Goombd Played! - Pinball FX2 Vengeance and Virtue DLC

I haven't been making much of a secret how much I enjoy Pinball FX2. Even though I completely suck at pinball, this is one of my favorite games of 2011. So it comes as no surprise that its latest piece of DLC, dubbed Vengeance and Virtue, is such a ringer.

Following in the footsteps of previous Marvel Pinball releases, Vengeance and Virtue features Marvel Comics themed tables for you to play in Pinball FX2, each with its own unique hero motif and gameplay style. This time, we get to bump some pins with Ghost Rider, the X-Men, Thor and... Moon Knight. The first three choices are easily solid picks in the Marvel Comics pantheon of heroes, but Moon Knight? You're probably scratching your head over this just as I did, right?


Well, once you start playing, you'll start loving this table, just as I did. Moon Knight is a fairly obscure character for any casual comic reader but his table is anything but. In fact, it's probably the best one out of the bunch. Not only did it get an unique intro 'cutscene' but it also sports some of the fastest designs out of all Pinball FX2 tables. It makes for some crazy high scores and it's an easy table to pick up in terms of doing missions, too. A very varied mission selection also makes this table a blast. Midnight Man, you're absolutely insane!

The other tables in Vengeance and Virtue are pretty good too. Thor follows the more contained and more straight forward style seen in the core Pinball FX2 tables, with steep ramps that require a lot of speed and less careful aiming. In terms of presentation, it's extremely flashy but in terms of actual pinball, it's probably the least exciting out of the new tables.

Professor Xavier's crew, the X-Men, are given their own table and it's much like the previously released Fantastic Four level. Villains show up in just about every corner to hinder your progress. For instance, Magneto uses his trademark powers to slow your ball down and Blob shields certain ramps with his... uh... glut. Out of the new tables, this is probably the most visually busy and distracting one, but it still packs a punch.

Ghost Rider's trip to a hellish carnival is easily Vengeance and Virtue's most unique table. Heck, it features a freaking shotgun that is often used during gameplay and that's a big plus in my pinball book. In terms of crazy ramps, this table has plenty to offer right out of the launcher, with a very different way of scoring a skill shot that mimics old carnival ball toss games with the ball you're putting into play. The motorcycle dare devil nature of the Ghost Rider character is also explored in the lane and ramp design, that provide fast turns and some crazy jumps.

If you've been enjoying what Zen Studios has been dealing out in terms of Pinball FX2 DLC, you'll find a lot to like in Vengeance and Virtue. They explored the darker corners of Marvel Comics and came out with some of my favorite tables. If you're new to Pinball FX2, this is one of the best DLCs so far and a great chance to start playing.

Now I want to read up on Moon Knight! Who would've thunk he'd make such a great theme for pinball? |7

Goombd Played! - Akimi Village

It's the PlayStation 3's time to start building! Akimi Village was released a while ago and if you're not familiar with the name, think of Keflings. Still not ringing a bell? NinjaBee's Xbox Live Arcade franchise started out with one of the first games to use the dreaded Xbox avatars, A Kingdom for Keflings. Last year, we got to mess around with its sequel, A World of Keflings, which carried over all of the best from the resource gathering and building world had to offer.

Akimi Village is pretty much the same type of game. After choosing your character, whether it's a boy or a girl, you're given the task of aiding a race of 'very' little people with the rebuild and cleaning of their world. There's a group of core materials you have to start out harvesting and from there, a handful of blueprints to build from. Each building carries an unique function. Some help you generate more villagers to help with the gathering of these materials, while others, for instance, help turn stored items into other types of building blocks that you'll use for different constructions.


Just like the 'Keflings games, your goal in Akimi is to build every single blueprint. There's no particular challenge to this, in the 'challenge' sense of what games have come to accustom us to watch out for. You're never put in any danger nor will you have to fight any enemies. Building and harvesting are the only goals, and even though they might seem simple and crude at first, they're not.

This is a ridiculously busy game. You won't feel like you're aimlessly playing it at any point thanks to a very well paced style of gameplay. There's always a new goal to strive for and just like 'Keflings, you're always treated to some very funny writing and an extremely colorful visual presentation.


