Naruto

Naruto Uzumaki, ninja-in-training and container of the nine-tailed demon fox, brawls his way through countless ninjas, bandits, monkeys, and more in Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles for the PlayStation 2. There have been a number of straight one-on-one Naruto fighting games released in the US over the past few years, so this single-player action game, which usually pits you against a number of enemies at once, is a nice change of pace. The combat is accessible enough, and the game's unique skill-customization system can appeal to one's obsessive tendencies. A lack of variety both in the missions you take on and the actual combat, though, hurt the game's broader appeal.

There's no shortage of generic-looking ninjas to beat the snot out of in Uzumaki Chronicles.

Uzumaki Chronicles sees Naruto and his fellow Leaf Ninja trainees having their skills tested with more-serious missions as the more experienced ninjas of Leaf Village find themselves busy with the threat of invaders. The setup is quick and dirty, rightfully assuming that the player is already familiar with the characters and settings. The game features a nonlinear mission structure, allowing you to choose from a number of available missions at your base of operations in Leaf Village before heading out into the overworld. Your travels across the land are presented with a large static map like you'd expect to see in a traditional Japanese RPG. Also like in a traditional Japanese RPG, you'll have random encounters with a variety of villains while traveling across the overworld, and you'll have to clear the area of enemies before you can continue on your mission. The missions are often self-contained tasks, such as delivering supplies, foiling bands of thieves, helping a local shopkeeper, and training even younger, less experienced ninjas. They can occasionally seem kind of petty, but there's some good variety between the individual plots. When you get down to it, though, you'll regularly find yourself surrounded by enemies and forced to clear the area, just like in the random encounters, and it gets old well before the six or so hours it should take you to get to the end.
At its core, Uzumaki Chronicles is a pretty straightforward brawler, giving you two hand-to-hand attacks that can be strung into combos, the ability to use ranged weapons like kunai, shuriken, and firebombs, and the ability to jump. Your special abilities, or "jutsu," are what make the combat exciting. You can hold R1 to charge up the shadow clone jutsu, which unleashes several autonomous Naruto clones who will attack targeted or nearby enemies. R2 produces the power strike, an energy attack that launches you forward, and holding both R1 and R2 simultaneously activates the sexy jutsu, which temporarily turns you into a bikini-clad girl, a technique more distracting than damaging. You have a special meter that builds up while you fight, and once it's filled you can activate it to tap into some of the power of the nine-tailed demon fox, which makes Naruto incredibly powerful and nigh-invincible for a short time. Specific missions will allow you to bring along additional characters that you can tag into battle for a short period of time by tapping the R2 button, and though the controls are roughly the same, these support characters can have pretty wildly different abilities from Naruto. Still, Naruto's skill set is pretty limited and doesn't change enough over the course of the game. All the fights start seeming the same before long, causing the action to grow stale.
Probably the most intriguing aspect of the game is the skill plate system, which lets you augment Naruto's innate abilities. As you beat down enemies, you'll pick up health- and stamina-replenishing items, ranged weapons, as well as virtue orbs. These orbs can be spent like cash to increase your health and your stamina, and can also be spent on skill chips, which come in a variety of polygonal shapes. Skill chips can have a range of effects, from improving your resistance to certain attacks to increasing the number of clones that appear when you use the shadow clone jutsu. To use the skill chips, you'll have to arrange them on your skill plate, which itself is imprinted with a unique pattern. Since skill chips can only fit within this pattern, it limits the number and types of chips you can use at one time, and it's not hard to spend a lot of time rearranging skill chips to try and cram in as many as you can. Typically speaking, the more powerful skill chips are larger and come in more obtuse shapes, making them harder to arrange on your skill plate. You'll also get bigger, more involved skill plates as you progress. The skill plate system is a little more convoluted than it ought to be, with too much awkward menu navigation, but the meta-puzzle-game aspect of it makes it fun to play around with, and when used correctly it can make Naruto a much more potent fighter.

Playing with the skill plate can be more interesting and challenging than the actual combat.

