by Thierry Nguyen
Let me tell you right now: Justice is "that one BioWare NPC" in Dragon Age: Origins -- Awakening. You know who I mean; how in every BioWare game one of your party members utterly breaks out to become a bizarre and awesome character. For the Baldur's Gate franchise, it was Minsc, the insane ranger. For Knights of the Old Republic, it was the sociopathic assassin droid HK-47. For Mass Effect, it was Wrex, the talking dinosaur wielding a shotgun, and for Mass Effect 2, it seems to be Mordin, the singing scientist. For the original Dragon Age: Origins, it was the curious golem Shale, and so for Awakening, it's definitely the ghost-from-another-dimension-trapped-within-a-medieval-badass's-body, Justice. Besides introducing another great character to the Short List of Badass BioWare NPCs, Awakening adds five other party members (two per class total, and only one is a returning character from Origins); an increased level cap; several skills, specializations, and talents for said level cap; additional items (and tiers that indicate quality; Origins stopped at Tier 7, and you can now have Tier 9 items); new enemy types (including monsters that look like a cross between giant spiders and the monsters from Critters); and a 20-25 hour campaign. It's basically the Dragon Age 1.5 that you knew you'd be getting, as opposed to a, "you expected Dragon Age 2 but actually get Dragon Age 1.5" situation.
Perfect Dark XBLA Review
by Scott Sharkey
Either you've played Perfect Dark before, or you haven't. Most readers who find their way here probably have, and the ones who haven't, well, you'll probably need some serious convincing to play a decade-old game that pretty cheerfully ignores the innovations the FPS genre gained from games like, say, Half-Life, and came out on a console that wasn't exactly known as the cutting edge of graphical holyshit-osity. For that first bunch it's really easy to say, yeah, with the HD upgrade Perfect Dark on XBLA looks every bit as good as you remember it. Which, if you actually pop in the cart these days, you'll realize is a hell of a lot better than it actually looked back in the day. Between the replaced textures and multiplayer over Live (in splitscreen, no less) this is a great way to re-enjoy a game you already love. It deserves that love. You should be proud to love it. More so now that it's been touched up without losing a single bit of its original character. On the other hand, Perfect Dark is old as hell and likely to alienate anyone who cut their teeth on games that came after. If you're one of those people...I'm sorry, but I'll be damned if I can think of a reason to say that this is kind of a major gap in your videogaming experience that you absolutely have to go back and fill in. Unlike some other genres, most first-person shooters are pretty far from timeless. We can't look back on, say, Tetris, and think, "Man, this would be way the hell better with snappier graphics, more block shapes, and an epic storyline that makes us question the nature of our humanity or whatever."
Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Episode 69
by IGN Staff
Craig and his cohorts jump into the recording booth for some Nintendo (Sony) chat.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.15.10
by IGN Staff
Modern Warfare 2's pricey map pack, Crackdown 2 gets a release date, Insomniac goes multiplatform, and our Giveaway Winner.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.12.10
by IGN Staff
360 wins the month of February, new Mass Effect 2 DLC in April, New Deus Ex unveiled , and our Friday Giveaway!
Yakuza 3 Review
by Eric Neigher
Legend has it that the term "yakuza" derives from the classic Japanese card game hanafuda. Of the many combinations of cards you can draw as a hand, the worst is eight-nine-three -- pronounced, in an old dialect of Japanese, "ya-ku-za." In order to win the game with such a hand, you would need a combination of trickery, luck, and courage -- qualities that the gangsters who took the name as their own held in high esteem. Despite being the worst of society, they would use those strengths to attain power, wealth, and respect. Centuries later, the U.S. version of Sega's Yakuza 3 has been dealt an equally bad hand. Released without several of the features of its Japanese counterpart, Yakuza 3's Western release has generated enough nerd rage to intimidate the Incredible Hulk, and has suffered from a bungled, half-assed marketing effort that has failed to engage anyone beyond the series' cult following. Nevertheless -- and pay attention now, because this is important -- Yakuza 3 has what it takes to overcome the hype and go down as one of the PS3's all-time great titles, but only if you will give it a chance.
MLB 10: The Show Review
by Andrew Fitch
In videogames, just as in sports, competition's really the key to success. When you've got a rival challenging your every move, you're simply a lot more motivated to get the job done right. The year-to year competition with Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer helped propel EA's FIFA series to worldwide success as the top footballing sim, while many observers feel that Madden hasn't shown the same innovation since the NFL 2K franchise bit the dust. Last year, MLB: The Show faced competition in theory, but against a buggy, broken MLB 2K9 -- one of the worst baseball releases in history -- it wasn't much of a contest. And that might have lulled Sony into a false sense of security -- while MLB 10: The Show is still the baseball sim to beat, the competition's certainly much closer this year. For example, while I didn't personally experience any game-breaking bugs in The Show's franchise mode, some users have reported issues such as randomly completed trades and crashes in specific stadiums. I simmed the first half of my franchise season in order to speed things along and noticed some curious results myself: At the All-Star break, real-life San Francisco Giants ace (and the Cy Young winner two years running) Tim Lincecum stood at 2-10 with an ERA over 5, while underachieving Barry Zito had laughably transformed into the ace of the staff at 10-3, with an ERA well below 3. Maybe The Show just hates Lincecum for gracing the cover of MLB 2K9?
Presented By:
IGN UK Podcast #25
by IGN Staff
Recorded before a live studio audience.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.11.10
by IGN Staff
Sony unveils their motion controller, Gran Turismo 5 out this year, Monkey Island 2 gets a remake.
