So when I heard that one of my favorite PS2 games was getting a 360 version, I jumped for joy. I imagined online battles. And I was not disappointed.

Culdcept Saga
Developed by Omiya Soft

Culdcept is a different breed of game. The best way to describe it is Monopoly meets Magic the Gathering. The game itself has a brutal learning curve at first with card rules/restrictions, but the single player does a good job of explaining and training as you play.

So here is the basic premise of the game. You are a cepter who has the ability to use the cards. Moving your cepter around the game board, you want to win by reaching a score goal on the map. The first map has a goal of 5000. This value is made up of two things:

Mana – The magic power that allows you to summon creatures and play cards
Territory – When your creature is on a space, you own that land. The land value is part of your total score.

Each map can have multiple paths to go, but the basic premise is the same. You want to make your way around to touch the forts (or checkpoints) on the map, then return to the castle to complete a lap. The castle is like the Go space in Monopoly as you’ll gain mana based on your current stats. The squares of the map are divided into multiple types. Element spaces are Fire, Water, Wood, and Earth. This is where you will summon creatures. Passing Forts nets you some mana and you need to pass them all to complete a lap. Shrines affect the entire map in some way with a random effect and fortune tellers allow you to draw a card from your deck of any type you want.

So maps are one half of the game. The second half are the cards. There are a total of almost 480 cards in the game. You can have up to 6 cards in your hands and you create your own deck from cards that you own. You’re given a started deck to begin, and no matter if you win or lose, you will get cards to better your deck. In your deck are three types of cards:

Creatures – Creatures allow you to capture territory. They get bonuses for being on their elements, and there can be tons of rules based on them. Some creatures require discards to summon, others can’t summon to specific element lands. Some are purely defensive and cannot attack at all.
Items – Items are used in battles to help your creature. If you need to defend your land, you may use armor to up the creature HP so it survives the attack. Attack items up your creatures strength to do more damage. Some items have skills such as reflecting damage, stealing opponent’s items etc.
Spells – Spell cards are used on the map, not in battle. These can be used to attack creatures, heal HP, and even affect the dice which control your characters movement on the board.

Almost all cards have a mana cost, so summoning and using spells a lot can leave you without mana to defend yourself later on. You have to balance your card usage with your location on the game board.

The basic gameplay flows like a regular board game. You can use a spell if you wish then roll the dice. Once you land on a spot you can decide to take action. If it is an empty spot, you can lay down a creature to own the territory. If you land on an enemy, you either have to pay a toll (like Monopoly) or you can choose to fight the enemy to try to win control. This is where some of the strategy comes in. Early on, it’s very cheap to pay the toll. If you attack and fail to win, not only have you used mana on your creature and items, but you still have to pay the toll.

If you land or pass your own creatures, you get more abilities. You can change the land element (to help your creature), level up the land (more on this in a minute), swap the creature with one in your hand, and even move the creature a space to attack or just take over another land.

The big option is to level up your land. This works very much like hotels in Monopoly. By paying mana, you can up the level of the land causing the tolls to rise as well as boosting the creature that is on it.

Just like Monopoly (see there it is again) you can bankrupt an opponenet who can’t pay your toll and then cause them to sell off land to pay you. If you choose to fight, each player can choose to use an item to help their creature if they have the mana and items in their hand.

Sounds like an interesting premise, does it not? Add in four player multiplayer on and offline with team battles and the ability to set up rules such as turn time limits, banned cards etc. Multiplayer is easily the reason to play this, and it helps that you can get new cards in multiplayer as well so you don’t have to slog through single player. Blind battles allow the game to make random decks out of all the cards in the game, not just the ones you own. You then choose one of 5 decks and play that way. While it is fun to see cards you haven’t seen yet, these games take a bit longer as players have to deal with unfamiliar cards and abilities.

All this for the budget price of $40 doesn’t hurt either. However the game is not without flaws.

In single player you will find the AI likes to cheat here and there. They may cast a spell to hurt your creature then roll the exact number they need to land there to attack it. Or they’ll roll the right number to avoid your higher priced areas. Games both online and offline can take an hour or longer depending on number of players and score to win. Against the AI, nothing is more frustrating than playing for over an hour and losing at the end.

