Following on from the success of OutRun Online Arcade, After Burner Climax takes the classic formula of that SEGA arcade hit and puts it in beautiful high definition, 3D graphics. You take control of a fighter jet as it flies through a variety of different settings at horrifying speeds, from city skies to perilous mountainous regions and even deep in the heart of the enemy base.

OutRun and After Burner share that in common, as they both sport branching paths and simplistic transitions between areas that have wildly differing art styles. There are fewer branches in the levels here, but the presentation is the same, and still works as well in 2010 as it did back in the day.

You can speed through levels in no time at all at max speed (the first level can last about twenty seconds) or you can slow down and go for the high score. The game grades you on enemies shot down, combos built and completion time and there’s a feature that’s new to the After Burner series to help you hit all three targets.

That’s Climax mode, where the game gets its name. Climax mode is essentially bullet-time, slowing down the action for a few crucial moments to allow you to lock on to enemies and send a salvo of missiles their way. It’s pretty handy, and can be used offensively to take out a large group of enemies or defensively to dodge incoming projectiles or a mountain you’ve not accounted for in your steering.

Climax mode is a simple and seemingly glaringly obvious addition to the After Burner series, but it makes a world of difference. It’s controlled by a meter you have to build up, so it can’t be used all the time, but mastering how and when to use that Climax meter is vital to survival and high scores in this game.

Other than that, this game is After Burner exactly as you remember it, just a whole lot prettier. All the stages are sharp, and the frame rate is mostly solid even as you crank up the speed and zip through levels at a pace that makes you wonder if the pilot’s face would still be intact were this ever real.

It feels like an old school arcade game bought up to modern standards from the gameplay right down to the detailed HUD, which’ll be showing combos, score, stage and a plethora of other information in a day and age where many games are trying to do away with HUDs. This isn’t a complaint, though – I love the retro feel of this game, and the option to switch the modern music off and opt for the old After Burner II chiptunes is also a very welcome addition.

The action is fast-paced, engaging and fun, even if it is a bit simplistic and limited. The game can be completed in about fifteen to twenty minutes, but after you’ve done that there are a bunch of unlocks that will change the way the game plays, making it harder or easier to complete. Named EX options, they edit the game in such a manner as to increase the replay value quite a bit.

In the end, After Burner Climax is a simple but enjoyable update to the 80s arcade classic that later made its way home in the early 90s. If you go in expecting a game with tons of depth and options you’ll walk away disappointed, but if you want a game you can pick up, play, sink some time into and have a ton of fun with, After Burner Climax is for you.

7/10

Originally Published on The Gaming Vault.

It’s strange, then, to see the gaming media compare Alan Wake to Heavy Rain. Both have put a massive emphasis on plot, but when push comes to shove Microsoft’s latest exclusive blockbuster has more in common with the Uncharted series than Quantic Dream’s ‘interactive experience’.

Strip away the storyline and Alan Wake is an interesting if slightly repetitive third person shooter which mixes guns with light, an overarching theme of the entire game. Enemies in the game are humans taken over by the darkness, and the dark energy which takes the form of a mysterious tar-like substance must be burned away from them with a flashlight, flare or other light source before you can shoot to kill.

The action in the game controls wonderfully, with the same slack character movement but tight aiming you’ll find in games like Uncharted and Gears of War, though here precision accuracy isn’t the real core of the gameplay – it’s more about crowd control, using light to deal with and hold off the melee-using enemies, with the shooting a secondary element.

In line with that the Left Trigger ‘boosts’ your flashlight, making the light more deadly to enemies but reducing its battery charge while the right trigger fires and the right bumper uses your secondary weapon – which could be flashbang grenades or flares. The flashlight is thankfully unlimited in Alan Wake, recharging when you’re out of combat, and in combat you can switch batteries to remain combat-ready at all times, though batteries are finite.

The Left Bumper sprints, but in combat it has a secondary function – dodging. Remedy’s Max Payne pedigree shines through here as most dodges will initiate a brief sequence of bullet-time, with the camera panning around Alan as he narrowly misses the pitchfork or knife he’s avoiding an attack from. It looks pretty damn cool, and the animation in these sections looks great.

The Max Payne effect continues in other areas, with sweeping camera movements when you pull out a flare or commit to other large actions in combat, though some of the most intense moments in Alan Wake’s combat for me came when I had next to no ammunition or flares, and I was left to run from light source to light source with a ton of enemies chasing after me – it gets intense.

As well as the regular flashlight, there are a few upgraded flashlights and other light sources – car headlights, spotlights, street lights and so on. The car driving controls are a bit floaty, but even that is still very solid, and it’s fun to run down enemies thanks to the power of a car’s headlights.

In addition to the shooting mechanic there’s some collectables to grab and things to collect. While a few are useless, most – like TV Shows, Radio Shows and Manuscript pages – provide you with something to watch, listen or read that fleshes out the town of Bright Falls, its inhabitants or help to clear up the mystery of what’s happening to Alan Wake – they’re rewarding to find.

