The few survivors left standing in the wake of such news were finished off by a trailer, which points to a Summer 2013 digital release on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo’s Wii U.

Soak up some nostalgia below.

Rather than tackling one large mansion, Luigi will be transported to several locations, dispatched from the Professor’s bunker via a device that pixelates and transports him through security cameras, ala Tron.

The handheld release offers a stage layout for each area, where Luigi will accomplish small tasks toward recovering the pieces of the Dark Moon hidden within each, which feeds a quicker action based style of game versus a spiraling haunted mystery.

Dark Moon seeks to streamline the business of busting ghosts on the go, with short stages than typically run ten minutes – though there were a few times I missed a completely obvious solution to a puzzle and spent up to thirty minutes wandering around in the dark. For the most part puzzles are fairly obvious given the limited possibilities for solving them – though each area offers several rooms, the specific goal for each stage will create a linear path that keeps you from wandering too far off course.

Armed with his vacuum cleaner, the Poltergust 5000, Luigi nervously wanders the haunted halls and rooms of these locations to suck up spirits. And while Luigi still uses his flashlight to stun ghosts, this time around players hold a button to charge the light, which goes off like a flashbang to temporally stun them. Once stunned, the Poltergust will latch on to however many ghosts are stunned, and a wrestling match ensues as they frantically pull Luigi around the room. This is also the moment a ghost’s health points become visible and the Poltergust’s gauge begins filling – so long as players pull in the opposite direction with the 3DS’ analog stick. Once filled, players can zap a ghost’s health down quickly, or get shaken off by the spirits if the gauge isn’t filled in time.

Ghosts won’t go down without a fight, with each color variant possessing a unique defense. Green ghosts will use objects within a room to block Luigi’s light, forcing players to wait for a window of opportunity when they let their guard down. Larger red ghosts will slam the ground, while yellow ones spew hazardous ectoplasm. Purple ghosts will attempt to trap Luigi within their gelatinous bodies while blue ones will throw objects, and another purple variant will simply spook Luigi to interrupt his attacks.

Dark Moon makes a small attempt to shake up this formula at times, but largely depends on deploying these spirits in different groupings throughout each area.

The effect is quite a bit like wrangling tricky fish. Player’s will often find themselves contending with several ghosts at once, approaching from different angles – so you might lock on to one or two only to have another smack you before achieving success. There’s quite a dance that goes on trying to clear a room that is filled with several variants or even multiples of one type.

That action priority creates a game favoring quick bouts of such play versus more unique encounters, and any major break from the formula is largely reserved for boss encounters, where spirits will possess objects and Luigi will have to force them out before using the Poltergust to weaken them.

Dark Moon still finds Luigi nervously poking around darkened rooms, shaking cabinets and opening drawers to search for items, and using the Poltergust to interact with the environment. There’s still a great sense of play from simply interacting with the environment – using the Poltergust to turn cranks or suck up drapes is instantly accessible and delightful.

Discovery is offered more through the darklight though, which players can shine to reveal hidden objects.

Focusing the darklight on hidden objects will draw out spirit orbs that players can suck up to return the item in question to reality – including paintings that might produce items or trapped Toad assistants. Each stage possesses a hidden Boo that players can search out, furnishing an extra objective to the more straightforward task assigned.

The smaller sections of each stage leave less space to wander, or more over, make finding and using objects more direct. Luigi will find cash scattered throughout each area, which builds toward upgrades the game assigns to his equipment, extending the gauges for his Poltergust and blacklight – there’s no shortage of cash crammed in every corner of this game. Replenishing Luigi’s health is also a priority for searching every inch of the environment – hearts tend to vanish quickly during boss battles and ghost filled rooms. Players can gain a second chance at life by finding a golden bone within each stage, which will cause a ghost dog to revive Luigi once during each stage.

Dark Moon is very arcade-like, with Luigi clearing rooms while moving toward critical points of discovery, which in-turn involve clearing rooms. While the early moments of the game offer a few twists on the formula, the game establishes its shtick and then sticks to it like glue. And while that formula works rather well, it also paints the game into a corner, wherein the surest way to curve the difficulty is to simply increase ghost strength and sprinkle more of them within the final rooms of a game that kind of smacks players upside the head with a sudden spike in difficulty toward the end.

