GameWorld

Shaun White, the man, is all over the place these days. You can hear him reminding you that "the computer is personal again" in one of those weird HP ads. You can buy a skateboard deck with his initials on it. Walk into the boys' clothing section at any Target department store and his name will be more prevalent than the chain's own bullseye logo. That kind of exposure doesn't just happen, you have to earn it. Perhaps it is because he's taken his snowboarding goal and translated it into a life aspiration: master gravity.

click to enlargeTaking a page from the Dewey Cox book of fame and fortune, Shaun White's got it all. His amazing skill, prolific marketing talents, and obligatory childhood trauma (two open heart surgeries before the age of seven) have vaulted him about 12 seconds into the eighth of his proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

In the world of sports, it looks like minute eight is when they start slapping your name on video games. Tony Hawk and John Madden probably know all about this. Your first few releases might be great, but then you get too big too fast. Details get missed, control gets relegated to teams and departments. What was once your baby becomes the bastard child of a thousand focus groups. At least Tony and John's franchises have the decency to wait a year or so between releases. Depending on the success of the current title, the year-long wait either lets the disappointment fade or the anticipation swell. But Shaun White went and released several video game titles in one season. What you end up with is a mixed bag.

I had the great fortune to have been able to review Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for the Wii, and the only thing this game and that have in common is his name. It's hard to tell where Shaun's vision lies when comparing these games. Was he going for boundless fun or for technical accuracy? Where the Wii version is whimsical and fantastic, the Xbox 360 version is overly grounded and staid.

Most snowboarding games do not 'reach' for the 'grounded' goal, but that's exactly what this one does. You can tell early on that realism was what the designers were going for, and they definitely achieved their goal. If you want to know what it really feels like to snowboard or if you want to know the best way to choose a board, this may be the game for you. You cannot do too much outside of what is physically possible in the real world here. Gravity, stamina, inertia – they are all very real things in Shaun White Snowboarding.

Luckily, snowboarding is a fun activity all on its own. It takes you to places you might not normally see, and it lets you briefly defy certain physical laws. Unfortunately, most of us would like to be able to do things that cannot be done in life when we pick up a video game controller, and you get none of that satisfaction with this title. It's too real.

Built using the Assassin's Creed engine, the game looks impressive, better than any other in this genre. The mountain vistas are highly realistic, and the scale of the world is to be applauded. This game may be even more fun to watch than to play. Only after I handed the controller over to a friend could I appreciate the amount of eye candy. Too bad you can't take in all the scenery when you're trying to pull off a stunt, but that's the way it is in real life, so maybe it's all part of the grand design.


This game is an excellent example of camera control done right - plenty of views to suit any player and each view is easy to switch from one to the other. With such wonderful panoramas, players will be happy they have so much control over the view. The soundtrack is to be envied, although in the end it only amounts to exceptional background music.

There is a decent amount of variety in the courses. You can visit mountains in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and there is a bonus 'Target mountain' in the Target limited edition release. You can customize your board and gear and shop to your heart's content, provided you have the funds. These are all the good things and there may have been more, but the game failed to hold my attention long enough for me to discover them.

click to enlargeMenus and on-screen instructions tend to get a little overwhelming. Fonts are too small and there is too much information thrown at you at once. If you don't understand something, you don't get much follow-up instruction, turning what should have been a valuable learning experience into a frustrating missed opportunity.

There are goals, but there is no pressure to do any of them. You can enter competitions, take on challenges, or just enjoy the ride. There are hidden Euro coins sprinkled in the mountains. If you find and collect them all, Shaun White himself will believe you are serious about your craft and take you under his wing. But I'll bet you too will get bored with this game before you find them all.

Shaun White Snowboarding should have used other aspects of the Assassin's Creed engine and gone beyond the boundaries of the real. It just feels like a miss. It's not exciting or fun enough for me, reading more like an instruction manual than anything else. The game seems to have potential, but if it bores the player to tears within the first few hours, so none of that potential will be enjoyed. There is something to be said about realism, but this game is so real, it leaves you cold. If I had to choose a Shaun White title this year, I'd get the Wii version and leave this one on the shelf.

