Text by Brian Albert

Some video games mask their true selves for hours of play, blossoming (or shriveling) into another form as time ticks on. Look at Brutal Legend. I mean, what is it? Its a hack-and-slash game thats also an open-world game thats also a car combat game that becomes a real-time strategy game. And then theres Indigo Prophecy, a cinematic adventure title that abruptly morphs into a Matrix simulator, disregarding the world rules it had established earlier. These games betray the players expectations, for better or worse.

Nexuiz isnt interested in doing this. It is a nineties-ass arena shooter with speedy player movement, tight environments, and a thread-thin plot. The game takes one contemporary step with a refreshing mutator system, but retreats back into a more comfortable decade in nearly every other sense. You know that uncle whos given you five dollars every Christmas for the past 15 years? Well, just imagine that this year hell slip an extra buck into your hastily purchased holiday card. Thats Nexuiz.

There are two warring factions. Both have complex names that you dont need to remember. Anyway, the fighting has temporarily ceased, but the seething disgust between them calls for continued bloodshed. Enter The Nexuiz Competition, a series of televised shootouts. Hint: Just shoot the dudes who arent the same color as you.

The weapons youd expect to find make an appearance. The shotgun punches holes like a pro. Theres a mortar that, well, morts things. A sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and repeating energy rifle round out the arsenal. Like I said, the gangs all here. I do wish that the weapons felt more powerful, though. Most of the weapons fire their projectiles with dull, empty thuds, and the act of pulling the trigger doesnt feel very satisfying. It may seem like a trivial gripe, but some of my favorite weapons in gaming I love because of how they sound. See: the Overwatch Pulse Rifle from Half-Life 2 and the DD44 Dostovei from Goldeneye.

What sets this game apart from the (dwindling) pack is its wild use of mutators. The idea itself isnt new, but the sheer quantity and zaniness (there are over 100 of them) breathes a ton of life into a couple of tired game modes. Some mutators are beneficial to everyone playing, while others affect only yourself, your team, or the enemy team. Dynamic mutators are earned by a pick-up, by earning a killing spree, or by capturing a flag. A prompt appears on screen, allowing you to select one of three mutators. Such a decision may seem inconsequential in an arena shooter, but this isnt the case in Nexuiz.

Final Fantasy is a franchise that has been around in the gaming industry for as long as most of us can remember. It’s had it’s ups and downs, with Square-Enix trying to do their best to make every entry in the series feel different. Recently, however, the series had been losing fan support. A focus on linearity and character design over elements that were fan-favorites in past games upset longtime lovers of the brand, and ultimately cost Square-Enix some of the reputation it spent so long to build.

Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t received too well by the press nor by fans. In order to try to fix that, Square-Enix set out to not only expand upon what their vision for the future of the series is to be, but repair some of the damage done by recent Final Fantasy releases and regain the trust of the fans. The fruit of this labor is Final Fantasy XIII-2, a direct sequel to XIII.

Your first thought may be, Why not start over? Simply put, Square-Enix believes in the universe they created in XIII and they feel the need to show fans what they wanted to see in the original. Some of the back story is already solidified, and it’s easier to continue a story rather than start from scratch.

Especially when you can go as crazy as you want with time traveling, future saving, and inter-spacial gambling and Chocobo racing.

The game’s presentation continues to be top notch, and Square-Enix does a fantastic job of informing players of what happened in the previous title. You have the option upon starting up the game to go into a little primer section that will explain to you, chapter by chapter, how the story of XIII unfolded. You’ll learn about the characters, including the mysterious Lightning, who has disappeared to a strange location called Valhalla in XIII-2, as well as the fate of Fang, Vanille, Hope, and the entire crew. This primer isn’t only incredibly helpful, but it’s almost essential if you want to be able to try to piece together any of the craziness that is the storyline in XIII-2.

In the game, you play as Lightning’s younger sister, Serah, who is joined by an adorable little Moogle named Mog as well as Noel, a new character to the series. Noel’s past (or in this case, future) is a bleak one, and Noel is given a mission by Lightning directly to protect Serah and ultimately help save the universe, and mankind itself. To do this, Serah, Noel and Mog all must utilize fragments, artifacts and gates to travel throughout time to repair paradoxes created by a mysterious chain of events, as well as seek out who ultimately caused the entire process to unfold in the first place.

