Review
Games Without Boxes: New Downloads On PSN, WiiWare, and Xbox Live Arcade
June 30, 2008
By Scott Stein
Fatal Inertia EX
PlayStation Store (Koei)
Cost: $29.99
Japanese company Koei , normally known for its obsessive military history series Dynasty Warriors, has hit up the PSN with an updated version of their 2007 360 hover-racing game. No samurai here; in fact, it’s a combat-racing genre piece solidly lodged somewhere between Wipeout and Star Wars Episode 1 podracing. The vehicles control a little stiffly, though the semi-open-environment arenas afford kinetic cliff-hugging and water-skimming opportunities (until getting pulled back when you miss flying through a checkpoint, thus ending the buzz). Online matches and a fair number of single-player challenges and car upgrades are good reasons to try a download, and the graphics are better-than-average for a non-disc game—but there are only six worlds to race on, and the cost feels like it should really be ten dollars cheaper. Until Wipeout HD, this is the only game on the futuristic-racing block, and it’s not a bad one at that.
Ticket To Ride
Xbox Live Arcade
Cost: 800 points ($10)
Hear that? It’s the sound of Euro-board-game geeks everywhere squealing with joy. In the tradition of Catan and Carcassone, the award-winning cardboard-and-wood game of 1800s railroad building has found its way onto Xbox Live Arcade. Drawing cards, laying routes and generally screwing over up to four other players feels like a cross between Uno and Monopoly, with the additional joy of staring at a huge map full of confusingly-colored track routes. It isn’t very complicated once you get used to it, and don’t expect more than the basic game—but, like backgammon while sipping whiskey, it’s quite a nicely addictive way to pass the time.
Gyrostarr
Wii Ware (High Voltage)
Cost: 700 points ($7)
In the spirit of Gyruss and Tempest, High Voltage’s psychdelic half-pipe racer pits you as a little ship heading down an increasingly-accelerating warpgate, collecting clouds of energy to fill your meter before the level ends and you crash out at high speeds. Shooting little abstract enemies along the way that look like they escaped from a shopping-mall Time Out in 1984, each level piles on the same thing over and over in waves of difficulty, with occasional bonus levels. Fast, fun, but hampered by uneven Wiimote motion-controls that feel too slow for the pace of the game, it’s a better effort than other anemic WiiWare launch titles. Still, for our weekly Wii money, we might spend it on the Virtual Console re-issue of Alex Kidd in Miracle World instead.
