XBOX 360

Death Goes Into Overtime It took a little over a month, but the promised Argul’s Tomb downloadable content is finally here. This new addition is free to anyone who pre-ordered Darksiders II, and for everyone else who didn’t, is going for $6.99 or 560 MS Points. For those who are getting it free, there’s really no point in reading this review, it’s there if you want it....

It’s been almost 7 years since Dead or Alive 4 released on Xbox 360, and in that time, a lot has changed. The flagging fighting genre has undergone a renaissance of sorts, with the Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat series all undergoing key iterations that have gained footholds in the mainstream, while the Dead or Alive series has only managed to spurt out a mini-game collection and a...

F1 2012 is one of those games where fans are eagerly anticipating the release of the title and non-fans barely give it a second glance before moving onto the next game. For many players who are not interested in the world of racing, a blatant racing game with no hidden side missions -unlike those in the popular racing game franchise, Need for Speed - can appear to be a...

Raven's Strike is the latest expansion for Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and adds three new campaign missions which can be played solo or cooperatively. The three new missions provide about four to five hours of gameplay and will have your team of ghosts wading through swamps, navigating an expansive rail yard and taking down Raven's Rock officers. The Raven's Strike add-on also adds a new map to GRFS's...

Totally 80s I think games like Double Dragon Neon inadvertently make a statement about where gaming is today. There was time (during the 80s itself, coincidentally) when baby boomers pining for the simpler, headier, more passionate days of the 60s would wax nostalgic with music. They did this by viewing badly produced informericals that offered “mix tapes”—and later CDs—of old popular favorites from the era, sometimes by...

There’s A Thin Line Between Being A Hero And Being A Memory The Transformers are one of those properties that has enjoyed a unique, almost incomprehensible staying power with generations of children, not just the ones growing up in the 80s. Whether it was the original first generation, the Beast Wars/Machines antics or the new Transformers: Prime series, the robots in disguise have been selling toys and...

Hybrid is a very different direction for 5th Cell, who are known for creating the successful Scribblenauts series. The studio typically develops games for mobile and Nintendo platforms but this time they are jump-jetting to a whole new genre and platform with Hybrid, a third-person shooter for Xbox Live Arcade. When I first got wind of Hybrid I was immediately drawn to the use of jet-packs. After...

I'll admit that when Harmonix first announced Rock Band Blitz I was very very skeptical. I'm a huge fan of Rock Band and I play bass in the greatest fake band in the world 1.21 Gigawatts. My friends and I probably have at least one Rock Band session a week and head to a local bar once a month to show off our chops in public. So when I...

Outrunning The Walkers So, here we are at the third episode of the Telltale take on Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead series. For anyone that is jumping into the series now, I have some absolutely essential advice; don’t do it unless you’re willing to play through the previous two episodes. This is a “serial” episodic game in that what you play now has all of its meaning and...

Dust: An Elysian Tail hearkens back to a simpler time in the action-RPG genre, where the plot advancement, character development, and exploration factor depended on you. These are all common traits of games released with the PlayStation 2 era, and it’s coincidental, as Dust is reminiscent of the cult Vanillaware hit Odin Sphere. Just without all the pesky chugging while knee-deep in combat. Dust is, in fact, a slicker,...

A Better Gaming Tomorrow What a torturous and circuitous route Sleeping Dogs has taken to finally land on retail shelves. First called Black Lotus, and started almost straight after Vancouver-based United Front formed, the stewards of the studio, Activision, decided the game might sell better with more brand name recognition. So they attached it to the True Crime series, which ended up being a mistake when the...

Death Takes A Holiday The first Darksiders came out in the summer of 2010 and surprised everyone by being a decent, Zelda-esque romp through a post-apocalyptic world as imagined by comic artist Joe Madureira. It was a game that was as much about puzzles, exploration and getting new gear/abilities for further puzzle solving and exploration as it was about the 3rd person, brawling action in tradition of...

Deadlight is a side-scroller that sandwiches the shambling undead between an ambitious campaign and dark narrative, topping things off with a delectable glaze of melodrama. It conjures earlier adventures like Shadow Complex and Limbo, but never fully commits to either style. It's an enjoyable enough trip through the textbook trappings of zombie apocalyptica, but when the journey comes to an end we surmise you'll be left wanting a little...

The Amazing Spider-Man marks Beenox’s third take on Spider-Man for Activision, only this time it’s a movie tie-in game, which is set not long after the events of the recently released film of the same name. It’s also a return to the open world sandbox featured most prominently in the Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 movie tie-in games. Whereas the last couple games took out the open...

Spec Ops is hardly the new kid on the block, gamers were first introduced to this third-person military shooter franchise way back in 1998. Since then there's been some sequels and spin offs but the series has effectively been on hiatus since 2002. At one point the recently shuttered Rockstar Vancouver was even at work on a Spec Ops game that was eventually canceled. It may have been a...

The world of Skyrim, like so many previous Elder Scrolls titles, is immene. To fathom how many hours it would take one to completely scrutinize all corners of the in-game world is immeasurably difficult. Think you spent a lot of time with Persona 4? Skyrim can certainly rival that. So what's next after creating an expansive, exhaustive adventure? Releasing DLC, of course. Dawnguard is the first piece...

Ubisoft really wants you to be God. Gamers first got a taste of wielding absolute power over tiny minions in From Dust but that was for the merciful gods out there. In Babel Rising you'll be playing as a much more vengeful deity as you rain down elemental attacks to prevent the construction of the Tower of Babel. First released in 2009 for mobile devices Babel Rising...

The Zombie Apocalypse Continues Telltale is blazing new ground in the genre of adventure games with their wildly dark, intense and horrific take on the iconic Robert Kirkman comic series. This second instalment, Starved For Help, continues the odyssey of Lee Everett, a new character created for the series with the blessing of Kirkman himself. It’s got to keep walking on some fairly high ground that the...

Generally speaking games based on movies are hastily cranked out affairs design to sucker kids and pushover parents into thinking that somehow the experience of the film can be replicated in the cheaply produced game. However, Disney movie games can and should be counted on for a little more. After all, the company has produced a few pretty fantastic games themselves over the years (Castle Of Illusion, anyone?) and...

At this point we all know what to expect from a Lego game. We’re going to see some appealingly goofy Lego designs, a story with reverence to the source material and a welcome sense of humor about itself, and of course endless opportunities to smash the crap out of villains and items until they fall into collectable plastic pieces. Yep, the series sure is consistent aside from whatever franchise...