I sat down at Nintendo’s Redwood City office to get a good look at the single-player mode for myself (since all I had to go on were Nintendo Power previews and Stephen Totilo’s experience) before diving into the multiplayer mode. I was given a choice: I could replay the same demo Nintendo Power and Totilo had already covered, or I could be one of the first to see the second dungeon in the game – the Snow Temple.

What kind of correspondent would I be if I didn’t go for the latter? A copycat, that’s what!

What Is It?
The Snow Temple was described to me as the “second” dungeon in the game once Zelda and Link are sent to the Tower of Spirits to restore the Spirit Tracks of Hyrule. The level began outside the snow-covered structure with the train parked out front and Zelda hovering beside Link.

What We Saw
The temple had about three floors and judging from the main room that requires puzzle solving, I’d say I completed three quarters of it before having to stop to play some multiplayer.

How Far Along Is It?
The game comes out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that could well be a final version of the game.

What Needs Improvement?
My Snow Temple For An Item-Toggling Button: Link started this dungeon with the Whirlwind item and earned the Boomerang about halfway through. To use an item, you’ve got to select it from a menu so that it appears in an icon in the upper right-hand side of the lower screen. Tapping that icon activates the item and then you do whatever is required of you to use it (blow in the mic for the Whirlwind, draw a path on the screen for the Boomerang). There came a point in this dungeon where you had to use the boomerang to create a path of ice over water (by crossing its path through an ice torch and back across the water) – and then quickly change to the Whirlwind to activate a switch out in the middle of the water. Because the ice path melts quickly, your timing has to be spot on and it can get pretty fiddly when you’re trying to bust out the Whirlwind, aim it and THEN blow into the mic. I died at least twice, wishing in vain that a tap of the shoulder button would switch between items.

Dude, Where’s My Zelda? As soon as I set foot in the Snow Temple, Zelda shrank and faded away with a sigh. It turns out she can’t go with you or help you within the Temples and you can’t talk to her for advice the way you could with other companion characters in other Zelda games. This turned Spirit Tracks into an experience that was an awful lot like Phantom Hourglass. Phantom Hourglass was good, so that’s not an automatic minus – but I think people were expecting the all-new Zelda gameplay to be a consistent feature instead of an area-specific thing.

What Should Stay The Same?
Shallow Learning Curve: Truthfully, I never beat The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and it’s been ages since I’ve touched it. But it really didn’t take long to master the stylus-only controls and the menus weren’t at all difficult to navigate and interpret. People who missed out on Phantom Hourglass are going to be just fine adjusting to Spirit Tracks.

Sure Rings My Bell: The entire temple was based on moving three bells into a main room together so that Link could trigger them in a sequence to open a door. This objective was communicated entirely through visuals (little panels with bells on different note lines, panels on the floor, etc) and all of the puzzles were familiar slide-the-block, clear-the-room-of-monsters affairs that I know and love in Zelda games. I got so caught up in the familiar, simple gameplay, I didn’t mind dying twice and getting stuck three different times.

Final Thoughts
Despite not having beaten Phantom Hourglass and not really liking The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (yeah, I said it – you wanna fight?!), playing Spirit Tracks felt like coming home. That’s probably the best feeling I could ask for from a game, especially so close to the holidays when I long for that feeling and have all this extra time to play games.

EyePet Review: His Master’s Voice
In which Luke Plunkett’s furniture and lighting fail to meet Sony standards.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert Micro-Review: Palm-Size Power Trip
In which freelancer Matt Cabral forgives a key omission.

Left 4 Dead 2 Review: We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North
In which Michael McWhertor no longer worries about the corny and the hokey.

Assassin’s Creed II Review: A Season For Masterpieces
In which I praise, among many other things, the game’s infidelity joke.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues Review: Nuke The Mini-fig
In which Brian Crecente finds a silver lining to a Crystal Skull.

Asphalt 5 Micro-Review: Pedal to the iPhone
In which Cabral is driven to temporarily dislike one of his favourite bands.

Torchlight Review: The Fate Of DiabloCraft
In which Michael Fahey is on the verge of laughing — but holds back.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Review: Deja Vu in Space
In which Brian Ashcraft fires the Ion Cannon a tad too much.

Art Style Digidrive Micro-Review: The Superiority Of Video Games
In which I praise a game that can be played on shaky boats, wobbly subways and other unstable places.

