Sonic Riders

The SEGA hardcore will be pleased to know that Sonic Team has not skimped on the license. In addition to a story mode, the title boasts a massive selection of old and new mascots, including everyone from Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, Jet the Hawk, Storm the Albatross, and Wave the Swallow to Dr. Eggman, Shadow the Hedgehog, Rogue the Bat, Cream the Rabbit, Robo 1 and Robo 2. Gamers can also use collected rings to shop for new snowboarding gear for their favorite characters, extending replay value.
Really, though, Riders is all about the fast and unpredictable races and Sonic Team has done a solid job of delivering on speed and anarchy. As in any racer, the main objective is to finish ahead of any competitor, but Riders serves up a few twists, some of them literal. The mascots hop onto hovering boards and blaze through courses, spitting out the occasional trick, grinding the rare rail, and catching air when the opportunity arises. There is a shallow, but enjoyable trick system in place. Gamers need only press in a given direction to execute in-air moves and then land for more points. Players looking for any extra depth in the setup, however, will find themselves very disappointed. Sonic and friends can execute speed bursts to catch opponents and for added air time, which adds welcomed flexibility in matches. The downside is that using too much boost causes the characters to run out of energy and they'll need to stop for a recharge, a tedious, unnecessary process that slows the racing experience.
The game introduces a unique turbulence system, which enables riders to literally surf the wind trails of their competitors. It's a refreshing idea and it's made more enjoyable by the fact that tricks can be executed and linked into combos between different turbulence systems. Some level of skill is additionally required to identify the turbulences, ride and link them. If there's a drawback to this element, it's that the wind trails tend to play the racer for gamers. Once inside a turbulence system, participants could set their controllers down and advance anyway.
Sonic Team has done respectable work of mixing up the levels. Riders will race through everything from a futuristic Metal City and Splash Canyon to Dr. Eggman's Factory, a lush jungle known as Green Cave, and even some Sand Ruins. The variety is commendable. That noted, we think the studio missed an opportunity with the design of the courses, which as a whole lack the twisting corkscrews and loop-de-loops that have rocketed Sonic the Hedgehog to stardom. There are also occasional camera issues to contend with despite the fact that the action is mostly forward moving. We have to also note that we kept wondering why SEGA didn't simply contract Amusement Vision, which made the spectacular F-Zero GX, to design this racer? The F-Zero engine - everything from sense of speed to control and graphics - is well beyond the code serving Riders.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi

Best described as a mix of Virtual On and Budokai 2, Tenkaichi has lost a lot of Budokai 3's flashier special techniques like the Dragon Rush and Hyper Mode, but retained the much more important Teleport counter to avoid your opponent's power strikes. The kick command has been removed from the control scheme too, and your assault types are now modified by the other buttons in conjunction with the generic attack button. Since "Kick" was taken off the control map, it has been replaced with a "Dash" command that plays a much more significant role in the gameplay than in past iterations.

The reason that the Dash is so important this time is because of how one-on-one fights are structured. The traditional side-plane fighting game view with occasional alternate camera angles has been axed in favor of a fixed view that looks similar to Katamari Damacy or Armored Core. The big difference compared to those two, though, is that the camera can't be adjusted by the user and rotates on its own dependant on the action. Because of this factor (in conjunction with the larger size of each free-roaming stage) the dash button becomes a terrific offensive and defensive tool. Offensively, rushing forward not only allows you to get closer to your opponent, but it also lets you perform Dragon Dash special attacks which take off more damage. On the defensive side, the dash command makes escaping from your foe and hiding behind obstacles much easier to do (be careful, though -- just about anything in the environment can be destroyed).
This setup alone changes the feel of head-to-head battles compared to the last games pretty noticeably... especially since players can actually fly and descend on their own without the need to be launched (finally!). That flying technique is particularly useful when competing in tournament mode with "Ring Outs" turned on since one technique you can use to avoid the cheese tactic is to sail up into the air. Despite this new perspective and true ability to fly, however, fans that liked the multitude of attacks found in the last version may be a bit disappointed in this more simplistic setup. Even so, I have to admit that the action plays out a lot more faithfully to the anime under the current schematic.

Another positive aspect to Budokai Tenkaichi is the ramped-up AI. Even when playing on the medium difficulty, the CPU is a brutal and merciless bastard. It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear -- and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you're dead. Despite that, the lower challenge settings are a bit more tolerable (with the easiest level being less of a pushover than your average fighter) and the number of moves that the computer will use to mix it up against you is pretty respectable. Nothing beats playing against another human being, though. Tenkaichi is an impressively fun two-player contest that has plenty of options to choose from.

