August 16th, 2009 by hylian1

Review by Cronomag

If you had the choice between two meals, which would you choose? Filet mignon or a 1/4 lb burger? Keep that in mind while you read this review for the King of Fighters XII. Ah, yes! King of Fighters is back, and SNK Playmore hopes that this year’s KOF will garner many fighting game fans. Can it accomplish this?

Story: There isn’t much of one. There is a fighting tournament and your combatants have to win the whole thing. That’s about it. It would have been nice if this game had a main antagonist like in previous KOF games, but for some odd reason, SNK decided not to have one in this game. It shouldn’t be a big deal, most fighting game fans don’t play these games for the story anyways.

Graphics: Wow! What were you thinking SNK. The character sprites are noticeably pixelated. In this day and age of high powered gaming consoles, there’s just no excuse for this. You might have to sit back at least ten feet from your tv set if you don’t want to notice the low rez characters. The background visuals are better drawn, but most of them look boring. Only two backgrounds stand out as memorable, the one with the fat ladies sitting at a cafe near the ocean, and the other is the one with the fire background. The other stages are meh! There are also some anime cut scenes that are, again, well drawn but boring. They could have showed some fighting cut scenes, instead all they show is a news report.

Sound: Most of the music in this game is good, it has a metal\rock vibe to it. The grunts, hits, yells, from each character also sound decent. The only issue I have with the sound is that the fight announcer sounds way louder than the rest of the game. This should be no problem, as I’m sure you can change this in the settings options. But come on? Should the fighting announcer be louder than the rest of the game by default?

Gameplay: You have to pick three characters from the available twenty-two. Before each match you can choose the order in which your characters will fight. This is helpful when for instance, you know how one of your characters will matchup with the opponent’s character. The combos seem easy to learn. You wont have any problem in performing three to six hit combos. Longer combos are possible, you just have to spend some time with the game in order to learn them. Special moves and super moves are also in the game, and are generally easy to pull off, provided you are using an arcade stick or the madcatz SFIV gamepad. The regular xbox 360 controller just doesn’t cut it when it comes to fighting games. The game is most enjoyable when playing against someone else in local play. I had no problem when I played online, the game ran smoothly. However, there have been several reports about the game being laggy online to the point where it became unplayable. I guess I just got lucky.

Content: As stated before, this game lacks a main villain. In past KOF games, there was always a final boss that had to be defeated. He was often made so hard and cheap that it often took all three of your characters to take him down. In this game, your final adversaries are three random characters. In past games there were way more characters available. The most notable absence from the game KOF fans will tell you, is Mai. She is an Asian lady who has a huge cleavage, wears a skimpy outfit, and uses fans as weapons. Instead you get Ash, a dude who looks like a chick, oy vey! KOF XII also lacks in stages, there are only six. This game has a practice mode, but in order to pick another character you have to exit to the main menu and pick practice mode again. What a hassle. There is no survival mode! SNK, how can you omit survival mode from your best fighting game franchise. Hopefully you can add this in some future dlc, for free of course. Time attack has been incorporated into the Arcade mode. Every time a match ends, you will be shown the time it took you to beat your opponents. You will then be given an option to restart the level to get a better time if you wish.

So there you have it. This game isn’t terrible. Like a 1/4 lb hamburger, you’ll enjoy it. It has its faults, and SNK will hopefully learn enough from them before KOF XIII. If you are a hardcore KOF fan, then I would recommend this game, but only after a price drop. If you are looking for a good fighting game, get the filet mignon. Get SFV or Blazblue. These are the games that KOF should aspire to be like. Those are 9-10 caliber games. KOF XII? A 7.

June 11th, 2009 by hylian1

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is the direct sequel to 2004’s Chronicles of Riddick on the original Xbox. Athena begins where its predecessor left off, with Riddick lying on a beach at Butcher Bay. Players control Riddick for a short time in this area before all goes black and find themselves locked away on the Dark Athena spaceship. This is where the adventure begins.

Captain Rivas of the Dark Athena has been taking prisoners and using advanced technology to transform them into drones. The drones are controlled by other people via machines spread across the ship. The player’s goal is to escape the Dark Athena and ultimately put an end to Captain Rivas’ evil designs.

Gameplay

Dark Athena offers up some fairly unique aspects to its gameplay and shouldn’t ever be pushed off as being just another FPS (first person shooter) on the 360. The game is relatively short, but its what is offered within this short time span that makes all the difference.

