Consoles, Games and Emulators.

Blitz Games has never really been the epitome of groundbreaking game design, usually hiring its services out to publishers for low-profile licensed games like Cubix: Robots for Everyone. But this small British development house has been incredibly prolific recently, shipping no fewer than four games in the past six months. Granted, none of these titles have been real award-winners, but the latest from Blitz Games, Zapper, is probably the most noteworthy of the bunch. As the spiritual successor to Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge, Zapper delivers more challenging action puzzle gameplay in a colorful, upbeat setting.

The story of Zapper the cricket serves as very thin window dressing, motivating you to stop Maggie the Magpie and rescue your little brother, Zipper. Zapper is basically just Frogger without the license, and anyone who played either of the first two 3D Frogger games should be instantly familiar with the game’s controls, and players familiar with the platformer formula should have little trouble figuring this one out. You’ll guide Zapper across a series of 3D grids, hopping from space to space, dodging hazards, leaping across chasms, and doing a little bit of zapping, which can stun enemies and open up wooden crates. Your primary goal is to smash all six of the evil magpie eggs placed in each level by Maggie the Magpie, but there are also lots and lots of shiny baubles to collect, and collecting enough of these will give you a onetime superzap, which can be used to reveal secret areas of the map and open up special steel crates. Using the shoulder buttons, you can make Zapper change the direction he’s facing without hopping to another square, which makes for much tighter level design all around. At 18 levels, Zapper is longer than Frogger 2, but unfortunately the action generally doesn’t change much through the 18 levels, and you’ll probably have had your fill of Zapper by the end.

If you indeed tire of Zapper’s story mode, the game also offers an arcade mode and a multiplayer mode. The arcade mode isn’t much–it essentially just puts a timer on levels you’ve already played. Though every game in the multiplayer mode is a slight variation on the theme of catching Zipper on the map before the other players do, this mode is made more interesting because of the inclusion of custom rules, which let you tweak the match settings to your liking.

The visual style of Zapper is much the same as its predecessor, creating a bright, colorful environment that walks the line between 2D and 3D by mixing visual elements from both styles. While the game is quite proficient at what it does here, the game is displayed on such a small scale that the graphics are more charming than impressive. Zapper himself, however, lacks the polygonal definition or the character to be much of a recognizable personality and, like many platforming heroes, could have easily been swapped out for a completely different character altogether. The sound in Zapper is pretty much dominated by the soundtrack, which comes off like a fusion of Fatboy Slim-style party music and the old-school Big Band style of the old Merry Melodies tunes. This is a better combination than you might expect, and a couple of the tracks are actually downright infectious.

The changes that Blitz Games has made from Frogger 2 to Zapper are incremental, and the resulting product is basically the same. So it doesn’t get a lot of points for originality, but the style of gameplay found in Zapper is still fairly unique, and the graphical presentation is competent enough that it doesn’t distract you from the task at hand. In the end, Zapper fulfills its modest aspirations of capably creating an enjoyable action puzzle game.

Zathura is a third-person action adventure game based on the just-released movie of the same name. The movie is based on the children’s book from author Chris Van Allburg, who also brought us Jumanji. Like Jumanji, Zathura is about an enchanted board game that whisks players away on all sorts of fantastical adventures. The game is your basic platformer with plenty of shallow combat and not much else. Zathura is obviously intended for a younger audience, but the game is too short and frustrating to be recommendable to anyone, regardless of age.

Zathura the game sticks fairly close to the movie, so you won’t find any surprises if you’ve seen the movie already. The game starts off with two young brothers being left at home alone one afternoon. Danny, the whiny younger brother, pleads with Walter, his bullying older brother, to make him some lunch. Eventually the two end up fighting, and Danny ends up all alone in the basement, where he finds a strange board game called Zathura. Danny hits a button on the game, and a card pops out. When he has Walter read the card for him, a meteor shower suddenly starts smashing the house to splinters. When it’s over, the remainder of the house is floating through space with the two young boys stranded inside. To get back to earth, the boys have to finish playing the game, but each time they take a turn, something crazy happens. The adventure will take you to a couple of typical sci-fi worlds where you’ll fight rampaging robots, lizard-men known as Zorgons, and, well, that’s about it actually. There isn’t much to this game, and you can easily beat it in two or three hours. When you finish the game, you’re rewarded with two trailers for Zathura and one for Jumanji–great.

