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Cheap Playstation 3 (PS3 PSP) - GAMER NEWS
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In case you weren't familiar with the BloodRayne series when it first came around, it was a game mostly focused on the premise that game systems were powerful enough to render polygonal boobs, and by God the industry was going to find a reason to render every conceivable possible type of them. BloodRayne was our adolescent introduction to vampire-styled boobies, as Rayne, as sexy vampress, roamed the world sucking blood out of ***, which, in all fairness, is more story than a game about vampire boobies needs, so points for trying. They put out more effort than the movies did.
The game industry as a whole has gotten over their need to render boobs for boobs sake, so I was excited to see where BloodRayne would head in a modern gaming environment. The answer is somewhere between Castlevania and Super Meat Boy. The game follows Rayne as the secret international conspiratorial organization she works for sends her to break up a meeting of a secret international organization of vampires. Or something. You get about two sentences of back story before you're dropped into the game--Bad Dudes has a deeper story. And dropped is literal. You move between most levels by way of a rocket powered coffin drill that always enters from the sky and exits into the ground, which is almost as awesome as it sounds. In between coffin rides, Rayne slashes, shoots, and sucks her way through levels of the same three enemies over and over, as well as the occasional sun lamp, which vampires hate but apparently surround their fortresses with to keep other vampires away. When you're lucky, a level will add a new enemy type to the mix, up until the game gives up on new enemy types and decides on complex gauntlets of environmental hazards instead.  The controls are too mushy for any of these tasks to be pulled off well. The computer will decide sporadically that you're not allowed to attack because an enemy is about to do an attack animation that will hit, meaning you'll spend most of your combat sucking enemies' blood, since that's the only animation you can do that won't be interrupted for nonsense reasons. Platforming is worse, as it often requires you to do the most frustrating reverse-direction backflip since Mario 64 tried to teach us how to do it from scratch. When you add in the complex death traps the game throws at you later on, the frustration will increase exponentially, as you try to dance around Super Meat Boy style hazards with a sprite sporting the size and grace of China Warrior. The real shame here is that a game so bland an frustrating can look so good. The characters are just 2D sprites in a mild anime style, but their animations are the most fluid you'll see this side of BlazBlue. Maybe it was a memory issue that in so few but gorgeously rendered characters in the game, because it's almost criminal that a game can move so fluidly in video but be so staunched in actual play. In any case, the care in animation doesn't make up for the lack of effort in the other aspects of the game, so I'm going to have to give BloodRayne: Betrayal a GRADE: C+
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The first Toy Soldiers was a whimsical take on tower defense, taking place in a world of wind-up and tin soldiers modeled after World War 1 fighters. It was a delightful take on the “living toys” well that has been milked plenty of times before, but was done freshly enough to keep any thoughts of “I’ve seen this before” from cropping up in your head. Hoping to catch lightning in a bottle a second time, Signal Studios has decided to move their series into a realm a little more familiar to kids of the 80’s and beyond--playing in a world of Cold War and G.I. Joe inspired toys. All the tower defense tropes you’re familiar with are in play, you buy towers with different attack types, kill oncoming hordes, receive money/resources for killing hordes, use said resources to upgrade the current defenses and build more. Toy Soldiers: Cold War brings in a couple of more hands-on features, allowing direct control of turrets and piloting remote controlled heavy vehicles like tanks and helicopters. Direct control gives the player the ability to work up scoring multipliers and even earn special attacks, such as artillery barrages and a Stallone-inspired rampaging commando. 
The execution of basics in this game is excellent. Graphics, sound, and gameplay are all solid. The scoring system awards time management and hand-on play instead of sitting back and letting the AI do the work for you. Unfortunately, this far into the console cycle there’s a ton of solid games out there, and I was left waiting for something in TS:CW to stand out to me. The original Toy Soldiers had a marvelous charm about it due to the tin and wind-up atmosphere behind the “toys”. But Cold War lacks that charm on almost every level. The only reminders that you get that you’re playing with “toys” is from fly-by opening sequences at the beginning of the level and the “battery charge” time-limit on vehicles. Even the screen shots I’ve added to the review make it hard to pick the “toy” from the “soldier”, and I tried to pick some of the more obvious ones out of a sense of honesty. Other than those touches, you’re just playing “generic Cold War tower defense”; if you were playing TS:CW and told me you forgot you were supposed to be playing with 80’s era action figures, I wouldn’t just understand, I’d be surprised if you didn’t. 
So, lacking the polish of the 80’s action figure paint coating, you’re left with a collection of mini-games and a generic tower defense. I feel like judging a game on it’s mini-games is like a food critic judging a meal based on the napkin and after dinner mint, so that leaves us with a generic tower defense. And frankly, there’s better tower defense games out there, and I’m not talking in general, I’m talking better tower defense games on Xbox Live Arcade. You’d be better off taking your money and buying fifteen dollars worth of G.I. Joes (which these days appears to be less than two). 
Unrealized imagination and uninventive implementation, paired with a game that really doesn’t give you a reason to purchase above other selections, are the reason I have to rate this game a
Grade: C
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It has been 14 years since Super Mario 64 came out, a game that many mark as the turning point that made 3D platforming a viable game genre. This holiday, Disney Interactive Studios and Junction Point released Epic Mickey, totally ignoring most of the principle groundwork that Mario 64 laid out.
The story follows cultural icon Mickey Mouse. Years ago, he stumbled upon The Wasteland, a home for forgotten cartoon characters, and with his usual reckless curiosity, Mickey nearly destroys it by spilling a large portion of paint thinner over the landscape and accidentally creating a sentient amalgam of paint and thinner called The Blot--we've all been there. Mickey flees before his mistakes are noticed, but as time passes, The Blot returns and spirits Mickey into the Wasteland, for a purpose our rodent friend won’t learn until later.
Mickey defends himself with a magic paintbrush he happened to get his four-fingered gloves on as he was dragged into The Wasteland. His paintbrush can spray gobs of paint or paint thinner onto other characters and the environment, to either’s benefit or hindrance, depending on how you want to play. As the game progresses, Mickey also collects an assortment of attacks in paint/thinner elementals called Tints and Turps, and in sketches that can transform into solid objects like anvils and televisions.
Gameplay comes primarily in two forms, which are essentially 3D “rooms” and 2D “hallways”. 3D areas are large sections, usually with a quest or series of quests to unlock the path to the next “room”, and jammed with hidden collectibles and side quests. The 2D sections are the pathways between 3D areas, and are charmingly stylized on classic Disney cartoons. Unfortunately, I found the short, less-than-a-minute 2D sections to be the most enjoyable sections of the game.
The controls fall apart in the 3D sections. I don’t want to use the word ‘broken‘, because the controls to work, they just don’t work well. The camera is the wonkiest I’ve seen in a modern game in years, often refusing to go where you want it to, and it even lost me a few times, leaving me to wander blindly off-screen until I found my way back to it and knocked it loose. The camera even features a picky first-person view. A few times, totally frustrated with the camera’s lack of co-operation, I tried to kick into to first-person view to see the area I wanted a better look at. Much to my frustration, the game decided that this wasn’t a moment it wanted me to have first-person, and disabled it on me completely.
Adding to the camera frustrations is Mickey’s paint spray. The Burton-esque lack of right angles in the game means that often you won’t be able to paint an area directly in front of you because the curvature of the ground has just such a slant to make your paint splatter helplessly on the floor in front you. Couple this with the lousy camera, and you can be prepared for several hair-yanking spats of painting the wrong object, or more likely nothing at all. 
For the degree of shortfalls in the game’s mechanics, though, you will find an equal level of creativity and charm in the design that has gone missing in most games of the current generation. The world of the Wasteland is patterned after what looks to be a Clive Barker version of Disneyland, and playing 'spot-the-difference' on familiar landmarks adds a fun extra element. The 2D classic cartoon levels each have unique art styles that perfectly mimic the original shorts, including characters that look more composed of ink and paint than bits and polygons. Occasional plays on classic Disney tropes, such as meshing Peg-Leg Pete with Peter Pan, will keep your inner child chucking as well.
In the end, though, the game seems to not know who its audience is. If it wants to skew to an older gaming audience, it has totally thrown out the book of lessons the industry has learned from previous 3D platformers, eschewing such necessities as a competent camera and a “checklist” system to let you know when you’ve picked an area clean of collectibles and side quests. If it wants to appeal to kids, it is under-stimulating, with its dark, don’t-play-with-the-lights-on-if-you-want-to-pick-out-detail levels and a lack of voice acting anywhere in the game. If it’s going after casual gamers, the levels are too abstract, forcing you to go miles off the beaten path to find side quest items. And if it’s to appeal to the hardcore audience, well, it shouldn’t be on (just) the Wii.
As it stands, it is basically two things: a Disney Fan Game, by which I mean a game that the feverish Disney fans will buy because they have to, or a Christmas Game, a game that is going to end up in more homes than Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors merely on the strength that parents will walk into random-big-box-retailer’s electronics section and say “Hey, Mickey Mouse. That’s a safe choice.” 
The game has enough hooks to keep you playing, but enough frustrations that you won’t really be sure why. I spent much of my time after unlocking the two included vintage cartoons (something that happens relatively early, if you’re trying) questioning why I was still at it. Early interviews with Warren Spector about Epic Mickey mentioned that he had conceived a trilogy out of it (which shouldn’t be news--you can’t get a publisher to touch an original IP these days until you convince them you can make it into a trilogy), and despite the games flaws, I’m sure that it will sell enough to warrant a sequel. I just hope that before Junction Point ships the sequel out the door they take time to evaluate the product and fix the easily redeemable flaws.
Grade: C+
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Split/Second has it all: a slick presentation, streamlined heads-up display, an incredible sensation of speed, awesome techno-vibe soundtrack that perfectly suits the gameplay, and a track-deformation hook truly its own. Everything is all well and good...until the excitement of the timing-based, environmental attack "moves" hook runs out on you. The "reality TV show" campaign is fun a few "episodes" in but all it does is cover up the few race modes available to the player (six total) and only about half are worth the inclusion. Regardless, it does a solid enough job to cover up Black Rock Studio's first time-out bruises to present a refreshing (and exhilarating) take on a stale genre that rivals the best titles in the Burnout series. And if you're looking for more of a challenge after solving the campaign game tape, step up and go online to take on the -- relatively healthy -- community in a seemingly lag-free experience.
Grade: B+
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Game developers take note: Wanted is how you bring to video game life a movie license that revolves around bas-assery. Instead of artificially inflating a game's length to give it a supposed "depth" most developers go with, Grin went with a less is more approach. Wanted provides five (separate story line) hours of satisfying bullet-bending, round-exploding shooting with Mr. A-hole himself, Wesley, and a sense of "cool" that permeates through the source material. Its short length also makes the -- relatively easy -- trophies fun to unlock and extends the play time to 15-20 hours. Perfect for some trophy-whoring. Technical hiccups mar the experience a bit (i.e. not being to hit visible limbs because the enemy is technically behind cover) but still worth the price of admission. You may have missed it at launch, but the game's ultimate drop to $10-15 make it so worth it now.
Grade: A-
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