Oh, but they would be wrong. Mass Effect, in my opinion, is a game that really gets you to react as if you were the lead character him/herself. Not just as an extension of your personality, but as if what you say and do has an actual impact throughout the game.

As an RPG, it touched on some moral angles and issues that really brought your own character into the game. From the first part of setting up your character traits and looks, all the way to each individual discussion that you had with others, you basically direct the story line to your way of thinking. The first time I played it, I was acting the part of the typical good guy hero/team player. Encouraging others and making choices that I felt would “save humanity”. This second time through, my attitude is more of the hardcore marine who is more interested in saving his own skin. And the dialogue really does adapt to your conversation, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

The game play was pretty typical of a 3rd person shooter. Based on your character traits, you are able to upgrade skills and use a variety of weapons. This made for a lot of choices when assembling a team. The skill sets of your AI compatriots were also upgraded throughout the game as well, so you could mix and match your 3 man crew to complete technological missions while still having a weapons guy to lay cover fire. The one thing I did notice is that a few of the people were really focused in one skill set (such as technology) so I rarely used them. I tended to go with the more multi-tool characters in order to have a better balance.

The game itself seems to be quite vast as you explore several solar systems. Each system has up to a half dozen planets that are open for you to scan for elements or to physically visit for story and side missions. There were even a few “abandoned” ships that you could land at and search. This made for a very open environment, although, it was hard to keep track of where you had already been to.

Now, the part that had all these people thinking that the game was soft core pornography….It isn’t. I know, it sounds disappointing, but in all actuality, it really gave a human feeling to the game. It was your decisions and how you directed conversation that led to an intimate cut scene. Not to mention the fact that you had to play through about 3 quarters of the game to get to this part!

Alright, that’s out of the way now…Let’s talk about some of the bad in Mass Effect. First off, the steering for your land vehicle is horrible. Since you spend a majority of discovering planets, it requires you to be in the wet sock of a vehicle quite a bit. It does get a little better the more you drive around. But really, I don’t think it would have been that difficult to give it just a base movement structure instead of having the machine follow your point of view. The other part of this is trying to maneuver around hills and mountains. By the look of the machine, you would suspect that it would be easy to traverse a mountain (especially when you are forced to drive up the side of one to accomplish a goal). This is not the case. It’s easily frustrating and the maps do not give any type of hints to get to where you need to go.

My other complaint is that once you beat the game, there doesn’t seem to be any way to go back and find things that you missed. This is especially true with the new downloaded content that recently came out. If they are going to make on open RPG like this, you should still have the option to go back and complete previous missions. Although, I’ll get to do them with my new character, there were a few accomplishments that I would have liked to obtain already.

Overall, I felt Mass Effect could be the beginning of a new style of gameplay. One that tailors the game around the attitude of the actual player, much like Bioshock does with the Little Sisters but on a grander scale. I welcome this sort of immersiveness and feel that this could easily get people that aren’t traditional RPG fans involved. My Rating for this is 4.5/5. I learned to deal with the few downfalls, but overall, it’s a beautifully rendered game and had me interested throughout. And that’s no easy feat!

Call of Duty though, took me a bit by surprised. Obviously, the details were fantastic. Realistically, when you shoot through a wooden box, the person on the other side gets a piece of the shrapnel. I felt that this is the first game I’ve played that really utilized that. The other thing that really impressed is how immersed I felt in some of the environments. I’ve been in the Middle East (not the war torn parts, but enough to know what it looks like), and some of the levels really captured the essence of those territories. In fact, I commented on how one of the levels really reminded me of Black Hawk Down (the book and the movie).

So COD gets a plus for the look and realism, what about the controls? Well, I actually thought the controls were very easy to use. There didn’t feel to be a dependency on the D pad and most of your actions could be done with little movement, mostly using the trigger buttons and bumpers. I liked this fact a lot as most military games over-utilize the D pad to control your squad and to use peripherals. COD gives you a squad that knows where they need to go and how to get there so you could focus on eliminating the enemy targets.