There are a few fun moments to be found in Zathura, but for the most part it’s as generic as they come. You’ll jump from platform to platform, fight some enemies, and occasionally go up against a boss. The boss fights are the highlight of the game, but there are only a couple of bosses, and they don’t put up much of a fight. There are three playable characters: Danny, Walter, and a large robot that is programmed to protect the boys. You don’t get to choose which character to play as, since the character transitions are built into the game at specific moments.

You might play as Danny for one section of a level, then switch off to play as Walter for another section. Each of the characters has different abilities. Danny is a weakling, so he can’t do much but run around and shoot enemies with a slingshot. He can do a couple of kicks, but they aren’t very effective since his legs are so short that you have to get right up on an enemy to make contact. Danny can collect different kinds of ammo for his slingshot by breaking objects like crates and boxes. He has infinite moon rocks, but he can collect only limited supplies of electric shots, freezing shots, and explosive crystal bombs. Walter is similar to Danny except he’s a bit stronger, so he can do things like swing on bars and hang on ropes. Walter is also much better at hand-to-hand combat. His main weapon is a metal robot arm collected early in the game. He can swing it like a bat to beat down enemies or deflect ranged attacks. Walter can throw things like radioactive waste containers and sand-crab eggs to damage enemies from afar. The robot has two melee attacks and a built-in cannon that can fire pulse ammo, bombs, missiles, and homing charges. The robot can also jump higher than the boys, and it can perform a boost charge.

The controls are pretty simple regardless of which character you use. You can lock on to enemies by holding a button, which is about the only way to effectively use ranged attacks. You can also crouch, strafe, and side-dodge. Usually, you can adjust the camera with the right analog stick, but sometimes the camera will become fixed at a terrible angle that makes it tough to see what’s going on. There are also some platforming sections where the screwy perspective makes it difficult to judge your jumps, so you’ll end up missing a lot of platforms and falling to your death. It doesn’t help that the characters never seem to make contact with the ground, and sometimes they float around as if they’re on ice.

Zathura is very forgiving when it comes to dying. You have unlimited lives, and when you do die you usually respawn almost right where you left off. It really takes away any sense of danger or risk this game might have had. On one level we found that when we fell off a platform it was easier to commit suicide and respawn at the top of the level rather than to climb all the way back up. Even without the infinite lives and frequent health pickups, this game is supereasy except for a few poorly designed platforming sections.

In addition to the generic gameplay, the graphics are pretty unremarkable. Some of the enemies–like the zorgons–look detailed and animate well. For the most part, though, the characters aren’t the least bit interesting. The three playable characters have only a few animations that quickly get old. The environments are standard fare for a sci-fi game of this type. There’s the industrial stage with lots of metal crates and laser beams, the lava stage with, well, lots of lava everywhere, and one level that has you hopping around on the surface of an asteroid. None of the levels look particularly interesting, and the few themes you’ll see here don’t feel very distinct. The Xbox version of Zathura suffers from the occasional bout of slowdown, but it’s head and shoulders above the PlayStation 2 version of the game, which is constantly plagued by a choppy frame rate.

The sound in Zathura fares a bit better, but it’s still nothing special. Most of the music sounds like it was taken straight from the movie. The soundtrack is about the only thing that makes this feel like an epic adventure. The actors from the movie lend their voices to the characters in the game, and while it isn’t Oscar material, it’s competent enough. Walter and Danny’s father and sister both have roles in the movie, but they have been cut entirely from the game. That doesn’t matter much since the game focuses on the two boys anyway. The sound effects are rather shallow in Zathura. You’ll hear the same metallic creak every time your robot swings his arms, the same laser sound whenever an enemy turret fires, and the same hollow clatter when you destroy a box or piece of machinery.

Zathura is ultimately just another perfunctory action game based on a movie license. For the price of this game you could go see the movie twice and then go pick up the recently released Jumanji (Deluxe Edition) DVD and still have money left over. In doing so, you’d be getting about three times as much entertainment as you’ll find in this game. If you’ve seen the movie, though, and just can’t get enough, you might find something to enjoy here, but Zathura is way too short and uninteresting to be worth the $40 selling price.

Carl Johnson’s back on the set after five years in Liberty City, returning to his old haunts in San Andreas to mourn for his mother, dead after an act of senseless violence. An already unpleasant homecoming gets worse, though, as crooked cops set him up for the murder of a policeman, he discovers that his neighborhood is falling apart under an influx of drugs, and that his old gang is barely capable of holding their territory. Needless to say, the solution to all of these problems involves a whole lot of violence, as befits the latest and greatest entry in the extraordinarily popular GTA series of games.

