Now I’m going to review the last game in the Streets of Rage series. Personally, I think this game is the worst of all 3. Sega didn’t add anything new in this game. Also, the graphics are the same as the 2nd game and the sound hasn’t improved, but even got worse. Sometimes I hear a scratching sound that certainly doesn’t belong in the game. This occurs mostly when going up on an elevator. The game was released in 1994 so I really did expect some improvements, but there weren’t any. It was later released for the Japanese version of Sonic Gems Collection for the GameCube and PlayStation 2, and for the Wii Virtual Console in 2007. The game also appeared in Sonic's Ultimate Mega Drive/Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

This time they did put in a sort of a story line, by showing a short comic book-style cut-scene. They better left it out, because everyone will skip the cut-scene and start fighting again. The game also has an intro, and if there is one thing you can say about video game bad guys, it’s that they’re persistent: Even after two defeats at the fists of a few vigilantes, the crime lord, Mr. X, has returned with his most diabolical plan yet to take over the city. Having started a robotic corporation, the enigmatic Mr. X has recruited the brilliant Dr. Dahm to create robot doubles of the city’s officials. In addition to controlling the government with his mechanized doppelgängers, Mr. X’s syndicate has placed bombs throughout the city. It isn’t long before our heroes learn about these new developments and once again take to the streets to stop X’s plan. Returning fighters Axel, Blaze and Eddie are joined by elderly cyborg Dr Zan.

Besides the 4 characters you can also unlock 2 bonus characters to fight as: Shiva, a boss character from SoR 2 and also in this game and Roo, a boxing kangaroo. (I’m serious) In the Japanese version, Bare Knuckle 3, there is also a bonus character, Ash, that isn’t added in the western versions of the game. Reason for this is that Ash is a gay character and I think this wasn’t allowed by the conservative Christian community at the time.

There are more differences between the original Japanese version of SoR 3 and the U.S and European versions, like recoloured character sprites. This means that you’ll encounter some enemies with pink, green or even orange hair... Also, the Japanese version featured a different plot that didn’t include robotic doubles of government workers. (I think the original game was a lot better than the version I played)

Oh, sure, the developers did add some new things, like a dodging roll and you can also perform running attacks now, so that is nice, but the stupidest thing the developers have added is a lifebar for your weapons. This means you can only hit an enemy a couple of times and then the weapon will be discarded. Of course this doesn’t work when an enemy hits you so they will smack you to death with a weapon that doesn’t get damaged, which is bullshit.

I think the most annoying part of the game is when you’re in stage 3, when you’re attacked by a guy in a bulldozer. In order to defeat him you have to smash through some brick walls. The bulldozer will splatter you between him and the wall every time when you’re too late, and that means you lose a lot of your health. In this part of the game you will lose many of your lives + your interest in the game.

These are the rounds:

--Round 1: Harbor - the coastal harbour where the search begins.Mini-Boss: Ash (Japan version only), a stereotypically effeminate man.Boss: Shiva.
--Round 2: Night Club - the task force fights their way through Syndicate-controlled streets and invades a crime-filled nightclub.Mini-Bosses: Bruce and Roo ("Danch" and "Victy" in Japan), if Bruce is defeated first Roo escapes and becomes a playable character.Boss: Twin acrobats Mona and Lisa ("Onihime" and "Yasha" in Japan).
--Round 3: Construction Site - the task force follows the Syndicate's trail through the construction site of the new city hall.Mini-Boss: a Donovan enemy operating a bulldozer.Boss: Robot Axel ("Break" in Japan).
--Round 4: Subway - a hidden subway tunnel which is being used for illegal cargo hauling and training site for an army of dangerous ninjas.Mini-Boss: none.Boss: Ninja Lord Yamato.
--Round 5: Syndicate Hideout - the task force battles their way to the top level; however, Mr. X is no longer there.Mini-Boss: none.Boss: Robot X.
--Round 6: Save the Chief of Police - the task force races against time to save the Chief of Police, who is being held hostage and will be killed by toxic gas.Mini-Boss: none.Boss: Super Jet.
--Round 7A: Syndicate Robot Factory - if the Chief of Police is rescued in time, the task force then arrives at the Syndicate's true stronghold. Here, the team enters the laboratory and fends off Mr. X's robots before taking on the evil mastermind himself.Mini-Boss: Dr. Dahm ("Dr. Zero" in Japan), a stereotypical mad scientist operating a mechanic claw.Boss: Robot Y ("Neo X" in Japan), a robotic exo-suit operated by Mr. X himself.
--Round 7B: City Hall - if the task force fails saving the Chief of Police, this leaves the way for an imposter to take his place at a press conference in the City Hall.Mini-Boss: none.Boss: Shiva.(Stronger than the Shiva fought in stage 1.)

Good Ending -- The true ending of the game is the hardest to achieve. The player(s) must rescue the Chief of Police (General Petrov in Japanese version) in Round 6. Then during the boss encounter in round 7A, they must defeat Robot Y within 3 minutes.

Bad Ending -- This is the alternate scenario to the situation above. The player(s) must rescue the Chief of Police/General Petrov in Round 6. Then at the end of Round 7A, the timer must expire before Robot Y is defeated.

Alternate Ending -- If the players fail to rescue the Chief of Police in Round 6, the game will continue with Round 7B. Shiva, who is now an imposter posing as the Chief of Police, is about to hold a press conference that will bring the city to the mercy of Mr. X (in the Japan version he is trying to create a war in a country). The task force must defeat him.

Incomplete Ending -- if the game is played on the easy difficulty, it will finish after Round 5.

