I really liked the graphics in the Star Battalion, they were excellent and the pictures are optimized for the new Retina Display. Beautiful maps and complex ship models make the game immersive. The voice acting is not the best but the overall ambience will keep you focused at the task on your hand.

The single player is laid out pretty well; the solid story line mixes up with gameplay between dogfights and missions. Some quests will ask you to blow up the air units and others will need you to take the tanks out for protecting a convoy. You can also try out new ships depending on what mission you are in. No mission here feels tedious but some do feel a bit like traditional quests of RPG. Most of the single player games have enough variation for the enemies and the quests will keep you guessing about what happens next.

Once you get a good hang of the controls, test your skills by playing online playing cooperative missions on the Web or locally. However, you cannot dog fight in the multiplayer mode. I was disappointed to see this especially the dog fights are really cool and a lot of fun. One who blows away most of the targets wins.

This game is recommended if you want a solid air combat game having great controls, lot of gameplay variation and smooth graphics. The price may be a bit high at $6.99 but it is certainly worth the buck.

Bonecruncher Soccer is a really good game overall but it doesn’t have the polish of the more-refined and older Backbreaker franchise. Different developers have made this game but I hope Bonecruncher Soccer provides updates soon for smoothing out the control system and graphics. These updates will make it better, just like BackBreaker Football. The swipe controls are good for gaming but you need to be very precise on some occasions. For instance, during the spin-move dodge, you have to do it at the right time or you’ll get caught in the middle of the spin. I had to practice it for sometime and I avoided those moves because they needed a lot of concentration.

There are some issues about control but overall, I found the Bonecruncher Soccer both challenging and fun. There are a lot of options for clothing customization which means your favorite player can be recreated with the number and uniform. If you are a fan of soccer and are looking for a cool pick-up-and-play game, get Bonecruncher Soccer now.

Once this is done, there is the Free Battle mode which lets you choose your opponent and also the location of the fight. This is a minimum fuss and is recommended if you don’t want to play the full mode.

Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm doesn’t have any tutorial option but you won’t miss it because the controls are pretty simple and you will get used to it very easily. The face buttons are to be used for chakra charging, melee attacks, projectiles, and jumps. The shoulder buttons are for blocking and for calling in the support characters. There are 4 different items mapped on the direction pad and you can use the left analog stick for moving around.

The arenas are pretty big and you can roam anywhere and the camera does a good job of framing in the action even when the players are far apart. Occassionally, you might have to view the battle from camera that is looking over shoulder of opponent but shifts in the perspective are really smooth and hence you won’t get confused with the action. The camera is really great and I liked the accessible controls through which you can defy gravity.

Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm has just one button for the melee attacks and you will be using it pretty frequently. There are lots of satisfying and lengthy combos which can be performed easily but once you get a combo started, it doesn’t mean that you will end it up successfully too. Blocking is easy but you need to do more than just a press of a button. Your guard is bound to get failed if you don’t act well.

The levels for werehog in the Sonic Unleashed 360 are very tedious. These are divided evenly in to fighting and platforming but for me, these elements had lots of frustration instead of excitement. There are combos which can be unlocked as you go ahead in the game but you will be disappointed with the combat strategy which just need some mindless tapping of the 2 attack buttons. There is a shield for protection when things get out of control but you won’t be using it much. The foes in the game are really stupid and just stand around till you decide to fight with them. There is no variety due to which the game gets monotonous after a while. In each level, there are few checkpoints but they are placed awkwardly.

In there werehog mode, you get strectchable arms with the ability for grabbing on to the ledges. This is useful for various stages but the Sonic Unleashed 360 has put in some restrictions that makes simple navigation quite annoying. To start with, you can just grab on to the specific surfaces. If the jump is mistimed, you will face a ‘quick death’ as the character cannot grab the ledge to save him. Secondly, the stretchiness for the arms varies; for some scenarios, you can easily grab the ledge while at some places, it cannot be done.

