I loved the first Crackdown game.  Though I was a little late to the Xbox 360 adpotion party, I showed up in full force and bought Crackdown as my first real game for the console.  Given that I was so fresh to the console and this was really my only primary game for it, I easily spent 3 months in early 2007 playing through it.  I even went as far as to purchase the DLC for the game, though I never found it as challenging and fun as the core game itself.  Suffice it to say, I was a Crackdown whore though.

A couple years later, Real Time Worlds attempted another game called APB.  This was set in a similar environment to Crackdown, but was more focused on becoming the next big MMO, which of course we all know WoW will keep that crown until the end of time.  Since Real Time Worlds was putting all their focus into APB, they pawned Crackdown 2 onto a new studio that had grown out of RTW called Ruffian Games.  I was aprehensive of this at first, but was still loving the idea of a sequel to a game that I spent so many hours and even months on.  Now anyone who has done any amount of serious video gaming should know that you are setting yourself up for failure once you start getting too excited about a game.  It seems best if you just let them sneak up and slap you across the face, as this year’s release of Borderlands showed.  However, I let myself get excited into the hype of Crackdown 2.  Reading previews, watching trailers and developer diaries, I should have known that I was setting myself up for disappointment.

Dell had a deal a few days after release of the game, which they said was a pre-order discount but they were still running it well after the release date.  Taunted by the good deal on the game I placed an order and refreshed package tracking pages in rapt anticipation.  When it arrived I coveted the cover and swooned with dreams of Agent sugarplums in my head.  Putting in the game I found myself in the same world that I had left three years prior, though it looked much more worse for wear.  Controls and game play came easily, and contained the same niggles such as the struggle of getting a proper enemy targeted when in a horde of target-able objects.  I threw myself into the game, looking for new adventures.

For a while, I was honestly entertained.  I built up my skills, explored the world and new game concepts such as closing freak breaches, which proved to be one of my favorites.  The game was fun, but it was nothing new.  There were new objects to play with, like the magnetic grenades that allowed you to suspend objects in midair in springy fashion.  Even these wained my interest quickly and I hunted for more depth in the game.

I didn’t find it.

The entire weak storyline had been stripped from the game, leaving you only a series of tasks to be done in almost any order.  Though the appeal of the open world was there, and great expanses of sandbox to play in, there was so little direction in the game that I felt there was nothing to work towards except a hollow checklist of activities.  Freak breaches closed: check.  Control point controlled: check.  Collect every gun by bringing it back to a checkpoint after I was through a bunch of the game and forgot the mechanic: check.

I spent a good couple weeks in my copious free time hacking and slashing through this game.  I even got most of my skills up to the amazing cap level of 6 (ground pound and the wing suit were fun at this level).  I closed breaches, controlled points, and tried to destroy the infected zombie apocalypse, which seemed to be the only real goal of the game.  More often than not, I found myself frustrated trying to get these goals done.  Freak breaches could only be done at night, and I often found myself crawling across the map to close one, only to have dawn arrive and I can’t work on the objective, which caused me to wander off and forget about it until it was dark again, getting to it just in time for…dawn again.  Arrrgh!  There was one last control point that I needed to complete, but the bulk of the enemies were on the roof of the building above the point.  If I went too far away from the point while climbing the building then it would reset and I would have to start over.  The weapons were satisfying, explosions abound, and I never found myself at a loss to blow things up or mow them down.  Nothing really new to see here, but that was fine as well.  Graphics were also about the same.  With a texture filled cell shaded world it is a style I’ve come to like a lot, though it’s not really pushing the pixels that hard.

Orbs were a big part of the last game and this iteration was no different.  I found them easier to get in many areas and had mighty asparations to get them all this time.  I was also excited about online co-op, since the previous game didn’t perform well in this area at all.  Needless to say, I didn’t get all the orbs because my lack of enthusisiam preventing me from wanting to stay in the game long enough to do so.  To be honest, the orb hunting was one of the highlights of this game for me.  I easily spent hours doing nothing but this.  In the end though, it wasn’t enough to keep me going.  Co-op never happened either since no one I knew had gotten this game.  Better luck next time.

