It’s the thirteenth Final Fantasy and it’s most likely anything but the final one if history means anything. And after so many games in a series well known for each game being completely different while remaining recognizable as a series, has Square Enix been able to keep things interesting? I would say yes, definitely, but not quite as interesting as they might have.

There’s so much to say about Final Fantasy XIII, but I’ll offer this brief synopsis first: fast battles and a great battle system, interesting setting, mediocre script, incredible cut-scene animation, breathtaking creature designs, all-over-the-place voice acting, varied characters (some you’ll enjoy, some you’ll be annoyed by), minimal variation in gameplay rhythms, beautiful varied music, uninteresting leveling-up system, mediocre equipment upgrading system, impressive bosses, great graphics and art design.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Final Fantasy XIII.

The Excite series has seen some great entries on the Wii. ExciteTruck, a close-to-launch title, was a great trick-racing game where stars collected while racing through drifting, tree-running, jumping, spinning and generally performing unrealistic stunts were almost more important than winning the race. ExciteBots took the idea and went even more crazy: racing mechanized insects was just the tip of the insanity-iceberg. If you’re looking for more of that then ExciteBike: World Challenge will disappoint. That’s because it returns to the simplicity of the original ExciteBike and re-imagines it. The result is a very simple game with good depth and a lot of fun.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of ExciteBike: World Challenge.

SEGA’s upcoming Yakuza 3 has been a long time coming, and, in fact, up until December 2009 we didn’t know if it would ever come out after the not-too-grand reception (in terms of sales) the first two games had in the West. This isn’t surprising – Yakuza is a game series centered very much on Japanese culture.

Yakuza are to the Japanese as Mafia bosses are to the Sicilians. That’s my understanding, please correct me if I’m wrong – my Japanese culture knowledge is limited. In the demo you’re a tough guy named Kazuma Kiryu, the same main character from the previous Yakuza games, and you’ve just arrived back in Kamurocho, an area of a city (I think Tokyo) which must have the most neon-lights per-square-meter of anywhere in the world.

Continue reading El33tonline’s hands-on preview of Yakuza 3.

As the name suggests, 100 Classic Book Collection is not a game so much as a library. Even so, we review these things because they’re on the DS which is, ostensibly a game-playing device, so if said device is used to run software it is automatically assumed to be fun.

It’s hard to figure out just what to rate here. The books chosen are magnificent. Most of Austen, lots of Dickens, Eliot, multiple Bronte’s, many Shakespeares. You couldn’t get a much better selection of 100 books anywhere. But while the books are the reason for the software, what should be discussed is the software used to read the books – and just why would you use this software instead of buying the real thing – ink on paper? Reading a book on your DS is never going to be better than reading a shiny new book smelling like books do. It is, however, cheaper and far more portable. Particularly if the book in question is Les Miserables.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of 100 Classic Book Collection.

There are some good things about Need for Speed Nitro. But any reasonable comparison between it and what else is available in its genre shows it to be a pale shadow of the state of the art, and on top of that, it’s short on fun.

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. No online play for a fairly serious car-racing game in 2009? I guess it was considered not worth the effort to do. A lot of the game reeks of that attitude: very few tracks, a repetitive and simplistic career mode, limited car selection, long loading times and shockingly bad visuals combine to give an impression that the Wii version of Need for Speed is very much a poor cousin to the real deal on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Oh, and the racing is not all that interesting either.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Need for Speed: NITRO.

Band Hero is, essentially, Guitar Hero 5 with a different track list and a very slightly different aesthetic. It’s clear that the track list is aimed at a different market to Guitar Hero – it’s a game for people that enjoy top 40 pop-rock music, but other than this the game hasn’t been changed much at all, and can’t be said to be even a minor evolution in the genre. Of course, playing plastic instruments with friends is still lots of fun, there’s no denying that, but you should really consider Band Hero to be an expansion disc of 65 new songs (most of which you can export into Guitar Hero) and not a new game in its own right.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Band Hero.