My overall opinion: this game shouldn’t have existed, the series should've stopped at the second game, because this game doesn’t add anything special. The sound is bad, the graphics are the same as the second game, while they should've been improved in 2 years time. And the gameplay is bad, some bosses from the first and second game have been reused. Conclusion: Don’t try this game, you'll have much more fun with the second game.

Dead Space is a game developed by Visceral Games and published by EA games, released in 2008. Visceral Games is known for the Godfather series and is a relatively new company. EA games is probably the most well-known publisher, both hated and loved by many gamers. Even though this game’s really great, it never got the attention/sales it deserves. Dead Space could be best described as a horror third person shooter with RPG elements.

In Dead Space you play as an engineer who’s sent to a ship that’s having certain technical problems, you’re accompanied by a crew consisting of a total of 5 people, Isaac Clarke(which is you), Kendra Daniels(a technologist), Zach Hammond(a senior security officer, who starts out as the leader of the group) and 2 other crewmembers who die at the beginning and weren’t given any names. When you first arrive at the ship, you’re expecting to repair the malfunctions, but as soon as you enter you realize that something bad has happened. With every mission, a piece of the background story unravels. Throughout the entire game you’ll feel claustrophobic and continuously being cautious. The constant awareness of the situation is required, since the alien life forms can strike at any time in any place. I’ve chosen to remain about vague about the storyline, since I didn’t want to spoil it for people that are considering buying it. But throughout the 12 missions(which are like stages, not just a series of objectives you have to complete), you’ll have to fight off bosses, make many discoveries and be sucked into the story almost immediately. It’s one of the few games that have managed that in a LONG time. Another fun thing I can mention, is the fact that the game creators have created a code for the scribbles that you see scattered around the map, which are quite a lot, and in the first few missions you’ll find a few alphabets translating the code to normal English, so there are a lot of hidden messages in this game, some that’ll lead you to certain cheats and others that’ll point you in the direction of Easter eggs.

The graphics in this game are just amazing, the unsettling surroundings really suck you right into the game and that feeling gets stronger by the sounds you hear, you’ll continuously feel that there are enemies waiting to pop out when you least expect it. I just love what they did with the HUD, or well what they didn’t do with it, since in this game the HUD has been left out, everything you need to know is incorporated in the suit or the guns, in case you need to browse through your inventory and such, your character projects the screen in front of him, making the experience even better, since you’ll feel more and more part of that world. And of course, the gore makes this game so much more fun, because it’s always fun to mutilate an alien with a chainsaw or in this game shooting operating saw blades or hovering them in front of you, the sound that comes along with killing enemies or dismembering just feels so nice, and gives that brutal touch to finishing of an enemy. The constant background sounds make you jumpy as well, there are places on the ship(usually toilets for some reason) where you hear constant whispering, which gives a daunting feeling about the place. And besides the whispering you can hear things move around, some of those things you’ll never encounter, but there are some you will.

The controls in this game are smooth, never have I experienced any trouble playing this game, but the fact that you don’t have a HUD, so the fact that you have no pause when you’re selecting a different gun, because your ammo for example has run out, could take a little while to get used to, since in most games your game pauses itself when you go to your inventory meaning that you can go to the menu even whilst you’re in the middle of a firefight. The game also has quick-time events when an enemy does a grab-attack where they try to eat you or at least harm you without you being able to shoot them. Another thing I liked is the fact that they didn’t use the PS3’s Sixaxis or at least not in a way that it bothered me, because usually it seems that those parts in which you have to use Sixaxis are rushed or aren’t working properly making it a nuisance.

Throughout the game, you’ll collect credits, ammunition, power nodes and various other objects except for guns. Power nodes are items that you use for upgrading your equipment and abilities. Weapons are bought in the store using credits, that you obtain throughout your missions or by selling items that you no longer need. As mentioned before, your character has certain abilities such as telekinesis and statis (a “spell” that puts your enemies in slowmotion). Throughout the game you’ll have to solve various puzzles which are by no means hard, but it keeps the game from getting repetitive and boring by mixing action with some other elements. You’ll also encounter a few minigames along the way such as a shooting range, a basketball minigame and there’s a point in the game where you have to take control of a gun turret to shoot incoming asteroirds(it is required for you to complete this minigame in order to make progress, so technically it’s not a minigame). But of course the game’s core element remains to be shooting alien life forms, preferably by dismembering them since that does the most damage. But there will be some times in the game where simple firepower isn’t enough to stop certain aliens and require a more intelligent approach.

So is this game worth your money? Yes, it’s totally worth every penny. There’s not a single reason you shouldn’t buy this game if you’re judging by the quality of it. But if you don’t enjoy violent games you might get offended by Dead Space. I’d even recommend this game if you’re not very fond of shooters, since this game is so much more than a simple shooter, it offers a big variety of elements from different genres.

Supreme Commander is a product made by THQ and Gas Powered Games. THQ is known for the games Saints Row and the Dawn of War series and Gas Powered Games (GPG) for Dungeon Siege and demigod.

The game has been the idea of Chris Taylor, who was also the developer of the first RTS game that used 3D environments and units, Total Annihilation. He also is the founder of GPG.

The game came out on PC and Xbox 360. This is the PC review

The history of the game goes back to the 21st century, when man discovered a new technology, The Quantum Gate. Using this Gate, great amounts of people and goods could be moved over huge distances in a short amount of time. Eventually man, build its first Quantum Gate in space and a time of exploration and colonization started. Man descended into a Golden Age of prosperity and wealth and the Earth Empire was born.

