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Enchanted Arms for Xbox 360 (and now PS3) is an epic Japanese RPG featuring turn-based random encounters, a party of diverse characters and plenty of monsters to collect. This is the first and only Japanese RPG on Microsoft’s console and it’s above mediocre, but doesn’t rise to the bar set by so many Final Fantasy games.

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Many Tycoon games have allowed gamers to manage everything from railroads, theme parks to cruise ships and even prisons. Latest Tycoon game is Hospital Tycoon published by Codemasters. There already was a hospital management game (Theme Hospital, created by Bullfrog in 1997): now 10 years later, can another hospital simulation do better?

Unfortunately this game isn’t as good as Theme Hospital. Both games are very similar: you’re the general manager of a hospital and you need to create facilities and hire staffs in order to cure patients. Diseases and cures are fictional but are based on real life counterparts. The game tries to inject humor everywhere but it fails flat. Especially the whole TV show concept… It turns out Theme Hospital is a TV show and you play 12 episodes where many intrigues, twists and humor are supposed to create a semblance of a storyline. Except they didn’t bother to have voiceacting! Instead your staff (whenever they speak) uses gibberish, not entirely unlike the speech in The Sims. However with incredibly limited voice samples, you’ll hear the same thing constantly.

Gameplay is intuitive: when a sick person comes in, he’s first examined. If the doctor can’t find what’s wrong, he’s sent to the research lab to get more information. Once it’s a known disease, then there’s diagnostics (such as X-Ray, Odor sampler) and finally cure thanks to machines like sensory depravation tank and DNA recombiner. It just takes minutes for a patient to go through the process and leave your hospital… theoretically.

The game suffers from a horrendous AI that makes playing impossible. Staffs would occasionally stop doing their jobs: for example, for no apparent reason, receptionists stop working which means patients can’t get registered, shutting down the entire hospital. Or doctors just don’t see patients anymore. Even engineers who fix your broken machines get stuck fixing a machine which doesn’t get fixed at all! Of course if you could tell the staff to do something, but the commands don’t register either.

In the end, the game could have been quite fun but its buggy state means that enjoyment will have to come from another Tycoon game… and god knows there are so many of them!

Rating: (1 out of 5)

Verdict: avoid unless they fix the AI

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Sam & Max Hit The Road released back in 1993 is rumored by many to be one of the finest point-and-click adventure game released by LucasArts when it was more than just a studio for Star Wars games. Now they’re back in episodic games spanning 6 episodes created by Tell Tale Games. Sam (a dog thing) and Max (a bunny thing) are private freelance police and they take on cases that regular police - or sane persons - may find unbelievable and ludicrous.

Episode 1 - Culture Shock
When 3 child stars from the ’70s (called Soda Poppers) end up terrorizing the neighborhood with free videos of Eye-Bo by Brady Culture, Sam & Max are called into action to find out what exactly is Eye-Bo and why everyone is worshipping Brady Culture, a once-has-been byproduct of a failed television show.

Episode 2 - Situation Comedy
With the situation of Brady Culture resolved, Sam & Max turn their attention to Myra Stump, a very Oprah-like figure, who refuses to stop taping her show and is holding audience hostage for 3 days. Our favorite animal detectives must navigate through a talent competition, a cooking show, a sitcom and even a gaming show in order to find out what caused Myra to go ballistic.

Episode 3 - The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball
Sam & Max are sent to the local casino to find out what happened to the undercover agent who infiltrated Ted E. Bear’s casino and finally put an end to those adorable, yet hypnotizing teddy bears by any means necessary, cheating at card games, playing one-armed bandit slots and recovering the lost meatball sandwich.

Episode 4 - Abe Lincoln Must Die
It looks like Toy Mafia wasn’t the criminal mastermind behind the entire enterprise. Sam & Max must fight the conspiracy at the highest levels of government and make sure the Dakotas (South, North and West) go to war over the control of Mount Rushmore. Oh, and Max must figure out a way to beat gigantic robotic Abe Lincoln statue in order to become president of the United States.