Naruto isn't a terribly attractive game. Naruto and his pals definitely resemble their anime and manga counterparts, but they look flat and lack detail, having looked much more impressive in past Naruto games. The environments where the action takes place are small and plain-looking. There aren't many of them, either, so you'll see the same few over and over again. The sound design, while not impressive, is at least authentic, with plenty of original voice work from the American anime cast and background music that matches the vaguely feudal Japanese feel of Naruto.
Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles isn't an aggressively bad game, but there's just something rather bland and generic feeling about a lot of it. It's just not interesting enough to warrant attention from anyone not already devoted to the Naruto franchise. It offers something a bit different from the past few Naruto games released in the US, but even devotees have seen Naruto games with better production values


Naruto Ultimate Ninja Heroes (188.95 MB)

Jackass

With over five years having passed since Jackass went off the air, releasing Jackass: The Game on the PlayStation 2 in late 2007 might seem like bad timing. Indeed, this minigame collection with a grimy coating of gross-out humor, gleeful sadomasochism, and calculated bad decisions would've felt much more essential had it been released nearer to the run of the show or the theatrical release of one of the Jackass movies. It might feel a little mercenary, and the minigames don't break any new ground, but for those who have maintained a fondness for that special blend of shopping carts, hilarious underwear choices, and vomit, Jackass: The Game does a good job of capturing the spirit of the show.

Legally speaking, it wouldn't be Jackass without chronic misuse of shopping carts.

Setting itself up as a kind of lost fourth season of the show, Jackass: The Game puts you in charge after regular Jackass director and accomplice Jeff Tremaine is dealt some very personal bodily harm during an impromptu stunt gone awry. The season consists of seven episodes, and for each episode you'll have to produce five stunts, which you'll play through in a series of minigames. There are a few short cutscenes showcasing the Jackass boys' juvenile tendencies interspersed throughout the season, but most of the game's personality comes through in the actual gameplay.
Staying true to the source material, the stunts here can range from complicated, big-budget gestures of stupidity, such as destroying a suburban home by playing golf with hand grenades, right down to the simple joy of repeatedly kicking your friends in the crotch. Some are ripped almost verbatim from the show, such as the gag-reflexive "egg gulp" stunt, the rhythm-based Party Boy stunt, and the "wee tattoo" stunt that tests your ability to draw a tattoo on an unstable target. Others turn down the Jackass and turn up the Tony Hawk, allowing for stunts that, in real life, would end up involving the police and next-of-kin, such as the "pachinko precipice" stunt that has you flinging a Jackass down a rocky cliff in an attempt to rack up as huge a hospital bill as possible.
As with any minigame collection, there are some that you'll play once and never want to play again, while others will keep you coming back time and again. Jackass is at its best when it's simple and gross, which, luckily, is most of the time. The game never even bothers to explain the controls for any of its stunts, instead just tossing you in and hoping for the best. With rare exception, it's all you need, partially because they're intuitive, and partially because a number of them have simply been lifted from another game and grossed up a bit.
The game gets a good amount of mileage out of its stunts by giving you a number of objectives within each of them. Sometimes they're just tiered, score-based objectives, though often they're diametrically opposed to one another, requiring you to approach the stunts in radically different ways in order to complete them. Still, even if you work to complete every last objective, which you don't need to actually finish the season, the whole thing shouldn't take but a couple of hours. Outside of the season you can play the challenge mode, where the objectives are generally harder and you can earn cash to unlock extras like props, character models, and clips from the show. There's also some multiplayer options, including round-robin and random round-robin, as well as the provocatively named "ass-to-ass" mode that lets two players go at it in a small selection of stunts. The multiplayer options are a little spartan, and you get the sense that they shaped the modes to accommodate the stunts they had, instead of making the stunts with multiplayer in mind in the first place.

A game of rock-paper-scissors gets physical.

The visuals are stripped down, too, though the ugly, bland, back-alley locations actually end up helping the game look more like the show. Nearly the entire cast of Jackass regulars, minus skater-turned-reality-TV-star Bam Margera, are in here, and while their likenesses are generally bang-on, all of their voice clips sound stiff and stagey, which goes against the unscripted, casual feel of the show. The soundtrack ends up being much more complementary, including noise from bands like the Anti-Nowhere League, the Circle Jerks, CKY, and Nashville Pussy.
Jackass was the ultimate example of "don't try this at home" television, making it fertile ground for a video game adaptation. Even though it's missing the schadenfreude element that permeated the show, Jackass: The Game has the right attitude, and it still manages to elicit the occasional chuckle with its sophomoric hijinks


JackAss (690.94 MB)

Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider steals liberally from several major action games, yet somehow avoids stealing the parts that made those games fun.