The other plus with COD is the fact that you don’t play the game as just one guy. You actually go through the story as several different characters and even a few different takes on certain situations (I’m not going to say any more as there was one level that was really , really, cool!). But all these different characters ultimately lead up to the same objective which tied the game up nicely. It also kept the game fresh as you didn’t just run through and blast everyone.

So the game looked and played good, and it didn’t rely on the same old FPS strategy, so what’s not to like about it? It’s way too short! I beat the game in just under a week of playing. Granted, I put a good amount of time into it, it just didn’t take me very long. I’m sure that there will be downloadable content in the future, but I didn’t feel as there was enough to make me want to replay it. I’m sure people will disagree, but that’s just me.

The multiplayer never seemed to work for me the few times I tried it so I won’t even comment on that. From what I hear, it’s pretty good though!

So my rating for COD4 is a 4.5/5. I really enjoyed everything about the game and would encourage everyone to give it a try. My guess is that this is much better suited as a purchase than a rental as the opportunity to download additional missions is there. But even if you rent it, you’ll certainly get your enjoyment out of it!

The first game on my agenda was Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro Am. At first glance, this game was very “rude”, even by PS2 standards. After awhile of game play, I understand why. ATHF: ZNPA is not supposed to be pretty and that’s what really gives it character. The voice overs, cut scenes, and even the menu pages give you that feeling the Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad really made the game. Even Carl contributed some!

This game is definitely relying on the voice actors transition from tv to interactive entertainment and I think it succeeds. The actual game play can be cumbersome as a standalone golf game, and the amount of enemies you have to face while walking to wherever your ball is sometimes never-ending. But the fact that it’s sprinkled with characters from the show keeps it entertaining throughout the repetitiveness.

The biggest flaw, however, lies with the ability to hit a ball where you want it. Using the old three button hit technique (push button to start swing, push button at top of swing, push button at end of swing). This made it difficult to judge exactly where the ball was going to land and it took away any real challenge of making accurate shots. You pretty much just hit away, and if you land in water, you hit it maybe a little bit softer. If they could have allowed you to hook the ball or put some spin on it, a lot of the trial and error shots would have been a bit easier to solve. Instead, I’d end up with double or triple bogies because my shot would just sail straight away and land in a lake. The other problem was the actual physics. How could a shot on the moon travel the same distance as a regular golf course?

Then again, the faults are all forgotten once Cybernetic Ghost starts speaking in between rounds! My overall score here is going to be biased by the fact that I am an avid fan of ATHF. The 3.5 I’m giving it isn’t because it’s a particularly good game. It’s just fun to listen to those three constantly go at it and to hear some of the great secondary characters chime in with their own two sense!

The second game in the same vein is Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The other Adult Swim contribution that also banks on the ability of the voice actors to make the game. This one, in my opinion, works a lot better than the previous.

The style is on par with the Phoenix Wright games, without as much attention to detail. It’s your basic sleuth around and ask questions to get info and profile your “suspects”. Once that’s completed, you head off to the courts. Here, you get to interact with all the characters, including Mentok and Hiram Mightor.

The court cases are not that difficult and it’s more about presenting the right evidence at the correct line of the witness’ statement (I got stuck on that part a couple of times). But you generally have ample chances to make a mistake here and there. The ability to skip through a lot of the cut-scenes really works in the game’s favor if you end up having to restart a level though.

I really don’t have anything bad to say about this game except that it could have been a little more challenging. But once again, I’ll take a simpler approach if it means that I get to listen to all the innuendos and double entendres thrown out there by those lads at Sebben & Sebben!

My rating for this one is an easy 4. It may not be hard to play, but you are Harvey Birdman!

