Like the original Toy Soldiers, Cold War has you guarding your precious toy box against action-figure invasions — only this time, cavalry and biplanes give way to infantry and armaments from the Reagan era. You’ll drop a handful of upgradable tower-defense staples (rapid-fire turrets, anti-aircraft guns) on predetermined build sites, taking direct control of them whenever you feel like mowing down a crowd.

Your A.I. gunners are now relatively competent, but manually controlling one has its benefits. Quickly chew up 20 enemies, and you’ll earn infinite ammo and enhanced damage. Extend that kill-streak to 40, and you’ll earn bombing runs, nukes, and even a Stallone lookalike with a rocket launcher and a mouthful of movie quotes. It’s all pretty silly, but it’s also a lot of fun, at least for a while.

Cold War improves on the first game in almost every way. The newly cooperative camera makes it easier to jump between battlefield supervision and firsthand carnage without losing your bearings. Vehicles, which range from Top Gun-style jets to thundering tanks, are faster and more maneuverable. Get in a jam, and you can even rewind the action to previous waves. Only a few boss battles pop up during the 11 campaign missions, but the action chugs along at such a steady clip, you won’t have time to wish for more.

On the other hand, you’ll almost certainly yearn for more than just three survival stages and versus-mode maps to tackle. But even if Cold War lacks enough variety for more than a few afternoons of entertainment, its simple, enjoyable challenges still earn it an honorable discharge.

On Xbox Live Arcade

7.5

• Tower defense with a direct-control twist; fun toy vehicles; goofy humor.
• Attractive and mildly destructible environments, ranging from Mount Rushmore to Washington, D.C.
• Only six turret types; notsurvival and versus maps; rare boss battles.
• Who’s gonna clean up all these broken toys?

From OXM

Ever need to escape the doldrums of reality, and the only prescription is to use your arms to gesture-slice the crap out of a giant watermelon in slow-motion? No? Then you, my friend, are missing out, as the previously iOS-based, food-decimating Fruit Ninja Kinect offers incredibly insane amounts of quick-hit glee…if you have a buddy in tow.

The concept is ridiculously simple: various colorful fruits are tossed up onto the screen and your job is to slice the bejeezus out of ‘em by wielding your arms like you would finely sharpened knives. Chopping multiple fruits with one slash nets you combo points, while avoiding game-ending bombs in Classic Mode (or point-reducing tickers in Arcade Mode) and cutting point-multiplying bananas keeps you hacking, slashing, and juicing your way to higher scores and unlockables. Aaaaaand, that’s it.

Sure, you can take your newly mastered craft online to battle all comers over Live. Or even better, you can pull a friend in front of the Kinect with you to co-op your way to record-breaking points, or to compete in a split-screen obliterating frenzy. Fruit Ninja continually tosses you new records to gun for (like “Beat 300 Points in Zen Mode!”), but there’s nothing beyond more bomb-dodging and fruit-slicing in your future, really. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: it’s just that Fruit Ninja’s amazingly simple gameplay is strictly designed to be taken in small, party-based doses – nothing more, nothing less. And for $10, we were kind of hoping for more.

On Xbox Live Arcade (For Kinect)

6.0

• Silly, goofy, instantly accessible fruit-slicing fun — but mostly in multiplayer.
• The fun wears thin quickly; simple, arcadey gameplay is one-note throughout.
• Touchy gesture-controls can lead to many face-palming moments on menu screen.
• Where does this avalanche of fruit come from?

From OXM

Elimination: Kill a set number of enemy soldiers as quickly as you can.
Stealth: Make it through the level without being detected by enemies.
Defense: Protect a computer terminal against waves of enemies.
Assault: Charge an enemy base with guns blazing.

From what I can tell, it looks like the MI6 Ops will be available to play right from the start.

As a side note, the developer confirmed today that the PlayStation 3 version of GoldenEye 007: Reloaded will support the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter gun.

GoldenEye 007: Reloaded does not yet have a release date.

From IGN

After the events of Dragon Age II, the city of Kirkwall is safe at last — that is, until a new threat arises and threatens to send our champion to an early grave. It seems that Hawke’s unseen patriarchal progenitor has dabbled in some dark arts, and now the Hero of Kirkwall’s blood is going for a high price. Let’s just say Hawke’s got some daddy issues.

Set in the foreboding Vimmark caverns beneath the bustling cityscape, this enigmatic adventure — like the full game — tests your skill in overwhelming combat just as much as your mystery-solving chops. With Legacy’s brief content and relatively few side-quests (just three), though, it never achieves the same sense of scale as Dragon Age II’s main quest or similarly priced BioWare DLC. While Legacy does offer Hawke and company alternate choices, there’s little significance in whom you ally with. Deceptive forks aside, morality is only a small detail of this quest, not a cornerstone of the gameplay.

