Addictive puzzle battles and a ton of content make Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes hard to put down.

The Good

Outstanding puzzle-based battle design with loads of units and strategic depth   Lengthy, challenging campaign   Charming story with anime-inspired character art.

The Bad

Somewhat steep learning curve.

A blending of match-three battle puzzles, strategic role playing, and a cute fantasy storyline is at the heart of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. This mostly straight-up port of 2009′s Nintendo DS hit retains all of the portable’s cunning battle design and charm, simply moving the handheld game to your television. At times, the game feels a little small for the living room, with text and unit graphics a bit tiny for a big-screen TV. But the intricate turn-based battles and the involving fantasy story have been moved over to consoles in all of their addictive glory, making it one of those games that practically superglues a gamepad into your hands.

Battles in Clash or Heroes are intricate, match-three puzzle affairs with loads of strategic depth.

Despite the similar name, Clash of Heroes isn’t quite a Heroes of Might & Magic game. You might be confused in the beginning, however, because the basic structure here is nearly identical to those predecessors. The main mode of play is a campaign where you lead five young heroes in the fantasy land of Ashan (featured in Heroes of Might and Magic V on the PC) into battle while trying to soothe tensions that sneaky demons have stirred up between the realm’s leading kingdoms. You start off with a hero who gains experience, casts spells, and equips artifacts. And, you lead units of D&D refugees into battle against foes in one-on-one arena-styled duels. Quick Battle mode and multiplayer are both available online and off, letting you stage one-versus-one or two-versus-two battles with customized armies (new to Clash of Heroes for consoles). Cosmetically, the game looks and feels different from previous releases in the Heroes of Might & Magic series, with the art tipped toward cheerful, colorful anime, and the mostly lighthearted plot aimed at an all-ages crowd.

But everything changes on the battlefield. Instead of pitting stacks of creatures against one another as in the Heroes games, here, you do battle in a Puzzle Quest-derived match-three format with rows of troops aligned into grids. You have a limited number of moves to make for each turn and can only shift the last unit in a line or remove a unit farther up in a column. Generally, you try to set up an attack or a defense with each move. Attacks are arranged by lining up same-colored units vertically aimed toward the enemy formation. If you place three green elven hunters in a row, for example, they chain, which means that they activate and start charging for an attack in a subsequent turn. When troops do attack, they generally charge straight into the enemy columns, doing damage to any foes or fortifications along the way. The goal is to get to the back of the enemy line, where you inflict damage to your opponent’s health. Bonus damage is earned by linking multiple attacks of the same color at the same time, as well as by fusing two attack groups stacked on top of one another. Defenses are arranged in the same way, although here, you line up same-colored units horizontally. This creates walls that block enemy assaults and are invaluable for keeping powerhouse foes away from your back line.

The lengthy campaign includes a lot of difficult battles and some charming story sequences.

In the campaign, gold, ore, and blood crystals earned through quests and side quests like bounty hunting or simply discovered in chests by the side of the road are used to buy units that are then added to your army. Units come in a variety of types, all with different special abilities that allow for bonus attacks, speedy charge times, health regeneration, leaps or flight over walls, and the like. You have access to a number of heroes and monsters drawn from the five kingdoms in Ashan, along with the demonic hordes. So you battle with elves, fantasy knights, cornball undead that look like they escaped from Grim Fandango, demons, wizards, and pretty much the rest of the monster manual refugees that populate traditional Heroes of Might & Magic games.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops bears the series’ standard superbly, delivering an engrossing campaign and exciting competitive multiplayer.

The Video Review

Chris Watters infiltrates the Cold War in this video review for Call of Duty: Black Ops.

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The Good

Thrilling variety throughout campaign   Fractured story creates an intriguing atmosphere   New multiplayer currency system is invigorating   Combat training lets anyone enjoy multiplayer excitement   Theater lets you share and enjoy triumphs and failures.

The Bad

Short campaign.

When a franchise consistently delivers massively popular, high-quality games, each new entry in the series comes laden with expectation. Call of Duty: Black Ops has some big shoes to fill, but it does so admirably. The engrossing campaign is chock-full of exciting, varied gameplay and drips with intrigue and intensity. The excellent multiplayer boasts some invigorating new features, and the new combat training mode finally gives novices a way to enjoy the competitive action without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously skilled veterans. Cooperative zombie killing and video editing tools help make Black Ops the most robustly featured game in the franchise, and though you may have expected it to be the case, this is undoubtedly one of the best shooters of the year.

The single-player campaign is set largely during the 1960s and takes you to Cold War hot spots like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. You are an elite covert operative, and your globe-trotting adventures form pieces of a puzzle–a puzzle that your mysterious captors are trying to put together by interrogating you. Each excursion into the field is a memory, and these missions slowly come together to build momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle in place. It’s not a very original mechanic, but it gives a coherent context to the action, and a few strong characters and dramatic moments give the story some genuine intrigue. The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.

Your interrogation-fueled flashbacks are not beholden to the linear flow of time, allowing your missions cover a wide variety of geography and gameplay. A dramatic breakout from a brutal Soviet prison is one early highlight, and later missions feature frontline conflicts, urban firefights, and mountainous incursions. The environments are richly detailed, and though the campaign is not without a few technical hiccups (like occasionally problematic checkpoint markers and the odd teleporting ally), these moments aren’t likely to hinder your enjoyment. In addition to the on-foot action, you use a number of vehicles to achieve your objectives. Some put you in the gunner’s seat while others put you behind the wheel, and though the vehicle handling is unremarkable, the thrill of blowing stuff up and speeding through hostile terrain is undeniable. The core running-and-gunning mechanics remain as exciting as ever, and the gameplay variety throughout the campaign keeps the action moving at a great clip.

Uncle Sam considers it impolite to use the door during a hostage rescue.

Though the campaign is a rip-roaring good time, it clocks in at a mere six hours long. The mode that will likely keep you coming back to Black Ops for months to come is, unsurprisingly, the competitive multiplayer. At its core, this is the familiar top-notch Call of Duty action that players have been enjoying for years. You earn experience for doing well in battle, and as you level up, you gain access to new and powerful ways to customize your loadouts. New weapons and maps freshen things up, and one of the new killstreak rewards–an explosive-laden remote-control car–is a delightfully deadly device that embodies the frantic, slightly goofy side of virtual online combat. The key new element, however, is currency. In addition to earning experience for your battlefield performance, you earn Call of Duty points, which you can then spend in a variety of ways. Most perks, weapon attachments, killstreaks, and equipment items are available early on, providing you shell out the points to equip them. Guns are still unlocked as you level up, but again, you have to pony up the points to put one in your loadout. Customization options like face paint, player card backgrounds, and the new create-your-own-icon tool are all accessed by spending points. Having to pay your way gives you more loadout options at lower required levels than in previous Call of Duty games, and the fact that points are so crucial to improving your arsenal makes them as just as sublimely satisfying to earn as experience points.

