Relive the tense Omaha Landing through the eyes of Able Company in what has to be one of the greatest World War II games released to date.

Relic really has outdone themselves with Company of Heroes. Very few games based off of D-Day and the subsequent Normandy breakout have been as powerful and intense as Company of Heroes. "But wait!" you say "Isn't this an RTS?" Yes, Relic tells the story of Able and Fox companies across an amazing campaign with you in command of the entire operation.

Company of Heroes plays like most real-time strategy games, so usuals to that genre should be able to pick it up and run with it fairly quickly. The general flow of any given scenario is to capture and hold territory points through strategic points that will give you one of three resources (Manpower, Munitions or Fuel). Company of Heroes places a lot of emphasis on tactical movements and cover. Units left standing out and the open are sitting ducks to just about anything else, but that same unit left in heavy cover can be a nightmare for your enemies to flush out. And with a plethora of units and weapons to make use of, players will definitely be able to formulate many different strategies and have a very different experience in each and every mission.

Every unit seems to have its own personality and you may find yourself growing attached to the soldiers under your command, whether it be the engineers ("If a mouse farts in this minefield, I want his ass blown sky-high!") or a sniper ("Here comes the boogeyman"). The tactical importance of each unit means the game doesn't feel nearly as rock-paper-scissors as some strategy games do nowadays. Pesky MG nest up ahead? Shell it with a mortar team, or move in some armor and be a little more direct, or for maybe use a sniper to pick off all the soldiers on the weapons. Heck, even a rifleman squad can do it with their grenades and various other explosives. And if it doesn't work the first time, just have at it with a different strategy.

Players have countless options when they jump into a game; virtually all units have some kind of upgrade option and with the Command system, you can customize your strategy to a specific style as you gain experience and commander points in the match. Enemy using a lot of armor? Counter by specializing in the Armor track and get access to some of the American's (or German's, if you're playing axis) heaviest tanks. If that isn't your style, try a more indirect game with mobile artillery and howitzers. On top of all of that, engineers and, in some cases, riflemen can build defensive structures to force your enemy into choke points or better hold positions, all the while units themselves gain experience and veterancy ranks, making them more effective in combat.

Visually, Company of Heroes is one of the sharpest looking strategy games on the market and with highest settings still pushing computers, it will be looking great many years to come. Explosions, weapons and soldiers look as they should and everything reacts like it should. The attention to detail is stunning; couple this with Havok physics and you have one of the most immersive and detailed games on the market. Sounds all sound true to their source; units all have their own personalities, whether it be the calm, composed lines that they deliver when moving around, or the frantic, paniced lines shouted while under fire. All of the units in Company of Heroes have some kind of charm and humor about them, and I think players may spend time simply trying to find out what each and everyone has to say.

To put it simply, if you want to experience one of the greatest World War II games on the market, do yourself a favor and buy Company of Heroes. It is a game that deserves to be in any gamer's library and I have personally never encountered any game breaking bugs or quirks to speak of. Top to bottom, this is an amazing package. Even the multiplayer and quick matches are well constructed and a blast, so once you've wrapped up the campaign, there are many more hours to be had with this game.

Crysis is by far one of the most visually stunning games released to date and tries to streamline the First Person Shooting genre but is hindered by glitches, high system requirements, and a rather run-of-the-mill plot.

Don't get me wrong, my system is more than capable of playing Crysis, but I know that for a friend of mine, the system requirements were the exact reason he didn't end up purchasing the game. And I know that for many gamers, that will be a bone of contention, just like Supreme Commander and Doom 3 before it. So for all the 'would-be' Crysis owners out there, make sure to read the box and get those system requirements before you sink 50 dollars on a game that will be a glorified slideshow on your computer.

Before I begin on the game itself though, I want to make it clear that I am reviewing the vanilla 1.00 release of Crysis, not the most recent 1.20 Patch.

After installation and configuring settings, Crysis drops you right into the action. Literally. And the game takes it from there and runs. You play as 'Nomad,' a group of US Delta Force agents sent to rescue several scientists on a Pacific Island that has been taken over by North Korean Military group in order to cover up whatever it is the scientists have found. But even in the intro, the plot of the game stumbles over itself and does a bad job of making anything particularly mysterious. Maybe I'm looking at the game the wrong way, but by the time Nomad quite literally crashed into the water from your team's botched jump onto the island, I had the first few scenes almost called to the letter. Now, this wouldn't be that big of a deal for Crysis if it hadn't come out in the wake of Bioshock and Half-Life 2: Episode Two where narrative actually keeps you going and keeps you engaged. Crysis on the otherhand feels like a run-of-the-mill Sci-fi Action Flick.

