The only thing Sabotaged was my free time: The Saboteur review

Gamers kill a lot of Nazis. But, The Saboteur is the first time killing the endless goose-stepping horde of the Third Reich has ever looked this cool or copied the Grand-Theft-Auto play style so much.

The Saboteur is a stylistic third-person sandbox game where players take the control of Sean Devlin, an ex-racecar driver who’s taken on the duty of being the backbone of the French resistance and the pleasure of hunting down the occupying Nazis of Paris.

The story, for the most part, does an OK job of giving you the back story of our hero’s anger towards the Nazis, but after the first couple of missions it’s just like any other B-rate action story: predictable and nothing special with some pretty terrible voice work.

Devlin’s actions will seem awfully familiar to if you’ve played any other sandbox game that’s come out in the last 10 years. There will be a mix of carjacking, gun play, running around an open city and, of course, keeping the ladies at the local burlesque house dancing.

Saboteur’s carjacking differs from its GTA roots because the cars you steal can be taken back to a resistance garages where they can be stored and then upgraded. The problem is the all cars handle relatively the same. There are some faster models later in the game but by then it’s too late and you’ll be past the point of caring.

The same thing goes for the guns. There are a wide variety to choose from with a bunch of different upgrades that can be bought with contraband material that you’ll pick up from across the city. But, there isn’t a lot of difference in the weapon styles and the later guns carried by the elite S.S. troops are so over powered there really isn’t a point in spending your hard earned cash on an upgrade for the earlier models. Just save it for more dynamite, the game will be more fun that way.

The other side of the controls are the stealth mechanics and the Assassin’s-Creed inspired parkour movement. The game’s loading screen tells you that the easiest way to move about the city is by rooftop like an Irish ninja. What it doesn’t tell you is the controls for the climbing are clunky and slow.

The stealth game play is just as bad. As you infiltrate Nazi installations, like POW camps and zeppelin stations, Devlin can disguise himself as various guards and Nazi officials. But the guards can and will spot you if you get too close or do suspicious activities, like wiring the general’s car to explode shortly after he leaves for Berlin.

This so broken that the game is less of a headache to simply run through the game with guns blazing. The only downfall with this approach is you’ll need to run from the Nazis once the mission is over.

The majority of the game, from fighting Nazis Indiana-Jones style, to running odd jobs for the resistance and the occasional train bombing, will leave you vastly underwhelmed and there is only one true redeeming factor for this game.

That one gem is the black and white, Sin-City inspired art style.

When the game starts, before Devlin starts cracking skulls and when the Nazi occupation is at its highest, the game is almost entirely in black and white with the exception of certain accents like red swastika armbands, the gold glow of windows at night and the spilled blood of assassinated Third Reich leadership.

As you finish story objectives and wrestle control from the Nazis, Paris will explode into color from its black and white oppression. The problem is the game looks better in black and white than it does in color. Once it’s in color the city and the surrounding countryside look pretty boring by comparison.

Other than the early art style, the game falls flat because it hasn’t done anything new in a substantial way. The majority of this game has a been there-done-that feel. And if it wasn’t for the art and color scheme this game wouldn’t be note worthy at all.

Going to Get Edumacated: Encleverment Experiment review

Encleverment Experiment is a mix between the thinking games made popular by games like Brain Age and Big Brain Academy and party game-show games like Buzz!. But this game isn’t as clever as its name may lead you to believe.

The game is broken up into two parts. The first being the once-day tests that will track your progress in memory, math, reaction time and patterns. The variation in the tests are pretty basic and act more like glorified flash card exercises than a mental workout. One test will have you memorizing objects as they fall onto the screen, while others will have you lead a dog on the trail to find his misplaced bone and another will have you complete basic arithmetic problems before time runs out .

The problem with the tests is the goals aren’t as intuitive like with other games like Brain Age. So, if you want to just skim over the instructions, which there are a lot of, and get right to the game you’ll end up scratching your head wondering what’s going on pretty regularly.

Another issue is the difficulty of the quizzes can vary between the ridiculously kindergarten simple to the downright pulling-your-hair-like-you-did-for-your-SATs-because-you-were-too-busy-to-go-to-the-prep-classes hard.

