These are all based on the 360 version. I’m aware of Band Hero and Lego Rock Band DS version, but have not tried those yet.

The Beatles: Rock Band

In lieu of a normal Rock Band release, Harmonix instead gave us this loving tribute to the Fab Four, and it certainly lives up to the quality we’ve come to expect from the game. There’s no doubt that this is still a Rock Band game, and the effort and dedication to making the songs challenging yet fun to play is quite there.  Of course, the songs from The Beatles are not hard of themselves – their hardest songs, such as “Hey Bulldog” or “The End”, barely scratch at the difficulty that things like “Visions” or “Painkiller”. But, that’s the advantage for The Beatles: Rock Band as it makes the game more accessible to all players of all skill levels and ideal as a social/party game.

The changes that they have made in the Rock Band formula are definitely things I would like to see in the main series.  For one, it borrows a unpause countdown timer from Guitar Hero that makes it much easier to jump back into a song.  The overdrive (“Beatlemania” in this game) activation for drums no longer provides you with a large open block for riffing in, but instead alerts you to a final green cymbal hit you can take to trigger it, while you still play out the basic beats of the game. While this was mostly done to prevent dilution of the Beatles’ songs, it would seem to be the type of effect that would work quite well in regular Rock Band that allows you to keep the rhythm going in more complex songs. The approach to harmonies are excellent, and definitely a feature that the main series begs for, though it would be nice if they could work out how to allow these for online play (that is, with two or three remote people each on a harmony part).  The challenges for Achievements or Trophies are also nicely arranged: beyond the usual “get 100% on Expert on any song”, there’s enough of a selection of more difficult challenges that keep you coming back to the game to improve your score. Downloadable content support has been great to date – there are now three full albums that one can play through completely in one sitting (including the infamous Abbey Road Medley), though Harmonix has been quiet about any future content down the road.

Clearly I would be remiss to not mention the stunning graphics and Dreamscapes associated with the game.  Everything about the art direction in this game is near perfect. The Beatles themselves are rendered nicely throughout their various periods in both their natural aging and dress. The recreation of the various stages and performances they played at is a great capture of that period of history. But the Dreamscapes are what drives the game home, and The Beatles: Rock Band would have had a much less memorable impact on the genre if they were not included. The more fantastical ones such as for “Sgt. Peppers” or “Yellow Submarine” are visual wonders, while the more emotional songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Here Comes the Sun” are nicely played out against mellow yet visually appealing backgrounds. There are issues with a few of the Dreamscapes being so bright and colorful that you may lose track of the note patterns (“Within You Without You” is one of those), and unless your comfortable with Rock Band already, you’ll likely not be able to watch these as you struggle through the notes at least the first few times.  It is also good to see them continue to use Dreamscapes (even if they are recycling a lot of material) in the DLC for the game; while both the “Sgt. Peppers” and “Abbey Road” albums consistently use Dreamscapes, the “Rubber Soul” album nicely uses a combination of concert settings and Dreamscapes for those songs.

Previously, Activision did figure out the right way to do a band-specific game with Guitar Hero: Metallica, in terms of combining songs, related or influenced groups, and facts and tidbits about the band.  While I consider The Beatles: Rock Band to be a greater game, it is also another way of presenting a band-specific game, though because of the influence, history, and cultural impact of the group, it is likely the only band-specific game to be given as much attention to detail.  It does a great job of covering all the years of the group (though at least mentions to a point some of the strife in the band’s later years), and the additional photos and videos are highly appreciated.  But again, I don’t believe any other band, outside of a group like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd, has such a diverse and imaginative catalog to create something of the spectacle that is The Beatles: Rock Band. That’s not to say that other Rock Band band-specific games aren’t possible, and the early information on the upcoming Green Day: Rock Band makes it sound like an ideal product – an exportable soundtrack of Green Day songs, with Green Day band avatars and venues with a bunch of history and facts about the band to round it out.  But I get ahead of myself – we’ll come to an example of how not to do a band-specific game in a bit.

Overall, The Beatles: Rock Band is a must if you already are into the plastic-instrument market, unless you absolutely hate the band.  It is a tad short and easy, but these are fun songs to play particularly with friend off- and online, and there’s a certain elation you get through playing these.  If you’ve not yet gotten any plastic instrument game, it is highly recommended to get the full bundle offered with The Beatles: Rock Band (now dropping in price after post-holiday sales) as the Beatles-themed instruments are of good sturdy quality to last you into the various other music games including the iterations of Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Gameplay: A

Audio: A+

Graphics: A

Value/Replayability: A-

Overall: A

Lego Rock Band

When announced back around May of 2009, many people were skeptical of this game – it seemed like a completely odd pairing between the Travelers Tales, Lego series and Rock Band.  Surprising it works. It does have some limitations, and for those completionists, it takes a lot of effort to get to the end, but this is a great game for those with younger children that are interested in playing music games without the concerns of questionable song lyrics.  If anything, its biggest flaw is the complete lack of online play (which makes some sense concerning the target age group, but still something that could have been blocked out by parental controls).

If you’ve played Rock Band 2, you’ve played the main career mode of Lego Rock Band.  There’s numerous venues, which you progress through by earning appropriate Lego vehicles once you have enough stars in any given venue. Instead of money, you earn Lego studs, which then can be spent on customizing your Lego band, their Rock Den (the hub of Career mode), or to hire staff for the band to improve payoffs for studs and fans.  There are several preset challenges in the game that also become unlocked as you get enough stars.  Some of these challenges are special Rock Challenges, which feature a music-video like performance though the actions will depend on how well your band does, including special sections where only an individual’s current performance is counted. The actual gameplay of these is a bit odd, but the video parts themselves are typical of Travelers Tales’s humor in other Lego games; for example, it is not quite a shot-for-shot remake, but the Rock Challenge for “Ghostbusters” pays many homages to the Ray Parker, Jr. video.  A handful of challenges include playing songs as the special Lego-ized guests in the game, including David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the bands Blur, Queen, and Spinal Tap; unfortunately (maybe after the Guitar Hero 5/Kurt Cobain disaster) you can only play as these Lego avatars during these specific challenges.  The only other major gameplay feature change is that if you fail, you don’t drop out or the like, but instead lose a part of the bricks that you have earned.  After a short pause, you’ll get your note track back with noted marked as part of a “recovery phrase”, with each note earning some of those studs back; you can then fully recover the studs that you lost if you play perfectly this phrase. There’s also the addition of Beginner difficulty mode, which makes it very easy to have those less dexterous to join in simply by doing something in time with the music and not so much getting the exact note patterns.

Now, Career Mode suffers the same problems that people had with Rock Band 2’s mode, in that, if you don’t have any DLC, you’re stuck playing the same songs over and over again.  This is made worse in Lego Rock Band that you only have 45 songs on the disc to start instead of 85, so the repeating is even worse here. Fortunately, Lego Rock Band uses a subset of any DLC you’ve already downloaded (those they have determined to be appropriate for families, roughly 33% of the DLC catalog) so that you can avoid this issue.  It still doesn’t present a great solution to the repetition, and to be honest, most of the songs that carry over from DLC fall into modern pop/rock, meaning repetitive phrases and monotonous guitar and drum parts, but it is a right move.  What this basically means is that if you are seeking to complete career mode (per Achievements or Trophies), you’ll have to play through a good number of the 100+ sets they have, including multiple “make a setlist” and “random setlist” challenges in every venue.  Don’t get me wrong: Rock Band 2 desperately needs a way to play, without enabling cheats which disables saving and online play) an songlist in any venue, and this approach in Lego Rock Band provides that. But most venues have two of each of these (just varying on the number of songs) and is just tiring to work through.  Add to this the lack of any online play (likely due to protect the average player of this game), and the Career mode gets very old very fast.

The oddity about the game is its soundtrack. First, it is completely exportable to Rock Band though with an additional cost; exportability is a good thing and that leads to the odd part is that there’s enough in this game that I would think the average Rock Band player would want to have, but alongside “meh” songs like Pink’s “So What” (though, admittedly, the Rock Challenge involving this is rather fun). “Ghostbusters”, “Two Princes”, “Summer of ‘69”, “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions”, “You Give Love A Bad Name”, and of course the quintessential “The Final Countdown” are great to see added to the library. But then songs that may seem exciting to have, like “Let’s Dance” or “Kung Fu Fighting” you quickly realize are rather repetitive and monotonous much like songs like “Song 2” or the like.  It is very uneven, moreso than Rock Band 2’s setlist, and that was across 85 songs.  Of course, the soundtrack is all subjective, so there may be a lot more you like or dislike.  The only thing to remember is that Harmonix has not confirmed or even hinted that these songs will appear as regular DLC and instead one should assume the only way to get them is to get a new copy of the game (rental or borrowing won’t work due to the need for a unique code) and import them.

Lego Rock Band is not for everyone.  If you are an avid music game player, unless you are particularly fascinated with the Lego games, you’re not going to find anything that Rock Band 2 doesn’t already offer, beyond the exportability of the songs.  But it is a very good product for families with younger children, and also maintains the humor and style that Travelers Tales has brought to market with the Lego games.  It works – but not for all.

Gameplay: B+

Audio: A

Graphics: A

Value/Replayability: B

Overall: B+

Guitar Hero 5

Activision and Neversoft have learned many things regarding band games since their release of World Tour last year, and while different from how Rock Band approaches the genre, Guitar Hero 5 does do a lot of new and interesting things that would be nice to see picked up by Rock Band.