But anyway, Spirit Tracks has multiplayer. Boy does it ever have multiplayer, and boy did we ever play it. Here’s what we liked:

What Is It?
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks’ multiplayer mode is akin to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube — four people each control one colour-coded Link and move around the same map as the other Links. The difference in Spirit Tracks is that instead of trying to help each other, you’re racing each other to collect Power Gems and trying to royally screw each other up on the way.

Note: It’s local-only.

What We Saw
I played two matches against a developer and two publicists at Nintendo’s Redwood City office after finally getting my hands on the single-player mode.

How Far Along Is It?
Spirit Tracks is out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that may have been a final version.

What Needs Improvement?
Little Bit Laggy: When dashing around the dungeon map, things start off steady and the Power Gem drops are few and far between. As the match picks up pace, however, and players start falling into traps or getting sliced up the Phantoms, huge amounts of Gems will suddenly spill out onto the map. That plus all four players frantically running to that point to scavenge Gems caused a couple of super-laggy moments in an otherwise smooth experience.

Trap Door Confusion: There are trap doors in every map that are either random or triggered by switches. I honestly couldn’t tell you which, though, because sometimes I’d press a switch and a trap door would open and sometimes the door seemed to open and shut in a kind of rhythm. It was confusing — and that much more frustrating when I fell into one because I didn’t know if I should blame somebody for it.

What Should Stay The Same?
Spreading The Phantom: Numerous Phantoms — those big guys in helmets from the last Zelda DS game, Phantom Hourglass — wander the maps, prowling for Links. When one spots you, a little icon pops up above your head, indicating that it’s got a bead on you. If you fail to run for your life, the Phantom will speed toward you and cut you – costing you precious Power Gems and precious seconds as you scramble to get up and recover them before the other players get there. The fun part about this mechanic is the bit where you can pass the Phantom’s bead onto other players you run by — like spreading Chlamydia. It’s amusing.

The Invisible Zone: One map we tried out had a patch of water in the centre that rendered players invisible when they ran in. You could still see ripples where their feet landed in the water — and if you look closely, the ripples are colour-coded like the Links — but with all four players running around in there and Phantoms bearing down on one or more of them, it was blind panic. And freaking awesome.

Mario Kart-style Pick-ups: Occasionally, an orb with a question mark on it will fall from the sky. Players that snag this pick-up are treated to several things like a random Gem drop, invisibility or a lightning strike that you can inflict on other players. It keeps things interesting and can be the salve to the wound of a player who just went from 51 Gems to two after a string of Phantom infections.

Single Cartridge Play: I am so happy that it doesn’t require four people to actually buy the game to enjoy this mode.

Final Thoughts
The multiplayer mode in Spirit Tracks certainly isn’t the main attractions of the game — but it’s a solid addition that deserves to be played if you can tear yourself away from trains and princesses for a little while.

After a several weeks of inactivity, the Art Style series has returned to North America’s DSiWare shop with Digidrive an abstract puzzle game about directing traffic that can sit alongside Art Style: Boxlife, a wonderful game about folding boxes in a factory, as a suggestion that Art Style games are downloadable because, were they sold in stores, the descriptions on the back of their boxes would scare people away.

This game is a remake of Bit Generations: Digidrive, a 2006 Japan-only Game Boy Advance game from Q Games, the studio known best these days for making the Pixel Junk series on the PS3 and less-well-known for programming the PS3’s background ribbon thing. And, yes, their take on directing traffic, virtually, is fantastic.

Loved
Terrific Traffic Trope: The gameplay in Digidrive is as solid and simple as it gets. Thank goodness, you know, that game designers consider waiting tables and taxi-driving and other often un-delightful real life activities as subjects for games. Here, being a one-man traffic light is a joy. What you’ve got is a gradually sped up relentless flow of colour-coded cars approaching the centre of a four-way intersection from four sides. With either the d-pad or the stylus players can direct the cars to one of the three lanes that branch from the road on which they are entering the playing field. Your directive is to park like-coloured cars behind each other, which banks fuel. Doing this well and then cashing in that fuel by letting a siren-blaring emergency vehicle drive into that section of parked cars, provides force to a puck on the bottom of the screen. That’s important, because you are hoping to push that puck away from a plunger that is creeping up on it.

Yes, that’s weird. And no, that’s not how directing traffic works in real life. But it’s fun, because of a few smart twists: Going into a high-speed Overdrive mode if you have at least five cars successfully parked in all four lanes helps you bank a lot of cars. Also, a clever but risky technique lets you double your reserves if you sacrifice one of the rows of parked cars. Timid players will never park many cars and keep cashing in to bump that puck forward nudge by nudge. Bold players will bank more and more cars, doubling and re-doubling their reserves, waiting until the last possible minute and than cashing in to ignite a major push of the puck. Hey, trust me, OK?

