World of Gaming

We set out on a journey filled with magic and dragons in imageepoch's upcoming role-playing game exclusively for the Wii.

Those who have been waiting for a classic Japanese role-playing game to come to the Wii have something to look forward to this summer when Arc Rise Fantasia is released in the United States. The game was released last year in Japan and is developed by imageepoch, the makers of Luminous Arc. It's difficult to know all the features of the game after playing just the first 40 minutes, but we were able to get a feel for how the game will play and were impressed with the visuals in the initial CG cutscene. Unfortunately, there are only going to be two of these fully animated sequences in the game, but they were impressive nonetheless.


Most of the time, the story is told through lines of voice-acted dialogue with character portraits and in-game cutscenes. The hero of the story is L'Arc, a mercenary from the Meridian Empire who, in the opening cutscene, tumbles off of his airship after fighting off a horde of dragons. He meets a lovely young girl by the name of Ryfia, who's actually from the Republic with which the empire is at war. Whether it's her pretty face or, perhaps, her really short dress, he decides to escort her to her destination, and the fact that she is the enemy doesn't seem to faze him one bit. We eventually meet up with Alf, L'Arc's childhood friend and a member of the royal family, who also tags along to help the young lady. We'll have to wait to see how this story unfolds, but judging from how everyone reacts to Ryfia, there's likely going to be some serious drama.

Like a typical Japanese RPG, you'll move from one city or dungeon to another, traveling across the overworld map. When you enter a certain area or town, you can see extended scenes if you choose to press the 2 button when it appears. The game will provide a bit more backstory if you decide to read or watch these scenes, but they can be skipped or ignored. Rico is the in-game currency, which you'll acquire as you defeat monsters, to purchase new weapons, orbs, and other items to help you along the way. Orbs are your source of magic, so you can equip them to cast spells in combat. We got just far enough to test them out once, but we're told that there will be a lot more customization as time goes on in regards to your character and weapons.

Enemies are seen onscreen and you can generally run around them if you want to skip a fight. Battles are turn based and rely on action points. Your three-person party shares an AP gauge and each action comes with a cost. You can choose to use up all your AP with one character or divvy it evenly among your teammates, but it really depends on how you want to approach the fight. At certain points in the game, you'll have a fourth party member, but he or she will be controlled by the AI. You can chain attacks together to form combos and execute an excel act when your SP gauge is full. For easy battles, you can adjust your character's tactics and the game will automatically fight for you depending on your setup. There weren't a lot of options for us because we only played the beginning of the game, but we were told that eventually you'll have a larger cast of characters to choose from and you'll be able to form your own party.


Our tour of the Meridian Empire was brief, but there seem to be a lot of fascinating characters to meet and plenty of peculiar enemies to fight. The game stands out visually as well, with its vibrant environments and anime artwork. For those of you who keep track, composer Yasunori Mutsuda, who also worked on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, is one of the composers for Arc Rise Fantasia.

If you're looking for a 60-hour epic on the Wii, then you will want to keep an eye out for Arc Rise Fantasia when it is released on June 22.

Source: Gamespot.com

Bee and Boo Mario are back, but Mario's got a few new tricks up his sleeve.

Yoshi was clearly the highlight of our last play session with Super Mario Galaxy 2. However, during our recent hands-on time with the game, the focus shifted back to Mario as we checked out one of the plumber's cool new suits, which was a rock suit that transformed Mario into an unstoppable--well, unstoppable until he hit something bigger than he was--rolling boulder. We explored five distinct levels, faced some peculiar bosses, splashed around in a water level, and then proceeded to go ice skating. As talented as Mario is, it shouldn't surprise us that he's also quite the ballerina on ice, and his shoes are obviously made to endure just about anything.

Before jumping into the various galaxies, we were first given a tour of Starship Mario. This will be your planetlike ship and hub area that you'll use to navigate the overworld map. The map layout is reminiscent of old-school Mario games where you move along a path from one level to another until you reach the boss at the end and warp onto the next world. On the ship--which is a landscaped version of Mario's big head and bulbous nose--you can run around and mingle with the Toad Brigade, as well as your various Lumas friends. As you progress through the game, more things will be added to the starship, but at this point, we only had access to Yoshi--conveniently nestled on Mario's gigantic nose--and a packed berry garden in which we could play around. We're guessing that as you get new power-ups, they will also be available here on the ship to practice using because there are signs posted throughout to give you a refresher course on the basics of Mario Galaxy.

Our first stop was the Puzzle Plank Galaxy, where we needed to use our ground stomp to activate switches, push blocks, and move planks. The fiddle music was lively and upbeat, as we dodged wigglers and butt-stomped everything that looked like it could be a switch. Other than snagging the usual starbits and reaching the star at the end, there were comet medals that were hidden or tucked in hard-to-reach places for us to collect or unlock levels from previous galaxies. Before fighting the miniboss at the end of the stage, we had to use our ground pound shift and slide giant pieces of a wooden plank to complete a painted image, which was similar to a sliding puzzle. Once the image was in place, a couple of beetles stacked on top of one another appeared but were easily disposed of after a few stomps.

The next galaxy we visited was called the Boulder Bowl, where we saw the rock mushroom for the first time. This stone fungus gave Mario a stone hat and a tough exterior, but he was only protected when we shook the remote, which transformed him into a huge rolling boulder. Once we were spinning, we couldn't stop until we ran into something hard enough to either break, or big enough, to hurt us. You're unwieldy in this form because you're rolling fast, but you can guide Mario to knock down bridges, break things, or roll over goombahs. The boss fight took place on a circular wire cage, where we faced Rollodillo, a monstrous well-armored critter that would charge at us by rolling into a spiked ball. Like all boss fights, there was a weakness to exploit, so it didn't take long before we used rock Mario to ram into Rollodillo enough times to call it a day.


The only 2.5D platforming level we played was in the Honeybloom Galaxy where we got to check out Bee Mario again. As cute as Mario is in his little bee outfit, the controls are still the same as you press and hold the A button to hover--ever so slowly--to higher ground while dodging snappy piranha plants. It was a bright and cheery level, filled with blossoming flowers; we also got to swing on green vines and bounce off of soft pods. Our favorite level by far was the next area we traveled to: the Cosmic Cove Galaxy. Here, we swam underwater and saw bizarre creatures--including a giant stinging jellyfish--that lurked beneath the surface. We also rode a green turtle shell as though it were a jet ski. Once you grab the shell, it'll start going and you can control the direction you want to go until you get hit. You can press the Z button to brake (but who does that?). The shell also comes fully equipped with brake lights and a headlight. The level wasn't very large, but it was big enough to gain speed and jump out of the water as though we were a dolphin. There was also enough going on in the sea bed for us to explore as though we were scuba divers, but it didn't end there. Once we activated a switch, the top layer of the area froze over and we then had a giant skating rink on which we could skate. By shaking the remote, Mario swooshed gracefully across the ice and did pirouettes in the air with very little effort. Enemies that were unfortunate enough to have been at the surface were frozen and could be plowed into, but we could also see that the creatures beneath the ice were still swimming along undisturbed.

Yoshi came in at some point in our demo, and we were introduced to a new fruit: the golden bulb berry. Instead of giving Yoshi some potential indigestion, the bulb berry turned Yoshi into a golden dinosaur that lit up a small radius around the duo to show floors that were otherwise unseen. For example, we were in the Haunty Halls Galaxy where platforms would shift and disappear while we were constantly surrounded by a variety of ghosts. Only Light Yoshi could illuminate the invisible floors so that we didn't take a misstep and fall into oblivion. There's a timer, though, on the bulb berry, and the constant ticking is a nagging reminder that you need to either get to the next berry to keep the floor lit or find a platform to take a break. Even if you know where the floor should be, it won't be there unless you have Light Yoshi with you.