Professor Layton is a man who loves to solve puzzles. In fact, it’s what he lives for. Not useful real-life puzzles like “who kidnapped my cat?” or “where is my missing shoe?” but rather abstract mathematics and logic puzzles like “how many triangles are in this picture?” It strikes me as a skill that’s singularly useless in the world other than if you want to qualify as a puzzle-nerd, but somehow in the world of Professor Layton and the Curious Village this is considered the most quintessential skill anyone could have, and Layton is the highly respected master of puzzle-solving, and thus a most respected individual. Think Sherlock Holmes, but instead of solving murders and mysteries he solves matchstick puzzles.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

The Mario RPG series (which sometimes also stars Luigi) is pretty much my favourite RPG series. It’s so good and so unconventional (despite actually having a lot of the conventions) that even if you don’t like RPG’s you really should give these games a try. If you do, you should definitely start with Bowser’s Inside Story – it’s the best game in the handheld Mario and Luigi series and it’s more accessible (and available) than the GameCube’s Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. In fact, this is one of the best games on the DS full stop.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.

After a long break since Tekken 5, the King of Iron Fist Tournament is back, this time in high definition. The question is whether it has anything to offer for the fighting game fan over its predecessor – and my answer is yes, but not a huge amount. There’s online play, of course, and there’s a more extensive single player adventure (which is still a poor man’s brawler – any of the recent super-hero games are better than this), more characters and more polygons and shiny textures. The fun level is about the same – so if you enjoy the series this is a decent upgrade, and if you don’t then Tekken 6 certainly won’t change your opinion of it.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Tekken 6.

When Nintendo released the first new 2D Mario game in about 15 years in 2006 on the DS, New Super Mario Bros., it went on to become one of the best selling games of all time, so now, when the Wii seems to really need something to light its sales up, they turn to Mario again and deliver one of the best games of the year and the best platformer I’ve played since Super Mario Galaxy.

I was one of those who thought New Super Mario Bros. on the DS was a breath of fresh air for gaming – a new 2D platforming game with a lot of creativity but without much complexity. With New Super Mario Bros. Wii it’s clear though just how much more there was to do – this game is brimming with more interesting ideas and clever level design. In fact it surpasses the DS version in every way (other than, of course, portability), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes on to become one of the most successful games of the generation.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

The PSP has had an up-and-down year, with the highlight being the release of the PSP Go and the lowlight being the price of the PSP Go. It’s the handheld we all want but can’t afford. Kind of like the iPhone in South Africa. Meanwhile there has been some great content out on the PSP this year. Here is a list of 8 of the best.

Continue reading El33tonline’s PSP Christmas Buyer’s Guide for South African gamers.

Earlier this year Take 2 released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the DS to great critical acclaim but lackluster sales. And so GTA comes back to the PSP, its handheld home, in the form of Chinatown Wars PSP – an upscaled port of the DS game. It’s not different enough an experience from the DS one that I can recommend buying it as well as that one, but for those who missed it I can recommend Chinatown Wars on the PSP with the same qualifications as before: this is a morally bankrupt game in which you take on the role of a hired thug doing any and every crime you can think of. But it’s also fun.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

Beaterator is not so much a game as it is an electronic music-creation tool complete with loops and samples from Timbaland himself. As such, there is very little to compare it to, especially on handhelds, making it hard to review. If the criterion used to judge it is purely the power of it as an “instrument” then it is a very impressive piece of software. If the criterion used is just how much fun there is to be had with it for a casual music tinkerer then it doesn’t quite match up to the Korg DS-10 on the Nintendo DS - simply because while it is more powerful, it is also more difficult to create new music with Beaterator than with the Korg simulator.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Beaterator.

King of Fighters XII is the first high definition iteration of this long-running 2D fighting series. Only SNK know just how many games there have been in the series, and even then I’m not sure that they could possibly keep track. As indicated by the subtitle, “Rebirth,” this is meant to be a reboot of the series for a new generation of consoles. In reality this seems to be a cover for having a limited set of characters and a very limited set of game modes that just don’t entertain for as long as they should.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of The King of Fighters XII.

There’s not a lot more to say about Tales of Monkey Island. It’s a truly excellent series of episodic adventures that follow the story of Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to rid the Pirate Isles of the Pox of LeChuck. This episode, while still inordinately clever and graced with the presence of Stan and his flamboyant and cleverly-rendered jacket, isn’t quite as fresh as the previous ones, but does set things up for a most intriguing finale.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Tales of Monkey Island: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood.