Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Rhythm/Music
Release date: Available now
Review by: Christopher J. Troilo

We move further and further into an age when gaming has become a group activity in which we combine electronics with our favorite pastimes. From a hardware standpoint, Nintendo has learned how to take simple sports and games and make them interactive, and now Harmonix has done the same thing for music with its Rock Band series, and they’ve done it really, really well. With the release of Rock Band 2, it’s more than apparent that the developers have listened to their fans’ calls for improvements and have tried their best to address every one of them.

For those of you who might be new to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band experience, here’s a brief overview of how these games are played. In Rock Band, you choose between singing into a microphone and playing one of three instruments (guitar, bass or drums). While you listen to mainstream songs, you attempt to play along by using your voice or your instrument in synchronization with colored notes moving along the screen in time with the music. For guitar and bass, you “strum” a flat lever while pressing buttons on the guitar’s neck. For drums, you have four color-coded drum pads to hit, and a kick pedal to simulate the bass drum. Vocalists get lyrics and an oscillating line that indicates the pitches of the notes.

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Publisher: Hothead Games
Developer: Hothead Games
System: XBLA
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ryan Asher

It’s the same stuff, different day for your main protagonist as Episode 2 of Penny Arcade Adventures begins, but this time it’s not a skyscraper-sized robot thrashing your pad. It’s your old buds Gabe and Tycho barreling recklessly into it with their truck. Cue the start of another random, hilarious and sometimes socially awkward misadventure starring the fine duo from Penny Arcade.

After the formalities of your now destroyed home are discussed between the duo and your character, who you can import from the first episode, you’re off to Anne Clair’s for mission details. If it’s the blood of evildoers you crave, no worries; it isn’t long before you’re outside the local loony house cracking the skulls of loitering crazies. The characters feel the need for change when it comes to their various instruments of death. Sure, Gabe still utilizes his fists to dish out his brand of hilarious justice, but Tycho has transitioned to the shotgun and you’ve moved on from the rake…to a hoe.

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Publisher: EA
Developer: EA Redwood Shores
System: Xbox 360
Genre: FPS
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

There are no new ideas, just new ways of freshening up the old ones. At least, that’s how the old cliché goes. While it’s a tenet derived from narrative fiction, the same notion can be applied to video games, a medium that continues to push the idea of interactive storytelling with new and exciting ways of involving the player in the narrative, even if the stories never really evolve beyond the same yarns that have been spun in the past. But, as with fiction, old tales can be rendered new when enough care and polish is applied. With the launch of Dead Space, EA presents a new take on a somewhat creaky survival horror genre in desperate need of a fresh voice.

At the outset of the game, your character, Isaac Clarke (a possible homage to Asimov and Arthur C.), is awakened aboard a vessel streaking through the void to rendezvous with the deep-space mining ship USG Ishimura. The crew of this “planet cracker” has made an amazing discovery on the surface below, and as the scientists aboard begin the process of deciphering their archaeological find, all hell breaks loose. Responding to a mysterious distress signal transmitted by Clarke’s girlfriend, Clarke has two main objectives: rescue the girl, and sift through the rubble and decay that has overtaken the Ishimura in an attempt to understand how things have gone so horribly wrong.

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Publisher: Gamecock Media Group
Developer: Blazing Lizard
System: XBLA
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

There’s a great line in Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire, “The Player.” A desperate screenwriter pitches potential projects as mash-ups of established properties, describing them as “It’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s meets Psycho,” each more ludicrous than the last. The idea is that audiences crave the familiar, rejecting anything new and innovative. The game industry isn’t immune to this Reese’s school of thought (take two great things and make one great taste) with sequel after sequel cannibalizing the innovations that have come before to seemingly build a better game (when Sonic is employing Bullet Time, you know we’ve got problems.) It’s a notion that developer Blazing Lizard has embraced heartily, melding pirate chic with ninja cool in its recent XBLA release, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball. Based on my time with the title, I can safely say that no one’s got their chocolate in my peanut butter.

