KJ reviews Starhawk and breaks down the single and multiplayer experience. Is it worth the full 60, or just a placeholder for that other space shooter.

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The controversial Prequel/Reboot wont make it out this year. Ninja Theory is working hard with Capcom to make sure the title lives up to its popular name. The new release date for DMC is January 15, 2013 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. PC owners will get a port at a later date.

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• Better Ask Somebody: DMC (PlayLegit.Net)

Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

Die Hard Arcade is a straight forward beat-em-up game released originally as an arcade game in 1997 and then for the Sega Saturn in 1998. It was also ported to the Playstation 2 in 2006 with slight graphical upgrades although essentially it is the exact same game. Many people also may not know that while the US release of the game supposedly coincides with the movie series Die Hard, generally the similarities are vague due to the fact that Die Hard Arcade is simply ported from a Japanese game by the name of Dynamite Deka. laughably it becomes quite obvious when you have to fight hordes of robots which as most of us remember was not a feature of the movies.

Starting off, the visuals of the game are pretty impressive. The graphical nature is comparable to Playstation one and all images on the screen are presented in three dimensions. The backdrop is lively with doors opening and closing, fireballs shooting through the air, and fan blades rotating wildly. The 3D graphics may be slightly deceiving however, as the gameplay itself is presented in a traditionally 2D fighting style, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact I’m a fan of the more traditional style. Mid-ground is also interesting as it is littered with objects that can be destroyed with weapons or enemies ramming into them.

The controls are pretty straight forward although can get be slightly difficult to use at times. The player may pick up surrounding objects and use them to destroy enemies. Rocket launchers, pistols, and broomsticks are just some of the fun objects the player can use to their advantage. Another control aspect of this game that’s unique is that there are cut-scenes where the player must time the push of certain buttons to create an event on-screen with either a success or failure. Depending on that success or failure you can destroy enemies in really cool ways through the cut-scene.

One mentionable main problem I have with the control layout is that the punch and pick-up-item button are the same which means that it can become somewhat frustrating when the player needs to punch and ends up picking up an item or vice versa.

Honestly though none of the faults of this game matter much in the end because I had so much fun just laughing as I was playing this game. It’s hilarious and entertaining and definitely tons of fun even for a short time. The sound effects and music are really comical especially during the interactive cut scenes. At one point a woman steps out of a doorway unexpectedly and BAM! I just punch her straight in the dome piece. it’s absolutely hysterical. Another scene I loved is when I walked into a bathroom and the guys taking care of business in front of the urinal while three dudes are apparently hiding out in the bathroom stalls. it’s just totally ridiculous and completely awesome.

This isn’t a truly in-depth game but the fun factor alone gives it some brownie points.

Die Hard Arcade Gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Way too much fun

+Cool weapon usage and mid-ground destruction

What’s Perpetrating?

-Music and sound effects

-One major control issue

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Have you ever wanted to destroy all of humanity? How would you do it? Disease? War? Famine? Zombies? Am I working with too many ideas here? Too many question marks? Well, the good people at Dark Realm Studios have provided us with a game to simulate the end of Humanity. You get to craft a disease (Viral, bacterial, or a Parasite if that’s what floats your boat), and as you infect people you get evolution points to help your disease become, faster, better, stronger.

As evil as it sounds, the game is actually very fun to play. It’s challenging infecting everyone because if your disease gains notoriety people will start closing their ports. Theres also the challenge of weather, hot or cold areas of the world, and finally, once your disease is notorious enough, the scientist of the world start work on a vaccine. So you have to act fast, being silent and lethal. I usually play as a virus, so I can’t talk too much about Bacteria or Parasites. I know bacteria may be easier to kill with drugs, and parasites are more visible since their effects can show up on your body. Viral just seems like the right way to go in my opinion.

The graphics aren’t really that big of a deal in this game. You wont be face to face with any of your victims, you play from a satellite view of the world where you get to see your disease travel around the world by borders, planes and ships. The world is presented as green in the beginning, as your disease takes its toll on the country, it starts turning to different shades of red, until ultimately its a very dark red (meaning no human life). You can also control how fast time goes by in case you get bored by playing in on the regular speed. The soundtrack is barely there, just dark ominous tones throughout the slaughter of mankind. I really can’t think of anything else that would fit in a game like this.

