Game Room: March Roundup

Author:
SI Staff
Publish date:
Apr 23, 2012

Game Room: March Roundup

MLB 12 The Show

Loading up Sony's baseball simulation every year is like going back to the ballpark for the first time each season. This game looks so good it can give the most cynical baseball fan chills. But photorealistic graphics are everywhere in sports gaming. MLB 12 The Show stands out for bigger and better reasons. First up, cross platform saves. If you have a Vita, you can start a franchise on your console at home, save it, then resume gameplay on the road. It's extremely expensive when you consider what's involved (you'll need a PS3, a copy of the game for the PS3, a Vita and a copy of the game for the Vita), but it's definitely worth the investment if you've already got both a PS3 and a Vita and you can't be away from baseball for more than a few minutes at a time. Pulse Pitching has gotten rid of the throwing meter baseball gamers have grown accustomed to on the mound. Now you have to time your pitches in relation to a growing and expanding pulse meter. It keeps the timing mechanism you're used to, but tweaks it just enough to add a new challenge to every at-bat. The Move motion controller enjoys an expanded role in fielding and pitching this year. Throwing fits naturally with the Move, but moving as a fielder can get tricky. The Move's sensitivity can also be a bit finicky in a game that requires split-second decisions. Besides, this is baseball -- do you really want to be getting any exercise while you're playing? Instead of just focusing on a lot of minor updates to graphics and gameplay modes, Sony added completely new functionality we haven't seen before. The result feels like a totally new baseball game that any serious sport gamer will want in their collection. Score: 9 out of 10

MLB 12 The Show

If you own a PS3 and a Vita, The Show for the Vita is absolutely worth picking up. The cross platform saves make this an unprecedented next-generation portable game: start a franchise at home, keep it going on the road. The Vita's huge screen helps the graphics sparkle, but the screen is good for more than just updated presentation. On the Vita, you can use the rear touch screen to direct throws and run the bases. Just like FIFA, this will take some getting used to, but once you master it, you won't remember playing portable baseball without touch screen functionality. Between the new controls and the cloud saves, MLB 12 The Show on the Vita is versatile enough to keep you busy deep into the dog days of summer. Score: 9 out of 10

MLB 2K12

2K Sports' MLB series has struggled in recent years to compete with Sony's The Show, and this year's edition puts up a solid, if glitchy, game of hardball. Improvements from last year's game are subtle, with minor tweaks to an enjoyable set of play mechanics. The color commentary, in particular, is engaging and often eerily relevant. Still, the game is marred by persistent glitches: balls that teleport, animations that don't interrupt smoothly, an annoying grey box that sometimes won't go away in the batter-pitcher interface, play-by-play that's occasionally just wrong. Worst of all is the default fielding camera angle, which is too low and far from the action to gauge depth on hard-hit balls to midfield. Still, the pitching interface is consistently challenging and fun, scores seem mostly realistic and the game has enough variety with its online and offline modes to make it a worthy buy if you can't get The Show. Score: 8 out of 10

MLB.TV on Xbox Live

Just in time for the 2012 baseball season MLB.TV has been added to Xbox Live. MLB.TV, only available on the PlayStation Network last season, features live on-demand games as well as full and short game recaps. MLB.TV on Xbox Live displays all games in HD with the option to pick home and away audio feeds for most games. The service is Kinect enabled, using voice and gesture commands to navigate. One new feature that wasn't available last season on the PSN version is split screen viewing allowing you to watch two games side-by-side. Toggling between the two games makes one side active with audio, and with a larger view. There's some wasted space to the sides of the split screen viewing, so hopefully a future update will maximize the real estate. An MLB.TV premium subscription ($125) and Xbox Live Gold membership is required to watch live game streams and full recaps.. Score: 9.5 out of 10

