www.gamestop.comWhen the city of Rapture was first unveiled, it was an underwater dystopia ravaged by civil war and self-destructive genetic manipulation. This strange and unforgettable world was also one of awe and wonder. Set nearly a decade after the events of its precursor, BioShock 2's Rapture is just as haunting and atmospheric the second time around (and perhaps even more so), but the sunken tomb of Rapture has lost much of the mystery that made it so memorable. Everything seems a bit too familiar, and the story that accompanies your journey is not as impressive or shocking as the original. Despite this, BioShock 2 plays host to several enhancements over the first, including an expanded set of moral dilemmas, improved shooter mechanics, and a surprisingly fun and engaging multiplayer mode. Whether or not you've experienced Rapture before, BioShock 2 is an all at once beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking experience that stays with you after you've shut it off"Fallen, fallen is Babylon." Scrawled across the wall above a board covered with photographs, these words greet you in the waterlogged, decaying opulence of Adonis Spa after you awaken. Ten years have passed since the surprising events of BioShock 2's opening cinematic, and you're a man with a mission: to find your Little Sister. As Subject Delta, one of the original Big Daddy protectors first introduced in BioShock, you were pair-bonded with a Little Sister named Eleanor Lamb through a love that could literally kill you. Your mutual desire is to be reunited, but Eleanor is now being held captive by her mother, Sofia Lamb, the new master of Rapture. As an altruist and collectivist, Lamb is the diametric opposite of Andrew Ryan, the wealthy industrialist who founded Rapture as a place where mankind could be unfettered by petty morals, the hand of government, or the word of God. As an antagonist, she lacks Ryan's charisma and larger-than-life presence, but her personal philosophy and particular brand of madness nonetheless provides an interesting, if heavy-handed, alternative to his.

Though it is essentially a first-person shooter, the key component of BioShock 2 is its story, and while it features a powerful and compelling narrative with a satisfying conclusion, it is not without its issues. Whereas much of the first game focused on the city of Rapture and the mystery of how it fell from grace, BioShock 2 barely touches on these aspects, and as a result, prior knowledge is required to fully understand what is happening. There is supplemental reading on the big details buried within the menus for those who need it, but unfortunately, this isn't effectively brought to your attention. Furthermore, there are a number of inconsistencies present that are never satisfactorily explained. These range from small, nagging issues with the way certain story-based gameplay elements or characters from BioShock were grandfathered in, to larger problems with your very existence as a Big Daddy. It never becomes clear why you alone among the Big Daddies can use plasmids, for example. And while your pair-bond with Eleanor lightly manifests throughout the game, there is never any emotional connection there to latch hold of--the only reason you have to pursue her is that you're explicitly told you need to find her.

Standing between you and your Little Sister is The Family, Lamb's semireligious cult of splicers, or former citizens of Rapture whose years of abusing a genetically enhancing drug called ADAM has granted them superhuman powers at the cost of their sanity. The years have not been kind to the splicers, who are far more warped and disfigured than ever before. They're also more dangerous now, having spent the last ten years honing and refining their predatory skills and abilities. Most of the splicers you encounter, such as creepy wall-climbing spiders and teleporting houdinis, are recognizable from the first game, but they’re now joined by brutes, who can ruin your day with a charging tackle or a thrown piece of concrete. To keep up with these dangerous freaks, you have no choice but to splice up yourself to increase your potential and unlock new abilities. This means you need ADAM of your own, which is where things get As a Big Daddy, you're only too familiar with the way that ADAM is obtained: the Little Sisters. Making regular rounds in Rapture, the adorable but intensely creepy Little Sisters seek out ADAM-rich corpses (which they lovingly refer to as "angels") to drain with their wicked-looking needles. Each Little Sister is guarded by a Big Daddy, and unfortunately, there's no secret handshake that will get a Big Daddy to part willingly with his tiny charge--you've got to put him down. Once the two have been separated, it's up to you to decide what to do with the little girl, who cries in mourning of her surrogate father. As a Big Daddy yourself, you can lift her lovingly onto one shoulder and become her new guardian, or you can ruthlessly slaughter her for ADAM on the spot--an act made all the more cruel and unforgivable by your circumstances. By choosing the former, you can help your adopted Little Sister continue her rounds, earning a nice ADAM bonus in the process, but you're really only delaying the big decision. Do you choose to be selfish and harvest her? Or will you choose to be selfless and rescue her from her ghoulish condition? Each choice offers a different degree of ADAM as reward, but no matter what you decide, sooner or later Big Sister is going to catch up with you. These grown-up Little Sisters have been retrofitted with armor inspired by their guardians, and they are fast, powerful, and angry at you for messing with their pseudo siblings.All players have a persistent rank based on the amount of ADAM they've earned by winning matches and completing secondary objectives like hacking turrets, booby-trapping vending machines, or taking creeper photos of the bodies of their fallen enemies (which has the side effect of granting you a damage bonus against that player). Your rank determines which weapons, plasmids, and gene tonics are accessible, and you organize these into one of three loadouts you can select before a match begins or between respawns. Loadouts can and should be customized for different situations, and while you're dead, it's possible to check out what combinations the other players are using. Reaching certain ranks also earns you new voice recordings left by the multiplayer characters themselves, which provide their intriguing insights into the civil war and their downfall into madness.

