By
PSM2_
posted January 15, 2004
You can keep your Tenchu. Stick your Crouching Tiger where the sun don't shine. Forget stealth kills and sneaking around - what ninja games really need are masked men with inflated heads rolling around attached to bowling balls and boxing matches between giant mechs. Honest, they do. Really.I-Ninja's a curious concoction. Being the product of co-operation between Namco and UK coders Argonaut and published by Sony. The thing is it feels like a Namco game right away - bold, brash and brilliantly
ICO is an expertly crafted, beautiful game that shames soulless tripe such as 50 Cent: Bulletproof and the like by challenging your brain, your thumbs and, ultimately, your emotions. What's more, it's just been re-released.
It strikes such a fine line between frustration and intoxicating beauty. You'll curse the clumsy combat, but your senses will be so spellbound by the bewildering scale and unearthly allure of it all that you'll immediately forgive its shortcomings. The undeniable fact is
In the future, we will all race as giant, fighting robots - that much we know. Victory won't depend as much on speed as it will survival via combined team tactics, cunning strategy, and the ability to crush a helpless enemy so far into the asphalt that their face melts.
The Immortal Grand Prix is the year 2049's answer to our generation's NASCAR Chase for the Cup, with the redneck factor ratcheted down a few notches. As Team Satomi, you're put square in the middle of the maelstrom of a
If you've been to a live drag racing event, you know how the smell of tire rubber, the roar of engines, and the excitement of the crowd simply don't translate well to TV broadcasts. The small screen just can't do the spectacle justice. Likewise, the IHRA Drag Racing videogame series can't seem to capture anything but the most basic flavor of the spectacle.
Drag racing, for the uninitiated, is about more than strapping yourself to a zillion-horsepower rocket engine and crossing the finish line
By
PSM2_
posted September 9, 2005
A developer could spend a small lifetime weaving an intricate, complex storyline around the most photorealistic environments and lifelike characters imaginable, but the truth is that most gamers are happy to just crash around smashing things to pieces. Why watch Newsnight Review when The World's Sexiest Police Chases is on the other channel? The Incredible Hulk isn't setting benchmarks or raising bars but it is a smashed-up-truckload of joyous low-brow fun - the gaming equivalent of popping
To describe Staff of Kings as a game seems a bit disingenuous – this is a collection of smaller sub-games, similar to Disaster: Day of Crisis. There are puzzley platform bits, typically involving copious whip-cracking; there’s brilliant environmental combat, which lets you hurl pool balls at bad guys, shove enemies into aquariums or whack them in the head with garden tools.
It wants to be different, that much is clear from the off. From the widescreen presentation of each scene to the smartass split screen cameras, Prophecy sets its agenda with astounding production values. What starts as a seemingly psychotic-homicide (committed by main character and loner Lucas Kane) quickly evolves into a well paced tale, mixing gameplay driven character background studies with ‘innovative action
On paper, the premise of Iridium Runners is, well, dumb. It’s a futuristic racing game with weapons - in other words, a blatant rip-off of Wipeout - but instead of driving hovering ships, you’re running. On foot. As in the films The Running Man or Run Lola Run. Except that no one’s trying to kill you or make you put your shirt back on, you’re just running. Running, running, running. It's not the premise of Iridium
