Ridge Racer 7 PlayStation Game Review

Last year's Ridge Racer 6 marked the first time that a game in the main Ridge Racer series appeared on a non-Sony platform. With Ridge Racer 7, the series is back on PlayStation and available at launch for the PS3. It brings the same arcade-style, drift-crazy gameplay to Sony's new console, and fans of the series should probably enjoy it. However, there's one small catch: Most of the tracks in Ridge Racer 7 were also in Ridge Racer 6. So while the new car customization options and slipstream speed boosts are features that only fans of the series will immediately appreciate, all of the recycled tracks may make those same fans feel like they've already played some of this game before. The enhancements to the gameplay are still enough of a draw, and to the Sony-faithful Ridge Racer players who passed on the previous installment, Ridge Racer 7 will especially have a lot to offer.

The undisputed video game drift king is back for some more insane sliding.

For the uninitiated, Ridge Racer 7 will seem like a totally foreign world. While the arcade-style racing genre has absolutely exploded over the last decade, Ridge Racer 7 still focuses on the same thing it has since it first began in actual arcades: ridiculous on-rails drift mechanics that whip you around corners almost automatically. Nearly losing control of your car around every sharp turn is the only way to win in Ridge Racer, and the way you drive is unlike anything else on the market. At this point, it's something of a secret handshake between the player and the game console. Either you already know what Ridge Racer is, how to play it, and why it's fun, or you don't.
It's difficult to imagine someone making Ridge Racer 7 his or her first Ridge Racer game and quickly getting into it, just because the way you drift is so arcane. The idea is that as you go into a sharp corner, you let off the gas and then immediately hit it again. This causes you to spin out and start sliding around the corner automatically. Your goal at this point is to make sure your car is pointing in the right direction when you come out of the turn, where you'll regain traction and keep going. When we say automatically, we mean it. You can slide through multiple hairpin curves without even thinking about the nature of the turns themselves. As long as you're prepared to correct the car's direction, you're A-OK. The game's cars offer multiple types of drifting. Mild sticks to the road pretty well and doesn't get too crazy around curves, but it's also the slowest type of car. Dynamic is on the opposite end of the spectrum, so when you drift, the car's direction will dramatically whip around, making it easier to get into a drift but harder to get out of one. Since it's the fastest drift type, it's the expert's choice. Standard strikes a happy medium between the two and should be the best choice for beginning and intermediate players.
Don't mistake all this talk about automatic cornering to mean that there's nothing to Ridge Racer 7. On the contrary, keeping your car moving at high speeds is an exercise in precision timing and takes a bit of strategy. As you drift at high speeds, you'll charge up a nitrous boost meter, which has three different levels. When it fills, you can bust out a quick speed boost, or you can save it up for a double or triple nitrous boost, if you want something with a little more kick. When boosting, you can't drift to charge up your meter under normal conditions. But if you get into a drift just as your nitrous expires, that extra speed fills up your nitrous meter much faster, something the game calls "ultimate charge." So you want to strategically time your nitrous usage to take advantage of that whenever possible. Also, Ridge Racer 7 adds slipstreaming to the action. It's a dramatic addition because it's extremely effective. When you get right behind another racer, even if you're pretty far away, you accelerate faster and can move at a higher top speed. The closer you get, the more of a speed boost you'll receive. This completely changes the way you play compared to previous Ridge Racer games, because now you want to stay behind your opponents for as long as you can and then swing out and attempt to slingshot around them. It's a smart addition.

Slipstreaming is absolutely key in Ridge Racer 7, and you'll need to employ it effectively to catch up to the competition.

Ridge Racer's car design has always been really cool. There are no licensed cars in here, but the game treats its cars as if they come from a series of fictional manufacturers, with great names like Kamata, Assoluto, Gnade, and Danver. On top of that, each one of these makers has different makes, so you can get the Danver Bayonet, the Sinseong Jujak, or the Age Prophetie, just to name a few. The car designs get wild, with lots of smooth curves that give all of the vehicles the look of futuristic concept cars. In fact, the game doesn't even call them cars. It's very careful to call them "machines," which is crazy. You can customize your cars by going into the "machine connector," where you can purchase body parts from a separate set of manufacturers, including Dig Dug. Bet you didn't know that Dig Dug made sweet body kits in his spare time. You can also purchase engine, tire and suspension, and nitrous upgrades and change the paint on your car. While the engine upgrades increase your top speed and the nitrous upgrades change the way your nitrous meter works, the tire and suspension upgrades don't seem to have a very dramatic effect on the way your car handles.

To upgrade your car with aftermarket parts, you'll first have to establish a relationship with the parts maker. Races that establish those relationships open up as you play through the main mode, called Ridge State Grand Prix. In this mode, you'll enter into races one series at a time and go up against seven other cars in a points battle. Winning these events will open up races that will unlock the ability to buy new parts and cars. The more you use a specific manufacturer's cars or parts, the more points you earn with them. These points give you discounts on that company's gear at set intervals. While there are tons of different events to enter, there are only 21 tracks. That number doubles because the game lets you race them both ways, but be prepared to spend a lot of time racing on the same tracks. You'll get very familiar with these tracks as you play, and if you played Ridge Racer 6, chances are you'll already be familiar with almost all of them, since there are only a handful of all-new tracks in the game. The repetition, both within the game itself and when taking the previous game into account, is Ridge Racer 7's biggest problem.

The online racing in RR7 lets up to 14 players race at once.

In addition to the grand prix mode, you can enter time attack mode and race the tracks by yourself. Your best times will be posted to an online leaderboard, though annoyingly, your scores don't post right away and, according to the game, may take up to an hour to appear on the leaderboards. That sort of delayed feedback takes some of the punch out of the leaderboards' effectiveness. There's also an arcade mode, which lets you pick a car and a track and go nuts. You can play multiplayer via split-screen, but it's not very smooth and not very exciting, either. Heck, you can even play an arcade-perfect emulation of Xevious, if you like, because it pops up during the initial load-and-install process.
The game has online support for up to 14 players in a race, and this is where it gets a good dose of longevity. You can simply get together and race, or you can get into a team battle, where the racers split into two teams and earn points for their team depending on where they finish. Pair battle is a team mode where you split up into teams of two cars. The goal is to drive in unison with your teammate, because if you do side-by-side drifts around a turn, you earn nitrous more quickly. The team shares one nitrous boost meter, as well. You can also take on time attack mode as a duo. It's a really neat set of modes, but without any way to communicate with your teammate during the race, it's hard to stick together and drive appropriately. Your only communication with other racers is limited to a preset list of phrases in the lobby before and after each race. The phrases are varied, but not enough to let you communicate meaningfully.
Ridge Racer 7 has support for all the HD modes that the PS3 can handle, up to 1080p. At 720p and better, the game looks extremely sharp, and though you'll see some noticeable jagged edges on some surfaces, the great sense of speed, matched with the sharpness of the graphics, makes this game look great. Since many of the tracks appeared on the Xbox 360, it's worth comparing how the two different games look. Ridge Racer 7 looks sharper and cleaner than Ridge Racer 6 did, but in most cases you'll have to stare at both versions to notice any real difference beyond just the increased resolution. Like previous Ridge Racer games, something about Ridge Racer 7 looks extremely mechanical. Watching other cars drift is especially weird, because they sort of pivot effortlessly and start moving in a different direction. Overall, it looks good, but it also often looks extremely unnatural.

If you played Ridge Racer 6, you'll recognize most of the game's tracks.

The sound in Ridge Racer 7 is somewhat understated. Engine noises are sort of low, as are the sounds of nitrous bursts. Squealing tires during drifts, however, are plenty loud. The game's announcer is a lady who sounds like she stepped right out of a bad classic-rock radio station and into the Ridge Racer recording session. She'd probably sound more at home introducing a double shot from Poison followed by that Y&T twofer that the guys down at the local tire shop just requested than she does talking about nitrous drifts and winning races. She's pretty underwhelming. The music is the same sort of upbeat, lively techno that the series has been using all along. There are a lot of tracks, but the one that sums it up best is called "Bad House Music." It's aptly named.
Ridge Racer 7 is a great entry in the long-running series, which is good news, especially given that it's the first racing game available for the PS3. The gameplay changes made here are probably the most dramatic that the series has seen since Ridge Racer Type 4, though the repetition of tracks may be a bummer for some series fans who've probably played a mess of Ridge Racer 6. But if you're a fan of the series and you haven't played it lately, you'll be in for a real treat. And even those without much of any exposure to Ridge Racer may be drawn in by this game's sleek style.