Ape Escape Million Monkeys

Your goal in each stage is to capture monkeys while taking out whatever targets lie in the way. You have the expected arsenal of weapons at your disposal. Your default arsenal includes a sword, a net, a laser gun and a pair of roller blades, but you can also select other weapons, including a remote control car and rocket launchers. During the heat of battle, you may also find yourself boarding tanks and mechs to wage extra fire power. In addition, each character has individual special attacks that can be performed by pressing two face buttons simultaneously.

The control is classic Ape Escape, for better or worse. The face buttons are used to switch between weapons, with the right analogue stick used to attack. This is actually true only for some weapons, like the sword and net. The laser gun and roller blades are controlled exclusively with the face buttons, making for a somewhat confusing mix. Combine this inconsistency with the total lack of camera control, and combat can be sloppy.

If you don't take the game too seriously, though, Ape Escape packs some laughs. The game has all the humor you've come to expect from the series, with the zany monkey antics made all the more fun due to a real setting. That's right, Kakeru, Natsumi, Hakase and the like fight in real locations throughout Tokyo. If you've been to Tokyo, you'll recognize the hot spots in Akihabara and Shinjuku.

The game can be played in coliseum, versus and story modes. Like the main story mode, versus mode is played from the traditional 3rd person Ape Escape perspective, and offers a split screen battle to the death for up to four players. You can also face off against three computer controlled opponents. Coliseum mode, also for four players, switches the battle to an overhead view, with all players on the same screen.
All modes of play allow you to chose from a large cast of characters. You'll recognize Kakeru, Natsumi, Hakase, Haruka, Specter, Saru Team, Pipo Team, but if these aren't enough, you can also create your own character. The character you create is based around one of the default characters, but can be equipped with costumes and extra weapons that you earn by playing through the story mode.

Million Monkeys is a bit sloppy overall, with rushed presentation and bland visuals making it seems like a throw-away title that was forced out in time for the cartoon. It's no Ape Escape 3, but if you want to catch monkeys, where else can you go?