Just call it "Devil May Ghost Rider of War." Based ever-so-loosely on the same-named upcoming Nic Cage movie (which, in turn, is based on the popular Marvel comic book), Ghost Rider isn't just inspired by such great action franchises as God of War and Devil May Cry, it practically robs those games blind of every gameplay mechanic it can get its grubby, demonic hands on. And yet, somehow, some way, despite the incredible pedigrees the developers were lifting from, Ghost Rider is completely bereft of the elements that made those games so much fun. It is a hollow, monotonous shell of those games, completely soulless in its execution and devoid of any unique or interesting qualities, much less any fun. Suffice it to say, no matter how much of an affinity you have for the titular hero, this game is not for you.

How in the heck do you make a game about a dude with a flaming skull for a head so incredibly boring?!?

Ghost Rider purportedly features a storyline penned by Marvel writers Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti, but the story feels less like a fully fleshed-out piece of comic fiction and more like leftover table scraps. The story doesn't even do a good job of tying in to the movie. It's told through some comic-paned cutscenes that feature just-different-enough-to-not- quite-look-like-real-actors drawings of all the major characters from the movie. A soundalike of Sam Elliott (apparently channeling his Big Lebowski character, with a spookier edge) narrates a few opening sequences just to get you up to speed, and eventually you figure out that the demon Mephisto needs Ghost Rider to head up to earth to stop his son, Blackheart, and his army of demons from getting their apocalypse on. It's a middling tale that's disjointed in its delivery and does a weak job of shoving in some familiar Marvel personalities (like Blade) just because it can. It also doesn't help that the audio mix on the cutscenes is so awful that you'll have to turn the volume on your TV way, way up just to hear what's going on, only to be brutally assaulted with the screechy in-game sound effects and soundtrack at much-too-high volume seconds later.
Once you settle into the gameplay, you'll find an unholy combination of God of War's whip-heavy combat and Devil May Cry's ranking system. The game is all about you killing Blackheart's demonic forces with as much style and variety as possible, and to its credit, it does provide a decent number of combos to work with. You start out with almost none, but then, through a direct rip of God of War's upgrade system (right down to the sound effect it uses to fill up your various upgradeable meters), you can use souls you've collected to buy new combos and up your abilities.
The problem, though, is that very few of the combos are actually worth using, and you get the most useful ones very early in the game. In fact, one combo in particular is so powerful, it kills just about any enemy in roughly three hits. All the other combos in the game tend to take much longer to fell any one foe, so there's not much incentive to ever use the other combos--except when the game forces you to. There are a couple of instances where enemies will pop up with shields that can only be broken by reaching a certain ranking on the combo meter. You can't build up your combo meter unless you throw in as much attack variety as possible, so you're arbitrarily forced to use as many different attacks as you can to eventually crack this shield. Trouble is, the meter fully resets any time you're hit, and enemies are just good enough at coming at you from offscreen and nailing you when you're not expecting it to make this whole process intensely frustrating.
Apart from this one particularly stupid element, very little of the remaining components of Ghost Rider are frustrating, mainly because the game's really easy. You fight the same onslaughts of the same generic demons over and over again, and they never change up their attack patterns in the slightest. Not to mention the one-size-fits-all combo that eliminates practically any bad guy in just a few hits. You'll blow through the game in just a few hours, but it'll take some fortitude to not become desperately bored an hour into the whole thing. The combat goes absolutely nowhere, and the enemies are so dull to look at and fight that you can't help but wish the developer had gone the extra mile and just lifted enemies right out of DMC or GOW, since at least they'd put up a more interesting fight. Level designs add to the sense of monotony, not just through their constantly drab and grainy graphics, but also because the game frequently forces you to backtrack through the same territory again and again.
Interspersed between the boring beat-'em-up levels are a number of motorcycle-riding sequences. These are pretty straightforward, sticking you on the Rider's flaming bike and tasking you with making it from point A to point B, all the while shooting away at bad guys that randomly pop up in your path. Periodically you'll need to get all Road Rash on them and swipe at some enemy bikers with your chains, or hop or slide your bike over or under some obstacle, but that's about it. The controls in these sequences are pretty loose, and there's even less variety to them than to the beat-'em-up portions of the game. And just like in the other levels, these sequences force you to backtrack frequently.
Ghost Rider is out for both the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, and while the core gameplay is identical between the two, other details are quite different. The main story mode is structured differently between the two. You play in a much smaller area in the PSP levels, and each time you clear a section of enemies, you walk into a checkpoint, which then spawns another crop of bad guys. In the PS2 version, you travel from stage to stage, just as you would in a typical action adventure game. The PSP version also has quite a bit more bonus content, including a challenge mode and a multiplayer mode. The challenge mode includes a few different race modes, some of which include rule variations like elimination races and a survival mode, where all the racers have a quickly diminishing life bar and must get to the checkpoints to replenish themselves. Of course, the races suffer from the same bad controls as the story mode driving sequences, and the few weapons you can use to mess with your opponents don't help matters. Still, you can play these same modes in multiplayer, both with multiple copies of the game or with game sharing. Clearly someone went to a lot of trouble to make the PSP version's features more interesting--too bad the underlying gameplay of these features wasn't made better.

