PS3 New Games

Seven months. That’s how much extra time EA Bright Light has had to tweak and polish Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince after its release date was pushed back thanks to the movie’s theatrical slippage. The time could have been spent perfecting one of the most valuable game licenses. …

The current reinvention of Transformers is one of those things that make it hard to be a geek some days. The previous Transformers film took everything we loved about the original cartoon and toys and rendered it stupid – yet made something like 700 million dollars – and the game was just shy of an abomination. This time around, the movie is arguably even worse. Seriously, gold-toothed, urban transformers who can’t read? …

After apocalyptic future worlds, there can be few settings less original than the Old West. Chuck in a desert, some dueling and a few authentic guns and you have yourselves a game, right? Well Techland don’t subscribe to that – Bound in Blood, like its predecessor, has ideas coming out the wazoo. …

The Guitar Hero series has usually had a stellar track list – seriously, how many people would be willing to shred out to a ridiculous looking plastic guitar if the tunes were lame? So on one hand, it makes sense for publisher Activision to release this compilation, which collects 48 songs from five previous Guitar Hero titles (Guitar Heroes 1 through 3 as well as Rocks the ‘80s and Aerosmith). …

Few games make the process of throwing and landing a punch as satisfying as Fight Night Round 4. Knowing that you have timed the angle of your fist to catch your opponent so sweetly their head reels back with the force is a constant joy.

Back in 2004 EA introduced Total Punch Control, a system that replicated the shape of a jab, hook, uppercut or cross depending on how you moved the right analogue stick. …

Though it admittedly doffs its cap to Nintendo’s wonderful Pikmin, Overlord II is precisely the kind of inventive title we should be crying out for in this sometimes derivative day and age.

This sequel has opted to consolidate rather than innovate though, with most of the facets that made the first game such a lark simply emboldened upon here. …

During the demo appointments leading up to Undisputed’s release, we knew we were seeing something good. The tactical, yet undeniably brutal sport (if it’s recognized by many state athletic commissions then yes, it is a sport) is rendered the best it’s ever been in digital form. …

It’s funny, really, ‘Ghostbusters: The Video Game’ is a bit of a misnomer. It’s Ghostbusters, yes, and it’s clearly a video game because here it is loading up in our PS3 under ‘Game’. But this is, without question, Ghostbusters 3 ‘the movie’. As a game it’s far from perfect, but in a very refreshing turn of events we can confidently say that, for once, that isn’t the point. …

You can really sum up Cross Edge’s endless problems in a single sentence: It feels like it was designed in a Japanese boardroom. And that’s because it likely was. When you’ve got a role-playing game featuring characters from Capcom’s Darkstalkers, Nippon Ichi’s Disgaea, Idea Factory’s Spectral Souls, and Gust’s Ar Tonelico and Atelier franchises (among others), chances are you’re dealing with a lot of behind-the-scenes politics. …

It’s amazing, but true – Trash Panic has the same maddeningly addictive qualities as Tetris. The concept is simple, there’s a bin on screen and objects are dropped or ‘smashed’ from above into it. The junk piles up and you need to keep smashing bikes into TVs and chairs into boats in order to crumple it down and so leave space above for more trash. …

If you’ve ever played 2005’s The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (or the lukewarm 2008 follow-up from Sega), then you know that its “hero” aspect is largely inconsequential. Who cares about saving puny humans when you can make boxing gloves out of their cars and smash their buildings into rubble? …

Some things – like the economy – get worse; others – like your ‘lady’ prowess – can only get better; but some things can’t manage the distinction of either. Some things – like the Tiger Woods PGA Tour titles – just stay exactly the same.

Not in the history of EA Sports has the gulf between two annual revisions of a series been so small. …

FUEL is a big game. Like huge. The overall racing area covers roughly 5,000 square miles of terrain, from icy mountain tops, to arid desert lowlands. It’s ten (maybe twenty) times the size of GTA IV. The epic scope of what developers Asobo have created is incredible, but at the same time there’s a whiff of quantity over quality. …

There’s more chance of Andy Murray cracking a smile and sorting out his big hair than there is of spotting what’s new about Virtua Tennis 2009 when you first start playing. For the past ten years the series has consistently played an excellent game of tennis, and while the player likenesses get better and sharper, everything else has an air of ‘if it ain’t broke…’ about it. …

You know what’s annoying? When you’re driving a mission-critical vehicle in GTA and somehow manage to roll it, only for it to burst into flames and explode. This game doesn’t do that. In Red Faction you can flip any car, buggy, or juggernaut back onto its wheels with a few quick nudges. It’s a small feature. Tiny. Wee, even. But there it is. …