IGN_Strategize Video Podcast: Final Fantasy XIII
by IGN Staff
Basic combat and paradigm role strategies in FFXIII.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.10.10
by IGN Staff
OnLive is fully unveiled, new Modern Warfare 2 map-packs are set to hit the 360, a new Battlestar MMO, and Street Fighter comes to iPhone.
Scrap Metal Review
by Eric Neigher
Banging things into other things has been a major form of entertainment since the pilot episode of "Caveman Jackass" back in 20,000 B.C. There's just something endlessly appealing about controlled destruction. So, if you're stupefied by slaughter, dumbfounded by demolition, and enthralled by evisceration, you're sure to be tickled by Slick Entertainment's new XBLA title, Scrap Metal. Sitting somewhere between a straight-up arcade action title and a lightweight racing sim, Scrap Metal has drawn comparisons to Rare's R.C. Pro-Am -- but the similarity to that old classic is mostly skin deep. Really, Scrap Metal's casual-game veneer hides a robust (if somewhat overly sensitive) physics engine, more levels than a Byzantine ziggurat, and a grip of imaginative set pieces. Both multiplayer (Scrap Metal offers local and online) and single-player are challenging without being too intense, offer plenty of tweaking without being overly detailed, and feature charmingly over-the-top graphics.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.09.10
by IGN Staff
Final Fantasy XIII is finally here, Harmonix announces Rock Band 3, learn to play REAL instruments in a new music game, and we debut the final new fighter in Super Street Fighter 4.
Command Prompt Podcast, Episode 78
by IGN Staff
Everything we know about Civilization V.
Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Episode 68
by IGN Staff
Sexy Levi Buchanan lends his voice for this week's episode.
God of War 3 Review
by Matt Leone
Debates over its final boss fight aside, God of War 2's ending made for good theater: Greek Kratos rode on the titan Gaia's back as she scaled Mount Olympus in pursuit of a gods vs. titans face-off with Zeus and friends. It served as a big cliffhanger -- literally or not, depending on your taste for puns -- which set up God of War 3 as the final game in the trilogy. Looking back on that ending now, it seems clear that the developers knew what they had in mind for the third game all along, but at the time it left a lot open to interpretation. Would it be an entire game on the side of the mountain? Or might Kratos participate in some kind of War of the Monsters-style spin-off?
Game Scoop! Podcast, Episode 155
by IGN Staff
A Super Fan joins us to chat about the Activision/Infinity Ward debacle and GDC.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.05.10
by IGN Staff
Portal 2 confirmed by Valve, the iPad hits stores this April, a possible Sony iPad killer, and enter for a chance to win C&C4 for PC.
Lunar: Silver Star Harmony Review
by Justin Haywald
Lunar: The Silver Star has seen several remakes over the years, but the last time the series went portable, in Lunar: Dragon Song, it flopped commercially and critically. Regardless, Game Arts had remade the original Lunar again, and this time for PSP, as Lunar: Silver Star Harmony; as it should, this version hews closely to the PlayStation's Silver Star Story Complete, with all of that game's excellent, animated cut-scenes. But other than that, from the overworld maps to the backgrounds, the game has been remade, effectively recapturing all the things that made the original so good (and also retaining a few of the things that made it so frustrating). The writing is more subdued, though it still tries to be funny -- you'll read the occasional anachronistic line about a character using a phone or something else ridiculous to try and get a laugh. But the team at XSeed excised most of the pop-culture references for a more straightforward translation.
Shoot 1UP Review
by Andrew Hayward
Shoot 1UP is described by Mommy's Best Games as a shoot-em-up for "normal gamers," but "normal" is not a term I'd quickly associate with the developer's output. After all, its first Xbox Live Indie release was Weapon of Choice, an over-the-top, Contra-like shooter pumped full of gore, outlandish weaponry, and heavy metal music. And Shoot 1UP, with hand-drawn tapestries populated by pies, beached whales, and a large robotic woman with metallic, projectile breasts that fire waves of glowing bullets, strays just as far from the ordinary. In a genre notoriously targeted at the hardest of hardcore, Shoot 1UP is an anomaly. Sure, you can recreate the traditional "bullet hell" experience -- just select Serious difficulty, kick the game speed up to 200%, and go hog wild. But for those of us without the patience or skill set to endure even relatively mild shmups, Shoot 1UP presents something fresh -- a more action-packed entry that scales wonderfully between casual observers and aficionados.
Game Scoop! TV Video Podcast: IGNSolved Mysteries: Activision vs. Infinity Ward
by IGN Staff
IGNSolved Mysteries: WTF is going on at Activision & Infinity Ward?
IGN UK Podcast #24
by IGN Staff
The last throes of youth.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.04.10
by IGN Staff
Ex-Infinity Ward founders sue Activision, SOCOM 4 is announced, and expect to see a new Lara Croft game later this year.
Podcast Beyond, Episode 128
by IGN Staff
Clements is lost, but that can't stop the news.
Battlefield Bad Company 2: IGN Strategize Video Podcast
by IGN Staff
Advanced squad tactics in Bad Company 2.
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.03.10
by IGN Staff
A new Halo: Reach trailer awes fans, Portal 2 may be coming soon, & Itigaki is back!
Daily Fix Video Podcast: 3.02.10
by IGN Staff
Infinity Ward in chaos, Sony acquires Media Molecule, & Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents.
