Naja Electronics

cebreakers are not known for their comfort. With their hulls designed to crush through seasonal ice to keep important trade routes open, icebreakers are constantly lurching and known to roll even in moderate swells. As if that wasn't uncomfortable enough, developer Action Forms has added dead bodies and abominable snowmen to the North Wind, the nuclear-powered icebreaker that serves as the setting for the upcoming Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason.

It's 1968 and the North Wind is trapped in the ice near the Soviet arctic station Pole 21. Meteorologist Alexander Nesterov is stranded on the ship--how he got there, we have no idea. Along with his standard talent as a meteorologist for predicting the weather in the Arctic (100 percent chance of cold), Nesterov is also able to sense the memories of the dead. And of the dead, there are plenty--12 crew members have died on board the North Wind, and Nesterov is in a unique position to enter their memories to set things right.

When Nesterov approaches one of the dead crew, he triggers a mental echo--a flashback of the final moments of the crewman's life. We saw one crewman who had an unfortunate fight with a shipping crane and, well, the crane won. During the mental echo, Nesterov sprinted to the crane control to move the deadly hook away from the crewman. You don't actually go back to save his life, but the spirit is sufficiently moved by your actions in the mental echo to help you solve the mystery onboard the North Wind and, then, go on to rest in peace.

Resources are scarce on the North Wind. We found a rifle and a few rounds of ammunition, but mostly, we had to rely on an ice axe or our mitts to fend off the creatures that inhabit the ship. Somehow, the North Wind has become infested with monsters--monsters that don't like you. One giant mummy creature tried to off us with an axe of his own, and later, another ice monster hurled blocks of ice at us.

In order to survive, you'll have to stay warm. There are pockets of heat scattered throughout the North Wind, from steam pipes to smoldering fires, which can be used to stabilize your body heat, displayed in the lower left corner of the screen. If you lose enough body heat, you won't even be able to perform the simplest of tasks. We futilely tried to open a door for five minutes before a developer kindly walked over and explained the body heat system.

Set in such a creepy atmosphere--a blend of The Thing, The Sixth Sense, and BioShock-- Cryostasis is poised to offer plenty of scares when it's released in 2009. We suggest you bundle up.

By 2020, constant depletion of resources has international tensions at a breaking point. One spark will ignite what no one thought could ever happen … a third and final world war. World War III comes to life in Tom Clancy’s EndWar.

Minimum Requirements

• OS: Window XP / Vista
• CPU: Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8G, Same level AMD CPU RAM: 1Gb DDR2 533
• GPU: Nvidia 7600GS, ATI 1600XT (256Mb RAM)
• Input: Keyboard + Mouse

Grand Ages: Rome, the follow-up to Kalypso Media’s Imperium Romanum, is a city-building game for PC. The player takes the role of a Roman patrician, a nobleman, who has just started his political career. His ultimate goal is to become the Governor of Rome. Throughout the game the player can develop his game character by gaining favor with various historical figures such as Julius Caesar, Pompey and Octavian. The benefits provided by these relations are carried over not only for the rest of the campaign but also in free-build maps and multiplayer scenarios

General Features

• Persistent Player Character - benefits gained from completed quests are persistent and can be used on any mission, including campaign, free-play and multiplayer.
• Campaign that features 20 maps of historical cities and locations.
• Patrons - more than 20 historical figures that offer additional objectives to the player.
• Over 60 buildings & 50 units.
• Ships and Islands.
• New and Improved Economics.
• Multiplayer - cooperative and competitive mode.
• Enhanced battle system with standard RTS control of the squads.
• Grand Monuments such as the Coliseum, Circus Maximus and the Pantheon.
• City States - famine, siege, riots, etc.
• Disasters - random disasters such as plagues, fires and earthquakes.
• All such disasters will be visualized.

The main reason Pixar movies are so revered is that they are able to appeal to both adults and children at the same time. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the games based on these movies. Wall-E follows in the path of many cartoon adaptations before it--taking the wholesome aesthetic and crafting a trivial game around it while ignoring a large part of the film's audience in the process. The mechanics in Wall-E are accessible enough that children eager to spend more time with the lovable robot will find an inviting world, but the end result is too short and predictable to provide value for any platforming veterans.

The story in Wall-E is about friendship and flowers. Like in the movie, you start off as a lone robot on a dirty planet, left to clean up the trash of thoughtless generations after the humans bolted for cleaner pastures. The first level is quiet and desolate. It's not often that platformers present a world without any enemies in sight, but the early parts of Wall-E exist to highlight his severe loneliness--and that weight comes across quite powerfully. Wall-E eventually meets up with a flying robot named Eve and gets to experience space travel firsthand. The cutscenes are well done, telling most of the tale through gestures and robot groans that give a lot of personality to the mechanical beings. Though the cinematics were not taken directly from the film, they are still carefully crafted to express the subtleties of Wall-E and Eve's wide range of emotions. The environments are inviting and eye-pleasing, though they are sometimes too sparse, especially in the space station levels.