Overall I was left unsatisfied.  I wanted it to be the sequel of a lifetime.  What I got was less of an overall game, put out as a quick money shot for a publisher, riding on the successes of a prior title.  Had this game even been given the shallow storyline treatment of the first game, or better yet sliding even closer to a GTA title, it would have done so much towards giving the game structure.  Instead I didn’t even bother finishing it, and it goes into my Goozex queue of shame.  I pour out a drink for my homie Crackdown 1, may you rest in sweet peace in my gaming memories.

– Ben Mazhary-Clark

I will start this off by being honest.  I have never finished a Splinter Cell game before this.  I tried on multiple occasions to get through the first Splinter Cell title, the Pandora Tomorrow title, and even Double Agent.  Most times I would end up stuck in some situation where I was out of ammo, surrounded by tangos and not have a way out of the game short of restarting.  I often found that the level of stealth required to get through the game was almost insurmountable, reminding me of the old PC game Thief verses something more modern with technology on my side.

Needless to say, I was skeptical about yet another Splinter Cell title being added to the franchise.  Overall the Tom Clancy name was being diluted by Ubisoft and the name was being put on tons of IPs.  Was this going to just be another in a line of rehashed titles for Ubisoft?  Obviously I stayed my hand, and waited until well after release to see how the public as a whole reacted.  The trailers had looked interesting, with much more action than previous titles, but I wasn’t going to let myself be swayed into buying Splinter Cell Conviction right out of the gate.

Then of course, I had a free night to play online with a friend, and got a copy of the game off ebay (used).  This revision of Splinter Cell gave me a whole new appreciation for the series.  Gone were the long levels of making sure you weren’t seen, and limited resources.  It was actually FUN.  This game did for the stealth genre what Mass Effect did for RPGs.  SCC gives a whole new take on the one man stealth army, with hand to hand eliminations which load up a meter so you can mark targets and take them down in execution succession, better gadgets and a unique black and white system to show when you are hidden.  I loved it.  We spent a good 6 hours that night playing through the co-op campaigns on normal.  A couple weeks later we went through them all again on realistic and finished it out in about half that time.  The game was good, and I was inclined to play it.

Over the next month or so I finished out the storyline.  The details and fleshing out of the background story were satisfying enough for me, though only borderline plausible.  Let’s not kid ourselves though, this is a superhero action game, who’s really looking for a scientifically correct story?   Throughout the game, you are mostly at the same capability level, with the unlocking of certain skills or gadgets occurring over time.  For the most part, you are just Sam Fisher: Bad-ass extraordinaire.

One aspect I really enjoyed about the game was using the surrounding walls or buildings as a backdrop for cut scenes or objectives.  One time, I was chasing a target through a crowd and he ducked into a tent.  As I passed it a bit of texts over-layed on a truck near me saying “He’s still in the tent!”.  Excellent use of the environment to keep yourself involved in the story and engaged.

There are great challenges within the game that give you point credits so you can upgrade your arsenal or gear, which adds a little bit of RPG mechanic to the otherwise stealth shooter series.  I tried to get the bulk of the challenges (PECs) but lost interest before finishing out any full set.  The amount of time required to complete all sets is fairly intensive and I had other fish to fry with my copy of Crackdown 2 sitting there taunting me (read: orbs).

For me, this was the first Splinter Cell game I actually enjoyed playing.  Even hard core fans of the series have had greats things to say about it.  Though it is a deviation from the previous trend of the series, I feel it is for the best.  Taking in Rainbow Six: Vegas elements into the Sam Fisher universe really helped round out the game and gives a much fuller experience than the previous iterations.  There are many hours of game play available in this game and I’m almost sad to move on to another.  I likely put about 20 hours into SCC, which is pretty good for a modern shooter game.  The co-op elements shine brightly in the Deniable Ops part of the game, while the single-player makes you yearn to solve the mystery around your missing daughter and the conflicting emotions of revenge.  If you are a fan of Splinter Cell in general, this is a shoe-in for you.  If you like semi-stealth shooters and tactics, dive in.  Most shooter fans should enjoy this as well.  However, if you only like car racing games…well…you might want to pass.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