It’s certainly one way to go, but wants for more of the clever energy the game opens with.

The one break from the formula that could use some work are moments where the game wants players to target and fire projectiles, either by directly firing at a target or by flinging one object into another. This doesn’t come up often, but when it does, frustration merges with confusion as to why timed targeting was the deviation of choice here.

Nintendo’s increasing love affair with online multiplayer shines rather brightly within Dark Moon, perhaps making the best use of the ghost busting formula established here.

Players are able to enter the ScareScraper with up to four friends, either locally or online, choosing a set amount of floors in which to clear ghosts, track down ghost dogs, or simply search out the exit before time runs outs. All four players are free to explore each floor separately, stumbling into one another throughout rooms where sucking up ghosts becomes a rather addictive party game and everyone constantly uses the dpad to make Luigi say one of four greetings. The nature of the core mechanics really click with the time based multiplayer options, enough that I find myself favoring the multiplayer sessions over the single-player adventure.

The famous “Mario?” button has been replaced within the single-player game, with Luigi now able to say four different pronunciations of “Hello?” to your heart’s content.

Though segmented to deny a larger mansion exploring experience, stages do manage to produce fairly complex scenarios at times. Since Luigi can’t move objects from room to room without the aid of a portal that instantly points you in the obvious direction, the primary mystery often boils down to wondering how many ghosts you’ll fight in an upcoming room before gaining the key to unlock another.

As with the original, Dark Moon is in possession of wonderful mechanics in search of the means to develop further during the exploration, which makes for a terrific initial experience that gets familiar a little too quickly and can’t seem to help walking in circles toward the end. The game finds plenty of strength in Luigi’s awkwardly charming nature, but the segmented nature of its stage design limits an attachment to environments the player is simply passing through with short visits. But on the flip side, those same elements feed one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve found on the 3DS to date.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Developer
Next Level Games

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo 3DS

Modes
Singleplayer, Multiplayer

Release Date
March 24, 2013

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Despite a well earned sense of exhaustion from numerous Lego videogames based on popular franchises in recent years, Chase McCain’s mission to save Lego City from seasoned criminal Rex Fury managed to sink its teeth in firmly, until I’d found myself saving said city some thirteen hours later and realized that I’d still only completed 18% of what the entire game has to offer.

Sandbox games typically inspire me to ignore missions that quickly become familiar, opting instead to run amuck through an open world to create a game of my own by causing as much carnage as possible before the power to do nearly anything grows tedious in the absence of purpose. But stepping off the boat to Lego City found me sticking to the cops and robbers narrative through to the end, and then spending an equal amount of time pondering why that was.

The consistent humor of Lego videogames furnishes this city with plenty of charm, and free of an established license, the game grabs at every opportunity to borrow jokes from mainstream film and television.

Every inch of this cop story exploits that genre, with the angry police chief, bumbling sidekick and brainless thugs in tow, constantly seeking to turn a phrase, kick up bad puns and generally ensure that something ridiculous is always occurring. And there’s another reminder here for me, namely to lighten up. I simply can’t remember the last time I laughed quite so much, specifically at such silly antics -from a bit about a phobia of French parrots to one officer’s realization of why his horse probably didn’t appreciate the apple he fed it after being told he was riding backwards.

While this humor is delivered through cinematic sequences, a flood of voiced dialogue from characters delivers additional laughs, from video calls updating players about their missions to the banter of everyday citizens wandering the streets of the city.

Understanding the scale of what Lego City offers draws an unavoidable comparison to the Grand Theft Auto series. But a critical deviation is the way in which the police role and Lego blocks encourage a different kind of exploration. At least, Lego City is not about taking the world apart, but rather in creating a larger world via your presence, by doing what comes so naturally with Lego – by building.