Star Fox 3D play Station Game Review

Star Fox 3D

In the 14 years since Star Fox 64 first landed on shelves, millions have answered the desperate call to save the Lylat system from the forces of the vile Andross. Few who have heeded that call have forgotten the brave wingmen who flew alongside them, or the perilous places they passed through on their mission. Now, the call rings out once again. Star Fox 64 is and has always been a well-crafted adventure, and whether you're a seasoned space ace or a novice pilot, you're sure to enjoy rescuing Corneria from Andross' clutches. Underneath the new 3D paint job, this is mostly the same game that has been released not only for the N64, but also on the Wii's Virtual Console, and it's hard not to wish that Nintendo had created a new mission to undertake rather than hauling out this classic again. But although Fox's Arwing has been around the galaxy a few times, she's still got it where it counts.
The diabolical scientist Andross was exiled long ago to the distant world of Venom, and from there, he now mounts an invasion against the peaceful planet Corneria. His forces overwhelmed, the canine General Pepper calls on the services of the Star Fox team, a mercenary band of fighter pilots, to fend off the invasion and take the fight to Andross' harsh homeworld. But team leader Fox McCloud and his fellow fighters aren't in it just for the money. Fox's father, James, led a mission to Venom some years ago from which he never returned, and which team member Peppy Hare narrowly survived. The characters have plenty of personality--particularly Falco, whose arrogance is as sharp as his beak. The frequent chatter between team members Fox, Peppy, Slippy, and Falco creates a sense of camaraderie, though some lines repeat too often. Peppy loves to inform you that "Your father helped me like that, too" when you blast a bogey off his tail, which you might find yourself doing frequently.
Your mission to defeat Andross begins on the lush planet of Corneria. Propelled forward along a narrow path, you shoot enemies both airborne and on land, and do some fancy flying with your Arwing spacecraft to evade enemy fire and snag power-ups. Control is easy and intuitive; holding the left or right shoulder button while turning lets you bank in that direction more quickly, and a double-tap of either shoulder button performs the famous barrel roll, which deflects enemy fire in addition to looking pretty cool. As a result, you feel like a skilled pilot from the moment you start playing, but true mastery of Star Fox 64 takes time.
Each stage plays out the same way each time, with enemies entering from the same directions at the same moments. Familiarizing yourself with these patterns is vital if you want to earn the medal for each stage, which requires you to score a certain number of hits against enemies. Earning these medals isn't easy, and they serve as a good incentive to revisit the stages repeatedly and hone your skills. If you earn all of them, you earn the right to feel like a hotshot, and you unlock the game's expert difficulty level, which has a whole new set of medals to earn. But you don't have to be concerned with acing the mission to have a good experience with Star Fox 64. You can also have fun just fumbling your way through the adventure. It's easy enough to be accessible to just about anyone, but those who want a significant challenge will find that, as well. And this version includes two difficulty levels that are available from the start: one duplicates the difficulty of the N64 version, while the other makes your ship sturdier and your enemies easier. 

NBA Street Homecourt Ps Game Torrent Download

When the original NBA Street hit the scene in 2001, it took the over-the-top basketball formula established by the NBA Jam series to the next level. Since then, enormous rim-rocking dunks, intentional fouls, and blatant goaltending have been a part of nearly every play. Rather than simply adding more content and possibly making the latest game in the Street series too complex, developer EA Canada has trimmed the fat and focused almost entirely on simplifying and perfecting the gameplay. NBA Street Homecourt is easier than ever to pick up and play, and almost all of the new moves and dunks are fantastic, but because of a shallow career mode and a limited number of other gameplay modes, there aren't enough ways to enjoy it.

Once again, the dunks leave Mars Blackmon asking, 'Is it the shoes?'

NBA Street's fast-paced, over-the-top gameplay is back, and it's as good as ever. The trick stick has been removed, but the new simplified controls work very well. Basic dribble moves are mapped to the square and triangle buttons, and the really crazy stuff is performed by hitting one of those face buttons in conjunction with a shoulder button. As always, the more moves you make, the faster your gamebreaker meter fills. And if you really make a defender look bad, you'll earn a bonus for your trick points. As crazy as they are, the series' dunks are so frequent that they've almost become routine. Almost. Homecourt has breathed new life into dunks by adding a few twists. For starters, teammates will sometimes get down on all fours at the top of the key and act as launching pads. All you've got to do is run up to them and jump, and you'll soon find yourself high in the sky heading toward the rim for a vicious dunk. The biggest addition to the dunk repertoire is the double, and sometimes triple, dunk. A meter fills as you hold down the dunk button, and the longer you hold it, the more powerful your dunk. If you release the button too late, you'll get denied by the rim, but if you time it just right, you can dunk the ball, catch it, and dunk it again. If you do this during a gamebreaker, you can dunk the ball a third time. Multiple dunks are both awesome and awful. It's great when you're the dunker, but as the dunkee, it's maddening to lose a close game as a victim of a double dunk. It's bad enough when you're playing against a friend, but it feels downright cheap when the CPU does it.
After you've performed enough tricks and dunks to fill the gamebreaker meter, it's time to unleash some pain. Once the meter is activated, you've got a limited amount of time to score, but you'll want to take some time to perform as many tricks as possible because the more you refill your meter, the more points your bucket will be worth. As usual, the moves and dunks you can perform here are completely over-the-top, even by Street standards. While the game's focus is mostly on offense, you'll need to hunker down on defense if you're to rule the streets. Goaltending and fouling aren't just allowed--they're encouraged. The way you play defense is largely unchanged, and for the most part, it's very satisfying, especially when you're blocking shot after shot. The only negative aspect of the gameplay is that it's often very difficult to pick up loose balls, particularly if you're on defense. The CPU even has a difficult time picking the ball up and getting it back to the baseline after a bucket.
The one area in which Homecourt is lacking is the number of gameplay modes. You can play a basic game without tricks and gamebreakers or play games where points count only if they're scored with a full trick meter or a gamebreaker. However, none of those modes are particularly interesting. Online play offers up the same games, as well as leaderboards. While the game runs well online, it would have been nice to have some sort of true online career mode. Because the other modes are so shallow, nearly all of the game's value is found in the Homecourt Challenge.
Homecourt Challenge is where you play on your local court, eventually make a name for yourself, and take on real NBA players on their homecourts. You start by creating a baller, but rather than altering individual features, you select from one of a handful of generic heads and then merge it with the heads of two NBA players. This means that you can finally find out what the love child of Steve Nash and Yao Ming would look like. (It's every bit as horrifying as you might imagine.) Outside of being sort of creepy, the create-a-player feature is quite limited. After you've created your Frankenstein baller, you assign him a position and playing style. Then, you head to the court where you can round out your squad of three by picking up some no-name locals. Once your squad is assembled, you'll play pickup games against other local players, and eventually, you'll get to take on teams made of NBA and even a few WNBA players. The rules for victory vary. Sometimes the winner is the first to score 21 or the first to lead by three points; other times, you'll only be allowed to dunk or take jump shots. Your created player's attributes improve slightly after each game, and when you reach a certain level, you can max out one skill by designating it as a "freak skill." This makes your player nearly unstoppable in one aspect of his game, and knowing you have a deadly shooter, shot blocker, or rebounder is invaluable in tight games against the CPU. You won't want to get attached to your teammates because you'll constantly be adding and dropping players to improve your team's talent level.
Part of the appeal of the NBA Street series has always been the great player animation, and Homecourt does not disappoint. Dunks are satisfying not only because they change the score, but also because they look powerful, leaving fallen players and bent rims in their wake. You never know what mind-blowing dunk you'll see next, either. It might be a reverse, or a reverse with a flip, pump, spin, and a windmill. These moves look even better, thanks to a consistently snappy frame rate. The players look realistic, and because the game's roster is mostly made up of the NBA's better players, they're almost all instantly recognizable in-game and look even better in the replays. The real-life courts on which you play vary greatly in style and design. Most of them aren't instantly recognizable locales, but whether it's an indoor gym, beachside court, or urban setting, they all look nice.
It's odd that the developer decided to muck up all of the great-looking animations, players, and courts with a "retro" look. Everything is run through a filter that gives it a sepia tone. The idea was to make the NBA players' homecourts look as they might in home movies or pictures. This might make sense if there were any old-school players, but it's a safe bet that Carmello Anthony's home movies weren't shot with an old 8mm camera. There's no option to turn the effect off, either. Eventually you can get past it, but it's still lame. Homecourt supports 1080p, but it doesn't look much better than the lower resolutions; and the frame rate, which is fine in 1080i and 720p, takes a pretty big hit in 1080p.

Unless you look like a combination of both AI and T-Mac, morphing two NBA players into one isn't the ideal way to create your own baller.

The game's audio also has a bit of a retro feel to it, but it works because it's cool. When you bust out a gamebreaker, you'll do so to the synthesized funk of Herbie Hancock's "Rockit." The outstanding soundtrack features artists, such as RJD2, Quincy Jones, The Jackson 5, DJ Shadow featuring Q-Tip and Lateef, the Herbaliser, and many more. On the court, players will talk trash, which itself is nothing new, but here it actually doesn't sound supercheesy.
There's a lot to like about NBA Street Homecourt's debut on the PlayStation 3. The controls are easy to learn, the gameplay is as tight as ever, players look great and move well, and the soundtrack is top-notch. As any good game should, Homecourt leaves you wanting more, not only because it's so much fun, but also because there isn't enough to do. However, there are worse things you can say about a game other than it left you wanting more.

MotorStorm Apocalypse PS Game torrent Download Game Review

Sony and developer Evolution Studios' Motorstorm is undeniably one of the more anticipated of the upcoming crop of PlayStation 3 games. It was one of the first major games shown for the system and looked to demonstrate the kind of incredible visual fidelity the PS3 was to be capable of. In this regard, Motorstorm does not disappoint. It's easily one of the best-looking games on the system (if not the best thus far), and you'll be hard pressed not to ooh and aah as the game's vehicles crash and explode into one another again and again. Trouble is, that's pretty much the bulk of what you're going to get from it. While the racing is legitimately exciting and filled with visual treats, there's only a handful of ways to experience it, and the only way that really holds up over time is online against friends.

It's safe to say that this beats the hell out of Lollapalooza.

