Something of a demo crossed with a mini-prequel, Case 0 offers an exclusive area to explore and shows off some of the core mechanics of DR2 - everything from the improved guns and aiming system (borderline useless in the original game) to the very fun new ability to combine items together into hilarious, deadly contraptions. In addition, you can carry over any costumes, experience points and Combo Cards you find in Case 0 to the full version of the game, and it even lets you gain 200 exclusive achievement points. Not bad for only $5.

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It's River City Ransom crossed with the four-player X-Men arcade game and it uses the license of an excellent comic. What more do I need to say? Go download it. Oh, and buy the comic too. And watch the movie. None shall disappoint.

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One small warning: the game has an odd programming issue that can lock up your Playstation. I hear it's linked to having downloads going on in the background, so wait for all your downloads to finish before you play. If all else fails, try erasing the game from your hard drive and and reinstalling it.

 

 

Another of the fondly-remembered platformers for the SNES, lauded at the time for its 3D-modeled character sprites that were unlike anything seen before in gaming. Beyond the graphical gimmick, though, it was also a really solid game, providing tons of different stage settings and hidden areas to find, as well as some fun boss battles and some of the catchiest music on the platform.

The sequel, Diddy's Kong Quest, was even better, surpassing its predecessor in visuals, music and size; it was, quite literally, bigger and better in every way.

All that said, you should avoid the third game; it was a sloppy product rushed out at the very end of the SNES' lifespan and it shows. There's nothing here that wasn't done much better in the two prequels.

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Well hot damn, a new Virtual Console game after nearly two months of nothing but shitty Wiiware games. But is it any good?

Actually, yes, it is. Ufouria is a non-linear platformer that requires you to find and swap between four characters, each of which can navigate areas and obstacles the others cannot reach. It's kind of a blend between Little Samson and Metroid in that regard. The game does thankfully include a map and compass, which makes navigation much easier than in Metroid. Of course, you'll have to find both of them first.

Of course, being a Sunsoft game means two things: excellent music and high difficulty. In Uforia's case, it means a lot of tricky jumps and nasty deathtraps. You have unlimited continues, but using them sets you back at the beginning of the game and forces you to walk back to where you died all over again, Zelda II style. Also annoying is the fact that your only long-ranged attack for a large portion of the game is a thrown ball which can only be collected from enemies you stomp on, but it vanishes after only one use (even if you pick it up again before it disappears). It's also irritating that if you're carrying a ball and stomp on an enemy, the ball you're carrying will vanish from your hands to make way for the new one the enemy drops, forcing you to pick it up again.

In spite of some annoyances, Uforia is an enjoyable game and well worth checking out, especially since it's never been released in the US before today.

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Let the hate mail commence!

Halo 3 ODST

Oh goodie, another mission pack with four more hours of gameplay and 1-2 new multiplayer modes you'll never touch being sold for full price as a "Sequel". Boy, I miss the days when developers had integrity, when mission packs provided you with tons of new content - often as much or even more than the full game - and they were never, EVER sold for full price. But I guess those days are long gone. Enjoy your Halo Reach expansion pack in eight months, suckers!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Another dime-a-dozen first person shooter everyone's going to forget about in nine months, which will conveniently be just in time for the release of the NEXT Call of Duty game! Is this their marketing plan or something?

Darksiders

Yet another shitty clone of God of War, a game franchise which - let's be honest here - was never really any good to begin with. The only reason anyone might have cared about it is because Nintendo was in their 3-4 year gap between quality action platformer releases and the only alternatives were either Sega's Sonic shovelware or this turd. So out everyone went, buying up God of War by the millions, desperately trying to convince themselves it was a good game and not at all a shitty button mashfest with tons of gore and tits thrown in just to make it marketeable to fourteen year olds.

Heavy Rain

Didn't anyone at Sony get the memo? Interactive movies always blew ass, and every platform that tried to tout them as one of its main features tanked in less than three years. Go ahead, name me one decent, well-produced, fun FMV game that still holds up today. Go ahead. Do it. You can't, can you? I rest my case.

There's also this little quote:

“I would like people to play it once... because that’s life. Life you can only play once...I would like people to have this experience that way.” - David Cage, director of Heavy Rain.

See? Even the director admits it's not worth buying and barely even worthy of a rental.

Red Dead Redemption

GTA still blows nuts, even if you replace all the cars with horses and the "dynamic" city with a boring, empty desert. Still has the same terrible controls, glitchy physics engine and mind-numbingly tedious missions. Guaranteed to bore you to tears in under four hours, or... well, no, you don't get your money back either.

