the top of the leaderboards (the game has problems updating the leaderboards on-the-fly though, so you may have to reset to see how high you are in the rankings). The gameplay is incredibly fun and engaging, and makes sure to never bore you. The presentation is top-notch. And it’s a HUGE update to the first Galaga Legions, which frankly wasn’t that great. Pick it up!

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I’m not really well-versed ot the Warhammer 40000 universe. All I know is that it’s basically a standard fantasy world, but with spaceships! But I checked out Kill Team anyways (thanks Pat!).

So read on and see if someone who knows nothing of WH40K enjoyed a very quick look at said universe!

Developer: THQ Warrington
Publisher: THQ
Date of Release: August 2nd 2011 (PSN), June 29th 2011 (XBLA)
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: Twin-stick shooter
Rated T for Teen

What I liked

Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly good. It’s a linear mission-based Twin-stick shooter. Basically: Go to one area as told, kill stuff there, go to next area, kill stuff there, rinse and repeat. There’s always a voice telling you where to go next, and a radar that will point you to your next objective. You have a few basic actions: Moving, sprinting, using special skills (depending on the class), grenades, melee attacks and shooting (wherever you aim with the right analog stick).

Generally, the area you’re fighting in (a huge Kroozer, which is the only place you’ll be visiting) is full of enemies and things to blow up. There are various collectibles here. There are 10 emblems to find in each mission, and power-ups that can be found in certain boxes. The power ups range from double/triple/quad shots to invincibility, rapid fire, health regeneration, increased melee damage and power shields. Each power-up lasts a little while, even health (basically gives huge health regen). You get points for every kill and thing you destroy (more if you do kills in super-quick succession) which eventually leads to a leaderboard.

The gameplay is fun and intense and almost never lets up, even when you backtrack they’ll generally be nice enough to give you enemies to kill on the way. The boss battles are quite entertaining too, even though they rarely require much more than “shoot them a lot”.

Customization
You have multiple classes to choose from here. Each has different types of weapons, some have stronger melee or stronger ranged weapons. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock perks, which gives various bonuses like health and damage and power-ups lasting longer and such. And you also get weapons. Weapons unlock for any of the classes, no matter what class you’re currently playing, so you’ll get Force Swords for your Librarian even if you’re playing as a Sterngard Veteran. It seems to me like the weapons and perks unlock depending only on the number of kills, or points, but I may be wrong, it’s not terribly clear.

The customization and different classes enables to try various methods to go through missions, so it’s a nice addition, and each class works very differently as well.

What I didn’t like

Difficulty/time
The game itself isn’t terribly hard, since you have infinite continues and tons of checkpoints. What annoys me here is that they just put tons of enemies everywhere that you can’t possibly avoid to kill you, so you have to rely on luck a lot of the time to avoid dying. As you advance through the game projectiles hurt you more and more, and there’s really not much you can do against that other than hope to be able to move away (boosting your health may help as well, but not much). I’m guessing this problem is non-existent if you play in co-op, but I didn’t get to try that since the multiplayer is local-only.

Another thing that bothers me here is the time it takes to complete missions. If you’re well upgraded and good at the game you might take twenty ot thirty minutes for a mission (the missions took me longer on my first run)…. but that’s really long for a mission in a game with no story and no real cinematics (they put random cutscenes to show objectives and such, but nothing beyond that) and, well, it’s a score-based game. It’s nice for games like this to be playable in short bursts, but it’s not the case here.

What I didn’t particularly care for

Presentation
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING. The monsters you fight look cool, but otherwise… meh. Also, it’s really dark. That doesn’t cause too many problems, except when you’re fighting tyranids, because YOU CAN’T SEE THEM. That and the fact that there always seems to be fog/smoke where you fight them, or low-lighting… Having to rely on “where are the enemies hitting me from” to fight them is rather annoying. Sure, there’s the radar that shows where the enemies are, but get ready to get hit while looking at it anyways since you won’t be able to concentrate on dodging projectiles.