There's an incredible amount of variety from what we've been shown that all looks and sounds great. There's plenty of detail in every world that you explore to make it unique and stand out, as well as a peppy soundtrack to keep you motivated. Nintendo will be revealing more details on the game so we'll be able to update you with more information on Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the near future. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is set to be released on May 23.

Source: Gamespot.com

This remake of an arcade classic is proof that time travel doesn't always have to be frightening.

Nostalgia, wrapped in loving memories, covered in a layer of wistful longing. Few sports games can inspire those types of emotions in people, but the original NBA Jam certainly makes the list. Its dead-simple controls and bombastic presentation made it a fan favorite back when the arcade version was released in 1993, and subsequent releases on home consoles all but solidified its place as one of the most iconic sports games of all time. Now that EA has announced it has both acquired the rights to the franchise and tasked its Burnaby, BC, studio with developing a new version for the Wii, the question on everyone's mind is what exactly a revisited NBA Jam will feel like in 2010.

Familiar in a good way--that's how we'd describe it after having played about four full games at a recent EA Sports event. It was only a few seconds after tip-off in a game pitting the Lakers against the Cavaliers that we had one of those riding-a-bicycle moments, that feeling that we were instantly back in the world of NBA Jam. The biggest reason for this is that EA Canada has preserved the simplicity of the controls: Hold Z for turbo, hit A to pass, and flick the remote up in the air to shoot, dunk, block, or do anything that requires jumping into the air. And, of course, there's everyone's favorite: the shove. You can rest easy knowing that violently pushing people to the ground is just as easy--and funny--as ever.

But it's not all the same, because EA Canada has layered in a few new abilities over that core control scheme. Holding Z and pressing B will do an ankle-breaker crossover, holding B after grabbing a rebound will throw a flurry of elbows, and holding C and flicking the remote will perform a pump fake. However, all you really need to win are those core run-pass-shoot controls--it seems like these new moves have been layered in as optional abilities to add some style and variety to your game. Moreover, there are also some new features that are so obvious that you'd think they were there all along, like the ability to pass from the ground after having been knocked over and a difference in movement between acrobatic 2-guards and lumbering centers.

The area where the new Jam feels, well, newest is in the art style. Rather than rendering characters with 2D sprites or 3D models, every frame of facial animation for the players is taken from a live game photo. So when you see Pau Gasol's sweaty caveman beard or his awkward mid-dunk grimace, you know those images were taken from real game shots. The result is a game that has a very charming homemade collage look to it. Beyond that, the lovably ridiculous announcer is back, with plenty of new material and nods to old catchphrases like "boom-shaka-laka" and "from downtown!"


All told, we enjoyed our trip down memory lane with NBA Jam. The combination of new and old definitely has a balance that's more heavily weighted on the "old" side, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The biggest flaw we could find in the game is its format: a retro experience like this seems tailor-made for the downloadable game space, but NBA Jam is retail-only. We'll see if EA reveals any more release plans further down the road, but in the meantime you can expect NBA Jam to arrive for the Wii later this year.

Source: Gamespot.com

Stylish combat that is as challenging as it is exciting provides the backbone for this great role-playing game.

The first time you fall in battle you will assume it's a fluke. How could a normal, low-level enemy triumph over your team of gun-toting heroes? The second time you fall, you will grit your teeth, wipe your brow, and rush right back into the fray. The third time, you will realize that rushing into battle is a fool's folly, but even with careful planning and well-executed shooting, you will find the life sapped from your protagonists' bodies. But when you finally are victorious in that fourth battle, exploiting your enemies' weaknesses while keeping yourself out of harm's way, the spoils of war will be so much more than the gold, weapons, and other assorted loot you greedily swipe from your downed opponents. The real reward comes from knowing you overcame the punishing obstacles that stood in your path by learning and adapting to your enemies' attacks. Resonance of Fate is an unforgiving adventure, but its tactical combat is so fluid and engaging that you will be sucked into this world until you finally destroy the last enemy who stands in your path.

Climate once again reveals itself as man's greatest enemy. In the distant future, violent weather patterns have destroyed the human race's opportunity to live on the soil of the earth. The solution? Erect a giant tower in the sky, above all the churning chaos down below, and give up any chance to ever again smell the flowers and sit beneath a tree. Sacrificing nature to continue to live may sound like a fair trade, but the resulting society is ravaged by monsters, poverty, and cardinals who posit that killing god is the only way to be truly free. The story in Resonance of Fate is told in a drawn-out, stilted way that only reveals its agenda dozens of hours into your quest. You control a party of three adventurers, and instead of striving to save the world as is typical in the genre, you partake in a series of seemingly unrelated jobs for various townsfolk. Delivering presents, retrieving a long-lost ring, and finding a bottle of well-aged wine may sound like insulting duties for heroes, but these odd tasks do add up to something tangible.

What makes this story engaging even before your ultimate goal becomes clear is that the characters are well-developed and easy to relate to. Vashyron is the leader of your party. His sarcastic quips make him the go-to source for levity, but his motivating force is choice. He is a strong believer in letting people carve their own path through life, and his reluctance to intervene allows the others characters to grow. Zephyr is not happy being the innocent bystander. He is sullen and angry in the face of adversity but does not rest until things are put back correctly. The last member of your party is Leanne. She starts the game as an impressionable wallflower but exhibits an uncanny maturity when her terrible secret comes to light. Resonance deals with weighty issues, but many of the cutscenes have a comical, lighthearted tone. The most memorable of these cinemas is one in which Vashyron is so overcome by the beauty of his employer that he cannot keep his dancing desires bottled up. This mix of silly and serious helps keep things interesting, and the solid voice acting and believable dialogue mask the story's exceedingly slow pace.


The story may be doled out in bite-size chunks to keep you hungry, but the combat is not nearly so stingy. Every facet of this complicated battle system is available from the very beginning, and the perfunctory tutorial is little help in piecing together the esoteric mechanics you need to succeed. It takes an hour or more to come to grips with the basics, and you will still be discovering tricks and strategies dozens of hours into your journey. Resonance does not spend time holding your hand by offering up sacrificial lambs, either. From the feisty first battle until the harrowing boss fight at the end of the adventure, the game pushes your limits and challenges your skills in every fight. This sink-or-swim approach presents a steep learning curve, but if you stick with this game past the rocky beginning, you will find a deeply satisfying experience.

The combat is centered on movement and positioning, forcing you to analyze the various pieces of cover, explosive barrels, and other obstacles littering the battlefield as you try to outmaneuver your enemies before they get the jump on you. The mix of real-time and turn-based combat gives you plenty of time to plan your attack, but once the action begins, you need to slam on buttons and make pinpoint adjustments that make this feel as intense and exhilarating as an action game. The key components of this fantastic system are hero moves. These allow you to set up waypoints in the arena, and once you begin your move, you character runs along a preset line while you jump and fire in real time. Hero moves are the most effective way to take down an enemy, but you can only pull off this fancy technique a limited number of times. If you do it too often, you enter a state of panic in which your attacks are weaker and your defenses are lower, all but guaranteeing you will end up on the losing side.

The challenge comes from figuring out the ideal way to move around the arena to have the best chance of unleashing mayhem while staying just out of reach to avoid a retaliatory blow. Your foes cannot run and jump like you can, but they have a variety of deadly attacks that make it imperative that you hide behind cover or position yourself high above them so they cannot strike you. All too often, you find yourself greatly outnumbered. Taking on three grass yetis is difficult enough, but when they team up with five deadly guards from the cardinal's personal entourage, your odds of victory are skewing dangerously close to insurmountable. The trick is figuring out how to separate your opponents into manageable groups, forcing you to continually move around the arena so you avoid taking big damage while still dishing out enough of your own. To help even the odds a bit, you have a cache of grenades as well as a bevy of elemental bullets to play with. Losing can be frustrating, but all of your problems fade away when you light that insufferable yeti on fire with a Molotov cocktail.


