NHL 2K8 - Preview (PS3)

Hockey games have been on the upswing ever since the introduction of the Xbox 360 a few years back. Thanks to crisper graphics and innovative controls, the sport has rarely been depicted as accurately as in the past few years. That isn't to say that there's no work to be done, however. As Kush Games, the developer for 2K Sports' upcoming hockey sequel NHL 2K8, will tell you, there's always room for improvement. We had a chance to check out the E3 build of the game to see where it's heading.

Along with a new-look menu system that looks a bit like a film reel, the game will feature improved player models and the new Reebok "Rbk Edge" uniforms, which were first seen in last season's All Star Game. They will also be worn by all NHL teams during the 2007-2008 season. The uniforms are slightly slimmer and feature swaths of mesh fabric near the arms, along with an almost feltlike material on for the player number, which was clear to see on the player models in the game. The uniforms won't be the only new aspect of NHL 2K8's look. The team has also gone to great lengths to vary the kind of equipment the players will use on the ice, which includes tape on the socks, skate-blade holders, or the nearly 50 different sticks that will appear in the game.

Beyond the new look to 2K8, a new control scheme means the game will feel slightly different. The developers at Kush, recognizing the increased popularity of tying controls to the right analog stick, have moved some--but not all--stick control to the right stick. With the puck in your possession, you can move your stick left or right and push forward or pull back, all by moving the right stick in any direction and, more importantly, shoot from any position. Different players will have differing stick handling skills--so that Joe Thornton is able to kick the puck to himself or quickly switch from side to side, while your third-line wingers might not be as skilled. On defense, you can also use the right stick to poke check your opponent to try to grab the puck from an opponent. You'll also use the right stick for face-offs and be able to swipe at the puck either forehand or backhand, depending on which way you move the stick.

However, unlike 2K8's major competitor, you won't be shooting with the right stick. Instead, shooting and passing will still be executed with buttons, the right button and left button, respectively. The new mechanics--coupled with some more observant referees--means you'll need to pay attention during face-offs more than before. If you go too early, you can get warned or even booted out of the face-off, bringing your winger in to take your place. Guys with strong face-off skills will have a larger "window" of time they can use to win the face-off. In addition, a higher skilled player will be more liable to win in case of a face-off tie-up.

Another new twist to the controls is separate speed burst and sprint buttons. Your standard speed burst will be controlled with the right trigger (the left trigger is still for skating backward). But if you're looking for that extra push over the top when chasing a dumped puck or making a last-second breakaway, you can hit the A button for a dramatic, if brief, charge. The upside is the burst of speed can give you some crucial clearance on the defenders; the downside is that, after a sprint, a player won't be able to handle the puck, their turning radius will greatly increase, and they'll be gassed at the end of a sprint and will be due for a line change more or less immediately.

It takes some time to get used to the new controls, especially the shooting and passing tweaks. But beyond the adjustment time, the game plays fine. The goalies are more aggressive than before; producers say the goalie artificial intelligence has been completely rewritten so that net-minders will challenge the offensive player more often and will be more apt to use the butterfly when defending against shots.

While last year's cinemotion presentation option, which replaced play-by-play commentary with sweeping orchestral music, will still be available, the new default presentation style will feature the team of Bob Cole and Harry Neale (of Hockey Night in Canada fame). They will be once again offering their play-by-play and color commentary on the games. However, the improved cinemotion camera style will be part of the action.

We caught glimpses of features in NHL 2K8 that neither 2K or Kush are ready to talk about yet. These include the team-select screen that showed some teams noted with a "super rank" tag (perhaps it has something to do with franchise mode?), as well as yet another control mechanic tied to the L3 button (clicking down the left analog stick), for which we're still awaiting details. But we do know that when the L3 button was clicked, we weren't able to shoot or pass the puck. 2K also hinted at some sort of mechanism that will allow your player to call his shot before he shoots on the goalie and, while they didn't go into any further detail, they did say it will bring an entirely new level of fun to the gameplay. Finally, the game will be running in 1080p resolution at 60fps when it's released later this year, a first for any 2K Sports game on Xbox 360. Stay tuned for more on the game in the coming weeks.

Rock Band - Preview (PS3)

Guitar Hero was just a jam session compared to Harmonix's next effort, Rock Band. We got to try an early version of the ambitious new rhythm game at an Electronic Arts press event in advance of E3. (EA is merely distributing the game to retail; Harmonix and new parent company MTV are handling the actual development and publishing duties.) As rhythm game fans are no doubt aware, Rock Band will flesh the core Guitar Hero concept out into a full band experience, featuring lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. In other words, Harmonix is basically blowing the doors off the original formula it helped create a couple of years ago. EA had prototype guitar and drum controllers, a microphone, eight demo songs, and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon on hand at their event, and for some strange reason, we felt compelled to spend all our free time at the event glued to the Rock Band Demo kiosk. Let's just say it wasn't the free beer that kept us there.

Of course, you've been clamoring for Rock Band's set list as much as we have, so here's what Harmonix had to show at the demo: The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," David Bowie's "Suffragette City," The Hives' "Main Offender," Weezer's "Say it Ain't So," Nirvana's "In Bloom," Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," and Mountain's "Mississippi Queen." Even better? All but the last two of those songs will appear as original recordings by the artists themselves in Rock Band. Harmonix is leveraging MTV's enormous record-industry clout to ensure that as many original recordings as possible will appear in the game; purportedly, the only songs which will be covered in a studio are the older ones for which no master tapes have even survived.

On the gameplay side, Harmonix hasn't messed with what's already worked in multiple Guitar Hero products. Mechanically, the two guitar players in any given song will see the exact same fret-board-based five-note patterns they're familiar with. The drummer will see his patterns in the middle, between the two guitar tracks, and this track will show only four notes, to correspond to the four pads on the drum controller. A solid line will appear on the drum track indicating when you need to hit the bass drum pedal. Finally, the song lyrics will run along the top of the screen, using a style similar to those you've seen in numerous Karaoke Revolution and SingStar games before, and singers will get to hit the mic with their hands to approximate a tambourine or cowbell in some songs. If you were wondering how Harmonix was going to fit all this gameplay onto a single screen, you'll see in the screenshots that there's still plenty of room left over for denim jackets, mohawks, and flaming frets in between all the gameplay interface elements.

If Harmonix hasn't shaken up the gameplay model that made Guitar Hero great, it's certainly bolted some interesting new mechanics onto that model. Like in Guitar Hero, you'll build up a points multiplier as you play without missing a beat, and this time around the bass player can achieve a 6x modifier, compared to 4x on the other roles, because bass can get a little dry sometimes. Harmonix is specifically emphasizing Rock Band's multiplayer action with some of these new features. For instance, sometimes you'll hit a "unison phrase" section of a song that will require all players to perform perfectly for the duration of the phrase to nab a big score bonus. Luckily, all players can select their own difficulty levels before a song, but if one of your bandmates fails out of the song, you'll be able to bail them out by pulling off exceptional performance.

You'll actually get to go off the rails from time to time in Rock Band and freestyle a little. Singers will encounter sections where they can sing (or shout) whatever they want for big points (the louder the better, of course). Similarly, drummers can play their own fills during preset sections of the song. But the best of these features, from what we saw, was the wild full-band flourish that happens at the end of a particularly rollicking song. You know how a good band will draw out the end of a big song and improvise for a few bars before pulling off a huge simultaneous finish? Yeah, you get to that in the game. Everyone will flail on their instruments (or scream into the mic) as the points rack up and the song finishes with a big bang. Hey, we saw it work brilliantly in action--this is going to be a half-decent party game, we're pretty sure.

Harmonix is going all-out to extend the Rock Band experience beyond your own console. For starters, you'll be able to create your own rocker by choosing from tattoos, ripped jeans, piercings, and various ridiculous hairstyles. You can use that custom shredder in the game's four-player online mode, but even better, you can join up with some friends to create a persistent band that you'll all belong to, even on the Harmonix Web site. Our favorite part, though, is that the game will generate custom loading screens and band T-shirts based on the custom appearances (and presumably, on the silly name) that you've come up with for your characters and band.

So about those controllers. As we mentioned, the devices EA had on hand weren't finalized, but the new Fender Stratocaster-style guitar controller and the drum kit were looking quite solid. The drums are no-frills--you've got four pads and a pedal. But the guitar blew us away. Unlike the previous Gibson controllers used with Guitar Hero, Rock Band's guitar isn't immediately recognizable as a toy; it basically looks like a miniature Strat. The colors and styling are extremely consistent with the real thing, and there are some nice nods to detail, too. The five-way tone switch on the body actually works, letting you subtly adjust the sound of your guitar in-game. The fret buttons aren't colored on their face--you just get a small colored bar on the edge of the neck instead--which preserves the authentic Stratocaster look. Easily our favorite new feature, though, is the addition of a second set of fret buttons right up next to the bridge for wailing during the most enormous solos. Clearly there are people with a hand in this game who know how to rock with deadly efficiency.

Needless to say, we're extremely excited about the direction Harmonix and MTV are taking with Rock Band. It's not putting the rhythm genre on its ear the way Guitar Hero did, but it's evolving that initial concept to such an extent that it's practically a new experience anyway. Stay tuned for a whole lot more to come on the game next week at E3 and in the months leading up to the game's release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later this year.

Transformers: The Game (PS3)

Transformers: The Game is very much the archetypal movie-licensed game. It's got all the hallmark problems of the genre, including short length, overly simplistic mechanics, a barely-there story, and a bit of a sloppy feel. It is simply an excuse for fans of the upcoming live action film (and maybe even some fans of the old cartoons who, admittedly, will take pretty much anything they can get at this point) to run around, awkwardly beating up Autobots or Decepticons in various semidestructible environments. If that's all you want out of the game, then Transformers might provide you a few mild hours of entertainment. If you were hoping for something more, Transformers will probably just disappoint you.

