New 360s getting two-game bundle

Microsoft packing in Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance with new Pro and Elite systems.

Now that the Wii and Playstation 3 have had a year to catch up to the Xbox 360's head start, Microsoft is pushing back hard. In August, it dropped the price of its consoles across the board. Last month, the company released its biggest system-seller of the year, Halo 3. Today Microsoft followed up on those moves by announcing two Xbox 360 bundles that will come with two games packed in.

Free toys inside!

This holiday season, gamers in the market for an Xbox 360 can get Pro and Elite models of the console with copies of Turn 10's Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The bundles will sell for the standard Pro and Elite prices of $349 and $449, respectively, and Microsoft expects them to be readily available at retailers by the end of October.

If that price of admission is still too high, thrifty gamers might have some recourse on the way. Rumors have resurfaced recently that Microsoft is ditching its Xbox 360 Core package in favor of an Xbox 360 Arcade package. That system would supposedly have the same features as the Core Xbox 360, but come with a wireless controller, a 256MB memory card, and five Xbox Live Arcade games.

Microsoft is counting on this holiday season to provide the Xbox 360 with plenty of momentum to fend off Sony and Nintendo. The company has said it expects at least seven upcoming and recently released Xbox 360 games to break the million-unit sales mark, including Madden NFL 08, BioShock, Halo 3, Project Gotham Racing 4, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

source :
www.gamespot.com

For Girl Gamers - Harvest Moon DS Cute is Release!!

Ah, winter. While global warming trends may or may not have delivered the expected seasonal chill and covering of snow, we once again find it time to revisit the weird, yet strangely compelling world of the farming RPG. The generally quirky, usually lovable Harvest Moon series continues to release one pleasant variation after another, with a standard of quality approaching that of earlier entries in the Final Fantasy series (the exception to this rule being the horrible Animal Crossing knockoff A Wonderful Life Animal Crossing knockoff A Wonderful Life – for its part, the FF series pretty much died around the release of the visually stunning, yet horribly annoying card-game driven FF VIII).

An unfortunate trend which seems to be cementing into place with the Harvest Moon series is to first release a “normal” version of the game where you play as a male, while shortly after the game has lived out a brief (generally one year) lifespan, a second, nearly identical version appears, changing the lead characters gender to female. Case in point: Harvest Moon DS Cute, a fairly straight distaff remake of Harvest Moon DS. One interesting, if annoying quirk: after answering a series of Animal Crossing-style questions, the computer chooses which girl it thinks better suits your personality. The two girls in question are the blonde from Harvest Moon for Girls or the pony-tailed brunette from Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life. While these sort of “personality match” games are amusing enough when whiling away time over the internet, it seems a bit fascistic to have your choice decided for you, without consent or a view to personal preference. It’s very much akin to locking you in to whatever career your guidance counselor deemed a best fit back in HS…and we all know how far afield those options were!

As with any Harvest Moon game (excepting once again the It’s A Wonderful Life travesty), you’re given the task of building up and running a successful farm. This time around, you also have to find all 101 Harvest Sprites, who have mysteriously gone missing (given how hard they work your farm in previous series entries, this is no real surprise – munch munch, budum!). Along the way, you can get married and (should you have some overbearing need to) have a child with one of the local guys – and in addition to the usual suspects, a thief named Skye has been added to the pool of eligible bachelors. This time around, you also get the option to marry one of the guys from Mineral Town without having the game end immediately thereafter as in Harvest Moon DS. Of course, in order to meet one of Mineral Town’s eligible bachelors (quick, somebody get Jim Lange to emcee this!) you will have to have Friends of Mineral Town simultaneously inserted in your Nintendo DS.

Source :
www.ds.vggen.com

Dark Sector Review - PS3 - Xbox 360

Any video game which can name cult Hollywood classic Krull among its inspirations gets an automatic respect boost. Enter Dark Sector, the new third-person actioner from Unreal developer Digital Extremes and D3 Publisher. Unfortunately, the game's inclusion of a glaive (the Krull-inspired spinny kind, not the Japanese polearm ) as one of its central components is just about the only thing we're really over the Black Fortress about. After a looooooooong and troubled development, Dark Sector arrives this week on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 infected with an affliction far worse than protagonist Hayden Tenno's condition: mediocrity.