Episode 5 - Reality 2.0
When Internet no longer works (and planes fall out of the skies) and people are being hypnotized by VR goggles, President Max and his assistant Sam must visit the virtual cyberspace in order to figure out who is behind everything and why people need to be controlled even if it’s the end of all those porns.

Episode 6 - Bright Side Of The Moon
For the last episode of this season, Sam & Max travel to the Moon to the exclusive resort for high-level members of Prismatology in order to battle the evil mastermind, score a date for giant Abe Lincoln’s head, and figure out a way to sell the entire country to the Queen of Canada.

Gameplay is extremely simple as it’s just point-and-click: click on where you want to move, click on items you wish to collect and click to interact with the environment. You even click to drive cars! Simplistic gameplay doesn’t deter from the true asset of an adventure game: storyline. Sam & Max Season 1’s storyline takes many, many, many outlandish turns and twists, and it’s simply a great fun to follow. You’ll definitely be impressed by the sharp dialogs and virtually perfect delivery of those lines. Apart from Sam & Max, there are other recurring characters such as Bosco, owner of Bosco’s Inconvenience, and Sybil who is a professional career switcher.

The game is far from perfect: many locations and characters are recycled, limited inventory makes puzzling solving fairly easy and all the backtracking can get tedious. However game’s dialog and style will make you forget about those shortcomings.

In the end, this is a great game for all adventure fans, and even if you’re not, you’ll enjoy the game for its deadly wit, penchant for mindless violence and comedic one-liners. Just make sure to pick up the entire first season (and save quiet a bit of money). Here’s to season 2 and beyond!

Rating: (4 out of 5)

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Catan is the first real board game to hit Xbox Live Arcade service for Xbox 360 and if you are even remotely interested in strategic board games, then this should be at the top of your list. Catan is all about resources: you must collect, trade and steal wool, lumber, ore, brick and wheat in order to build roads, construct towns, upgrade them to cities and buy development cards. Some development cards (such as soldiers) allow you to steal from opponents, others give you free roads, monopolize a certain type of resource or keep building your victory points.

Basic premise is fairly simple to understand but the game is incredibly complex to master. Rolling 2 dice is immediately familiar to everyone, but placing your towns and roads on a map made of numbered hexagons takes some time to get used to. As all board games, Catan is governed by a few rules that aren’t immediately accessible: it’s a great thing the game comes with a great “learn as you play” mode and help explanations to ease you into the world of Catan. But once you start, it’s really hard to put the controller down: fairly slow-moving gameplay emphasizes strategy as your initial placement of 2 settlements and 2 roads will severely limit expansion depending on resources you choose to collect. Trading is available in 2 forms as well: trading with other players, or using ports where you can trade 2, 3 or 4 of the same resource to get 1 of another.

In the end, this game is strongly recommended to all those board game lovers. Great thing is there’s a free demo available which gives you a taste of what’s to be expected of the 800 Microsoft points purchase.

Rating: Â (4 out of 5)

Kane is back! And so is the Command & Conquer series with the release of Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. The original C&C game helped solidify real-time strategy genre as a staple on PCs everywhere: even though Tiberium Wars is not revolutionary and doesn’t bring new ideas to the table, it’s an almost-perfectly executed RTS game that stays true to its roots.

The third Tiberium Wars begins when the Brotherhood of NOD destroys GDI (Global Defense Initiative) headquarter, killing most of the leadership. Playing as a GDI commander, you’ll repel NOD attacks, recapture strategic locations such as the Pentagon, prevent use of new liquid-tiberium weapon of mass destruction. Or you can go through the NOD campaign destroying the GDI. This time, a third playable faction (alien race Scrin) literally crashes the party when they crash-land on Earth in search of rich tiberium deposits and both GDI and NOD fight for their lives against the technologically superior Scrin.

All this storyline (and more) is told in the glorious full-motion video that’s a staple of the Command & Conquer universe - except for that Generals nonsense. Unlike videos in Need for Speed Most Wanted and Carbon, it looks like Electronic Arts spared no expenses as they look professionally made, using very well-known actors such as Billy Dee Williams (from Star Wars movies), Grace Park (from Battlestar Galactica), Michael Ironside and Josh Holloway. It’s clear their performance isn’t Oscar-worthy but it’s still enjoyable to watch them.