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Ezio’s Roman holiday is a joyous and gorgeous addition to a quality series.

The Video Review

Kevin VanOrd is recruited into the brotherhood in this video review for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

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The Good

Huge, beautiful city stuffed with amazing details   Lairs and other platforming sequences are fantastic   Long, with lots of fun and varied activities   Economy is more meaningful than before   All sorts of improvements, big and small.

The Bad

Main story is disappointing   Assassin recruitment is contrived and ultimately meaningless   Glitches.

The ladies of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood have both bark and bite. If you played Assassin’s Creed II, then you already know Caterina Sforza, the comely Italian countess with a soft spot for sly, rugged assassins. She’s not the only female character with an important role to play in Brotherhood, however. Claudia Auditore is no longer just a submissive bookkeeper, but rather a strong young woman who eventually learns to handle a blade. And then there’s Cesare Borgia’s cunning sister Lucrezia, whose sharp tongue is matched by her severe, almost vampiric appearance. These willful women are ensemble players in the continuing drama of Ezio Auditore, the self-assured star of Assassin’s Creed II. His story continues in Brotherhood, which begins directly after the events that closed its predecessor. This follow-up tale doesn’t have the same impact of the story that spawned it, but Ezio’s world is a wonder to inhabit, filled with amazing architectural detail and bursting with tons of enjoyable content.

Ezio is not the only leading man in this ongoing tale. He’s an ancestor of Desmond Miles, the near-future bartender who has remained a series constant. You play Desmond in several terrific sequences, the final of which concludes with a moment so staggering it rivals Assassin’s Creed II’s ending for pure shock value. It’s unfortunate that Ezio’s part of the story isn’t as memorable as Desmond’s, or indeed, as memorable as his previous journey. The setup is simple: After a battle at the family’s villa in Monteriggioni, Ezio’s nemesis, Cesare Borgia, steals the all-important artifact known as the Apple of Eden. With the help of Caterina and other old friends, Ezio heads to Rome to retrieve the Apple and rid the city of Borgia influence. There’s a bit of drama when an associate is accused of betrayal, but for the most part, Brotherhood’s straightforward plot doesn’t have much emotional impact, and because Ezio exhibits little personal growth, there’s the slightest hint of staleness to his escapades.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t special story moments to savor, however. One set of side missions is a series of heartfelt flashbacks that put you in the shoes of a younger Ezio, and they let him show off that old charm that he rarely exudes in Brotherhood. Other indelible moments come by way of your glimpses of Lucrezia Borgia, who has a complicated relationship with Cesare. She knows what she wants, and she isn’t afraid to test the boundaries of human decency in the pursuit of power. Lucrezia aside, few of the important players are new, but they’re all voiced by a great cast that gives further gravitas to a story and world that are presented without the slightest hint of irony. Furthermore, certain story elements are given poignancy by way of their presentation. For instance, spying on a scheming Cesare and Lucrezia through a palace window makes their dialogue seem even more devious.

Rome’s cityscapes are often breathtaking.

While Brotherhood’s story falls just short of series standards, its sense of place and time is as impeccable as fans could possibly hope for. You spend the majority of the time in Rome, and while you may miss exploring multiple cities, the city is nevertheless huge and gorgeous, brimming with so much visual variety and exquisite detail that Brotherhood feels as consequential as its forebears. You might roam into a cathedral to discover a palatial view punctuated by red tapestries and golden candelabras. Citizens wandering the streets munch on apples, carry lanterns in the evening, and flirt with each other behind pillars. It is all rendered with amazing detail and lit beautifully, undercut only occasionally by visual blemishes that will be familiar to fans of the series. There is some texture fade-in, and you’ll glimpse citizens popping in here and there. More notable for PlayStation 3 owners is the obvious screen tearing and less consistent frame rate. Regardless of your chosen platform, the soundtrack enhances the atmosphere with operatic soprano warbles and French horn melodies. Large portions of the soundtrack are lifted from last year’s game, which is mildly disappointing; how nice would it have been to hear a new theme when synchronizing the map from atop a high perch? Regardless, the music is a graceful complement to the splendid visuals.

Within this grand world is a ton of stuff to do. The staples of the series–rooftop platforming, blending with crowds, silent assassinations, rhythmic swordplay–have all returned, and most have been enhanced or adjusted in some way. It’s as joyous as ever to bound across roofs and climb to the tops of towers. Lifts that rapidly fling you to a rooftop are a great new addition and provide a second of high-speed thrills, though the movement mechanics are generally the same as before–it’s the architecture and level design that have been altered for the better. As in Assassin’s Creed II, you may search for glyphs hidden on walls and on rooftops, and they are perceptible only when you activate eagle vision. Finding one allows you to solve a puzzle, which in turn unlocks a small hint of a larger mystery. While most of these glyphs took only a modicum of effort to find before, they are now often hidden on sizable landmarks with tons of nooks and crannies to explore. Expect to put in more effort if you hope to uncover more of the conspiracy that drives the series. Luckily, it isn’t wasted effort: ledges and outcroppings are carefully and intelligently placed, which makes it a pleasure to climb these structures.

Ezio enjoys some quiet time.

Many towers you climb don’t allow you to simply ascend with little care; they require more conscientious navigation. In fact, numerous towers not only require climbing, but must be burned to the ground as well. The Borgias have spread their influence around Rome, and to undermine their rule, you destroy their edifices. Before you can do that, you must assassinate a commander in the vicinity. Often, your target will flee if you directly engage the guards that surround him, so you will want to approach carefully. In many cases, this gives you a chance to put a new weapon, the crossbow, to good use. Not only is it handy for picking off one of these key figures, but it’s also useful should a number of enemies charge you on horseback. In any case, once you have offed the key officer, you may climb to the top of the nearby tower and torch it. Afterward, you automatically take a leap of faith into a hay bale or wagon of leaves conveniently placed beneath, while melodramatic organ chords signal the importance of your endeavor.

Eliminating Borgia influence is important because you then gain access to local vendors, though this access isn’t immediate. The economy, an interesting but messy feature in last year’s installment, has been fleshed out in smart ways. As before, you must spend money to make money, but Brotherhood’s catalog contains a lot of big-ticket items. If you want access to blacksmiths, doctors, tailors, and so on, you first must purchase and renovate their shops. Not only does renovating an empty storefront give you access to supplies, but it also begins to generate income. As you bring in money, you eventually purchase landmarks, which cost a tidy sum. In many cases this is only so you can add to your periodic bank deposits, though there are gameplay benefits as well. For example, you might be able to climb to a particular synchronization perch only after you renovate a portion of the aqueducts. Shop quests are another nice economic tweak. When you loot corpses, tackle escaping pickpockets, and empty scattered treasure chests, you may discover special items, such as prayer beads and jars of leeches. These items can be offered to designated vendors in return for high-quality weapons, tougher armor, and the like.