The best worst example is the face recognition quiz. You are shown a face for a few seconds and asked to memorize the features after which you’ll be given four faces to choose from. In back-to-back questions, the faces I was asked to choose from had no similarities what so ever–I was asked to memorize a woman’s face and I was given one that looked like a man–and then the next question had nothing but small variations in the nose and upper lip between all four choices.

The next part is the game show. Here you’ll compete in the quizzes with computer opponents, or if you can find someone else that’s willing to improve their mental abilities through the Xbox, a friend. The game show basics are all here. You and your opponent will go through the tests and compete for points so you can unlock more in-game mascots that will keep you company as you play. This section of the game some more playability because of the computer opponents you’ll face, but it’s not a big enough difference from the daily tests.

Aside from the inconsistent difficulty, Encleverment Experiment is an average thinking game with a funny and engaging presentation and with an art style and narration that seems like it’s pulled off of a Saturday morning cartoon. But the real problem with this game it missed the bus for the mental-exercise craze that was all the rage a few years ago. With other games, like Big Brain Academy, that got the degree of difficulty and playability just right then Encleverment Experiment can’t compare. But if you need a quiz game for the Xbox, this would be an OK choice.

More Mutants than You can Shake a Stick At: Marvel: Ultimate Allaince 2 DLC Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 updated its roster with five more characters from across the ever-expanding Marvel Universe and added more challenge-room missions to use them in. The characters added for this DLC are: red symbiote and long-time Spider-man foe, Carnage; the leader of Wakanda, the Black Panther; and the mutants Psylocke, Cable and Magneto.

The selection of heroes offered in this content bundle is a good mix of well-known characters, like Magneto and the Black Panther, as well as some lesser-known characters like Psylocke. A plus for this DLC is each of the five characters plays drastically different from each other, which is refreshing since the majority of the original cast’s play style was very similar.

Like the original 24-character cast, the new heroes are great adaptations, and they look like they’ve been ripped from the pages of a weekly comic. On the powers side of the game, each character continues to control differently. The two standouts are Carnage, who plays like the animalistic nature of Wolverine mixed with the brutality of Venom, and Psylocke, who is agile and deadly like Daredevil and Iron Fist.

The underperformers of the group are Cable and the Black Panther. Cable is strongest when he stands back and shoots at bad guys with the hefty cannons he brings to the party. This is understandable because of his comic book back story, but it makes for some awfully boring button mashing. The Black Panther, on the other hand, gets up close and personal like the majority of the characters already present in MUA2 and is just more of the same.

Fusion powers stick to the same routine like the original content of the game, with one exception. When Magneto and Wolverine team up to perform a targeted attack, Magento lifts Wolverine’s metal body into the air and hurls him at the soon-to-skewered enemy. This attack is technically just like the other targeted combinations in the game, but this attack in particular has a warm place in my comic-book-nerd heart because it’s something you’d expect from the panels in a weekly book.

Beyond the characters, the DLC offers more missions to run through. The high point of these missions is the Overlord stage where you can fight Magneto in all his metal-manipulating glory. These missions add some replay value to the game, but only for another couple of hours. The characters and extra missions in this DLC pack add some nice touches to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, but it still isn’t enough to warrant throwing ten more dollars at it. If you absolutely need more characters, then by all means go for it. But otherwise, you might as well save your money for the comicbook shop.

Fairytale Fights Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Gamers kill dinosaurs, roll random things into balls, and control a plumber as he kicks and stomps mushroom monsters into the ground. There are some weird games out there, but Fairytale Fights is the first time gamers take control of well-known bedtime story characters in their blood-covered escapades in fantasy land, and for good reason.

Fairytale Fights is an M-rated brawler set in “once upon a time” where players pick from Beanstalk Jack, the Naked Emperor, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood, and relive classic fairytale stories. But these aren’t the stories you grew up with.

Players are tasked with quests like finding the three little bears’ porridge pot and saving the princess all while hacking their way through an endless amount of enemies, all of which squirt blood like there is no tomorrow. The game looks like it’s a kid’s cartoon on an LSD trip. The colors are overly vibrant and pop off the screen, and the character models look like they’re something taken from the warped minds that came up with the Happy Tree Friends.