Sadly, though, some of the gameplay improvements introduced in A World of Keflings did not carry over to Akimi. You're not given the option to move buildings that you construct nor are you able to guide workers into helping you complete blueprints on their own. The interface is also a little hard to figure out, due to small and sometimes similar looking icons that are confusing to pick out from.

Regardless of some of these issues, if you're in the hunt for an easy going game that doesn't treat you like a 6 month old toddler but isn't as complex as a military strategy simulator, Akimi Village might just suit you. It's a fun download that should take you about nine hours to get through and after you're done saving a world, you can take your gathered resources and help other players online save their own, if you so wish. |7

Goomb Played! - The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

It's a wonder how a game like The Witcher 2 manages to be gritty and positively beautiful at the same time. Polish developer CD Projekt Red's newest role-playing game is set in a gorgeous fantasy world, lush with details, a strong lore and absolutely amazing characters.

No one is a hero in Geralt's group of acquaintances, including himself. He lost his memories and the only thing he's sure of is that there's trouble brewing and somehow his order, of the witchers, is involved. It all starts when a serial king murderer strikes where Geralt happened to be. Framed for the regicide, he's forced to prove his innocence and avert a global crisis.

For an RPG, The Witcher 2 plays extremely simple. You got three "evolution trees" which you can follow when you level up, in the form of alchemy, sword fighting and magic. Each of them is tied to an aspect of combat but also influence other key abilities, like crafting and the making of potions. Potions work differently and are only used before fights, when you enter Geralt in a meditation state, where not only you can drink these concoctions but also mix them.

The fighting part of the game is very basic and easy to handle. The Witcher 2 turns into more of a hack and slasher, although not as involved as God of War, for instance. Depending on your choice as a 'spec', your prowess with swords, magic or status effects is improved. Fights can quickly turn hairy since enemies swarm you at about every chance they get.

Role-playing is probably the best aspect of Garelt's adventure, thanks to some excellent dialogue and interesting quests. Sidequests are far from the usual fetch and destroy a certain number of enemies and manage to be important to the overall story. Sure, you will run into RPG tropes here and there, like the repeated monster contracts but even those are relatively varied and make use of more than just 'kill kill kill'.

A great presentation isn't the sole reason to jump into any game, although it helps a lot. The Witcher 2 is an absolutely gorgeous game. Environments are colorful and feel alive, even when you're sneaking through a cave. Geralt himself looks rugged, as he should look, like an aged warrior that's been on the wrong side of many blades, with scars to prove.

Music is superb as well. The score manages to be epic at just the right spots in the story or during action scenes and subtle at softer, calmer moments. When a character opens his or her mouth to speak, you're treated with very well performed voice acting. Geralt sounds just as gruff as he looks and dwarves... well, they sound like dwarves. Did I mention dwarves are the kinkiest race on the planet?

They sure are, thanks to how of a more mature tone CD Projekt Red takes in this game. Dialogue more than often turn sexual, with the constant use of the word "plowing", The Witcher 2's version of "frak". You get the drift, right? There's more than one instance of actual sexual situations too. While not nearly as intense as was hyped during this game's development, they are treated in a far less awkward manner than in a game like Mass Effect nor as say, interactive as God of War. They work more as cutscenes than anything though and don't particularly affect the story at all.

It's worth mentioning that this is an open ended game that features more than one path during the story. These forks in the road work a lot better than the usual karma options and they actually show unique facets of the story. The Witcher 2 demands a second playthrough as soon as you set your controller down if you wish to know the full story or see where a different choice in allegiance can take you, for instance.

The Witcher 2 is one hell of an RPG. While the combat can get mindless and cheap at some points, the story and atmosphere are just incredible. It's the type of game that will grip you. Simply put, if you got the machine to run this, you shouldn't miss it. |10

Goombd Watched! - The Walking Dead 'Mid' Season 2

When I think of zombie related fiction, my mind is always drawn to the human struggles. That's probably due to my "formation" in the genre, that comes from watching the George A. Romero school of movies, which for the beginning half were strongly tied to the deterioration of the human mind during a crisis and less of a bloody fest.

