WARRIORS OF MIGHT AND MAGIC

Gameplay:

                   While many a console gamer might enjoy this style of game, fans of turn-based RPGs who enjoy Final Fantasy, Lunar, and heck, even the action-RPG Brave Fencer Mushashi are sure to grow downright bored with it. You see every time Warriors does something well, it does another thing badly. In many respects, Warriors is quite pleasing: it's filled with special lighting, water, fogging and particle effects, the range of textures is hardy, and the amount of items and weapons is abundant. The reward system is generous. The levels occasionally clever designed. The CG is clean and well choreographed. Like I said, it hits the mark in several areas.

                        With Warriors, it's not the clothes on the emperor that causes the trouble, it's the skin and bones themselves. Warriors of Might and Magic has one of the clunkiest, most simplistic fighting systems ever, and a limping framerate and animation system to go with it. And if you want to count the AI, if you can call it that, it also helps to sink the game, too. Along with these elements is a decent story, at best. These are the things that will eventually attempt to dull your senses and numb your wits.

                         OK, that's not terribly nice, but Warriors struck me as fun for about one hour, when I got to encounter all sorts of little puzzles, fought off some demons and skeletons and then collected millions of little gold pieces. Like the PC series Diablo, Warriors is built around the relentless element of collecting, which keeps pushing you to increase your inventory, and to push for the next coolest thing. I was also curious enough to see all of the levels, dungeons, and countless side quests, which were all fun and neat in their own regard, mostly because of their looks and atmosphere, but little else. In fact, when I realized that I was just going to bash the poop out of everything in the same repetitive fashion in an endless dungeon crawl for 10 more hours, the idea of playing for even the next several hours was horrifying.

Screenshots:

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VAGRANT STORY

Gameplay:

                     Looking at the games that the company has already released, and adding to that the strong lineup of upcoming titles that will be unleashed on American gamers on a monthly basis throughout this summer and fall, this is undoubtedly Square EA's year. No other game company, including Sega and Nintendo, has a software lineup that includes this much quality.

                         The biggest case in point is that Vagrant Story is generally overshadowed by Square's other titles such as Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, and Parasite Eve II, when it's arguably one of the best games on PlayStation.

                        Under the fine direction of Yasumi Matsuno, the game has a storyline and presentation that are equal to that of Hideo Kojima's cinematic masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid. In fact, the five-minute long opening sequence to the game is one of the best one will ever encounter in a videogame and will pull the player deeply into the storyline as well as any opening to a big budget Hollywood action flick.

                        Truth be told, the actual storyline of the game plays out much better than most of today's big blockbuster films. Set in Medieval times, the game's story revolves around Riskbreaker Ashley Riot, who is a member of the Valendia Knights of the Peace (VKP).

Screenshots:

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TREASURE PLANET

Gameplay:

                        Two different types of levels make up Treasure Planet's circuit through the galaxy. There are basic platforming levels, which feel a bit like Jaz & Daxter, and levels built around the "Solar Surfer," which feel like the worst imitation of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater ever made.

                         The platforming bits, of course, are the best part, relatively speaking. Our hero can hop and spin with the same aplomb as Naughty Dog's creations, and there's an assortment of fun gadgets used to solve puzzles -- a jetpack to fly for a brief time, cyborg arms to smash things or heft heavy objects. Their chief affliction is a bad case of whatever disease also afflicts most Rare games, that strange compulsion to make the player collect things instead of presenting a genuinely engaging challenge. The game's cast seems to think it terribly important to collect 100 coins and 10 bits of green energy in every level, but I frankly don't give a damn. Thankfully, the majority of the tasks in the later levels are more complex than just "get umpteen of these,"

                     The Solar Surfer bits, which looked like a good time when demo'd in limited form at E3, are pretty awful in their finished form. The first Surfer level almost works, because it presents a linear circuit, rather than attempting to design an effective non-linear level. The holes in the concept start showing at the end of that one, though, when you have to go through an entire lap around the level to try and take a jump just right to grab that very last coin. Then, it all falls down. The non-linear, Tony Hawk-style Surfer levels have terribly limited challenges, dead simple rail-riding mechanics (just press L1 and forward), glitchy collision detection, and inconsistent controls. On top of that, the same case of Rare-itis afflicts these levels as well, with the addition of more imprecise controls when you're trying to grab that one chunk of green energy.

Screenshots:

Part one : Click Me

Part two : Click Me

TOY STORY 2 : BUZZ LIGHTYEAR TO THE RESCUE !