Throughout the game are nice little touches that developer added that makes Dark Athena a more surreal experience. One example is the doors. Anyone familiar with the genre knows that in most fps games, defeating whatever enemies are in a particular room will result in the door to the next area magically opening for the player to continue onward. In Riddick, that is not the case. Instead of taking that simple route, the developers took the time to offer a variety of ways throughout the game. Sometimes you must wait for a Drone to come through a locked door, pick up a use a Drone’s gun to shoot out the glass to the next area, aquire key codes, and even in one point pick up a grenade from a defeated foe to blast through a wall. It’s these small little experiences that helped to shape the game into what it is.

While gunning down Drones is an important part of the game, stealth and hand-to-hand combat is also vital in completing the tasks at hand. Riddick can use the darkness to his advantage and stealthily sneak up on Drones and fatally kill them using his hands or a variety of different weapons such clubs, hair pins, and scalping tools–each of which has its own unique finisher. These items can also be used in hand-to-hand combat rather than just using Riddick’s fists.

Riddick isn’t the only character to control througout the game. In a few sections of the game, players will don machines to take control of Drones and even a giant mecha-robot that fires missiles. These moments add some exra spice to an already incredible game that does so much to begin with.

The only real complaint I honestly have with the game is its lack of variety in enemies. While the Drones can be somewhat more difficult in the later parts of the game, they are basically the only enemies you’ll be fighting. Drones, some soldiers, and a few people in mechanized suits are all Athena offers in this regard. It is still enjoyable to battle them, but it would have been nice if more enemies had been readily available.

Graphics

Visually, Dark Athen manages to hold its own quite well and offers some of the best graphics on the 360 imo. Attention to detail is noticeable from beginning to end and Riddick is near picture perfect in resemblance to his Vin Diesel. Watching the animations when you perform a fatility move on a Drone never gets old and the fire effects from explosions are incredible. Fantastic job done here.

Sound

The sound effects and voice overs in the game are certainly top notch. Vin Diesel is a professional actor and he does an excellent job in lending his voice to a game that he plays a major role in. Hearing the guns fire definately has a realistic feel to it along with the many explosions throughout the game. The screams of your victims are unforgettable as well and will leave you wanting to continue killing them time and time again.

Controls

Flawless. Not a better word for it. The hand-to-hand combat, the shooting, the stealth, and so on all flows smoothly and not a single moment did I have any issues with it whatsoever. Even the jumping and climbing aspects worked perfectly to compliment the game. The developers are definately deserving of praise for managing to keep them feeling incredible and intuitive throughout.

Overall

Overall, Assault on Dark Athena is an unforgettable experience that brings something fresh and unique to a genre filled with so many generic titles. With fantastic gameplay, wonderful visions, great sound effects, controls to die for and even a completely remasters version of the original game, Dark Athena is a title that no one who is a fan of shooters should miss out on.

Score: 9.5/10

March 18th, 2008 by Banjo-Conker

Joanna Dark returns in this prequel to one of the Nintendo 64’s most popular games. But does this Xbox 360 launch title provide the same appeal as the original? Hmm, let’s find out!

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March 8th, 2008 by hylian1

Chances are you may have heard of Kameo: Elements of Power before. Maybe because it’s been getting a lot of attention since it’s unveiling on the Xbox 360, but maybe also because it was a game shown on the back of your Gamecube’s packaging. Yes Kameo originally started out on the Gamecube (rumor has it that Kameo may have even been planned for an N64 release at some point) back before Rare was purchased by Microsoft and after that purchase was made, development of the game continued for the Xbox instead. But in October 2004, one final delay led the way for Rare to turn their focus towards Microsoft’s next gen console that was due out at the end of next year. And that Kameo is the Kameo we have today.

With development time stretching out to nearly 6 years, Kameo has certainly gone through some changes as well. Rare originally planned the game to feature well over a hundred monsters for you to capture, but apparently this idea was far too ambitious and instead Rare focused on polishing up and perfecting less warriors. They kept cutting down the amount of monsters (or warriors as Rare calls them) in the game all the way down to ten. Rare unfortunately even had to cut out an entire warrior element from the game to make the game’s release. Some character and level art was changed over the years, and to be blunt, Kameo has been through development hell. Luckily, in the end Kameo turned out really well. It’s one of the most compelling reasons to pick up a 360, and just one of the best action/adventure games in general. Read more…

March 1st, 2008 by hylian1

Diddy Kong Racing DS is a remake of the original Nintendo 64 hit, Diddy Kong Racing, released in 1997. DKR DS is Rare’s first title on the Nintendo DS and offers practically everything the original did while adding loads of new content and unlockables. But was it enough to warrant a purchase of what could seemingly be the same game released ten years ago? Read on to find out! Read more…