The driving sequences would be pathetically easy if it weren't for the bad bike-handling controls.

The PSP and PS2 games look practically identical, too--so much so that you'd actually have to say the PSP version is more impressive looking, just because so little seems to have been lost in translation. Of course, that's less a compliment to the PSP game and more an extreme knock against the PS2 game, as neither could be considered good looking by any stretch of the imagination. The graphics are terribly grainy and the level designs so blurry and ugly that they just become hard to look at after a while. Ghost Rider's been given a few stylish attack animations here and there, but none of it's all that impressive. The enemy designs are particularly lame; these generic bad guys could have been plucked from any bargain-basement action game, and couldn't be any less intimidating looking if they wore white sheets, rattled bike chains, and said "boo" a lot. On top of everything else, the camera and frame rate can't even hold up their end of the bargain. The frame rate chunks up badly in a number of seemingly random spots, and the camera tries to go for the whole God of War, fixed-angle thing, but it frequently kills your ability to properly see where enemies reside. The only control you have over it is to snap it behind you.
Though it's hard to be shocked these days when a movie-licensed game isn't quite up to snuff, Ghost Rider is legitimately surprising in just how poor a game it is. That it goes so far out of its way to usurp qualities from multiple major action adventure franchises, then proceeds to trot out the dullest, blandest beat-'em-up possible with those lifted mechanics is mind-boggling. Fans of the comic will be depressed with how poorly their favorite hero is utilized here, and fans of action adventure games won't be able to shake the feeling that they're playing a bad bootleg of games they've already played before. Indeed, Ghost Rider is ultimately just another flaming corpse to toss on the pile of failed licensed action games

Ghost Rider (721.27 MB)

Final Fight round 3

The beat-'em-up is dead. Really, it's been dead ever since gaming went polygonal. Early 3D attempts like Fighting Force set the tone for games like Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance and Spikeout: Battle Street, making bad cameras and generic, boring action the new hallmarks of a genre that used to have no fewer than three stand-out games in it: Taito's Double Dragon, Sega's Streets of Rage, and Capcom's Final Fight. Fresh for 2006, Capcom has a new take on its series, the curse-filled fist-fest Final Fight: Streetwise. But all this game manages to do is further nail the genre's coffin closed, while sullying the good name of an arcade classic along the way.

Any game featuring Mike Haggar can't be all bad, can it?