It takes a long time to figure out the intricacies of battle, but Resonance is a blast even before you piece every tantalizing element together. This game simply exudes style. The cinematography used during hero actions is so over-the-top and exciting to watch that it makes battles a joy to take part in, even when you're getting beaten down by a goblin in a drum barrel for the fifth straight time. The camera pans around your character as you sprint headlong toward your enemy, setting up an angle low to the ground so you feel the pounding footsteps as you near your prey. In a flash, you begin to slide, reaching behind your back to nab your gun as you contort your body to line up a deadly blast. You can knock your enemy high into the air with a few concussive blows, and seeing him dangle above the earth as his rag-doll limbs flop pitifully around is sickly satisfying. If you decide to jump, your character performs twists and flips with ease. Once airborne, you can slam your enemy into the turf, causing him to rise and fall with such force that the screen shakes and armor sheds from his crippled body. Resonance revels in the majesty of flight and never shies away from the intense pain your bullets are capable of, making fights mimic the sadistic thrills most commonly found in pure action games.

The deeply rewarding combat and high-flying style erupt in bouts of pure awesomeness during the intense boss battles. In a game in which losing to a random foe in an ordinary encounter is an all-too-common occurrence, you can expect to have your butt handed to you again and again when you face off against gigantic beasts that tower over your heroes. You need to use every trick you have learned, and a few you may not have even realized yet, to tackle these treacherous monsters, but there is nothing quite as sweet as toppling something that has tormented you for so long. Your techniques have to be refined to perfection in these grueling duels, forcing you to make sure every grenade throw, every machine-gun blast, and every hero leap is performed with care and precision. Every one of the boss battles pushes you to the edge of your abilities before you finally take a deep breath and figure out the best way to succeed, which means that every boss battle is intensely satisfying when you finally win. Nothing in Resonance is handed to you without a fight, which makes it so much more fulfilling when you grab hold of victory with your own two hands.


Because so much of the combat is open to you from the very beginning, there is little distinction between your fights at the start of your adventure and those that happen toward the end. However, although you do not gain access to a wider variety of moves, the game still manages to stay challenging and engaging. The most noticeable change is to your available weapons. As you get deeper into your quest, you earn a variety of bullets and grenades that have a powerful impact on combat. From being able to infect a small group of masked bandits with poison to knocking them all out with an explosive blast, these small changes have a big effect on your tactics. The weapon upgrade system puts a unique spin on traditional standards. Although you do earn the occasional new gun, you spend more time enhancing your current firearm. This is done in a grid-based puzzle game and requires a fair bit of thought to maximize your bullet-spraying power. But you aren't the only one learning new tricks. Your enemies come equipped with dangerous weapons and seemingly impenetrable shields, and figuring out how to defeat them requires a good deal of strategy.

Resonance is a difficult game no matter how you tackle it, but things become much more manageable if you take your time progressing through this adventure. There are 16 chapters total, and each contains one story mission as well as a handful of optional side quests. If you rush to the next story segment, you'll find yourself underpowered and overmatched against the unrelenting forces that stand in your path. These formidable barriers can be frustrating, repeatedly punishing you for trying to progress before you have earned that honor. However, if you do the side missions first, as well as clear out danger zones and compete in arena challenges, you'll have the skills and equipment to tackle anything. Unfortunately, there is little variety among the side missions. The objectives may be different--perform a reconnaissance mission in an abandoned building or clear out the monsters roaming near the waterless bridge--but they boil down to the same combat that's in the story missions. The occasional fetch quest isn't exactly riveting either. The combat is deep enough to remain interesting throughout the adventure, but a little more variety would have gone a long way.

This lack of variety is most noticeable in the visuals. The tower of Basel, which you call home, is stark and suffocating. The view changes little from one area to the next, so you are repeatedly greeted by a bland color palette and predictable architecture in every place you visit. Without foliage or wildlife to inject some diversity, things quickly become monotonous as you trudge from one bleak zone to the next. The industrialized theme is certainly consistent, and makes sense given the tower you call home, but it does weigh on you after a few hours of traipsing through similar sections. Thankfully, the unexciting visuals do not extend to the characters or to the enemies you fight. The starring party members have distinct personalities, and you can even change their clothes to inject your own taste into the proceedings. The enemies are even more striking, taking a variety of interesting forms, which makes it fun just to gun them down. With a little more style in the environments, Resonance could have provided the visual charm to match its impressive combat, but in its current form, the dreary atmosphere is one of the few dark spots in this great adventure.


Exploration does not provide any visual treats, but it's an interesting spin-off from traditional progression. The tower of Basel is made up of 12 floors, each covered by hexagonal spaces. You earn different shapes by emerging victorious in battle and lay these twisted pieces on the floor to carve a path to your next area. The sparsely detailed overhead view gives the impression of a board game, and you need to employ a puzzle-game mind-set to effectively use your limited pieces to clear the appropriate number of tiles. It's an interesting way to open up new places to explore, and it even ties in to the combat. Each level has terminals that, once activated, provide a boost for you in battle. Getting these to function requires colored hexes that are hard to come by, so maximizing your map skills goes a long way toward achieving ultimate success on your quest. You do have to walk across the same ground over and over because you never leave this civilization-saving tower, but it's a neat mechanic nonetheless and an interesting diversion from the combat.

There is a lot of content in Resonance of Fate. It can take more than 60 hours to play through the entire adventure, and if you do every side quest along the way, you can push that number much higher. But it doesn't matter how long a game is if you aren't consistently engaged along the way. Thankfully, the exciting combat and quirky story make this game incredibly difficult to put down once you get sucked in, and there is always a new challenge waiting for you around the corner. Resonance of Fate is a challenging and deeply satisfying adventure that will keep you hooked until the very end.

Source: Gamespot.com

A revamped Career mode and some fine racing are offset by some strange AI quirks in Capcom's latest two-wheeled racing game.

Some call it bravery, and some call it insanity--that particular willingness of MotoGP racers to strap themselves in the saddle of a two-wheeled, 800cc monstrosity and rip around some of the world's toughest tracks with nothing more than a helmet and thick leather coming between them and oblivion. For the rest of us who might lack that particular fortitude, there are video games like Capcom's MotoGP 09/10 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This is the third MotoGP game from the company, and unlike the straightforward previous efforts, MotoGP 09/10 introduces some new features that add depth to the racing experience. However, those additions are offset to a certain degree by some strange AI quirks and an overall organization that makes it tough to get to the game's best content.


The biggest additions in MotoGP 09/10 are found in the game's Career mode. You are responsible for more than just your performance on the track here; as your career progresses, you need to hire a staff of press officers and engineers who are responsible for securing sponsorship opportunities and researching new technology for your bike, respectively. Money from sponsors is important, because as your team grows, you need more than your race winnings to keep the team afloat. Different sponsors have different requirements you need to meet on-track in order to get paid (such as finishing 8th or above in qualifying or in a race). Failure to do so can mean missing out on quite a big payday; miss too many of these goals and you might even be reduced to laying off staff to make it to the next week.

You can hire engineers to work on various aspects of your bike, such as tires, engine, suspension, and so on. Different engineers have different mechanical specialties, and for quicker results, you need to make sure you have the right person on each job from week to week. Both press officers and engineers have levels attached to them: higher-level press officers will be able to get you better sponsorship opportunities, and you need higher-level engineers as you move up through the different bike classes in Career mode. All of this hiring and firing and sponsorship signing means a lot of heavy menu navigation, but it's all attractively organized and easy to understand.

