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Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

'Mafia II' Video Game Demo Review

Mafia II Glitch
I recently had the chance to play the demo of chart-topping video game 'Mafia II' on PlayStation 3, and whilst I haven't actually played the first in the series, I thought it might be worth checking out. Admittedly I had a fair amount of fun playing the demo, albeit not because of the quality of the game, but rather the lack thereof.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

SoftServe Inc. Became General Sponsor of the "CEE IT Outsourcing Review 2009" Research

SoftServe logo
SoftServe, a leading global provider of proven high quality software development, testing and consulting, announced that the company became the General Sponsor of the "CEE IT Outsourcing Review 2009" research. The "Central and Eastern European IT Outsourcing Review" is a project of the Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Association (CEEOA).

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Battlefield Bad Company 2 Beta key distribution Review Screenshots and Videos

BrightSide have produced a great guide to the Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta test. It includes a report on beta key distribution and a great review backed up with screenshots and videos

Monday, July 06, 2009

Fight Night Round 4 review for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 consoles

ali in fight night round 4 video gameI got in close, chucked off a few body blows, swerved a jab and with a quick flick of the right stick and a tap of the A button unleashed Iron Mike Tyson's signature jumping haymaker to send the great Muhammad Ali to the canvass.

The massively satisfying sequence was instantly replayed in slow-mo, hi def EA polished glory and my fate was sealed, 'I'm playing this for the next two days solid'.



Better yet I did not fall out of love with Fight Night Round 4 when Ali got up, dusted himself down and absolutely pummelled me for the next three rounds before knocking me out completely with a masterclass befitting the legendary man.

View all Six gamezplay Fight Night 4 video here...


Read full post here on The Bucks Herald

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Best Mac games ever - The Colony, Dark Castle, Escape Velocity, Marathon and Crystal Quest

colony
A “Mac game” is a game that’s some combination of first, best, or only on the Mac.

Such games are rare these days.

Many of the classics required dexterity and dedication well beyond that demanded by today’s crop of mass-market video games.

Here are the best of a bygone era...

Full list on Macworld post here...

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Will Wright on critical SPORE video game reviews from some users...

will wright spore http://gamezplay.orgEA’s biggest PC game of the year and the brainchild of renowned game designer Will Wright, “Spore” hits store shelves today. The game has won Best of E3 awards and been lavished with positive pre-release coverage in the gaming and mainstream press.
So why is it getting 8s and 9s rather than 10s? And what does Wright make of reactions such as that of the New York Times‘ review, which concludes:
“Now if Mr. Wright and the Maxis team just take another few passes through Spore’s later stages and release a big revision patch next year, they may finally end up with a game to match the stellar toy they have already unleashed.”
On Friday, I had a chance to talk to Wright about the response the game has been getting, giving him a chance to clarify the goals of his design team and to reveal how he’s playing “Spore.” (As the week progresses, we’ll be posting Wright’s thoughts on each of the game’s stages, which he also shared during the interview.)

Read the full interview on MTV web site here...

SPORE http://gamezplay.org

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Classic Game Room HD - HAZE for Playstation 3 review Part 1


Part 1 of 2: Classic Game Room was the FIRST classic video game review show on the Internet in 1999. Returning in 2008 with new episodes, Classic Game Room breaks out a review of HAZE for the Plays...

Watch the video here on YouTube

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Battlefield - Bad Company review of the latest in the series from DICE

The latest in the phenomenally successful Battlefield series, Bad Company is something of a departure for developers DICE. Not only is it the first in the series to be designed specifically for consoles but it'll also be home to the strongest single player campaign element found in the series so far. However, for the purposes of this preview we're going to be focusing on the area the series is famous for, online multiplayer.



It's becoming almost expected now for high profile shooters to offer some kind of multiplayer beta and Bad Company is no exception. For those lucky enough to have access codes the beta offers a tantalising look at one of the game's multiplayer modes, Gold Rush, and two of the maps.


There are five classes of soldier on offer, Assault, Support, Recon, Demolition and Specialist. They all do pretty much what they say on the tin and come complete with their own set of upgrades and unloackables to add extra spice to proceedings as you move up the ranks. Moving up said ranks involves earning in-game points, the more you earn the higher rank you earn and the more goodies you're able to get your hands on. As console gamers found in CoD4 this kind of experience based promotion system works well and it's nice to see a similar system in play here.

