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Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer’s Edition

As with any industry, videogames have become a multifaceted endeavor. More and more attention is drawn to this interactive entertainment, whether it be from a business stand point as companies generate massive amounts of revenue from the games or other periphery products (books, movies, figures, shirts, etc.) or whether the game itself has created such a pop culture buzz that it permeates into the general populace. At times the focus is on the players themselves, ...

Secret Agent Clank

Secret Agent Clank is the latest PSP title to receive the PSP-to-PS2 port treatment, previously seen in games such as Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and Silent Hill: Origins. Whether this is due to a lack of faith in the PSP or a desire to milk the PS2 for every last penny is a question that I'll leave to you, but when it comes to the games themselves, this often seems to leave to problems in ...

Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories

I know that for most, Kingdom Hearts seems to be a love it or hate it kinda' thing. Some people don't like Square Enix, some don't like Disney, some are put off by the combination of the two, and some took one look at the first game's button-mashing and awkward camera and dismissed the franchise outright. I still maintain that Kingdom Hearts II is one of the finest games on the PS2 (fixing just about ...

SingStar Abba

Call it a Karaoke Revolution ripoff, a crass money-machine or a very expensive karaoke machine, but Sony’s SingStar karaoke game series is nothing if not persistent. Made available for both the PS2 and PS3, SingStar takes music videos, pops the words on the screen and encourages gamers to sing along. There are both strengths and weaknesses to the series, and since they are fewer in number, let us concentrate on the strengths of SingStar Abba ...

Bratz Girlz Really Rock

For longer than I can remember, I’ve been the resident girl game reviewer around here, which basically means I’ve taken a hit for the team, as there is no genre as consistently terrible as girl games. I say this not because I have a problem with games that emphasize fashion and the color pink, nor do I have a problem with games intended for people two decades younger than I am. Rather, it is because ...

Singstar Country

I don’t really need to review Singstar Country, because I kinda’ already reviewed it back when it was called Singstar Pop 2. Sure, the tracklist is different, but otherwise it’s the same game with the same problems. For the record, here are the songs you’ll be getting: Alan Jackson - "Chattahoochee" Alan Jackson - "Good Time" Big & Rich - "Save A Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" Blake Shelton - "Home" Brad Paisley - "Online" Brooks & ...

Singstar Legends

I don’t really need to review Singstar Legends, because I kinda’ already reviewed it back when it was called Singstar Pop 2. Sure, the tracklist is different, but otherwise it’s the same game with the same problems. For the record, here are the songs you’ll be getting: Barry White - "You're The First, The Last, My Everything" Biz Markie - "Just A Friend" Black Sabbath - "Paranoid" Bonnie Tyler - "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" David ...

Pipe Mania

Pipe Mania is not a new idea. Then again, not many games are these days. Back in the 80s and 90s, this game was called Pipe Dream. Modern gamers might recognize it as the hacking minigame from Bioshock. In any case, the formula behind it has been around for decades: place random pipe pieces on a grid so that a liquid (seemingly invariably called “flooze”) gets from point A to point B without spilling. While ...

Singstar Pop 2

As I believe I made clear in my review of Singstar on the PS3, I do not think highly of Sony’s karaoke series, largely because the concept was done first and far better in Konami’s Karaoke Revolution series. The Singstar games just have too many flaws that have never been addressed, and it’s little surprise that Singstar Pop 2 makes no attempt to rectify them either. For those who haven’t played the Singstar games before, ...

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Mercenaries 2 was obviously pushed out the door early. I can't really figure out why, either. At least I hope this is early. This game is marred by bugs, and I don't mean "Oh look there's a Spider in the corner." bugs, but more like "plauge of locusts" bugs. The game isn't broken per se, but enough that I would have expected that this was a small publisher, not EA. However this ...

Silent Hill Origins

It thrilled and chilled on PSP last fall and now the most recent installment in the Silent Hill series is available on PS2 as well. Silent Hill: Origins began life as a remake of the first Silent Hill game and soon evolved into a game with its own unique character and storyline. While some environments and areas will be recognizable from previous installments, Origins is, in essence, as close to an all-new Silent Hill installment ...

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3

There are enough Naruto games now to qualify them as supplemental material to the series. So many of these games are crowded together that they have to be heavily edited to avoid spoiling the anime series that takes longer to translate. Without the story to prop up these games, you quickly realize how similar they really are. They are not bad games necessarily, but if you have played one you’ve played them all. Namco ...