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii) – I am a big fan of the 360 arcade title, but this game doesn’t even come close. The idea is there, to use the controllers “handy-wavey” technology, but it just doesn’t flow well. Trying to do a full circle onscreen ends up making you look like you’re putting yourself in a sleeper hold. Plus, downgrading the graphics to the Wii version takes away a lot of the luster that the Xbox brings. I do like the idea of additional levels, but not enough to save this game. 1.5/5

Carnival Games (Wii) – Yet another Wii title that could have been a lot more fun. It was great to play some of the old carney games that I remember (ski-ball, clown-head-balloon-pop, ring toss, etc) and it was definitely fun. For about 20 minutes. Once I played all of the games, there wasn’t any incentive to keep playing. Some of the single player challenges were so ridiculously hard that it wasn’t worth the time to even try to beat them. I guess just like real life! 2/5 (just because ski-ball!)

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Wii) – Exact same as the DS version. Except the graphics and the controls are bad. .5/5

Battalion Wars 2 (Wii) – Finally, a game worth it’s weight. I like this game. A lot. The controls are good and fluid, the game looks nice, and it was fun to play. I encourage everyone to give this a shot as it’s nice to see something of quality make it to the little white system here. It’s a nice little 3rd person, RTS type game that does a good job of being different. 4/5

Timeshift (360) – I liked this game at the beginning. In fact, things were awesome once I got the exploding arrows. But, like any puzzle incorporating FPS, there is always a point where you just give up because the developers decided to make life more complicated than necessary in order for you to advance. That is the point that I promptly took it out of my Xbox and sent it back to gamefly. Why do you have to have stupid puzzles ruin a perfectly good time of blowing people up? Oh, and I might be the only one, but I enjoyed the time freezing and slowdowns. Especially when it meant you could walk up to an enemy and just unload a barage of shotgun blasts at him in slow-mo! 3/5

Clive Barker’s Jericho (360) – This game started out bad and quickly got worse. I wanted to like Barker’s signature on the game and the darkness and creepiness was evident. But if it takes an entire clip to kill one of these freaks, then it’s overkill (no pun intended!). Not to mention that your AI buddies routinely walked into the line of fire and quickly found themselves a bloody heap in the middle of you and several monsters. Of course, then you had to go back and “heal” them just to do it all over a few minutes later. Oh, and somebody should have told them that the game should be dark (as far as storyline) but not dark (as in “I can’t see a friggin’ thing!”). 1/5

Well, I hope all of you don’t get any of these games (except Battalion Wars) for Christmas. If you do, maybe you can exchange them in and get yourself Rock Band or something!

But hold on a second here. Do you like small to average size…

Another dirty disc error? At least the last auto save was only half an hour back.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Do you like small to av….

Whoops, died from a single rocket shot out of nowhere. At least my AI buddies are shooting into the walls. Good work there, space exploring pals.

Anywho, do you like small to average-small sized role playing adventures? Hey, you’re in luck!

Let me ask you another thing. Do you like Choose Your Own Adventure books? Great! Just, you know, don’t be upset when choice one and choice two both tell you to turn to page three. It’s a pretend Choose Your Own Adventure book. And who doesn’t like to pretend?

Oh no! My face! My precious face! Oh, there it is. Sorry, my face was just a non-textured blob there for a second. A handsome talking blob, sure. But, you know.

At least the story was alright.

Is Mass Effect worth even a rental? Sure, if all your friends have died and you’re bored.

Anyhoo, I got it this weekend and decided to pop it into the ol’ 360 yesterday. What I found was a very good, arcade-y game. As a baseball fan and having the playoffs upon us, I thought this could really get me hyped about watching a Rockies and potentially Cleveland World Series.

I started with the Home Run Derby. Actually, there’s 2 of them. One is your traditional fare. First one to 10 homers wins basically. But the second one is a home run pinball game. It sets you in the middle of Times Square and lets you have at it with all the marquees and obstacles that comprise of downtown N.Y. That was fun. A lot of fun. It took a bit to get accustomed to the aiming, but once I got it down, I was hitting signs all over the place!

My next objective was to check out this rookie challenge. You create your own rookie and assign him to the team your going to play as. The downfall is that there aren’t a lot of customization choices, but as you continue through the game, you can add sunglasses, a theme song, and several other options which gives your player a little added depth. I was happily surprised by this and it kept the interest in my player growing. The other thing is that as you go through games, situations, and scenarios, it adds points that you can apply to your rookie stats. You can bulk up and make him a power hitter, give him speed, or make him a better fielder. The options of how you do it is completely up to how you spread the points around. This made me decide early on how I wanted to develop my player. I made him a speed/power combo and am working on his contact.