The basic premise of the game is the same as the film's. The classic Transformers battle between good robots and evil robots has spilled over to planet Earth as the two warring sides search frantically for an artifact known as the AllSpark. The AllSpark is essentially the life force for all Transformers, which explains why they'd want to get it back. Sam Witwicky (voiced with appropriate "gee whiz!"-ness by Shia LaBeouf) is an average teenager who happens to hold the key to finding the AllSpark. From there, it's a race for both sides to find Sam and get the AllSpark. There might be more to the movie's plot than what is presented here, and you should really hope there is, because otherwise, we're all in for one exceedingly boring film. With the exception of a few bouts of basic dialogue between Sam and the various Transformers (including veteran TV series voice actors Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprising their roles as Optimus Prime and Megatron with about as much enthusiasm as you could hope for), there's almost no story to drive the game forward. In some respects that's not surprising, simply because with this method, almost none of the film is spoiled for you.

The one potentially interesting thing about Transformers is that it splits the game into two campaigns, with one for each faction. In the Autobots campaign, you'll play as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, and others as you hunt for the AllSpark and try to protect Sam, and the rest of humanity, for that matter. On the flipside, the Decepticons campaign has you playing as Megatron, Starscream, Barricade, and company to track down the AllSpark and destroy the Autobots. While the opportunity to play as both the good and evil sides sounds enticing, you'll actually find that there's very little difference between the two campaigns.

Regardless of which side you pick, you'll be forced to slog through a copious number of missions that have you fighting easy-to-kill grunt Transformers using the same three-hit combo again and again, or racing around one of the game's few, somewhat open-ended environments trying to chase down one Autobot or Decepticon to fight a few times while using the same three-hit combo, as well as an occasional throw attack. These missions might have been more tolerable if the combat were a little more involved, but as it stands, you just need to mash on the melee attack button to blow through most enemies, and the few that aren't so easy just require a random object from the environment thrown at them to soften them up. As you are Transformers, you can also transform and roll out as one of several different vehicle types. However, driving is decidedly less fun than running around as a robot, as the cars handle very loosely and tend to get hung up on random environmental objects--which is odd, since when you hit other cars, they just go flying like they're made out of cardboard.

The lone bright spot comes from the Decepticons campaign. In certain missions, you're tasked with simply laying waste to one environment or another. Be it a big city or a sprawling military installation, these environments are fun to destroy. Your weapons fire does a lot of damage to buildings, cars, trees, and any other solid objects nearby. In the Autobots campaign, you can do the same types of damage, but it's all incidental, since you're ultimately trying to protect humanity--not lay waste to it. On the Decepticons side, your goal is to cause as much chaos as you can, and that can be a good bit of fun. What's neat is the way the destruction and battles are presented--explosions are frequent and large, the damage to buildings looks appropriately massive, and the combat moves you can pull off actually do look cool. Seeing Optimus running around, double-fisting pistols, and Blackout using his helicopter blades as a sword is pretty awesome. Part of that comes from some solid animation, but it also helps that the Transformer models are so highly detailed. Say what you want about the new robot designs from the movie--they're represented very well within the game, though the one issue is that sometimes you'll actually forget which Transformer you're playing as, since many of them look the same in robot form. That's really more the fault of the film's designs than anything else, though.

Adding to the mass-destruction effect is the camera, which violently shakes during battles, and even jerks around a bit as your big, clunky robots run around. Unfortunately, that shaky-cam effect tends to get in the way more than it helps. At times there are so many explosions and so much gunfire going off that the added chaos of the camera makes the whole scene indecipherable for several seconds. This is also one of those games where you can easily get boxed in by multiple enemies or trapped in some chunk of the environment, unable to move because the camera won't steer around to a good vantage point. By the same token, Transformers relies too heavily on contrived "action zones," which are just chunks of the open-world environments that you can't exit while in battle. If you go out, you've got to run back in or you fail the mission. Of course, it doesn't help when you're getting blasted out of the zone and are continually forced out again and again by enemies who follow you out and keep knocking away at you. That isn't a constant problem, but a few missions are made far too frustrating by the fact that you have to constantly try to stay within these stupid action zones.

At least you won't have to put up with issues like this for very long. Each of the game's campaigns is only a few hours in length, putting the game's total length right around five to six hours. If you're really looking to extend out the experience, there are a bunch of side missions in each game area (most of which are just simple, slightly dull "kill a bunch of this enemy type" missions), some unlockable content to mess with, including film clips and photo sets, and some unlockable skins for the Transformers that give them their original, G1 skins from the show. Granted, you'll have to go do all the silly side missions to unlock a lot of those skins, and those just aren't fun enough to justify the effort.

There are some notable differences among the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii versions of Transformers. The Xbox 360 version has the usual smattering of achievements, many of which can be easily earned just playing through both campaigns, though several of the remaining ones require you to do all the various side missions. In terms of control, the 360 and PS3 versions are basically identical, though the PS3 version lets you use the Sixaxis tilt controls to steer Decepticons that can fly, like Megatron and Blackout. The Wii version obviously has its own array of motion controls, though unlike some other, recent movie-licensed titles, they aren't completely half-baked. Yes, you swipe the Wii Remote or the Nunchuk to attack, but these controls actually feel responsive enough that you don't feel like you're constantly struggling to hit something. The one downside is camera control, which is mapped to the remote. It's not unmanageable, but the camera will often move up or down too far if you just happen to hold the remote at a slight angle. In terms of graphics, the 360 and PS3 versions are both entirely comparable to each other, though the PS3 version is a bit lacking in the lighting department, looking overly dark in spots. The Wii version retains the basic look of the other versions, though it's obviously scaled down to fit with the system's hardware. The Transformers still look nicely detailed in the Wii version, but the environments have been scaled back significantly. The frame rate also tends to dip more often on the Wii version, but not to an unplayable degree.

Transformers: The Game ultimately delivers a passable, though entirely unremarkable tie-in to the upcoming film. The one thing it nails is the size and feel of these gigantic robots and their ability to cause massive destruction, but that isn't enough to carry the entire game, especially with the burden of the periodic glitches, camera problems, and overly simplistic combat to carry as well. If all you want is to see some nice-looking robots beat each other and the world silly, then throwing down a rental fee on this game isn't a bad way to go. But regardless of your affinity for the film, the franchise at large, or giant robots in general, Transformers: The Game doesn't have enough going for it to make it worth a purchase.

Super Stardust HD (PS3)

Here's something you never thought someone would be able to say in 2007: The dual-joystick shooter market is, perhaps, getting a little oversaturated. The arcade-style games, initially popularized in arcades by Robotron: 2084, saw a rebirth with the release of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved on the Xbox 360. And we've been getting a mix of classic emulated releases, as well as new games, ever since. Housemarque's Super Stardust HD marks the third such game to hit the PlayStation 3, and it's also the best. But if you've been trying to keep up with this genre, there's a good chance that you might already be sort of tired of it.

Super Stardust HD puts you at the controls of a tiny spaceship that flutters around a grid, which protects a planet from asteroid attacks. Big space rocks are constantly slamming into that grid and sticking to it, so it's up to you to fly around the grid to blast the rocks apart. Think of it as Blast Factor in space, instead of in a petri dish, or perhaps Asteroids on a sphere with all-directional fire. The catch is that you have three different weapon types available at all times, and each one is somewhat more efficient at dealing with specific types of rocks. For example, your gold melter destroys gold rocks faster than your ice weapon. As you blow up rocks, you'll get down to their cores, which glow green and release power-ups when destroyed. You can power up each of your three weapons, as well as collect extra lives, a shield, and extra bombs. Bombs let you clear a radius around your ship when things get too hectic. You can also cut through rocks and other smaller enemies using a boost attack. The boost attack is probably the most dramatic change to what would otherwise be a very cookie-cutter game, though the multiple weapons at your disposal are also a nice touch.

There are multiple planets to unlock and defend, with each planet broken up into five phases of increasing difficulty that culminates in a boss fight. You can opt to play the game one planet at a time or play in an arcade mode that lets you progress from one planet to the next. There's also a co-operative mode for two players. Both players play on the same screen, and if one ship tries to fly too far away, the other gets dragged along as the planet scrolls. Also, sticking close to your partner gives both of you a weapons boost. Co-op play hasn't been a feature of too many of these new wave Robotron clones, so it's a cool addition in Super Stardust HD, even though you can't take that co-op online.

While the planets you're flying over aren't terribly interesting, the game's rocks and explosions are the visual highpoints. The rocks blast apart into interesting crooked shapes, and the explosions are fairly flashy. The game will do 1080p if you have a capable set, and the frame rate stays solid. The soundtrack has an appropriately sci-fi adventure tone to it as well, which helps set the mood a bit.

How likely you are to enjoy Super Stardust HD is directly proportional to how many other games like this you've played over the last year or so. If you're burned out on Blast Factor and want something new, Super Stardust HD's $7.99 price tag feels just about right.

The BIGS (PS3)

As good as baseball games have gotten, many people feel that they're too complex and yearn for the old days where you could play an entire game in 15 minutes but didn't have to have a college degree to figure out the controls. If you've ever felt this way, or you just like fast-paced, over-the-top baseball, The BIGS should be right up your alley.