The main thing though that everyone will notice the second their game starts is the visuals. This game's presentation is stunning and it is still giving other games that have since come out in '08 a run for their money. I'd go so far as to say that it beats Metal Gear Solid 4's visuals easily, and anyone who's had a chance to play that game on a large 1080p display knows that is no simple task. One thing that really had me impressed were the character models. The first time you see all your comrades with their helmets off in the first scene is just amazing. Crytec has made characters that actually look human without falling face first down into the uncanny valley and they're one of the few developers out there who have managed to not make their characters look like they're at least partially plastic. But my admiration of the visuals was abruptly cut off when I killed a foe and his texture glitched, consuming the environment in front of me and making it significantly harder to navigate until I looked away from the visual space he decided to occupy. I wouldn't be complaining and docking the game too much if this had been a one time thing, but it happened again. And again. And then it happened with a group of enemies that weren't even dead, but they were supposed to be cloaked. It basically turned into me shooting into gigantic-korean-foe blobs that had devoured my screen, while I hoped that I'd manage to actually hit him and get his glitched existence out of my face.

For all of those people starting Crysis for the first time though, there is one other thing you'll notice. The mandatory nanosuit teaser scene before the game actually gives you control. This scene channels modern hollywood action flicks and shows off the fancy nanosuit you'll be wearing in the game. This nanosuit is the main gameplay feature that anyone following Crysis has heard about many times. Simply by holding down the middle mouse button, you are presented with a radial dial that allows you to change which mode your suit currently has engaged from the four available modes: Cloaking, Armor, Speed, Power. Cloaking is fairly self-explanatory. You turn effectively invisible at long ranges, but your suit's power drains quickly so long as you're in motion. While cloaked, enemies will still be able to hear you and will fire at those noises and going invisible in front of your enemies will only get you so far if you aren't booking it away from them because it won't stop them from shooting at you. But, alas, cloak was kind of a deal-breaker for me. Through most of the beginning of the game, if you have a habit of almost never using ammo and conserving as much as possible, you'll probably quickly figure out that if you slowly move around your patrol of foes while cloaked and then just switch to speed if needed, you'll be able to avoid many conflicts. It changes the feel of the game from an action game to a stealth game set to "way too easy." I had figured that I'd be able to use the cloak to ambush enemies or pull off predator-esque attacks, but in the end I realized most of that effort was better spent not even wasting rounds on the normal AI. Back to the other three abilities. Armor makes you take less damage from all sources, including fall damage and will allow you to regenerate at a very fast rate if you stay still. Speed allows you to move faster, and if you engage your sprint, you'll move exceptionally fast, but only for a brief burst. Power increases your overall strength- allowing you to throw things farther, jump higher and hit harder. All in all, the system works, and it is fun during the more tense scenes, but sometimes it feels too easy to dupe the AI.

That's not to say that the AI isn't good, in fact, the human AI is all executed incredibly well. Enemies will react to your movements and the noise you make and generally try their hardest to flush you out where ever you may be, especially on higher difficulties (as an interesting little tidbit- at the highest difficulty, the game introduces the language barrier, causing the North Koreans to actually speak Korean) but that doesn't mean you can't ever manage to elude them, as I have previously written. In one scene, I had found a very nice sniper ledge, pulled out my rifle and fit it for silent sniping (customization is another big feature of the game, and I'll touch on that in a bit) and slowly picked off the guards in the camp, but I noticed that they began to follow the shots and eventually I had to deal with a search party that arrived at my location, so the AI can and will find you if you stay still and don't neutralize them quickly.

The last big feature I want to talk about is the customization. At more or less anytime, you can press the customization key on your keyboard and the focus will shift to your weapon (and will add a little Depth of Field blur around the edges for effect) and you will have all sorts of add-ons and choices depending on the weapon, ranging from supressors to reflex sights and scopes depending on the situation. It definitely has its uses and it works seamlessly with everything else, so all in all, I like it.

Crysis is a good game. It is a solid shooter, and anyone looking for a game to play that has a PC to run it won't be disappointed. But do I think it was game of the year material? No. It has its shortcomings and its flaws and overall just feels like one of those generic shooters that you might play through a couple of times and be done with. It has an enjoyable multiplayer that you may or may not get into, depending on your views of competitive shooters, so you've always got that to look at as well once you've wrapped up the story and its obligatory cliff-hanger ending for the already announced sequels in this trilogy of games. With some polish, I'd say that Crysis definitely holds promise as a series in the future.

Mario's latest romp on the Wii won't disappoint long time fans. All the old features of Super Mario we have come to love over the years are still here along with a few new twists for fans and newcomers alike.

Super Mario Galaxy is one of those games Wii owners have been waiting for, and it is finally here. Mario's latest adventure starts off the way we've come to expect. Bowser whisks away Peach and you must give chase. Only this time, Mario finds himself plucked out of the Mushroom Kingdom and flown across the Galaxy to save his Princess. After a brief tutorial to get you acquainted to the Wii controls, you're dropped off on the Observatory which serves as a hub for every other level, much like Delfino Plaza and Peach's Castle in the previous two Super Mario titles. From here you are tasked with retrieving the Grand Stars in order to repair and refuel the Observatory so that you can sail to the center of the universe and save Peach from Bowser. But this is a Super Mario game, you knew the plot before you even looked at the box.