Given that Rockstar created a massive game world in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, with only a year’s worth of development time between that game and Grand Theft Auto III, it should come as no surprise that the world of GTA: San Andreas, with two years of development soaked into it, is one of the biggest worlds ever modeled in an action game. Instead of focus on a mere state, Rockstar has enlarged their focus, this time choosing to model an entire state, with three separate cities and a huge amount of countryside to explore. Everything is bigger and better in San Andreas, so get exploring!

In this guide, we’ll provide you with a rundown of the game’s weapons, a complete walk-through of the game’s many missions, locations for all of the hidden oysters, photo ops, graffiti tags, a listing of weapons, and the proverbial much, much more. Big thanks to the guys from gta-junkies.com for supplying the location maps for this guide.

Researchers at Intel are working on ways to mask the intricate functionality of massive multicore chips to make it easier for computer makers and software developers to adapt to them, said Jerry Bautista, co-director of Intel’s Tera-scale Computing Research Program.

These multicore chips, he added, will also likely contain both x86 processing cores, similar to the brains inside the vast majority of Intel’s server and PC chips today, as well as other types of cores. A 64-core chip, for instance, might contain 42 x86 cores, 18 accelerators and four embedded graphics cores.

Some labs and companies such as ClearSpeed Technology, Azul Systems and Riken have developed chips with large numbers of cores–ClearSpeed has one with 96 cores–but the cores are capable of performing certain types of operations.

The 80-core mystery
Ever since Intel showed off its 80-core prototype processor, people have asked, “Why 80 cores?”
There’s actually nothing magical about the number, Bautista and others have said. Intel wanted to make a chip that could perform 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, known as a teraflop. Eighty cores did the trick. The chip does not contain x86 cores, the kind of cores inside Intel’s PC chips, but cores optimized for floating point (or decimal) math.
Other sources at Intel pointed out that 80 cores also allowed the company to maximize the room inside the reticle, the mask used to direct light from a lithography machine to a photo-resistant silicon wafer. Light shining through the reticle creates a pattern on the wafer, and the pattern then serves as a blueprint for the circuits of a chip. More cores, and Intel would have needed a larger reticle.

Last year, Intel showed off a prototype chip with 80 computing cores. While the semiconductor world took note of the achievement, the practical questions immediately arose: Will the company come out with a multicore chip with x86 cores? (The prototype doesn’t have them.) Will these chips run existing software and operating systems? How do you solve data traffic, heat and latency problems?

Intel’s answer essentially is, yes, and we’re working on it.

One idea, proposed in a paper released this month at the Programming Language Design and Implementation Conference in San Diego, involves cloaking all of the cores in a heterogeneous multicore chip in a metaphorical exoskeleton so that all of the cores look like a series of conventional x86 cores, or even just one big core.

“It will look like a pool of resources that the run time will use as it sees fit,” Bautista said. “It is for ease of programming.”

A paper at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, also in San Diego, details a hardware scheduler that will split up computing jobs among various cores on a chip. With the scheduler, certain computing tasks can be completed in less time, Bautista noted. It also can prevent the emergence of “hot spots”–if a single processor core starts to get warm because it’s been performing nonstop, the scheduler can shift computing jobs to a neighbor.

Intel is also tinkering with ways to let multicore chips share caches, pools of memory embedded in processors for rapid data access. Cores on many dual- and quad-core chips on the market today share caches, but it’s a somewhat manageable problem.

“When you get to eight and 16 cores, it can get pretty complicated,” Bautista said.

The technology would prioritize operations. Early indications show that improved cache management could improve overall chip performance by 10 percent to 20 percent, according to Intel.

Like the look and feel of technology for heterogeneous chips, programmers won’t, ideally, have to understand or deliberately accommodate the cache-sharing or hardware-scheduling technologies. These operations will largely be handled by the chip itself and be obscured from view.

Heat is another issue that will need to be contained. Right now, I/O (input-output) systems need about 10 watts of power to shuttle data at 1 terabit per second. An Intel lab has developed a low-power I/O system that can transfer 5 gigabits per second at 14 milliwatts–which is less than 14 percent of the power used by current 5Gbps systems today–and 15Gbps at 75 milliwatts, according to Intel. A paper outlining the issue was released at the VLSI Circuits Symposium in Japan this month.