The quiet energy of the first few levels doesn't lead to action packed gameplay, but it still provides a few thrills. Your time on Earth is spent navigating through elaborate obstacle courses. As Wall-E, you can jump and make tiny cubes of trash that you can hurl at targets. There is a variety of different garbage types--heavy, magnetic, and explosive--but the puzzle solving is extremely light. The key is always next to the locked door, so navigating this filthy world is very straightforward. The platforming elements are a little more complex, forcing you to climb walls vertically and even upside down with your magnetic bottom, but the paths are always linear so any sort of directional acumen is left by the wayside.

The Eve sections follow the accessible path displayed in the Wall-E portions, but they spice up the action a bit. Eve is able to fly around the environment at will, which turns out to be surprisingly fun. There are two types of flying sections: open air and tunnel races. In the open air, you have to search for plant life and other collectables hidden on the surface. The freedom of flight works well here because the controls are so responsive. It's easy to fly through pipes and under bridges, but the lack of imagination in these objectives is disappointing. The levels are ultrastreamlined so it removes any challenge from the scavenger hunts and the space is too confined to make racing interesting for long. It's a shame the developers couldn't have expanded on this section because the act of flight is really well done.

The shooting sections make up the final gameplay type, which occur late in the game. Once in the spaceship, you have to fight your way through a small army of robots. The hectic pace and destructive violence seems out of place here compared to the rest of the game. You can pull the camera in over your shoulder and mow down robots with quick aiming, or you can let the game auto-target anyone who walks in front of you. The lock-on is too responsive, making quick work of your enemies before you have time to worry about your health dropping. The sheer number of foes you'll have to face here make these sections too long and repetitive. When the simple joy of platforming and flying is replaced by nonstop shooting, the game loses much of its charm.

There are a number of movie related unlockables, but the rewards aren't compelling enough to demand a second play-through. The multiplayer mode is only good for a quick taste before it loses its appeal. There is just something unsettling about taking part in a deathmatch with four happy Wall-Es wheeling around with laser guns. The main adventure can be finished in less than 10 hours, and after you play through the story once, there just isn't much reason to go back again.

Warhawk is a 32-player, multiplayer-only shooter from Sony. It has ties back to another Warhawk, an early game for the original PlayStation that focused on the warhawk itself, a fighter jet that can convert to hover mode and back again. You probably don't remember it, which hardly matters, because the multiplayer focus of the PlayStation 3 Warhawk game leaves it with no real story and no real sense of the war you're fighting. This game has a stripped-down feel, but the exciting gameplay certainly makes up for those feelings. This is blue versus red across multiple modes and maps, in the land or in the air. And it's excellent fun.

The real story of Warhawk isn't about the epic conflict between two opposing sides. It's about how this game has been made available. If you want it immediately, it's a downloadable purchase from the PlayStation Store for $39.99. If you're desperately in need of more things to put on shelves, or if you want a voice-chat device, you can buy the game in stores for the standard $59.99 in a package that comes with a wireless headset, some behind-the-scenes video, and a full manual. There's no functional difference between the two games, so it really comes down to personal preference. The downloadable version does not come with instructions at all, which is sort of messed up. Other games on the PlayStation 3 have had Web browser links built in to load up offsite manuals and things like that, but Warhawk has none. So the only way you'd know that you need to push the L3 button to talk or find out about the zones mode is to fumble around for yourself or go to Sony's site, where it has a downloadable manual available. But even that manual, which comes in the box with the retail version, doesn't explain everything, such as some of the terms used in the ranking screen.

It's a good thing, then, that most of Warhawk is incredibly straightforward. It's easy to jump right into a game using the game's server browser, and there seem to already be plenty of people playing at all hours. If you've ever played something like Battlefield 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront, you'll probably take to Warhawk's brand of team-based multiplayer shooting quickly, as it's a simplified take on that experience. The maps have bases strewn about that your team can capture. Capturing them gives you a place to spawn, or if you're playing in the zones mode, it'll help you earn points toward winning the game. You spawn on foot, with nothing but a lowly pistol and a couple of grenades. But at bases and spawn points, you can usually find a host of weapons. These include an assault rifle, flamethrower, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and binoculars, some of which you can use to call in air strikes. You'll also find plenty of vehicles, such as jeeps, tanks, and the warhawk itself. And in some fortified areas, you'll find turrets that shoot flak or homing missiles, which are very, very effective against incoming aircraft. All of this balances out nicely because the ground troops can take out vehicles with the homing rockets from the rocket launcher, the turrets can defend base positions against air--but not as well against other vehicles--and the tanks are usually sitting ducks for warhawks to plink away at with swarm missiles or cluster bombs.

One of the major gameplay differences between Warhawk and other similar shooters is that you'll find a ton of aircraft on most of the maps. Sometimes you'll feel as if half of the game's 32-player limit is buzzing around, dogfighting overhead, or attempting to strafe ground targets. This gives it a unique feel, and it's a lot of fun. Warhawk controls well regardless of what you're piloting too. You can play around with controller sensitivity to get things just right, and, if you like, you can fly the warhawk using the tilt sensing of the Sixaxis controller. However, the tilt support never feels responsive enough to be useful in tense situations.

