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.

Genji: Days of the Blade

While this action adventure game flexes a bit of the PlayStation 3's graphical muscle, its rather shallow, derivative gameplay makes it difficult to recommend.

• Level design is often dull, and sometimes frustrating and confusing  
• repetitive hack-and-slash combat rarely demands much skill or finesse  
• some noticeable cut corners throughout the story make the game feel rushed. 

One of the first games available exclusively for the PlayStation 3, Genji: Days of the Blade is the sequel to a PlayStation 2 action game from last year, which was inspired by the legendary adventures of a duo of warriors from Japan's ancient history. You don't need prior experience with the original to dive right into this one because some opening cutscenes set the stage for the many hack-and-slash battles to come. Genji features vibrantly colored, high-definition visuals and some exciting showdowns. But once you get past the pretty pictures, you'll find a conventional, simple, sometimes-frustrating experience that feels rushed in spots. It's as if the priority was to gussy up the graphics rather than flesh out the gameplay. Although the graphics really are the best thing about it, a decent story and pretty good combat system make Genji worth playing. So, as a technical showcase for the PS3, Genji's good; but as a game, it's just OK.

Days of the Blade is a basic hack-and-slash action game with much better than average graphics.

Genji: Days of the Blade picks up soon after the original Genji: Dawn of the Samurai left off, and the introduction summarizes what happened in the first episode. Once again, the hero of the story is Yoshitsune, an noble young master swordsman charged with defending the Genji clan, led by his own brother, against its rivals--namely, the Heishi clan. In spite of its apparent defeat the last time around, the Heishi return in Days of the Blade, complete with some unholy new powers, which cause its legions of soldiers to transform into hulking demonic warriors with these strange, pinkish crystals that jut out of them. Joined by his unflappable and very tough friend Benkei, Yoshitsune once again sets out to defeat the Heishi and its leaders. Eventually, his quest will be joined by two other characters that are new to this installment, including a pretty priestess and an intimidating man who's the spitting image of one of Yoshitsune's old enemies. The story in Genji: Days of the Blade indulges in a lot of predictable anime conventions but is delivered through some captivating, richly detailed cinematic cutscenes that help drive it forward. Although the story is mostly there to justify putting you through one battle after another, there's at least one interesting twist.
The game is quite easy to control using the PS3's stock Sixaxis controller, so if you've played Genji for the PS2 or any other games like it, you'll be in familiar territory. Gameplay mostly boils down to slashing away at droves of demonic enemies and sometimes having to slog through some environmental puzzle. These puzzles are made somewhat more confusing than they should be because of a fixed camera angle and a map system that gives you no feedback about where you're supposed to go. That is to say, on the occasions when there's nothing to fight in Genji, it can sometimes be difficult and tedious to figure out exactly what to do next. Thankfully, the combat is pretty solid, if unremarkable. You can easily string together moves to create different attack combinations. It's also possible to quickly attack in all directions, which is essential, because you'll be dealing with foes who'll constantly try to surround you. Although the game is at its best when you're fighting one of its boss opponents, regular opponents offer a decent challenge and get bigger and stronger as the game progresses. As for the bosses, some of these guys are pushovers, while others are quite tough. However, these battles provide some much-needed contrast and variety overall.
The four characters are also all quite different. Yoshitsune is the most versatile and overall best character because he can attack almost nonstop with his dual samurai swords. Benkei is slow to the point of being sluggish, but he can shrug off most enemy attacks and smash aside multiple foes with a single swing of his club. The priestess, Shizuka, is armed with a sort of grappling hook blade weapon, which has a wide attack range that makes up for her slight physique. And Lord Buson fights with a spear-like weapon, which he can rapidly twirl about to form a defensive shield. Even once you've met all four characters, some sequences will limit which of these warriors you may use. But when you can use them all, you'll probably stick to Yoshitsune, although Benkei's good at quickly putting the hurt on some of the game's bosses. Each character has his or her own health bar, so switching fighters is useful for when you're about to die (or you can use one of the many healing items that you'll find). Strangely enough, it's game over if any one character runs out of health, even if all your other characters are unscathed.
Interestingly, you'll find multiple new weapons for each character and be able to upgrade the attack power of the weapons you've got. The new weapons tend to give your characters completely different move sets, potentially adding a lot of variety to the combat. Unfortunately, the system just doesn't seem thought through because there's little tactical advantage from one weapon to the next, and they're roughly the same in terms of attack power. So even though you get a different set of moves with each one, you'll naturally be inclined to rely on your starting weapons because they'll be the ones you've used the most up until that point. Your characters also get somewhat stronger as you play. You'll be able to upgrade your maximum health and pick up a variety of useful items the further you go. The system for finding health power-ups is quite nice: The tip-off that one of these hidden items is nearby is that a trinket on your character starts to glow. Then, it's up to you to slash around to find the thing.