In Mario's latest adventure, he travels to various Galaxies from the six themed domes in the main Observatory collecting stars in order to access newer galaxies and Grand Stars, used to access new domes. The general flow of the recent batch of Mario games hasn't been altered: go to world, collect as many stars as you can, go to newly unlocked worlds, rinse and repeat until your Bowser-related confrontation that invariably leads to unlocking a new zone. What is different is that when you arrive at a Galaxy, you land on a small planet which will have some kind of objective (as well as its own gravity to keep you glued on..usually) that you'll have to complete in order to get to the next planet until you build your way to a star. Some levels are classic Mario platforming. Jump from Point A to Point B smashing baddies and avoiding falling to your doom (which happens to be a black hole just under whatever you're working on. Others are more in line with more recent Mario adventures- Race this guy, help that guy and so on until you get a reward.

But wait, this game is on the Wii, so we've got to talk controls. Your basic jumping and moving around is all handled with the appropriate buttons and analog sticks, but with the pointer that is drawn on screen, you can pull Mario to certain types of star icons in order to progress through a level, or by moving the controller, you can execute some of Mario's move repetoire (or in the case of launch stars, activate them). It might take a little adjusting and getting used to, but it works and becomes intuitive very quickly. "But what about this Co-star mode it talks about on the back of the box!?" Yes, lo and behold, you can get a friend to play with you in this installment of Super Mario. Having a friend around and tossing them a wiimote will allow them to shoot at enemies with star bits that you collect as Mario, or if you and your friend give Mario the command to jump at about the same time, he will jump higher. Mainly it is for messing around- there isn't any need to have a second person around, but it'll give your friend something to do while you're busy obsessing over this latest adventure, or it'll let you help out a sibling/relative as they learn to play Mario's latest adventure.

Visually, Super Mario Galaxy looks like a little more polished version of Super Mario Sunshine. The environments spacially (forgive the pun) are probably larger than in sunshine generally speaking, but the actual explorable area is probably about the same. Sound direction at the same time is what we've come to expect with Mario's recent adventures, filled with memorable remixes of classic songs as well as new tunes to enjoy. It sounds and looks like a Mario game, what else is there to say?

My main complaint is that the difficulty is a little bit sporatic. For those people who will invariably go after every star in the game, you may find yourself in the same place I was in- getting frustrated over stars that will cause your demise time and time again because of a timer or inane requirement. But why is this? Well, many of the extra stars in Super Mario Galaxy are obtained from comets- which are basically trial/challenge runs of a star you have already gotten as well as one comet which is always a coin hunt. These challenges are set by which type it is- some require you to beat an objective in under a certain time limit, others require you to beat a boss or a segment of a level without taking any damage while others are the races against your shadow-self. These challenges will range from very easy, to excruciatingly annoying. I never found one that was genuinely hard, but several that I had to repeat many times because of a short timelimit or troublesome level design. Don't worry though, there are a couple genuinely "hidden" stars to be obtained, but the 100-coin star has been nixed this time around.

Super Mario Galaxy is the Nintendo title we've been waiting for on the Wii and it won't disappoint. There are a few secret features there for the adventurous that collect all 120 Stars, but I won't spoil those here. Whether you're new to the Mario series or a veteran, there is definitely a game here to enjoy.

The Orange Box is the single greatest deal of this generation of gaming. Bar none.

I am going to throw a little bias in here right off the bat and say that if you have a computer that's up to it (which is less and less of a problem given that the source engine is no longer demanding top-of-the-line systems to run it), the only Orange Box worth buying is the PC version. And why's that? Because the best content is the kind you can get for free and the only place you'll be experiencing the Half-Life 2 Modding Community in full force is on the PC.

That aside, let's look at this package. You get five games in one delightful package, two of which I'm going to breeze over because they are Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One, and they've had plenty of reviews already. But hey, they're two free games that you can give to your poor, unexposed friends if you already own Half-Life 2 and Episode One thanks to Valve's Steam Digital Distribution platform. It is a painless and almost immediate process to give any extra copies of games you may have picked up from the Orange Box and it makes for a great gift for any PC gamer you may know that hasn't experienced Half-Life 2 yet.

But let's cut to the chase and talk about the new stuff: Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the highly anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

One thing that you may quickly notice upon booting up after fudging with the installation (if you buy the retail copy, but already have a steam account, it takes a few minutes of fudging to actually install the game, but it works) is the introduction of achievements on the PC, so if you're someone (like myself) who will hound after achievements, you've got something to hunt for in all three of these titles- including escorting a hidden garden gnome to the end and sticking him in a space shuttle (no, I'm not kidding). But now we've got the game installed and we've noticed the achievements, so let's start talking games.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

This is the Half-Life 2 we've all come to know and love, but now we're officially out of City 17 and in the great outdoors- but it is crawling with angry combine and antlions, so we're not out of the woods yet. We pick off pretty much exactly where we left Gordon and Alyx in Episode One.

After crawling out of the train wreck that opens this chapter of the game, Gordon and Alyx being making their way to the Rebel Base- your overall goal throughout the game. But several minutes into the game, Alyx is attacked by one of the newest combine enemies in the Half-Life series, the Hunter. Almost immediately priorities shift and it turns into a race against time to save Alyx, unforturnately, this involves kicking over the antlion hill and then diving straight in. Gordon's trek into the antlion den introduces a few new breeds of antlions, including the still-growing grubs, the acid spitting workers and a very angry den mother. Without spoiling too much, after you're out of the den, your trek to the Rebel Base continues, and you're finally really exposed to the outdoor environments. While still being fairly straightforward in direction, the areas feel larger, and show off some of the newer features in the source engine, like HDR and motion blur. Along the way you'll get several chances to get revenge on the Hunters (they're smaller, blue, spine-shooting cousins of the Striders that we've already seen in the Half-Life 2 series) and get to try out the new, fancy Hot-Rod vehicle. The plot is amazing and has quite a few memorable twists and moments that you just have to experience for yourself.