You’ll rekindle the joys of camaraderie, at least, as Hawke and his crew delve deep to settle some unfinished business in those murky depths. Witty banter and romantic asides (if you went down that road) are in full swing, and — together with some great voiceovers — make for a handful of great reasons why DAII diehards should return to Kirkwall.

Unfortunately, you’ll find fun-leechers in other places. While Legacy nearly escapes the bland-environment trend that plagues Dragon Age II, reused textures become overwhelming, with the prison walls beginning to meld together after a few hours spent in their holds. Also, without being too spoiler-ish, the final boss doesn’t exactly play fair: my team had more problems navigating the terrain than they did actually dishing out damage. Besides its arduous boss battles, the rest of the DLC isn’t overly difficult — Legacy has a few pockets of challenge, but nothing you didn’t face in the full game.

As far as story coherency, the DLC can be played at any point after settling in at Gamlen’s house or your own, because its inhabitants — like all the other enemies in the game — level along with you. This means you can actually play Legacy before Dragon Age II’s trip to the Deep Roads if you like; because you’ll be at a lower level, it’ll be easier for your party to coast through the darkspawn horde. Plus, you’ll sport a fancy new power weapon afterward, the likes of which aren’t really seen until the main game’s later areas.

At $10, Legacy is a bit overpriced for its shallow, brief amount of content, but whether it’s worth the money ultimately depends on your interest in the game’s expanded universe. If gaining some really neat insights into Hawke’s genealogy interests you, you’ll find Legacy a solid expedition; if it doesn’t, this DLC may be a fruitless adventure.

On Xbox 360

5.5

• Gives players another chance to romp around with the team.
• Legacy is incredibly linear and lacks nearly any replay value…
• …and can feel like a glorified weapons quest.
• How did no one discover the giant prison overrun by demons? C’mon, guys.

The books and movies are loved by many, but praise for Harry Potter games has often been elusive. I was as disappointed by last year’s Deathly Hallows: Part 1 as most folks, so I’m happy to say that this follow-up has provided a small bit of redemption.

It’s obvious that EA Bright Light paid attention to complaints about the first Deathly Hallows, as they’ve cut the fat from its worst parts. Gone are the unresponsive Kinect missions and the pace-killing invisibility-cloak sections. The combat has been improved, too — there’s more strategy to the shooting, and you earn new spells during the narrative when you most need them, rather than at random moments.

The game still falls far short of modern shooters, and the boss battles often fail to add new gameplay tactics to the mix. But when the game rises to the occasion — like during the battle against giants, and in a sniping section set on a bridge — it’s a fine conclusion to the franchise.

On Xbox 360

6.0

• Better pacing and gameplay than Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
• Still a thoroughly average and repetitive adventure.
• Most of the final battles lack gravitas; the Battle of Hogwarts isn’t very epic.
• Who greenlit the idea of having TWO playable elderly ladies? Sigh.

From OXM

ORIGINAL STORY: Super-sized PC action RPG sequel Torchlight 2 is too big to fit on Xbox Live Arcade and will need to be “comprehensively redesigned” if it’s ever to see a console release, developer Runic Games has revealed.

CEO Max Schaefer told Eurogamer that it had only just managed to squeeze the original game below Microsoft’s file size limit. As it stands, the significantly more ambitious sequel is not even close.

Whereas the first game had just one just small town and a few dungeons, the sequel has vast outdoor areas, multiple hub cities, different terrain types and, crucially, co-operative multiplayer.

“With Torchlight 2 there is a little more complication as far as just being able to do a straight port, as we did with Torchlight 1,” he explained. “In all likelihood, if Torchlight 2 gets to the Xbox it would be probably fairly comprehensively redesigned.

“We would have to be redoing the interface for a console release anyway, just like we did with Torchlight 1, so it would probably make sense to do something more specifically tailored to the Xbox.

“We managed to shoehorn Torchlight 1 in there but just barely,” he continued.

“As some people have pointed out, there’s a little bit of frame-rate slowdown when it gets super crowded on screen. That’s another fact of it not being designed for the system and just being shoehorned onto it.”

That said, it still hopes to bring the game to consoles in some form, given the huge success of the original on XBLA.

“Torchlight on Xbox Live did very well for us. I think it’s the number one revenue game on XBLA for the year so far. We missed out being the top for units sold to Full House Poker by a little bit but they cost less than we do. It was definitely a profitable and valuable experience and we’re happy with the results.

When asked whether he was interested in pursuing a full retail release for consoles rather than sticking to the limiting confines of XBLA, Schaefer replied, “We would absolutely consider that.” However, no formal discussions with any prospective publishers have yet been held.