You get four characters and multiple weapons to choose from, but Yoshitsune and his deadly blades are usually your safest, best choice.

You view the action from a third-person perspective and use the left stick to run around in the environments. The face buttons, by default, are used for several different attacks and for jumping. You can hold down the right shoulder buttons to block and lock onto nearby targets, respectively. However, in practice, it's safe to ignore these moves and just concentrate on swinging wildly at everything that moves. Rather than control the camera perspective, the right analog stick lets you perform evasive flips, dodges, and rolls in any direction. The D pad lets you freely switch between any of the characters currently in your party. There are never situations in which more than one of your characters can be fighting at the same time, and the game is noticeably missing any kind of cooperative mode for two or more players. Yet the ability to switch between your characters on the fly adds a bit of depth and variety to the action.
The left shoulder buttons are used to instantly switch to an alternative weapon and to initiate your "kamui" power. Initially, switching weapons at any time seems like it'll open up a great deal of potential for unique attack combinations, but it turns out to be largely unnecessary. On the other hand, each character's kamui power is essential because it lets you quickly devastate entire groups of foes practically before they can move. This ability has changed since the first game, in which you unleashed defensive counterattacks against foes coming at you in slow motion. Now, just by dialing in button sequences as they're shown onscreen, you'll lay into one nearby foe after another. This will go on until you mess up, or they're all dead (or, at least, severely hurt). The effect of the kamui power is really slick at first, but it's roughly the same each time, which gets to be repetitive. Yet you'll still rely on this technique to efficiently mop up groups of foes or seriously injure boss opponents. Interestingly, a few late-game foes will turn the tables and use this same power against you.

Genji does support the Sixaxis controller's unique gyroscopic features by optionally letting you perform your evasive maneuvers by jerking or shoving the controller in different directions. This is somewhat novel at first, but you'll also likely find your character dodging around unintentionally once in a while. There's no sensitivity setting to try to fine tune this feature, either, so the motion-sensing aspect of Genji: Days of the Blade feels thrown in, like a gimmicky alternative to the standard controls. The option is tellingly set to off by default. Meanwhile, the Sixaxis' omission of a rumble feature probably won't go unnoticed here if you've played Genji for the PS2 or the many other games like it, with their dramatic clashes of steel that seem to invite some sort of tactile feedback.

Genji's fixed camera angles effectively show off some of the game's vibrant scenery, but they often get in the way as you're trying to fight.