The BIGS has a lot in common with Midway's Slugfest series; the games move along at a brisk pace and there are plenty of gargantuan home runs, as well as some absolutely filthy pitches. On the mound, each of your pitches is mapped to a face button on the controller. To throw a pitch, you simply press the corresponding button and hold it until you've gone past the mark on the meter. If you wait too long or release too early, your location will be off and you'll tip your pitch to the batter. Each pitch is rated according to the pitcher's ability to throw it. This ability decreases as the game goes on, but the change can be accelerated by giving up hits. The harder the pitch is hit, the less effective it will be, and eventually, you'll lose the ability to throw the pitch completely. This isn't a huge problem when playing a single game because you've got plenty of pitchers at your disposal, but it's an issue in rookie challenge because a pitcher's stamina level carries over from game to game.

For every strike you throw, you'll fill your turbo bar a little, and when you've filled one of your bars, you can press a button to activate turbo. This adds some extra zip to your fastball and adds some break to your breaking pitches, making them very difficult to hit. Above the turbo meter is the power-up meter. On defense, this can be filled by striking out hitters, making great plays, and robbing home runs. Once it's full, you can use it on either offense or defense for one at-bat. When it's used on defense, your pitches are all powered up and nearly (but not quite) unhittable. You'll also steal some of the points from the opposition's power-up meter depending on how many strikes you throw. Even when you're tossing regular pitches, it's a blast because the pitches are so darn nasty.

Hitting is just as simple and just as satisfying as pitching. You've got one button for a contact swing and one for a power swing. You don't have to worry about lining up cursors or using the analog stick to try to match the pitch location--it's all about timing. The left analog stick can be used to aim your shot, but there's no reason to be intimidated--it's easy to do and not all that necessary. You can earn turbo by taking balls, but the pitches move so fast and break so much that judging location is nearly impossible unless the pitcher tipped his pitch.

The turbo that you've accumulated on defense carries over to when you're on offense though, so you'll get plenty of chances to use it. If you activate it before a pitch, you'll add some power to your swing and force the pitcher to throw a strike. If you use it after you've hit the ball, you can run extra fast. While you might not be able to fill your turbo meter much on offense, you can increase your power-up meter fairly quickly by getting base hits, walking, or getting beaned. Activating your big hit power-up will guarantee a home run, provided you make contact. But this isn't just any old home run, it's a titanic blast that will spark as it hits the fair pole or explode when it hits the scoreboard. It would have been nice to have a bit more variety with regards to where the ball goes when it's hit because it seems to go to the same few spots over and over again. It also would have been nice to not get home runs taken away by the CPU several times in a game (even when you use turbo to hit), but for the most part, hitting is a lot of fun.

Where The BIGS stumbles a bit is in its fielding and base running. Once you've practiced (and when it works) mashing a button to run faster and using buttons to select the runner, moving the analog stick to direct them works OK, but too often the runners don't make the turn when you want them to or they stop in their tracks just shy of the base. The ability to run full-speed into the catcher like a freight train is totally awesome the first time you see it and makes up for some of the base running woes, but not all of them. The rest of the game is so simple you wonder why base running is so complicated. In the field, you can use boost to run faster or throw the ball faster, but the game plays so fast that you'll rarely have time to discern that you need turbo and press the button before it's too late. You can rob home runs by running up to the wall, pressing a button to jump, and then replicating a sequence of button presses shown onscreen. But unless you're playing another person, these opportunities are few and far between.

Once the ball is hit, you're given control over the player in the best position to make a play, but the ball is hit so hard that it's often already passed you by the time you figure out who you're controlling. This issue is exacerbated by a fielder's inability to change direction quickly; if you take one step in the wrong direction, you can forget about getting to the ball in time. Finally, the plays where the ball hits a fielder, knocking him down as it ricochets away are far too common and are all the more frustrating thanks to the lousy fielding controls. But even these issues don't prevent the game from being a ton of fun to play.

There's no traditional season mode in The BIGS. Instead there's the rookie challenge, where you create a player then try to lead him and his team to the World Series. There aren't a whole lot of customization options with which to create a player, though additional items unlocked throughout the mode let you add a little flair. Once you've picked your player's position and distributed some attributes, it's off to spring training. Here, you'll play a couple of games; based on your performance, you'll earn points that can be used to improve your players' running, hitting, and fielding abilities. You'll also participate in some fun minigames, such as batting practice and running an obstacle course. You earn big points for successfully completing these drills, which is good because the points you get from playing actual games don't amount to much.

After you've finished spring training, you must barnstorm your way around the league, taking on whatever games appear on the map. Sometimes you'll have to play a full (five inning) game, while other times, you are placed in a situation where the game has already started and you must perform a task with your created player, such as steal a base, drive in a run, or get a base hit. After you've beaten the first few challenges against a team, you'll get the opportunity to steal one of its players if you beat that team in yet another a full game. You can only steal 10 players, so you might want to hold off on snagging someone from the Devil Rays or you might not have room for someone on the really good teams that you'll encounter later in the rookie challenge. As you finish the available games and scenarios, new ones will open up. Then eventually, you'll take part in the All-Star game, and if you're good enough, the playoffs and World Series.

The rookie challenge is quite a bit of fun for a while, but you'll find that you've seen most everything it has to offer in just a few hours. Because this is an arcade-style game, it would be unreasonable to expect a whole host of general manager options and full stat tracking, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect at least some customization options or some basic statistics. Alas, there are none. As a result, you might find yourself rushing through games or even getting yourself out on purpose because there aren't any rewards (other than minimal points for your created player) for playing well and crushing the competition.

The BIGS is light on additional play modes, but what is here is good. Home run pinball drops you right in the middle of Times Square, and your objective is to do as much damage as possible by hitting balls into neon signs, taxi cabs, or huge televisions. It starts off easy enough, but it quickly gets tough when the pitcher adds a new pitch to his repertoire every minute or so. There's also a bit of strategy to employ because you can earn bonuses for hitting all of the letters in the "HOTEL" sign, and once powered up, you can smash the new year's eve ball. Once you've finished a round, your score is uploaded to an online leaderboard for all to see. If you prefer to hit in a stadium, you can take on another player in a split-screen home run derby where the objective is to be the first to hit 10 taters. Both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have basic online options that let you play a ranked or unranked match. Unfortunately, lag and frequent hiccups make the online games significantly less fun than offline contests.

Most likely, the first thing you'll notice upon starting a game is that the players are absolutely huge. Their faces are detailed and in most cases look like their real-life counterparts. But their bodies are larger than life, and their muscles are ripped. Even normally scrawny players like Ichiro look like superheroes, though there is still a little difference between him and someone like Albert Pujols. There's not such a dramatic difference between the stadiums in the game and real stadiums, but some artistic license has been taken with the proximity of local landmarks to the field, as well as the size of notable features inside the stadium. A few issues prevent the game from looking as good as it probably could have looked. For example, the lighting is poorly done. It's so intense that it frequently washes out colors and gives players an odd sheen that makes their uniforms look as if they're made of rubber. Some of the animations, such as when a player spins around after missing a pitch or how a second baseman floats in midair in slow motion as he turns two, look great, but there isn't enough variety. The transition from one animation to the next is also often awkward or nonexistent, particularly when fielding. The huge home runs look fantastic, and it's awesome to watch the scoreboard explode, but you'll probably find yourself wishing for more variety rather than player celebrations, or at the very least, more destruction from your homers.

Given the over-the-top nature of the game, it's probably a good idea that the outstanding but somewhat mild-mannered duo from MLB 2K7 Jon Miller and Joe Morgan aren't calling the action. Instead it's Damon Bruce, a radio host for KNBR out of San Francisco who calls the action. Outside of a few instances where he blurts out the wrong player's name, his basic play-by-play is on point and his energy level is high, though not to the point of being annoying. The crowd and the sound effects are also typical for a baseball game. The exceptions to this are the nicely fitting, almost cartoonlike sounds of the bat crushing the ball and the sound of a pitch whooshing past a hitter. Fans of grunge-era rock will enjoy the soundtrack, which features artists like Stone Temple Pilots and Screaming Trees.

With its simple, yet exciting gameplay, The BIGS has gotten off to a great start. It's a bit shallow, with some room for improvement in regards to how it plays in the field and on the base paths, but anyone looking for a fun, arcade-style baseball game would do well to give The BIGS a shot.

The Darkness (PS3)

The Darkness. You work best when you're in the shadows, it's a grisly and occasionally gruesome tale, and it also happens to be the name of the demon festering inside of you. Yes, for multiple reasons, The Darkness is a perfect name for this first-person shooter from 2K and Starbreeze, the developer responsible for The Chronicles of Riddick. Based on a comic book from Top Cow, The Darkness weaves an interesting and authentic tale of mobsters seeking revenge together with an otherworldly force with an insatiable appetite for human hearts.

The game opens with an amazing set piece that gets things moving right away. You play as Jackie Estacado, a New York-based mob hit man on his 21st birthday, and you've just woken up in the back of a speeding convertible. A money-collection deal has gone wrong, your two buddies are attempting to get away from crooked cops, and you apparently got knocked out somewhere along the way. As you're speeding along to a construction site to take out the foreman, you're tossed a shotgun to help defend the car from incoming fire. The car crashes, you end up on foot, and the story begins to unfold. Your Uncle Paulie, the leader of the crime family, has gone off the deep end, suspects you of foul play, and puts a hit out on you. So it's on you to tear apart his operation by taking out key moneymakers and money movers. As you do this, Paulie starts to hit back, sending thugs not only in your direction, but also in the direction of Jenny, Jackie's girlfriend and the only person that really matters to him. Luckily, you won't have to fight it out all by yourself.

