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Imagine the bleakness of the man versus giant creatures gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus as a definitively Nordic tale, and you have a general idea of what Jotun is. Sprinkle in a little bit of Dark Souls’ difficulty and a malevolent sense of challenge, and you’re closer to hitting the bullseye. Now imagine all of that hand-drawn in a style somewhere between Dragon’s Lair and Princess Mononoke, and you’ve got Jotun.

Boiling the game down to its disparate parts does the game a mild disservice, though. In execution, Jotun is a perfect storybook, a game that seems ripped from the imagination of a Viking child being told tales of warriors of old facing down their gods. It’s a wonderfully wild, vibrant bedtime story told with fire and verve, even when the game is at its most stark and lonely.

Jotun tells the tale of Thora, a Viking shield maiden who falls from her boat during a voyage and drowns. Because passage to Valhalla is only granted to those who fall in battle, Thora is given the chance to earn her way into the golden halls by finding and killing the Jotun, the Titans of Norse mythology. Along the way, the gods assist her, granting her new power when she finds their shrines and pays her respects. Otherwise, all she has is an iron axe and an iron will. We learn between stages where Thora’s determination comes from in a fantastic, steely narration performed in Icelandic. Each new piece of her story would be worth it on its own, revealing years of underestimation, neglect, and later, a sibling jealousy that turns tragic. Even if the gameplay wasn’t as good as it was, being able to help Thora achieve glory would be more than worth the effort.

Gameplay is 16-bit levels of simple, and yes, that is a compliment. You have a light attack with Thora’s axe, a hard-hitting heavy attack with a major delay, and a dodge. Thora can find massive shrines to the Gods in each stage, and by praying there, she earns new magical powers specific to each one--Thor allows her to use Mjolnir for a short time, Frigg allows her to heal at will, Loki creates a decoy that eventually explodes after a time--but all six of the powers have limited uses, and none are what you would call a guaranteed solution to any sticky situation. Primarily, timing, cunning, and luck will get Thora to Valhalla.

For most of the game, that cunning involves mastery of the environment. Jotun’s six stages, which can be tackled in any order, are impeccably designed. They are deceptively linear, laid out in such a way that gives the impression of vast, stunning tableaus in places dwarfed in size by your typical Diablo III dungeon. The illusion works. Grand, breathtaking vistas are the norm in Jotun, and they often serve as a wicked distraction from the dangers mere inches away. They’re also often rather desolate places, dark locales that no mortal has tread upon in ages. The game isn’t swarming with enemies, except for one particular stage that sends a veritable legion of dwarves your way. This bolsters the comparisons to Shadow of the Colossus, where the loneliness of what Thora has to do makes the sheer distance between each new obstacle feel like a greater journey. The real problem with that desolation is that more than a few times, you’ll need to backtrack through some of these areas to find much needed power ups, or because you’ve missed a crucial switch in order to get to said power ups, or because you’ve ended up in an area and the game’s obtuse pause screen map didn’t help you.

The main events of the game, however, are the Jotun themselves as bosses. The Jotun are simply awe-inspiring enemy design, taking the rather threadbare descriptions from Norse lore, and extrapolating them to the nth degree, with each one several times Thora’s size onscreen.

The best is still the first: A nature giant that feels like Ursula from The Little Mermaid made entirely out of living trees and vines. Still, each of the bosses are just wonderfully realized, and you get maybe a good minute to marvel at them before the pain starts. A terrifying shield-swinging giant can summon a legion of dwarves out of the ground to rush at Thora with a scream. Halfway through the frost giant’s fight, the playing field turns into a sheet of slippery ice; when it’s down to a quarter bar of life, a white-out blizzard starts. A blacksmith giant has you fighting in a neverending firestorm. What the Jotun typically lack in speed, they make up for in power, where being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a fight will mean your end in two hits. The Jotuns’ patterns and weak points aren’t hard to suss out whatsoever, it’s simply a matter of using your limited arsenal to deal with them, and often with the horde of peripheral obstacles/enemies each Jotun will throw at you during, and quite often it will still not be enough. The game gives Thora infinite tries, and will start her right at the boss with each of her powers replenished each time she dies. Persistence and learning from the numerous failures will lead to success, but the game will not coddle, and every victory will be well-earned beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The PS4 and Xbox One ports of Jotun are very much on par with the PC version. The only major difference is the addition of Valhalla Mode, a boss rush that opens up after you beat the campaign. Aside from expanded health bars, an extra element of danger has been added to each boss battle taken from the campaign, forcing you to alter your attack strategy. The first stage's plant boss now has poisonous spores surrounding her weak points, making it a game of hit and run rather than patient strikes. Alternately, a sword-wielding forge boss has a much shorter window in which to strike. Valhalla Mode is a small addition, but a welcome one.