Thanks to that and my liking of comics - I'm no collector, but I dabble in them from time to time - it was an easy transition to make when I first discovered and started reading the 'The Walking Dead' book. At that point, the series was already well underway and thanks to the excellent pacing and captivating nature of Robert Kirkman's narrative, it didn't take me long to get up to speed on the story.

It was just as easy to transition to the TV show. Season one had less episodes and the comics' story was somewhat retold in a different manner. Some characters were completely new and the survivor group movement relatively different than what the book told, a big plus in my opinion. Friends were pretty divided, though. Some hated the fact that the show was so slow at points, or the lack of deaths and violence.

That sentiment carried over and grew quite a bit on season two. There were more episodes for the producers to work with and they obviously took their time building up the impending group conflict for the second half of the season, with characters evolving and adapting to the situation in a slower and more deliberate pace and for some viewers, that's just dull.


I'm not torn up about it nor would I go out of my way to try to change their minds. For me, the show is working extremely well, taking bits and pieces from the original source and coming up with its own identity. I never wanted to see frame-to-frame from the comic in film form at any point. That'd be just boring for this show. Sure, I'd love to see some things from the book pop up here and there, especially after the farm setting is done away with (if ever, in season two) but unlike die-hard fans that grope and moan about every single little detail that's changed in a comic book adaptation, I'm happy with what's being done with The Walking Dead.

Will people get what they want in the second half of this season? More guts and gore, tension and deaths? Probably. Would I like to see it done every single episode? Certainly not. This is a show that should go beyond just seeing people getting torn to bits all the time. I'm fine with the concept of grindhouse existing for horror flicks, but those are just that. Flicks. This is a TV show, it spans for much longer and there are only so many ways the same thing can happen before it just becomes dull. And so far, The Walking Dead is anything but that.

February 12th can't come soon enough!

Goombd Played! - Jurassic Park The Game

It is said that some things are just better left extinct. In the game of videogames, certain styles of game design can fall under that category. One in particular was born in the 1980s, with Dragon's Lair as its shining example. It showed how colorful and well animated games could look but how boring and non-interactive they could be as well. You could only guide the knight Dirk by pointing which way he should head and depending on your choice, he either lived or died. Since then, we haven't gotten hardly any games fully based on that concept. It was pretty much dead and buried after a few other disastrous attempts a few scant years later.

What we now know as QTE (quick time event) can somewhat be associated with that concept, although very rarely do we get to play games that are solely reliant on it. It's usually used as just a gimmick, a break between action scenes that more often than not tends to be plain irritating, demanding precise timing and in most cases, brain dead button mashing.

So it came as a surprise when Telltale Games, the people behind episodic games like Sam & Max and most recently Back to the Future The Game, announced that they had acquired the rights to the Jurassic Park film and would be making an adventure game that would exclusively use this sort of mechanic instead of giving direct control of characters on screen. The resulting works mostly well but isn't rid of a few annoying problems.

Similarly to Back to the Future The Game, Telltale's pick for a niche to place the story for Jurassic Park The Game is rather interesting. Rather than being a sequel to the somewhat lackluster Jurassic Park film franchise, Telltale's game is centered around a can of shaving cream. That can of shaving cream. Barbasol. The one Dennis Nedry, Wayne Knight's obnoxious computer hacker character from the first Jurassic Park movie tried to smuggle dinosaur embryos out of the island in but ultimately failed. His contact decides to send two agents into Isla Nublar in order to recover the prize and that's where the game begins.

Scenes play out and don't give you direct control on what's going on with the characters and the situations they are placed in. Instead, you're given the task of correctly (and timely) pressing the buttons shown, like a quick combination of controller buttons and analog stick tilts. For most of the time, the intensity and demand of what you have to press fits with the chaos that's going on, while in others, it's just frustratingly obtuse.


Telltale has managed to convey a sense of immediacy for what happens to the game's characters into the indirect controls you're given to do but sometimes the game's interface manages to do a great job getting in your way. The graphics and character animation do a great job of showing emotion (mostly of desperation, as it's to be expected when dinosaurs are trying to eat everyone) but in some instances, amidst all the action it becomes extremely difficult to see some of the prompts or get the timing wrong due to how often the indications on screen become obscured by the camera that is often shifting positions and moving along a predetermined path.