Past the above, Alan Wake is all about the story. It’s not the longest story in the world, clocking in at about a dozen hours, but for those hours you’ll almost certainly be on the edge of your seat and desperately waiting for the next twist or reveal.

In terms of a summary, all you need to know is that bestseller novelist Alan Wake’s wife is missing, he’s missing a week of memories and he’s finding pages of a book he can’t remember writing – and the pages are coming true. Dark creatures are trying to kill him, a kidnapper claims they have his wife – and he’s trying to unravel the mystery.

The story is admittedly cheesy and hackneyed, but this seems to have been a deliberate decision from Remedy, with the game quite openly flaunting its inspirations of late 80s/early 90s thriller TV and slashy thriller novels, embracing the cheese of the medium and being all the better for it.

The narrative somehow manages to be self depreciating but thrilling at the same time, and the mystery of what has happened to Wake kept me playing while the script did a fantastic job of getting me invested in all the major characters, especially Alan and Barry, best friends and colleagues.

To further the TV or novel-based feel of the game, the action is split into episodes or chapters – six in total – with each episode ending with a big cliffhanger and beginning with a nice little ‘Previously on Alan Wake’ montage.

Each episode also ends with a musical number, and that makes this a good time to mention the soundtrack, which is a wonderful mix of licensed music and pieces composed specifically for the game, ranging from old country music that fits Bright Falls perfectly to the spooky strings you’ll hear whilst in the woods and, yes – a bit of heavy metal in a surprising but awesome section of the game.

Wake narrates most of his experience with a sort of internal monologue, and it only adds to that TV-thriller atmosphere the game exudes. While story is Alan Wake’s strong point, arguably the best facet of the game is in fact the atmosphere, and how it’s constructed a seemingly alive world out of the spooky town of Bright Falls.

That’s accomplished through the previously mentioned TV and Radio shows, which can be found and watched or listened to at set points in each chapter, but also through the in-game dialogue as Alan comments on things as he walks past them and banters with whoever he’s with at the time.

Bright Falls is an incredibly well-accomplished little backwater town, and it’s without a doubt one of my favourite game locations in years. The game gets a lot out of what it’s based off and where it’s set, and it really makes the most of the characters, setting and mystery at hand.

It’s difficult to talk about the story without spoiling it, but it’s an intriguing, exciting and awesome ride as it twists and turns and leads invariably to its exciting climax, which goes a long way to indicate a sequel is all but certain – no bad thing in this case.

The same little touches also make the gameplay more fun, too. You’ll find messages on walls that only show when you’re shining your flashlight at them, pointing you to secret areas where extra weapons can be found. Meanwhile, pages of Wake’s manuscript you find can be read and often foreshadow events before they happen. I knew I was going to face a possessed bulldozer before it happened thanks to the manuscript, and so I saved a few flares to help me deal with it – an awesome touch!

All that stuff is awesome, but Alan Wake still has flaws. The combat is repetitive despite being fun, and this isn’t helped by the variety of enemies being limited to four or five different kinds. There’s also objects that can be possessed and will attack you, like the aforementioned bulldozer, but the enemy variety leaves much to be desired.

The game is also remorselessly linear, driven solely by the story and nothing else. This, again, is similar to Uncharted, though Alan Wake lacks any multiplayer component unlike the second in that series. In a game where the story is as tightly woven as this, that can hardly be argued against, though.

In the dark Alan Wake manages to be one of the best looking Xbox 360 games around, with impressively realistic looking lighting and shadowing, but in the few daytime scenes there are it begins to look a little rough around the edges – thankfully most of the game takes place in the dark, where it looks fantastic.

Alan Wake suffers from a number of problems, but in the grand scheme of things it’s a real achievement of a game, managing to do things with story that many other games have failed to do while also managing to have an engaging if repetitive combat system and an absolutely superb atmosphere.

Remedy have proved that they’re not just a one-trick pony, creating a game that’s starkly different to Max Payne but also deeply referential to it. The clever story, great voice work and presentation all work to sweeten an already sweet deal, and while it’s been a long time coming in the end it’s clear that Alan Wake was well worth the wait.

8.7

Originally Published on Strategy Informer.

For those of you who haven’t spotted it before, Nier is a genre-bending Action RPG coming from Cavia, the team behind Resident Evil’s Darkside Chronicles spinoff as well as the PS2’s Drakengard series of RPGs.

The game tells the story of the titular character Nier, who is fighting to find a cure to save his daughter from a deadly disease. There’s some interesting stuff in the opening, with the opening of the game taking part in the near future – 2049 – and then skipping forward 1300 years to a world on the brink of apocalypse.

There’s a touch of sci-fi to everything that goes on here, with the futre world where the lion’s share of the game takes place basically already a nuclear wasteland. I’m starting to get tired of those open, rolling, brown fields, and Nier doesn’t help that feeling by sporting flat, boring areas with muddy textures. You’ll be running through areas that all look the same and it’s disappointing that a game with such a cool twist on the traditional JRPG and Adventure game formula fails to make its world distinct at all.