Overall

It’s a fun enough game, with a lot of characters and customization for what is a fairly basic twin-stick shooter. The presentation isn’t too impressive in any regards, and there’s no story, and I do have a few minor problems gameplay-wise, but it’s still a fun title. WH40K fans will enjoy seeing/fighting a few things, but it won’t convert anyone into WH40K fans. Oh, and I didn’t mention it but it does include a 2-player mode. Sadly for some, it doesn’t play online, so get a second controller and invite a friend over to blow up orc ass together.

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Well this coming out came to me as a surprise, and I enjoyed the little bit of the demo that I played. And the price seemed right, since it’s half the price it cost 2 years back when it came out in Japan.

This is my first forray in the Wizardry series, though I did try a few of the older ones after starting to play this. So I’ll go right away and say this: if you’re not amongst the hardcore of the hardcore, you may have trouble with this game/series. It’s fun, but it’s not exactly easy to play if you’re not accustomed to the retro.

So yeah, here’s my review!

Developer: Acquire
Publisher: Xseed Games
Date of Release: June 1st 2011 (gamefaqs says May 16th, but that’s false due to the PSN being down at that time)
Platforms: Playstation 3

Genre: RPG
Rated T for Teen

What is good about this game

Gameplay
The basic gameplay is great. It’s reminiscent of… every other Wizardry game before it, as far as I can tell. It’s a classic-style first-person dungeon crawler RPG.

You have a town which you can… visit through menus (no pointless exploring, yay!). The inn lets you recover your HP and MP (as well as having a record of what you did(in addition to a bestiary and item catalogue) and a warehouse). The item shop can appraise items (though… just get a Bishop to do this) and you can buy/sell stuff there too. The guild will be the first place you go to so that you can build your party (otherwise don’t expect to survive) and get quests. The temple is a place where you can convert Gold into Experience Points, and revive dead party members (but, be careful, 2 missed resurrection attempts means perma-death for your character). Finally there’s the Palace which, as far as I can tell, is useless beyond being a place with a few NPCs to talk to.

Making characters is fairly simple: Go to the guild, register a new adventurer and make them. If you’re slightly OCD, you’ll be trying to get a high amount of bonus points, which you can put in any stat. You see, one of the quirks here is that you have to have a certain set of stats to make the different classes. For example, you need a certain amount of strength to make Fighters and Samurai (with a mix of other stats in addition to strength for a Lord), Intelligence to make a Mage, Piety to make a Priest/Bishop, Agility and Luck for Thieves and… everything for a Ninja. You can get up to 40 bonus points for any character, and 47 bonus points for your main character. In addition to lass, you have to choose a race, each of which get different starting stats, which makes them more suited for different classes. So you can build your team how you want it, and set up a front and back row to place your characters (3 per row). Each race also has a stat cap for every stat. While stats and classes are important, the most important element to a character’s power is mostly the equipment, you can have terrible stats, but have a weapon that hits for 500 damage, which compensates.

The exploration is very fun. You move around in the dungeons in a grid, in first-person view. You can find chests, get hit by traps, find quest items, get into disorienting dark rooms, anti-magic zones that will make battles a bit tougher, as well as random teleports and panels that spin you around. It’s simple classic fare, with repetitive-looking levels, but the dungeon layouts that are different on every floor make it interesting.

Battle is fairly simple. It’s all random . You’re given a bunch of enemies in front of you, each seperated by monster type and placed in their own rows in battle. When you choose targets for your characters’ attacks and spells, rather than targetting specific enemies, you just target their row. Weapons have a range, so you may not be able to attack anything other than the front row, but as you advance you will find weapons that can hit a row or 2 back.

Difficulty
Combat can be really tough though, since, if you’re not powered up enough, going to the next floor of a dungeon will find you being completely out-classed by the new monsters. That’s basically where the difficulty comes in: if you don’t grind enough, you won’t get enough levels and equipment to survive the next floor. What I like is that the grinding isn’t excessive. It’s possible to grind endlessly, but it’s not terribly needed if you go at it properly. At first you may grind a bit more to get a shiny new katana, but that becomes less prominent as you advance. I found that fully exploring a floor before going to the next generally got me the equipment I needed to continue. I do have trouble from time-to-time (where I’m at my Bishop has to revive at least one member after every few battles), but it still feels to me like very balanced difficulty.