When you aren’t busy checking out the devastation your disease is causing, you’ll be busy evolving your disease to keep it ahead alive and spreading. The way you build up your disease will have an effect on how the game plays, if the disease is too obvious, ports will close and planes will stop flying in the countries that have not been infected. Basically meaning, you won’t completely win. If you try to keep it simple, people will end up curing themselves and your disease will die, also meaning you wont win. The main strategy would be to keep it evolving and adapting to conditions fast enough so that people don’t notice in time, also strong enough so that people can’t overcome it with over the counter medicines.

I’d like to take this moment to say that this game is also available to play online, you can search for it on google (or bing, whatever) and you can try it for yourself. Pandemic 2.5 is what I just reviewed, and its available in the app store for .99 cents.

Pandemic 2.5 Gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Fun Game

+No repercussions or guilty conscience

+Cheap

What’s Perpetrating?

-Didn’t really hold my attention after 2 days

Spoiler alert, Everyone died.

Check out the special Behind the scenes video.

An update is available for Mario Kart 7, “which will eliminate the ability to exploit shortcuts when playing Online Multiplayer on the courses “Wuhu Island Loop,” “Wuhu Mountain Loop,” and “GBA Bowser Castle 1″.

Just log into the eShop to receive it. You won’t be able to compete without it online so go get the MK7 update. Local play will remain unchanged.

Never thought we would have to report that. #smh.

Real Talk by J. Valdez

One of the best fighting games of all time is now available on the iPhone. However I don’t really feel like I’m playing one of the best fighting games of all time. The game plays slow, and it doesn’t help that the controls seem to follow my commands reluctantly. I’ve had games lag, or some games can have unresponsive controls at times, but with MvsC2, it doesn’t matter if you have apps open or not, or if you are jail-broken or not. The lag is actually consistent in that aspect.

The controls are actually simpler than some of the other fighting games I’ve played on the iPhone. At least the default ones are, you can add more buttons and move them around to better suit your style. I don’t like the special and assist buttons though. On other games the special/assist can work for different moves depending how you move the joystick. In this game however, you tap and slide in a certain direction to get a desired special attack/assist move. It may not seem like a big deal but if this were the fast paced game it was supposed to be, then the lag from input would leave you defenseless for a second or two.

One thing that fighting games kind of lack on the iOS is the ability to play against the CPU in a just for fun match. Sure you can play arcade against the CPU, but sometimes I just want to play one fight, and I don’t want to get on wifi to play someone else. There is no option for that in this game. It has a couple of game modes but all with a purpose, if you will. I’d like to take some of the characters and just fight one match without having to fight another immediately after. As for game modes, on MvsC2 you have Arcade, VS, training, and score attack. Those are pretty self-explanatory.

The visuals are not bad at all while playing. It looks like the original game with a bit of modification to fit the screen. Some people may complain that its not HD. However the game still looks very good, it would look nice with the HD treatment but its not needed at all. It’s also very satisfying to watch the animations when you are able to defeat the lag and do a combo/hypercombo. Which is one of the main things I liked about the original game.

I found it hard to advance from fight to fight, not because I didn’t know how to use the characters, but because of the lag from input I keep talking about. Most of the time, by the time you were able to input for a combo/hypercombo, the enemy was already attacking you, or blocking. Sometimes this is to be expected because obviously the enemy isn’t supposed to stand there and take your hits. It starts getting annoying however, when you try to dodge an attack, but aren’t able to dodge in time, then when you dodge, you get hit with another attack. It doesn’t work for me in other games, but this was the first game where I was able to spam attacks back and win (thank you Iceman).

All in all it’s not the game I remember playing. Not the fast pace, excitement filled fighter that I would play with friends or family. This is a slower sibling version of that game. You may argue that it’s only slow because its running on a phone. Wouldn’t even bother arguing back because I’ve played many, many games that were bigger, faster, and more graphic intensive that MvsC2, so I know it’s not the phone. If anything it could be that they didn’t optimize the game for the phone, and the code ran slower when ported over. For 4.99, a price that actually surprised me due to it being the full game (I thought it would’ve been more), the biggest thing about MvsC2 was speed, and that isn’t present in this port.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 Gets

Out of five

What’s Legit??

+It’s Marvel vs Capcom 2 man!