Being an adventure game, the combat isn’t the sole focus of the game, with the third-person hacking and slashing feeling a tiny bit like a Dynasty Warriors style button-masher. The melee action is broken up by magic, enabled by the Grimoire Weiss, a floating, talking magical book. Weiss serves as your ‘Navi’ in the Zelda-style segments, but also grants Nier a bunch of magic powers.

The magic powers vary and level up as the game progresses, but Weiss will shoot magical energy at enemies, summon up gigantic deadly blades to swarm around you and other typical magic attacks – projectile, area of effect and so on. This combined with the ability to dodge and roll adds a bit of depth to the combat, making it solid but still rather limited.

Nier’s a rather disjointed experience, with that combat fairly satisfying at one moment for those with a blood thirst, but the next moment having you pottering about a quiet town helping out an old lady for a sidequest. Ten minutes later you’ll be stuck scratching your head at a puzzle in a Zelda-like dungeon, and then as the dungeon progresses you’ll be back in combat mode.

Cavia seem keen to nod to almost every part of gaming history – there’s a rail shooter segment and plenty of areas where the camera gets locked into a specific angle and follows you around in a manner which is half Resident Evil and half how the camera used to move in the NES and SNES Zelda titles – it’s an interesting setup.

Many of the sidequests are mundane and boring, forcing you to trot across the game’s massive but bland-looking overworld, killing animals and shades (Nier’s main enemy), even calling at some points for you to indulge in a spot of fishing or gardening, the former of which is rather frustrating to actually do.

Most of Nier’s sidequests and distractions are, like other aspects of the game, solid but wholly unimpressive. What is impressive is the sheer amount of things that you can do – this is definitely more than a linear adventure game or action RPG, providing the player with a veritable deluge of optional tasks – In that respect Nier is the opposite of the ‘story or bust’ Final Fantasy XIII.

All those side quests can be ignored and skipped over if you so desire, and that leaves you with a more manageable Action RPG of around 20 hours in length. Here you’ll be focused on combat and getting through dungeons and ensuring you’re ready for harder combat challenges by powering up Nier.

The main method of powering up is through the ‘word’ system. Defeated enemies sometimes drop words, which can then be equipped to weapons and magic to change their properties or buff their powers. The word system is vital to get through the game comfortably, and can do everything from light an enemy on fire to make battles reward Nier with more experience – it’s all classic RPG stuff.

The dungeons are far better designed than the overworld, with some mind-bending puzzles that’ll leave you confused for a while but slapping yourself when you finally make the connection. The end of every dungeon is almost always a highlight with impressive looking and challenging boss encounters.

I was also really impressed by the way the game seamlessly segways between 2D and 3D segments. It’s probably the best and most cool stylistic choice Nier makes, though in certain places it’s questionable, like areas of a dungeon early on that has you fighting enemies from a top-down view like a 16 bit Action RPG. The controls suddenly felt very hokey at that moment, while for the rest of the game they were relatively tight and responsive.

Despite many elements that show a ton of potential and an equally large number that make me cringe, the star of the show in Nier is the story. It’s quirky, over the top and aware of the medium in a way which I haven’t seen in a Japanese RPG for some time. Grimoire Weiss is quite the character for a book, constantly wisecracking at the expense of Nier and at the game’s design.

He’ll comment on character designs, the layout of levels and dungeons (because seriously, who would build a place as complex as half these dungeons?) and he even has a fair amount to say about Kaine, the game’s much publicised foul-mouthed, sparsely dressed hermaphrodite character.

I’m not sure if this self-aware and referential script is down to the localization team or the original developers, but it’s an impressive piece of work, managing to turn a game that was mostly mediocre and add something truly special to it.  Even if the gameplay largely bores you many players might find that the story continues to drive them through it.

66%

Rune Factory definitely bears a huge resemblance to the game series it’s been spun off from, featuring the same cutesy anime characters living and working on a tiny little farm which has plenty of room to grow into a sprawling, impressive business.

While you’re still working your farm and building relationships with simple dating-sim style options, where Rune Factory differs is where it becomes an RPG – dungeon crawling. Heading into dungeons works like many other dungeon-crawler RPGs, but it’s all turned on its head by many of the qualities bought to Rune Factory by the Harvest Moon formula.

The game clock is always ticking except when you’re inside shops and other non-dungeon buildings, so dungeon visits will have to be timed in such a way that you don’t leave your farm unattended for too long.

Monsters from dungeons can also be bought back to your farm and put to work, so further progression in early dungeons will grant you the help you’ll need to head deeper into other dungeons for longer periods of time. These monsters can also tag along in dungeons, and can be leveled up and improved in the traditional RPG way, becoming better farmhands or more combat-hardy over time.

Timing and multitasking is vital in Rune Factory – you’ll have to be juggling dates with potential wives, tending to the farm, heading into dungeons, shopping and even cooking for your family and farm hands all to be fit into a 24 hour day that amounts to 24 real-life minutes.

