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Rainier's Articles


'N+' (NDS/PSP) - Screens

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - E3 2008 - July 15th

Adding to the successful formula that made N a hit online, N+ will offer equal parts platformer and action gameplay with incredibly fluid animation, fast action, amazing acrobatics and instant playability. N+ embodies the same brisk pick-up-and-play style that has endeared gamers worldwide and improves on the adored flash game with downloadable content, multiplayer components and a built-in level editor.

PSP

Wii Preview - 'Castlevania Judgment'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Eighting
Release Date: Fall 2008

Three-dimensional Castlevania games have always been a bit lackluster than their 2-D counterparts. While Symphonia of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow are considered among the best games on their respective systems, Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: 64 are generally held to be mediocre at best and borderline unplayable at worst. There's just something about the trip into 3-D that makes Castlevania lose its magic. Perhaps this strange curse is what made Konami decide to make the first Wii Castlevania title into something completely different. Castlevania: Judgment

XBLA/PC Preview - 'The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Lucastarts
Developer: Lucasarts
Release Date: Q3 2009

Adventure games are a bit of a niche genre. Compared to many other games, they focus on crafting an interesting and enjoyable story and don't require a tremendous amount of natural skill to play. Some adventure games take themselves incredibly seriously, such as the classic CD-ROM title, Myst, but the titles that are most fondly remembered by gamers are ones that had a sense of humor, such as Grim Fandango and Sam & Max, which are infinitely quotable and fun to replay. The Secret of Monkey Island was

NDS Preview - 'Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

Genre: Adventure
Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
Release: Sept. 2009

City Interactive is a relatively new publisher, especially in North America. While they have been doing PC games since 2002, this is the first year that they've started on consoles with a few games for the Nintendo platforms. Among the games that they demoed at E3 was a DS iteration of their recently established adventure game series, Chronicles of Mystery. The game showed off just enough to potentially be a fun romp through a genre that has earned its resurrection on the Nintendo platforms.

Chronicles of Mystery: Curse

Wii Preview - 'Naruto Shippuden: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

Naruto Shippuden: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3 is a classic 3D fighting game featuring new and improved gameplay mechanics and multiple gameplay modes, 40 3D environments to choose from, including nine completely new stages, over 30 characters, and for the first time, includes Wi-Fi multiplayer capabilities.

NDS Preview - 'Away: Shuffle Dungeon'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Role-Playing Game
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Mistwalker
Release Date: October 2008

Last year at GDC, Hironobu Sakaguchi was at Microsoft's hotel talking up Lost Odyssey. He was seriously jet-lagged and, in response to another reporter's question, mentioned that Mistwalker Games' next project was going to be a DS game. He was promptly hushed by a PR agent.

Away: Shuffle Dungeon is apparently that project, with character design by Sakaguchi and music composed by Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu. Unsurprisingly, it's an RPG; specifically, it's an action-RPG starring a brash young hero named Sword. (The name is meant to

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'Assassin's Creed II'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Release Date: November 17, 2009

The first Assassin's Creed left me a bit cold. It was a visually stunning game with silky-smooth controls and lots of interesting ideas, but it also had enough flaws to be solidly average at best and tedious at worst. I was understandably hesitant when I went to see Assassin's Creed 2 during E3. Fortunately, Assassin's Creed 2 appears to have been designed entirely to counter every almost every criticism leveled against the original game. From the moment the demo began, I found that every

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'BioShock 2'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

BioShock was one of the more interesting games to hit in the past few years. A pseudo-sequel to the cult PC hit System Shock, it combined survival horror and first-person shooter elements in an interesting and exciting way.

PS3/X360 Preview - 'Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2009

Genre: Action Role-Playing
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Release Date: September 15, 2009

It's hard to make a good superhero game but nearly impossible to make a good superhero team game. Characters like Superman, Spider-Man or The Hulk are hard enough to make work when the entire game is focused on them, but trying to put a bunch of heroes into a single game usually leads to iffy results, such as the lackluster Justice League games. The one notable exception to this has been the Activision superhero titles, X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. The two games

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'Dead Space'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Survival Horror
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Electronic Arts
Release Date: October 20, 2008

Survival horror's a genre in transition. It began as a sort of half-assed, 3-D subcategory of adventure games, and while the involved technology changed, many of the tropes didn't. From 1996 to 2006, you were still using tank-style controls to steer some luckless chump through a terrible situation.

Resident Evil 4, while not really horror by any stretch of the imagination, reinvented the genre while also giving action games a good swift kick in the ass. Dead Space is the first post-RE4 survival