Warhawk comes with five different maps. Before you get all up in arms about how low that number looks, each map can be configured for different game sizes, so there are configurations for small, medium, and large-sized games. Each map also has a dogfight configuration, giving you more warhawks to use. The different configurations make the maps feel totally different, giving you different strategies to work with and so on. This means that playing in an eight-player game can be just as thrilling as a 32-player fracas. There are also multiple modes. Team deathmatch works as you would expect, with control-point captures giving you new places to spawn but no real points benefit. Capture the flag is a standard two-flag CTF mode that puts flags in each team's main base. Zones mode creates colored circles around each base, and the goal is to earn points faster than the other guys by holding more zones than the other team. The zones link together if you hold the right ones and level up your control over them to make the colored circles bigger, which brings in even more points. Lastly, there's a deathmatch mode, which can be fun for dogfights, but this is very much a team-based game, so playing with no team to back you up isn't as much fun. You can also play online with a split-screen, which allows multiple players to play online from the same machine. On top of playing on the Internet, the game has support for LAN games.

Outside of the game, you can chart your progress to look at your rank and medals. You'll earn ribbons for a variety of round-specific accomplishments, such as finishing first on the winning team, getting 10 antiair kills, not shooting your teammates, and so on. Badges and medals also take your global counts into consideration, giving you awards, such as a meritorious service medal. You'll get this award for capturing the flag 100 times, defending 100 zones, capturing 500 zones, and then getting two flag captures in the same game. That's sort of steep, but it certainly gives you something to shoot for as you play. As you rise in rank, you'll unlock additional head, shirt, and pants types for your soldiers, giving you a clear way on the battlefield to see if someone's totally raw or a honed online killing machine.

Warhawk will run in 480p, 720p, or 1080i, and the game looks really nice overall. Its greatest visual feature is that you have a very long draw distance, giving you a clear view of things that are really far away. For example, on one map, which is made up of a series of high islands, you can sit in your base and see turrets moving in bases far, far in the distance. Armed with a sniper rifle, you can practically reach across the entire map and knock fools out. The equipment looks good, and it also blasts apart really well. Exploding warhawks cause burning hunks of metal to fall out of the sky, and it looks great. The game sound is also effective, with good weapon noises and explosions. Warhawk, unlike most online PlayStation 3 games, has voice chat, which comes in handy.

In the WWE, it's not uncommon for seemingly vanquished superstars to return at random, handing out fresh beatdowns and earning back their former glory. After a disappointing showing last year, THQ's long-running SmackDown vs. Raw series has returned to the ring, having spent the year slimming down and focusing on its core strengths. The work has paid off: a lot of extraneous elements have been removed, the creation toolset is better than ever, and there are two modes that offer satisfying single-player arcs. Though it is still hampered by a number of lingering issues, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 manages to recapture some of the glory of its younger years.

The most notable improvements are in the single-player realm. The lackluster 24/7 mode has been ditched in favor of a lengthy Career mode and the scripted Road to Wrestlemania. In the Career mode, you choose a superstar (existing or created) and enter a bracket to make a bid for the title belt. Each bracket has five opponents including the current champion, and you'll have to earn stars by winning matches in order to get a shot at the title. You win up to five stars for each match by earning points in three areas: match results, technical, and excitement. These categories encourage you to get into the WWE superstar mindset by rewarding you for both pummeling and mocking your opponent. At the end of each match your attributes will increase and your health will replenish based on how the match went--no micromanagement here. You'll also earn amusing awards for things like striking your opponent 35 times or breaking a barbed-wire-wrapped plank over his or her back. It only takes a handful of successful matches to earn you a title shot, which is great because it keeps your career moving along at a good clip. This action-packed Career mode is the perfect complement to the Create A Superstar mode, and winning belt after belt as you bulk up your created character is satisfying and fun.

The other single-player mode, Road to Wrestlemania, features six unique story arcs that let you play as WWE superstars like The Undertaker or John Cena and defeat numerous foes (and a few nemeses) on your quest for Wrestlemania glory. Matches are interspersed with story scenes packed with typical WWE action and voiced by actual WWE superstars, so fans of outrageous melodrama will be well pleased. In keeping with traditional SmackDown vs. Raw strengths, the superstar models, entrances, and arenas are all excellent. While the character animations are good (despite occasional clipping problems), the wrestlers still lack fluidity when maneuvering around the ring. This feels like a result of staying too true to the source material: though WWE wrestlers do often move slowly, it's not very exciting to actually plod around the ring in a video game. The audio only further detracts from the excitement factor. Four-hundred-pound men hit the mat with all the impact of a child shutting a car door, and the strongest punches sound like a raw chicken breast being dropped on the floor. It dampens the supposedly hard-hitting action, and while the once-dismal announcers from years past have been improved quite a bit, the sound design is in serious need of a shot in the arm.

