Ever since The Conduit was revealed last year, it has been heralded as the FPS savior for the Nintendo Wii. It has also been touted as a true hardcore game for a console that drowns in shovelware and self-help games.

Well, The Conduit is finally upon us and we’ve taken a taste of the hype-basted buffet. Was it worth the wait or does this motion controlled FPS leave us with motion sickness? Read more… »

What would you get if you tried to combine Disney’s Hercules films and Mario Kart? Other than a copyright-infringement lawsuit, the likely result would be Heracles Chariot Racing, a WiiWare and PS2 game from Neko Entertainment.

As may be inferred from the title, the game involves Heracles engaging in a brutal contest of will, strength and skill, driving horseless chariots around whimsically designed courses and lobbing deadly weapons at each other in pursuit of victory. But how does it stack up against its competitors and the rest of the WiiWare crowd?

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Readers, I have something to admit to you. It’s not easy, but I have never played a single Worms title. Of course, I remember the glory days of the two tanks blasting each other on my PC monitor at school, and to your certain dismay, the reboot of that classic has never graced my home desktop or my console.  However, those days are over and I’m finally ready to open a can of Worms 2: Armageddon.

So, hit the jump if you want to live.

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Ahh, pirates. The one demographic of villains that seemingly never gets old, no matter how many films, books, and games are created in their honor. Age of Pirates 2, by Playlogic, seeks to further popularize the pirate genre, and create an incredibly detailed swashbuckling RPG simulator for the PC.

One of the best parts of Age of Pirates 2 is that it doesn’t force you to be a pirate. Does it do anything else right? Read on to find out. Read more… »

First person shooters are not a rare commodity, and the majority that do exist, don’t derserve the $60 price tag publishers slap on there.  You’ve got your Conflict: Denied Ops, Quantum of Solace, Haze, The Darkness (decent, but not $60), Call of Juarez, Perfect Dark: Zero…I could go on.  However, now that companies are starting to test the limits of downloadable gaming we are starting to see original, and higher budget, titles creeping onto each system.

Last week, PSN released their new FPS The Punisher: No Mercy, which hasn’t fared too well critically, and now both sides are getting a taste of DICE and EA’s Battlefield 1943. So, hit the jump and report in, soldier! Read more… »

Paradox Interactive and 1C: Ino-Co’s latest creation, Elven Legacy, is a turn based strategy title that combines the strategic concepts of chess with an engrossing storyline. The game forces players to move units into hexagonal positions for control of the map.  Turn restrictions, overwhelming enemy forces, and a severe lack of resources will force players to bring out their inner tactician in order to survive. Read more… »

Often times the greatest pool halls are the little, unknown places that only you and a few of your friends know anything about. Perhaps your “spot” is in a smokey pub where the drinks flow, and greasy food stains the pool cues. Others contend that the best places to play are in the dark basements with a few old pieces of furniture to lounge around in-between shots.

No matter where you play, its about friends, skill, and fun. Can Pool Hall Pro recreate this magic?

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While moral choice systems are the feature du jour for contemporary games, there has been a curious lack of games that allow players to play as the villain, especially in recent times. Characters in various open-world crime games such as Grand Theft Auto are certainly despicable, being vicious, violent criminals (especially the “hero” of Saints Row 2), but even then, the player is not implied to be villainous, diabolical, or really evil, terms usually reserved to describe the antagonists in superhero fiction.

The original Overlord was one of those games, casting the player as a rising (or falling) star in the world of evil, out to depose the hypocritical adventurers that did in his predecessor. It garnered attention and praise for its novelty (to those too young to remember Evil Genius, Syndicate or Dungeon Keeper) and charming aesthetic, twisting traditional stereotypes to make being an evil overlord a good thing to be. The affair was flawed, though, as it ultimately cast the player as more of an antihero, forcing him to actually liberate territories in his quest to topple the former heroes, which were even more evil than the player, unwillingly serving the greater good and undermining the concept of being super-duper evil. Does Overlord II manage to do proper justice to injustice?

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Whenever you’re without online leader boards, one of the biggest challengers in a game is yourself. You’re always trying to beat your own score, always trying to do just a little bit better: always trying to shave off that extra second for just a few more points.

This spiritual successor to Marble Madness, known as Vertigo allows you to do just that. Navigating your marble, or Xorb as the game calls it, is a challenging experience that will bring you through fifty-four different tracks and nine different environments. Steady your hand, and prepare for Vertigo.

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In a gaming world dominated by slick HD graphics and fast-paced, action-packed combat, the adventure genre has been fading quickly from the memories of gamers since the late 90′s, with only a few titles, such as Sam and Max and the newly introduced Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures, managing to keep the genre alive in the hearts of both new and old gamers alike.

Now that Telltale Games have virtually revived the adventure genre from a long nap in a pool of its own ale-induced vomit, they’ve tried their hand at a classic series that may have been your first experience into the point-and-click adventure genre; Monkey Island. The swashbuckling, genuinely funny series has been in serious need of a revival, one that the Telltale gang delivers on both the PC and the Wii .

But with such high expectations to meet and rabid fans to please, can Guybrush Threepwood and Telltale Games recreate the piratey-magic? Or does Tales of Monkey Island Launch of the Screaming Narwhal sink faster than the ship it sailed in on? Read more… »

I would love to start this review by stating that the days of rushed games, as movie tie-in cash cows, are over. I would love to say that like the Wolverine game, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is sitting in a category of “games that are greatly better than the movies they are based on.” However, none of that is true. I could say this is a below average game that reeks of rushing to meet the movie’s release. That would be true. Read more… »

I feel as if, from the get-go, I had a completely different expectation as to what this game would offer me. Part of it is the title: there are magicians, but there’s not exactly much magicking; there are “Mysterious Times”, but rather than the times our characters live in being mysterious, there is quite literally a “Mystery Time” each week. More importantly, though, there are no ‘Quests.’ Or, maybe there are – I didn’t finish the game (and there’s a very good reason why), but I played the game for almost two months without finding a single ‘Quest’.

Still, I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Just because the name is misleading doesn’t mean the game should be excluded from getting a fair critique, and Magician’s Quest Mysterious Times is no exception. So, let’s get started, shall we?

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