World In Conflict [PC]

This game is fun. It's an RTS at heart, but it has no resource management or buildings or almost anything from any standard RTS. The game follows the story of the "what-if" scenario that the Cold War went hot. Russia invades the US, hell ensues. The story in the Campaign is actually pretty well told featuring great voice actors. If the story doesn't get you, the graphics certainly will. Of course, that is if your computer can handle it.

Units are not made, resources are not gathered. In the campaign, you get a set number of points to spend on infantry, vehicle, air, or support troops. Once you have used up those points, you cannot get anymore troops until yours are gone. This means you control smaller batallions of units instead of an entire army, but when the conflict to the left and right of you is a rocket barrage and infantry charge in the downtown Seattle area, WIC does a great job of making you feel like you're right in the middle of a real war, so the small unit cap actually works with the game. Destroy enough units to call in special support, such as precision artillery strikes, carpet bombs, or everyone's favorite, the Nuke. Fully destructible environments are reduced to rubble and the atmosphere is tarnished with the smoke of the giant explosion for the rest of the match. Nuking a US city has never been more fun!

For multiplayer, it's even more narrow chaos. You can only choose to play one of the 4 roles the entire match. This means it is a MUST to play as a team. If your entire team chooses helicopters, one opposing support player can take you all out with anti-air. This makes for entirely hectic multiplayer matches, which are played as an "attack/defend the points" gametype. Very, very addicting.

So if your computer can handle it (again, it's really more of a system hog than you'd think) then get this game if you are a fan of RTS's.

Phantom Crash [XBOX]

If one thinks Mech games, usually one tends to think of systems other than the Xbox. But there is a less than unknown game called Phantom Crash which should satisfy gamers who love action and love mechs. The game takes place in neo-Tokyo where mech pilots build their own mechs and take them into three abandoned areas of the city to do battle. You can choose the type of your mech, what weapons it has, what kind of movement it has, etc. It's not as in-depth as Armored Core, but what Armored Core has in depth in customization, Phantom Crash makes up for it in frantic action. Battling takes place in one of three huge maps and goes on forever, or until you leave the area and return home. All three maps are large, and different contenders come in so you never run out of stuff to kill. Rank up, buy better mech parts, have fun, repeat. The story is atrocious though. Ignore that, and you've got yourself a great game.

Meteos [DS]

Who doesn't like Tetris? If you're one of the millions of people who could play Tetris for hours on end, Meteos will become like crack for you. The player chooses a "planet" and has different colored/shaped blocks fall from the sky. It's up to the player to arrange them in lines of three or more using the DS's stylus to then launch them into the sky at other planets. Insane combos can and will happen this way. There's nothing quite as satisfying as launching a screen-filling Meteos attack at your opponent and then watch them crumble. Great puzzle game for the DS, and is in desperate need of a sequel with Wi-Fi play.

Solomon's Club [GB]

A sequel to Solomon's Key. Use a wand to create and destroy blocks to get a key to each room while dispatching or avoiding enemies and collecting bells to rescue faeries. I've never played Solomon's Key, but I have played Fire 'n Ice (Solomon's Key 2), and this is a lot easier than that. Because of this, it's a lot more fun...but, to me at least, not much of a challenge. It's on okay time waster though. Nice and fun and simple.

Elevator Action II [ARC]

This a great sequel. With three unique characters, new weapons, new enemies, bosses, and expanded levels, this is a great example of how to make a sequel. You can find it on Taito Legends 2. I think that the price of admission is worth this one game. Of course, there are other good games on it, but this one is fantastic by itself.

Game-A-Day: Classic - Gunbird [ARC]

I don't know what it is about H.Shooters that I hate and V.Shooters that I love, but this V.Shooter I love even more than usual. It's funny. It looks fantastic (but then again, so do most Psikyo games). It's funny. It controls fantastically. It's funny. Each character has their own shooting style instead of having to choose in-game, making all the characters more than just cosmetic and no longer having you worry about losing your progress by a mistiming. It's funny, especially if you have a partner so the characters interact (personally, I just set a player 2 and turn on the cheats to make them invincible and then forget them). It's got a bit of bullet hell to it, but eh. It's a good, fun game.



And that's the last of the classic reviews. From now on they'll all be fresh!

Game-A-Day: Classic - Demon's Crest [SNES]

This is a spin-off of the Ghost's 'n Goblins series staring a demon that's supposed to be, i dunno, the real devil, or something. He can hover using his wings, spit fire, hold onto walls, cast spells, and change his element with collected crests so he can do other stuff too. It's a bit open, like Mega Man X, with you able to choose where to go next and backtrack to stages to open new areas. It even has some mode 7 effects that are pretty cool. Would probably be even more impressive if I hadn't already seen it in Illusion of Gaia, among other games, though. It's real fun, and actually not as hard as the series it's branched off of. I really recommend it.

Darkwing Duck [NES]

This is one of those aforementioned "great Capcom licensed games" that I was talking about. This is like Mega Man dumbed down. Kinda. The challenge is toned down, but not too much. It looks really good. The music is some of the best I've heard. There's some strategy in which secondary weapons you pick up. The only thing I don't like is the overuse of bottomless pits. Those are annoying.

Bottom line: play it!

Game-A-Day: Classic - Binary Land [NES]

This is a great puzzle game from Hudson Soft. You have to guide two penguins who are in love to the end of a top-down maze filled with spiders and their webs. However, they're both separated by a wall down the middle, and when you move one the other mirrors the moves. You also have to get them at the goal at the same time, so no getting one then the other. They're both armed with bug spray to take care of the webs and spiders. If you run into one of the webs, your penguin gets stuck and has to be freed. If they both get stuck, you're fucked.

Wow, that's a rather ham fisted description. Oh well, no matter, as this is an awesome game. The only thing that I didn't like about it is that like almost all games of the age (this coming out back in '85), the music is a digitized version of a classical song and it repeats for the whole game. But what do you expect; they're programmers, not musicians.

Game a day: Classic - Ninja Wariors, Again [SNES]

This is one of the few beat-'em-ups that I really like. It has good controls, good graphics, good music, and has a nice challenge without being too hard. All in all good fun.
But there's not much else to say about it. Plus, if I look at it objectively, this is probably pretty average. Of the beat-em-ups that I've played, this is probably fifth on the list after (inpo) TMNT III and IV, Sailor Moon [ARC], and Final Fight.

Still, I never said that I would be objective, so this gets a

Game-A-Day: Classic - Polarium Advance [GBA]

Yes. Polarium Advance. On the GBA. I didn't know about it until recently. It's the Polarium we know on the DS, but with some improvements and omissions. First thing first, no more challenge mode, instead focusing on the puzzle mode, giving you one puzzle everyday for a year, and with over 365 puzzles that's almost four times the amount in the first one. And on top of that, there's an added challenge where each puzzle will give you two points on the grid that you have to connect in a certain amount of spaces while clearing the board after you've cleared it at least once. Sometimes you'll get it your first time on the board, but others you really have to rethink how to clear it. Second, instead of having to have a solid block of one color, only the horizontal rows have to be the same color. This makes some boards harder and some easier. Thirdly, there are three new special tiles. Hurdle tiles, tiles that sit on the edge that you can't move over; multi-tiles, wild cards that act as empty spaces that will switch to whatever color is needed to clear the row; and solid tiles, tiles that hold other tiles that let's them drop down when cleared.

Maybe it's just that I was sitting down and playing a whole bunch of them at one time, but there's something about it that just makes you go "eh" after a while and you get sick of it. So because of that, despite the fact that it's a really good puzzle game that's better than the original, I give it a