Think of Motorstorm as what would happen if someone in a postapocalyptic future decided to crossbreed rallycross racing and Burning Man-style music-festival culture into one ridiculous orgy of vehicular violence and heavy music. Of course, no one would ever do that, but it makes for a compelling-enough game concept. The twist with Motorstorm's brand of racing is that a variety of different vehicle types all coexist on one track, from big rigs all the way down to dudes on motorcycles. While that might sound like a nightmare for those who prefer their vehicles more on the svelte side, don't worry--you're not destined to be bopped endlessly by bigger vehicles. All the tracks in Motorstorm have multiple paths, and different vehicle types are more suited to some than others. If you're on a bike, ATV, or dune buggy, you can take the higher ground, which tends to be loaded with jumps and other obstacles not properly suited to the bulkier racers. On the flip side, the lower ground tends to be muddy and less reliant on crazy turns and narrow ledges--precisely the kind of stuff a bigger vehicle would be perfectly designed for.
This balancing act permeates every aspect of the racing, and it actually works quite nicely. Some of the vehicles can be a bit of a drag to drive on certain tracks, but as there are plenty of vehicles to choose from, you're bound to find something that works for each situation. It's all about finding the type of vehicle you're most comfortable with and then finding the sections of the track that will get you to the finish line fastest. All the while, you'll be fighting off both other racers and the track itself to survive. Make no mistake, the tracks are treacherous. Jumps are often a tricky prospect to pull off, and there are broken-down cars, mud pits, ledges that will send you flying off a cliff and to your doom (until you respawn, of course), and all sorts of other unpleasantness there to get in your way. As things go, you'll have to deal with the incessant bopping and other antagonizing antics of your opponents. The big guys can wreck into whomever they please, but even the little guys aren't left out in the cold. Racers on bikes and ATVs can attack one another as they drive past, knocking opponents off their rides, which can be immensely satisfying.
It's too bad, then, that there's not more to it. As chaotic as some of the cinematics of the game make the racing look, it's not quite as chaotic as you might expect. The racing isn't exceedingly fast, and the whole core of the racing experience is really just about vying for position based on size and which paths you can take. Your vehicle has a nitro boost that can be liberally used to help put you past opponents and take higher jumps, but there's no real combat to the racing beyond bumping and the occasionally thrown elbow. There's nothing really wrong with that, but the racing in Motorstorm can still get a bit tedious in spots. Once you figure out the right way to take a track for your type of vehicle, that's pretty much what you tend to stick to. That there are only eight tracks in the game heightens the repetitive nature of the racing. They're long tracks, and with all the varying paths, it will take you at least a few go-arounds with each to figure out their various intricacies. But once you do, you'll find yourself pining for some additional variety.
It doesn't help that there's so little to do in the game overall. All Motorstorm offers is a kiddie-pool-shallow single-player mode and online racing. The single-player mode offers up a series of event tickets. These tickets open up races to take part in, and how you place in each race determines how many points you earn to spend on more tickets. You keep doing this until you've unlocked all the races, and, well, that's it. If you're waiting for the part where you unlock new race types or new, unique vehicles, keep waiting. Yes, you can unlock new vehicle types, but they're purely aesthetic changes. New vehicles don't display any new or improved statistical info, so if you're racing one vehicle in a weight class, you're racing any of them. As for race types, there's only one: races. You can't even adjust what types of vehicles play in a race--all that stuff is predetermined based on the event, meaning you're stuck with a specific class in the vast majority of the races. The actual progression of the events doesn't offer a lot beyond the ability to unlock new vehicles and to serve as a practice mode for the online game. That's a decent-enough offering, though once you get to the later events, where the CPU drivers turn into sadistic jerks that endlessly frustrate you, you'll probably just give up on the single-player mode altogether and stick to the online play.
The good news is that online mode is a fun time all around. The unpredictable style of racing Motorstorm uses is a perfect fit for rousing multiplayer matches, and with the ability to have up to 12 players in a race, there's plenty of anarchist fun to be had. The game uses a solid lobby and ranking system (though it only ranks wins, not other placings), and voice chat is supported, as well. Furthermore, the online mode lets you do a few things that you can't in the single-player, like letting you choose from any of the available vehicles at all times. Online matches don't seem to suffer from much, if any, lag. The only real bummer about the game's multiplayer is that you can't play it offline. Online play is excellent to have, for sure, but if you just want to hop into a race with some friends that happen to be sitting next to you, you can't do it.
However, when you consider how fantastic Motorstorm's graphics are, the lack of split-screen multiplayer maybe makes a bit more sense (though it's no less disappointing, all the same). Of the current crop of PS3 games, Motorstorm absolutely takes the prize as the best looking. Sure, there's some ugly textures that crop up now and again, and the frame rate tends to dip during particularly destruction-heavy moments (split-screen would have probably murdered it altogether), but those few issues aside, the game's a real visual achievement. It all starts with the vehicles, which are some of the most beautiful jalopies you'll ever see. Each vehicle is extremely detailed from bumper to bumper. Even the driver models are fully detailed, which is plainly obvious when you're driving a motorcycle or ATV. And the crashes are even better. Your rides break apart in incredibly dynamic ways, creating completely different forms of destruction each time out. And even when you just slam into something and don't completely wreck it, you'll see that damage. Tires will bend or start to come off, bumpers will deform, paint will chip, and every vehicle eventually becomes so caked with dirt and mud that the paint job is practically irrelevant from the get-go.
That the tracks are just as excellent looking is really saying something. Again, there are only eight of them, but each one is a long, drawn-out trek through one form of desertic hell or another, and they're all a treat to look at. Motorstorm has some of the most impressive lighting effects you've seen in a racing game to date, and depending on the time of the day, the sun is either completely washing out a barren wasteland or coloring a beautiful landscape with gorgeous oranges and reds. Even the distant mountains and hills in the background look excellent, though it's the up-close pieces of the track that really impress. Dirt and mud fly everywhere, deforming the track itself in the process, and many of the pieces of junk littered about the track can break or be otherwise moved. The copious dust and dirt is maybe a bit overboard when it drenches the screen, but it's a neat effect all the same. Less impressive is the array of available camera angles. The standard from-behind camera view is fine no matter what vehicle you use, but the first-person camera mode is really only enjoyable when you're on a bike or ATV. The view isn't exactly a hindrance in any of the other rides, and you do get to look at some of the track details much closer this way, but it's just not as enjoyable a way to drive. A real, in-the-cockpit view would have been nice in this case. But cockpit view or no, it's hard to find much fault with the way Motorstorm's visuals are presented.

Oops.

Motorstorm's audio is also pretty great. On the track, engines have a ferocious roar to them, and every time you wreck into something, the booming, crunching sounds of the crash really make you feel it. While you race, you get one of several rock or techno songs from major artists like Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Wolfmother, Spiritualized, and Slipknot, among others. It's a diverse soundtrack that always manages to fit the vibe of the overall game, in that every song heightens the intensity of a race in one way or another.
Motorstorm is a good game that also feels like it has a great deal of untapped potential. As an over-the-top, gorgeous-to-look-at racer, Motorstorm is absolutely a success. As a deep and lasting experience, it's far from it. The question, then, is what's more important to you? Is it of greater import to you that a game feature great racing mechanics and incredible graphics, features be damned? Or does a deep array of lasting modes and features make or break a game for you? If you answered yes to the former, then Motorstorm is unequivocally the game for you. If you answered yes to the latter, pay consideration to just how much you're going to get out of a solid online mode and a cheap-feeling single-player mode that you'll probably never go back to once you finish it. Either way, here's to hoping that the next time around, Evolution turns in a more fleshed-out experience to go with its great game design.

Full Auto 2: Battlelines PS3 Game Review | torrent Download

Full Auto 2 is technically proficient, but almost every aspect of this car combat game's gameplay is messed up in one way or another.

The Good

• Has a more stable frame rate than the previous Full Auto.

The Bad

• Bad car physics make everything feel too light  
• no communication options in the online mode  
• enemy artificial intelligence feels very robotic.

The original Full Auto debuted on the Xbox 360 and tried to be a thrilling combat racing game but ultimately failed. The explosions were cool, but the handling was bad, the car physics made everything feel weightless, and the weapons weren't much fun to use. Full Auto 2: Battlelines has switched sides and is exclusively available on the PlayStation 3. It makes some changes to how you outfit your vehicle, attempts to add a storyline, and adds a new arena mode that makes it a bit more like the car combat games of old. But it doesn't fix the core problems of the first game, so all the new modes only serve to make the bad handling, questionable physics, and dull weaponry stand out that much more. Whether you're familiar with the previous game or not, this game probably isn't for you.

Full Auto 2 attempts to add a story to the single-player mode, but it's barely there and kind of dumb.

The storyline has you answering to a computer-based authority figure called S.A.G.E. This female-voiced computer summons you because an evil gang is running the streets. The police can't stop them, so it's up to you to enter the gang's car combat events and take them out from the inside. It's a very thin story that doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. The career mode takes you from one series to the next, and each series has a number of different events in it. While there are more events than there are tracks or arenas, the game changes things up by giving you different primary and secondary objectives. Sometimes you'll just need to finish first. At other times, you'll have to gun down a specific vehicle, then finish first. There are also arena levels that take away the racetrack and give you a wide-open level on which to fight. In the arena levels, you'll have to blow up your enemies to succeed, and you're usually on a time limit too. You'll have to hit the primary objectives to move on, and meeting the secondary objectives, helps you to unlock more stuff. But you'll unlock most of what you need just by getting the primaries, so unless you're crazy about getting new paint jobs for your car, you don't need to get every single little thing.
So the main focus of the game is racing around in cars and shooting everything that moves; two things that are cornerstones of the video game industry. But the way Full Auto 2 brings them together isn't very exciting. The driving is brought down by poor car control. The vehicles all very floaty and weightless, and the way they fly through the air after hitting jumps just doesn't feel right. Also, the handling lacks finesse, making it very easy to just bang your way through every corner without really caring that you're hitting walls all over the place. The hand brake lets you slide a bit through turns; but the sliding, too, doesn't feel right at all. In addition to basic driving, you can fire two weapons. You select your weapons individually prior to starting the race and unlock more as you go. So the weak machine gun and smoke screen combo you're limited to at the beginning quickly gives way to a shotgun, grenade launchers, mines, and so on. The fire controls work decently, and you can even aim some of the front weapons with the right stick. But because you need to hit the face buttons pretty frequently to fire your secondary weapon or hit the hand brake, you don't have much time to fiddle around with aiming your front weapon. The other two things at your disposal are a speed boost and "unwreck," which is a button that lets you rewind time when things go wrong and hope that they pan out a bit better the next time. Unlike the first game, your boost and unwreck are linked to the same meter; so if you boost a lot, you'll be unable to unwreck as frequently. But the speed boost almost always seems more useful than the ability to rewind your mistakes, so unwreck feels mostly useless.
In addition to the career mode, you can jump into any race or arena via an arcade mode and just play, but you'll still be limited by what you've unlocked in the career. The multiplayer options let you play two-player games locally or up to eight players online. The online mode has options for ranked and unranked arena battles and races, and you can limit which cars are chosen to help keep things fair, but the weapon selection is always based on what you've unlocked in the career. Of course, there is a catch. It's either a function of the rarity of the PlayStation 3 or a statement about the popularity of Full Auto 2, but it seems like almost no one is playing this game online. Ranked matches require four players to start, and even after sitting in a ranked connection screen with one other racer for more than an hour, no one else joined up to play. Unranked games can go with just two players, but even those seem to be in extremely short supply. To add an extra layer of frustration, there's no way to communicate with other players, so you can't even put on a headset or plug in a keyboard and say "Hey, instead of sitting here for another hour, how about we go try an unranked match instead?" In the few multiplayer games we were able to find, the game ran reasonably well, but there was a noticeable amount of jumpiness and lag to the way the opposing cars move. Of course, your mileage may vary when it comes to online experiences of any kind, but don't expect to find a bustling community to play with online.