Progress in Career mode is determined by a number of metrics, including championship points and cash earned from completing races. New for this year is a rider reputation system that measures your performance on the track in more granular terms. You earn reputation for doing things like making clean passes, running incident-free sections of the track, or completing in-race challenges (such as passing a singled-out rider or reaching a certain top speed on a straightaway). Conversely, you lose rep by being passed by other riders, hitting opponents, falling off the bike, or using the game's new second-chance feature (which lets you rewind a race and drop back in at any point). At the end of each race session, you are given an overall reputation grade, and all of the rep points then feed into your overall reputation level. Reputation doesn't mean much in terms of how other riders react to you; instead, improving your rep can earn you more slots to hire additional staff.


On the track, MotoGP 09/10 straddles a line between arcade and simulation racing in a way that can be disconcerting at first. On the default settings, the game's HUD is absolutely jam-packed. In addition to standard lap timers, race position, current gear, track map, and so on, the game throws in a bunch of information, some of which is superfluous. For example, every action you perform on-track that causes you to earn or lose reputation is called out in bright blue (or red) letters, which can be annoying, especially as the messages pile up. In the lower right-hand corner of the screen, you'll find a color-coded sector indicator that will tell you how cleanly you've driven a certain section of the track, as well as a bike mock-up that illustrates the wear of your tires, the latter of which proves to be one of the most important bits of information you'll need in a race.

You'll be referring to that tire meter often, especially in the MotoGP class, where the immense power of the bikes wreaks havoc on the tire rubber. In fact, tire wear is one of the real strengths of MotoGP 09/10's handling model. If you've been driving aggressively during the first part of a race, you'll often find yourself struggling with a rear tire that has lost a good deal of grip toward the end of the race. As a result, success in a race is all about being smooth--using the precise amount of brakes going into a corner and smoothly accelerating out in order to do the least damage possible to your tires.


There are four different skill levels in MotoGP 09/10: gentle, moderate, severe, and insane. Most riders will find their comfort zone on the moderate setting; as you move deeper into your career, you'll eventually have invested so much time and money into researching your bike that you'll find yourself blowing the competition off the track on sheer mechanical muscle alone. Because of this, you can set AI skill level at any event on the calendar to increase the challenge level. Depending on the skill level you choose, your opponent riders in MotoGP 09/10 are often hard-charging and are apt to slip behind you to gain a draft and then zip around you on straights. AI bikes occasionally make mistakes, going too deep into corners or running into one another, and they're more than happy to make you pay in the late goings of a race if you haven't been taking care of those tires.

Those positives aside, there are some troubling aspects of the game's racing. For example, performance between qualifying and actual races can vary wildly. It's not unusual to out-qualify the field by five seconds or more, only to find yourself inexplicably in a wheel-to-wheel battle with opponents once the green flag drops. This disparity between qualifying times and race performance has all the telltale signs of rubber-band AI, but there's no doubt that it makes for exciting, close-knit racing. In addition, the bikes are tremendously stable in the game--to a fault. You can be rammed from behind by a bike going 50mph faster than you, and instead of the result being a horrific accident, you merely enjoy a boost of speed.

Perhaps the biggest annoyance in MotoGP 09/10's handling is the overreliance of the tuck, which is when the rider digs down deep in the saddle to gain an extra bit of aerodynamic advantage from his bike. It's used in real-life races too, but in the game, it's overexaggerated to a ridiculous degree. You initiate the tuck with a button, and the game's reliance on the tuck means you miss out on an extra 20 to 30mph of top speed (or, sometimes, even the ability to go from fifth to sixth gear) if you don't use it. You'll get used to using the tuck to your advantage quickly, but it never feels realistic.

MotoGP 09/10's other modes include Championship, Arcade, Time Trial, and multiplayer. Unfortunately, you can race only on MotoGP-class bikes at the outset in Time Trial and multiplayer races. In order to gain access to the game's best bikes in Championship, Career, or Arcade mode, you first need to complete full seasons on the lower-class 125cc and 250cc bikes. The smaller bikes have their own charms, and they serve as effective learning bikes for those new to motorcycle games, but it's too bad veterans have to spend so much time slogging through the two-wheel minor leagues before getting on the big boys.


In addition to split-screen racing, MotoGP 09/10 features online racing for up to 20 people. In between sessions, players can vote on the next racetrack, the number of laps, weather conditions, and so forth. You might have trouble finding a full 20-person race online, but you can expect good performance once the race begins. In keeping with the game's dual-year title, Capcom is also planning a free update for the game that will update the tracks and riders to coincide with the start of the 2010 MotoGP season.

MotoGP 09/10 doesn't skimp on the racing, even if it takes too long to get to the bikes you really want to ride. The long Career mode gives you more to do than simply button through to the next race on the calendar; the online racing is respectable if not overly crowded; and the game's difficulty runs the gamut from simplistic to ludicrously challenging. Most importantly, on the track, the racing blossoms the more you play thanks to the game's healthy respect for smooth riding, which, as any MotoGP rider will tell you, is a skill that is only developed over time.

Source: Gamespot.com

Rugby League 3's expanded team roster and fast-paced multiplayer may breathe new life into the series, but its lousy motion controls and outdated player stats leave it sitting on the bench.

AU Review--Rugby League fans have been waving their flags and calling chants from the stands for years in hopes of seeing a new game based on their beloved sport. Developer Sidhe Interactive has heeded the call, bringing the series it made famous on the PlayStation 2 to the Wii for the first time. But while the addition of more teams, eight-player multiplayer, and a new formation tactics system gets things off on the right foot, outdated player rosters out of the box and an unresponsive control scheme cause the game to trip over its own feet.

Rugby League 3 expands its predecessor's 50-team roster to 80 and includes sides from the 2009 Australian, English, Welsh, French, and New Zealand domestic leagues; the Australasian and UK national sides; the Toyota Cup Under 20s; and annual Aussie mainstay clashes like State of Origin and Country vs. City. Each team includes fully licensed rosters, player likenesses, and club kits, though considering that the game is launching at the beginning of the 2010 season, it's disappointing to see changes like Lote Tuqiri's move to the West Tigers and Hazem El Masri's retirement at the end of the 2009 season not reflected. While these are glaring omissions, the inclusion of custom team and player creation tools gives those with the time and inclination the chance to shuffle players, modify skills and stats, and build their own dream teams.

Gameplay is split into two categories: match play, and playing and coaching. If you like being on the grass and tossing around the ball, then the Instant Action, Single Play, and Competition modes give you the chance to play quick matches with randomly selected teams, pit two chosen sides against each other, or attempt to steer one club to victory over the course of a season. Playing and coaching puts you in the shoes of the team manager as you watch from the sidelines, or captain the side to glory.

Controls are Rugby League 3's biggest issue. The simplest scheme sees you holding the Wii Remote sideways and guiding your characters around the field with the D pad. Shaking the controller left or right passes the ball, while upward thrusts barrel your player through tackles. Plugging in a nunchuk shifts player movement to the analog stick and uses the same wrist flicks to trigger dummy and real passes. The concept of using waggle to get the ball to teammates on either side of you makes perfect sense, but with the controller in your hand, the gestures required to perform the movement are slow to register and lack precision. This makes it hard to pass to a specific player, and at times even the correct side of the field, and makes the wrist snapping required to string together fast plays that keep the ball moving nigh on impossible. Nunchuk play makes player control easier, but it suffers at the hands of the same imprecise passing mechanics. The third and most responsive control option is playing on a GameCube controller. The triggers negate the need for motion gestures and give you the control to throw short or cut-out passes with ease by using half or full button presses. Wii Classic Controller play would have been an ideal replacement for remote and nunchuk operation but is unfortunately unsupported.