Probably the most important change is that the game is less about the career mode and instead about enjoying playing the songs with others. There still is a traditional Career mode – you create your band, your avatar, and then are presented with a series of venues with fixed songs within each. But like Guitar Hero: Metallica and Smash Hits, progression is based on earning a reasonably fraction of the stars available (roughly about half) to open the next venue. It takes very little work to get a “completed” career mode in the sense of opening every venue, even if you’ve not played all the songs. Stars can be earned at any difficulty, removing the frustration of the “Hard” to “Expert” transition that has been part of the series since its start. That said, they have introduced a new feature, called Challenges. Each song has its unique challenge that is tied to one instrument or the whole band. Often these are straightforward – earn a specific number of points, maintain a series of correctly-played notes, or the like. Others are more specific due to the song’s structure, such as nailing the “Fame”s at the end of the same-named David Bowie song.  Each challenge has three completion levels, with a max of an additional 3 more stars (to the 5 you can get for the general performance) depending on how well you do. This helps to accelerate the playthrough of the Career, but this is even further capitalized by the fact that when you are playing with others, as long as any band member completes the challenge, all members are individually credited towards it. Thus, if there’s a Challenge with a tough guitar lick that you can’t do, find a friend and play with them to finish it.  Activision has noted that some of these Challenges can only be completed at the highest level when playing Expert difficulty, so there is some aspect of learning to play well to keep improving and complete all of these. There are also Challenges that allow you to pick any song to complete it – this also includes any common downloaded songs from World Tour as well as the selected lists of importable songs from World Tour, Smash Hits, and Band Hero (roughly 50% of each of those respective setlists); yes, Activision finally has realized the necessary of building a library of songs and importability. It is still trailing what Rock Band offers, but it is a definite step in the right direction.

Unlike Rock Band, the game does not enforce a rigid structure on the combined band, which while more a disaster in off-line mode, makes it very easy to play with others online, since you’re not waiting for that one vocalist to fill an empty slot in your 3-person band.  The visuals may look weird when this happens, but it makes the game very accessible to online.  Other Online modes include the usual face offs but also include a set of Rock Challenges.  These are various modes where up to 8 players play at the same time (you don’t see their note charts, however, just tracking their scores per the challenge rules) the idea to earn the most points per that mode’s rules. One includes a mode where the difficulty of your track keeps increasing (and thus earning you more points) as long as you play well, and falls back if you fail enough notes. Another mode is an eliminator mode, that the player with the lowest score after a 30-second segment is dropped out. There’s about 5-6 of these modes all together and it does change how you approach a song. It is interesting to play – it may not be so much for music appreciation but does provide a level of enjoyment.  Perhaps one of the more subtle modes of the game is the Party Play mode, which, when you launch the title, the game automatically drops into; it is an extended demo mode but lets you pick up the axe or sticks at any time and jump in.  In a social party setting, this certainly has many advantages since people can drop in or out, change difficulty, or the like, without having to spend minutes navigating the menus. Particularly after becoming rather tired of “Hello There” due to the endless repetition in the Rock Band 2 menus, this is a very welcome feature.  There is also an improved version of GHTunes, allowing for more interactive creation of user songs, with fewer restrictions on length and the like, but in the end, this still has the same problems as the World Tour version: no vocals are allowed, and they still come out sounding like MIDI songs.  User-created content is great, but the approach by the upcoming Rock Band Network seems to be nailing that.

There are only a handful of changes to the actual gameplay (a good thing, since this is like the 5th title of the series) – they’ve reworked the Star Power to be individually collected ala Rock Band instead of a shared pool, and these contribute to the Band Multipler; this multiplier also gets boosted when the band plays certain marked phrases all correctly and with other consistent play mechanics.  While one can fail out, recovery of that member requires the other band members to play their parts well.  Otherwise, the in-game play remains the same (and as I’ve found, makes it weird to jump back and forth between Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.)

This leaves the question of the soundtrack, and – well, its clear that the two franchises have a clear bead on what works out for these games, as there’s a large number of overlaps between tracks on Guitar Hero 5 and songs available through Rock Band 2.  This game’s soundtrack is a bit weighted towards more recent songs – again, considering the game as more social than for music appreciation.  Whereas World Tour did have a disproportionate number of foreign songs (due to the game’s more popular success in Europe), Guitar Hero 5 avoids too many of these, though still manages to pull from a few bands you’ve likely never heard of. But it seems most of the songs are playable and enjoyable for all instruments at any time (even if this means we lose great guitar solos), and thus can be considered well-rounded this way.

Graphics are improved to a degree in this game. World Tour was criticized for having Muppet-like avatars on stage, and while it is not the case that Guitar Hero 5 still doesn’t have some of the more creepier images, they’ve applied graphic filters to make it look reasonably more life-like and take out the stilted motions of the avatars.  There is just enough in-game advertizing on the venues to appear realistic without overwhelming.  And by now, everyone’s aware there’s several celebrity avatars in the game, including the infamous use of Kurt Cobain which has since becoming something of a firestorm for Activision.  On one hand, it helps to make the game feel legitimate, but at the same time, when you compare the real-life celebrities against what you can make with the character creator, there’s a still a large gulf that needs to be crossed.

Guitar Hero 5 is definitely a positive improvement on the series after the more disappointing World Tour.  It doesn’t offer any significant advantages over Rock Band if you’re the type that likes to play along to these songs and appreciate them, but is definitely geared towards the more social aspects of just having fun with them.  All the steps made are in the right direction for this, but there is danger that they may be adding too many features within the main gameplay that may tip this from being enjoyable to being too complex to appreciate.

Gameplay: A

Audio: A-

Graphics: B+

Value/Replayability: A

Overall: A-

Band Hero

There’s no easier way to describe Band Hero beyond being the pink version of Guitar Hero 5 aimed at ‘tween girls. The gameplay and approach are all the same, and the only real difference is the venues, selections of clothing, and the soundtrack.  The fact that current pop sensation Taylor Swift is predominately featured in the game should clue you in if you really need this game or not.

The soundtrack is by far one of the weakest if you are looking for a significant challenge. These are all Top 40 , pop hits, and that usually implies a simple guitar and bass strumming rhythm and fixed drum beat that rarely varies.  If anything, the soundtrack is one to glorify the vocalist, and really is more a karaoke machine with some guitars and drums thrown in.  That said, there are songs that I would to have in Rock Band simply because of musical appreciation, for example “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” or “American Pie”.  Even with that said, there is atrocious censorship in this game to earn it an ESRB “T” rating, such as the removal of the word “Whiskey” from the chorus of “American Pie”.

This should have been downloadable content to Guitar Hero 5; none of the new venues are super exciting, and only serve to be highlighting the guest acts.  Unfortunately, it does look like Activision believes there is a product line here as hints of a Band Hero 2 are already emerging. I can understand that there will be a class of people that play Guitar Hero 5 but hate the bulk of the music in Band Hero , and vice versa.  But here’s an example of what Harmonix has already learned: you can provide DLC of music that is outside of what one might consider a core audience – you’re not forcing everyone to buy it just to get one or two songs they like, and gives you ideas of where to explore if there’s more interest; I’m sure the various genre retail track packs didn’t simply arise because Harmonix wanted to do it, but instead because there was a general interest in having more classic rock, country, and metal in the game.  Band Hero represents another genre, that of pop-rock, that Activision could have treated the same way.

Technically, there is nothing bad about Band Hero beyond the caution behind the very modern soundtrack; the game does what it promises without failure.  It however is an example of the problem with Activision’s approach to the market – they’ve stated they rather sell full products than DLC.  Which is fine when you’re talking two or three releases a year.  However, 2009 has come and gone and shown that the music game market cannot handle 5 different titles from the same series.  It is really hard to recommend this game unless you are desperate to play any of the songs from its setlist, and instead just recommend to hope and wait that Rock Band will soon these as well.

Gameplay: A-

Audio: C

Graphics: B+

Value/Replayability: B-

Overall: C

DJ Hero

DJ Hero reads like a train wreck from most any angle, but really comes together in the end – as long as you are fan of the electronica/hip-hop/mix scene.  While I may criticize Activision of saturating the traditional guitar/band market with titles, this is one spinoff I completely agree with its inclusion. Both FreeStyleGames and Activision should be commended for a great first shot out the door barring a few technical problems that can easily be fixed for DJ Hero 2.

The game is all about mixing two songs together to create a rather new work.  It features over 80 different mixes with over 100 different individual songs used (however, at the same time, its clear that there’s a lot of reuse of single songs to make all those mixes).  The game requires a new plastic controller modeled after a turntable.  One side is the turntable that spins freely along with three buttons, each associated with the two songs used in the mix and an effects stream. The other side has a crossfader, an adjustment dial which is used ala the whammy bar to build points during certain sections, and the “Euphoria” (Star Power) Activation button.  During a mix, you’ll constantly need to work the crossfader back and forth to bring one song to the audio foreground and back again and to use the buttons on the turntable to hit beats on the individual mixes. These buttons are also used to hold down and “scratch”, rotating the turntable as indicated by arrows on the tracks.  Euphoria is earned by doing all the actions in a segment of the song, while a “Rewind” feature, activated by spinning the platter counterclockwise 360 degrees, is earned by playing enough notes in a row correctly and then allows you to go back a few seconds in the song to fix errors you made or simply boost your score.  As with Guitar Hero, DJ Hero gives you up to 5 stars for each song. There is no failure mode in the game – you simple do not score points if you continually miss the tracks.