The game's multiplayer options are fairly bare, but considering it's tough to even find other players online at the moment, it sort of doesn't matter.

Full Auto 2 runs in 1080p, if you're equipped with a television that can handle it. Even at this high resolution, the game runs at a mostly stable frame rate, but it isn't as smooth as Ridge Racer 7, the other 1080p racing game on the PS3. The game has decent explosions, but the environments are sort of plain, and the game doesn't deliver an especially thrilling sense of speed either. If you're looking for a point of comparison, it does look better and run smoother than its Xbox 360-based predecessor, but the difference never seems huge. The sound is essentially what you'd expect it to be, with plenty of explosions, gun fire, and engine noises. The music is pretty generic electronic music that fits with the action. The more important vehicles in the career mode actually have licensed music associated with them, with the idea that as you get closer, that car's theme song starts getting louder and louder. But the jarring switch from the regular racing music over to the licensed track and then back again if you fall behind, makes this better in concept than it is in practice.
In fact, that's the case for all of Full Auto 2: Battlelines. A high-speed racing game with action-packed weaponry and destructible environments is a solid, if somewhat uninspired, concept. But in practice, not a single aspect of the game comes out feeling right, and what's left is a generic racing shooter that fails to excite from end to end. Unless you're absolutely, positively desperate for something new on the PlayStation 3, you can most definitely stay away from Full Auto 2.

Fight Night Round 3 for PLaystation Game Review

Fight Night Round 3 features the same great gameplay the franchise is known for as well as a few minor, but appreciable, additions exclusive to the PlayStation 3.

The Good

• Same great control mechanics found in previous Fight Night games  
• lots of great boxing legends to test your skills against  
• amazing-looking player models  
• gruesome sound effects make you cringe when you hear a guy get smacked in the face  
• get-in-the-ring mode offers a different, enjoyable way to play.

The Bad

• Career mode lacks structure and feels like a series of loosely related matches rather than an ongoing fight to become a champion  
• Long load times.

Fight Night may be the only boxing game in the business, but the lack of competition certainly hasn't made the champ soft. The perfectly precise and intuitive Total Punch Control mechanic, cringe-inducing knockout blows, and in-depth boxer creation mode are all accounted for in the latest installment in this fighting series, Fight Night Round 3. New to the series this time around are impact punches, a reworked career mode, a customizable boxing-style feature, and an all-new first-person boxing mode exclusive to the PlayStation 3. Admittedly, most of the improvements and updates found in Round 3 are merely incremental updates over Round 2, but they're still enough to warrant stepping into the ring for another bout, just as long as you haven't already played the game on the Xbox 360.

Fight Night is back with a fistful of leather for your pretty little face.

Unsurprisingly, the best parts of Fight Night Round 3 are the parts that haven't changed. The Total Punch Control mechanic is back, and it works just as well as it has since the first Fight Night made boxing fun again back in 2004, which means that series veterans will be able to jump right in and start throwing combos with ease. If you're new to Fight Night, you might find that the controls take a bit of getting used to, but once you know them, you won't want to go back to plain old button mashing. You move your boxer with the left analog stick and throw punches with the right stick. You can throw jabs by tapping the stick forward to the right or left, depending on which fist you want to use. Hooks are thrown by moving the stick in a quarter-circle motion toward your opponent in either direction, and uppercuts are closer to a half-circle motion. You can put extra power behind a punch by pulling the stick back even farther and "winding up" for a powerful haymaker. One new aspect of the control that unique to the PlayStation 3 version of the game is the use of the Sixaxis motion control to throw illegal blows. By quickly moving the controller forward you can throw an elbow or head butt. Aside from that, the game makes no use of the motion sensors in the Sixaxis controller.
Featured for the first time in the Fight Night series are impact punches, which are variations on the haymaker. The haymaker is the basic "swing for the fences" power punch, which was introduced in last year's Fight Night Round 2. The flash KO punch is like an exaggerated haymaker, and it instantly drains your opponent's health and primes him for a quick knockdown. The stun punch is another version of the haymaker, and it initiates a sort of reverse first-person minigame where you see yourself through the eyes of your opponent as you pummel him with punches. It's difficult to pull off any of the impact punches, though, because the windup is slow and the punch is easily countered. But that's a good thing, because it helps keep the action somewhat balanced.

Throwing a lot of punches is a fine strategy and simply flailing about will often win you a match, but occasionally you'll have to defend yourself. You can block and parry punches using the R1 button. You can use the right analog stick to determine which part of your body you want to guard. For example, if your opponent shows a left hook to the head, you can throw up your right arm to parry the shot and then return fire with your own left while your opponent is off guard. When you parry or block successfully, you can quickly and easily make the transition from defense to offense and throw a barrage of counterpunches before your opponent knows what's happening. Indeed, successfully parrying and countering is an integral part of any fight. You can also lean by holding down the L1 button, which is a good way to hold your ground while avoiding punches. Clinches have returned, so when you've taken a beating and are about to go down, you can press a button to lean on your opponent and regain some energy.
Of course, there's more to boxing than simply throwing and absorbing punches. You also have to worry about maintenance. Maintaining your fighter's health is an important part of Round 3, and it's all handled through the same training and cut-man minigames from the previous Fight Night titles. Before a fight, you have the option to train your fighter in one of three regimens, depending on which stats you want to focus on. Before you train, you can hire a trainer, and each one has a specialty that will improve your results in a given parameter.
The minigames consist of the heavy bag, the weights, and the combo dummy from Fight Night Round 2. The minigames are extremely simple timing and pattern-recognition exercises, and you'll never have a problem reaching the required point goal to achieve the maximum benefit from the training. Once you're in the ring, though, your health concerns will be more immediate, as you start stopping hard leather with your face. Between rounds, you can play a minigame to reduce swelling and patch up cuts on your boxer's face. The routine has been simplified since the previous game, and instead of four focus areas, you only need to worry about the left side and right side of the face. A small icon appears at the bottom of the screen, and you have to move the right analog stick in time with the icon to heal your fighter. If you let him get too swollen, he won't be able to see to defend against incoming punches, and if he's bleeding profusely from unattended cuts, the ref will stop the fight.

You can assign different fighting styles to your boxer, and it's fun to experiment with different styles to see which one best fits your own strategy.

While the game still plays mostly the same way, you are given a bit more control over how you fight, thanks to the inclusion of some new fighting styles, which you can assign to your fighter. When creating a custom fighter, you are given the same options as in the previous games regarding your boxer's physical attributes, but now you can choose his fighting style by setting a base style, punch style, and block style. You can give your boxer a speed-based style to make him light on his feet, a slugger punch-based style to give him extra power behind his blows, and a cross blocking-based style to provide a bit more protection. There are plenty of combinations to choose from, and the different styles have a significant impact on your fighting strategy. You can change your fighting style between matches in career mode, and it can be fun to try out different combinations to see which work best.
Fight Night Round 3 features career, play now, ESPN Classic mode, online modes, as well as a new first-person Get in the Ring mode. Play now lets you choose your fighter, opponent, and venue for a quick match. In this mode, you can pit any of the boxing legends against another, regardless of weight class. If you want to see Evander Holyfield go up against Manny Pacquaio in front of thousands at Madison Square Garden, you can.

The ESPN Classic mode lets you relive some of the biggest bouts in recent boxing history. You can choose from classic rivalries such as Ali versus Frazier, Robinson versus Lamotta, and Gatti versus Ward. Before each fight, you're treated to an all-too-brief history of the fighters and their rivalry. These classic fights could be an interesting sort of interactive lesson about the history of boxing, but they're severely lacking in authenticity and detail. Despite the ESPN Classic brand that's stamped on the game, the classic fights feel half-baked. The classic theme is ruined by modern laser lights and Dodge advertisements plastered all over the place, and it doesn't help that a lot of the fights don't even take place in historically accurate venues. You can unlock special gear by winning these classic fights, but ultimately, ESPN Classic mode fails to offer anything different than the play now mode.

Career mode has been reworked entirely, but it all still comes down to bashing random guys' heads in over and over.