Aside from the Lego bolts players will horde throughout the game, Lego blocks are hidden throughout the city, which can be used to create new objects and structures. The Wii U’s gamepad can be used to scan for blocks of varying values, or players can simply collide with Lego objects to gain blocks – the goal being to create new structures on super platforms discovered while cruising the streets. Most missions will require players to build a key object in this way, but players wandering the streets will also find chances to build police centers where vehicles can be delivered, helipads for accessing aircraft, and my most recent discovery – a monument I’ve constructed over one of the city’s bridges.

It’s a simple enough idea that offers players an additional investment by developing the world around them, and something rare and special here that could stand to offer a lot more down the road.

Exploring Lego City exposes vehicle time trials and plenty of smaller objectives, such as recovering or interacting with objects scattered throughout the city. Maybe you play a game of basketball to discover there are several more to find throughout the city, or maybe there are twenty pigs waiting to be found and shot home via a pig cannon. There are plenty of secrets which require different skills to access them, which is yet another reason why Lego City encourages players to follow the primary narrative before exploring every inch of the city proper.

Those primary missions find Chase wearing a variety of different hats, literally. As the story presents new tasks, Chase will gain new costumes that in turn grant new abilities – the fireman can put out fires and chop through boarded doors, the burglar can pry open locked vaults and entry points. This enables Chase to access new areas that further the story, and also allows players to uncover more secrets hidden around the city – as with all Lego games, the emphasis to revisit completed missions to complete smaller objectives is alive and well. And while I feel it gets said of many games, anyone who loves searching out every last secret and finding every stray block will discover plenty to chew on here.

Aside from the story consistently changing locations that drag in every Lego play set imaginable, a formula quickly reveals itself throughout each stage. Chase will need to change costumes frequently to get through areas, which are cycled through with a simple button tap. Players will continually find themselves assembling an object that requires a particular costume for interaction, which then reveals another object that requires another costume change. While the radically changing set pieces work to keep situations fresh, the core play remains true to this well established Lego videogame law – break everything in sight and interact with the key objects remaining to move forward. One new toy is the color gun, which will require players to use different colors to change the nature of objects, turning off electronic devices or creating climbing points for example.

Lego City also offers free-run areas where blue bricks allow Chase to perform slick moves with a tap of the B button. Early on, the game presents a situation where players chase down escaping criminals and the flow of these sections nails the seventies cop vibe beating at the heart of this game. Chase also has some basic melee moves which allow players to fight and tackle opponents, even slapping cuffs on them as they lay disoriented on the ground following a successful attack. I don’t know why chasing after a bank robbing clown and cuffing him is so infectious, it just is.

Chase’s investigative abilities make use of the Wii U’s gamepad, providing points where players can conduct surveillance by holding the gamepad up to the television and then turning around for a panoramic view while listening in on conversations and snapping photographs – at anytime the gamepad can be used to take photos of whatever happens to take your fancy. The gamepad also provides a constant map of the city as well as functioning as a video communicator – Chase gets plenty of video calls while on the job.

Just this afternoon, I was looking for more examples of things to do in the city after the main story is finished, and I discovered an observation point that allowed me to spot a crime with the gamepad and engage in another high speed pursuit.

As with the Grand Theft Auto series, completing missions opens access to more of the city. One minor complaint with the comparison again in mind is that the lack of a radio reminds me why I’d probably go insane if I didn’t have driving music in real life.

Cruising the streets of Lego City without a radio still doesn’t deprive players of consistently curious sights – today I also spotted someone walking around in a lizard costume for some reason. It would also be criminal to forget to mention the volume of vehicles within the city, all of which possess distinct handling, while certain vehicles allow players to perform a temporary speed boost – all of these vehicles will break into Lego pieces upon collision. Primary missions go out of the way to offer up ridiculous rides as well, including a skeletal dinosaur and a jet powered snow plow.

