Reviews & Articles

One of the games I got to see and play at E3 was the Xbox 360 version of EA’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, which was released Aug. 4. The game was inspired by the live-action film based on the classic cartoon, but the game takes place after the events of the movie. Whatever the case, the G.I. Joe franchise is sure to make the game appealing to those who grew up with the cartoon from the mid-1980s and will hopefully attract a new generation.

One of Natsume’s latest works-in-progress, Cheer We Go is a cutesy role-playing game about a young teen girl who’s just moved back into town and starts a cheer team to revive the dying school spirit at her new junior high. You navigate your way through the storyline by tackling the different modes and minigames in order to put the “pep” back into “pep squad.”

Dragonica Online is a game by THQ and ICE Entertainment that is their first attempt to bring casual massively multiplayer online games to American audiences. Dragonica Online — is known as Dream Dragon in China. Currently under localization and in closed beta, Dragonica Online is a fantasy action, free-to-play game targeted at 13- to 17-year-olds. It is a 3-D side-scrolling game that makes use of jump-pads to travel between islands in the foreground and background in a 3-D map. Everything you can see, you can get to; you just have to find the way.

In Natsume’s latest simulation game (simply called Afrika), you play a wildlife photographer on the job in the great continent of Africa. Clients send you requests for certain shots (“I’d like a picture of a zebra yawning, please”) and it falls to you to brave the elements and the animals to get the best shots possible.

I didn’t have a lot of time at E3 to roam the expo floors, but when I did get a moment, I went straight to the Ubisoft booth and played as much Rabbids Go Home as I could.

Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a brand spankin’ new shop in Clover Town, set in the Harvest Moon universe. The town is filled with many familiar Harvest Moon faces from the series, and you can interact with them. Decide what you’re going to sell and build you business to help the town grow and prosper. Will you make fruit juice? How about ice cream? Maybe decorating eggs is more your style.

It was inevitable that when customizable content became the norm in video games, the public would indulge in humorous creations appealing primarily to the mischievous teenage boy in all of us. I’ll admit my eyes grew wide when I set my eyes on Spore Hero for Wii. My mind began to race as I realized the creatures I had created in the original Spore that nearly got me banned from online play could be pitted against those of my friends’ creations in battle. Awesome.

By all accounts, Bayonetta will, as director Hideki Kamiya put it, “blow the doors off the action genre.” As the Sarah Palin-esque bespectacled eponymous heroine, players slice, dice, shoot and blast their way through beautifully rendered gothic environments with an extremely high frame-rate with no trace of slow-down.

Champions Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the table-top game of the same name and developed by Cryptic Studios, the group that brought us the innovative City of Heroes and City of Villains. Champions is almost City of Heroes 2.

Unlike most of the Harvest Moon games, this one is all about logic puzzles and is based on the Island of Happiness world. The gist of it: There’s a puzzle grid with a variety of different produce squares. You need to harvest the produce by rearranging veggies on the grid into chains to beat the puzzle and progress in the game. There are 12 characters to unlock, each with unique abilities to help you complete the puzzles. There are also several gameplay modes (survival, mission, crop quota and more).

The Harvest Moon world is in trouble yet again! A long time ago, an earthquake struck the islands, plunging many of them deep into the sea. If you can find the magical sun stones, you can raise the islands back up again and restore them to their former glory. You’re bringing cutesy back.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by an emotion that you end up behaving obnoxiously in a public place? Walking to the Harvest Moon setup in the LA Convention Center, I was nearly overcome by all the adorable-ness and “SQUEED!!!” the ears off of my friendly and ever-patient Natsume guide. Natsume’s E3 lineup featured eleventy billion new Harvest Moon games, all due out this year for just about any Nintendo platform you can think of. Here is Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, but check out for my reviews of Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, Harvest Moon: My Little Shop and Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming.

I’ve never played any of the 50 bazillion other Naruto games, but I’m a ridiculously huge fan of the manga and anime, so my fellow reviewers graciously gave me the opportunity to review Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Council 4. And, even more graciously, the vendor at E3 who was demoing the game actually gave me a copy to take home and keep! Everyone bow to the almighty Tomy Games.

The progenitor of first-person shooter protagonists has once again been called into action to fight the Third Reich. B.J. Blazkowicz, the perennial hero of the Wolfenstein series, is once again the star of Activision and Raven Software’s latest Nazi-stomping caper. An in-depth trailer and demonstration were available at E3, and I got a peek.

There are different developers for the different games, but they all fall under the Go Play line of Wii games by Majesco. Go Play games are pretty much what they sound like: games that get players up and moving. But, there's another element, which I think is the best part, and that's bringing together families.

We only got to see City Sports, but the other two games — Lumberjacks and Circus Stars — looked just as fun and just as silly.