During that Golden Age a doctor named Brackman, successfully connected an AI to a human brain. Seeing great opportunity, the Earth Empire began using the symbions, as they are called, to process large amounts of data. And behind the back of Brackman, they developed a secret loyalty program, so they wont betray them or join forces with other groups. Eventually Dr. brackman found out and fled with his most loyal symbions to far away systems and founded the Cybran Nation.

Next to the discovery of Dr. Brackman, an alien race was discovered on an alien planet called the Seraphim. They wanted to introduce the humans to The Way, a spiritual movement the alien race followed. But the humans destroyed the alien race on the planet and only a handful of human followers remained. After the destruction the Earth Empire sent multiple exploration teams to the surface of the planet. But because the teams never reported back and were gone missing the EE made a quarantine zone.
After a good amount of time, the EE started to lose contact with a number of systems around in and around the quarantine zone. Every day the EE lost more and more systems. It became clear to the EE that a new faction was attacking them, the Aeon Illuminate. At the same time the EE was attacked by the Cybran Nation too. Eventually the EE collapsed. But out of the ashes rised a new faction, the United Earth Federation or UEF.
The Infinite War had begun.

The factions in SC are the UEF, the Cybrans and the Aeon, and have they’re own agenda. The UEF’s goal is to restore the Earth Empire to it’s former glory, the Cybrans want to liberate all symbions that are ’imprisoned’ by the UEF and the Aeon want to spread The Way through the entire universe.

They each have there own campaign, but with the end on Earth.
The UEF campaign is nothing else but to hold the enemy back until their super weapon, Project Black Sun, is completed.
The Cybrans want to liberate their brothers, with the use of the UEF super weapon.
The Aeon want to defeat the UEF and spread The Way through out the universe, again with the UEF super weapon.
Quick tech info why they all want to use Black Sun. Black Sun can not only fire of charged particles, but can also fire particles that contain data and someone’s conscience ( don’t ask me how, but it can).

The missions in SC are BIG. It’s not a game that you can complete in a few minutes, it can take you up to an hour to only complete 1 mission ( there are 7 missions per factions) so expect long hours of playing.

You have 2 resources that you will have to gather, mass and energy. Mass is gathered by building mass extractors on top of mass deposits. Another way of getting mass is the use of mass fabricators, which turn energy into mass. Energy is obtained by building energy generators/power plants.

In the start if a match the only unit you have is your APU, the Armoured Personal Unit. This is a big mech, which can build, repair, capture, salvage and attack buildings and units. The APU can be upgraded by upgrading the mech’s hard points. This can vary from a rocket/nuclear missle launcher to a tech upgrade.
It’s always advised to keep your APU alive as it’s a good builder and can be very powerful in the offensive. But most disturbingly is when your APU dies, as it causes a big meltdown. Not good when its right in the middle of your base.

You have 3 kinds of factories to pump out units, land, air and naval factories. These buildings are upgradable too a max of lvl 3, each lvl granting you units that are more expensive but also more powerful.
The different techs are lvl 1 to 4. The only difference between lvl 3 and 4 is the fact that only your APU, engineers (buildable in the factories that can build, repair, capture and salvage) and support commanders can build lvl 4 units, the experimental units.
Next to factories, you can build defences, that’s seems pretty obvious. As with the units, defences have different tech lvl’s (1 to 3).

The units in SC are pretty standard and most unit types can be found in all the factions. So you have anti-air, tanks artillery, fighter-bombers, bombers, fighters, frigates, subs, cruisers, battleships, carriers and destroyers . Now the most awesome units are, of course, the experimental units. These units are massive and not all of them are units, the UEF has an experimental cannon, that can fire rounds from a huge distance.
These experimental’s can tear a whole army apart if used correctly.
However these units are extremely expensive and you will have to make sure that you have a good economy.

The gameplay of the game is very good. The AI of the game is pretty good. depending on how you set the AI, it will keep on rushing, getting his tech lvl up before attacking or it will use a mix of those two. Also on easy and normal the AI doesn’t use air units, what’s kinda lame. One thing that’s special in SC, is that every shot that’s fired from let’s say artillery is all calculated, so every shot is different, and will never land in the same place. That also counts for planes. If you shoot down a fighter, there may be one a crash you’ll never see again.
The maps in SC are absolutely huge. You have the ability to zoom out so you can see the entire map. Of course you can’t see your units from that distance so icons are used so you can identify your units and types and the enemies. However sometimes when you try to zoom in to a major battle the game, you get some lag or huge lag. But overall the zooming works well.

The multiplayer in SC is almost the same in the campaign and skirmish. You can play with up to 7 other people that you can battle in free for all or in teams ( I suggest the last option). All in all it comes to this, build a base, construct lots and lots of units, and rush your enemy with experimental and normal units. But like the singleplayer be sure to reserve some hours of your day.

The overall graphics of SC are good, but it needs a big, strong CPU to run smoothly. The biggest thing in SC that sucks the performance out of your PC is the ground. Really, if you put your fidelity high, be sure to prepare yourself for optimal lag in a big ground-battle. But even if you put the graphics down at its lowest, the game still looks good.
So overall score, pretty good. Way lot better than Stormrise. Good gameplay, huge maps and massive battles. However not everything in the game is good, all factories and structures may look different but at the end they all do the same, with little variations in unit types and abilities. Still a very solid game.

Civilization Revolution is a game produced by Firaxis, known for games like Pirates, Civilization series and Railroads. The game was published by 2K Games in July 2008. It’s released for the iPhone OS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The Civilization-series can best be described as an enhanced chess game, you play on a board and make moves with your units, select what researches you want to do and which buildings you want to build.