At the lowest AI difficulty, straight runs, barges through waves of defenders, and wide passes to run the wing will work just fine, but as you crank up the difficulty, the game adapts to use all the tools at its disposal. First-grade-level AI players ditch straight runs for advanced crossovers and fast, short passes--and the element of surprise. The CPU will wait until the fifth and final tackle before punting the ball downfield, but it's just as likely to run on the last tackle and chip over your defence mid set and chase it down, or snap a cheeky field goal to secure the lead going into halftime. It's these changeups that make each match challenging, but thankfully it doesn't ever feel like you can't be competitive because the AI is using cheap tactics or skills unavailable in your own repertoire.

Rugby League 3's best feature is its strategy presets menu. At the tap of a button you have access to five preset offensive or defensive team formations depending on whether or not you're in possession of the ball. Defend Kick pushes your fullbacks and wingers back to wait for deep kicks, while Full Line creates an even defensive spread but leaves you vulnerable to those who manage to bust through. Cover Defence shifts wingers to prevent chip kicks, and Aggressive charges down kickers to try to force errors. If you don't want to mess with formations between plays, then Automatic mode works well by dynamically adjusting your team placements on the fly. The strategy system marks a welcome addition to the series and turns what is an otherwise basic run-and-pass game into a slightly more analytical experience with the chance to plan advanced plays and exploit weaknesses in your competition's defensive line.

If you're more interested in the science of football, then Franchise mode lets you get your knees grassy and practice your cheque writing at the same time as you buy and fire players, train your squad, and juggle contract negotiations. Careful budgeting of your salary cap is essential to ensure you have enough players to field a team as you face injuries, judiciary appearances, and your star players being offered guernseys for local and international tours.


You can toggle whether or not you want your players to be given the chance to play for their state and country at selection, but selfish coaches can also manually edit players out of the squad to keep their top talent on the field during the season. Multiyear contracts are supported, and watching your best and brightest climb the Dally M Award newsletter as a result of your coaching is rewarding. Rugby League 3 has something of an identity crisis though, in that it seems unsure whether it's a team management simulation or a traditional sports game. Whether you're playing Competition or Franchise mode, each match gives you the option to simulate the game. Skipping matches keeps your head in the stats, but choosing to pass on playing introduces the risk of receiving automatic injuries and carry-over penalties you may not have incurred if you had played the match yourself. The game is a competent League sim title, but if you're after a well-featured, dedicated simulator rather than a game that spends half its time playing on the field, you would do better to look elsewhere.

Andrew Voss reprises his spot in the commentary box and spits out player names during play. Banter alternates between natural informal chatter and wooden ad-lib as short audio snippets like team names and locations are mashed together on the fly. Occasionally, the commentary doesn't match the onscreen action either. Crowd cheers are canned rumbles triggered at set intervals during matches even if nothing interesting is happening on the field, and the game's looping guitar rock theme gets stale fast. Football players celebrate silently on the field at the completion of matches, but team songs are missing, and the game passes on the chance to include any of the licensed music used to promote the sport on television.

Character animations look decent as players swan-dive over the line to score, and teammates celebrate prematurely before a player is held up in goal. Tackles have enough force behind them to look suitably jarring, but physics seem to go out the window when even beefy front rowers are rolled back five or 10 metres like rag dolls during tackles. Subtle touches, such as legs thrashing as held players try to wriggle out of the tackle and play the ball, help give the characters a living feel. The players are for the most part recognisable as their real-world counterparts, and video referee decisions and highlight replays do a good job emulating the camera angles of football broadcasts.


Multiplayer is one of Rugby League 3's most enjoyable components, and it lets you and up to seven friends battle it out on the same console. Unfortunately, since the Wii supports only four GameCube controllers, the four unlucky remaining participants will be forced to play with either a Wii Remote or a Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination. AI characters fill in the remaining team gaps, but coordination with the team players in the room is essential as everyone flails their way around the field. The experience is frenetic, but you quickly establish a rhythm as one player feeds the ball to another to take a run, and the ability to cycle between players means you won't ever be stuck defending the wing or holding out for the chance to kick the ball at the end of the tackle count with nothing to do in the meantime.

With no signs that an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 game based on the sport is in the works, rugby fans don't have the luxury of an abundance of competing League games to choose from. Though Rugby League 3 includes a nifty new play-making strategy system, competent multiplayer, and a healthy range of creation and customisation options for tinkerers, out-of-date player data, unconvincing audio commentary, and shoehorned Wii controls make it hard to recommend to all but the most devoted of football fans who are willing to look past its flaws.

Source: Gamespot.com

Global Agenda's novel take on class-based combat has the potential to be exciting, but drudgery and other issues present serious obstacles to your enjoyment.

In a future where resources are scant and an oppressive worldwide government endeavors to extend its controlling grip around the whole planet, there are those who resist. Banding together in disparate factions, elite soldiers use their diverse talents and quick reflexes to carve out their place in a world where the land you fight and die for is the only land you control. Powerful alliances emerge and leverage their gains to create weapons of war, elevating the scale of conflict and heightening the drama of battle. Or so Global Agenda would have you believe. Though there is hectic, satisfying combat to be found in this large-scale third-person shooter, the game is rarely as exciting as the premise purports. You must grind though hours and hours of dull, repetitive missions to level up to the point where you can be competitive in player-versus-player action. PVP skirmishes can be exciting and well matched, though they are just as often lopsided and frustrating. Joining an agency and fighting for hexes on the persistent world map will make you more invested in the action, but even the best matches struggle to justify the hours of grinding needed to find them. Global Agenda satisfies the minimum requirements for a solid class-based shooter, but it takes a long time to fully reveal itself and, even then, the results aren't particularly impressive.

You begin by choosing one of the four classes. Assault players wield chainguns and rocket launchers, making them powerful tanks when supported by medics. Recon specialists sneak about and snipe foes with long-range rifles, while robotics players can deploy turrets, drones, and stations to aid their allies or defeat foes. Gaining levels unlocks new weapons, gadgets, special abilities, and points that can be allocated toward three different skill trees. These trees allow you to specialize within your class so, for example, medics can develop more effective ways to poison enemies or just focus on healing allies that much better. Because there is no cost to reallocate your skill points, you are free to spec your character on a game-by-game basis if you so choose, selecting the skills that will suit your play style. There's some intriguing diversity among the classes that creates the possibility for some dynamic interplay, both cooperative and competitive. Developing different strategies to support your allies and more efficiently destroy enemies is neat, and seeing other players in action is likely to pique your interest in playing as other classes.

Unfortunately, it takes so long to fully level one character that your interest in trying other classes may shrink at the prospect of repeating that grind. There are two main types of combat: player versus environment and player versus player. The latter does not separate players based on rank, so jumping in as a low-level soldier is a great way to get steamrolled by players who have better characters and more knowledge of the game. Getting the hang of the basics in Global Agenda is easy, but it takes a while to master your role. Each player has a melee weapon, a jetpack, and a special ability that can be used to give his or her teammates a temporary boost. You also sport two primary devices (for example, weapons, healing gun, repair tool); each with an alternate fire mode (for example, aiming down the sights, improved healing). These devices, along with the jetpack, are fueled by your regenerating power pool. Finally, each player can equip three off-hand devices (for example, temporary buffs, turrets, mines) that operate on a cooldown period. During combat, you must keep an eye on your health and power pool while using your devices effectively. While the run-and-gun action is pretty straightforward, there is strategic subtlety to be found in which devices you choose and how you use them.