For the PlayStation 3 version of the game, there's an additional mode called "get in the ring." This mode plays just like the play now mode, except you view the action from a first-person perspective. Everything you see is how your boxer would theoretically see it, so when your opponent has been tap dancing on your face for three rounds, your vision will start to get blurry around the edges as your boxer's face swells up from the punishment. It's a great effect, and the first-person mode is a lot of fun. It plays just like a regular boxing match, so once you spend a few minutes getting accustomed to the new perspective, you should be able to bob and weave, throwing punches with ease. You can also choose to play any of the other game modes from a first-person perspective, which is a nice touch. The computer-controlled opponents in the get-in-the-ring matches seem to be a bit easier than in the normal quick matches, and as long as you have any experience with the game, you'll be able to take on just about anyone. You'll also notice that these matches rarely last more than a couple of rounds, and most opponents will be down for the count after a second trip to the canvas.
Career mode returns, but it has an entirely new look and structure this time around. You can choose to create your own boxer, or you can rebuild a legend like in previous Fight Night games. Again, you begin as an amateur, and you have to fight your way up to the professional ranks. Professional and amateur, however, are the only real "ranks" in career mode. In the past, as soon as you went pro, you'd get a ranking. You'd start as the 50th ranked boxer and steadily move toward number one as you won fights. Now, there is no rank; you simply fight one bout after another. As you win fights, your popularity increases. Once your popularity gauge is full, you qualify for a special contract fight, such as a sponsored fight or a title fight. In career mode, you can become the champion of your weight class, or you can switch weight classes and go for another title. While career mode in Round 3 lacks the rigid structure previously found in the Fight Night series, the basic principles are still intact. You still sign contracts one at a time, then train in one of the three minigames, and then fight. The difference is that there aren't any clearly defined goals or progress indicators, aside from your fighter's stat increases. As a result, career mode feels more like a series of loosely related exhibition matches, rather than an ongoing struggle to fight your way up the ranks and become a champion.
The fights start off extremely easy, and if you have any previous Fight Night experience, you'll be able to cruise through your first dozen or so fights without getting knocked down once. In fact, most of the early fights will be over before the third-round bell. You can increase the difficulty at any time, but the computer opponents still tend to behave the same. The most noticeable difference in higher-level fights is that your opponents are able to absorb a lot more blows, and they inflict more damage per punch. As far as boxing strategy goes, though, you'll see the same few combos thrown repeatedly throughout the game, and before long, you'll be able to recognize and anticipate all of your opponents' moves.
Round 3 introduces to career mode the concept of rivalries. As you make your way through your career, you'll face one or more rival boxers. You have one main rival in the game, and you'll have to face him several times throughout your career. There isn't much of a difference between these matches and any of the others, aside from the ridiculous cutscenes of the weigh-ins before the fights and that rival boxers tend to throw illegal blows while all normal opponents play by the book. Aside from that, and the novelty of beating the same guy's face in multiple times, the rivalries are entirely superfluous.
There's no substitute for the bitterness and bad blood you share with perfect strangers when you fight online. The PlayStation 3 version of Round 3 has online play, with a full complement of stat-tracking features, leaderboards, and match options. The online play is smooth and lag-free. It's also easy to set up and find matches. After each bout, you get kicked out to the main online menu, which can be frustrating if you were hoping to get a rematch without going through the entire setup process again. You can play both ranked and unranked matches online, as well as take your custom boxer online as long as he has been retired from career mode. The game also integrates ESPN content, so you'll constantly be updated on sports news and scores while online. The get-in-the-ring and ESPN classic modes are also available for online play.
On the Xbox 360, Round 3 looked amazingly lifelike, with some of the most realistic and detailed fighter models to appear in any game. The graphics hold up on the PlayStation 3, with equally lifelike and technically impressive models that are slightly more detailed than on the Xbox 360. Everything from the tape on a fighter's gloves to the look of sheer exhaustion on his face makes you feel like you're watching a real bout. The heads-up display has been removed, and while you do have the option to turn it on, you really won't need to. You can judge how your fighter is holding up by the expressions (or contusions) on his face. The default camera is pulled in close, and it always provides a great perspective on the action in the ring. The knockout replays are especially fun to watch, because the face on the receiving end of a punch contorts and deforms as shock waves ripple through flesh and cartilage. All of the venues and crowds look detailed on the PlayStation 3, but upon close examination, you'll notice that the backgrounds do still suffer from the cardboard cutout look. If you have a high-definition display, you'll see an amazing amount of clarity and detail, but even on a standard-definition display, the game looks great. That said, minor issues, such as feet clipping through the canvas or a fighter's trunks clipping through his legs, do detract from the overall presentation of the game, if only slightly. There are also some very lengthy and frequent load times in the game, and they're worse on the PlayStation 3 than in the other versions of the game. The loading times are so bad in fact that they just about break the create-a-fighter mode. It's extremely tedious to make a fighter because every time you change a feature such as hair style or skin color it takes several seconds to load each new element, and sometimes they don't load at all. It makes the entire create-a-fighter mode more trouble than it's worth.
The boxing legends included in the game look accurate, although greats such as Marciano, Liston, and Foreman are noticeably absent from the roster. The animations are still somewhat spasmodic when fighters are changing up their blocks, and the ridiculous, twitching rag dolls are still in full effect, but otherwise, the game looks and moves as good as it plays. There are half a dozen venues in the game, from the Staples Center and Madison Square Garden to a warehouse and a hole-in-the-wall boxing gym. The action has been slowed down a bit from previous games, which is noticeable at first, but it doesn't take long to get used to the pace. If anything, the slower gameplay serves to highlight the differences between fighting styles, as you'll see a significant change when switching from a slugger to a speed-style boxer. The dramatic replays return, so you can see each and every knockout punch in all of its crushing glory.
For as good as it looks, there are some tremendous eyesores in the form of excessive advertisements in all three versions of the game. You'll see Dodge and Burger King logos everywhere, as if it were stipulated in some contract that each frame of the game had to have at least one corporate logo. You can even unlock the Burger King mascot to serve as your trainer, which pretty much destroys any pretense of authenticity in this game. It's just as offensive in the PlayStation 3 version of the game as it was on the Xbox 360, given that both versions retail at a premium price point as opposed to the discounted price of their PlayStation 2 and Xbox counterparts.

The first-person perspective will give you a newfound appreciation of your skull.

The audio is well done in all three versions of the game. When you knock down an opponent with a slug to the mouth, you'll hear the sickening crunch of unseated teeth and snapping tendons, followed by the thick, wet sound of spit and blood flying from his mouth. The excessively gruesome effect really punctuates each knockdown, and it makes you want to avoid being on the receiving end of such a punch. The commentary is once again provided by Joe Tessitore, and while he's competent behind the mic, he isn't very exciting. He also tends to repeat himself often. It gets tiring to hear all about the "textbook boxing style" and "well-rounded skills" of your fighter half a dozen times in one fight. The music is composed entirely of hip-hop tunes, which sound good enough, but there are only a handful of songs, and they get repeated endlessly. As a result, you'll probably end up muting the music after a couple of hours of playing.
EA Sports' heavy-hitting franchise doesn't change up its approach for the third time through, but the gameplay remains as tight and enjoyable as it has always been. So while there are no surprises in store, you can expect a great game of boxing, with a fully capable single-player experience backing up a solid online multiplayer game. Most of the changes to the PlayStation 3 version of the game are hardly noticeable, but the new first-person perspective works surprisingly well and will hopefully be a standard option in all subsequent Fight Night releases. Although it doesn't drastically improve on what is already a great game, Fight Night Round 3 for the PlayStation 3 does enough to give it a slight edge, although not quite enough to make it worth another investment if you already own the Xbox 360 version.

Free Download Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Game Free Download

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Review

Raven improves upon the great work it did with the X-Men Legends games, with a lengthy adventure that touches upon nearly every last corner of the Marvel Universe.

The Good

• Huge, eclectic cast of Marvel heroes and villains  
• deep yet largely optional character customization system  
• great variety of environments  
• seamless local and online co-op play.

The Bad

• Presentation a little technically uneven  
• some customization options seem contradictory.

In 2004, Raven Software surprised a lot of people with X-Men Legends, an action RPG focusing on the exploits of Marvel's mutant superheroes. The Diablo-style gameplay was a significant departure for Raven, a developer best known for its extensive work on first-person shooters. Perhaps more surprising was the game's success in introducing action RPG conventions to the world of superheroes, a fairly novel combination at the time. It proved to be a winning formula, one that Raven further refined with last year's X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. Not content with the localized struggles of the X-Men, the concept has been blown out to an intergalactic, interdimensional scale with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. With well over 20 unique playable heroes, a massive campaign that features a wide variety of well-known Marvel Universe villains, supporting characters, and locations, as well as plenty of hidden extras, it's the biggest piece of Marvel fan service seen in a video game. It also builds upon a lot of the gameplay systems established in the X-Men Legends games, making for an experience that's deeper, longer-lasting, and generally more satisfying.