In Civilization: Revolution the player can win by 4 methods:

• --By conquering the enemy
• --By researching and developing a spacecraft and sending it off to Alpha-Centauri to colonize that planet
• --By creating 20 Great People, Monuments and converted cities and building the United Nations
• --By accumulating 20.000 gold and building the World Bank

The graphics in this game are nice, the creators have chosen a cartoony style. And of course, just like in previous games, the scale is way off, making it easier to spot your units. One of the new features in this game is that you now have advisors, which talk in a style similar to the Sims-series, which means that they just talk gibberish, in for example Civilization 4, when you selected a unit it would greet you in its native language, in Civilization: Revolution, they don’t speak at all, aside from the screaming in battles.

One of my complaints with this game is that it has been oversimplified when comparing it to Civilization 4, in order to make matches less time-consuming and the game less overwhelming. I personally was disappointed by it, since quite a lot of features had been stripped or had been made easier. For example, now there are treasures/bandit camps scattered around, which your computer opponents often don’t even touch, automatically giving you an advantage. Also, the bandit camps no longer hold a thread to you, whilst in Civ 4 they could really mess up your plans and those of your enemies, they also were very opportunistic since they would attack you when you were waging a war and your troops had left home, in Civilization Revolution, they simple remain in their cities, they haven’t even got a territory, unlike in Civilization 4. Another complaint about Civ 5, is that the amount of leaders you can pick from has been reduced to 16, whilst Civ 4 had 26, not even counting the ones that came in expansion packs. Although they did put a few new ones in, like a Zulu king(don’t ask me why, since I don’t really think that they’ve contributed anything to world history), they left some of the better ones out, like for example the Dutch or any European nation for that matter, except for England, Germany, France, Spain, Greece and the Roman Empire. Even though, there are many other European countries that have taken their role in world history as well, and have had their great leaders as well.

Another thing that has been changed when comparing to previous games in the series, is the scenarios, in previous games you played various great and well-known battles whilst in this game, you just play following a set of extra rules in order to win and those battles are all fictional. This takes away a bit of the learning concept which was present in the past games, I actually find this a bit disappointing , since I always loved playing great historical battles and changing the outcome of them. Not everything holding historical information has been ripped out, though, the Civilopedia is still present if you want to read up on certain great leaders or monuments.

Another thing that bothered me is that the game shifted to a more combat oriented gameplay, whereas in the previous games you’d only use war as one of the last means to expand, in this game you can’t go 5 rounds without either starting a war, getting one declared on you, getting threatened or making peace after obliterating a good amount of units of the enemy. The communication between you and the computer opponents have been simplified as well, a lot of options have been removed, in past games you were able to build a very positive relation with a nation and make it your ally, which was very fruitful. You can still buy and sell technologies but whereas you used to be able to use a very deep trading system, now you only use currency to buy certain technologies. In previous games you could also trade cities, sign contracts and pacts, and many other things. All that has been ripped out.

As far as sound and music go, the game scores average, the sounds you hear from tiles, like the sound of the sea when you’re hovering above a beach and so on. The music sadly doesn’t have any background music, so the only music you’ll hear is the one in the menu and when somebody declares war on you.

Now it seems that I’ve drilled this title into the ground, but this isn’t the case. Whilst there have been things left out and some complaints, the gameplay remains to be classic and addictive. It certainly isn’t a waste of money buying this game, if you like strategy games. But if you’re a fan of the series and liked the depth of the game, you might get disappointed, but it’ll still keep you occupied for quite some time.

The next game I'm going to review is the second game in the Streets of Rage series. The second game was released in 1992, a year after the first game. The game was also released on the Sega Game Gear and Master System, but those graphics are worse than the Genesis/Mega Drive version.The Game Gear and Master System versions also have different stages and lack the character Max Thunder, so I don’t recommend playing those versions of the game.

The genre is the same as the first game: A sidescrolling beat-em-up. Sega has put in an intro which states the following: One year has passed since Adam, Axel and Blaze took back the streets on the anniversary of their previous victory, the three heroes got together to celebrate, but their happiness was short lived. Adam's younger brother Eddie 'Skate' Hunter contacted Axel shortly afterwards with news that Adam had been kidnapped by a gang of thugs. A photo left in Adam's ransacked house showed a chained Adam at the compound of the crime lord Mr. X. With Mr. X back in town, crime quickly escalated and citizens once again began to fear for their lives. Axel and Blaze must team up once more to defeat Mr. X and rescue Adam. Joining them in the fight is Eddie and Axel's friend, the muscle-bound Max Thunder.

Streets of Rage 2 features much longer levels than the first one, each with multiple settings. It also has weather effects, like rain and mist.
These are the 8 rounds in the game:
--Round 1: Downtown: You start your search in the streets. Trailing them into Barbon's bar, you'll eventually meet Barbon in a back alley, behind the bar.
--Round 2: Bridge Under Construction: Moving across a bridge full of thugs and bikers, you continue your search. The boss Jet, is equipped with a jet-pack and has a few nasty moves up his sleeve.
--Round 3: Amusement Park: Strolling through the park grounds, arcades and the Alien House, where the props explode, and real danger lurks in the fake fog.
--Round 4: Baseball Stadium: You make your way into the baseball stadium, where you find a secret elevator hidden on the baseball pitch which then takes you to an underground fighting ring.
--Round 5: The Ship: Mr X seems to have got himself a private island this time, so you have to take a ship out to it. You fight your way through some cargo decks before emerging on deck to deal with the bikers.
--Round 6: Mr. X's Island: You've landed on Mr. X's island, so you now have to make your way across a beach and then through a jungle with nasty surprises waiting for you that's lurking through the darkness along the way.
--Round 7: Munitions Plant: You make your way across the factory floor, contending with conveyor belts. You then arrive at an elevator, where you make your way up to the roof.
--Round 8: Syndicate Stronghold: As in Streets of Rage, you face all the bosses in the game here. You begin downstairs, then grab an elevator up to Mr. X and then begin the final battle against him.