My progress was hindered by the camera. The game gives you free control of the view when you are at the middle of a big land plot. However, when you go to a precarious walkaway the control of the camera suddenly gets restricted. It just lets you shift slightly to the character’s either side. Falling in water results in immediate death and hence this is really annoying.

The Sonic Unleashed 360 has pretty pictures but that alone is not everything I’d look for in titles. The levels are laid very poorly and the controls too are unresponsive. Both these coupled with the wonky camera and monotonous combat makes this game one of the worst I have ever seen.

I don’t recommend using letters in Xbox Live Gamertags as they look pretty uncool. This is ubiquitous on the Internet these days and they chatter do it a lot but you have to struggle while reading the names. Sometimes they don’t make any sense at all! Also, avoid putting ‘Noob’ anywhere near the Xbox Live Gamertags. It is just like asking other players to pwn you. Gamertags that are self-depreciative are more memorable than having boastful tags like ‘DeadlySnipa’ or ‘SupaKilla’. It is often seen that Gamertags are memorable popular reference gaming memes in the subtle work or ways. Tags like “A Terrible Shot” will always stay in the mind of an opponent every time when the Xbox Live tells says “You were killed by A Terrible Shot”.

It is not easy to come up with Xbox Live Gamertags now but you can invest some time and effort for making the right one. It will reflect your personality better as a gamer and a memorable tag will get you more pals on Xbox Live.

Batman Begins game has successfully translated the presentation and the look of the movie in to the game and this is clear from the opening menu itself. The first screen that you see is the movie’s animated version with bats spookily circling around Dark Knight as he menacingly stands in foreground. Electronic Arts signed up contracts with the movie actors including Michael Caine and Christian Bale to lend their voices and likenesses to this game. The acting is the best part of the Batman Begins game; it is consistent and top notch.

If you are playing it on GameCube the videos will look compressed but it is not really disappointing. Batman purists and fans will be pleased with both Eurocom and EA with the efforts that they have taken for making the game just like the feature film. This game manages to remain close to the theme of the movie all the time and I will heavily recommend you the Batman Begins game if you are a fan of the movie. Bruce Wayne goes to the Himalayas and learns ninja-like fighting. Batman Begins was made by Cursed Mummy and Sphinx team and hence the controls are pretty similar which is good because you don’t need much time to get used to it.

Batman Begins game manages to be engaging as well as atmospheric as Batman is seen hanging from the wires and he also listens to the conversations of enemies. Also, he drops occasionally from nowhere and takes out the bad guys. Some might say that the game is like Batman for Dummies because its options are limited and it is not as flexible as some of the Ubisoft’s titles. In all the levels, you will see context sensitive icons which tell you about the items that you can use in the game. If the relevant icon is not displayed, it means that the Batman cannot use the weapon.

Talking Tom Cat Nokia N900 app lets you record voice up to 30 seconds and you can also upload the content to YouTube for showing it to your friends. It can also be e-mailed. You can also interact with the cat by rubbing on his tummy through the touch screen. Tap the head of the cat on the top repeatedly and it will fall over as if he was pouched. You can also touch his feet and tail.

Talking Tom Cat Nokia N900 app let you feed the animal with glass of milk. However, the main feature of the app is the animated voice which is really cool. I was hooked on to it for hours and just couldn’t get enough of it.

The puzzle laden action is good to avoid the violence.

Thumbs Down:

Boring and basic combat; poorly optimized 3D engine; variation in animal and human character rendering; pointless co-op; poorly optimized 3D engine; glitchy visuals

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The Alice in Wonderland is developed by Etranges Libellules.

It has 10 ESRB rating with Fantasy violence description. The game has been released on 2010-03-02.