Despite how it may sound, the action is indeed hard-hitting. It's easy to perform powerful moves using the analog stick and a few buttons, and the breadth of things you can do in and out of the ring is impressive. From removing the turnbuckle cover to slamming your opponent through a burning table, there's no shortage of satisfying ways to deal damage. Specific match types have their own nasty additions, from rubbing your opponent's face against the elimination chamber to the powerful hot tag, which allows a tag team partner to build up momentum so that, when tagged in, he or she will get the quicktime chance to unleash two unblockable attacks followed by a finisher. Enabling such a wide variety of moves is one of SmackDown vs. Raw 2009's chief strengths. Like previous games in the series, it too relies on relative position to increase your repertoire, and your wrestler is still prone to miscues as a result. However, missing a move because you aren't quite in the correct position is less frustrating than missing one because your opponent is in an uninterruptible animation. This usually crops up in matches with three or more players, when one player is performing a move on another. In these realistic-to-a-fault situations you get a good feeling for just how exciting it is to stand passively aside while other wrestlers battle it out.

In addition to the Career and Road to Wrestlemania modes, the competent AI and unique wrestler abilities make playing single-player much more appealing in SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. No longer content to stand around drooling, computer opponents will actively attack you, tag their partners (you included), and use environmental elements reasonably well. Though the Road to Wrestlemania and early stages of the Career mode will seem easy to experienced players, it won't feel like you're playing against brainless apes. Last year's fighting style system has been removed, and in its place are unique wrestler abilities that existing superstars have and created superstars can earn. The effects range from attribute boosts (able to remove belt in ladder match faster) to enhanced abilities (can regenerate a small amount of health). While these abilities aren't particularly powerful, they can come in handy during tight matches.

While you might not have tight matches against the computer, you are sure to find tough competition online. You can use SmackDown, Raw, ECW or created superstars as you face off in ranked or unranked play in any of the match types that support one to four players (six-man matches and royal rumbles only available locally). Against tougher players, any miscues due to bad position, odd animation, or the semi-frequent lag are likely to cost you dearly, and once your opponent has you on the ropes you'll be hard-pressed to reverse your way out of it. The best new online feature in WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 is the WWE Highlight Reel. Anyone can capture clips from their matches, edit them together using the robust toolset, and then upload their clip or screenshots for all to view and rate. Those willing to invest some time will be able to create some pretty excellent stuff, as evidenced by the existing image of Freddy fighting Jason in a flaming ring and video of Obama giving McCain the Rock Bottom.

Of course, these hilarious videos wouldn't be possible without the still-impressive Create A Superstar tool. Once again, with a little time and patience, you can create almost anyone you like, from famous celebrities to hideous abominations. You can then customize your character's move set to craft their fighting style, choreograph their ring entrance, and even create a finisher to decide how he or she (or it) will finish opponents off. The Create A Finisher tool allows you choose from a huge list of move parts and chain up to 10 of them together to create a finisher as quick and brutal or as long and painful as you want. You'll get a constantly updating preview of the move while you design it so you can easily tweak it to your liking. It's really fun just to experiment with all the different move combinations, and this feature really rounds off a formidable suite of customization tools.

With 14 years of history behind it, the Virtua Fighter series offers a mature fighting system with plenty of characters that have been around since the beginning. Though the mode selection hasn't evolved much over that of Virtua Fighter 4, this fifth installment builds upon its predecessor's fighting system and is a better overall fighting game. If you're already on board with Virtua Fighter and you own a PlayStation 3, that statement should be enough for you to know that you probably need this game in your library. It's a fantastic fighting game with terrific characters, including some solid additions to the cast. If you haven't been following the series, it's likely that this game will feel arcane. It's not very beginner friendly, which may be a big deal to you if, for example, you're the average PlayStation 3 owner who's just desperate for something--anything--new. Either way, your enjoyment of VF5 is going to be a factor of your skill level as well as the number of people you have nearby to play with.

Competitive gameplay is what this style of game is all about, so let's start right at the top. Virtua Fighter 5 has the standard array of modes you've probably come to expect from a fighting game. There's an arcade mode, which gives you a score and puts you up against a boss character--Dural specifically, the same boss that the series has used all along. There's a versus mode for playing against a friend. There's also a dojo section that is meant to provide training in the game's various moves. However, since a fair amount of the timing in VF5 is different than its predecessors, it's almost criminal that this mode doesn't have any sort of "demo this move" button that shows how the move is done. The game doesn't really go out of its way to describe the different moves and stances, though the manual does feature a decent moves list, where you'll see what an "offensive move" is, which you'll need to know if you want to perform all of the moves in the dojo mode. There's also a mode marked VF.TV, which is where you can pit any fighter against any other fighter and watch the PS3 play against itself.

The deepest single-player mode is the quest mode, which returns from VF4 largely unchanged. You're given a basic map of a few different arcades, and you can travel to any one of them and fight against various artificial-intelligence-controlled players. These players are done up to resemble real people, in that the fighters are ranked, have a win/loss record, and wear various customized clothes, as if you're playing against an actual person who has spent time on his or her fighter. But the illusion quickly breaks down, as the fighters you're up against here never feel like actual human opponents. While the higher-ranked fighters are certainly less susceptible to basic moves and traps than the lower-ranked players, everything still feels very robotic. Also, there's no way to create your own AI profile. The ability to create your own profiles and acquire new ones online (which some other recent fighting games have done) would have given this feature a lot more meaning in Virtua Fighter 5. VF.TV ends up feeling like a throwaway mode, though it could have been saved if you were able to upload and download replays online.