Another great thing about this game is that it IS an arcade game. It doesn’t have the set 180 + game schedule, but rather, it assigns games as you progress. My first couple of games were against the Royals and Tampa Bay. As I completed those, it unlocked Seattle and Detroit. Besides that, you don’t necessarily play traditional 9 inning games. In fact, it gives you a few different options when going to an opposing ballpark. Like in Seattle, I had to play a best of three, three inning games. The next objective was to be in the bottom of the ninth and hold the lead. In Tampa Bay, I had to get a hit with my rookie player in a five inning game and then had to beat the Rays in a five inning game. The last challenge at each stadium is the “steal” challenge. You beat the team in a five inning game and you get to steal a player and add him to your own roster. My Chicago White Sox now has the following order….Vernon Wells, my rookie character, David Ortiz, Paul Konerko, A-Rod, Joe Mauer, Alex Gordon, Tad Iguchi, and Dye. My pitching staff is just as sick! The cool thing about stealing players is that you only get 10 steals throughout your “season”. This gives a little strategy to who you want and how to rebuild your team. You also only have 3 starting pitchers and 3 relievers, so it provides a good balance while still loading up on playmakers and superstars.

The gameplay is really fluid in my opinion. I am not a fan of the current MLB game that is out as I find it to be clunky. I prefer to have a timing pitching/batting sequence and the BIGS delivers on that. The one fault I find with the gameplay is the quirkiness of the runners. To select a runner, you tap the button that displays above them as they are running the bases. The problem is when a runner is about to reach 2nd, the button will change from the “B” to the “Y”. Once you do select them, you have to hold the LS in the direction of the base they are going to. The other issue that I have with that is it’ll look like they are standing on 3rd in the hud, yet are not on the base. I have been thrown out more than a few times when this has happened.

The other problem I have with the actual play is that the computer is more apt to make a “great play catch” than you are. Many times have I hit the ball well only to have the A.I. rob me. This happened exactly five times in a row, so I know it’s not just randomness.

Overall, this game was something that I thought I’d like in small spurts. Instead, I find that I’ve played it so much that I’m actually forming a blister on my thumb. With the different challenges and the achievements to strive for against each team, I want to keep playing so I can build up my rookie and my team for the post season. I haven’t enjoyed a baseball game as much as this since the old Triple Play series! Oh, and it helps that the game does look good too!

And as I initially stated in my opening, once I went through the tutorial (which isn’t on the demo), the controls made a lot more sense. Hence, don’t always put stock into the good and bad of demos!

So my rating for this is a 4.5 out of 5. If they can fix the baserunning errors by next season, then I wouldn’t hesitate to give this a 5!

Let me just say that was a very bad idea! The game itself has a confusing premise, albeit comparable to Oblivion (and a host of other middle aged themed games). You set yourself up as a customized character that journeys through the countryside trying to find your sister who mysteriously vanished while you were checking an empty house for a nights rest. Then you fast forward several months and start your journey. “What about the sister?”, you ask. I know, cause that’s what I said too. Unfortunately, I never made it far enough in the game to actually find out what was going on.

Let’s start with the customization. No matter what changes you made to the facial features, it never really looked like it did anything. Really, you could only see very vague changes and it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Now the gameplay. It was bad. Very bad. The worst part about it was the dizzying camera effect along with the very poor frame rate. The landscape and scenes looked decent, but when it’s going at 20 fps, it can be vomit inducing. The inherent “chipping” of the background because of the framerate actually rendered this game unplayable to me. I have a very strong will (don’t get seasick, carsick, yadda yadda) but this game actually gave me a headache to try and play. Since the game is viewed via 3rd person, it really gave a poor visualization of the surroundings. It’s hard to imagine that a game can be approved and released when there is such huge flaws in it. Another gripe was the language selection. It was like a combination of middle aged jargon mixed with made up sentence structure. Something along the lines like, ‘I t’with you fell on. We must go now’. WTF?! Yeah, it was that bad!