Andrew Ryan dreamt of a world where his fellow man could endlessly pursue self-happiness and self-fulfillment, so he chose the impossible--a city beneath the oceans. When given the opportunity, the citizens of Rapture chose self-destruction in their selfish and twisted pursuits of his ideals. Precisely what you choose to do when you are beholden only to yourself and your own moral constraints is the backbone of BioShock 2. Rapture may not be as mysterious and intriguing this second time around, but it is nonetheless host to a powerful and moving tale that allows you to better realize--or pervert--Ryan's principles at your own discretion. Regardless of whether or not this is a return visit to paradise lost, there is plenty to be found here to make it a worthwhile, meaningful, and compelling one.

With enough ADAM at your disposal, you can spend it splicing up your DNA with plasmids to gain access to psychokinetic powers, such as the ability to throw fireballs, generate decoys that draw enemy fire, or shoot bees from your hands. You can also purchase gene tonics to enhance yourself with a wide variety of passive traits like faster movement speed, immunity to electrical damage, or quieter footsteps. Your combat options aren't strictly limited to genetic mutations, however, because there is an extensive arsenal of more traditional projectile weaponry for you to find as well. Each gun you find can dish out some serious damage to marauding splicers, from the bolt-launching rivet gun and the shoulder-mounted launcher to the .50 caliber machine gun and the deadly spear gun. Each gun also has multiple types of ammunition that you can switch between depending on the situation. As you journey deeper into Rapture, you'll have opportunities to upgrade both your guns and your plasmids, and there's a much greater sense of improvement this time around. Plasmids gain secondary and tertiary abilities, and weapons receive bonuses, such as the power to zap and stun foes with electricityMuch like its predecessor, BioShock 2 is slower and more methodical than your average shooter, but combat feels much more natural and effective than it ever did before. Most noticeably, you now duel-wield plasmids and guns, which allows you to dish out damage using both simultaneously or keep up an active defense with one hand and an offense with the other. Though setting traps was a useful tactic in BioShock, there are more compelling reasons to do so now because many more high-profile encounters are player initiated. Setting down an adopted Little Sister to guzzle ADAM, for example, summons a horde of splicers looking for a fix, and fortifying your position with proximity mines or trap rivets can take you a long way toward weathering the storm. When dealing with roving packs of splicers, there are often a number of ways to approach each battle. If you're short of patience and have plenty of health, you can rush in guns blazing and hope for the best. If you're a bit stealthier, you can catch your foes unawares and take them out before they even realize it. You can also promote infighting with the security command and hypnotize plasmids or even hack security cameras or sentry turrets for extra help (the Pipe Dream hacking minigame is gone and replaced by a much more streamlined version). Finally, the research camera returns in video recorder format--simply set the camera rolling and eliminate your enemies on tape to learn new abilities over time all while experimenting with different attack combinations to keep things fresh. This new setup is easier to use than the previous method, but you've got to juggle your weapons around because the camera must be temporarily equipped in place of a gun to activate it, which can be distracting during a firefight.

