When we last experienced the WWE on our PS3 and Xbox 360, we were left underwhelmed, unimpressed and unsure that THQ could revive its wrestling series. Long gone was the swagger that made the Smackdown vs. Raw series leap to the top of the fighting-game genre. Nowhere to be found was our compulsion to do anything other than queue up entry sequences so we could listen to the music. But this year THQ worked some magic. Not only did the company go back to the drawing board to a certain degree -- a bold move for any storied franchise -- but it …
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Movie-based games have a bad reputation, but with good reason: they almost always stink. The Chronicles of Riddick is among the few exceptions, but from out of nowhere this fall Ubisoft has delivered the most surprising, unassuming second exception to this Rule of Suckage: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. OK, so the movie itself isn't Gone With the Wind, and in fact neither is the game. But if you step back and judge it as a children's game (which is what it really is) and evaluate its merit as a vehicle for delivering movie interaction, …
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The Beatles: Rock Band does absolutely everything it needed to as a game, both to live up to all of its 9/9/09 release-date hype and to open the vast (and vastly impressive) Beatles song catalogue to a new generation of would-be musicians. In terms of the hype, The Beatles: Rock Band delivers with creative graphics, undeniable style and gameplay tweaks that justify the curiosity of even the most-jaded Rock Band fans. As a generation-spanning vehicle, the game also makes its gameplay so approachable that it's impossible to deny any player the …
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Things seemed to be going well in the firehouse where Ecto 1 was housed along with the four classic Ghostbusters -- Ray, Peter, Egon and Winston -- but then that green blob of ectoplasm named Slimer decided to break out of his display case and start running amok. And who better to catch the omnipresent omnivore but the new guy who just joined the Ghostbusters? That being you, the player, also known simply as Rookie or New Guy. Ghostbusters: The Video Game -- along with the Blu-ray Disc release of the first feature film -- has brought the famed …
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Activision has a surprisingly good track record with movie-based games, even though the industry average for such tie-ins is abysmally low. So with Monsters vs. Aliens, one of the standout animated films of 2009, the stakes were high for the company to uphold its track record or risk tarnishing a film that topped the box office longer than expected. Fortunately, the company delivers with Monsters vs. Aliens the video game, particularly for households with families whose kids fell in love with the film during its box office run. Like most …
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It seems like a long time since we've seen an original Spider-Man game, but in reality, it's just been a year. When you think of Spider-Man games, the movie-based ones come first to mind, although Friend or Foe released last year, and this fall saw the release of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. Somehow, Web of Shadows seems more original even than Friend or Foe. Maybe it's the RPG elements. Maybe it's the new acrobatic gameplay. Heck, maybe it's just the lack of good voice actors (yes, this game's are absolutely horrid). Regardless, Spider-Man: Web …
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The Guitar Hero franchise is back, and this time it's brought along other, um, heroes. The game has finally gone the full band route, taking a cue from Rock Band, which last year took its own cue from Guitar Hero, which before that took a cue from actual musicians. Progress is wonderful. Developer Neversoft has really gone out of its way to add a lot of bells and whistles to Guitar Hero World Tour. In addition to the new instruments, there are several music creation modes and a meaty online experience. But we can get to that in a bit. How does …
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