Marvel character Wolverine's previous appearances in games have been mainly kid-friendly and gore-lite, which is somewhat odd considering that the mutant's indestructible claws should result in plenty of decapitations, severed limbs, and exposed intestines with every attack. Raven Software's latest take on the feral superhero--the movie tie-in X-Men Origins: Wolverine--looks like it's taking those claws pretty seriously. Our first look at this game proved to be a blood-splattered affair with plenty of brutal attacks on display.

And when we say brutal, we mean it. Our hands-off look at some of the levels in Wolverine showed the character dishing out some gruesome and visceral punishment. The game looks like it might reach levels of blood-spewing mayhem not seen in a comic-book-based game since 2005's The Punisher. The third-person action game will use the storyline from the upcoming big-screen film (as well as adding its own levels), with stars Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber lending their voices for the characters of Wolverine and Sabertooth, respectively. Our demo began with the title character free-falling through the skies over Africa (apparently his helicopter had just been blown up), with his high-impact landing making a small crater in the ground. A 1,000-foot drop means nothing to the regenerative mutant, however. In a matter of seconds, Wolverine had bounded out of the crater, ready to take on the small band of enemy soldiers that had surrounded him.

Wolverine will sport both quick and power attacks, which can be threaded together to perform increasingly powerful combos. Landing one of these combos will result in a quick cinematic view of one of Wolvie's various finishing moves, which is where the ultra-violence comes in. One of the finishers we saw included Wolverine holding back a soldier's head and stabbing him through the neck. Another had Wolverine impaling an enemy, lifting him up in the air, and repeatedly stabbing him in the chest with his other set of claws. One of our favorites (in a sick way) was the finisher that saw Wolverine slash an enemy across the stomach, pulling out his intestines along the way. Wolverine will also have a lunge maneuver, which will allow him to leap large distances to target enemies, as well as a feral sense ability, which will allow him to spot special paths across levels and see enemy weak points.



As well as upping the gore quotient, Raven seems to be going for a cinematic feel, with several set-piece action sequences planned. As an example, we were shown a level set in the Weapon X facility underneath Alkali Lake, where Wolverine had to escape a wall of water rapidly rushing down a tunnel. Wolvie used his lunge ability to quickly leap onto an enemy's truck, which was also trying to escape, and proceeded to jump from vehicle to vehicle, attacking soldiers as he went. In another sequence, Wolverine was being pursued by an attack helicopter and had to quickly run across a bridge while the chopper was destroying it behind him. The final sequence we were shown should please longtime X-Men fans: Wolverine taking on a 100-foot-tall sentinel. Wolverine's feral senses kicked in, highlighting fuel cables running along the sentinel's feet that had to be attacked to hobble the giant robot.


If the violence we saw in our quick demo is any indication, X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks to be a decidedly more adult take on the popular superhero. Check back with GameSpot soon for a full hands-on preview of the game.

The long-running series Prince of Persia has returned to its original title with no subtitle (we actually had to call this “Prince of Persia 2008”) and no number (it would actually be
number ”7”). I didn’t know you were allowed to do that… But hey, it’s fair enough as they went with a whole new look, fundamentally changed gameplay, and a female companion who's constantly by your side and whose name fully deserves to be in the title as much as Daxter, Kazooie, or Clank.

click to enlargeIn fact, according to the manual, the Prince is not even a prince at all, just a smart-aleck adventurer or possibly a thief who is looking for his donkey that he claims is laden with gold. One magical sandstorm later, he finds himself in the middle of a celestial war, teamed up with a hottie named Elika who actually is a princess.

Once upon a time, the magical land in which the “Prince” now finds himself trapped was balanced between the god of light, Ormazd, and the god of darkness, Ahriman. But Ahriman got greedy and there was a terrible war. Ormazd tricked Ahriman into the Tree of Life, where he became trapped; however, Ormazd was so disgusted by the whole thing that he just took off sulking into the universe, leaving his brother bound.