Fairytale Fights is an interesting idea and a fun game to look at, but, like the head cheerleader back in high school, that’s all it has going for it. This game is boring, overly simplistic, and lacks any real reason to play more than five minutes.

The game’s combat, which should have been the highlight of this god-awful experience, is overly simplistic. All the combat is controlled through flicking the right analogue stick. It is intuitive by design, but it’s held back by the complete lack of depth. For hours on end, or as long as you can stomach playing, all you will be doing is flicking the stick without any skills or abilities to upgrade.

The game is spiced up with special moves called “Glory attacks,” but it still isn’t fun. After you slaughter enough make-believe character, you’ll be able to pause time and jump between enemies to smack them around. Too bad the Glory attacks aren’t functional. When you try to jump between multiple enemies the game is particular about how close the enemy has to be, even though there isn’t a visual cue to judge distance. This makes the Glory attacks more of a pain to use than they’re actually worth.

As players prance through the forest, a plethora of weapons–like swords, candy canes, and wooden spoons–are available in bladed, blunt, ranged, or thrown varieties. All of these have different levels of attack power. Bladed and blunt weapons will be what you’re working with most the time, and the only real difference between the two is if you want to chop your adversaries into more manageable pieces.

This is the other highlight of the game, albeit a small one: the amount of blood splattered with bladed weapons is hysterical. After short skirmishes the colored background will be covered in the blood of wolfs, would-be prince charmings, lumber jacks, and the crumbs of gingerbread men. The violence is entertaining for the first 20 minutes of the game but, like the rest of Fairytale Fights, its appeal is outlived by its monotonous game play.

This game is wait-in-line-at-the-DMV boring. The levels lack any sort of pacing and stretch on longer than what should be allowed under cruel-and-unusual-punishment laws. To make matters worse, there are sections in the levels where you’ll be blocked from progressing and forced to satisfy an undisclosed kill count before you can continue. This is mind-numbingly bad, because for the majority of the level you can avoid all enemies until you hit these invisible walls where you’re forced to actually play the game. Some life is pumped back into the game with small puzzle sections and light platforming elements spread throughout the levels, but the puzzles are simple process-of-elimination problems and only last for a couple of minutes.

The platforming elements are worse than the puzzles because of the terrible camera and awkward control scheme. The camera is too far out and is often blocked by stage pieces in the foreground. Once you figure out where you’re supposed to jump, the controls will be so unresponsive that you’ll die over and over on a simple jump. Not to worry though, there is no life system in Fairytale Fights so you can respawn again and again to relive all the fun you’re having.

If it isn’t clear by now, here it is: avoid Fairytale Fights. This game could’ve been fun if it came out 10 years ago and was in an arcade where you paid a quarter instead of full retail price. Adding insult to injury, this game has a grab-bag of aggravating problems that’ll make you curse the time you spent playing.

The not-so-spectacular-or-amazing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

The idea behind the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise is great on paper: Take your favorite Marvel superheroes and make your own team to fight the forces of evil. To a comic book nerd this idea is a dream come true. But the franchise has let us down before, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, by Vicarious Visions, is only so much of an improvement.

The premise of MUA2 is based around Marvel’s 2006-2007 series, Civil War. The Civil War is sparked by the reckless behavior of a naïve super team that plunges the entire Marvel Universe into chaos and pitts friend against friend and Avenger against Avenger.

In this war of ideologies the super hero community was split in two, each side lead by a strong leader, and backed by certainty of righteousness. Iron Man backed the pro-registration act, a bill that would have all superheroes become government workers and essentially a super police force, while Captain America stood for the individual rights of all heroes and lead the anti-registration movement.

The anti-registration movement eventually lost after Captain America’s surrender and his realization that heroes were no longer fighting for the common good of the people they swore to protect. In the comics, the events of the Marvel Civil War eventually lead to the assassination of Captain America, the downfall of Iron Man, and the rise of Norman Osborn, Spider-man’s long time foe the Green Goblin.

The problem with MUA2 is it’s only loosely based on the comics. The first half of the game follows the story set in the seven-book series, down to every panel and dialogue box. The second half goes off on an odd tangent that isn’t anywhere near as compelling as the comics it’s supposed to be based on.