 The game plays like any other C&C game as you’ll need to collect tiberium, build powerplants, construct your base and destroy the opponents by using a combination of infantry, vehicles, airplanes and superweapons. Fairly lengthy single-player campaigns for GDI and NOD gradually introduce you to advanced weapons and structures, and Scrin even gets a mini-campaign of their own. Many staples return including GDI’s Orcas, Mammoth tanks, Commando, Ion Cannon and NOD’s buggies, flametanks, stealth tanks and nukes. Every faction plays differently: GDI focuses on sheer power, NOD relies on alternative techniques such as stealth and hit-and-run, and Scrin’s high-tech units are varied and may take some time to master them.

In the end, Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars is a perfect C&C game featuring everybody’s favorite Kane in another misadventure with FMVs, fairly engrossing storyline, greatly balanced factions and return of crowd-pleasing units. This game may not be as complex as Supreme Commander, or as intense as Company of Heroes, but if you’re a fan of RTS, you can’t go wrong with Tiberium Wars.

Rating: Â (5 out of 5)

Here’s the first true PS3 game that I definitely wanted to purchase as soon as it came out, and it’s an overall disappointment: even being delayed by couple of months (it was originally launch title) wasn’t enough to make this title the showcase of what PS3 is capable.

Positive things first: graphics are gorgeous and they truly feel like a real next-generation title. Vehicle models are incredibly detailed and when chunks of metal start falling off, you can understand how you can never go back. Explosions are definitely worth the steep cost of entry PS3 + game.

Now the problems: gorgeous visuals would have benefited a lot from diverse environments as you only get 1. Surely the rock formation in the middle of desert fits the off-road nature of the game, but off-road exists outside of that tiny area. Where’s thrilling race in the middle of forest like they do in rally? How about icy/snowy mountain roads? All those locations would have made the game more than just one-note wonder.

And what a one-note wonder it is! Apparently racing is a solitary event since the game doesn’t offer any offline multiplayer. So if you have more than 1 person on your PS3, then others better get used to watching the pretty graphics. The pursuit of singleness means there’s only 1 mode: PLAY. You progress events by placing 1st, 2nd or 3rd, and you’ll unlock vehicles as you complete the events.

At least the game offers a wide variety of vehicle classes, from nimble bikes to towering semi trucks. However each vehicle in a class behaves the same way as they are just different shells of the same vehicle. You’ll just stop trying to find the best vehicle to suit you since, first they are all the same, and second the loading time for each vehicle is atrocious. Selecting a new vehicle class or a new vehicle shell takes at least 5 solid seconds, and other loading times are numerous (such as main menu, starting a race…).

In the end, Motorstorm works better as a tech-demo than a full-fledged game. The game lacks a lot of contents that we take granted in other racing games, such as multiple modes, vehicles that handle differently and fast loading times. And it definitely would have benefited from rumble feature as it felt odd to be driving over rough terrain with the vehicle bouncing everywhere without any feedback from the controller…

Rating: Â (2 out of 5)

Star Wars Episodes 4 to 6 are regarded as vastly superior to Episodes 1 to 3, and it’s no surprise that the game based on the original trilogy is superior as well. LEGO Star Wars II transforms the beloved world of A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi into LEGOs: buildings, vehicles and even characters are all made of LEGOs.

The storyline should be familiar to anyone who watched the original trilogy: Luke, a farmer from the middle of nowhere turns out to be the last Jedi and ends up defeating the Empire thanks to his family and his Rebel friends. The game takes some liberty with details in order to create compelling gameplay but the general story elements are all there.