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13

EA's golfing franchise returns with a few tricks in the bag, including a new swing system and enhanced Kinect integration. Playing with Kinect controls has pros and cons. The swing detection is suitably forgiving and generally tends to produce straight and powerful shots. The process for aiming or fine tuning your shot isn't nearly as accurate, responsive or fast as using a controller. The integration of voice commands via Kinect is nice, though you'll have to repeat yourself from time to time. Using the controller to swing has more of a learning curve when it comes to the direction and force with which you flick the left stick. The graphics are an improvement from last year's game, which looked pretty good. In order to play many of the courses featured in the game you'll either need to collect enough in-game points by beating challenges or you'll need to pay for essentially rented rounds via downloadable access. Not being able to buy them for unlimited use with a one-time purchase or including them with the asking price of the game feels onerous. One place to collect those points is the new Tiger Legacy Challenge. This mode is a series of challenges based on Tiger's life starting with two-year Tiger chipping into a net and working up through the Tiger Slam and beyond. The mode is interesting as a timeline of Tiger's amazing career but the navigation and restarts when you don't succeed can get annoying. Score: 7 out of 10

NCAA Football 13: RG3 & Co.

Andrew Luck might be the top pick in April's NFL Draft, but EA has named Heisman Award winner Robert Griffin III its cover athlete. RG3 won't be alone on the cover. EA is letting fans vote on which former Heisman great will join him. The finalists are Barry Sanders (Oklahoma State running back) and Herschel Walker (Georgia running back). The winner will be announced April 16. NCAA Football 13 is scheduled for a July 10 release on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

SSX

The SSX extreme snowboarding series made a huge impression on last generation consoles, though it has been dormant for seven years. Unfortunately, parts of the game feel stuck in a cheesy, X-Games past that detract from the parts that work well. You're one of a team of super extreme snowboarders that launch yourselves from helicopters down massive snowdrifts, aiming for big jumps, dangerous stunts and fast times. The play mechanics are fun, with a surprisingly versatile use of the right stick to execute tricks, but the ludicrous story is too absurd to warrant any attention. Graphical quality varies, with a generally solid framerate, but your surroundings -- some of the most beautiful mountains in the world -- never generate any significant sense of vertigo or awe. Other levels find you trying to make your way in the dark, which is as fun as it sounds. The multiplayer mode is more like a glorified social networking leaderboard, with no head-to-head play. SSX is probably a good time for fans of the franchise, but it comes off a little half-hearted when taking away the nostalgia factor. Score: 7 out of 10

FIFA Street

FIFA Street is the latest iteration of EA's urban soccer series, and, while it's not as maniacally over-the-top as NBA Street, it manages to bring some worthy wrinkles of its own to the table. Teams compete not just for goals, but for "style" points accrued by fancy footwork and opponent humiliation. The arenas are much smaller than the official FIFA game, with a much more visceral style of gameplay. The size of the goals vary widely, depending on whether you're playing on a basketball court or a rooftop in Japan, so every match plays a little differently. There are several different modes, including an awesome one which subtracts a player from your team with every goal you score. The game is made for multiplayer, and it's easy to imagine it being a big hit on frat house couches and online. It's not the deepest game, and surely won't take any purchases from FIFA 12 or PES, but it's enjoyable and approachable in areas where those titles can be more complex and intimidating. Score: 7 out of 10

Mass Effect 3

In Mass Effect 3 you play as Commander Sheppard faced with the herculean task of uniting an intergalactic coalition to repel alien invaders. Mass Effect 3 is an RPG that immediately draws you in with a complex Sci-fi storyline filled with many well-drawn characters. How you interact with the characters dramatically affects the outcome of the game and how those characters relate and react to you. If you played the original Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2, the decisions you made in those games will impact the relationships, characters and story as it unfolds. But the game is still great if this is your first experience with it. The cover-based combat in Mass Effect 3 is engaging and layered as you're able to upgrade weapons, armor and powers as your progress. The voice acting and music in the game is excellent, though the lip synching with the onscreen characters is a bit off. Mass Effect 3 also has a solid array of multiplayer options which serve as the cherry on top of what's already an amazing single-player experience. Score: 10 out of 10

Armored Core V

It's been a long wait in console land for a new Mech game. Armored Core V jumps into the fray with a deep game that's kind of a mixed bag. Armored Core V features single player missions, but the heart of the action is 5-on-5 multiplayer online matches where you can pit your Mechs against other humans. There's a persistent online war in conjunction with the solo and multiplayer matches to keep you coming back for more, and players seeking community can join teams of up to 20. Armored Core's customization is impressive with endless options on decorating your creation and hundreds of parts to assemble the Mech of your dreams. Unfortunately, the game doesn't properly instruct you on how the building system works, so there's a lot of trial and error. Ultimately, Armored Core V requires a passion for Mechs, strategy and a good deal of patience to enjoy the full potential of the game. Score: 7 out of 10