Tomb Raider Underworld

Did Tomb Raider ever have a good game? Nope. Just a bunch of forgettable, by-the-numbers platformers with shitty controls and glitchy collision detection whose only selling point was the D-cups on the heroine and the graphical technology they wasted all their development time improving just to show them off. Who keeps buying this slop?

Final Fantasy XIII

Oh, honestly, are people still buying this crap, holding on to that faint flimmer of hope that Square will eventually make a good game again? WAKE UP. Square's glory days have walked the path of Duke Nukem Forever; they're gone and not coming back. Quit throwing your money away based on misplaced nostalgia and support somebody who's still interested in making a quality game, like Atlus, Level 5, Nippon Ichi Software, Bioware. Or hell, even one of the little guys like CD Projekt or GSC Game World.

And no, I'm not even going to rent it. I stand by what I said in my Last Remnant nutshell. What's more, I'm really getting tired of this neverending cycle where we buy their games, get let down, but instead of learning our lesson, we all rush out and preorder their next turd the instant it gets announced. Then, like fucking cattle, we all call in sick for work the day before release, camp out for hours waiting for the midnight launch, fork over the cash, rush home, and play it until sunrise only to realize that it eats even more than their last fucking game. It's time to get some standards, people; they're never going to get any better if you keep buying their shitty games. They'll just read the sales figures, figure they don't need to change anything since their profits are still off the charts, and they'll just make an even more rushed, shoddy product next time around. You vote with your dollar - start voting for someone who deserves it. If they see a significant drop in profits, then maybe, JUST maybe, they'll quit slacking off and make a decent game again.

Mortal Kombat

Does anyone still seriously follow this franchise? To me, Mortal Kombat's simplistic gameplay and nonsensical plotline that mashed togther robots, ninjas, silly costumes, hammy faux-Eastern mythology and gore too over the top and fake looking to ever take seriously was the very definition of early 90's camp. Which is where it should have stayed; it's all aged about as poorly as a carton of milk left on top of a furnace for eighteen years. Street Fighter won the war, let it go already.

Tales of Vesperia

The latest sequel in an abismally bad RPG series whose only defining characteristic, it seems, is that the stories get stupider, the protagonists more whiny and obnoxious, and the gameplay more mash-friendly in every single entry. Not to mention that they just heap on more and more of that cutesy anime bullshit that I absolutely loathe. Quit buying this garbage and play a real game already.

Dead Space 2

System Shock for retarded juggalos whose only plans for the future are an enlightening career in serial murder.

 

 

Do the words "front-runner for the greatest action-adventure title of all time" mean anything to you? No? Then play this and be enlightened.

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Why are you looking up reviews of this? It's one of the defining games of its generation, it shaped the action-adventure genre into what it is today, and every gamer worth their weight in quarters will tell you the same. Go download it.

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A blend of a sidescrolling platformer, an overhead shooter, and a city sim that has you, as God (yes, literally) rebuilding and repopulating the destroyed planet so that you can reacquire your lost powers, drive all the demons from the earth and eventually defeat the devil himself. While all of this goes on, you get treated to some of the best music the SNES platform ever had in its repertoire. One of the best games from the tragically short-lived Quintet.

So where are Soul Blazer, Illusion of gaia and Terranigma already, dudes? Get that kickass trilogy on there!

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Oh hell yeah. One of the best games in the entire series, Castlevania 4 is an excellent remake of the original title. Konami went all out to make this one take advantage of the SNES' hardware - colorful graphics, scaling and rotating sprites, expansive stages, enormous bosses, excellent music, and several new tricks you can do with your whip, from swinging on obstacles to whipping in any direction to spinning it to block projectiles and hit tiny enemies. Of course, the game still provides plenty of challenge, but in the good way - there are much fewer cheap shots knocking you into pits and brute-force boss tactics to be found here.

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Zelda gets turned into a 2D sidescrolling platformer and meshed with some RPG elements. You'll have to grind experience points to increase your health, magic gauge or attack power, talk to townspeople to get clues about where items and dungeons are located, and deal with some annoying obstacles (like enemies that drain your experience points) and treacherous platforming sections. But hey, at least it avoided the trap Castlevania II fell into; almost every clue you're given actually makes sense and has relevance within the context of the game.

Fun fact: If you're clever with the Fairy spell, you can use it to sneak through locked doors without a key. Just be careful not to get trapped without enough magic to get back out, though.

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