Low-power I/O systems will be needed for core-to-core communication as well as chip-to-chip contacts.

“Without better power efficiency, this just won’t happen,” said Randy Mooney, an Intel fellow and director of I/O research.

Intel executives have said they would like to see massive multicore chips coming out in about five years. But a lot of work remains. Right now, for instance, Intel doesn’t even have a massive multicore chip based around x86 cores, a company spokeswoman said.

The massive multicore chips from the company will likely rely on technology called Through Silicon Vias (TSVs), other executives have said. TSVs connect external memory chips to processors through thousands of microscopic wires rather than one large connection on the side. This increases bandwidth.

When it comes down to fighting perfection, unprecedented depth and fantastic gameplay mechanics, nothing comes close to Virtua Fighter. Since the early 90s, Virtua Fighter has been the bastion of 3D fighting, with nearly every iteration. Yes, unfortunately every series has a blemish somewhere, and VF is no different. While Virtua Fighter 3tb wasn’t up to par with the likes of Tekken 3, and later on, Tekken Tag, the release of Virtua Fighter 4 quickly made up for it. Virtua Fighter 4 was unlike any fighting game I’ve ever played before; it had the most amazing mechanics behind it, terrific balance, and an addictive quality. Lots of hours were invested into VF4, and I continued to play VF4: Evolution extensively, as well. Tekken and Soul Calibur have been able to tide me over during the past years, but I still wanted a new VF. And so that time has come. After over a year of anticipation (and five years since VF4), I’ve finally gotten my fifth Virtua Fighter; and I couldn’t be happier.

   For starters, when it comes down to tight mechanics, nothing is as balanced as Virtua Fighter 5. You can throw all of the Tekkens and Soul Caliburs you want at me, but they simply don’t measure up to just how tight Virtua Fighter 5 plays - and this is coming a big Tekken fan, too. As soon as you start a match with any given character you have experience with, you quickly realize why VF5 is so special. It’s the fluidity, the precision and superb balance. Likewise, if you plan on playing this game in harder difficulties, you’ll be spending quite a bit of time honing your skills in the game’s Dojo mode.

   Dojo will teach you not only the moves of a specific character, but also train you to fight under certain difficulty levels. For instance, it’s tiresome to play through the Arcade mode on Hard just so you can better yourself. Especially since you re-start every time you get beaten — so here’s where the Dojo comes in. You can set the fighter you’ll be practicing on to fight back by adjusting his A.I. from 1 to 5 — 1 being the easiest, 5 the hardest. It quickly becomes a tool to improve your skills, and it will also teach you that guarding is an essential asset to victories. There are a number of other adjustments you can make to your punching bag fighter, most of which I recall being present in VF4. If you want to practice a fighter’s move-set, then go into the Dojo’s Command Training and practice it in either Time Attack, or normally.

   When you feel like you’re ready, head over to either the Arcade mode or Quest mode. Arcade mode is what you’ll want to play when you’re in the mood for a quick pick-up session. If you’ve played VF4, then you know what to expect here: 10 stages, Akira is the last boss, and Dural is your bonus fight. Of course, this VF game is no different than the ones before it, in that it still doesn’t have endings - so sometimes, the Arcade mode feels a little hapless. If you’re looking to feel rewarded, then look no further than the addictive Quest mode.

   Quest mode is basically one enormous virtual competition that takes you and your chosen fighter from arcade to arcade, fighting through dozens of other arcade players just like you. There’s a map laid out in front of you, with a whole bunch of different arcades you can visit. Each arcade spot you go to has its own range of players: some arcades will have only novice players, some will have a mix, and some will be strictly for the hardcore. You’ll want to start off at the novice/beginner and maybe intermediate arcades, that way you can build up a worthy winning streak, earn some easy rewards, and easily climb in rankings. Quest mode rewards you with items that you can use to customize your fighters with, or money so that you can buy more items with. What’s superb about the customization is that you have the ability to completely change the look of one fighter; having the same two fighters look nothing alike. You can change their clothing, hair color, hair style, and all sorts of accessories to them. For that reason alone, Quest is addictive.

