Game Room: May Roundup

Author:
SI Staff
Publish date:
Jun 3, 2010

Game Room: May Roundup

Skate 3

True, the skate franchise has kick-flipped Tony Hawk to the curb, but skate 3 -- the game's third release in four years -- borders on overkill. Instead of major gameplay upgrades, skate 3 focuses on teamwork and social networking. You can now build your own team of skaters -- either with AI or other gamers online -- and complete challenges as a crew to help develop your own new skate brand. The new "skate.feed" functionality helps you track your friends' custom parks and board graphics online. Gameplay is largely unchanged, except for an Easy Mode that dumbs down the analog stick controls for first-timers. skate 3 upholds the franchise's lofty standards, but the game doesn't feature enough new elements to stand out from the first two builds. Score: 8/10

Split/Second

Split/Second led the racing game charge in May with an over-the-top offering that combines basic racing with amazing, destructible environments. The game is broken into episodes which feature a series of races you must beat in order to advance. As you race, you gain power from drafting and drifting. Doing so charges up the power plays you'll use to trigger environmental attacks against targeted drivers, including an impressive array of small and large set-piece explosions that would put Michael Bay to shame. Meanwhle, you can use a different slate of attacks to open up new routes on the tracks. Adding to the intensity of the races is the ability to avoid many of the attacks coming at you -- if you're a good enough driver. The graphics in the game are vivid and sharp and the sound design is very strong. Multiplayer online is solid as well, though you can only race cars you've unlocked. Score: 9/10

Blur

Next up is Blur , a frenetic racer that features an array of power-ups used to destroy, escape and avoid other drivers. (Car power-ups include items like turbo, missiles, shields and mines.) Career mode involves fighting your way up a ladder of bosses, and each prong features a series of races with varying conditions you must satisfy before taking on the boss. Some are standard races, while others are timed events. Once you beat a boss you get his car, but you'll get plenty of new cars as you advance through the game, which boasts 50 licensed cars and several real-world tracks. Career mode can be extremely challenging even to racing veterans, but the game allows you to easily toggle difficulty if you hit a wall. With 20 racers going head-to-head, multiplayer is a chaotic experience. The sweet spot is team play, where you have more support and fewer targets. The graphics in Blur are good, though the sound effects, especially for the power-ups and car explosions, are excellent. Score: 8/10

Mod Nation Racers

The third quality racer this month is Mod Nation Racers , a classic kart game featuring a dizzying array of character and track customization. Both tools are surprisingly easy to use and can be seamlessly shared on the PlayStation network following the highly successful sharing model of Little Big Planet. The game's refined racing experience centers on tight control, a solid array of power-ups and bright, detailed graphics. As you advance through the career mode you'll be able to level-up attacks, which is a nice -- and addictive -- reward. Online races are limited to 12 karts, but that's plenty to keep the action level high, and the presence of hidden tokens adds great replay value. Score: 9/10

Super Mario Galaxy

Despite its age, the original Super Mario Galaxy remains one of the best titles ever released for the Wii. For those who finished that game, and even for those of you who have yet to plow through the myriad of levels, the sequel has the signature style of perspective-warping gameplay with quite a few wrinkles thrown in. Super Mario Galaxy 2 keeps what the original did best and builds on that. Of course the plot is no surprise: You have to save the Princess! But there are plenty of pleasant additions, starting with ... Yoshi! Mario's little dinosaur friend is featured on many levels and never fails to disappoint. For those of you who enjoyed the transformations in the first game -- Bumblebee Mario and Ghost Mario -- there are a host of new forms for Mario this time around that we won't spoil here. If you like playing with a friend, the Player 2 controls have been enhanced to allow for grabbing and stomping enemies instead of just collecting stars. Simply stated, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a must-have for Wii owners. Score: 10/10

Red Dead Redemption

In Read Dead Redemptio n you play as John Marston, a former outlaw forced to track down his old gang. This classic Western-inspired game takes place at the turn of the 20th century and is set in an open world featuring three massive territories loaded with required story missions and a ton of optional side quests. You'll encounter a big cast of characters as you progress through the game, which is loaded with tons of amazing details and delivers some of the best graphics we've ever seen and some of the best audio to date. The stellar musical score and spot-on voice acting work with the visual elements to create an amazingly immersive experience. Gameplay is very well done when it comes to realistic physics, which makes repetitive tasks like riding your horse around very satisfying. In the game you'll do everything from hunting down outlaws to rustling cattle to fighting in large-scale gun fights. Because it's a sandbox-style game, you can decide if you want to be good or bad as you accumulate Honor and Fame ratings. Multiplayer options are robust, featuring everything from free roam levels, to team death matches, to capture the bag. This deep, detailed game is an early contender for game of the year. Yee haw, pardner! Score: 10/10

3D Dot Game Heroes

3D Dot Game Heroes may sport an unfortunate title, but it more than makes up for that with a tremendous retro gaming experience that's a loving homage to classic adventure/exploration games like The Legend of Zelda . You can start things off by creating a character in the game's cool, signature pixel construction style, or by picking from existing options and jumping right in. You can also get designs from other users online, and there's already some pretty clever ones floating around. In the game, you'll use upgradeable swords, bows, boomerangs and magic to fight your way through hordes of monsters in the wild, dungeons and mazes. When you're not fighting, you'll gather info and shop for necessary items in various villages. The style of the game is a nod to the classic 8-bit era and is further enhanced with retro -- though at times repetitive -- music. The game requires some puzzle solving and some patience, as it's not always clear what you're supposed to do -- but that only adds to the charm. For a game that's less than $40 bucks, you simply can't go wrong adding this to your library. Score: 8/10

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Despite carrying a similar title, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a standalone game, not a tie-in with the current movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time . The game begins with the Prince returning home to visit his brother, upon which the pair release an ancient evil. (The same thing happened in our office last year, but I digress.) Playing as the Prince, you'll benefit from amazing acrobatic abilities and combat skills to run, jump, slide and fight through to the end. Along the way you'll level-up the Prince with some cool combat powers and acquire the ability to temporarily freeze water and rematerialize objects. These elements work together to make the platform and puzzle-solving experience challenging and rewarding. The graphics in The Forgotten Sands are solid, as is the voice acting, but if we're splitting grains of sand, the story could've been a little more engaging. Score: 8/10

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 is based on the current theatrical movie, though the events of the game take place after the events of the film. The story is pretty basic: Someone has stolen Tony Stark's AI sidekick/butler Jarvis and you have to uncover the principles and plot through various missions. You can play using different Iron Man suits, or you can play as War Machine. Either way, you'll fight various robots, tanks and choppers using Iron Man's repulsors (or War Machines' machine guns) and missiles to pave the way. As you progress you can upgrade the weapons systems, though the process to do so is unnecessarily complicated. The graphics are decent but won't blow you away, and the campaign is pretty short. Score: 6/10

Alan Wake

If Stephen King wrote a Silent Hill game, the result would be Alan Wake . The titular character, a moody author suffering from writer's block, finds himself in a small lake town for a vacation that, like all horror novel getaways, finds him being menaced by a "Dark Presence" that takes the form of shadowy dead guys attacking in the woods at night. Bad guys get softened up with light from a flare or flashlight, then shot down with a variety of firearms. The controls are well-tuned and the graphics and sound design compliment the twists and turns of the "Lost"-esque story perfectly. That said, what's up with the almost complete lack of lip sync? The game has numerous, lengthy dialogue sequences and highly-detailed character models, but the conversations look like a poorly-translated kung-fu movie. Score: 8/10