Jotun is a short game, and good players can probably plow through it in about 3 or 4 hours, but even with the ending behind me, I find myself dying to witness some images again and wanting to try different strategies. I want to hear Thora tell her tale again. Any good bedtime story that makes you want to hear it again right after it’s over is one for the ages.

The Good
Beautiful hand drawn art
Tough but mostly fair challenge
Wonderfully imagined take on Norse mythology
Fantastic boss battles

The Bad
Some mild, tedious backtracking

8/10
Great

Rubber Ducky
Rubber Ducky, you're the one,
You make bathtime lots of fun,
Rubber Ducky, I'm awfully fond of you;

(woh woh, bee doh!)

Rubber Ducky, joy of joys,
When I squeeze you, you make noise!
Rubber Ducky, you're my very best friend, it's true!

(doo doo doo doooo, doo doo)


Every day when I
Make my to the tubby
I find a little fella who's
Cute and yellow and chubby

(rub-a-dub-a-dubby!)



Rubber Ducky, you're so fine
And I'm lucky that you're mine
Rubber ducky, I'm awfully fond of you.

(repeat chorus)

Rubber Ducky, you're so fine
And I'm lucky that you're mine
Rubber ducky, I'm awfully fond of -
Rubber ducky, I'd like a whole pond of -
Rubber ducky I'm of -
Rubber ducky I'm awfully fond of you!

(doo doo, be doo.)

brings back a lot of memories. great for classic gamers new and old. the emulations is great and very faithful to original titles. its the one collection i play when im in a SEGA mood for old games.

Valve gave me the keys to the Kingdom. big mistake

it has a female boss that shoots things from her boobs. that alone should be worth the price of admission.

i never bothered playing the game. so i have no clue if its good or not. really i dont care. i got the game just to score and easy 695 achievements. and boy is it ever easy to get them all. just turn on the game and let it idle in the background.

for 6 bucks it is a really fun game. yeah its a departure from the original 3d style the series had. but it stil has the fan favorite charaters and Ty is still the same as usual. seeing as i had never played the first 3 games at all i was a little leery at first but i decided too take a chance on the 4th game and i'm glad i did. for a new game at 6 bucks its really worth trying it at least. the one problem i did run into is when you exit out of the game steam for some reason still thinks your logged into the game when you can see you arent.

System: PC, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, DS, 3DS
Dev: Traveller's Tales (No not THAT one)
Pub: LucasArts
Release: March 22, 2011
Players: 1-2
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p

The missions are broken into three different subcategories: adventure / platform, space combat, and real-time strategy. The adventure missions are the ones most closely related to those of past games of the series, but look and play better, with solid enemy AI and a ton more things to smash. The boss battles do a great job finishing levels with an epic struggle, but we expect no less from a Star Wars game. The space missions and RTS missions are where you see this game break from the standard. With literally hundreds of allies and enemies on the screen and no lag or drop in frame rate, the large scale battles are truly a spectacle to behold. The strategy missions feel like a light version of StarCraft with LEGOs, as you take out enemy buildings using a hefty variety of vehicles, then use blocks to create your own support buildings. But no matter which mission you're tackling, even when surrounded by a seemingly inescapable amount of enemies, the forgiving difficulty keeps you from breaking a sweat. You essentially have unlimited lives, and only lose a couple thousand studs (pocket change) when brought down to zero health. Despite having a varied group to control, you'll most likely keep to those wielding lightsabers, since continuous mashing of the attack button will thwart any attempts to do you harm. However, LEGO games have never been designed with challenging gameplay in mind, making the game approachable to a wider audience.

As touched on before, the graphics shine in this latest version. The venues are all perfectly molded and believable in the Star Wars universe, and the animations are fluid and varied. Each of the 114 characters is uniquely tailored with its own personality and combat style, so how Anakin swings his lightsaber is completely different than how Mace Windu or Obi-Wan does. Even small elements, like Yoda hobbling along on his cane when pressing the analog stick lightly, then quickly jumping into a double flip to decapitate a droid, all showcase the care given to each character's authenticity.

Little needs to be said about the music and sound. It's Star Wars; the music is world renowned, the sound effects iconic, and both are perfectly integrated into the game, period. The voice acting is an issue all on its own though. While I fully understand that voiced scripts have no more place in a LEGO game then they do in a Sims game, the lack of talking only accentuates the confusing direction and hint system.