In order to access this strategic element, you need to level up. (The level cap is 50, though you unlock every device and skill point by level 30.) PVP is generally dominated by higher level players and getting roundly defeated doesn't offer much in the way of experience rewards, so your best choice for effective leveling is to run PVE missions with a team of three other people. These missions take place inside enemy facilities that range from mines to labs and back to mines again. Despite the fact that there are four tiers of PVE difficulty, there isn't a lot of environmental variety. It doesn't take long before you've seen all the maps and every corridor, warehouse, and rooftop looks familiar. The bland art design doesn't help matters much. Though there are a few nice flourishes (pools of molten rock and soldiers in breeding tanks), the austere futuristic setting is largely uninteresting, serving as little more than geometry for you to traverse and use as cover.

Though they may be dull, the environments themselves aren't your enemies. That role falls to the robots. Laser-wielding androids are the foot soldiers of Global Agenda; they are generally content to soak up your gunfire while shooting you unenthusiastically and occasionally fleeing. They are accompanied by deadlier rocket- and grenade-launching automatons, as well as elite soldiers that mimic the assault, recon, and medic classes. Each PVE mission is capped with a miniboss fight, though as you move up the difficulty tiers, minibosses start showing up in corridors, leaving the end-of-level fights to bigger, badder bosses. Even with these tougher foes, the enemy population is almost as repetitive as the level design. While they don't offer much in the way of excitement, these missions can be reasonably challenging, depending largely on how well your teammates fulfill their combat roles and support each other. Players are generally smart enough about what they should be doing, and the game supports voice and text chat should you feel the need to offer helpful suggestions.


Victory brings the inherent satisfaction of a job well done, but even this is dulled by the repetitive nature of these missions. On top of that, you don't gain much in the way of concrete rewards. You earn experience points, credits (Global Agenda's currency), and raw materials that can be sold or used in crafting. Neither comes in much quantity, however, forcing you to grind for hours on end to make any significant progress. Crafting requires the aforementioned materials, as well as blueprints, which can be purchased from a store in the hub city (or, rarely, earned in PVE missions). This allows you to construct personal upgrades for your soldier, but the improvements they offer (for example, +1% ranged damage) feel laughably small. Though you can stack a few of these to get a somewhat less-meager bonus, learning to make the good stuff requires that you craft hundreds of items yourself. You may be able to find someone to sell you premium items, but you can bet they are going to come with a premium price tag. Accumulating worthwhile crafting skills and upgrades is tough in Global Agenda's economy, where both credits and materials require you to slog through hours of repetition.

If you do manage to amass some material wealth, there are plenty of places to spend it in one of the Dome City hub worlds. Body armor and a helmet are purely aesthetic improvements, but these suits are definitely the visual highlight of Global Agenda. The cool futuristic designs range from sleek to outlandish and can be customized with a wide variety of dyes to create some striking looks. There's also an auction house (buy and sell things at subpar prices), a mail center (send or receive messages and items C.O.D.), a virtual combat arena (hone your battle strategies), and locations you must visit if you want to craft items or assign skill points. Navigation is straightforward, thanks to the abundant kiosks offering directions. In addition to visiting the various stores and workshops, Dome City is a good place to seek out party members, join an agency, or just admire armor sets.


Though PVE combat is a good way to prepare for PVP, you'll still have to deal with a significant learning curve. PVP combat is hectic and fast paced, demanding dexterity, battlefield awareness, and preparedness. The fraction of a second it takes you to activate one of your off-hand devices can mean the difference between life and death, and attacking or defending without the support of your teammates is a difficult proposition. Each of the five PVP modes pits two teams against each other. In Scramble, Breach, and Control modes, teams struggle to control specific areas of the map for a certain amount of time or until they gain a certain number of points. Payload is similar in its focus, but the area in question is actually a large object that moves along rails as one team tries to guide it across the map. Finally, Demolition charges each team with the task of escorting a mech carrying explosives into the enemy's base to blow it up. It's also worth noting that one PVE match type has some PVP sprinkled in it. Double Agent mode adds two human players to the AI team, making it tougher for the team of four players to complete its objective. While this mode offers a novel twist on PVE, it lacks the dynamism of PVP.

With so many abilities in play, PVP contests can get very busy, very quickly. Two robotics set up turret nests in the corners of a building to defend a point as their recon allies fly to the top of the structure to snipe incoming enemies. Assaults spin up their chainguns, triggering shields that draw enemy turret fire away from the medics that are keeping them alive. Grenades, lasers, and rockets fill the air and, in less than a minute of carnage, the enemy advance is scattered. If only the enemy recons had sabotaged the turrets, things might have been different. Just a microsecond more and that big chaingunner would have lost his medic, yielding the central position. And what might have changed if that robotic had a drone equipped, instead of a force field? Matches can hinge on such details, and when the two teams are in an even struggle for dominance, PVP can be exciting and tense. The thrill of a timely deployment, the satisfaction of saving your teammates from the brink of death, the joy of explosive slaughter…these are the rewards offered by PVP combat in Global Agenda.


Unfortunately, like in other areas, Global Agenda is stingy. You are far more likely to end up in a lopsided match than in an enjoyable contest. Ill-matched teams make for hollow victories and merciless defeats, neither of which is particularly enjoyable. Joining an agency is a good way to associate yourself with a regular group of players, and having a consistent team can help mitigate the number of bad matches you encounter. Agencies can join alliances in Conquest mode, giving them access to alliance-versus-alliance fights for control of resource-producing hexes in a number of persistent world maps. Resources gained here can be sold or used to craft weapons of war like mechs, dropships, and squads of androids to help your alliance in its quest for dominance. AVA combat is essentially PVP with higher stakes and high-cost battlefield machinery. These matches are more consistently well matched, though AVA is certainly not without lopsided debacles. Gaining access to this level of combat requires hours of grinding, PVP practice, and an invite to a competitive agency. But once you're there, the matches are some of the best the game has to offer, and because your territories are only open for battle during specific windows of time, you don't have to worry about all your progress being snatched away while you sleep.

Whether or not it is worth the grinding time to access this level of play depends on how many hours you have to spare. Whether it is worth the price is another matter. The $39.99 purchase price currently gets you everything that Global Agenda has to offer. However, Conquest mode, the auction house, crafting, player mail, other advanced features, and leveling past 30 are all designated as subscriber-only elements. This subscription (listed as $12.99 per month) was set to kick in at the end of March, but the developers have pushed that deadline back to the end of April. With no subscription fee in place, Global Agenda is reasonably priced. Only time will tell whether that remains true in a month.

Even with a reasonable price, Global Agenda is not easy to recommend. It demands tens of hours of dull, low-level play to access and enjoy the more exciting content. And even that content is not consistently enjoyable. While Global Agenda does offer a distinct breed of action in the world of massively multiplayer online games, its hectic combat is hidden beneath layers and layers of drudgery that only sincerely dedicated players are likely to enjoy.

Source: Gamespot.com

This microgame collection includes dozens of games, but its focus is on empowering you to create your own.

If you've ever had the desire to develop your own game, or you're someone who can't play an existing game without thinking about ways it could be improved, WarioWare DIY might be just the creative outlet that you've been looking for. That's because in addition to the dozens of included microgames that you can play back-to-back at a frenetic pace just as you would those in any other WarioWare collection, this sizable offering includes powerful but accessible tools for creating and sharing your own. It's true that these games are limited in scope and will be played for seconds rather than for hours, but getting them to play exactly as you want them to can still be an enjoyable challenge, and hey, even the world's best game designers had to start somewhere.