Just like in the first game, you can play on Easy, Normal and Hard + Hardest. You can also change the amount of lives you have from 1 to 5, so you can make it even harder for yourself.

This time there are 4 characters you can choose from: Alex, Blaze, Max and Eddie, and they all have different specialities except Blaze, because she’s an all-rounder and has 2 of 3 stars on every skill , so she’s average on every skill. There are 5 skills: Power, Speed, Technique, Jump and Stamina. Stamina means how much punishment your character can take.

There are a couple of things that have been changed in this game. First example of this are the graphics, which have been greatly improved compared with the first game. As stated before, rain and mist is added in some stages. Besides that, there are more and better sound effects than in the first game. The soundtracks are edited, though. When you listen carefully you recognise the soundtracks from the first game. But this isn't bad, because they improved the sound so it all sounds nicer than the first game. In this sequel, you even have more weapons at your disposal than in the first game, like a katana or bomb. If you've played the first game, you'll also recognise your enemies. There are some new enemies too, like bikers, kickboxers and robots. Your enemies have names now and there is a health bar added, so you know when they're almost dead. Some enemies got funny names, for example a fat guy who's called Hamburger. What parents would call their son Hamburger? Only when they're pure evil they would do such a thing.

Just like in the first game, you have a special ability. But Sega changed it from the police car to a stronger attack. You can use this ability as much as you like, until the point where your health is almost depleted. Yes, this is the goofiest part of the game. When you use your ability, you lose a little bit of health. I prefer the police car, it's cooler too.

This game just plays like the first one, so if you liked that game, you'll definitely like this one too. Besides the last complaint, I like this game more than the first one. It would've been almost perfect if the police car was still in the game.

I’m going to review the Streets of Rage series. Three games have appeared in this series, so I’ll make 3 reviews. So naturally I’ll start with the first one. This game is very special to me, because I’ve played it a lot in my childhood. I always used to play it with friends. The other 2 games in the series I got with the Ultimate Sega Mega Drive Collection.

The game was released by Sega in 1991 on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Later on the game got released on the Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System as well.

Streets of Rage is a sidescroller beat-em-up and can be best compared to Double Dragon on the NES and Golden Axe on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You’re fighting on the streets in an unknown city against various enemies, such as criminals, punks and ninjas. These enemies have their own skills. The normal criminal attacks you with his fists or a melee-weapon, whilst the punks will try to throw you and the ninjas will try to kick you.

There are 3 difficulty levels in this game: Easy, Normal and Hard. When you play on Normal or Hard, you’ll encounter more enemies and they’ll do more damage.

The game doesn’t really have a storyline. You’re fighting on various spots. Luckily the creators did put in an intro: The mean streets of the big city are about to get even meaner. A huge crime syndicate led by the mysterious Mr. X has moved into town and has quickly infiltrated all levels of the local government. With chaos controlling the streets, it seems like life will never return to normal. All hope seems lost until three police officers decide that they’ve had enough. Adam Hunter, Alex Stone and Blaze Fielding turn in their badges and hit the streets to dish out some vigilante justice on the hoodlums that are terrorising the populace.

The game exists of 8 rounds which have a boss at the end of them (or 2 bosses, if you’re playing with a friend), except for round 7, where you’re going up in a big elevator. The fun part of this is that you can throw your enemies off the elevator. This means imminent death for enemies, of course. The surroundings vary between the centre of the city and a bridge. You also fight on a ship and in a factory. There are some bosses that you’ll encounter multiple times in this game. The bosses are inhumanly big, as a matter of fact, they’re about 1 and a half times bigger than you are. In the last level, you have to defeat every boss again before you can take on Mr. X. At the end, you can choose whether you work along with Mr. X or fight him, the first option is of course the easiest.

During the game you’ll find various melee-weapons as well, you can find the weapons in barrels, telephone cabins, bonfires and so on. Your enemies have weapons as well, sometimes. Some examples of these weapons are knives, beer bottles, baseball bats and iron pipes. These weapons make you dish out more damage, of course. The players receive points when they defeat an enemy and when reaching a certain amount of points you’ll be granted an extra life.

There are 3 characters you can use, Alex, Adam and Blaze, they each have their skills. Adam is strong and very good at jumpkicks, but he’s slower than the other 2 characters. Alex is faster than Adam but is worse at jumpkicks. Blaze is good at jumpkicks and she’s fast, but she isn’t as strong as Alex and Adam. Another thing these characters have, besides their standard moves, are special powers. If you activate it, a cop car will appear and will shoot at your enemies with a rocket launcher. Every normal enemy will get killed by this, but a boss can take a few of those attacks. You’ll only get one per life, if you’ve used them and you die, you’ll receive a new one.

One thing I find odd in this game, is that the criminals have taken over the streets without using a single firearm. If this would’ve happened in reality, this event would quickly come to a screeching halt. But, on the other hand, this isn’t a game where you should overthink the story, and besides that it’s a great game.

The graphics are okay. The graphics are by any means better than those of Alex Kidd, so that’s something positive. The soundtrack is very cool as well, the songs really fit with the game. Especially the song that plays on the background in bossfights, is one that I really love.