Sometimes the game feels a little needy – begging you to tend to this crop or go and see your family while you’re more interested in dungeon crawling, but on the whole Rune Factory is a relaxing, simplistic title that is part RPG, part The Sims and finally an awful lot of Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon – and it’s a strangely addictive proposition.

It’s not all as simple as described above, with the game offering depth in the form of the titular runes which can be gained and managed to help certain types of crops prosper in certain areas, while extra weapons and items can be forged and created to make dungeon crawling a little bit easier.

In fact, Rune Factory is a game that’s jam packed full of options of things to do – so much so that it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, and much like real life I found myself stressing that were just weren’t enough hours in this virtual day. The fact that time freezes inside all non-dungeon buildings is handy, but the days will still fly by very quickly indeed.

Dungeon action is Action-RPG styled, with you swinging your sword in real time with the press of a button or the flick of a wrist. It’s simplistic, but different weapon types and helpful monsters tagging along make all the difference in how battles play out. It’s competent but simple, with the depth of this game hidden in managing the actual farm.

Rune Factory Frontier features pretty standard Wii visuals, offering up some pretty environments and plenty of detail for a standard definition game. It’s a pretty, colorful game, full of the vibrant blues and greens that one would associate with farm life – with the visual aesthetic adding to the relaxing feeling of the game.

Voice acting is intermittent but decent and the music provides a welcome amount of variety, with different ditties for each season, matching the visual style and mood of each season of farm life perfectly – it all works rather well.

Rune Factory Frontier is flawed in places, but the sheer amount of depth offered in this title is stunning. It’s without a doubt one of the deepest RPGs on the Wii, and that depth offers up months of gameplay that’ll keep you enthralled.

Freedom is the name of the game here, and in an age when many RPGs are forcing players further and further onto an on-rails path, Rune Factory Frontier’s open-ended gameplay is a breath of fresh air.

80%

Originally Published on RPG Site.

Being a Japanese RPG, Infinite Space goes some way to embrace the traditions of both the JRPG and Sci-Fi genres, merging the two into a traditional story about young man Yuri who dreams of leaving his home colony and flying amongst the stars – and as the name of the game might suggest, he succeeds.

Yuri will eventually take on the role of the captain of his own ship, and through him you’ll be able to recruit a massive number of crewmembers throughout the game as well as upgrade and change your ship.

While Infinite Space mixes combat both on-and-off ship the real focus of the game is on the ships themselves, and the better part of the in-game combat is actually on those battles that take place out in the deep reaches of space.

Yuri will start out with a single ship, but as you progress through the game he’ll gain access to command a mini-fleet of five. You’ll be challenged with building a balanced team of ships suitable for any combat situation, and the ships themselves fit into the archetypes one would expect from both science fiction and RPGs, with certain classes of ships slotting into support roles whilst others are the heavy, hulking and formidable tank in battles.

It’s all about customization, and every ship in Infinite Space can be kitted out with various load-outs of rooms, weapons and features that will all have considerable benefits in combat. It’s impossible, of course, to slap every single upgrade on your ship, so picking and choosing exactly what to put on each ship will have a massive effect on how that space combat plays out.

The upgrades are called modules, and modules can do anything from improve health and attack power to speed up the movement of ships. It’s all a sci-fi nerd’s dream, where all the parts do the job you’d expect from the name and it allows you to live out those space-captain fantasies where you build the perfect space faring vessel. It’s not all big engines and lasers, though, as modules such as the cafeteria will be required to keep the morale of the ship’s crew up.

Managing the crew actually plays as large a role as managing the ships themselves, as you’ll have to staff each ship’s rooms with people skilled in those jobs. You’ll need a first mate, someone to juggle finances and yes, and somebody to staff that cafeteria and cook the meals. If that person isn’t a good cook the cafeteria will have a lesser effect on crew morale, so it’s important to choose wisely.

With a massive galaxy to explore, combat is usually initiated as you’re speeding across the stars from one planet to another, with sci-fi’s ever-present space pirates out to strip your ships of their riches. Once in combat, you’ll have to wait for a meter to charge up before you can execute a manoeuvre.

The moves are split into three groups; attacks, barrages and dodges. Attacks fire all the weapons currently available, barrages cost double the command meter but are more powerful and the dodge does exactly what it says on the tin, dodging incoming attacks. This sounds like a simplistic rock-paper-scissors combat setup, and that’s because it largely is.

As well as the simple command setup, you’ll also have to juggle the range of your ship. Certain weapons will only fire so far, so you’ll have to get in close if you want them to work – but doing so leaves you at more risk of getting hit by more powerful weapons yourself. You can also order smaller fighter ships to take off to harass enemies and stop them from moving, and these elements together add a welcome layer of complexity to combat.

While the commands themselves are different, Infinite Space spices up its combat by having you think about distance and weapon range constantly and by also placing an enormous emphasis on preparing the right battle load-out on your ships before heading into combat.