It takes a while to get use to the controller, but where the game shines is that the difficulty ramp being the specific difficulty levels and within the various setlist challenges makes it very easy to get used to all the features.  Early songs for me on medium were more geared towards getting the crossfading right and hitting the beats on each mix.  Then they add more rapid crossfade changes and introduced scratching (where exactly how you scratch didn’t matter). Making it through the medium difficulty was sufficient enough a challenge with those but easily lead into the Hard difficulty where there are now “spike” crossfades (Where you have to move the crossfader out and back in a single motion), and scratch sections that required specific movements on the turntable.  I’m certainly not yet an expert in the game, but I feel that I’ve mastered something, that same feeling that I had back during Guitar Hero and clearing those high-end songs on Expert.  Without the gradual increase in difficulty, this game would probably have been the train wreck that it was anticipated to be.

The music itself is pretty good. Again, if you’re not into the remix culture, this game will do nothing for you. And there’s some of the mixes (typically the slower ones) that just seem to drag on and on.  There are also some mixes that just don’t work – “Sabotage” vs “Monkey Wrench” is ok, but feels overly awkward.  The game also attempts to extend the Guitar Hero gameplay into 10 special mixes, but it really doesn’t need this – the types of songs that work well for mixes don’t really aren’t challenging on guitar, and vice versa. The “failed” mixes, in my opinion, are maybe about 20% of the tracklist – the other mixes are all real strong. This is further helped by the fact that FreeStyleGames was able to bring aboard some big names in mixing: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Grandmaster Flash, Daft Punk, DJ Shadow, and others, all that have the right ear to make these work.  Just as with the right approach to gameplay, without this talent, I have a feeling this was have been less impressive. As it is, their presence both in music and their appearance helps to lend credibility to the product.

Gameplay is basically your career mode – you have a number of pre-set tracks consisting of mixes, with most of the later ones being those done by one artist. You collect stars (at any difficulty) to unlock the later sets of tracks, as well as for characters, venues, and additional clothing and outfit styles. While all songs are available in a “quickplay” mode from the start, it is not a traditional quickplay but instead you use can custom one of two sets of tracks to what songs you want to play.  This means that if you’ve made up two custom setlist to keep around for a while, you’ll have to erase one to quickplay a mix.  There are online modes, basically score attack modes between two DJs, or you can have a guitar player help with your DJ, but thankfully there’s no “battle mode” here; at this point, the series is too fresh to be assured if this would work.

The visuals are… well, they fit with what Activision has provided in the past with Guitar Hero.  It definitely is based on the club scene, and that means lots of flashing lights and random girls dancing to the music.  While the celebrity avatars are spot on, the new characters created for the game are just a bit too cartoonish to mesh well.  The overall theme is interesting, but it does seem to lack a certain professionalism when you compare it to Rock Band.

The biggest factor into getting this game is to justify the cost. The new controller is not cheap (nor is it cheaply made), and presently works in exactly one game. There is another DJ game due out soon, Scratch, information given, it is very unlikely that it will be compatible with the DJ Hero controller. There is a very strong likelihood of a DJ Hero 2 coming out (it has been all but confirmed by Activision), and the game current does have a limited selection of DLC available for it.  But it is important to stress, this is not a bad game, and despite the shear number of other titles Activision has put out this year, this was the largest risk and to me, was a good payoff in its implementation.  This is likely a good try-before-you-buy game; if you can get your hands on a demo unit to get the feel for the game and the flavor it gives, you’ll have a better idea if you’re willing to plunk down the money for it.

Gameplay: A

Audio: A

Graphics: B+

Value/Replayability: B

Overall: A-

Guitar Hero: Van Halen

This could only be a joke, right?

It is not that Van Halen couldn’t have the same treatment that Metallica got.  They’ve got a lot of songs in their pocket, many instantly recognizable, and there’s some good killer guitar shreds from them.  In other words, it is completely possible to make a good Van Halen band game. But all the decisions taken for this game, despite being functionally equivalent to Guitar Hero: Metallica (which, to recall is closer to World Tour’s approach than Guitar Hero 5), makes it a laughing stock.  Issues such as:

- Focusing on the period of the band before Hagar (that is, pre-1984) drastically cuts the number of good songs to pull from. The game does not even acknowledge their existence in the band (unlike Guitar Hero: Metallica which at least tribute the past members of the band in the various facts).

- The inclusion of Wolfgang as the default bassist.  Every time on screen, it looks like some kid snuck up on stage to perform; it probably doesn’t help that Wolfgang is a bit on the heavier side, and all that looks like baby fat for his on-screen avatar. The effect is even worse when you eventually get to the last tier which puts the band back in their skin-tight outfits – including Wolfgang which wasn’t even borne at the time some of the songs selected were played out.

- I know this is a band that has been around a long time, and I don’t think we’d necessary want to see 40-50yrs olds bouncing around on stage like children. But at the same time, I found the band’s default appearance effectively made them look like mid-20s that shopped at the Gap. I’m sure they had a say in what they wanted to look like on the game screen, but I think they went too far in the virtual youth look. Again, comparing to GH: Metallica or even GH: Aerosmith, the band avatars looked right – aged appropriately, but still energetic and happy to be performing. The job that Van Halen got in making the avatar transition just makes the band look like any other alternative band today.  And remember, we’re playing their songs from before 1984; it puts their outfits even more out of place.

- Like GH: Metallica, there are "guest acts”, which I’m not always thrilled with (I bought a band-specific game, I want band-specific songs). At least in GH: Metallica, most of these made sense.  The ones given for GH: Van Halen just boggle the mind.  I love Weezer as much as the next person, but what connection at all do they have to Van Halen’s music?  It has been reported that Wolfgang (hmm, coincidence?) was given the reins as to what guest acts to include, and while these songs would be fine in a regular, non-band title, they just don’t work here.

I can’t fault the game technically: again, it is functionally equivalent to GH: Metallica, and the charting seems really well done; solos on “Panama” and “Eruption” are just as much of a blast to play out (if you can!) as you would air-guitaring to them.  But it just feels, in the end, a half-assed job.  If there was some effort to at least acknowledge later songs from the band’s career (things like “Right Now” are painfully missing), it might have helped. But in the end, the content of this game feels dictated by what the current band wanted, and somehow Activision didn’t seem to feel like fighting it. It feels, effectively, like an egotistical view of the band.

And of course, you can’t overlook the means by how Activision treated this title.  It was rumored for several months, and then when finally revealed, it was given a release day on Christmas week; that is not how you treat a game you hope to sell well. Then add the free giveaway of the game for those that purchased Guitar Hero 5 in the first month of its release, and you can quickly tell Activision wanted this one out of its hands as fast as possible.  Speculation again, but I suspect that they had signed their contracts to make this game, but quickly found it impossible to work with Van Halen to make it as quality as GH Metallica, and thus offloaded it to another in-house developer (it uses Neversoft’s code, but they aren’t the lead on this) and sell or give away copies to complete the contractual requirements.

Guitar Hero: Van Halen is a game that you do not want to support with your dollar; it is still a technically sound music game title to have if you can get it for free or used, or rent it to play through, but this minimal lack of effort and overall package is just disappointing.

Gameplay: A-

Audio: C

Graphics: B

Value/Replayability: B

Overall: C

Rhythm Heaven

Gameplay: A

Rhythm Heaven is the distant cousin of the Warioware games, in that it presents a number of minigames (60 in total but with basically 24 “unique” games).  These aren’t fired rapidly at you as Warioware would do, but instead provides a short games – from 30 seconds to a few minutes – that involve tapping or “flicking” to a song’s rhythm.  The game is presented vertically like a book, akin to Brain Age, with the ability to flip it around if you are left-handed.

The games are arranged in ten tiers of five games each, which you have to play through in order to unlock them all.  Each tier has four basic games and then a “remix” that combines the elements of those four games.  The last four tiers are harder versions of the previous games, with remixes that include elements from other games not in that tier, which can lead to some unexpected results.

All these games can be described as either “call and answer” type games, where you need to mimic a specific rhythm given to you in the phrase before, or games where you have to wait for specific cues and respond in the right way. The actions are simplistic; tapping or tapping and holding, “flicking” like a air hockey puck, and in some cases just sliding back and forth.  There’s no hotspot – anywhere on the touchpad works, and thus you can focus most of your attention on the other screen where most of the time you can use the visual cues provided by the game’s animation to time your moves.  Surprisingly, however, this can be a hindrance sometimes – I found at least a few games that ignoring the screen and playing with my eyes closed was much easier to complete than the visual distraction of the animation. Most of the games is preceded by a tutorial that is skippible at any time to review what the cues and actions are for each game.

After completing the song (which doesn’t have any variation, so you can work through these by memorization), you’re graded on how well you performed.  If you fail, you have to try again – and annoyingly, you have to wait for the game to go back to the game selection screen, then reselect the game, and then click through the tutorial, which is annoying on some of the tougher games.  However, to the game’s benefit, if you screw up a game three times in a row, you can stop in the game’s “cafe” and have that game considered “cleared” so that you can progress – meaning that you basically can unlock everything with about a couple hours worth of effort.  Alternatively, you can simply pass, or you can get a near-perfect or better rating, which earns you a medal.  Medals are used in the game to unlock more rhythm-based minigames.  Furthermore, these games will sometimes be highlighted on the main screen, allowing you the chance to run though it with a perfect result in order to unlock the game’s music or other features that you can watch later.

The game itself is a bit on the tough side, particularly anything involving flicking as if you’re too “weak” with the flick, it won’t register right. It’s also got a very narrow “hit” window for some games, though with practice, you can anticipate these better.  However, there were still games that game me a tough time.  One require you to volley a ping-pong ball back and forth with flicks, and I just had a hard time with the timing even when I didn’t focus on the graphics.  However, most of the rest of them are really well done, embodying the basics of music and rhythm – playing on the eights, triplets, and off-beats.  The remixes are definitely the highlight as it still makes all these games feel consistent yet with enough chaotic nature to make them difficult.  Completing all the games isn’t hard, but mastering this game is a challenge.