Of course, once you start talking about online functionality, it's hard to ignore that Virtua Fighter 5 doesn't have any online play. Given the game's frame-specific nature, any amount of latency would probably be unacceptable, so there's probably a technical reason why it's not present. But without online play, you're limited to playing single-player, which doesn't put up an interesting, lasting fight for very long, or playing against your friends, locally. If you happen to live in a hotbed of Virtua Fighter activity, where you're persistently surrounded by Akira experts and your days are spent rabidly discussing frame data, that's most definitely not a problem. But if you're the only Virtua Fighter fan on your block, it's going to be a pretty lonely experience, especially once you start customizing characters that no one else will ever see and, well, crying yourself to sleep at night because your uncultured "friends" don't care that you unlocked Sarah's D costume last night and immediately purchased the pink leather shorts for her to wear with it. Don't worry, they're the ones with the problem, not you.

The gameplay in VF5 is still based around three buttons: guard, punch, and kick. Considering that there are plenty of cases where you'll have to hit multiple buttons, a joystick would be the best possible control option. But unless you're willing to start importing controllers, you're probably going to be stuck with the default Sixaxis controller. It's certainly functional, but hitting guard and kick at the same time can be tricky when you're trying some of the more timing-intensive moves, forcing you to rely on shortcut commands on the shoulder buttons.

The entire cast of Virtua Fighter 4 returns in VF5, and that includes professional karate man, Akira, who has served as the main face of the series over the years. But there's also Lau, who's looking older than ever, the constantly annoying Lion, the occasionally annoying Jacky, and so on. There are two new characters in VF5, as well. El Blaze is a Mexican wrestler who looks a lot like Rey Mysterio Jr. and uses a lot of great-looking wrestling moves. Eileen uses the martial art of kou-ken, which is just a fancy way of saying she sort of fights like a monkey. Her backstory paints her as a fan of Pai's who decides to get onto the fighting circuit after seeing Pai in action. Most of the existing characters play very similarly to how they've played in the past, though you will find a handful of new moves in there. Also, VF5 has a much more defined sense of scale to it. Huge fighters like Jeffry and Wolf look gigantic compared to someone like El Blaze or Lion. You can attach data profiles to characters, which lets you track your win/loss percentage and also gives you gold that can be used to purchase new costume parts for each fighter. There are plenty of choices, though most of them are fairly standard variations on the existing four costumes.

Virtua Fighter 5 is a great-looking game from top to bottom. The characters look great and animate well, with the lone exception of their mouths, and teeth, which just look a little off when characters speak at the end of a fight. There are plenty of different backgrounds in the game, and they all look great while also figuring into the fights. Some of them are walled off, giving you a surface to juggle fighters up against, while others are open, letting you win by pushing your opponent out of the ring if you can. The game runs at 720p on the PlayStation 3, which gives you a nice, high definition to work with, though some of the characters and stages can look a little pixelated in spots. Still, this looks like a perfect port of the arcade version, and it looks really nice. Those graphics seem to come at a bit of a price, though, as the load times between fights can be lengthy, which really slows down the action. It's a little puzzling, considering the game installs more than 2GB of data to the PS3's hard drive.

The sound effects in Virtua Fighter 5 haven't really changed much. You'll hear the same sort of jetlike sweeping noises when you execute specific types of kicks, the same slam noise when you jump on top of a fallen opponent, and the same treble-heavy crunches and slashes when you punch. Contentwise, that's fine, though most of the game's sound, even the speech, sounds a little low fidelity. The music is good across the board, with the same sorts of electronic-tinged rock that you'd expect to hear from the series.

Virtua Fighter 5 is a great fighting game that's specifically geared toward players who have experience with the series. If you've been playing Virtua Fighter for any length of time, this game is worth adding to your library, especially if you have other like-minded players in your immediate vicinity. But if you're a fan of other fighting games and aren't already familiar with Virtua Fighter, it's likely that you're just going to keep on wondering what all the fuss is about.

Learning about the adventures and deeds of Vikings, such as Erik the Red or Leif Eriksson, was always the highlight of any world history class in school. After all, these were true stories about men who explored the unknown, conquered new lands, and often killed mercilessly. With such strong material to draw from, it would seem that a fictional game based on Viking lore would be a sure thing, but Viking: Battle for Asgard completely fails to capture what makes Vikings--or even games for that matter--interesting. Those who enjoy mindless killing might find something to like here, but everyone else will find Battle for Asgard monotonous and dull.

There's a story here, but it's barely worth mentioning. You play as Skarin, a Viking that has been called upon by the Goddess of Light to fight the forces of Hel, whose undead army is killing people to create a new Valhalla. There's also something that has to do with Skarin having haunting visions and some anger toward at least one of the gods--you know, like in God of War. The story is told via cutscenes that are reminiscent of the graphic novel 300, but they're typically quite short, hard to follow, and fail to tell the game's tale in any coherent matter.

