I admit that I barely heard of Digital Reality’s SkyDrift, an aerial racing game available on Xbox Live and PSN, just a couple of weeks before it launched. However, what I’d seen impressed me. For a downloadable game, SkyDrift looked like a truly polished title. I had high hopes for this aerial racing game, and luckily most of them came true.

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You’re on Banoi, an island paradise off the coast of Papua New Guinea. You’re on the job so you can’t enjoy the beaches, the tropical climate and whatever else this pacific island promises. So you don’t want to be here, not like this, going through one loathsome motion after another. Then, like an unsuspected monsoon, a zombie outbreak quickly turns loathsome into terrifying.

While that’s the general situation for all of Dead Island‘s playable characters, those who pick up the sticks for this title must sample similar loathing for some of its mechanics. There is so much promise and beauty. Yet, you can’t avoid the biting flaws threatening to tear this game down. After all the hype, Dead Island mostly teeters between the extremes of awesome immersion and near rage inducing frustration, creating what can best be described as a love-hate relationship with the player.

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As a series, Dungeon Siege has always had an odd position in games industry.  Dungeon Siege III‘s predecessors were adequate PC dungeon crawling romps that stood in the colossal shadow of Blizzard’s incredibly popular Diablo games. While it proved to be a moderate success, the franchise seemed to fade away into obscurity shortly after release of the sequel.

Now, Square-Enix has acquired publishing rights to the series . This time around Dungeon Siege has the jump on Diablo III, and is on both consoles and the PC.  Dungeon Siege III set out with ambitious promises to deliver a revamped, reworked Dungeon Siege experience. In practice it’s one that often falls short, leaving us with a mildly entertaining, linear hack-and-slash game.

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When DeathSpank released on PSN and XBLA last summer it received no shortage of praise. Headed up by legendary Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert, that title combined the strengths of adventure games with those of hack and slash titles like Blizzard’s Diablo seies. While there were some problems with gameplay execution, DeathSpank won gamers over with an irreverent sense of humor.

While The Baconing might not bear the moniker of its predecessors, DeathSpank is back. The hero to the downtrodden has put on too many undergarments and has thus brought on the apocalypse. He must cast the thongs into the fires of Bacon to stop the end of the world. Yes, it’s that typical sense of humor you’ve come to expect of the series. I wish I could say that the same quality was there. But that would be a straight up lie.

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Last year, Cipher Prime followed up their auricular puzzle game, Auditorium, with yet another puzzler, Fractal for the PC. Long story short, we enjoyed it. Short story long, the game featured simple yet challenging puzzles set to a mellow soundtrack. It stole the hours from under your oblivious feet.

The game is back and this time it’s for the iPad in the form of Fractal: Make Blooms Not War. After getting caught nearly numb pushing hexagons to an fro for who know how long, one must say that it’s as much a match made in heaven as a game and platform can get.

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Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about a small gold fish and the wacky world he lives in. Don’t write off this pint sized piece of aquatic cuteness, however. That’s what he wants you to do. When your back is turned he’ll pounce. It’s what he’s good at.

This a story of deception and rage. This is Launching Pad Games’ Mighty Fin.

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Be honest, you already have preconceived notions about this game. That’s fine, I get it. After all, it is an annual sports franchise that, for the most part, takes an incremental approach year in and year out. However, last year was no such year with the introduction of GameFlow and Game Planning. Sure, it might not have been a feature for everyone, but the impact it had on the game was as important as the introduction of Focus was to the Tiger Woods franchise.

Fact of the matter is that Madden NFL 11 opened itself up to be much more accessible without taking anything away from the hardcore.  While the game wasn’t perfect, it was innovative and took a necessary step in the right direction. Madden NFL 12, on the other hand, falls right back into that incremental approach. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. Read more… »

In its heyday, the JRPG was one of the the most well loved, paradigmatic experiences in the entire medium of videogames. Unfortunately, all empires must eventually fall and the the tale of the JRPG has been one of stagnation and decline. Rapid technological improvements brought many eastern studios into an uphill battle, where all too often gameplay suffered at the expense of modern graphics.

We are left with an aging genre where stories are often absurd and incomprehensible, combat is frustrating and needlessly complicated, and high-definition visuals are prioritized above all else. Luckily, Xenoblade Chronicles proves to be a rare exception.

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Twenty years ago, shoot ‘em ups were one of the most prolific genres on the market. Since then, they’ve fallen into decline and become something of a rarity. Now, fans of the venerable genre always have their eyes on the horizon, on the lookout for the next slice of bullet heaven to waltz their way.

A couple of months ago that might have meant the British colonization of Mars on PC, but this week you might want to set your sights on Nintendo’s WiiWare service. If you enjoyed Ikaruga (how could you not) and its unique polarity mechanic, you may just want to check out what Microforum has in store.

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Catherine tells the story of Vincent Brooks, a man in his early thirties coming to grips with growing up. When his long-term girlfriend Katherine starts planning their future, Vincent begins drinking his troubles away, unsure of whether he is ready to give up his freedom and settle down. On one booze-soaked evening, the attractive young Catherine walks through the doors of the Stray Sheep Pub and into Vincent’s life, turning his world upside down and sending him into a guilt-ridden, downward spiral as his life becomes a web of lies.

While those looking for a salacious affair with Catherine are sure to be disappointed, anyone with an open mind will discover one of the most truly mature stories ever told in a video game. That, and one hell of an addicting puzzler.

Edge! Edge! Edge! Edge! Edge! Edge! Edge!

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Dragon Age II was met with some pretty mixed reception, to say the least. Although I personally found the combat enjoyable enough to warrant a second playthrough, there were many unforgiveable issues with the title that were tell-tale signs of a rushjob.

So, seeing as Legacy, the first piece of DLC (and not the last, according to Bioware) has just dropped four months after the fact, the burning question is: does it fix some of the core game’s glaring issues? Read on to find out. Read more… »

So far, Obsidian has given us Dead Money and Honest Hearts – both of which had their positives and negatives, but nothing on New Vegas’ table has been as definitive as Fallout 3′s Broken Steel.

Thankfully, Obsidian’s latest offering, the appropriately titled Old World Blues, comes close.

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