The graphics are very dated and aren’t updated much beyond the PS2 version. While it’s been helped moving to HD, there’s not much to marvel at. Furthermore the battles are just the cards with their stats being attacked by a 3D weapon or spell and not the actual monster models from the map doing the battle. Music can get repetative quite quickly, especially when you lose to the AI constantly. Thank god for custom Soundtracks. The story for single player is very basic and you do well to even skip cutscenes (with some bad load time between each one).

If you like board games, card games, and generally games that are not the norm, this game could be for you. Even in losing a match, it’s nice to be rewarded with some cards which could turn the tide to your favor the next time. The game is very enjoyable for fans of the genre, but do expect to spend time learning the game before finding the strategy and depth the mechanics have to offer.

VERDICT = B-, RENT IT THEN BUY IT

Burnout Paradise is the latest in the Burnout series which is best known for its arcade feel and massive crashes and damage. This version however does away with the menu screen to select a linear race or event and makes an entire city your personal playground.

As said before Paradise is an arcade racer, but a lot of changes happen in this new version. For starters, while cars are still given stats for their abilities (Speed/Boost/Power) they are also classified into different types and have their own weight and handling. Stunt cars are designed for the trick events and get more boost meter from jumps and barrel rolls (LOLLER). Speed cars can’t use their boost meter til it is full, but using it all causes a BURNOUT which refills the meter to 90% full automatically. Each of these car types will have their use in the different events around the city.

The city itself is huge, it can take quite a few minutes to get from one side to the other. You can almost think of the city as having 8 sections each with a personality. The Crystal Observatory is in the northwest and of course is full of mountain curves and drops. The South has the Navy Shipyard, so expect piers and shipping containers. There is a full downtown area as well.

In past Burnout games, you selected a race or event from a list and had to wait for it to load. Not anymore. Almost every intersection in the game has an event to do. These include races, road rage (takedown as many opponents as possible), stunts (get x points in a certain time limit) burning routes (for car specific races) and marked man (everyone tries to stop you from completing the race). Once you choose the event, the load time is masked by giving you info on the race. While loading it will show you the map with the start and finish to plan your route. Unlike past games where the race was linear (exception of shortcuts) this game allows you to use the whole city to get there. To end an event you don’t want to do, you simply stop moving for a few seconds.

There are also assorted side missions to do. Throughout the city there are gates which lead to shortcuts. There are 400 of them to find I believe. Also, Burnout billboards are around the city and usually take you finding jumps to get them. For all the administrative functions, there are drive thrus. The junkyards allow you to change rides. Repair shops allow you to repair damage during races and events, paint shops change your colors, and gas stations give you a full boost meter.

I also like the way they handle getting cars now. You can win cars by ranking up your license and winning events. However not all are given to you. Some become available in the city, but you have to hunt them down and crash them to win. I actually veered off course during a race cause a new car I was after drove by.

Now lets talk multiplayer. First off, no local multiplayer, however this really doesn’t bother me. The awesome thing is the game can go online almost flawlessly. All of this is mapped to right on the DPad, you can create a match (for races), do freeburn which allows up to 8 players to drive the city and do challenges (more on this in a moment), or join up. Choosing to create or invite gives you about a 10 second load time and that’s it. You’re on, and people join in.

You can set up a race or series of races by choosing any of the existing races in the game, or making your own by choosing where to put down the start and finish. Winning allows you to mug for the camera (if your camera is equipped) to taunt your opponents. The camera also comes into play during takedowns as if the person you crash has one, you’ll get a mugshot of him at that moment.

So how about the challenges? There are 350 challenges in the game. 50 for each number of players (2player,3,4,5,6,7,8) and they range from easy (everyone meet at the baseball stadium) to team based (team total of 2000 yards drifting) to everyone must do a stunt (jump over the mine shaft). It’s fun as everyone tears off to the location of the next challenge and then sometimes causes havoc for other players. For example, Hito and I had to do drifting around a fountain. All was fine til we head on crashed cause we were going in opposite directions around the fountain. I can imagine the challenges with more players to be even more fun and deadly.