Into the game itself and the one mode on offer, Gold Rush, is a variant on the traditional Capture The Flag game that thankfully does more than simply replace the flag with a pile of gold. Players are divided into two sides, attackers and defenders, and pairs of chests holding gold provide the focus of each side's task. It's not all quite that simple though, a couple of twists make things a whole lot more interesting. First up is the idea of respawn tickets, the attacking side has a limited number of these and once they're used up it's game over, victory to the defenders. Defenders meanwhile have to worry about being pushed back through their territory. As the attacking force claim a pair of chests a new area opens up containing another two chests and pushing the defending team deeper into their own terrain. If the attacking team claims four sets of chests then it's their turn to dance a victory jig.



It's a simple set of changes to the formula yet they prove to be immensely enjoyable giving the action a real sense of ebb and flow. Last gasp stands in the final area against a dwindling attacking force give a much more urgent feel to the end of games than a simple flag or frag counter could ever do.


The two maps that come with the beta are both impressive in their own way. The first, called Ascension is based around a rural village while the second, Oasis, takes place in a much more open desert environment. As you'd expect the village offers more in the way of close quarters street and building based combat while out in the desert snipers come into their own with less cover and smaller buildings making the game more open.

All the clever modes and pretty maps in the world mean nothing however if the thing plays like a dog, thankfully this is far from the case here. It may seem faint praise but the best thing about Bad Company is that it all simply works. Weapons feel perfect, aiming is fast and accurate, the maps are well designed and everything flows like a well oiled machine. There's no noticeable lag and there's more than enough people on the servers to have given them a damn good test as well as keep things interesting at all times. If I has one grumble it would be that identification of enemies can be hampered a little by the colour coded gamertags that float above player heads sometimes taking a few seconds to kick in which led to some comedy moments of shall I/shan't I but no doubt will be fixed come release.

Graphically things are looking very impressive with little or no slowdown even in the most frenetic fire fights. Not only do the environments look beautifully realistic and come complete with some well implemented physics, but they're also highly destroyable which always adds to the fun. Who needs pin-point accuracy when you can just blow the side off a building after all?



It's fair to say that we'd kind of expect the multiplayer aspect of a Battlefield game to be pretty hot, so there's little surprise to be proven right by this beta. What will be more interesting will be seeing how they've forged the single player campaign and story when the game gets released in the summer. However, if the other multiplayer modes and maps prove to be half as much fun as the content found in the beta then there's every chance Bad Company will sell on the basis of its multiplayer alone despite the apparent single player focus.

Source: Play

Monday, March 24, 2008

Agatha Christie Too Mysterious On Nintendo Wii - Review


W.I.R.E.D. Review --

I can tell you the exact moment that I decided to stop playing Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None and never come back.

But first let me say how much I appreciate the effort. The Wii's mouselike controller and casual audience make it perfect for point-and-click adventure games, which of course is why absolutely no one has bothered to make one. No one except The Adventure Company (natch), who has ported its 2005 PC adventure game And Then There Were None, based on the best-selling novel, to Wii.

As a proof of concept, it works like a charm. Adventure games work very well on Wii. The interface transfers over perfectly, the one-handed controls mean you can eat lunch while you puzzle over the game's brainteasers, and high-tech graphics aren't important to the slow-paced style.

But as a game, And Then There Were None commits every cardinal sin of bad adventure design.

When I first started playing the game - how silly I feel, looking back! - I thought it was shaping up to be too easy. The re-enactment of Agatha Christie's famous novel was speeding along at a rapid clip: Ten strangers arrive on an isolated island, and one by one their mysterious and absent host begins to murder them. By the time five people lay dead, I'd only solved a few puzzles, although I'd amassed a sizeable inventory of objects whose uses I could not even begin to guess at.
By this point, my main complaint with the game was that too much of it seemed to revolve around tramping around the island aimlessly, having absolutely no direction as to what to do, and finding nothing. Eventually, I'd pass some arbitrary waypoint and the game would load up the next cut-scene, somebody else would die, and the game would continue on with me having done very little.

And then, about halfway through, I hit The Wall. My character decided that now was the time to put his "plan" into action, a plan that he had not shared with me, for getting off the island. Great! Only except I had pretty much clicked on everything by this point and didn't know what to do. Applying a little more brain power, I discovered the secret entrance to a hidden room. But was still totally stuck.