Streetwise puts you in the role of Kyle Travers, younger brother of Final Fight's Cody. If you've been following Cody's story over the years, you remember that he appeared in Street Fighter Alpha 3 as a convict. Streetwise picks up on this and paints him as a released convict, which you'll notice only because he still wears his orange jail shirt. Anyway, Cody's old now, apparently, because he can't fight anymore. But Kyle can, and the game opens with you in the imaginatively named Fight Club, where you're beating the crap out of a guy in a makeshift ring. From there, the story sets off. Cody has gotten into something bad, and he's in way over his head. That "something" is the exciting new street drug, glow, which, just like liquid soul in Midway's NARC, is a horribly addictive substance that also happens to give users superhuman strength. Unlike liquid soul, though, it also makes glowing light shoot out of their eyes. As Kyle, you'll punch a lot of dudes in the face as you try to find Cody to get him out of this mess.
Final Fight: Streetwise attempts to deliver nonlinear action in a free-roaming environment. You'll always have a primary destination that will move the story along, but you'll also run into citizens in need of help who'll give you the occasional side mission. The side missions all seem to be fairly dumb, especially the ones that don't involve fighting. One is a slide puzzle. And in a couple of spots, you'll encounter people who won't help you out until you help exterminate the vermin in their shop. That means you'll get to run around and stomp on rats and cockroaches to an up-tempo ska beat. It's just stupid. Of course, the main objectives aren't much better. You go from one spot to the next, beating people up and triggering cutscenes. The dialogue and speech are almost universally awful and don't even work on an ironic level. They're just packed full of lame, gratuitous cursing. Not even the presence of the greatest video game mayor of all time can help save the pathetic story and objectives.
Of course, if the action were interesting, you'd probably be able to look past the busted story. But the fighting system is awfully basic, and most of your opponents will go down if you simply get in their face and slam on the weak attack button over and over again. They make up for their individual stupidity by often attacking you in quantities. In some spots you'll go up against around eight or 10 guys at once. But they don't all attack at the same time, and your attacks can (and will) hit multiple enemies in many cases, so the fighting is rarely challenging. The boss fights are a little more pattern-based, so you'll have to do some blocking and strategizing here, but not enough to pique your interest. As you play, you learn new moves and are given the opportunity to purchase more combos, but these are rarely useful, since the whole "pound one button until everyone around you is dead" tactic works even better if you spend your cash on increased attack damage.

Oh, wait, yes it most certainly can.

Streetwise takes place in a run-down city full of nondescript buildings. Of course, since the game is free-roaming to a certain extent, requiring you to find specific locations, the generic look of everything can be exasperating. Thankfully, a bright arrow appears next to your next destination, but getting there is still up to you. The character models are ugly during gameplay, though during some of the cutscenes they at least manage to have good facial animation. The game has an often-broken camera angle, especially in tight corridors. Getting pinned in a near corner by attack dogs is especially annoying, since you can barely see yourself, let alone the dogs. In addition to the aforementioned lame speech and dialogue, the rest of Final Fight doesn't sound much better. The licensed soundtrack is weak and often doesn't fit with the action, and the fight effects are pretty generic, too.
Adding to the insanity of this package is the original arcade game, which is available as an unlockable bonus. Despite a pretty good emulation of the arcade version appearing in Capcom's classic arcade compilation last year, the version in Streetwise isn't that version. It looks awful, runs at a ridiculously choppy frame rate and doesn't play well at all. In addition to that, there's also an arcade mode that focuses more intently on the weak fighting rather than the weak story. If you're a fan of the original, get Capcom's recent arcade game compilation and avert your eyes from this disaster of a game, especially if you hold any nostalgic feelings about the original game.


Fight Night Round 3 (499.32 MB)

Crash of the Titans

Ever since series creator Naughty Dog said goodbye to Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, the series has floundered. While the reasons for the inconsistent quality are myriad, one of the key problems has been an inability to establish a tone that is consistent and compelling on the part of the short parade of developers who've tried their hand at the series. There's just no signature Crash Bandicoot feel anymore, which has made for a trail of indistinct, forgettable games. Now Radical Entertainment is at the helm for Crash of the Titans, and though it's a solid effort--arguably better than the past few Crash games--it still kind of feels like Yet Another Mascot Platformer.

Can you imagine how often the word 'edgy' was bandied about during the design of Crash's sweet new arm tattoos?