Early in the game, Jackie is possessed by The Darkness, some sort of parasitic creature that speaks to you as a demonic voice in your head and manifests itself as two demonic snakelike appendages that shoot out of your shoulder blades and appear on the sides of the screen. They snap and growl when you whip them out, and over time you'll earn new abilities. For starters, revealing The Darkness gives you a shield against damage, better vision in low-light situations, and a move that lets you plant one of the snakelike creatures onto the ground and take control of it. From there, you can crawl into ventilation ducts, sneak around, and kill enemies with a bite attack. You'll also earn a demon arm attack, which causes a big, sharp appendage to thrust outward and through your enemies. Eventually you'll get guns that use The Darkness' energy as ammo and a black hole attack that lets you open up big vacuums that suck enemies in, killing them quite easily in the process. The catch is that The Darkness has a limited amount of power, and all of these attacks drain it. It's restored automatically when you're standing in shadows, making shooting out light sources wherever you go a pretty big part of the game.

You'll select your darkness powers much like you'll cycle through your conventional weapons, with a touch of the D pad. There aren't very many different types of guns in the game, and what's more, the dual pistols that you start with are also the most effective weapon from start to finish. You'll get a shotgun, assault rifles, and an auto-shotgun that isn't accurate enough to be of much use. The game's auto-targeting seems to make your aim naturally gravitate toward the heads of your foes, and one shot from a pistol is almost always enough to take care of them. Considering the artificial intelligence isn't always swift enough to duck and cover, the game usually isn't too much of a challenge on its medium difficulty setting.

Most of the game takes place in New York, and despite its world being reasonably open-ended, the story itself is strictly linear. You'll always know where to go next, and you'll have a good idea of how to get there. If you end up lost, an objectives menu will point you in the general direction, and a map will show you which sections you'll have to travel through. Along the way, particularly in the game's two active subway stations, you'll run into people in need of a little help. This gives you some side missions to play with, and most of these seem to involve going somewhere and shooting and/or talking to someone. They're usually not very difficult, and there isn't really much of a payoff, either. You'll usually get one of the 100 pieces of bonus content, which gives you a few issues of the comic books, as well as plenty of concept art. Unless you're a sucker for concept art or an Xbox 360 achievements fiend, most of the extra stuff can be safely skipped, though the world looks so nice that you might find yourself wanting to complete as much as possible just to spend more time with the game. The main storyline definitely has some length to it, though, so even if you ignore all of the extra little elements, you'll still feel like you got your money's worth out of the game. Thanks to a handful of especially mind-blowing sequences and well-crafted plot twists, you'll feel like you've covered a ton of ground by the time you reach the game's final confrontation.

Not every single aspect of the story is a winner, though. There are a few weird spots that stick out, given the high quality of the rest of the game. For example, enemies rarely even make mention of your unique curse, making you wonder if it's invisible to others for a good third of the game. How would you react if you saw some guy with glowing eyes and a bunch of demonic tentacles sticking out of him running right at you with pistols in either hand? Then, you run into a cutscene where a storyline character specifically references "that demon s***," making it apparent that it's totally visible to all. Shouldn't some guys be running away, screaming like banshees when you reveal yourself and eat the hearts of their friends? Even civilians don't freak out very much if they catch a glimpse of your power. This makes some parts of the game feel slightly disjointed, though all in all, the action and the story are both very satisfying. It's especially fun to eat the hearts of every enemy you take out, which occasionally causes the two demon heads to fight over the heart. Weirdly enough, the head on the right always wins, but it's cool moments like this that help give The Darkness a unique feel.

In addition to the single-player mode, there's an eight-player online mode that gives you the basic first-person shooter modes, like deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. You can do some configuring from there, such as turning on one-hit kills. You can also morph from human form to that of a skittering little demon called a darkling, which is weak and unarmed but has a powerful melee attack and can crawl on walls and ceilings. Modes like survivor play off of this; your goal here is to be the last human standing, and death from a darkling makes you join the darkling side. The online is mostly functional, though the game really falls apart when one player is lagging. Your movement becomes erratic and the game becomes basically unplayable. When it works, it's a decent diversion, though it does feel tacked-on. Being able to actually call upon The Darkness and use the powers you get in single-player might have been cool, though having eight players use a black hole at the same time might have been a little too crazy. Either way, it's immediately clear that the single-player is the star of the show.

Visually, The Darkness looks superb. It's got a very smooth frame rate and a large, nicely detailed world. It goes up to 1080p on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The texture clarity is such that there's a secret sequence of phone calls you can hear by reading phone numbers off of billboards and flyers put up around town and calling them from the nearest pay phone. It also has a great art style to it. New York looks appropriately grimy and urban, with a lot of graffiti. And the Otherworld, where you'll spend a bit of time, has a nicely hellish look that applies to both the environments and the enemies you face. Most of the animation is good, and you have to give it up for any game that features motion-captured break-dancing for no reason other than to provide a bit of flavor in one of the subway stations. About the only disappointing aspect of the game's look is that people's lips don't move very much when they speak, which makes some of the dialogue-heavy sequences look slightly off; but that's minor in the grand scheme of things.

The voice acting in The Darkness is universally awesome. You'll encounter plenty of raspy-voiced old-school mobsters who sound like they stepped right off of the set of Goodfellas. Jackie himself comes across perfectly as the tough-guy hit man that he's supposed to be, but he still shows flashes of vulnerability. And then, of course, there's the voice of The Darkness, which is supercreepy and perfect at giving you a case of the willies. Even the random people you run into on the street have believable voice performances. On top of that, the script is really something, so these great voices have solid dialogue to work with. The rest of the sound effects are appropriate, and as you take damage and near death, things slow down and start to sound as though you're underwater, which is a nice effect. The snapping and chomping of The Darkness' twin heads is pretty cool, too. Most of the music in the game is ambient background stuff that helps set the appropriate mood.

The Darkness is available on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, and the differences between the two versions are pretty minimal. The PlayStation 3 version seems to have slightly better color than the 360 version, but the 360 version looks a bit sharper. Also, the Xbox 360 version has achievements, and the PlayStation 3 version gives you the same tasks, but calls them accomplishments. Regardless of what you call them, they're evenly spread, with a few that come from winning more multiplayer matches than you'll probably be willing to endure. Overall, both versions are equally recommendable.

The Darkness' appeal comes from its many different parts coming together in a really great way. The believability of the characters mixed with this hellacious demonic force fits together in a really interesting fashion; the gameplay is very satisfying, even if it isn't especially challenging; and the presentation is top-notch. If you're a sucker for M-rated action--and really, how can you pass on a game with a human-heart-eating mechanic?--you'll definitely want to play The Darkness.

All-Pro Football 2K8 - (Xbox360)

ESPN NFL 2K5 is one of those games that have developed a seriously hardcore following in recent years. That's because it happens to be one of the most tightly crafted football games ever made, and also because it happens to be the last NFL-licensed game made by 2K Sports, following EA's snatching of the NFL license into the land of exclusivity. For just about three years now, fans of the 2K brand of football have been wringing their hands in anticipation of what 2K might do to bring back an alternative to Madden. The answer is finally here in the form of All-Pro Football 2K8. All-Pro is precisely the kind of football you remember from NFL 2K5--maybe a little too much like it--but with a roster of classic players from NFL yore. The premise? Build your own team out of your favorite old-timers, and compete against other teams full of heroes of the gridiron, both offline and online. It's a very cool idea for a game, especially in the way you build your team, but some niggling issues with the gameplay and presentation, as well as a stripped-down package of modes, prevents 2K8 from being a truly great return for 2K football.

First, let's look at who you're working with in All-Pro. The roster of classic players goes well over 200, and you'll see plenty of big-time names like Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino, Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Mike Ditka, and more. There's also a nice variety of players that aren't quite as immediately recognizable, but certainly deserve their all-pro status, like Lem Barney, Len Dawson, Chuck Muncie, Jessie Tuggle, and the like. However, there's also a decent chunk of players in the game that kind of leave you scratching your head about why they're in there. Mike Golic, for instance, is far more notable for his ESPN broadcasting career than his playing career; Korey Stringer is better known for his death at training camp than his role on the field; and what, exactly, did Brian Bosworth ever do besides play well for about two seasons before getting injured, retire, and go on to star in bad movies? Still, several weird choices aside, the number of honest-to-god legends vastly outweighs the goofy picks, and while one could argue endlessly about various omissions in the roster, this collection of players is plenty good for a starting entry.

But what do you do with all these classic players? Essentially, from the moment you first boot up the game, your task is to build the team of your dreams. To build this team, you're provided 11 empty slots with which to fill superstars, and the remaining slots are taken up by generic players. The classic players are ranked in gold, silver, and bronze tiers. You get two gold, three silver, and six bronze players for any team you create, and they can fill whatever positions you like. Want a potent offense? Grab Jerry Rice and Walter Payton, toss in a silver-tier quarterback like Joe Theismann or Randall Cunningham, and you're in good shape. Prefer the defensive game to be the focus of a team? Pick Ronnie Lott, Dick Butkus, Lem Barney, and Ed "Too Tall" Jones, and you're looking pretty scary. Of course, it's all about balance. Go too far on one side of the ball or the other, and you may suffer in the end. Likewise, if you don't fill out your less sexy positions, like offensive line and kicker, you could find yourself in a difficult spot in certain situations. Difficult a balance as it can be to strike, it's a fun one to experiment with. You can create as many teams as you like, and edit any one you create over and over again until you feel like you've gotten it right.