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Pac-Man Championship Edition DX introduces a number of terrific new elements that make it a superb update of the arcade classic.

The Video Review

Carolyn Petit gobbled up her fair share of ghosts for this video review for Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

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The Good

Sleeping ghosts completely change how you go about scoring big   Slow motion and bombs are terrific new elements   Eating dozens of ghosts at once is immensely satisfying   Variety of game modes, mazes, visual, and musical options   Difficulty options offer great experiences to players of any skill level.

The Bad

Poor leaderboard integration.

Three years ago, Pac-Man Championship Edition took the classic Pac-Man formula and reinvigorated it with a new look, changing mazes, a ticking clock and a new emphasis on skillfully eating lots of ghosts in sequence to rack up huge points. But where Championship Edition felt like an evolution of Pac-Man, the new Championship Edition DX feels more like a reinvention. It introduces a number of elements that fundamentally change how Pac-Man is played, without losing any of the timeless appeal of speeding around mazes, gobbling up dots, and chomping ghosts. On the contrary, DX only makes the entire Pac-Man experience more thrilling and addictive than ever.

When Pac-Man made his arcade debut 30 years ago, his life was a game of cat and mouse in which you spent most of your time trying to avoid the ghosts and survive. In DX, survival is not so tricky. What’s tricky is scoring as many points as possible within a five- or 10-minute time limit. As in Championship Edition, clearing all the dots from one side of the maze makes a piece of fruit, a cup of coffee, or some other object appear on the other side of the maze. Gobbling up these items changes the cleared portion of the maze and gives you more dots that need to be cleared. What’s completely new here is that ghosts are sleeping in set positions throughout these mazes. If you’ve played Pac-Man before, your instincts may tell you to stay as far away from these ghosts as possible, but that’s actually the opposite of what you want to do.

Zooming past a ghost wakes it up, and it immediately starts giving chase to Pac-Man, following every move you make through the maze. As you continue to pass sleeping ghosts, each one will join your ghostly trail. You actually want this to happen, because when you finally gobble up a power pellet, you can turn around and eat your entire ethereal entourage for massive points. Luring dozens of ghosts into following you and then eating all of them at once is immensely satisfying, and this goal completely changes how you approach playing Pac-Man. The challenge is to figure out the most efficient routes through the maze and how to get as many ghosts to follow you as quickly as possible. This new focus makes DX feel a bit like a fast-paced and absorbing puzzle game.

But it also feels like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants action game that requires lightning-fast reflexes. It’s still dangerous out there for Pac-Man, and not all of the ghosts are asleep. His longtime adversaries–Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde–still emerge from the ghost house at the maze’s center and roam its passageways, and their movements may sometimes interfere with your best-laid plans. But Pac-Man has a few new tricks up his sleeve that give him an edge over his old foes. As you play, the game’s speed gradually increases, which means you can score more points in less time, but it also means that avoiding dangerous situations becomes much more difficult. But when you get extremely close to a ghost, the action slows way down, giving you ample opportunity to react. You want to avoid these situations whenever possible because the clock continues to tick in real time even as the action moves in slow motion, but it’s a great addition to the formula that eliminates the potential frustration of dying in situations that spring up too quickly to give you a reasonable chance to respond.

Pac-Man’s new career as a pied piper is really working out for him.

Even with the help of this slow motion, though, you may still find yourself on collision courses with ghosts that offer no chance for escape. That’s when your bombs come in handy. You have a limited number of bombs that, when used, bounce all the ghosts on your trail back to the ghost house. Like the slow motion, the option to use a bomb is better than dying, but it comes at a cost. The downside of using one is that it cuts any point multiplier you’ve built up from eating dots in half, and it prevents you from waking up any additional sleeping ghosts for a short time. (Dying eliminates your multiplier and slows down the game’s speed.) Both of these tools are integrated into the action in a way that makes them very useful, without taking the challenge and excitement out of the game.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is the very definition of a game that’s easy to learn and tough to master, but getting better doesn’t feel like an uphill struggle. Gobbling pellets and chomping down ghosts is a great pleasure, thanks to the inherent appeal of the Pac-Man formula and to the very tight and responsive controls. So you find yourself absorbed and wanting to play again and again. And as you do, you naturally start playing smarter and earning higher scores as the patterns become clearer and you get into a groove. The imposed time limit means that, quite literally, every second counts, encouraging you to strive for perfection and avoid mistakes that cost you even a moment. In this endeavor, it’s very easy to lose track of the hours as you play, whether you’re aiming to knock friends down a peg on the leaderboards or just striving for a new personal best. And getting better and setting new high scores carries with it a feeling of accomplishment that then spurs you on to play still more and continue improving your performance.

Unfortunately, while games like Joe Danger have integrated friends’ leaderboards in ways that fan the flames of competition, the leaderboards in DX are one step removed from the game itself. If you want to see just how you’re doing compared to other players, you need to back out of the mode-select menu and enter a separate leaderboard menu where you have to select the specific mode and maze for the scores you want to view. And if you select the filter to view your friends’ scores, your own score isn’t listed among them. The leaderboards do have one great feature: viewable replays for all of the highest scoring players. If you want to know how the best of the best are getting those amazing scores, you can see how they did it. But it’s surprising that a game that’s all about high scores makes you go through a few unnecessary steps just to see how your score measures up.

Consult your doctor. There’s a highly contagious new strain of Pac-Man fever out there.

The hottest competition is in the game’s first and best mode, called Score Attack (five minutes). But DX offers plenty of opportunities for a change of pace. As you play, you unlock a 10-minute Score Attack mode, as well as a number of time trials that score you not on how many dots and ghosts you eat but on how rapidly you clear the mazes. In addition, you unlock a total of 10 mazes, so you won’t soon get bored of retreading the same patterns over and over again. DX also gives you a number of ways to change the look of Pac-Man, with some options carrying on the attractive neonlike appearance of the original Championship Edition, and others that cast Pac-Man and the ghosts as three-dimensional characters in mazes made of building blocks, in a nod to the look of 1987′s Pac-Mania. You’re also given a number of musical selections, and thankfully, the original CE’s excellent ambient track that subtly builds up as time runs out is among them.

