Review

Games Without Boxes Reviews Siren: Blood Curse

Siren: Blood Curse, the PS3’s exclusive downloadable rural Japanese freakout, arrives already carved to bits, twelve pieces to be exact. In this case we’re talking about episodic content (between Siren and Dexter, is this the new shotgun?). Siren feels like a totally new style of game experience, more like a horror TV series and you’ll have to pay for the experience. A four-episode pack goes for nearly fifteen bucks a pop or forty bucks for the whole thing. The pricing definitely has a twinge of an adversarial feel. Sony can get into your wallet for an extra $25 bones if you go the a la carte route. When you’re toying with making the purchase keep in mind this is a sequential episodic storyline, not twelve separate games. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Games Without Boxes, PS3, reviews, Siren: Blood Curse | 1 Comment »

Review

Games Without Boxes: The iPhone Edition

After working out the launch kinks, Apple fans can now gorge themselves on the iPhone App Store and its buffet of software: some free, some cheap , and all of it a mystery. Among the 500 downloads you can make on your iPhone (be it 3G or plain ol’ last year’s goods) are a monstrous number of launch games such as Super Monkey Ball. As a portable game device, the iPhone could be the best thing to happen since the original Game Boy. Let’s see if any of these Day One games make the DS and PSP sweat their pants just yet. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Games Without Boxes, iPhone games, reviews | 1 Comment »

Review

Games Without Boxes: New Downloads On PSN, WiiWare, and Xbox Live Arcade

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.
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Tags: Fatal Inertia EX, Games Without Boxes, Gyrostarr, Ticket To Ride | No Comments »