At first glance, you might mistakenly believe Blue Dragon Plus to be a strategy game in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics, with little hand-drawn heroes and monsters arranged on an isometric 3D stage. But once the fight begins, everything starts happening in real time and you must feverishly put together your plan of attack, because those enemies aren’t waiting for your turn.

You command your units around the field with quick but simple controls that rely totally on the touch screen. You tell your units where to go, who to fight, when to heal, and when to move to special areas on the map. It seems like your attention is constantly needed everywhere at once, but the game gives you some room for error by providing a high number of healing items. Also, as you progress through each map, the game occasionally pauses to let some part of the story play out.

Speaking of the story, it picks up one year after the first game, as Shu and his pals journey to the center of their world to make sure everything is still OK where they defeated the ultimate evil. In a big twist, the nefarious Nene isn’t as vanquished as they thought, and trouble starts all over again. While it doesn’t have the console version’s voice acting or so-bad-it’s-good rockin’ battle music, it does have a big dose of 3D cutscenes. It’s possible that the game’s first couple of hours are just unusually heavy with them, though, seeing as we haven’t yet had a chance to spend more time with the game.

We’re interested to play more, especially after seeing Blue Dragon Plus attempting to shake things up compared to its more traditional predecessor. Hopefully it will give this franchise another chance at the big time. Expect to see more of its high-end presentation and simple but fast techniques when it releases early next year.

Stormrise will remind you of Full Spectrum Warrior. You view the battle from the perspective of the unit you have selected, which usually means “third-person,” unless you’ve selected one that flies, in which case you get a bird’s-eye-view. Unlike Full Spectrum Warrior, however, you control a force much larger than a handful of fireteams; in terms of numbers, Stormrise brings traditional RTS-sized armies to the field. The difficulties inherent to managing forces this large with a gamepad are where most console ports fall apart. And this is precisely what Bhopti says that Stormrise’s “whip select” control scheme will remedy.

If nothing else, the “whip select” scheme definitely appears flexible. Every one of your units, regardless of how far away, is represented by an icon. In order to select it, you simply “whip” the control stick in its direction. In the case of two unit icons being too close to one another, Bhopti promises that the whip select’s fine-tuning will typically result in your intended target being selected. (I didn’t have a chance to play, but TeamXbox’s Tom Price did, and he told me that his experience didn’t quite bear this out.) Other kinds of supplemental functionality are built into the system. For instance, you can issue a movement command to a distant unit while you have another selected, which seems to work most effectively when you’re looking down on the battlefield from a flying unit. And you can also assign multiple units into a single group, in order to keep the array of onscreen icons manageable.

When talking about Stormrise’s maps, Bhopti brought up terms like “verticality” and “layer cake.” The latter described what he feels is a crucial expression of the game’s level design. Unlike most of the RTS games we’re familiar with, Stormrise isn’t built around a flat plane scattered with obstacles. Rather, many of its maps are layered; one map that Bhopti flew through had a multi-level parking garage, a subterranean tunnel system, and an army-sized warehouse built into it. The point he was trying to drill home during this portion of the demo was that, regardless of where you are (or what your current point of view is), it’s almost impossible to get a full spatial picture of your surroundings. In the case of the army-sized warehouse, an enemy who decides to actually stash an army in it will easily foil you if you dismiss it as empty offhand.

When you consider what this notion of “verticality” could mean for navigating this world of “layer cakes,” Bhopti’s hyping of the “whip select” scheme starts to maybe seem a bit more credible. But chew on this: Stormrise’s PC version will ship with a specially-designed mouse and keyboard scheme. According to Bhopti, the team (which includes quite a few recruited pro gamers) is currently wrestling with a few iterations of it. These days, it’s common for PC ports to come with keyboard commands built-in, regardless of how absurd it would be to actually play the game that way (see: Devil May Cry 4). But it light of Bhopti’s bold statements, shipping the PC version without mouse and keyboard controls would have spoken volumes.

Sega and the Creative Assembly are promising us another look at Stormrise not long after the new year. It’ll be particularly interesting to see how the multiplayer component is shaping up.

Other Information

• Publisher: SEGA
• Developer: Creative Assembly
• Genre: Real-Time Strategy
• Release Date: Q1 2009
• ESRB: TBA

As your close personal friend in the game, White has you racing to meet up with him and his friends as he jets Carmen Sandiego-like between exotic mountain locales around the world. When you first arrive at a hill, you can only compete in one event — it feels limiting at first, but the barrier to clearing each event’s low enough that you can easily progress through the main game thanks in large part to the excellent controls.

Whether you’re using just a Wii Remote or you’re lucky enough to shred on a Balance Board, the game’s responsive and consistent in pulling off tricks, spins, and jumps. Twisting the controller gently makes you spin through the air as you fly off cliffs, and quick flicks while holding A or B pulls off the more impressive stunts. After quickly acclimating to the different move combinations, you can consistently pull off exactly the tricks you want to do every time. I never felt like it was the game’s fault when I crashed: I knew it was because I’d committed to a stunt too late or was trying to land an obviously off-balance trick.

Grinds are a little too easy since you hop on rails automatically, but chaining them together with rail tricks feels satisfying and surprisingly natural. Overall, using just the Wii-mote feels a little more accurate, but the Balance Board provides a more realistic snow-shredding experience. Actual snowboarders might feel just the opposite, but if you don’t have a board already, this game gives you the perfect excuse to pick one up.

The single-player offering’s fairly short, but it’s got plenty of extras to unlock if you perform well in events, including new characters. Instead of changing snowboards, Road Trip lets you select a guy or gal from your roster that’s best suited to the challenge. That’s pretty normal, but what the game does differently (and effectively) is throw in the abilities of your cameraman. You have to select a second character (who will tag along and film you from behind); they power you up with a special ability as you fill your Respect Meter — accomplished by nailing tricks and collecting crown tokens scattered across each track. It might feel like a gimmick at first, but the longer you play, the more you rely on those abilities to boost your own skills just enough to surpass your previous best score.

Some of the powers are what you’d probably expect — speed boost, higher jump, etc. But others, like temporarily blinding your opponents, are designed squarely with multiplayer in mind. Multiplayer’s terrific (local play only, mind you), as the friendly controls make it easy to drag a group of friends into the game with you. You can go through a separate story mode cooperatively, compete head-to-head, or trade off taking turns in assorted events. Multiplayer sessions only allow for one Balance Board, but who has more than one anyway? It would’ve been better to tie the multiplayer and solo story modes together, but the game’s short enough that it adds a little extra life to the title.

Shaun White will probably draw comparisons to the Wii’s other snow-topped mountain experience, We Ski, but Road Trip throws out that title’s kiddy aesthetic for a cool anime look with a great licensed soundtrack. The game does so many things right, it’s almost hard to believe that the same company developed both this and its PS3/360 counterpart. I only hope that more companies will put the same time and attention into making their Wii ports such excellent (and in this case superior) standalone experiences.

Get Even falls somewhere between overhead shooter and real-time strategy, as you’re not actually firing at the various structures and enemies that cross your path – rather, you’re instructing the iconic pixels to take down whichever target you specify with the Wii Remote pointer. Those little buggers can be killed in action, so you’ll need to occasionally shake the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to generate more, or unleash a screen-clearing special attack, which also replenishes your forces.

Each stage has a singular objective (destroy specific buildings, abduct all the cows, etc), and rather than assign your UFO a health meter, any hits taken simply deduct from the running timer (which doesn’t often provide a ton of wiggle room as it is).

The missions play out in an expectedly frantic manner, as you must find a balance between zipping toward the indicated objectives and downing enough extra buildings, turrets, and tanks to accumulate precious bonus seconds to stay afloat. So while Get Even’s a relatively simple experience, it’s not mindless – when I botched a stage, it was typically not a matter of bad luck or cheap foes, just poor strategy on my part.

Get Even’s cities are simple and fairly nondescript, but the game strikes a smart presentational tone, juxtaposing serious-sounding tunes with the obviously bizarre happenings, not to mention visual words of praise (“Cool!”) and amusing human radio transmissions (“Our forces are not equipped to take on 2D targets!”). Frustratingly, it comes at a higher cost than expected, as the initial $5 purchase delivers but a single three-stage mission (about 15 minutes of play).

You’ll have to shell out $5 apiece for the three additional mission packs (two complete missions apiece) to near the two-hour mark, but the immediate existence of such add-ons makes the original seem like a glorified trial – not to mention an exploitation of WiiWare’s simplistic, demo-free structure. That’ll understandably be a hurdle for some, but it’s a shame, as Get Even’s high concentration of amusing (and plain ol’ fun) action might entrance even those unaware of its storied roots — if only for a bit.

Let me rewind a bit. Riddick has a fantastic opening, where you (as the titular Riddick, meaning you’re playing Vin Diesel playing Riddick) step off the prison transport and into Butcher Bay prison, and the first thing that happens is you snap someone’s neck and make an escape.

Except, you don’t. It’s all a fantasy, but even for a typical dream-sequence opening, it’s incredibly visceral and sets the harsh, dark sci-fi tone of the game. You proceed into the prison and acclimate to stuff like dialogue with major characters, the layout of the prison, the “do me a favor, and I do you a solid” quest structure, a melee combat system that’s full of space shivs, and so forth. Everything to date is, as mentioned, “pretty cool.”

It’s when you walk around the courtyard that you see a sign in the distance, and it looks like it says, “No talking in the courtyard.” Yet as you approach the sign, whatever fancy graphics technology (mip-mapping? Whatever) that makes things more distinct and detailed the closer you get resolves the text to reveal the true (and literal) writing on the wall above. It clicks that Starbreeze is full of smart, subversive guys who know how to inject the right humor into even the bleakest of environs. From that point on, Starbreeze keeps on showing off great feats of design as Riddick climbs, shanks, shoots, crawls, and pilots his way off of Butcher Bay.

So it’s immensely disappointing that one of my favorite Xbox games does not work on the Xbox 360. But then the rumors of a new remake, dolled up in HD-generation visuals, surfaced. And then the remake was finally announced, with notes on both the new visuals and the tweaks to the game based on community feedback along with some nebulous “new chapter” type of content – new content that, I assumed, would be a tacked-on “you fly around and attack a spaceship or something” chapter that extends the game by another hour or so.

When Starbreeze finally showed off their work, I got the full picture. Yes, this game’s an enhanced remake. But it doesn’t have the token “here’s a random new level as new content” that I expected; the whole “assault on Dark Athena” portion of the game is a separate campaign that’s as long as the original Escape from Butcher Bay. In effect, Riddick fans get a new game that’s as long as its predecessor, while the Riddick newbie gets a nearly 20-hour crazy sci-fi adventure.

Similar to Quantum of Solace taking place within an hour of Casino Royale, the Assault on Dark Athena campaign takes place soon after the conclusion of Escape from Butcher Bay. Riddick puts himself into cryosleep for the long ride away from Butcher Bay, but he wakes up early when the Dark Athena, a slave ship, picks up the escape pod. A bounty’s already on Riddick’s head for his escape, and Revas, the Dark Athena’s captain, orders his crew to flush out Riddick for the reward.

The developers at Starbreeze describe Dark Athena as having the same sort of overall structure and gameplay as Butcher Bay but adapted for a new setting (a massive spaceship as opposed to a massive space prison). For example, while guns are DNA-locked on Butcher Bay (Riddick needed to input his DNA into a database before using any firearms), on the Dark Athena, guns are grafted to the arms of cyborg drone soldiers. So when Riddick needs some firepower, all he has to do is take down a drone and use it as both a shield and a gun (with the tactical disadvantage that you can only move backward when holding a drone in this manner). Another Butcher Bay-to-Dark Athena transition is the quest hub; in Butcher Bay it was a prison hub, but on the Dark Athena, it’s the slave-filled brig.

Dark Athena isn’t just filled with adapted/tweaked Butcher Bay gameplay. A couple of interesting mechanics focus on the drone soldiers. Besides the previously mentioned gun aspect, Dark Athena has an interesting take on their behavior: They essentially alternate between being dumb and smart. In pure robot-drone mode, they have red eyes and patrol in set patterns, only reacting to things in their immediate line of vision – they’re really easy to sneak around in this state. But at any moment, those red eyes could become white, indicating that the drone’s under remote control – meaning with a literal blink of the eye, the drone could switch from dumbly patrolling to intelligently coordinating team tactics with other remotely controlled soldiers. Yikes.

On the flipside, Riddick can also control drones by finding a control pod. You can do this to take out other drones with impunity, since you’re safely ensconced in a pod somewhere else. A minor puzzle that the developers showed off was a fan that restricted access to a corridor that Riddick needed to get to; you solve this predicament by taking control of a drone and jamming its body into the fan, providing room for Riddick to get by.

Most of Starbreeze’s demonstration was a quick tour of some of the new Dark Athena stuff, like the look and layout of the ship, the story context, and the gameplay tweaks that the drone enemies bring to Riddick. I haven’t seen any of the enhancements (described as ranging from tweaking the overall A.I. to redoing some of the environment layouts) myself, but if Starbreeze manages to make the old game look and feel as snazzy as the stuff happening in the new campaign, I look forward to seeing a HD-era version!” sometime next year.

Your task is to step into Lara Croft’s shoes and collect all the artifacts which once belonged to the god Thor. It’s belt and not quite braces, but gauntlet and hammer that you’re after.

Once you’ve got these, then you can show Natla who’s really in charge.

But it’s a white-knuckle ride as you trek through ancient ruins, dangerous jungles and a tumble-down mansion, with perils waiting for you at every turn. Fire is the least of it; jaguars, giant bats, traps and sudden spears through the floorboards are all out to get you.

Hold your nerve, though. With a bit of ingenuity, a bit of lateral thinking and a clear head you can solve the puzzles of the gods and so get the access you need. Watch out. You’ll also need quick reactions.

It’s all great fun, absorbing, inventive and fast-moving, devilishly plotted to keep you on your toes in a contest that’s never mindless, always thrilling and ultimately highly satisfying.

Of course, there are some bad points as well as good. The display doesn’t show your health all the time so you don’t know when to use a health pack, and if you really want to be picky, then it does take quite some time to climb up off a ledge onto a platform.

But all this is far outweighed by the plentiful good points. You have to press x when you don’t quite make a successful jump. X will give the chance to make a saving grab – and that’s a big part of the fun.

The puzzles are intelligently presented and they certainly stretch you sufficiently. The extras (profiles, concepts and treasures) are terrific; and Nintendo are spot on with the realistic sound effects and movement (you can even see Lara’s hair move).

Added to the appeal is the fact that you get increasingly-better weapons as you progress throughout the game. A percentage marker usefully tells you how far through the game you are, and the good film clips and storyline are all part and parcel of a great package which has been thought through in every last detail.

The high adrenaline slow motion moments when you have to jump out the way are a nice touch. And what a relief at the end when you know that civilization won’t end here – thanks to all your frantic button-pushing.

When Midway announced that it was planning on bringing the TNA wrestling franchise to consoles with the recently released Impact, I was pumped for two reasons. First off, it was an opportunity to get into the ring with a new federation that sported new rules and a new roster, but I also secretly hoped that competition would be the onus needed for THQ to finally fix some of the nagging issues plaguing the Smackdown vs. Raw franchise. I don’t know if Impact was the secret catalyst that finally brought about the creation of a much-improved WWE game, but I do know that this year’s SvR may very well be the best yet, and wrestling fans should most definitely jump on board with this grappler.

While last year’s entry in the series may not have been perfect, it did a lot of things right, and all the franchise’s previous successes are on display once again. WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw ‘09 brings back the highly intuitive grapple system, allowing players to lock up opponents and dish out pain with the simple flick of the right analog stick. Also back is limb-specific damage, meaning that it’s once again possible to target specific areas of your foe’s body in order to soften him up for an easy pin or wear down his limbs before you go for a crippling submission hold. These staples of the game worked splendidly last year, and thankfully they didn’t end up left on the cutting room floor this time around.