The stars of the world's greatest comics join forces in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

Ominous things are afoot right from the start in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Dr. Doom has brought together a coalition of supervillains under the Masters of Evil name, whose first act is to attack a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. An opposing coalition of superheroes quickly comes to the aid of S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, who takes command of the situation and coordinates the superheroes as they continue to track Doom and his minions across the universe and into different dimensions. The sheer quantity of Marvel supervillains you'll face on your quest to defeat Dr. Doom is genuinely staggering. Heavy hitters like Ultron, the Mandarin, Mephisto, Loki, and Galactus all play major roles, but there's still room for lower-profile villains like M.O.D.O.K., Fin Fang Foom, Arcade, Grey Gargoyle, Blackheart, Super Skrull, and literally dozens of others. There are a couple of truly excellent twists and turns, and the story does a good job of concealing the true nature of Dr. Doom's plans until just the right moment. Some of the finer points, such as the excess of long-winded expository speeches in between levels, don't stand up to close scrutiny so well, but the narrative is successful in keeping the game moving at a fast clip.
Your starting lineup in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance consists of Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, but after a few levels playing with these heroes, you're given the option to create your own custom team. At first you'll have about 18 different heroes to choose from, and they represent a good cross-section of high-profile heroes and more obscure fan favorites. Old-schoolers like the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and several X-Men are there, as are a number of heroes who are likely unknown to those who don't keep up with comics, such as Moon Knight, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, and Deadpool. As you progress you'll run into other heroes such as Blade, Dr. Strange, Ghost Rider, and the Silver Surfer, who will in turn join the cause. Part of the fun of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the sheer variety of places the game takes you. While the X-Men Legends games seemed stuck mostly in dungeonlike corridors and sewers and such, here you'll visit some of the most spectacular and mythical locations in the Marvel Universe, including Mephisto's Realm, Asgard, Mandarin's palace, the Skrull homeworld, and, finally, Dr. Doom's sinister Latverian castle. The lush environments really do look as if they came straight out of a comic book, and the game's overall look is enhanced with loads of dramatic lighting and crazy particle effects. The heroes and villains look good from afar, but up close they lack detail and have been bump-mapped to the point that they look like action figures. There are other inconsistencies, such as a few distractingly large, blurry background textures and the ravine of difference in quality among some of the prerendered cinematic sequences. It's also unfortunate that the frame rate isn't more stable. Too many special effects can make the game stutter a little when running at 720p. It's a bit worse when you run the game at 1080p, though when it's running smoothly, it's by far as good as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance looks on any platform. The sound design is also a little uneven, with some overly chatty characters and environmental sound loops, but it more than makes up for this with a soundtrack that's just fantastic, capably shifting gears to keep up with the game's near-constant, dramatic scenery changes.
The basics of the gameplay should be perfectly familiar by now to fans of hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers like Diablo, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, or Raven's own X-Men Legends games. Commanding a group of four superheroes, you'll fight your way through swarms of enemies, becoming more powerful and gaining new abilities and the occasional piece of gear along the way. From the get-go, everyone can perform a handful of straight-up melee combos. There are a few details that give the basic combat some depth beyond simple button mashing, such as the ability to disarm enemies and grapple with them and enemies that are only susceptible to specific attacks. Pulling the right trigger gives you access to a number of your hero's special powers, and these special powers, along with stuff like the ability of flight when appropriate, play a big part in giving each hero a unique feel. As different as the abilities can look and feel, most can be easily slotted into a handful of categories. There are melee attacks, radial attacks, projectile attacks, beam attacks, individual as well as team boosts, and high-powered "xtreme" attacks that you can only trigger after your usually slow-filling momentum meter reaches capacity. Save for the Silver Surfer, who seems stymied by the terranean nature of the gameplay, the heroes feel quite comparable to their ink-and-paper counterparts. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on the PlayStation 3 makes occasional use of the gyroscopic features in the Sixaxis controller, and the implementation can be inconsistent. It works pretty well for puzzles, such as when you have to follow a series of on-screen tilt commands to disarm a bomb. Sometimes it just adds unnecessary steps, such as when you have to hold the left shoulder button and then tilt the controller to perform a roll, when just tapping the left shoulder button produces the same results.

Character customization runs deep, though you can choose to automate it if it's too much for you.

Though you have little control over how your hero's basic stats like health and energy increase as you reach new experience levels, with each new level you're given skill points that you can put toward special powers. Each hero has eight or more special powers in an arsenal, though many of them are inaccessible until you reach certain experience plateaus. You can also use cold, hard cash that you pick up by beating enemies and smashing crates to purchase points, though they start off pricey and become exponentially more so as you progress. Each hero also has three alternate costumes that you can unlock, which not only can drastically affect the hero's appearance, but also comes with a unique set of bonuses that you can pay to increase. Defeating significant villains and finding special treasure chests will usually net you a piece of performance-enhancing equipment. Usually any hero can use any gear you happen upon, though it never shows up on their person, and there are also lots of rare pieces of gear that only specific heroes can use.

Need for Speed Carbon Free Download

Even though the wingman mechanics and canyon races don't quite pan out, it's still a stylish and enjoyable street racer.

After rebooting the franchise with Need for Speed Underground, EA has continued to produce some solid street racers under the Need for Speed banner. Last year's Need for Speed Most Wanted, which featured hilariously over-the-top live-action cutscenes and seriously tense police pursuits, proved to be a high watermark for the franchise. Now it's being followed up by Need for Speed Carbon, which downplays the role of the police chases, introduces some simple team-racing mechanics, and occasionally takes the action off the city streets and into the outlying canyons. The new gameplay doesn't always improve the experience, but the racing can still be quite intense and still has a pronounced sense of style.

That guy from Battlestar Galactica isn't much of a Razor Callahan substitute.

Carbon continues the story where Most Wanted left off. For those just tuning in, Most Wanted ended with you recovering your stolen car and bailing out of the city of Rockport while the overzealous, anti-street-racing Sgt. Cross continued his pursuit. At the start of Carbon, you're making your way to Palmont City when Cross, now a bounty hunter, catches up with you and totals your car during the chase. Before he can collect his bounty on you, though, your old friend Darius steps in and pays off Cross. You are then put to work, taking over the turf of the other rival street-racing crews in Palmont City. It seems that you've got a history in this town that predates the events in Most Wanted. During the course of the game, you'll learn more about that fateful night you skipped town. Different characters will give their takes on the night you supposedly ran off with a big red duffle bag full of cash. By the end of the game, you'll not only find out what really happened, but you'll have taken over all of the street-racing territory in Palmont City.
Outside of the actual gameplay, one of the more endearing aspects of Most Wanted was the way it used live actors in CG environments for its story sequences. These sequences invariably featured plenty of actor/model types, trying a little too hard to talk tough and failing spectacularly at it. The technique remains the same in Carbon, though there are more story sequences now and a slightly more self-aware tone. The heavy use of flashbacks is an interesting idea, but the story ends up being kind of muddled. None of the villains come off as particularly menacing. Although it's hard to really qualify any of it as sincerely good, it's just over-the-top enough that folks who enjoy stuff like The Fast and the Furious, ironically or otherwise, should get some enjoyment out of it.
Most Wanted had you racing to raise your visibility with the police and take on the most notorious street racers in Rockport. In Carbon, it's all about turf. Palmont City is divided into four major territories, each of which is predominantly controlled by a different street-racing crew. Each territory is then further divided into zones, and within each zone, you'll find starting points for a variety of different race events. Winning at least two events in a zone will put it under your control. And once you've taken over all the zones in a given territory, you can take on the head of that crew. As you continue to extend your reach across Palmont City, rival crews will come back and try to retake territory the same way you took it from them, forcing you to accept their challenge if you want to maintain control. Having to go back and re-race events that you've already won is kind of a pain, but the open world structure is nice and gives you plenty of options to take on races at any given point.
However, you won't be taking on all of these crews by yourself because Carbon lets you bring along a wingman into many of the races. These computer-controlled companions break down into three different behavior types--blockers, drafters, and scouts. Blockers will run interference for you, spinning out opponents at your command. Drafters let you slipstream behind them, giving you some extra speed from the reduced drag, and from there you can pull aside and slingshot your way past them. Scouts have a knack for finding the many alternate routes and shortcuts that can be found in most races, and they have short neon tracers that follow them, making it easier for you to take advantage. You'll definitely find yourself in races where your wingman's influence is the difference between winning and losing. But often, your wingman's presence is either unnecessary or an actual hindrance. Blockers are only really effective in taking out competitors that are behind you, and even then, they're not very reliable. Drafters work as advertised, but the lengthy straightaway needed to set up a proper draft is rare in Palmont City, which limits their usefulness. Scouts are the least useful of the three because the neon tracers don't seem to get longer as the cars you drive go faster, and eventually, there's just not enough time for you to anticipate an alternate route. If you didn't call on your wingman, you might expect him or her to just hang back. But we found ourselves getting bumped into and boxed in by our wingman on several occasions. It's not ruinous to the experience, but sometimes it makes you wish they would just go away.

Canyon duels are challenging, but their repetitious structure can sometimes make them wearying.

The game relies on some pretty tried-and-true types of races, but it also throws some curves. You'll find plenty of common stuff, such as lap-based circuit races, point-to-point sprints, and checkpoint races. But there are also some unique races, such as the speed-trap race, where your standing is determined by your cumulative MPH as you race through a series of speed traps. Most races take place on the city streets of Palmont, but there are also drift events, which can take place either on a closed race course or on the winding canyon roads that surround the city. The goal in the drift events is to score points by making clean drifts around corners. The car handling changes completely for the drift events and feels much more slippery than in the rest of the game, which recalls the drift events found in Need for Speed Underground 2.
You'll also face off with the different crew bosses in the canyons, and these events may test your patience. Once you've taken enough turf for a crew boss to challenge you, you'll first race against him in a standard city-street event. If you beat him there, you'll advance to one of the game's canyon courses, which are narrow and undulating. Here it's a two-part race, where you'll first have to chase the boss through a point-to-point race, and then reverse roles for the second part. Your score on the first half is based on how close you stay to your rival; then in the second half, your rival tries to outdo you. These events can be quite challenging because the courses are technically complicated, and the crew bosses tend to be better, more aggressive drivers than the average street racers. There are also a number of ways in which you can instantly fail. If, during the second race, your opponent manages to get ahead of you for more than 10 seconds, you automatically lose. But on the flipside, if you can get ahead of your opponent for more than 10 seconds in the first race, you automatically win both races. Also, each course is absolutely rife with cliffs. This means that if you take a corner at the wrong angle or speed, you can launch your car off of a cliff, immediately ending the race. All of these elements can make for a tough but fair race. However, failure takes you back to the first half of the canyon duel, even if you failed during the second half. It's kind of a minor point, but it's one that can turn a canyon duel into a real chore.