Three difficulty levels mean that players of any skill level can start at a speed they’re comfortable with, offering a terrific experience to both those driven by a competitive desire to dominate on the leaderboards and those just looking for a fun and accessible game with a retro arcade feel. The new elements fuse so seamlessly with the familiar ones that DX immediately feels like a thrilling new game and a timeless classic at once. Thirty years after Pac-Man first became an arcade sensation, it’s exhilarating to see new concepts introduced that make the whole experience of playing completely fresh and compulsively playable all over again. The original arcade superstar is back, and this is one of his best performances yet.

By Carolyn Petit, GameSpotPosted Nov 24, 2010 4:26 pm PT

This fast-paced racer keeps you glued to the TV and on the edge of your seat regardless of which side of the law you’re playing on.

The Video Review

Justin Calvert defends Seacrest County in this video review for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

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The Good

Exhilarating races and cop chases   Autolog system makes competing with friends more compelling   Tight controls make it easy to take corners at high speed   Loads of licensed supercars   Great online options.

The Bad

Camera cuts occasionally mess with your driving   No traditional leaderboards.

Hot Pursuit is a Need for Speed game in name only. This blisteringly fast racer has more in common with developer Criterion Games’ own Burnout series than it does with any previous Need for Speed offering, despite lacking a number of features that are commonly associated with Burnout games. This isn’t a game in which you’re rewarded for crashing spectacularly or for jumping through billboards, but it is a game that encourages you to drive dangerously and to take down your opponents by any means necessary. The option to play both as illegal racers and as the cops that are chasing them brings some much-needed variety to the action, while spike strips, road blocks, and other satisfying countermeasures ensure that Hot Pursuit doesn’t feel quite like any racer that you’ve played before. Regardless of whether your interest in Hot Pursuit stems from a love of Need for Speed, Burnout, or neither, you won’t be disappointed.

If you’re familiar with the Burnout series, you’ll immediately feel at home with the handling in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Licensed cars from the likes of Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and Porsche can be made to slide around corners with only the briefest of touches on the brake, and you earn nitrous by driving dangerously close to other vehicles and into oncoming traffic. Furthermore, there are plenty of shortcuts available if you stray from the Seacrest County roads, and should you wreck your ride while attempting to take one, you’re treated to a glorious slow-motion shot as panels buckle and debris starts to fly. A similar slow-motion treatment is used to alert you when additional cops show up to chase you down and when you successfully take out an opponent, which adds a welcome touch of Hollywood to these high-speed chases. Not that they need it.

Even in the Career mode’s time trial and rapid response events where you have no cops or racers to worry about, the potential for disaster is ever present. Oncoming and slow-moving traffic, risky shortcuts, and sharp corners all conspire to keep you on the edge of your seat, and other event types add so many additional hazards for you to concern yourself with that your heart will likely still be racing long after you cross the finish line. As a racer, you find yourself being pursued by cops who can organize roadblocks, hit you with EMP blasts, drop spike strips in your path, and even call upon helicopters armed with spike strips to slow you down if you get too far ahead of them. And as a cop, you’re expected to chase racers who have their own EMPs and spike strips, as well as powerful turbo systems and jammers that render all of your equipment useless for a short time. The good news is that as your opponents slowly gain access to more and better equipment in Career mode, so do you.

Hot Pursuit’s cars are resilient enough to shunts that they get their own health bars.

Equipment is mapped to the D pad and is available only in limited quantities. This keeps events of the same type from feeling too similar because, for example, taking down racers by overtaking them and then dropping spike strips is very different from hitting them with EMP shots that take a few seconds to lock on after you position yourself directly behind the target. You always have the option to just bash into other vehicles in order to take them out, but these cars are much more resilient than their Burnout counterparts, and it generally takes several hard shunts to put them out of commission. Incidentally, as a racer you’re free to run your opponents off the road or even to use countermeasures against them, but when there are cops in pursuit, it’s best to save your aggression for your common enemy.

Cops and racers in Hot Pursuit benefit from impressive AI that makes them both formidable and occasionally unpredictable opponents. Both are smart about using their countermeasures effectively and are appropriately aggressive. But they’re also fallible, which can make for some exciting moments when racers collide into each other directly in front of you, for example. Racers won’t always take shortcuts, but it’s not uncommon to see them doing so; impressively, when you’re tailing them as a cop, they often wait until the last second to turn off the road, which makes attempting to follow them much more challenging. Cops will take shortcuts as well, but only when they’re pursuing racers down them. Interestingly, not all of the alternate routes actually save you time, and how effective they are as shortcuts is in part determined by how well your car handles off-road. If you’re in a four-wheel drive Subaru Impreza or Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, loose surfaces don’t slow you down much, but if you’re in a low-slung exotic like the Koenigsegg Agera or Pagani Zonda, you’re probably better off staying on the tarmac.

If cops all got to drive cars like this, who wouldn’t want a job in law enforcement?

Predictably, though AI opponents do a great job of keeping things interesting, they’re still no substitute for other players. Hot Pursuit doesn’t support local multiplayer, but its three online modes are so much fun that it can be hard to tear yourself away once you start playing. Online races support up to eight players, and since they don’t feature any weapons or cops, they are a test of your driving skill and nothing more. Hot pursuit events, on the other hand, are four-against-four races in which a team of cops with full arsenals must try to prevent equally well-equipped racers from reaching the finish line. These events never play out the same way twice, and therefore you’re unlikely to tire of them anytime soon. Similarly, you never know what’s going to happen next in online interceptor events, which pit just one cop against one racer. The difference here, other than numbers, is that you’re free to drive anywhere on the map. As the cop, you obviously need to stick close to your target, but as the racer, it’s extremely satisfying to outwit your pursuer by taking a shortcut, using countermeasures to gain an advantage, or just doing something as simple as performing a quick U-turn. The chase ends either when one of the cars gets wrecked or when the racer manages to outrun the cop, at which point you have the option to switch roles and start over.

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An enjoyable Story mode, powerful creation tools, and great online features make Sackboy’s sequel a giant leap forward for LittleBigPlanet.

The Video Review

Justin Calvert and Sackboy flex their creative muscles in this video review for Little Big Planet 2.

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The Good

Incredibly versatile creation tools   Great Story mode with plenty of replay value   Presentation is uniformly excellent   Community feedback features ensure that the best user content is easy to find   Supports user content and DLC from the first game.

The Bad

Cooperative play can be confusing   Tutorials aren’t as comprehensive as they could be.