“We’re very consciously trying to focus on one thing at a time and at the moment it’s getting Torchlight 2 out for the PC. Then the next thing will be the Mac port.

“Beyond that we’re keeping our options open, depending on what happens. We have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things but we want to stay a small studio. We’re 30 people total, so we really like to do one thing at a time and not over-commit and grow the studio more than we would like.”

Schaefer was good enough to provide Eurogamer with a few more tidbits of information on the keenly-anticipated follow-up to its acclaimed 2009 dungeon crawler.

First up, the The Railman character class has been renamed The Engineer, “because in re-doing our story 25 times we’ve actually got rid of rails, so it didn’t make sense anymore.”

He also added that the game’s fourth and final class will be revealed at PAX Prime, later this month.

A player limit for the new co-op mode hasn’t been decided on yet, but Schaefer reckons “It’ll probably be between four and eight.”

However the modding tools will allow you to tinker away with that number to your heart’s content.

“You’ll be able to break the game by setting it to 1000 or whatever – there’s quite a lot of flexibility with the tools. If you really want to put more people in and design a level that fits that many people as a customer you’re free to do so.”

He declined to offer an update on what new pets we’ll see in the finished game, explaining that that will be one of the last aspects of the game to be finished up.

“It’s everyone’s favourite thing but it’s also one of the more trivial aspects of making the game,” he said.

“We haven’t actually tackled the new pets yet, so I don’t even know what we’re going to add. But they are a little bit more fully-featured and we’ll have really fun, cool pets. Everyone likes the pets, but it is the thing you do at the very end after everything else is working.”

A release date still hasn’t been pinned down, but Runic is hoping to have it out this Autumn.

“It’s going to be in the Fall. It’s definitely, 100 per cent, for sure this year and not the Winter with any luck. It’s coming along really well. We’ve hit our internal July milestones, so we should be on track for a Fall release.”

Finally, Schaefer offered a quick update on the status of the planned Torchlight MMO. Sounds like it’s a long way off.

“That’s obviously still in the plan. But is it the next thing or is it something beyond that? We just don’t know. We have a lot of good ideas for the MMO, we just aren’t committing to any kind of schedule yet. If Torchlight 2 blows up on PC and it’s the biggest thing since sliced bread we’ll probably want to give more attention to that before heading into the MMO world.”

From Eurogamer

Let’s face it: with all the undead appearances in videogames and pop culture, few of us still perk up at the words “zombie game.” Which makes it even more amazing that Dead Block has put a fresh face on the shop-worn corpse-killer.

Dead Block takes familiar zombie-movie concepts and transforms them into a fun, frenetic exercise in self-defense and resource management. A meaty construction worker, butterball Boy Scout, and sexy security guard use items like tasers, exploding hamburgers, freeze traps, and the power of rock ’n’ roll to keep the undead hordes at bay. With fewer weapon and enemy types than Call of Duty’s zombie mode, survival depends on learning when and where to use each character’s unique weapons, traps, and abilities.

Though Dead Block’s zombie combat would benefit from easier targeting, its rockabilly music, amusing characters (zombie clowns, anyone?) and manic pacing more than compensate. The campy madness only gets better in split-screen co-op, so not having online multiplayer is a shame, but for hectic puzzle-action fun, this game delivers.

From OXM

Ditching a traditional prologue, this modern-day reinvention of the Western-themed shooter series immediately tosses you into a raucous highway chase where, from the passenger window of your fast-moving SUV, you pump rival vehicles full of lead and watch them detonate. Within minutes, you meet the three lead characters and learn of their plight against a Mexican drug cartel, but by the time the credits roll, you may wish you’d stayed in those initial, exciting moments.

The law-enforcement trio — an LAPD detective (Ben McCall, descendent of the brothers from Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood) flanked by FBI and DEA agents — serves an important purpose, as it sets up interagency strife and creates companions for the co-op journey. But the whole time, their interactions and dialogue are absolutely insufferable. All three lazily repeat the same shared quips and constantly chide you for poor shooting or stealing all the kills; plus, if you’re playing solo (as any of the three leads) with A.I.-controlled partners, they’re probably standing around mouthing off while you’re left to complete the objectives. The whole relationship’s a far cry from the compelling bond you had with your brother in Bound in Blood.

As is usually the case with shooters, Cartel’s campaign is consistently more enjoyable with online partners filling the roles, though it certainly has its moments as a solo quest. With diverse locations ranging from vast forests to downtown safehouses and dusty desert villages, the game keeps the scenery lively and even inserts regular behind-the-wheel sequences to shake up the typical stop-and-pop action. Plus, Cartel introduces intriguing co-op elements such as performing secret tasks or stealing items while your comrades aren’t looking — which unlocks weapons and can affect the game’s ending — along with quick-hit challenges like racking up the most kills or headshots in a shootout. The secret quests also pop up during single-player missions, but the brain-dead A.I. partners really dull the appeal of sneaking around the stages.