Once you get your team on the field, any fan of NFL 2K5 is going to be able to settle into a groove pretty quickly. That's because this game might as well be 2K5 with a handful of gameplay tweaks. Some of those tweaks include a new gang tackling system that actually looks and feels superior to anything found in recent Madden games, and a new right-analog-stick tackling mechanic that essentially lets you do big hits, high and low tackles, or reach tackles (the last of which rarely ever seems to work very well). There's also a new kick meter that tries to turn the right analog stick into a kicker's leg, having you pull back on it to start the play, and then push forward to kick (provided you time it and aim correctly). Nifty idea, but it doesn't work well at all. Kickoffs seem to work fine, but kicking field goals is a lot more scattershot than it should be. You know something's off when you're timing your kicks nearly perfectly and putting little angle on the ball beyond where you set the arrow pointer, and you're still missing kicks from 35 yards out.

Interestingly enough, it's not the changes made to 2K8's design that really sell it--it's the stuff you remember. It probably speaks best to how fantastic a game 2K5 was that 2K8's gameplay can still be considered great fun, and still feel realistic, considering how much of it is identical to that game. The running game is still the best in the business, with moves and blocking that look and feel just about as spot-on as you could ever hope for. The passing game is no slouch either, though there's a weird bit of delay between when you press the button to throw to a receiver, and when the pass actually launches--one that might be somewhat realistic, but feels overwrought when you're just trying to get the ball out quickly. Defense is stingy and mechanically sound. Defensive backs tend to drop a few too many "gimme" interceptions, and defensive players still like to stand dead still in one spot when assigned to zone coverage (wide receivers tend to do the same thing on certain types of routes), but those quibbles aside, it's hard to complain much about the defensive game.

So, if the game still plays so well, what prevents it from being truly great? It's a lot of things, many of which are elements that are missing. As an offline, single-player game, All-Pro is a weak effort. You get a quick game mode, and one season to play through against a series of pre-made teams, and once you win the championship (or don't), that's pretty much the end of it. There's no franchise mode, no crib, none of the amenities 2K Sports fans have become accustomed to over the years.

Customization options also feel a bit lackluster. There are plenty of ways to design your team, including names, cities, uniform styles, and the like. The number of logos is a little on the paltry side, but there's enough of a variety to ensure you won't end up creating very many similar-looking squads. Player customization options are more disappointing. There aren't quite enough base options for faces, nor any way to really edit hairstyles or other distinctive features. What's also disappointing is that any player you create has to be put into the gold, silver, or bronze category. There's no way to edit the scrub guys on your team. It makes sense that you wouldn't be able to edit their attributes and performance ratings, but not even being able to edit their names or appearances is pretty weak.

At the very least, the multiplayer game isn't lacking. In fact, it's safe to say that 2K8 feels like a game specifically built for multiplayer competition. Half the fun of the game is pitting your created teams against other people's concoctions to see how they match up. You can do so in the standard ranked and player matches, as well as in tournaments and online seasons for up to 32 teams. There's still no fantasy-draft option, but given the limited number of noteworthy players in the game, that's somewhat understandable. Online performance seemed aces all around in the matches we played. Small bouts of lag popped up, but nothing that affected gameplay.

Presentation is another area where All-Pro falls a bit short. Graphics are a point of contention simply because of how much the game resembles its Xbox forebears. Certainly the graphics engine has been scaled up quite a bit. You'll see plenty more detail in players' jerseys, helmets, and especially the arenas, which are massive and feature excellent-looking crowds, and animatronic mascots in some cases. But at the same time, it still looks like a scaled-up version of 2K5. The overly lanky player models, weird player faces, and sometimes stiff running movements give the game an aged feel.

That's not to say all the animation looks bad, mind you. Not even close. The new gang tackles look excellent, collision animations in general look just about perfect in most cases (even when players run off the field into the bench and players on the sidelines) and there's nothing quite like having a QB launch a long bomb to someone like Jerry Rice or Andre Reed, and watching them make a spectacular leaping catch for the score. There are definitely some areas where the animation could have used an upgrade, but much of what's there works nicely. By the same token, the celebration animations feel pretty out of date, as a lot of them came straight from 2K5. Not to mention that some of them seem woefully out of place, or downright inappropriate. Barry Sanders doing a boastful dance after a TD? We don't think so. And there's something truly disquieting and, frankly, a bit tasteless about OJ Simpson doing a throat-cut animation after a big play.

Broadcast presentation is another issue of note. On-field stat displays are solid and give you good info about what's going on in the game, but the camera presents an occasional issue, especially if you aren't playing with a widescreen TV. Zooming back prior to a play doesn't let you see your receivers on the far ends of the field, which sometimes makes it difficult to check up on what route they're running. On the audio front, the delightful twosome of Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe make their return to the commentary booth, but loads of the commentary seems to have been directly lifted from 2K5 with little editing or adjustment. Sure, they've got all the player names updated, but O'Keefe's food jokes and "You can't coach that!" moments are largely recycled. On top of that, the ancient editing techniques give the commentary a stilted feel that breaks up the flow. On-field dialogue is also extremely cheesy and poorly delivered, and the in-game soundtrack is rather short, so you tend to hear a lot of the same tracks again and again. At least the sounds of the game are as high quality as ever.

Ultimately, All-Pro Football 2K8 delivers an enjoyable gameplay experience that fans of 2K football will find immediately engaging. At the same time, that great gameplay is so great because much of it comes directly from a three-year-old game, and many of the supplementary features that made that old game so fantastic are missing here. The issue isn't with the lack of an NFL license, but the inability to truly enjoy the game in a single-player environment for very long, not to mention the decidedly antiquated presentation. But with all that said, what matters most is that All-Pro is still an enjoyable football game, in spite of its more lackluster elements. This is a good, solid foundation that 2K can hopefully build upon for future sequels. If you temper your expectations from the extremely high ceiling set by NFL 2K5, and simply go in expecting a fun multiplayer-focused experience, you'll get just that out of All-Pro Football 2K8.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)

Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox was a true modern classic. It featured smooth, challenging gameplay and amazing production values. It was, in short, one of the finest games of its generation. In 2005, its gameplay was reworked and expanded for a second release, Ninja Gaiden Black. And incredibly enough, the third time's the charm. No, Ninja Gaiden Sigma isn't a true next-gen sequel, nor is it a simple port of the Xbox release. But it does add a good deal of new content, both subtle and obvious. If you're a Ninja Gaiden enthusiast, you'll want to see the new chapters, reworked levels, and slicker graphics. And if for some reason you missed it before, this is a must-play game. The action is intense, focused, and certainly not for the faint of heart. It's also among the most satisfying in all of gaming and remains as awe-inspiring as ever, three years after its original release.

So what's changed? The biggest addition is that Rachel the fiend hunter is a new playable character. She's a badass buxom babe who gets three chapters of her own, and a few levels in mission mode, too. She may be top-heavy, but she still manages a good number of terrific moves. Her minicampaign isn't as expansive as Ryu's: She's limited to using the warhammer and has only a single magic attack (called sorcery, rather than ninpo). The chapters are remarkably refreshing though, particularly because Rachel isn't as agile as Ryu--though a swing of her hammer does a huge amount of damage. Playing her requires you to adjust because her levels are interspersed among the others, so as the game's groove shifts, so must yours. Along with her chapters come new cutscenes, new bosses, and even a few feminine touches that humanize a story that was (and still is) more summer blockbuster than art house drama.

Her chapters aren't just disconnected additions, however. Ryu's chapters are shifted and reworked to give greater context to Rachel's. In fact, every level offers unexpected surprises, both big and small. In some cases, it's as simple as different items found in treasure chests. In others, the significance of the adjustments will catch you off guard, but pleasantly so. For example, one of the central chapters of the original Ninja Gaiden featured a straightforward puzzle to end the sequence. Now, a replica of an earlier boss returns, complete with a few new attacks to round out the surprise. Throughout the game, you'll find new enemies to uncover, such as glowing spirits and soldiers on motorcycles. You'll even get to play with a new set of weapons: Dual swords called Dragon's Claw and Tiger's Fang.

The changes are great, and they do more than throw in stuff for the sake of stuff. In some cases, they refine the pace and address frustrations of the original to make for an even tighter, more centered experience. One such change is the addition of a shop near the final save point before a major, difficult boss fight. It sounds insignificant, but it soothes a large frustration from the original and keeps the difficulty level steady without removing any real challenge from the boss encounter itself. Needless to say, there are countless additions, subtractions, and modifications, and they run the gamut from superficial to substantial. For the most part, all of them are for the better. The only questionable one is the ability to shake the Sixaxis controller to give more power to your ninpo skills. It feels needlessly tacked on, and shaking the controller doesn't really jibe with the general slickness of the other controls. Thankfully, it's the only element that stands out as unneeded among legions of improvements.

And if you haven't played Ninja Gaiden? Well, there's no better time than the present, and you won't need any previous experience with the series to understand what makes it excellent. Ninja extraordinaire Ryu Hyabusa is on a quest to recover the legendary Dark Dragon Blade and avenge the destruction of his peaceful village. Along the way, he meets Rachel, who is on a vision quest of her own. Their two stories mesh nicely in a single-player campaign that may take you 25 or more hours the first time through, depending on your skill level and prior experience with Ninja Gaiden Xbox.

The story never takes center stage, though it has the proper over-the-top sensibilities to frame what the game is really about: kick-ass action in the form of throws, slashes, wall-running, and acrobatic tumbling. If you think a ninja should be able to do it, you can do it in Ninja Gaiden Sigma. The controls for doing so are smooth and seamless, and aside from a few camera angle issues, at no point will you feel you have to struggle with the controller to pull any of these moves off. They result in astounding sequences of somersaulting, swordplay, offensive magic (called ninpo), and countermoves that are as gratifying as anything found in gaming. And as you progress through the game, you can upgrade your weapons, add new attacks, and earn other enhancements.

