The appeal of fighting games is easy to see: formulate a better strategy than your opponent in single combat to win bragging rights, continued play, or the ability to advance the story. Fighters with simplified controls can still be fun (e.g., Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series), but they need a sense of fairness and reward to keep the player motivated.
Fighting games are heavily skill-based. You don’t just level up your guy to make fighting easier. You have to practice until you know his moves inside-out and can pull off an aerial block that cancels into a super with your eyes closed. Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi, then, is not a fighting game. It’s an action game made out of a fighting game. READ MORE
When the Wii was about to be released, I could not have been a more jazzed little Nintendo fanboy. My bros and I were in high school and had loved Nintendo for all our lives, as many of us of course have. With well-produced videos and coy press releases, Nintendo slowly revealed info about the console and made wild and lofty promises about the mystery codenamed “Revolution”. It totally worked on me. For two nights and one day, I stayed in front of the Best Buy in my town in a tent. I was second in line and the employees leaving work Friday night told us we were crazy and to go home. They opened the store the next day to a line around the building. READ MORE
Tropico 3 felt like it could have used a little more time in the oven. There was a great game and some interesting mechanics in there, but most of it felt like it was slapped on top, while the developers hoped that people found it fun instead of finding it odd that so many new mechanics weren’t adequately explained. Tropico 4 is Tropico 3 with the presentation that should have always been there. READ MORE
Every gamer has their reasons for enjoying the medium of video games. We’ve always been drawn to games as a narrative experience. Sometimes you get so enraptured in a game that you won’t even notice what’s wrong with it mechanically. Then, when you’re halfway through a game and enjoying the heck out of it, someone says something like, “Doesn’t the combat get a little repetitive?” Then the glass shatters in your head and you realize that yeah, it does get a little repetitive. And that climbing the terrain was annoying. And that the gunplay is a little off. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception could have been one of those games, but it isn’t at all. READ MORE
November’s so packed with releases that we’re going weekly! Matt gushes about his new favorite game, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Andrew explains how he spent the Battlefield 3 campaign following his buddy Follow, Graham has mixed feelings about Cave Story 3D and Shawn reminds us that a new 3DS Zelda is on the way.
