The original EyePet game was a novel pet simulation experience using the new PlayStation Move controls to let young gamers raise and play with a virtual pet on their PS3. We gave it a very good review on the basis of being a fun experience that used the new (at the time) Move capabilities fairly well. But since then, things have changed. Move has been around for a while, family and child-friendly titles have proliferated, and the bar has been raised quite a bit. So does the sequel, EyePet and Friends, rise to the challenge?

The Parent Perspective

Not a lot has changed with the formula with EyePet & Friends. Some of the activities may be different, but when all is said and done, it’s still a fun pet simulation game. Along with the basic fundamentals of caring for a pet, there are also many activities you can engage in with your virtual pet, including a number of minigames that can be unlocked in the Toy Box. I would have liked it better if you weren’t given access to only one game off the bat. The rest have to be unlocked with Pet Tokens that you earn by doing most basic tasks in the game. At the rate that tokens are dispensed, it will take a bit of time and/or repetition to access all the possible minigames, meaning the game could be a bit of a grind.

If your kids are the creative type, there are loads of customization options and other ways to unleash their creativity. You can customize toys, outfits, stickers, cards, and many other objects. It’s a significant part of EyePet & Friends to be sure.

There’s a good amount of pointing required to do a lot of things. Younger gamers sometimes have difficulty with this so be prepared to help out littler ones or be ready for a bit of frustration. Pointing is done like you would with a Wii Remote and works just fine.

Your background video results may vary. And likely will. Seriously, what lighting did they have to pull this off?

There isn’t a lot of reading required, and a voiceover guy will provide a very verbose explanation of any activities the first time you try them. Unfortunately, the game won’t let you do much while he talks, and older gamers may not want to hear the whole speech on how to put a new hat on your little creature. Fortunately, you can press the triangle button to skip the description. This does make the game more accessible to the non-readers.

Finally, the biggest change with the sequel is that you can have two EyePets going at the same time, meaning (hopefully) no fighting over the controller as each player can try the activity at hand. For cleaning/feeding/etc. type activities, you work on your own while the games are typically a bit competitive. Both players perform the same activity together, so be prepared for some arguing over what activity to do next. Folks who see the glass half full will look at this as a good chance for kids to learn how to share. Might be best to have an older sibling (or parent) take the lead and let the younger gamer play along. Unfortunately, there is no drop-in, drop-out. You have to choose one or two players and stick with your choice. Quitting the game is the only way to change number of players.

The Review

There is one significant problem that really hurts the experience. And it might be exacerbated even more for kids. The pacing of the game is, quite frankly, terrible. This is because every time you do a new activity, you’ll be graced with horribly long load times. And by long, it can be 30 seconds or more. To give you an example, when you come back to the game, your pet tends to be automatically hungry and dirty. So that’s a separate load sequence to get to the initial interaction with your pet to be told to take care of them, another to load up the washing sequence, and another before feeding. Then another when you finally get to do something. Your kids will spend a LOT of time waiting. This tends to be “not a good thing.” I really don’t know how this wasn’t addressed or if it couldn’t be, but it takes away from the fun. And to add insult to injury, there are cute animations that usually go across the screen to keep you entertained, and there’s framerate issues with them. The PlayStation 3 is a powerful piece of hardware. How does this happen?

If you've got creative types, you'll have lots of fun with this game with all the customization.

Speaking of framerate, the addition of the second player sometimes comes at a cost. The added animation seems to cause framerate issues when two pets are on the screen on occasion. It’s especially bad during cleaning. Like, it crawls.

An issue that didn’t (or couldn’t) get fixed from the first game is the fact that the augmented reality aspect of the game gets diminished somewhat by the high resolution pets playing on the terrible backdrop provided by the PlayStation Eye camera. I found better lighting improved the visuals a bit, so keep that in mind if you’re going to pick this game up.

There will be times where control will be an issue. Getting your pet to do certain tricks with the Trick Wand is frustrating. The game will show you what pattern to draw with it, but be extremely picky about doing it perfectly. Plus, since the minigames pretty much all involve pointing at the screen and using buttons to control, it results in some games having really clunky controls.

Oh, and be warned. If you go to the EyePet Store, there are two things to note. One, it will give you the opportunity to buy DLC. Two, it effectively ends the game. Exiting the store actually takes you back to the main title screen and you have to reselect the number of players, then rewash and feed your pet. That’s pretty clunky. If you’re going to offer a store in-game, it’s got to be more seamless than that.

I’m bagging on the game’s problems quite a bit, but it does have moments of fun. I don’t think it’s added a lot to the formula, beyond adding another player and adding some activities, but when they are actually involved in activities and not waiting for them, your kids will certainly have fun. The little pets are adorable, they do cute things, and you can dress them up. And they do a fairly good job of interacting with what you’re doing, so it isn’t all bad.

The wait for the minigames is almost worth it.

The GamerPops Recommendation

EyePet & Friends is a fun but flawed kid and family experience. It’s not a full-fledged game so much as it is a pet simulator with some bonus content. Unfortunately, the bar has been raised on quality family gaming experiences since its predecessor came out, and this game has sort of stayed the course more than anything. Sure, adding the second player is a welcome addition and an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the pacing is ruined by the long load times and there are some other technical issues that frankly shouldn’t be manifesting in a second effort. It won’t be so bad as a value title perhaps, and the fun of interacting with a virtual pet may be enough for you to overlook its problems. But at its launch price, I’d expect something a bit more polished.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone

Content descriptors: No Descriptors

Rating summary: This is a pet-care simulation game in which players can feed, bathe, and play with whimsical animals called Eyepets. Players can engage in a variety of mini-games with their Eyepet: performing tricks, customizing their appearances, and monitoring their health/well-being.

Have you ever played The Sims 3 and thought to yourself, “This is great and all, but wouldn’t it be great if I could play as a dog?” Then for you, the one person in the world who probably asked that question, The Sims 3: Pets fulfills your dreams and more. For the rest of the world, The Sims 3: Pets is an interesting effort that expands on the world of The Sims 3, but doesn’t quite convince gamers that a console Sims can top the PC version.

Parent Perspective

Despite the presence of adorable and playful pets, The Sims 3: Pets isn’t a game for kids or most teens, despite its T rating. Yes, there’s some fairly mild sexual content and language, but it’s not sexual content that’s the issue here. It’s the regular content, which is geared, in pace and challenge, to a more obsessive casual player. Teens can certainly play the game and those who can appreciate this style of gameplay will have fun, but they shouldn’t expect action or excitement here.

Because this is a life sim, that also means death is in play. And not necessarily a cartoonish or typical video game death, but the end of your Sim or Sim pet’s life. You can expect a long life filled with plenty of adventures and activities first though, but it’s doubtful younger games will have the patience to last long enough in the game for their characters to die.

The Review

Depending on your appreciation for The Sims, you’re probably either going to love this game or hate it. If you love handling the minutia of your Sims’ lives, then you are definitely the right kind of gamer. But for most, the combination of obsessively detailed gameplay and a rather slow-moving experience will not be engaging enough to draw them into a fairly hefty game.

And that’s not a flaw specific to this game, as it’s just the way the entire Sims franchise has been structured. You have a variety of smaller goals and challenges, as well as larger mysteries that string together a series of quests, but there’s nothing really driving you to complete anything thanks to the game’s completely open gameplay.

Want to go wander around? Go for it. Dig up someone’s lawn? Have at it. Try to see how long you can go without peeing on something? That’s an option as well. If it wasn’t such an obvious part of the game’s design, I would think that maybe aimless wandering with the occasional diversion into pointless destruction is a fairly accurate representation of life as a pet. Throw in stealing food off the counter, and you pretty much have my family’s beloved dog.

Yet, while playable pets are introduced, the game doesn’t go all in and make this all about the dogs and cats, instead coming off more as a fairly expensive expansion of the core gameplay with some extra pet content added in. Essentially, new animal characters are subbed in for Sims, with new interactions and objectives, but ultimately it’s just a variation on the gameplay, rather than really trying to reinterpret the game from a pet’s perspective.

To an unfortunate degree, the game still revolves around the humans, so even while you are playing as the pet, your actions are still connected to the humans in your lives, and dependant on what they are doing. If your humans go to work and leave you home alone, the aimlessness sets in, and not in a good way.

What the game does offer is a large sandbox of options to be explored, though many of them feel more like chores than exciting options. There are quests and adventures to be had, citizens to interact and befriend, a family to love, and a whole city to be peed on. How you choose to do that, or whether you choose to do that is completely up to you.

Despite a fairly extensive tutorial, The Sims 3: Pets is not the easiest game to get into, especially for newcomers. With tried-and-true gameplay that will be instantly familiar to long-time players of the series, it asks a lot of others to figure out what all the icons, interaction options, and on-screen elements mean. It takes a while to get used to everything, but practice and repetition is the key.

What becomes immediately clear however is that the game’s interface was obviously designed for a keyboard/mouse combo, and while a valiant effort was made to make a console controller work, this is a PC game, and if you can play it on a PC instead, you probably should. And that’s without factoring in the fact that the PC version gives you more pet options beyond just dogs and cats.

The Kinect version features a number of voice commands, for your Sims and your Sim pets, but it’s completely optional, and quite honestly, ignorable.

It’s also worth noting that this game definitely needs to be installed to your Xbox’s hard drive, especially if you have an older model. Otherwise the endless (and I literally mean endless) grinding of the DVD will drive you crazy, if the resulting load times haven’t already done the job. And boy, does this game love its load times, especially if you leave the confines of your home to venture out into the surrounding areas.

The GamerPops Recommendation

For the average gamer, The Sims 3: Pets is an all or nothing proposition; you’ll either want to put in endless hours nurturing or tormenting your family, or you won’t want to put in a single minute. There’s really no middle ground, and I have a feeling that despite the presence of playable animals, most gamers will opt for the latter.

For gamers who are willing to invest the time into a pet life simulator, The Sims 3: Pets is miles ahead of the typical virtual pet game. There’s a full slate of activities to pursue or not, utilizing both the human Sims and their cats and dogs, but it’s still the same Sims gameplay, which doesn’t make the most of the new canine and feline additions.

As an Xbox title, it’s not necessarily an ideal experience, but in general it does the Sims justice. Considering this is essentially an expansion pack, the $50 price feels high, and unless you are willing to sink in a lot of hours pawing around the virtual world, there’s just not enough here to justify the cost. In an odd way, The Sims 3: Pets puts quantity over quality, and for this game that’s not a recipe for success.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Teen

Content descriptors: Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence

Rating summary: This is a “sandbox” simulation game in which players create, customize, and control characters—including household pets—called “Sims” through their daily activities. Players are free to pursue a variety of daily goals as they observe and attempt to influence other Sims in town. Players can socially interact with Sims to build relationships, and are free to pursue more intimate encounters, such as the ability to kiss, “make out,” or engage in WooHoo (i.e., sex) with another Sim: this action depicts the Sims squirming, giggling, and moaning under the covers until hearts float around the bed. (The WooHoo option is available to both heterosexual and same-sex couples.) Sims maintain their health and hygiene through eating, exercising, bathing, and using the toilet. They sometimes vomit, expel flatulence sounds, or urinate on themselves if their hygiene is not properly managed. Some interactions lead to fighting, which is depicted by sounds of struggle and partially obscured “fight-cloud” effects; other animations include Sims drowning in pools, getting electrocuted by household appliances, or dying in fires—a Grim Reaper arrives as dead Sims turn into ghosts.

Carnival Island is the latest gaming experience for the PlayStation Move from Sony as they try to catch up with what Kinect and the Wii have offered for families. We saw a bit of it back at E3 and now have the finished product to play through. So is it a fun romp full of wonder or does it disappoint like paying $30 to win a $2 toy in a rigged game?

The Parent Perspective

There are a lot of things to like about Carnival Island from a family perspective. It can support up to four players, and if you want, you can do it with only one Move controller in Pass and Play mode. If you have a second wand, you can also have up to four players playing side by side in pairs. You compete in 5 games (random or chosen), and play for superiority. Games for the most part are fairly simple to figure out, and can be played down to age 5 or 6. My four year old struggled a bit, but was able to handle a few games. Little ones will likely have the most difficulty with pointing based activities like the shooting alley games. All in all, though, the games will be familiar to anybody who’s been to a carnival or a fair, and the Move controls do a very good job for the most part of approximating the actions of those games. Also appreciated is how some games, like baseball toss, allow for overhand or underhand throwing.

From a content-appropriate perspective, Carnival Island is fine and caters to kids in a big way. The story mode involves two children playing around at a strange grey carnival and bringing it back to life and colour by playing the various games at it. (Okay, the part where the carnival floats into the sky with the kids along for the ride sans parents might be a bit concerning.) There are various animals milling about, and even the carnies are sanitized. By playing games, you unlock various cute creatures who will cheer you on when you play. If you want a stretch, animal lovers may not like the frog bog games where you use a hammer to launch frogs at targets.

Luckily, you don't need to be Kobe to do well at this game.

The Review

Let’s face it, the elephant in the room is Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do. They both feature carnivals, reward you with tickets, feature strange carnies, and have next generation motion controls. There are many other similarities, including some of the games you get to play in both. It might not be the most original idea in the world, but it takes what predecessors have done before and adds enough, though controls and metagame, to stand on its own.

From a control standpoint, Carnival Island is simply better. It helps that the Move controller is just more accurate than Kinect in nature. It’s not 100%, particularly in basketball toss games, but it is much smoother and more true. The game and Move system do a great job of tracking your motions. Of course, the flip side to this is that Move will inherently limit the options for game types, which is why of the 30+ games, they are grouped into one of only seven categories: coin toss, a bowling game that they can’t call Skeeball, shooting alley, baseball throw, frog launching, and basketball toss. The variants are different enough for the most part, but it really comes down to one of seven main activities at the end of the day.

Story mode is a short affair that sees you journeying to the four parts of the carnival and bringing colour back to it by playing games in the seven buildings. Each starts with one main game for you to play. However, instead of requiring a certain number of points or tickets to unlock the next game, each game has 9 in-game achievements called Challenges. Challenges can be anything from hitting a certain number of points, doing a specific act like scoring with every throw, or random-type events. If you meet one Challenge you unlock an animal that will cheer for you in later games. Beating two Challenges will unlock the next game for you. Most of the time a gamer of any skill can meet at least the two Challenges necessary to advance, but some games will need multiple attempts. It felt a bit like Jetpack Joyride in that the emphasis is more on meeting specific achievements than scoring high. There are cutscenes when you unlock both buildings in a section of the carnival to progress the story, but the story isn’t too deep, more providing a fun distraction. Fortunately, there are over 300 Challenges in total, so there is incentive to go back and play the games many times.

We can't call this "Skeeball" per se, but if it looks like a Panda and talks like a Panda...

In terms of value, it’s a mixed bag. Yes, there are many reasons to go back and play in Story Mode, and you can play endless amounts of times in the Party modes. But with really only 7 categories of activities, it stands that it will get old fairly fast. Tickets can be used to buy various items, but they don’t seem to serve much purpose in the game other than to let you carry stuff around.

Presentation is all right, though I could have done without the loading times in between every single game. Especially if you’re going from one “Skeeball” type game to another. Overall the look of the game is nice and clean and there are nice little details in most of the games to make it feel like a decent carnival. Carnies still have too many intact teeth though.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Carnival Games is a good family title that is easy to play for many ages and doesn’t require having a whole bunch of Move wands to get lots of players involved. The controls are quite tight considering that they are motion-based, so there will be little frustration, leading to greater enjoyment of the games you’re emulating. Carnival Games, for my money, is the best carnival-based game available for those that are looking for that kind of experience. Of course keep in mind that, like most games in this sub-genre, it’s a collection of mini-games and doesn’t hold a lot of long-term replayability, unless you have obsessive types in your household who like to 100% a game. The initial $40 price point is okay, but may be a touch high from a value standpoint. Still, the content that is there is quality.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

No actual frogs were harmed in the playing of this game. Unless you count those Frogs Legs I was eating at the time...