A few months of polish could have really helped, and maybe some testing on it would have pointed out the very evident character and background problems. But, all in all, I found this to be a huge disappointment and not worth taking away from my Halo time. Unless you’re some kind of masochist, stay very far away from this game. My vote is .5 out of 5. The .5 is because the verbatim was so absurd that I found it kinda humorous!

The end.

Let’s start with the good, shall we? Skate is a beautiful looking game. The tricks were realistic enough to bring back memories of pulling my own method airs oh so many years ago. The buildings and the scenery were beautiful to look at, and even better to skate! The trick system was actually quite good too, once you get the hang of it. Pulling nollies and flips became second nature when I was just zooming around town looking for a nice long rail to 50-50. Although, I wish they would have let me pull off a darkslide as that’s one of my favorite grinds. But it was still so much fun to have a skateboard game where I could actually envision myself as the skater. I was truly immersed in this game, and that rarely happens!

Now the downfall….It was a little too realistic. The game shows you in a third person form, looking up from the ground. This is bad because a skater needs to be aware of his surroundings. Whether you’re trying to get a good angle for a grind or if you need to see if traffic is coming before you grind out into the street, you need to know what’s going on around you. This hindered a lot of tricks and force you to bail. A lot. I really would have liked to change the camera angle so it’s over the shoulder, or even be able to look freely left and right. If they wanted a game so realistic, they should have taken all the aspects that one has when they skate. Many times I would skate to the top section of some stairs and have no idea how they curved or if there was even a break in the steps so I can time my landings. I felt cheated by the “unknown” and it really detracted from my gameplay.

Another thing that frustrated me where the difficulties of the missions. Quite a few of the accomplishments that you had to do seemed so outrageously difficult that I just gave up. Once again, a lot of this was attributed to the poor camera angle selection. If I was able to actually see where and what I had to do, I’m sure it would have been a lot easier to judge without taking away from the difficulty of the tricks. Instead, it just frustrated me to the point of shutting the game off and playing Zuma. Another issue I had was trying to pull manuals. This was a necessary trick you had to use for some of the missions, yet it was so difficult to pull off that it wasn’t worth the 15 minutes I spent trying to accomplish this.

Another downfall of this realism is the fact that you cannot get off your skateboard! I found it infuriating that they could make a game so real to play, yet, you couldn’t walk up a hill or climb some stairs. Seriously, it would take 5 minutes to skate up a hill that you could have easily walked.

There were so many neat features to this game (being able to upload tricks and pictures to the online server for the world to view was really cool). But it became undone by it’s own desires to be real, that it ultimately doomed this game. Too much went into the concept that it degraded the gameplay to such an extreme that it wasn’t fun. Maybe they’ll make a second one that’ll really give the gamer a chance to explore and thrash without worrying about getting hit by a car that came out of “nowhere”.

So my vote for this game is 2/5. I’m glad I only wasted a rental on this and not the full $60.

Let me start off by saying that I didn’t have high hopes for this game. As with a majority of Wii games I have played lately, I’ve noticed that they really are the product of a “new” console. The controls and game play just seem a bit off to me.

Pool Party is no different. It suffers from awkward camera angles, odd game physics, and too much controller function. What should have been a relatively straightforward “point and shoot” gets dulled down by the many functions of the button schemes. What I mean is, just because the Wii has ten controller buttons, you don’t have to assign a function to each one. At one point, I actually had to contort my hand to place the ball when it was in hand. It was overkill for me and made me want to quit playing right there.

I did persevere and I can’t say I was really rewarded or let down. The game itself was fun enough playing it 2 player, but on the single player, it got to be too much. The A.I. was stupid for the first 4 or 5 balls that were sunk, then it became a professional trick shot artist on me. There’s no way someone can bank the ball back and forth off of 4 rails across and have the ball go in. No way. But of course, the physics of the game will let the computer do it. The other thing is that there was no “slop” rules. Which meant, in a game of 8 ball, you could just hit the stack of balls and whatever dropped, you got credit for. I’m not a purist of the sport, but c’mon, you gotta have some kind of rules to govern that! Otherwise there is no skill and therefore, no challenge.