It’s been years.  I have put off buying a Wii for years.  However it appears that I strung the family on long enough with the Gamecube and Xbox 360.  It finally happened, we bought a Wii over spring break.  Best Buy had a good deal that weekend, and I was able to get the Wii system with a free copy of Wii Sports Resort that game with the Motion Plus adapter in it (two months later, this is now the standard bundle, but at least I didn’t over-pay). Then of course I picked up Wii Play as the second controller.  We quickly realized that this console is a hardware buying nightmare, in comparison to others I had bought in the past.  With a family of 5, having the maximum amount of controllers is key.  After limping along for several weeks I was able to snag two more wiimotes and three nunchucks off the local Craigslist, and some non-branded Motion Plus adapters off DealExtreme.

But really, the focus is the games.  Now we all know the Wii isn’t any kind of modern technical marvel.  In fact, the core system is hardly more powerful than the Gamecube that came before it.  Where the Wii shines is gameplay.  Getting a crowd of people together all waggling towards a common goal or duking it out against each other is what makes this console interactive and fun.  Let’s get to the games, and more specifically, the ones I feel are worth a play.

Many of the games that come out for the Wii are trash.  A hasty flash game port or another random collection of mini games, they feel tired, unoriginal, lame and a waste of money.  Overall, the first party games from Nintendo are usually a safe bet, but even these are often just upgrades from a Gamecube version, which is often an upgrade from an N64 version.  It takes time to find the jewels in the pile of waste.  Below is my quick list and a summary of each game that I have found reasonably entertaining.

Wii Play – I don’t recommend this for the games it includes at the full retail price.  Even my kids lost interest in them after a while, but it’s a great way to get a second controller and add a few extra mini games to your collection.  You are going to buy that controller anyway.  Cow racing only goes so far.

Animal Crossing City Folk – My kids have always gone crazy for this series.  Granted, the core game has hardly changed since it came out on the N64, however it is a very engaging game for children.  The kids have spent countless hours doing little tasks around their town, decorating their home, sending messages between each other.  I’d recommend it for 12 and under.

Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility – This game has some elements that are similar to Animal Crossing, but with much more depth.  You can choose to farm, go mining, enter contests at the local fair, do tasks around your town and even foster a relationship and get married.  This is the game that took over for my kids after Animal Crossing waned for their attention.

Boom Blox/Boom Blox Bash Party – Personally, I love this game.  It is very accessible to all ages.  For the most part, you are throwing things at Jenga like blocks or trying to pull pieces out of stacks without toppling the whole bunch.  It is a very creative game and secretly teaches you physics while you play it.  Great for hours of fun, I even play it with my wife.

Mario Party 8 – The next iteration of a long line of Mario Party games.  It’s basically going to be the same collection of mini games with new faces on them and lots more motion control than previous generations.  If you don’t have a Gamecube copy laying around to play, this is always a good game to pick up for group festivities.  Playing this game by yourself wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Mario Kart – Though it really isn’t that much different from the prior version on the Gamecube, it does have motion control.  You remember back in the day when you would turn the controller while playing a driving game, though it didn’t help you?  Now it will.  Fun party action with 4 players, and a grand opportunity for smack talk.

eXcite Truck – Like eXcite Bike and other eXciting games previously, this game pits you in a truck for all kinds of wild racing, truck jumping and other such trials.  A nice break from the endless mini game collections.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii – For those of us who grew up in the NES era, this might feel like old hat.  However, this is a fairly good remake of the original SMB side scroller from the 80′s.  Extending the game that was remade for the DS, this variation now adds 4 player co-op for better or worse.  Sometimes your partners can be a help, but often they can be in your way and push you into that pit of lava or steal your mushrooms.  Hard feelings or not, it is still a blast now that it is no longer just a single player experience.