Gameplay:

                     Toy Story 2 follows the plot of the movie point for point (not that I've seen the movie already -- the game did a fine job of utterly spoiling the film for me by including cut scene FMV directly from the film, without a single frame of exclusive footage). Woody has been kidnapped, and it is up to Buzz Lightyear and the rest of Andy's favorite toys to rescue him. Unfortunately for Buzz (and the player), your toy gang is rather incompetent, and so you'll spend most of your time rescuing them and doing menial tasks to win their favors rather than venturing forwards with your quest (kind of makes you wonder why the rest of them even went along on the journey). For instance, Mr. Potato Head seems to lose a limb or vital organ on just about every level, and you'll need to find the missing parts for him to gain a special power so that you can race your buddy RC around the level in order to collect a Pizza Token (which, of course, is your only way of getting to the next level). When I have a friend who is facing a life-or-death peril, I'd like to think my buddies would just give me a fricken' pizza token!

                       Actual gameplay in Toy Story 2 is pretty solid. Buzz has a number of mascot moves at his disposal (the stomp out of mid-air, the double-jump, the spin move, the ability to grab edges and pull himself up a wall) in addition to his powerful laser weapon (isn't his laser just an LED?). His gun doesn't auto-aim (the game would have been much better served with some of Syphon Filter's control features), but the weapon control is only occasionally bothersome. Buzz himself controls reasonably well, but the problem is that he just doesn't control as well as Mario, and yet he faces a quest that is just as daunting. 

Screenshots:

PART 1 : Click me

PART 2 : Click me

TOMBA!

Gameplay:

                             Take one part platformer, add two parts adventure game, and you're bound to end up with something a lot like Tomba! Created by the same mind that brought us Ghosts & Goblins, Tokuro Fujiwara, its fresh new approach the platform category is truly one-of-a-kind.

Players control Tomba, a wild jungle boy out to retrieve his lucky golden bracelet from demon pigs that have overrun his land. Along the way, he'll embark on a number of side adventures - and that's where the game truly shines.

                            That's not to say there isn't a lot of old-school platform action to be had. Tomba has a variety of moves (jump, throw, attack) and weapons (mace, wood boomerang, stone boomerang), and there are plenty of demon pigs, spiders, and other foes to use them on. In this respect, the game truly does play much like the classic 8- and 16-bit games, which inspired it: Ghosts & Goblins and Ghouls 'N Ghosts. Control is spot-on, and fans of those games will eat this one up.

                          Much more than your standard platformer, however, this game is all about sub-quests. At various stages in the game, Tomba is assigned tasks to complete (rescue trapped villagers, for example), and once he does, he's rewarded with Adventure Points (AP). Certain amounts of AP are needed to pass each area in the game. Here's where it becomes more of an adventure than a run-and-jump action game.

Screenshots:

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TOM & JERRY HOUSE TRAP

Gameplay:

                             Tom & Jerry In: House Trap is, essentially, the direct descendant of a very old NES game you might remember, Spy Vs. Spy. Oh, you don't remember that one? Well, big shock there.

                            Spy Vs. Spy was based on the comic strip of the same name, taking its decades-long struggle from the pages of MAD magazine and making a game out of it. The white and black spies would run around a building consisting of a finite number of rooms, set traps here and there, and hope the other guy blundered into some contraption that would flatten him or blow him up.

                             Tom and Jerry may not be intentionally based on Spy Vs. Spy, but those who played the latter will find the former hauntingly familiar. Tom (the cat) and Jerry (the mouse) run around a house consisting of a finite number of rooms, set traps here and there, and hope the other guy blunders into some contraption that will flatten him or blow him up. If the indirect approach - setting up mousetraps, vacuums, falling bowling balls, and the like - doesn't appeal to you, though, you can always resort to the simpler expedient of braining the other guy with a shovel. You see the house via the same side-scrolling split-screen view as in Spy Vs. Spy, and while a layer of depth has been added by the 3D graphics, allowing you limited movement on the Z-axis, the game is still essentially the same. You set traps, hope they work, and occasionally resort to some clumsy Power Stone-style brawling.

                              This is entertaining, and Warthog's handling of the control and game balance is sound, but like the cartoons it's inspired by, the appeal wears extremely quickly. It's like the slams reel on a BMX video: the same thing over and over again, and once you see it enough you realize that it wasn't even very funny the first time. Each mission does not introduce you to an entirely new area, but instead merely adds one more room onto the existing house, and as such you'll rapidly run out of new traps and such to brain your opponent with.