The timing in which to press the buttons was my most frustrating issue of contention with this game. I rarely reached a point where I just wanted to give up, due to how well the check-pointing works in this game, although some people might get turned off after seeing their unlucky fictitious friend get eaten due to a mistaken or missed input. Regardless of how forgiving the action is for most of the game, allowing a fair number of mistakes before slapping you with a game over screen, it's still disappointing to see it happen instantly in some of the more exciting parts of the game, in "insta-kill" mode.

If you persevere, though, you'll be rewarded with a surprisingly well developed story that is delivered in the confines of this four part episodic series. Telltale once again manages to develop an exciting plot that plucks an overlooked element off the movies, all the while creating their own original elements that perfectly fit in the mythos of Jurassic Park, something that both of the movie sequels failed to do. Two other islands? Really, Mr. Spielberg?

While it's a little annoying that you don't get to guide much of what happens in the story, it's mostly up to you to uncover additional tidbits of background information on characters and the Jurassic Park canon. They're hidden behind certain dialogue choices and button prompts that can be easily missed if you aren't looking. The overall script is set, though. Certain character deaths, for instance, are written from the beginning and happen regardless of how perfectly you execute action sequence button prompts. The way you get to certain points in the plot can somewhat differ but it's nothing dramatic or short of a few extra bumps and awkward falls on the way to an objective.

It'd be easy to classify Jurassic Park The Game as passable if the scope of comparison was focused on action adventure games like Uncharted. But as an adventure game that strips the 'point' out of 'point and click' and replaces the 'click' with button prompts, analog stick movements and a few cases of insane button mashing, it works relatively well. You're still picking dialogue choices, examining items and solving a half of a handful of puzzles, even though most of what you do is firmly strapped in on a story that moves along a pre-determined track. Jurassic Park The Game might not be one of Telltale's best titles, but it's certainly the most unique of the bunch. |6

Goombd Played! - A World of Keflings DLC: It Came From Space

The concept of playing a game with absolutely no confrontations and violence might seem foreign to many videogame fans. Killing and being victorious over your opponent always seems to be the goal of just about 90% of all games. Luckily for us, the 10% left sometimes turn out to be amazing. That's the case for Ninja Bee's A World of Keflings.

I already made a case about how much I love that game a while back, when it was released as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion that Microsoft likes to make during U.S summertime. It's an absolute blast putting together your own towns and not have to worry about anyone coming around to demolish it. It was truly a "busy busy bee" game.


So it comes as no surprise that we're getting to play a set of DLC for that game, a little more than a year after its release. It Came From Space features a whole new set of blueprints to build, a new environment to pluck resources from and a handful of crazy characters to laugh at. As the name suggests, this DLC is centered on aliens. They crashed on the Kefling world and lo and behold, it's up to you (mainly, your Xbox Live avatar) to help them get back home.

Luckily for your E.T friends, all of the materials they need happen to have come along with their ship. You'll get things going by putting some of them to work and harvesting the base items like bars of radioactive materials, wood and clay but soon enough, just like in the original game, you're steered towards turning these into more specialized materials.



The gameplay structure It Came From Outer Space follows is right on with what we saw in 'Keflings. Those base materials are harvested into a single building at first and from there, you expand and build new structures as objectives are met and blueprints are learned. This time around, though, there's a catch. Some of these buildings are living beings and can be mutated into other types of structures. This might sound pretty complicated, but it's really not. You basically build the core structure and feed it a carrot filled with alien mutagen. Mutated buildings can then produce other types of much needed raw materials.

Another new type of unit introduced in this DLC is the robotic minion, which already starts out at high levels on just about every job you could put him to. And you'll need to put him to work right away since he's the only one capable of handling the nuclear materials and junk parts required by your schematics.


As you might have picked up by looking at these screenshots, there's only one environment to play in It Came From Outer Space. It's relatively smaller than the usual A World of Keflings stage and takes about as long to play through as well. You're likely to take around 2 hours to complete all the objectives and get every achievement, but there are incentives to keep building even after the story is done.