   One thing that should be known about Quest mode is that once you start one match, new challenges will constantly keep appearing match after match. Eventually you’ll fight long enough to enter a tournament, but there’s a minor quirk to all of this. When you’re playing regular matches, you’re racking up wins, which puts you on a winning streak. Now, if you decide to quit or you have to stop fighting, you can’t. Well, you can, but you’ll lose your winning streak. Think of this as ‘cashing-out’ in a casino; once you’ve had enough, quit the match, and the game will deposit all of your earnings and items into your inventory. The other way your streak will end is if you lose, obviously. Lastly, you can’t go up in ranks if you’re only fighting against easy challenges; your opponents have to be formidable and within, or above, your achieved rank in order for you to advance. Likewise, fighting harder enemies will yield better rewards, too.

   As far as other features go, there are 18 selectable fighters (you unlock Dural). The two new characters are El Blaze and Eileen. El Blaze is a tiny 5′5 wrestler who resembles the likes of WWE’s Rey Mysterio and Japan’s Ultimo Dragon. He’s got a very free-flowing technique to him, and is an ideal fighter for beginner players. Eileen is another female character to add to the cast. She’s also a fairly easy fighter to get the hang of, and possess quick motions that can easily be comboed. There’s a TV mode that allows you to view the replays you saved, two promo videos, simulated CPU battles, and nothing else remotely superb. The VF.TV mode is pretty useless, honestly; it’s only real purpose serves as a way to watch your saved replays. Last, but not least, VF5 controls superbly well with the SixAxis controller. You can remap the buttons anyway you’d like, and pulling off the moves has been fairly accurate in my experience.

   You know what’s every bit as impressive as the gameplay? The graphics. Virtua Fighter 5 has absurdly detailed visuals, cementing it as the absolute best looking fighting game out there right now. VF5 wows me more so than VF4 did years back, and you may recall how much I ranted about the visuals in VF4 and VF4: Evo. Screenshots really don’t capture the finer details of VF5, because this game is a feat to behold. The character detail is meticulous, defined, and ridiculously well textured. The detail of each fighter’s skin is unquestionably some of the most detailed among any next-generation offering right now. There is simply no question about it, Virtua Fighter 5 is stunning!

   Not only do the fighters themselves boast a magnitude of definition, but some of them look eerily realistic under proper lighting conditions. And the real-time lighting is another visual facet that lends itself to creating such a realistic look; any sources of light in a given environment will realistically reflect or shine on the bodies of fighters - it’s especially noticeable on exposed skin. On top of the beautiful character detail and lighting, the animations are silky smooth, better than what they were in VF4/VF4: Evo. The strands of animation are so fine and complicated, that it doesn’t take long to realize why a game like VF5 wouldn’t be very playable online; they’d have to simplify the entire engine, and half-ass the mechanics.

   Here’s what many will find to be their favorite part of the visuals: the stages. Virtua Fighter 4/VF4: Evo were both known to display some pretty spiffy looking environments, but VF5 takes it to a whole other level. Everything from the colors, to the textures, to the scenery will leave you in awe and amazement. Some of the stages are so gorgeous that they’re distracting: take the Waterfalls, Island, River, or Temple stage, for example. All of the stages are every bit as detailed and splendid as the next, but the brightest and greenest do tend to stand out.

   Lastly, while the Virtua Fighter 5 box mentions only 720p, the game can be actually ran in 1080i and 1080p, as well. To do this, make sure you have 1080i selected, unselect 720p from the PS3’s display settings, and then boot up the game to run it in 1080i. Unselect 720p and 1080i to run the game in 1080p. But know this, while the upscaling to1080i looks perfectly fine (it will actually cure 90% of overscan problems you may have in 720p), 1080p tends to look jaggier and unnatural. If 720p displays without any overscan issues on your TV, then leave it at that. But if you’re experiencing overscan problems, scale up to 1080i and check to see if 1080p will render fine on your TV: this seems to be a ‘your results will vary’ case.

   When it comes down to the audio, I was fairly surprised at just how nice the soundtrack was. I was expecting some second-rate Yngwie Malmsteen guitar rock, but instead the soundtrack demonstrates properties of gothic orchestrated arrangements with organs, violas, marching drums, cymbals, and even a distorted guitar. The tune that accompanies the “Palace” stage is the one in particular I just described. Other tracks include Japanese influenced techno, heavy metal, Japanese influenced rock and more. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, it does practically everything right, because it doesn’t limit itself to cheesy guitar riffs and extraneously long solos: it mixes so many other instruments for a fantastic package.