The last change in the game is Showtime mode. Unfortunantly, Crash mode was cut for this. To execute it, simply wreck then hit LB+RB together. When I first did it I was reminded of Katamari Damacy. You essentially roll or pinball down the street and can boost yourself a little to keep going. To refill the boost and keep Showtime going you need to crash into more cars. It’s not a bad mode, but it is no crash mode.

The final thing in the game is the Road Rules. For each of the events and Showtime modes at each intersection, the game will track your stats and that of your friends. You can actually work to beat their scores, and they’ll be notified of it, making you the “ruler” of that specific street. Streets you own are color coded on the map as well.

Graphically, this thing is a beast. The sense of speed the game gives never causes any graphical issues, although the shine can be a bit much. As far as sound, the in game sound is great and the soundtrack is packed with a ton of music (35 track + 20 from older Burnouts). The tracks range from Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, GnR, and Seether to techno and lesser known bands. The only questionable inclusion is Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend. Really EA, really?

Overall I’m in love with this game. The open world enviroment plus all the exploration to be done coupled with the online co-op challenges and the mayhem included caused me a great amount of joy last night. If you’ve got it and you’re not on my friends list, send me a request. We’ll be looking to partner up soon to chase down the high number player challenges.

VERDICT = A-, BUY IT

Let me say this first. I REALLY wanted to like this game. Even when it pissed me off, I brushed it off and kept going.

That said, holy god does this game suck. Let’s start with the basics.

As anyone who has played the KUF series knows, there is a Light God and a Dark God. They take turns ruling over the land so at one point the Light God controls and civilization thrives. When the Dark God’s turn comes, everything gets raped and pillaged and lots of torture happens to the citizens. All of this is fine and dandy until one day the Light God who is sick and tired of seeing all of his hard work destroyed decided to not hand over control as agreed.

Which bring us to the meat of this game. Playing either a Light side or Dark Side character, you’re either out to stop the Dark God from regaining control or helping the Dark God keep it. There are 6 characters to choose from, 5 to start and one unlockable. They vary in speed, starting HP, and weapon selection. Each character has about 6 weapon types they can equip. Regnier for example, the guy pictured below favors broadswords, guantlets, whips, and arm cannons.

Graphically the game is average. There are some really beautiful moments in some of the stages, other times there is clipping and some ugly texture work. There is also slowdown due to too many enemies or walking into an area that has a lot of textures on the walls plus enemies nearby.

So how does the game play? My best description for you is take Phantasy Star Online mixed with Dynasty Warriors. It is a pure hack and slash from a third person perspective. While killing and maiming you will find items, gold, armor, weapons, and other equipment to use. You’re allowed the use of two weapons (most people do a melee and a ranged weapon), two spells equipped, and two items hotkeyed.

Your melee is as simple as pressing the button. Each weapon has a canned combo of 4-6 hits and they don’t vary. So for example, using a 20AP Broadsword does the same combo as a 50AP Broadsword. AP is the damage it will do to an enemy. There is also an SP cost, which brings us to the most hated feature of the game: Stamina points.

Your character has a HP meter and an SP meter. SP is the amount of actions you can do before tiring. So for example, if you have 150SP and the broadsword takes 45SP to swing, you can only swing 3 times in a row before needing to recover. Recovery is handled by your equipment as they all work together to restore SP. So while you may swing 3 times, your SP is constantly recharging and may allow you to swing 4 times in a row before tiring. This brings up synthesis.

Synthesis in the game allows you to combine equipment to make better equipment. AP/SP is based on an average. So combining a 30AP sword with a 40AP sword will make a 35AP sword. Same holds true for SP usage. Also, there are abilities tied to weapons, such as the ability to gain damage done to enemies as SP(a great one to use, you’ll be able to attack without stopping) or causing a spell to be randomly cast in battle. This is great for upping attack power as well as enhancing abilities (abilities on weapons can go to level 20) but will also cause the SP usage to go up. So you’ll then need to synth the weapon with other items to lower the SP to a better rate.

The same holds true for armor and accessories. You can make a ring that has a healing ability and continue to synth more healing kills into. The drawback is success rate. Every time you synth an item, the chance of the next synth succeeding is lower. To get around this, you can pay gold to make it a 100% success. After synthing my weapon jut 5 times, I was having to pay over 25K to keep it at 100%. Of course you can pay less and have a chance of failure as well. This then becomes a habit of filling your inventory full of crap you pick up just to sell it all to make gold for synthing. It gets annoying quick.