Another thing that was lacking in this game was the effects of English. The game would allow you to hit the q-ball in different spots, but that would just angle your shot. There was really no true backspin or topspin that you could put on there. In fact, it was hard enough to work the point of impact on the q-ball as it was. Anyway, a pool game without English is pretty much useless as there was no real way to give yourself a good leave or even to avoid scratching on close shots. The only thing that would really help you was if you used max power to hit the ball. The q-ball would stop on impact then, but you had to be extremely accurate (and with the camera angles, that was near impossible).

Overall, this game really could have been a solid, fun game. There is a pretty hefty amount of games on there…Snooker, 8-ball, 9-ball, and several different variants of each. But they became after thoughts as the difficulty of making good shots and the unevenness of the A.I. really brought the game down.

I would have given this game a lot more because the 2 player was fun, but just not enough to get me to enjoy it. So, 1.5 stars out of 5. Hopefully, someone will read this and make a pool game that we can really enjoy!

I must say, I really wasn’t looking for a handout, just some answers to my questions. I think she did a pretty good job and she listened to my concerns and suggestions in how to make things a bit better for us as an end user.

I’m going to give them the benefit here and see what happens in the next couple of months. Julie was kind enough to give me a free month (which I didn’t ask for, so that was a nice gesture). And I hope they really do heed my advice as it could have potential as a service to gamers like us.

Oh, and the fact that she contacted me is a definite plus for them!

I come here to provide you all on the extreme ineptness of one online entrepreneur: our friend, Gamefly.

What do I have against Gamefly? Well, for starters, their customer service. But before I get into that, let me describe the past 3 months of my Gamefly service.

The first month went rather well, I would get the games that were available in my queue, also receiving the first game I requested even though it was unlikely to ship. Hmm, since I was new, I had priority over everyone else I suppose. Yay me, or so I thought.

Fast forward about a month/month and a half. I notice that I’m getting games that are ranked in the bottom tier of my queue. Now, I know their rules about availability of games, but they were legitimately skipping over stuff that was listed as Now. Not just one or two spots, but it skipped over 5 that were ready to go, per their online system. How do I know this, I started making a spreadsheet to track how screwed over I was getting. All the while, a Referee who shall remain nameless was able to get the new releases as they came out. No doubt that person will have problems in the very near future.

Anyhoo, onto the other issue…Customer Service. Here is my initial email to them:

“Hello,
I’m giving the benefit of August 9th as the return date, however, I believe I mailed the game back earlier that week.

I also have a few complaints about the Gamefly service…

1. The games that are sent to me are generally from the middle or bottom part of my queue. It seems like there is no effort at all to send me any games I that I want “now”. I’ve reordered my queue in hopes of getting games that are coming out or recently released and this has proven futile. And I know that this isn’t because these newer games have medium or low availability as I’ve personally kept track of how many currently available releases have been skipped over to get me something that was 26th in line. Not to mention the fact that I referred somebody and they were able to get a game (the darkness)at the same time I was given the 15th choice in my queue.

2. Fast Return. Why does this not work all the time? It seems like once a month I have games that are applicable for the Fast Return Program. I am seriously getting the feeling that because I rent a higher volume of games, I’m being penalized for it. I find that absurd and a poor business model. If it’s not a constant offer, then it shouldn’t be offered at all. Or is it just a selective service that you offer users once a month?

3. I’ve only been a member for a few months and I really hoped that this would be a great experience. But so far, this has been a huge disappointment. I’m still hanging hope that this may change in the future.”

What’s their response? Nothing. Just an auto response that tells me how to claim a game as not received by them. Whoop-te-do. That doesn’t answer all of my questions. So what do I do now?

“Dear Gamefly,

Since you failed to respond to my last email within the 24 to 48 hour response time, I feel it’s only fair that you cancel my account.