It's too bad the motion-sensitive dodging mechanic wasn't implemented better, since this might have freed up the right analog stick for moving the camera angle around. Genji's fixed camera angles certainly help show off the game's detailed environments and character models, but they're often not ideal for gameplay. Examples of this can be seen in the many sequences in which your character will be running toward the screen while hordes of enemies await just beyond your viewing area. Ironically, you'll be forced to spend a lot of time looking at the ugly, plain minimap in the corner of the screen because it shows you nearby enemies and helps you remain oriented as the camera angles keep shifting on their own. Although the minimap is useful, it won't prevent you from getting lost because it doesn't clearly point you toward the direction you're supposed to go next. A larger area map is also available, but it's practically worthless because it doesn't reveal any landmarks or anything other than the most basic layout of each stage.
The level design in Genji is really the biggest culprit. In spite of the lush scenery, the minimap reveals these areas for what they are--a bunch of rooms interconnected with a bunch of corridors. You can smash barrels, crates, and things in the environments, but they're woefully noninteractive overall. Early on, the game sets you up for some puzzle-like sequences when it explains how Yoshitsune's acrobatics and Benkei's brute strength can be used to overcome different obstacles. But the implementation of these special moves feels completely contrived because Benkei is only capable of smashing down certain and very specific objects in the environment, while his club will cleanly pass straight through everything else. It's disappointing to feel so limited in what you can do within areas that look so lifelike.
Genji also appears to be missing some intended content in a few spots, including a couple of cutscenes that seem to promise some sort of horseback chase sequence is going to ensue. However, there are no such sequences, which probably would have helped add more variety to a game that gets really repetitive. Apart from the boss fights, the occasional jumping puzzle is what breaks up the monotony of fighting the same few types of enemies over and over in droves. Take Genji's often-bad camera angles and combine them with cumbersome, decade-old platform-jumping level design, and you've got yourself a recipe for those types of sequences that, at best, make you feel thankful that you'll never have to play them again once you finally get through them. Also, we even ran into a significant bug fairly early on in the game that prevented us from progressing any further because we managed to fight through a particular sequence without picking up a key that's ostensibly necessary to leave the area. When we returned to the area later, the key was gone. So we couldn't go back, which forced us to return to an earlier save file. While most players probably won't have this experience, the confusing level design prevented us from knowing that we'd done anything incorrectly by not finding that key.
It bears repeating that the game certainly looks nice. It saves some of its most dramatic-looking sequences for later, such as one level in which you must traverse the enemy's huge naval fleet by literally jumping from ship to ship. The brightly colored enemy ships set against the glow of the sun reflected on the surface of the ocean are really quite striking. Subtle motion blur effects, excellent motion-captured animations, and the overall level of detail in the different characters help make this game pleasing to behold almost constantly. It's hard to decide whether the scenery or the character animations are the best part of the visual presentation because both look great. This is especially true if you're running the game at its highest resolution of 720p on a widescreen, high-definition display. Although the graphics are impressive, they're not earth-shattering and have some rough edges such as how the game's frame rate will noticeably bog down when a lot of enemies are onscreen. Some of the battles in Genji really throw a lot of enemies at you, evoking a Dynasty Warriors sort of feel to the hack-and-slash action. But as good as these parts look, the game seems to struggle a bit to keep up with it all. Note that the frame rate drops are apparent even when playing the game in lower resolutions.

Some frustrating jumping puzzles and confusing levels drag down this otherwise fairly fun action game.

Genji also features some excellent audio, including a musical score that's filled with traditional Japanese instruments and haunting vocals. Some of the tracks repeat too often, but overall, this soundtrack is very well suited to the game. Although the repeated hacking of Yoshitsune's blades will be most of what you hear, the sound effects are solid. Cutscenes are all fully voiced in English by actors with rather thick Japanese accents, which fits the theme, though the quality of the voice acting isn't that great. Thankfully, the ability to switch to a Japanese language track is available (with optional English subtitles). Other extras include a hard difficulty mode and the ability to watch any of the prerendered cutscenes or listen to any of the music tracks from a menu, which isn't much. And although this seemed to have little impact on the game's fairly brief loading times or anything else, you have the option to install Genji to the PlayStation 3's hard disk drive if you want.
The limited selection of games available around the launch of a high-profile new console means that a bright spotlight is cast on each of them. Genji: Days of the Blade is an example of this effect because this really is an average, forgettable game that's only interesting because there aren't many other PS3 games to choose from yet. It's worth checking out if only as evidence of what Sony's new system can do from a graphical perspective; however, its 10-or-so hours of repetitive combat shouldn't be the tipping point for anyone who wants to justify getting a PS3.

Tony Hawk's Project 8 Review

• Redesigned career mode gives you multiple levels of challenge  
• nail the trick mode is a cool-looking addition that has a positive impact on the gameplay. 