MLB 08: The Show

It’s ironic … and shocking. It wasn’t that long ago that Sony’s in-house sports development team, previously known as 989 Sports and now just referred to generically as SCEA, was an industry laughing stock. But as the PS2 era wound to a close and the PS3 era dawned, Sony reinvested in reinvigorating their sports game lineup, and the results have been improved, although none of their games have yet eclipsed the industry big boys, ...

Ratcher & Clank: Size Matters

Ratchet & Clank have become the cute cartoon face of the Playstation brand as of late. Playstation has tried out a few different cartoon mascots, none of which stuck for very long. Of course Ratchet and Clank benefit greatly by being adorable while blowing the living crap out of everything in sight. The formula has served Insomniac well for quite a few games: four PS2 games, a PS3 game, and even an iteration on ...

Buzz – The Hollywood Quiz

So what are you expecting when you put a game titled Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz into your PlayStation 2 (or 3)? Frankly, if you expected anything other than movie industry questions in a “whacky” manner, then you should check yourself into the nearest mental health facility. Presented in a game show format, the host is something akin to an attorney who was whisked away from his old life (perhaps unwillingly) given a straight feed of ...

Buzz! Junior – RoboJam

I had the hardest time writing my review of Buzz! Junior – RoboJam not because the game was bad and I was having trouble articulating why, but because the game isn’t what it should be. What is it? A collection of minigames that uses the Buzz controllers. There is no reason for this other than to simply justify having these controllers. What should the game be? It should be a quiz game much like ...

SingStar 90s

Singstar 90’s is the latest title in Sony’s long running karaoke party franchise. If you are unfamiliar with the franchise now, the whole idea is simply to sing, on key, and the better you do, the more points you get. Instead of a more “traditional” style of game, Sony takes the Singstar series into more of a party territory, where all of the songs are unlocked and ready to go at the onset. Players ...

Luxor: Pharaoh’s Challenge

One cannot review Luxor: Pharaoh’s Challenge without mentioning Zuma. While Zuma certainly wasn’t the first game to use the “shoot balls at balls to make color matches” puzzle game formula, it is unquestionably the game that popularized it. And like it or not, any game aping this formula in the years since Zuma’s inception must invariably held up against it. It’s more or less the same game, albeit with some differences. Luxor has a fairly decent ...

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law

Anyone who has a cable package that includes the Cartoon Network and knows what the words Adult Swim really mean, will be familiar with Harvey Birdman, the TV series. An Alex Toth/Space Ghost-inspired character, Birdman is a former superhero turned attorney, and through this character Capcom supplies the PS2 and Sony’s PSP with a completely different take on the popular Phoenix Wright games hosted on the Nintendo DS. Like the Phoenix Wright games, you play ...

Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey

Calling Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey a niche game may not distill how unlikely most people are going to play a game where you assume the role of a Confederate Privateer. It isn’t a surprise that this was made by a Russian developer, but it is still quite an unorthadox and potentially offensive choice for a premise. Although it could go into the realm of bad taste at breakneck speeds, Swashbucklers is saved by ...

MX vs. ATV Untamed

There are sports games, and then there are extreme sports games, which suffer all the same pitfalls as other sports game, but are more… um, extreme about it. Where Sports games will have a bland soundtrack of stadium rock, extreme games will have a bland mixture of “alternative” rock. Like all sports games, extreme sports games end up becoming little more than graphical patches to the previous installments. MX vs. ATV also uses an ...

Moto GP 07

It’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, in Wisconsin that means the roar of the Harley’s has died down until the warm weather returns. While here the Softails and Choppers still rule the road from the first warm days until the first snowfall, racing bikes, so called crotch rockets, are gaining a huge following. As for the rest of the country -- these bikes are really huge. So it is a surprise that Motorcycle Grand ...

College Hoops 2K8

In basketball and in videogames, one thing remains true: the struggle to reach the top is nothing compared to the struggle to stay on top once you’ve reached that plateau. No one should understand this better than 2K Sports and the development team behind College Hoops 2K8. Back when they were first relaunching their college hoops title, the king of the hill for college basketball games was EA Sports’ March Madness series. It took several years ...

Cars: Mater-National

As a huge lover of Pixar, I have to say that Cars is probably my least favorite film they’ve produced. Oh, it’s still good, mind you, but it struck me as being far more gimmicky, far less layered, and having far less emotional impact than virtually every other film from the house that Luxo Jr. built. However, be that as it may, that film also happened to see one of the best and most successful videogame ...

Avatar: The Last Airbender– The Burning Earth

There are so many bad licensed games; they really should start putting warning stickers on them. Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Burning Earth adds a whole new level of unpolished game play to the usually bad genre. It may be that the developers thought no one would notice that they only threw together the game to get it out between level grinding in WOW. Well that would make sense, anyway. Considering this hit ...

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