Simple enough, right? Not so much.

Throughout the course of changing the future, you change the past. (think of the Butterfly Effect, only in reverse) Because of this, fixing paradoxes in the future has the potential to create even more parallel universes where certain events a full eclipse, for example cease to happen. This will have players jumping back and forth through different paths of time to complete their objective.

That’s the story in a nutshell if it makes any sense, congratulations. If not, don’t worry Square-Enix gives players a recap of events in the game every time you turn the game on, after loading your profile. Consider that feature very appreciated for those of us who need a bit more time to piece together some of the more complicated aspects of the story. It’s also a nice feature if you put the game down for an extended period of time, and perhaps one that more developers should consider including in their games.

Bryce, the protagonist of NeverDead is immortal, and like him you will tire of this gimmick rather quickly. Konamis latest third person shooter brings very little to the table in terms of innovation to a genre that sees at least one major release per year. If NeverDead is any indication of what TPS fans can expect from the genre, theyre in for a bumpy. Read on to learn why NeverDead should have never happened.

NeverDead narrative centers on Byrce a demon hunter who works for a secret organization. His day job has him slaying monsters, defeating bosses and containing outbreaks of a hellish nature. What makes Byrce unique is the curse of immortality. This immortality isnt the standard invulnerability youll find in other works of fiction. The game makes it very clear that Byrce feels dismembered limb, penetrating bullet and enemy attack.

The games dismemberment mechanic is its sole new addition to a genre that often follows a similar pattern: The protagonist defeats waves of enemies with the possible option of taking cover and defeating bosses. Throughout the campaign Bryce is able to lose his arms, legs as well as his head. Once a limb has been lost the only way to recover them is by performing a combat roll over them. This means that you cannot simply walk to reattach your lost limbs. You will find yourself performing combat rolls even in areas where there is little threat of being harmed simply because youve lost your leg.

Ive already shared that the dismemberment mechanic doesnt bring anything new, and unfortunately the core mechanics dont fare much better. Bryce has two different fighting styles to choose from going out guns blazing and using the butterfly blade which is conveniently mounted to his back. The default weapons including assault rifles, small machine guns and pistols feel almost like peashooters. You will pump countless rounds into some of the enemies only to find out that only drop after six plus bursts. The sword fighting fairs a little better but still has some awkward control issues. In order to use the butterfly blade you must press the hold the left trigger to engage the sword and then flick the left stick to swing the sword. The sword play is satisfying but there is no connection between the direction you press the stick towards and the animation that plays. The sword combat would have flowed a lot better if it had been mapped to a button rather than the left stick.

The level design in NeverDead could be described as clich at best. Youll spend the opening hours of the game playing through levels like The Asylum, The Museum and The Police Station. Each level features a number of objects youd expect in each setting desks in the police station, pieces of art in the museum and broken windows in the asylum. Unfortunately these objects tend to repeat and at times it can feel like entire sections themselves repeat.

In early previews of the game I found your A.I companion Arcadia to be more than capable of handling herself. She does a decent job at helping dispatch an entire room of enemies even when your fully dismembered shell come to your aid. Now that Ive had the ability to play the game on multiple difficulty settings I cant exactly give the same praise to Arcadia. Playing for a short period youll think that the companion A.I is more than capable but a few levels in one of the games central flaws become apparent your friendly A.I is are never in trouble because the enemy never target her. You are the constant target of all enemies on screen regardless of the situation, making the entire point of the friendly partner completely pointless. In a mew robust title the support characters are able to hold their own and provide some level of support while leaving the major hurdles to you. In other games these characters are sometimes overwhelmed or surrounded. This creates a sense of urgency and pressure on you to perform and save your companions before they meet their end. NeverDead never achieves this by providing a seemingly invincible sidekick.