Before I tell you what happened next, you have to understand that the game's shelf life was rapidly deteriorating. And Then There Were None is not a good-looking game by anyone's measure; the characters and environments were pug-ugly in 2005 and the journey to Wii did them no favors. The writing is mediocre, the voice acting barely passable, and the music is one repeating piano piece that would drive one to suicide if there were not already a murderer on the loose.
I had been quite forgiving of all of this because, well, it's based on a great murder story that I haven't read. By this point (about four or five hours in), I was getting absorbed into the murder mystery and wanted to know what happened next.
So bearing all this in mind, I hope you understand why I went to the Internet for help. Loading up a FAQ for the game, I was immediately confronted not with a head-slappingly obvious solution to the puzzle, but a giant list of in-game items that I had absolutely no idea existed.
The pipe stem is in the ladies' bathroom? I marveled. I went in that bathroom like ten times and looked everywhere! But there it was: A miniature gathering of pixels that for all the world looked like a slight discoloration in the sink tile, something that I never in a million years would have clicked on.

More revelations from the FAQ: Belied by the serious, realistic ambience, the latter half of the game hinges on the sort of completely ludicrous, use-the-turkey-baster-with-the-flour1 type of puzzles that no one ever solves unless they a) cheat b) try to combine every object with every other object in a desperate bid to make progress.
Yes, I could have brute-forced my way through some of the puzzles using just that technique given enough time, but some of them were profoundly absurd in their opacity. Had I really been enraptured with the story and presentation, I might have just looked up the puzzle I was stuck on and proceeded from there, but by that point I had lost all ability to care, and shut the game off forever.

I'd like to encourage The Adventure Company to bring more point-and-clicks to Wii, but please, please make them better than this.

Source: W.I.R.E.D.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Next generation games review for XBox 360 Playstation and Wii - Gran Turismo 5 - Prologue - Rainbow Six Vegas 2 +


Next generation games review

Screaming down a hairpin, taking out the trash and playing tennis with a hedgehog and a monkey, I have been working my thumbs to bone tracking down some of the best games soon to hit the shelves.

Gran Turismo 5 - Prologue

Decent exclusive PS3 titles have been fairly thin on the ground so far, but finally we are starting to see some of the games we were promised when the machine launched.

Power sliding onto Sony's PlayStation 3 console comes the oft-delayed Gran Turismo 5 - Prologue.


The full version of the game is due out in 2009 in the UK and late 2008 in the US and Japan but a cut-down version is being released in late March to whet the appetite of the franchise's fans.

In the early version there are 71 motors to choose from and high-definition visuals that make previous incarnations of GT look like the crude scrawls of an infant.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2

PS3-exclusive titles might be a bit thin on the ground, but there are plenty of games which are available for both the PS3 and Microsoft's XBox 360.

This game rather explosively falls into this category, and has set its laser sight on Call of Duty 4's crown as top first-person shooter.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six team is back for another pop at taking out the bad guys in Sin City. The plot behind this shooter makes the Die Hard movies seem cerebral, and basically involves dispatching hordes of balaclava-clad bad guys.

But it is the ability to direct your AI-controlled team to do your every spec-ops bidding that makes this title so much fun.

Sega Superstars Tennis

This is another all formats title for those who will be left with a headache after all those screeching tyres and booming guns. Perhaps the cartoonish charms of Sega Superstars Tennis will soothe their aching head.

In this game, classic Sega characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog and the big-eared simian from Monkey Ball limber up for a tennis title with a twist.

Characters can perform special moves, obstacles can be introduced to the court, and the whole thing feels a million miles away from most of the dark and gloomy titles dominating contemporary gaming.

Wii Fit

If Nintendo has its way we will all be cancelling our gym memberships and getting fit with the help of its videogames console and a weird bit of plastic that you stand on.


With the aid of the balance board peripheral, Wii Fit puts the user through a series of exercises in the comfort of their living room.

Stand on the board and the Wii measures how much exercise the user is doing.

These exercises range from Yoga tasks, to weird imaginary hula hoop competitions, to daily fitness tests that can be saved and the progress viewed via the power of onscreen diagrams.