Screenshots:

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THE MUMMY

Gameplay:

                          Players get the chance to take on the role of Rick O'Connell, a foreign legionnaire who, in the awkward likeness of Brendan Fraser, travels back to Hamanaptra with Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan and her adventurous but greedy brother, Jonathan. I'll skip the whole story since it was indeed the same as the movie, and it's in the manual, too, and if you didn't read that you get the whole intro sequence from the feeble in-game cut-scene intro. The gist of it is this: Evelyn reads a passage from the Ancient Book of the Dead and awakens Imhotep. You start by venturing inside Hamanaptra, the Lost City of the Dead, with Evelyn and Thomas, and it's your task to put him, er, back to sleep.

                         The Mummy is, at its heart, an arcade-style action game with adventure elements. Not the other way around. The game provides you with sense of discovery but it's couched in an action formula, not a wide open, discovery way, so while initially The Mummy seems like Tomb Raider, it's not. It's simple. What happens in The Mummy is that almost everything you need to find is right around you, whether on a ledge nearby, behind a wall that a switch opens, or pretty much in any easy-to-find area. The sense of discovery is made easy and it happens frequently. Again, it's an arcade game.

                         At least one sense of discovery will knock you over the head, however. And that's how often a group of enemies will swarm in on you and pummel you on the head. I found that nine out of 10 times I had just enough or not enough ammo or weaponry to fight off diggers, mummies, zombie workers, and the like. I guess that's where block move comes in. The block function helps when you're fighting an enemy in front of you, not behind. Oh...well, scratch that note, because they lways sneak up from behind you. Seriously, though, the hack-and-hack-some-more mentality of The Mummy, while paralleling the movie, quickly grows repetitive and uninteresting. If there was more time dedicated to smoothing out the 3D engine and the interactions between Rick and his enemimes, the game would have had a little more life to it. This game simply won't drive your imagination very far at all.

Screenshots:

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SOUL REAVER

Gameplay:

                  OK, those are big words. But this is a big game, one that deserves big descriptions. Soul Reaver starts off with a gorgeous, two-minute long introductory scene that explains just exactly who, what and why you, Raziel, are an ugly, decayed, moth-eaten, former vampire. I won't tell you the whole story here, but let's just say that once Raziel "evolved" past his creator Kain, things went south in the worst way possible.

                        Once you're awakened by "The Elder" a mysterious force that feeds souls into the web of destiny, an excellent training session unfolds as Raziel makes his way up to the surface world. What turns this normal training session into such a treat is that it blends seamlessly into the gameplay. As Raziel walks along a path he encounters new areas of challenge, from hovering to fighting to using light and nearby objects to defeat enemies. This clean beginning sets the tone for the rest of the game.

Screenshots:

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SKULL MONKEYS

Gameplay:

                           Here was a time when there were only a few basic types of games made for consoles. You either had shooters, hack and slash (or shoot) action games, sports games, or platform games. Of course, they were all 2D because, well, there was no 3D. And that was fine because you didn't know what you were missing.

Now it's the late 90s (man, time goes fast) and we're squarely ensconced in 3D games. Yeah, I know there are some of you out there who just love 2D games. "Eh, 2D games are better because they focus on gameplay, eh, whine, whine." Whatever. My whole deal is if a game is going to be lazy and be 2D, it better have some pretty damn amazing gameplay.

                           Skullmonkeys, the new platformer from the same folks who brought you the PC gameThe Neverhood, is a 2D game. It does do some cool things, particularly with the claymation-style animation made popular in the first game. But does it have that brilliantly amazing gameplay that makes up for the fact that it's 2D? Frankly, no.

                             This isn't to say it's an entirely bad game. You control Klayman, who has returned from the PC title to save his home world from the evil monster, Kogg. Kogg has recruited the help of the Skullmonkeys, gorilla-like beasts with skulls for heads from the planet Idznak, to aid him in his conquest. The game is set up in typical floating platform style, with the monkeys waggling back and forth across them in tight little patterns.

                             Control in the game is top-notch, with a basic, intuitive interface that's remarkably easy to learn. Along with the obligatory jumping, Klayman has a variety of power-ups to help him. He can shoot green orbs at his enemies, launch homing missile birds, or release a decoy Klayman to distract the tougher baddies.