More than two years after the release of LittleBigPlanet, the creativity of the game’s community continues to impress. Tools that were designed to let users craft their own levels for the popular platformer have been masterfully manipulated to make all manner of weird and wonderful gameplay experiences, 3-million-plus of which live on in LittleBigPlanet 2. The superior creation tools that you’re afforded access to in Sackboy’s second outing are sure to send that number skyward soon, and even if you have no desire to make your own masterpieces, you’re sure to enjoy the incredibly varied fruits of developer Media Molecule’s labors, as well as those of other players. For creators, LBP2 is an easy-to-use tools package that lets you turn your ideas into games that can span multiple levels and genres, and even include cutscenes. For players, LBP2 is a game that lets you play all of these creations in addition to its own charming and impressively varied Story mode. Everyone’s a winner.

Regardless of what you ultimately hope to get out of LBP2, the Story mode is a great place to start. The world of LittleBigPlanet has come under attack from the evil Negativitron, and only you (and up to three of your friends) can save the day. The 30-plus Story mode levels are incredibly varied both in terms of gameplay and visual design. One moment you’re jumping between moving wooden platforms and swinging from sponges; the next you’re riding a bee through a blocky-looking side-scrolling shooter and knocking enemies out of the sky with honey projectiles. Then, after using sticky cake projectiles to solve simple puzzles, you might find yourself cruising through another character’s body and using white blood cells to combat a meanie infection. Each and every one of these levels serves as an enjoyable showpiece for what LBP2′s new creation tools are capable of, and playing through the Story mode is even more fun than in the original game because you never know what the next level is going to have in store for you. Furthermore, Story mode levels have plenty of replay value if you’re interested in finding all of the collectible materials, stickers, Sackboy outfits, and other goodies that have been expertly hidden away.

A number of the Story mode’s collectibles can only be reached if you’re playing cooperatively in a group of up to four players. Sequences that require multiple players are rarely complex, but even relatively simple objectives can be tricky to complete if you have to enlist the help of someone who isn’t familiar with LBP’s floaty physics or comfortable with how Sackboy moves between the foreground and background. Furthermore, playing cooperatively (especially locally) can get pretty confusing because, unless all of you are moving in sync, the camera becomes problematic. First, it zooms out in an attempt to keep all of you in shot, which can make distinguishing one Sackboy from another difficult. Then, if that fails, it leaves the player or players who are lagging behind for dead and they rejoin the action at the next checkpoint. Some levels fare a lot better than others in multiplayer, but often, the most enjoyable way to get items from multiplayer areas is to have friends hop into your game only when they’re necessary, which is unfortunate and not much fun for them. For a fun multiplayer experience, your best bet is to check out some of the new versus games which, once you unlock them in Story mode, include enjoyable takes on basketball, air hockey, and pool, to name but a few.

It’s easier than ever to stray from LBP’s traditional handmade crafts aesthetic.

Armed with the items that you’ve collected in Story mode, as well as any that you’ve imported from your original LittleBigPlanet profile, you might be eager to jump into Create mode, but you’d do well to check out some of the new creation tutorials beforehand. The adequate though not entirely comprehensive tutorials are again wonderfully narrated by Stephen Fry, and even if you consider yourself something of an expert with the first game’s tools, there’s a lot of new ground to cover. Sure, you can safely skip the tutorials on gluing, corner editing, bolts, and basic sensors, but what about Sackbots, power-ups, microchips, and the gameplay sequencer? These are just a few of the new creation tools at your disposal in LittleBigPlanet 2, and they are quite literally game-changing additions. For example, Sackbots are non-player characters that can be customized with different appearances and behaviors; you can use them as actors in cutscenes, as enemies that are intelligent enough to avoid hazards and use power-ups, or–as they appear in the Story mode–as friendly little guys that you must either lead or herd through levels. Microchips, on the other hand, are a strictly behind-the-scenes innovation that give you a big flat space upon which to arrange multiple logic pieces (timers, randomizers, and the like) that might otherwise be confusing and difficult to arrange when applied to an object.

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Dead Space 2′s thrilling campaign, intense multiplayer, and great bonus material make it an outstanding game and a worthy follow-up to its superb predecessor.

The Video Review

Carolyn Petit suits up for this necromorph-filled video review for Dead Space 2.

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The Good

Dismembering necromorphs is as thrilling as ever   Some great new necromorph types   Wonderfully atmospheric visuals and sound design   Exhilarating multiplayer   A great bonus in Dead Space Extraction.

The Bad

No significant gameplay advances over the first game   Single-player falls into predictable rhythm for a while   Some dull objectives.

Isaac Clarke, the unluckiest space engineer of the 26th century, is more unfortunate than ever in Dead Space 2. 2008′s superb Dead Space took the style of survival horror shooter action exemplified by games like Resident Evil 4 and meshed it with an atmospheric deep-space setting and some terrific, distinctly sci-fi gameplay elements, creating something that felt simultaneously familiar and unique. Dead Space 2, on the other hand, will feel thoroughly familiar to those who have played the original; its few improvements over Dead Space are minor tweaks rather than game changers. But blasting the limbs off of hideous necromorphs remains tremendously satisfying, and although the pacing lags a bit during the game’s middle portions, this second outing packs more than enough scares and surprises to make stepping back into Isaac Clarke’s suit extremely worthwhile. In addition, a new multiplayer component successfully translates Dead Space’s particular breed of dismemberment-focused combat into a pulse-pounding team-based experience that casts you as both humans and as the foul necromorphs. And, at least at the time of release, the PlayStation 3 version includes a hefty bonus: the great on-rails shooter Dead Space Extraction (previously a Wii exclusive), at no additional cost. As long as you’ve got the stomach for it, Dead Space 2 is one sci-fi horror thrill ride you definitely want to take.

The first few moments of Dead Space 2 smartly accomplish a good deal in a very short amount of time. We get a glimpse into Isaac’s psychological state, his psyche still tormented by the painful loss he experienced on the Ishimura during the events of the first game. We also learn that the three years since then have been little more than a blur to Isaac–he’s in some kind of hospital facility, but has only the vaguest memories of his time there. And almost before you can say “necromorph outbreak,” you take control of Isaac as he runs for his life from the hideous creatures who, for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, have suddenly appeared and started slaughtering the human population here in the Sprawl, a vast urban area on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Isaac, who said not a word in the original game, has a voice here, and although he’s a bit bland as a character, the intensity of the action that surrounds him makes you feel invested in his desperate struggle for survival. Revealing glimpses into the world of Dead Space–such as a trek through a Unitology center that sheds light on the inner workings of the church whose activity is inextricably linked to the necromorph outbreaks–keep the momentum rolling during the early chapters. The game later falls into predictable rhythms for a while, but it picks up steam again toward the end, as the story goes to some unexpected and exciting places and puts almost as much emphasis on Isaac’s struggle against his own demons of guilt and regret as on his battles against the necromorphs.