Value/Replayability: B+

Opening up everything in the game will take a few hours, but getting everything mastered will take a while. However, like with most other rhythm games, there’s not that much replayability – the song actions remain the same, and are presented in the same order.  Of course, it helps that many of the songs are catchy and worthwhile to play again.

Graphics: A

Like Warioware, the game uses a number of graphic styles for the games – from simple black-and-white penciling, sprite-based games, and simple 3D graphics.  Most work quite well, and particularly for the remixes, the differences in style help to quickly identify what game and actions you need to match.  It’s nothing particularly amazing but works well for the game.

Audio: A

For a rhythm game, the audio is very important, and it does not fail in Rhythm Heaven. All the songs used are nice and upbeat with a lot of variations in beats and speed to provide a wide range of challenges.  It’s not necessary quirkly like Katamari Damacy, but perfectly fine for a game like this.

Overall: A-

Rhythm Heaven is a great game if you like rhythm games in general, quirky Japanese games, or just games that are fun.  It’s not quite like any previous DS game such as Elite Beat Agents, and if you’re into these games for the music, this may not catch you as much as others.  But, it does provide a nice challenge, is well presented as an overall package, and shows promise for more games in the same vein without wearing out the formula too much.

Story: A-

The game takes place in the years before the events of FF7, and focus on the history of Zack, the other SOLDIER that was present at the pivotal mission with Sephiroth and Cloud, and in fact shows the events of that mission in more detail.  But before that, it presents who Zack his and how he became ranked in SOLDIER, how his friendship with Sephiroth, Cloud, and other SOLDIER and Turks came about, and how he fell in love with Aerith.  Much of the plot is a mirror of the events that ultimately occur in Cloud and Sephiroth’s fate, in that another scientist has started to look into human cloning.  Some of these events filter into the other FF7 media, including Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus and despite being a prequel to all these, doesn’t seem to retcon the history already established.

Needless to say, the story won’t be as easy to follow if you’ve not played through FF7, but at the same time, they do try to make the story self-standing and only passing familarity with the existing characters is just necessary for a good appreciation of the game.  There is a bit of fan service by dropping hints to other characters and events in FF7, such as a few of the side missions involving Yuffie, and the name-dropping of Cid.

As for the actual story, it’s a tad confusing at first, as there’s a bit too much overlap between the parts of the game that teach the game mechanics and that introduce all the characters.  However, about 1/3rd of the way through the game, the story does get going pretty well, and, presuming you’ve worked through FF7, you’ll start to see how the pieces fall into place.  The ending is pretty well done even it is clear how it will end as they help to invest time in the critical characters to make you feel them moreso than in an average RPG (it may help that you only control one character throughout the game, and thus you’re more vested in that one character than 6 or so).

Gameplay: B+

Unlike FF7, Crisis Core is more an action-based game, and designed differently from most of the other Final Fantasy titles.  The main mission in the game spans several chapters, with each chapter a part of a mission for Zack through various aspects of the world. There’s no overworld, but instead you’ll be taken to each area of importance which you can then walk around to interact with the people and environment, in a manner similar to Final Fantasy XII, including down to the little dotted lines to know when you’ll cross into a new area.  Once you’ve completed what you need to do in that area of the world, you move onto the next, and this process repeats for the rest of the game.

However, the main story missions are supplemented by side missions you can take at any save point. One selected, you are whisked off to the mission area, one of about eight special areas that are repeated used in the missions but have means of creating artificial barriers as to keep you confined to one part of the map.  On these missions, your goal is usually to defeat one or more fixed enemies that wait at the end of the course.  Successful completion gives you a reward and more missions to complete, but failing doesn’t end the game, just returns you back to the save point you were at.  The only time you can die and be forced to load from a saved game is if you fall during the main story missions.

Most encounters are random and invisible, though you’ll come to recognize that the game only activates these in areas where there is enough space; there’s otherwise no distinction between standard movement and combat display.  In combat, you can attack, dodge, block, use items, or use spells and abilities inferred by equipped materia.  The combat is active, allowing you move out of the way of a projected attack, or get around to an opponent’s backside to inflect critical hits, and otherwise works pretty well once you get the hang of the game’s timing and approach. The game works well on the PSP as the game always locks you onto an enemy and uses a decent means of trying to keep Zack in the picture when the battle moves around.  The controls are fine here – the d-pad keys work just as well as the analog nub for movement, while the attack and block are on the face buttons; the various skills and abilities are selected by tapping the shoulder buttons to move between the options.  It initially takes a bit of work, but its a system that you can easily slip into.

You gain materia from missions and stores that you can access via menus at any time, but you can only equip six materia.  Most of the materia from FF7 are here, including the usual magic spells, special attacks, passive abilities such as Libra to scan enemies, and stat and skill bonuses.  The game gives you the ability to fuse materia together, most of the time to improve the power of one of the materia, but other times to create entirely new materia; this latter, however, is fewer and far between than I would have liked, as I only found 3 or 4 successful combinations (which you’re told of before you commit to fusion) that gave entirely new ones.  Later in the game you also get the ability to add in other materials to the fusion to further boost the stats that benefit Zack.

The game’s primary trick is the “Digital Mind Wave”, two sets of 3-wheeled slot machines that run automatically in battle as long as you have Soldier Points that are gained from killing enemies.  As long as you take missions, you will not run out of Soldier Points (it costs 10 to spin, I ended up with more than 400,000 SP by the end of the game), so you’ll always get the benefits of what results.  The nature of the reward depends on the semi-random nature of the set of wheels with pictures of characters that Zack befriends in the game.  Should two of the pictures line up, the game pauses for a moment to show you the third wheel’s result and the second set of wheels, the numbers 1-7, as they come to a stop. If all three pictures match, then Zack will automatically do a Limit Break attack that is based on the matched character (e.g. matching Aerith will massively heal you, matching Cloud will fire off a Meteor attack).  In this case as well, if you get a pair of numbers on the other set of wheels, the materia in that associated slot will level up, increasing its power or benefit.  Matching all 7’s will level of Zack – however, this is less a random chance and more based on an “invisible” experience meter (that is, it is impossible level Zack up by biding one’s time in a long protracted battle where you just dodge and let the DMW spin).  Even if the pictures don’t line up, you will still get a bonus in battle by matching up the numbers, such as limited invincibility or no-cost spell use for a few moments.  As noted the wheels are “semi-random”, as the matching will be influenced by your current Limit state, which is built up as you take damage and after certain story events; the higher the Limit meter, the more likely pictures will match up.  There’s also certain points in the main story that further weight th wheel down in favor of specific characters and will also affect the chances of getting a match.  Also, once you collect certain objects in the world, the wheels will sometimes change into pictures of possible Summons (your Ifrit, Bahamut, etc.) or in another case, the more comical Summons like Cait Sith, Chocobo, or Moogle.  The former summons are of course super powerful attacks (with fortunately a cutscene you can skip once you’ve seen it once), while the latter usual impact a nice attack or health benefit for Zack.

The DMW mechanics is certainly unusual and has both advantages and disadvantages.  One clear advantage is that when the game pauses to show you the results of the wheel stops when a match is possible, you get a brief respite from button mashing in the game.  The randomness of the wheel also forces you to play smart, working for points of opportunity for back attacks or striking as a group instead of expecting to be able to fell the group in one blow.  The largest drawback of the DMW is the fact that you cannot predict how it works, and thus, if you’re looking to level up your materia, you simply need to “grind” as to give enough time for the DMW to end up on matches.  Fortunately, and what is a saving grace for the game, is that “grinding” is made easy through the side missions.  Instead of walking around the same area between save points luring monsters into battle, the missions at least add some variety with the different areas they send you to and guarantees of reward items at the end of the day.  Yes, you will have to grind, but you may not realize that you are doing it as you go along.

Even though this is a benefit of dealing with the DMW, this leads to the major drawback of the game – if you do do a lot of missions, either purposely grinding, or if you’re like me and you just have to do them, you will quickly grow super powerful and will make the main part of the game a cinch to finish. At the end of the game, I was regularly landing attacks that did 3000-4000 HP of damage, with the damage meter being maxed out at 9999; very few foes in the main storyline, including the end bosses, posed any significant challenge as a result between straight up attacks and the use of Curaga every other attack cycle; this was basically after completing about 40% of the 300 missions available, so I dare wonder what a character that’s done all 300 missions would be like.  Part of this was my own playing of the games; at the start I didn’t see missions being all that value and just pumped through the first 1/3rd of the game’s main story until I got to a boss I couldn’t defeat easily (one attack was more than what I had in HP), so I spent time powering through all the missions that I could do, and repeated that pattern once every chapter or so (side note: missions are ranked from Very Easy to Very Hard depending on your stats, so as you gain power, missions that were once Very Hard will be listed as being easier.  Thus, I would do all the mission up to Normal and maybe a Hard or two, and find that after running through a number, I’d have new Normal-difficult missions to take that were originally Hard or Very Hard.  Thus, the missions provide a cycle that’s hard to break until you’ve basically done all you can per what you’ve opened by the main story, leaving the most difficult missions for later).  Then when I got to a boss about 2/3rd through the game that I couldn’t beat, and that I had exhausted most of the available missions, I went to materia fusion and basically maxed out what I could with attack, HP and defensive bonuses.  From then on, I had nearly no problems with anything on the main story (side missions were still difficult as those creatures do sometimes scale with your skill level).  I don’t know if this was necessary bad or good that the game ended up being that easy to complete; Final Fantasy games are notorious for very difficult endgames but this was pretty simple.  I’m sure that if you’re more intent on driving through the main game and do just the bare amount of side missions, the challenge will be there, but its hard not to see how, with those side missions calling out to you, that you wouldn’t want to make Zack as powerful as possible.  I think the imbalance basically comes as a combination that the side missions not only boost your stats but also reward you handsomely (there’s some really powerful materia and items as rewards from that), and that if they had reduced the quality of the mission rewards, then there would have been more a challenge in the endgame.