   But not all of the things are peachy: the vocal presentation is pretty bad in many ways. The game has an announcer that you can toggle on (it’s off by default), but believe me…keep the announcer off. AM2 shouldn’t have even wasted their time with an announcer; he’s really painful to listen to. The voice-overs for the English speaking fighters are so, so bad (i.e. cheesy) it’s hilarious. El Blaze and Lion, in particular, are almost embarrassing to listen to - thankfully you can always skip the fight intros and outros. Aside from that, you have, what seem to be pretty much the same sound effects present in VF5 that were present in VF4. They get the job done, and that’s fine by me — but hopefully the next VF gives us some newer, harder hitting sounds.

   Virtua Fighter 5 does not disappoint. While it may not offer the amount of extras that Tekken does, it does offer the most well thought out fighting mechanics a fighting game could have, and that’s more important than having a bunch of mini-games. Ultimately, you’re paying for the experience of Virtua Fighter 5, not tacked-on extras, and in that regard VF5 delivers in every way. Virtua Fighter 5 doesn’t have game endings, or copious amounts of characters to play with. What it does have is 18 well balanced fighters, that don’t share the same move sets, that can all be customized and the Quest mode. Visually, there is no equal, and based on what we’ve seen of Tekken 6, it doesn’t look like there will be an equal for some time. The soundtrack is terrific, even though the voiceovers aren’t. Likewise, as good as Tekken: Dark Resurrection is, VF5 is still the better fighting game every which way.

   It’s been a while since gamers have been treated to two amazing 3D fighters simultaneously. With Tekken: DR appearing on the PS3 and now Virtua Fighter 5, fighting game fans should find themselves extremely content.

The sport of tennis is slowly becoming more popular in the U.S., and some developers have attempted to make faithful recreations of the real-life game in the past. To this point, the two Top Spin titles have come the closest, but a new contender has arisen in the form of Sega’s Virtua Tennis 3. Of course, we probably shouldn’t be expecting a straight simulation out of this one, but then again, those who play the sport don’t have as many games to select from. There’s no Madden franchise in the world of tennis video games, for example. Therefore, we were all hoping for a semi-realistic yet still wildly entertaining title…we figured it was a realistic expectation, considering the promising previews the game has enjoyed in the past.

Right off the bat, it’s clear this is the prettiest tennis game ever. Its closest competitor is Top Spin 2 on the Xbox 360, but Virtua Tennis 3 distinguishes itself with beautiful character animations and detailed court backdrops. Sega made a point of showing off their intricate character models over the past few months, and thankfully, it’s very clear they weren’t exaggerating. The high point of the visuals certainly centers on the players themselves, and while the rest is darn solid, it’s not quite as refined or crisp as we would’ve liked. However, the graphics shine in glorious 1080p HD resolution - we at least got a chance to see it in 720p HD - so if you have the capability, the game looks that much better. The courts and stadiums aren’t as spectacular as those absurdly detailed players, but it’s still a nice effort.

The sound is where things start to get annoying. Sega has provided us with an outrageously repetitive set of tracks - or rather, “track” - that begin to grate almost immediately. It’s cool to have a rockin’ soundtrack with a game, but first of all, this is tennis, not basketball. Secondly, if they wanted music to play a major role in the game’s presentation, perhaps they could’ve included at least one new track here and there. The voice-over announcers are fine and not too intrusive during the practice sessions, and while the music is well orchestrated, it’s just far too invasive. Turning it off is a better option, and that’s never good news for any game. The sound effects are better, but again, not as diverse as we anticipated. All in all, the sound is the worst part of Virtua Tennis 3, which means the game doesn’t suffer too badly.

It doesn’t suffer because, as a sports title (and just like most video games), the gameplay remains paramount. And above all else, this game is both accessible and fun, as anyone can sit down and have an enjoyable experience. It doesn’t take much time to get the hang of the relatively simple controls, and if you’re at all familiar with the Top Spin games, you’re already a step ahead of the game. Sega institutes a similar philosophy in Virtua Tennis 3: hold down the button - whichever one you’ve chosen for your groundstroke - a little longer, and before the ball gets there, to help you prepare for the shot. The result will be a much harder and more effective return, and herein lies the key to success in the game. The only problem is, once you’ve mastered that, there isn’t much left to even learn…let alone master.