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone

Content descriptors: Comic Mischief

Rating summary: This is a collection of carnival-themed mini-games in which players can participate in activities such as minibowl, ring toss, throwdown, and frogbog. In the frogbog mini-game, players use a mallet to stomp a lever that tosses a frog into the air; the frog flails wildly, and often hits lilypads with a thud amid comical ‘dizzy star’ effects.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn brings the beloved Belgian boy reporter to the big screen and video game consoles for the first time, combining elements of three of Tintin’s earliest stories into an epic adventure. Can Ubisoft’s new game capture the spirit and action that has made the books hugely popular for decades?

The Parent Perspective

Off the top, the most tangible positive benefit that The Adventures of Tintin offers is the opportunity for parents to introduce their children to the Tintin books. Boys especially should enjoy the comic book adventures of the young Belgian reporter, though girls could enjoy as well. With over 350 million copies in print around the world, they’ve been beloved by generations of readers, and if this game can lead a new generation to the book store, that’s a terrific outcome.

As a game, The Adventures of Tintin is best for older children. Despite the generally light tone of the game, there’s a rather surprising amount of violence in both the single and multiplayer modes. Through level after level, Tintin and company punch and body slam their way through plenty of generic villains. It’s certainly mild as far as physical violence goes, but it starts to feel somewhat out of place fairly quickly. Some enemies have guns (as do the airplanes), but the gunplay is highly cartoonish.

The biggest drawback to The Adventures of Tintin, naturally, is that there’s practically zero awareness of Tintin amongst today’s children. In fact, it’s entirely likely that most parents may have only heard the name, let alone knowing anything about the characters, stories, or history. Is there any hope that parents picking up this game for the kids will be handing the disc over to an eager audience? That’s a tough obstacle for Tintin to overcome, but at least the game is abetting by being fundamentally solid and fun. Is that enough? Frankly, it’s hard to be too optimistic, but stranger things have happened.

With the modest story mode, a full and separate multiplayer mode, and added challenges that each offer a certain level of replayablity, there’s definitely decent value in the game, though that really will be impacted by how much the gamers end up liking Tintin.

The Review

Anyone up for Uncharted Jr.? In a sense, that’s what the Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is. With a globe-trotting story, a plucky hero and his trusty sidekicks, and the promise of treasure at the end, there’s a sense of familiarity for fans of Uncharted, Indiana Jones, and countless other adventure heroes.

Secret of the Unicorn is at its best in the purely side-scrolling levels, as the lack of camera control renders the 3D sequences more annoying than fun. The side-scrolling levels mix exploration, stealth, combat, and puzzle solving across a few different locations, mixed up with the occasional 3D action set piece or section playing as Tintin’s canine sidekick Snowy. With just the right level of difficulty keeping the game challenging but beatable, this will be just right for kids 10 and up, but anyone older will breeze through quite quickly.

It’s obvious that a lot of love has gone into the game, creating a stylish and cinematic experience that mimics the film’s updated versions of the original line drawings. The story mode’s colourful visuals and the beautiful character animations evoke the feeling of the movie, while the multiplayer environments manage a similar effect, but with a slightly creepy edge to them. The orchestral music and extensive dialogue enrich that experience, especially the salty Captain Haddock, who peppers the adventure with strange words used completely out of context.

The game’s single player storyline follows the movie’s plot, travelling from Europe to the Middle East and back as Tintin pursues the fabled lost treasure of the Unicorn, a 17th century ship that was besieged on the seas. Along the way, Tintin and his dog Snowy will adventure, fly, and drive their way around. It’s a relatively short adventure however, stringing together a lot of short chapters, but the pacing is brisk and the story never really drags. Flashing back to the 17th century Captain Haddock does feel like it derails things a bit though, taking you out of Tintin’s story in a very clunky way.

If you want a truly demented treat, try jumping straight into the multiplayer experience without playing the story mode. These co-operative side scrolling platformer levels take place in the dazed imagination of a concussed Captain Haddock, and feature almost no set up as to what’s happening. For a complete Tintin neophyte, it’s inexplicably bizarre, yet zany good fun, especially when the giant masked pirate laughs at you over the game over screen,and you have no idea why. As a co-op mode it’s definitely fun, built the same way as the single player campaign with co-operative challenges that aren’t always obvious, but aren’t painfully difficult.

Challenge modes add extra value, allowing you to play swordfighting, motorcycling, and airplane flying games. They aren’t up at the same level as the main game, and are certainly not something Ubisoft would want to hang its hat on, but as an extra add-on to the game, it adds to the overall value of it.

Secret of the Unicorn supports 3D TVs, though I don’t have one so I can’t comment, but you can see a few instances where the developers have designed the game to potentially showcase the 3D effects. PlayStation Move controls are also optional, but as is often the case (especially considering the simple and tight controls using the standard controller) “optional” is best read as “you have the option not to use it as well”.

And finally, it’s worth mentioning this just because it’s unique: the game gives you options for French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish, though the fact that French is the first option should give you an indication of just who exactly the game is meant for.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Ultimately, its success will depend heavily on the success of the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson film, and that’s too bad, because there’s definitely a fun and spirited adventure to be had. However, much like the recently reviewed Rayman Origins (another Ubisoft title with strong European roots), The Adventures of Tintin seems destined to succeed in the European market, but end up in the bargain bin in North America. On its merits, the game deserves better than that, as it delivers an experience that largely captures the spirit of the source material and most importantly, has fun with it.

Hopefully, the new movie and perhaps the game can be successful enough to drive children to the wealth of classic Tintin comic stories, and if it can do that as well as it delivers a fun game experience, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn would have to be considered a success.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone 10+

Content descriptors: Cartoon Violence

Rating summary: This is an adventure platformer based on the movie The Adventures of Tintin. Players assume the role of a young reporter looking for a sunken ship’s lost treasure. As players run and jump through each level, they can punch human enemies and/or slam them to the ground, resulting in “dizzy star” effects. During some sequences, players use slingshots, swords, and explosives to dispatch nearby thugs or pirates; characters/vehicles blink when hit, and may disappear amid small explosions when defeated. In a handful of sequences, characters use guns to fire “cartoony” projectiles at adversaries that run, jump, or fly across the screen.

Rayman is back. After a reasonably successful run on his own series of titles, he was shoved aside by his own co-stars as the Raving Rabbids become the stars of a recent series of titles. But now after a few years in semi-retirement, Ubisoft have brought back the limbless hero in an all new adventure.

Developed by Ubisoft Montpelier, Origins is that beloved rarity: a side scrolling platformer that does so many things well. In fact, Rayman Origins does almost everything just right. Except for one, slightly crucial thing. But, we’ll get to that in a bit. First let’s bask in all the great things that the game does. Because there are quite a few.

The Parent Perspective

Rayman Origins isn’t so much a game for kids, as it is a game that kids can play along with their parents. With its four player co-operative gameplay, with just a hint a competitiveness, it’s ideal for families to play together. A key goal in each level is collecting enough coin-like characters as a group, but you are allowed to punch and kick each other along the way in pursuit of those riches. As a side scrolling game in the vein of Super Mario Bros. Wii or the recent Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, it’s also in some ways an easier fit for those under-10 gamers who haven’t quite mastered 3D platforming, and the simple controls are as responsive as you’d like them to be.

