Game Reviews

GAMES BLAZBLUE: CALAMITY TRIGGER Developer: Arc System Works Publisher: Aksys Games Platform: PSP Players: 1-2 MSRP: $29.99 First things first: this isn't the new version of Blazblue. That's Continuum Shift, and it'll be out in North America later this year. This is just a PSP port of the original BlazBlue, though it's not completely reused material. There's a new mode called “Legion” where players navigate a map, fight teams of enemies, and build an army from defeated foes (which, sadly, don't include any cameos from the Guilty Gear games). The game's hyper-flashy look was scaled down for the PSP, resulting in lower-resolution visuals that…well, they don't look all that great. BlazBlue's appeal relies heavily on the visual punch of, say, a superhero ninja slamming into a gothic vampire's electric cat-chairs, so the game might lose something. Still, the gameplay's intact, or at least as intact as it can be with the PSP's control pad. And hey, it's an achievement to put this on the PSP at all, right? Get Excited If: You didn't mind the Game Boy Advance port of Guilty Gear X.

CALLING Developer: Hudson Publisher: Hudson Platform: Wii Players: 1 MSRP: $39.99 Still mad over Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse not getting a North American release? Even more mad over Juon: The Grudge: Haunted House Simulator being a poor substitute? Well, there's always Calling, Hudson's Wii-based tribute to the J-horror film genre. Seemingly inspired by the film Kairo (or Pulse), Calling shows a cursed website's effects on several playable characters, each of whom pokes around various buildings and uncovers clues regarding the site's victims. The Wii remote functions as a flashlight and a cell phone, with ominous calls coming from the controller's little speaker. The game relies on the same gloomy, sudden-scare style as many j-horror films, so it might not suit those who aren't frightened by a glare from a ghostly schoolgirl. Then again, what doesn't work in a movie sometimes works in a game, and preview videos show that Calling might work just as well as the Fatal Frame titles. Get Excited If: Fatal Frame scared you worse than Silent Hill.

FINAL FANTASY XIII Developer: Square Publisher: Square Enix Platform: PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 Players: 1 MSRP: $59.99 Oh yeah, this thing. As commonplace as it is to see Final Fantasy on a game cover today, it's still a major event when a properly numbered Final Fantasy arrives, giving fans around the globe reasons to hate it. Each new Final Fantasy enrages about half of its potential fan base, though Final Fantasy XIII does its best to capture the same glowing, anime-sci-fi fusion as Final Fantasy X (while straying from the subdued, sepia-toned realm of Final Fantasy XII). Its world is an exotic fantasy spread run by bizarre deities, and this apparently worries the residents of a floating city so much that they hunt down residents who are marked to serve those deities. Caught up in this war between humans and gods are the ex-military heroine Lightning, the somewhat douchey rebel leader Snow, halfway orphaned kid Hope (yes, Hope), outcast teenager Vanille, coolly efficient warrior Yun Fang, and easygoing marksman Sazh. Oh, and the baby Chocobo living in Sazh's afro. It's all in the mold of belt-covered, neon-glowing future pulp established by Final Fantasy artist Tetsuya Nomura, though the game's battle system goes in a new direction. Players can arrange multiple commands for characters to unleash all in one go, and the entire flow of battle depends on the lead character, whose death ends the game instantly. There's a lot to anger the more sensitive fans, but it's still a Final Fantasy through and through. Get Excited If: You liked Final Fantasy X, loved Final Fantasy VII, and didn't like Final Fantasy XII that much.

YAKUZA 3 Developer: Sega Publisher: Sega Platform: PlayStation 3 Players: 1 MSRP: $54.99 One might feel bad for portraying Sega as a company that's failed constantly since 1993, but this Yakuza 3 mess really plays up that angle. After playing a frustrating will-we-or-won't-we game with the North American version of Yakuza 3, Sega finally announced it and then scheduled it for the first week of March, when Final Fantasy XIII will overshadow just about everything. Of course, Yakuza fans would still buy it without complaint, but Sega then decided to excise at least two of the game's diversions: visiting hostess clubs and answering Japanese history questions. Mini-games are really half the fun of Yakuza, in which a gold-hearted mobster named Kiryu explores everything the sordid underworld has to offer. The history games are perhaps inessential and would require a lot of translation work or rewriting, but the same can't be said for the hostess sections, in which Kiryu drinks and chats with club women who aren't necessarily just pretending to like him. They were minor distractions, but they were fun pieces of the street-tough lifestyle in Yakuza and Yakuza 2. That aside, Yakuza 3 retains a lot of what made the first two games enjoyable: a mixture of fairly in-depth street brawling and gritty crime drama, though the hardened Kiryu is running an orphanage this time around. Get Excited If: You're just glad to have Yakuza 3 in a language you can understand.

Also This Week: Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition arrives on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with its extra chapters and costumes, while the collected Sam and Max 2: Beyond Time and Space comes to the Wii.