What is bad about the game

Quest order
This is one minor problem for me. You get a few sets of quests as you start the game, and, as you finish those, you unlock more. In one of the early sets of quests, you have to find an item in the sixth floor of Shiin Dungeon. In the following set, you have things to find in the third and fourth floors… But this becomes really annoying, because, buy the time you get to the sitxh floor and are strong enough to fight in it, you’ll have fully explored the third and fourth floor already… so revisiting them completely just to find what you need for your quests is… really annoying.

Oh, and speaking of quests, the ones that require drops from monsters is… excruciating. The drop rates are so low for some of those that you’ll basically be grinding just to get those, or trying to find areas where the required monsters spawn more often.

Leveling
The leveling can be rather annoying. Since there’s a level cap, the game designers felt like they should make it possible for you to actually lose stat points when you level. As far as I can tell, this is the first Wizardry game where this happens (one of the previous ones apparently had such a feature, but it was so rare most players would never encounter it), and it happens almost every few levels. It can make getting certain classes harder than it should be. I would have a ninja by now if it wasn’t for my character losing an INT point 2 levels back.

Overall

This is just a nice and fun retro-style dungeon crawling RPG. There’s nothing really bad about it. The difficulty is balanced, making characters is simple, there’s not too much grinding and it’s nice simple fun. There are low points, as I mentioned, but they don’t REALLY break the experience. It’s fun, it’s classic and it’s well worth playing, especially if you’ve been itching for a classic-style computer RPG (and you don’t have a DS to play Dark Spire/Etrian Odyssey).

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Well, another stealth release by Atari… sort of. I think it was announced for the 360 a few days before coming out, though I saw nothing about the Steam release before it came out. Star Raiders was a weird game back in the day, but very revolutionary, due to it being one of the first proper space battle simulators, and it had some strategy segments and such, with a good amount of control options. It came out on various 8-bit Atari computers, but more popularly (or at least more commonly known in recent times) on the Atari 2600. The Atari 2600 version is noteworthy due to the touchpad controller it required.

So I decided to check it out, since the last Atari reboot, Yar’s Revenge, was great. My expectations weren’t as good as Yar’s Revenge, partly since I never actually played Star Raiders originally, and partly because the gameplay I saw in trailers didn’t seem as interesting.

So read on and see if it’s any good! Not like there’s gonna be many reviews for this elsewhere (the only review I found as of the writing of this review is an unfair review by GamePro). There’s actually not too much to talk about here, so it’s gonna be fast.

Developer: Incinerator Games (Another one Atari? You got another company that hasn’t done anything and don’t even have a website to do your reboot? You guys are weird)
Publisher: Atari
Date of Release: May 11th 2011
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360 (coming to PS3 later) PC version reviewed

Genre: Space battle simulator-ish thing
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10 years old

What’s good about the game

Gameplay
The game plays in a third-person perspective. The controls are… very confusing, using a keyboard+mouse setup at least (didn’t try using a controller, though it’s probably the better option in this case). You use WAXD (yes, that’s X, no S) to strafe around the screen, you accelerate with the Space key and reverse your throttle with the S key. You have a few extra commands at your disposale, like doing slow barrel rolls with E and Q, changing targets with C, boosting with F, and changing your ship’s form with 1, 2 and 3 (there’s more, I just mentioned the main stuff). You aim your gun with your mouse pointer. The right mouse button shoots your heavy weapon, and the left mouse button shoots your main weapon.

I’ll mention this right away: When you start playing the game, the controls DON’T WORK. The tutorial level is nearly unplayable, and I almost gave up on the game before even finishing that level. After the tutorial level, however, the controls start working properly. They’re still a bit hard to handle, but it becomes easier to get used to once you complete that tutorial.

So how does the game play exactly? Well, you’re given a Galactic Map. Unlike the original Star Raiders, where enemies moved around on that map, here each mission is always the same, and the enemies won’t move around on the map at all from what I’ve seen, taking a much more streamlined approach to the gameplay progression. So you choose an available mission on the galactic map and are given a set of objectives (and secondary objectives that, as far as I can tell, are useless to do). Generally, those missions involve destroying enemy ships, may it be standard fighters, battlecruisers or giant star bases.