Screenshots:

PART 1 : Click me

PART 2 : Click me

SCOOBY DOO : CYBER CHASE

Gameplay:

                     Scooby Doo is one of my favorite cartoons. Every time a Scooby Doo title comes out, I hope it will be loads of fun and capture the essence of the Mystery Gang. So far, they've all been disappointments. Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase is based on an already-released, straight-to-video release of the same title. After playing the game, I have little hope that the video is any good as well.

Features:

• Six levels
• Play as all five members of the Mystery Gang
• Password system to save your progress
• Only for Game Boy Advance

                            The premise of any good Scooby cartoon is that something spooky is out scaring people. The Mystery Gang comes along and through hilarious antics manages to catch the ghoul only to discover it's not a monster at all but the museum curator or that cranky old man who owns the ski lodge. Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase says to hell with convention and tries to pass off a Scooby adventure sans masked evildoer. Someone has unleashed the Phantom Virus, so it's up to the Mystery Gang to beam into cyberspace and stop it before it does evil things like e-mail people porn or subscribes them to Christian Coalition mailing lists.

                              The game features six levels that can likely be beaten in your sleep. In each level you'll collect Scooby Snacks while searching for very elusive clues. To pass each level you'll need to find the box of Scooby Snacks. The "clues" you search for are obscure objects that are supposed to help you deduce who released the Phantom Virus. Finding these clues isn't necessary to passing the level, and they likely won't help you solve the crime, because it's hard to even tell what the clues are. One is definitely a keyboard and I think one might be a shoehorn? I dunno.

                               Before journeying to a level, you'll be able to choose which Mystery Gang member you want to be: Velma, Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby are all here. Sorry, no Scrappy Doo. The gameplay is Zzzz city. If you can stay awake through it all, you get to walk around collecting Scooby Snacks and jumping on platforms. To avoid the nasties wandering the levels in very controlled patterns, you can either put on a mask (of which you have a limited amount) or throw a Frisbee at the baddie, thus stunning him. You have unlimited Frisbees, which makes using the masks pointless. There's no point in the game where putting on a moosehead is better than whacking a zombie with a frisbee. I love me some platformers, but the first thing a platformer must be is fun. And Scooby Doo is no fun.

Screenshots:

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ROADRASH

Gameplay:

                     OK, who here has never played Road Rash, raise your hand? I assume not many are raising your hands, as everybody and their dog has played this game at least once. Having been around since the Genesis, Road Rash has enjoyed a long, full life. Isn't it time it had a well deserved rest?

                      There's no denying the basic premise is a promising one. Race your motorcycle against a bunch of other bikers through cities and across countrysides, beating the crap out of them as you go. Let's not forget getting to beat the cop, too (heh, heh). And there's no denying this latest version looks the best ever, better even than the 3DO version, which set the stage with FMV and a soundtrack by Soundgarden. But snazzy cut-scenes aside, there really isn't anything here we haven't seen before.

Screenshots:

PART 1:  Click me

PART 2:  Click me

RESIDENT EVIL 3 NEMESIS

Gameplay:

             In this episode, Capcom drops us back into Raccoon City in a kind of prequel/sequel. The time frame takes place in between Resident Evil 1 and Resident Evil 2, and stars Jill Valentine (from RE) and newcomer Carlos Oliviera, a renegade Umbrella military personnel, who turns to the light side of the, er, force, as it were. Just hours after the end of Resident Evil, Jill -- who has retired from Stars -- begins to head out of town. But, trapped in town by a new surge of zombies, she must once again relive the horror. Halfway through the story Jill is rendered unconscious by the Nemesis, and Carlos must keep her alive by finding a vaccine. At this point, players take on Carlos, and follow his quest to help Jill. If Carlos succeeds in his search for the vaccine and saves Jill, players will continue playing as Jill.

                        But the usual "zombies running amok in Raccoon City" theme isn't central here. Throughout the game, a creature called the Nemesis chases and fights against you. It's an abomination, a T- or possibly G-Virus created monster with one goal, to kill Stars members until they're all dead, and it's he (is it a he?) that lifts this title above rest. The Nemesis is different than other zombies, as you may have guessed. It's intelligent, to some degree, and can wield a weapon, a big, big weapon. The Nemesis carries around a missile launcher. What's worse is that he can run as fast as you and open doors and follow where ever you go. He should have been named the annoying, relentless mutant Ever-ready Battery freak, but somehow that seems to long. "Your worst nightmare" would have been perfect, too. Ah well, the point is, he's a bad-ass, and he's got plenty of surprises in store for you besides just fast feet and a big gun.

                       The rest, well, isn't quite history yet, but we'll leave it for you to find out on your own.

Screenshots:

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