The game is reasonably difficult, but especially forgiving in multiplayer; when a character dies, they puff up like a balloon and float across the level, and need only to be deflated by another player to be brought back to life. With three or four players, there should be no expectation of defeat in any level. Multiplayer is drop-in, drop out, which is ideal of course when playing with children whose attention spans don’t make it all the way through the level.

But is this something kids will want to play on their own? Once they get introduced to the game, perhaps, but Rayman and friends have almost zero awareness among the younger set (and quite possibly not even among parents), so this is more of a title for parents to love and to encourage the kids to join in on.

There is a rather busty fairy (or at least I think she’s a fairy) and some mildly off-color humor, but otherwise the content is largely acceptable.

The Review

First and foremost, Rayman Origins is one of the most visually stunning games of this generation. The digitally painted backgrounds and characters are gorgeous, utilizing the new UbiArt Framework graphics engine. I don’t typically get into the “games as art” discussion, but the visuals in this game are undeniably artistic, with a distinct sense of style that runs through all the different environments. But it’s not a static world, and the way the characters and elements within the worlds move are beautifully smooth and filled with a cartoonish zeal. So much so that it almost feels like this could be hand drawn animation, it’s that lovingly rendered and detailed.

Second only to the graphics is the audio. Because of the wacky sound effects and the subtle background music, the audio drives the overall goofiness of the game in a way that’s very Mario-esque.

As gamers, we are all largely familiar with the Japanese aesthetic and the North America version, but what we rarely seem to get are games that feel distinctively European. Rayman Origins is one of those titles; it’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is, but there’s just something at work here that feels European to me. There’s just something here that brings to mind the adventures of Asterix and Obelix. Maybe I’m the only one who will see that, but there’s just something here that says “I’m not exactly the style you’re used to” and that’s a great thing.

Gameplay? Also very strong, with the game being equally fun in any configuration from one to four players. Levels feel just right in length and difficulty, with plenty of puzzles and challenges (many of them optional). Controls are very simple and wonderfully reminiscent of the good old days of side scrollers, though as a minor quibble, it would have been nice if holding down the jump button went straight to glide, rather than having to release and press the button again. There’s also a nice completist element at work here, with hidden crates to be found in each level, as well as speed run and collection bonuses and plenty of playable characters to unlock. Plus, you can just go back and replay the levels to look at the beautiful art.

So, we’ve documented all the great things about Rayman Origins. What’s the one thing it doesn’t do?

It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Literally. I have no idea what was going on at any given point in the game, because I’m not a Rayman fan. So, there’s this guy with no arms and legs. His name is apparently Rayman. He has friends of various shapes and sizes. There are these floaty things he likes to collect. And this is his origin story.

Or something.

Who’s the fat guy with the giant smile? Who’s the little dude? Who are any of the characters you can unlock and play? Why doesn’t Rayman have arms? All questions you may be asking yourself. If you’re a long time fan of the Rayman games, hopefully this will all make sense, but ultimately, it’s a testament to the strength of the gameplay and the experience that you don’t really need to care or understand what’s happening. As long as the game keeps up a steady stream of action and beauty, it doesn’t really matter, but it feels like a real opportunity was lost to introduce people to the characters and welcome a new generation of Rayman fans.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Rayman Origins has everything going for it, except perhaps name recognition. With so many other franchises dabbling now in four player co-op/competitive gameplay, Rayman Origins is a worthy entry, and could even potentially be the best of the bunch. That said, with so many other higher profile contenders out there, it feels like Rayman and friends could be resigned to the hidden treasure status. But without a doubt, this is a game that gamers of all stripes should play. Even if they have no idea what’s going on.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone 10+

Content descriptors: Comic Mischief, Mild Cartoon Violence, Suggestive Themes

Rating summary: This is an action platformer in which players assume the role of Rayman, a “cartoony” character that must help his friends defeat evil beings in their world. As players run, jump, and fly through each level, they must avoid hazards (e.g., fireballs, lightning bolts, lava pits) and defeat a variety of creatures (e.g., birds, shrimp, fish, robots, dragons). Most enemies disappear into puffs of smoke when hit. During the course of the game, players must rescue female nymphs that wear revealing outfits (e.g., moderate amounts of cleavage). The dialogue occasionally contains comical remarks and/or references to bathroom humor: “[N]obody ever wanted to share my Boogers on a Stick!” “Stop ogling me,” and “They force-fed you farting beans . . .”

When Disney Universe was announced, much was made about the fairly obvious similarities to the LEGO games developed by Traveller’s Tales. In fact, Traveller’s Tales design director Jon Burton wrote a few tweets to this effect at the time. It certainly looked like Disney Universe was borrowing heavily from the successful formula established by the various LEGO titles, a favourite of ours here at GamerPops. Humour, lots of characters, drop-in drop-out co-op play, playing through movies, it certainly looked the part. But now that the game has been released, is Disney Universe the rip-off it’s suspected of being, or does it do enough to stand on its own as an enjoyable gameplay experience?

The Parent Stuff

So, yeah, about that drop-in drop-out co-op part? Not so much. This turns out to be one of the bigger disappointments of the game. Eurocom ends up doing something similar to what Insomniac did with Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One in that the game does competitive co-op. You’re playing together, but you’re also competing at times for gold, level ups, etc. At the end of the level, stats are displayed for each player in terms of gold collected, enemies killed, stars collected, and respawns and players are ranked. This is fun for families or friends that want a little competitive aspect to a fun game. The issue is that it doesn’t allow people to come and go from the game as they please, requiring restarting a level to change the number of players. When you have younger gamers with shorter attention spans, you’d like the option of dropping them out. When a couple of kids are playing and want a not-busy-at-the-time adult to join in, you can’t until they finish their game and essentially restart. It’s annoying and as mentioned, a real disappointment as we find this to be a staple of a good family game.

By the way, speaking of those levels, they’re fairly long. Each world has three different episodes in it, but those episodes have three levels each, and you really have to play on an episode-by-episode basis, not level-by-level. This requires a bit of a time commitment which you don’t always have. I would have preferred to see the game let you go level by level so that it could support shorter gaming sessions.

Okay, maybe bouncing on the bellies of Axiom residents isn't the nicest thing...

Despite these shortcomings (and in the context of what we’re looking for in a family game, they are not insignificant), the kids got a huge kick out of Disney Universe. Even with some of the omissions, the formula is still a winning one, plus it involves familiar and well-loved Disney settings and characters. The kids simply loved being able to play through their favourite Disney movies, as their favourite characters. The gameplay is fun and easy to pick up, and kids seem to love the chaos. And chaos there is, to the point where three and four players on the screen is almost overwhelming. But it really is a fun choas, and we still have kids coming over wanting to play Disney Universe, so it must be doing something right.

The game itself isn’t too hard, though I found it inconsistent with dealing damage. While it makes sense that lower minions and bosses deal different amounts of damage, the one-hit kills get a bit annoying after a while. Luckily, respawns are infinite and only cost gold, some of which you might be able to collect again before it disappears (or gets nabbed by your buddies, of course). Plus, Disney Universe isn’t shy about holding your hand. Large blue arrows are only all too happy to point you to your next objective and provide direction. After the occasional ambiguity of other similar games (LEGO can be bad for this), the lack of subtlety is actually welcome, at least as far as kids are concerned. And of course I’ll mention, as always, that a lack of camera control on a 3D platforming game in two dimensions rears its ugly head again. Expect to fall a few times to your doom. Each character does have a circle underneath of them to indicate where you are, but it only shows up when there’s ground underneath of you.

There is, of course, a fair amount of cartoon violence in Disney Universe as characters possess weapons which they use to beat up the various evil bot characters you will encounter. If you’ve played similar games, there will be nothing new here. There are areas that require some teamwork and co-ordination to complete, though there are also times when it’s every player for themselves.

You must avenge my death Kimba, I mean, Simba.