More on this BBC story here

Friday, December 21, 2007

Call of Duty 4 Nintendo DS Review

First Person Shooters have been a rare treat for DS gamers, probably due to the extra efforts the developers have to put in. But Activision have overcome that hurdle resulting in the next instalment of the Call of Duty series: Modern Warfare. For a DS game, the graphics are amazing with everything looking so clear and sharp, handling explosions and fires especially well.

It was a disappointing surprise to discover that online play was non-existent as Call of Duty would seem to be the perfect game for it. However, there are more than enough multiplayer modes which I will come onto later but excluding that you're just left with the main campaign mode. It took me just under 8 hours to complete but thankfully a Medium and Hard mode have been added causing a noticeable upgrade in difficulty.



The controls in place work extremely well, simply using the D-Pad to move around and the touch-screen to aim like previous shooters have done. To get those valuable headshots you'll need to double-tap on the touch screen so your gun zooms in. Accuracy is quite an important thing to consider as without getting headshots enemies can take quite a bit of battering before falling. Changing weapons is done via the touch-screen as well as completing actions such as picking up a gun or calling in air support.

The enemy AI is fairly advanced when compared to other DS games having them grab you if you get to close and throwing grenades if you're in range however there seems to be an issue with enemies staying rooted to the same point, no matter how close you get. Although, due to your soldier having a regenerating shield rather than health, as I did you'll probably stick to 'hit and run' tactics instead of stealth.


'Mini-games' are located throughout the campaign missions, the completion of each needed for progression in the game. A common one which pops up frequently is diffusing a bomb where you have to trace wires with the stylus or instead cracking a code by finishing a maze-like puzzle. There's also the chance to control a machine gun mounted on a back of a moving truck and to call in an air strike on enemy territory which all come up at points throughout the campaign mode.

Once you're into the game, like myself, you'll probably start thinking about the multi-player options just before you rush off to find another friend who owns it. Activision have certainly made sure you won't be short of game modes as free-for-all, hunter, team deathmatch and capture-the-flag are all there making an appearance allowing 2-4 player matches. Even better, there's a single-cart mode which allows up to 4 player free-for-all even if your friend doesn't own the game. Sadly, online isn't there and would have for sure turned this great game into a must-have for DS owners, but at least this leaves us with something to hope for future Call of Duty additions.

But what has impressed me most about Modern Warfare, is the work that has been put into the sound and voice which creates a much more realistic atmosphere and allowing characters issuing you instructions to sound crystal clear, you'll see what we mean if you click for the trailer below.

So Activision have added another game to the small collection of first-person shooters for DS but Call of Duty, comes out top for graphics and controls with lack of online being the only real disappointment. If you're a fan of the series you probably won't need my convincing to go out and buy it, but if you're an average gamer looking for maybe a Christmas gift or just a reason to clear the dust off of your system then Call of Duty is it.

Watch the game trailer video here...

Overall:
Best shooter for the DS yet with great graphics and sound however lacking online is a big disappointment.

Fun: 8.5 | Value: 6 | Overall: 8

Source: Nintencast

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Conan video game delivers fists of fun - review


The legend of Conan the barbarian, the many-muscled pulp novel creation of Robert E. Howard, has been delivered in full gory glory with "Conan" the video game, a fantastic release thick with violence and gorgeous graphics.

The Conan character is perhaps remembered best from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, where the protagonist broke loose and took vengeance on anyone who dared stand in his way. You'll get that same bloody retribution feel here, but with better dialogue and a fuller story line.

This "Conan" ($59.99;€41 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) battles several big boss enslavers and their monstrous minions. His efforts are done to aid A'Kanna, a female warrior trying to avenge the destruction of her homeland by the evil wizard Graven.

As I grabbed the Sony PS3 controller and dove into this drama I quickly realized one important thing — nearly every character in this game is angry and doing grave bodily harm. And I mean everyone.

It all comes together seamlessly. The character's movements are fairly free-ranging, yet the angles are easy enough on the eyes as to not make you dizzy. There's no dual-thumb twiddling necessary like first-person shooter games where you must manage your X and Y axis constantly while trying to navigate the game map and avoid harm. In "Conan," the screen swivels around nicely and you get a third-person perspective as you storm through various combat scenes.

