"No f&#*ing way am I wearing that." That was the initial reaction by many gamers when they saw the little plastic guitar that powered the original Guitar Hero. My, how times have changed. In Rock Band - the new multiplayer spin from the original GH creators, Harmonix - not only do you eagerly want to grab a fake plastic guitar, but you won't have to look far to find three other people just as willing to step up to grab a fake plastic bass, fake plastic drums and a fake plastic ...
From Rockstar to Sega superstars, we’ve seen our share of racquet games on Wii that haven’t offered any significant advance - in terms of motion controls - from the tennis freebie bundled with the console. For one reason or another, we’re still waiting to see if Wii Sports is actually as good as it’s going to get. Nobody else has really gotten the hang of what we always thought would be the most obvious sport on ...
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We'll admit we were skeptical of Blast Works: Build, Fuse and Destroy the first time we saw it - but probably not for the reasons you'd think. The problem wasn't that Blast Works is a side-scrolling, 2D shooter - we like the old school stuff. And it wasn't that the graphics are so primitive and blocky that it looks like everything is made of LEGO bricks. No, the big problem we had was that it's basically a port of a PC indie ...
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Wacky Races would like to consider itself on a par with Micro Machines - in both, your input into the races is minimal. You can’t accelerate or brake, just simply waggle the Wii-mote to boost, and steer with the Nunchuk. Dick Dastardly occasionally steps in with simple minigame ‘booby traps’ for your racers to avoid, but they’re uninspired and disruptive to the flow of a race. Younger audiences might get a brief kick ...
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Castle of Shikigami is one of those games that we really wish we saw more of these days. It's a vertical "bullet hell" 2D shooter, which basically means there are more pink death blobs in the in-game sky than there are paparazzi hanging out at Britney Spears' neighborhood McDonald's. It's challenging, it's colorful, the controls are blessedly simple (no motion-waggling required), its dialogue is wonderfully campy and wacky. It has no fewer ...
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The people that made the 2008 rendition of The Incredible Hulk must have really liked 2005's The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. They've employed the same free-roaming design and have given the Hulk many of the same abilities that he had in that earlier game. But that's totally A-OK, since they've also jazzed up the graphics and given players many more ways to destroy the people and buildings populating the expansive 3D replica of ...
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How can a game that’s identical to the brilliant LEGO Star Wars in almost every respect not be as good? Simple - the setting. The Star Wars universe is vibrant, colourful and fantastical, while Indy’s real-world ’40s setting is more subdued. This works in the context of the films, but recreated in LEGO it has none of the outlandish flair of Lucas’ galaxy far, far away. ...
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What proud son doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps? We can think of a few ol’ blocks you don’t want to be a chip off - Saddam Hussein, Noel Edmonds, the Grim Reaper. Alas, then, for poor Death Jr., son of the soul collector. And alas for Root of Evil, a port of a PSP title, it’s a massive chip off the old block - with blocky being the key word. Where in the developers’ handbook does it state ...
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Is the old NES puzzler still worth revisiting after all this time? Well... ...
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