• Frame rate is frequently unstable  
• no online support  
• skater creation options aren't as in-depth as they have been in previous installments

Tony Hawk appeared on the Xbox 360 last year, but Tony Hawk's Project 8 marks the first time that the series has been built from the ground up for the current generation of consoles. As you might expect, not being saddled with the constraints of the Xbox and PlayStation 2, Activision and Neversoft have made some strong visual strides this year, updating and modernizing the game's look while replacing a lot of the trick animations that had been in place for years. The gameplay is as freeform and as technical as it's ever been, with some smart changes on that front that are enough to keep fans of the series interested, while a new tutorial is aimed at getting new players up to speed. Unfortunately, some technical glitches and unstable frame rates plague both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Tony Hawk's new scheme is Project 8, and he's looking for the top eight skaters in town. By the end of the game, one of those skaters will be you.

Those frame-rate problems hit the PlayStation 3 version of the game significantly harder than the Xbox 360. Other than the choppy frame rate and slightly sharper graphics on the PlayStation 3, some of which is only noticeable when using an HDMI cable on a high-end HDTV, the games look roughly the same. But there are other, more significant differences between the two versions. The Xbox 360 version has online support for up to eight players, including a new game mode called walls, which gives your skater a tall trail behind him that behaves sort of like the light cycles in Tron--if you hit another player's wall, you're out. The Xbox 360 version also uses its online support to present a lot of different online leaderboards. Much like Amped 3, many of the different goals in the game have their own individual leaderboard, which adds some competition to the single-player game and gives you a reason to keep on playing the same goals again and again. Without this, the PS3 version feels sort of flat by comparison.
The PlayStation 3 version of the game distinguishes itself by offering complete support for the Sixaxis controller's motion-sensing abilities. You can set it to just control functions like balancing, if you like, or you can move and execute tricks with it, as well. It works, but it lacks the precision offered by the D pad, so it's a neat experiment that's pretty good at showing off what the Sixaxis is capable of, but you probably wouldn't want to play through the game this way. The PlayStation 3 version also installs a 264MB cache file onto the system's hard drive when you first put the game in your system. Presumably, this is done to help speed up loading, but the load times don't seem much better than the Xbox 360 version of the game. If you're in a position where you have to choose between the two versions of the game, the Xbox 360 version offers a more complete package. The Tony Hawk series was a pioneer when it came to being online on the PlayStation 2, and its omission on the PS3 is completely crazy and thoroughly disappointing.
Underneath all those differences lies the same basic game, and it's not that different from what Tony Hawk fans have come to expect from the series, but the changes are noticeable and welcome. The big gameplay change this year is the addition of a new slow-motion trick mode called "nail the trick". You can enter it while in the air by pressing in both analog sticks, which slows the action and moves the camera to your feet and your skateboard. At this point, the two analog sticks (or the Sixaxis' tilt sensors, if you're so inclined) control your feet, letting you flip the board around in a variety of ways. It's very strict on its timing, making it difficult to use at first. But as you get better and better at it, you'll find that it's a handy way to rack up some points when worked into your trick combos. The scoring system has been reworked a bit, so it's a little more difficult to post up ridiculous combos and multipliers by abusing a ton of lip, grind, or manual branches. Considering that score inflation in the online mode over the years has made the system difficult for anyone other than the hardest of the hardcore Tony Hawk players to enjoy, bringing the scores back down to earth is a good idea.
The game has a good career mode that doesn't bog itself down with too much story. Tony Hawk is starting up something called Project 8, and he wants to find the eight best skaters in town. You start out ranked 200th, and everything you do is focused on increasing that rank. The primary way to move through the game is to complete goals, but the goal system has been thoroughly reworked this year. Rather than setting you up with a very clear critical path that takes you to the top, the game is a bit more open ended. You'll immediately find all sorts of goals, and as you complete goals that open up new parts of town, you'll uncover even more challenges. Also, the game doesn't ask you to set your difficulty at the beginning of the game. Instead, many of the game's goals offer three different levels of completion. You can get by if you can complete the amateur-level goal, but there are also pro and sick levels to achieve. As it should be, the intermediate Tony Hawk player should be able to accomplish the pro-level goals more often than not, and some of the sick level goals are, indeed, sick.