Crash of the Titans doesn't overexert itself with its story, which is pretty boilerplate. After teaming up in 2004's Crash Twinsanity, Crash Bandicoot and his nemesis Dr. Neo Cortex are back at each other's throats at the beginning of Crash of the Titans. The game kicks off with Crash and friends relaxing at home, attempting to recycle butter, when the quaintly insane doctor shows up in a blimp to kidnap Coco and Aku-Aku. It's unclear how the kidnapping figures into his plan to take over the world with hulking, mutated monsters and seems like a force of habit more than anything else. Still, Radical manages to tuck some good humor into the proceedings, which, more often than not, is thanks to some strong readings from a cast of veteran voice actors.
A solid but predictable setup gives way to some solid but predictable platforming action. Although it's not as microscopically focused as the first three Crash games, the path you walk in Crash of the Titans is still pretty narrow. In terms of volume, there's not a great deal of actual platforming here nor is it terribly challenging, but a physics system that causes platforms to wobble precariously at least makes it interesting. There are also a number of hoverboard sequences wedged in there, which seem totally random both in terms of placement and length. There's certainly a greater focus on combat, and every level contains several sequences where you have to take out a large group of enemies before you can progress. As you defeat enemies and smash environmental objects, you'll pick up mojo orbs. These orbs can earn you ability upgrades and new moves, though the combat never gets more complicated than three- or four-button combos.
The big twist in Crash of the Titans comes from your ability to jack the giant freaks that Cortex has deployed against you. When you start wailing on one of these monstrosities, a star meter will appear over its head and begin to fill up as your attacks connect. Once full, you can hop onto the shoulders of the monster and ride it around, like some kind of fleshy tank. You'll find that there's a good variety to these monsters because they have wildly different suites of attacks, as well as their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. Certain monsters are impossible for Crash to successfully attack on his own, requiring you to jack another monster first. Having to daisy-chain a series of monster-jacks during boss fights represents some of the most satisfying action in Crash of the Titans.
The game does a pretty good job of introducing new monsters at regular intervals to keep you guessing, but once you've figured out the basic tactics necessary to jack all the different enemy types, it loses a lot of its steam. Crash of the Titans tries to compensate later on with larger numbers of enemies, though this can lead to frustrating moments where you're being pummeled from all sides and unable to defend yourself or retaliate. It should take about six or seven hours to play through Crash of the Titans on the default difficulty level. The game naturally tries to lure you back with hidden items and secondary goals that can earn you some unlockable extras, as well as a cooperative mode. But you'll probably have had your fill of double-jumping, hoverboarding, and monster-jacking by the time you reach the end the first time through.

Here's a fun fact that's totally made up: The working title for this game was 'Crash & Carry'.

Crash of the Titans offers pretty much the same experience on the Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 2. The Xbox 360 version is naturally the best-looking, with the cleanest textures, as well as the nicest lighting and particle effects. However, the motion-blur effects can get a little carried away on Crash, which have the odd effect of making him look prerendered, like he was in a Donkey Kong Country game. The Wii and PlayStation 2 versions are pretty comparable from a presentation perspective. However, the Wii version's particle effects look nicer, and it also looks better on an HDTV. Crash of the Titans shows some restraint when it comes to the Wii motion controls, which the game only really uses for performing some of the monsters' special attacks.
Radical has created a reasonably fun experience here that's frothy, intermittently funny, and a breeze to play. The big underlying problem with Crash of the Titans is that you could swap Crash out for any number of other cartoony platforming heroes and not really know the difference. Without much of a distinct style to call its own, it's hard to get too excited.


Crash Of The Titans (779.28 MB)

Grand Theft Auto Vice City

We're up to two Grand Theft Auto games on the PSP, and as of now, both have become PlayStation 2 games not terribly long after the handheld version's release. Vice City Stories, the most recently updated of the two, follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Additionally, much as was the case with Liberty City Stories' transition to the PS2, Vice City Stories loses a lot of its appeal when played on a console versus the PSP. Still, it's only $20, and if you don't own a PSP or just never got around to playing it upon its original release, this isn't a bad way to go if you absolutely, positively must get your GTA fix.

Return to the soft neon glow of Vice City in GTA: Vice City Stories.

Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980s and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a Scarface-inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the aftermath of a cocaine deal gone wrong, and subsequently ended up building a major criminal empire throughout the city. It was a bizarre, convoluted, and completely entertaining tale, filled with ridiculous and profane characters, as well as lots of biting satire on the most superficial of decades. Vice City Stories is, again, a prequel, taking place a couple of years prior to the original game. You play as Vic Vance, the brother of central Vice City character Lance Vance. Vic's a strange fellow. When the game begins, he's just joined the army, and he gets off the transport truck at a military base in Vice City. Upon meeting his commanding officer--a borderline psychotic named Jerry Martinez--things start going wrong. We find out that Vic has joined the military to make some money to support his family, specifically his sick brother. But within the first few minutes of the game, you'll find yourself inexplicably picking up drugs for Martinez, killing Mexican gang members, and chauffeuring prostitutes.
Of course, any veteran of this series won't be shocked one bit by missions like these. The trouble here is that the setup for getting Vic into this mess is beyond flimsy. From the get-go, Vic talks about how uncomfortable he is with illegal activities, and yet he does every single illicit thing Martinez asks him to do. If you're someone who doesn't want to do anything illegal, and your boss starts asking you to pick up hookers and hide drugs for him, are you going to just gripe about it and then do it anyway? Not to mention that Vic seems completely willing to run into an apartment complex and start wasting Mexicans without even being ordered specifically to do so. He just says, "I'll go get it" (referring to owed money stashed inside one of the apartments) and goes in guns blazing. GTA heroes are never heroes, exactly, but the trick in the past has been that there's been no attempt to play those characters up as sympathetic. They weren't boy scouts--they were gangsters, killers, and dope dealers. Vice City Stories tries to present Vic as a guy who doesn't want to get into that stuff, yet he freely and frequently does throughout the entire game. He mostly comes off as a hypocritical idiot.
For what it's worth, though, once you get through about the first hour of the game, you'll probably be inclined to stop questioning why Vic is doing what he's doing and just go with it. As time passes, the game settles into the typical progression of GTA missions and oddball characters. While Liberty City Stories was almost devoid of memorable characters, Vice City Stories digs up a few favorites from the original Vice City, and introduces a couple of new ones as well. Vic's mildly crazy brother Lance, the alcoholic gun nut Phil Cassidy, the balls-obsessed Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina, and the foul-mouthed Ricardo Diaz (voiced by Phillip Michael Thomas, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, and Luis Guzman, respectively) are all back. Lance plays a huge role in the story, but the others aren't quite as prominently featured as they were in the first game. Still, you get a good chunk of time with each of them.
Functionally, Vice City Stories plays very much as Liberty City Stories did on the PS2, return of the right analog stick camera control and all. When running around and shooting people, you simply press the R1 button to lock onto an enemy. Occasionally the game will lock onto random civilians, as opposed to the guy with the submachine gun blowing a hole in your head, but usually it's pretty good about identifying exactly whom you should be killing.
Mostly, though, the combat is quite fun. Running around causing mayhem and blasting away at the masses is just as enjoyable as it's ever been, and there's a good variety of guns and other instruments of destruction to play with. The one part that isn't so good, unfortunately, is the melee combat. Basic fisticuffs and blunt-object beatings are merely a bit clunky, but if you try to get yourself into a fight while holding a gun at close range to someone punching you in the face, you'll lose every time, unless you run a good distance away, turn back, and start firing. For some reason, the game just can't deal with aiming mechanics while you're face-to-face with an enemy; you're basically hosed.

It's hard to feel too sympathetic to Vic Vance, since he seems incapable of keeping himself out of trouble, despite the fact that he whines about it at every turn.

Vice City is a sizable open-world environment and driving around it can be a bit overwhelming at first. Odds are that unless you've had the original Vice City regularly inserted in your PS2 for the last couple of years, you won't remember too much of the city's layout. But even though it'll take a while to figure out all the roads and side streets, there's plenty of familiar scenery and landmarks that appear just about where you remember them. The game's minimap is about as useful as it's ever been in depicting where you are, and there is a larger map to check on in the pause menu. Still, it feels a bit antiquated, especially considering evolutions we've seen in recent games of this type, where the best possible paths for a mission are highlighted on the map. Heck, even an arrow pointer telling you where to turn would be nice.
Driving in the game is pretty much as it's been for years now. The vehicle physics are perhaps a bit more exaggerated than they were in Liberty City Stories, and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's extremely easy to spin out while taking turns in many of the game's cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but at the same time, some of the jumps and ridiculous crashes you can have make those wacked-out physics worthwhile. You will run into weird physics glitches from time to time, and you'll sometimes get stuck in pieces of the scenery. These issues aren't exactly new to the series, but they're as annoying as ever. In addition to cars and bikes, helicopters make their return in Vice City Stories, and they're among some of the most enjoyable vehicles in the game. The flying controls are easy to handle, and flying around the city is often much quicker than trying to drive it.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories (370 MB)

TwistedMetal Head On

Twisted Metal: Head On has plenty to offer for fans of the series and anyone with an interest in vehicular carnage. <br/>