Abstract Art: The techno soundtrack is good. Better is the iconography of the graphics. A less interesting development team would have used numbers to represent the number of cars successfully being parked at the end of a lane. Q Games uses shapes. Park five cars and you get a triangle. Park a bunch more and that triangle fills up and becomes a square. Repeat until the square becomes a pentagon, then a hexagon (if you haven’t messed up by this point and had the puck hit by the plunger), and then the hexagon becomes a circle. I like ammo counters and flashing words too, but I’ll take a game that signals success with shapes.

Hated
Touch Options: Hated is a strong word, but I found no great advantage from playing the DS version’s new touch mode. It allows players not just to direct the game’s cars with a tap of the screen but to tap the shapes of banked cars to cash them in, rather than waiting for — or sending out into the roadway — an emergency vehicle. This seemed to make the game simpler without making it better. I preferred the d-pad controls which allow me to play this game even when I’m standing on the subway, holding onto a railing for support with my other hand. Many portable games require you to play while sitting, leaning or standing still. Praise Digidrive for allowing us portable gaming on unsteady platforms, but if you do, don’t try those touch controls.

It’s hard to express the quality of a puzzle game when just putting it in your hands would prove that the balance and flow here is good. Don’t be deterred by the traffic-directing subject matter. In fact, I hope that kind of oddity emboldens you to try this game. It was fantastic on the GBA and makes the transition to DSiWare well.

Art Style Digidrive was developed by Q Games and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DSiWare downloadable store on November 16. Retails for 500 Nintendo Points ($US5) Played three difficulty levels in single player, tried touch mode, tried two-player Vs mode against the computer and had trouble looking at the traffic in the intersections of Manhattan without wanting to get involved.

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Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Ben Carey. If you’ve played Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, or just want to ask Ben more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (PSN)

As far as I’m concerned, having a fifteen syllable title alone makes this game awesome. However, if I’d never played the game before, a title like this would make me think of a next generation, revamped Destruction Derby, which, incidentally I would be very keen on.

The easiest way to describe SARPBC is this: it’s basically soccer with nitrous oxide fuelled remote controlled cars. That would make a good title in itself.

Loved

Bang for Your Buck: Nowhere else will you find this much quality gameplay for under ten dollars. The aim of the offline mode is to collect as many stars as you can. There are 100 stars to collect in the mini-game mode and 65 to collect in the tournament mode. These modes are both excellent training for when you start playing against real people. You have to practise your flips and twirls and pirouettes, let me tell you.

Multiplayer: Perhaps even more enjoyable is playing with (or against) your friends. You can play with a mix of human players and NPCs or you can keep it strictly man vs machine, if that’s what you prefer.

Replay Function: Replay mode makes you feel like god: you can freeze time; slow it down or speed it up; fast-forward or rewind; and rotate the camera (which allows for Matrix-cam). You can even edit it up and upload it straight to YouTube (and trust me, there are times you will definitely want to).

Hated

Online: The online mode is clunky and prone to lag. It’s not uncommon to try and steal the ball only to find it’s already in your goal at the other end of the field.

SARPBC has a lot of replay value, and occasionally the developers add new tracks, at no extra charge. Now that’s value!

Reviewed by: Ben Carey

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 300 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

Monster Hunter Tri, however, is going for a different audience with its exclusive Wii release. By streamlining the Wii friend code process and adding features other multiplayer games rely on — such as a chat window — Tri is trying to jump start the online ecosystem that’s already built into the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

But how does that impact that actual monster hunting?

What Is It?
Monster Hunter Tri is a multiplayer adventure game where up to four players can team up to hunt down monsters. The game skips over friend codes, instead using a lobby system where you can easily find other players and send friend requests. Additionally, there’s a chat window in-game that can be accessed with a USB keyboard if you don’t feel like pointing and clicking. Currently, Wii Speak is not in the game — but Capcom is “looking into it”.

There’s also a singleplayer mode built into the game, but details on it are scarce.

What We Saw
I played three missions during the University event using both the Wii Remote/Nunchuck configuration and the Classic Controller Pro because they had one handy.