You just have to get your hands on this game. You could download a Sega emulator and play this game on your pc. But the graphics will really suffer from this, so I really discourage it. Streets of Rage is called differently in Japan, it’s called Bare Knuckle there, so if you’re interested in buying/importing the Japanese game, you’ll have to look for that title.

Driver is a driving action game developed by Reflections Interactive (now known as Ubisoft Reflections) which is also the developer of Destruction Derby. The game was released in 1999 on the PC, Mac, Playstation, Game Boy Color and is still available on Playstation Network.

There are 4 cities in which you can drive: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The first 2 cities are available from the beginning, but you have to unlock LA and NY in Undercover (the story mode).

Your name is Tanner, and you’re a NYPD detective. You're send on an undercover mission and you have to infiltrate the mob. You get some missions from local gangsters in each city while climbing your way up in the mob. I'll skip the story until the last mission, because this is the most epic one. The mob orders you to kill the President, but you refuse to do it and try to bring him to safety instead. You have to drive the President to the other side of New York while being followed by the police and the mob. The mob probably found out what you’re doing and the police thinks your trying to kidnap the President. This mission is freaking hard, because you’re constantly being attacked by mob or police cars and there is no way of escaping them. I played this game on the Playstation and you can’t change the police difficulty like on the PC. You have to try this mission for 20 times or more before you succeed when you're playing fair, as in a non-cheating way.

But when you succeed you’ll get some cheats to your disposal, like invincibility or mini cars. You can use these cheats in ‘Take a Ride’ where you can drive in one of the 4 cities in day or night, except for Los Angeles, where you can only drive around at night. Besides ‘Take a Ride’ there are also a couple of minigames. These minigames are Getaway (you’re being followed by 1 police car and you have to lose him as quick as possible), Survival (you’re being followed by 4 invincible police cars and you have to survive as long as possible), Pursuit (you have to pursuit another car and take him down. You win when the other car’s damage bar is full), Cross Town Checkpoint (you have to drive past a couple of checkpoints as fast as possible), Trail Blazer (you have to drive past all red triangles in time, when you get past 1 triangle you get some extra time) and Dirt Track (you can practise your skills or drive a time trial on 4 tracks)

The graphics of this game are, to Playstation 1's standards, very good! The damage of cars is visualised well. When it's raining the lights coming from the cars are reflected on the streets. If you've got the Playstation version you have to run this game on your Playstation (if you still have it, of course), and not have it run on a PS2 or PS3, because the quality of the game drops if you do so.

The soundtracks of this game are amazing. If these soundtracks weren’t in the game it wouldn’t be as much fun as it is now. It really adds an extra dimension.

There is 1 funny glitch in this game. When a car (which is a police car most of the time) is laying on his side, you have to hit it on the bottom or top. When you hit it on the bottom, the car launches into the air and when you hit the top, you're the one going on a sightseeing tour in air. After playing Alex Kidd I really cheered up when playing this game again. You have to try this game out, it really is a classic.

Vietnam: Black Ops is a game developed by Rise Software in 2003 and published by ValuSoft. In the year that games like Rise Of Nations, Max Payne 2, Halo(on pc) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City were released.

What you probably already expect from reading by which company it has been published is that it makes no chance against any of those titles, which in fact is true. The games mentioned before, of which I even left out Call Of Duty, are true classics which are still played until this day, some of which most gamers say that they’re the best games they’ve played in their entire life.

Vietnam Black Ops is a standard first person shooter, you’ll enter a level and have to shoot your way to the exit, nothing more, nothing less. The game doesn’t contain any puzzles or anything else to break away from its repetition. There’s also no multiplayer, so after playing through all the missions (9 according to the box), you probably won’t get back to it.

As you begin the game , you start out as a POW(or Prisoner Of War, in case you didn’t know). There is some fighting outside and the wall of your prison gets blown up, in the chaos you’ll have to find a gun and from that point onward you’re pretty much only trying to escape. So I wouldn’t expect a deep story or anything, you don’t even get to know anything about your own character.

Let’s talk about the graphics, as you might already think, they’re bad. There are very little round objects even tree stumps and fallen trees are have edges, just like in ValuSoft’s other game CIA Operative(review seen on this website). All enemies look the same, they’re all wearing black clothes and a traditional Vietnamese hat. You do get to play in different environments like jungles, ruins and tunnels, stopping the game from getting extremely tedious. Furthermore, the enemies have only got a few death-animations. The only few things that are pretty decent are the artwork(which is something ValuSoft often does alright) and the guns, which are done pretty good actually, even though they’re hanging in an impossible way in front of your character. The effects in the game are, on the other hand, done rather poorly, like smoke looks like it was some stock animation and is placed in the weirdest spots, like in a wall. The other effects all feel like they were rushed or just simple stock animation.

The enemy AI is stupid as well, when they see you they just stand still and fire, pretty much functioning as gun fodder. They pretty much only move when you run into another room and they’re unable to hit, which they don’t really do anyway. This bad AI, makes the game incredibly easy. Now, of course you could select a harder difficulty but that only means that with every hit your health drops a little bit more and when you get in parts where you’re getting shot at by an enemy sniper, this could lead to frustration.

Another thing I’d like to mention are the controls, this is a point where some big mistakes have been made. I’d also advice you to remap the keys anyhow, since they aren’t the same as most shooters and people usually like to play with the WSAD-keys instead of the arrow-buttons. Another problem is that the menu screen is awkward and at times badly coded, for example the “Quit” button is broken, you can’t exit the game like you’re supposed to, instead you have to Ctrl-Alt-Del yourself out. And to navigate through the menu you have to select a button with your mouse by hovering over it and then press Enter, which is rather inconvenient. But what sucks most is that your mouse buttons aren’t being used in the standard settings, you have to go to the menu and bind them to certain actions. Why you wouldn’t want the left mouse button as your standard firing button is beyond me, but the developers somehow thought that Ctrl was a better firing button. And another thing is that the game doesn’t save any of your settings, my resolution and keyboard settings got reset every time I started the game.