The game's goals offer multiple levels of difficulty that should challenge players of all skill levels.

There are a lot of different goals in the game--in fact, there are plenty of times when your compass gets so cluttered with goal arrows that you're not quite sure what you should do next. Probably the most interesting new goals are the chalk challenges. Grind versions of the chalk challenge have you skate a specific grind line in an attempt to reach the next chalk marking. The first line you reach is for the amateur goal, the second for pro, and the third for sick. There are also chalk challenges for being able to reach a certain height while launching off of a quarter pipe, natas spinning or stalling on specific objects, wall planting or wall riding up to varying heights, and so on. Since your skater improves over the course of the game, you might not be able to reach the sick levels for these goals right away, giving you a reason to come back later after you've raised your stats.
You'll perform at skate demos several times over the course of the game, and these work by splitting the crowd watching the action into three zones. You need to constantly do tricks in each zone to keep each section of the audience happy. You'll also meet up with pro skaters and then take on specific challenges to show them you're legit. These challenges are often unique. Bob Burnquist's pro challenge asks you to jump out of a plane and perform tricks in the air. Bam Margera, once again, can't stay out of the garbage, and he'll demand that you launch yourself off of a building and land in a dumpster. Ryan Scheckler focuses on gaps and acid drops, Daewon Song has you move pieces around a small area to set up a lengthy grind line, and there are five more challenges to play through over the course of the game, not counting Tony Hawk's grand finale, which is different depending on how many goals you complete at the higher levels. All in all, people that have stuck with the series over the years should be able to blaze through the game's goals and get the amateur ending after about six or seven hours. But moving up to the pro and sick finales will most definitely take some time. The career is helped along by several appearances by a virtual Jason Lee (Mallrats, Enemy of the State, Stealing Harvard), who guides you by informing you of new skate demos, pro challenges, and other more important goals. All in all, it's a fun, streamlined mode that focuses on the gameplay without spending too much time with needless story sequences.

The level design is similar to American Wasteland, in that Project 8 presents the world as one large city with different sections. However, this game makes good on the "seamless world, no loading" concept that American Wasteland touted. Where American Wasteland just hid the loading by forcing you to skate between areas in tight, non-descript tunnels, Project 8's world is truly seamless. The only time you'll see loading screens while playing is if you retry a goal that's halfway across the city, forcing the game to pause for a bit while it warps you there. The large city is nicely designed and has plenty of opportunities for ridiculously long combo lines. The size of the city becomes a problem online, where you might play a full game without ever seeing another player. To combat that, you can choose to limit players to one part of town or a few areas that combine multiple parts of town into one area. The online mode in Project 8 on the Xbox 360 is much the same as it has been over the years. You can connect to a game with up to eight players and just skate around. The host then chooses to start a game and things go from there. In addition to the new walls game type, old modes like trick attack, score challenge, combo mambo, graffiti, and horse are also available. The online action is a lot of fun, and in a surprising twist, you can still use the slow-motion nail the trick mode during online games.

Project 8 takes place in an open city, but initially you'll be locked into a pretty small area.