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is a pleasant break from the constant onslaught of first-person shooters, only made more satisfying by adding humor to the formula, a nearly extinct theme in modern video games. While the controls and difficulty are watered down, and you'll inevitably find yourself lost many times throughout, the game is just pure, addictive fun. And with so many things to collect and unlock, it's just that many more reasons to keep picking up the controller and redoing a level for the twelfth time.

4.6
Graphics
The best in the series by far, with smooth animations and colorful backdrops, all which befit the Star Wars universe.
2.8
Control
Although there are many different skills and attacks to use, button mashing seems to be the easiest way to get through a level. The lack of direction is also the game's biggest detriment.
4.2
Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
From the great orchestrations penned decades ago, to the genuine blaster and lightsaber sound effect, this game showcases them beautifully. However, the lack of voice acting, and even subtitles, makes virgins of the animated series even more lost.
5.0
Play Value
The game's replayability is arguably the greatest in recent gaming history, with so many reasons to keep going back, from the plethora of things to unlock, to the endless things to smash.
4.2
Overall Rating - Great

Game Features:

Massive Ground Battles - Brand new to the LEGO Star Wars experience, players will take control of battalions of clone troopers against the relentless droid army - building bases, deploying vehicles, and calling in reinforcements to defeat opponents.
SceneSwap - Authentic to the Star Wars experience, a new feature allows players to take control of multiple teams in separate locations. Working together to complete various objectives, players will control each team through the press of a button, while playing in single player or in multiplayer co-op modes.
Multi-Layered Space Battles - Players will be able to take off in their favorite ships to navigate and fly through multi-layered combat throughout the galaxy.
Explore the Galaxy - Players will be able to explore exotic locations in a variety of ships throughout sixteen different star systems. Fans will play as villainous Separatists, the noble Republic heroes or even as bounty hunters, tracking down characters across the galaxy.
Expanded Force Abilities - Using the Force in all new ways to control LEGO objects, players will solve puzzles, access new areas, pick up and throw enemies - even turning them into weapons.

Everybody's second-favourite Call of Duty sub-franchise returns, picking through the carnage of the preceding game's CIA conspiracy while simultaneously barrelling onward into the cyber-enhanced future-war of 2025.

The game flits between control of David Mason, son of the first Blops' protagonist, and flashbacks to (not terribly) covert missions taking place during the conflicts of the late 20th century. For the most part, it follows familiar Call of Duty rote: enemies swarm out and you pop their heads and push forward. Like Whack-a-mole, but with foreigners. You shoot men in 1980s Afghanistan. You shoot men and robots in future-LA. Hither and thither, men are shot, their demise serving a globe-trotting anti-terrorism yarn that would be amusingly ludicrous if it weren't laser-targeted to evoke actual middle-American paranoia.

But before we get to that: let me tell you about my horse. My horse keeps on falling through the ground. It doesn't fall far – just up to its flanks – but it's very hard to fend off a Russian assault on a half-buried horse. I can't get off my horse because I haven't quite reached the horse-dismounting checkpoint. I am stuck. I reload and reload and reload and eventually make it through.

I mention this because my problem with Blops 2 and CoD in general is not that they are cinematic shooters of little mechanical imagination or meaningful interactivity – I'm completely cool with that. CoD is essentially Duck Hunt with multidirectional movement and a hysterically self-pitying, bellicose view of global politics. That's OK. That's allowed. But I take issue when I repeatedly crash through its flimsy world into the unglamorous workings behind.

It's not even that Blops 2 is buggy: it's just so inflexible and brittle as to splinter at the most gentle pressure in any direction other than the one in which it is ordained to move. Playing it is to tiresomely re-analyse the ever-shifting boundaries of interaction. The very first level kills you if you stray outside the invisibly defined battle zone; later you are gifted with an entire canyon to roam – assuming your horse remains above ground level.

At one point, I found myself stuck on a beach while angry locals swarmed through the jungle behind. The sign above my AI partner said, 'Follow'. However, he had stopped. I'd been told there were some boats on the beach, which would seem like a mission-critical observation, were it possible to interact with them. “Keep running, Mason!” shouts my AI partner, apparently unaware that we are hemmed into this tiny sandy deathzone by invisible walls. Several reloads later, I discover that I have to press F on my companion and initiate an ending cutscene. Ah.

This seems like a shame because it torpedoes one of Black Ops 2's most ambitious endeavours. At key points during the game you are given choices which dramatically change its outcome. But so trammelled are you in the interim that you may not realise your own power.