But those battles against the hideous undead mutations remain front and center, where they belong. The key to dropping necromorphs is still blasting off their often frighteningly pointy limbs, which you do with a number of repurposed mining tools and a few actual guns, all of which feel powerful and are immensely fun to use. All of the weapons from Dead Space return in this sequel, including the plasma cutter and the line gun, which fire beams of energy capable of slicing necromorph limbs clean off. Another returning weapon is the ripper, a terrific tool whose spinning blade can result in a noisy, grisly end to necromorphs who make the mistake of getting too close to you. And there are a few new weapons as well: the detonator lets you place laser-triggered trip mines to set explosive traps for approaching necromorphs, and the javelin gun fires spikes at such a tremendous velocity that any necromorph unfortunate enough to be in their path is likely to find itself impaled to a wall.

Show no mercy to necromorphs who have boarded the subway without a ticket.

As you progress, you can upgrade your weapons with nodes that you collect, making them noticeably more effective at limb-ripping and laying waste to necromorphs, resulting in a satisfying sense of progression. What’s more, it seems kinesis technology has seen remarkable advances in the three years since Isaac’s fateful trip to the Ishimura, and it’s now a much more effective offensive tool. Using this ability to pick up severed necromorph limbs or any of the sharp rods conveniently scattered across the Sprawl and hurl them at necromorphs is no substitute for a trusty plasma rifle by your side, but it works well in a pinch. There’s a delicious feeling of dishing out poetic justice in turning the necromorphs’ own limbs against them, and making use of this tactic is an effective way to conserve your often very limited ammo supply.

The Sprawl’s pressurized environment also occasionally offers a spectacularly reckless and dramatic way to eliminate some necromorphs. Certain rooms have windows that you can easily shatter with a shot of your weapon or a hurled object. The instant you do so, everything in the room–furniture, necromorphs, and you–is rapidly pulled toward the window as the air rushes out into the vacuum of space. To save yourself, as you are being pulled toward the opening, you must quickly shoot a sensor that brings a metallic emergency door down over it. It’s a risky and thrilling maneuver that brings some action-movie-style craziness to what is often a more grim and atmospheric adventure. These Hollywood set-piece moments and others that involve speeding trains, pursuits by massive necromorphs, and other surprises are great, but they’re not entirely enough to keep things from falling into a predictable rhythm for much of the second half. Still, things start revving up again as you approach the conclusion, and the outrageous final moments make for an intense and truly memorable climax.

Despite your powerful and satisfying arsenal, you still feel as if you’re in constant danger, and that’s never more the case than when you’re faced with a few of the terrifying new types of necromorphs that make their debuts here. One new variety, called the pack, resembles a twisted version of a human toddler. Individually very weak, these terrors run at you in groups, emitting bloodcurdling shrieks all the while, and if one manages to leap up onto you, it can cause tremendous damage. The other new standout necromorph type is called a stalker. These hunters display an intelligence previously unseen in necromorphs, making use of cover to try to stay hidden from you until they decide to strike, charging at you with incredible speed. It’s particularly satisfying to hit one of these charging beasts with your very useful stasis ability, stopping it in its tracks before blasting it to bits. On the other hand, these creatures are so speedy and so prone to charge at you when your back is turned that Isaac’s slow turning ability can at times become less a source of tension than a source of frustration.

The pack are one of the deadly and terrifying new types of necromorph that you encounter.

Stasis remains an invaluable part of your arsenal, but turnabout is fair play, and the bile of another new necromorph type, the puker, slows you down almost as much as your stasis ability slows the necromorphs down, leaving you extremely vulnerable for a short period of time. All of these new necromorph threats fit in perfectly with all the returning varieties from the first game, creating a diverse and deadly assortment of both short- and long-range attackers to keep you constantly on edge as you make your way across the Sprawl. Unfortunately, as in the first game, the camera sometimes contributes to the challenge. When you’re backed up against a wall and a necromorph gets too close to you, the camera often won’t show you your assailant, and targeting the creature can require you to move around to get a decent angle, which is frustrating when your health is rapidly being slashed away.

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Weighty shooting action and magnificent visuals collide in this great follow-up.

The Video Review

Kevin VanOrd returns to the front lines once again to take on the Helghast in this video review for Killzone 3.

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The Good

Core shooting action is weighty and satisfying   Campaign is filled with interesting set-piece battles   Terrific maps make competitive play an absolute blast   More environmental and gameplay variety than before   Astonishing visuals.

The Bad

The story is awful   Co-op play is local only and is hampered by frame rate problems   Not all changes to the online multiplayer are for the better.

Like its predecessor, Killzone 3 is immediately striking for its gorgeous landscapes and glowing lighting, which provide a hostile, not-quite-familiar backdrop to the heart-pounding first-person firefights that often occur on the planet of Helghan. But to dismiss this sequel as a mere visual showcase would be a disservice to the core action, which maintains the excellence that distinguished Killzone 2. There’s a heft as you move, jump, and shoot that you rarely feel in shooters, but it works for Killzone 3, giving every shot that finds its mark a satisfying sense of impact and keeping you mindful of where you step before you wade into a sea of gunfire. Set-piece battles energize this foundation, mixing up the pace by putting you in a jetpack or inside a lumbering armored suit. It’s unfortunate that not every aspect of the game maintains the same high standard of quality. The storytelling is so awful as to be embarrassing, yet there’s so much more story than before, and its frequent interruptions injure the flow of the single-player campaign. And the tacked-on local cooperative mode is a missed opportunity, and problematic in its own right. Yet for these few steps back, there are steps forward too, making Killzone 3 an exciting follow-up to one of 2009′s best shooters–and one of the most beautiful-looking games to grace consoles yet.

In Killzone 2, it was easy to ignore the story. There wasn’t much context for what made the red-eyed Helghast so hated and feared, beyond the fact that they waved fearsome flags that not-so-subtly evoked images of Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, the story focused on the well-meaning but interchangeable grunts on the front lines of the Helghan invasion to generic effect. In Killzone 3, the Helghan leaders, with their evil-scientist scowls and bushy mustaches, all too often take center stage. You see their atrocities firsthand, but these caricatures and their teeth-gnashing war room antics are beyond laughable. The game spends far too much time elaborating on their political machinations, complete with pounding fists and wrinkled brows. You can skip the overlong cutscenes, but they intrude often enough that the flow of battle suffers. Granted, like the rest of Killzone 3, these scenes are gorgeous to behold. Blustery images of heroes Sev and Rico making narrow escapes are as slick as any sequence you’d see in an action film. But it’s hard to be invested in the fate of characters you don’t care about, fighting an enemy characterized not by their cause, but by the color of their eyes.