If you’ve read the comics this is a huge disappointment, because the events of the civil war had a profound impact on the Marvel Universe. If you’re oblivious to the original storyline then it’s just another mediocre story with superheroes that happens to look pretty.

The graphics are a huge improvement over the first game. The 24 playable characters look great and are fantastic interpretations of the print superheroes. The powers are impressive to look at, while the levels are colorful and highly detailed. Later in the game when you’ll explore the Black Panther’s techno-jungle home of Wakanda, which is a delight to behold.

The camera is another improvement and easily the most notable change from the first Marvel Ultimate. The camera is now closer to the action and gives a better perspective of the gameplay, making it more fun overall. But it does occasionally revert to being too far away.

Control wise, the game hasn’t evolved much from the original. The one addition to the control scheme is the fusion powers that mix-and-match two heroes’ powers for devastating effects. If you add Thor’s control over lightning to Captain America’s star-spangled shield you get arcs of electricity bouncing off the shield and frying the enemies who are unlucky enough to stand in the way.

The problem is there are only three fusion match-ups: clearing, guided and targeted. This drastically limits the effectiveness of certain teams if they lack specific powers like energy or elemental. This can force players to select heroes they don’t care about for the sake of one fusion power. And when you can’t have the team you want, be as effective as one that fits the mold it defeats the purpose of the Ultimate Alliance games

The targeted fusion power – which has two characters perform some variation of the fastball special made famous by Wolverine and Colossus–is the only real efficient way of taking down bosses and ultimately makes the boss’ fights less of a challenge and more of an inconvenience, since gamers will have to mash buttons to charge up for another fusion attack.

Another simplified aspect is the character customization. Vicarious Vision gutted the majority of the features from the two X-Men Legends games and the first MUA, leaving gamers with very few options and a lack-luster customization tool set.

Gamers won’t be able to equip items with the wide variety of attributes seen before, like poisoning strike or increased critical hit percentage. Players now have to pick three attributes which the entire team will share. It doesn’t seem like much but it greatly limits the combinations available.

Like other action games, as the heroes level up gamers will be able to spend points on both passive and active skills. The problem here is that the game doesn’t broadcast when characters level up. This left me checking my character stats to see if there were more points to spend. And if you go too long without checking the character sheet the game will automatically spend the points. The changes can be undone but it’s insulting to have a game auto spend experience points for you.

The last details that seals MUA2’s fate are the things taken away from the first game that made it a memorable comic book experience. This time around, there are no specific missions for heroes and fewer alternate costumes. This disappoints because of the amount of history characters like Captain America, Iron Man and the fantastic Four have. After all Marvel did just celebrate their 75th anniversary. This is ultimately a disservice to comic book fans and gamers.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a game of give and take. Every time something new is given or fixed, something that wasn’t broken is taken away. The game is fun to play but when compared to a great comic book game that holds true to its roots—say, Batman: Arkham Asylum—MUA2 can’t compare and ends up feeling quite mediocre.

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Tower defense games are all the rage now, just like those furry UGG boots and the TapOut clothing line. With the flood of TD titles on the market, a lot of them are going to look similar to the one sitting next to them. Unfortunately Defense Grid: The Awakening doesn’t do anything to stand out from the rest.

The premise of Defense Grid is simple: build defensive towers to hold back endless waves of aliens who are hell bent on taking all your shiny energy blocks. The game makes a meager attempt to spice up its story by adding a cliché British-voiced computer AI that serves as the narrator for what’s happening on screen. As the game continues players are told about the computer’s past life as a human a millennia ago. Players will soon bear witness to the computer’s emotional train wreck as he recounts how the aliens destroyed his world. I’m guessing this is the awakening part of Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Admittedly, it is nice to see a developer try and pump a story into a game that doesn’t necessarily need one. But any goodwill the story generates is erased by the game’s plot holes, like the nameless aliens you’re slaughtering, and the dry attempts at humor.

It may make a terrible attempt at a story, but Defense Grid is a solid Live Arcade game and a solid example of the tower defense subgenre. The game is takes place over 24 levels and two campaigns, which is a lot for a Live Arcade game. Each level comes with different modes, like endless waves with basic towers that add to the replay value of the game. Levels vary from one-track paths that the aliens follow and the bread-and-butter style maze levels where players will build paths the aliens follow as they’re slowly slaughtered. The different modes and levels also come with online leader boards so gamers can see how the rest of the Xbox Live community compares.