When the opportunity arose to execute someone, I couldn't work out how to decline – or even if I could. I tried shooting other people in the room, but the gun just didn't fire. I tried to wait the decision out, but eventually I assumed there was only one interactive option available. Bang. Sorry. Deciding whether or not to kill someone should be dramatic, but here it felt more like attempting to interpret faded washing instructions. Can I tumble dry this?

Still, such pivotal moments, when they work, do perk interest in the otherwise daft plot as it maniacally flings itself around history, occasionally stamping on the bits of it wingnuts don't like. Despite all the techno-gobbledegook, conspiracy, brainwashing and betrayal, Black Ops 2 presents a paint-by-numbers world, in which the primary colours are fear, jingoism and self-righteous aggression. In this version of reality, Islamic terrorists are elided with South American socialists, hackers and anti-capitalist protesters.

The game's arch-villain, Raul Menendez, is a product of American interventionism gone awry, but if there's a warning there, it's subsumed by the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fervour of his personal quest for revenge. Menendez is not a nice man (you can tell because he has a scar) and his response to his violation by America is to go around yelling and kneecapping people, so it's hard to sympathise with him. That we are only encouraged to worry about American foreign policy inadvertently creating Menendez-like monsters is itself troubling, but I suppose people whose lives were just quietly and terribly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ don't make exciting antagonists.

After this calamitous introduction to the campaign, however, Blops 2 settles down. Its set-pieces become more coherent (if not the plot) and the majority of its novelties work. Except this time, there are no egregiously annoying infinite spawns. Indeed, the game sidesteps many of the series' clichés. Turret sections are subverted almost the instant they begin, as are other staples: the slow-motion breach and clear, the last-second gun-toss.

Elsewhere, futuristic gadgetry brings welcome variety. You can target enemies with a fleet of drones or hunker behind shambling quadrupedal mechs. Their power is most visible in the radical addition of Strike Force, a simplistic RTS gamemode which runs in parallel to the campaign. Using a high-altitude view, you capture points, defend them, protect convoys and rescue hostages. At any point you can dive into the brain of a soldier or robot and take direct control. The major weakness is the AI – the lamentable pathfinding is all the more visible in the top-down view – but its incompetence obligates you to get your hands dirty, and so creates the delightful tension between strategy and ground tactics. It's messy, perhaps, but fun: rarely in a Call of Duty game do you get the entire toybox to play with all at once.

Black Ops 2 also manages occasional spectacle, despite a creaking engine. The recreation of a Yemeni hillside township is both visually and spatially fascinating, a wonderful chaos of alleys and stairwells, offering as much vertical variation as horizontal. Elsewhere, an exclusive, floating mega-resort has been taking notes from Brink's super-white sea-faring skyline – a dazzling, crisp utopia which is disturbingly cathartic to smash.

Exploring that Yemeni township is all the better in multiplayer. In fact, everything is better in multiplayer. Add a few real people, and levels that were inert backdrops to the campaign now reveal a more delicate construction: multiple strata and intertwining paths, every space run through with dozens of sightlines to keep you on your toes. On the deck of a burning aircraft carrier, your objective is to minimise your exposure, skipping between coverpoints, constantly craning this way and that to ensure you aren't being flanked. A railway station generates an ongoing flow of combat through multiple, looping routes. Rarely do you find a position which isn't in some way compromised, forcing continual movement.

Myriad multiplayer modes are divided and duplicated among a variety of playlists, although most of the new additions, like the roaming king-of-the-hill gametype Hardpoint, are fairly unadventurous reconfigurations of existing rulesets. The 'party game' playlist contains the most outlandish departures from regular Call of Duty gunplay – here you earn extra bullets with kills or automatically cycle through the game's armoury.

Treyarch have made some canny rebalancing decisions: the special rewards formerly known as Killstreaks have evolved into Scorestreaks. Helping your team with objectives now contributes to earning UAV surveillance, drone strikes and other devastating powers. The unlockable-arms-race seems less painful for new players, too, thanks to an ample starting kit.

This is all to the good – but is it a reinvention worth $60/£40? The menus are biased toward gamepad controls and the lack of dedicated servers is regrettable.

Alas, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, your time is spent. We had some fun times--remember when Sentinel was steamrolling everyone?--but now it's over. Developer Capcom has dug you an early grave to make way for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the $40 follow-up that, for some, has come much too soon. Regardless of how you feel, the game is here, and it is the superior version, with new characters, stages, and rebalanced gameplay. Of course, it's also just as challenging as before and can break your heart with a single combo. It's mean, it's flashy, but most importantly, it's Marvel, baby!