Visuals are still looking good, but showing a little bit of age now that the Source Engine is pushing 4 years old. And sound is excellent as always. The guns sound and look great and all of the music fits the mood of each scene perfectly.

Thankfully, this time around Episode Two is longer than Episode One, but you still won't be getting the same kind of play time out of it that you did in Half-Life 2, but you at least get to enjoy things a little longer. All in all, if you were getting the Orange Box for Episode Two, you won't be disappointed.

Team Fortress 2

Welcome to a Pixar movie gone horribly, horribly wrong. Team Fortress 2's most distinct feature is its visual direction, which as I said, lends itself to a Pixar-esque feel- but Pixar this isn't.

Team Fortress 2 pits you against an opposing team in your traditional game modes- Capture the Flag, Territory Control and Assault and Defend. You will be able to play as one of nine different classes, each bunched in groups of three into smaller categories: Offense, Defense and Support. Each class has a distinct feel and purpose, so you'll get plenty of playtime just learning and mastering each class.

In Offense, you have the Soldier, Pyro and Scout. The Soldier is the tough, rocket-launcher wielding, foe blasting back-bone of an attack. The Pyro is the more durable, flamethrower wielding offense class, who excels at both close quarters attacking and defending and is the key class for flushing out enemy Spies. The Scout is the quick moving, fast striking and fast capturing offense class designed to take and take and take.

Defense has the Demoman, Heavy and Engineer. The Demoman is the angry, black cyclopse (Go watch Meet the Demoman and you'll understand) who's got a habit of making everything go boom. He can cover pretty much any point and will make anyone sorry for trying to take your territory. The Heavy is a booming russian wielding an equally large minigun that rains down cover anywhere he gets planted, but even though he's the most durable class out there, he will only last so long against sustained fire. Then there's the Engineer. He solves problems. He can aid team movements with teleporters, building life saving dispensers and a vicious turret to guard anything that needs guarding.

Finally the Support classes: The Spy, The Sniper and The Medic. The Spy has the ability to disguise as any class on the opposing team, adopting a name of someone on that team and allowing them to launch sneak attacks onto unsuspecting foes for an instant kill. Unfortunately the Spy is fragile and can easily be rooted out by a trigger happy Pyro. The Sniper is your standard comfy distance killing class, and is also not all that durable when it comes to close quarters. Finally, the Medic, who is arguably the most important class for any successful assault. He's armed with his Healgun and Syringe Gun to keep him going and keep everyone else on your team going as well, but that makes him one of the biggest targets out there.

As of writing, Valve has released content packages for the Pyro and Medic, which will allow players to unlock new weapons for the classes if you unlock enough class-specific achievements and with seven classes to go and a thriving modding community, Team Fortress 2 isn't about to run out of content.

Portal

Hello <reader name here>! Welcome to the Aperture Science Portal Review©. Here you will learn to operate the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device® in order to overcome the many trials that you will face. At the end, there will be cake, and <reader name here> will be inducted into the Aperture Science Sucessful Test Subject Database™! From all those here at Aperture Science, we wish you, <reader name here>, the best of luck in the trials ahead!

Portal is perhaps one of the greatest games ever made, and nothing that I could write would do it justice. While the story clocks in at just over a couple of hours, they will be one of the best experiences you'll ever have. If there's any one thing I could say, it is if nothing else, do yourself a favor and buy Portal.

The Orange Box is a package that no PC gamer deserves to miss. Do yourself a favor and get it. Right now. Just stop reading and go buy it already.

Assassin's Creed is a game with a lot of misdirected and unused potential. Some will love it, others with loathe it but regardless of stance, there is a solid game buried in there.

Assassin's Creed is one of those games that gets a lot of buzz, but ends up delivering a mixed package. It is by far one of the most visually impressive games out there, and is one of a select few games that manages to make sprawling urban environments that work (to a degree). Sadly, the game just push its own limits. It feels like a game that is trying hard to do more, but won't let itself. So, without further ado, let's step into the shoes of top assassin Altaï- er wait, Desmond Miles.

It is hard to bash this game because of its plot, but I've got to. Assassin's Creed has gone with the majority of the entertainment industry and decided to weave together a conspiratorial plot involving the ever-mysterious Knights Templar. As such, anyone who's read The Da Vinci Code or caught any of the many trends that has spawned won't be entirely surprised or blown away from Assassin's Creed's plot, which is unfortunate, because a game like this is just starving for a compelling and fresh plot. I'm not saying the plot is terrible, but it isn't shocking, surprising or particularly new. I've talked to plenty of people who think the exact opposite and love it, so like many parts of the game, the plot itself is a bone of contention. Without giving too much away, you play as Desmond Miles in the year 2012 who's playing as an ancestor of his, Altaïr. Yes, to put it simply, you're playing a video game of a guy playing a video game. No matter how much narrative and drama you try to layer over that, the simple fact remains that it is a game within a game.

