PlayStation 2 owners have it made when it comes to role-playing games. With Final Fantasy making regular appearances on the console, fans can just sit back and wait for the next big adventure to be delivered to them. This sheltered console life mirrors that of Luke, the pampered hero in Tales of the Abyss - his every whim has been tended to inside his uncle's castle, never needing to venture out and discover what else might be on the horizon.
Once he does manage to break free of his comfort
The Tales series meant very little in the US until 2004's surprise hit Tales of Symphonia. It blended intense action, beautiful graphics and... well... a passable story into a lengthy adventure hundreds of thousands found well worth undertaking. Flash forward to earlier this year, and suddenly, things hit the status quo again. Tales of Legendia, which arrived on the PS2 in February, was kind of a mess - though it looked great, mediocrity seeped through every
By
Edge
posted 6 years ago
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Sequelitis is endemic in Japanese RPGs, but the Tales of... series stands alone in its naming conventions - no numerals for this baby. Keeping a handle on Phantasia, Destiny, Eternia, Symphonia, Rebirth and Legendia only gets harder as Namco releases the latest PS2 game, Tales of the Abyss.
Abyss' story quickly reveals its epic scope: a noble son, Luke, finds he is the holder of a rare power - the seventh Fonim (a sort of element) - just as war breaks out with a kingdom which had kidnapped him
"Back in my day,” say the oldest of the old-school gamers, “all we had was the local arcade, and we loved it! We happily dropped 25 cents a game to get our asses handed to us." Those days of traveling places to play games are gone, but a property from about the same by-gone era, the recently revived Teen Titans comic book franchise, will try to bring the arcade-style button-masher glory days back. Just because it's an old idea, it isn't necessarily a bad one.
In Teen Titans, you
Normally when GM gets hands-on with a preview, that's literally it, 'hands-on'. But when we went to see Tekken 5 we were more fingers, hands, legs and bums-on. You see Tekken 5 doesn't come on some tiny sliver of a silver circle; it arrives in the colossal arcade-shape of a sit-down, two-player, widescreen, wide-seated cabinet. Which did make it harder to lug back into the office without everyone wanting a go.But size isn't the only reason that Namco's named kicker counts as a big game - there
By
PSM2
posted 6 years, 9 months ago
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If you're sick to the core of watching grizzled old men in body-hugging wetsuits limp-wrist their way around oil rigs and military bases, you'll be glad to know that Fatal Shadows performs the hitherto unimaginable task of making stealth actually sexy.Firstly, there's a noticeable drop in the number of men involved this time around. Former Tenchu protagonist Rikimaru has been axed in favour of series mainstay Ayame and newcomer, Rin. They're both women, they're both incredibly 'well-rounded'
Wednesday 7 June 2006
If ever there was a game that The Simpsons' Ned Flanders would buy for his children, it's this. No need for an 'Imagination Christmas' this year, eh? Diddly.
The Bible Game is actually surprisingly charming and inoffensive. As the name suggests, this is a game which tests your knowledge of the holy text. It doesn't stuff God down your throat (fortunately) and as it deals only with the Old Testament, targets the broadest audience possible. It's well-natured and quite
The Chronicles of Narnia books remain high on their pedestal of nostalgic childhood memories; the movies, perhaps a bit less so. Fans of either probably hanker for the ability to frolic through the Narnian fields equally, and so the games keep coming.In case you aren’t familiar with the story behind the second chapter known as Prince Caspian, or need a refresher, it begins one Earth year after the events from the first book/movie.
Think of your favorite novel. Now know this: The Da Vinci Code kicked its ass. Dan Brown's thriller about secret societies, hidden messages in famous paintings and some controversial theories about Jesus Christ is officially the best-selling novel ever, nearing almost 40 million copies in print. So what can the game provide that all those dead trees can't? More puzzles.
Without giving too much away, you'll take up the role of Robert Langdon, an art expert who finds himself a key suspect in a
Friday 28 April 2006
The film is out next month. The multi-million selling book is still pounding the sales charts week after week. It's was about time we delve into The Da Vinci Code game and unravel the mystery of what it's actually like to play.
Although it's based on the film, The Da Vinci Code fleshes out the action with a fresh line-up of cryptic puzzles and locations. For example, Langdon - the bookish hero - treads the stones in a church called Saint-Sulpice, while his cryptologist
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