Even with your allies’ poor A.I. and grating personalities, Cartel’s campaign offers a decent enough run-and-gun adventure. And the competitive multiplayer — in which 12 players battle it out as cops or gangsters in objective-based or team-deathmatch battles — is an enjoyable, if unremarkable, extra.

Problem is, annoying bugs and glitches consistently derail both modes, and while many of these oddities are simply visual quirks, others can cause unnecessary deaths or losses. Smaller issues range from sloppy animations throughout (partners poking through car frames and walls, or strangely stuttering atop furniture; a rigid bystander gliding down a hallway) to subtitles riddled with typos and inaccuracies. Bigger concerns include crummy events like falling through a floor and dying, and seeing a multiplayer getaway vehicle spinning in the air, unable to function while the team slowly loses the match as a result.

Such issues are inexcusable in a final release (not to mention a full-priced retail game), but then again, much of this game demonstrates a lack of care and an inattention to detail. It’s sad to see an under-the-radar favorite tank so spectacularly in an attempt to revitalize the brand, but Cartel is one call you can clearly push to voicemail.

From OXM

Microsoft’s ambitions for the Kinect–which has shipped some 10 million unitsas of March–are evident. In addition to Kinect Fun Labs, Microsoft has expressed interest in implementing Kinect support into all first-party games and is targeting to release one Kinect-enabled Xbox Live Arcade game every month.

From GameSpot

But the rise of premium subscription services like Call of Duty: Elite and Electronic Arts’ Season Ticket is a fee too far for me. My tolerance for incremental revenue streams has died a death of a thousand cuts, and I’ve lost all taste for publishers’ short-sighted, exploitive, and (in the case of free-to-play games) downright predatory tactics in the marketplace.

If the subscribers are considered Elite, what does Activision think of the unwashed masses who paid “only” $60 for Modern Warfare 3?

In most of these cases, publishers will tell us that the game on the disc is every bit as good as it ever was, and that gamers are getting everything they’re accustomed to–a full-featured product with sufficient bells and whistles to justify a $60 price tag. And to take their side for a moment, each one of these approaches is defensible.

After all, the difference between DLC on the disc or not is a question of semantics: Should transferring MB of data to access the content instead of KB really make a big difference to the consumer? As for combating used game sales, why shouldn’t publishers take issue with the practice? These companies spend millions making and marketing a game to convince people to go to their local GameStops to buy the thing, only to have the retailer sell them a used copy from which the people who made the game won’t see a dime. Those sales add up pretty quickly, given that GameStop annually rakes in $2 billion in used game sales, an amount roughly 13 percent the size of the US retail gaming market last year.

Even microtransactions and preorder incentives have had their place. Who could argue with Rock Band’s a la carte approach that gave gamers access to thousands of extra songs, tailoring the game to their exact musical tastes? And I’ll be the first to admit I preordered Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike just for the preorder disc that featured the old Star Wars arcade game.

But when taken together, every one of these incremental revenue streams that publishers so desperately crave might leave a bitter taste in a gamer’s mouth. While the $60 we once spent for new retail games is arguably buying just as much, it certainly isn’t buying any more than it did before. In fact, that same $60 is now undeniably buying a second-class game experience.

Rock Band did it right by focusing one extra revenue stream and implementing it in a consumer-friendly way.

If you don’t buy the collector’s edition with the extra content, the map packs, and the subscription service with the whiz-bang Web-based tools, you’re only getting a fraction of the total game experience. And if that fraction doesn’t meet your fancy and you trade the game in, you’re getting less value in return because GameStop knows it’s getting a disc with crippled online features. As a result, even consumers who always buy new games at full price are being punished by this scheme.

Publishers can say the core product doesn’t suffer as a result of these initiatives, but the problem is one of perception. I perceive that my $60 is no longer enough for them. I perceive that their focus is shifting from making a game to making a business model. I perceive that the more desperate they become for my money, the more cynical, manipulative, and dehumanizing their approach to getting it will become. I can’t even convince myself that I am a valued customer any longer; I am simply a potential revenue stream with an incidental pulse.

But the more examples I see of downright disrespectful cash grabs from publishers, the less common it becomes for my full-price purchase to get me a complete, cohesive gaming experience and the more I’ll appreciate (and happily shell out for) the games that buck that trend: the Vanquishes, the Children of Eden, and the Shadows of the Damned.

From GameSpot