PS3

With the release of any sports game belonging to an established franchise, there’s always the question of whether or not the game is different enough from the most recent instalment to merit purchase. With the price of sports games routinely being $59.99 plus tax, and their clockwork release structure, it’s easy for fans to grow resentful of a sports franchise, despite enjoying the games, because how much could...

Closure at Last Five years and a whole of licensed products later, gamers have finally arrived at the conclusion of the first Mass Effect trilogy. What started as an experimental RPG science fiction shooter published by Microsoft in 2007 has turned into a flagship franchise for Electronic Arts with novels, comics, statuettes, action figures, social media games and even an upcoming direct to video anime. But when...

The Name Says It AllReviewing something like Journey is a tough call. Those that are informed enough to have followed its progress already know that this is something special, that it is probably going to win a lot of awards this year. But those same people already know that those awards will likely not be game of the year. While Journey is an amazing experience that everyone should try,...

The “X,” She Is Back Remember the 90s when everything was “Xtreme?” A time when you were a more intense person who lived on the edge simply because you drank Mountain Dew instead of Coke or Pepsi? Are you pining for a return to that youthful time when all that mattered was doing crazy stunts and stickin’ it to The Man? If...

Meet the impostorsWith Batman gone or otherwise out of commission, who will rise up to defend Gotham City from the forces of chaos? How about a ragtag group of wannabe bat men and women? These “heroes” are the only thing that stands between order and a city overrun by psychotic clowns. This is the set up for Gotham City Impostors, the latest FPS from Monolith Productions, a developer most...

More Lost Hours of Your LifeWhen Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was first announced, there was a lot of potential on show thanks to the big names involved, but there was also a lot of doubt. An RPG in an FPS market? A new IP going up against the current monster, the Elder Scrolls series? Art direction that was colorful instead of dark and gritty? Could this possibly survive in...

You Are Not ReadyThese days the word “epic” is often thrown around to describe things that are above average, or just remotely interesting. It is a word that has come to occupy a space slightly above “good” but below “legitimately unique and special.” Everything from a nice shade of pink on slippers to the delightful froth on a well poured mug of root beer can now be “epic.” But...

In preparation for the release of Shank 2, I went back and replayed the original Shank. Doing so made the experience of playing through Shank 2 much more informative, to see how Klei Entertainment tweaked the gameplay mechanics for the new game, updated them, and gave them a new level of complexity compared to the first game.Shank`s story was an intimate one, that focused on Shank’s quest for...

The cyberpunk genre is ripe with opportunities to tell stories of a dystopian future overrun by technological innovation; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner explored what separates a machine from humankind, the Deus Ex series touched on the moral issues of augmenting human abilities. Now, Starbreeze’s reboot to the Syndicate series, besides being the first FPS of the year, tries to follow suit only and finds itself with a mixed but...

The battle between good and evil rages through the ages and now a new generation of hero is needed to continue the fight against the darkness. Soulcalibur V is Project Soul's sixth entry into the Soul series and brings with it some changes to the core gameplay and a new generation of heroes. “Critical Finishes” and the “Soul Gauge”, long time staples of the series, have been replaced by...

A Return to Extreme NostalgiaFor many people the 90s represents a time in gaming when graphical resolution and processing power finally let gore and violence be properly conveyed on a screen. It was a time of guilty pleasures—or not—such as Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Night Trap. Twisted Metal, debuting on the original Playstation waaaaay back in 1995, was another example of developers, specifically David Jaffe, realizing, “Hey, look at...

Crystal Chronicles RevisitedAs with Final Fantasy X, Square has seen fit to do a direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, a game which was commercially successful, but less so critically. The original game, while hailed for its high quality graphics, received a lot of criticism for its gameplay, story and most of all, its linear nature. The new game meets all the criticisms heads on, and with the exception...

Scarygirl's Not So Scary GameNathan Jurevicius is the Australian transplant to Canada responsible for the Scarygirl graphic novel and vinyl toy series. Now the cult IP has made the jump from a humble, free flash game to a downloadable title on the PSN, XBL and PC. The short version of this review is, buy it if you're a hardcore, old school platform gamer that also happens...

Growing up I never had a Sega Genesis of my own, so my experiences with Sonic the Hedgehog were gained from those times I spent at friends’ houses playing their system. The Sonic games were fun and fast-paced, simple-looking but deceptively complex. Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know that this game, Sonic the Hedgehog CD (shortened to Sonic CD) had even existed. It’s not hard...

Earlier this year in February, after eleven years of waiting and hoping, fans of the seminal Marvel vs. Capcom 2 were delighted by the release of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The game saw a return to what fans of the series loved: fast-paced tag-team matches, eye-popping graphics and over-the-top action, punctuated by ludicrous hyper-combos which delivered a flurry of hits to opponents. However, the release wasn’t without its problems,...

Swear To Me When Batman: Arkham Asylum first released in the summer of 2009, it had a lot going against it. Rocksteady was a largely unproven developer, and there was a long legacy of terrible games based on comic properties, with Batman himself being one of the more visible examples. The naysayers and doubters—myself among them—were all proven tremendously wrong from start to finish, as the game...

As a gamer with a strong sense of nostalgia for my misspent youth in basements clinging to various console controllers, I’ll always have a soft spot for side-scrolling platformers. There’s something about the graphical simplicity and hair-pulling difficulty of the genre that is endlessly appealing to me. This is what most videogames were for years, and while I’m just as excited to dive into technical marvels like Uncharted 3...