What’s really special here is the way the world of Lego is tied together into a living city where players can destroy and build at every turn on a play set that could only be realized within a videogame. One nagging complaint is the game’s load times, particularly when starting up the game requires one load screen prior to actually loading a saved game. Once the game is loaded, players can travel every inch of the outer city without a care, but the initial experience of loading between cut-scenes during the primary missions proves consistently aggravating. That the game makes an early joke about progress bars doesn’t warm me over here – I shouldn’t feel like I have time to actually go build something out of Lego while playing a game about Lego.

The current lack of releases for the Wii U makes Lego City Undercover stand out as an important release, but the game deserves more of a nod than this.

I can’t compare playing a videogame someone else created to the hours I spent creating whatever my young imagination could summon with Lego, but given my own surprise at how much I’ve enjoyed the visit, it seems important to stress the idea that Lego City Undercover offers a world alive with the simply joy of play – where it’s equally enjoyable to create your own games as well as play the multitude the city has to offer. Freed from the burden of responsibility to other franchises, Lego City Undercover offers a significant salute to the greatest toy of my childhood with a videogame that is earnestly as easy to lose hours of play to in much the same way I did with a bucket of building blocks so many years ago.

Lego City Undercover

Developer
TT Fusion

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo Wii U

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
March 18, 2013

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

While Lara Croft’s first expedition uncovers an island prison run by years of stranded inmates, she also discovers a landscape that abandons the idea of singular globetrotting digs offering a sterile glimpse into frozen pockets of time, instead uncovering a complex web, where the strings of history intertwine around a mystery beating a rhythm of madness heard across the entire island.

And while Lara unearths the pieces to this puzzle, the franchise mirrors her efforts with a dig through the more recent history of the medium. It doesn’t take a gaming archeologist to see the influences running throughout Tomb Raider, particularly the unsteady ground and quick time events that fed Uncharted’s cinematic flow.

But as a student of history, Tomb Raider isn’t looking to simply copy answers during the test.

Pursued by the island’s savage inhabitants, Tomb Raider opens with Lara on the defensive, and encourages stealth even as she begins to find the means to fight back. There’s a pervasive dip into survival horror, with Lara crawling through the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to sneak behind opponents in order to silently strangle them with her bow. Many of the game’s quick time events clutch at a legitimate sense of panic as players hit the left and right triggers to keep Lara scrambling toward light at the end of a tunnel or hit a button prompt at the right moment to fend off an attacker.

There’s something very personal about these early moments, bred in the difference between trying to land a punch and simply fighting for a chance to escape. As players make their way up a mountain path with Lara’s hands bound behind her back, hiding behind cover as men search the area for her, every step forward is about survival in a game where the initial goal is to simply stay alive.

In a sense, I’ve played this game before. Hiding under cover while impatiently waiting for lazy guards to walk away. But I’ve never played a game that so successfully enforces an initial idea of helplessness, so much so that finally laying hands on a pistol is cause for rejoicing – though that sense of relief is short lived. It’s not unusual to initial limit a player’s power and allow them to slowly build abilities, but Tomb Raider goes against the grain in early sequences where Lara is completely powerless, with the player merely trying to move her forward in some desperate search for safety.

What role Lara’s gender plays in encouraging empathy and a connection between the player is a question that lacks easy answers, or perhaps more succinctly is a question unique to each player’s experience. And if that sounds like an attempt to slide away from that idea for the moment, it certainly is.

What I will say, is that I never felt like Lara was a precious flower I was trying to protect, but rather that Tomb Raider opens with a sense of dread in the air that persists throughout the game, so that even as players begin to level the playing field, there’s a consistent drive to seek shelter and linger in areas of short lived safety. If you wanted to talk about a game where a male protagonist is hunted through the darkness with terrifying results, we could perhaps summon the spirit of Alan Wake for discussion at a later date – though that still wouldn’t quite scratch at the situation Lara finds herself in when initially at the mercy of the Solarii cult running the island.

The unnerving atmosphere gains strength from opponents that do more than simply run toward Lara while firing bullets, though they will certainly do that at times. But adversaries will also eagerly seek vantage points while opening fire and tossing explosives to force Lara out from cover while other foot soldiers close in for the kill. And while the game will at times force large confrontations that keep players scrambling while firing off rounds, the most memorable moments involve crawling through the darkness and listening to enemy banter before snapping their necks or burying a hatchet in their backs as Lara hunts with a desperate energy that reminds me of the better moments from 2009′s Velvet Assassin.

