Reviews

As a PS3 trilogy, the Uncharted series has primarily been about three things: traversing lush jungle environments by hanging from a highly unlikely series of outcroppings and ledges; shooting at gun-toting enemies that pop out en masse from behind beautiful ruins; and listening to some impeccably acted and animated witty banter. Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the first portable entry in the series, is definitely about all those things, but it's also about awkwardly showing off the Vita's unique control functions in ways that annoy more than they enlighten.

Last year's Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D always felt like a proof of concept that the series could function on the 3DS, and Capcom has admitted as much in interviews. Though it stood out with impressive visuals and online co-op action, its decision to hack together a collection of existing side modes from previous series entries made it another uninspired option on a platform struggling to pin down an identity.

Resident Evil: Revelations finally breaks free of the series's portable history, which is filled with false starts and half-measures alike. It's an original, full-fledged adventure that looks and feels like it could have debuted on a console—at times, it even tops 2009's Resident Evil 5 for sheer thrills and entertainment.

There's an undisguised nostalgia about Cell: Emergence, though it's not quite as bold or overt as other recent blocky 3D games like 3D Dot Game Heroes or Minecraft. Still, the effort from indie developer New Life Interactive uses the mechanics and still-screen storytelling of an aged arcade shooter to deliver a short, cerebral package. And despite its humility, Cell: Emergence's new, understated package recalls a refreshingly old-school way to play 3D shooters.

The Darkness II is one of the most unabashedly and gleefully gory games of this generation, reveling in its own torrents of blood and shredded viscera. While bullets, exploding heads, and tearing through flesh aren’t anything new in the video game world, the brutal Darkness executions take the virtual carnage to a whole new level. Bodies are regularly torn in half (both crosswise and lengthwise), skulls and spinal columns are torn out through mouths, bodies are impaled with thrown objects, and entire digestive tracts are forcibly removed through enemies' nether regions.

Given that, it surprisingly never makes the player feel like they’re in need of a shower when the bloodshed is over. Games like Rogue Warrior and Soldier of Fortune were just as brutally violent, yet their uber-serious undercurrents simply made them feel like exercises in virtual sadism. Last year’s Bulletstorm, on the other hand, was so over-the-top and silly that the blood and guts really didn’t make any impact at all. The Darkness II manages to strike the right balance between the two extremes, not only making it a better game than the ones mentioned above, but also making it superior to its predecessor in many ways.

The ubiquity of the action RPG, as an idea, is a little weird when you think about it. It's hard to think of two more disparate genres to try to combine, and usually the attempt ends up leaning too heavily toward one side of the coin or the other. Action RPGs often feel like roleplaying games that replace turn-based combat with overly simple button mashing, or like action games with some cursory, stat-building “RPG elements” thrown in toward the end of development.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning manages a surprising trick, then, in creating an action RPG that feels like a full-fledged action game and a full-fledged RPG. Unfortunately, only one of those two component parts manages to stand on its own in a satisfying way.

Digital forms of Solitaire have been included with Windows since it reached version 3.0, and they may well represent the most widely played video game series this side of Angry Birds, enjoyed by bored cubicle workers and bored, procrastinating students alike. While most serious gamers probably wouldn't put these games top ten picks of all time, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single PC owner that hasn't put in at least a few hours on a machine that has nothing else available.

Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle maker Popcap is targeting this familiar genre with its latest Facebook time-waster, Solitaire Blitz, a supremely addictive and well-crafted offering that adds just the right amount of tension to the zen autonomy of mindlessly clicking cards.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place three years after Final Fantasy XIII. Vanille, Fang, Snow and Lightning are gone; either dead, encased in crystal or disappeared to unknown adventures. Serah Farron, Lightning's sister and Snow's fiancé, hides her pain while teaching the children of New Bodhum and helping her friends in NORA. Images of Lightning engaged in an epic battle haunt her dreams, but she knows her sister is gone forever.

What happened to Final Fantasy? The elaborate narrative and groundbreaking graphics of Final Fantasy VII turned the franchise from a significant cult favorite into a mainstream blockbuster in 1997. Since then, though, almost every Final Fantasy has struggled to find the correct balance between game and story, with CGI cut-scenes and anime clichés taking up as much time as the gameplay.

The instructions underneath VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh's new browser-based MMO ChatChat simply read: "be a cat." These instructions also describe a dream I held between the ages of 5 and 7, so I'm eager to finally see if my dreams were realistic. Below is a short, diary-style description of my first hour as a cat.

AVSEQ (pronounced ay-vee-seck, I'm told) stands for Audiovisual Sequencer, putting it in a class of abstract, interactive audiovisual experiments that runs from Simon all the way through and past Electroplankton. It's a tough game to evaluate as a whole, though, because the "audiovisual" portion and the "sequencer" portion, both interesting in their own right, fail to mesh together in a satisfying way and each seem to actively work against the enjoyment of the other.

If you crossed the asynchronous multiplayer component of a game like Words With Friends with a simple but engaging turn-based strategy game, what you'd end up with would look a whole lot like Hero Academy. This free-to-play iOS game, developed by the same team behind Orcs Must Die, is an excellent way to get in some satisfying strategy gaming in quick bursts. Just make sure you have some friends to bring along.

Fans of the iOS version of Quarrel, released last August, already know that the game's mix of Scrabble-style anagram making with Risk-style positional battles makes for a truly addictive mix. The Xbox Live version, hitting the Marketplace today for 400 Microsoft points ($5), adds a crucial online multiplayer feature but takes away some of the interface simplicity that makes the iOS version so easy to get into.

The first three DLC packs for Gears of War 3 seem to each have been created with different players in mind. "Horde Command" was obviously aimed at fans of Horde mode, and the fact that all three of the new maps in this first DLC pack were later bundled for free with remakes of two maps from the original Gears of War suggests the lasting value of the pack lay in the fortification upgrades. The second DLC pack, "Raam’s Shadow," was geared towards campaign fans, and now "Fenix Rising" (available for 800 Microsoft Points, or $10) seems aimed directly at Gears 3's online multiplayer die-hards.

Five new multiplayer maps make up the bulk of the new content in this DLC offering, and each one is designed to represent a distinct stage in the journey of series protagonist Marcus Fenix. While all five maps are playable in Versus, Horde, and Beast modes, we focused mainly on Versus mode in our testing.

Like all great platform games, Dustforce is a game about managing a character's momentum. Unlike most platform games, though, the game has a relentless focus on maintaining that momentum in a single, perfect, unbroken line; a focus that's equal parts wonderful and maddening.

Super Crate Box has been available for both the PC and Mac for a good while now, but the game has just been released on iOS devices as a universal app; a $1 purchase gets you both the iPhone and iPad version of the game. Some titles try to make an impression with expansive stories and complex mechanics, but Super Crate Box is a game that shows you everything it has within the first hour. You control a small character on the screen, you see the entire level instantly, and you need to pick up crates to score.

It may not sound like much, but each aspect of the game has been honed to perfection.