Wii Fit – Yes, sometimes we need to stay a bit more active.  I was actually surprised to work up a light sweat the first night I played this with my wife.  Though a lot of the activities are centered around keeping your balance, they do try and keep the fun in making you stay active.  Wii Fit Plus adds the one thing that the original lacks, the ability to create a playlist of activities that you can string in a row.  One of the pet peeves of the first one is you spend a lot of time in menus before doing an activity that only lasts 1-3 minutes.

Wii Sports Resort – Usually a great way to pick up a motion plus adapter (much better accuracy, why didn’t they build them this way from the beginning?), this set of games can easily stand on its own.  As an upgrade to the Wii Sports that comes with the console, the mini games within this package are varied and multi leveled.  From disc golf to bicycling to kayaking, it has kept us entertained for many many many hours.  The downside for multiplayer is that every player MUST have a motion plus adapter to play, otherwise it won’t let you join.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 – Also usually bundled with a motion plus adapter, this game with the improved accuracy of motion plus, makes you feel like you are really playing the game.  As much as a wiimote in your hand can feel like the real thing at least.  Character customization is great, and the gameplay has a lot of longevity in it.  The bonus feature on the Wii version of this game is that it includes multiple disc golf courses on it.  Bring a disc golf player myself, this is added draw, though there have been complaints that the disc golf in Wii Sports Resort runs with a better feeling of weight in the physics of the game.

Lego (anything) – Very popular on almost all platforms, the Lego series provides hours of adventure and exploration in the various licensed worlds (Indiana Jones, Batman, Star Wars).  If you have someone interested in any of the licensed worlds that Lego brings to their games, the fun is sure to follow.

So there you have it, my pick of games that we have enjoyed or will soon enjoy once I trade for them on Goozex or some such.  Feel free to leave your personal favorite in the comments section.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

In the past, I never would have picked up an RPG (Role Playing Game for those not in the know, and if so, why are you reading this?).  The mere mention of them gave me impressions of turn based action sequences, painful management of inventory, and killing spiders for 20 hours to level up.  Recently, publishers and game designers have switched it up a bit, making RPGs less of a painful grind and bringing back the fun.  Mass Effect was the game that got me interested in RPGs again.  The inventory management was pretty easy, the action felt more like a shooter with squad based strategy elements, and the storyline kept you captivated.  From there I went a little more hardcore, and blew untold hours on crafting a paradise in the wasteland of Fallout 3.  Then, from out of nowhere came a game I had heard about in passing several times but never gave it any thought.  A new IP called Borderlands.  Suddenly, days after it came out I was working out a plan to acquire it.

Borderlands for me had all the elements I was looking for in an RPG.  The art direction was cell shaded, which I enjoyed in Crackdown and Robotech Battlecry.  This artistic style gave it a unique look that was easily recognizable whenever you saw a screen shot up.  Battles were action based and didn’t require a lot of setup beforehand.  Inventory management was fairly minimal.  All of these elements were only made better for me given the fact that online co-op was also available, though limited to a 4 player raid.  More on all of these points below.

The premise of the game is that you have landed on the world of Pandora, to search for alien treasures hidden somewhere on the planet’s surface (no, this isn’t Avatar).  The planet itself looks like you’ve landed somewhere in New Mexico, with nothing but scrub and junkyard towns scattered about the dusty plains.  The junkyard towns are usually where you get your quests and have the supply depots in them, where sharky businessmen make their living off the fortune seeking quest followers.  Cell shading lends to thicker outlines around objects, while textures insides of the cells are still reasonable.  If you have played Crackdown you are familiar with the style.  At first it feels almost cartoony, however once the action starts you will feel it is anything but.  Textures themselves are of a industry standard detail, nothing over the top.  Occasionally when you warp into a new part of the world, the textures can take a while to pop in, though it isn’t usually that distracting as you are already rushing to replenish your stores at the closest vending machine.

