2 Corinthians 6:14, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?
Divinity II: Ego Draconis is what happens when two unequally yoked ludic parents get drunk, throw their focus on factions to the ground like so much discarded clothing, and make a baby. From Morrowind we get compelling characters, an impetus toward unlocking the inner divine, and a strikingly vertical level design. And from Two Worlds come the tedious hacking-and-slashing, rambling trajectory through quests, and a bevy of technical issues. It’s a thirty hour-long game that hides its innovations behind fifteen hours of CRPG schlock and loading screens that tease you about the thrilling mechanics you don’t have access to yet, and when everything finally falls into place you may find yourself feeling that the best of the experience came too little, too late.
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Family Game Night 2 is the treacherously long awaited sequel to the completely mediocre 2008 release of Hasbro’s Family Game Night on the PS2 and Wii. To help soften the seething burn of anticipation for this must-forget sequel, EA saw to it that fans were able to download an enhanced version of the original for Xbox Live Arcade early on in 2009 and later, in October of the same year, through the Playstation Store. Still, the bridge of time that fans had to see pass before Family Game Night 2 hit store shelves in its splendid mediocrity seemed nearly unfathomable and unforgivable.
It’s definitely the most Nitro of all the Need for Speed games.
The Need for Speed series has been kickin’ about multiple game platforms for over a decade and a half and in that amount of time has matured, evolved, and become a form from which other racing games find their mold. When someone mentions Need for Speed, the first thing that should come to mind is Top Gun. The next thing should be police cars that won’t get off your back, drifting along break-neck turns, and customizing the hell out of virtual cars modeled after the real life variety. Like most games that exist on multiple platforms, Nitro follows suit to extend its racetracks into the neighborhood of Wii gamers by toning it down a little bit.
I have never played a CSI game before. I have never played a TV franchise-based game before. I have also never watched an episode of the original CSI, or any of its other exciting spawn. What I have played are lots and lots of puzzle games. Some newer puzzle games verge into the murky, uncertain land of “third person adventure” titles, and thus lose a certain something found in more traditional point and click adventures and investigation. Some, far older games, were text-based adventured, or slightly later, the early LucasArts titles. Even if it doesn’t want to, CSI: Deadly Intent: The Hidden Cases fits rather uncomfortably (and yet quite smoothly) into the adventure game model, even if it relies too heavily on mini games.
You might love Dragon Ball: Raging Blast – that is to say, if you already love the Dragon Ball franchise’s attempt to churn out a videogame roughly every ten months. Admittedly, the titles appear across multiple platforms, but that doesn’t distract us from the feeling that the Dragon Ball video game franchise isn’t particularly deep and isn’t evolving much – for fans of the series this might not be considered a bad thing. However, for gamers unfamiliar with the franchise, there isn’t much to grab onto that isn’t already done significantly better in other titles.
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