The difficulty level can sometimes feel bumpy, with some battles pummelling you into the ground with relentless difficulty and others offering up pathetically weak gangs of pirates, but overall the game provides a decent, enjoyable challenge that’ll saw me obsessively tweaking your ship designs to get the optimum setup for hours on end.

If all else fails you can get up close and board ships, but the on-foot combat is simply the three commands without the interesting aspect of range, and so is rather boring – this seems to be a glaring oversight and a missed opportunity for an on-foot battle system as interesting as the in-space one.

As a sci-fi nerd, there’s something incredibly satisfying about Infinite Space’s over-complicated, indulgent customization. It’s relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it, but there’s such a plethora of options and parts available that it’s pleasingly extreme. As I said above, I spent hours tweaking the layout of ships and building all-new ones without much boredom.

The issue here is that while it’s fine once you get the hang of it, Infinite Space does commit the rather nasty sin of failing to explain any of its complex systems properly. While explanations of what various ship modules do and what obscurely-named character statistics mean can be found deep within the game’s built in help system, it feels overly draconian that in this day and age to be forced to go searching for an explanation.

Infinite Space suffers overall from a difficult teething phase where the first few hours can foster frustration thanks to a lack of sufficient explanation and a sharp difficulty curve, but that curve soon levels out and the game systems are incredibly fun once you’ve learned them.

The game sports some decent-looking graphics, and has some great-looking anime character portraits and extremely detailed-looking ship and module designs that are sure to make any sci-fi fan grin, though the actual rendering in battle leaves a bit to be desired. Cutscenes progress through text and character portraits on-screen, and overall Infinite Space looks just fine but it certainly won’t win any awards for its visual presentation – gameplay is king here.

No More Heroes composer Masafumi Takada is on board for the soundtrack, providing exactly the kind of sound you’d expect from an epic space opera, with the overall sound-design following suit with all the lasers, explosions and ship engines you’d expect present and correct.

Infinite Space definitely has some significant issues – it’s lacking in presentation with basic graphics and there are some major oversights in terms of just how the game is built, with some systems plain-out not clear enough for players just starting out with the game, but the extremely clever and fun combat design and customization go an awful long way to make you overlook those problems.

Weighing in at fifty to eighty hours, Infinite Space features an awful lot of content for a portable title, and just might be the perfect portable title for an RPG fan – it’s familiar yet different, clever, fun and it’ll last you an age.

80%

Originally Published on RPG Site.

With the advent of a fighting game revival thanks to Capcom’s Street Fighter IV and the newly released Super Street Fighter IV, Mad Catz have put out a few solutions for those suffering with trying to play the game on the 360 or PS3 controllers – and the cheapest, least hardcore of the bunch is the FightPad.

Compared to the arcade sticks which’ll set you back three figures digits, the FightPads will only set you back around 40 dollars (or 35 pounds, exchange rate be damned) a piece. They’ll look familiar in shape to Sega Saturn fans, resembling that pad that is so revered by fighting game fans very closely.

The pad sports an eight-way floating D-Pad that is nice and mushy, offering a smooth movement that’s the polar opposite of the stiff D-Pads on the official controllers. The D-Pad actually seems to function in style closer to an actual fighting stick than a regular D-Pad, adn this works well, as sticks have always been the best for fighters.

The fact Mad Catz have quite deliberately made the D-Pad oversized was clearly a very wise decision, as your thumb can then slip about the pad easily and in more exaggerated movements, making many moves that are sometimes difficult easier to use.

Like the FightSticks from the same range, the function of the D-Pad can be edited to be the Left or Right analogue stick or the D-Pad itself, allowing you to choose just in case the game you want to use it for uses the stick for menus and the D-Pad for gameplay. This makes sure the pad is compatible with a wide range of non-fighting games, including 2D classics on Game Room and Xbox Live Arcade.

The fightstick features six face buttons and two shoulder buttons in the now traditional layout, and in most fighting games this amounts to the top three buttons being Heavy, Medium and Light kick while the bottom three are the same for punch. In Street Fighter the shoulder buttons serve as a combination of all three punches or all three kicks for activating ultras, but in different games they might have a different function.

I found the pad suitable for other fighters like Dead or Alive or Soul Calibur with some tweaking of the control options for the games, and the D-Pad and the buttons remained just as responsive outside of the Street Fighter games they were designed for. The only real complaint I can level at the buttons themselves is that they are a little too loose in my pad and are prone to a bit of rattle.

In addition to the standard features as controller, the FightPad also includes a turbo feature. It does what it says on the tin, allowing you to double or triple-up button presses, with a little light blinking on the front of the pad to let you know that turbo is being used. I didn’t have much use for this feature myself, but it’s handy to have.

The controller is a comfortable build, with a smooth plastic that’s adorned with artwork of a Street Fighter IV character with the sides of the pad having a harder plastic. Where your fingers will come to rest on the underside is covered in a softer grip which helps you keep a grip on the pad.