Just like the first LEGO Star Wars game, you control a character as you go through famous locations battling the Empire and monsters, collecting studs, collecting minikits to build vehicles and powerblocks that give you cheats. The game is extremely easy to pick up as in most cases you just need 3 buttons: jump, attack and action. However this doesn’t make the game monotonous as you can easily switch between several classes of characters: trooper that can fire blasters, droids that can’t fire but can open doors, bounty hunters with thermal grenades and of course jedis with lightsaber and Force powers. And don’t forget that Princess Leia’s bikini allows her to bitch-slap Imperial troopers and disintegrate them! If you get tired of unlocking dozens of characters, you can even build your own. If you ever wanted to give Luke Skywalker a woman’s bikini figure, well you can do it here.

Apart from playing as different characters, you can drive vehicles in the game. All the famous vehicles are there: speeder in the forests of Endor and snowspeeder in Hoth. Some missions allow you to pilot spaceships such as the X-Wing and the venerable Imperial Falcon. Controlling the vehicles are very easy so everybody can enjoy piloting them.

The game can be finished in about 10 hours but there are lots of contents to unlock: characters, vehicles, hilarious cheats and secret missions. It’s even better to go through the game with a friend as another character can jump in at will.

There are some minor issues such as problematic collision detections and dumb AI-controlled characters but those don’t distract you too much from having fun. If you enjoyed either LEGO or Star Wars, then this is a must.

Rating: Â (4.5 out of 5)

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Supreme Commander is the long-awaited spiritual-sequel to 1997’s Total Annihilation, which I have fond memories of playing online with friends. Total Annihilation was a real-time strategy game that did things a bit differently than the rest of the genre by focusing on strategy: you had to balance resource management, understand unit strengths and weak points and deal with weapons of mass destruction.

10 years later, Supreme Commander does almost everything better and bigger. From 2 generic interchangeable sides, we now have 3 sides: United Earth Federation, Cybran Nation and Aeon Illuminate are in an eternal struggle over ideology and victory. Single player campaign takes you through several missions where each side’s point of view is well explained. Overall, the story is mildly interesting and is mostly told through briefing texts before each mission.

Each mission lasts more than an hour each: as soon as you complete several objectives, your playing field doubles or triples revealing more of the map. Towards the end of the mission, you’ll be mostly likely dealing with multiple objectives on multiple battlefronts on maps that are supposedly equivalent of many square kilometers.

Your ACU can start building the foundations of your base and your economy such as mass extractors and energy generators but you’ll quickly need more high-tech level engineers in order to build advanced structures such as fusion power generators at tech-level 3, and experimental units beyond tech-level 3. All 3 sides start out very similar and most structures have equivalents, but once you get to experimental units, differences emerge. UEF can build mobile ground factory with shield generator and attack capabilities as well as an aircraft carrier that can submerge. Cybran Nation gets a huge spiderbot with powerful laser that can cut through small units as well as a gigantic gunship capable of decimating foes very quickly. They also are the only faction capable of building a chain cannon hurling highly explosive shells across the battlefield. Aeon Illuminate’s experimental unit is a huge saucer straight out of Independence Day capable of launching many ships, and has a powerful laser to destroy the opponents’ bases. Another Aeon unit is the colosus which is a huge towering mech with incredibly powerful laser.

Unit balancing is almost perfect: T2 ground defenses are stronger but they are slower so you can’t ignore T1 defenses, T3 generators can supply a lot of energy but cost also a lot to build which means sometimes multiple T2 generators can be better, T3 gunships are incredibly powerful but they’re easy prey to T2 anti-air ground unit or T3 superiority fighter… The game demands you to know everything about it which can be daunting at first: but it’s fairly intuitive and once you do it, it’s an incredibly rewarding experience.

I can’t say Supreme Commander is perfect: the 3 sides are almost the same unlike StarCraft’s 3 sides and the main problem is the system requirements. The game absolutely demands the best to be played without a hitch, so on my fairly old computer (after all it’s a Pentium 4 with ATI Radeon X800 card) things get sluggish especially when a nuke goes off or an ACU gets destroyed.

If you have a great computer to play the game and if you take the time to study the subtleties, Supreme Commander is the best real-time strategy game by giving you a huge gigantic battlefield, incredible controls over your units, great looking visuals, supreme nuke explosions and a versatile map where everything is represented by icons but you can still issue orders.

Rating: Â (4.5 out of 5)