There’s an interesting pull against the tension, where I want to run into enemies to perform melee attacks and quick time kills, but often find myself cut to ribbons in the attempt. Weapons combat is tight enough to make precision firing easy, and it’s never a chore to gun on the run and hit targets. And yet there’s something loose and open without proving sloppy, encouraging freedom in the ability to dodge attacks and spin around to fire or execute a melee attack.

But perhaps tension here is most often strengthened by Lara’s body language. Whether she’s reaching out to steady herself against the side of a cliff, or defensively crouching down when enemies are ahead of her, her subtle movements seem to continually reflect the gravity of her situation and influence my reaction to the challenge.

There are an equal amount of times where Tomb Raider offers a break from this tension with a more familiar experience. Areas of the island provide a jungle gym where players are cut loose to use zip lines and rope bridges to explore darkened caves and towering peaks at their leisure. The island is littered with collectibles and side challenges that reward players with survivor points that upgrade skills, and salvage crates that can be used to upgrade weapons – looting dead enemies for ammunition and salvage becomes particularly addictive.

It’s almost possible to forget about the main story and get sidetracked, running back to campfire sites to expand Lara’s abilities. And the fact that you can fast travel between discovered camp sites keeps the explorative nature of the franchise alive and well within this reboot.

That bit around the campfire is the part of the game we accept as part of a videogame. Where we take time out from hunting and scrambling over cliffs to magically upgrade abilities with points, and where the brain ideally shuts off and accepts the sense of it. But aside from the intimate setting of a cozy camp fire, why does my brain do this?

Probably because I need every advantage I can gain, learning new skills that allow Lara to swing an axe at enemies or to dodge attacks and kick dirt up into their eyes. The fact that the process is streamlined and simplistic seems like a reward for the time Lara and I spend together searching out every last crate and challenge. Exploration is encouraged by need, and in that act players are encouraged to find plenty of the old Tomb Raider spirit, consistently veering just off the path to find another secret.

Part of the old Tomb Raider spirit also awaits players with optional tombs, hidden areas where the bread and butter of the series is refined with laser precision. While it’s quite possible to walk right by these areas, they offer physics based puzzles where the only adversary is the environment – though the ability to press a button to temporally illuminate key objects of interest ensures that players won’t spend nearly as much time scratching their heads as with every other release in the franchise.

The game falls into a comfortable formula once established, balancing exploration and combat as separate pursuits seeded throughout the search to understand the nature of this mysterious island. But the greatest moments to be found here are when the two bleed together, with pockets of resistance and accidental discoveries that lead players down a road they could have entirely missed.

Aside from the occasional point where veering through a flowing river leaves very little room for error and invites repeated attempts, Tomb Raider’s only low-point comes from the multiplayer offering, which feels like an odd complaint given that I wouldn’t have criticized the game for skipping the attempt to include such a mode altogether. The multiplayer does a competent job of phoning in the expected death match option along with pitting two sides against one another as survivors and Solarii. But of all the things to learn from other releases, I can’t help feeling that offering a series of co-op special ops styled missions would have done more with the material and strengthened the package.

Tomb Raider focuses on the birth of a survivor rather than the emergence of a hero, and this is something I’ve been left thinking quite a bit about this week.

Short of the hero’s search for glory in myth and legend, a survivor finds the strength to overcome real adversity, and in discovering the strength to survive within the self, is capable of heroic acts that not only inspire others, but provide a testament to the strength of the human spirit. And aside from the marketing, this seems critical to understanding what Crystal Dynamics has risked and accomplished here, taking one of gaming’s earliest heroes and giving us a tangible protagonist worthy of the empathetic bonds developed during this journey of survival.

