On February 7th (the same release day as the game itself), you can grab the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Original Soundtrack in physical or digital format. The “dark fantasy score” is composed by Grant Kirkhope (GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Viva Pinata) and performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Head over to Amazon to listen to sample clips. There’s also a full interview below with Kirkhope on the game’s music and sound. If you don’t have a full seven minutes free to watch it, at least check out the last twenty seconds. It’s practically guaranteed to make you crack a smile.

Source: Top Dollar PR
Buy the Soundtrack: Amazon

But it would be a shame to let the game’s music be swept under the rug. Instead, grab Lifeformed’s original Dustforce score, Fastfall. If you purchase the whole soundtrack (for $3.99), you’ll also get three additional bonus tracks. Even if you haven’t tried the game yet, it’s a nice, relaxing album of mellow electronica that’s easy to enjoy. You can hear a sample of the game’s music in the trailer below.

Buy the Soundtrack: Bandcamp

Last year, Sonic Colors showed me that 3D Sonic games could be fun again. Of course, this was the very same year that Sonic 4 dashed my hopes of a quality 2D Sonic experience. So when it was announced that the next game in the series would feature both styles of play, I was skeptical of SEGA’s ability to handle the classic stages.

It turns out they actually learned from their mistakes… well, most of them anyway. Sonic Generations, while not perfect, manages to be a rather successful blend of old and new Sonic gameplay that’s fun in spite of its shortcomings.

But it wouldn’t be a modern Sonic game without an attempt to explain why there are two Sonics revisiting levels of the past. And so silly tales of time travel and time eaters try their darndest to make you care about what’s happening. It all feels rather unnecessary, but it’s also fairly unintrusive, so each time a cutscene presents itself you’ll be back to playing the game before you know it.

The worlds of Generations are divided into three distinct eras starting with the SEGA Genesis and ending with the current console generation. At first, it seems like a brief setup with each Sonic only getting one Act per world (18 stages in total) with a boss capping off each era. But 90 challenge stages scattered throughout each world add much more longevity to the experience.

Anybody who played with the incredibly broken physics of Sonic 4 is undoubtedly wondering how classic Sonic controls. While it doesn’t feel exactly like playing the Genesis games, it does manage to feel surprisingly good. Momentum is actually kept properly without constant micromanagement and Sonic isn’t constantly unrolling his body to leave himself vulnerable; two huge problems with Sonic 4. It isn’t without its faults, though. Sonic takes an unusually long time to get up after being hit. But the controls do enough right to feel like a good approximation of the games everybody loves.

Modern Sonic plays about as good as he did in Sonic Colors (minus the powerups). That is to say he plays as well as the levels he inhabits. When it works, you get an exhilarating sense of speed while still having plenty of pathways to explore. But when it doesn’t, your clipping through the environment, getting the camera stuck behind an obstacle, or slowly walking backwards (involuntarily) down the side of a very tall building toward your death.

Sounds awful right? But just like with all aspects of the game, the good manages to outweigh the bad. These faults, though glaring when present, managed to happen pretty seldom in my extensive time with the game. Modern Sonic can still occasionally feel a little too automatic as the levels ping pong you around in a flashy display of speed. They didn’t reinvent his style of play. But it’s a further refinement of the previous games and there are usually enough branching paths and 2D sections mixed in to keep things entertaining.

Challenge stages have a surprising amount of enjoyable features, considering their optional nature. Some have you using the elemental shields from Sonic 3 to get past obstacles, even allowing you to unlock the shields as part of your customizable ability set for use in the main levels. Others have you calling in tails to help you fly through Chemical Plant or hitting buttons to toggle an array of walls and platforms in a psuedo-puzzle platformer stage. But they can’t all be good. With a full 90 challenge stages, there are some real stinkers, too.