Also back is the momentum meter, which fills every time you land an attack on your opponent. As expected, once the meter is full, you can unleash a finisher, but this year, there’s a new wrinkle for those wanting to dish out even more pain. As most wrestling fans know, their favorite superstars often have two or three moves that they don’t use as “finishers” per se, but rather as go-to attacks during the course of the match. Attacks like John Cena’s Five Knuckle Shuffle or Undertaker’s Old School can now be accessed as Signature Moves, which are earned by tapping a couple of buttons when the momentum meter is full and can then be deployed anytime the proper conditions are met later in the match. It’s a great touch for players who earn an attack early and can’t quite put away their foe with one blow, as well as those who just like to go through the full repertoire during a match.

The thing is, the basic matches have never been a real weakness for SvR, but the game’s shortcomings were on display when it came to the somewhat lackluster game modes. THQ has always seemed to face a constant struggle when it comes to crafting a worthwhile career mode, and previous experiences have often led to ridiculous story lines where wrestlers are arbitrarily assigned rivals for no good reason and the entire experience is just the same thing over and over regardless of who’s lacing up the boots. That’s all been fixed this year, though, as THQ has crafted the excellent Road to Wrestlemania mode. While the game may sacrifice a bit of creativity in the name of a coherent story line, it’s all worth it once you dig in and start playing.

Road to Wrestlemania puts you in the shoes of one of seven WWE Superstars, each with his own unique plot and rivals. Choosing Triple H, for instance, puts you on a path where you eventually choose to reunite either Evolution or Degeneration-X, depending on who you side with over the span of a few months. The other grapplers get just as loving a treatment, with Chris Jericho trying to track down a masked assailant, the Undertaker once again being plagued by his power-sapping urn, and John Cena dealing with MVP’s lack of patriotism when he secedes from the U.S. to create “Better-Than-U-Topia.” A lot of work went into creating the Road to Wrestlemania, with each event featuring dramatic intros and conclusions, and ringside announcers who are up to date on all the latest drama in your character’s particular personal struggle. It may not be the “pick a wrestler, take on the world” model we’re used to, but in many ways, it’s so much better.

Those looking for a more traditional experience will find it in Career mode, where you can either take a current superstar and put him through the paces or create one of your own. The game features a dynamic stat system where your performance in the ring determines which attributes go up every match, leaving you with a character truly crafted to your play style. In addition, there are a number of special attributes that will be unlocked as you meet certain criteria while playing. For instance, kicking out of a pin attempt when you have several body parts in the orange (danger) status will net you the resilience attribute, making it harder for foes to keep you down for a three count.

Each wrestler can obtain up to six of these special perks, allowing you to round out your character even more fully. Sadly, though, beyond developing your superstar, there’s not much to Career mode, as the rest of it simply consists of picking an opponent, duking it out and then being awarded stars at the end based on your performance. Once you attain enough stars, you can challenge for a #1 contender slot with a special match stipulation, and if you’re victorious, you get your title shot. The mode then ultimately comes down to the somewhat-boring belt collection and doesn’t really have a whole lot to offer. THQ smartly decided to emphasize the Road to Wrestlemania this year, which is great because if Career mode were the showcase, we’d be left with yet another hollow shell of a game.

Finally, there’s a special emphasis on tag- team matches this year, and once again this game delivers where others have fallen short. AI behavior has been significantly tweaked so your CPU partner is now much smarter about running in to break up pins, grabbing opponents who wander too close to your corner and generally behaving like a real partner rather than a worthless bot.

Teamwork also takes on newfound emphasis with team finishers and “hot tags” showing up to make the whole affair feel more realistic. The hot tags are especially fun, as they recreate the big swings of momentum that are paramount to these types of matches. By simply holding down a directional button, the teammate outside the ring can start juicing up the crowd and calling for his partner to make the big tag. Once he does, the now-legal man comes flying into the ring and, through a series of timed button presses, lays out both members of the opposing team and lands a big finishing maneuver. Just like the real thing, it’s a great way to turn the tide when victory seems to be slipping away.

SvR ‘09 has included the new Create-a-Finisher and WWE Highlight Reel to further enhance the title. Create-a-Finisher is exactly what it sounds like, allowing you to string together a series of moves in order to craft your own attack of ultimate destruction. Sadly, due to animation restrictions, not all moves are completely compatible with one another, so you can’t fully let your imagination run wild, but the editor is still pretty robust, and you shouldn’t have too much trouble replicating the sweet moves you pull on your roommate when you’ve been drinking and feel a little rowdy.