Action in Borderlands is often intense and keeps your interest.  The intensity increases when you co-op up to three other friends, as both the levels and the quantities of the enemies you are fighting explode to manic proportions.  Even exploring the world and grinding I still found exciting enough to keep playing it on and on.  As you progress through the game, the enemies level up with you.  Each enemy you destroy will give you experience points, that ultimately help you become more powerful.  They also often drop items, such as ammo, weapons, health vials, etc.  Lot more on weapons later.  The interesting item in regards to the level of enemies is when you go back to an earlier area you can literally mow everyone down with little resistance.  The caveat of going back to lower levels, though it does make you feel god-like, is you get almost no experience for anything you take down.

When leveling up, you find yourself with access to new skills and abilities.  There are 4 classes you can play as:  tank, sniper, soldier and assassin.  Each one has it’s own set of three major branches of a skill tree that unlock unique abilities for that class.  As you gain levels, you are given points to deposit into skills in the tree, leaving your character customization options fairly open.  I chose to take the assassin route, and by the end of the main quest line had quite a stealthy bad-ass whom could take on her fair share of enemy raiders.

Which brings us to weapons.  Some have described Borderlands as a gun nut’s orgy.  There are an almost unlimited amount of gun combination available in the game.  You have your basic classes such as SMG, machine gun, sniper, rocket, etc.  However, for each one of those classes you have level of weapon and a series of modifiers available for each one.  These modifiers can be something simple like a 2x reload rate, or more extreme like 4x fire damage for a certain amount of seconds after the target is hit.  Though inventory management isn’t that difficult in this game, you can spend a bit of time after a battle looting what the dead left behind, always searching for the perfect gun.  Ammo slots can be upgraded as well, and once you are half way though the quest line running out of ammo really wasn’t a big deal.  A nice feature is you can collect everything off the battlefield, then take it into a local town or vending machine and cash it all out.

The quests given to you in towns and people you meet out in the wasteland are varied.  It can be something simple like collecting and item and bringing it back, or the more extreme of finding pieces of an ancient artifact to help the storyline along.  All quests can be done solo or with your friends.  Once completed, everyone in the party gets the experience from the quest.  Vehicles are available within the first hour of the game, which further facilitates exploring and movement on the very large map.  Their armaments and speed mix it up a bit in what would be a boring quest or a lot of walking.

Borderlands shines the most when played co-op.  Gearbox did include 2 player split screen, though it is hard to see the menus in each half of the screen when you are trying to do inventory management and the like.  The ultimate best way to play this game is online with three other people.  Nothing beats the experience of trying to flank a horde of baddies with your party, communicating to each other over voice chat, and completing a quest together.  For best results, everyone in the party should try and be a different class, but even when there are duplicates the game gracefully takes it in stride and sends just the right amount of challenge your way.

The developers at Gearbox really knew how to breathe extended life into this game.  Not only can you do a second playthrough with your same character, but the amount of DLC they have release has been substantial.  They have released several major DLC packs for Borderlands to date, and they are still planning more.  The latest iteration, General Knox, adds a whole new realm to the universe, with fresh weapons, vehicles and enemies.  The last game in the recent past I have seen that provided such a steady flow of DLC for a game has been Burnout Paradise.  It is great to see that some developers are finally extending a game with added content, verses just popping out another sequel once a year (I’m looking at YOU EA).

Overall this game has been a great experience.  It took about 30-35 hours for me to do the first play through.  I still have plans to play it a lot more as soon as I can finally make it through Mass Effect 2.  The constant approachability of Borderlands and the amazing fun of playing it online has been keeping it off my Goozex queue, even though I have already finished it once.   I’ll see you in the Borderlands.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

It’s a given.  I love driving games.  Most games involving a car and/or motorcycle I’ve at least booted up once or tried the demo of.  They don’t have to be bad or good, but I usually have to try them.

A little while ago, two separate companies released Baja off-road rally type games around the same time.  These were Baja: Edge of Control by THQ, and SCORE International Baja 1000 by Activision.  On the surface, they appear to be almost identical, but on a deeper dive, THQ’s shone more brightly.  After appreciating the amazing work that was put into DiRT by Codemasters, I thought I would give Baja: Edge of Control (B:EoC) a shot and traded for it on Goozex.

