Nuketown

Console Game Reviews

Get in the Fight with Dragon Ball: Raging Blast

Posted in by hardcorhobbs on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 8:48pm

Dragon Ball is a series well known for it's long fight sequences. Some may say too long, and when referring to the anime they would be right.

The popularity of the manga caused the animators to fast track the series, so fast they rand out of source material. To slow down the pace of the anime the animators drew out the fighting sequences, causing the long drawn out fights the series is so infamous for. So it's no surprise the a majority of the games created from the Dragon Ball franchise are fighting games, the latest being Dragon Ball Raging Blast.

Live your own story with Dragon Age: Origins

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 6:17am

The highest compliment I can give Dragons Age: Origins is that everyone who plays it wants to tell me about their character. In a pen-and-paper RPG, that’s a major social faux paus, but with Dragon Age I think it’s a sign of just how into this game people are getting … and how well it’s namesake gimmick is working.

Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360/PS3/Windows) opens, as so many RPGs do, by having players pick their physical appearance, species (human, elf, dwarf) and class (rogue, fighter, mage). Your picks drive more than your abilities in the game though; they also establish which of six origins stories will be associated with your character.

Mass Effect Revisited

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 4:30am

It took me two years, but I finished Mass Effect, Bioware's science fiction RPG and the company's follow-up to Knights of the Old Republic. I wasn’t far from the end – it only took a two-hour push to finally beat the main campaign – but finding those two hours had been a challenge when I was reviewing a new game every other week.

I’ve since scaled back my review schedule, and I’ve got to say that it’s been nice to slip into some of my old favorites and see what corners I might have left unexplored or (as is the case with Mass Effect) what stories were left untold.

Rediscover Magic with Duels of the Planewalkers

My long, dark tea time of the gaming soul came in 1995. I was one year out of college and having no luck finding a regular Dungeons & Dragons game. I was working at a daily newspaper in Stroudsburg, within walking distance of a comic book store on Main Street. And it was there that I found my substitute: Magic: The Gathering.

The collectible card game was decimating the local role-playing game community; while it was difficult to get even a one-shot D&D game together, pick-up games of Magic were always waiting at the comic shop.

I was desperate. I needed my gaming fix. So I did what had been unthinkable in college: I put away my polyhedral dice, and started buying Magic cards. I spent two or three years playing Magic, finally giving it up once I was able to get the Blackrazor Guild campaign off the ground. During that time I had a lot of fun delving deep into the game's mechanics, constructing different concept decks, and spending way, way too much on boosters.

SciFiWire: Resident Evil 5

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 11:05am

My review of Resident Evil 5 is up at SciFiWire.com. It's been a while since I played any of the Resident Evil titles, and the transition from the old survival-style games to the new run-and-gun games (ok, more like "run and then gun" games) was a bit jarring.

The current Resident Evil game is also obviously influenced by the movie series; there are a lot of cinematic, super-cool interactive cut scenes that could have been ripped from any of the films (dodging a possessed, chain-wielding motorcycle gang for example) but it's a hybridization that works.

The run-stop-shoot mechanic in this game is going to infuriate FPS veterans, but honestly, those folks should be playing Left4Dead instead; it's horde mechanics and four-player co-op play is more in line with what they want anyway. For those who like to be a bit more methodical (and occasionally panicked) in their zombie playing should enjoy Resident Evil 5

Blue Dragon Plus Mashes Together JRPG With Real-Time Strategy

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 03/23/2009 - 4:30am

  • Blue Dragon Plus
  • Designed by Mistwalker
  • Developed by Feelplus and Brownie Brow
  • Published by Ignition Entertainment
  • Nintendo DS
  • MSRP: $29.99
  • Buy it from Amazon.com

Blue Dragon Plus is a role-playing game/real-time strategy game mash-up and portable sequel to the Xbox 360 original JRPG. The first Blue Dragon was a game that I'd hoped to check out when it was released in Winter 2007 -- I was in a bit of an RPG drought at the time, and it looked interesting -- but I got sidetracked by life.

When the chance came to review Blue Dragon Plus for the DS -- a platform that I'd love to have another good RPG for -- I leapt at it. And landed in something unexpected. From what I've heard of Blue Dragon, it was a fairly traditional, turn-based Japanese RPG featuring your standard cast of adventuring heroes out to save the world. Blue Dragon Plus, however, is decidedly non standard.

SCI FI Wire: Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 11:56am

My review of Lord of the Rings: Conquest is up on SCI FI Wire, which is SCIFI.com's newly redesigned and re-launched hybrid of the old SCI FI Wire web site and Science Fiction Weekly. This is my second review for the new site (the first was of Prince of Persia, which ran back in late December). The new format is a challenge to write for because the word count is much lower, but it's a good kind of challenge to have. It's certainly helped me flex my shortform writing muscles.

As for the game itself? It's a definite "meh". There's no really strategy to this strategy game; it's almost entirely about hack'n'slash button mashing. It also has one of the most annoying narrators of all time, who  admonishes you to "take that tower" or "slay those orcs" every 15-20 seconds, which is particularly annoying when you've wandered off the battlefield and really aren't sure how you're supposed to get to your next objective. 

Ticket to Ride wins on Xbox Live

The Xbox Live version of Ticket to Ride is a faithful port of the popular board game, recreating the train-themed game on Microsoft's game console. The game board features a map of the continental United States with its major cities connected by different colored train routes.

Players draw different colored tickets from a deck each turn, which can be used to complete the corresponding routes. Most routes require one to six tickets to complete, though a few are grey, and can be completed by any color tickets (though you still need the right number of said tickets).

Completing routes scores points, but that's just the short game. The long game involves completing completing enough routes to reach a destination. At the start of the game, players draw three destination cards -- e.g. Seattle to New York, Los Angelos to Miami -- and then pick two. The rest of the game sees players vying to complete these destinations. Each destination is worth a certain number of points; relatively short-haul ones might only score six or eight, but long ones -- like the Los Angeles/New York run -- can yield upwards of 20.

Get lost in Fallout 3's radioactive wasteland

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 8:31pm

War. War never changes. But thankfully, it does gets upgrades. Fallout 3's all about those upgrades, presenting the best damn post-apocalyptic America this side of Thunderdome.

Submerge yourself in the artistic warfare of BioShock

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 10/18/2007 - 8:13am

Roger Ebert has famously said that video games may have the potential to be beautiful, well crafted, and technically competent … but they are not art. In a later column, he asked what video game made to date could possibly stand up against the greatest movies ever made?

Admittedly, I find his premise faulty; I don't think a movie has to rival Casablanca or The Godfather in its brilliance to be considered art, nor do I think that a video game has to clear that hurdle. But I think eventually they will … and BioShock is the proof of that.

Every aspect of this first-person shooter, from its tremendous visuals to its compelling plot to its philosophical challenges to its creative game play, marks it as art. And not just art … but Art.