Of course that never lasts, and Ahriman is beginning to escape his prison as evidenced by the “corruption” spreading everywhere. The Prince, of course, must battle that corruption and slam the cell door closed again. True to the game’s roots, he does this by leaping, swinging, running along walls, and performing other acrobatic feats that are just this side of slightly impossible.

However, this time he’s not alone. Have you ever wondered why you could double jump in games? Get up and try it. You can’t do it. But now I’ve figured it out. In all those games, you had a partner Elika along with you, only she was invisible. Yes, Elika is your double jump, your magical weapon, your power-up at certain glyphs dotting the landscape, but more importantly, your savior.

click to enlargeYou cannot die in Prince of Persia, not under any circumstances, because Elika always saves you. Falling off a cliff? She flies in and grabs you. Sinking into corruption? She pulls you out. About to get stabbed? She blasts the enemy off you. Ran out of toilet paper? She… never mind.

It’s a nice game mechanic because while it fundamentally is no different from the die-try-again, die-try-again, die-try-again game (Mirror’s Edge, I’m looking at you), it feels different. With no loading time and no “you just failed” attitude, it makes the whole thing a happier, more fun experience.

And you can count on Elika to save you time and time again, especially if you try and play like previous Prince of Persia games. While there may be two or three paths to get to where you are going, and you can tackle the game’s challenges in any order you choose, the path you end up choosing only has one exact way through it. So if it’s Run, Jump, Swing, Double Jump, Swing, Wall Run, Taa Daa!, that’s the only combo that will get you down the hallway. Try it until you succeed.

This makes PoP play a lot like a three-button rhythm game with environmental clues coming at you instead of colored dots. Imagine Bike Hero except without all the ground markings, which then I guess is just like imagining a Bike Ride. Not all that exciting, is it?

click to enlargeThe only other gameplay element is the combat, which is fairly infrequent and entirely duel-based. Yes, the Prince’s battles are always one on one. Actually, it’s two on one if you count Elika, and of course since she’s around, you cannot die. If I were Ahriman, I’d cry foul. Like the wall running, it’s also timing intensive and revolves around enemies going into particular “states” which can only be broken by a specific button press particular kind of attack. It’s not brilliant, but it allows for some cinematic moments.

Speaking of which, the whole game is very, very pretty. Ubisoft remade the look with a semi-cel-shaded effect that makes everything look like a combination of a cartoon, a stained glass window, and a painting. It doesn’t work quite as well as Okami, but it works very well indeed. Both the Prince and Elika look great, as do the varied environments, especially after they’ve been cleansed of corruption.

The sound also excels, with a terrific score that varies from vaguely Middle Eastern soft tones to vaulting symphonic pieces clearly inspired by the soundtrack of Laurence of Arabia. Also there’s great voice-acting for the frat-boy sense of humor Prince and the more earnest Elika. There’s even a talk button for people who want more dialogue with their action.

Unlocking areas is one of the places where the game breaks down a bit. In order to get to every area of the map and restore all the fertile grounds, you’ll need to collect all of Elika’s four magic powers. In order to get those, you need to collect the “light orbs/seeds/stationary spherical fireflies” that appear after a land has been cleansed. It just feels like a cheap way to get you to run through the same paths a second time. And they’re exactly the same too, with all the same jumps and falls, just prettier since all the corruption is gone. So it’s still less of an open environment and more like that game you played as a kid where the floor was poison and you all had to run around the house on the furniture (and your house was only two hallways leading to the same door).

click to enlargeAnd why am I helping to cleanse these lands anyway? (Other than to perhaps impress the hot chick.) There’s nobody in them. They’re empty, so who cares if they’re corrupt? The crumbling city has been abandoned for a thousand years. Let it go.

And with no multiplayer, PoP is about a 12-hour single-player experience, and only masochists will try and find all 1001 light orbs (you get new costumes).