As we said in the intro, we probably shouldn’t expect a tennis simulation from the game, and after playing for a mere hour, it became painfully obvious this wasn’t a simulator; not by any stretch of the imagination. While your character “levels up” in multiple tennis disciplines via plenty of practice sessions, you’re not exactly practicing the same way the pros do. No, you’ll be defending the court from attacking aliens, popping balloons, knocking down barrels, playing “court curling,” assaulting bowling pins with your serve, and even playing groundstroke bingo. These little mini-games serve as your training, and while they’re a little childish and certainly arcade-style, they do force you to hone your skills.

Furthermore, Top Spin 2, which actually is a simulator, did very much the same thing. This is a good news-bad news situation, and thankfully, the good outweighs the bad. The bad? You’ve got to spend way too much time early on in your World Tour (the career mode, essentially) bouncing back and forth between these bizarre training sessions. The difficulty is also extremely erratic; ranging from so simple a monkey could succeed to so horribly challenging; you want to slit your own wrists. And it spikes all over the map, too. But the good news is that you’re appropriately rewarded for your efforts, as your character’s abilities increase quickly, which directly impacts your effectiveness on the court. The growth of your player might not be quite as visible or dramatic as it is in Top Spin 2, but it’s there, and nicely implemented.

Unfortunately, the higher-level training challenges represent the peak of the game’s difficulty. Provided you take the time to enhance your player, none of the tournaments will give you much trouble, even after playing for many hours and facing down the toughest competitors on the highest levels. The Exhibition and Tournament modes are even easier; we put the difficulty to “Very Hard” and still won an Exhibition match without losing a single point. Granted, we had access to the best of the best, but then again, we were supposed to be playing against the best of the best, too. In fact, you’ll ultimately spend more time - especially early on - struggling with particularly tricky training challenges than playing in any real tournaments. Once you get past the first two or three hours, things open up a bit more, but even then, the challenge rarely gets very high.

Still, the control you have over your player is great, and that control gets significantly better the more you train. There’s a minor issue you may frequently experience when getting used to the game, where the player dives for a ball you didn’t want him to dive for. This happens when you’re preparing for the stroke, as you should be, but if you begin your preparation too far away from the ball, the player wants to dive. The other issue - which is also minor - is that your preparation sometimes isn’t even acknowledged by your player, and you just stand there dumbly. Again, it has something to do with your timing, but it happens a bit too frequently. Other than that, though, the control you have throughout the game, from movement to groundstrokes to volleying to serving, is mostly excellent. You’ll never feel like you’re at a disadvantage because you don’t have a grasp on the controls; in fact, you’ll generally feel as if you’ve got a firm handle on the gameplay no matter what you’re doing.

While the game is far too easy, that also means it’s very accessible, as we mentioned before. You don’t have to be a hardcore tennis fan who wants to learn every tiny minutia of the game to succeed, and while the real-life player in this reviewer hates that, it’s not a problem for everyone. At the very least, it makes Virtua Tennis 3 a great party game, despite the lack of online play. Up to four players can sit down and have some round-robin singles fun or a doubles entertainment, and regardless of each player’s skill, you’ll all be having a blast within a few short minutes. But we just can’t give the game props for offering a very deep single-player career mode, which is usually the bread and butter of any sports game. You won’t be losing much, which is probably good news for some people, but you might grow bored before hitting the elite #1 position.

In the end, Virtua Tennis 3 falls a little shy of what we had expected, but it still delivers a solid tennis experience. It remains far too easy on just about every level, and that’s not helped by the erratic difficulty in those silly challenges, which are over-emphasized throughout the first few hours of play. You just don’t spend enough time in tournament mode, and when you do, you feel like some sort of court God. But on the flip side, the control is about as good as it can be, the graphics are great, your hard work in the training pays off at every turn, and there’s nothing better for multiplayer offline tennis fun. But for tennis fans looking for a realistic video game experience, they’re going to have to stick with Top Spin 2, despite some of its flaws. For the more casual who don’t mind a lack of challenge and a less-than-engrossing schedule in the career mode, they might want to give Virtua Tennis 3 a try.

Samurai Showdown has always been a sort of …different fighter. It’s always the one forgotten when people list their favorite fighting games, and some gamers have never even heard of the series. I personally enjoyed the series, even if it wasn’t as much as Street Fighter or Tekken. It had a very unique feel compared to other 2D fighting games.