Poor customer service is no excuse and I will be passing the word that Gamefly really doesn’t care about consumer questions or concerns.

Thanks for a disappointing experience.”

Yeah. I’m quitting my Gamefly. As of today. Ain’t no Netflix, that’s for sure….

First game is Bust a Move for the Wii. We received this game on Saturday and had it beat by Sunday. It is that easy. And repetitive. And boring.

If you’ve played the online or any of the previous console versions, you know exactly what you’re getting. Aim your little pointer at the like colored balls and press a button. That’s it. No more, no less.

The controls are extremely twitchy. My girl sat down next to me and it actually caused the aim to dart all across the screen. That means you have to sit perfectly still and hold the wii-mote with both hands to even play this. That is not good. Secondly, was the constant music that played throughout the game. There are 5 different “8-bit” tracks (one song for each 50 puzzle level). These songs play continuously through the level. And then continues on in your mind a good half hour after you quit playing. It’s that bad.

And I won’t even get into the lack of a decent multi-player section.

My rating: 1.5/5. This game was fun for about 2 minutes. After that, it sucks the life out of you….

Speaking of (see what I did there!)….The Darkness.

This game is good. Very good, in my opinion. Although the length of the game is rather short (it can be beaten in less than a week if you really try), it provides quite a punch from what’s on the market currently.

I am going to refrain from any real “details” of this game because it was a joy to uncover powers on my own and I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Let me start this review by stating that I had not previously read the comic before I played this, so it was a fresh storyline for me. However, I have started reading it and the storyline really stays true as far as I can tell. At least moreso than most of the other comics to games that are out.

So the gameplay gives you control of the main character, Jackie, and his “demons”. This is surprisingly intuitive considering that you play as both, and at the same time no less! The controller scheme is mapped in a convenient way so you can use your dark powers while maintaining a fire fight with your enemies. This also leads to some very graphic and up close “kills”. I won’t spoil the different ways you can tear your victims apart, but let me just say that none of them ever get old!

Now the look of the game is also very detailed. Seeing the faces of these people that you have to interact with gives you the feel that you’re back in an old timey mob setting. In fact, there were a few times that I would just admire my character in a mirror. It was surreal to me to see your reflection as clear as day in-game.

The only real problem I had with this game (outside of being short) was the camera angles. Quite a few times the camera would get hung up corners or as you controlled the creeping death. This was frustrating at times, but not nearly enough to make me not want to play it!

All in all, I give this a 4.5/5. I hear that the multiplayer is “broken”, but as a campaign, I thoroughly enjoyed this from the beginning till the end. I also recommend that you rent or gamefly this as it can be beaten in a relatively short time.

Being a fan of the bar version, I figured this would be worth the money to plunk down. Let’s just say I wasn’t totally correct. Yes, it does feature 23 games that can be found while imbibing on your adult beverage of choice. But that’s where the similarities ended for me.

For those of you that are unaware (or underage), Touchmaster uses a touch screen to perform actions. Checkers, Tri-peaks (and other various card games), as well as a spin off of Othello, and a few others. The touch screen does work well for this, but that’s not the problems I had.

My problem lied with the games themselves. Instead of getting 3 plays for 50 cents, you get one play for free. This makes some of the games very uneven, as you should get rewarded for progressing through a game. A few of the games are close to never-ending if you use logic, and some of them end abruptly because you have to rely on the luck of the AI. This can be extremely frustrating. Especially when you rack up a million points and then the AI gives you a situation that is impossible to win. The other thing I notice is that I tend to restart games when I realize that the “computer” is going to end up screwing me soon.

Now, even with that major fault, I still find a few of the games very enjoyable. There isn’t any longevity for this game, but it’s something to do when you’re at a commercial break while watching tv!

I rate this one a 2.5. If you can find it for 15-20 bucks, it’s worth it. But I definately wouldn’t pay the $30 asking price now that I know! Besides, you can save that extra 10 bucks and get yourself a nice pint of Guinness while you play this at the bar!