The game starts you off in Baja California, with one class open, the VW Baja Bug.  While this isn’t a bad vehicle overall, at this bottom level in the game it is torturous.  Even after upgrading everything on the Bug, you are unlikely to completely win many events at this lowest class.  Also, the learning curve is rather steep.  Right off the bat, you are being bounced all around on very uneven terrain, having to pick up the controls that were not very well explained in the manual or in-game help.  The gist of taking most hard corners is to e-brake slide into the turn, then pop your clutch on the way out.  Once you have this down and get up into the higher levels, it becomes quite easy to keep ahead of the pack.

After you make it beyond the grind of the lowest VW Bug level, other classes open up and you can buy vehicles to race in these classes as well.  I found that if you re-ran several events in the lower classes, you could completely avoid whole classes and just buy the truck or what have you in two levels up and skip over something not as exciting, say “open wheel”.  Furthermore, when you bank up a whole bunch of money in the game, and buy a new 4 wheel dream of choice, you often will have enough to max out all the upgrades at this level.  If this is done, and with proper e-brake/clutch technique, you should be able to clean up almost all events first time through, making the learning/difficulty curve rather skewed: amazingly hard at the start, a challenging but attainable win after the first two classes.  Classes are unlocked with XP earned in racing, and easily unlocked classes ahead of me as I progressed.  Money can be earned by wining races and splattering sponsorships on your rally vehicle.  Sponsors will pay based on how many body panels you still have left at the end of the race, which for me was usually about half.

Events and tracks are varied enough to keep things interesting.  About half way though you will know a large quantity of them quite well, as many repeat with subtle changes.  Tumbleweeds and small rodents or bunnies (can’t figure out which) do sometimes cross the road in front of you.  Scenery of course looks a bit like a desert, no big surprise there, but it certainly doesn’t have the spice and thrill you’d hope for after hours of driving.  It feels accurate, and we’ll leave it at that.  You can fall off cliffs and run into trees, and occasionally roll.

Damage is modeled well when you run into trees or other cars.  In fact, it is modeled so well that they have damage gauges for many parts on your vehicle: tires, oil pressure, temp, suspension, etc.  As you tool through a race, these indicators will decrease.  When they do, the overall performance of your desert rat will decrease as well.  There is the option to pull off the road into a hot pit stop or helicopter to get repaired, but I usually found that even with a blown tire and steaming radiator I had enough of it together to make it the 3-4 laps on a standard rally without repairing.

Which brings us to race types in the game.  Included for your racing pleasure you can do: hill climb, circuit, point to point rally, open world non-race touring, and more that I’m likely forgetting.   There are also major rally modes for the Baja 250, 500, 1000′s.  These can take hours to complete (4 hours on the 1000 I think?) so I didn’t bother trying them out.  In these long modes you would certainly have to make use of the repair facilities, if not for your truck, then for your thumbs by the end.

Overall I was very happy with playing through it, though I didn’t have the passion about the game to finish every nook and cranny in it as I did with DiRT.  The driving certainly keeps you on your toes at all times, regardless of how much you upgrade your vehicle.  It is a good rental, though hopefully you would have it on long term rental, as the game would only get enjoyable for you after you get past the first class or two.  I personally got it off Goozex and will be putting it back up there soon.  I’m sure it is cheap enough to buy now as well, given that it has been out for a while.  Graphics are decent, gameplay is solid once you figure out what the controls all do.  It makes for a nice aside to play when you want something a little more casual but spirited than another game you might be playing at the time (*cough* Fallout 3 *cough*).  Recommend for those of you who want to feel like you know how to race in the dirty dirty.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

There have been a lot of Star Wars games.  A LOT.  In my experience, only a few have made the cut at all in terms of quality.  I think the last good one I played was X-wing vs. Tie Fighter.  Maybe Jedi Knight.  Rogue Squadron?  Please.  So along comes a game where you get to fully explore the dark side of the force.  I was intrigued.  Never before had we been given an opportunity to slay down anything in our path, with no regard for who it was that you were mowing down.  After a few looks at screenshots and descriptions, I ordered Star Wars: The Force Unleashed off of the Best Buy site on basically a half price deal they were doing the day after Christmas here.  After a very painful process to actually get the game in my house from Best Buy (took over a month and somehow I ended up with two copies of the game) I was able to sink my teeth into the game.