To be blunt, the glossy top isn’t always ideal if you’re playing in a hot room – the last thing you need is to slip on the D-Pad during a vital move because the controller’s starting to get a little sweaty, but overall the quality of the FightPad build is superb. It’s comfy to hold and use and Mad Catz have picked out some great Street Fighter IV artwork to decorate the pads.

The Xbox 360 version of the pad is wireless, which eliminates the fuss of batteries but adds the inconvenience of a wire lying across the floor. The PS3 is the opposite, wireless but requiring power. Both pads serve competently and without lag, and that’s all that matters in the end.

For the bargain price – comparable to that of a normal controller – the FightPad offers a specific solution for fighting games as well as enough versatility to be an ideal controller for retro Xbox Live Arcade and Game Room titles.

It’s a tiny bit light and flimsy feeling, but it’s so far managed to survive hours of intense Street Fighter play, so they’re clearly pretty robustly built. If you’re looking to improve your Street Fighter game and get rid of that rubbish analogue stick without shelling out over a hundred bones for a stick, this is definitely the solution.

Originally Published on Strategy Informer.

In line with that vision, the guys over at Mad Catz created two models of stick for the release of Street Fighter IV – the standard FightStick and the Tournament Edition FightStick. Both models offer arcade-level precision at home, with the Tournament Edition offering features and quality that hardcore Street Fighter fans expect at a price premium.

For the release of Super Street Fighter IV Mad Catz sent us over one of the latest model of the stick – the Super Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition S. As the name suggests, it’s branded for Super this time, while the S signifies the fact that the stick has lost a little of its physical bulk.

The first thing that struck me upon receiving the stick was the absolutely stunning quality of the packaging. Featuring Ryu and Ken prominently, the packaging features imagery of all of Super’s thirty-five playable characters and has an absolutely awesome flip-lid box which allows you to show off the quality of the stick inside without even taking it out of the box.

While the box for my Hori Real Arcade Pro EX2 was discarded as soon as I’d taken the stick out, this box is of such high quality that I’ve held onto it and keep placing the stick back into it – which in turn is keeping the stick a ton safer, too. Mad Catz definitely deserve two thumbs up for presentation.

The stick itself is equally as well constructed, managing to meld the slimmer design with sturdiness, with the whole stick offering a reassuring weight that makes it feel sturdy and quality while ditching much of the bulk that makes home-use arcade sticks overly bulky.

Despite the S designation, this isn’t a small stick. It’s a heavy box, and rivals the console you’ll be playing the game on in size. In an arcade stick this can only be a good thing, though, as a teeny-tiny stick cramps your hands and the weight helps to stop the stick from moving about during intense battles.

The stick is as authentic as you’re going to get sitting in your living room; featuring the original Sanwa brand arcade parts that were used in the real Street Fighter IV arcade cabinets over in Japan and the buttons laid out in the exact same way they are in the Japanese arcades.

The stick is wired to eliminate any potential crossed-signal issues at tournaments and also to ensure that there’s no input lag – a vital assurance for the ultra-fast fighting genre where every frame counts. The wire is handily massive, with more than enough length to stretch across even the largest living room or gaming cave.

The Start and Back buttons have been placed on the back of the stick facing away from the player, ensuring they don’t get accidentally pressed mid-match. As if that wasn’t enough there’s also a flick switch on the face of the stick that stops the Xbox Guide, Playstation button or Start from working – absolutely ensuring gameplay will go uninterrupted.

A second switch will also allow you to choose what the stick itself is – the D-Pad, Right Stick or Left Stick. This allows the stick to potentially be used for games that only use the D-Pad control, making it potentially ideal for Xbox Live Arcade or Game Room games that were originally in the arcade.

Also handy is the addition of turbo fire, which can be mapped to any of the face buttons on the stick and used liberally. Morally I wouldn’t recommend doing that online, but the feature is there to use and abuse as you wish. There’s also an Xbox Live headset port for talking back as you’re accused of being a scrub or a flowcharter, of course.

The build, size and shape of the stick feel just right. While it lacks the roominess about the buttons that a real-life arcade cabinet often has it’s the ideal size and shape for home use; small enough and light enough to fit on your lap or a small table, but also large and heavy enough to be a sturdy, strong and reliable piece of kit. The stick always felt robust even when trying to pull off the most intense combos, which is always welcome.

The stick seems to pick up input very well, and I felt while there was a bit of a rough honeymoon period where I struggled to get to grips with playing with a stick, I was quickly pulling off moves more quickly and reliably than I ever managed with a regular controller – it really is true that a decent stick offers a greater degree of control.

The stick managed to keep up with the speediest of battles easily, and I never felt that it was the controller’s fault that I lost a bout – something which used to frequently happen with a regular controller!

As mentioned earlier, the stick is a viable choice for more games than just Super Street Fighter IV – there’s of course other fighters including Dead or Alive 4 and Soul Calibur 4 as well Xbox Live Arcade titles like Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, but it’s also perfectly viable for other Xbox Live Arcade titles, from something like Pac Man Championship Edition to Streets of Rage 2’s XBLA port.

