In the industry’s history, there has been exactly one commercially-released lacrosse game. In 2001, Blast Lacrosse, a NFL Blitz-style game, was released by Acclaim for the original PlayStation. This dearth of lacrosse interest among video game developers is what makes the work done at Cross Studio and Complex Games all the more impressive.
Fueled by a passion for the sport and video games, owner Carlos Sunseri’s initiative has yielded five lacrosse titles on the Xbox Live Indie Games scene over the last four years. This library includes three College Lacrosse games and two National Lacrosse League licensed titles, with real teams and players from the indoor league. The newest title, College Lacrosse 2012, is a game ripe with promise but flawed in a number of areas of execution. READ MORE
Planning to have friends over and play some games? Good for you. There are lots of great options, as readers of this column know, and you can jump in wherever you’d like.
You know, until that fifth person walks in the door.
It’s a thing that can cause a train wreck in the head of any gracious gaming host. All those games you planned to play? Either you’ll have an awkward person just sitting around and watching, or you’ll have to split up, which isn’t the best option. But while your options may be limited, they’re not gone: there are some great games that support five or more players. READ MORE
Give a hearty welcome to the three newest members of our crew on this new episode! Brad, Chris and Henry join Graham, Jeff and Chris to talk about our most vivid gaming-life memories. We also discuss the latest JRPG news (like Tales of Xillia in the West and Final Fantasy VII back on PC) and share our thoughts on Lego Batman 2, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Magic 2013. Oh, and more things! Always more things.
The dungeon-crawler and I have a tough relationship. It’s one of those love-hate things, those rare occurrences when I can completely understand why masochistic gamers keep plugging away at them despite being repeatedly beaten down. There’s some sort of addictive pleasure to keep going, even when the game rips everything away from you. Unchained Blades (thankfully) manages to properly balance both the oddly-addictive challenge with a good dose of fun that will appeal to the core dungeon JRPG fan as well as the uninitiated. READ MORE
The Best to Own Forever series isn’t about what’s great right now. It’s about what will be great in 10 years, even though there will be better-looking games and later sequels, and what will keep you pulling that dusty old console out of the closet every once in a while. In this installment, we look at the long-lived PS2.
Similar in a lot of ways to the Parappa the Rapper series, Gitaroo Man is an insane Japanese rhythm game that features effective use of button timing and analog movement. Each song is as expectedly catchy and zany as the last and the actual controls are spot on, which provides some of the most satisfying moments I’ve seen in any rhythm game. And if you’re really up for a challenge, try playing on the harder modes, I guarantee you’ll have quite a task ahead of you. This is the kind of rhythm game we rarely see released anymore, and one I think is completely worth having in any PS2 library. – Andrew PassafiumeREAD MORE