Speaking of stinkers, the final boss of Sonic Generations is, by a wide margin, the lowest point in the game. It is a complete mess. It’s hard to believe it was ever playtested. The rest of the game’s bosses are generally decent, though a bit repetitive. If nothing else, they at least don’t reuse slight variations of the same fight over and over like Colors.

And of course, there’s the nostalgia. Ultimately, Sonic Generations is a celebration of the franchise and is jam packed with fan service. Aside from the stages themselves, there are plenty of remixes of classic and not so classic tunes, some of which are a real treat to hear (and some of which will at least give you a good laugh). You can also unlock extra artwork and music from across the franchise’s history that can be used in place of the default themes. Playing a level to Jet Grind Radio composer Hideki Naganuma’s Sonic Rush score certainly put a smile on my face.

Sometimes the choices of what to represent is a bit questionable. One of the worlds is taken from Sonic 2006 which is hated pretty unanimously and the rocket powerup used in the Planet Wisp stage is arguably one of Sonic Colors‘ least interesting items. But trips through stages such as the Chemical Plant (Sonic 2) and Speed Highway (Sonic Adventure) make up for these odd choices.

Aside from a few framerate issues in small sections of certain stages, Generations is delicious eye candy.  The modern version of Planet Wisp in particular is absolutely gorgeous as you make your way through the alien vegetation in the early part of the stage. No matter which version of Sonic you’re playing as, there’s always a lot to look at to the point where it can occasionally be distracting. But one thing it is definitely not is boring.

The same can be said about the game itself. Even after finishing off the main game, it still had its hooks in me. The brief nature of the challenge stages have a powerful “just one more” effect. I found playing through the main stages a second time arguably even more enjoyable as I had a better grasp of how to effectively navigate them as fast as possible or take more time to explore and find hidden red rings.

Sonic Generations may not be as creative as last year’s Sonic Colors. It doesn’t really have any new mechanics to spice things up and all the stages are reinterpretations of existing material. But what’s there manages to feel tighter than its 3D predecessors and the inclusion of 2D stages that actually work are a welcome change. Is it still flawed? Sure. But I’d be lying if said I didn’t have a damn fun time playing through it.

This review is based on the PlayStation 3 version of Sonic Generations provided to the reviewer by SEGA.

Sometimes a game comes along that seems like it’s hitting all the right marks. You like the concept, the aesthetics and the music. All the still images and preview videos get you really amped up for the game’s release. But alas, once you’ve played it, it just doesn’t click with you.

I am sad to say that was my experience with Rock of Ages. A game that, on the surface, had enough elements that seemed interesting and unique to me that I thought for sure I would like the game. I was wrong.

Rock of Ages combines tower defense elements with a Marble Madness style ball rolling game. You, as Sisyphus, grew tired of rolling that rock eternally up a hill and decided to break out of Hades via a time vortex that Chronos was guarding. As you progress through time, you will come across all manner of unsavory historical figures who are trying to stop you for some inexplicable reason.

The resulting encounter becomes a contest of who can smash the other person’s door in first and squish the opponent inside with their giant boulder. But each boulder must be carved from a solid piece of stone. While you wait, you can spend money, earned from smashing things on your way to the opponent’s door, on your own defenses. More often than not, the defenses will serve mainly to slow down your opponent. But if you can deal enough damage, you can actually break apart their boulder completely.

That is the tower defense portion of the game, and it is where I found the most frustration.  While potentially there were a lot of different ways in which you could setup various units, you are in such a time and budget crunch that it generally resulted in madly placing what few things I could without really doing much planning. The AI on the other had, knows exactly what units to place where. This leads them to spend most of their resources defending shortcuts; ones I wouldn’t have noticed were there otherwise. So while this should have made the battles harder, all it really did was expose weaknesses in the levels. Nearly every match I won on the first or second try, even if it was almost always by a close margin.

At least until I got to Plague. Ah Plague, the one big difficulty spike in the game that nearly resulted in an incident involving me and the pulling out of hair. It wasn’t until my pal Adam Milecki revealed his winning strategy that I was able to continue my progression. The problem was the strategy he suggested, spam the war elephants, pretty much worked in every situation from that point on.