Twisted Metal: Head-On for the PSP was considered to be the sequel to Twisted Metal 2 that had never been, and one of the best gaming options available at the portable system's launch. Forget about that other Twisted Metal 3; Head On expanded upon some ideas from the original games, refined a few others, and blew the dust from some fun that had been missing from the series for quite a while. So, the question is: What does Twisted Metal Head On: Extra Twisted Edition bring to the PlayStation 2 other than a port of a two-year-old game built for lesser hardware?
That question is answered with the amount of bonus content packed onto the disc. In addition to an enhanced version of Head On, you also get three new levels from the heretofore-unknown sequel to Twisted Metal: Black, as well as an on-foot section called the Sweet Tour that puts you in Sweet Tooth's oversized boots for a little trivia and concept-art treasure hunting. And if that still isn't enough bang for your buck, you'll also get a documentary called Twisted Metal: The Dark Past, scrapped ending movies from the first PlayStation game, and an all-new Transylvania level.

The PS2 game looks and controls better than the PSP original.

However, the core of the package is still Head On, and the gameplay is classic Twisted Metal at its finest. For those who have played the game in its original incarnation, this version is certainly an improvement. It really does feel as if it was made for the PS2; the loose control afforded by the analog nub on the portable version is just a bad memory. All of the special attacks, such as freeze, shields, invisibility, and so on, are easier to pull off without having to quickly switch to the D pad (although that is still an option).
Going from Head On to Lost Levels isn't much of a change aside from the different theme, but if you've played Twisted Metal: Black anytime recently, it might feel a little strange at first because there are some subtle differences in the color-coding system used for weapons and power-ups. The Lost Levels themselves are well designed. The first level, called Suburban Terror, is a strip mall combined with some expansive suburban roadway, and the highlights are a movie theater and bowling alley for you to tear asunder. The second level, Stadium Slaughter, is a large motocross arena surrounded on the outside by some highway overpasses. The real highlight is the third level, Carnival of Darkness, which is a large amusement park. This level has showstoppers that include a huge roller-coaster track that you can fight it out on, as well as a water ride complete with a giant skull that has eye sockets that serve as a set of ramps.
There are a few hidden characters and secrets within as well. For example, the all-new 12-Pak is a headless horseman type who rolls in a modified stock car. There are no game endings to speak of in Lost Levels, and the only story you're going to find is the small paragraph available on the character-select screen. The other supposedly new vehicle isn't really new at all: It's Gold Tooth, a gold-plated and much more powerful version of your standard Sweet Tooth. Of special note is a supposed letter from beyond the grave written by some mysterious game developers. You can read portions of it upon completing the Lost Levels. Ultimately, to read the whole letter, you must beat the three levels on the hard difficulty setting, at which point you'll be pointed back to Head On to uncover the rest of the big reveal.

Stop me and buy one.

Twisted Metal Head On: Extra Twisted Edition's multiplayer offerings on the PS2 are a step backward for the series. The PSP version of Head On included both ad-hoc and online support for up to six players to compete in a variety of deathmatch settings. The network play has been stripped from Head On, but you are still left with the series' staple split-screen mode, in which you can play a co-op game with a friend, or challenge your opponent to a head-to-head deathmatch. In light of Twisted Metal: Black Online, it's hard not to wonder why no online mode was included in this package.
Visually the Extra Twisted Edition is inconsistent, considering that it consists of many completely different parts. Head On represents a step up from the PSP version, but still falls below the bar on the PS2. That is not to say that it looks overtly bad, just that it's very basic in terms of geometry. Lost Levels looks better than Head On, but it's also a lot darker than it needs to be. It should be noted that Twisted Metal: Black had a brightness tweak in the option menu because it was difficult to see on some TVs, but that option is not available here. The frame rate is solid in both, with the exception of a small hitch in Head On when the next song in the soundtrack is queued. The music is also in keeping with what has appeared in previous Twisted Metal offerings: mostly guitar rock and techno in Head On, and frantic industrial tunes in Lost Levels.
The Lost Levels, Sweet Tour, series documentary, and slew of bonuses make the package a no-brainer for big fans of the series, and with its low price point, it's worth a look for anyone with a more casual interest. It's nice to see that instead of going the route of a quick and dirty port to the PlayStation Network, Eat Sleep Play and Sony decided to pack the game full of extras to make this a more compelling purchase. <br/><br/>
Twisted Metal Head on (313 MB)