Tomb Raider offers a maturity of theme without sacrificing the more fantastic elements of the franchise, preserving the core sense of play while tackling the near impossible task of humanizing a protagonist that has existed as a legend throughout the larger share of the industry’s history. By the end of the adventure, it seems that Lara still can’t help growing into the legend we know her to be, and yet Crystal Dynamics has gifted her with a fresh sense of humanity, and more over, offered us the opportunity to finally form a real connection with the woman behind the legend.

There are plenty of challenges to overcome in taking the series further in the future, but this reborn Tomb Raider takes the best of modern influences to give players the experience worthy of that legend, offering one of the finest releases we could hope for to close out this generation of console gaming.

Tomb Raider

Developer
Crystal Dynamics

Publisher
Square-Enix

System
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows PC (Xbox 360 Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, multiplayer

Release Date
March 5, 2013

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review

At least it seems pretty impressive when Nintendo discusses the 3DS in 2013 and doesn’t have time to mention new Pokemon releases during what Nintendo refers to as, “The Year of Luigi.”

The focus on Mario’s timid brother begins with the already well known and upcoming release of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon on the 3DS, with Nintendo mentioning two additional multiplayer modes as well as showing off how Luigi’s Poltergust 5000 can be used to interact with the environment to help solve puzzles.

Keeping with the Luigi theme, Nintendo also pulled out a new entry in the Mario & Luigi franchise for the 3DS set to release this Summer. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team finds Mario venturing inside Luigi’s dreams, with players using the dual screens to interact with the sleeping Luigi in order to affect changes within the dreamstate.

Nintendo also revealed that another release in the Mario Golf series would be arriving this Summer as well, with Mario Golf World Tour under the familiar development hands of Camelot Software.

And if that doesn’t fill you up, Nintendo also plans to bring the Luigi celebration to the Wii U, with word that this year will see downloadable content that offers alternate versions of all the stages within New Super Mario Bros. Wii U, creating a new game the publisher has dubbed New Super Luigi U.

Aside from familiar plumbers, Nintendo also made plenty of fans happy with a release date of June 9th for Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the 3DS, and news that the notoriously difficult Wii revival of Donkey Kong is being revamped for release on the 3DS as Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D.

But wait, there’s even more!

The 3DS eShop received plenty of attention today as well, with news that Pokemon creator Game Freak’s rhythm game, HarmoKnight, will be releasing on March 14th, followed by a sequel to Dillion’s Rolling Western, The Last Ranger, on April 11th.

It’s dizzying to think there’s even more Nintendo gave us to talk about today, so let’s soak up video clips for all these announcements first, which you can catch below.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

Mario Golf World Tour

New Super Luigi U

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D

HarmoKnight

Dillon’s Rolling Western: The Last Ranger

I know they’re not necessarily the healthiest treat option available to me, so I try not to drink them too often. However, when I get my hands on one, I am relentless and guzzle it up, usually to the point that my wife has to tell me to stop making disgusting sounds as I suck the straw like an addict trying to get just one last tiny hit from his crack pipe.

The Etrian Odyssey IV demo is kind of like that.

I have tasted every last bit of what it has to offer and am starving for more. Atlus was generous to provide such a meaty demo, but in a sense, they were also a little cruel. If anyone takes the time needed to build a party of adventurers, traverse through and map out every square inch of the available labyrinths, level up their characters to the max that is allotted in the demo, and complete all offered quests, they are going to find it very hard to wait a couple more weeks to continue their journey into all that Etrian Odyssey IV has to offer.

For those who don’t want to bother downloading the demo and experiencing for themselves what the game is all about, here’s a quick primer: It is a first-person dungeon crawler that employs a plodding pace, steep difficulty, and comparatively primitive graphics. It also features an interesting variety of characer classes to choose from, a wealth of abilities to bestow upon characters as they level up, and a captivating soundtrack by acclaimed composer Yuzo Koshiro.

The Etrian Odyssey series is not for everyone, and I’m sure there are plenty of individuals who would find it boring and unappealing, but I think it is absolutely amazing. If you can put in the time needed to truly appreciate any of the Etrian Odyssey games, I’m confident you’ll discover them to be satisfying and addicting.

