As a sad footnote to a year strewn with the corpses of shuttered studios, Free Radical let go most of its 180-plus employees on December 17. Best-known for the TimeSplitters series, the Nottingham, England-based shop had bet heavily on the success of its oft-delayed PlayStation 3 shooter, Haze. Unfortunately, the Ubisoft title was a critical [...]
By Brett Todd
Posted Feb 4, 2009 4:41 pm PT
An obtuse interface makes MLB Front Office Manager bewildering even to baseball-sim veterans.
Sports management simulations have finally hit the big time. After years of indie obscurity, at least in North America, the genre has finally been hauled into the mainstream by EA Sports and 2K Sports. But [...]
By Kevin VanOrd
Posted Jan 27, 2009 9:18 pm PT
This gory, gorgeous action game has plenty of flaws, but it will still satisfy your thirst for blood.
Nariko in Heavenly Sword. Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. And now Afro Samurai. These are the characters that you remember for their remarkable hairstyles, though Namco Bandai’s newest hack-and-slash [...]
By Justin Calvert
Posted Jan 20, 2009 7:09 pm PT
Skate 2 adds a number of new features to the Skate formula, but not all of them are winners.
When Skate was released in 2007, it took a fresh new approach with a control scheme that made tricks feel more realistic and satisfying than in any previous game. [...]
By Chris Watters
Posted Jan 14, 2009 6:51 pm PT
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an exciting and action-packed way to experience Middle-earth, provided that you have the patience and fortitude to shoulder a few frustrating burdens.
The Lord of the Rings universe is full of memorable battles. No matter whether they are staged in a [...]
By Luke Anderson
Posted Dec 22, 2008 4:42 pm PT
The AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack is a short but sweet experience that leaves you feeling like you didn’t get a Whole Lotta Rosie.
Rock groups don’t get much bigger than AC/DC. The Australian hard-rock act has churned out 17 studio albums over 30 years, including one [...]
By Justin Calvert
Posted Dec 18, 2008 6:14 pm PT
Jason spends too much time talking and not nearly enough time fighting in this Greek mythology-inspired action-RPG.
Loosely based on the same Greek myth that inspired the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-oriented role-playing game in which you assume the role [...]
By Aaron Thomas
Posted Dec 9, 2008 5:43 pm PT
If you enjoy tedious objectives, racially insensitive humor, and ugly graphics, the latest Destroy All Humans is right up your alley.
Developer Sandbox Games was shut down by THQ nearly a full month before Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon hit retail shelves, and the PlayStation 3 [...]
By Joe Dodson
Posted Dec 5, 2008 7:22 pm PT
Bolt is an action platformer that benefits from its super ambitions, even if it doesn’t completely live up to them.
Bolt doesn’t know it’s just a movie-licensed game. Sure, it has a few of the telltale weaknesses: the plot is thin and the game gets repetitive toward [...]
By Tom Mc Shea
Posted Dec 5, 2008 5:49 pm PT
Terrible level design, unresponsive controls, and a poor camera are just the beginning of the problems in this awful adventure.
Every new Sonic release carries a hope that Sega’s blue hedgehog will be able to regain the form that made him a star in the early [...]
