Like drift-racer OutRun before it, After Burner is the latest Sega classic to get an HD remake and a release on XBLA. Out of the two, OutRun Online Arcade is still the one to go for – there’s much more bang for your buck there. After Burner Climax features a reworked version of the Arcade mode, which – despite looking lovely in HD and being incredibly satisfying to play – only amounts to about ten minutes of fun. Sure, you can change some variables in the main Arcade by fiddling with EX options (get a bigger targeting reticule, more credits, an auto-gun and so on), but if anything that makes your play-throughs shorter...
Pirates, eh!? Brilliant, eh!? Not really, but this is a multiplayer game up there with Bomberman and Worms.
Alan Wake begins with a nightmare. Chased by a ghostly hitchhiker he thought he'd just killed with his car, the titular protagonist is running and stumbling through the woods when suddenly, with a panicked start, he wakes. The writer is safe next to his loving wife and the two are on a relaxing vacation together in a peaceful rural town. Everything's okay… okay, that is, until their cabin comes alive, the wife is swallowed by an evil lake and the writer wakes up again, dangling alone over the edge of a dark cliff and wondering desperately which, if any, of these experiences is real.
Playing as Alan Wake, you'll face the same confusion...
Alan Wake makes his triumphant return and focuses on much of what he does best. We just wish there was more going on...
Poor, poor Alice. It's not bad enough she lost her family, her home, and has been institutionalized for eleven years - no, now her only escape, Wonderland, is in shambles. To save her mind and her imaginary friends, she must get to the bottom of something - she's not sure what (and neither were we for most of the game). She equips her Vorpal Blade (aka kitchen knife) and starts cutting through the macabre scenery - with little explanation and far less reservation - as if cutting off heads was the obvious solution to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder...
It’s hard to get emotional about Alien Breed Evolution. Nostalgia alone should raise a smile but a clumsy mix of old and new has made the intense but ugly Alien Breed into the pretty but tepid Alien Breed Evolution. It’s not a change we’re very happy with.
Some things had to give, of course.
Find out if the agonizingly difficult platformer is worth your time or if it should go back to it's home planet...
Our favorite sound, probably out of all of them, is the ones made by aliens when they’re being horrifically slaughtered in their second film, Aliens. It is, we think, based on a heavily distorted recording of a trumpeting elephant, sped up to make it absolutely terrifying in a way only the panicked, high-pitched scream of a flailing pachyderm can be.
In second place it’s the dense, tinny shred of a pulse rifle.
Aliens hasn't had a proper game for some time now. Does Colonial Marines succede where all others have failed? Well...
|
|
Log in using Facebook to share comments, games, status update and other activity easily with your Facebook feed.