Maybe I'm dating myself, but I totally grew up on the Sims; every afternoon after grade school was done, I'd be on my dad's PC, trying to get my Sims to talk to each other instead of beating each other's brains out. Ahh, good times.

It’s bold, it’s action, it’s blasters, explosions, light sabers — it’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a continuation of Knights of the Old Republic by Bioware. Set 3,000 years before Darth Vader and 300 years after Knights of the Old Republic II, this new Star Wars massively multiplayer online role-playing game delivers epic storytelling in true Bioware style. Are we excited? Yes, as it should be with true Star Wars gamer geeks!

I know I’m a bit strange, but when I was little (when the other kids on the block wanted to be firefighters and such), I wanted to be a myrmecologist (one of those super cool awesome scientists who study ants). So, of course, I immediately gravitated toward the Ant Nation games at the Konami booth. I saw two versions, one for the Nintendo DS and one for WiiWare.

Like the first Painkiller, Painkiller: Resurrection is a beautiful game with a classic first-person shooter feel. I’m talking Duke Nukem, Quake and Doom classic here. The game even brings back the bunny hop (where you move faster when jumping, so players constantly hop to move as quickly as possible).

The two latest installments of the Chronicles of Mystery series were debuted at E3 this year: Curse of the Ancient Temple for Nintendo DS and Tree of Life for the PC. Both are expected to be released later this year, either in late fall or the early holiday season, though the exact date is still up in the air.

If you want to talk about customization in an MMO, let’s talk about APB: All Points Bulletin. A new game revealed at E3, developed by Real Time Worlds and published by Electronics Arts, is — as you might guess from the title — about street gangs against enforcers of the law. Although still early in development, APB had a robust and very detailed character creation system to show off at a meeting room in the LA Convention center. Literally, it’s one of the best I’ve seen in any MMO to date.

BioWare also offered a first look at the second iteration of the space-opera trilogy Mass Effect 2. The demonstrator asserted that the goal with Mass Effect 2 was to take the first game and “improve every aspect.” With a boast like that, I immediately became skeptical. But the next 15 minutes humbled me as I was blown away by what was in store for the fate of the galaxy.

Joining the growing ranks of role-playing puzzle games, Konami’s Puzzle Chronicles looks like it will be a good fit for anyone who was a fan of Puzzle Quest or other puzzle RPGs. The demo version I saw was on the Nintendo DS, though it should also ship for PSP and be downloadable for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare.

Though it has only been around since 1995, BioWare has already established itself as one of the premier RPG developers. Hits like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights gave way to hallmarks like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. At this year’s E3, BioWare showed Dragon Age: Origins, an upcoming role-playing game that shows the stream of great games from BioWare is not stopping anytime soon.

Bright colors, stuffed animals and lots of unnaturally huge eyes greeted me as I arrived at Natsume’s setup at the Los Angeles Convention Center for E3. It was there that I saw Squishy Tank, an ultra cute puzzle adventure game for the Nintendo DS due to hit stores this September. It is based on Yawaraka Sensha (Soft Tank), a game released in Japan in July 2008.

The third installment in the Cooking Mama series will include 80 new recipes and the ability to shop for ingredients. Players will also be able to combine ingredients to make new dishes like they did in Cooking Mama 2. New this time is the ability to catch items and save steps during the game before doing something fatal, which causes Mama’s eyes to flame up.

In Majesco’s A Boy and His Blob, dark times have fallen on Blobolonia, an evil emperor has seized power, and the Blob escapes to search for help. Crashing on Earth, he finds a young boy (the unlikely hero) to help him leave Earth and return to save Blobolonia.

If there's one thing that video games have told us about the future, it's that things are going to be bleak. Things like technology and artificial intelligence will only hasten humanity's downfall into a hellish dystopia, and the way to make the best of the situation is to grab a gun, team up with some fellow bad-asses, and go to town.

Wii Sports was the little game that could, a small collection of five sports games that catapulted Nintendo’s Wii console to a surprising lead in the latest console war. Wii Sports’ intuitive motion controls appealed to hardcore and casual gamers alike, and it even got people who rarely if ever play games to try their hands at it. So how do you improve on something that people already fell in love with? If you’re Nintendo, you take the original and make it better, quicker and more responsive. Wii Sports Resort is that improvement and will come complete with the Wii MotionPlus add-on.

When I visited Activision’s massive demo area at E3, I asked my guide if there were any games she thought weren’t getting the attention they deserved. “Well, I think Singularity is going to be a sleeper hit,” she said. “OK,” I nodded. “Show me that.” She led me to a small room with a gigantic screen, cushy chairs and gloriously cold air conditioning. I relaxed into my seat as they turned the lights down low and began to show the demo.