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Publisher: The Behemoth; Microsoft
Developer: The Behemoth
System: XBLA
Genre: Adventure/ RPG
Release date: Available now
Review by: Christopher J. Troilo

With home consoles staking a larger and larger claim to the videogame market, it’s hard to remember the days when pre-teen Friday nights were spent in the arcade at the local mall. I used to love going with three of my friends, pumping quarters endlessly into the giant machines and tackling epic beat-em-up games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons or X-Men. What made these games a blast was their simplicity. You moved left to right beating up anybody who wasn’t on your team. For hours this formula of action and comedy enthralled me; it was the perfect recipe for entertainment. The creators of the new XBLA game Castle Crashers clearly remember those arcade days and pay wonderful homage to them.

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Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Gearbox
System: Xbox 360
Genre: FPS
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

Some days I feel this war is never going to end. Every time I think my tour of duty is coming to a close, along comes another assignment to guide the Greatest Generation through another World War II game. While it has become cliché to rail against the proliferation of WWII-themed first-person shooters, clichés exist for a reason, born of repetitive thoughts and actions. So each successive Axis and Allies adventure needs to bring something new to the forefront, or at the very least, offer a different perspective of the action. These are the marching orders that Gearbox, developer of the Brothers in Arms series, accepts in the creation of its latest title, Hell’s Highway.

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Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Backbone Emeryville
System: XBLA
Genre: Action
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ryan Asher

When you play a game that is mindlessly fun and addictive, but really has no redeeming value whatsoever, how exactly should it be classified?

I think it shouldn’t be. It’s beyond classification, one might say. It’s like your drunken buddy who always does something embarrassingly hilarious around respectable company, or playing midnight street hockey and being obnoxiously loud – these things are all highly entertaining, but you’re looked down upon for enjoying them.

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Publisher: Atari
Developer: Namco Bandai
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

For a sport that single-handedly fathered the entire video-game bloodline following the release of Pong, tennis seems to get short shrift in gaming these days. Sure, there are a smattering of games released each year—usually timed to coincide with Wimbledon—but compared to the vast iterations of baseball, hockey and of course, football, that are released almost monthly, tennis often languishes on the sidelines. It’s a void that Namco Bandai hopes to fill with the release of Smash Court Tennis 3.

Smash Court Tennis 3 is actually a port of a PSP title released in 2007. While it features the facelift one would expect in the transition to more powerful hardware, this is the exact same game released on Sony’s handheld. That said, the Xbox 360 version of offers a full menu of features to fill your solo and multiplayer needs, so newcomers to the series should find something of interest here.

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Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Games
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Racing
Release date: Available now
Reviewer: Michele White

Ever want to try your hand at maneuvering the banking turns of Daytona or tackle the challenge of keeping a car intact in the demolition derby that is Darlington? NASCAR’s 2008 season may be speeding to the checkered flag, but even if you’re driver is already out of the chase, you can get an early start on the 2009 season with EA’s NASCAR ‘09. Jeff Gordon (no need to stand up and cheer/boo) is standing by to be your tour guide and mentor in the world of the NASCAR big leagues.

The autosave feature is the first option that presents itself, and I highly recommend its selection to prevent the loss of a great position in a 500-mile race that you find yourself without the stamina to finish in one sitting. Next, Jeff will ask you to choose your driving style: normal or pro. He recommends normal, but those familiar with the NASCAR series will want the options available to them with pro. Finally, you get to give Jeff’s car a test run to become familiar with the controls, and so it’s off to Michigan in the number 24.

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Publisher: Sega
Developer: Eurocom
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Reviewer: Christopher J. Troilo

Every four years, the world’s greatest athletes come together, placing aside global differences, to compete before the eyes of all nations. This August marked the 29th occurrence of this event in the modern era—the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Beijing, China, was named the host city nearly seven years ago, and finally, after much deliberation and planning, the athletes have embarked on the last leg of their journey to be the very best at what they do.

This year, the Opening Ceremony was watched in some manner by an estimated 4 billion people across the globe, more than any other event in history. Olympic Fever caught hold, and there are many outlets for fans to show their pride and to be a part of the Games. Since the chances of being on the medal stand are slim for most of us, the digital world offers the closest thing we can get to experiencing going for the gold—this year’s official video game for the Olympics, simply titled Beijing 2008.