Rapture is an underwater city full of wonder and amazement that is steeped heavily in the architectural styling of the art deco movement. The entire city is a monument to the ego--specifically Andrew Ryan's ego--which is a notion so contradictory to the guiding principles of Lamb and her Family that they find it necessary to desecrate it at every turn. The cryptic messages about rebirth and their accompanying butterfly motifs that are found everywhere greatly add to the haunting atmosphere of Rapture. At the other end of the spectrum are the bright and cheery crayon-drawn messages that Eleanor leaves you like a trail of breadcrumbs, each of which warms the heart. But when you see them in the context of their surroundings, they are creepy and disturbing. Rapture is a dark, dismal world that envelopes you with a blanket of isolation--excellent art direction, a great soundtrack, and a fantastic voice cast all team up with a powerful story to create an atmosphere so thick and intense that it is at times downright chilling.

Besides its 10-to-12 hour-long single-player campaign, BioShock 2 also features a fun and entertaining story-based multiplayer mode set during the fall of Rapture. As one of a handful of pre-insanity splicers, you've joined the Sinclair Solutions Consumer Rewards Program for self-defense to test experimental weapons and plasmids in the war between Andrew Ryan and his archenemy Atlus. Most multiplayer matches support up to 10 players, and they're much faster paced than the single-player game--so much so that it'll likely take you a while to get accustomed to it. With maps set in familiar, albeit less ruined, locales from the first BioShock, multiplayer features seven game modes that are takes on standard shooter multiplayer types. Capture the Sister, for example, involves carrying around a crying, screaming, and angry Little Sister for as long as possible before you'reMuch like its predecessor, BioShock 2 is slower and more methodical than your average shooter, but combat feels much more natural and effective than it ever did before. Most noticeably, you now duel-wield plasmids and guns, which allows you to dish out damage using both simultaneously or keep up an active defense with one hand and an offense with the other. Though setting traps was a useful tactic in BioShock, there are more compelling reasons to do so now because many more high-profile encounters are player initiated. Setting down an adopted Little Sister to guzzle ADAM, for example, summons a horde of splicers looking for a fix, and fortifying your position with proximity mines or trap rivets can take you a long way toward weathering the storm. When dealing with roving packs of splicers, there are often a number of ways to approach each battle. If you're short of patience and have plenty of health, you can rush in guns blazing and hope for the best. If you're a bit stealthier, you can catch your foes unawares and take them out before they even realize it. You can also promote infighting with the security command and hypnotize plasmids or even hack security cameras or sentry turrets for extra help (the Pipe Dream hacking minigame is gone and replaced by a much more streamlined version). Finally, the research camera returns in video recorder format--simply set the camera rolling and eliminate your enemies on tape to learn new abilities over time all while experimenting with different attack combinations to keep things fresh. This new setup is easier to use than the previous method, but you've got to juggle your weapons around because the camera must be temporarily equipped in place of a gun to activate it, which can be distracting during a firefight.

Rapture is an underwater city full of wonder and amazement that is steeped heavily in the architectural styling of the art deco movement. The entire city is a monument to the ego--specifically Andrew Ryan's ego--which is a notion so contradictory to the guiding principles of Lamb and her Family that they find it necessary to desecrate it at every turn. The cryptic messages about rebirth and their accompanying butterfly motifs that are found everywhere greatly add to the haunting atmosphere of Rapture. At the other end of the spectrum are the bright and cheery crayon-drawn messages that Eleanor leaves you like a trail of breadcrumbs, each of which warms the heart. But when you see them in the context of their surroundings, they are creepy and disturbing. Rapture is a dark, dismal world that envelopes you with a blanket of isolation--excellent art direction, a great soundtrack, and a fantastic voice cast all team up with a powerful story to create an atmosphere so thick and intense that it is at times downright chilling.

Besides its 10-to-12 hour-long single-player campaign, BioShock 2 also features a fun and entertaining story-based multiplayer mode set during the fall of Rapture. As one of a handful of pre-insanity splicers, you've joined the Sinclair Solutions Consumer Rewards Program for self-defense to test experimental weapons and plasmids in the war between Andrew Ryan and his archenemy Atlus. Most multiplayer matches support up to 10 players, and they're much faster paced than the single-player game--so much so that it'll likely take you a while to get accustomed to it. With maps set in familiar, albeit less ruined, locales from the first BioShock, multiplayer features seven game modes that are takes on standard shooter multiplayer types. Capture the Sister, for example, involves carrying around a crying, screaming, and angry Little Sister for as long as possible before you're killed and she's kidnapped by another player. In other modes, you can become a lumbering Big Daddy if you happen to find a suit lying around or are picked at random. Multiplayer matches are fun and challenging, and this unorthodox addition to BioShock 2 can breathe additional longevity into the game. killed and she's kidnapped by another player. In other modes, you can become a lumbering Big Daddy if you happen to find a suit lying around or are picked at random. Multiplayer matches are fun and challenging, and this unorthodox addition to BioShock 2 can breathe additional longevity into the game.

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If you're trying to determine who the greatest Sega character of all time is, it's going to be pretty difficult to devise a competition in which Ulala and Sonic are on even ground. The Space Channel 5 star would win any dance-off (not even Michael Jackson stood a chance), and no one is stopping the blue hedgehog from grabbing golden rings. But if you put 20 characters from Sega's rich history into race-ready rides and equip them with all sorts of wacky weapons, then you might at least find out which of them is the best driver. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing closely follows the formula of the genre-defining Mario Kart series, but this arcade racer is far from a cheap cash-in. With 24 well-designed courses and ultraprecise controls, swerving your way to victory is a joy. Your favorite character mayThe 20 Sega characters in All-Stars Racing are an odd bunch, to say the least. A whopping seven of them have been pulled from the well-worn Sonic universe, though some of the lesser known entrants could have easily been scrapped to allow a few more franchises to share the limelight. It makes sense that the lightning-fast blue hedgehog and his evil nemesis Dr. Eggman made the cut, but would anyone really have missed Amy or Big the Cat? The 13 non-Sonic characters run the gamut from ridiculously obscure (Zobio and Zobiko from House of the Dead: EX) to cult favorite (Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue) to long-forgotten 8-bit star (Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone). It's an eclectic cast that stretches through Sega's entire history, which should please anyone who's been following Sega since the Master System days. There is a slight difference in the lineup among the systems. The Wii version lets you play as your Miis while the Xbox 360 version gives you control of your avatar, as well as a kart with Banjo and Kazooie on board. Sadly, there are no such bonuses on the PlayStation 3.

Once you make the difficult decision between driving as AiAi or Samba, it's time to get a taste of the racing. The controls are tightly honed, making it easy to weave through traffic, slide around corners, and drop a few landmines in front of your unsuspecting competitors. Everything in All-Stars Racing feels just right, so within seconds of starting your first race, you'll be able to focus on positioning rather than wrestling with your steering. The most exhilarating aspect of the racing experience is the boost system. By holding down the drift button when you enter turns, you slowly build up your boost ability. The longer you hold it, the faster your burst when you finally release it, which adds a bit of strategy as you see how far you can tempt fate. The only control issue is some iffy collision detection when slamming into the environment, but occasionally getting stuck on a rock doesn't hamper the overall fun of flying around these tracks.