Spinning Blades and the People They Slice in Dark Sector

The fundamental gameplay underlying Dark Sector's lesser elements is reasonably sound. An action game in the vein of Gears Of War, Tenno dispatches enemies with his glaive and firearms as he runs through a series of linear environments. Combat relies heavily on a lock-to-object cover mechanic for nearly every encounter, save the occasional knockdown boss fight. As the story progresses and Tenno's infection moves into its advanced stages, additional abilities - such as a telekinetic shield, aftertouch for the glaive and hardened skin - become available at scripted moments.

Wait, infection? What's all that about? Hayden Tenno is a CIA operative inserted into a frozen gulag at the beginning of the game, in the fictitious Eastern European nation of Lasria. His mission is to blow the former prison - now a testing facility - sky high and take out a man named Mezner, who is responsible for a viral bio-weapon that eventually mutates any infected individual into a hulking humanoid beast. Tenno learns this firsthand when he is captured by Mezner and infected himself at the end of the game's introductory chapter.

As an Infected, Tenno is initially able to only summon his glaive into existence and hurl it at foes, carving up bodies according to where it makes contact. He can also run up to perform a melee finisher when they glow red, triggering a bloody animated death sequence. Shortly after becoming infected, Tenno gains access to a timed button press power throw, which hits for 4x damage (and breaks certain locks), and aftertouch, which allows him to steer the weapon in flight with the press of a button.

The glaive can also be made to temporarily take on elemental properties - electricity, flame and cold - by throwing it into certain parts of the environment. Elemental effects add a considerable damage boost in combat for the short amount of time that they last. The mechanic also factors into the game's environmental puzzles; certain doors, for example, require a little electrical charge before they will open.

Tenno's access to traditional firepower is somewhat more limited. Although he starts out with his government-issue pistol, dropped weapons from fallen enemies are of little use. Built-in governors cause each weapon's firing mechanism to detonate after 20-30 seconds of use if one of the Infected wields it. Black Market shops pop up throughout the game, allowing Tenno to purchase governor-free firearms (which are stored in lockers at the shops) and apply any collected upgrades. But the glaive, always dual-wielded with the pistol, is Tenno's primary weapon for the bulk of the game.

Dark Sector also includes a multiplayer component for two to 10 players which features two modes, Infection and Epidemic. Infection makes one player a fully-powered Tenno while the rest, as soldiers, attempt to bring him down. Whoever fires the killing shot becomes Tenno in the following round. In Epidemic, each team gets its own fully-powered Tenno, selected at random. The object is to bring down the other team's powerhouse. The modes have potential and at least offer more than the usual deathmatch/team deathmatch options, but they share many of the single player game's faults.

The Lowdown on Dark Sector

On paper, the above mechanics sound like bloody good times. Not so in practice. Hayden moves around quickly enough, but the right analog aiming is far too touchy. Even at its least sensitive, there's an abrupt acceleration whenever the reticule is moved, making fine aim control more of a burden than it ought to be.

Then there are the downright baffling gameplay elements at work in Dark Sector. Why, for example, is a trained CIA operative like Tenno unable to crouch without locking to a cover object? And why can't he blind-fire from behind said objects? Also, would it have been a big deal to give Tenno a two- or three-hit melee attack instead of the same, cumbersome right-to-left slash over and over again? Not that any of this matters all that much since the enemy AI is so blindingly stupid.

Foes typically dig themselves into a rut and remain there until a spinning glaive removes one or more of their extremities. They occasionally run from cover to cover, but enemies rarely respond to thrown grenades and never employ advanced tactics such as flanking or coordinated assaults. Other enemy types - such as shield-carrying melee attackers - add a little bit of tactical variety, but combat encounters generally favor quantity over quality.

There are also some fairly massive lapses in the game's own logic. For example, enemies rely heavily on grenades but they rarely drop any for Tenno to pick up himself. When they do, Tenno actually can pick them up. If Lasrian engineers had the forethought to install governors in their firearms, you'd think they'd also have given some consideration to limiting the Infected's access to high explosives.

Dark Sector shines brightest in the visual realm. Literally. Powered by Unreal Engine 3, nearly every surface in the game shimmers with an unnatural brilliance. The graphics are good overall, but the not-quite-real quality of the environments which looked so good in Gears Of War and Unreal Tournament III is no longer as impressive as it used to be.

Dark Sector does style very well, but it falls short on gameplay. Carving up wave after wave of enemies with an aftertouch-equipped glaive is undeniably entertaining, true. But the joy doesn't last. Less-than-perfect controls and rinse-repeat combat scenarios inevitably sour the experience after the first few chapters. A weekend rental at best, skip Dark Sector and put that money instead towards Krull on DVD.