Without a gripping story, all you're left with is Viking's gameplay, which is occasionally enjoyable but usually just plain mediocre. It's a third-person action adventure that focuses on combat while mixing in fetch quests and unfulfilling exploration. Your main task is to go to enemy encampments, kill the bad guys, and free the soldiers who are imprisoned there. Once you've freed enough soldiers, you can attack an enemy fortress. This triggers a huge battle with hundreds of soldiers onscreen at once. Heavenly Sword did a fantastic job with encounters of this size, but during Viking's epic battles, the last thing you want to do is fight because it's so easy for enemy soldiers to gang up on you. Your best bet is to simply run past everyone, kill the shaman that protect the area, summon a dragon to fry some guys, and beat the boss. If you master this once, you're good for the rest of the game because every battle after this is almost exactly the same--just a little longer. Other than that, the only other things you'll be doing are fetching items for people and finding gems so that you can summon the aforementioned dragons. These tasks play out in much the same way as freeing soldiers, but instead of letting soldiers out of a jail after you've killed all the enemies, you open a treasure chest.

The game is broken up into three levels, each of which is a large world that's reminiscent of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but on a smaller scale. Having such a large area to explore is initially exciting, but this excitement quickly turns to disappointment and then boredom. The problem is that there's nothing to do and very little to see. The only optional quest in the game is to find barrels of mead, and other than that, the only thing you're rewarded with for heading off the beaten path is gold, which is quite easy to acquire. There are also several occasions where you'll find yourself lost or confused as to what to do next because either the game didn't make your next objective clear or the map was difficult to read. At least the game doesn't force you to walk around too much, thanks to its liberal use of portals that allow you to teleport from one area to another.

So missions are tedious and exploration is unfulfilling; how about the combat? It's a little better--at least at first. Skarin is armed with a large sword and axe with which to make short work of Hel's legions of undead soldiers. You attacks are initially limited, but upgrades can be purchased as you progress. Skarin can briefly power up these attacks using his rage mode (a handy way to break shields). He can also collect red orbs that represent the souls of the vanquished, as well as unleash elemental magic, such as lightning, fire, and ice onto his foes.

It can be fun for a few hours to run around, indiscriminately beating on undead soldiers, knocking them off of cliffs, and sneaking up behind them to stick a sword in their backs. You can do all this and lop off their heads with a press of a button, but combat still gets repetitive. Although you have a fair amount of moves at your disposal, you'll wind up performing the same moves repeatedly throughout the game because there's no reward for mixing things up, enemies can gang up on you to kill you in no time, and the best attacks are typically the easiest to pull off. The game tries to mix things up with the addition of several button-pressing minigames during important fights, but this mechanic is played out and not much fun.

There are also instances where you'll need to use stealth; these are hit and miss. When everything comes together, it can be a lot of fun moving from cover to cover silently chopping enemies in half, but too often, your plans are laid to waste because someone saw you through a solid object or noticed you killing someone else from far across the area. If you're spotted and everyone heads your way, you're in for a rough time. That is, unless you can lure a few guys away from the action, kill them, trigger a few more to run your way, kill them, and so on. Thankfully, the game's inept AI is easy to exploit; otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to make it through some of the more challenging areas.

Battle for Asgard is one of those games that looks great in screenshots but not so great in motion. The biggest culprit is a horribly incompetent camera that is zoomed in so close and moves around so much that it can't even show a functional view in a wide-open field, much less any location with walls. You're constantly forced to manually manipulate the camera while getting attacked by and fighting off enemies that are offscreen. Each of the game's three worlds is quite large, but the first two levels look virtually identical, and other than the occasional enemy, fortress, or camp, they're completely devoid of animal life. It's possible to run around for minutes at a time and never see a living thing; just trees, flowers, grass, and some ugly mountains. The undead soldiers are interestingly designed and look appropriately menacing. However, there are only a handful of different kinds of soldiers and their animation is often limited. The only time the visuals are impressive is during the huge battles at the end of each level. Hundreds of soldiers will clash while dragons fly overhead shooting fireballs and wreaking havoc. It's too bad that the best parts of these battles are the cutscenes because once they actually start, the frame rate takes a dive, and you'll notice that most of the soldiers are standing around or running into each other.

Subpar audio rounds out Viking's disappointing package. Other than an epic orchestral piece that plays during the end-level battles, there's almost no music whatsoever. Wandering around this barren world would be boring enough with music, but it's even more tiresome without it.

Vampire games apparently can't be staked. If they could be finished off a la Van Helsing, you can bet that Vampire Rain: Altered Species would never have made it to the PlayStation 3. Developer Artoon's blend of Splinter Cell-style stealth gaming with toothy creatures of the night was so awful when it debuted for the Xbox 360 last summer that it deserved to be locked inside its coffin for good. Alas, the game has been resurrected for a new platform with a subtitle added to it in the hopes of fooling people into believing that this is a superior sequel. It isn't. This is a mostly straight-up reissuing of last year's debacle, loaded with the same crippling design screwups and absurd difficulty.