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus

Since it's my job to analyze and pick apart games, as well as to simply enjoy them, I had to try with all my might to separate my strong, immediate like of Sly Cooper the character from my like of Sly Cooper the game. The point being two-fold, really. Sly Cooper is an enormously charming platform character that I have liked from the first time I saw him. It's important to like a platform character; in fact, it's quite significant. You will spend an enormous amount of time with him or her while playing the game, and if you think he or she is cheesy, stupid, unoriginal or whatever, it will color your feeling for the rest of the game. Sly is cool in many ways: He's stealthy, talented and always up for dangerous missions. There is an unspoken cool about his character that's hard not to like. See? I like Sly a lot. For the most part, I like playing the game too, though it's not without some eye-raising issues. A third-person perspective 3D platformer, Sly Cooper delivers a single-player jump-and-smack experience that skillfully blends old-school timing elements with skill-based techniques in a multiplicity of ways. First, Sly Cooper the character not only looks good when he's moving -- thanks to superb animation and the greatest tail ever -- but he also controls well. Sly is incredibly responsive, and though his size seems a little large at times due to his long arms and legs and the cane he carries, skillfully jumping and hitting enemies with precision is a quick study. Having gone back to play Super Mario 64 over the last few weeks, Sly Cooper in comparison is a much less complicated character to control. His list of basic moves is straightforward, including attacks, jumps, double jumps, walking, running and climbing. Sly learns more basic moves in the first world. There he learns stealth moves when the area is lit with a blue mystical wave; like MGS's Solid Snake, the stealth move is wall sneak. Sly can also use his cane to swing from hanging rings, which shows off Sucker Punch's excellent physics model, and he can climb ladders and poles, using the Circle button. After beating missions Sly learns special moves, usable by toggling through with the L2 button and selecting Triangle. Slow motion, fast motion, dive attack, hat mine, decoy image and more are earned. Sadly, few of these are required to complete the game, which makes one wonder if it's really needed to open them up in the first place. By beating bosses, however, players earn very necessary moves. These include the Ninja Spire Jump, the Rail Walk and Rail Slide, an Invisibility Technique and technically superior ways to use guns, like for instance modifying the team van with a powerful turret. Using these latter moves adds a great deal of depth and enjoyment to the game. What I like most about Sly Cooper's level design is that collecting is part of the bigger picture, but it's not the only reason to be there. The worlds are rife with mini-games (about one to two per world) and the platform areas feature a masterful blend of jumping, fighting and stealth areas. I loved Back Alley Heist since it enables players to use awnings to bounce along fire escapes and sneak past searchlights. On the other hand, there's The Lair of the Beast, a swamp filled with slides, rails, and a massive serpent that comes chasing after you near the end. Fire in the Sky is a beautiful Chinese-designed level filled with pagodas and high mountain passes that are just plain pretty. And the last world, The Cold Heart of Hate, is surely my favorite because its packs in everything. It's riddled with tough stealthy areas, shooting levels, run-and-chase sectors, and lead-and-snipe missions. Plus, it's the hardest level of the five. For the record, there are five bosses, one for each world, and they start off easy. There's Raleigh the frog, Muggshot the burly, mustachioed gambler-gangster, Mz. Ruby the alligator-voodoo queen, The Panda King, a demolition/fireworks artist gone bad, and Clockwerk, the brilliant, giant robotic hawk that lives on a health diet of hate and jealousy. Mz. Ruby provides an excellent ToeJam and Earl/Parappa the Rapper fight that's most enjoyable. She and the Panda King present moderately hard fights, but the last boss is definitely going to require some time, since it's a three-part fight. Just a note: For those who like collecting, it's there for you. While the world is lush looking, more importantly, it's bustling with animated enemies and treasure troves of breakable objects. As you go about beating the level, swinging at seemingly unimportant objects more often than not provides players with coins. Collect 100 coins and earn another life. Bottles can be collected to open up safes, each one providing special moves and/or vital Cooper history. And horseshoes give you an extra life.Comprising five large worlds, each containing seven levels, Sly Cooper appears to be a large, long game. But it's a little deceptive. While many of the gameplay techniques are derived from Mario-style gameplay, the game design in part follows a more Crash Bandicoot style. Meaning that unlike Super Mario 64, which practically required players to attain every last star to see the ending, Sly Cooper is designed more like Crash Bandicoot, so players can beat the game, see the ending, and can then, if they like, return to the game to collect the rest. I beat the game in less than 12 hours this way, missing about four bottles, and I played through numerous levels two or three times in that period. For the record, once beaten, the game offers very tough Time Challenges, which potentially add numerous hours. But in my mind Sly Cooper is a short game. Compared to any Mario game, it's short; compared to Jak and Daxter, which took about 13-20 hours to beat, it's short; and in contrast with say, Donkey Kong Country or Banjo-Kazooie, it's short. Did I like the game? Oh yes. Did I want to play lots more? Oh yes. Is there any issue? It all depends on how long you take to play a game, but for me, Sly Cooper could have easily used at least one or more worlds as tough as the final one. I guess the other thing that adds to this feeling of shortness, is its relative easiness. For the first three worlds I wasn't heavily challenged at all. The last two were harder, but not hard. The last two are somewhat challenging, but still only the last world required major restarting.Sly Cooper is also rife with slowdown problems. The larger levels aren't as large as those in Jak and Daxter and in some cases less is going on, but there is significant lulling in various areas of the game. Strangely, few of the slowdown areas occur when multiple enemies are on screen. They happen in large, hub areas and they happen quite frequently. Truth be told, it's more of an eyesore than a gameplay problem. Rarely did the slowdown hamper the gameplay directly, but with such a pretty, well-animated and luscious looking game, it's a real shame to see such blatant slowdown so often. Added to that, some minor problems include occasionally fishy camera angles and buggy sections. For instance, the camera gets stuck inside a building that Sly has left, leaving him open for attack by an enemy. And sometimes it just gets stuck inside an area. In the last level of the last world where Sly is racing against time to beat the lava from killing him, the camera got stuck inside the final construct, and it took me about a minute to figure out how to unstick it. With regard to buggy sections, in Vicious Voodoo, Sly fell onto a log on the outskirts of watery bog. He could not jump or double jump to get back to land, and every time he hit the water, he has automatically brought back to the log. Essentially he was stuck and so I had to restart the level. Are these huge problems? Nah, but there are noticeable enough to mention.

