It’s not often we see any World War II flight combat games on the market these days. While fans of this genre will most likely play the best of the best on PC, those few who own consoles and want to get some great flight combat action rarely see anything outside of Ace Combat. And so we have Air Conflicts: Secret Wars, a game appealing to such a specific audience that it limits its best features entirely. READ MORE
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
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
Spider-Man hasn’t had much luck in the game industry lately. Activision has put Beenox in charge of the franchise and their first effort, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, was decent fun. It offered a nice selection of Spider-Men with nice variety, but the entire game lacked focus and suffered a bit for its linearity. Spider-Man: Edge of Time limits it to two Spider-Men and focuses more on the time-travel aspects of the story that were briefly touched upon previously. It does offer a more focused experience, but at a hefty cost. READ MORE