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Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
System: XBLA
Genre: Shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

1942: Joint Strike stimulates my thoughts of the future. Will prevalent games such as Grand Theft Auto IV eventually be remade or reworked on some future platform? Should we expect that a game’s graphics will shadow its predecessor’s, as Joint Strike’s do its arcade grandfather’s? The possibility breaks some fifth-wall process in my mind and makes me wonder all kinds of magnificent things, not only in the visual department, but also in terms of gameplay extensions developers haven’t yet begun to imagine.

Joint Strike is a reconditioning of a 1984 arcade shooter in which you control a World War II-era fighter in a battle against squadrons of Japanese planes. This time, however, every aspect of gameplay and graphics has been expanded, polished and toned to accommodate both the modern gamer and fans of the original. Elements from all of the 194X games are combined, giving the player multiple planes to select, health bars (instead of 1942’s one-hit kills), a compliment of powerups to augment your firing pattern, charge shots, and the ability to eliminate every enemy on screen with a super bomb.

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Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Number None
System: XBLA
Genre: Platform
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

Braid is the single most important game released this year.

Ever since technology caught up with our hobby and evolved it from simple beeps and blips and tests of hand-eye coordination into a medium capable of spinning a decent yarn and taking players away to awe-inspiring worlds of wonder, the argument that games are art has gathered strength.

In the past year, the debate has raged, with film critic Roger Ebert famously battling author Clive Barker over the topic. Ebert declared that no game could be considered art since the creator hands over control to the user to craft the experience. Barker countered that exact point — that art is defined by the experience we take from our own individual encounters with someone else’s creative endeavor. Ebert’s assertions seem rooted in the past; the Neolithic 8-bit era and earlier (yes, gaming lacks a Cave Art period). Many of Ebert’s readers tossed Shadow of the Colossus into the mix as proof that this medium can inspire and stir the soul. The jury is still out on whether he agrees.

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Publisher: Activision
Developer: id Software
System: Xbox 360
Genre: First-person Shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ryan Asher

The Strogg have finally reached Earth, and the nomadic aliens are hell bent on totally ruining our sweet planet (before we do that ourselves with our Hummers, overpopulation and sexually suggestive song lyrics). It’s a plotline that I wish I could describe further, but the opening cut scene of Strogg ships approaching Earth is the only semblance of storytelling in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It’s a shame, really, as the clichéd, ominous-sounding narrator and the menacing spaceships descending upon Earth really had me yearning to see what other plot devices the developers would employ.

As it turns out, the run-of-the-mill introduction to Quake Wars is only foreshadowing for the gimped game within. I’ve played my fair share of barebones games before, and the cupboards are nearly bare here. Like most games of its ilk, Quake Wars lets players choose from two sides: in this case, the GDF, the humans who are ensuring our way of life (which consists of listening to Big ‘N Rich for most of us); and the Strogg, the dudes who want to take that away.

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Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Codemasters
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Racing
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

My appetency to win transfers just the right amount of strength to my leg to push the accelerator through the floorboards, stabbing the already red engine with white hot spurs. Two particularly troublesome rivals are crowding my rear, with the rest of the pack choking on the atomized pavement behind us. By my figuring almost a half a million dollars of fiberglass, steel and Italian leather churn recklessly underneath me. One more successful turn and I stand the tallest on the podium, one wrong move and I become the only man with a flying car in the vicinity.

Codemasters know their racing games, as made evident by their successful TOCA and Colin McRae (R.I.P.) series. DiRT, another CM racer was released last year to solid reviews; praising its great visuals, damage modeling and amazingly useable cockpit view. Now the 23 year old developer is looking to take the same tenacity (and engine) from DiRT and apply it to some asphalt with their latest: Grid.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Canada
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports/Soccer
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

Timed to coincide with the real world UEFA EURO 2008 competition in Austria and Switzerland, EA has released their latest entry in the soccer field, UEFA Euro. While EA is also the developer behind the venerable FIFA series, UEFA differs quite a bit and offers up its own compelling sports package even if it seems that we’re getting two soccer games from the same developer in the same year.

Where UEFA differs immediately from FIFA is in the stable of teams to choose from. Only those teams eligible for this real-world competition are on display in the game. In UEFA, players are tasked with choosing their favorite team from among the 52 member nations of the United European Football Association. What this means is that you can choose to captain a perennial powerhouse like England or append a Cinderella story on Croatia.

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