The structure of the canyon duels can be frustrating, but the way Carbon marginalizes the police chases that were so instrumental to the success of Most Wanted is even more disappointing. The cops still play a factor because each zone has its own heat rating that increases the more you race there. The higher the heat, the more likely it is that cops will start coming after you. While Most Wanted had you purposely baiting the cops, as well as attempting to wrack up huge property damages and lengthy pursuits to advance the story, there's little reason in Carbon for you to attract the attention of the law. With the ability to hop directly to any race event through the world map, it's possible and quite easy for you to go through the entire story mode where you can count the number of police encounters on one hand.

Carbon features an eclectic selection of more than 30 unique licensed cars.

Structural imperfections aside, the core driving in Carbon is really solid. There's a great selection of licensed real-world cars that you can purchase throughout the course of the game, which are sorted into three different groups--tuners, muscles, and exotics. And you'll find that each group handles differently. In the tuner group, you'll find a lot of souped-up Japanese sports coups, like the Nissan Skyline, Subaru Impreza WRX, and Toyota Supra. And the strength of these cars tends to be an ability to slide around corners. Muscle cars are all Detroit steel, including new stuff like the Chrysler 300 and the Dodge Challenger Concept. They also include early 1970s classics, like a Chevy Camaro SS and a Plymouth Barracuda. And though they've got great acceleration in a straightaway, they're pretty loose in the corners. The exotics group is probably the most varied, with high-end offerings from Mercedes, Porsche, Alfa Romero, Lamborghini, and more. These cars also tend to demand a higher level of skill to use them correctly.
You can buy cars from dealerships or you can win them from crew bosses. And once you get them, there are all kinds of upgrades that you can apply to them. There are tiered performance upgrades, as well as a rainbow of paint colors, dozens of vinyl stickers, aftermarket rims, spoilers, and body kits. You can also fabricate your own body parts with the game's autosculpt system, which is oddly reminiscent of the Game Face feature in EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour games. It's a novel idea and great for making some really physically impossible-looking parts. But it takes too much incremental tweaking of settings to get something unique. And there's such a wide variety of prefab aftermarket parts that don't require all that toil, which means only the truly obsessed will get much out of the autosculpting.
If you keep your eye on the prize, you can see the credits roll in Carbon's career mode in well under 10 hours. But if you want to beat every event, as well as unlock every last car and upgrade, you can just as easily spend 20 hours. And there's even more racing to be done outside the career mode. There are 36 increasingly difficult races to take on in the challenge series, and the quick-race option lets you jump into something--no strings attached. Like the Xbox 360 version, Carbon on the PS3 provides a pretty solid online multiplayer component, where up to eight players can participate in all of the race types found in the career mode, as well as multiplayer-exclusive modes, where players get to play as both cops and street racers. The rules in some of these modes aren't explained very well, which can make for some pretty confusing moments. But once you get past the learning curve, you can have some good, team-based fun. We also experienced some minor but pervasive latency issues, even when we were nowhere near the eight player limit, as well as an odd bug where all in-game sound would drop out for the duration of a race. It's kind of flawed, but again, the actual feel of the racing still translates pretty well online. And an online experience system where you can unlock additional cars helps make it a little more interesting.
With Palmont City apparently living in eternal night, the game's feel recalls the Need for Speed Underground games, though the scenery changes in Carbon are much more varied. There's a distinct West Coast feel to Palmont City, and you'll find yourself in districts that recall the more posh parts of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. As different as it feels from the city of Rockport in Need for Speed Most Wanted, keen eyes and ears will notice a lot of recycled elements here. Vehicles, environmental objects, textures, and a lot of the sound elements have been cut and pasted into Carbon, making for some odd déjà vu. In some cases, it's a good thing because the squeal of the tires and the growl of various car engines still sound great. But hearing the same police radio chatter in Palmont City that you did in Rockport is just weird. There's some familiar, dramatic music in Carbon as well. Although it's odd how poorly the game uses what is actually an interesting licensed soundtrack of rock, electro, hip-hop, and grime. You just won't hear much of it because the game seems to prefer its own music most of the time.

The missing online component in the PS2 and Xbox versions makes the 360 version an obvious favorite.

Need for Speed Carbon on the PlayStation 3 looks roughly comparable to its Xbox 360 counterpart--which is to say it looks really good, with some heavy-motion blur around the edges of the screen, lots of good-looking bump mapping, and slick lighting and reflection effects. There are a few subtle differences, most of which the PlayStation 3 version comes up on the short end of. The PS3 seems to have more jagged, aliased edges, and a framerate that is a little more stuttery. The soft glow and motion-blur effects do look better on the PS3 version, though there's times that it's laid on a bit too thick.
Ultimately, Need for Speed Carbon doesn't make the best use of some of the strengths from Need for Speed Most Wanted. Many of the changes made to the Most Wanted formula seem to be for the sake of change, but it all still just comes back to the solid driving action, which Need for Speed Carbon puts to good use.

Resistance: Fall of Man Download Free

Resistance successfully combines many of the best qualities from other great first-person shooters with spectacular visuals and a few novel twists.

If you're going to make a first-person shooter, you might as well take aim to deliver the best of what this style of gaming has to offer. That's what Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games must have done with Resistance: Fall of Man. One of the most highly anticipated titles in the PlayStation 3 launch lineup, Resistance is a technically impressive, well-designed, intense action game that unmistakably draws inspiration from some of the finest recent examples of similar games. Resistance doesn't attempt anything wildly different than other first-person shooters out there, but by offering a strong selection of interesting weapons, plenty of ruthless foes to shoot them at, good level design, and an excellent presentation, it accomplishes what most such games fail to do. A fully featured multiplayer mode for up to 40 players rounds out an exciting campaign in what's an all-around great effort and a promising example of what the PlayStation 3 can do.

Nathan Hale's got no time for chitchat. He'll combat the Chimera almost single-handedly in Resistance's action-packed campaign.

Resistance takes place in a grim alternate reality in which World War II never happened, yet something possibly even worse happened instead. As political tensions run high in the middle of the 20th century, a monstrous race of horrifying creatures suddenly shows up and starts killing everyone. Initially presumed to be a Russian biological weapon, this fiendish species is known as the Chimera. It quickly overwhelms Asia and most of Europe before it focuses attention on the United Kingdom. In the game, you play as a no-nonsense American soldier named Nathan Hale, who is sent in to reinforce the UK's defenses. A brush with death early on gives Hale a unique perspective of his foe and, before long, he's lone-wolfing it against the worst that the Chimera has to offer. As Hale, you'll blast your way through the devastated streets of England and also find yourself deep within the enemy's own territory as you struggle to survive and turn the tide of a losing battle.
The story is told from the perspective of a different officer who briefly interacts with Hale during his missions against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Her solemn narration is easy enough to follow but not particularly engaging because by her own admission, she doesn't really know what's going on in Hale's head or what's going on with the Chimera. Brief but nicely done cinematic cutscenes using the game's 3D engine at least serve to give Nathan Hale a believably concerned look between battles. Still black-and-white images and charts that are made to look as if they could have come from the early '50s also help set the mood and premise of each level in the game's more than 10 main stages. However, the story in Resistance is there mostly to justify a number of fairly conventional, though very well done, first-person shooter battles. You'll learn a bit about the Chimera as you fight, and there's some resolution once you finally finish the campaign after countless grueling shoot-outs. But Hale's character is never developed and he almost never speaks, and the plot has some noticeable gaps. Ultimately, this is a game whose personality mostly comes across when you're shooting something. The Chimera and their ugly spider-like features make them easy to hate straightaway.
Resistance controls just like other first-person shooters on consoles. You use the two analog sticks to move and aim, while the left and right shoulder buttons trigger your weapon's primary and alternate firing modes. The game takes a few small liberties with certain conventions, but none that will substantially change how you'll play it if you're used to playing similar stuff. Some of these tweaks to the formula have to do with how you recover your health between shoot-outs. In Resistance's campaign, your health bar is divided up into four quadrants, which automatically recharges up to the nearest quadrant if you avoid getting hit for a little while. This isn't quite like what's become trendy because of games such as the sequels to Halo or Call of Duty, in which your health recharges completely between firefights. Here, when your health is low, you can still survive the typical encounter but you'll really need to be on your guard. Also, unlike in those games, Resistance lets you pick up and carry each new weapon you find, which may not seem as realistic as having room for only a few guns, but it means you get an increasingly powerful, all-purpose arsenal at your disposal. The game transparently saves your progress as you fight through the campaign and uses a checkpoint system in mid-mission. Checkpoints can be fairly sparse at times, creating tension and the need to replay some tough battles repeatedly. But because the combat is dynamic and exciting, having to do this usually isn't a bad thing. However, the game does get almost punishingly hard near the end at the default difficulty setting, forcing a little too much trial and error. There's an easier and a harder difficulty setting as well.

Conventional shooter controls that are matched with some unconventional weapons and unusually good graphics make Resistance feel familiar but distinct.