Many of WarioWare DIY's included microgames need to be unlocked before you can play or reverse engineer them, and you need to spend time exploring all of the game's features in order to get all 90 of the games. The menu system can take a little figuring out, but it makes a lot of sense once you spend some time with it. The main menu takes the form of a small town where any of five different buildings can be tapped to access submenus. The DIY Studio is home to the Super MakerMatic 21 machine used to develop microgames, record soundtracks, and pen four-panel comics--all of which can be enjoyed up the street in the DIY Shop. The Distribution Center is where you go to share your creations with other players (or with the WiiWare game WarioWare DIY Showcase), the Options Garage is exactly what its name suggests, and the WarioWare Inc. building is your one-stop shop for tutorials and freelance work. It's also where some of the game's most interesting challenges are waiting to be unlocked.

The first time you visit WarioWare Inc., there are only two options available to you: You can work as a freelance artist creating sprites for games that are otherwise finished, or you can take lessons in game development. Freelance work is fun because it familiarizes you with the simplistic graphics tools and also affords you a very quick way to see some of your creations in action. At the start of each freelance project you're presented with templates that clearly show what Wario is after, but you're also told that you're free to completely ignore the templates if you prefer. You might be asked to trace pictures of rabbits with and without crossed eyes to appear in a whack-a-mole-style game but instead opt to fill their roles with zombies whose heads cave in satisfyingly when you hit them, for example. The "DIY 101" lessons are much more time-consuming but do a great (if occasionally long-winded) job of introducing you to the concepts of AI (action items), triggers, switches, win conditions, and the like as you're taken step-by-step through the creation of three microgames. Finish those, and you gain access to the Assembly Dojo, where you're presented with 32 work-in-progress games and asked to finish them with only minimal guidance. One, for example, requires that you create an AI for a car that causes it to move when tapped, but only if the onscreen traffic light is green. Completing these occasionally challenging projects is extremely satisfying, and if you can make it through all of them, there's no doubting that you're ready to create your own microgames from scratch.


Starting out with a completely blank canvas is pretty daunting, but if you have a realistically achievable game idea in mind, you shouldn't have too much trouble realizing it. In part, that's because you're forced to approach the creation of each game in a regimented way. You start out with a background image, you create and animate objects (with placeholder or clip art if you prefer), you create behavioral AI and triggers for those objects, and then you figure out where the stylus comes into play and what's required of the player to win. Even creating the AI and triggers for objects, which is the most complex part of WarioWare DIY game creation, doesn't take long to figure out, because the way it's presented is so user-friendly. Every menu is stylus-driven, and you're rarely presented with more than six options at any one time. The only tricky part is figuring out how to use these options in tandem with one another so that a simple tap of the stylus in-game can simultaneously cause an object to switch to a different animation, play a sound effect, and alter its movement, for example. Impressively, you can instantly test your game at any time during the creation process, which is not only extremely useful, but just might give you a new level of appreciation for the work that professional game designers do--especially if you "ship" a game and then realize that there's a problem with it.

Similarly, the musicians of the world who work on games may earn your respect if you take some time to compose your own microgame music. Like every other aspect of the game, WarioWare DIY's music creation tools are accessible enough for anyone to use, but the catch is that if you're a talentless noise polluter with little or no understanding of how music is composed, that's not likely to change. With that said, the barrier to entry has been set about as low as it possibly could be, because there's an option for you to generate a string of notes simply by humming into the microphone. You're then free to reposition these notes using the stylus and, if you're feeling confident, work them into multi-track recordings. With the tap of an onscreen button you can decide which of around 50 different instruments you want your piece played on, and your choices range from conventional (piano, trumpet, wood flute, electric guitar) to downright strange (fat robot, baby, monkeys, pig). And if even that sounds like too much work, you can just have the in-game composer create songs for you, either completely at random or while adhering to a theme and style of your choosing.


WarioWare DIY's world is presented as a simplistic microcosm of the games industry, so when you finish a game you get to have some say in its packaging and cartridge design before it ships and appears on the shelves of the DIY Store alongside any other games that you've unlocked or created. When you ship a game, you also have the option to share it with friends. This works just fine if you're sending games to and from handhelds in the same room, but sadly the online functionality is limited. In order to share games online, you first need to exchange 12-digit friend codes with any other players (up to a maximum of 50) you wish to share games with. Then, you upload finished games to your online warehouse, from which your friends are free to download them at any time. Inexplicably, your warehouse has room to stock only two games simultaneously, along with two comics and two soundtracks. It's a real shame that there's no way to have more space in your warehouse or, at the very least, to use the six spaces that you're allocated any way that you choose. If you're a prolific game designer, there's no reason you can't design a dozen or so microgames in a single day, and if you're a talented musician, perhaps you can use WarioWare DIY's straightforward editing tools to create soundtracks for friends to use in their games. You never need more than two warehouse spaces, provided you keep in touch with friends and let them know when the items they want to download are available, but the lack of online storage and any in-game means of communication are just two more hurdles that you need to overcome to get the most out of the already convoluted community aspect of this game.

Even if you don't have friends who are playing the game, there's still some benefit to going online with WarioWare DIY. Free games are being made available for download on a weekly basis, including a number created by big-name designers like Yoshio Sakamoto (co-creator of the Metroid series) and Masahiro Sakurai (creator of Kirby). Furthermore, regular competitions to create games around a given theme can potentially expose your creations to a large audience because the best entries are made available for download to anyone who visits the in-game store. Add these downloaded games to the 90 that are included on the cartridge, and you're not likely to get bored with WarioWare DIY soon, regardless of whether you're looking to learn from other people's creations or just enjoy them.


WarioWare DIY is a great WarioWare game if you're a fan of the series, but it's also much, much more than that. The included creation tools are user-friendly enough that anyone can work with them, but they're not so dumbed down that you feel like they're doing the work for you. There's even more fun to be had solving design-related challenges for these games than there is playing them, so if you have even a passing interest in making your own games, you'd do well to pick up a copy. And if you don't, you should still get a copy just so that you can enjoy the fruits of everyone else's labors.

Source: Gamespot.com

Crazy stunts, a huge and gorgeous gameworld, and a playful attitude make Just Cause 2 a lot of fun.

Just Cause 2 is ridiculous in the best possible way. In the space of a few moments, you can grapple to a hovering helicopter; beat up the pilot and hijack the chopper; blow up a cluster of fuel tanks; put the chopper on a collision course with an enormous antenna; jump out at the last moment; and watch the resulting explosion as you parachute down to the saddle of a moving motorcycle below. But in the life of Rico Rodriguez, such events are just another day at the office, though in this case, the office is the gigantic island nation of Panau, where three gangs vie to wrest control from a corrupt government. This is a big game that gives you a lot to do and a lot of crazy ways to do it. When Just Cause 2 gives you the freedom to do the things you want in the way you want, it shines in all its preposterousness and good humor. When missions and challenges shoehorn you into specific actions, however, the same loose mechanics that make the open-world exploration such a joy become a frustrating burden. Nevertheless, this sandbox action game surmounts its few issues with liberal doses of ludicrousness; well, that, and the ability to attach disreputable cops to a buggy with your grappling hook and drag them around.

There's a story tying all of the craziness together, but it's about as believable as the crazy stunts you pull. As in the original Just Cause, you play as Rico, a member of a US agency called, appropriately enough, The Agency. The story is all silly fluff, standing out more for its so-excruciating-it's-almost-good voice acting and broad ethnic caricatures than for any intricate plot developments. (Don't bother looking: There aren't any.) You'll probably have more fun trying to figure out where different characters are from based on their insane accents than you will working out what exactly is going on or why you should care, but the tale still works well in light of the game's screwy attitude. Contradictory updates from the government-run news agency will have you giggling precisely because they're so crazy; Rico offhandedly dismisses the insane, supernatural events that occur after an eventful flight into a Bermuda Triangle-type region. Most importantly, the tale provides oh-so-implausible excuses to blow up gas stations, radar installations, and offshore oil platforms.