The other major part of the game is where you are rolling the ball down the hill towards your opponent’s gate. If you’ve played Marble Madness or Marble Blast Ultra then you should feel right at home with the controls. I enjoyed this part of the game more than the tower defense mechanics. Skillfully rolling your boulder while dodging the harmful and smashing the smashable felt pretty good. One could argue that this is the main mechanic in the game. In fact, I didn’t even know about the tower defense mechanics existing until Rock of Ages had already come out. This portion felt exactly how I thought it would and, while fun at first, didn’t have a lot of staying power.

Boss fights seem to rarely work out these days. We may all have ones we remember fondly from back in the day, but they seem to rarely be good now. The boss fights in Rock of Ages are not designed to have you worry about defeating the boss before he defeats you. Rather, they are a matter of figuring out how to hit the boss to take down his health. You don’t have a health bar on these parts and if you fall off the edge, you will be placed back on the playing field unharmed. This made them feel really pointless on one hand, but on the other hand I was kind of glad you couldn’t lose. I really, really didn’t want to be stuck on them.

"Quick, hit the dragon in his weak point or this will take longer!"

The aesthetic aspects of Rock of Ages are great. I love how the style changes as you progress through the ages, I love the use of music, and I especially love the sense of humor. The title screen opens with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference, and how could I not love that? The cut scenes between levels are completely off the wall and are filled with pop culture references and random crazyness. The Monty Python style artwork is fantastic.

Rock of Ages also has multiplayer, but I was unable to try it for this review. I attempted to connect to a multiplayer match via Xbox Live several times, but I could not find any games to connect to, nor did anyone connect to my game when I tried to host. There is local split screen matches as well, but I was not able to try those either.

Overall, I found myself frustrated with Rock of Ages. As I mentioned above, I really wanted to like this game. Unfortunately, I just found the mechanics more frustrating than fun.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of Rock of Ages provided to the reviewer by Atlus.

Gundemonium Collection may be over a year old, but it just released on Steam with a few new features. This package of doujin shmups contains Gundemonium Recollection, its sequel GundeadliGne, and their vastly different prequel Hitogata Happa.

The most obvious changes in the Steam version are the remixed soundtracks. They’re quite a step up from the originals thanks to the talent of DM Ashura and Woofle (Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania IIDX). You’ll also find a new online co-op mode for GundeadliGne allowing you to play with your Steam friends.

But I’m sure many out there haven’t had a chance to check out these games in the first place since they are a niche within a niche.

Both Gundemonium Recollection and Gundeadline are horizontal shooters with unusually large sprites. This allows for a lot of personality to be put into each character and enemy design. They often approach Cute ‘em Up territory with their goofy pumpkin enemies, Parodius-like women in bunny suits, and other equally wacky things. Of course, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets cut in half.

"Bullets abound in Gundemonium Recollection."

The large sprites also go hand in hand with the friction system that rewards players for coming in close contact with bullets. The small hit box allows you to squeeze through unbelievably tight spaces while having the rest of your sprite take advantage of this system.

Bombs are pretty standard fare in Gundemonium Recollection. There are a few different variations depending on your character and you’ll acquire more by picking up powerups. GundeadliGne takes a far more interesting approach. A variety of selectable “Matrix Orders” each provide you with a unique bomb function and reload time. Bombs no longer have to be collected and instead must be recharged. This allows you to choose settings that match your play style whether you want weak attacks that recharge fast, strong or wide area attacks that recharge slowly, or anything in between.

GundeadliGne also introduces the “Flip Turn” system, allowing you to shoot in either direction similar to Capcom’s Section Z. Because of this, enemies come from all directions instead of just the right, and bosses tend to move around much more as well. It gives the whole game a different feel than its predecessor and provides a fresh change of pace.