Visually the game is mediocre. The game is presented using a traditional god’s-eye-view that gives players a good perspective of the attacking horde. The downside of this is that the level of detail in the aliens, even when zoomed in on the action, is lackluster. To be honest though, this is more a failing of the tower-defense genre of games than Defense Grid’s specifically. More times than not, the aliens resemble bugs scurrying along a colorful background, as opposed to anything remotely sci-fi.

Luckily, the art design for each level is easy on the eyes. The environments are quite varied, ranging from tundra to decaying urban settings. Things get really interesting when aliens cross multiple horizontal areas, making for challenging vertical puzzles. The multiple layers don’t add much to the gameplay but it’s nice to not stare at a flat surface for the whole game.

The towers are the most interesting part of the game. Players can choose from ten different types of towers, like the standard machine gun tower, or the flamethrower and Tesla coil, all with different attributes and properties. Each tower can be upgraded twice, granting improved abilities and range.

The controls for the game are simplistic and easy to master. The left analogue stick controls the cursor, the “A” button selects which tiles to build on and the right stick controls the zoom of camera. Interestingly, the triggers control a satellite AOE attack.
Defense Grid: The Awakening isn’t a bad game by any means. But it is boring. Everything presented in it has a been-there-done-that feel. This is probably due to the fact that tower defense games have been around as long as people have been able to play custom games, thanks to Blizzard’s Battle.net.

If the game had some sort of personality other than its emotionally unstable computer narrator it would be worth playing. That being said, playing Defense Grid is like eating saltine crackers. It’s completely doable but there are other things that are more interesting and more satisfying to do.

Not even on the on the half shell: TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-shelled

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had a long video game history. Their gaming legacy started with the arcade cabinets to the NES and so on to the Wii release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up in late September. It’s only natural that one of the classic side-scrolling beat’em ups from decades past is remade, which it has. The game is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-shelled, a downloadable game that’s a throwback to the reptilian quartet’s 1991 video game TMNT: Turtles in Time.

Like the original, Re-shelled our four heroes are tasked with saving New York yet again from the vise-like grip of Shredder. Players will pick their favorite turtle and button mash their through the rather short levels until they reach the boss. Once players negotiate the boss’ demise they are thrust into another level. Rinse and repeat until credits roll.

A huge improvement for Re-shelled has over the original is the graphics. Re-shelled has colorful 3-D models of the four turtles and their enemies on top of an equally colorful world as opposed to the original’s 16-bit era sprites. Unfortunately, the graphics of the game are the high point while everything else falls into monotony.

There are three modes for Re-shelled: single player, survival, and quick play along with a multiplayer option for each. Each mode is very similar because they all work off of the story-driven single player. So, if you beat the single player, which takes about two hours, you’ve seen the entire game. A plus is that there are difficulty settings for ranging from easy to hardcore. But it’s evident that this is your little brother’s TMNT game because none of the four difficulties are very hard. The difference being that on the harder difficulties the enemies are more numerous instead of more aggressive.

The enemies in Re-shelled are dumb. How dumb? Let’s just say the foot clan ninjas make the hordes of endless baddies in the Dynasty Warriors franchise look smart. Like the original, enemy ninjas, robots, and golems come in a rainbow of colors each with a different attack and weapon than the last. Problem is the melee enemies are easily wiped out while the ranged opponents pose the most threat–the word threat is used loosely in this review. On top of the lackluster henchmen are the equally lackluster bosses. The same rules apply for these fights as it did back in the ‘90s: mash thumbs into controller until boss is defeated.

Another semishinny spot in Re-shelled are the controls. The basic attack and jump are still around just like the all-powerful jump attack that sends the turtles barreling across the stage. An addition to this tried-and-tested routine is the special attack that knocks back encroaching enemies and a momentum-based dash attack. This is handy and needed improvement to the game play but is held back due to odd design decisions.

