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Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 Review: Rolling in the Right Direction


A new Sonic game always brings a level of uncertainty with it. Sega’s mascot has seen more highs and Read more

One Million Fans Take a Stroll with The Walking Dead Episode 1


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Kittens Spit Fire When Serious Sam Double D XXL Assaults XBLA This Fall


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PSN Reviews

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Sega Bass Fishing Review: Check Out That Bass!

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Daniel Campbell in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | 1 Comment

yup, he's fishin

Listen to the audio discussion:

In 1997, a lot of things happened in the game industry. Video game legend, Gunpei Yokoi, passed away in a car accident, Final Fantasy VII redefined the RPG genre, and Sega Bass Fishing was released in Japanese arcades. Shortly after the launch of the Dreamcast in 1999, the fishing simulation title found its way to Sega’s ill-fated console. Here in 2011, Sega Bass Fishing has been released once again on XBLA and PSN for $10.

Sega Bass Fishing features an Arcade Mode and an Original Mode, both having online leaderboards. In case you’ve got fish bait for brains, the game is about catching bass. The player has a limited window of time to catch as many bass as possible, but the number of fish is not important since the collective weight of all the caught fish is what will win you competitions. The game sports tournaments, unlockable lures, and a number of different locations to put your fishing prowess to the test.

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Astro Tripper Review: You Must Be Trippin’

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Mike Wall in PC, PC Reviews, PSN Reviews, Reviews | 4 Comments

boom

The past few years have seen several coin-op classics such as Pac-man and Space Invaders revitalized by infusing new energy into the gameplay and injecting them with an unhealthy dose of neon, strobing lights. The new remixes were wildly popular with critics and gamers alike, and now PomPom Games has taken a similar, albeit less official, route in updating the classic arcade game, Defender. I hope you’re wearing your Hank the Tank T-shirt, because we’re kickin’ trippin’ it old school with Astro Tripper.

In case the tiny spaceship shooting insane beams of energy didn’t give it away, Astro Tripper is a side-scrolling shoot-em up. It was originally released back in 2009 on PSN and it has now received the full Steam treatment complete with a 100% higher price tag.  Astro Tripper ditches the continually scrolling levels of most shooters and focuses the combat into long, narrow arenas. As in Defender, players can switch the direction the ship is facing. While I appreciate the attempt to update a classic, Astro Tripper’s immensely frustrating difficulty caused largely by anachronistic design choices make it a game that should be relegated to only the most hardcore shmup fan.

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Swarm review: Quelling the swarm

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Taylor Bliss in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | Leave a comment

Stack of Crates

As I booted up Swarm, there were two options laid out to me on the right hand portion of the screen: “Press A to select” and “Do not press Y.” Naturally, I chose the latter and watched the death of my first Swarmite. Up close on the welcome screen, the slaughtering of the Swarmites is actually kind of disturbing. Normally in the game, you have an isometric view that makes the Swarmites look more like ants and their deaths more like you focusing a magnifying glass on them. But here, the Swarmite in full screen, it killed the whimsical detachment I hoped I would achieve while playing the main game.

The setup is pretty basic. “Momma” needs a new hat, and the “Hat Boss” is the one who’s got it. Before you can get to the hat boss, you’re going to have to collect some DNA first. Each level available, excluding boss levels, has 5 pieces of said DNA. That’s about all the explanation I could find. The name of the Hat Boss was descriptive enough, I suppose, but why collecting DNA is what allowed me to face the hat-wielding boss was without explanation.

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Slam Bolt Scrappers review: Picking up the pieces

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Dave Voyles in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews | 3 Comments

blocks!

For those of you who have been with us since the beginning, you may remember our first hands-on experience with Slam Bolt Scrappers back at last year’s PAX East. Shortly afterwards, I had an interview with CEO of Fire Hose Games, Eitan Gleinert, and at the time he was unsure of which platform it would land on. Well a lot has changed since then, and their first title launched on PSN this week.

Tetris, the classic shape-dropping puzzler has been a staple in any solid gamer’s diet for nearly a quarter century. Sure we’ve seen some altered experiences of it with titles like Dr. Mario on the original Nintendo or Super Puzzle Fighter, but not much in terms of innovation. It wasn’t until my hands on experience with SBS a year ago that I began to take notice of this game.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 Review

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Dylan Martin in PC, PC Reviews, PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | 5 Comments

losing those rings

Out of all the mysteries in the world, there is one that ails me the most: when will Sega make another good Sonic game? After playing Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, I’m sad to say that now is not the time.

When a teaser trailer for Sonic 4 was posted back in February it boasted the game was “built from the ground up.” This was meant to ease the worries of cautious fans who were continually disappointed by a series of poor and mediocre titles. But when a trailer was released a few months later demonstrating the gameplay, some keen observers immediately noticed a flaw in Sonic’s movement: the momentum was off.

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XBLA Review: Mega Man 10

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Dave Voyles in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | Leave a comment

obligatory snow level in mega man!

The Mega Man franchise is without a doubt one of the most daunting and difficult franchises to date. Having played my fair share of them, I should probably have known this going in, but appearently it’s been a while because I forgot exactly how hard they can be. You can’t hold that against Mega Man 10 though. Even more intimidating than the normal game is the hard mode which is unlocked after finishing the game on normal, which I could only imagine would be insane.

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XBLA Review: Zombie Apocalypse

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Dave Voyles in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | 3 Comments

Four survivors escape in Zombie Apocalypse

Zombies?  Check.  Apocalypse?  Uh-huh.  Violence?  Yip.  At the moment this seems to be the winning formula for a successful title.  While not every title which holds these qualities is a winner (I’m talking about you, Yet Another Zombie Defense), thus far Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, Plants Vs. Zombies, and Dead Rising have all proven to be hits.

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XBLA Review: After Burner Climax

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Erron Kelly in PSN, PSN Reviews, Reviews, XBLA, XBLA Reviews | 3 Comments

Return to the cockpit in After Burner Climax

In my experience, arcade games come in three-and-a-half flavors.  First you have your adventuring games, which increase the difficulty exponentially so as to make you die and suck up your quarters.   The second are titles which move incredibly fast so as to make you die and suck up all your quarters.  The third kind are the rhythm and dance titles, which are fun, but limit the number of songs you play, leading you to dump in more and more quarters.

The last flavor is, of course, deer hunting simulators. But nobody cares about those.

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