Dark Sector available on PS3 and Xbox 360
source :
www.ugo.com

Crisis Core Released

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for Playstation Portable has shipped to North American retailers today. The game is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, the best-selling Final Fantasy ever that was released over a decade ago. God that makes me feel old.

In Crisis Core, players control Zack, an elite SOLDIER (ten years later, I don't know if that's supposed to be an acronym for something) working for Shinra Corporation and a comrade of Cloud and Sephiroth. Fans of FF7 might remember him making a few appearances in flashbacks. The game will chronicle the events that lead up to the beginning of the 1997 RPG.

Like FF7 the combat system will feature Materia, the magic stones you slot into character's equipment to give them magical abilities. Combat will also make use of a new mechanic known as Digital Mind Wave: in the corner of the screen, there will be three independently spinning reels and when they're aligned, players can perform special attacks and summon huge monsters. The North American version of the game will also feature an exclusive "Hard Mode" to test your skills.

Oh yeah, and at 6 PM tonight, Square Enix is hosting a launch party at the Playstation Store at the Metreon in San Francisco. The party will be limited to 200 fans, with the first 100 people in line getting a free commemorative t-shirt. Makes me nostalgic for the day I pre-ordered FF7 and received a Cloud Strife t-shirt to cover my bony, pre-high school torso...those were simpler, nerdier times.

source :
www.cinemablend.com

Top Rated Games

Score: 9.5

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

Release Date: Mar 9, 2008

Duke it out with your favorite Nintendo characters in Super Smash Bros. for the Wii. Genre: 3D Fighting

Score: 9.5

Crysis (PC)

Release Date: Nov 13, 2007

Crysis is a Sci-Fi FPS game for the PC in which mankind must struggle to survive in the face of an alien invasion.

Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Score: 9.5

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

Release Date: Nov 12, 2007

Super Mario Galaxy finds Mario taking his adventures to new heights as he soars through space from planet to planet in search of stars.

Genre: 3D Platformer

Score: 9.5

The Orange Box (PC)

Release Date: Oct 10, 2007

The Orange Box includes the original Half Life 2, Episodes One and Two, Team Fortress 2, and an additional single-player game called Portal.

Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Score: 9.5

The Orange Box (X360)

10, 2007

This package deal contains Half Life 2, and HL2: Episodes 1 & 2, as well as Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Score: 9.5

Halo 3 (X360)

Release Date: Sep 25, 2007

Bungie's popular first-person shooter makes its debut on the Xbox 360 with Halo 3.

Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Score: 9.5

World In Conflict (PC)

Release Date: Sep 18, 2007

World in Conflict is a real-time strategy game that takes you back to 1989 during a fictional war between the U.S., NATO, and the Soviet Union.

Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Score: 9.0

Patapon (PSP)

Release Date: Feb 26, 2008

An action-oriented 2D platformer similar to Loco Roco in artistic style that features rhythm-driven action.
Genre: 2D Platformer

Score: 9.0

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

Release Date: Feb 10, 2008

Professor Layton and the Curious Village has you using skills such as reasoning, knowledge and creativity to solve various puzzles.

Genre: Edutainment

Score: 9.0

Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)

Release Date: Feb 4, 2008

Sins of a Solar Empire is a real-time space strategy from Stardock.

Genre: Sci-Fi Real-Time Strategy

Score: 9.0

Burnout Paradise (PS3)

Release Date: Jan 22, 2008

Burnout Paradise gives racers an open world to drive, race and crash through.

Genre: Racing

Score: 9.0

Burnout Paradise (X360)

Release Date: Jan 22, 2008

Burnout Paradise gives racers an open world to drive, race and crash through.

Genre: Racing

Score: 9.0

No More Heroes (Wii)

Release Date: Jan 22, 2008

From SUDA-51, creator of the surreal shooter Killer7, No More Heroes chronicles Travis Touchdown's rise to the top of the assassin's league.

Genre: Action

Score: 9.0

Super Mario Bros. 3 (WII)

Release Date: Nov 5, 2007

Mario ventures beyond the Mushroom Kingdom to battle Koopas across seven neighboring worlds using new power-ups like the Tanooki Suit.
Genre: 2D Platformer

Score: 9.0

The Orange Box (PS3)

Release Date: Dec 11, 2007

This package deal contains Half Life 2, and HL2: Episodes 1 & 2, as well as their extras such as Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

Source :
www.gamespot.com