This game fills in some new back story with Vader.  It occurs after the events of the 3rd movie (Episode III), after Vader has been created.  Vader has taken on a new apprentice, behind the Emperor’s back, in hopes to overthrow the Emperor behind the scenes.  The game leads you through a storyline as his apprentice, with the time line coming rather close to the 4th movie (Episode IV), as there is a Death Star already being built and functional.

First impressions were good.  You start the opening level as Darth Vader so you have no issues slaying all the Wookies in front of you, though I did feel a little bad about it at first.  Once that level is down however, you are left to fend for yourself as Vader’s apprentice.   The first HALF of the game was truly painful as this character.  You rarely had enough power or experience to really do the damage you needed to.  Boss battles were often very hard.  Given this, you end up spending half the game attacking and hiding and dodging to keep alive until you level up enough.  Whenever you level you are given points that allow you to add to stats or abilities, similar to a mini-RPG.  The decisions are not very difficult.  More force power that recharges faster?  Yes please.

Once the second half of the game kicks in, you are in the swing of things.  Powers are readily available and you can easily meet the objectives of each level without a redo.  There is certainly joy in wreaking complete havoc on your environment.  Force push here, lightning there, jump in here and sith slay with your saber.  Rinse and repeat.  Most large enemies are easily taken down with running in circles and force lightning them.  Kind of a cheat, but it also feels great to be your own personal electric chair.

When you tire of hacking through levels (as this game really is just a hack and slash), there is a sum of training and challenges you can do.  I wouldn’t expect them to take more than an hour all told, and are usually best done after you are fully leveled up near the end of the game.  For the most part they aren’t very difficult, as long as you engage the most troublesome enemies in the room first, then deal with the rest afterward.

Overall the game is very satisfying.  Once you get a fair amount of powers under your belt, the game is enjoyable, though before that it can feel like a grind.  Like most Star Wars games from Lucasarts, it feels like they put a lot of thought into it, but didn’t take the time at the end to put in the extra polish a truly excellent game usually has.  I experienced many glitches, where I’d fall halfway into the floor, the enemy I was fighting would disappear, and once the save game even became corrupt, causing the game not to boot anymore and moving it off from the hard drive to a memory card made it suddenly work again.  Amazingly, these still didn’t take enough away from the experience to make it miserable.  I liked the game, and had a great time with it.  However once you are done, there isn’t much replay value, and off to Goozex it goes with my two copies.  I’d recommend picking this up if you enjoy the Star Wars universe.  If you are looking for a basic shooter or hack and slash game, your money might be well spent somewhere else.  A solid rental for sure, buy if you are a fan.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

Another game based off a movie, yeah great.  When are those ever any good?  You’d be hard pressed to find one.  But this is different.  It’s an old movie, a classic movie.  this can’t just be a shameless plug for the latest blockbuster.  Sure, you CAN go buy the movie at your local retailer… but this is far from the typical movie game made to be a piece in the media blitz puzzle.  Though the game obviously has roots in the movie, it doesn’t try to integrate itself to it.  Instead it creates it’s own universe.  The the cool part is, then it tosses you the keys and says “Go ahead, have some fun… be home before dawn”.

When one looks up this game on the EA site they see it classified under the “Action/Adventure” genre.  Ok, there’s action in it, and I would say there’s a bit of adventure… though i don’t see a fedora or a bull whip anywhere.  But if you stop and think about it, doesn’t EVERY game qualify as such?  I mean really, what else is there?  The Boredom/Monotonous genre went out of vogue in the late 90′s.  So, in the quest to better describe this game i hereby offer a new genre.  Hence forth, this type of game shall be referred to as a Sandbox game.  A sandbox game is one where a world is given to you with several vague objectives and you can do whatever the heck you want.  If you want to follow the objective, more power to ya.  If you want to drive around as fast as you can running over as many people as you can… go for it.  Examples of this sort of game are game such as Crackdown,  Grand Theft Auto, and yes… The Godfather 2.