That said, there is one aspect of the side missions that work to this game’s advantage, and that is the fact that they are generally short – 5 to 10 minutes – and drop you back to the save point when you are done.  This is perfectly ideal for use on the PSP which you may only play in short bursts.

Value/Replayability: A-

With me having done about 40% of the 300 missions, I completed the game in about 15 hours; I would suspect that with all the missions, we’d be looking at close to 25 hrs for a 100% completed game. Your mileage may vary depending on how far you take the missions, but this is a pretty decent length for a game. That said, the main story itself, cutscenes and all, is probably only about 5-6 hrs long.  Completing the game unlocks a harder difficulty , though otherwise doesn’t alter the main story.

Graphics: A

The game looks perfectly fine on the PSP – the 3D is well done, smooth, and everything is pretty clear to see on the small screen.  There’s a handful of pre-rendered cutscenes as well, in the same style as Advent Children.  Nothing really wrong in this area.

Audio: A-

Most of the major story points in the game are voiced, reusing past actors where appropriate for their roles.  Musical themes are also reused when possible, but for the most part the game uses mostly new music.  It’s not as great as other themes, but still a good soundtrack for this.

Overall: A-

Crisis Core for the most part works as a good action-based RPG on the PSP.  The combat system is simple and easy to learn, it includes some of the best features of FF7, and encourages strategic thinking associated with a random element.  It also has a gameplay feature via the side missions that’s well suited to playing in short bursts on the portable unit.  The presentation is also spot on for a Square Enix game.  However, if there is a fault, it is that the combination of game elements seems to direct the player into easily creating an over-powered character through the side missions, resulting in the main story side being less of a challenge than most Final Fantasy games.  This is not necessary game-breaking, but an odd design decision that makes you wonder if the designers thought everything through. Regardless, the game does try to create something that stands alone from FF7 if you’ve not played it, but the game is best enjoyed with full knowledge of the earlier title.

Story: B+

MadWorld put you in charge of Jack, a hardened ex-marine that has a retractable chainsaw built onto one arm, seeking entry into the newly opened DeathWatch television game show where contestants attempt to be the last man standing for a large cash prize.  Three days prior, the DeathWatch was a large metropolis called Varrigan City, but thanks to the release of a virus with promise of a vaccine to those that would kill others, and someone with a lot of resources, the city was quickly transformed into the deadly game show, and Jack is searching for a VIP that was trapped in the city when this all started.  But the only way through is to act like a contestant, get sponsored and work his way through the ranked matched to get deeper into the city.  However, Jack’s initial mission is only just a starting point, as Jack as well as the DeathWatch game are more than what they seem as the game progresses.

The story is not very deep but it does help to hold the interest to the game, and has a good twist and turns to make you want to keep playing.  The story is mostly told as cutscenes using a combination of in-game engine and kinetic comic-book style displays before and after certain levels (any attempt at story between levels would get in the way of killing).  Jack, as pretty much the only character with real development, is pretty complex and well characterized.

Gameplay: A

MadWorld is divided into a number of levels spanning 5 areas of the city; each area has 3 levels in it including one specific boss fight, all the other levels feature a time limit for you to score enough points by killing the drones on the level in order to open the boss fight and kill him or her, thus moving Jack up the DeathWatch ladder to eventually face the top-ranked player  Most of these are played out on small arenas on foot, but a few feature combat from the back of a motorcycle while driving along highways.  In these levels, reaching other point thresholds will unlock several features, including health items, weapons, new environmental ways of killing foes, mini-bosses, and a special BloodBath challenge.

To score points, you control Jack to kill foes.  Simple kills, basically beating a foe up or slicing them in half with a chainsaw earn some points but you really score the points when you use the environment effectively as well as make your foe suffer multiple points of pain before finishing them off. For example, you can thrust a tire around an enemy, stab their head with a street sign, stuff a garbage can on them, set them on fire, throw another enemy into them, and the like, including multiples of these, before throwing the enemy against a “rose bush” of conveniently placed spikes.  Basically, each injury you do to the foe acts as a multiplier increase to the score, which help you get to the required points for each level. At times, if you wear down a foe, you’ll have an opportunity to use a Finisher on them, which requires typically one little Wiimote/Nunchuck action to complete.  There will also be need to use such actions to pull off the pain-inflicting moves, but these are shown on the screen when they become available.  The controls themselves to pull all this off are pretty straight-forward, and if anything, the only complaint is that the move to grab at a target seems very persnickety about how far or close you are to them, but otherwise they become second nature quickly.  The levels themselves are generally small (roughly the size of a city block) with lots of environmental killing devices awaiting their use as well as secret areas with more unique methods for dealing with foes.

Throughout most levels is the BloodBath challenge, which still will earn you points towards your level score, but also gives you bonus points for pulling off special killing tactics.  After being introduced humorously by the Black Baron (who ends up victim to the death-dealing machinations by his assistant) you have a limited amount of time to kill foes by a specific method.  This may be getting the foes to stand in front of a set of speeding trains to be run over, or to be targets for your spike bat to be struck against a giant dartboard.  These present a fun diversion from the rest of the level (as taking damage is usually very difficult to do during these.

When you open a boss fight, you’re taken to a special part of the level.  While regular attacks with bosses will wear down their health, the main way that most bosses are defeated is to get them into a Finishing Move melee, requiring you to get close and pull off a specific motion with the controllers.  When you get into the Finishing Move (clearing indicated with anime-style battle panels quickly flashing on screen) you basically need to watch for a handful of quick time events to respond to the bosses moves, and either dazing the boss to wail on him or scoring big damage.  Each boss is finalized with a final Finishing move as well.  While quick time events can be a boon to a game, they are used well here; there’s enough timing to execute them, and because the game doesn’t use the motion sensing via the infrared sensors but instead the internal motion sensing, the moves only require small flicks appropriately for the event.  The one aspect of the game that is a bit annoying is that if you should die completely facing the boss (wearing away all the health from all the lives you bring into the boss) you have to restart the entire level over instead of starting the boss fight again.  For most of the bosses, at least at normal difficulty, this isn’t a problem but there was one boss on one level that felt really difficult to score points (e.g. it would take me 15 minutes or so to get the number needed to bring up the boss fight) that was also a more difficult boss (namely as he wasn’t the type you just wail on) that I had to redo the overall level 4 or so times before I was able to defeat the boss.

Once you beat a level, you can go back to try to improve your score, and there’s also a harder difficulty level for the game if you need that challenge.  A split-screen multiplayer mode is also available, where you all fight in the same arena trying to amass the most points.

The game is pretty damn fun.  Obviously, you need to recognize that the killing going on here is over-the-top comically and while this game does show brutal deaths, it helps that the overall presentation is so bizarre and comic-bookish that no one is going to mistake this as a “murder simulator”.  When you have that in mind, you can have a lot of fun, experimenting the most effective and efficient ways of dealing with the enemies of the game.  There’s enough variety in the way the levels provide you with means of killing that helps to avoid monotonous gameplay, save for the time you’re getting to the last few levels.  The controls are very well-polished – this isn’t a game where they just tacked motion-sensing on the end – and are very easy to pick up.  Even if you’re not great at normal fighting games, button-mashing will serve you well here.

Value/Replayability: B+

The full game is not really long, maybe 8 to 10 hours if not shorter if you’re a pro at the Street Fighter type variety.  But in terms of overall length, that feels about right – Jack doesn’t power up (nor does he have the need to do so), so there’s no new moves that he learns and while the enemies get more difficult, the same tactics work for most in the game.  The replay is there in the ability to go back to any level to try to better your time/score and to try it at the harder difficulty level.  I think if the game was any longer it would have become rather bland, so this was a decent choice here.

Graphics: A

It’s impossible to talk MadWorld without spending time on the graphics.  There’s clear influences of Frank Miller’s Sin City, as the entire game is pretty much rendered in three colors: black and white for characters and environments, yellow for onomatopoeia words that appear as in comic books, and copious and copious amounts of red for blood.  The black and white visuals are very difficult to describe just by relying on 2d screenshots, but they do work well for the game, thanks to the designers’ choices.  There’s enough (but not too much) detail that make it easy to help distinguish edges of features in front of other features, and while you might blink a few times when you start playing it to figure it out, it’s really really well done.  It also helps to “disguise” the fact that this game is running on the Wii, as the presentation looks just as good as any 720/1080p game for the 360 or PS3.  While the gameplay itself helps to lend to the idea that this is supposed to be a fun game that happens to use violence as a scoring mechanics, this is also aided by the choice to represent physical harm to foes as near-river-like amounts of bright red blood (in the same fashion as No More Heroes).  There’s no guts (well, one Finishing move has a heart, ripped out ala Temple of Doom style), and you don’t see these gapping wounds in the bodies.  It may look like it’s a very bloody game, but really it is all decoration and very satisfying.  (Be aware, this is still not a game for youngsters, this is only part of the reason).

