PS3 Reviews

Fallout: New Vegas Review

As Bethesda and Interplay continue to squabble over the rights of the Fallout license, gamers who started Fallout 3 back in 2008 have finally played through most of what the game and its DLC content has to offer. The stage is set for a new adventure to follow up one of the best action RPGs released in the past decade. Fallout: New Vegas takes players from Washington D.C. across the country to Nevada where the nuclear apocalypse was less severe. People have started to pick up the pieces and build a life similar to the wild west of the 1800s. Players must now adapt to their new surroundings and fight, help or become the new sheriff in town.

Costume Quest Review

Double Fine Productions is home to some of the best creative minds working in the game industry today. But while their first two releases Psychonauts and Brutal Legend were praised for their inventive worlds, good sense of humor, and entertaining stories, they also had some issues with their game design and failed to make a big impact financially. That resulted in a new strategy for Tim Schafer and his team. Instead of pouring all their energies into large projects that the whole company’s future hinged on the success of, they abandoned the retail market in favor of splitting into smaller groups to work on cheaper downloadable titles to limit the risk and boost their output. Costume Quest is the first release using this strategy, and while we don’t know how much this strategy will help the company, it could result in a lot of really fun projects.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West PS3 Review

Ninja Theory has teamed up with Namco-Bandai in order to remake one of the oldest Chinese folk tales ever written—Journey to the West. The developers took a leap in terms of cinematic presentation and interpretation in order to tell the story in the best way possible, so what happens when a hot red-head and a monkey man team up to fight killer robots? Ironically, you get a pretty competent version of Wu Cheng’en’s work and an incredibly gripping epic that may have evolved story-telling in games.

Sonic 4 Episode 1 (PS3) Review

It’s probably safe to say Sonic never really coped with the move to 3D with the same ease that his old rival Mario did. And although some of the first Sonic Adventure titles on the Dreamcast were decent enough games they never seemed to progress into anything that would catch peoples attention like the original games did back in the 90’s.

The thing that made the original Sonic games so good was the mix between very fast gameplay, strong clean graphics, and a good challenge. Sonic 4 Episode1’s main aim is to go back to basics and only be a slight evolution of this format. From that perspective it is a definite success. The visuals are highly colored and detailed but remain easy to understand even when Sonic is running around at full speed. Sonic’s movement also feels and controls much like it did, with the original spin dash and the power-ups like Speed Shoes still in tact.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

There is artistry behind the visual presentation of Castlevania:Lords of Shadow, and it pays off wonderfully. I enjoyed this game on a visual level more so than any game since Shadow of the Colossus, but all of that would be for naught if it didn’t make sense within the context of the gameplay and this is the games biggest success.

Dead Rising 2 PS3 Review

Zombies always find us no matter where we hide. They find us in mansions, malls, our front lawns, Louisiana, in post apocalyptic futures and even WWII. And now they have found us yet again in Dead Rising 2, Capcom’s other zombie franchise. As aging motocross champion Chuck Greene, you must save the last remaining survivors from a zombie onslaught in Nevada, clear your name off a terrorist plot and make sure your daughter Katey takes her medicine all within a few days length.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (PS3) Review

Spider-Man is a hero that resonates with people not just because of his ability to propel himself high above skyscrapers and string up hoodlums, but because his humanity permeates through his mask and is a genuinely friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. You can’t help but root for him even though he has been in quite a load of fodder games and bad movies over the years. The one constant source of Spider-Man nirvana stems from the pages of comic books. His battles and stories are so compelling that writers have rejuvenated and rebooted the canon time and time again. Developer Beenox hopes to draw inspiration from some of Spider-Man’s greatest incarnations in order to deliver a game worthy of the fiction.

Mafia 2 (PS3) Review

The life of organized crime has always appealed to audiences striving for an iota of power. The idea that even the lowliest dock worker could become the leader of a mob syndicate based solely on who they know is, in many ways, a Cinderella story for the working class. Video games share that same appeal allowing the player to slip into a role of power whether they become a superhero, a super-soldier or anything in between. It would seem that mobsters and games should go together like pinkies and rings, but in the case of Mafia 2, the glamour and appeal fade quickly. As Vito Scaletta, it’s your job to slog through every mob cliché known to man.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days (PS3) Review

The initial Kane and Lynch: Dead Men failed in a number of categories. Most detrimental to its existence was imprecise and incoherent gameplay that felt muddled from the start. Having to tell your computer-controlled ally what to do and where to go made the entire game into a bad escort mission, but developer lo-Interactive has taken some big risks in order to create the game they had originally envisioned and that meant embracing the franchise’s theatrical roots.

Blazblue: Continuum Shift Review

Blazblue: Calamity Trigger was released back in the summer of 2009. It was the latest fighting game made by Arc System Works, the creators of the well received Guilty Gear games. As with all successful fighting games, Blazblue was due for an update which balances out performance, eliminates overpowered moves and addresses problems vocalized by the fan base. Blazblue: Continuum Shift accomplishes just that and takes the opportunity to reach out to those outside the usual demographic.