Once engaged, Conan delivers crushing fist, foot and weapon blows. He can block and parry attacks, and snatch up better weapons from his vanquished victims for future killing combo moves.

Sprinkled throughout the journey are various hidden treasures, some tucked away in large jars and chests, that rejuvenate Conan's strength and give him enough experience to buy and master new death blows. The "elbow stun" and "fast strike finisher" were my favorites, the latter sending foes flying upward with a slice from my blade.

This title is not for the faint of heart, or thin of skin. Blood is let at every turn. Enslaved women wearing nothing from the waist up and not a whole lot below are chained to fortress walls. When freed, some of them exclaim to Conan "My clothes! Where are my clothes?" I was a bit offended by that aspect, and had difficulty simply chalking it up to the world of male gaming fantasy.

Overall, it's probably the best, most engaging game I've played all year. Even the cut scenes are works of art. "Conan" shows what game developers can deliver if they truly commit to a project and pay attention to details necessary to bring an iconic figure like Conan to life.

Horned hats off to THQ Inc., Havok, Nihilistic Software and all of the gaming brains behind this title.

Four out of four stars.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Thursday, November 29, 2007

VIDEO GAME REVIEWS


After selling almost 200 million games over more than two decades and generating untold billions of US dollars in revenue for Nintendo of Japan, Mario is back with two new games. Super Mario Galaxy, released this month for Nintendo's Wii console, is the first major new Mario game in five years. Also, Mario shares top billing with his longtime rival Sonic the Hedgehog in a separate new game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.

Mario has always starred in games for everyone. So to test whether it could still appeal to an overeducated, media-saturated audience, I assembled a panel of non-gaming yuppies in their 30s at my house last weekend, put the Wii controls in their hands and sat back to check the reaction.

Judging by the hours of giggles, chortles and guffaws, Mario still has the goods and that incessant tug to play just five more minutes.

The reaction in my living room and elsewhere around the world indicates that Super Mario Galaxy is more than a worthy successor to the franchise's considerable legacy of smiles. It is being widely hailed as the best game yet for the Wii and is drawing plaudits from gamers and magazines alike.

Super Mario is generally a single-player game, but in a nice innovation, a second player can jump in and use a Wii remote to control a separate cursor on the screen that can stun enemies, pick up treasure and otherwise assist the main user controlling Mario. The game's whole feel is so finely tuned, so infectiously enjoyable, that it's understandable why Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator, has been one of the most famous game designers in the world for decades.

My panel of non-experts had a lot of fun with the game's Olympic "events" (up to four can play at one time), especially the trampoline, but that game still is not receiving the praise being lavished on Super Mario Galaxy.

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa is another new game in an old series. How does it stack up?

The thing to understand is that playing a "massively multiplayer" online game, or MMO, is a commitment of money and time. MMO players routinely spend hundreds or even thousands of hours on their favorite games over many years. All of that time is an investment in building up the powers and abilities of one's virtual identity, not to mention the fun of adventuring with friends. For all that, players generally spend around US$15 a month.

Tabula Rasa is certainly a lot of fun, and it looks great. In an online gaming market deluged with dragons and elves, its fast-paced science-fiction combat is a refreshing change of pace. There are aliens descending all over the place and firefights stretching over gorgeously rendered landscapes.

Graphically, the game seems to take a page from Starship Troopers, with its bright colors and varied foes.

The big question is whether the game has enough depth to keep players coming back for months or years without devolving into a mindless repetition of "see alien, shoot gun, repeat."

Garriott and the rest of his team at NCsoft have been candid in saying that they are trying to appeal mostly to a broad base of casual gamers rather than to the smaller cadre of hard-core players who might spend 30 hours a week or more on a game.

More than four years after its debut, Eve Online is only now hitting its stride as one of the most interesting games in the world.

Eve takes place in a fictional galaxy in a far future, where humanity has splintered into four competing factions, the theocratic Amarr, the militaristic Caldari, the liberal Gallente and the rebel Minmatar. Players choose a side and find their own path.

At a stage when most games have long since stagnated, Eve continues to grow, recently passing 200,000 subscribers. CCP is planning a major graphics overhaul scheduled for Wednesday.

In many ways, Eve is like the real world. All 200,000 of Eve's players exist in one huge virtual galaxy spanning thousands of solar systems. About 40 percent of Eve's players are European, another 40 percent are North American and about 20 percent are from other continents. They all share one polyglot community around the clock, and at any moment tens of thousands of users are logged on.