Note: It’s unconfirmed if the Classic Controller Pro will be brought to the US along with Monster Hunter Tri.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out early 2010. I didn’t notice any major show-stopping bugs — but I was sad to see that the Wii was hooked up to computer monitors which have a nasty reputation of making even very good Wii graphics look fugly. So I can’t speak to the graphics which are apparently supposed to be pretty.

What Needs Improvement?
There’s No Lock On: Normally, this doesn’t matter in Monster Hunter because you pan the camera toward a monster, press attack and bam! You’ve hit it. However, Tri introduces underwater combat where the monsters can change depth quickly during a fight. Panning the camera a la ground combat under water takes a little extra work and can be totally disorienting. So, yeah, a lock-on would be preferable.

At Tiddy Bit Fiddly: On the Classic Controller Pro, I had a lot of problems getting the Bowgun to aim right. Not only do you have to have the weapon out and cocked before you can attack — you also have to choose between shooting from the hip or going into sniper mode with a targeting reticule. Given that battles move very quickly and monsters can charge across a field right at you while you’re reloading and re-cocking, it would be nice if the button controls for un-slinging, cocking and aiming your Bowgun were perhaps a little streamlined. Or if there were a Panicked Dodge button that would snap you out of sniper mode at the last second.

Constant Loads: Every time you leave an area of a map — which you will, because the monsters move around — you’ve got to endure a loading screen. It gets tedious.

What Should Stay The Same?
Wow, It’s Multiplayer! I’m not used to more than two people in my multiplayer on the Wii, so I was excited to see four people in the same place, attacking the same thing with no lag — on the Wii! If Monster Hunter Tri can work things out such that people actually buy this game and play it, it’s going to be a lot of fun team up with people and make new friends among strangers the way I would on other consoles.

Swimming Is Fun: Once you get the hang of the quick-swim button and the dive button, moving around underwater feels pretty pleasant. I kind of wonder how the lancer doesn’t drown under the weight of her weapon, though…

Final Thoughts
Two things will probably make or break this game: Wii Speak and pay-to-play subscriptions. In Japan, they don’t have the former, but they do have the latter — and a long history of loving Monster Hunter. Here, we’re sad because there are only like two games that use Wii Speak and I really don’t think we’d stand for a subscription Wii game no matter how awesome it might be. Also, we’re not as fond of or familiar with Monster Hunter — but with any luck and a little attention to these two make-or-breaks, Capcom could be changing that.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues spends much of its time focused on the brickification of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it also gives players a taste of Indy’s original adventures. Better still, it gives Indiana Jones fans a chance to build their own LEGO levels this time around.

Can a new, coop-friendly split-screen system and the ability to design your own levels make up for the fact that the game reanimates Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Lets see.

Loved
Two Players, Two Screens: One of my big qualms with previous LEGO games was that when you started playing coop — and that’s always been the best way to play — the screen became a leash. If one player went too far in a direction it started pulling the other player around with them, sometimes to their death. This time around, once you hit the limits of the screen it splits, allowing the two players to go their separate ways. The way the screen splits also shows which direction the other player is in. It’s a neat design concept that typically works quite well.

Build Mode: While LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues spends most of its time focused on just about everybody’s least favourite Indy film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it also introduces the ability to design and play through your own LEGO levels to the franchise. The system is fairly straight forward: You select and throw down LEGO bricks you’ve unlocked through gameplay to create sets based on what comes with the game. Not only does that include AI-programmable enemies and creatures, but traps that you can tie to different bricks. It’s a robust little system tied to a fun aesthetic. My only disappointment is that you apparently can’t share your creations with friends online. A pretty big bummer.

Another Take: While more than a third of the game is devoted to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the game also includes abbreviated takes on the first three movies. Interestingly, instead of just porting over chunks of these LEGO adaptations from The Original Adventures the game seems to completely reinvent them. While Indy purists may lose sleep over these in-a-nutshell adaptations of the first three films, they’re clever, punchy and fun in a way that makes playing the story a second time worthwhile.

Wide Open Spaces: Every LEGO game has a sort of jumping off point, a hub from which gamers embark on the multiple stores and adventures of the particular game. In the original LEGO Indy game it was a university, this time it’s the storage warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sort of. The top menu has you select one of the eight containers (some start boxed up and have to be unlocked) to decide where your adventure begins. There are crates for the first three movies and then three crates for Crystal Skull and finally a crate each for the build mode and another for “Super Bonus” levels, which are essentially time trials. But when you jump into a movie, the game drops you into a fairly expansive area that than has to be explored to find the storyline. While you wander around these large set pieces you also discover hidden items, challenges and fun little things to do. It’s a neat addition to the LEGO gaming experience.