With that being said, I was very disappointed with Samurai Showdown V. I was expecting a slightly updated look and sound with the classic controls I knew and loved. After some time with the game it seemed to have taken a step back - every aspect of the game is far below average. It doesn’t have much to offer, either, aside from the typical Arcade Mode and multiplayer modes.

Arcade Mode is what you would expect from any fighter: fight one enemy after another with some short story sequences until you finish the game. There is also a Practice mode with a good amount of options to tweak so you can practice just the way you want. This way you can practice your moves on an opponent that won’t fight back, allowing you to perfect your strategy for when you head online.

Samurai Showdown V features an online mode where you can hop on Xbox Live and test your skill against other samurai around the world. Since fighting games are based on competing, adding the online function was a great idea. For gamers like me that can’t find someone to fight locally, the ability to challenge other players online really saves the replay value of a game for me, as well as other gamers in my position.

One thing you notice from the very beginning is how low the quality is on things like text, backgrounds, and sprites. Everything seems to have a really rough edge, like it belongs on an older game system. At the end of the Xbox’s lifespan one would expect a 2D game to look pretty crisp I would think. The backgrounds are appropriate, but still could be improved. We were seeing beautifully animated 3D backgrounds back on the Dreamcast, why can’t we have them on our Xbox?

The sound is a mixed bag, featuring some very moody and appropriate music as well as tunes that don’t fit at all. Some characters have great sound effects for their attacks, while others have an annoying sidekick that emits unbearable squeals during the entire fight. So at times I loved it, and other times I couldn’t stand it.

There are plenty of fighters to choose from in Samurai Showdown V, each with their own unique feel, weapons, and attacks. Samurai Showdown does a great job of providing diversity in their characters. Each character has a different speed, jump distance, dodge speed, and size – not many fighting games feature this kind of variety in their playable characters. There are 26 characters in all, and each one has 4 different costumes.

The gameplay in Samurai Showdown V is very deep, and beginners are going to have a hard time at first. If you’re familiar with the learning curve in Guilty Gear, Samurai Showdown is similar. There are not only moves to learn for each character, but other strategies that all characters share. Once you get a good feel for the game the fights become very entertaining, but at first they may feel slow and frustrating.

Samurai Showdown V is a fun game, but not fun enough to overcome its flaws. I would have a hard time recommending this game to anyone that isn’t already a fan of Samurai Showdown, but if you enjoy 2D fighters and have patience I believe that you could enjoy this game. I consider myself a fighting game fan with patience, and I still had a hard time seeing through the bad graphics and annoying sound. Maybe if there were more gameplay options, unlockables, or any other objective to work toward the good would outweigh the bad, but I’m afraid in this situation it just doesn’t. 

Review Scoring Details for SAMURAI SHODOWN 5
 

Gameplay: 6.5
Samurai Showdown is a series with a steep learning curve, and the gameplay mechanics are very different from most fighting games, so it doesn’t always give off a good first impression. If you take the time to learn a character the game can be a lot of fun, but not a lot of gamers will do that if they don’t like the gameplay to begin with.

Graphics: 4.0
I never like to say this about any game, but Samurai Showdown V doesn’t look good at all. The character sprites are extremely rough around the edges, the animations are a bit choppy, the backgrounds are plain, and it just isn’t appealing to look at. It doesn’t look horrible, but bad enough to distract from the actual gameplay.

Sound: 6.0
As I mentioned above, this was a hard shot to call. Some of the music is perfect, while other songs seem way too out of place. And while some fighters sound great, others will drive you bonkers.

Difficulty: Hard
Even on the easiest setting new players can have trouble with this game. The learning curve is what makes the game difficult, and it may take the player some time to get used to the controls.

Concept: 8.0
Bringing online to a Samurai Showdown game was something the series needed. It can be hard to find a fellow SS player, so having a place where they can all get together and play is a great thing.

Multiplayer: 6.8
Multiplayer saves the day! Having a competitive buddy to play with can make any game bearable, as long as you’re both into it. Plus, with Xbox Live being the main focus of SSV, multiplayer is what steals the show here. 

Overall: 6.0
Unless you’re a big fan of Samurai Showdown, be careful with this one. Even if you love 2D fighting games, this one is not like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. Samurai Showdown has its own distinct flavor, and it can sometimes be too sour if you aren’t expecting it.

News about Wii outselling either Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 has been commonplace to the point that we decided at megagames not to report them unless the wind changes.

More interesting is the weekly sales analysis which indicates that the sales gap is only growing larger.