Games Cheats and Reviews

Grading Lego Harry Potter is difficult. It’s simultaneously the best and the buggiest Lego console game for various reasons. To the game’s credit, Harry’s magical world fits superbly with the series and grants the Lego formula some very welcome refreshment. But it’s also a dishearteningly frequent perpetrator of bugs, glitches, and, shockingly, what seems like sloppiness; though expertly polished over all, in specific instances, the game just seems like a downright rush job.

LHP takes one of the best additions to Lego Indiana Jones 2 — the seamless co-op splitscreen feature, which smoothly splits the screen into two parts when the players separate and joins the screen again when the players reunite — and puts it to good use in terms of level design. But this is where things get sloppy: The game’s camera angles don’t always seem calibrated properly for co-op play, an arguably integral part of the Lego console games’ appeal. Oftentimes, I found my co-op partner and myself either at opposite edges of the level, or at opposite edges of the screen, while still being close enough to one another that the splitscreen effect hasn’t activated. And in those cases, I frequently encountered difficulty seeing my own character, or the in-game object my character was trying to manipulate. At times, key items can be obscured from view or, frustratingly, be put out of reach, depending on where both characters are standing at the time.

Game compilations run the gamut from lavish affairs crammed with bonus content and a suite of options to cheap, barely-functional shovelware. Capcom’s Mega Man Zero Collection holds the middle ground between those extremes. It’s a bare-bones anthology to be sure, consisting of four Game Boy Advance games with few bells and whistles. On the other hand, the included titles play perfectly, and they’re excellent games to begin with.

Among the few additions MMZC offers over the standalone games, the most important is the option to play through the entire series in sequence. The Zero games remain the most story-driven niche of the entire Mega Man franchise, picking up a century after the Mega Man X series and ultimately building to a very conclusive finale that brings unambiguous closure to the tales of heroes X and Zero.

RayStorm HD is about as quick and dirty as a port can get. At 1200 Microsoft Points, the only real additions to the PlayStation classic are a new ship, online leaderboards and marginally improved visuals. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t cut it, especially given that RayStorm hasn’t even held up that well over the years.

The original RayStorm was a decent shooter with a gimmick that fit in nicely during the original PlayStation era — rather than being able to shoot everything with a single gun, enemies on the ground had to be targeted and destroyed with a special lock-on system. With polygonal foes moving constantly between the two planes, RayStorm attained the illusion of depth.

Opening paragraph: "With the new year, as expected you can count on Koei to release yet another game in the Warriors series. This time they are doing it with a port of Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce, originally developed for the PSP. With the game being a direct port with only minor changes and additions you can take a guess at how the game is going to play out on current generation consoles."

IncGamers’ Tim McDonald checks out recent job postings and Halo: Reach news, and comes to the conclusion that Bungie has something special planned for the multiplayer.

From the column: "Much as ODST’s new multiplayer options were a little stunted in comparison to the huge additions made in Halo 3, it’s not a fair comparison as that was originally intended to be little more than an expansion pack. With Halo: Reach being the next big thing, I daresay we’re going to see vast improvements, and while there’s little in the way of official word there are enough clues that we can take some educated guesses."

Now we get a chance to see what the inventory system and health bars will look like.  These few additions make it look a lot like a particular princess saving game on another system.  No matter how you shake a pixel at it, this game is starting to look like an awesome homage to the great 8-bit days!  This game just can’t get here fast enough!

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

A playable demo for Lunar: Silver Star Harmony was recently released for the PlayStation Portable. You can download it from the PSP’s PlayStation Network, which will take about 210MB of memory. In the demo, you’ll get to see the enhanced graphics, animated cutscenes and play through a few battles in the RPG classic. Lunar: Silver Star Harmony is a refreshing return to the role-playing game, which also includes some additions to the story.

As a bonus for completing your first quest in the demo, you’ll get some bonus equipment for use in the full game. Upon completing the demo’s quest, you can create a save file that will store the "demo clear data." The game doesn’t say what the items are. Game publisher XSEED Games has only hinted that it is "bonus starting equipment."

"What exactly did Subsistence do right? Well, to start off, it included an improved camera and an online multiplayer mode. These two additions, coupled with the updated versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid 2, helped push Subsistence over the edge with longevity.

The addition of online gaming finally gave Metal Gear fans the ability to square off against their friends in capture-the-flag and deathmatch variations. The Metal Gear community responded positively and it was huge success for Kojima to introduce multiplayer to the previously single-player only franchise."

The PlayStation Network has conquered games, bringing high quality innovative titles to the PlayStation family, it has conquered movies, bringing high definition blockbuster titles at competitive prices, and now, the PSN is set to conquer the digital comics market. The Digital Comics Reader, a service that aims to bring everyone’s favourite comics to the PlayStation Portable, is set to be one of the hottest additions to the handheld this year. Now, the reader is being rolled out across different countries in the world as it’s store goes live today.

PlayStation LifeStyle writes:

"When you purchase a brand-new PlayStation 3, you are posed with one important question: "What do I buy with my new PS3?? Sony Computer Entertainment of America have made it easier for you to decide by releasing the perfect PS3 starter kit. The box even states that the contents of the bundle are "Perfect Additions for Your PS3 System"…"