Expect bullet patterns to get crazy. Not only will you be dodging spiraling waves of shots, you’ll also find yourself navigating through tunnels and segmented tracks made of bullets. Luckily, certain secondary weapons can help slow things down and make dodging more manageable.

"Hitogata Happa is full of very interesting ideas."

The black sheep of the collection (though not in a negative sense) is Hitogata Happa. Unlike the other games, Hitogata Happa is a vertical shooter with wildly different mechanics. Unfortunately, these mechanics are not immediately obvious without consulting the game’s manual (which I highly recommend doing). I went from not “getting it”, and practically ignoring it, to finding it the most fun and interesting game in the group.

Many enemies have a “Zone of Control” that acts as sort of an inverse to the friction system of Recollection. Flying within this visible circle around the enemy will cause all bullets that pass through it to slow down and also turn them into gems when the enemy is defeated. It can be dangerous, but often reaps huge rewards.

These gems can be spent on “dolls” which are essentially the different characters you control. There are quite a few different dolls to choose from and each one feels drastically different thanks to a unique variety of weapons, special abilities, and movement speeds. But you can only buy twelve of a single doll and the more you buy, the more the price of that particular doll will rise, encouraging you to spread your money across a variety of dolls. Weapons include focused laser beams, multidirectional drills, a Raiden-esque curving laser, homing missiles, and even swords to name a few.

If you’re wondering how the game retains its difficulty while allowing you to purchase so many lives, it is thanks to Hitogata Happa‘s very unconventional bomb system. Rather than pressing a button to use a bomb, you instead must fly your doll directly into an enemy. This will kill the doll in question, but also explode causing massive damage which is crucial to winning boss battles.

But you can’t just use this attack any time. You’ll have to first let the “Flow Charge” gauge fill completely over time. This can cause some frustrating moments as I often found myself dying the second before the gauge was full. But when you completely destroy an entire arm of a boss by flying into it, it’s extremely satisfying.

In the first level, you will be forced to use the cheapest doll the game has to offer. It’s fairly slow, but has the special ability of slowing down time at the cost of your mana gauge. It can be easy to get turned off by the game when only experiencing the first level, since much of what makes Hitogata Happa great is what’s introduced after it. And when you aren’t intimately familiar with the game’s mechanics, that first level can be a doozy. But persistence is key as you’ll soon find the unique twists on the shmup genre that the game offers as you progress.

I often found I had to abandon everything I learned in shmup school while fighting the bosses of Hitogata Happa. Aside from rewarding you for charging into the enemy, the bosses themselves are usually rather unique. One made use of several searchlights and fired an especially deadly cannon whenever they spotted me. Another inserted a brain into one of three shells, then shuffled them around. I was forced to keep track of all this while simultaneously dodging bullets in order to shoot the correct enemy.

Bosses also have a time limit. When it runs out, they enter “Error Mode” and spew bullets everywhere. Dying at all during this will cause you to lose regardless of whether or not you have any remaining dolls. This is why bombs are especially important since they allow you to take out the boss before this happens.

Gundemonium Collection is worth checking out for the unique gameplay of Hitogata Happa alone.  Luckily, both Gundemonium Recollection and GundeadliGne are no slouches either.

This review is based on the Steam version of Gundemonium Collection provided to the reviewer by Rockin’ Android.

You know that moment in gaming where you’re no longer making conscious decisions and instead find yourself relying on pure, razor fast instinct? This is how I felt for almost the entirety of the time I spent with SkyDrift. Much like the fantastic Split/Second, SkyDrift‘s brand of racing puts you on the verge of death constantly, and everytime you manage to narrowly escape certain doom at the hands of the track’s terrain or your opponent’s weapons it feels like a miracle.

It’s amazing how much the concept of flight changes how a racing game plays. The added verticality of racing in an airplane instead of a car allows for a sense of freedom that really makes every race play out differently. This is also helped by some really superb track design. There aren’t a ton of tracks, but the ones that are there are filled to the brim with branching pathways, a ton of variety, and plenty of extra dangerous obstacles that reward players willing to take risks.