As you may have heard, Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox was a difficult game, and it's no different here. That isn't to say it's as tough as Ninja Gaiden Black, nor does it ever reach punishing levels. But it is no walk in the park, and newcomers may find it initially intimidating. If you've already cut your teeth on the series, you may be inclined to think that Sigma is a little easier, though that is due more to certain level design tweaks than it is to a reduction in challenge. In particular, Rachel's first chapter may strike fans as a little too easy thanks to a nice smattering of health potions, but the impression won't last once you reach her later appearances. As it is, you'll encounter armies of strong, agile opponents of all sorts, both human and, well, not so human--and you'll fight them in a variety of environments, from winding city streets to subterranean caverns.

Some of the most touted improvements in Ninja Gaiden Sigma over the original release are in the visual department. That isn't to say that it looks exactly next-gen, because there are signs of porting in the form of some bland textures and a few other blemishes. But it looks great, and a side-by-side comparison reveals a lot of nice enhancements in elements like shadows and color saturation. Animations are particularly spectacular, and Rachel's movements are as sleek as any of Ryu's. The sound effects and soundtrack remain the same as before. Still, as with the visuals, the audio additions are beautifully woven into the rest of the design, so nothing seems out of place or glued on.

And once you're done with the tour de force the first time around, you've got new difficulty levels to try out, stand-alone combat missions to play, and in-game leaderboards to peruse. There's simply a lot of game here, and the fact that this is a retooling of a three-year-old title for a new audience shouldn't dissuade you from playing it. Whether you're a series veteran or a newcomer, the in-your-face action of Ninja Gaiden Sigma is as exhilarating now as it ever was, and the new, slickly embedded content is surprisingly meaty. Play this game.

NCAA Football 08 - (Xbox360)

NCAA Football 07 was a great game but it suffered from many of the same problems that other series experienced in their transition from one generation of consoles to the next, most notably a lack of game modes and features. That's not a problem in NCAA Football 08. Even if the presentation is largely unchanged, there's no shortage of ways to stay occupied. The new campus legend mode and super sim are also nice additions to an already great-playing game.

Last year's relatively light list of game modes is a thing of the past. You can play a quick game, hop online for an unranked or ranked game, play a few minigames, take over a college program in dynasty mode, or try to become an all-time great player in campus legend mode. NCAA 08's minigames are the same as 07's minigames. Tug-of-war, bowling, and option dash are a lot of fun if you didn't play them to death last year, but it would have been nice to have something new.

Online play is OK, but lag makes it consistently difficult to tackle and kick. Though online play and minigames are underwhelming, the rest of the game modes make up for the underwhelming parts. If you're online, you can use the new Weather Channel feature to play in the same weather as the real stadium in which you're currently playing. You could always change the weather on your own before, but this is a cool addition especially because playing in rain and snow really affects how players move more than ever.

At first glance, dynasty mode isn't terribly different from last year's mode. You still pick a school (you can't create your own), set your lineup, adjust your schedule, and try to lead your team to a national championship or win as many games as possible so you can earn offers from a more prestigious school. To find success on the field, you'll need to work hard off the field recruiting, and this is where you'll notice the biggest change to dynasty mode.

Recruiting now has a lot more of a hands-on feel to it. You select 35 players to focus your efforts on, rank them, and then call them on the phone to establish a relationship. Once you've got them on the phone, you choose from a variety of topics to discuss with your recruit. You can talk about your school's fans, TV coverage, athletic facilities, tradition, and more. Your school is ranked in each category, so you'll want to pick your program's strengths and hope they match the interests of your player. If he's feeling your pitch, a football icon at the top of the screen will smile; if you're not on the same wavelength, the icon will frown, and eventually, the player will hang up on you.

Once you've garnered significant interest from the recruit, you can schedule a campus visit and up to three activities during the visit. You'll want to pick the things the recruit is most interested in, which is why you should find out what the player feels is important about his college experience when you've got him on the phone. But you've only got 10 hours per week to talk, and each pitch you select takes several minutes off the clock, so you'll need to budget your time wisely. You can offer a scholarship at any time, which the player can accept right away, mull over, or reject based on his interest level.

If you're having a hard time nailing down a commitment, you can make promises to the player. This option is only available in the offseason and lets you promise playing time, personal accolades, or even championships to the player. If you make good on a promise, your integrity rating goes up and you're given access to more promises. If you fail to keep your promise, your integrity goes down and your promises won't carry much weight. This new recruiting system is a lot of fun for a while, and you really feel like your decisions are affecting each player's interest in your school. But by the end of the first season, you'll start to notice that you're just doing the same thing over with each player, and that yapping on the phone with 35 players is rather time consuming.

If you're not in the mood to take the reins of an entire program, you can create a high school player in campus legend mode. Once you've picked your position and school, you'll find yourself in your state's playoffs. You've got extra incentive to win and play well because scouts are at each game rating your performance. When the playoffs are over, you're presented with a list of schools that are interested in your services, as well as where you rank on their depth chart. At first, you're not going to be a starter at a top-25 school. To move up the depth chart, you'll have to attend practice. Here, you're given 10 reps and you earn points for successful plays. When you've got enough points, you'll move up on the depth chart.

This might sound like a lot of work, but even if you're the fifth-ranked player at a position, you can take the starting spot in a matter of weeks, and once the job is yours, you can't lose it. Not only will you have to attend practice, but you'll also have to make decisions on how to spend your free time. These choices are presented in a "choose your own adventure" format. You will have you decide what to eat, whether or not to play darts, how long to study, and when to hang out with your friends. If you make a good decision, you'll often be rewarded with attribute boosts, but if you choose poorly, you can find yourself with bad grades or even injured. This is an interesting concept, but you never know what the "right" decision is, and many of the situations are just plain goofy (like when you burn your hand frying pickles).

Thankfully, actually playing in games makes up for the somewhat uninteresting time between them. You'll only play when your player is on the field, which is nice because you can breeze through games in no time at all. Because you're the player and not the coach, you might not get the ball every time, but it's always fun to get it through a key block that springs another player for a touchdown. The camera focuses on your player, and while it does a decent job of keeping up with you, it often doesn't show enough of the field around you, which is frustrating when it causes you to run into a defender just offscreen.

The game's action on the field during regular game modes, such as exhibition and dynasty, doesn't feel much different from last year. For the most part, this is a good thing. The controls are tight, and it's easy to quickly adjust your defense or call hot routes on offense thanks to clever use of both analog sticks. The right analog stick is also used to nice effect during plays. On offense, you can flick the stick to juke and use it to go high or low to deliver bone-crushing big hits. The game moves at just the right speed; not too fast and not too slow. One of the best things about playing college football games is running the option, and NCAA 08 does it well. However, quarterbacks almost never make a bad pitch, even when they're being hit by two players and flinging the ball backward over their shoulder.

But you'll come to appreciate this because there are so many other ways to turn the ball over. Even with gameplay sliders changed to prevent them, there are an inordinate amount of fumbles and interceptions--sometimes as many as 10 per game with five minute quarters. Raising the difficulty to Heisman alleviates this problem a bit, but most people aren't good enough to play on this setting, so it's little consolation for the average Joe who's frustrated by turnovers.

The playbooks are deep, but because you can pick plays based on Lee Corso's recommendation, play type, and formation, it's not too tough to navigate. It's not quite as easy on defense, but it's still not bad. If you dig deep enough into the playbook, you'll find that trick plays have been added this year. Like play action, these trick plays stand a decent chance of working against a human opponent but are worthless against the CPU.

The biggest change to how the game plays actually has to do with how it lets you not play. At any point during the game, you can choose the super sim option and skip a single play, an entire possession, quarter, or game. If you choose to simulate more than one play, you can interrupt at any time should things start to go poorly. This is a fantastic option for people who don't like playing defense (or offense), as well as those who want to skip the end of blowouts. It's also great for people who enjoy playing multiple years of dynasty mode, but who don't necessarily want to simulate an entire game or play every snap of every game either.

Visually, NCAA 08 doesn't look much different from last year, which includes the obnoxious sponsor logos that stick out like sore thumbs. There are more stadiums included this time around. While there are some inaccuracies here and there, the stadiums look great. The stands are packed with rabid fans, and mascots still patrol the sidelines. But it's what's not here that makes NCAA 08 feel a lot like a pro game; namely referees, marching bands, fans with signs or painted faces, and cheerleaders that detract from the college football feel.

Other than some nasty clipping issues, the players look great. There are a wide variety of body types, so it's easy to tell the difference between a running back, offensive lineman, and tight end. But even more impressive than how they look is how the players move. Player animation is outstanding, and you'll be seeing moves for the first time a dozen games into your first season. Running backs will slink through the grasp of would-be tacklers; defensive players will team up for vicious gang tackles; and wide receivers will leap, snag the ball with one hand then crash to the ground. Thanks to a faster, smoother frame rate and better-looking player shadows, the 360 version of the game gets the nod over the PS3, which struggles to run smoothly even at half the frame rate.

The main menu screen is home to the biggest change in the game's presentation this year. The background screen is your school's trophy room, complete with trophy cases, video screens, and banners. You can fill this shrine by winning titles, individual player awards, and rivalry games. Each trophy is re-created with a detailed 3D model that you can view from all angles while Chris Fowler gives you a bit of history about the trophy. The main video screen shows in-game highlights that can be saved at any point during a game, and the screens on either side show still photos that are acquired the same way. The trophies and highlight reels are a cool way to remember great plays from the past, as well as a welcome addition to the series.