It's worth noting that the motion sensor in the PS3's stock Sixaxis controller is put to limited but oddly likable use in this game. For instance, there's this one ghoulish Chimera creature that attempts to sidle up to you and grab you by the throat. Should you let this happen, you can shake the controller to break free from its grip. Because this effect is used sparingly, it's surprising and effective. In multiplayer matches, you might also catch fire if you're torched by an enemy flamethrower. You can't stop, drop, and roll, but by shaking the Sixaxis, you can put the flames out. It's a simple, fairly intuitive way to make you feel a bit more connected to what's happening onscreen.
What helps to distinguish Resistance from other first-person shooters is the quality of its weapon design, its enemy artificial intelligence, and its presentation. While these aspects of the game are not substantially different or vastly superior to what's been done before, they're right up there with the best of what such games have had to offer. Resistance doesn't include any real-world weaponry but lets you brandish an impressive variety of powerful make-believe automatics and energy weapons, many of which have imaginative alternate-firing modes. Your starting weapon, a powerful rapid-firing rifle with a 50-round clip and a mounted grenade launcher, will be a mainstay throughout the campaign. You'll also quickly find the Chimeran equivalent, called the bullseye. This is an energy rifle that has the unique ability to fire homing beacons, which causes all of your bullets to zero in on those beacons. So it's possible for you to tag an enemy, then step behind cover and fire straight into the air as those shots automatically change trajectory to find their mark. Another remarkable weapon is the auger, a massive rifle whose shots burrow straight through solid surfaces, making them very difficult to evade. Better yet, the auger can form an energy barrier to protect the user against incoming fire. You'll gain a real appreciation for this fearsome weapon during the campaign.
Not all of the weapons are noteworthy because the lineup includes your fairly typical shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and so on. Interestingly, when you finish the campaign for the first time, you'll unlock some additional weapons that you can find if you go through it again. You can also find these in the game's multiplayer mode. If there's an issue with the game's guns, it's that you wind up depending on the first two weapons most of the time. Each of these weapons is a fairly standard point-and-shoot affair, so it's perfectly effective to just stick a target in your reticle and go full-auto on it. Resistance definitely has more of a run-and-gun feel to it than a deliberately paced, tactical shooter. However, you still need to inch your way into enemy territory. You'll also need to use grenades to disrupt enemy formations because getting surrounded by your enemies brings swift death and a visit back to the nearest checkpoint. Resistance winds up feeling quite a bit like the Halo games in how it balances a simple, action-packed style of shooting with a basic need to frequently take a defensive position and wait for opportunities against entrenched foes.

The chimera aptly fit the profile of your typically ugly, nasty monstrous menace.

The game presents the Chimera as a virtually unstoppable foe, while Nathan Hale seems uniquely capable of surviving their attacks. In reality, they're not quite as tough as they look--some concentrated gunfire will bring any of them down eventually. You'll also pick up on how heavily injured Chimera troopers tend to stagger to their knees, which is the perfect time for you to finish them off and the wrong time to move on to the next target. You'll face a variety of Chimera during the course of the game, including some very predictable spider-like things that burst forth from egg sacs and rush you mindlessly. The vast majority of the time, however, you'll be fighting squads of Chimeran hybrids. Typically armed with bullseye rifles, these soldiers are quite effective at using cover, as well as flanking and rushing tactics. They'll also flush you out of hiding with one of their hedgehog grenades, which send deadly needles flying in every direction when they explode. Fighting against the hybrids grows to feel a bit monotonous in spots because they're by far the most common type of foe you'll face. Yet it's a testament to the quality of the game's artificial intelligence and presentation that battling these forces is often quite thrilling.

The nature of the combat against the Chimera changes quite dramatically depending on where you're fighting. Much of the shooting in Resistance occurs at medium and long ranges as you, any fellow soldiers, and the Chimera move from cover to cover, taking potshots. However, you can also look forward to plenty of room-to-room fighting, as well as shoot-outs from within dimly lit, claustrophobic corridors. Even if you don't usually get a good sense of a desperate war being waged, you get a good sense of scale from the different environments in the game. Battles can be particularly fun when you're joined by friendly soldiers and get to intercept enemies focused on taking down these computer-controlled comrades. But there are never more than a handful of humans there to help you out, and they'll probably wind up dead soon anyway. The game does have a few nice moments in which you're able to save another man's life as he's about to be executed by a Chimeran monster. Yet this aspect seems like it could have been more fleshed out because the game does little to make you care for your disposable allies, who run into combat shouting typical "we're under fire" platitudes.

A few vehicle-driving sequences are thrown into the campaign for good measure.

For variety, Resistance throws a few vehicle-driving sequences into the mix. And if you squinted your eyes during these parts, you could mistake them for Halo. Piloting a highly destructive tank or driving a jeep with a machine gunner in back does make for a good diversion, though these vehicles are so powerful that they make you wonder how humanity lost so badly to the Chimera in the first place. Then again, the Chimera have a few imposingly large vehicles and creatures of their own. Yet the way that the human vehicles make you feel practically indestructible undermines some of the sense that you're fighting an uphill battle. Even so, these sequences are rare and different enough from the on-foot running and gunning that they're a welcome part of the campaign. While fairly straightforward, the campaign does a great job of never stooping to make you backtrack, solve puzzles, or otherwise waste time doing anything other than fighting against powerful foes. It does this for a good 10 to 12 hours, culminating in a series of difficult showdowns.
There are several good reasons to go back to the campaign multiple times, including the extra weapons that get unlocked after you finish the game once. You can optionally play through the whole campaign cooperatively in a split-screen view, though it's too bad you can't play cooperatively online. Co-op mode naturally invites some new types of tactics, and it's somewhat easier than playing solo because you can revive your partner if he goes down, which is a good way to take the edge off of the hard difficulty mode. The campaign also lets you dig around for unique pieces of military intelligence that are scattered throughout the levels, which give some additional insight into the Chimeran menace and the back story. Finally, the campaign features a series of unlockable challenges that are called skill points, which are achieved by accomplishing certain specific feats. For instance, you can earn one by roasting several bad guys with a single air-fuel grenade. These points are tallied up to unlock some bonus features, such as concept art galleries.
Of course, there's an entire multiplayer mode to keep you busy in addition to the campaign. Multiplayer features a variety of maps (based on areas from the campaign), some of which accommodate smaller eight-player or 16-player matches, while others are intended for full-on 40-player war. There are six different multiplayer variants in all, including your conventional deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag types. There's also a last-man-standing-style mode called "conversion"; and two base assault modes, called "meltdown" and "breach," which are reminiscent of Unreal Tournament 2004's onslaught mode in how they're set up to make players fight over specific points on each map. Playing on prerelease servers with a full 40 players, we experienced smooth, lag-free battles in each of these different modes of play, although your mileage may vary. You can also play over a network or try to squeeze some enjoyment out of a split-screen mode for up to four players. Resistance's online multiplayer interface lets you easily find ranked or custom, unranked matches. It also includes support for setting up competitive clans, a "party" system for seeking out online matches together with your friends, and a "buddy" system for keeping track of which of your friends are online. You'll also rank up and earn special insignias based on your multiplayer accomplishments.

The human and Chimeran sides have some distinct gameplay differences in the multiplayer modes of Resistance.

The most interesting aspect of Resistance's multiplayer mode is that you can play as either the humans or the Chimeran hybrids, and the two sides are quite different. Humans can quickly sprint from point to point and have access to an onscreen radar that points out both friends and foes. Chimerans make bigger targets and don't have a radar but can enter into a rage at the touch of a button, which temporarily makes them faster, stronger, tougher...and capable of seeing through walls. Although either type of character can use any weapon once they pick it up, the respective sides also start off with their standard-issue rifles. Overall, the differences between the two sides are pronounced yet seem nicely balanced. The multiplayer modes typically force you to change sides in between rounds, which also helps break up the pace of these matches. Even if it boils down to the same type of thing that other shooters have been doing for a while, the well-designed weaponry, exciting presentation, and support for a large number of players makes Resistance's multiplayer mode impressive.
Resistance is going to invite a lot of close scrutiny on the most superficial level. And in spite of a few easily dismissed rough edges, it looks fantastic. Much like the rest of the game, the quality of the visuals might not be vastly superior to what other graphically impressive shooters have delivered in the past, but they're at least as good and marginally better in most ways. The Chimeran hybrids are great to see in action, and you'll likely appreciate how errant gunfire tends to puncture the tubing on their strange backpacks. The game features some great-looking flame effects and some strikingly impressive yet underutilized glass-shattering. It also features plenty of excellent lighting and weapon fire, as well as beautifully rendered, realistic environments. Although, some of the visual design, such as for the Chimera's ominous-looking steel barriers that wall off portions of England's cities, evokes a real Half-Life 2 vibe. Resistance doesn't always succeed at clearly defining its own visual style, but the visuals still are terrific and will substantially contribute to your enjoyment of the game as a whole. It helps that the frame rate stays smooth and steady even when the action gets very intense. Bear in mind that Resistance looks much better when viewed on a high-definition display; on a standard television set, the game's visuals seem understated and may be hard to distinguish from those of other sci-fi-themed shooters.

It's good news that Resistance plays about as good as it looks.

The audio doesn't give up much slack either. Powerful weapon effects reverberate loudly throughout the game, though the human rifle's roar is much more dramatic than the bullseye's high-pitched whine. The sound of stray gunfire hitting everything around you will be more than enough to make you look for cover. And the Chimera sound appropriately menacing, if predictable, with their low, guttural growls. Resistance's musical score is fittingly bombastic, symphonic stuff and picks up sparingly during particularly key moments during the campaign. It's not especially memorable, but it works very well to deliver some of the campaign's most exciting sequences. Besides the narration, there's not a lot of speech in the game, either. But what's there is fine, even if the British soldiers you'll be fighting alongside seem just a little too upbeat about the dire circumstances. As for Resistance's other technical merits, loading times between missions are noticeable but not bad in spite of how the game frequently writes to the PS3's hard drive between missions, presumably to help keep loading times to a minimum.
If you consider yourself a fan of first-person shooters, then you really owe it to yourself to give Resistance: Fall of Man a shot. Whether that means taking the plunge for a PlayStation 3, playing one over at your filthy-rich friend's house, or whatever else it's going to take is beside the point. What matters is that developer Insomniac Games took the best aspects of some of the best first-person shooters from the past couple of years, added some great weapons and visual flourishes, and put it all together just in time for the PS3's launch.