The Review

Disney Universe has a rather fun premise. Disney have opened a new virtual attraction that lets you experience some of the company’s most famous movies by putting you in that world and letting you dress as your favourite character. You can interact with various bots that mimic characters from the movies, and you have a virtual tour guide (a floating blue square) at your side who in the introduction goes to great pains to tell you that nothing bad could possibly happen. Repeatedly. Luckily, this gave me an opportunity to teach the boys about foreshadowing. Shockingly, things go wrong and an evil red tour guide takes over and starts using the bots to wreak havoc in the virtual world. He’s also captured a number of guests and you’ve been asked to help free them.

The game supports up to four player competitive co-op play. There are six worlds (each with three episodes with three levels in each) you can play in, although Pirates of the Caribbean is the only one available at the start. Eventually you can also unlock Aladdin, The Lion King, Wall-E, Monsters, Inc., and Alice in Wonderland. There are also a number of characters (more specifically, costumes) available for you to choose from, though many more are unlockable either by purchasing them with gold you collect or by beating particular episodes (in some cases twice). Costumes can be leveled up to make them more powerful by collecting stars, usually hidden in locked chests, throughout the episodes.

As mentioned before, you collect gold in the game, which is used as currency. Gold can be accumulated by killing bot enemies, smashing destructible objects, or just collecting what’s lying around. Gold can be used to buy certain characters (the ones you don’t unlock by completing episdoes) or to unlock the other worlds. I will take a small issue with this. After playing through all three episodes of the Pirates world in a four player game, we didn’t have enough gold to unlock any other worlds. With all the chaos, and with younger gamers involved, we’d frequently die and lose gold we’d accumulated without getting it back in time before it disappeared. If I played the game on my own, it wasn’t an issue and I’d have more than enough gold. I don’t like the thought of finishing a world and not being able to move on. Perhaps more gold should be available for higher numbers of players, or you should have longer to get back your lost gold on death, I’m not sure. But it seems unusually harsh to keep you locked out of levels so early in the game. Perhaps an escalating cost for opening up worlds would have been a compromise here.

Gameplay is the standard beat-em-up, smashy-smashy style you’re accustomed to in similar games, and it feels just as good here. Controls are fairly easy to get into, and although the box on the Wii version says you need a Nunchuk for everybody, my four year old found a way to play using just a Wiimote when his borrowed Nunchuk wasn’t working. That’s a nice undocumented feature, though you might want to check for yourself to be sure. The kids were able to pick it up relatively quickly, and you can get by fairly easily with just button mashing if you’d like. One fun thing added for this game is that sometimes an arcade machine will pop up in a level which allows you to play a minigame in that particular spot. Enemies and objects disappear and you have a little arena to play your game, which varies. Sometimes you’re all working together to avoid a hazard, sometimes it’s every man for themself, and sometimes it’s a combination of working together and against each other. If you succeed in the challenge, differing levels of gold are rewarded depending how well you do. It’s a fun little way of breaking up the action.

Another fun twist is that your tour guides will show up every so often in a level to help/hurt you. Blue Tour Guide will give you temporary power ups to help you defeat enemies while Red Tour Guide will curse a player if he touches you. The curses and powerups vary, but the curses can be just as much fun as the powerups sometimes. Big heads, chickens, bomb heads, it all almost makes you want to get cursed and provides for lots of giggles.

Insert obvious "Didn't LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean just come out?" joke here.

The level design deserves a good amount of praise. The different worlds do a fantastic job of recreating the movies. Whether you’re playing in the Door Factory in Monsters, Inc., the Axiom from Wall-E, or the totally-not-drug-inspired world of Alice in Wonderland, it’s really easy to get lost in the worlds you’re playing. It’s really the highlight of the game, and makes me wish that a real life version existed of this, but the game is good for now. I do wish the lighting was better, though. Some of the levels were particularly dark, to the point where it made seeing key objects very difficult.

Finally, value-wise, there’s actually quite a bit in here. There are loads of unlockable costumes, and there is inherent replayability as you need to play worlds multiple times to unlock the characters. You have the equivalent of 54 levels too, so you won’t run out of first-pass gameplay anytime soon. I also like how the game spells out exactly what you need to do to unlock your favourite character’s costume with a comprehensive costume list and their unlock criteria. You can also unlock music and tips for beating certain bosses.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Playwright Wilson Mizner once said, “If you copy from one author, it’s plagiarism. If you copy from two, it’s research.” Is Disney Universe derivative? Certainly. It borrows liberally from other games for its core gameplay mechanics. The LEGO series, Ratchet & Clank, and even LittleBigPlanet come to mind right away. But it doesn’t crib one particular game and adds just enough of its own touch and charm to stand well enough on its own, even if the similarities aren’t nearly as subtle as you might see elsewhere. The novelty and fun of Disney Universe make it a terrific game for kids to play with friends or even with their parents and the competitive co-op will satisfy the more competitive families without devolving into a turncoat free-for-all like other games with this feature end up becoming. Only the missing drop-in, drop-out co-op, the lack of granularity of the episodes, and occasionally poor visibility hold it back from being truly great. But that won’t stop Disney fans from wanting to pick up this game, as well it shouldn’t.

Although we reviewed this game for the Nintendo Wii, if you have the option, you might want to check it out on the PS3 or Xbox 360 for the improved visuals and the option for costume (already coming out) and hopefully level DLC. The game is set up to easily add levels and costumes, and fans might want to take advantage of these options as/if they become available.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops by the publisher.

Crossover marketing, Disney Universe has got it.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone 10+

Content descriptors: Cartoon Violence, Crude Humor

Rating summary: This is an action platformer in which players assume the role of bobble-headed Disney characters that must defeat a villainous hacker. Players solve puzzles, rescue characters, and use “cartoony” weapons (e.g., swords, cannon turrets, hammers) to defeat roaming minions. Combat is accompanied by whimsical impact sounds; enemies usually blink when hit, and disappear when defeated. In some sequences, players use pellet guns to shoot at opponents in fast-paced battle. During the course of the game, a pig character performs a flatulence attack, which is accompanied by green gas-cloud effects.

Jimmie Johnson is a multi-time NASCAR champion who knows success. He’s always said that you can race anything with an engine, which is the inspiration for his new racing game Jimmie Johnson’s Anything With An Engine. You’ll race all sorts of strange vehicles on all sorts of strange tracks. But while he’s enjoyed lots of success in stock cars on the oval tracks of NASCAR, how will he do in the even more cutthroat world of kart racers?

The Parent Perspective

Let’s put it this way, I went in looking at this game using the Family Game Metric, but after playing, I’m treating this as a Core Game. Teenagers are okay to play this game, and from that perspective, if that’s the age of your kids, then you could partake of Anything With An Engine with them. Even though the game carries an E10+ rating, the ESRB Content Descriptors pretty much tell the story. It starts when you meet your announcing crew, with consists of an older guy who is inferred to be a bit of a drunk and a pervert, and his sexy colour commentator who wears a revealing outfit and has just a hint of valley girl to her. Shockingly, he hits on her, with one of the worst lines I heard being, “Are you from Tennessee? Cause yer the only 10 I see.” Wow.

Beyond that, there’s a little bit of language and potty humour (one character rides a toilet, try to guess what his exhaust is). There’s also a lot of weapons involved, including “mines” (which are actually just cute props that fit your characters, like a rubber ducky or a golf ball) and missiles. There’s quite a bit of exploding going on as well, and a lot of contact between vehicles. Again, old hat for teens, but another reason why you’re probably not going to let single digits play this one.

But the biggest issue might be the difficulty. Even on the easiest difficulty setting, a somewhat seasoned kart racer will find it tough sledding. The AI opponents are super aggressive and weapons are flying all over the place. The time trial modes have brutal goal times that likely will take repeated attempts to beat. And the Jimmie Johnson boss battles are what you would expect them to be when you’re squaring off with a NASCAR champion, a non-stop battle (though the fact that they’re cheap makes them more Kyle Busch-esque). This isn’t a quick and easy kart racer by any means, and that may be the biggest reason why kids won’t enjoy it as much. My wife may have put it best when she said, ”It looks like the kind of game that you play when you get too old for Mario Kart.”