Did you like how last year's game sounded? If you did, and you weren't sick of the commentary from Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, and Brad Nessler, you'll like how 08 sounds because it's pretty much the same. The trio has nice chemistry and offers a bit of in-depth analysis, though they do get behind from time to time, particularly during punts. Corso's goofiness has also been toned down a bit. This means you're less likely to hear him repeat his goofy sayings, but his goofy sayings are kind of his appeal, so it's a bit of a Catch 22. As usual, the fight songs in the game sound great, though you might go insane by the time you hear your school's fight song for the 200th time.

Almost across the board, the new content EA added to NCAA Football 08 makes it a better game than last year. The ability to sim all or portions of a game at any time is fantastic and feels like such a no-brainer you may wonder why it didn't happen before 2007. Campus legend mode is fun, even if it is a bit shallow, as is the recruiting, which could be great if it were fleshed out a little more. It's also cool to be able to check out your highlights and trophies in your school's shrine.

While these additions are welcome, it feels like EA skimped a bit on the stuff that happens after the kickoff. The in-game presentation doesn't have much of a college football feel to it, and the amount of turnovers will likely frustrate many hardcore fans. But even with these issues, NCAA Football 08 is a great game and another step in the right direction for the franchise.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (PC)

Perhaps I'm just a bad leader. Even though I don't get my men killed that often and they diligently trot out "nice shooting, sir" when I make a headshot, I don't get the impression they're happy. Or even conscious, to be honest. They don't talk to each other, they don't joke, they don't complain about being told to walk backwards into a firezone. Occasionally, if left to his own devices for a while, one will pathetically inquire "sir?" in a voice that sounds like a slightly butchered C-3PO awaiting instruction. But that's it. It's creepy. That's why I've started tackling missions on my own, leaving my squad back near the insertion point to stare blank-eyed at the floor. I might well be in extreme danger as a result, but at least I no longer feel like I'm being followed around by three shop dummies wired up to dog brains.

Such unease aside, GRAW 2 on PC is a significant revision from its earlier console incarnation, especially in terms of squad control. A new overhead tactical map mode means long chains of orders can be set for one or all of those dog-robots in the guise of men, even down to the direction they face and the width of their firing arc. While this does mean your control over your Ghosts (for the uninitiated, they're a squad of near-future US commandos fighting insurgents) is absolute, a certain self-sufficiency has been sacrificed. These guys can only do what they're told. More positively, this means GRAW 2 is entirely your game - your dog soldiers will only do your dirty work if you're canny enough to tell them how to do best do so. Your own glory is never snatched away by gung-ho AI.

There's a real pleasure to setting a skirmish up then watching it be played out exactly as planned. Your men move into position, there's a handful of bullet noises, and one by one the red diamonds that signify enemy locations blink out. It's over in seconds. These Middle-Eastern terrori... ah, 'Mexican renegades' are no match for US might, it seems. ("Thees ceety, what haff we done to her?", asks a Mexican loyalits you're allied with as he regards the ruins of Juarez. "It's called the price of peace," responds your character, apparently only just holding back a yee-haw afterwards). You don't need to fire a shot yourself, though conversely being an accomplished mouse-jockey means most skirmishes can be mastered without your mates on the easier difficultly settings. In either case, such military precision, if you get it right, rarely fails to raise your mouth into a smug half-smirk. While GRAW 2 might be lacking personality, this is certainly a slick game. The tactical map is far easier and more intuitive than anything involving the word 'tactical' usually tends to be. Its odd, satnav omniscience is not a requisite either - you can direct your men through the FPS HUD instead, with a couple of mouse-clicks sending one or all of them to anywhere within sight distance.

This is just dandy if you're only sending them to a wall five metres away. Unfortunately, if they're a way off from your position, they're agonisingly slow to catch up. Give such an order and half the squad will stop to have a think about it first, often just stand still or only go halfway. The maddening AI problems of the beta code we had a look at a few weeks back have been fixed somewhat - there's no getting stuck on a rock and running on the spot until the end of time here. Instead, anything that might cause pathfinding breakdown is sometimes entirely ignored, requiring your giving multiple orders to coax your glassy-eyed compatriots over to where you want them. Particularly ridiculous is getting them to the extraction helicopter needed to finished most missions. You'll sit inside it on your own for a good couple of minutes while they bimble unhurriedly over and squint at the doorway in apparent bafflement. It's like having your bus wait at one stop for ages whilst a pack of doddery pensioners struggle to climb the step and fumble for the correct change. Only you're supposed to get out of there before a bomb goes off, and they don't seem to care.

Enemies aren't much better. There's similarly no life to them - faceless and identical, they wait where the game spawns them, created alternately as either hawkeyed sharpshooters or villains from a Bruce Lee movie, running into the path of your fire one by one. Notch up the difficulty and they're all suddenly crack snipers, changing the nature of the game entirely from the fairly straight FPS it is on Easy or Normal to almost a strategy game, wherein you spend most of your time on the tactical map, placing your men and orchestrating flanking manouvres. It's a gruelling challenge this way, where a single mistake brooks complete failure - frustrating for anyone with a lingering desire to be Arnie, but a well-realised itch-scratcher if the one hit, one kill approach of Operation Flashpoint is your cup of death-tea.

The net effect of the blatantly robotic AI on both sides is that GRAW 2 feels at all times like a simulation of war, not war itself. And of course it is, as all games with guns are, but there's very little of the adrenaline of, say, Call of Duty here. Everything hinges on how you set up the combat, rather than the combat itself, which is somewhat perfunctory. One could argue, of course, that this is how an impeccably-trained death squad should be, and that the pop-gun feel and sound of the firearms is far closer to reality than the juddering mega-splodes of Doom-y weaponry is. Me, I want something that gets the heart pounding, not just the knowing raise of an eyebrow as I overlook the resulting pile of mathematically-decimated corpses.

So, an improvement on the (initially) buggy port that the first GRAW on PC was, but even with the pleasingly significant interface and visual tweaks over the console version, this is still very much a an adequate but not spectacular sequel to an adequate but not spectacular tactical shooter. It's GRAW, but a bit better, and that's it. Certainly, it's without doubt one of the more accomplished depictions of that cold-hued near-future-war videogames have been so hung up on of late, but it's not even slightly trying to improve gaming.

Colin McRae- DiRT

Fans of Codemasters' Colin McRae rally racing series are in for a surprise with the publisher's newest title, DiRT. DiRT has more in common with Digital Illusions' Rallisport Challenge series than the Colin McRae games of old, putting a greater emphasis on a variety of off-road racing disciplines, as opposed to sticking hard and fast to traditional rally racing. That's not to say that rally fans will be disappointed with the game. DiRT veers a good bit further into arcade territory than earlier games in the series, but it is still a blast to drive, and absolutely stunning to look at.

Let's just address that elephant in the room right off. There have been plenty of driving games of late that have been visually impressive, but very few live up to the visual fidelity displayed by DiRT. This game is a technical achievement in car design, track design, and damage modeling. To begin with, the cars are beautifully rendered, highly detailed models that are as fantastic to look at as they are to destroy. Damage modeling is one of the most impressive aspects of the game; you can lose bumpers or doors, break glass, tear up the paintjob, and roll your ride into a crushed, deformed mess. Tracks are equally beautiful and destructible. From the rain-slick tarmac tracks of Japan and the dusty backroads of Italy to the muddy, gravelly countryside of the UK, DiRT nails every environment wonderfully. The game also uses lighting to fantastic effect, not just to emphasize how shiny and reflective the cars are, but to give each track an individual atmosphere. Driving around desert mountains in the washed-out haze of late day is an amazing sight to behold, for sure. And if you feel like tearing up these tracks, you can bust through fences, barriers, bushes, and anything else not held to the ground with concrete. All the while, dirt, mud, or gravel will kick up against and often stick to your car, making the game's namesake seem entirely appropriate.

As amazing as the game looks, all that detail comes at a bit of a price. Performance is not always up to snuff, especially in races with multiple cars on the track. The frame rate is a little choppy during single-car rallies, but once you get a group of other cars racing with you, the game practically turns into stop-motion animation, especially if all the other cars happen to be bunched up with you. This is more of a consistent issue on the 360 version, though the PC version is highly taxing even on high-end hardware, so you're likely to run into some performance problems unless you're running a top of the line machine. Longer-than-average load times also tend to rear their ugly head (primarily in the 360 version). Even still, the game never becomes unplayable because of the crummy frame rate or lengthy loads, and at worst, these are merely annoyances.

The quality of the presentation doesn't begin and end with the in-game graphics either. Even the menu system is immaculately built. It's hard to describe it, except to call it a bunch of floating boxes with selectable options that zoom in and out as you select them. Even the loading screens are cool because they display real-time statistics on your game, such as your favorite tracks or vehicles, your average speed, and even your favorite driving surface. Menus are usually a forgotten element of a game unless they're specifically bad, so the fact that DiRT's are notable for how good they are says something.

Audio is not quite as immediately impressive as the visuals, but it is great all the same. Engine noise is probably the best aspect because each car has a definitive and unique sound to it that feels just right. Crashes and other racing effects are also excellently produced. The soundtrack isn't licensed, but the instrumentals that play over the various menus and replays are quite solid. The only damper on the category is your codriver, an obnoxious, bro-sounding dolt whose dialogue sounds like it was written by a nonnative English speaker and whose only reference for the language was reruns of Saved By the Bell. Lines like "Smooth and steady; I'm Mr. Smooth, and you're Mr. Steady," and "Yeah! We won the championship! I'm so stoked!" are funny once, but then they're annoying from there on out. At least he gives you some good info on the tracks before you race.