Where the story stumbles, the action more than rises to the occasion. The M82 returns from Killzone 2 and remains a pleasure to shoot. Smooth animations make it enjoyable to go from standard shooting to peering through the sight of this assault rifle. Ruddy blood erupts from your enemies; weapons sound powerful; and animations effectively convey the jolts of bullets hitting armor. The boltgun, the flamethrower, and other Killzone 2 favorites return, though the new weapons pack plenty of punch as well. With one of them, you can charge up a glowing green orb of energy that plows through scores of enemies, leaving corpses in its wake. It functions much like Killzone 2′s lightning gun, in the sense that on the few occasions you get to wield this powerful beast, you feel like an unstoppable supersoldier. Another potent weapon lets you switch between two modes, raining artillery fire onto Helghast and vehicles. It’s put to memorable use in a boss fight of sorts in which you take on an impossibly enormous walker firing upon your collapsing base with machine guns and missiles.

It’s fun to shoot the helmets off of menacing Helghast.

Like so many shooters, this one often funnels you down narrow corridors carved through the trash and rubble of its war-torn vistas. This predictable foundation is prevalent in the first hour, but gives way to memorable set-piece battles that define the Killzone 3 experience. In the best of these, you don a jetpack and thrust into the air with the same satisfying sense of substantial weight that has always permeated the series’ movement and gunplay. The first time you lift off is great fun, giving you a chance to load up Helghast troops with lead from above. It’s just as rewarding to fire at foes in jetpacks as they hover above, looking like winged demons summoned from hell. Shooting one down causes him to careen about before crashing into the terrain–or possibly, into you. This entertaining change of pace is accompanied by a change of scenery; rather than battling in the dusty Helghan desert, you feel the chill as you make your way through drifts of snow and soar above icy ocean waves.

“New scenery, new mechanics” is a major theme in Killzone 3. Not only do you make your way through a hostile sci-fi jungle, but you do so stealthily, stabbing your foes in the back in particularly dramatic fashion. In a wintry war zone, you pilot a speeder while launching missiles at the aircraft that zoom above and in front of you. An enjoyable battle in yet another frontier closes the game, though this brief final chapter is too easy to feel like an actual climax. Nevertheless, it’s a better conclusion than Killzone 2′s, and it’s preceded by a series of progressively more challenging firefights that raise tension levels. For even more variety, you can also jump into the action with a Move controller and navigation controller in hand. This method of control is much as you’d expect: you move using the thumbstick on the navigation controller, and you adjust the camera, aim, and shoot with the motion controller. Everything moves smoothly and precisely, and the auto-targeting adjusts in smart ways when you aim down the sights of your gun or turret.

War is hell. And apparently, hell boasts some beautiful scenery.

Even the more standard levels that stick mostly to running and gunning do a good job of giving context to your actions and keeping intensity levels high. For instance, you fight your way through a junkyard that funnels you through its corridors in conventional fashion, but then pits you against hovering security drones that deliver death surprisingly quickly, all while a couple of Helghast snipers take aim. Killzone 3′s enemy AI is fantastic. Your adversaries flee quickly from the grenades you toss, are quite accurate when they throw their own, and sprint to more effective cover spots when your gunfire causes the sheet of metal they were hiding behind to fall away. You are often accompanied by a mostly competent AI teammate. He might cry out that he can’t get to you to revive you when you go down, even though he’s crouching right next to you. But apart from these rare blips, the artificial intelligence is wonderful. On the occasions when you are part of a larger battle and accompanied by numerous soldiers, your foes are just as focused on your comrades as they are on you. As a result, you feel like a proud cog in an authentic war machine, rather than a simple bullet magnet.

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With a wealth of content to explore, tight controls, and great visuals, Top Spin 4 is a fantastic tennis simulation that caters to pros and novices alike.

The Good

In-depth online and offline career modes   Realistic physics   Responsive controls   Great animation captures the feel of a live match   Spot-on sound effects add to the drama.

The Bad

Optional Move controls aren’t accurate enough to win championships   Characters’ faces sometimes look odd.

Not only does Top Spin 4 succeed at being one of the most accurate tennis simulations available, but its new training modes and shot assists make it accessible for newcomers to the sport too. Whether you’re playing a simple exhibition match, shooting it out in a grand slam, or showcasing your skills in online tournaments, each and every match is full of the drama and thrilling spectacle that make tennis such an exciting sport. There’s a heap of content to explore, with a deep career mode and an improved character leveling system that ensures your hard work never goes unrewarded, letting you compete in online matches with a player you can truly call your own.

Character customization lies at the heart of Top Spin 4, since your creations can be used in both online and offline modes. You choose the gender of your character, along with a number of attributes, including height, facial features, and clothing. There are also settings for tennis style and behavior, which change the animation of forehands, backhands, and serves. You can even select the type of grunt shouted during shots and the type of victory celebration at the end of a match–which is great if you want your character to throw down his racquet in disgust when losing a point or act nonchalant when winning a match.. If you’re especially creative, you can use the advanced features editor to sculpt your character’s face precisely using a number of control points, though it’s fiddly to use and more often than not results in some scary-looking creations.

Once you’ve created a player, you’re sent to the Top Spin Academy, which teaches you the basic controls. Face buttons perform flat, top spin, slice, and lob shots, while the triggers and shoulder buttons act as modifiers, allowing you to perform adventurous drop shots or dash to and from the net. By tapping a button, you perform a control shot, which is accurate but slow. Holding it down performs power shots, which are faster but are more likely to go out if you hold the button down too long. Meanwhile, the left analogue stick moves your player around the court and aims your shots. It’s a lot to take in, but the tutorial gently guides you through each type of shot individually so you can master the basics quickly. It also teaches you about timing, which is critical during a match. If you press a shot button too early or too late, your shot might go out or lack power, making it easy for your opponent to return the ball.

Even the pros get sweaty.

While previous games in the series expected you to perfect timing based purely on your own intuition, Top Spin 4 introduces a number of on-court assists known as “helpers” that make connecting with the ball much easier. For timing, your shot is given a rating of perfect, good, too early, or too late, which is displayed over your character’s head after you’ve hit the ball. Shots get a power meter so you know how hard you’re hitting them, while a first bounce helper shows you where the ball is going to land when an opponent returns a shot. There’s also a fatigue gauge that shows you how tired a player is getting, either from hitting power shots or from running around the court. You can use this to your advantage by hitting wider balls, which are much more difficult to return when your opponent is fatigued. If you’re feeling confident, you can turn off the helpers.

Further tactics are taught in the advanced lessons of the Top Spin Academy, so you know exactly when to deploy a deft slice or catch your opponent off guard with a drop shot. You learn about the three fundamental play styles of tennis: the fast power shots of baseline offensive; the accurate control shots of baseline defensive that move your opponent around the court; and the quick plays of volley. Even if you’re well versed in tennis, these tutorials are great for learning the many techniques that professionals use, helping you identify what kind of players you’re up against and what moves to use against them. Mastering these techniques takes time, but with the addition of helpers, it’s much easier than before. The controls are very accurate, and the physics are spot on, so you never feel like the game isn’t responding to your actions, which makes each match a lot of fun to play.