The closer you fly to the ground and walls, the more you will fill up your boost gauge. Every minute you cheat death is one that will make you faster. Sometimes it’s easier to fly above or around archways or avoid a narrow slit in a rock face, but if you can survive the danger it can be your ticket to a shorter path, a sweet power-up, or simply a proximity-based boost reward.

Each track sets itself apart by having you fly through anything from the wreckage of an old boat to the lava flow of an active volcano. And since each track has that extra dimension that flight adds, the reverse versions feel drastically different. There’s also a great sense of openness not unlike the underappreciated Excite Truck (but with a bit more focus).

Weapons in racing games must be handled delicately in order to retain balance and fun. Thankfully, SkyDrift hits the nail on the head. Icons clearly indicate which power-up you’ll receive so you can grab what’s best suited for the situation. Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses without any of them becoming the “I win” button. Even homing missiles aren’t a guaranteed hit due to their straight flight paths. Sure, they will follow their target, but they can’t distinguish between the terrain. Steer your plane behind the other side of a rock mass and you’ll be safely out of the city limits of Explosion Town.

Most importantly, re-spawning is extremely quick. There’s nothing worse than waiting as a Lakitu slowly fishes a go-kart out of a lake. SkyDrift avoids this problem by never letting you have enough downtime to break the flow of the lightning fast gameplay while still disadvantaging you enough to motivate your survival.

If you have a power-up you don’t need, you can sacrifice it for a bit of boost. How much you get will actually be determined by how far back you are to help you play catchup when you’re doing especially poorly. So why even use weapons? Aside from slowing down your opponents, killing them also increases your boost gauge and does so often to a much greater extent than absorbing a power-up would. Killing sprees always let you end in boosting sprees.

Each weapon has a more powerful version if you pick it up twice. You can also hold two different weapons at a time and cycle through them. This all adds up to a lot of different ways to tackle each situation you find yourself in. Will you use your EMP shockwave to take down the surrounding planes or to counter a missile the moment before it hits? You might find the answer is “neither” as you quickly realize there’s a mine to destroy that’s blocking your favorite, secret path.

Not every race features weapons. A small handful of races in the campaign use rings instead. Flying through rings while racing other planes might not sound terribly exciting on paper, but when each one ramps up your speed at an exponential rate reminiscent of Wipeout‘s Zone Mode, it’s one of the most adrenaline pumping experiences in the game (especially when you break the sound barrier).

While playing SkyDrift, I felt like I was transported back to a time when arcade racers were king. That’s not to say the game feels dated (it doesn’t), but I could just see myself in some sort of crazy, plane-shaped contraption of a cabinet, shooting down enemy planes as the whole thing swivels back and forth. The fittingly rocking music and bright, colorful visuals certainly didn’t hurt that feeling.

SkyDrift is an absolute blast. It’s a fresh spin on the weapons-based racing genre that manages to bombard you with explosions and exciting close calls while retaining a sense of coherency and balance. The dual-stick controls take a little getting use to, but you’ll be glad you put forth the effort. Once it clicks, it’s a hard game to put down.

This review is based on the PSN version of SkyDrift provided to the reviewer by Digital Reality.

It seems I have reviewed quite a few pirate themed games during my time here on WingDamage, from ones that fought zombies to ones on monkey related islands. They are a recurring gaming mascot that lends itself well to interesting and colorful character designs.

In Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games’ Pirates of Black Cove, there is certainly not a shortage of wackiness or crazy characters. There is a level of cartoonishness in the writing that lets you know right out of the gate that they were there to have a good time with this RTS/RPG/Navel Combat hybrid (or as the game’s site calls it, “Light Strategy Adventure”).

