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Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is an action-adventure game set in a new fantasy setting. Typical of the genre, you’ll also solve various types of puzzles as you explore and defeat enemies.
Released about a month before Christmas, this game was quickly lost in the plethora of new games at that time. I never let it leave my radar, and eventually found some time to check out the game. It turned out to be a little different than I was expecting.
Mass Effect 2 is Bioware's follow-up to their awesome-but-flawed space opera role-playing game. The sequel is a beautifully crafted game that knows exactly what scifi notes to hit to get player's blood pumping and keep them engaged, even as the main story is less than stellar.
The game – and that I almost wrote "movie" tells you a lot about it – picks up where its predecessor left off. Exactly where that is depends on the choices you made in the previous game. My main character was woman named Xandra Shepherd, a tough-as-nails, victory-at-any-cost commander who hated the anti-human Citadel Council, the ruling body of much of the galaxy. When their base of operations – a massive alien construct known as the Citadel – was attacked by life-destroying entities known as Reavers, Xandra didn't lift a finger to save the Council. She did, however, defeat the Reaver incursion. As a result, my game began with a new human council in charge of the Citadel … and the galaxy in denial about the threat of the Reavers.
Dark Void is a videogame with a great deal of promise. When I first heard this game described, I couldn’t have been more excited.
A pulp adventure set in the Bermuda Triangle with alien technology, Tesla inventions, and jet packs! An Indiana Jones-like hero fighting the good fight against Battlestar Galactica-style foes out to conquer the world! Wow, that’s right up my alley.
Or so I thought.
In recent months there have several major disasters involving superhumans. A cry has gone out amongst the people to hold the superhumans accountable for their actions. Congress answer that cry with the Superhuman Registration Act. The act requires anyone having or utilizing any form of superhuman abilities to register with the government as a "living weapon of mass destruction." Unfortunately this law splits the superhuman community.
Those for the act, lead by Iron Man, believe that this is the only way to show the people good faith that what they do is the right thing. Those against the act, lead by Captain America, believe it is against everything America stands for. The act is now law, and the lines have been drawn. Will you join Iron Man and the pro movement, or Captain America and the resistance movement? Regardless of what you choose prepare for a superhuman Civil War!
This is a brief background of Marvel Comics 2006 story-line entitled Civil War. It also serves as the background for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.
"There you go Astro Boy. On your flight into space. Rocket high, through the sky. What adventures soon you will make." ~Astro Boy theme song
After nearly 50 years what adventures could Astro Boy still make? Astro Boy the Video Game (DS, Wii, PS2, PSP) seeks to discover just that, in a fun little old-school style adventure.
Astro Boy is the story of an advanced robot, named Astro, who is created to replace the deceased son of a brilliant scientist. Unfortunately the scientist discovers his son can never be replaced and rejects Astro. Eventually he is found by another scientist who discovers Astro is more than he seems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.