+It’s cheap for being the full game

What’s Perpetrating??

-It lags

-It’s slow to react

-It’s laggy and slow

Real Talk By: KJ

As the gaming industry continues to evolve, Downloadable Content is becoming one of the biggest factors in this transition. DLC has extended the life of games we enjoy, but has also damaged it – thus tainting the experience. We understand that DLC isn’t going anywhere, but in this article we will try to break down multiple ways to make it more enjoyable. Remember the time when you could enter a cheat code, or earn weapons and clothing by playing the game? I guess that time is over. It sucks, but maybe we could get some sort of justice in this modern-day of gaming corruption.

Carry-Over Content

Let say I bought an Outfit for use in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Those that purchased Chun Li’s Alternate knows that she’s wearing her suit originally from Street Fighter Alpha 3. What if we could take that clothing piece everywhere she makes an appearance? Super Street Fighter 4? You bet. Street Fighter x Tekken? Absolutely. It would be one set price. Generally costume packs are there to take advantage of impulse buyers, so why not make it worth their while and everybody else’s. These costume bundles can get extremely expensive, so why not lighten the blow a bit. Some titles offer rewards to people who have played their previous games. Gears 2 players that beat gears 1 unlocked exclusive items. It would be like that, but with money attached.

 The Early Bird gets the Season Pass

Game Publishers do not want you buying their games used, hence the origin of the online pass. The people who run out and get it within the first week, are true champions in their eyes. The customer’s efforts should be acknowledged. If publishers cared about the consumers, they wouldn’t have the pass to begin with. Since it exists, ive come up with a season pass plan. Anyone that purchases a game within the first 1 to 2 weeks of it being sold, would receive all the future installments of DLC at the nice price of: free. This could mean future characters, Map packs, clothing, extra audio or any various items locked away on the disk. Also any EA sports games wouldn’t require an early bird player to enter those obnoxious foot-long codes (THIS-ISPO-INTL-ESS). Publishers many times use DLC to cut their losses any way that they can. If they could somehow influence people to get these games on day one, and make it worth their while, everybody would benefit. Pre-ordering a game just to get a multiplayer skin, isnt going to cut it.

Just take your time

Can’t say ive meet a gamer that loves day one DLC. It’s as if your purchase has been cancelled out, before you could even open the box. the ones that personally piss me off, is the content hitting the dashboard before the game has even released. Companies that have a track record of “getting it”, reap the benefits. With Batman’s Arkham City DLC adventure releasing shortly, it has drawn a lot of positive buzz from the gaming community. Gamers were treated to a title jammed with content and quality, had plenty of time to enjoy the experience and now they are ready for this next chapter. Valve usually releases free content long after their game has been released, thus revitalizing the game. When gamers get treated well they are willing to support your company and its software. Rockstar games has a laundry list of DLC that could stand alone as separate retail titles. The effort seeps through the game. Publishers remember that there’s other games coming out with DLC, try to out do your competition. The Street fighter x Tekken character locking is a joke. There has to be a better way to make money from DLC that’s profitable for both parties. Capcom has reported sluggish sales for SF x Tekken, so obviously gamers aren’t ready to lay over just yet. People respect hard work and that will never change.

DLC is a great concept, but it has been abused for far too long. There has to be some sort of balance.

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“Harley is the new boss of Arkham City and is determined to make Batman pay for what he’s done to The Joker.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment bring to you today a new trailer and screenshots from Harley Quinn’s Revenge Pack, the final chapter of Batman: Arkham City saga that adds more than two hours of fresh single-player gameplay to the critically-acclaimed title from Rocksteady Studios.  The Harley Quinn’s Revenge mission sends players back into Arkham City to face their final challenge as they interchange between playing as both Batman and Robin.” WB Games

Whether your spending 15 or 20 for the title, this will be an absolute steal. Improved animations and more moves, will add to its combat fluidity. Finally a much-needed spectator mode will arrive as well.

“Console-only features include a robust and detailed Training Mode, eight player Online Room Match Mode, and a match record feature to replay, save, and upload fights. Developed by AM2, the console version of Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown will bring the storied franchise’s detailed balance, overhauled fighting mechanics, and extreme depth to new audiences and VF veterans alike in the acclaimed series’ best version yet.” SEGA

You better look out for KJ, he’s mean with Jeffry.