And blowing stuff up is what Just Cause 2 does best. Causing explosions leads to chaos, which functions as a type of currency in Just Cause 2. To unlock new story missions and other goodies, you need to wreak as much havoc as you can, and you get lots of different, preposterous ways to do it. If you see a grouping of fuel tanks, you could just run in and shoot them with a machine gun, but that is one of the less dramatic ways to do it and will use up ammo besides. (And early on, the game is a bit too stingy with ammo, given the focus on making things go boom.) But why approach things in such a pedestrian manner? Instead, you could hijack a passenger jet, put it on a destructive path, and jump out at the last minute. Or you could steal a hulking tank, drive it to a central location, and start blasting everything that looks like it might erupt in a ball of flames. The dramatic approach can take a bit more time, but it usually leads to a good deal of entertainment. Yet, even if you do things the easy way and use a dinky pistol, the explosions are perfectly loud, big, bright, and obnoxious.


Of course, such noisy endeavors will get the attention of the local authorities. It's amazing just how quickly swarms of militants will descend on you. (You might actually see soldiers fade into view directly in front of you.) The most obvious way of handling them is to fill them with lead, and when you're surrounded by enemies, Just Cause 2's loose shooting mechanics work just fine. The ultraforgiving autotargeting makes it easy to run about spraying fire, though you can zoom in if you need a bit more precision, like if you are taking out a military colonel and need to land a headshot. If you use a controller, you might run into troubles with that same autotargeting; You can aim and shoot directly at a guy's head as he leans out a car door but not land any hits. But if you're using a mouse and keyboard, you aren't likely to encounter this issue, and you're getting a more fluid experience to boot.

When you're surrounded by a dozen armed baddies and bombarded by a hovering helicopter, however, making a quick getaway may be the best option. Rico's grappling hook is a real life saver in these circumstances. You might attach it to a nearby building and fling yourself onto a roof or grapple the ground and pull yourself out of harm's way. Better yet, you can pull off a sort of inverted Spider-Man routine by grappling the ground, hurling yourself into the air, and opening your handy parachute before you hit the ground. Once airborne, you can repeat the move over and over, flinging yourself around using the grapple hook like Spidey would use his webbing. From the air, you can perform some satisfyingly silly stunts. For example, if you'd rather travel around in a motorized rickshaw, you can grapple on to one, pull yourself onto its roof, and evict the driver, who will undoubtedly be vocal about his or her displeasure. Or perhaps that chopper is still dogging you. In that case, grapple onto it, chuck the pilot out, and take it for your own. But it's plenty satisfying just to travel using your hook and parachute. It takes a little time to get used to the rhythm of taking off, but once you're accustomed to it, there's nothing like soaring above Panau's snow-capped mountains or taking in a beautiful sunset while floating slowly toward the beach.

There's more to traveling around this gargantuan isle than just parachutes and rickshaws, however. There are more than 100 different vehicles to drive and pilot, from sedans and double-decker buses to commuter aircraft and speedboats. The physics are loose and wild, which lets you pull off some crazy stunt jumps off of ramps and cliffs. It's always fun, too, to get some good speed in a motorcycle and parachute away and then watch the bike zoom off without a driver. Often, it will even explode for no apparent reason other than the obvious thrill of it all, as if you're supposed to believe you ejected just in time. The loose handling of most of these vehicles suits the chaotic nature of the game rather well, and assuming you're not trying to do anything too specific, random wipeouts are to be expected and are even rather enjoyable when they occur. (You might get a chance to perform a daring and unplanned escape as you go careening over a cliff, after all.) If you're taking part in one of Just Cause 2's racing challenges, however, the lively physics don't always work to your benefit. A race in a speedboat, for example, might send you over a thin stretch of land. This could lead to a superfun sequence of tumbles and spins before you zoom away on the other side. But it could also lead to a frustrating sequence of tumbles and spins that deposits you directly on the beach and keeps you from completing the challenge. Aircraft challenges can also be exasperating because you don't have the ability to yaw (that is, move from side to side), and the relaxed controls make it easy to overshoot the ring you're meant to fly through.


Panau is an incredibly impressive place to explore. Tall snow-covered mountains cradle ski resorts and military bases between them. Beachside shacks dot the ocean shores, where gorgeous lighting gleams on the ocean waves. The capital city shows off a beautiful nighttime skyline. Should you plummet below the ocean, you'll admire the striking underwater views, which feature tropical fish and colorful coral reefs. Just Cause 2 is a stunning game and provides a marvelous variety of vistas to gawk at, and the draw distance lets you take in a lot at once. We ran into a few occasions in which ground textures displayed a faint grid overlay, but a few setting adjustments seemed to fix that up. You should note, however, that you'll need to be running either Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play Just Cause 2: The game does not support Windows XP. The audio doesn't meet the same lofty standard, but it does what it needs to do, with lots of energy if not much nuance. An American friend speaks with a big yee-haw accent and gang leaders deliver their banal lines in a weird, halting manner and with unidentifiable inflections. Explosions look big and sound loud. It's all about broad strokes, and while not every aspect of the audio makes a good impression, the overall effect is fitting given Just Cause 2's over-the-top inclinations.

The game gives you plenty of reasons to visit all of these varied locations. The many villages dotting the geography harbor rewards like gas tanks to blow up and weapon and vehicle parts to collect. Those parts can be used to enhance the effectiveness of your guns and rides--you just need to call up the black market dealer and choose how you want to apply them. You can also call the dealer if you want him to drop off a weapon or vehicle or to quickly travel to a location you've already visited. The implementation of this mechanic could have used some tweaking. For example, you can't order up more than one item at a time (if you want both a shotgun and a chopper, you need to make two calls). But considering how easy it is to find weapons and how much fun it is to parachute around, you won't need the black market contact all that frequently. Even if you aren't inclined to collect the scattered treasures, there's intrinsic joy in seeking out and blowing up propaganda stations and demolishing the statues of island dictator Baby Panay. Maybe that's because you can grapple one of those statues to a fire truck, hop behind the wheel, and pull the false idol down.


Amid all this free-form gameplay are loads of faction missions to perform for the three gangs you work with, as well as some longer agency missions that progress the story. Some of these missions are fun and varied, such as one in which you must defuse a series of bombs by stunt jumping from one vehicle to another. Most of them combine Just Cause 2's various mechanics in interesting ways, having you fly an aircraft, infiltrate guarded fortresses, and destroy specific objects in the course of a single assignment. But even when flaunting this kind of variety, some missions aren't very enjoyable because they magnify the small issues that barely register during your free-form travels. For example, the waypoint arrow gets confused by different altitudes, which is rarely an issue when you are just traveling to your chosen destination, but it's a bigger annoyance when a time limit is pushing you to find an exact spot. Heavily scripted escort missions saddle you with AI companions who think nothing of wandering into fire. And stronghold takeovers get monotonous because they play out more or less the same way every time. The game's loose mechanics make for freewheeling fun when you choose your own actions, but they can sometimes lead to irritations when the game pushes you down a specific path.

These aren't game-breaking flaws, however; certainly not in light of the huge and attractive world Just Cause 2 places at your fingertips. There's a lot to do, a lot of sights to take in, and a lot of secrets to uncover if you look hard enough--and the game is so much fun that you'll have a blast doing it. After all, you can grapple to a gas canister, shoot it, and fly into the air like a rocket. And if that sounds like fun to you, it's time for a vacation to the island paradise of Panau.

Source: Gamespot.com