ATV offroad fury 4

The ATVs are a fair bit more manageable in turns than the MX bikes, though due to their weight and size, you don't have as much airborne control over them. So while the ATVs are easier to handle and respond a bit more consistently, the MX bikes will allow to you really bite into the course and do some damage.

The buggies and trucks are quite similar in handling and feel, though the buggies are looser around corners. This gives them something of a rally racing feel, and they're much more fun to drive in the end. Being that you're always given the option of choosing between the two, there really isn't a reason to pick the trucks as the buggies are much more satisfying to drive.

The buggies are tied to an issue that's present both here and in the PSP game. After each race, you'll earn credits based not only on placement but a bonus on your trick total as well. Being as you can't perform tricks per se in a buggy or truck, you rack up trick points by catching air or sliding through turns. Since you'll automatically do these things a lot, you rack up bonus credits left and right. And unlike performing tricks on an ATV or bike, there really isn't any risk of crashing here. You can easily rack up many multiple times as many points in a buggy as you can on a bike. We ran about half-a-dozen races and were able to completely max out more than one of our vehicles.
However, maxing out your ride doesn't mean you'll kill the competition. There's a whole lot of AI assistance going on here, so no matter how fast you go you'll always be tailed by the opposition. It doesn't exactly make it seem fair, though it does keep the races interesting, and in that way it works. We just wish there was a tangible benefit to spending a bunch of cash on upgrades.

Beyond the assistance, the computer AI is pretty decent (and even vengeful), but it isn't perfect. At times, probably due to the assist features, it'll sometimes seem to take jumps better than it should be able to or accelerate quicker out of a turn than you can, even if you can burn it at other points. We've also seen a race or two where the lead opponent quickly burned ahead to a good 30 second lead as we raced perfectly fine, and yet in the other races in the championship everything was quite close. Curious indeed.
One of the new additions to ATV Offroad Fury 4 is Story Mode. You play the part of, you guessed it, an up-and-coming rider who came close to winning it all once, and is trying to do it again. The story isn't anything that'll win an Oscar, but it sort of works. Unfortunately, it really only acts as cutscenes between the game's numerous races, but at least it makes things a bit more interesting and puts characters behind some of the names.
One questionable item with this story mode is that for each race in a championship, you need to finish in third place or better to move on. The computer, of course, will finish fifth through eighth and come back again and again, but you have to finish on the podium in order to move to the next race. This doesn't really make a whole lot of sense as that means it's impossible for you to place any lower than third for an overall championship series. Of course, this may be necessary for the story, but it's kind of stupid that you need to retry a race for finishing fourth or something along those lines. It almost makes the point totals pointless.

While the story mode could be fleshed out a little better and the AI has a couple questionable elements, the game is pure fun to play. As mentioned, most all of the vehicles feel great, and the track design plays perfectly to the control physics. Plenty of turns and jumps await that'll test your ability to properly pre-load a launch and skit around a corner.

There's a whole lot of variety to the tracks here, enough that they're easy to recognize after a single race. Many of them are challenging to start as you need to learn their layout so that you don't over-commit to certain jumps, but they're unique enough that you'll pick this up quickly and play to each track's design. Good stuff here.

There are now multiple paths to some of the courses, some intended for ATVs and bikes and others for the larger vehicles. This gives you options as to how much gain or loss you want to risk here, adding another dimension to the competition.

SWAT global strike team

You play Mathias Kincaid the leader of a team of SWAT operatives with special global jurisdiction. Unrealistic? Sure, we're videogamers and we're not supposed to challenge the political validity of things like global elite police organizations. Anyway, as a police unit arresting enemies and protecting the public are central to your gameplay experience with a compliance system compels you to try to get a suspect --like a terrorist or bank robber-- to give up without getting shot so you can then handcuff them and move on. Hitting the compliance button or shouting "SWAT: Drop your weapon" into your headset will start a compliance meter going under your targeting reticule as long as you have the suspect targeted. You will see enemies drop their weapons, at which point you can either have one of your teammates cuff the baddies or you can move close enough and hit your action button to do it yourself. This in and of itself is pretty engaging and adds another layer of strategy to the standard "kill everything that moves" motivation that drives every other FPS. The downside is that this feature, like many of the others in the game, goes underutilized throughout the game.
Commanding your teammates is done using the D-pad where commands will pop up contextually when you're targeting an object that you can interact with. Looking at a door will bring up commands like breech, enter etc. You can select what you want your teammates to do by pressing the appropriate direction on the D-pad or simply say the command you want to issue if you have a headset. Teammates can 'cuff and stuff suspects once they've surrendered, disarm bombs and crack codes in computerized security locks with the press of a button. However, the game doesn't stay hectic enough, consistently enough where you'll have to master all of your command skills in the heat of battle. Too often a sequence will unfold where the gunfight will happen first and then whatever objectives in that particular area will be handled first. But your AI teammates are on their own and deadly accurate when it comes to engaging enemies, so firefights tend to be over quickly.

Also you don't have to do much thinking when it comes to deploying your mates. For example, your demolition expert is the only one who can hack and disarm stuff so all you have to do is find the bomb or computer interface, hit the button and you're done. The only challenge here may be protecting him while he does his work. They always stick close to your side so there's not much threat of them getting smoked around the corner ahead or anything like that. Your teammates can be hurt but there's nothing stopping you from always being at the front of a firefight to protect them or anything. Your ability to manage them just doesn't affect the gameplay as much as it should.

You get bonuses and even medals for following the proper rules of engagement which means not killing innocents and not automatically blasting bad guys who aren't threatening you. That is, just because a terrorist is ready to blast doesn't mean you can shoot him without first giving him a chance to surrender. Shooting armed suspects in the back is also a good way to get bad pub for your global SWAT team. Some enemies have no intentions of ever surrendering so when you target them you'll see there's no compliance meter under your reticule.

Dogs life

The world of a dog is pretty simple and the only things that the main dog, Jake, cares about are: bones, food, and his favorite girl dog, Daisy. Everything was copasetic in Jake's world until Daisy gets dognapped and Jake is off on an adventure to get her back. This takes him through farms, towns, and ski slopes as he follows the clues and gets plenty of bones along the way.

In every area of the game there are a few different quests to complete, each providing a bone as a reward. If dog's love anything in the world, it's a good bone and Jake is willing to do anything to get one. To find most of these bones, it's necessary to enter into Smellovision where the camera goes into first-person perspective and odors in the world are represented by colorful clouds. All of the humans leave a scent trail and buried bones are shown by a glowing orange cloud. The real challenge, though, is in collecting a set number of one color scent to initiate a challenge.

One of the colors in each area will reward a bone to the nearest doggy bowl immediately, but the other colors will start a challenge with a local dog. These can be simple racing challenges or, our favorite, a pissing contest where each dog tries to claim the largest amount of area by peeing everywhere. Other contests include tug-of-war, a digging contest, and a Simon Says challenge, but it was definitely the peeing that caught our hearts and minds, so to speak.

Once a challenge is completed, Jake can then take control of the defeated dog for a limited time and explore the environment in a different way. This can be done just for the fun of it or even to help recover a bone that Jake couldn't get on his own. For example, in one of the early levels Jake couldn't fit through a tiny doggy door that another one could. By swapping dogs, the little dog could get the bone and bring it back. While we loved collecting all the bones this way, it was just fun to run around with a different pooch and see the world a little differently. Either way, it's a fun way to play with different dogs.

All in all, the basic gameplay of controlling the different dogs and completing different quests is simple and well-executed. There can be some difficulty in tracking down all of the different scents in order to get the bones sometimes, but this is just a matter of persistence and roaming around as much as possible to discover everything. While this can be a bit of a hunt, we rarely felt that the developers put anything in impossible to find spots and that the design did make sense.

The only downsides to Dog's Life are the graphics and the sound. The visuals look like the game was ripped from a PSone title and the audio is all over the place. Countrified electric guitar gives way to thumping techno and the voices are some completely accidental comedy in their own right. It's a bit of a rough treatment overall, but with the goofy gameplay intact, kids shouldn't have too much of a problem with it.

The only big complaint that we have about the game is that the presentation is pretty horrible. The pause menu shows the current status in the pages of the book and shrinks down the information into complete and total squinting territory. Flip the page to the set of moves for the dog and it gets even worse. A couple of the moves were a process of trial and error. It was a hassle, but since we only rarely had to deal with it this problem is pretty bearable.

Closing Comments

Make no bones about it, Dog's Life is for kids and shouldn't be considered by any hardcore gamers. This is a title that you could recommend to a younger sibling or any other adolescent who hasn't already acquired a bloodlust for some of the gorier games. This game keeps it clean and keeps it fun and is something that we can recommend for kids and not feel all weird about it. So go out and be a dog.