That versatility helps to justify the price tag a little more, but really how awesome the stick is in itself more than justifies the price, even if it is admittedly expensive. It’s not likely to break, and it’s easily moddable should the need to change the artwork, buttons or more take your fancy.

If all that wasn’t enough to justify the price, I can’t make it clear enough how high quality a build this is – it’s definitely one of the nicest, most upmarket pieces of gaming equipment I own. The only issue I have is the slightly rough edge where the artwork ends that can grate on the wrists after a while – but this is minor.

There’s a veritable glut of 2D fighting games available for the Xbox 360 now, and so the extra edge and authenticity this stick will help to give you should be more than enough reason to make any fighting fan make the investment. I should know – I just bought a second!

Originally Published on Strategy Informer.

If you’re looking for a short review, here it is: if you enjoyed playing Street Fighter IV, you’ll probably find a ton of fantastic features that’ll make investing your time in Super Street Fighter IV worthwhile. That’s it – and now let me explain exactly why.

Just in case you’ve been under a rock for the last six months, Super includes ten characters which weren’t in the original Street Fighter IV, bringing the grand total of playable characters to an impressive but not excessive thirty-five.

Of those ten, two characters are entirely new to the Street Fighter lore – Juri was described as a ’spider-lady’ when she was revealed, and that best describes her properties – fast, deadly up close and focused on kicks. Hakan is the other newcomer, a gigantic hulk of a man who is focused on grappling foes into submission. Hakan is all about ‘oiling up’ – pouring cooking oil on himself to grease up, which changes the properties of attacks.

The two represent the extremes of Street Fighter well – Juri is simple to pick up and use if you’re familiar with somebody like Ryu or Cammy, while Hakan can be confusing at first but can be absolutely deadly once you figure out exactly how to make use of his unique oil mechanic.

The other eight characters will all be familiar faces to hardcore Street Fighter fans with Makoto, Dudley and Ibuki coming from Street Fighter III and Adon, Cody and Guy representing the Alpha spin-off series – though Cody and Guy originated in the ‘Final Fight’ brawler series.

The roster is rounded out by T.Hawk and Dee Jay, the final two ‘New Challengers’ from the Street Fighter II expansions that were omitted from the original release.

The new characters offer a good spread of styles – Dudley’s a gentlemanly combo-building beast while Adon’s weirdly-angled attacks make him utterly different to anyone else in the cast, and while there’s plenty of projectile attacks in Street Fighter IV Cody’s knife-holding and throwing mechanic is definitely interesting and unique.

Every character in the game now has two Ultras, too. Cammy’s gained the counter CQC ultra, while Ryu’s got a massive Shoryuken that hits with such ferocity that the music cuts out. They’re all high quality cinematic moments, and they make a serious difference in battles – tactics against somebody selecting Ultra II is almost certain to be very different than if they’d selected Ultra I, as different Ultras perform and execute in different ways.

Better still, every one of these characters and ultras is unlocked from the start, with the only stuff that needs to be unlocked through gameplay being costume colors, taunts and other largely extraneous options – everything you need is unlocked from the get-go.

One blast through the single-player will unlock both the car-beating and barrel-busting minigames to play separately and also the option to cut them out of future single-player runs entirely – it’s all like Capcom have finally realized that these games are often played same-screen and ensured everything important was ready for those multiplayer nights in from day one.

Likewise, all the stages are unlocked from the word go, including a couple of new ones. Stages in Super Street Fighter IV are essentially a backdrop – they don’t affect gameplay – but they’re all lovingly constructed, pretty looking and often have Easter eggs in the form of character cameos in the background.

There’s still explosions and changes to the stage as the fight progresses, all of which animate well but aren’t so distracting that you take your eyes off the all-important fight. A welcome option to play the game with remixed versions of classic music – be it Ken’s Street Fighter II theme or Cody’s theme music, which is a remix of a Final Fight tune – is also included.

Where Super Street Fighter IV really soars is in its online. Sporting improved netcode and a greater plethora of options, it’s now easier to get a game and easier to pinpoint why you lost or how you can get better thanks to the new replay theatre.

Your last thirty matches are saved automatically, and you can then watch and save these forever if you so choose. You can watch your own matches back in slow motion to study for mistakes or even search through the online archives to see the best matches ever fought with your character of choice – it allows you to learn from the best.

The system is split into blocks – you can view battles with the original 8 world warriors from Street Fighter II, from bosses, newcomers and so on. These channels are handy, but it definitely would’ve been better to be able to search for matches between specific characters rather than only within larger groups – I’d say this is an oversight on Capcom’s part.

There’s still ranked matches to improve your rating, but the big new addition in Super for online is the ‘Endless Battle’ mode, allowing eight players to play together. The winner stays on, the loser is sent to the back of the line and all the other players can chat and watch while the matches they’re not in takes place.