So onto the bad:

So how about magic? First you have to decide what spells to learn. You do this by sleeping and going to the dream world. There you talk to your guide and decide what spells to get. It’s not that easy though. You then have a list of enemies you have to kill to learn the spell. This is stupid, because some of the spells (not even the high level ones) depend on you killing for example 5 rare monsters, which can randomly spawn. I literally made it to the end of the game only learning 2 spells out of the 6 I wanted thanks to this.

How about a story? Aside from the opening scenes, the only time the story progresses or you get a quest is by going to the dream world and talking to the guide. Outside of this, there is really no story to talk about. Also the quests are realtively dull as well. Regnier’s quests were geared around filling shards with souls. So you set out and kill a ton of undead for the shard of death. Only, the shard stops at 30% full. You don’t find out til later on that you have to kill multiple types of undead to fill it. I wasted time killing skeletons and pulling my hair out over why the shard percentage wasn’t moving. Also, add in the fact that there are only 5-6 enemy types in each area of the game.

Also, there are no shops in the game. At set points, you will find a spot for an Idol who acts as a shop and gives you a chance to sleep and go into the dream world. There are three idols (Love, Greed, Death) and each of them is stocked with different items (Death carries weapons and the only one with revive items, Love carries armor). So if you need another Idol, you either have to zone to reset the idol, sleep (with its 30 sec load into and out of dream world) or buy an expensive item to change the moon to the time you need. Again, a slightly annoying feat. This is especially bad for Regnier, who has a quest to talk to each idol. I couldn’t get Death to appear no matter what I tried and had to spend time zoning and sleeping til he appeared.

Notice the Idol of Love looks like Angelina Jolie?

The biggest flaw of all in the game are ranged attacks. You will literally find enemies who either your shots will pass through with no effect or will BLOCK YOUR SHOTS repeatedly. The entire Ice world is a pain in the ass for this fact. There are enemies who have a spell which causes you to bleed HP if you get close to melee them, yet takes 8 shots to kill even though only 2 have to hit. Add in the fact that there are at least 2 bosses in the game that essentially require ranged attacks to kill, and you will be bored in no time flat.

Also, I’m gonna have to list SP here as well. Swinging 4 times and then having to retreat so I can regen SP is stupid. Nothing like running in, hitting, running away for hours on end.

There is one redeeming factor in the game, and it is 4 player online co-op. Having 3 friends makes the game more fun and easier to tolerate. However even here, there is a glitch. For some reason, voice chat does not work in a private friends game. You have to make your game public and kick people out til you get your friends into the room. This can be addressed with a patch, but this should not have been released like this in the first place.

As I said earlier, I wanted to like this game, I really did. I got fed up at one point due to boredom, but returned for more. But after one of the levels last night, I can’t take it anymore. The enemies magical ability to block (which you don’t have) and the absurd gameplay rules (fuck SP!) and I don’t want to see these same six levels with 5 other characters. Please, make KUF:Dominion so that I can wipe this bad taste from my mouth.

VERDICT – F, SKIP IT

Unreal Tournament 3. Twitch gaming at its finest. God how I love thee. Let’s not waste time here, UT3 is good, very good. And while not much has changed in the core gameplay, everything about it is top notch and makes you want to keep playing.

Single player consists of battles against AI bots in different match types and number of players. The story this time is based in a war, not a tournament. You and your team of 3 try to defend your home colony and fail. Left for dead you sign up as a merc squad in the hopes of getting a shot at those who attacked you.

The cutscenes between matches are nice. Funny thing as I watched though was I got this Gears of War feeling all over again. As in, “hey change that guys skin color and you’ve basically got Marcus Fenix”. Good voice acting helps these scenes along. But again, you’re really just doing matches vs bots.

The one thing I want to do is point out the slight absurdity of the story. So essentially all out war has broken out. The respawners from the original UT games are now being used on battlefields, meaning that the wars and fights will never end. The main premise of these matches is disabling the enemy respawner, thus allowing you to kill everyone finally and not let them come back.