More important, the economy and politics of Eve are almost entirely driven by the players themselves.

The most compelling aspect of Eve is that once players control a region of virtual space, they bear the responsibility of policing it, setting taxes, establishing diplomatic relations with neighboring groups and waging battles to protect their territory or take more. In most online games, the advanced content involves getting together with a few dozen friends to battle computer-controlled dragons and demons. In Eve, major battles involve hundreds of players fighting in starships in vast Star Wars-like firefights.

Source: Taipeit Times

Saturday, November 17, 2007

WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2008 Review (Xbox 360)


Love him or hate him, Vince McMahon is modern-day studio wrestling.

While calling the WWE the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment is pompous, you’ve got to hand it to Vinny. Although aided by his father owning the biz in the early years, McMahon had his hand in turning the World Wrestling Entertainment into a mega-dollar company, despite “inter-office” turmoil and the fact that wrestling is fake. No really, it is.

Helping McMahon and company achieve such a success with their fake sport is a very lucrative pull-through with merchandising. Everything from toys, air fresheners and clothing, to theme music CD’s and classic WWF DVD’s (with all of the logos blurred out to stave off any more lawsuits from the World Wildlife Fund) help to fill those arenas each and every week, not to mention their part in boosting Pay PerView sales.

And then there’s the video game. Video games have played their part in the WWF’s and WWE’s success throughout the years, dating back to the days when McMahon was a simple announcer and non-heel. There was even an old-school coin-op produced, not to mention a slew of titles during SEGA’s and Nintendo’s early-bit heydays. The wrestlers (Big Boss Man FTW!) changed from year-to-year of course, as did the fighting systems and graphics, but the one constant was the Japanese developer’s fascination with the sport, and their penchant for making spot-on recreations of McMahon’s flashy universe.

Yuke’s out of Japan was one of those developers caught up in the wrestling boom. Their mid-90’s Power Move grapplers earned them acclaim, which eventually led to myriad WWE games in the 2000’s for the Dreamcast, Playstation One and Two, the Gamecube and yes, even Microsoft’s original big, black box.

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 saw Yuke’s move their wrestling game prowess onto the Xbox 360, and for the most part it was a success. Obviously the anticipation is high for today’s subject WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, as it usually takes developers at least one title to feel out the new hardware and figure out exactly what it can and can’t do. A year later, it’s still obvious that Yuke’s knows how to concoct a good WWE game, but we’re still a little unclear if they have the whole progress concept down yet.

Before we get into what Yuke’s should have done for WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, let’s look at what they did, in fact, do, and do well. In a word- graphics. WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008’s predecessor was a pretty solid game visually, but Yuke’s somehow managed to make their latest work the graphical equivalent of an Atomic Drop. The character models are even better than last year (still a tad greasy though, although maybe that was by design since most of these brutes are sweaty and Nair’d beyond belief), and the new characters brought over from the ECW look spot-on as well. There’s a greater amount of aesthetic fluidity to the entire production now; from ring entrances to just about every interaction the wrestler has with an opponent (some of the bigger moves still get choppy though). There’s also a greater sense of overall realism due to the reworked animations that lessen the “robot” factor that often plagues sports (well, entertainment) game characters. The new running dynamic is actually pretty realistic-looking too, not to mention it being a valuable tool that keeps the pacing of each match more realistic-feeling. Close-up facial expressions add to the visceral feel of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 as well, especially when foes are involved in a Struggle Submission- the new interactive pain delivery system that adds a touch more skill to moves like the Figure 4 or the STF-U (parents - we’ll let your kids figure out what that stands for). What we see this year, we like for sure.

The entire visual presentation WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is unquestionably impressive, which at first gave us a sense of hope that the gameplay would follow suit. But it seems as though Yuke’s wanted to add additional features to the same basic engine they had in place in SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, instead of fixing the anomalies that kept last year’s game from being great.

We like the work that Yuke’s put in to WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 to create clear fighting styles for each character. This is a great feature for the casual wrestling fan that may not realize that Mr. Hardy is an aerial master or that Batista is essentially an immovable object. But for the true wrestling and wrestling game fan, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008’s Fighting Style system presents a problem….

More here...