Like in many of the sports games that have transitioned from the previous generation of consoles to this one, in Project 8 there are a lot of features and options that haven't carried over from American Wasteland or the previous games in the series. While you can still create your own skater, your options for hairstyles, faces, eyes, and so on are way more limited. However, the number of licensed shoes in the game has skyrocketed, presumably because the nail the trick mode gives you a detailed look at your feet. The level-creation tools show up in a limited form during the career, but there's no option to make your own skate park or goals. Those options were nice to have in the previous installments in the series, but Project 8 doesn't feel like it's missing a large chunk of content or anything like that.
If it wasn't for its frame rate problems, Project 8 would be a great-looking game. Most of the animation that's been used and reused in Tony Hawk games is gone, replaced by all new motion-captured tricks and rag-doll physics. Yes, that's right, the legs-straight-out benihana animation you've come to know and love over the years is history. But shed a silent tear for it, because the game's animation does look really nice. The environments are bright and colorful, and even the gross-looking pedestrians that have given you goals in the previous games have been replaced by nice-looking close-up shots. The game runs at a good speed, but unfortunately the frame rate just can't keep up. The PlayStation 3 version of the game is more unstable and sinks to lower depths than its Xbox 360 counterpart. On the 360, it's just enough to get in the way of the gameplay. On the PS3, it's enough to make the game feel unfinished, but only on the occasions when it really starts dropping frames. Both versions also contain a cool pro tricks section that lets you view the skater models doing tricks as they were motion captured. You can move the camera around, focus on the board, roll the sequence in slow motion, and see just what level of fancy footwork goes into doing actual skate tricks. It reinforces the concept that actual skating is, at the pro level anyway, insanely difficult.
The soundtrack in Project 8 is your typical mix of multigenre licensed music. By default, it's low enough to serve as background music that doesn't get in the way of the action. There's a bit of voice work in the game from the pro skaters, but since they only turn up during very specific challenges, most of them only have a few lines. Considering their wooden delivery, maybe that's for the best. Tony Hawk gets a bit more mic time, but even he seems like a bit player in the game. Instead, it's Jason Lee who does most of the talking. In addition to being a former pro skater and running his own skate company, the guy's an actor, and he manages to deliver his lines quite a bit better than the skaters do. There are a lot of new sound effects in Project 8 that really enhance the experience. The grind noises in Tony Hawk have always been great and realistic, but they've been mostly the same for the last several years. There are a lot of new skating-on-surfaces effects this year that really enhance the sound of the game.

The models and animation are great, but an unstable frame rate really gets in the way.

Like every other release on Microsoft's platform, the Xbox 360 version of Tony Hawk's Project 8 has a series of achievements that you earn by completing specific tasks. The achievements are designed much better here than they were in American Wasteland, with a handful of points coming for just progressing through the story mode, while many, many more come from mastering it. There are also points for reaching specific scores and combos in the high score mode, playing and winning online, and more. The game also has an achievement for beating a developer or beating someone who has beaten a developer in an online game. It'll be interesting to see how this viral achievement works its way from player to player.
Project 8's tutorial should help new players get into the swing of things, but ultimately it's fans of previous installments that will get the most out of this game. The redesigned career mode and multiple difficulty goals inject a lot of excitement into the formula, and features like online leaderboards and Xbox Live support really make the Xbox 360 version stand out. If you've ever been a fan of the Tony Hawk series, this game is worth your time.

Civilization II Game Free download | Civilization II Game Cheats

The design team at Microprose has managed to add a score of new play elements that help the aging strategy classic evolve - without sacrificing the game's addictive qualities.

After the disappointing example set by X-COM 2, many gamers expected Civilization II to be nothing more than Sid Meier's original game with a few new graphics tacked on. Others were worried that the game's designers would stray too far from the path, and would ruin the spectacular play balance that made Civilization such a hit. In the end, the design team at Microprose managed to add a score of new play elements that help the aging strategy classic evolve - without sacrificing the game's addictive qualities.
Although players familiar with the original Civilization will probably be able to jump in and start playing right away, a swarm of new features definitely warrants a few minutes with the manual. What players will most likely notice first is the much greater number of races to choose from, including the Sioux, the Carthaginians, and the Chinese, as well as a customizing option that lets you create any personal favorites the designers may have missed. This time around, cultural variations are also represented onscreen by four different city growth patterns. The fantastic number of new combat units adds limitless possibilities, as players figure out new ways to use marines (who can attack from the sea), cruise missiles, paratroopers, and even religious fanatics to their best advantage. For those who grew tired of the chaotic battlegrounds of the original game (remember when that chariot took out your battleship?), there's a new warfare system that gives units a score in both firepower and hit points for more realistic combat results. All of these features combine to give the game a powerful depth, and enough variation to ensure that players will be loading this one up for months to come.
Plenty of little details in Civilization II are also worth noting: an improved graphics set featuring a three-quarters viewpoint similar to Syndicate or Crusader, entertaining sound effects that range from the trumpet of an elephant to the air raid sirens of an atomic attack, full-motion video clips for each of the civilization advances, and a full map editor that enables players to design their own fields of conquest. Although the game suffers from its lack of multiplayer options, there's really nothing available that can compete with its depth of play, subtlety of challenge, and pure addictive potential. The fact is, if you're a strategy fan, you've already bought this game, and if you're not, this title could turn you around.