Even if there’s no particular reason for it, Prince of Persia is a fun romp through a desert temple. The parkour-heavy gameplay looks impressive and is satisfying without being too frustrating. So head on over to your local store and pick up a copy of Princess Elika and That Nameless Drifter Guy Looking For His Donkey.

You are Goku, the Asian Superman, the super-human based off the legendary super-monkey in The Journey to the West, the super martial artist who can fire super fireballs and soar through the clouds in a super-stream of chi. Raditz, a barbaric Saiyan who claims to be your older brother, has come from the outskirts of the universe, flown to your house, knocked you to the floor, and kidnapped your son Gohan in his plans to conquer Earth. You stand up from the ground slowly, and as Dragonball Z fans know, it’s time for you to kick some alien butt.

So in order to reach Raditz and claim your revenge, you have to jump through gates. Let me repeat that. You jump, as in hippedy-hoppity... through gates, as in blue, twirling hexagons framed by metal. The goal is to find and jump through seven of them, because you are by all means a man-horse who likes to leap through shiny neon geometric shapes. Why? So you... Can advance... To the next level. Oh, and you also collect floating coins. And there’s a time limit. And you’re graded.

It takes something really (not) special to be worse than the first level of Superman 64, where you fly The Man of Steel through four rings and have him throw cars before the time runs out. Here, Goku has actually forgotten how to fly, which means you have to wander around a green landscape with plastered rocks and trees, hop and dash like a rabbit on crack, and figure out how to reach that spinning gate on top of that rock... so that you can reach that other spinning gate on top of that other rock.

I can’t be kind about this. Not only does this not make any sense since it’s quite clear in the Dragonball Z series that he and Piccolo actually fly to Raditz’s spaceship, but Atari has forgotten what fans of the PS2 Dragonball titles like - beating people with super-powered punches and kicks and blowing shit up with energy blasts. If we wanted to play as a normal human, we would be Hercule and... ummm... sorry, completing this sentence hurts me.


It’s easy to sympathize with the developers, though, since they got themselves into are in a tight design spot. After creating three installments of Dragonball Z: Budokai and another three installments of Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, anyone would say, “Hey, maybe we should try something new." Or in other words, “Let’s do the same thing but with a neat twist!”

In fact, much of all of the fighting that Budokai veterans know and love remains the same, and it’s the bulk of what you do whether you’re in the story-based Dragon Mission, the versus Dragon Duel, or the unlockable Fighter’s Road. The one-on-one, cel-shaded fightfest is still about using basic strikes and throws, building up chi for energy attacks, transforming into a higher state so you can perform a devastating hyper-move, and buying extra skills for your characters with the zenny (coins) you earn (and coping with yet another rock-synth-blergh soundtrack by Hironobu Kageyama).

As usual, you can complain over how every character pretty much plays the same way, with some even borrowing complete attack combos from others. The word “cookie-cutter” comes to mind, but that makes them sound more delicious than they actually are. The fighting system is solid and simple, but that’s only because it’s been copied and pasted about five or six times over. Honestly, the best thing you can say about the cast is that they are all characters that fans of both Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT actually care about playing. (I look forward to any angry emails from all fans of Garlic Jr. That’s right, all eight of you.)

Infinite World tries to mix things up with a smattering of side diversions, but the last thing I want to do when I’m a kickass Saiyan is to jump through hoops (literally), go on fetch quests with a time limit, and press buttons with the correct timing as their icons scroll along the bottom of the screen. (Sorry, Vegeta isn’t a guitar hero. If anything, he uses guitars for target practice.)

click to enlargeMost of these mini-games are lackluster snapshots of various genres, the most inspired of which is a shooting bit where Tien has to stall Cell by using successive Tri-Beam blasts, just as he does in the series. But even then, it’s stale, repetitive, and irritating. Catching the banana-peel-throwing monkey Bubbles is tedious. Running the entire length of Snake Way is snooze-inducing. Having to jump through gates while lightning strikes you is maddening. Like the casting for the upcoming Dragonball Z movie, something is just not right.