But enough whining about story-telling, we're in this for the action. Altaïr's movements are all very fluid, and the acrobatic stunts you can perform are all fairly impressive. Combat is simple and intuitive once you get used to the 360-to-PC control set up, which does work, but takes some getting used to. You're probably just better off hooking up a 360 controller and playing it that way. All of the assassination animations feel skillfully executed and professional, but do suffer from one of the biggest flaws on this package: repetitiveness. I had a few gripes with the tutorial of all things, because at one point I was stuck doing one scene over and over again because one command wasn't working as it should've been, but that sorted itself out fairly quickly. All in all, controls will be the least of your issues that may come up with the game, they work, they're good, be happy.

And here's the point where I start talking about the flow of assassinations (read: the missions, not the actual executions) themselves. To me, this is both the best, and the worst part about the game. This is the core gameplay, if anything this should be the best part of the game, but sadly this is what is dragging things down. All assassinations begin more or less the same way. Your boss gives you your orders, you go out to the city (and to the proper district, if necessary), check in with the local assassins, and then go out to collect intelligence on your target. Now, you collect intelligence by completing small missions within that district, as well as having two optional ones that are more for completionists. That doesn't sound bad, does it? Well, the problem is the missions are decided from a very small pool. You'll be pretty much doing the same missions in each city, the PC exclusive added missions are also heavily repeated, so while it does add a little more variety, you'll be seeing them all multiple times. Once you've gotten enough/all the intel on your target, you go back to the local hub and proceed to your target. Once again we stumble into a problem. To actually get to your target and perform a sneaky, y'know, assassination tends to be a chore. You are almost invariably spotted by your target or his entourage well before you get within dagger range, prompting a sword fight- sometimes with dozens of foes. Now that fight isn't hard, no, rather it just defeats the purpose of being an assassin. You end up felling more like a thug in the end when you go after your target and more like an assassin just wandering around the city.

And while we're on the subject of cities, let's start talking environment. As I have said, Assassin's Creed is gorgeous; it is one of the best looking games of recent times. Monkeying around on the Dome of the Rock has never looked so good. And, seeing as how this game takes place in the Holy Land in the middle of Crusades, there's a ton of life in every city (and even the roadways and small towns have a little bit of action). I was blown away at first with the cities, the sheer activity was impressive but all was not right in Jerusalem. Not only is Altaïr the most obvious assassin out there (he walks into the city essentially wearing a sign I KILL PEOPLE), but everyone singles you out. All the time. Beggars standing on the streets, well, the second they catch a glimpse of you, they're in your face (curiously, they won't bother anybody else- apparently assassin garb screams rich in 1191) and if you get fed up and stab them, everyone freaks out, the guards come after you and you lose health. Woo. If only that was the worst part of being the Player Character in a sea of NPCs. No, the worst is the crazed/deranged citizens. You'll start encountering these guys after a couple of missions and it is their sole purpose to make you want to kill each and every one of them with a cruel and burning passion. See, what these guys do is wander around in a spot, usually a crowded one or an otherwise good alleyway for escapes and twitch and mutter to themselves. "What's so bad about that?" you say. Well, as soon as you get too close, they being their homing sequence and then proceed to shove you.

Over
And
Over
And
Over

Again. This also, would only be a nuisance if it wasn't for the fact that if you then proceed to bump into anyone else, the guards flip out and attack you. This is an all-too-common occurance that also begs the question "why only me?" these guys mutter, twitch and generally spaz without attacking anyone else, but they seem to have a burning passion directed against you. With a little more development time and toying with AI, both the beggars and crazed guys would seem less like they're out to get you and more like the various facets of city-life. I have failed to touch on the guards themselves, which seem to understand that you're probably not the friendliest guy out there, and because of that, merely running around the town can sometimes cause a massive guard chase, but that isn't a common occurance. No, the annoying one is when you're traveling to other cities on horseback- during these sequences, if you don't have your horse trotting to your desired location, you're up to something, which will summon hordes of psychic guards upon you and alerting everyone across the land of your presense. So much for immersive, eh? Apparently in 1191, moving at more than a crawl on horseback was a treasonous act that would result in immediate attack. By everyone.

But how does the game sound? Well, everything is spot on that is just creating a mood- music, idle chatter, and weapons all sound alright, but my one gripe with the sound direction is that the citizens you interact with (the generic ones that is- ones you are optionally tasked to "save") have about 10 lines total, so by the 3rd or 4th one you help out, you'll be hearing all too familiar lines. That's more nitpicking, and I'll let it slide, but it wouldn't hurt by any means to just try to do away with all this repetition plaguing Assassin's Creed.

Assassin's Creed is solid. I know it sounds like all I've been doing is tearing it apart, but I did have an alright time with the game when its quirks and such weren't driving me up a wall. Sneaking around (or running, as the case usually is) on the rooftops, hunting down guards to more quickly and efficiently make it to objectives is fun, if only to watch your assassinations but the completionist inside of me is crying for something new or different between all these same objectives. If running around shanking people in the Holy Land during the Crusades appeals to you, you'll probably enjoy Assassin's Creed. If you're looking for an immersive, story driven, action-packed adventure, I'd take recommendations with a grain of salt- you'll either love it or hate it. I don't see myself going out of my way to recommend Assassin's Creed, but I will tell friends thinking about picking it up that they'll probably enjoy parts of it, and that it is at least worth a rental (of course, us PC users don't quite have that option).