Rafter always has a wave for his fans.

If you’re playing the game with a Move controller, then things are a little less accurate. You need a navigation controller or a pad to move your player, while your other hand swings the Move controller to launch shots. The angle of your swing dictates whether it’s a flat, top spin, slice, or lob shot, while the speed of it controls the power of the shot. The triggers play a role too, performing drop shots and net dashes. The Move works to some extent, but it’s often difficult to angle your swing correctly or move it at the correct speed to perform the desired shot. This is exacerbated by a less-than-helpful tutorial that explains the motions via a series of static pictures, where a video or interactive lesson would make things much clearer. It’s fortunate, then, that the Move is optional, so at the very least you can give it a try and inevitably fall back on the more accurate standard controls.

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The classic crossover series triumphantly returns to usher in a new age of heroes.

The Video Review

Maxwell McGee puts X-factor to the test in this video review for Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.

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The Good

Fights are intense and engaging   Huge and diverse cast of recognizable characters   Superbly rendered characters, backgrounds, and animations   Online play runs smoothly   Simple mode is great for beginners.

The Bad

Barebones multiplayer which lacks replay support   Archaic story mode   Mission mode missing key training tools.

After a decade of anticipation, and a few long months of speculation, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds is upon us at last. This venerable fighting series, renowned for its structured insanity, has finally returned with the same fire and intensity that was its hallmark. However, not all the characters from the previous game have returned this time around–but not without good reason. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was a game so completely dominated by a handful of characters and strategies that the majority of its design was rendered moot. Developer Capcom has since learned from this, and the changes made help distill this game’s combat into a more well-rounded experience than ever before. The result is not the most technically demanding of fighters, but is certainly one of the most enjoyable. The white-knuckle intensity is still here–but this is not the same game you remember from 10 years ago.

In the extravagant world of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, there is rarely a dull moment. You and your opponent each have a team of three characters to battle it out in one frantic, continuous round accented by dazzling finishing moves and triple-digit combos. But beneath all its style, the game’s core combat mechanics have been simplified and work harmoniously to drive you, and the action, forward. Locomotion plays a large role in this, even if the characters are slower than before. This change feels natural in the game’s large arenas and affords you the time to plan out your next move without having to rely on blindly overwhelming your opponent. But even if you are slower, you never want to stop moving. There is safety in mobility when every character can clear the length of the arena in a single bound or pepper you with projectiles from a screen away. Stopping only makes things easier for your opponent.

Movement keeps the battle flowing and changing as you duck in and out of your opponent’s reach, each side frantically searching for that break in the other’s defenses. Sometimes opportunity is easy to spot. Other times you have to make your own luck. In either case, when it’s time to strike, the number of tools you have in your arsenal is intoxicating. You might unleash a fierce flurry of blows, summon another character to take a quick shot, or employ a snap back attack for a more favorable match-up. When on the defense, a well-timed advancing guard can punish a nasty rushdown player, while a crossover counter can rescue a teammate under fire. Regardless, after each encounter you take away a little something to add to your repertoire–be it practice with your favorite go-to combo or knowledge that a new assist isn’t all that great. There’s a constant sense of progression as you endlessly experiment with new tricks and new combinations.

From beat to beat and blow to blow, it’s the little touches that sell the experience. It’s that slight pause at the start of a hyper combo–a breath just wide enough to fit a single expletive before the hammer falls–or the feeling of weight right as you launch someone into the air. It’s the fact that combat can just as easily take place vertically as it can horizontally. The addition of the new launcher button helps expedite this process. And once you’re airborne, a few quick hits lead you to an important crossroads: either end the combo safely or press your luck. If you go with the latter, you can bounce your opponent in one of four directions, after which you switch characters and continue the combo. That is, unless your opponent inputs the same direction as you, in which case you’re the one who’s sent tumbling down. It’s a gamble, and one that keeps both sides of the beatdown engaged.

The cast is slower overall this time, but some character are still pretty nimble.

All of this would be enough, but then there’s the x-factor. True to its namesake, the x-factor is your wild card in any match. Activated by pressing all four attack buttons, this ability temporarily increases your character’s attack power and speed–and resets his or her current animation. Its potency and duration are determined by the number of team members you’ve lost, making it an excellent last resort to turn the tables on your opponent. But its applications run deeper than that. The simple animation reset lets you chain together moves that would otherwise be impossible, such as two super moves back-to-back. Or, if an opponent manages to flank you while you’re caught helpless in a big attack, you can burn the x-factor to cancel that attack and face your opponent. The amount of diversity gained for something so simple makes this new feature a valuable tool rather than a mere gimmick.

Combat in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is an enjoyable blend of violence and intimacy. Surmounting your opponent is just as much about getting in his head as it is about getting around the controls. Some people like to mix things up and have fun, while others just want to win no matter the cost. Whatever your calling, finding characters who fit your style of play is paramount. This game offers a wide array of variations on a single character theme, as most of the rosters’ techniques are executed in the same way. Several of the basic moves and combos you learn for one will easily transfer to several others. However, while these inputs may be similar, their outputs are wildly different. Every character brings something unique to the experience, and the game quickly moves from the tedium of learning individual commands, to the joys of mastering their timing and situational uses.

At the heart of the game is Ryu, whose iconic trio of moves–the fireball (hadoken), the uppercut (shoryuken), and the hurricane kick (tatsumaki senpukyaku)–serve as the foundation for many others. Some characters, such as Morrigan and Zero, emulate this style closely while adding their own variations to the execution. Arthur and Chris are characters who explore a single aspect of this style, the fireball, with a variety of different projectile attacks. Dante takes it to the extreme with a staggering lineup of 32 unique attacks. If you’ve ever had trouble perfecting the motions for these moves, the game address this with a new simplified control option. This aptly named simple mode condenses each character down into a few key moves which can be executed at the press of a button. While this severely limits your offensive options in battle, simple mode’s simplicity makes it ideal for series newcomers.

Who likes to rock the party? Dormammu likes to rock the party.

Is this game’s roster perfectly balanced? No. If it were, it would have only two characters who each played exactly like the other. Battles aren’t won on spreadsheets using numbers and averages. They are won with experience, mind games, and a bit of luck. Capcom delivers a roster where every character feels powerful and fun to play. In a game this over-the-top, there’s a way around everything. One strategy isn’t going to work in every situation. The deadly trio of Storm, Sentinel, and Magneto is still a mighty combination. But this time so is everyone else.

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