You start by picking one of three pirate captains, each with their own special talents. I decided to go with the rifle toting guy, mostly because he was the one with the sweet eye patch. You soon find that, while you are captain of your own ship, there are much more important pirates that you will be answering to. As you progress, various pirate leaders will give you quests, the completion of which will gain you monetary rewards, as well as a measure of favor with that faction. Once you have maxed that out, you can get the pirate leader of that faction to join you in your fight as another hero character.

Pirates of Black Cove is broken up into two main parts. They make logical sense from the piratical point of view, as there are the parts where you are traveling/fighting on your ship and the sections where you are on land completing quests and plunderin’.

On land, the game takes on the flavor of an RTS with some light RPG elements for your hero character. You have three slots for units, which can be filled by hiring scallywags and various other undesirables to fight alongside you. Rather than each character taking up a slot each, different unit types allow for a group of that type. So your basic melee units may allow for up to five of them before a slot is full, while the huge cannon toting guy that does massive splash damage takes up a whole slot on his own.

The nice thing is, as you get more hero units on your side by gaining their loyalty, they too will have three slots that can be filled up. The downside is the slow walking speed. While you are progressing through a town and its surrounding landscape you don’t notice it too much, but once an area is cleared of enemy units and you have to walk all the way back to your ship, it is excruciating. There is a button on-screen that will call all your units back to the ship, but all of them have to be back at the dock before you can actually depart. There were a few times where, for the stories sake, I could see not having a quick “back to ship instantly” button, but that shouldn’t have excluded it from the game as a whole.

Missions aren’t the only time the slow walking speed is a problem. When you are navigating a pirate base, you have to physically walk your main character to the building to recruit units. This takes way longer than is necessary and seems like the kind of thing that could have been streamlined into some sort of menu system.

Unfortunately, the slowness doesn’t end there.

While I found the actual ship to ship combat to be pretty entertaining, the travel time between anything happening on the wide blue ocean became boring pretty fast. There are a lot of collectibles around the game world, but the slow travel speed made me never want to veer off course.

Newer ships with better stats can be acquired, but the cost seemed disproportionately high. More ships available for purchase with smaller incremental stat increases for cheaper prices might have helped alleviate this issue. As it played out for me, I was spending so much money on units that I was stuck in the starter ship up until a boss fight where I absolutely could not win without upgrading my ship.

I gave in and started grinding for money. This entailed attacking random ships and collecting money for destroying them. This didn’t get me much money each time, so it was pretty slow going. I decided to try capturing ships, which I had written off earlier because every time I had tried in the past the ship was either way worse than the starting ship, or would immediately kill me if it was actually worth having.

After several tries, I finally acquired a much faster, more powerful ship and suddenly navigation of the world seemed much more manageable. If only it had been easier to get a better ship earlier in the game, I think I would have been a lot more into it as a whole.

While Pirates of Black Cove does have its charm, it unfortunately lost me with its slow pacing. There were no less than three patches while I was playing it for review, so perhaps they can address some of these issues down the road.

This review is based on the retail version of Pirates of Black Cove provided to the reviewer by Paradox Interactive.

As an overall experience, the OnLive MicroConsole asks quite a bit out of me as a user. Not the service itself, I have no beefs with the service. The OnLive MicroConsole is a box roughly the size of a DSi. It is designed to bring PC gaming to your television or monitor without the need of a computer with reasonable specs, or a computer at all for that matter. There is a lot the OnLive MicroConsole has to offer the world in terms of a cheap and affordable PC gaming experience brought straight to your living room. It’s hard to imagine a world where they could even live up to a fraction of such lofty goals and promises

All it asks is that you have a TV or monitor with an HDMI port, an Ethernet port to plug into nearby, and at least 2 MBPS out of your ISP to experience their service. This is where I ran into some issues. I’ve got power sockets and death squids all over the place, so that’s no problem. My TV is HDMI ready, so no need to drop 30 bucks on a component adapter, and I can handle the MBPS needed. But I’m clearly not the person they had in mind for the MicroConsole. The service allows for computers to connect via WiFi, however the console does not. The console requires you to connect either with an Ethernet cable or through various bridge techniques.