In closing, I look at Assassin's Creed and see its potential. I can see the diamond in the rough and I hope the developers take notice to what the fans and critics alike have to say about the game, because if they do some tweaking and work on the story a bit, Assassin's Creed 2 could easily be Game of the Year material whenever it decides to grace us with its presense.

Metal Gear Acid was the PSP's launch title everyone had their eyes on- and many were thinking just what WAS Kojima thinking this time around? Overall, Metal Gear Acid is an enjoyable game that PSP owners won't regret purchasing.

Metal Gear Acid isn't Metal Gear Solid. But it is Metal Gear. Let's just look at our Metal Gear check list:

Leone's Metal Gear-Franchise Check-List™

• Focus on Stealth? Check.
• Over the top bosses? Check.
• Over the top plot? Check.
• METAL GEAR!? Check.

As many people who were following the news about this game quickly found out though, it wasn't the action game everyone thought it would be. Instead, Metal Gear Acid is a Turn Based Strategy game. "Hm, well, it could work" thinks Joe Anybody. But then everyone found out it was also a Collectible Card game. "WHAT!?" thinks Joe Anybody. It's true, Metal Gear Acid is a Turn Based Collectible Card Strategy game. Or TBCCS. Go Kojima!

Joking aside, I was hesitant like many others when I popped in this UMD along with my brand new PSP on launch, but after the obligatory long cutscenes, I grew to like the system. It worked, and that is all I asked for. It was different, to be sure, and there was a lot to figure out, but once you got it, it worked. And it worked well. That's not to say this game is for everybody. It does take awhile to get used to everything, and learning the finer details of the system can be overwhelming at times, but it does add to the depth of the game. And for the completionists out there, there are two hundred and four cards to nab, so get going. One unfortunate fact is that this IS a collectible card game, and that entails the unrelenting storm of booster packs, and with no dedicated singles shop, collecting every card can be a long trial of resetting your PSP, or a lot of points spent getting countless duplicates.

The story is told and broken up over missions that are revealed as you complete each one, and occasionally you have to backtrack with new equipment that you have obtained in order to further the story. Outside of the story though, you can repeat any mission for points and cards. Boss fights are exceptionally Metal Gear, large, bulking and often times bizare. Take my namesake for example: Leone is the leader of a mercenary group you encounter. He is a hulking man who can wield a PTRS1942 anti-tank rifle with one hand and use it to deflect bullets. Seriously, how many other franchises are there where you come to expect something like that?

You'll spend a lot of your time modifying, rebuilding, and adding to your deck to improve your efficiency in a mission. Once you're in a mission, your deck is "shuffled" and you are dealt a hand of cards, any of which can be used during your turn. Cards range from movement (but all cards can act as a movement card, albeit not always wise to do so), COST reduction (COST is what governs the turn order- the higher your cost, the longer it'll be until your next turn), weapons (anything from a katana to the RPG7 and Solar Gun), and character cards (with special abilities depending on who it is: IE Metal Gear REX will crush foes in a certain area, while Fortune will allow you to reflect bullets for a few turns). My main gripe is that sometimes you need a specific card to advance in a mission, so you'll spend turns standing and discarding cards while you wait for it to come around.

For a first generation PSP game, the visuals are tight and what you would come to expect from a Metal Gear game, and while there isn't voice acting in most of the cutscenes (yup, text boxes are in), the music in game is nice, the cards have flashy sounds when you activate them, and character cards will generally have footage relating to that specific card when you activate it (All of which can be skipped if you're getting sick of it) and everything else sounds as it should.

If I could give this a 75%, I would because Metal Gear Ac!d definitely is not a game for everyone. I won't beat around the bush, this is a "Love or Hate" kind of deal; you'll either want it to get a 0 or a 5, so it is hard to assign a middle ground. But that doesn't mean it is a bad game by any standard. It is a great game once you get into it and get the hang of things, and you will get a ton of playtime out of it, especially if you have a friend that has it as well because there is multiplayer which consists of mainly pitting your Snake and support character (AKA your deck), Teliko that you meet in the story against his (deck) in a duel to the death. Or something like that.

BioShock is an amazing game that will not disappoint.

If there was one game that really made me go "Wow." it was BioShock. Once you've got this game installed and running, prepare for an amazing trip under the sea into this genre defining game. Now, would you kindly follow me into the rest of this review?

Start to finish, BioShock has some of the best storytelling out there. The game starts you off in the middle of a plane crash, and even though you seemingly crashed in the middle of the ocean, an enormous spire is just a few yards away from where you land, and immediately you are greeted by a golden bust of Andrew Ryan, one of the game's main antagonists and a banner declaring "No Gods or Kings. Only Man." The art direction of this game is top notch. The world is so masterfully crafted that it will pull you in and won't let you go until it is all over. And even though the game takes place in Rapture, a city utopia-turned-dystopia, the short breaks for ads whenever you obtain a new plasmid or the charm of the vending machines: their jingles echoing through the halls of the city under the sea that is Rapture.