Audio: A-

While the main voice work for the game during cut-scenes is decent (some more than others, such as the Black Baron), where the game shines in audio is the hip-hop soundtrack (shades of Persona 3) that plays throughout the levels, and the work by the two announcers that are always there.  These two are voiced (in the North American and UK version) by Greg Proops and John DiMaggio.  Proops was on Who’s Line Is It Anyway? but more recently was the podrace sportscaster from Phantom Menace.  DiMaggio is (coincidentally?) the voice of Marcus Fenix from Gears of War but also Bender from Futurama, and in this game, he’s pretty much one can of Olde Fortran away from being in full Bender mode.  These two have a fantastic set of rude, crash lines they work from that accompany the killing spree you do on each level, and clearly they had a lot of fun with their lines and working together on (I’ve read they ad libbed a few of them as well, making this a nice touch).  The only complaint that I have about the lines is that they needed about twice as many, the repetition on the lines did get a little tiresome on some levels and later in the game. (Do make sure to stay for the credit sequence)  The rest of the sound effects in the game are good, and pretty much every way you can imagine that raw meat can be used to create sound effects has been utilized.

Overall: A-

MadWorld has some pitfalls and is not necessary a genre-changing game, but it is a very satisfying and fun game to play and feels that I’m playing exactly what the producers at Platinum Games wants to have as a game.  It’s a bit on the short side that makes it more a renter, though I’m one to always encourage supporting the little guys, and given Platinum Games’ history, I do suggest to buy it if you can.  While the gameplay may get a bit stale at the end, the rest of the presentation of the game is spot on and I find it quite amusing just to play it for a few minutes.

Guitar Hero: Metallica

Gameplay: A-

There’s not much to say about the basic Guitar Hero gameplay here once you’re actually in the songs, save that they’ve wisely copied one feature that I love from Rock Band, that being that your progress towards the number of stars you are earning is tracked as you play, which can also be used to some extent as a "progress through song" meter, which can be very helpful on these longer Metallica tunes. Otherwise, all the features (including sliding notes that use the touchpad on the World Tour guitar, armored notes for the drummer, and like) are present.

In terms of game modes, the Career mode drops the World Tour approach of gigs, and just outright gives you a list of songs to work through. However, you need to earn a minimum number of stars to open up certain sections of that list (basically representing another venue).  Fortunately, and probably very wisely, this barrier is low and you can earn the stars at any difficulty you want to play on.  Thus, to unlock the whole set of 49 songs, you pretty much only need to play about 12 or 15 songs total, making it very easy to get to the songs you really want to play if you’re not a fan of certain Metallica eras or their choice of guest acts.  For a set list this size, this works very well – a Rock Band tour mode would been too repetitive (again, Metallica songs are not short, so it would take time to work through things) and the gig approach from World Tour would lock up too much of the stuff.  And of course, the fact that you can play through without being tied to difficulty is great if you bite off more than you can chew by starting on Expert and getting your ass whooped by the time you get to the middle tiers.  The single player progress is still tied to the initial instrument you select (effectively you have four different careers to work through), but this is reasonable here since there are various differences in the difficulty of the songs depending on instruments – notably with some Metallica songs being simple but fast guitar/bass chord progressions and hard as heck on drums, while others have killer guitar solos over easy drumlines.  Band mode still requires you to have at least two people present to play, but otherwise works similar to the single player career.  There’s also the usual bunch of competitive multiplayer modes, including Boss Battles retools to feature Metallica-themed distractions, if these types of modes are your thing.

What’s probably the most pleasant thing to see in this game is that from a difficulty standpoint, this game feels right about perfect, or at least, right on par with Rock Band‘s implied difficulty.  I’ve played many songs on drums on Expert/Hard and some guitar and bass on Expert, and pretty much is about right where I’d expect metal songs to be for my skill based on Rock Band.   That is, if you’re more casual then hardcore, both Medium and Hard difficulties will present enough of a challenge to not be boring and give a good run through the songs, while Expert will be (appropriately) a very difficult ride but great for the purists. And of course, to meet the with the actual aggressiveness of Lars’ drumming, there’s a special Expert+ mode that pretty much requires you to use two bass drum pedals to even have a shot. (However, you either needed to have preordered the game or have purchased the second kick separately).  This is a far cry from Guitar Hero III‘s "wall o’ notes" and the scaled-back lack of difficulty in Aerosmith, finally achieving a good balance between being fun and challenging. I have to give Neversoft kudos for getting to this point as quickly as they did given that Harmonix has had much more background in getting there.  The only factor that comes into dragging these songs down is their length – sure, Metallica songs do run long, and there’s no reason for the game to cut them short, but some songs I did find that the same fast easy rhythm can get very tiring near the end at the Hard level, and maybe would have liked a bit more breathing room at this level.

Playing through the songs will give you cash that you can use to customize your avatar using the same character creation system as in World Tour.  You also unlock special features such as playable versions of Metallica members as you gain enough cumulative cash to cross certain boundaries.  When you complete all the Metallica songs and many of the special guests songs, you’ll unlock the ability to watch these via "Metallifacts" akin to Pop-up Videos, giving you some insight into the background of the song. Add in lots of videos of Metallica performances and their behind-the-scenes look at the motion capture and development sessions, and this is really a more complete tribute to the band compared to the few extras on Aerosmith.  There’s probably more that people would have liked to add, as this certainly isn’t the end-all biography of the group, but it pretty dang complete for a console game.

Value/Replayability: B+

If the only thing that really hurts this game (beyond the soundtrack if you are not a Metallica fan) is that it is still a full price game.  Now, sure, nearly 50 songs is a pretty full disk, but when one considers that World Tour has 80 songs and costs the same, one has to question how much value there is on the extras in this package, and for myself, not the world’s biggest Metallica fan but certainly appreciative of their music, it’s just a bit too much.  Add to the fact that save for the previous release of Death Magnetic content, there will be no additional (at the present time) DLC for this game, and you’re really looking at a very limited package. (GHTunes is still here, and cross-compat with World Tour, but my experience with comes out of there is very hit or miss).  It will still provide a good amount of gameplay and certainly not a bad use of your money, but it is a bit pricey compared to what else is out there.  At the same time, could this have been a DLC add-on to World Tour?  Maybe… but the spit and polish on the presentation really makes this game stand out alone.

Graphics: A

Neversoft really went all out to make this game look and feel like a Metallica game.  Thanks to extensive motion capture, all of the Metallica members look sweet and completely at home on the more realistic venues created for this game.  The motions and camera effects during the various songs is about as good as live concert videos, including the appropriate use of film filters to give some songs a handicam-shot type feel.  Even when doing the non-Metallica songs, the avatars look much better, and are less cartoony that the Guitar Hero III versions, if not even better than World Tour.  If anything, the only mark on the game’s presentation is that with the intensely accurate graphics there is a slight impact on the frame rate, barely impacting the display rate which I noticed but certainly not ruining the experience.

Audio: A

Presuming you are already a fan of the band Metallica, you’ll love the soundtrack, which weighs a bit heavier on their pre-Black album material (which common knowledge tends to consider as the better part of their career) but does include some more recent material too. The tracks are all master and sound excellent from the game. If there’s a hitch, it’s that the guest acts don’t quite have the same "volume" of sound that the Metallica tracks were obviously painstakingly mixed to perfection for the game; there’s nothing wrong to ruin the experience but switching from the Metallica songs to the guests and back, its clear there’s a bit of difference here.

Overall: A-

Your actual value on this game is going to depend on your fondness for the band Metallica. If you dislike them, you’re not going to find anything new here. If you’re a rapid fan, this game is definitely a must-have.  But for those in between (I mildly like their stuff, and certainly not turned off by it) you’ll find this to be the best post-Harmonix Guitar Hero game to date – it’s sufficiently difficult but not impossible through most of the game, the presentation is top notch, and overall a well done game. It would have been nice to have the option to have these songs as DLC, or means of integrating these with World Tour or vice-versa, as the price of this game is bit high for just under 50 songs, but it still is a pretty fun game.

Overall: A+

If you haven’t played Peggle from the PC side, the game is basically a Pachinko-like game where you shoot balls from a launcher at the top of the screen to a number of colored pegs in a field, though here, if you hit a peg, the peg will disappear after the shot is completed (or in some cases if it is potentially holding up a ball from falling) Twenty of these pegs are randomly selected to be orange, and the goal is to clear all the orange pegs starting with 10 balls.  Of course, there’s ways of getting more balls: getting a good score on a single shot or by landing the ball in a catcher that moves back and forth regularly will do this.  As you clear the orange pegs, your score multiplier increases, so while it may become more difficult to make a shot, going for more difficult shots can really pay off.  A pin is selected to be purple after every shot, and is a point boost to your score, while two green pins randomly selected at the start of the level will activate that level’s current "magic power". There are ten "Peggle Masters" each with a different magic power; some help with your shots, some with clearing the board, and other effects.  Some of these only last for that shot while others will last for the next few shots as well.  When you complete the last orange pin, you then have a simple chance of luck bonus round where you can score more points depending on where the ball lands at the bottom of the screen.  If you fail to clear the board with the allocation of 10 balls and any extras, you have to repeat the board until you do so.