Playing Splinter Cell with vampires isn't as cool in reality as it is on paper. About the only good thing about this game is that it doesn't waste your time; it broadcasts its awfulness right from the start. The campaign tells the ludicrous tale of John Lloyd, member of a team of plucky commandos fighting a secret war against postmodern vampires called Nightwalkers. These fanged goons are biting their way across America and will outnumber Joe Sixpacks with pulses in precisely 908 days. The new PS3 version of the game better explains how this is happening, courtesy of a relocated flashback scene, although the whole story still seems faintly ludicrous and not the slightest bit scary. Civilians are still walking the streets at night without a care in the world, so it's hard to believe that you're in the middle of a bloodsucking apocalypse. Visual design of the game is too urban and high-tech to give off any sort of creepy gothic vibe, so the game always goes for the gross-out. Yet gory scenes, such as the one where you discover some of your buddies have been turned into performance art through the innovative use of stop signs, seem more like cheap gimmicks than truly spooky.

It's hard to get too creeped out by the protagonist and setting, either, because both are pulled straight from Splinter Cell. Aside from fanged foes ripping your throat out when you lose, there aren't any differences between Vampire Rain and a typical espionage-style sneaker. Lloyd looks exactly like Sam Fisher, right down to his black Underoos and night-vision goggles. Mission objectives are taken from the Third Echelon playbook. You're sent on one technological scavenger hunt after another, set in usual-suspect locales, such as offices, parking garages, warehouses, and deserted city streets. Goals are very formulaic. Even though Lloyd is supposed to be fighting an undead invasion, he spends most of his time dealing with standard spy stuff, such as sabotaging electronics, shutting down power plants, and sniping bad guys. Level design should also be familiar because you spend the game creeping through alleyways, climbing ladders, and sliding down wires or poles in a desperate attempt to avoid the vision cones of patrolling bad guys displayed on your minimap. The only striking difference between this game and a typical sneaker is that you're dealing with undead killing machines that have no personality--not the usual sentries whining about noisy rats. Instead of getting to listen to inane conversations tipping you off to the guards, you get a cheesy flashing-eyes special effect that lets you know somebody with fangs is watching and you've got a couple of seconds to get under cover. If you fail, you're dead. If you succeed, congratulations--you've just beaten a transparent game mechanic.

Still, this isn't exactly a by-the-numbers stealth game. New ideas are introduced in almost every area, but these innovations just mess up what should have been a pretty straightforward game design. First of all, Nightwalker vision cones are rough approximations of what the beasties can actually see. Shadows are more authentic zones of darkness here, not the magic cloaking fields seen in the Splinter Cell and Thief games. But even though you get used to this vagueness, the fickle vision cones force you into tedious trial and error. Sometimes, you'll go to great lengths to get around a sentry that you're positive will be able to easily spot you, only to eventually abandon this alternate route and discover that you can dart around the bloodsucker unseen. Other times, you'll try to walk by a Nightwalker a half block away and be sighted immediately. To make keeping track of enemies even more bothersome, their vision cones are not automatically activated on the minimap. Instead, you have to switch on the necroscope feature of your night-vision goggles to check heat signatures and separate the vamps from innocent derelicts wandering the streets at 3 a.m.

Second, Nightwalkers are virtually impossible to kill. Throughout much of the game, weapons are worthless, so it takes a full clip of the automatic rifle or the submachine gun to take down a single Drac-pack refugee. They are also amazingly fast and kill with just two swipes, the first of which always incapacitates you. And once a Nightwalker gets you in its sights, it goes on the hunt until one of you is dead and can even pursue you by leaping all the way up to the tops of buildings. So there's no running away or hiding. Later weapons, such as a UV knife and a sniper rifle, make it easier to kill Nightwalkers, although these new-and-improved devices require rare ammo (yes, even the freaking knife), and disappear at the end of each level. Some levels appear to have been tweaked for the PS3 release, however, which makes the game marginally less difficult in spots. The vampire population seems to have been trimmed back in some key locales, and ammo caches have been made more common. These two changes make both sneaking and shooting more palatable. Still, nine times out of 10, vamp numbers, toughness, and speed continue to make it suicidal to try fighting them.

Level design causes more headaches. Paths forward are relentlessly linear in the campaign missions. Even though street scenes in the game appear wide open with lots of alleys to explore and ladders to climb, you're hemmed in by invisible borders. Basically, you're herded toward the single route through a level by both invisible and real walls, as well as heavily populated groups of vampire sentries, that you immediately know you have to find a way around them. Everything is so dark, however, that it can be tough to figure out which way to go. Most backgrounds are so shadowy that fine details are swallowed by the gloom. You frequently can't be certain of the presence of vampire sentries until you stumble over them. Night-vision and necroscope goggles can be used to pierce the blackness, but the battery powering them runs down in a few meager seconds.

Vampire Rain's murky visuals haven't been cleaned up for the PS3 port. This take on the game looks and performs worse than its 360 predecessor. Load times are long, despite a mandatory 30-minute installation of almost 4GBs to the PS3's hard drive, and jagged edges are on show everywhere. Sound effects don't help you navigate the darkness, either. Vamps generally don't say anything when they spot you, and their footsteps are so muted that they might as well be walking on air. They never talk to one another, shuffle their feet, cough, or even complain about how Count Chocula is an offensive vampist stereotype. Generally, they just stand stock still, mindlessly staring into space or mindlessly staring into space and smoking. The only noteworthy aspect of the audio is a high-pitched score that raises your heart rate and the squelching sound of a vampire mowing down on your carotid artery during the you-got-killed cinematic.