Once you've snapped out of the trance that DiRT's fantastic presentation tends to lull you into, you might remember that this is a racing game and that you do actually have to play it. It's a good thing it's a fun one. The game includes six different racing disciplines, which consist of rally, rallycross, hillclimb, CORR, crossover, and rally raid varieties. If you don't know what half of those are, don't fret. The game does a good job of easing you into the game's style of racing, with both some rather simple early races, as well as an explanatory narration by extreme sports maven and current Rally America champion Travis Pastrana.

Granted, even if you've never jumped into a CORR race in your life, DiRT isn't exactly a difficult game to grasp. You're racing down a course by yourself, trying to get the best time possible, or racing against other cars, buggies, or trucks on dirt and tarmac tracks. Most of the differences in gameplay come from how the various vehicles handle. There is obviously a big difference between driving a speedy Mitsubishi FTO and a massive racing big rig (yes, they actually have those). But even with all the differences among disciplines, the racing is always easy to pick up and play. DiRT has a decidedly arcade-driving sensibility that makes all the vehicles relatively easy to race with from the outset. Once you've gotten a feel for how all the different cars and tracks feel, you can simply crank up the difficulty, which in turn makes your opponent racers much more adept, and also leaves your car far more open to terminal damage. On the highest setting, all it takes is one good front-end collision to send you packing.

As realistic as the damage incurrence can be, the rest of the game definitely maintains an arcade mentality. Nearly all the vehicles have a decidedly floaty feel to them, one that seems to overcompensate for nearly every minute turn of the analog stick (if you're playing the PC version, you will need a dual analog controller of some fashion to play the game properly). It's not unmanageable or anything, but it's far from realistic. By the same token, the game's physics are often a bit silly, especially in wrecks. That's not an insult by any means because the exaggerated physics lead to some absolutely spectacular wrecks in many cases. But there are some eye-roll-worthy moments where you'll see a car tilt from lying on its side all the way back upright for no good reason or drive sideways up a cliff to land back on four wheels.

Floaty feel and wonky physics aside, DiRT is still a great deal of fun to play. Once you get a feel for the controls and up the difficulty a bit, the racing can be intensely challenging, addictive, and immersive. It's especially immersive if you happen to take in one of the game's two exceptionally good cockpit camera views. There's a zoomed-in view and a view that's a bit further back. Both views give you a great sense of being in the driver's seat, even going so far as to let you look around inside the car via the right analog stick. Not enough racers do the cockpit camera that well, and DiRT is worth lauding for doing it especially well.

As fun as the racing can be, it wouldn't be worth much if DiRT didn't offer up plenty of ways to experience it. Fortunately, it does the job. Apart from being able to take part in single races and events, as well as a series of championships, consisting of multiple races each, DiRT also has a lengthy, involving career mode that has you working your way up a literal pyramid of events. Winning races earns you points, which unlock new tiers of the career mode and cash, which you can use to buy new vehicles or liveries for said vehicles. With more than 60 career events, nearly 50 vehicles to unlock, and more than 180 liveries to buy for those vehicles, that ought to keep you busy.

The one feature that DiRT skimps badly on is multiplayer support. There is multiplayer, but just barely. Only two disciplines--rally and hillclimb--are available to play in multiplayer. But wait, aren't those the two disciplines that don't have you competing directly against other cars? You bet. Essentially, you're dumped into a lobby with potentially dozens of other players, and from there, you vote on which track you want to play. The available list to vote on is always random, and there's no option to pick a different car or even search for a lobby with specific cars/tracks available. Once you're in a race, it's merely a time trial against all the other players. You can see how you're doing in the real-time standings, but that's all. While the Colin McRae series has never been known for great multiplayer support, the total lack of online racing in a game that debuts several wheel-to-wheel racing types is a gigantic tease and really disappointing.

That said, the multiplayer support is really the only thing about DiRT you can call truly disappointing. On every other front, DiRT delivers a racing experience that's a lot of fun to play and visuals that are such a joy to watch that you can even bring yourself to forgive the shoddy frame rate. All around, DiRT is a class act, and it belongs in any racing fan's library.

Overlord (PC)

While most genre-bending games are content to dissemble just one convention, Overlord takes on two. Not only does it attempt to subvert how you perceive Tolkien-esque high fantasy by essentially putting you in the role of the dark lord Sauron, but the game also plays like a real-time strategy game masquerading as a third-person action RPG. It's all very promising, since real-time strategy games can be such slaves to convention; and it's rare for a game to focus so exclusively on encouraging you to explore your darker impulses. Though the game's controls take some getting used to, and its exploration of evil could use a little more bite, it's generally pretty successful.

As the titular overlord, you begin the game having just been resurrected by your minions, and your dark kingdom is in shambles. Your dark tower is a ruinous mess, you've got but a handful of subservient followers, and the local villagers are cowering in fear of forces other than yourself. This simply will not do. Powerful practitioner of might and magic that you are, you could go the hands-on route in rebuilding your tower and crushing the wills of the peasants; but then, what's the point of being the overlord if you've got to do everything yourself?

This is why you have minions, the scampering, mischievous little gremlins that are the heart and soul of Overlord. Though the game presents itself as a third-person action RPG where you control the overlord, it's more of a real-time strategy game. Either way, it's a very good-looking game, with the kinds of soft lighting and quaint high-fantasy settings that characterized Fable, though once you get past the aesthetics, it proves to have more in common with Nintendo's Pikmin games for the GameCube. Though you can perform some basic magic and melee attacks as the overlord, it's your minions that will be doing all your heavy lifting. The control scheme for Overlord is a little unusual, since you'll be controlling the overlord's movement as well as the minions'. The PC version offers both mouse-and-keyboard and dual-analog gamepad control schemes, and they're both totally useable, but they've both got their fair share of quirks.

Thankfully, the minions are generally pretty smart. They'll follow you around diligently, and if you take a route that they're unable to follow you on, they'll either stop in their tracks rather than commit hara-kiri, or find an alternate route. You can control your minions' movement directly by sweeping them around using either the right analog stick or the mouse, depending on which control scheme you've chosen. Alternately, you can lock onto certain objects, or simply point in a general direction, and your minions will head over there and perform the appropriate action. If the object can be smashed, they'll smash it. If it's an enemy, they'll attack it. If it's something they can use, such as a weapon or a piece of armor, they'll equip it. If it's gold, or a potion that restores health or mana, they'll bring it back to you. You'll also find lots of quest-specific items that require a team of minions to carry to specific locations, as well as various path-blocking obstacles. You can also command your minions to stay in a specific position, effectively guarding it.

Death doesn't even seem to bother them too much--nor should it, since they're pretty easy to replace. Every time you kill something in Overlord, be it man or beast, it leaves behind a little piece of life essence, which you can collect and store. For every piece of life essence you have, you can summon another minion, though there's a limit to the number of minions you can have at your command at one time. Simply watching the minions carry out your will can be fun, because you get the sense that they really love their job. They scream and cackle gleefully as they latch onto an enemy, and they beam with pride when they return to you with found treasure. Though you'll hear many of the same exclamations from your minions over and over again, the voice work brings a lot of personality to your swarming horde, and to the game in general. Watching your minions wreak havoc can be so satisfying that it makes up for a lot of the problems that the game develops.

Overlord starts out strong, and the first few hours offer some light and easy fun as you sweep your horde of minions across the countryside, slaughtering sheep and peasants and pillaging anything that appears even remotely pillageable. There are some RPG trappings to the game, in that you can upgrade or buy new weapons and armor, learn new spells, and increase your capacity for health and mana, as well as the number of minions that you can control at once. Still, the story is pretty linear. You might have more than one quest available to you at a time, but usually you'll find that one of those quests cannot actually be started until you finish another quest. As the shadow you cast over the land continues to grow, you'll face halflings, elves, bloodthirsty unicorns, an undead horde, dwarves, and more. In addition to the all-purpose brown minions you start off with, you'll earn the ability to summon more specialized types of minions. Red minions are fire adept, green minions are impervious to poison and have some minor stealth abilities, and blue minions can travel through water, are strong against magical enemies, and can revive fallen minions.

The game takes its time introducing the different types of minions, and you'll be several hours into the game before the strategy elements of the game start getting complicated. The tightly designed environments of Overlord are very deliberate in their layout, often requiring you to direct a single type of minion. It's not difficult to alternate between controlling one type of minion and another when you're not under the gun, but there are certainly moments where it'll feel like you're struggling against the controls as you're juggling multiple groups of minions and trying to issue a series of specific commands. Luckily it's not hard to toggle the camera from a behind-the-back third-person perspective to a pulled-back overhead perspective, both of which prove useful in different situations. It's certainly satisfying when you're able to get past one of the game's involved boss fights, even if it's partially out of relief that you won't have to deal with that again.

As much as the game likes to cast your character as a ruthless and malevolent overlord who cares for nothing but power and chaos, your capacity for true, genuine evil feels a little limited. Motivations aside, the nature of the quests you take on aren't that different from what a high-fantasy hero would be up to. Yes, you can choose whether certain characters live or die, and there are situations that can be resolved with varying degrees of bloodshed, but the choices you make have little impact on the course of the game. Good and evil are subjective concepts, and if there are no real negative consequences, there's no way to determine if your actions qualify.

Overlord is an enjoyably mischievous experience that blends real-time strategy and RPG elements to unique ends. The satisfaction of running amok with your legion of wickedly enthusiastic minions is what makes Overlord worth playing, and it's plenty compensation for controls that you'll occasionally struggle against and the limitations on just how evil you can really be.