Entertainment Weekly broke the news today that the third chapter in Nathan Drake’s adventures, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, will be coming in 2011. This time, Drake and Sully will be searching for a lost city in the Rub’ al Khali Desert of the Arabian Peninsula. READ MORE
December 2010
Uncharted 3 coming in 2011
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I don’t understand how Pac-Man Party and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX came from the same publisher at around the same time. The difference in quality and fun between the two titles is staggering. Pac-Man CE DX is a fun step forward from the reinvention of the original Pac-Man that was Pac-Man CE. Pac-Man Party, on the other hand, is Namco’s attempt to make Mario Party but just different enough that the folks over at Nintendo don’t threaten legal action.
Pac-Man Party’s three modes are single-player, party, and mini-games. Single-player has you, as Pac-Man, playing through each of the game’s five boards in an attempt to collect cookies and make Blinky give you back the cookie recipe. You roll the die, move the set number of spaces, and build castles on free spaces. When your opponent lands on your castle he owes you rent and then you have a battle mini-game to determine who owns the castle from there on. The mini-games all feel like rehashes of Mario Party mini-games with Pac-Man characters subbed in for Mario ones.
Multiplayer is the single-player game on a single board (instead of a progression through all five boards) with friends instead of AI ghosts. Play takes too long, and the mini-games are repetitive which makes the whole experience drag on. To complete the “short” game one player needs to collect 12,000 cookies. You only get about 200 for winning a mini-game so this takes a good, long while. Combine that with rehashes of mini-games you’ve already played, and the uninteresting Monopoly-inspired mechanic of paying one another rent and you’ve got a game you’ll only really want to keep around for the classic arcade games.
Pac-Man Party’s saving grace, if it has one, is the inclusion of three Namco classics: Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug. These three classics are emulated well and play just like you remember. Granted, if you want Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug there are far cheaper ways to obtain them that don’t come with a party game you’ll never choose over Mario’s own offering on the Wii. Pac-Man Party is a pass on all fronts. If you want to support Namco and Pac-Man I can’t recommend the two Pac-Man Championship Edition titles available on Xbox Live Arcade enough – that is what Pac-Man ought to be doing and what you ought to be playing.
Pros: Includes classic Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug in case you don’t already have them.
Cons: Repetitive mini-games, Games take too long, power pellets have been replaced by cookies for no good reason.
I love it when a dance comes together.
The thing is, that takes a while. And with Harmonix’s Kinect showpiece, Dance Central, that’s what’s holding it back.
In the game, you dance choreographed routines to various songs. If you come into it thinking you’ll get to enjoy the same types of tracks you like from Rock Band, that isn’t happening. The Dance Dance Revolution crowd won’t be entirely happy either, as there’s nothing to appeal to their Eastern tastes. What you have here are serious dance tracks from Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Soulja Boy and M.I.A., with a few old-school tunes for good measure. They fit well with what you’re doing, but it’s good to know what you’re getting into.
Dancing each song is a series of moves, and it judges you on your ability to move your limbs in the correct way. You can’t just jump straight into a song, though, or you’ll certainly not know what to do. Instead, you go into a little training mode before each song where it shows you the moves and makes you repeat them successfully before continuing. It works about as well as it can, but this game is supposed to be a party showpiece, and it just doesn’t work as well unless everyone prepares beforehand. (Which pretty much defeats the point.)
It’s also important to know that Dance Central doesn’t teach you to dance. I mean, it comes closer than anything ever has, but don’t mistake this for Rock Band 3‘s Pro Mode. You’re doing motions in a way a camera can capture them, and you’re still going to look a bit awkward doing them.
If you like a little practice in your dance games (and there’s definitely a crowd that does), Dance Central hits you hard. The highest difficulty level has you learning entire routines rather than a sequence of repeated moves, and there’s even an option to turn off the move display so you have to remember the whole thing.
Those who have been following our Kinect coverage know that many launch menu schemes have been difficult to navigate. While Dance Central doesn’t take the crown away from Your Shape, its interface is easily navigable, as it relies on a simple swipe of the left or right hand to advance or go back.
There are a few extra modes, such as Dance Battle (where you can challenge a friend to beat your moves) and Workout Mode (where it keeps up with calories burned). Neither are that fleshed-out, but that’s forgivable in a launch title. The life here is in the downloadable song catalog, which will certainly continue to grow for people who want to keep dancing.
Dance Central is good. That barrier to entry keeps it from greatness, but it’s still a worthy showcase for the early Kinect buyer.
Pros: Good menu design, accurate motion detection, general polish
Cons: High barrier to entry, limited appeal to song list
Finally recognizing that there were a lot of people who wanted to play Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People that couldn’t play it on the Wii or PC, Telltale Games has announced that it will be porting the entire episodic series to the PlayStation 3 and Mac. READ MORE
Splatterhouse is a game series that most people are not too familiar with because the series was born on the long-forgotten Turbografx-16 console. They were known to horror fans as fun side-scrollers with a nice variety in enemies, level design, and a pretty fair difficulty.
Fast-forward two decades later, and we have a remake of the 1988 arcade version of the original Splatterhouse. Namco hopes to recapture the violent magic of the first game and adapt it for today’s audience, and they do a fairly decent job of it.
The best thing about Splatterhouse is its unique look. The character models all look very impressive, and while the environments leave something to be desired, it all blends together rather well. In other words, everything will be covered in so much blood that it might all start looking the same after a while. That isn’t a bad thing though, as the game wants to be violent and succeeds at it wholeheartedly.
The problems with the presentation deal more with the technical hiccups and glitches. Monsters sometimes get caught in the walls or find themselves floating slightly above you. The game’s frame rate can take a serious hit during the more gruesome sections where you have eight or more enemies on screen and blood flying everywhere. Also, the camera never gets in the way, but it never wants to cooperate when you just want to take a look at your surroundings. Technical problems aside, the game functions pretty well.
The gameplay is what really matters here, and thankfully it’s functional and pretty fun. There is a nice variety in enemies and bosses, and the controls never seem to work against you, unlike other contemporary action games. The combat, while simplistic, is a lot of fun. It can be incredibly satisfying at times, although even during the less exciting sections I found myself having fun just taking out meager foes.
The problem? That’s about all there is to it. The game is simply a traditional brawler with lots of gore and a pretty ridiculous story. You can upgrade your character, but aside from health upgrades, much of it is unnecessary. Most battles typically feel the same, and there is usually never any real sense of danger unless you are being swarmed by enemies.
Despite these flaws, it still can be a very fun experience. The developers were never trying to make their game anything more than what Splatterhouse has always been: running around and killing monsters. The game still manages to be surprisingly fun despite its lack of depth. A nice bonus is the inclusion of the three original Splatterhouse games, which still hold up fairly well today.
Even those who enjoyed the original Splatterhouse titles might find this a bit underwhelming, despite the core gameplay being very functional and at times pretty fun. It’s not an amazing game by any stretch of the imagination, but for what it is, it works.
Pros: Very unique presentation; enjoyable voice acting; solid controls; the gameplay is pretty satisfying; the added bonus of the first three Splatterhouse games is nice
Cons: While some may enjoy more than others, the gameplay does tend to get a bit old pretty fast; long loading times; some glitches and framerate hiccupts