There really hasn’t been a drastic change to the basic gameplay present in the three previous games, which essentially involves making one’s way through dungeons, mapping the path along the way, fighting lots of monsters, leveling up characters and buying better gear, killing more monsters, and so forth. As someone who loves the Etrian Odyssey series, I don’t ncessarily see the similarities as a bad thing, but it’s worth noting that other than some streamlining and refinements, the developers seem to follow an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. In this latest installment, there are new character classes that make things feel fresh, including one of my new favorites, the tank-like Fortress. But, beyond that, casual observers will be hard-pressed to find much that separates IV from its predecessors.

That’s not to say there aren’t immediate differences that long-time fans will take note of right off the bat. For instance, the backdrop graphics are definitely improved from the DS games, and the enemies are polygonal models versus static drawings, while the stereoscopic 3D effect of the 3DS provides some immersive depth in the dungeons.

The music now has a more orchestrated sound, which I’m torn on because while I love it, I miss the more nostiaglic feel of the previous games’ “retro” instrumentations in the compositions.

Perhaps most notable of all is that the new overworld tasks players to travel around in an airship, collecting goods to sell, meeting up with other travelers, and fighting monstrous beasts. I think it’s a welcome improvement over Etrian Odyssey III’s seafaring overworld, and I can’t wait to see what new areas my craft will be able to fly to.

*The demo for Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan is available free via the Nintendo 3DS eShop, with a retail and digital download release hitting on February 26th, 2013.

Redesigned for the PlayStation Vita, Muramasa Rebirth will feature a complete re-localization in English, while again offering players the chance to guide Momohime and/or Kisuke through lush painted landscapes while learning the ins and outs of the 108 possible blades that can be forged.

On the flip-side, completionists can expect to chase down some DLC, with four additional scenarios that offer different characters.

Aksys hasn’t yet provided a date for the release, so stay tuned.

Stirring memories of 1987′s Maniac Mansion, players will assemble a party of three from the cast before embarking into the dark bowels of The Cave. But where that same choice in Maniac Mansion offered the potential for different endings, choosing your party here instead determines the areas players will encounter during their journey.

Each character has a specific area tied to their desire, and a special ability that allows them to enter that area and interact with the puzzles within. Healthy praise owes to the physical design of The Cave, which resists the modern urge to simply warp players to a location, instead constructing an elaborate map where you’ll sometimes see areas reserved for other cast members, and yet never find yourself getting lost, always guided to the next zone intended for your party.

Within this construction are a few areas breaking up the those character driven zones, fixed puzzle areas in-between the layers. The sandwich design means that on a second play though, you’ll encounter these exact same areas again, beginning and ending the game with the same area and encountering a crusty miner and a zoo in the middle of the story with each play through.

The game suffers some as a result on a second visit, and becomes more painful with a third. Encountering the miner and retrieving his three mine carts in order to progress is a fine distraction once, but repeated visits found me checking emails and text messages while trudging through the puzzles I had already come to know too well. While none of these sections are excessively long, the tedium is unavoidable and haunts the game’s long term value. Frankly, I just expect something more clever from Double Fine, even if they only made fun of the repetition while providing an option to skip it a second and third time through.

The character driven areas are terrific little puzzle boxes however, with the variety of the cast allowing the game to find plenty of outlets for its slightly dark humor, but also plenty of clever moments for puzzle solving – swapping through history with the time traveler to notice changes made in the past particularly stands out, perhaps because party members in other time zones show up as skeletons.

While each character area requires the specific skill of its star, like the scientist to operate computer terminals, each area also has points that will require cooperation between party members. Often times you’ll need them all to activate a switch, or using an item in sequence with another character elsewhere on the map – switching between them quick and smooth with the d-pad.

Characters are limited to carrying one item at a time, which will find you using all three more often, and also find you doing a lot of backtracking. The puzzle areas are small enough, but trudging from one end of an area to the other a few times while solving a puzzle also gets tedious quickly. The limited amount of items clears away plenty of the typical mist from puzzle solving problems, and at certain points a character’s special ability kills any potential need for solutions altogether. But every so often, the game discovers subtle ideas that shine with brilliance and renew faith in the reason so many of us eagerly assemble for the outing.