There are plenty of good reasons to pick this new DLC pack up. It's charming to no end, brimming with the sort of personality we've seen in previous Ninja Bee games and the pokes at science fiction tropes are hilarious. The writing is quick and witty and just like A World of Keflings, it's very reverential to pop culture and loves to make fun (in a fun way) of the tenets of videogames. It Came From Space is a great excuse to pop A World of Keflings back in, no probes abo...er... doubt about it! |8

Goombd Played! - Swarm

If you've grown tired of keeping your Lemmings alive all the time, Swarm might turn things around for you. In Hothead Games' departure from the adventure genre, you're rewarded for being sadistic. In fact, the more evil you are to your poor, hapless blue minions, the bigger, baddest, best score chain you'll get. Points are good, right?

Yes they are. You'll need plenty of those. Swarm's levels are only unlocked once a minimum cap is reached. Points are earned by collecting strands of DNA, killing Swarmites (it's what these lovable blueish guys are called) in creative/evil/fun ways and by being quick about it. Things aren't that straightforward though. Traps and puzzles liter your way and thanks to a smart implementation of direct controls, there's hardly a point where the game itself turns out to be an obstacle.

Surmounting these pebbles on the road, though, is another matter. There are various ways to use your little army of 50 Swarmites. They aren't as useless as Lemmings that simply walk one way or the other. They're obedient. You give them an order, they do it. Want them to stack on top of each other? Done. Jump over a chasm? Pff, easy. All these actions are mapped to a few button combinations and are unlocked the further you progress in the game.

Swarm is the type of puzzler that likes to throw new things your way every so often. New moves become available as you make your way through new stages. You're also awarded with medals the more you murder your blue victims too. These medals can then be upgraded the more kills you achieve on a particular style. Unlocking all is a matter of thoroughly exploration and discovery, and it's probably one of Swarm best features.


I'll admit (admissions are a part of Goombd!, after all) - I like to earn achievements and trophies. I don't particularly go out of my way to win them, though. I dig hunting when they make the game more fun and interesting, which is the case for Swarm. Going after them is an added layer of challenge and will demand nearly perfect results on all stages.

It also helps that Swarm is a pretty game. The Swarmites look like "claymated" and deaths would look adorable if they weren't so gruesome. Okay, I'll say that they are really darn cute. You never see any blood, though, so if you're into that, you won't find it here. You will, however, see plenty of blue. All over the damn screen.


Swarm is the type of game that could easily take you just a few hours to make it to the credits. That's just the beginning of it all, though. Getting all medals, awards, best scores and unlockables can easily quadruple that amount of time, if you are looking for replayability. And who wouldn't? Swarm is a blast. Or a jump in a vat of acid. Or a blue-tinted barbecue. You get the drift! |8

Goombd Played! - Eufloria

If you're anything like me, you're awful at real-time strategy games, the RTS, like all the cool kids like to call them. Maybe it's due to the unrelenting nature of having to make split second decisions, the stress of having thousands of virtual lives in your hands at all times. I'm just bad at them. I take too long to do the right thing at the right time. When it's time to attack, I'm still building my base, carefully placing my units around the base and when it's time to turtle up, hey, I'm mounting a thousand marine death-to-the-scourge single file attack force.

Regardless of what type of RTS player you are, you ought to give Eufloria a go. I might be wrong when I call this game a RTS, but it's the closest comparison I could muster. It's on a league of its own, in more than a single aspect, really.



You're not in control of armies of orcs or anything that you might associate with war. Helping along a plant empire colonize asteroids is Eufloria's push for a story. Starting out with little seedlings, you're tasked with exploring space and finding patches in which to sink the roots of your civilization in, quite literally. Early into your journey, though, you discover that not all is quite as it seems when opposing seeds races start competing for fertile ground.