Best enjoyed with friends. And perhaps alcohol.

The Review

Speaking of my long-suffering wife, she may have described the overall nature of the game best as “Mario Kart for hillbilly frat boys.” The game is entertaining enough, and aims to be an over the top kart racing experience. The characters all have specific personalities, with vehicles and weapons to match, like the golfer riding the golf cart, the guy riding a toilet, the granny riding the shopping cart, and others. They all have their little one-liners that come out when they do something good or get attacked. The tracks themselves also feature a lot of variety and various hazards to contend with.

Controls on the whole aren’t too bad, and the karts handle fairly well, but not quite as good as other arcade racers I’ve played. For whatever reason, there just wasn’t that sense of satisfying speed at times either. It might be the boost mechanic, which sees your boost replenish over time, but is unusable until fully charged and then it is used all at once. Whatever it was, it felt like the game tends to skew more towards the combat than pure racing and speed, at least in races. And combat you will. With missiles, mines, and side hitting at your disposal and a lot of bots in single player races, expect a lot of bumping, grinding, and shooting. Almost too much. Although this presents another piece of strategy, as your vehicle takes damage as you take punishment. You have a life gauge for this and the only way to replenish it is to drive through the pits and button mash to recharge. If your car blows up, it’s the same as if you went off the track and you lose some time respawning. The penalty probably should have been steeper here, especially because of the absolutely atrocious rubber banding that goes on which turns it into a small penalty at best. Seriously, the rubber banding is terrible, maybe the worst I’ve seen in a racing game in some time.

The powerup mechanic involves driving over various circles and performing things like drifting, which wins you votes from the fans. Winning votes will provide and power up your various weaponry throughout the race, which you’re certainly going to need. It works fairly well, but it comes back to an de-emphasis on speed, making you focus more on precision in races that use them.

The courses certainly are eccentric, like the characters.

That said, there are a refreshing number of options for race types, and they’re spread out nicely through the single player campaign, which consists of a number of races towards different Cups, all of which culminate in a one-on-one, best-of-three, enragingly cheap boss battle with Jimmie Johnson himself in his souped up… whatever that thing is he’s driving. You have standard races with powerups, time trials which require you to beat a certain time racing on your own (with the benefit of a superimposed racing line to help you), elimination races where the last place vehicle is dropped after each lap, an endurance race of a higher number of laps where you accumulate points depending what place you were in at the end of each lap, and one of the more interesting race types I’ve seen, the Matador. In the Matador, the field is split in half, and each half drives in different directions on the track. It certainly makes for an added challenge when both halves of the field meet each other midway through the lap, and adds to the large amount of chaos that already exists.

Presentation is actually well done overall for the most part, with the notable exception of the terrible introduction sequence. With such a high level of polish in other places, having what look like cardboard cutouts of the commentators and Jimmie Johnson discussing the start of each season sticks out like a sore thumb. No, really, while there’s talking going on, the characters only change poses every few seconds. It’s borderline horrifying.

The GamerPops Recommendation

At $30, there’s enough content in the game to make it a decent value play actually. Just know that it’s not really going to be good for kids, and even racing fans might not take to it for too long. It’s probably best enjoyed with a couple of buddies after a few drinks with its over the top nature, crude humour, and soul crushing difficulty. I think it will appeal to a more limited audience and though it tries to do some neat new things, there’s just too much chaos going on in most events to be enjoyed as a racer, even of the kart variety where you expect this kind of thing. It’s not terrible, it’s not great, I’m not even really sure it’s good. I applaud the amount of content in the game, so it’s certainly not throwaway shovelware, and for the price you could certainly do worse, but I think at the end of the day they tried to do too much, and ended up with a total cluster-you-know-what of a game, and not in the good sense.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

More fun than a NASCAR pitstop.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone 10+

Content descriptors: Alcohol Reference, Crude Humor, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Mild Violence

Rating summary: This is a kart-racing game in which players drive unconventional vehicles in combat-style races. During races, players can use a variety of comical projectiles (e.g., lawn gnomes, bananas, rubber ducks) to knock out opponents. Action is highlighted by crashing sounds and realistic explosions; drivers sometimes fly into the air when hit. One racing level depicts an oversized pterodactyl releasing bird droppings onto the track; one character emits flatulence sounds and gaseous clouds. A female character is depicted in a form-fitting outfit that exposes some cleavage, and the dialogue includes a few lines of suggestive innuendo (e.g., “Now to get my wife in a teddy!”). In the character bio section, one racer’s hobby is “distilling moonshine.” The words “a*s,” “damn,” and “hell” can be heard in dialogue.

When EA dropped the NASCAR license after its sim series ended with NASCAR 09 and the decent but unspectacular NASCAR Kart Racing, there was a legitimate reason to believe that it might be a while before another publisher picked it up.

So it came as a complete surprise that Activision, not necessarily known for their racing titles, picked up the license and here we are a little over a year later and Activision has just delivered it’s second title: NASCAR Unleashed. Whereas the first title, NASCAR The Game 2011, was more of a racing simulator, Firebrand Games’ NASCAR Unleashed is the one that mixes everybody’s two favorite things about NASCAR: rubbing and racing.

The Parent Perspective

NASCAR Unleashed has its flaws, but there’s more then enough positives here to make this game a good choice for NASCAR families. Gamers that don’t have an affection for NASCAR will probably feel left out here (thought they should certainly give it a try), but the experience will be at its best for families that enjoy watching the races together.

Unleashed presents pure, high-octane arcade racing action supported by a deliberately physical form of racing. Winning is still the objective, but the game takes rubbin’ to a whole new level, turning each race into an amped-up high speed game of bumper cars, encouraging racers to collide and smash into each other. That means that no matter the skill level of gamers, unleashing your inner Kyle Busch is always a fun option.

However, where skill is involved, there’s a noticeable unevenness that can frustrate gamers of all ages. Opposing drivers will either ignore you or attempt vehicular homicide, and that seems to be regardless of whether a racer is designated as your rival.

The career mode features single player racing or two player co-op, while the quick race modes offer head to head racing. A four player option would have rounded out the pack nicely, but hopefully that will arrive in next year’s iteration. Value is a tricky proposition, as it will ultimately depend on how many head to head races you want to engage in beyond completing the career mode. There is also no on-line racing option, so all multiplayer is limited to your living room.

Finally, as my colleague Jeff would say, the game hands out Achievements and Trophies like candy. So much so that you’ll periodically need to check the list to see what you just did to earn an award. But younger gamers should get a kick out of the constant rewarding that the game offers.

The Review

NASCAR Unleashed is kind of like Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s career. All the pieces are there to field a winner, but it just doesn’t manage to put it all together to win the race.

There’s a definitely a great idea here, and that manifests itself in a largely fun experience, but the execution needs some tweaking to create a consistently enjoyable and rewarding game. The biggest problem is that NASCAR Unleashed is equal parts fun and frustration. It’s just as easy to boost your way up 10 or more positions as it is to slightly miss a turn and see 10 cars whiz by you.

Oddly, if you’re actually able to get ahead of the pack, it’s almost like the game gives up, and so long as you can drive reasonably well, you may not even see your opponents in the rear view mirror. But if you don’t get to the head of the pack, you’ll quickly find that every race turns into a Carl Edwards/Brad Keselowski grudge match. Bang an opposing driver too many times and they’ll become your rival, meaning they will aggressively attack you at every opportunity.

The game does deliver a good sensation of speed, especially when you get to fire off a boost with some open air around you. In spirit, NASCAR Unleashed is closer to arcade racers like Daytona USA, rather than a kart racer. That means no power ups, no minimal silliness, save for the occasional oil slick, fallen tree, or ridiculously banked curve.