BioShock is a First Person Shooter with Role-Playing elements. You will collect Plasmids throughout your exploration of Rapture which are either special abilities like shooting lightning or telekinesis, all of which have their own unique look when you have them active, or passive abilities, like gaining health whenever you hit something with your wrench, or being able to resist damage. The system isn't all that deep- it is mainly mix and match to your liking, so you won't be bogged down or overwhelmed by the system. On the flipside, there are quite a few weapons in the game, all of which can be upgraded at the correct vending machine and have three different ammo types to pick from. And even the weapons illustrate the attention to detail, some of which look as though they were clearly built from the limited supplies the citizens of Rapture had. You'll be able to get everything from a Magnum, to a Chemical Launcher (IE, Flamethrower) and much more. There is another "weapon" you will pick up, the camera, which allows you to photograph your enemies. Each photograph is rated and then raises your research against that particular foe, increasing your effectiveness against them or unlocking new plasmids for you to use.

Going back to the visuals and sounds, Rapture looks and feels like a city that has gone to Hell. There are fragments of the world that once had been amongst the ruins, like a banner saying "Happy New Year 1959!" or the masks the various splicers, the insane inhabitants of Rapture that stalk the hallways, and some of the most powerful scenes for setting the mood and environment of the city come from the splicers themselves. In one early scene, you can notice the shadow of a splicer over a baby carriage singing a lullaby, a shadow of her former life, and it isn't until after you dispatch the splicer that you realize there is nothing in the carriage itself. At the same time, Rapture is falling apart mechanically. Many times you are restoring systems or just in the wrong place at the wrong time, like when a tunnel partially shatters, and ocean water starts flooding in. Everything about the environment just keeps you in and makes everything just seem so alive.

One complaint is that while the game touts multiple endings, they are two extremes and it is too easy to fall into one of the endings with only one action governing which you get. Throughout the game, morality steps in when you are confronted by the ever-present Big Daddies who are escorting ADAM (the "currency" used to buy plasmids) harvesters, the Little Sisters. Upon killing the Big Daddy, you are presented with the choice of either Harvesting all the ADAM the Little Sister has, or releasing her from her servitude to Rapture (yielding less ADAM upfront), returning her to her child-like innocence. In the end, the main bearing this choice has is on the ending: harvest at least one Little Sister and it is the "bad" ending for you, but if you don't touch any of them and let them all go free, you get the "good" ending. Other than that, the main difference is if you choose the "good" path, the Little Sisters will reward you with gifts, effectively making up for the ADAM you don't get by harvesting them and yielding a few extra plasmids as well. We can only hope BioShock 2 has a more fluid morality and ending system.

If you like shooters or a good story, get BioShock. You won't go wrong owning this game. It is quite possibly one of the best games released in recent years, and my only gripes are minimal. There is the deal where you can only activate your copy three times apparently, but that has yet to affect me, and I believe you can contact THQ to free up activations. So buyers beware, you may need an internet connection to activate this game prior to playing.

Supreme Commander is a solid Real-Time Strategy game best spent with some friends.

Supreme Commander was one of the most talked about and watched RTSes of 2005 and 2006, boasting massive battles and massive conflicts for you to engage in, and, to put it simply, it delivers. At first Supreme Commander may feel intimidating, but it is perhaps one of the most streamlined RTSes available. You are able to queue just about any action you want well ahead of time, allowing for quick base construction and massive army production. I could go on and on about the infinite uses of the queueing system, but I'll spare you the details.

Jumping into Supreme Commander will feel like familiar territory for RTS gamers, but with a few key differences. First off, resource management is more about balancing your input and output and less about just getting together one giant, static pool of resources. In essence, any resource production is an income rate, +1 mass per second, +20 energy per second, etc. and then everything else will have a cost. Building a building could be -1 mass per second and -30 energy per second and so your chief objective is to make sure that you're not pushing your economy too hard, because if your reserve pool runs out, all your production will slow down, snowballing and in some cases, ending your game. After a little bit of fiddling, you will undoubtly come to terms and enjoy pushing this system to the limits.  Secondly, base layout actually matters! If two buildings share one complete side (in the case of a larger building, if the smaller's side is entirely touching part of the larger's side, that counts too), then they will gain adjacency bonuses. Not all structures will have adjacency bonuses, but something like a base will benefit with having mass and energy nodes adjacent to it, because the production cost of anything it builds will be lowered. The same goes with any structure that needs energy to run: having a power generator or two will lower the running cost of that structure if they are adjacent. Likewise, building resource storage structures adjacent to the same resource generator will result in increased efficiency, allowing the generator to produce more resources (IE, have a higher output rate). What this all boils down to for the player is a simple, effective resource system that makes raising a massive army very easy.