 themes. Nine have been pulled from Sonic, and those only have three unique styles (casino, fortress, and green hill). The House of the Dead tracks are delightfully creepy, and the races through the brightly colored world of Samba De Amigo are a trip, but it would have been more interesting to have a few Of course, you'll be doing a lot more than just slamming through hairpin turns and trying to land ridiculous leaps of faith. You pick up items as you make your way around the track, although these aggressive power-ups are not as exciting as the core racing action. You have a standard array of forward-striking missiles and tailgate-halting mines, and though they are often the key to victory, they are the weakest aspect of this game. Having a chance to make up ground when you slip behind is always welcome, but the items are, for the most part, bland and unoriginal, so they feel more like a necessary evil than an integral part of the . fun. The one interesting aspect is an All-Star pickup that is unique for every character. This is your uberweapon so you only have a chance of nabbing it if you're getting beaten soundly. Seeing Sonic turn into a chaos emerald-fueled Super Sonic or Ryo hop on board a forklift is pretty cool the first time, but most of these items are little more than glorified speed burstsThe two main single-player modes are Grand Prix and Mission. Grand Prix comprises six different cups with four tracks each, and you test your mettle against seven computer-controlled opponents. Beginner difficulty is easy enough, but advanced and expert pose a much stiffer challenge. The computer is without mercy, so expect to be peppered by items, shoved off cliffs, and given the sort of respect usually reserved for the likes of Shadow. Mission mode is objective based and has you striving to complete bite-sized tasks. Being asked to perform a certain number of boosts within a lap or collect coins as quickly as possible isn't too difficult, but to really prove your worth as an all-star racer, you'll have to earn a triple-A rating. This takes a bit of practice, and getting top marks in the more than 60 missions can take  fair amount of time. It's just a shame you have to play through these modes by your lonesome. There is no way to team up cooperatively with a buddy, which is a disappointment because previous kart racers have let you take on the uncaring computer with your best friend in towThankfully, there are enough competitive modes to almost make up for the lack of co-op play. Online, you're restricted to just racing, but because that is the best element of All-Stars Racing, it doesn't feel too limiting. Eight   can compete at one time, and you have the option to allow computer drivers or banish them from the track. Toggling items or rubberbanding on or off is also an option, so you can keep things hectic or make sure that skill is the sole determining factor. Sadly, there is no way to set up a Grand Prix of your own, so you're stuck with a series of one-off matches. The four-player split-screen mode works in much the same way, and in addition to races it supports a number of different battle modes. There is King of the Hill, Capture the Chao, and a few others, but they aren't all that fun. The items lack impact, so these modes feel like minor diversions rather than something meaty. All-Stars Racing is at its best when you're striving for the checkered flag, and the competitive races do a great job of bringing this excitement to the forefront. franchises thrown into the mix. not have made the cut, but All-Stars is a lot of fun even if you're stuck with Billy Hatcher.The  controls would be for naught if the track design couldn't follow the same high standard, but there is no such problem here. Each of the 24 tracks is filled with tight turns, wild jumps, and even a cleverly hidden shortcut or two, which makes it a lot of fun to repeatedly play them to find all their secrets. All-Stars Racing does a good job of easing you into the experience with the early tracks but doesn't make them so simple that veteran drivers will breeze through them. There are always enough tight turns and narrow pathways to ensure the racing stays intense. The only small problem with the tracks is that there isn't quite enough variety in their

The final piece that ties this great experience together is the impressive visuals. The courses are jam packed with details, some of which you’re unlikely to notice until you’ve raced them many times. The Samba De Amigo levels are overflowing with chaotic images. Cardboard-cutout suns smile down at the player, wooden kiosks line the track, and every inch is   with vibrant colors. Every course follows a similar mindset, packing the environment with so many little touches and nostalgic imagery that longtime Sega fans will swoon with delight. All of this detail does hinder the frame rate a bit, though. During particularly hectic sections, the game will stutter at times, though it's not enough to ruin your chance at victory. This is more noticeable on the PlayStation 3, especially online, but it ultimately isn't a huge deal. The game usually runs smoothly despite having so many Although the core of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is obviously pulled straight out of Mario Kart, this wacky racer can stand on its own four wheels. The tight controls and excellent track design ensure that head-to-head competition is always exciting, but it's so fun just to play around with these karts that it’s easy to lose hours climbing the online leaderboards in Time Trial mode. All-Star Racing may not push the genre forward in any meaningful way, but it builds so well on established themes that it doesn't even matte burst off the screen, and the fancy graphics do a fine job of tying this entire package together  