The single player side is pretty straight forward for what you’d expect on XBox Live – high score tracking, the possibility of more levels (what is currently here is the base Peggle package, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Peggle Nights levels come along) via DLC, and the like.  An important factor to some may be the lack of precise mouse control but I will say I believe the controller scheme is well done, having just the right amount of touch and responsiveness to the controls to allow you to accurately line up shots as good as you could with a mouse.  The game is sufficiently addictive and Pop Cap made a nice simple interface to get you right to the game as soon as possible, making it a no-brainer to have as a purchased game. The bonus to this already great game is the "Peggle Party" multiplayer mode, which supplements the obvious online version of Peggle Duels.  It’s competitive, but not interference-type competitiveness.  You each get 10 balls and the same board layout (including positions of orange pins), and you all make your own shots. If you complete your shot before any other, you can sneak a peak at another’s board to see where they’re at. After each shot, the current scores are all tallied up. Obviously, the goal is to have the highest end score; however, there’s a lot of potential strategy here that doesn’t necessarily come about in single player mode.  For example, a skilled player may take his time and wait to make the big score on one of their later balls when their score multiplier is high, easily surpassing those players that may have tripped it earlier on.  There’s just enough strategy here to make the multiplayer fun and exciting, almost like the old party Crash mode of the Burnout games.  Multiplayer is nicely grouped into ranked and player matches, thus allowing you to be as friendly or competitive as you want.

It may not have the deepest gameplay around, but there’s no doubt that Peggle should be a must-have for any Xbox Live user.  It’s a reasonable good and addictive game with good additions and a nice Xbox implementation to make it worth your while.  The only put-off here may be if you just don’t like Peggle (but that’s a rarity) – if you haven’t had a chance to try it, PopCap has a web version on their site, which is sufficiently close enough to the real thing to give you the feeling of the game. But if you loved Peggle on the PC, there’s no question that this will be a hit too.

LocoRoco 2

Story: A-

In LocoRoco 2, the Moja Corps have returned, now armed with their own song to counter that of the LocoRoco and their planet, causing other beings that live on the planet to tire out.  They’ve also been able to convert some of the helpful Mui Mui to their side, who set about to create their own vehicles to spread the Moja’s bleakness across the planet. It’s up again to the LocoRoco to reawaken their music with their song.  Compared to the first game, there’s a more concrete plot, still told without words in cutscenes in the same style as the rest of the game, and conveys a nice funny story.  It’s not deep by far (younger kids still need to get it) but enough to be a better driver for the game.

Gameplay: A

The core aspects of the first game are still here, and as a good sequel, only attempts to add a few tricks to the goodie bag to keep the game fresh.  You don’t directly control the LocoRoco but instead use the PSP shoulder buttons to "tilt" the planet left and right to make the LocoRoco roll in that direction.  You can also make them jump by holding and releasing the shoulder buttons at the same time, necessary for clearing gaps, jumping to higher platforms, break walls, and fending off attacks from the Moja Corps.  As the LocoRoco goes about the level and eats a berry, it will grow by one; after this, you can tap a face button that will cause the LocoRoco to split into numerous individual LocoRoco which may be need to get by narrow spaces, and then regroup them into the large LocoRoco by holding down the face button.  New to their bag of tricks is for the LocoRoco to "swim" underwater, primarily using the shoulder buttons to control their motion of flow, and their ability to grip onto hanging objects from which they can then swing back and forth at times (rapidly pressing the shoulder buttons) to pull on that object as needed.  The controls are still very simple and can be picked up easily.

The game presents a linear course of about 20 levels to complete, but the story allows these levels to take place in a more haphazard order.  For example, instead of grouping the handful of ice-based levels into a group, you’ll play these levels interspersed with the others, thus making sure that no single environment gets old really fast in the game. The goal in each level is to try to make it to the end with as many LocoRoco (up to 20), collecting as many "Pickories" (effectively currency) along the way, in the fastest time possible.  However, there are many secret areas to explore to find the waiting Mui Mui, LocoRoco House pieces, berries, and more; as with the first game, you’ll get an idea where these are based on "hints" in the level design, typically an odd depression in the side of a wall that if you try to jump through, the hidden area will be revealed.  A significant addition to the game is the collection of musical notes through the levels.  Waking some of the LocoRoco planet creatures by touching them will reward you with a small number of notes, while encountering certain areas or beings with a minimum number of LocoRoco will initiate a simple beat-matching game to the LocoRoco song, and earn you a larger number of notes.  Once a certain number of notes are reached, you "level up" the level, making it easier to collect objects on that level through the rest of playing it and on return trips.  Also, with the Moja Corps’ song, there are areas that need to be wiped clean of the Moja influence (a matter of jumping the LocoRoco through the black clouds), which also reward notes as well as lead to overall larger bonuses.  Because of the number of secret areas and several ways of perfecting the levels, there’s a lot of replay value in the core game alone, more so than from the first game.

But in addition to that are a few new minigames.  There is still a “Chuupa” launcher game to try to get the farthest distance on a course using special bird launchers, similar to the first game.  Two more mini-games are based on events in the game, one where you use the Mui Muis to defend their house from evil Mui Muis, and then a second game that’s more like a shoot-em-up where you have to defeat the evil Mui Mui force with your own Mui Mui plane while carrying a LocoRoco on the backside to eat up the spoils of war.  You get one free shot at each, but after that you need to spend Pickories to play these, using good scores for getting House pieces.  The house this time is more for the Mui Muis, and you get to dig out new rooms and add furniture with all the pieces that you’ve collected, some which add the ability to look at movies or listen to music in the game, while others are simply toys.  Nothing significant, but adds enough to make you want to work towards full completion of the game.

Otherwise, the game is about as difficult as it was in the first game – if you’re just trying to clear it, it’s pretty fun and easy, but trying to aim for full completion is a bit more work and may require a few trips through each level to locate all the hidden areas.  Fortunately, the rest of the game’s presentation makes this a welcoming feature as opposed to a chore.

Value/Replayability: B+

The game has about 20-odd levels, like the first, each that will take you 5-10 minutes to complete without trying for full completion.  Like the first game, this leaves you with a rather short game to complete, so looking at the extra features helps to fill out the game.  Maybe not that much for the older gamer, but certainly enough there for younger gamers to keep there interest for a good while.

Graphics: A+

The game’s graphic approach hasn’t changed at all from the first game; everything uses bright, solid colors, allowing it easy to see all that needs to be seen while still allowing for great expression in the levels.  The LocoRoco retain their jelly-like behavior, and still morph and bounce around like little children, with great facial expressions.  There’s still the bit of a blurring effect but I’ve come to judge that more a factor of the LCD screen than the game itself.

Audio: A

The game also retains the light, bouncing songs using the fictional language that the first game had, with just the right amount of reuse of the old melodies and some nice fresh songs.  As with the first game, the number of voices in the songs are dependant on your LocoRocos – if you have just a single large one, you’ll get only a single voice singing, but with many LocoRoco in their individual state, you get all their voices – this is also true when you hit certain areas to wake the residents during the rhythm-game part.  It can get a bit too bubbly if you play all the way through once but certainly not painful on the ears.

Overall: A

LocoRoco 2 certainly doesn’t fail being a worthy sequel to the great first game, and does exactly what a sequel should do: provide the same gameplay with a few new tricks, nothing to make it feel like a strange new experience but still staying fresh.  It’s also a great cross-age game that can appeal to several ages of gamers, and definitely a nice game for the youngsters in this day and age.  It’s also enjoyable without playing the first, though you’d get a better appreciation for the overall experience if you’ve played the first.  Definitely a must-have game if you have a PSP.

The Lost and Damned

Story: B

The Lost and Damned describes a concurrent series of events that occur during the same time as the original GTA4 missions, but now focused on one of the side characters, Johnny Khiltbiz, at the start the vice president of a motorcycle gang, "The Lost".  As the game opens, "The Lost" is meeting their president, Billy, who has left rehab and is rejoining the club, but soon tensions between members cause Billy to get arrested again and the club split over Johnny’s leadership, with several of the members splittering off to try to refound the gang in their image. Johnny and those few loyal to him must work to regain "The Lost"’s respect by joining with newer gangs to gain numbers and firepower to take over.  Along the way, the story intersections with Niko’s actions and several other characters from the main game helping to fill in some of the backstory for the character.  However, at times, some of these seem forced, like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  It’s not a bad attempt but it does feel like it was done much later after the Niko storyline was fleshed out.

Gameplay: B+

The core fundamentals of GTA4 remain unchanged in the expansion; it’s still mission based with lots of possible side missions, so there’s not much change there.  A few new weapons have been added, as well as the ability to use a shotgun while riding a motorcycle, and as you can expect this leads to several missions that involve gunfights while riding your chopper through the streets.  As part of the motorcycle gang, an added feature includes staying in formation as you ride to checkpoints, leading to small health boosts as long as you keep it.  You’ll also gain the help of your gang through your cell phone to bring you a bike where ever you are or to bring about a weapons van.  Additionally, on several missions, you can optionally call up two members to provide backup, and while this is a nice addition, this also makes some of the game too easy to complete.  For example, one mission requires you to flush out an abandoned house by tossing a grenade in the front window, causing them to flee out the back, which makes it difficult to shoot them all down, but if you were to call your friends to help, they’ll automatically cover the back for you, making the mission much much easier.  Overall, the difficulty is really easy compared to GTA4 – though just hard enough to avoid making it a cakewalk.  You get a lot of ammo for the new weapons early in the game, and this will probably tide you over until the last handful of missions, but by which point you have enough money to buy weapons, ammo, and armor to keep you going for the rest of the game.  Otherwise, the game still has the same problems with the original GTA4 in that it is still the "follow the GPS to this location and do something" approach.