So now that we have that ironed out, what about the game?  You start out in Cuba, the day that Castro takes power.  When the dust settles from the revolution the family is forced to change their plans… which is where you come in.  The whole point of the game is to take over rival family’s business, then take out the rival family completely.  The game provides some guidance along the way, but how you do it is decided entirely by you.  You can bomb business, perform hostile take overs, or just go rob banks all day.  Whatever floats your boat.

You also get some partners in crime.  That’s right, you get your own family.  How that works with the movie logic?  Haven’t figured that out yet.  You’re a Corleone, he’s a Corleone, wouldn’t you like to be a Corleone too?  Regardless, you’ll get to recruit and promote 7 “made men” that you will then use to attack and defend territories in 3 different cities.  These men will have varying skills.  There are safecrackers, engineers, medics, demolitionist, arsonsists, and bruisers.  You’ll need to make sure you have the right men for the right job.  You can also upgrade your character as well as your family members… increasing accuracy, amount of health, and so on.  These men will prove vital in helping you secure every possible business and defending again rival families that are coming after you.  Treat them well.

I found my 10 or 13 hours of game play to be interesting and slightly addictive.  I found the need to completely stomp out all competition to be strangely compelling, which disturbs me a little.  The combat was fairly smooth, if not a touch on the arcade side.  Driving physics were HORRIBLE, but most sandbox games suffer the same affliction.  Graphics were quite good making for some inspiring fire balls, and surprisingly realistic animation.  Be VERY aware, this game is rated M for a reason.  There is nothing pleasant about shooting your way in to a rival family’s strip club, beating the owner in to submission, and then accidentally shoving your shotgun in his mouth and making a mess on the wall behind him.   If you’re sitting in your dorm room causing mayhem, that’s one thing.  Don’t buy this game for your kids, play it around  kids, or discuss it with kids.  Unless, of course, you want them to grow up to be a Don.

- David Hayes

The Nintendo DS is certainly prone to a slew of developers just putting out crap for them to say they have a title out.  Thus, with the DS (and the Wii) there are so few games actually worth trying out.  Some feel as good (bad) as a flash game port.  Often, 1st party games end up being the safe bet, and they are usually the highest quality.  Quality of course is completely personal opinion and experience.  In my experiences, the games below for the DS are a “safe bet” when starting your collection or looking for something new to try.

So here it goes in extreme summary mode, in no particular order:

New Super Mario Bros – brings back classic NES action, new layout, combo 2d/3d look
Mario Kart DS – great action similar to the Gamecube version, 4 players off one card
Kirby Canvas Curse – best use of the touchscreen I’ve seen yet, one of my lasting faves
Puzzle Quest – think Bejeweled with RPG elements
Animal Crossing – more kiddish, but it’s a casual fun game, can make up to 4 chars
Professor Layton’s Curious Village – one of the hardest games I’ve played, 300+puzzles
N+ – very simple 2d ninja level hopping puzzle game, works great with d-pad controls
Rune Factory - do farming and adventure RPG, etc.  Think Animal Crossing meets Zelda
SimCity - PC classic ported to the DS, hours of city building
Kung Fu Panda – yes, it’s a total movie sellout, but I had fun with it
Space Invaders Extreme – awesome redo of this game, play against people over wifi/inet
Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword – book style play, all stylus no buttons, amazingly difficult
Elite Beat Agents – fun rhythm based game, all touchscreen
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles – RPG game, I found it lots of fun

Nanostray - impossibly hard spaceship shooter, good challenge though
Geometry Wars: Galaxies – great use of d-pad and touchpad, always entertaining

Peggle Dual Shot – eliminate all the pegs with a set number of balls, good physics
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars – classic GTA action in your hand, lots of replay value

Hrm, guess that’s about it.  I’ve played many others, but these are the cream of the crop in my opinion.  I usually get all my DS games used at Gamestop, Game Trader, Craigslist or off Goozex.  Another great resource is Cheap Ass Gamer, which keeps track of the deals and sales all around.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

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