Scott Pilgrim vs the Review
To be perfectly candid, this may be the hardest review I ever write. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Starcraft 2 Review: The RTS King is Back
Blizzard released the first Starcraft
After playing the game for a few weeks, I can safely say that, barring a miracle or a catastrophe, there's a very good chance we'll be playing Starcraft 2 well into the next decade. For any other series this would be gross hyperbole, but for Starcraft this is simply a confirmation of the series' already well-established quality and longevity.
Will GreenwaldReview: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Spoiler: the audience wins)
If you like video games, you're going to love Scott Pilgrim.
If you like comic books, you're going to love Scott Pilgrim.
If you're a child of the 80's, you're going to love Scott Pilgrim.
And in all of those cases, you're probably going to look at your own life through a bittersweet lens after the credits roll. This review doesn't have any big spoilers, but it looks deep into the movie's themes, so buckle up.
On the surface, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (based on graphic novel series of the same name
Amazon Kindle – The Next Big Game Platform?
People use their Kindles
Every Word is a scrambled word game reminiscent of Boggle; you are given 7 letters and are challenged to spell out as many words as you can either with or without a time limit. Once you spell out the longest possible word, you go to the next level. Playing with a time limit feels somewhat frantic as you have to think as quick as you can, while playing without a time limit falls to far the other way and feels to laid back. All in all, Every Word is a fun little diversion.
The other game is Shuffled Row. Shuffle Row is very much like playing Scrabble; you have a rack on which 60 letter tiles will drop that you can use to spell out words. Each letter has a point value and longer words get a multiplication bonus starting at four letters. You can't hold more than nine tiles at once on the rack and the leftmost tiles will be lost if not used fast enough. Of the two games available, I find Shuffled Row to be far more entertaining.
The only issues I had with playing the games is discomfort with typing on the Kindle; I personally don't make a ton of notations, so I am not very good at the games. Unfortunately, you can only get these games if you have a Kindle; they don't work on Kindle for iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac. The best part of the whole deal is that both games are completely free. I suggest giving them a try today.
Dee SawyerQuick Review: Dragon Quest 9
[Note: This Quick Review is very long. It's a "Quick Review" not for the length of the review, but for the amount of time played. Quick Reviews are reviews of games that the reviewer has not yet finished, but has played enough to get a solid impression of the game. At the time of this writing, I had played Dragon Quest 9 for over 30 hours.]
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
Mechanically, this game is Dragon Quest. It's the same as Dragon Quest 3, 4, 5, 8, any game in the main series. Turn-based first-person JRPG combat, paint-by-numbers leveling and stat-building, and a full variety of quirky spells like Zing (Life), Frizz (Fire), Crack (Ice), and Squelch (Antidote). If you've played a Dragon Quest game before, you already know how this goes.
DQ9 distinguishes itself with a few unique features to spice up the game: character classes, wardrobe customization, and the removal of random encounters. Instead of dedicated classes for each character, you can select from six different jobs (expandable to twelve after completing some quests). The progression is very similar to Final Fantasy 3 and 5, where each job has its own level and skill allocation, and while you can carry certain bonuses over between jobs you generally have to start from scratch when you switch. It adds a pleasant bit of variety, and gives you the opportunity to arrange your party and play the game on your terms. If you want nothing but bruisers, you can do that. If you want nothing but magic users, you can do that. If you want a balanced party of fighter, thief, white mage, and black mage, you can do that. It's very freeing in an old-school way.
Will GreenwaldAlien Swarm: Free, fun, and full of violence
To those involved in the first person shooter “modding” scene, Alien Swarm should sound familiar. Black Cat Games released the first Alien Swarm game, an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, to a warm reception. Their success translated into jobs at Valve and an opportunity to create a full, “real” game, now on the Source Engine. Enter Alien Swarm, again.
Alien Swarm plays like a top down Left 4 Dead with aliens instead of zombies. In a similar construct to L4D, four people team up and complete mission requirements before completing a level. Breaking from the L4D mold, Alien Swarm adds the Modern Warfare-like abilities of character leveling, varied classes, and unlockable items. The development team was keen on making new equipment easy to obtain, and it’s a pleasure to see an appreciation for the difference between “leveling” and “grinding”. The formula is pretty simple: beat a mission, gain a level (usually), and get an item.
Leveling up and progressing in the game is fun, but hampered by the scant amount of content. At the current time there is only one “campaign,” consisting of 7 levels. The levels tie together with a thin story: there are aliens, they are bad, kill them. It’s a Michael Bay story, not Christopher Nolan.
Matt GormanQuick Review: Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 Portable
We're adding a new feature to Aggrogate. Many games are very time-consuming to completely play through, and it's not fair to offer a concrete verdict on a game without giving it the full run-through. Unfortunately, we're a bit short-handed and there are only so many hours in the day. If we waited to finish every single game before offering an opinion, we'd never get a review done.
Because of that, we're going to start offering Quick Reviews. Quick Reviews aren't full playthrough-and-write-up evaluations of games, but instead shorter reviews of whatever part of the game we can get through in a reasonable time. Any Quick Review will get at least five hours' worth of gameplay before even starting the write-up, and we'll be sure to note exactly where we stand in the game and how much we played by the time we publish the piece here.
Don't consider Quick Reviews to be full, comprehensive reviews, because they're not based on the full and total experience of the game. Instead, look at them as a general evaluation of what you can expect from a game from putting enough time into it to get a feel for the mechanics, design, and overall quality.
[At the time of publication, I played over 22 hours of the game and beat the fifth full moon event. Yeah, this game is long.]
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is the RPG that just won't die. After great success on the PS2, it got re-released with extra content as Persona 3: FES. Now Atlus has ported the original game to the PSP as Persona 3 Portable
Cheap Thrills: Coma Is Like Limbo on Flash
Cheap Thrills is a column by Chris Gampat reviewing affordable (under $20) or free games for the recession.
Coma is a free flash game where the player must accomplish certain tasks to finally wake themselves out of a coma and escape the dreamworld. Remember that very-creepy-but-addicting-nontheless game called Limbo for XBLA? Well, Coma will remind players much of that game. Granted, there are differences—but the core gameplay is still quite similar and players will encounter similarly creepy events without the simplistic but brutal violence that players experienced in Limbo.
Chris GampatPrince of Persia: So close, yet so far
[This review has a few spoilers. They're not particularly interesting spoilers that reveal anything you won't pick up on five minutes into the movie, but heads up anyway.]
Once again, Hollywood has taken a video game full of opportunity for action-packed fight scenes, special effects and other summer blockbuster fodder, and spent $200 million turning it into a thoroughly mediocre action film that completely misses the game's point.
On paper, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time showed potential. Director Mike Newell and producer Jerry Bruckheimer gathered together big-name actors, a huge special effects budget, and at least a passing understanding that the movie needed parkour and time travel elements, and then showed that they had absolutely no idea what to do with any of it.
Will GreenwaldSplit/Second: A kart racer in a car racer’s body
There are two types of racing games: simulation racers and arcade racers. Simulation racers commit to getting every single detail of the driving experience accurate, from driving physics that make your Acura RSX perform just like a real Acura RSX to massive amounts of fine-tuning using brand-name after-market parts to change the most minute aspects of your vehicle. Arcade racers let you drive around really fast and do stuff.
If you're looking for an accurate driving simulation, then pass right on by Disney Interactive's Split/Second. If you want to drive around really fast and watch things blow up, you're going to like this game.
Will Greenwald
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