So they took this idea and ran with it all the way through. CTF matches? The flag is what powers the enemy respawner and you have to grab it and bring it to your respawner to destroy it. Riiiight. Nevermind the fact that the flag has to be destroyed 3 times to win, or that the flag magically teleports back to the enemy base. You see? The game is all sorts of fun, but don’t shoehorn the story in to fit the game mechanics. But then again, why are you playing this for singleplayer?

Now before you go running out, I want to point out two things. One, there is no splitscreen. You heard me right. There is online co-op for 4 people together to run through the campaign mode (so basically your team vs bots) but up the bot difficulty and you could have some fun there. PS3 owners, I’m looking at you…..You will hate the Warfare game mode in singleplayer as your AI teammates will be complete idiots every once in a while and forget that bad guys blasting your core need to be stopped. This is why I’d like to do co-op.

So let’s talk control. The SIXAXIS work perfectly fine as your controls. R1 is fire, L1 is alt fire. R2 switches guns in order, L2 gives you a radial dial menu to select the one you want. X is jump and double jump, O is to bring out the melee hammer, square is for entering and exiting vehicles, and the D-Pad issues commands and taunts. Pressing down allows you to play dead, so you can hide or hopefully issue commands without being killed.

Now onto the biggie. Yes the game supports USB mouse and keyboards. It does not support Bluetooth ones however (based on discussions on other boards). I popped in my mouse/keyboard and just started blasting away. KB/M controls are fully customizable just like the PC version.

Multiplayer requires you to create a character. You choose a character model from about 16 different ones, then tailor their helmets and armor. While each section of the customization only has 3-5 different options, keep in mind that you are not going to stop mid battle to look at some guy’s armor.

Once in you can search for a game, either quickplay or make specific searches for what you want. From the server list you can see if the game allows KB/M or if it is a ranked stat match. Online play was nice and smooth and I saw no issues there. I’m also not using a headset, so god knows how well the voice chat is.

Gameplay seems to be a little slower than the PC version which I played as well, however the speed is still faster than most console FPS games out there. The graphics are amazing, with some real jaw dropping visuals, and the sound, well it has it.

The guns are back and have been tweaked and slightly changed, but for the most part function as before. Rocket Launchers still have the multi fire alt ability, bioguns fire out the larger shots which stick to people, and shock rifles fire the large globe of energy that can then be detonated with another shot. Flak cannon doesn’t seem to be as powerful as before however.

Gameplay types range from deathmatch/team deathmatch/CTF to Warfare (control nodes to open up the enemy power core to be destroyed) and others.

Overall, I’d say if your PC doesn’t want to run it, the PS3 version is no slouch. With the KB/M support you’ll be fragging people in no time. Yes, you can import user mods and everything into the game as well, so you won’t be missing out on much in terms of that (done through a menu choice on the game). I’m very happy with the game, and while COD4 still reigns supreme in my mind as the definitive multiplayer console FPS right now, UT3 will definantly be getting a lot of playtime thanks to the pick up and play feel and the sheer arcade speed. Easily one of the best looking PS3 games out, and if you get it come play co-op with me.

VERDICT = B+, BUY IT

(Cronos’ mind will now be represented in italics. The money won’t allow his mouth to say what he really thinks)

Alright, so in Kane and Lynch you get to play Kane, a guy on death row who gets broken out by Lynch and Kane’s former comrades, The7. The story goes that Kane hid something that The7 want back. And they send Lynch along to make sure Kane does it. Kane is the rational one of the group while Lynch apparently has medical problems and has to take pills to keep his episodes from boiling over. Lynch is an interesting character in that while he goes insane and kills innocent people sometimes, he has a real problem with Kane screwing over former partners and even kidnapping..

Fuck this game. The story gets fucked halfway though and it becomes revenge for the killing of Kane’s wife. Lynch goes from being funny to being whiny the whole second half of the game when it becomes a revenge plot instead of a crime plot. He actually began to drive me nuts with his incessant whining as well. He’s only the psycho they made him out to be for 4 levels, then there’s no mention of pills or violent outburst. THEY’RE LYING TO YOU. I made a typo in IRC calling him Lunch. That’s his new name for the rest of this shitty game review

Graphically this game is awesome. I can’t explain how the use of bloom lighting gives everything just a beautiful shine. When you get shot the screen goes red and the camera tilts, lovely effect.. I love the way explosions look like little poofs just to show off smoke effects. The pop in textures just show that the game designers were pushing to make sure that this game pushed the limits of the 360 hardware. This game is so graphically awesome that the 360 simply cannot handle it.