But Supreme Commander has a few other features worth mentioning as well, including the "strategic zoom." It will probably be the first thing you notice while playing and definitely the first thing you will miss when you're on a different RTS. Rather than just having your standard "god camera" that can zoom in close to shake hands with your units, you can also continue to zoom out- to the point that units are replaced with tactical icons, and eventually you can zoom so far that you're looking at the entire megamap, rather than fudging with the minimap, and with a flick of the mouse wheel, you can zoom all the way back in at another point on the map, making it really easy to manage the large amounts of units you're producing and keep your expansive bases organized. And, for those who have a computer that can handle the task, players can use two monitors to play Supreme Commander, allowing you to have two different perspectives on the battle at the same time, allowing for much more control and organization.

"Yeah, yeah, that's all fine and dandy, but is the game actually any good?" you say. Yes, yes it is. The streamlined style that the game presents you with lets you wage war on a huge scale without breaking a sweat. This game is perhaps a little slow for some gamers, but the build up is worth it. In a typical match, your biggest units will be colliding into your foe's by the one hour mark, and that's when things really start to peak. All of the attention to detail and flashy attacks really do feel like they pack a punch when you finally get to watch your Experimental juggernaut of a battle mech march all over you opponent's base, crushing anything that happens to be smaller than it and devastating what is left of their base. And that's not all, no, one of the most satifying scenes for a newcomer to Supreme Commander is your first strategic warhead (read: nuke) touching down in the middle of your unfortunate foe's base. I'd be hard pressed to find more beautiful and devastating nukes, except perhaps in another one of my personal favorite strategy games, World in Conflict.

One drawback about the armies themselves is that they're all generally similar right up until you're slamming your experimentals into each other. As a whole, every side has basically the same units, but with a little bit of their own flair. For example, the UEF, Aeon and Cybran all have a T3 Assault Bot of some sort, the UEF's has shields, as does the Cybran one, while the Aeon doesn't, but is able to heal other units (so two can work together as a squad, healing each other) as though they were also basic engineers. It really isn't until the Experimentals that the three factions begin to play differently. Experimentals are the "Tier 4" units: each faction has three, they all have long build times and cost an enormous amout of resources, but a single one can be the thing that turns a losing battle all the way around in your favor.

Visually, Supreme Commander was looking sharp two years ago, and it is still looking exceptional today. It is one of the better looking strategy games on the market, and while the armies all play fairly similarly, they each have very distinct visual styles. Sounds are, at the same time, spot on and help make all the units sound "epic" and powerful. Add to that the screen-shaking effects of some of the experimental units, and you can almost taste the power that is balled up inside some of the units in the game.

But wait, I gave it a 4!? Yeah, Supreme Commander is great, with a campaign that will be appealing to some and last them quite awhile, but I'd have to say if you want to get the most out of the game, you'll want to have some friends to play against. Not only that, but patching Supreme Commander is a pain that usually takes ages as you have to not only patch Supreme Commander, but also the patching interface itself. And in spite of two years between its release and this writing, Supreme Commander is still system intensive, so don't expect to be playing 81km matches with a friend unless you both have a good internet connection (Cable or faster, please) and good computer.

Without a doubt, I would recommend Supreme Commander to anyone, but you've got to have the system and the connection to get the most out of it. If you do, this game deserves to be in your collection, and it isn't about to get old. There's something about seeing your foe's massive base getting immolated by a strategic swarm of missile that still manages to bring a tear to my eye.

The latest Ratchet and Clank game is a great game that any PS3 owner will enjoy.

Being a newcomer to the Ratchet and Clank series, I didn't know exactly what to expect from the games, but after sorting out the installation glitch, I jumped right into the game and had a blast.

Ratchet and Clank opens with, well, Ratchet and Clank working on a vehicle when they're interrupted by who I can only describe as Mr. Incredible and rush off to go save him from the "robot army" gathered outside of his base. The game opens with a sixaxis scene, and after realizing that the game always uses "flat" as the neutral point for your controller, I managed to get through the scene without getting banged up that badly. Once I was on the ground though, picking up the controls was almost instantaneous. By the time I was done with the first level, I had felt like I had been playing the game for ages as far as controls go. By the time you reach Mr. Incre-er, Captain Qwark, you inadvertantly meet up with the main antagonist, Emperor Percival Tachyon and after a quick escape, wind up stranded on a new planet, looking for the nearest ride off and the game takes it and runs from there. The cast in this game is great- every character and enemy seems to have a little bit of personality, and the whole presentation kind of feels like they were channelling Pixar, which is never a bad thing.

Gameplay is smooth. The controls are intuitive and you'll be smashing up baddies and collecting bolts almost immediately. The big draw of the Ratchet and Clank game has always been the over the top weapons, and they're in no short supply here- and with ten levels for each weapon in all (after beating the game once and unlocking the "Omega" level weapons that is), you'll have plenty to do with each and every weapon for completionists out there. Everything that you do buttonwise to control Ratchet (and Clank) is tight and responsive, but the same doesn't always hold true for the sixaxis segments. Whenever you go into a flying segment (with Clank's robotic glider wings), the Sixaxis takes over and it can get a little hairy sometimes- between glitches and general control disagreements between player and console. The hacking segments can produce similar nightmares, and I had a personal frustration with the game when it came up with a message that I could use the left analoge stick rather than the sixaxis for hacking, but when I tried to accept that change, it wouldn't let me- the only option