First of which is there is no jump special attack. This may sound like nitpicking, but when a game already has a jump attack it’s not a huge logical jump to apply the same rules to a new feature. Another problem is the unused fourth button on the controller. As interesting as these new attacks are it doesn’t make any sense to not add something, anything, to a fourth face button. Especially since the dash attack requires your turtle to build up a running start, something you don’t often get when you’re swarmed with ninjas bent on your untimely end. This attack could’ve easily been mapped to the last face button that would’ve made it more useful.

Time has not been kind to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. And Re-shelled serves as the perfect example of why some games should stay buried in the past

She’s not too fat for me: Fat Princess Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

For too long video game developers have pushed the twig-sized princess down gamers’ throats reinforcing that the super-skinny-princess-peach size is beautiful. These games perpetuate the idea that a young adventurer will rescue a princess using drastic measures like Link saving Hyrul’s diet-pill-popping Zelda. Gamers are finally exposed to a princess worth saving because of her charm, wit and shapely curves instead of a size-zero-featherweight figure, in Titan Studios’ Fat Princess.

Fat Princess is a top-down ‘capture the flag’, or in this case, capture-a-hefty-member-of-the-royal-family, game. Players take up the mantle of a villager turned army recruit who fights to save their princess from the other team. Players are able to choose from five different classes, mage, warrior, ranger, priest and worker; each of which is upgradable with different abilities. The game offers the expected capture the flag along with control point and team deathmatch maps that are available in both single and multiplayer. A twist to this style of game is in addition to fighting; players will need to bring back pieces of cake from the battlefield to throw down the food hole of their captive princess to make her harder to carry away, which is one of the game’s few defense measures.

The game mechanics for the characters are basic. Either you hold the attack button for an area-effect spell or tap for normal assaults. Once a team collects enough materials upgrades and siege weapons can be purchased to give your team the edge in battle. Although there are few upgrades and siege weapons, roughly nine in all, they play differently from each other and add a level of variety and strategy to the game.

The single player tells the legend of the fat princess. The story is a short seven chapters that explains how beloved lady of the kingdom became so large. Each chapter is a different style of level and serves as a decent tutorial of how the game and maps work. The single-player mode, being what it is, takes about an hour to two to beat but is worth the time to play because the story is pretty entertaining and gets you ready for multiplayer.

The multiplayer is where the meat of the game lies. Up to 32 players can be in a single game. A plus for Fat Princess is bots will fill player-vacant spots so players will never be in a game with less than a full team. But Fat Princess is not without its flaws. The two most prominent are the lag and the connection problems. Connecting to an online match can take longer than it does to actually play a round. And once you connect you may experience some major lag problems or a game that is filled with more bots, which aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, than actual players. Titan Studios has already issued a patch regarding the connection and lag problems to Sony for testing that will hopefully fix these annoying issues.

Once players connect to a match they will find a game that is thick with internet humor. From the moment players boot-up the game players will be bombarded with tips sporting the G.I. Joe catch phrase “knowing is half the battle” and the game announcer shouting that the other team is in your base killing your dudes or that you’re being ganked while your character shouts things like “noob” and “it’s a good day to die.” These small touches add a lot of humorous atmosphere the game making it a laugh to play.

Overall, Fat Princess is an entertaining experience. It’s not groundbreaking like Team Fortress 2, but it’s close. Think of it like Chili’s or TGI Fridays. You go for the atmosphere, the cheap drinks and to hang out with friends.The food, or in this case the actual game, is just a plus.

More man hugging than wrestling, UFC 2009: Undisputed Review

If you don’t know what mixed martial arts is then you must have been living under a rock or on a desert island for the last couple of years. UFC 2009: Undisputed is one of the rare MMA games on the market and the only one for the next-gen consoles. If you’re a fan of the sport then prepare to dig in.

First the bad news, UFC 2009 isn’t the most graphically pleasing game out there. In the career mode the opening cut scene looks like it’s something that should be on the playstation 2 and not your 1080p, next-gen console. In fact, everything but the fighters has a grainy look with bad animations and voiceover. But you’re not really playing UFC 2009 for that.

The fighters on the other hand, show an impressive amount of damage when you pummel them repeatedly. fighters will have gaping wounds open on the face as blood splatters the floor of the octagon. Close ups of the damage are given during the rest period between matches so you can enjoy the bloody mess you’ve made.