Inside Dope:

You may remember a nice series in which a small girl falls down in a hole while sleeping then wakes up surrounded by talk animals in a small room. Yes, you are right to depict its name – Alice in Wonderland. Recently, you may have watched the similar titled movie by Tim Burton. Following the trend of making games of movies, the Alice in Wonderland game is now available for $39.99 for the Nintendo Wii. With this game, you can go through the similar experience of McGee Alice. The talking animals will engage you to play in the adventurous game while exploring the Underland, solving the puzzles and doing battle with enemies. The game stylishly renders the animals style, but there is a noticeable jarring effect while contrasting with their human counterparts. Your rolewill be of chaperone and protector of Alice. She may feel defenceless and hapless to offend the Red Queen’s army and Jabberwocky for avoiding the capture.

Alice has to find the Vopral Sword for stopping the queen’s plan. You have to switch between the characters for solving the puzzles and to swat the enemies away in your journey. The initial characters to accompany Alice are Mallymkun – sword-fighting dormouse and McTwisp – the time-slowing rabbit. Your options for animal characters will be eventually expanded to four including Cheshire Cat – invisibility master and Mad Hatter – optical illusion specialist.

You will feel quite pleasing while playing the Alice in Wonderland to explore a virtual world and solving the puzzles. The basic movement includes controlling the stick and swapping the character with C button. You can simply point the reticle at the object through Wii mote to manipulate it, select appropriate character, hold the Z button, and then perform the required physical action. You can initiate the telekinesis by motioning in any direction to haul the object away, which stops the giant mosquitoes and evil trees in their respective tracks. Each puzzle shares the similar basic nature and after solving it, you will enter into next hard level. We like that the game has thoughtfully designed sections, which forces for combining multiple skills even to solve a single problem.

The puzzle oriented game play is appreciated overall, but you may not like the dull fighting system. The Red Queen has sent merciless Red Knights to create hurdle in your way. These Knights has a shape of playing cards and fight like a tired warrior.

You have to continuously press the A button for attaching with your needle shape weapon. When Alice gets dragged into a void of these cardboard enemies, you have to tap B repeatedly to mash with them. Within one hour, you will come to know that the combat between the Red Knights and Alice is useless and get longer. Most of the part of combat is boring and completely basic.

The Nintendo Wii continuously tries to mimic the visual direction of Tim Burton in its Alice in Wonderland game instead of going for beautiful cartoon approach. It feels that the 3D engine is poorly optimized to keep the cutscenes of the game running smoothly. There is a variation in animal and human character rendering. Alice and Mad Hatter are poorly depicted and their voices are not synched clearly. The scenes look ugly and garish that makes the game appearing unfinished.

There is also some problem with the voice acting. Please do not except the same voice and accent of Johnny Depp for his Mad Hatter role in the game. The soundtrack also does not seem professional. It is quite surprise that the multiplayer feature is also limited to local co-op. The Alice in Wonderland is also suffers with horrific camera movement. You only have a choice either to be with the main companion or to have some game teleporting for coming back to frame.

Nitty Gritty:

The Alice in Wonderland is a good game that justice with its price tag and license. However, it has some issues such as pointless co-op, poorly optimized 3D engine and glitchy visuals. We will recommend this game to buy for children as it does not have so much violence like others.

Great color art scheme with good animations based upon true story.

Thumbs Down:

Borrowed stories from previous games.

Inside The Trunk:

• Price range: $42  – $59.95
• Publisher: EA
• Developer: Pandemic Studios
• Genre: Action and Adventure
• ESRB Rating: Mature 17+
• Platform – PS3, Xbox 360, PC
• System Requirements:
  • Processor-Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4400+ (AMD). Intel Core 2 Quad Q6580 3.0 GHz, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core.
  • Graphics Card – nVIDIA GeForce 7800GIX with 256MB Video RAM or ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro or Radeon HD 3800 Series
  • Sound – Directx 9c complaint sound
  • RAM – 3 GB and Hard Disk Space 7GB

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The Sabotuer is a game based on Word War II like other dozen games, which are good recipe for boredom. However, The Saboteur is not a war game otherwise it is a story of personal vengeance about an incident happens in Paris during Word War II. This game includes 1940s trappings, old fashioned weapons, painful opponent and monotonous setting but it has only a few common with Word War II. The game is free roaming adventure game with a mission structure like that of Grand Theft Auto. Once we cover the clash between real war and over the top portrayal, The Saboteur seems to be a good time. The release of this game is one of the good surprises of 2009.