The game features 6 officially licensed tracks, though the only actual track you get to drive is Daytona. Each of the other races starts you off on the final turn accelerating towards the start/finish line. Then, one right turn later you are off the track and racing through the city, the countryside, or a number of other locales roughly based on the track locations. That means Chicagoland sends you into the city, Homestead Miami puts you out to the harbor and Martinsville tosses you into the woods.

The upside to this idea is that it manages to break the cars away from the standard ovals, and of course, includes both left and right turns. There are some inspired moments in the track designs (Chicagoland’s were a personal favorite), but there are also too many tracks that feel bland and tame by comparison. It feels like the track designers perhaps weren’t allowed to really unleash their creativity and create tracks to match the potential wildness of the racing action.

Tackling those tracks are 15 of NASCAR’s most popular drivers including Jimmy Johnson, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, and everyone’s favorite non-winner Dale Earnhardt Jr, along with multiple skins of each of their vehicles.

Other than the career mode, there are time trials for each track and a quick race mode that allows you to string together one or more races into a makeshift season. With each race, you’ll earn points based on your finish position and success in secondary objectives. Those points then unlock new paint schemes for each included driver as well as a number of generic Activision & Firebrand Games themes to fill out the 20 car field. The career mode, with several smaller cups to unlock, takes a decent amount of time to complete, but beyond that, the value of the game is in the amount of head to head or co-operative matches you choose to undertake.

Besides the unevenness of the racing experience, there are some issues that, while minor, ultimately detract from the experience, and yet are completely fixable if there’s a NASCAR Unleashed 2.

With the vertical changes in some levels, there’s not a camera view that puts you at the right elevation above the car to see what’s going on, nor can you move the camera up and down with the right stick to give you a better view of the road ahead.

Given the amount of collisions, banging, and the occasion roll going on, it’s too bad there’s not enough parts flying off the cars. You’ll see your car getting beat up over time (specifically, the rear fender) and engines will smoke after enough damage, but the hardware is certainly capable of presenting more dynamic and explosive collisions, and that would have significantly improved the smashiness.

The game also features drifting, but it’s not as tightly executed, feeling a little more sim than arcade. Times like this, I harken back to Burnout Paradise, and encourage every racing game designer to revisit Paradise City to see arcade drifting at its finest.

The GamerPops Recommendation

As a NASCAR fan, it’s great to have had not one, but two enjoyable games released this year. As the more arcade oriented of the two, NASCAR Unleashed feels a little light on content and features, but the $40 price tag feels right on, and there’s plenty of violent but fun racing action inside. NASCAR Unleashed is an enjoyable choice as a mid-range arcade racer, but should appeal to race-loving families. Much like Activision’s other NASCAR title though, NASCAR Unleashed feels like it takes steps in the right direction, but the real rewards will arrive in the next iteration of the game. Let’s hope Activision gives it another lap.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Everyone

Content descriptors: Mild Violence

Rating summary: This is an arcade-style racing game in which players compete against NASCAR drivers through fictional tracks based on real-world raceways. As players navigate around each track, they can earn points for bumping or colliding against other racers; cars sometimes flip into the air and/or emit clouds of smoke, with occasional slow-motion effects. Crashing sounds and vocal encouragement are heard throughout the game (e.g., “Wow, taking out that many cars, that’s crazy good!” and “Nice! Smash ‘em outta your way!”).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the first game from Infinity Ward since top executives Vince Zampella and Jason West departed, with the studio now working alongside Sledgehammer Games, and it carries a heavy burden. Meet the high standards set by the previous two games, wrap up an overarching storyline and continue the online and offline gameplay that consumers have come to expect. A tall order? No doubt, but a challenge that the developers are up for, as they’ve made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 one of the most enjoyable games of the year for core gamers.

The Parent Perspective

So, you’re a parent of a 15 year old. All they want, more than anything else in the world, is to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Should you let them? That’s a tough question, without a simple answer. If you go by the ESRB rating alone, this game earns its M for Mature rating by being drenched in violence, gunfire, bloodshed, and more. It’s an unflinchingly mature game that knows just what its audience wants, and delivers.

So, what can you say in Modern Warfare’s defence? About the gameplay, not a whole lot. But there are intangibles at play, with some potentially solid messaging behind them. Not enough to say that teens should be playing the game

At its core, Modern Warfare 3 is about good vs. evil. If you accept the basic premise that the western allies are the good guys, and the Russians and their associates are bad, then the game presents a very clear delineation between the good guys and bad guys. The playable characters of Yuri and Frost have to do some terrible things, such as killing bad guys by the dozen, but those being killed are quite clearly bad guys who will do terrible things to innocent people if you don’t take them out. And even despite your best efforts, innocents still die.

Which plays into one of the interesting themes of Modern Warfare 3. Despite the heroics and the epic nature of the action, Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t really glorify violence. There’s no high fiving or chugging beers. These are professional soldiers, doing their duty and saving the world, killing whoever they need to to complete their objective, even if that means mowing through faceless, nameless enemies. There’s even, based on previous Modern Warfare experiences, the very real chance that the character you are playing could die at any time, which is again more realistic that you might expect.

While Infinity Ward have used some significant shock tactics in previous games, including the infamous No Russian level from the second game, there’s nothing quite on that level here. There is a cutscene in London featuring the death of a touring family, including a young girl, but it’s almost subdued by comparison.

In the end, we believe it’s every parent’s right to choose what’s appropriate for their children to play, we just want them to make smart, informed decisions. Were it my kids, I’d be steering them towards other options, even those at the more extreme end of the Teen spectrum, such as Batman: Arkham City. That doesn’t mean your kids will agree, nor does it mean they won’t play the game at someone else’s house. At the very least, parents should be discussing what their kids and playing, and why, and making sure the experience, no matter what they are choosing, is a positive one.

The Review

Epic. That’s the easiest word to describe to describe Modern Warfare 3′s single player campaign. Not ground-breaking, not innovative, but epic. Starting off with an epic siege of Manhattan, you’ll move on to epic encounters around the globe, from Africa to Europe to Siberia. Everything explodes, lives are lost, and helicopter crashes are surprisingly survivable.

There aren’t really traditional peaks and valleys. Instead, Modern Warfare 3 makes you feel like you are mainlining adrenaline, doing its best to never let the action lag. That intensity comes at the expense of storytelling, which is as shallow as it is shocking that it was written by Oscar-winning Paul Haggis (a fact that is curiously buried deep in the credits).

All characters, including the ones you play, are thoroughly generic, and it feels like the only reason your characters have names is so that people like William Fichtner can bark orders at you.

There’s also little in the way of emotional resonance, unlike other recent blockbuster 3s like Uncharted 3 and Gears of War 3. The only point where the game reaches any sort of emotional moment is the coda at the end of the game, when the situation is removed from being force vs. force, and instead comes down to a one-on-one encounter. And it should definitely be emotionally satisfying.

The game feels at its best in urban environments, showcasing modern warfare. In the few levels when you’re in the wilderness or third world shanty towns, it feels more like a game we’ve played many times before. In fact, those urban set pieces are so well done, it’s a shame that Infinity Ward didn’t make more out of them. You could have created an entire game just based on the battle for New York, and that could have been as enjoyable and compelling an experience, though the submarine hijacking and subsequent boat chase is nothing short of delightful.

The story is worth playing through at least once, but it is the multiplayer that will keep players engaged over the next year until the next Call of Duty. Multiplayer offers that same feeling of a non-stop action thrill ride, providing much of the same that fans of the series love. There’s an abundance of modes, though nothing we haven’t seen before, and a huge number of options to outfit your soldier.

There’s also some brilliant psychology at work in multiplayer. Every couple of matches rewards you with a new unlock: a weapon, an attachment, a new callsign, a perk, or more. The constant flow of upgrades and bonuses is enough to keep gamers playing just one more match, which inevitably turns into several hours of just one more matches.

Also included are Special Ops missions, which feature online or offline co-op play in either defined missions or wave after wave of enemies. That Horde-esque mode seems a little out of character for Call of Duty, but as the fourth way to play to the game, it’s perfectly acceptable.

The final component of Modern Warfare 3 is Call of Duty Elite, Activision’s new online companion service to this and future Call of Duty titles. The concept is intriguing, and subscribers should feel confident that over the course of the year, Activision will produce enough added content to justify the $50 price tag. It’s certainly not necessary though, and most gamers will be content with the basic version, if they access it at all. The stats tracking is remarkably in-depth, and the only thing missing from the experience are mobile apps to track your gameplay anywhere. As of the time of this review, the service remains glitchy but the potential is definitely there.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 may not be the greatest game of the year, but it will almost certainly end up as the year’s most popular. With an epic storyline that wraps up the first Modern Warfare trilogy, and a constantly rewarding multiplayer experience, the game provides everything that Call of Duty fans will be looking for. This third entry doesn’t really advance the series in terms of gameplay, but provides a satisfactory ending to the story bathed in epic set pieces. It also clears the slate for whatever will follow, either a new Modern Warfare story, or perhaps pushing the franchise into yet another new direction and era.

But it is most definitely not for kids.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Mature

Content descriptors: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language

Rating summary: This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of military operatives tasked with thwarting the plans of a terrorist leader. Players complete mission objectives and engage in battles that take place in modern-day locations across the globe (e.g., United States, Great Britain, Germany). Players use pistols, rifles, machine guns, and explosives to injure/kill enemies; the frenetic conflicts are highlighted by realistic gunfire, screams of pain, and large splashes of blood from injured characters. Blood-splatter effects appear often in the surrounding environment, in addition to dead bodies lying in pools of blood. Some sequences depict more intense acts of violence, such as a defenseless prisoner getting lit on fire; a man losing his arm from a sniper shot (with blood spurting from the wound); and a family dying (off-screen) in an explosion. In some instances, scattered packages of drugs appear in the environment (e.g., packets of narcotics that explode in white puffs when shot); in multiplayer mode, players can also unlock an emblem that resembles a cannabis leaf. The words “f**k,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole” can be heard in the dialogue.

The year was 1997, and Goldeneye changed everything. Back at a time when the first person shooter was the exclusive domain of the PC, Goldeneye showed that a console could not only run a shooter, but run it even better in multiplayer. Gamers of a certain vintage will no doubt have memories of epic four player split-screen matches.

But can a game that was groundbreaking 14 years ago be made fresh today, or does it have to be content to exist in that part of our brain that fondly recalls the 90s?

The Parent Perspective

Goldeneye 007: Reloaded is definitely an interesting case. On one hand, it could be a tolerable compromise between a teen gamer who wants to play a first person shooter, and parents who aren’t quite ready for the full on assault of one of the more popular games. The content has been lightened to meet a T for Teen rating, meaning no blood and enemy bodies disappear after only a couple of seconds on the battlefield. The game is still a shooter though with everything that entails, and there’s a general grittiness that is appropriate to the current Bond movies, but more extreme than the movie that this game is loosely based on.

The four player split screen multiplayer is also great if you can get four players together, which is rare to find in a game of this nature.

The big question though is whether the source material will appeal to today’s teens, given they may not have even been born when the movie was originally released.

The Review

Taken at face value, Goldeneye 007: Reloaded would be an oddly out of touch game that doesn’t compete with the best of the genre. But this isn’t a game to be taken at face value, because it isn’t really about competing with the Battlefields and Call of Dutys of the world. It’s about nostalgia, pure and simple.

Which then makes it a very odd choice that Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, and everything else about the original game and movie have been excised in favour of a complete reinvention of Goldeneye. The game keeps the same general plot, but updates things significantly to bring it into the world of the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Which makes complete sense since Daniel Craig has been dropped in as the game’s Bond, and everything else has been tweaked accordingly. So instead of the suave and borderline cheesy Bond of the Brosnan era, this new Goldeneye veers towards gritty and dangerous.

That creates an interesting and likely not intended bit of entertainment in the game if you haven’t seen the movie in years, trying to remember just how the original film and game went. I’ll be honest, I had to think deeply a few times to match up the new with the old.

That does beg the question though: what’s the point of of remaking the game if you’re only going to follow the broadest strokes, when you could just try and create a whole new experience? I suppose the safe answer to that rhetorical question is that the average gamer probably can’t name any of the original bond games of the last decade, but a lot of people know Goldeneye.

The end result of this update is a game that lies in a no-man’s land between old school and modern day. It’s not brought fully into the present, yet it loses a lot of the nostalgia. So what exactly is it then?

At the very least, Goldeneye is fundamentally sound. It’s a technically competent first person shooter, with an effective cover mechanic and lengthy levels. Enemies also take full advantage of the cover system, which is about all you can say for the otherwise generic swarms of gun-toting lackies.

One downside to the game’s design is that there’s very little actual spying going on. There’s plenty of shooting people, but there aren’t that many opportunities to do anything but shoot enemies. You can be stealthy, and sneak up on enemies or take them out with your silenced pistol, but that’s still just different ways to kill the enemies. A touchscreen cell phone has been added to your arsenal, adding new gameplay options that didn’t exist in the original, but it doesn’t fundamentally affect the way the game is played.

As much fun as the single player campaign may have been (and for the time, it was quite good) the four player split-screen multiplayer was where the real action was. Reloaded delivers a similar looking experience, and it’s always great to see local multiplayer in an age where everything is based on Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. And it’s to the game’s benefit that the local multiplayer is strong, because the on-line version is pretty much dead. Blame it on being released in the same window as Battlefield 3 and Activision’s own Call of Duty, but it’s hard to play on-line multiplayer when there’s no one else there.

On top of the campaign and regular multiplayer, there’s also a series of MI-6 Special Missions, which offer an extra challenge (emphasis on the challenge, if you want it). As icing on the cake, they are delicious icing, with certain missions better emphasizing the more spy-oriented aspects of James Bond, compared to the run and gun style of the campaign.

The PlayStation 3 version of Goldeneye 007: Reloaded features optional PlayStation Move controls, which seemed mostly effective but quite twitchy, with a side effect being that it rendered the normal difficulty mode several notches harder. I would guess the sharpshooter or a similar attachment would help with the aiming, but it’s definitely only an option for those who want a more realistic experience. For that, you can also crank up the hardest difficulty mode, in which you have no health, only armor that you pick up along the way.

The GamerPops Recommendation

Though it does an admirable job reinventing a classic experience, Goldeneye 007: Reloaded just can’t quite capture the fun and freshness of the original game. In an era where top-flight shooters like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 offer choices with better graphics, better sound, better gameplay, and better multiplayer, a game like Goldeneye just can’t compete.

Goldeneye 007: Reloaded feels like a game that could have been something unique on its own, but the remake aspects limited it, and kept it from truly achieving success. It’ll bring back those good old feelings for a little while, but probably not much longer. And even then, while it is enjoyable, it’s still not the same game.  It’s a fun novelty, and interesting from an artistic perspective to see how the game has been updated 13 years later, but ultimately that novelty wears thin.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.

ESRB Rating Summary

Rating: Teen

Content descriptors: Blood, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence

Rating summary: This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of James Bond as he attempts to track down clues and information about a secret “GoldenEye” satellite weapon. Players engage in missions such as planting bombs, retrieving items, and commandeering armed military vehicles. Bond uses pistols, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers to kill enemies and destroy targets; some attacks are accompanied by slow-motion effects. Players can also use stealth takedowns (e.g., knocking characters out, slamming their heads against walls) to defeat enemies from behind. Splashes of red blood appear when enemies are shot, and on-screen blood splatter occurs when Bond takes damage. One cutscene briefly depicts a couple kissing; the man can be seen tapping her buttocks with his hand. The words “a*s” and “bastard’ can be heard in the dialogue.