Vehicles: Always a pleasure in LEGO games, this time around the world gives you access to cars, motorcycles, bikes, tree-cutters, horses, camels, rickshaws and, my favourite, planes. There’s nothing like flying over a LEGO land and jumping out to parachute to your favourite play area.

Completest: As with all previous LEGO games, LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues comes with quite a few reasons to play, replay and replay the game again. There are special LEGO pieces to collect, time trials to unlock, Easter eggs to discover. And it’s all a lot of fun to do.

Funny Story: Played in tandem with my eight-year-old, the game had Tristan in stitches. And it wasn’t just him. Sure, I’d still like to see a LEGO heart ripped from a mini-fig’s chest, but the alternative to all of that Indy violence can be quite funny at times.

Hated
Not So Invisible Walls: The worlds of LEGO Indiana Jones 2 are much, much bigger, but they’re not without their limits and unfortunately those limits aren’t disguised very well. Go too far and your mini-fig will just float back to the map.

The Camera Controls… Still: How can Traveller’s Tales, who have single-handedly reinvigorated, reinvented the LEGO gaming franchise, still not have the in-game camera worked out? I’m sick of dying simply because the perspective is throwing me off. Fix this already.

What Next: I love the huge explorable, hidden, area-filled worlds of LEGO, but I hate having to wander around in them for half an hour trying to figure out which path, which cave, which ladder will take me to the next step in the story. A map or maybe a better indicator would be much appreciated.

I wasn’t really looking forward to LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. Of all of the LEGO games the first Indiana Jones was my least favourite, though I still quite liked it. And this time around, I wasn’t really anticipating playing through my least favourite movie in the series. But the game delivers on so many levels, adding a much needed split screen and a fantastic build mode, that I’ve been delighted with the experience.

If you didn’t pick up the first LEGO Indiana Jones game, I think it might even be worth skipping and instead going straight to this one.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues was developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by LucasArts for the DS, PC, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Wii and Xbox 360 on November 17. Retails for $US49.99/$AU89.95 (Xbox 360/PS3). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through all sets and campaigns both alone and with my son on Xbox 360. Built several levels alone and with my son.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

I was introduced to Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers last week, discovering quickly that this was not the kind of Crystal Chronicles game I had expected. It is, you see, a single-player game, the first in a splinter line of Final Fantasy games made for Wii platforms and previously designed for four players.

The Crystal Bearers is different, set 1000 years after Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and putting the player in control of a single hero, a mercenary named Layle. The series’ dwarf race, the Lilty Tribe, have risen to power. The mechanical race, the Yuke, have seemingly been wiped out.

I was told by a Square-Enix representative that this game would feel like a “true Final Fantasy” for the Wii. It will have a deep storyline. But it also has real-time combat and was described to me as 75 per cent mini-games.

What I saw and played clarified things. I was shown Lilty running through a farm, getting pulled into a challenge to pluck all of the vegetables from a field before a clock ran out. A scarecrow was the opponent, shooting at Lilty to try to mess him up. So don’t think of “mini-games” in terms of a Mario Party, I realised. Think of them is mid-game challenges.

Next, I was shown some combat. Lilty ventured to a dusty desert area and enemies attacked. The game is played with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The control stick moves the character. The Remote’s pointer is used for telekinesis, to pick up objects and enemies, then toss them. The d-pad on the Remote is used to swivel the camera, the only element of the controls I found hard to handle in the few minutes I played the game.

I was told that conversations with non-player-characters will be less than typical for an FF game. Instead, the interactions the player tries to get are “reactions”. You get these from enemies by encountering them. For example, out in that desert area, Lilty fought some dog enemies. Once he had a Reaction associated with them, he could get them to stop fighting, run over and, uh, urinate on him. Other Reactions are equally comical, sending enemies into a daze because they’ve had their heads knocked off, for example. It’s all cartoony, done for laughs.

Also, somehow, some way, you can take a cow, hold it over Lilty’s head and shoot enemies with its udders.

I’m a sucker for the absurd in my games, so, as little as I saw of the Crystal Bearers, I was encouraged. It’s hard to see it as being a “true” Final Fantasy game, but only a longer play session that presents more of the story can verify that claim.