The sound in this game is pretty good, even though there is no background music in the game. The sound effects of guns and other things sound pretty realistic. The only music in this game, are the menu screen song, which is surprisingly good and the game over screen, which is just those trumpets playing.

A thing that really bothered me was the fact that the game lagged a lot in some of the weirdest spots, like a waterfall and what made it even worse was that I had to time my jumps on platforms(which you’ll encounter in various levels if you have the patience). And the fact that I had 32 times as much RAM than needed, didn’t help. And checking the other requirements of this game made me realize that it certainly wasn’t my computer causing the problem, so it must be bad coding or a glitch of some sort.

All in all, you could say that this game is bad, but if you’re looking for a simple shooter, just to break away from your favorite ones. I guess you could buy this game, since ValuSoft’s games are sold at extremely low prices(most below $5), even though you’d probably only play for a couple of hours and then get tired of it and throw it in your cupboard, in which it’ll collect dust.

This is my first review I made, so why not start with a bad game?

Stormrise is a product of solely developed by Sega, no other studio was involved with the development of this game. In the early days of the consoles, with both Sega and Nintendo competing for a big part of the gaming market, Sega with the Genesis/Mega Drive and Nintendo with the Nintendo Entertainment System. In those days Sega also developed games. But now Sega has strayed away from the path of consoles and focused itself on the games.

Well, one of these games Sega developed is Stormrise. Maybe a title that says little to you or for some people a lot. When I bought the game I was pretty optimistic about it, despite some negativity around the game. Once I got back home, I inserted the disk into my PS3 and was expecting a good game.

So the game commences immediately when you start the game for the first time, immediately starting up the campaign. The short intro gives you a bit of information about what happened to Earth. It was the 21st century, where the human race had mastered Mother Nature by controlling the weather of Earth. But then something tragic happened. A catastrophic event, known also as the Event, destroyed almost all fertile land, entire cities and most of its population. Countries struggled to build bunkers as fast as they could, but soon the public realized that there wasn’t enough space for everyone. And then the panic rose. The bunkers were closed as they were full and the people outside the bunker doors were doomed, yep doomed. The people, who got lucky enough to get a place in one of those bunkers, were put in to a dreamless sleep as they were locked up in cryogenic chambers, to sleep through the storm that’s raging outside their bunkers. And then you, a commander of the Echelon, awake in a pod. The strange thing is that you are the sole survivor of an entire bunker that once held thousands of people. And from that point on, you’re put in active service.

Now I’m going to discuss the 2 factions: The Echelon and the Sai.
The Echelon: The Echelon were the lucky ones to be asleep in a bunker. They use high-tech weapons and vehicles. Their vision is to rebuild civilization and they see themselves as defenders of peace.

The Sai: The Sai were the remaining people that were the unfortunate ones as they were left outside in the storm created by the Event. But after centuries the people started to evolve, adapting to the harsh environment of the new Earth. The Sai uses an energy that’s called Sai energy, pretty cheap. This Sai energy gives the Sai extra strength and other powerups.

Well, that were the factions, now let’s continue with gameplay, which sucks. The camera’s horrible, for instance it doesn’t always do what you want. You’ll try and move it to the right and it won’t move. Pressing select gives you the map, and how dare they call it that? The only thing you see is a lot of orange and black. That orange and black are supposed to be terrain, your units, the enemy units and control nodes (which will be discussed later). The map is useless, you can’t move the cursor or whatever it is. You can’t identify your units let alone the enemies units.
Okay, now let’s talk about the gameplay.

You don’t have a bar on the bottom of the screen that lets you know what units you have, like in Endwar, instead you have to use whip select. They say “It’s a fast way to command your units fast and effectively”. Well it’s not, even worse it’s useless. With the right stick you select your units. But the tricky part is selecting the right unit, if you only touch the stick lightly it jumps. Plus if you have a staging area somewhere, where there are like 15 units, good luck picking the correct unit.

The units aren’t that special. You have your standard riflemen, medium infantry, then the heaviest infantry, light vehicles (buggies), medium vehicles (tanks), heavy vehicles (tanks and walkers) and, of course, a powerful unit that’s just as good as a tank. Yep, this game makes absolutely no sense at all.

But there is ONE big fail in this game. Picture this situation, you are standing with 7 riflemen on a good defendable spot. But then, the enemy appears, with 2 riflemen and 1 heavy infantry unit. Your forces and the enemy’s forces get into a fight and you lose. Now you might be thinking What the fuck, but yes that’s what happened to me. Not once, not twice, but 15 times. In the same campaign mission, level 3 to be correct. And that’s also how far I’ve gotten with the campaign, because this game sucks ass, hard.

Let’s take a look at the graphics. Well that’s probably the only thing in the game that has been done well, except the popup videos that pop up in the right side of your screen. The environment is well done, the effects, like explosions are good and the textures of the units are nice as well.

This game has an online option, that’s actually being used, surprisingly. There you have to destroy the enemy and capture all control nodes. These nodes give you the only resource that’s required in this game. The nodes are upgradable with 3 modules, which have 3 levels. A turret, a shield and a refinery. Pretty simple, before you can hit the turret you have to destroy the shield. After destroying the turret you can destroy the node (refinery is almost immediately destroyed). You start at a warp portal which is your staging area. Here you can puke out an unlimited amount of units using the portal, but only if you have enough energy.