 Civilization 2 Game Cheats :

Control opponent city While playing the game, press V, move diagonally into an opponent's city, and press [Enter]. Then, the city's productivity may be altered or units disbanded.

Cheat Codes While playing the game, enter one of the following codes to activate the corresponding cheat function:

                                Result                                          Cheat Code 

                     Update throne room                                        Q
               New council attitude and time                   [Ctrl] + [Shift] + T
                   Edit unit, except for type                       [Ctrl] + [Shift] + U

Anvil of Dawn Game | Anvil of Dawn Review

This title walks the line between the combat and puzzles genres very delicately, and most adventurers will find the game maintains an enjoyable balance throughout.

It's been a long time since the release of Westwood's Lands of Lore, but most gamers will recognize its obvious influence on the design of Anvil of Dawn, New World Computing's beginner-level RPG. Even so, originality isn't everything, and the company has done a commendable job of combining solid graphics and animation with the successful play style of Westwood's classic.
Players start the game by choosing one of five characters, each with their own special gifts in qualities including strength, agility, and magic use. Once their identity is sorted out, players will use the game's pleasingly simple first person, turn-based interface to move through Tempest, a war torn world that (as usual) requires a hero (or heroine—and I commend New World for their inclusion of two female player characters) to sort things out. As the game progresses, characters will face dozens of enemies, all of them unique, not the typical Tolkienesque denizens of most RPGs. Weapons range from commonplace items such as spears, bows, axes and swords to magical armament that enables players to stand up against some of the game's more powerful opponents. Twenty-five spells are also available in seven different disciplines (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Lightning, Flesh, and Void) for characters wily enough to learn them. This title walks the line between the combat and puzzles genres very delicately, and most adventurers will find the game maintains an enjoyable balance throughout.
There's no doubt that Anvil of Dawn reformulates something that's been done before, but in the end, it's a pretty good rehash. The game's entertaining storyline, easy-to-understand statistics, and functional game balance earn it a place on any beginning RPG fan's shelf. On the flip side, those who are looking for an RPG with depth of play and characters that can be highly personalized will probably walk away from this title disappointed.

Descent Game | PC, PS Game Decent

No exploding body parts or fireball-vomiting demons here--Descent puts an industrial spin on the genre by taking you into the bowels of huge factory-like space stations to fight mining robots gone mad.

Doom didn't just introduce the masses to a first-person, action 3-D shooter, it spawned a variety of first-person clones. Some of these clones, like Dark Forces, were welcome additions to the genre. Others were just more of the same. Only one 3-D shooter adds a whole new dimension to the field: Descent. No exploding body parts or fireball-vomiting demons here--Descent puts an industrial spin on the genre by taking you into the bowels of huge factory-like space stations to fight mining robots gone mad.
Consider this: in space, there is no up or down. Descent uses that concept to hit you like a 9G turn with a labyrinth environment and free range of motion on the x-, y-, and z-axes. Nudge your spaceship into a room, and watch out—attacks can come from your left or right, from above or below you. You'll spin your ship around while firing missiles and lasers until vertigo isn't just an Alfred Hitchcock movie, but a way of life. Surrounded by this chaos you must rescue scattered human hostages and gather powerups while trying to keep your firepower and shields at their max. A 3-D rotating map is available for those who can't handle the bewildering turns of each level.
With addictive action, network multi-player play and Descent level editors available everywhere you turn, I say without hyperbole that Descent is destined to be a classic. Don't believe me? Download the widely available free demos (while you're at it, check out Descent II as well) and judge for yourself. Just remember to keep your airsickness bag handy.