The game plays swiftly, action-first. It is colourful and has fun visuals, as you can see in these shots. Crystal Bearers may be off some people’s radar, but it will indeed be out this year in North America, the day after Christmas, for the Wii.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron follows the tale of two brothers, both Jedi clones, named X1 and X2. As the Dark Side’s power grows, the brother find themselves on opposite sides of the battle with X1 fighting for the Empire and X2 helping the Rebel Alliance. The game takes place over the course of the Star Wars films, with clips and characters from the older and newer films.

Compared with the previous entry in the Battlefront series, Elite Squadron offers “deeper” customisation than any of the previous Battlefront titles. But with customisation now standard on so many titles, a good game needs more than the option of character changes.

Loved
Variety Is The Spice of Space: Elite Squadron takes the fight into space, allowing players to fly X-Wings and board Star Destroyers. The inclusion of a galactic front in the series, opens up the title — makes it feel bigger. You go from blaster Stormtroppers on Tatooine to barrel rolling TIE Fighters in space. It really encapsulates the Star Wars experience.

So Epic: The great thing about Elite Sqaudron is the scope — players travel from Tatooine to Hoth to Endoor. The game is epic! Just like a Star Wars title should be. But at the same time, it does give players the feeling of experiencing the smaller side of a larger battle — just like a Battlefront title should

We Are Online: Elite Squadron has robust multiplayer, and The Heroes and Villains mode is a welcomed addition, giving players the chance to play as Stars Wars heroes or bad dudes. The other online modes, such as Galactic Conquest, offered replay value once the single player campaign is finished.

Hated
The Controls Are Outta Control: There’s no way around it, controlling the camera and the character by using the PSP’s analogue stick is a bad idea. Why not control the character with the directional pad? Oh right, because I’m using it for all sorts of input controls like getting into spaceships and whatnot. The controls could be and should be streamed lined — they feel dated. There is nothing wrong with complex controls when they add to the experience. Here, they don’t. They detract. It would make more sense to have the character controlled with the direction pad — not just for camera issues, but for control issues. The analogue numb on the PSP often lead my character all over the place, jumping too far, running too far, missing my landing spot. Unfortunately, the Alternative Controls are even less instinctive than the Default ones.

Been Here Before?: And as previously mentioned, the inclusion of space battles, provides a variety in gameplay, but some of that variety gets stale in the single player campaign. Missions seem to be either shoot guys on foot, use Ion Canon, then fly away or fly away, use Ion Canon and then shoot guys on foot. A pattern develops and becomes old.

The addition off space battles and the new multiplayer mode show that there is still innovation and room for the Battlefront franchise to grow. But for it to truly blossom, the basic control mechanics are in need of an overhaul. I fear the dark cloud of clunky controls shrouds all Elite Squadron.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron was developed by Rebellion Developments for the PSP and published by LucasArts on November 3. Retails for $US29.99/$AU59.95 for the PSP as well as for the Nintendo DS. A copy of the game was acquired via PSN digital code for reviewing purposes. Played through single-player campaign and tested multiplayer.

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Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD or Blu-ray releases.

This review was submitted by Ben Warwick. If you’ve played Cricket Revolution, or just want to ask Ben more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Cricket Revolution (PC – Steam)

Cricket Revolution is the first game from independent Pakistani developer Mindstorm Studios. All international teams from Australia to Bangladesh are represented, although there is no official licence attached so don’t expect to see your favourite players.

Loved

Batting: There are around 35 shots giving you plenty of choice depending on where the ball is bowled. Shots are played by pressing arrow keys, similar to a fighting game. A double-tap of the left arrow key will attempt to play a cut shot with a right-handed batsman and tapping down then left will play a cover drive.

Momentum: The rewards for gaining momentum are what you need to strive for if you want a chance of winning a match. Bowlers will unlock a special delivery if they have the skill level and batsmen will rise in level from unsettled to on fire, widening the timing window for shots.

Hated

AI: It’s very frustrating to set a packed off-side field only to have the batsman walk a metre over to where you pitched the ball and hit it through a gap on the leg side. Also when batting, more often than not a fielder will hit the stumps when you take a risky run. This makes it hard to judge whether you should take a quick single or not.

Lack of Movement: Unless a fielder is chasing a ball they will stand frozen still. When they could be walking back to their mark after a ball has gone dead or providing backup to another fielder, this gives the game a very unnatural feel.

I enjoyed playing this as much as I enjoyed Ashes Cricket, and for only $AU25 on Steam you can’t go far wrong. Considering that this is an independently developed game, it’s a very solid first up effort.

Reviewed by: Ben Warwick

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