So the overall score is bad. How bad? Very bad. Was this worth my money? No, I regret buying this game. The gameplay sucks and makes no sense, campaign is bad and only the graphics are good.

This game's made by Sega and is a platformer. Alex Kidd would've been the icon of Sega if Sonic was never invented, but luckily he was and Alex Kidd never became that icon.

First thing I want to say is that I've never bought this game consciously, it came along with Sega Ultimate Mega Drive/Genesis Collection. I don't understand why Alex Kidd was included in this top-notch collection, since it certainly doesn't belong there and I'll explain why.

For starters, Alex looks ridiculous in his red jumpsuit and yellow shoes. This doesn't really help you in liking Alex. Besides that he has big ears and he looks like an ape. I feel just the same as he looks when playing this game.

If you start the game and start playing immediately you won't receive any information about the story behind this game, at least an intro would've been nice. I had to search on the internet to find out about the story. The story goes like this: Alex Kidd, inhabitant of the planet Aries and brother of king Egle, heard that his long lost father, king Thor(or king Thunder in Alex Kidd in Miracle World), is alive somewhere on the planet Paperock. The planet's called that way, because everyone is an expert in Rock-Paper-Scissors. If a player is inexperienced with the game he or she won't last long. Alex Kidd had set his mind on freeing his father out of the hands of Ashra, the ruler of Paperock, and return to his homeplanet Aries.

Is it just me? Or did they misspell Paperrock and nobody has the patience to finish this game, no matter whether you're good or bad. It's just horrendous.

The environments in this game aren't that special. You just play a number of levels in different surroundings. Those are standard environments like urban, rural, desert, forest areas. You just play from left to right, with the exception of 1 or 2 levels, where you work your way upwards. It almost looks like this game has been made with MS Paint, so the graphics aren't that great either and can even be called bad, especially when considering that Sega's perfectly able to create great graphics if you look at, for example, the Sonic series.

The enemies in this game are weird. The first level your obstacles are a couple of cars and mini planes. In the second level, bloodthirsty animals are your enemies, consisting of for example hedgehogs, dung beetles and moles. In a different level, you're walking through the woods and bees, baboons and masked lumberjacks are your enemies. I think the creators of this game are referencing to Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th films. With every normal platformer you can kill an enemy by jumping on his head. And can you do that with Alex Kidd? Nope, you can't. In this game the only method of killing an enemy is by kicking or punching it. Timing is a requirement here, because 1 hit is all it takes to kill you. And dying in this game is even more annoying, because your soul goes to heaven and you'll lose another 10 seconds of your precious time.

The bosses are ridiculous as well. Instead of fighting them, you have to play Rock-Paper-Scissors against them. At first this seems unfair, but after playing a couple of times you'll recognise that their choices are scripted and are always the same, with that certain boss.

Apparently it's possible to buy items somehow. This is something that I had to read on the internet as well, because nowhere in the game has it been stated that you can actually but items, so at first I figured that money was useless and it only served as some highscore mechanism.

This game sucks. I can't think of anything positive to say about it. The gameplay is terrible, the sound is horrendous and the graphics could've been way better. The music is just too upbeat for a game in which every living thing wants you dead. You're still able to buy this game for other consoles, but I'll tell you: Don't buy it, it'll save you from wasting money and a terrible headache.

A game developed by Nintendo and released by the same company for the Nintendo 64. Released in 1996 in Japan and in 1997 in Europe and America. This game is the sequel to Super Mario Kart on the SNES(Super Nintendo Entertainment System).

This racing game is true classic , featuring many of the Nintendo Super Stars(Mario, Luigi, Peach, Donkey Kong, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi and Wario). The game features 16 tracks.

The game offers 4 modes which are Mario GP(which is an Championship mode, in which players race to get the highest position in the championship), Battle(in which players have to take away their opponents balloons by using weapons they pick up from question boxes, only available with 2 players or more), Versus(Racing on 1 track, with other players, only available with 2 players or more), Time Trial(Single player mode in which you have to try and get the best time for a track). There’s also an unlockable Extra mode.

The gameplay in this game is awesome, everything plays smooth. The characters are balanced and when racing there’s a system that makes sure that the space between players doesn’t get too big, just like in Burnout Paradise. Using powerups to gain an advantage in the race is fun, there are powerups ranging from boosts to banana peels to stun your enemies.

The graphics in this game are great, however the game still uses 2d images unlike for example Body Harvest. Every track varies a lot from previous ones, having different elements in it and a whole different feeling to it, which is supported by the looks of the track.

The sound is just wonderful in this game, the songs that are composed by Kenta Nagata, who did an awesome job at creating songs for this game, even if you hear the songs for a million times they don’t get boring or irritating, and they really add to the atmosphere of a track and enforce the cheery feeling in this game.

This game is truly a classic and can make any evening with friends great, I still remember the times in which we took our N64’s to christmas evenings and we ended up playing this game all night with my cousins. Multiplayer is the game’s strength, since playing alone is fun in the beginning but doing it with friends makes it so much more fun, especially when considering that after a while 150cc is getting easy alone and the competition with friends will always be challenging.

I really recommend getting this game, at any price. I would also like to suggest that you get an original N64 copy instead of buying it on the Wii via Virtual Console, since playing the game on the Wii will never be the same as playing the actual copy. You can really play for hundreds of hours with friends and you’ll find yourself getting back once in a while just to see how it was like and get hooked again.