Street Fighter X Tekken

Street Fighter X Tekken is a love-or-hate kind of experience. Capcom brings the Street Fighter and Tekken worlds together in a tag-team style brawler that requires the reflexes of a mousetrap tester and the cognition of a heart surgeon. Seriously, there are flight simulators with less complexity than this game which is, ultimately, about cartoonishly exaggerated characters trying to beat each other up. The well-designed tutorial takes a solid half-hour to work through, teaching newcomers the ins-and-outs of EX Attacks, Super Arts moves, Cross Rush combos, Super Combos and Cross Assaults. Add in Gem modifiers that add different capabilities to your characters and you have a feast for hardcore fighting fans. And don't bother going online until you know what you're doing, because the humiliation will be immediate and constant. If that's your idea of a good time, welcome to your new favorite game. Score: 8 out of 10

Mario Party 9

Nintendo's signature party franchise returns five years since the release of Mario Party 8 and not a whole lot has changed. You're still in the business of stockpiling stars. There's no shortage of minigames (a whopping 78 in this latest incarnation). And it's a whole lot more fun if you've got three friends to play with. Mario Party 9 remains as maddeningly unpredictable as ever -- one unlucky roll of the die or false step can move a player from first to last (or vice versa) within the span of a turn -- but user-friendly enough for players of all ages to pick up and play. Nine titles in, the Mario Party formula may be too familiar and predictable for veterans who came of age during the series' Gamecube zenith -- but the colorful visuals and wide variety of gameplay will be a hit with younger gamers. Score: 7 out of 10

Kid Icarus: Uprising

One of the most beloved platform games in video game history gets a dramatic makeover nearly 25 years after the original Kid Icarus was released for the NES. And Nintendo doesn't disappoint, delivering a completely fresh and innovative experience bursting with imagination. Each of the game's chapters -- well more than a dozen -- are split into air (on-rail shooting) and ground (3D platform) sections. An adjustable difficulty tool allows players to make each chapter as hard or as easy as they want; the harder the level, the greater the payoff in hearts, which can be exchanged for weapons and goods that can be fused together in countless combinations. And the one-player adventure is only the tip of Uprising's extraordinary replay value: a multiplayer mode can accommodate up to six players and a series of collectible AR Cards (sold separately) can be scanned into the 3DS for additional content. Some reviews have criticized the difficulty -- particularly the ground sections -- but veteran gamers will recognize the homage to the 1987 original, one of the most difficult games in the NES catalogue. Score: 10 out of 10

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

Operation Raccoon City is the latest Resident Evil game from the folks at Capcom. It's a standard third-person shooter that drops you into the Resident Evil storyline near the beginning as a member of the Umbrella Corp. special ops group. The single player campaign lines up waves of soldiers, zombies and other monsters to shoot through, but brutal teammate and opponent AI combined with wonky camera angles and questionable damage detection completely erodes the action. Making matters worse, the graphics and environments are drab, generic and repetitive. The game is probably at its best when you play the campaign co-op or one of several decent multiplayer modes. Operation Raccoon City will disappoint longtime fans of the series, and offers little to inspire shooting game enthusiasts not familiar with the canon. Score: 5 out of 10

Unit 13

When the PS Vita debuted last month with dual analog sticks it was just a matter of when we'd see a first- or third-person shooter to take advantage of them. Unit 13 answers the bell with a third-person shooter that eschews a cohesive story in favor of 45 objective-based missions. The missions usually boil down to getting in and out of an environment while taking out enemies, racing against the clock or gathering "intelligence". The dual sticks work well to make the game controls precise and responsive. Each mission played is scored and entered into an online leaderboard so you can see how you stack up, though the scoring tends to favor speed and carnage over stealth and patience. The enemy AI is a mixed bag and having enemies spawn behind you or in cleared area is annoying. You can play Unit 13 co-op online with another player, but without voice communication it's a little tricky to coordinate your efforts.. Score: 7 out of 10

Game Room: March Roundup