Yeah, right, the fuckin’ Wii could’ve handled this bullshit. Honestly, the game looks like a glorified PS2/Xbox game, explosions suck, and about the only thing going for it is environment damage when enemies shoot at the cover you’re hiding behind. Did I mention the textures that pop in and out and the fact that it’s just completely underwhelming? And then there’s the fact that the characters mouths will move in cutscenes but not during gameplay. Was that really that hard to do?

Sound is…….well to quote the great reviewer Ron Workmeng, “It has it”. The game tries to keep the Hollywood blockbuster style soundtrack throughout the game. The voice acting is great.

This is basically an R rated movie in a game. The spray the word fuck around like Scarface. The voice acting isn’t bad, but do I need a comment from my teammates everytime I give them a command? I don’t need to hear the same lines over and over. Oh, and Lunch becomes a whiny bastard like I said before.

Onto gameplay. At core, this is a third person shooter. You can fire your gun, throw grenades, and zoom or scope in to shoot at enemies. Once you get a few levels in you get your squad. Using the face buttons you can command to follow, defend a position, or attack and give cover fire. One of the best things is the way the AI decides to lay its life down for you by rushing enemy positions in order to give you a chance to kill the enemy.

And the cover system. I haven’t seen a cover system this well done since Gears of War. Amazing. It’s so realistic because you have to figure out which walls can give you proper cover, forcing you to think strategic.

BULLSHIT. The AI is stupid as stupid can be. I command them to fire on an enemy mounted gun and at least one of them will rush the mounted gun and get killed. Did I mention that if you don’t revive them fast enough it’s game over? Yeah, so now you get to take down a gun and go save your friend’s ass who is laying out in the open street.

At one point your 4 squads members get 3 lackeys each. I shit you not within 10 seconds of getting your 12 backup guys, they will be dead. You’d think they were wearing red shirts or something. It’s horrid. Lunch makes a comment how you’re losing too many men. He’s right, because right after you get rushed by 20 guys. It took me nearly an hour and a half to beat this area. And I lowered the difficulty after 30 minutes of trying. HATE

Cover system? More like hump a wall and hope Kane sticks to it. I died many times thinking I could get in cover and the wall wasn’t letting me. So fucking dumb.

And don’t bother throwing a grenade either. For some reason they seem to bounce off invisible objects. I threw one and it skidded along the ground, hit an invisible pebble and bounce up in the air like 3 feet to the left. Just plain bullshit.

Overall, Kane and Lynch is just so awesome. Everything put together makes this game a real winner. I can’t stress enough that I may have to go redo my vote and make this my GOTY. Thank you I/O and Eidos for gracing us with this game. My life will never be the same again.

The first 3-4 levels are enjoyable, the Tokyo level being the best which is why I linked to it. But once you reach Havana, just turn the game off. You will save yourself from one of the worst gameplay experiences ever. Your frustration level will never rise, and best of all your blood pressure won’t shoot up. Do yourself a favor, watch a few of the videos of the game linked here, see what it’s like. Just don’t play it. The video below is of the Tokyo stage and is the most enjoyable thing in the game.

I will have to award this with the highest thing I can, 12/10 and the Cronosblade Green(Cash Money) Medal Award.

VERDICT – F, SKIP IT

The answer is simple. Published by Sega, but developed by Treasure. Oh yes you read that right. So how does the game stack up?

Overview
The game is based around the Soul Society arc of the anime. I’m watching the anime right now, but haven’t gotten to this part (only on ep. 14). Anyway, Bleach is a fighting game in the style of Street Fighter II. However not every fight is 1 on 1. Up to 4 players can be on screen at once, either in free for all or team battle. Once you boot up, you’ve got Story mode, Arcade, Versus, Training, Challenge, shop and options.

Story mode is the meat of the game. You’ll have to use Ichigo (the main character of the anime) and work through his story mode. It has branching paths and specific conditions to get to certain fights. Beating it will unlock more “episodes” that follow the other characters.

Arcade is a straight out six fights to the end. Versus will allow you to do any style of battle (1v1, 1v2, 2v2, 1v3, free for all) against CPU or also Nintendo Wi-Fi

You start with 14 characters unlocked on the start, but that number easily doubles to 28 when you begin to clear story mode. The shop is where you can purchase music, voices, and spirit cards (which I’ll discuss in a minute)

Gameplay
The gameplay follows the typical 2 fighter style. Commands are based around half circle, quarter circle, dragon punch and flash kick style inputs. Aside from the life meter, you have a spirit power stock that can hold up to three bars (think Alpha 3 style). Most supers take only one bar to use, however your most powerful super (or for most characters, their Bankei) will take all three to use.

Sounds typical right? Here’s where the game differs from normal. You also have a spirit pressure bar (holds 3). These are used for things such as Flash Step (invincible dash or dodge), Guard Cancel (alpha counter), or to add more damage to special attacks (think SF3 EX moves).

On top of this, in a battle that isn’t 1 v 1, there is actually a 2nd line to fight on (think Fatal Fury). To switch lines, you have to burn one bar of spirit pressure, so you can’t do it over and over quickly.

Add in air dash, air combos, and all sorts of crazy moves and the game is quick and very fun to play. To deal with the fact that more than one enemy can attack you, all moves can be done in either direction. So doing a QCF toward the right will cause the attack to go right, doing it left will go left. You also have a block button to deal with attacks from all directions.

Finally, there is the spirit cards. The touchscreen has two cards loaded at any time (out of 10) and you can use them by touching them. These will have all sorts of effects such as upping attack/defense/speed, or causing enemies to not be able to line jump/jump/dash. You can also lower enemies spirit stock/pressure or even heal. More can be found in story mode or bought from the shop.

Finally add in wi-fi ability. If you can get over the Friend Code issue, you should find pretty lag free battles. And 4 humans fighting is always better than CPU fights.

Graphics + Sound
Amazingly good for the DS. Each character looks close to their anime counterpart. The action can sometimes be a little hard to follow in 4 player fights due to the camera zooming out slightly, but it’s not gamebreaking. Cutscenes are text heavy but can be skipped as well. The only weak link is the sound. Of course the voices are in english, so if the american VAs drive you nuts, you’ll be annoyed. Worse though is the very generic rock music for background fights.

Summary
After spending over 8 hours playing this weekend, this is a great fighting game. A huge character selection (some are joke characters, but still funny), crazy 4 player battles, and lots of stuff to unlock and buy in the shop will give a lot of replay value. Add in Wi-Fi and you have a solid winner. Don’t give the Wii version a look if you’re a Bleach fan, go right now and grab this game.

Verdict – A+, BUY IT

Let’s get the usual out of the way first. If you don’t like Dynasty Warriors or have gotten sick of playing them, then obviously this game is not for you. If you’re a hardcore DW fan though, this game is godly. There are some minor improvements as well, but I’ll get to those in a bit.

Warriors Orochi is a fantasy crossover of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series. The serpent king Orochi comes to Earth and brings together the armies of China and Japan. The named generals from both games choose sides and battles break out. There are 4 storylines to play through: Shu, Wei, Wu and Samurai. Since I’m a big fan of the Samurai Warriors series, I chose to start there.

The game boasts a total of 77(!) warriors for you to use. However at the beginning you start with 3 from each kingdom. Your starters on this team are Nobunaga Oda, Mitsuhide Akechi, and Hideyoshi Toyotomi. By playing stages, you unlock more characters. Inbetween stages, you’ll be given the chance to swap out characters in your team, abilites, and weapon fusions. What you say? Well, let me explain

NEW GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS
3 man teams – First off, you now command a 3 man team. You can switch between team members on the fly using the triggers. Only the active character gains EXP for kills, but your reserve characters regain life and musou (super meter).

3 catagories of generals – There are now three types of generals – Power, Speed, Technique. Each has pros and cons
- Power Generals don’t flinch when hit and can use part of their musou meter to area attack.
- Speed Generals can use musou to up their attack speed or counterattack when hit
- Technique Generals can cancel combos by jumping and can air dash

- Growth Points are new. You gain experience in battle as before. However at the end of the stage, instead of more experience you are given growth points. These points can then be used to level ANY character (not just the ones in your team) and for Weapon Fusions (see below)

- Weapon fusions. You will still aquire weapons in tiers during battle. But in the past you could sometimes get stuck with a Lv. 1 weapon for quite some time. Weapon fusion allows you to build weapons to your liking. Take a base level 1 weapon and mix it with a level 1 that has a slot for a special ability. You then use growth points to pay to add the slot to your weapon and up the attack by 1. You now have a level 1 weapon with +1 attack and an empty slot. Mix this with a weapon with say Fire element and pay to move the fire element to your weapon as well as up attack. You’ll end up with a Lv 1 weapon with +2 attack and fire element.

- Abilities are now learned by all, not character specific (these are the speed +, attack + etc). You can equip 7 different abilities to your team

- Call a horse at any time. Makes getting around maps a hell of a lot easier

- Dialogue during battle when adversaries meet and other situations. Xiahou Dun meets Nobunaga and says that he reminds him of Cao Cao, but then for the rest of the battle tells him he’ll never be as great as Cao Cao. Enemy generals will have dialogue usually with each of the three generals on your team.

- Battle itself seems to be much more faster and chaotic. Normal mode is very hard as well. I’ve had to switch generals constantly when one gets too hurt.

GRAPHICS
It’s a DW game, so you know what to expect. However a few things have changed. One is the fog of war is much much less. In past games when too many enemies got onscreen, some would disappear and would then hit you when you didn’t expect it. I actually had 6 named guys onscreen with multiple foot soldiers at one point, no disapperaing act and no slowdown. Overall the game looks a heck of a lot better but I don’t expect the big leap until DW6.

SOUND
Standard fare of orient mixed with techno. Voice acting in English seems to have gotten better, I think they hired known VAs this time. You do have the option for Japanese voices. They do use correct pronunciations for names now (Cao Cao is now spoken as Tsao Tsao)

FINAL
As it stands right now, it’s getting an B from me. The new gameplay elements and the increased speed of the game were sorely needed, and the fantasy storyline is pretty cool. If you’re a DW/SW fan, it’s a no brainer. If you’re on the fence, give it a rent. Yes it’s still repetative and the core button mashing elements haven’t changed, but the new features make it feel more updated than what you have seen from the series recently.

VERDICT = B, RENT IT THEN BUY IT

So after 24 hours with the Chatpad, I freaking love this thing. Yes it does make text entry a hell of a lot easier, and when there’s tons of communication between TOID members, it helps a lot. I can confirm it works in games where the text blade comes up to enter (such as COD4′s clan tag screen or Forza 2′s picture naming mode). It doesn’t support PSU and FFXI currently according to others.

Funny enough, there’s two buttons on there that I have no idea what they do (a green button and a orange button). The keys are backlit and will stay on for about 10 seconds before going off. I’ll be recharging my controller soon and I’m interested to see what kind of battery drain it may do.

This does add a little heft to the controller, but nothing crazy. Not much worse weight wise than say, the DUKE or something. You basically line up the plug to the port and it snaps into the two holes there at the bottom of the controller. In the second pic, I haven’t completely snapped the part in yet.

Now the microphone. Yes, they include a new headset in the package for this since the original port is in use. The sound and voice quality are no different than the original wired headset. I have two problems with the headset though. One is the plug into the chatpad makes me think this wire could easily get frayed or damaged due to the wire being at a 90 degree angle and not straight out. The second is the move of the mute/volume controls to the wire itself and not down near the controller. My wife loves to come in and talk to me during gameplay and before I could shift my thumb down from the right thumbstick to the mute control. Now I actually have to take a hand off the controller to do so, and in the case of say COD4, it’s long enough to get you killed. And spawn killed. Again.

Overall I still recommend this. It makes text entry and messenging friends a hell of a lot easier. I didn’t feel more tired or sore due to the slightly added weight, but individual feelings may vary.
VERDICT = A+ BUY IT