The Sabotuer games claims to be based on a true story revolving around Irishman racing car driver, Sean Devlin who accidentally gets involved in the struggle between Nazis and British Government and then forced to flee to Paris after the war breaks out. In Paris, Sean occupied himself in drink and bitter hatred of the Third Reich. The Sabotuer starts his mission to avenge the life of his best friend at the hands of a top Getaspo Agent, a high-ranking Nazi Officer, Kurt Dierker. In this way, he started his career as The Sabotuer and becomes prime recruitment material for the French Resistance. He takes up the German artillery and exhibit strange ability to regenerate his health like Wolverine X-man. Along the way, he gets caught up in Parisian resistance and simultaneously chain smokes his way towards ridding Paris of the Nazis.

The story does not depict the devil-may-care nature of the action. The cutscenes, documenting the terror that the Nazis are exerting on Paris, are dripped with drama. We found missions include mostly infiltrate, destroy and kill variety which shows fair usage of Asassin Creed Style platform.

The Saboteur plot starts with opening cutscene which seems uninspired and forced and an attempt to explain the premise quickly. The plot is no philosophical, it is placed wonderfully and feels like classic action movie.

Sean Devlin has to settle the score with the invading Nazi Army by finding and filling Dierker but he has to inspire the French people of occupied France. His home city is occupied by the cruel Nazi forces which makes the brief more personal. His finest efforts cannot save the life of his best friend and his friend got murdered in front of his eyes by same Nazi Officer.

Sean Devlin might be upset on this incident but as soon as he crack 10th whiskey in j ust few sentences, he turns into an Irish caricature. We found that each new cutscene comes with the dark news from the war front which works as fire to Sean’s quest.

The story is well done despite some visual discrepancies during the cutscenes. The dramatic tale highlights the harsh disconnect between depressing reality and ridiculous action. The user is able to deal the mission within multiple ways. We can either go all guns blazing or throw on a Nazi uniform and see how far the stealthy approach takes you. We found the gun play exciting but not perfect. The Hitman inspired stealth works well without being as clinical as specialist stealth titles.

Art Style in The Saboteur is most unique aspect. Nazi controlled areas are ominously dark and gloomy of all color with yellow tinge of window panes at night and red representing Nazi flags, arm bands and control points breaking the monotony of black and white which gives a suffocating and bleak feel for making the actions to free these areas. The colors are beautifully placed to easily show the targets.

Missions are presented in the standard GTAesque by a scarf faced person which is drenched in blue and standing out against the dire background. It clearly takes a clue from Grand Theft Auto because there are numerous missions dotted around Paris to perform sabotage missions. Beside the main mission, there are some side missions of destroying smaller Nazi installments such as sniper towers, radars, AA guns and propaganda speakers. On completing the mission, you will earn traband to buy weapons and ammon at dealers. At a point of time, you are blowing up a chemical factory, assassinating a Nazi general or breaking a rebel leader out of a prison camp. It also includes the interesting perk system to reward for excellence in various areas like snipping, gunplay, kills, driving and stealth.

As we said, the platform is inspired by Assassin’s Creed, stealth is inspired by Hitman and the area liberation system is inspired by inFamous which makes The Sabotuer to be based on borrowed ideas. The implementation of the story on the paper is good. The Sabotuer is not historically accurate; however, voice acting is so bad that it almost feels intentional.

As Sean completes the mission, he “inspires” every section of Paris, the black and white becomes flooded with color to show that Fresh Citizens are more likely to fight back against Nazis and becomes easier to defend against aggressive German Force. The shift of the scene from monochrome to color is so stylish that this game deserves appreciation for pure visual innovation. If you have enjoyed fanatasy aspect of Inglorious Basterds, then The Sabotuer will give you numerous Nazis to project your murderous urges onto.