Despite its incredibly simple art style and gameplay, Eufloria packs a lot of depth. It slowly takes you through the core elements of getting a game going, like planting a tree so more seeds are produced. From there, after a few slowly paced missions, you're in control of hundreds of units. Unlike other games that have you micromanaging lots of things at once, though, Eufloria's simple and extremely effective control options make it easy to keep track of just about everything. All it takes for an order to go through is a click or prolonged drag of a mouse (or in my case a single or extended PlayStation 3 button press) and off a group of seeds goes or a tree gets planted.


Due to the easy going but at the same time fast nature of Eufloria, even when I failed I never got frustrated and felt the urge to give up. It's incredibly quick to get things going again, rebuild an "army" and try to take on a challenge again. And if you don't think things are moving fast enough, a speedier game option is just a menu away too.

Aside from the story mode, you have the option to dive into special challenge levels that work like tests for everything you learned. These rank you in a variety of ways, not just for how many points you score, but for how fast you finish the stage and how efficiently you've done so, counting how many units you've built and lost.


There isn't an option to play this online, though, so you're locked with dealing against a moderately calm and pacifist computer controlled enemy. The A.I. won't completely destroy you by attacking as soon as you discover an opposing asteroid but it's not a pushover either. Maybe it's due to how bad I am in this sort of game, but I found myself having just the 'right' amount of challenge with Euflori and for that I'm thankful. I can appreciate a huge hardcore RTS game like SHOGUN2 that offers so many options, tactics and the whatnot, where I can just about finish the earliest of portions in a campaign mode before getting overwhelmed.

I'm just happy to claim that I have a RTS game I can enjoy without getting stressed over the many aspects of managing an army. I can simply click away and point my little friends towards an objective, hoping that they'll be successful. In the middle of all the explosions, deaths, blood and gore that we're so used to seeing with games nowadays, a "little" and simple" game like Eufloria has a reserved spot in my list of favorites any day. |8

Goombd! Played - Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road DLC

Unlike the title might suggest, in Fallout New Vegas' newest piece of downloadable content, you're hardly ever alone. Lonesome Road picks up right after Old World Blues, where you discovered that you are not the only Courier in the Mojave desert. Courier Six, the first person approached with the task of delivering the Platinum Chip and who refused to do so, is hot on your trail for mysterious reasons.

It all begins after you get transmission from Six and are sent to the depths of the Divide through a conveniently placed entranced in the middle of the wasteland. Much like previous DLC, you're not allowed to take any of your party members along. The trip is hardly solitary though, since as soon as you get to the first area of the Divide, you meet an eyebot named ED-E, that much to your surprise, acts a lot like another ED-E you might have met during your journey through the Mojave.


Much of Lonesome Road revolves around discovering the reason why you've been brought there. You come in contact with Courier Six rather early on and he hardly gives any clue about why you're there, let alone how to find him. You do, however, run into a crap ton of active nuclear warheads, Deathclaws and irradiated mutants who must all perish in the name of Six.

This DLC goes so far as to give you a special gun that activates those warheads in order to clear the path through all the rubble in the Divide, along with a few new pieces of gear to don and fashion on your way back to the Wasteland. Red Glare is a new type of rocket launcher that has the added bonus of being upgradeable. ED-E can also receive updates if you're thorough in your exploration and can manage to find his fallen eyebot friends scattered around. The best part about upgrading the little flying hunk of metal is that it all transfers to your original ED-E party member once you travel back to the main game.


The best part of Lonesome Road that I found to be extremely rewarding, besides the smartly written story and dialogue, that are not as heavy in delivery as Old World Blues, is how your actions in Divide play a pivotal role in the main New Vegas campaign. None of the previous downloadable packs provoked consequences in the Mojave, aside from giving you exclusive pieces of gear, but depending on your choices in particular parts of your visit to the Divide, your main Mojave quest might be deeply influenced.

I'm talking extermination here - things that can create ripples in your New Vegas experience. This is an awesome part of Lonesome Road that makes it worth playing through and to put an end to a four part story that began way back in Dead Money, where I for one hardly thought they would reconnect story-wise in any way. I will go so far to suggest that you give this a go right in the middle of your main New Vegas experience in order to see how the hell these consequences play out in the story. You also run into recordings made by Six as he explored the areas covered in the previous DLCs that tie into and help carve out a personality for this enigma of a character.