The ESRB describes Saints Row 2 with the following phrases: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs. I'm happy to say that, at least in this case, the ESRB wasn't being generous. No, they were actually being pretty damn reserved. Saints Row 2 exceeds every single one of those descriptors in pretty much any way possible.

This is a game that's so wildly over the top, it's enough to make the GTA:SA Hot Coffee "scandal" look mild in comparison. And you know what? The game is all the better for it. Just like movies, not every game has to be high art. Sometimes you're simply in the mood for a big, shiny, Bruckheimer-esque, explosion fest. That's exactly what Saints Row 2 promises and exactly what it delivers.

Set five years after the first game, it picks up where the original abruptly ended. After getting blown the fuck up you've spent the intermediate years laying in a coma in a prison hospital. Due to the miracles of modern science (aka an incredibly flexible character creator) you can recreate yourself however you like. This includes anything from a svelte, stocking clad working girl to a morbidly obese man with fat rolls so large they hide the thong he is attempting to wear.

Sadly, I had to spend half-an-hour looking at such a creation when Duke and I sat down for some co-op for the first time. The poor guy grabbed a random character and, well, let's just say it wasn't pretty.

Thank you for making Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I appreciate that it is (primarily) true to its source material. I am impressed with how you’ve managed to take the World of Warcraft formula, tweak it, slap a nicer coat of paint over it, and somehow ensnare me and maintain my interest. My general revulsion for the aforementioned MMO should have served as sufficient vaccine against your infectious game, but no. For yours is well-crafted, sirs.

Let me begin by commending the user interface. It is clean, efficient, and streamlines most of the nonsense in MMOs right out. Looking for groups is easier than ever, and the ability to refer others to your group leader for an invitation is a brilliant addition. Easy buttons for joining PvP scenarios and local teams keep the game operating at a good pace. You have taken many of the complaints I have had about the interfaces of MMOs for over a decade now and worn away all the rough edges.
The way you have balanced the factions against one another, with classes effectively mirrored (albeit with some pleasant tweaks to reflect the character of the faction), operates more smoothly than I had expected. Indeed, the PvP experience exceeds that of any MMO I have yet to play. It is the first MMO where I have not hated every moment of PvP I played through. Not only is there always a sense of 'agency' in every act I take, but I feel as though I always have a clear role to play, a contribution to make.

Some call me an urban legend, the last damn hope for humanity, that kid from Vault 101. Others call me a fuckin' commie. And I'm fine with that, as long as I don't hear them say it with their jaw attached.But it doesn't matter how lucky you are, does it? You've seen the Wasteland, this man-made Apocalypse, this sorry-ass excuse of a history lesson we all have to live with. The landscape is dead, vacant, and rusted - a painting of paradise whose colors have faded into the murk of browns, greys, and dusty hues. The wind blows through the windows of the abandoned car, creeps around the corners of the broken street, and spreads the odor of anarchy through the ruins of the Lincoln Memorial.
But you? You're just lucky. Lucky you're still alive. Lucky you can read. Lucky this book hasn't been turned into a carcass of mold like all the other books in this godforsaken hellhole. Lucky I have spare time. Lucky Moira made it worth my while to write this damn introduction for a survival guide. And especially lucky you haven't stepped into Megaton long enough to become Moira's little guinea pig. (And she’s lucky for not editing this out.)

Absolute freedom has bred absolute chaos. Raiders, slavers, mutants, mercs – they all want to rip your head off, and if they’re savvy enough, sell it to the highest bidder. Men are expendable. Women and children conceal weapons underneath their filthy garments. Soldiers weighed down by their metal power suits patrol the wastes like sulking, marauding ghosts. Human “ghouls” who have had their skin ripped off by the radiation live in fear of the smoothskin bigots. Civilization exists in tattered pockets in a world worn with war and natural, mindless cruelty.