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 and while the few extras and tweaks found in the exclusive international edition may seem a meager reward for your patience, they do make it the more enticing version to ownIt seems rather fitting that the end of the long-running Star Ocean series would come around full circle to revisit where the series first began--with the degradation of our beloved homeworld and with humanity teetering on the brink of . After fiercely mucking things up on planet Earth with a little trigger-happy nuke action, the last remnants of human civilization have ventured outward into the galaxy to find new worlds to colonize and meddle with. As far as prequels go, Star Ocean: The Last Hope (The Last Hope's plot setup is eerily plausible. A heated conflict between Earth's squabbling superpowers escalates into a nuclear Armageddon that wipes out most of civilization and sends the atmospheric conditions on the surface into a tailspin. The remaining survivors are driven underground until years later when a scientific breakthrough in warp-drive technology launches the Space Reconnaissance Force initiative to explore the galaxy and locate a new planetary home. The story follows young hero Edge Maverick, his close friend Reimi Saionji, and other crew members of the starship Calnus as they embark on the maiden voyage into the deep space beyond. Things go horribly wrong from the get-go, and crash-landing on a nearby planet inhabited by hostile life-forms kicks off an appropriately epic quest to stop a galactic takeover by a particularly venomous alien race. If you can get over the predictable way the story unfolds and tune out the game's many irritating JRPG character cliches, the tale should have enough substance to keep you from throwing in the towel prematurely. released on the Xbox 360 last year) gets a lot of things right in terms of gameplay, even if it falters in other areas. PlayStation 3 owners had to wait an extra year to get a crack at saving Like many other games of its ilk, a tremendous portion of the gameplay in The Last Hope boils down to the old RPG standby routine of wandering around each expansive world map and kicking the living snot out of the evil creatures you run into. As expected, this cycle typically continues until you're strong enough to push onward to tougher regions. Save points and healing spots are few and far between, and you're often stuck battling through long stretches of tough encounters. Even though you can run around most monsters found on the more open maps, you're going to have to suck it up and plow through them at some point to keep leveling up. Exploring every nook and cranny is also  in order to track down all the treasure chests, item-making components, and other goodies that lay hidden throughout the long, mazelike map routes carved into each planetary surface. The overgrown wilds, technology-laden city corridors, sandy beaches, icy mountains, and other locations you'll visit support an abundance of wicked adversaries, both big and small, to face off against. Fortunately, combat is one of the best aspects of The Last Hope. galaxy one last Bumping into wandering foes on the map triggers a fast-paced real-time fight sequence that thrusts your party into the fray with swords, spells, and blasters drawn. You control your selected character directly, running around the battlefield and unleashing hell on enemies as you see fit. Meanwhile, your comrades follow preset combat routines that can be individually adjusted beforehand. With everyone swinging blades, shooting arrows, and flinging explosive magic around, battles are typically exciting and chaotic. Other nuances--such as precisely timed blindside maneuvers that let you zip around to hit a foe from behind and perform combo sequences that can be strung together to decimate opponents in a flurry of moves--really add a lot to these encounters. A quick tap of a button also lets you cycle between anyone in your party speedily. Each character in your group has a different set of abilities, special moves, and combat style. Aside from being a lot of fun, it's actually necessary to switch around and play as different characters at various times during battles. Additionally, other folks join your entourage later in the game, giving you the freedom to switch them in and out of your party on a whim.

With a galaxy full of evil to smite and loot to collect, hopping from one planet to the next also presents numerous opportunities to stay busy in between following the righteous and heroic path of the do-gooder. Boosting your party's noncombat skills lets you cook tasty meals, forge new weapons, concoct magical items, and make all kinds of other helpful junk, provided you've foraged enough key components in your travels. Hunting down rare elements and combining different items needed to craft even more powerful gear and weaponry can grow into a time-consuming addiction with the potential to eclipse the importance of progressing through the main quest if you let it. Acquiring important items and artifacts also plays heavily into the high-paying fetch quests that appear at key shops in the pockets of civilization you encounter on each There are some beautiful landscapes and scenic backdrops here and there, but other areas are dull and devoid of visual personality in comparison. Character designs are also hit or miss. It's hard to empathize with the game's protagonists when they don't emote much, and there are moments when the dialogue is painful to sit through. The main updates in the international edition are in the audio and visuals. Instead of listening to the bad English dubs, you can now switch the dialogue over to the original Japanese voice work (and a few other languages), which definitely gives the package a more authentic anime JRPG feel. It's also possible to adjust the HUD menu appearance to a more classic setup that includes anime character portraits instead of the modern default designs. These aren't groundbreaking additions, but they're welcome ones.

The Last Hope remains a solid and mostly fun JRPG with a few character flaws that don't ultimately sink the ship. The international version is condensed onto a single disc, so there's no irritating swapping to deal with. Aside from the optional additional language tracks and the menu design tweaks, it doesn't hold any vast improvements over the Xbox 360 version. If you're hankering to suit up and go rid the galaxy of evil, you'll find this intrepid jaunt into the unknown packs enough danger and excitement to satisfy your sci-fi fantasy thrill-seeking urges.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 boasts a fast-paced and thrilling campaign, as well as some of the most immersive and exciting multiplayer action ever seen on consoles.

