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June 10, 2011

Review – Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: 360, Activision, black ops, Call of Duty, DLC, Escalation, map pack, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network, PlayStation3, PSN, Steam, Treyarch, XBLA, XBOX, Xbox 360 — Brad Johnson @ 8:46 am

Call of Duty Black Ops Escalation
Last week saw the release of Escalation, the second Call of Duty: Black Ops content pack, on the PC. Escalation includes four new multiplayer maps (Hotel, Zoo, Stockpile and Convoy), alongside a new zombie survival mission.

What’s most immediately noticeable is that the new multiplayer maps, thankfully, offer a range of new visual styles—especially refreshing after all the browns and greys of Black Ops proper.

Zoo and Hotel are both distinctly colorful, offbeat maps that serve as decidedly unusual combat grounds. Meanwhile, Convoy takes place on a broken roadway that feels distinctly urban and familiar, while Stockpile features a farming village that’s actually a lot less humble than it seems.

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May 25, 2011

Review – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: 360, Capybara Games, Clash of Heroes, COH, DS, Might & Magic, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network, PlayStation3, PSN, Review, Ubisoft, XBLA, XBOX, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade — Brad Johnson @ 3:17 pm

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes
Though the Great Fall of the PSN has much delayed us, that service’s howling, furious resurrection has finally allowed Team Sugar to report on the matter of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, the HD upgrade of 2009’s DS original.

Clash of Heroes exists in some infinite limbo between puzzle game and turn-based strategy. The goal of each battle is to deplete the enemy’s health by firing attacks into his endzone—which is carefully protected by his army of units. Units can be organized to form attack formations or defensive wall formations. Additionally, specialized hero units can be purchased and employed for devastating attacks.

The primary task here is to maximize the number of actions that can be performed in one turn. The player has a limited number of moves, and while certain actions may grant additional moves, one must be mindful of the most efficient, useful maneuvers on the field. Combat, accordingly, is as much a puzzle as a strategy game.

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May 23, 2011

The Spirit of ’47: A Primer to the Influences of L.A. Noire

Filed under: Features — Tags: detectives, film noir, L.A. Noire, movies, PlayStation3, pulp, Rockstar, Team Bondi, Xbox 360 — Gregory Gay @ 1:34 pm

Rockstar and Team Bondi’s latest game, L.A. Noire, hit stores last week. The game shoves you into the role of detective Cole Phelps as he solves a number of brutal crimes in the aftermath of World War 2 – think of it as a mix of Phoenix Wright and Grand Theft Auto. The thing is, L.A. Noire isn’t just a sandbox game set in the 40’s. It’s a love letter to the film noir genre – a distinctive cinematic genre from the 1940’s and 50’s mired in the shadowy world of crime.

Like every other Rockstar game, L.A. Noire will probably sell roughly a bajillion copies, and a few of those owners may just feel an urge to dive deeper into the game’s source material. Given that possibility, I thought this would be a good time to go into a bit more detail on the movies that have influenced L.A. Noir.

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May 18, 2011

Catching Up with the Thunderer

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: 360, Liquid Studios, Marvel Comics, nintendo wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation3, Red Fly Studios, Sega, Thor, Thor: God of Thunder, Wii, XBOX, Xbox 360 — Brad Johnson @ 11:00 pm

Thor: God of Thunder
To say that I read comics does not adequately describe the depth of my madness; to achieve that, one must paint a picture of filing cabinets, shelves and boxes spilling over with twenty years of meticulously bagged and boarded comics, piles of this month’s readings strewn across the floor; walls adorned with art, shelves with models, and a stack of individually framed posters from The Dark Knight that haven’t yet found wallspace. There’s a batmobile on the shelf behind me, and I assure you it isn’t my only one.

Suffice to say, I am invested.

Thus, I took the opportunity to play Thor: God of Thunder on both the Xbox 360 and Wii recently, and I will now leverage that terrible qualification to examine whether these titles do justice to Marvel’s Norse thunderer. Surprisingly, the version to come out on top isn’t the one you’d expect.

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May 3, 2011

Review – Portal 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation3, portal, Portal 2, Review, Steam, Valve, XBOX, Xbox 360 — Brad Johnson @ 8:53 am

Portal 2
I think it’s fair to say that probably every game is made, at least in part, by committee. The results can be fairly obvious; it’s easy to see when some executive has made the decision to pursue a Call of Duty or a Gears of War.

Valve, by contrast, produces perhaps the purest product available on the current market; the games where it’s clear that most decisions have been made in the interest of making the best videogame possible.

Portal 2 exemplifies this condition; it is pure game, straight through, with each facet specifically calibrated to produce what, undoubtedly, becomes an instant classic the moment the disc enters the tray.

The sequel returns the player to the life of Chell, unknown Aperture test subject, as she awakes hundreds of years after the events of the original game, once again trapped in the Aperture facility. If this change of circumstance is somewhat mystifying, then I recommend reviewing the updated ending to Portal (dispensed via Valve-patch), or better yet, reading the online comic bridging the events of the two games.

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April 25, 2011

Travis Touchdown In The Red Zone

Filed under: News Feed — Tags: Grasshopper Manufacture, Heroes Paradise, Konami, Marvelous Entertainment, Move, No More Heroes, PlayStation 3, PlayStation3, Red Zone Edition, Suda51, Travis Touchdown — Jamie Love @ 10:16 pm

No More Heroes Red Zone
Marvelous Entertainment unleashes video for No More Heroes: Red Zone Edition, the Japanese PS3 exclusive return of Travis Touchdown, which follows up on a technically troubled effort to bring the Wii title to HD consoles via the release of Heroes’ Paradise in Japan last year.

With Konami bringing an entirely reworked version of Heroes’ Paradise to North American PlayStation 3 owners this year – with the addition of PlayStation Move compatibility – it’s easy to imagine that Marvelous’ reveal of Red Zone with Move support stems from that same effort.

We had the chance to ask Marvelous about the relationship between the two releases today, and learned that Red Zone is in fact the Japanese localized version of the reworked Heroes’ Paradise Konami is releasing to North America – Marvelous also stressed that this new iteration of Heroes’ Paradise, and thus Red Zone, have very little in common with the original Japanese release from last year.

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April 14, 2011

Review – Crysis 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: 360, Crysis, Crysis 2, Crytek, crytek uk, EA, Electronic Arts, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation3, Review, XBOX, Xbox 360 — Brad Johnson @ 5:40 pm

It’s not difficult to imagine EA sitting down with Crytek, somewhere in the indeterminate space between Crysis and Crysis 2, fingers tented carefully and asking “Can you make it more like Call of Duty?” I don’t mean “It’s a funny joke to think about,” I mean I believe this happened. I believe it occurred in our discrete reality.

Indeed, I believe EA has this conversation with every developer to offer them product.

It’s easy to peer into the product and see the result of this conversation (which I will now portray as a factual historic event); fibers of Call of Duty have been infused in the deep tissue of Crysis, coloring its fundamental layers, its skeleton.

Amazing, then, that it remains, unquestionably, its own game.

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