The awkward controls, haphazardly implemented dismemberment mechanic and repetitive gameplay could be excused to an extent if NeverDead wasnt filled with technical issues. During the opening chapter I came across a few collectables that would have granted me valuable XP if the game would have let me use the dismemberment mechanic properly. Oddly, there are sections in the game that will prompt you to use moves that you either havent learned or purchased yet. I also came across a few instances where Bryce was presented with a power-up with no explanation as to its use. Add to this seemingly random moments that will have you flying across the map as a severed head and a few levels where you can escape the levels geometry and you have a game that feels half finished.

At the end of the day NeverDead seems to be Konamis answer to the Devil May Cry series. At first I thought I was drawing parallels that didnt exist but the more I think about it the clearer they become. Both games feature a demonic (or cursed) protagonist who uses self-depreciating humor to lighten the mood, both characters wield guns & swords and both games plots are almost undecipherable. Sadly, NeverDeads humor falls flat, the gameplay is repetitive and at the end of the day it will make you want to play a much better game. It is hard to recommend NeverDead as a purchase or even a rental given that there are much better third person shooters on the platform, even if those games are a few years old.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Sitting there in my college apartment, my roommates clamoring on about some fighting game that one of them brought home to play on our trusty Dreamcast. I thought to myself Great – ANOTHER fighting game that I have zero interest in. You see, my relationship with fighting games up to this point was not one for the ages. I had some interest in Mortal Kombat II, though I never could really get the hang of the fatalities. And… thats it. So I plopped down on the couch, ready to spit forth a stream of vitriol towards the game, the purchaser and the whole idea of fighting games. Then the title screen booted up and I saw the logo for Soul Calibur. Fast forward many hours into the early morning, and we were all still in our living room, myself included, playing the game. Everyone had settled into a character that made sense to them, and overall, not one person was dominating the whole game the entire time. It worked, and it worked very well. That was the first taste of Soul Calibur for me, and it remains the only fighting game series that I have ever purchased and played extensively.

From that point on I bought or played every major game in the series. The only one I dont own currently is Soul Calibur 3, because at that time I did not have a PS2. All throughout this time Astaroth has been my main character. Something about his brute strength was alluring from a gameplay perspective. Or to put it another way, I liked swinging a huge axe around and making opponents cry.

So here we are at Soul Calibur V. Namco Bandai have bolstered the roster even further than before, with 30 characters and even more that can be created with the robust character creation feature. The challenge here is this: If you are on the fifth iteration of your game, how do you keep it fresh without completely alienating fans of the series who have been with you all this time? Thankfully, though there were a few mis-steps along the way in my opinion, this was accomplished with a pretty good result. Lets go into some details, shall we?

From a gameplay perspective, you are given a host of normal options. You can play against the computer, play against a friend on the couch next to you, or play online against foes all around the world. Heck, you can even watch two computer-controlled fighters compete if you would want to, though I never understood the allure of such a feature. From a single-player perspective you can go through a storyline mode that I actually found quite interesting. You play mainly as Patroklos or his sister, Pyrrha, as you progress through a well-told tale featuring those two prominently. The storyline is developed by using a combination of manga-esque comic panels and in-engine cinematics, and the result is an effective way to push a surprisingly-deep story forward while keeping things interesting. One gripe I have about this mode is that you basically have to learn one or two characters movesets at the offset or else you wont be too successful here. I wish there was a story-line single-player mode for each character. This isnt a huge loss, but it certainly is missed from where I sit.

There is so much that has gone right in the game. The graphics are stunning, the music is as epic as one would expect from a Soul Calibur game, and the controls are tight and responsive. I personally make do with just the analog stick on my 360 controller, but my friends go with the d-pad, and either way its not difficult to execute even the more advanced moves. There are, however, some things that were rather confusing for me. First of all, I cannot for the life of me realize why they saw fit to do away with an infinite time limit when playing a match. I get that in tournaments they have standard timings and things of that nature, but why on earth would there be no option whatsoever for unlimited match times? When I have a bunch of people over to play a Soul Calibur title, often times the matches can go on for some time with all the defensive maneuvering and posturing that goes on. Nowadays with Soul Calibur V we have to keep a tight eye on the clock and it has forced a more aggressive play-style this time around. This just doesnt feel right.