The Video Review

Chris Watters leaves a path of destruction in this video review for Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Watch ItWatch HD 520p
The Good
Destructibility is strategically powerful and immensely fun Electrifying and addictive online multiplayer Great campaign with witty characters Beautiful, well-designed environments Superb sound design.
The Bad
Occasional technical hiccups.
There is no shortage of online destinations for those who enjoy first-person gun-wielding combat, but no matter how many opportunities you get to shoot another player in the face, there is always room for one more. Especially when that one more is as exciting and intense as Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The online multiplayer in this modern military shooter is a standout, featuring huge maps, destructibility, powerful vehicles, and excellent sound design. These elements combine to foster the sense that you are fighting on an actual battlefield, making many other online shooters seem more like combat arenas than believable war zones. Multiplayer battles are invigorating and addictive, but they aren't all that Bad Company 2 has to offer. The sizable campaign takes you to beautiful and exotic locations where you'll be sorely tempted to take a break from shooting bad guys and blowing things up to admire the scenery. Fans cooperative campaign play may miss the opportunity to play with a friend, but your hilarious and endearing squadmates more than make up for it, giving the campaign a rich sense of character not often found in the genre. The result is a very entertaining adventure that, coupled with the excellent multiplayer and top-notch technical presentation, makes Battlefield: Bad Company 2 something special in the world of shootersHumor is another way that Bad Company 2 distinguishes itself. Your squadmates each have great personalities, and their banter is witty and entertaining. You may have to wait for a quiet moment to hear some   their best conversations, but it is well worth it. Haggard's love for the Dallas Cowboys and command of the Spanish language are two amusing subjects, while a conversation about respecting the dead adds enough emotional depth to elevate these characters above one-dimensional stereotypes. They are competent and helpful on the battlefield, and though you may occasionally wish had a friend along for the ride, the men of Bad Company make great companions.

The campaign is a focused, largely linear adventure that takes you to a variety of gorgeous locations. The aforementioned arctic and jungle landscapes are standouts, but other places live up to the high standard. Driving a tank through a countryside in the full bloom of autumn provides eye candy and cannon fodder aplenty, while speeding around a dry seabed in an ATV brings strange sights, not to mention a particularly fierce firefight in the courtyard of an old fortress. You have to be sharp to defeat the smart, aggressive enemies who use destructibility to their advantage and avoid your line of fire. The action is challenging but not overly so, ensuring you have plenty of time to revel in the havoc you are causing. Despite one oddly forced situation, the campaign moves through exotic locales at a great clip, providing ample opportunity to flex your firearms and enjoy some intense vehicle sequences. This is a very entertaining, very exciting adventure.

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To the untrained eye, boxing involves little more than two fighters punching each other until one of them falls down. There's a lot more to the sport than that, though, and Fight Night Round 4 is a game that, while not necessarily realistic, encourages you to think about every punch you throw in much the same way a real boxer does. The action is fast-paced, the career mode really sucks you in, and there are some neat online options to boot. On the flip side, the career mode places too much importance on frustrating training minigames, and all too often opponents in ranked online matches suck the fun out of the fight by mindlessly spamming punches. Regardless, Fight Night Round 4 is a great boxing game, and one that improves upon its predecessor despite a few noticeable shortcomings.

To the untrained eye, boxing involves little more than two fighters punching each other until one of them falls down. There's a lot more to the sport than that, though, and Fight Night Round 4 is a game that, while not necessarily realistic, encourages you to think about every punch you throw in much the same way a real boxer does. The action is fast-paced, the career mode really sucks you in, and there are some neat online options to boot. On the flip side, the career mode places too much importance on frustrating training minigames, and all too often opponents in ranked online matches suck the fun out of the fight by mindlessly spamming punches. Regardless, Fight Night Round 4 is a great boxing game, and one that improves upon its predecessor despite a few noticeable shortcomings.