The Highlight Reel serves as a vehicle for those who like to show off, allowing you to take a match and then edit it together into a compilation of great moments complete with transitions, effects and other editorial touch-ups. Now whenever you want to relive the time you dominated your buddies in a Triple Threat match or go back to the moment when you dragged an online opponent through the flames in the new Inferno match, you can. You can also edit the whole thing so it shows off only your amazing moves and not the times you nearly lost due to excessive taunting or walking right into a finisher you should have seen coming.

SvR has always done a terrific job when it comes to capturing the animations and likenesses of real WWE talent, and this year is no different. The character models are spot-on, and the grappling and striking are more polished than ever. There are a few hiccups, though, as clipping will always be present in games like these and certain animations, particularly those involving the championship belts, still don’t look quite right. It’s nitpicky, but it’s one of those areas where the game just falls a bit short.

Whether it was the desire to stay one step ahead of TNA Impact or just the realization that things were getting stale, THQ and Yuke’s really stepped up this year and delivered a terrific wrestling game in WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw ‘09. The new Road to Wrestlemania mode finally builds a viable vehicle to tell the types of stories that one only finds in professional wrestling, with a smart eye toward rivalries and character dispositions rather than the slapped-together garbage that seems to plague every other game dealing with similar subject matter. Also, the improved tag-team mechanics are much appreciated, as are the nifty new Create-a-Finisher and Highlight Reel, which allow you scratch the creativity itch. If this is the future of the franchise, then we’re in store for a lot more great action down the road. Let’s just hope this is the sign of multiple title reigns and not just a one-night affair.

Score: 9.0/10

- worthplaying.com

It’s Friday night, and if you don’t mind us saying so, you’re looking rather snazzy: spiked hair, blue jeans, black hoodie, and brand new sneakers. Your cell phone rings. You pick it up, greet your friend, and tell him that you’ll be there in a few and to meet up by the pool table in the back corner. You disconnect and slip your phone into a jacket pocket, but instead of grabbing your keys and heading out the door, you hop into your favorite chair, grab your DualShock controller and power up the PS3.

A couple of button presses and analog stick flicks later finds you in the local Game Space of PlayStation Home. An avatar waves as he notices you approaching the pool table. “What’s up?” appears above his head. “Not much, Jeff. Where are the others?” you reply, just as the rest of your gang — Mike from across the country in Ohio, and Andrew who’s currently teaching in Japan — run over to the table. Greetings and the prerequisite smack talk are exchanged before you finally pick up a stick, challenge Jeff to a game, and catch up with Andrew as Jeff breaks — quite poorly, too.

The camaraderie between gamers, the ability to meet up with friends for some evening fun despite all of you being dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles apart… that, according to SCEA’s Jack Buser, is what PlayStation Home is all about. With hundreds of free and purchasable customization options, meeting areas, and activities, Home promises to be both a social network where people can hang, and a way to exponentially expand your PS3 gaming experience. We recently met up with Home director Jack Buser and received a guided tour of Home’s more notable features. Join us, won’t you?

Jack’s avatar materialized in the central plaza, a common area where players from a certain region can meet. Jack informed us that this region is for SCEA and will most likely undergo several changes before Home’s release.

As Jack slowly turned to give us a panoramic view, we pointed out a group of people standing at the top of a set of stairs leading up to a building. Each member of the group was garbed in blue sweatshirts and khakis. The step two stairs below the group was lined with small green machines that spat bubbles into the air, creating a curtain of shimmering reflecting sunlight. A large sound system thumped and vibrated behind them as they danced in a line, each set of arms and legs going through identical motions. Most curious of all was the red top hat sitting on each and every head.

Laughing, Jack ran over to give us a closer look. The red hats weren’t hats at all but afros, a trademark accessory worn by each member of the Red Afro Revolution, one of many cliques that Jack promises will pave their own path in Home. Jack began to slowly step closer, taking the stairs one at a time. Soft music reached our ears upon his first step; the next step caused it to grow louder still.

Sony’s PlayStation Home gets seriously previewed – Engadget