Two new types of side missions are available in the game.  The first is a series of races on motorcycles with the aid of baseball bats to knock off your opponents, which reminds me a lot of Full Throttle.  The second is a series of gang wars across Liberty City, where you need to take out a number of rival gang members on bikes to vie for control of the city.  Both are sensible additions to the game and work well with the concept of a bike gang. There’s also some new multiplayer modes that are added with the game that are centered around bike gangs, including races, operating cooperatively to complete missions across the city, and one which pits a player on a motorcycle verses one on a helicopter.

Value/Replayability: A-

The game adds about 20 new missions and took me about 8 hours to complete; judging by the side missions, there’s probably another 4 to 5 hours there.  Given that full-price titles may only provide this much in new gameplay, this feels like a pretty good deal.  I’d have liked to seen some new variety in the game, but its still hard to argue that cost.

Graphics: A-

The game, by default, applies a grainy-film filter to the output to make it look like an older 70′s movie, but I found this more distracting than not and had turned it off. There also seems to be a slightly different renderer used that made some distance features look like a Monet painting, but I couldn’t easily compare this to the as-shipped GTA4.  Otherwise, the game is still as nice as the original game looked.

Audio: A

The add-on brings more music and radio talk shows to the game as well as additional TV programs, so there’s a lot of different tunes (but for some reason, I kept hearing "Highway Star" and "Wanted Dead or Alive" a lot more than I thought I would have.)  Otherwise, the rest of the audio work is up to the same standards as the original game.

Overall: B+

The Lost and Damned expansion for GTA4 is pretty much a must-have if you enjoyed the game, and does represent a good way to provide additional content while we patiently wait for a new full-fledged sequel, better than the previous attempts (the two PSP-cum-PS2 games, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories).  Mind you, as the game does not vary much from the core GTA4 gameplay style, you may find it simply to be more of the same, and not worth your time.  But in terms of gameplay, it does provide a lot more than other retail games out there and is worth the price it’s given.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

Story: B+

Matt Hazard was an action video game icon from the 90s for the company Marathon Software, but they overused him, making any possible Hazard-related game. Shelves for a while, Hazard jumps at the chance to be the star of a new game after Marathon is bought out and changed to Marathon Megasoft and who are looking to restart the franchise.  But Hazard quickly realizes that the intent of the game is to kill him, and replace him with a fresh, new action star.  With the help of an outside coder to give Hazard the advantage, Hazard must work his way to complete the game to survive and get his own game back.

The concept of the game is actually pretty sound, as it easily sets itself to work in a number of video game parodies and clichés, and there’s a fair number of pretty funny jokes.  The writing is not the greatest, and the story does start a bit slow, but it doesn’t ever get too bogged down in the story once it sets things up enough.  It does help that there’s a couple of good voice actors that help to flesh out the roles.  It also sets the stage for some of Hazard’s parody friends and adversaries: such as Master Chef, a direct parody of Master Chief, and a boss fight against a turn-based opponent right out of a Final Fantasy game.

Gameplay: B-

The game itself is pretty standard, borrowing a lot of concepts from games like Gears of War, in that using cover is the key to success. In fact, most of the cover options are the same as Gears, including rolling between cover, blind fire, and the like.  It does add one nice feature which is to let you, while in cover, to point to a nearby point of cover and then hit a button to run there, instead of having to manually run and replant, though it does have its faults (e.g., you can only really do it on moving to cover further in front of you instead of to the side).  The game also implements “destructible” cover, though in this case, it’s cover items that will derez if hit too much.  Fortunately, there are fixed environmental cover points as well that give better protection.

As you guide Hazard through the levels, you’ll encounter a variety of foes from his various games, and thus the selection of weapons in the game is a bit eccentric, though they still fall in the lines of the usual archetypes in video games, so you’ll have your pistols, semi-automatics, AK-47s, laser pistols, and water guns.  You can only carry two weapons at a time, but there will be plenty of weapon drops from the various enemies you’ll face, as diverse as the weapon types.  Normally, I dislike games where enemies do get “teleported” into the level, but here the concept is perfectly at home as it’s part of the programmers’ attempt to stop Hazard.  Mind you, the amount of field shown by the third-person camera does make it hard to spot when they do teleport in but fairly the game tries to alert you with specific sound effects to this end.  Hazard also can lay down the law with up close melee attacks, and there’s special damage and shield short-term power-ups to be collected.  Shortly into the game, you start to collect the code of dead foes, which build a special meter, which once full you can unleash either cold-based attacks to temporarily freeze enemies or fire-based attacks that continue to burn the foe.  This is a nice idea but I found it only really useful a couple times in the end game.

Each of the levels features a boss fight, usually fighting through minions before getting to the big guy, but then the final boss is a series of quick-time events, which in context is ok, but is otherwise rather easy.  In fact, most of the game is arguably easy -  it takes a few good shots to even start your health to deplete, and you have the usual regenerating health that staying out sight restores.  The AI is straight forward and not too difficult to overcome, and if you do die, they’ll reuse the same hiding spots and tactics, making it easy to repeat such sections.  If anything, the most difficult fights involve the new “hero” that’s got an incredible sniper ability, and many times requires you to figure out how to run between cover in the short time that it takes him to lock onto you.  More times than not, I either misjudged the distance or didn’t get sufficiently behind cover for the game to consider me safe, and that sniper bullet is a one-shot kill.  Also, certain enemies take certain types of damage better than others: zombies need headshots to take down, while space marines are hard to bring down without the futurist weapons, but generally in the end, a melee attack works against all (well, except your “Castle Wolfenstein” 2D enemies)  At worst, just the shear numbers of enemies will go you down, nothing else.

The game has several issues, not deal-breaking, but enough to be notable and ruin some of the enjoyment. At least at one point in the game, I happened to not trigger a certain cut scene, but the game let me proceed anyway, and when I got to another point in the level, I couldn’t proceed further or return back; I had to restart the level in order to go back and reinitialize the cut scene and allowing me to proceed.  The cover controls are a bit sticky as it’s hard to move off cover into a standard walk unless you pull back seemingly exactly from the cover.

Value/Replayability: C-

The game is somewhat short, about 10 hours at most to work through, but even less if you’re skilled.  There’s no major secrets to find and no additional multiplayer, only three difficulty levels to work through in the game, so it can be easily cleared in a few days.  If anything, the story’s reasonably good to work through the game again to enjoy.

Graphics: C+

The graphics feel like a last-gen title; blocky architecture, low-detailed textures, and not a significant amount of dynamic lighting, though there is a nice blurring effect for near/far visuals.  It is not that they are bad – they work for this title given that it’s supposed to be the inside of a video game, but they lack a certain element to make them really sparkle.  There are a few nice effects, such as “code” being spilled from dead enemies instead of blood, and screen distortions when something has been changed in the game, and the odd nature allows for several incongruent sections to be maps closed together.

Audio: B-

The music is pretty much so-so, but otherwise the sound effects are useful for the game.  The voice acting at least helps to redeem part of the game, as the principle actors do get into their role.

Overall: B-

Eat Lead at least carries a humorous plot and an interesting concept to make it a game that you’ll probably want to play, but its weak production values and limited value means you’ll want to enjoy this as a rental and not much else.  It is a shame as the game could have been more, though it’s hard to necessarily call it a poor effort, just one that really could have used more spit and polish to make the game play as well as the humor the story tries to convey.

Flower

Gameplay: A-

Flower isn’t very complex and keeps to a nice free-flowing form, making the game more a relaxation piece than an intense experience.  You use the PS3 SixAxis tilt features to control a petal as it floats about fields; pressing a face button will cause the petal to move faster. About the fields are other flowers that as you pass over will bloom and release another petal that joins the one you control; as you keep doing this, you start amassing a colorful plume of petals with a slightly wider range of influence as it gets larger.

Certain flower sets, when you pass over them, will cause a change in the environment, usually opening the route into the next area to explore; however, there are several other flowers that just help to add to the color explosion.  The earlier levels are more in this fashion; the last few levels feature some other twists that aren’t too far off from this core mechanic but help to keep the game interesting without overwhelming; for example by running your petal plume over an area of a field to trigger the next event, or bursting through a barrier once you get your plume large enough.  Only a few levels feature any negative effect; touching an electrified structure will “burn” some of your petals off, but best as I could tell, you couldn’t ever die in the game.

The only major problem on the gameplay was the use of the SixAxis; since you can only use the controller to direct where your flower petals are going which orients the view in that direction, it makes its hard to reorient yourself if you get too close to a wall or pass over a bunch of flowers you were aiming for, and it takes a while to get back.  Plus, there are limits to how far tilting the SixAxis will translate into necessary actions.

Value/Replayability: C

As only a word of caution, if you are simply looking to complete this game once, you’ll probably believe the cost value to be too high. It is a bit pricy for what it is (I’d like to have seen maybe 3 more levels on top of the 6 already there) but if you know what you are coming into, you can justify it easily.

Graphics: A

The game is beautiful, taking advantage of the PS3’s abilities with fanciful and whimsical environments; the motion of the petals among the grass is wonderfully done and nice and relaxing. I loved how each environment on one level hints at what the next level contains – for example, one level that involves working through rock canyons leads to wind turbines in the far distance near the end, and sets the stage for the next level.  Only one nit is that on one level taking place during night has too many dark areas that make it difficult to judge where to aim.

Audio: A+

As with such games, music is highly integral to the game, and reminds me much of Rez in how the music is generated. A soft background track is always present, though varies as you move through each area, but when you pass over the flowers, you get little “pops” of instruments, creating a haphazard yet calming melody that fits the theme for each level.

Overall: A

Flower may not be a hardcore game, but its the type of game that you definitely need to experience.  If you’re not into this experimental games, it won’t turn you over, but otherwise, it is a nice little game to help relax and experience.