Boxers in Round 4 are capable of throwing a lot more punches in each round than their real-life counterparts, but that caveat aside, fights play out in an impressively believable fashion. In a fight that lasts 10 three-minute rounds, for example, it's not uncommon for the momentum to shift from one fighter to the other as fatigue, heavy punches, and different strategies all play their part. Also deserving of a mention is the ingenious new corner system introduced this year. In between rounds, you get to spend points on replenishing your stamina and health and on repairing damage, and the number of points that you get to spend is determined by different aspects of your performance in the previous round. For example, you earn points for having a high percentage of your punches find their target, for avoiding your opponent's punches, for stunning or knocking down your opponent, and even for managing to get back to your feet via a first-person minigame after hitting the canvas. It's a great system, because it acknowledges that a boxer throwing five times as many punches as his opponent isn't necessarily throwing better punches, and so while he may well earn more points from the judges, he's also going to expend a lot more stamina, and if many of his punches are being blocked or dodged, he's handing his opponent more to points to spend in his corner at the end of the round.



There are more than 40 instantly recognizable professional pugilists on the Round 4 roster, and that number is growing thanks to users who are taking the time to create them as custom fighters and share them online. Zab Judah, Evander Holyfield, Danny Williams, and Floyd Mayweather are just a handful of the fighters who have been brilliantly re-created using photos uploaded to the EA Sports World Web site, along with all manner of celebrities. The powerful toolset for creating custom fighters is easy to use, but satisfying results are much easier to achieve by uploading digital photos to the aforementioned site than by using the console's own camera. Whichever method you choose, the head generated using a frontal and a profile photo requires some major tweaking afterward, but the rewards are well worth the effort--especially if you're keen to play through the Legacy career mode as yourself.



In Legacy mode, your chosen fighter starts out as a "bum" at the bottom of his 50-strong weight class. Your goal, of course, is to work your way up to number one and claim the title belt, but Round 4 takes several steps beyond that as well. After winning your chosen division and earning the rank of champion, you're really only about halfway to achieving your full potential, because in addition to defending your title, there are other belts in other weight classes up for grabs. The criteria for retiring as a Hall of Famer, a ring legend, or the greatest of all time are numerous, and not for the fainthearted. Examples include maintaining a win percentage of over 95 percent across dozens of fights, defending a title successfully as many as eight times, and holding three championship belts simultaneously. The road to achieving that kind of success is long, which is a good thing, save for those occasions when obstacles on the road seem unnecessary or are just the result of bad design.

http://www.gamestop.com/Video Game Review

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Mario and Luigi, Back to the Wii: The More Players, the Deadlier

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Nintendo's challenging game has graphics that belie the punishing chalenges. It's not for casual play.







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The Super Mario Bros. recipe remains one of the simplest possible: rescue the princess by traversing ever more challenging two-dimensional levels. Jump at the wrong time, land in the wrong place, move in the wrong direction or touch the wrong thing, and you die. If you die, you start over. If you die too many times, you start over even further back.



This is how it has always been, and so it apparently shall remain. Yet New Super Mario Bros. Wii is far more difficult than the most recent major Mario title, Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Many of the same children and parents who enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy will be crushed into submission by New Super Mario Bros. Wii as they lose over and over again.



In that sense the new game feels trapped uncomfortably among Nintendo’s past, present and future. Nintendo clearly wants this game to appease grumbling longtime fans who resent the company’s move toward the mainstream. And for some it will do so.



At the same time, however, the Wii has been marketed quite brilliantly as casual living room entertainment for groups of friends who aren’t necessarily longtime gamers. And so New Super Mario Bros. includes the ability for up to four players to control separate characters simultaneously in the game, a first for the series.



The problem is that the multiplayer mode is nearly a complete disaster for nonexperts who might actually want to get through each level. With each person who joins the action, the game becomes even more difficult.



That is because the various player-controlled characters, including the brothers themselves, bounce off one another to their doom, push one another off ledges and shove one another into killer monsters. It can be very difficult for players (like the people I invited to my home to play) to keep track of their characters on the screen. In a game that requires precise control and punishes the slightest mistake with death, the multiplayer mode generates exponential confusion.



Even worse, the one concession the game makes to newer players does not even work in multiplayer. Perhaps the best addition to the new game is a feature that guides players past a level if they have died on it repeatedly. But inexplicably, it only works in solo play.



So New Super Mario Bros. Wii offers multiplayer support, but the actual design of the game encourages most people to play by themselves. That is not what Nintendo is supposed to be all about these days.