June 2011

Retro revivals are a growing trend these days, and for the most part, we’ve enjoyed seeing our old friends get a new coat of paint. Warlords, on the other hand, seems like your standard revamp-gone-wrong, with too much meddling and tacking on ornaments to keep the original’s fun. READ MORE

Okay, okay, we have a thing for the groan-worthy headline. But when we got our hands on dungeon-crawling game Crimson Alliance, created by map-pack devs Certain Affinity, we couldn’t help but develop a particular fondness for its style and gameplay. READ MORE

The launch lineup of a system can usually be divided into three categories. The first is the hastily-ported game from another system. With those, the original game is probably good, but there are few reasons the port is better. The second is the gimmicky game that shows off the features of the new hardware. Those don’t typically age well, as the developers try too many things and don’t have much time torefine ideas or hindsight needed to know what to avoid. Sound Shapes is part of the third group, the legitimately interesting and innovative titles that find a home at a system’s launch not because that’s where they need to be, but because it’s a time they can get publisher support without getting drowned out by larger projects. READ MORE

If any Final Fantasy game needed a sequel, Final Fantasy XIII is it. While it didn’t live up to the hype, it was still a solid entry in the series and the world begs to be explored more, especially considering how it ended.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 starts 5 years after the events of XIII. Lightning is presumed dead, Sazh, Snow, and Hope are nowhere to be seen, and Serah is in the company and protection of a new character named Noel Kreiss. The world appears to be experiencing temporal distortions and paradoxes for some reason, though we experienced almost nothing story related. READ MORE

The original Wii Play was largely a tutorial for the Wii remote, disguised as a series of simple games and bundled with a controller for not much more money. It racked up sales, not because it was a particularly desirable disc to have, but because it was usually a cheap way to snag another controller. Wii Play Motion, bundled this time with a Remote Plus and showing off its advanced functionality, bears quite the resemblance to its predecessor. The difference? Though none of the twelve included minigames show any sort of advanced replayability or draw, they feel like they have just a bit more personality to them. It’s enough to make an already-short experience a bit sweeter. READ MORE