If you enjoyed New Vegas, there's no reason not to give any of the four DLC packs a try. As a combined experience, New Vegas' pieces of downloadable content managed to deliver a much more solid overall story than say Fallout 3's, and that's saying a lot, considering how much I liked those back then. |8

Goombd! Played - Spelunker HD

It was weird playing Spelunker as a kid. The little guy I controlled felt like a super weak version of Super Mario. Geez, he could hardly take a fall! Thanks to that, my 6 year old patience level just gave up on the guy and I moved on to bigger and better games. 20-some odd years later, Tozai Games brought back Spelunker in somewhat glorious HD and I decided to give the explorer another chance.

I find it extremely easy to fault Spelunker HD with not trying to break out of the original game's mold, but that would be too easy and boring to do in a write-up. Instead, I gave the game a chance to challenge me and heck, it sure did. Not exactly in the traditional challenging way most games do nowadays but with how weak the main character is. There's a steep level of challenge with just keeping the poor guy alive. The smallest misstep kills him instantly as well as microscopic pebbles falling from the ceiling or... ok, let's just cut it out. He dies thanks to just about anything.

Even so, Spelunker HD still manages to bring a certain level of nostalgic charm. That's not thanks to the high definition makeover given to the original's blocky 8-bit graphics. The new looks work well in stills but they just feel weird in motion. The character animation throws me off during jumps and just frustrates me to no end.

But let's just talk about how the game actually plays. Spelunker is all about how far you can make underground at a time. Air is limited and the little spelunker is constantly harassed by ghosts, bats and even fellow explorers who want to get to the treasures before you. Thankfully, I was able to discover a way to somewhat save my progress the further I made down the levels through the nifty save state feature but that only took me so far. Lives ran out and I kept dying. That's how difficult and demanding Spelunker is. It's a fun but very punishing game if you're not careful.

Bringing friends along might improve your odds. Sadly, I was unable to try that out for long since there's practically no one playing online and none of my friends actually own the game. If you do manage to drag a few friends along, you can have up to four simultaneous spelunkers running on screen at once and I'm sure that can be very fun and chaotic. I did find myself enjoying the sole time I was able to find a soul to play with randomly online.

Spelunker HD is a tough, challenging and extremely frustrating game that can be rewarding if you give it the patience and dedication it demands. It's extremely rewarding every time you make it to a new area further down along the earth. If you're the sort of guy who enjoys this feeling, Spelunker HD might just be your cup of tea. |7

Goombd! Played - Renegade Ops

If you are remotely interested in explosions, chaos and death, then Renegade Ops is the game for you. It gives off that G.I Joe vibe as soon you press start, with an extremely cheesy story that takes you to a few different locales around the globe. All the while, you'll be tasked with destroying just about everything around you. And you'll love it.

Renegade Ops plays a lot like your typical top down dual stick shooter and it does it brilliantly. It instantly reminded me of an old Konami arcade game called Jackal, where you control a little jeep and rescue prisoners of war. There's so much in common between both games that the first level 'Ops has you saving civilians that were captured by an enemy general.



Also, similarly to Jackal, the difficulty is way up there in this game. Even on the easiest setting, you're gonna need to be mindful of enemies and obstacles along the way. It's a good thing there are so many options to pick from in terms of weapon power-ups and character customization. There are a handful of team members to pick from, each with their own set of strengths. I mostly stuck with the artillery barrage chick, for obvious reasons. Hey, I like my girls well armed.

Anyway, if things get too hard, you can always bring a friend or three along for the ride. And if things weren't chaotic enough when playing by yourself, prepare to be bombarded in multiplayer.


Seriously, this game has some brilliant explosion effects. In fact, the entire game is beautiful to look at. Even though the story is carried out in the already cliché 'moving comic' style, it's very well drawn and thanks to a cheese ball cast of voice actors, even if you don't follow the logical minefield of a story, you'll get a chuckle or two out of their performances.