Watch enough high-level matches in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and you see a few definite styles emerge. Players gravitate toward Wolverine, Wesker, She-Hulk, and others for their ability to relentlessly assault opponents and lock them down in close-range combat. Even Dormammu, with his fancy black holes and energy pillars, spends most of his time teleporting into melee range. The rush-down game has stolen the spotlight, and now Ultimate wants to make it share. The game has dedicated almost half of the new roster to favor zoning, or fighting at a distance, in the hopes of cracking the original's single, all-encompassing strategy.

Joining the roster are 12 new fighters, many of whom personify the game's overall shift in focus. Together with the original cast, they raise the game's collection to an impressive 48 fighters--just eight shy of Marvel vs. Capcom 2's total. Some of these newcomers, such as Iron Fist and Nova, are hard-hitting, straightforward brawlers. However, roughly half favor fighting at a distance or with unorthodox tactics. Consider Doctor Strange, the sorcerer supreme whose numerous projectiles range from homing disks to a fireball that can ricochet across the screen before striking its target. His long-range antics aren't new to the series, but they were rarely used in the previous game during competitive play.

Of course, this shift won't happen overnight; players naturally stick to what they know. But as the game and the community grow, hopefully these new styles will take root. In the meantime, there are some other core design changes to explore. Team aerial combos, another rarely used mechanic in MVC3, have been granted extra incentive. Now, the direction in which you tag out your character causes different effects, such as giving you an additional super meter. X-factor, the game's comeback mechanic, has also been scaled back in power and normalized across the cast. It can even be activated in the air.

You can mash buttons while performing certain hyper combos to increase their damage.
You can mash buttons while performing certain hyper combos to increase their damage.

The returning characters received a lot of love in this new release as well. The strongest characters haven't been brought down; instead, the rest of the cast has been brought up to match their strength. These changes manifest in new moves for some characters and new properties for existing moves for others. For instance, Magneto has a new move that physically drags his opponent around the screen, while Shuma-Gorath's throw now drains super meter from its opponent. Take a look at your old favorites, and chances are you'll discover new tricks that weren't possible before.

Luckily, you're not on your own to discover these changes. The game's mission mode, which teaches new players the basic moves and combos for the cast, has been updated to accommodate all these changes. The 12 new characters have their own mission sets, while the veterans' missions have been updated. Unfortunately, this mode still has issues in the way it presents information, so if you don't know your Gram from your Ragtime Shot, then you'll constantly have to pause the game and dive into the menu to see the move's input. Being able to watch a demonstration of the current mission would also have been appreciated.

Aside from the tweaks to mission mode, the gameplay offerings in Ultimate are nearly as limited as in its predecessor. There's a new Galactus mode that lets you hop in the driver's seat of the game's final boss. However, stomping through the single-player arcade mode gets old fast. The Shadow Mode DLC is altogether absent from Ultimate. Its likely replacement is the upcoming Heroes and Heralds mode, which Capcom has announced will be released "postlaunch" as a free DLC. The mode has you collecting cards and assigns them to your three-person team to unlock new bonuses and abilities. For now, however, its absence is felt, and the game's variety suffers for it.

One feature that fans were dying for in the original release that has made it into Ultimate is spectator mode during online play. No longer are you confined to watching two sets of life bars tick down while awaiting your turn; now you can see all the action for yourself. Ultimate also brings with it the online performance updates the original received, leading to a more consistent connection rate. Sadly, online still lacks the replay support enjoyed by Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; a feature which could have served as an excellent teaching tool.

Some of MVC3's overpowered assists, such as Tron's Gustav Fire assist, have been toned down.
Some of MVC3's overpowered assists, such as Tron's Gustav Fire assist, have been toned down.

Ultimately, Ultimate is still a monster hiding under an attractive coat of flashy combos and familiar characters. It may feel inviting at first, but sink a little deeper, and you discover a game in which victory and defeat hinge on a fine line. It's a high-risk, high-reward system that buries you in a brightly colored light show on the slightest misstep. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is unquestionably the superior version, and while its feature set still feels lacking compared to other available fighters, the series' unique blend of structured insanity remains strong.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 / PlayStation 3/XBONE/PC

The Good
New characters feel distinct from the rest
Spectator mode for online play a welcomed addition
Retains superb style and animation from the original.

The Bad
Lack of gameplay mode diversity
Replay support is still absent
Mission mode still lacks key training tools.

8
Great
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