There’s also a new Team Battle mode, which works similar to the Endless Battle but splits the eight players into two teams of four. The winner on the winning team stays on while the losing team rotates the player in charge. Even ranked matches have been streamlined, and it’s overall easier to get into a battle and once you do the netcode is solid, especially if you’re playing with someone in the same region, which matchmaking prioritizes.

There’s a stunning amount of depth to Super as there was in Street Fighter IV, and even though this time around I was playing with the fantastic Mad Catz FightPad and Tournament Edition FightStick I was getting my ass thoroughly handed to me online on a regular basis – but it was still great fun!

The single player is competent, featuring the now standard anime intros and rival battles with unique dialogue for each character, but the good news here is that it’s entirely optional unless you’re achievement-hunting. There’s varying difficulty levels if you need some practice before heading online, but the single player is not the priority here.

Like Street Fighter IV, the main issue with Super is the lack of any real tutorial content. The game does a better job this time with a Challenge mode that shows you how to combo with on-screen instructions, but even that feels a bit like being thrown in at the deep end of the pool to me, and I played a lot of Street Fighter IV.

In the end what you need to enjoy Super Street Fighter IV are a couple of mates to play it with on-or-offline who you can practice, learn and experiment with. If you can find that the game becomes addictive, more fun and infinitely more understandable.

It’s flawed in places, but this is still a game that expertly demonstrates to the rest of the gaming world why Capcom are still considered the kings of the fighting genre. It’s no incremental upgrade and brings more than just character balancing to the table, managing to improve, fix and surpass the original Street Fighter IV in every way imaginable – and they’ve done it at less than full price.

This is how you do an upgrade.

9/10

Originally Published on Strategy Informer.

It’s rare that I go into a game completely and utterly blind, and when I do sometimes it can be a pleasure and other times a nightmare. I can honestly say going into Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West blind and with no prior knowledge of the game was refreshing and very, very enjoyable.

Part of that is because it’s different yet familiar. Lead and Gold could be described on the surface as a Team Fortress style game with a multitude of game modes for online teams of players to tackle and that would be a pretty accurate description. The one major difference on the surface is that Lead and Gold is third person, not first.

Like Team Fortress Lead and Gold is class based, and each of the four classes offer a unique play style that is vital to making the team succeed. There’s the Trapper, Gunslinger, Blaster and Deputy – and it should be fairly clear what they all do from their names alone. The Deputy was my favourite, coming with a high-capacity semi-automatic rifle that could tear through enemies at mid to long range depending on how good your aim is.

If you haven’t already guessed from the title of the game or the class names, Lead and Gold takes place in the Wild West. It sports an interesting, quirky art style that isn’t quite cartoony but isn’t realistic either, and it really suits. While on the surface all the similarities may suggest that this is a Team Fortress ‘clone’, but once you scratch past the surface Lead and Gold reveals a surprising amount of twists to that class-based, team-based Red vs. Blue formula.

While on the surface all the similarities may suggest that this is a Team Fortress ‘clone’ once you scratch past the surface Lead and Gold reveals a surprising amount of twists to that class-based, team-based Red vs. Blue formula.

For a start, there’s the spawn flag which can be picked up by a player from your home base and carried around. This does exactly what you’d expect, and can be carried around or dropped so that the rest of the team spawn on the player carrying it or at the location where it was dropped. Because Lead and Gold deals with smaller teams than most other games of this kind, the ability to control where your teammates spawn is vital in certain game modes, especially the mode which requires you to capture various control points across the map – several times I spawned on an about-to-die comrade and rescued him from his would-be assailants – and that feels really satisfying.

The game also comes with a ‘Last Stand’ feature of sorts built in, where if players are shot in non-vital places but take enough damage to deplete their health they’ll be left on the floor with a six-shooter and aiming control. Unless it’s a clear-cut headshot, remember to never assume a body that falls down is dead in this game – it could come back to haunt you!

You can rescue teammates from this status by healing them, though that takes a couple of seconds to execute, so make sure you’re all clear. The classes are about more than what guns they use, too – classes here have extra buffs. Some classes emit area-of-effect buffs that heal, while my Deputy had the ability to ‘tag’ enemies, highlighting them to the rest of the team. Tagged enemies also take more damage, so this is a vital ability in close matches.

Generally much like Team Fortress the class load-out of your team will determine how you play each match and how successful your team will be. It’s the kind of game that can be picked up and played, but learning those classes will turn out to be hugely beneficial and advantageous in future matches. There’s also an experience system in place, though exactly what it does is still a mystery to me in this preview version. Aside from the above, Lead and Gold is pretty much self explanatory.

It may be small, simple and familiar in everything from the player count to the number of classes, but it’s an extremely polished piece of work. It boasts a straightforward HUD that’s easy on the eyes, and the whole game is really rather pretty and animates absolutely beautifully. The sound design is solid; the controls are tight and most important of all its pretty damn good fun.

Lead and Gold isn’t going reinvent the wheel or start a revolution, but what it will do is offer a refreshing take on an old genre that’ll be extremely fun with friends. And it’s cheap. What more could you want?

Originally Published on Strategy Informer.