In battle, you have 3 forms for your ship. The Attack form moves fast, has homing missiles, can eventually shoot from a good distance, but aiming is slow (also, you can’t strafe at all in this form). The Assault form can strafe and has low forward/backwards movement speed, but different secondary weapons and your crosshair will move faster. The Turret form has next to no movement speed, may it be while strafing or going forwards/backwards, but it has by far the strongest main gun (though it only shoots at 1.5 kilometers in from of you), and one of its secondary weapons can jam cruiser and frigate guns, or prevent generators from getting back into the frigates/cruisers/basestars leaving them vulnerable. Also, the Turret form has the fastest aiming speed. From my experience, you can’t go through the game at all without using all the forms properly. The Assault form is the most useless, though there are a few segments where its better strafing mobility come into play.

The movements and overall gameplay are rather slow-paced, but they work in the simulator-ish style of play. Enemy ships are much swifter than you are (well, the standard fighters at least, the Frigates, Cruisers and Basestars barely move), so proper use of your ship’s different forms and weapons is required to beat them.

When you use boost, get hit (either by the environment or enemies) or use weapons, you lose some energy, and die if you lose it all. The ONLY levels where that actually matters is the ones with a time limit, because, otherwise, you have infinite lives. That’s annoying since there’s rarely any way to lose any mission (the only one I ever failed is the mission that has a star fox-like escape sequence).

As you destroy enemies and random asteroids, you get credits. You can use those credits to buy new weapons. Each form has only one standard gun type which can be upgrade, and 2 Heavy weapons types that can be upgraded. You can also buy Androids, which give certain stat boosts, like more damage or speed or shields. The system is incredibly simple and you’ll probably max your ship out well before the final mission, since the number of upgrades is very minimal.

What’s bad about the game

Repetitiveness
If there’s one big problem here, it’s that every mission is always essentially the same. It’s cool when you fight new enemy types the first few times, but afterwards… there’s not much to break the monotony. There are 2 missions where you can destroy space elevators, or some that you have to find certain objects… but those are few and relatively far between. The repetitive nature of the game, and the fact that it’s actually fairly short, also removes any kind of replay value.

Overall

I really couldn’t find that much to comment on. The presentation is average, nothing to really say about it other than “it’s adequate”. The story just… doesn’t get in the way. It’s not good, but it’s not really bad (and, even if it were, you can skip it, so whatever). So all I really have to talk about is the good gameplay and the repetitive nature of the game.

It’s surely a fun game, just a highly repetitive and short one. Fans of the originals will enjoy seeing some minor references to the original (though this game doesn’t exactly have the depth of the original)… And, if you’ve been wanting a space combat game for a while, since there just aren’t really much of those recently, this one is decent enough (just don’t expect Freespace 2 here).

Star Raiders does some interesting things, like the multiple forms for the ship, but it generally isn’t as good as it could have been. The gameplay is slow, the controls are really rough at first, and it lacks variety. It’s still quite fun, but…not as much as it could have been. Leaving it a

It doesn’t come very highly recommended by me, unlike Yar’s Revenge, but it might still be worth taking a look. It could have been polished a LOT more, so for now it’s just “there”. Nothing great, but not as bad as some reviewers will claim.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Fun gameplay once you get used to the controls
- 3 forms on the ship adds variety

Cons
- Controls not working in the tutorial is really weird
- Infinite lives
- Not much replay value
- Repetitive
- Less depth than the Atari computer/2600 original versions

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Well, we got a new game as a review copy… which isn’t a frequent occurrence. The target this time is Chime Super Deluxe, an artsy puzzle game by Zoe Mode. It doubled in price from its Steam release, but it’s now “Super Deluxe”. It’s a game I was always interested in, but not really enough to fork out the money for it. So I was really happy to get a review copy so I could try it out.

Read on and see what I thought of it!

Developer: Zoe Mode
Publisher: Zoe Mode
Date of Release: March 29th 2011
Platforms: Playstation 3 (PSN)

Genre: Musical puzzle game
Rated E for Everyone

What’s good about the game

Gameplay
The basic gameplay is great. Fun, addictive and really fast-paced.

