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Holiday Game Review Madness
Posted by Brian Crecente at 5:00 AM on November 18, 2008
It's November and the number of high-end titles hitting store shelves is reaching the saturation point. What's a gamer to do? More importantly, what's a gamer on a budget to do? Well, we'll start rolling out our platform-centric gift guides later this week, but until then why not check out our reviews for some of the bigger titles and make up your own mind about where you plan on plunking down the cash.
Hit the jump for a break-down of what we've reviewed so far and tell us what you're putting on your holiday list. I'll make sure to update this list as we move forward:
I almost didn't write this. It feels a bit like beating a dead horse. But then I drank a cup of coffee and decided maybe some dead horses deserve the beating.
It's just a tragic facet of the human condition - a tribal instinct that can pit friend against friend and brother against brother. Catholic v Protestant, Sunni vs Shia, Spectrum v Commodore 64 and now - perhaps most bitterly of all - Xbox 360 v PS3.
Variety's Ben Fritz posted an interesting response to Leigh Alexander's 
Variety's Ben Fritz points out that his review copy of Fable II just landed at his office and along with the usual fare of review guide, tips and details came a personal plea from developer Peter Molyneux about how to review the game:
While the online press wait patiently at the starting line, hobbled by a reviews embargo, there's no stopping magazines from getting their Spore reviews out amongst the public. And the first three are in! Two are from German mags - PC Games and Gamestar - while one's from the British edition of PC Gamer. PC Gamer, they're on-board, giving the game 91%. But the Germans, well, the Germans think it's nicht so gut. Gamestar give it 79/100, while PC Games gave it 73/100, saying that while stuff like the creature creator is great, the early stages of the game lack depth and that there's an "uneasy mix of simulation and strategy". Those Germans...tough crowd!
Too Human is neither as good nor as bad as many have made it out to be. The action role-playing game, nearly ten years in the making, built up quite a storm of controversy and expectations as it tumbled its way to completion and release. The game tackles a retelling of Norse mythology with a cyber twist and works to reinvent the way people play button mashers. In the game the most loved god in Norse mythos, Baldur must contend with enemies on all sides and balance his desire for revenge with thoughts of the greater good.
The 20th edition of gaming's signature sports simulation sells us a big-tent philosophy -- dueling difficulty settings that will level the playing field between lifelong players of Madden football and more casual gamers who just want in on the fun without reading a playbook the size of an encyclopedia. As a business strategy, a more inclusive Madden makes a ton of sense. But that innovation underachieves in single-player mode and, online, it's not much use to advanced players and it seems more to drag out competitions between the equally bad ones.
Let's get this out of the way right now: Bionic Commando Rearmed isn't a "reimagining" of Capcom's 1988 classic. It's not "based on" the characters or premise, it's not a sequel, it's not a prequel. This is the original Bionic Commando, albeit with a freshly-applied coat of paint, and it brings to the 360, PS3 and PC all the pros and cons that go along with that.
There's simply nothing else like Braid on the Xbox 360. Jonathan Blow's time-twisting puzzle game may look like a simple 2D platformer, with its numerous allusions to genre trailblazers like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros., but its temporal puzzle mechanics and mature, powerful storytelling help it pioneer its own path. In Braid, our hero Tim embarks on a quest to right a wrong, rescue a princess and manipulate the fourth dimension in exciting, creative ways.
