(Download Street Fighter X Tekken Mobile from iTunes)
Capcom’s track record with porting their fighting games to mobile devices are hit-and-miss. While their work with the Street Fighter IV series set the standard, their ports of classic fighters have been mediocre to poor. What sets those apart is that Capcom really took the time to optimize Street Fighter IV for mobile, while the rest are simply shoehorned in. Thankfully, Street Fighter X Tekken Mobile is not an example of the latter.
Asura’s Wrath suffers from a problem that exists outside of the game itself. It’s a problem that has divided the critics. A problem that factored into the game’s poor sales. A problem that Capcom probably could have addressed with better marketing. Granted, this was never expected to sell like Call of Duty, but I feel like Capcom did this game a disservice by not emphasizing the game’s biggest strength…which is also its biggest weakness.
When it comes to video game franchises and their influence on my life, not too many rank higher than Rock Band. Besides the hundreds of additional songs I’ve purchased, and the countless hours I’ve spent rocking out with plastic instruments, the franchise inspired me to graduate to real instruments. I am by no means the next Keith Moon, or Geddy Lee, but I know just enough about playing the drums, and bass to actually play in a band. Even without ambitions of unleashing my real-life rock star, those games were the best the genre had to offer.
Years after the genre collapsed, Harmonix is back with a downloadable music game devoid of the peripherals that defined the Rock Band experience in the first place. Is Rock Band Blitz enough to breathe new life to the genre, or is it way too late to the party?
The Walking Dead series has been my biggest surprise of 2012. Going into it with no real interest in the franchise, or adventure games, its first two instalments have taken me on an emotional roller coaster unlike any other game has before. Based on what I’d seen of the trailer for The Long Road Ahead, I had concerns that the base premise wouldn’t be as interesting as the one in episode 2. However, all my fears were quickly quashed as revelation after revelation took place.
Episode 2 of The Walking Dead video game series picks up three months after the events of the first. Having found temporary solace in a run-down motel, Lee and his group of survivors find themselves facing off against a new threat: hunger. With tensions running high, and supplies running low, a pair of potential guardian angels appear. In exchange for some fuel, this duo of survivors are willing to provide your group with shelter, and rations from their supposedly large supply. Could this be too good to be true?
Arc System Works, and Atlus are poised to take the fighting game community by storm with their fighting game spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona franchise. Persona 4 Arena has already built up a ton of buzz in the community, and it would not surprise me in the least to see this game become a tournament staple over the next few months.
As someone who has 0 interest in the RPG, and as someone who has a history of sucking at Arc System Works’ previous fighting game efforts, I approached Persona 4 Arena with a bit of caution. Having just reviewed it for Splitkick, it’s good to know first-hand that my concerns did not come to fruition. If you want to read my full review for it, head over to Splitkick and check it out now!
Toting an electric whip, a mean “Sparta” kick, and a potty mouth that would make Howard Stern blush, style is the name of the game in Bulletstorm. Taking heavy cues from Devil May Cry, you’re constantly encouraged, and rewarded for creatively dispatching your foes. In one minute, you could be lassoing enemies towards you, kicking them in the air, and shooting them in slow motion as they fly away. In the next, you could be steering sniper bullets around obstacles to hit enemies in the butt – a 50-point feat that the game aptly calls “Rear Entry”.
Though style is at the forefront of the experience, there’s more to Bulletstorm than its overboard machismo. In fact, it’s this excess swagger that’s gotten everyone in this mess in the first place.
Zombies, as depicted in almost all forms of fiction, are simple creatures. Featuring great strength, limited intelligence, and (in most cases) limited mobility, their sole objective is to consume the flesh of the living. For this very reason, I don’t find zombies themselves all that interesting.
It’s what happens around the zombies that creates fictional magic. From The Night of the Living Dead, to Abraham Lincoln: Zombie Hunter, to Plants vs. Zombies, creators have found a number of different ways to leverage their simplistic traits into amazing experiences. For The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day, the zombies are a catalyst for a far more interesting tale of human survival under apocalyptic circumstances.
Save for the most recent installment, the modern-day Ninja Gaiden series has been held in high regard among critics and the gaming populous. Despite the positive word-of-mouth, I hadn’t played a Ninja Gaiden game since the Ninja Gaiden II on the NES. I’ll never forget how brutally hard the NES games were, and I heard the new games were equally challenging. As someone who isn’t much of a masochist when it comes to video games, this just didn’t sound like something up my alley.
However, when I came across Ninja Gaiden II for dirt cheap at a Blockbuster closing down sale, I decided to outside of my comfort zone to give this one a shot.
Though you’ve probably never heard of it, Binary Domain was a landmark title for Sega (in a bad way). As Sega’s most recent boxed release, it’s failure at retail contributed to substantial worldwide layoffs and a major restructuring of its publishing strategy.
Was it a bad game? Not from what I’ve read from the reviews, and general discussion on the internet. Because I was looking for something to scratch my Vanquish itch, I had this on my list of games to pick up when it hit $20. Though the game isn’t very old, it didn’t take long for it to drop to that price in my area. Is it the Japanese Hamburger I was looking for?
In Third Person 