Like most sports games, the controls of UFC 2009 are going to favor those who enjoy watching the sport. If you don’t know the differences between a fighter using boxing and Judo and one using Muy thai and Brazilian Jui jujitsu then you’re going have to spend a lot of time playing catch-up while being knocked around. After you learn how to play the game, the amount of control you’re given is impressive due to the versatility in each of the types of fighting and the transitions between the different positions.

Another problem is the computer controlled fighters. The difficulty seems to be at polar opposites, meaning that an opponent will be ridiculously difficult or absurdly easy. In one fight, I exploited Shogun Rua’s kicks to take out Chuck Lidell in the first round before he even had a chance to block. In another, I was put into a submission hold right after the round started. These balancing issues can leave you wondering what exactly went wrong when one moment you’re winning and the next you’re face down on the floor.

The best feature of UFC 2009 is the career mode where you take a greenhorn fighter through the ranks. The character development is surprisingly deep, allowing for you to customize every aspect of your fighter from standing defense to takedown offense. This is done by training in the gym where you hone your skills and boost various attributes.

Included in the game is the Classic Fights mode where you can relive some of the sports most memorable fights. Didn’t like the outcome of the Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell fight? UFC 2009 will challenge you to see if you can do any better.

Of course, there is the multiplayer. This is where the game starts to fall apart again. Online matches have a terrible lag problem and the victor is usually the one who has the better connection instead of more skill.

UFC 2009 Undisputed is an authentic mixed martial arts experience right out of Spike TV. If you’re a fan of the sport, then your choice is already made up and you probably already own the game and it should be a good series to look forward to. If you’re not a fan, it’s interesting to see what all the hype is about.

Fight Night Round 4, Worth the Wait

It’s been six years since EA Sports released Fight Night Round 3 and six years since the video game industry has seen a triple “A” boxing game. The anticipation for Fight Night Round 4 has steadily increased and was topped off at E3 when EA announced that the game would be available a week in advance. The anticipation for Fight Night Round 4 is well deserved because it’s an amazing game worthy of the hype.

One of the biggest improvements to the game is the addition of legacy mode. Legacy mode lets you take a boxer through the ranks starting from amateur fights and progressing to professional title matches. When you’re not fighting in the ring, players are tasked with setting up the next bout and training to make sure their boxer is in top physical condition.

This is one of the few downfalls with Fight Night Round 4. When playing Legacy mode, the majority of the time is spent with the calendar dealing with rest periods and scheduling the next fight than actually training, which takes a back seat to everything else in legacy mode. When you get to train your boxer, you go through the motions with punching bags or a sparring partner. These mini games give you a break from the fighting and serve as last minute adjustments of your boxer’s stats. But you don’t get a chance to play these mini games or adjust your stats often enough.

Another improvement to this year’s Fight Night is the punching controls mapped to the right analog stick. Punches are thrown by flicking or rotating the analog stick in the direction of the target, either head or body, while punch strength is changed by holding down certain buttons. If you’ve played Skate or Skate 2 it feels very familiar and you’ll experience the same sort of precession control.

A bitter-sweet feature of the game is the online play. When you find and connect to a match, the game is almost lag free and flawless. The short coming is you’ll spend a lot of time trying to connect to a match. While you’re waiting for a potential match to connect you’ll have the ESPN radio and news ticker so you can stay up to date on the latest sports events without needing to leave your console—because everyone knows food and human contact are over rated. These small features don’t add anything to the game play but add a nice atmosphere to the game.

The crown jewel of this already amazing game is the graphics. The character models and speed and of the game are superb and EA Sports, if nothing else, should be very proud of the way this game looks. During fights, the character models show muscle tension, blood and sweat in excellent detail that reach a high point when you score a blow that sends your opponent to the canvas beneath his feet.

After knocking someone out, the game enters a replay of the hit, showing you a close up of the blow. These replays show the impact of the gloved hand hitting the face and the ripple of muscle, bone and pain before the fighter struggles to their feet.

Howard Cosell said that “boxing is drama on the grandest scale.” Fight Night Round 4 has taken that concept and put it, as much as possible, into a video game. Fight Night isn’t for everyone, like most sports or fighting games, but it’s a stunning game.