Nitty Gritty:

The Sabotuer has everything which will be liked. Besides racing, stealth, murder and assassination it has more good like Sabotage (Life Saving), personal revenge and inspiration.

Thumbs Up:

Lots of improvements from its predecessor,  graphics eye candy is gorgeous, tons of diversity, side quests are fun to play around with and earn money.

Thumbs Down:

Nothing in particular.

Inside the Trunk:

• Price $44.00 – $58.99 for Xbox360 and PS3
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft
• ESRB rating: Mature
• Platform PC/PS3/Xbox360
• Recommended system requirements for PC: Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz (Intel), Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (AMD), graphics card – Geforce 8800 GS (Nvidia), Radeon HD 3800 series (ATI), 3 GB RAM, 12 GB free hard disk space, DirectX 9

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

When Assassin Creed I came out, the graphics engine was quite similar to Prince of Persia – The Two Thrones. But we welcomed it as we couldn’t get enough of Altair jumping seamlessly on roof toops and killing with those sexy maneuvers. Assassin’s Creed II is here and they have made it even better. The improvements made in this will make you wonder why Ubisoft didn’t do all this in first title.

Ubisoft made lots of money from Assassins Creed which because it was selling like hot cakes due to the eye candy put in. Our hero in this game is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who is a spoilt 17 year old son of a wealthy banker. He spends his time and money on women and fights with local gangs in the beautiful city of Venice.

However things take a turn around for the teenager when he finds out that his father isn’t just a banker. His father later on gets killed along with his sons (except Ezio, of course) and now Ezio must avenge his brothers and father.

ACII still has the free roaming principle which we loved in the previous version of the game. You will spend most of the time on the rooftops since it is easier to hop on from on roof to other. Walking on the streets will be slow and boring. There are more archers in this game which threaten Ezio constantly but the boisterous lad can take them easily with his sleek moves. Just don’t get carried away and refrain from killing all the people that you see, because there is the notoriety meter which has to be kept below the limit. When you push the meter to the limit, the guards will attack you as soon as they see you.

You can tear the posters down, kill off officials or bribe them to reduce your notoriety but this seems a bit easy to do in the game. You go down on the meter by offering 500 florins (the currency in the game) to the officials. And there is no shortage of money in the game.

Completing missions gets you money and you can use it to change appearance of the hero. You can dye his clothes, buy weapons, armor from the local blacksmith. ACII has lots of side quests and you can get wealthy by achieving your targets. You can collect feathers, statutes, treasures and all of these set your pocket jingling with money. If you think you are lighting fast, go ahead and participate in the rooftop race to add money in your kitty. Our favorite was when you explore the dead assassin’s tombs. But we think this belongs more to the murky environments of Prince of Persia rather than AC. In the previous installement there is was no stealth and thankfully Ubisoft has provided mission which needs employment of your stealth skills which sometimes feels better rather than stabbing a knife on the face.

The combat missions are still there and it has been packed with more eye candy. You can disarm your enemy of his weapon and then use it against him. This is better than purchasing a weapon from the market and you also get variety of weapons at your disposal. Just like POP3, Ezio can take multiple enemies a time, he has hidden blades for doing this and it is really cool. For killing off your foes, you get to purchase axes, swords, hammers, pistols and lots more.

Another highlight of the game was that you can hire cunning thieves and local courtesans to distract your enemies. And then there are the local mercenaries who are willing to kill for you if you pay them enough.

Ubisoft has really given a lot in the game and it will keep you hooked to your console for hours. Every aspect of ACII like progression, navigation and combat has been revamped to give a better playing experience. The city of Venice has been gorgeously designed and you can check out everything you want with the free roaming principle.

Nitty Gritty:

Assassin’s Creed II has everything that we wanted in its predecessor. Don’t waste time, buy this game now!