Solo gameplay modes outside of the campaign are generally unimpressive. One-off levels called trial stages can be more entertaining than the full-blown story missions because of somewhat innovative ideas, such as playing tag with all the other members of your team or grabbing a weapon from under the nose of a vampire, but they are too short to be all that involving. The only multiplayer option that stands out is Death or Nightwalkers, a solo and team Deathmatch variant where a killed player can turn into a vamp. Of course, all this does is give the player the absurd speed and strength of the vampires, so games end up unbalanced. It's probably best to stick with the uninspired alternatives online, which include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and a Capture-the-Flag clone where you capture a flame.

UK REVIEW--First things first: UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than any other game currently available for either the Xbox 360 or the PS3. EA Canada's gameplay team has been hard at work on the core engine since it finished FIFA 08, and its work shows. UEFA Euro 2008 isn't that far ahead of the latest FIFA offering, but minor improvements are apparent all over the pitch.

As you'd expect, Euro 2008 features a much smaller roster of teams compared to FIFA, only featuring the international teams that are eligible for the European Championship, without any reduction in the sticker price to compensate. The football is slightly faster than in FIFA 08, the animations are smoother, and the addition of a manual celebration mechanic lets you control your player after scoring. All of these things add up to make UEFA Euro 2008 a slightly better match experience than FIFA 2008, but not that much better.

Euro 2008's single-player modes are as varied as could be hoped given the limited nature of the licence. You can play through your chosen team's qualifying campaign or just jump into the finals with your team. You can also play through in the Be A Pro mode or its new cousin, Captain Your Country.

The Captain Your Country mode expands on the Be A Pro mode introduced in FIFA 08. You create a player and control him during the course of the qualifying campaign rather than in just one match. The aim is not only to see your team through to qualification, but also to rack up a large enough number of good performances to be made captain by the time you reach the finals. The weaker the team, the easier it is to become captain, but the harder it is to make it to the finals. Your personal score for each match is based on how well you perform in your allotted role; as a defender, you can run forward to knock in goals, but you're more likely to do well staying at the back and waiting to put in that goal-saving tackle instead.

You compete against three other players bidding to make the transition from B-team unknown to captain, with your scores out of ten displayed as you go along. This leads to some interesting gameplay, as there are a number of factors to bear in mind. Firstly, you want to perform as well as you can in your chosen position. Secondly, you want your team to get through to the finals and then win. Finally you want to do better than your fellow captaincy candidates, which can lead to a certain amount of gamesmanship as you try to ensure that they don't get the chance to impress. This is an interesting take on co-op play, and it works really well in both single player--where the other players are AI controlled--or in multiplayer, where the mode really takes off as the competition hots up.

The football itself is very similar to FIFA 08, complete with its advanced trick system that allows more skilful players to skip past multiple defenders when mastered. As with FIFA 08 this system can seem overpowered in multiplayer games when one player has mastered it and the other has not, but the online skill matching does a good job of ensuring that this is rarely an issue.

In addition to regular matches and competitions there are a number of scenarios to play out, which put you in control at moments from the actual qualifying campaign that were particularly significant. For instance, you might be tasked with coming out on top after having been dumped into a game 2-0 down with 10 minutes to go, or you might be required to replicate Scotland's famous 1-0 victory over France in Paris. Winning the European Championship with any side unlocks a batch of new scenarios from Euro 2004.

In previous midseason football titles released to coincide with major championships, playing through the full qualifying campaigns was a nigh-on pointless experience when playing as a high-ranked team, because you would steamroller the poorer international sides, but that isn't the case here. The opponent AI changes are noticeable from the get-go of your campaign, with weaker teams defending in numbers and making your life in front of goal very difficult indeed. Crowds are more vocal than before, too, and are more hostile both home and away. When you're already a goal down in a match that you have to win, hearing even virtual fans chanting "We want our money back" does nothing for your confidence. These changes do really give the game a lot of added value as it

The other significant gameplay factor that has been tweaked is the weather, which now plays a more significant role than before. Rain has noticeable effects on the speed the ball skids over the surface; if you hit wet turf, your pass will fly off faster than you'd expect, but if you hit a muddy patch, you will howl in dismay as the ball slows down and a defender slips back to cut out that seemingly perfectly weighted pass to your advancing centre-forward.

The multiplayer game has also received a certain amount of attention. The most obvious change is presented to you front and centre: UEFA Euro 2008 features a metagame that will tally up the performance of the various European nations throughout the tournament, with daily prizes for those who perform best. This performance is measured with a new in-game scoring system that attempts to quantify the skill you've shown. This is based on not only the number of goals you score and let in, but also on pass completion, shot accuracy, and more. It's adjusted for the skill of your team and the skill of your opponent's team. This may help to address the main problem FIFA 08 has had online--where Barcelona, the best-rated in-game club side, are the most popular team to play because they're so good--but we're sceptical. More significant is the introduction of quick 16-player tournaments, which can be set up among friends or with random people over Xbox Live or the PlayStation network. This is a compelling addition to the series' basic multiplayer modes and is something we hope to see replicated in FIFA 09.