The one item limitation and small sized areas also shifts the emphasis away from items, which once shined as the stars of adventure games. Here items often have very specific and obvious one time uses – swap a fuse, lure a beast with a hotdog, or move an object in the past to affect change in the future.

Is it wrong that a long for the days where we contemplated placing hamsters in the microwave though?

At some point, item collecting and usage got in the way of stories, or risked slowing down the audience’s ability to move through the story. And while one could argue that the story is the focus, I can’t help feeling that we’ve turned our back on the idea that item interaction was a critical part of the story. What I did with items trumped wherever the narrative might have led, and The Cave shrugs off that legacy, to an extent.

On the other hand, The Cave doesn’t overwhelm you with items and leave you wandering around looking for the place that said items might best fit. Instead, The Cave places the emphasis on the actions players will take to gain items and achieve their goals, leaving players to do some very bad things toward that end – so many very bad things. The Cave becomes a more humorous and also cynical experience, with a cast that cheats, steals, and murders to achieve their allegedly noble ambitions.

While the immediate humor provides plenty of laughs, the punch lines for each character falls a little flat when colliding with a budget that sees each story ultimately summarized by static images. There’s never any real sense of the bad deeds being committed by players along the way, and the twisted outcomes arrive in a manner long detached from said actions.

The Cave struggles to offer something more than simply asking “hey kids, remember adventure games?” It absolutely deserves credit for that while still tapping some of the absurdist humor and energy of the genre’s earliest beginnings. There’s a great deal of joy to be had in spelunking for puzzles, but the longevity of the pursuit is questionable.

It’s a hard call given how enjoyable the first session with the game is versus the tedium of returning to familiar areas just to squeeze every bit of new exploration the game has to offer. In the end, I don’t think you’ll be long for coming back up for air and feeling little reason to return with the same nostalgia-wide eyes so many of us favor the Lucasarts adventure legacy with.

The Cave

Developer
Double Fine

Publisher
Sega

System
PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), Xbox 360 (Xbox LIVE Arcade), Nintendo Wii U, Windows PC, Mac, Linux (Xbox LIVE Arcade Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Co-op

Release Date
January 22, 2012 Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation Network
January 23, 2012 Xbox LIVE Arcade, Windows PC, Mac, Linux

Price
$14.99, 1200 Microsoft Points

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The local and online multiplayer allows up to four players to enter the ScareScraper to clear ghosts with their Poltergust 5000. Hunter mode allows players to take on the roles of different colored Luigi to hunt down ghosts and clear each floor of the tower, offering rewards and upgrades for the trouble along with boss battles at the top of each tower. Players will also be able to set the number of floors between 5, 10 and 25, adjust the difficulty, and revive fallen teammates.

The really important note here is that few things are as amusing as multiple Luigi, a point proven by the trailer, which you can catch below.

Metro Last Light was due for release this year, but Koch Media has only said at present that it will “roll out future plans for each franchise in the coming months.”

Ubisoft wasn’t far behind with word of their own, with the company acquring THQ Montreal and the publishing rights for South Park: The Stick of Truth – South Park for $3,265,306 and THQ Montreal for $2.5 million. Ubisoft’s press release still mentions South Park as scheduled for release during the 2013 calender year.

Elsewhere Sega acquired Relic for $26.6 million, Crytek took the Homefront IP for $544,218, and Take-Two Interactive acquired Evolve for $10.894 million.

Darksiders developer, Vigil Studios, appeared to have received no bids during this period, spelling an immediate end for the studio today with a letter from THQ, stating that, “If you are an employee of an entity that is not included in the sale, we regret that your position will end.”

The same letter also offered, “Some assets, including our publishing businesses and Vigil, along with some other intellectual properties are not included in the sale agreements. They will remain part of the Chapter 11 case. We will make every effort to find appropriate buyers, if possible.”

At present I also haven’t spotted any word about the Red Faction franchise.