Basically, you’re putting blocks on a grid. They’re basically blocks from Blockus. The goal is to use those blocks to makes squares and rectangles, called Quads. Once a quad is made, you can add blocks next to it to make it bigger, which gives it a higher point value, but you have a time limit to make it bigger. When the time limit is reached (basically the quad fills up and you can’t do anything once it’s filled up), the quad “covers” the board, changing those grid areas to different colors. Once the quad is converted to level coverage, you can start using that area to place blocks again.

You get points for each area you cover, and each quad you make, but you can get various bonuses, like extra points when you make a quad without leaving any extra blocks outside of it. So basically you’ll learn different ways to place the blocks as you play the game, making the game very addictive. Also, blocks that keep being unused will eventually change colors and drop off the board, sometimes freeing out space you might need, so there’s some strategy when it comes to how you place blocks and how you handle unused blocks. Basically the game will constantly keep you thinking about where to place the blocks.

The basic goal of every level is to fill up the board 100%. There are 2 modes of play. There’s a mode where you have a time limit (you can choose between 3, 6 and 9 minutes), and you basically have to get as far as you can within the time limit (fully covering a board gives you a minor time bonus in the next), and a mode where you don’t have a time limit, so the goal is basically going to the end the fastest (or just using it for practice).

One interesting gameplay element is the music. You choose a track to play on, and each track has its own grids. At first it’s a really cheap and fairly empty musical loop, but, as you add blocks and coverage on the level, the music becomes more intricate, notes are added, more layers of sound are added, and it eventually makes the music come alive as you progress through the level. It’s a really nice element that adds to the gameplay in a way I’ve never really seen in a game before.

Visuals
Really not much to say about them. You have your grid, your blocks, the outline of the grid, and nice colorful backgrounds. It’s incredibly simple, but very well made. You can easily see what parts of the grid are covered or not, which parts have blocks in them, and your cursor which changes shapes depending on the upcoming block. It looks nice and complements the gameplay perfectly.

What sucks about the game

Music
It’s just not really good. Electronica-ish dance-ish stuff that’s generally not really interesting to listen to as it only revolves around short musical loops. And it’s BORING. Basically listen to 5 seconds of the music, and add random notes through that, and that’s about it. The game is super fast-paced and fun, yet the music doesn’t reflect that at all. I’ll be playing and, at the same time as I get excited at the fast gameplay, I’ll have the music putting me to sleep. Considering the music is such a big part of the experience, you’d hope it would at least be more interesting to listen to. The only tune I really had fun with is “Play With You” by Sabrepulse, with its use of classic gaming 8-bit sounds. But, otherwise, even when you start filling out the boards, the music is never really any good. I think this is a wasted opportunity.

Lack of content/repetitive nature of the game
Only 10 tunes? That’s not really a lot. Especially considering the music isn’t terribly good. Otherwise, unless you’re into online multiplayer, there isn’t much in the game. Basically just repeating each level non-stop trying to get your score higher in the leaderboards. Now that’s not a bad thing really, but I know it can be grating to some people. Puzzle games are basically repetitive by nature, but I’m sure the lack of modes and content will make people not really like the repetition.

Overall

Chime Super Deluxe is a very nice game. Visually very good, nice fast-paced gameplay that keeps you thinking all the way through, and an interesting use of music to accentuate the gameplay. As a puzzle game, it’s really well made.

It IS brought down by the lack of content, the lack of good music, and I’m sure the repetitive nature of the game (and, well, the genre in general) will keep some people from being happy of their purchase. Also, it’s kind of hard to see what’s so “Super Deluxe” about it, but then I found out the original version on Steam had only 5 tunes… So they doubled the price when bringing this to PSN, but they doubled the content as well. But it’s still a really low amount of tunes, a few more, maybe trying to span a few more genres (or at least better music of this style), would be nice.

If you’re interested in puzzles games and bad eletronica-ish music, or if you want a great puzzle game and you can get over the bad music, this game is definitely for you.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Great addictive gameplay
- Nice enough challenge due to the leaderboards
- Simple but effective visuals

Cons
- Lame music
- It might get too repetivive
- Not a lot to do

(As mentioned before, we were given a review copy of this game … We strive for honest reviews, so the fact that we got a review copy does not affect what we think of a game, or what we write about a game… take this review as you will, but I assure you that this is my honest opinion)

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