When you hear someone talking about JRPGs, you’ll think of Final Fantasy but more precisely, Final Fantasy VII (FFVII). Hate it or love it, you just have to admire what Final Fantasy VII did for the genre. It’s no surprise Square was going to release numerous FFVII titles, known as the Final Fantasy VII Compilation, after the success of Final Fantasy VII.  The big question is: is Crisis Core a worthy addition to the Final Fantasy VII Compilation? Read more… »

One of the year’s most anticipated releases is finally here, and fans are wondering if it will be the best in the series. It can’t be helped if Resident Evil 5 is compared to Resident Evil 4: both games are very similar in terms of gameplay, it would be impossible to ignore. So does Resident Evil 5 hold its own? Read on to find out what Tim and I have to say. Read more… »

Marbles! The fun little glass balls that everyone loves to play with, good for rolling, playing and throwing at people. Kororinpa is a marble game. Based on former classics like Marble Madness, you take control of a marble, rolling it through a number of labyrinth like levels. Each of the levels include tricky obstacles for you to navigate around.

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Flying Sims. Hate em’ or love em ‘Well all know them, they are the big boxes hidden underneath a huge pile of games or propping up your kitchen table. With manuals with dials, meters and graphs long enough to make an aeronautical engineer out of any one. HAWX although not a hardcore sim may be propping up kitchen tables around the world very soon. Read more… »

Kirby: Canvas Curse, known in Europe as Kirby: Power Paintbrush, is an extremely innovative game for the Nintendo DS. Kirby makes a triumphant return to the platforming genre with a game that’s sure to knock your socks off. However, while Canvas Curse is a platformer, it does not play like traditional Kirby games; it only uses the stylus.

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Fans of any media are no stranger to violence. In Michael Haneke’s film Funny Games, visceral off screen violence and repeated breaking of the fourth wall comment on violence as a negative form of entertainment. Chuck Palahniuk’s book Haunted has a group of writers create violent situations by sabotaging food supplies, and each other, in an attempt to become more credible; thus stating that in media, more violence means more entertainment.

Does MadWorld join this overdramatization of violence? With over the top characters, violence, and graphical presentation Madworld makes the statement “violence is fun” successfully, but not perfectly.

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If you’ve strictly been playing on consoles for the past few years, you might not know about Peggle, which has been the virtual heroin for PC Gamers over the last few years. Fortunately, now’s the time to catch the addiction as Peggle arrives on the Xbox Live Arcade, brought to you by casual juggernaught, PopCap games. Read more… »

One of the biggest mistakes that Sony’s gaming division ever made came at E3 in 2005. Intended to showcase both the power of the upcoming PlayStation 3 console and a title owners could be excited for, the now infamous Killzone “gameplay” trailer was met with extreme reactions at both ends of the spectrum, through many mediums. The resulting shockwaves have carried through the four years that have since past. Read more… »

SRPGs (Strategy Role Playing Games) are few and far between. Most of them cater to the hardcore gamer, offering thousands of customized options, weapons and spells, which would scare off any casual fan. Band of Bugs seeks to debunk the “SRPGs are hard” myth, but the question is: is it worth the money? Read more… »

Since the release of Sonic Adventure 2 in 2001, Sonic the Hedgehog has been in a coma. His 3D outings have generated limited success on the consoles while his portable endeavors have garnered rave reviews because they mastered the formula the Sega Genesis made famous. After reading about Sonic and the Black Knight (SBK) in Nintendo Power last year, I eagerly anticipated its release, hoping that it would mark the removal of the anthropomorphic blue blur from life support. Read more… »

There are not too many games about bugs, or even more specific, Arachnids. So as a nice change of pace, Rainbow Studios has provided a new Wii game, which is coincidentally a nice change of pace for them and on the console which is also a nice change of pace. Enter Deadly Creatures, the action adventure game in which you explore the world as a Tarantula and a Scorpion. So is this breath of fresh air actually good? Read on to find out.

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The Paper Mario series is quite an interesting one. The original Paper Mario stood as a faux sequel for Super Mario RPG. At this point Mario was still new to the world of Role Playing, and Paper Mario for the N64 was just the ticket he needed to worm his way into another genre, especially with Mario RPG’s release being limited worldwide. With Super Paper Mario being the 3rd game in the Paper Mario series, Mario’s found his feet and planted them firmly, right on top of a Goomba.

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