I absolutely loved this game through and through. It's just difficult enough to be rewarding but don't expect a walk in the park if you decide to tackle hardcore mode, where you'll need to be on your toes at every corner if you want any hope you making it to the end. Renegade Ops is easily one of the best downloadable shooters around, period. |10

Goombd! Played - Total War: SHOGUN 2

I've always been a tad intimidated by the Total War series. Honestly, who wouldn't be, at first glance? It's one of the most complex real-time strategy franchises around. One that has spawned a lot of entries and garnered millions of fans around the world. This time we're sent back to Japan for another go at unifying the country under one banner, with plenty of war, swords and of course, honor.

Under a similar engine that powered previous Total War game, Napoleon, SHOGUN 2 is absolutely gorgeous to look at. But don't get distracted by its impressive locales and scale, underneath the pretty visuals lies a lot of complex micromanagement and strategy creation.


The strategy comes into play rather early in the already lengthy single player campaign. SHOGUN 2 gives you a small window of time for you to familiarize yourself with the controls and interface before it kicks you off the boat and into the heat of battle. Things start off rather intensely as you're tasked with taking back villages that were conquered by a rival shogun and quickly move on to taking out said enemy.

Every battle plays out differently, even if you replay levels. The artificial intelligence that powers the enemy side is relatively smart, considering the number of units it has to handle, which can easily surpass the hundreds very early on in the game. Your own subordinates usually know where to go once you point out your orders, but will sometimes get stuck in more complex geometries depending on the map, like hills or steeper inclines. Thankfully it's easy to keep track of units when you're able to simply pause the battle and look around for stragglers.


If you grow tired of battling by yourself, SHOGUN 2 offers a pretty hefty set of multiplayer options to take your conquering band of samurai online, by either dropping a truce flag and recruiting a fellow warlord for a cooperative campaign or head-to-head skirmishes. I was naturally often defeated by more skilled shogun online, but there's truly a lot for the dedicated leader if they get tired of fighting against the computer.

Sega's been doing a great job promoting the Total War games and it wouldn't surprise me if SHOGUN 2 continues to receive improvements in the form of DLC for a long while. This is a huge game and it certainly calls for more expansions and options in the future. Overlord says so. He grows restless. |9

Goombd! Played - BloodRayne Betrayal

If there was ever a time when I'd stumbled upon a game that very few others only pushed aside only for it to turn out amazingly well, this certainly would be it. BloodRayne Betrayal is an exciting reinvention of the franchise and a welcome addition to the 'Games That If You Squint Look A Lot Like Castlevania' (GTIUSLALLC, for "short"). Developer WayForward has done a great job reinventing the moribund character from the early 2000s with a quick, rewarding and absolutely gorgeous 2D action platformer.

Let's get this out of the way right up front: the thing that might turn some people off is how tough Betrayal can get at times. The platforming sections are extremely difficult at times, merciless in nature, that force you to retry until you get them perfectly. That's easily the game's weakest point, while the fighting is its strongest.


I've never been one to love combo systems in games but I easily got into this particular one. Rayne is pretty nimble and deadly, with a lot of attacks at her disposal that make use of both melee and ranged weapons. Enemies are very pattern based and thanks to the fluidity of the animation, it is very possible to see the anticipation and tells of their incoming attacks. Early on you're thrown into a fight that teaches you the very basic of fighting and that's about all you get in terms of a tutorial.

The move set you start the game with is the same you'll be enjoying the credits roll with. There is no upgrade system to speak of, outside of hidden collectibles that can either boost your maximum health or the amount of bullets you can carry. This means that although extremely flexible, the combat can get repetitive if you find a good combination to crutch on during the game. Granted, the further you progress, the tougher enemies get but there was never a point where my go-to attacks did not succeed.


That said, stages are meant to be replayed in order to attain a higher mission score and rating. These are tied to how well and quickly you dispatch enemies. A timer pops up at every encounter and the higher that is when you kill the last foe in the group is what gets tallied to the overall score, up to the incredibly difficult 'S' rank.

I'd easily recommend BloodRayne Betrayal to fans of slash 'em all games. There are some spots where the platforming difficulty bumps the frustration factor off the scale but those are few and far between. And thanks to the fun combat and beautiful presentation, they're blemishes that are easy to forgive. |8