So, as it stands now, my only option is the grab a big ol’ Cat5 that I still have from when I wanted to play some PS2 online and went to work. The problem with this scenario is that I’m too uninterested in crafting any sort of bridge solution, so I’m just stuck having this MicroConsole sitting on the floor with cables strewn about as I try and figure out the best possible way for this to work.

It doesn’t work.

It just sits there.

Neither on my entertainment center or anywhere else useful, it becomes a deathtrap. Ready for my dogs to wander in, trip over, and unplug at any second. But I powered forward. Obviously the best solution for me is to just use my home computer if I really wanted to use OnLive effectively. But hey, this unit was free. I’m going to use it.

After that, it’s all gravy.  The unit boots up in a flash. First time start up is simple enough. Quick sync of the controller using the included USB cable gets your rolling. Speaking of included cables, considering they hand these things out like samples at Costco, it’s pretty impressive that it comes fully loaded with all the cables and accessories you would need. You get your network cable, power cable, USB cable for controller charging, a rechargeable battery, a battery pack that takes double-A batteries, even a pair a Duracell double-A’s to get you started, and surprisingly a rather nicely sized HDMI cable. It really is a fully loaded package.

Once you log in using your OnLive account, you discover that the dashboard is exactly the same as the PC experience. The OnLive MicroConsole is not it’s own unique user experience in any way. Outside of using a unique OnLive crafted controller, it is identical no matter how you are using their service.

A unique part of this system is the controller. Most conventional wisdom would just assume that, considering this is ostensibly a PC, that they would either A) pack a simple but branded USB keyboard and mouse with the unit or B) tell you that you can just use most any USB accessories you need. But they don’t.

Instead they took a rather surprising route. They included a controller unique to the console. What can only be described as a some sort of insane alchemic formation that is a cross between a 360 controller, a PS3 controller, and a Wii Classic Controller Pro. You get your traditional ABXY buttons, left and right triggers and bumpers, a D-Pad that doesn’t suck (this is important to note), and concave thumbsticks that are laid out like a PS3. There’s also an interesting media row, which allows you to record and control what OnLive has dubbed “Brag Clips”, which is just PR speak for gameplay videos you can record and show off to other OnLive users. It’s a rather nice inclusion.

You look at the controller though, and it gives off bad vibes. Aesthetically it looks like a third party controller you’d buy for your PS3 or PC that is both a game controller and a multimedia remote wrapped up into one package. However, its build quality is superb. It has a nice weight to it, and all the buttons, triggers and pads just feel solid. I should note that the OnLive MicroConsole fully supports most USB keyboards, mice, USB hubs and various other third party controllers, including the XBox 360 controller. Check it out below. I lined it up with the 360 and the PS3 controller for quick comparison shot.

I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the service of OnLive, since the service itself is free these days and easy enough to just jump in and try out. Most of the games feature 30 minute timed demos, so if you want to put the system through it’s paces, it’s easy enough to see if it’s for you and if you find it’s stream of Arkham Asylum up to your standards. The biggest worry, and a rightful one at that, is that this service does run through the Internet. You are essentially playing a video of a game with a wireless controller. There is a lot to go wrong in that equation. But I can tell you from first hand experience that it’s a virtually non-existent issue. I’m not so one with the machine that I recognize any sort of lag between pushing the button and having the action happening. It’s a very seamless. There are only a few times when you feel like you’re not actually playing the game directly, and that usually comes from video hiccups or a quick notice of controller lag. I’m not running a particularly fast network at my home, but it’s enough to get things rolling. The image I’m putting out is just barely above standard definition, however I have used the service on much better networks than mine and can say from first hand experience that the image quality can really be superb.

That previous thing I said. About using it on a better network? That’s another great little thing about the console.  It’s actually quite portable. The console is itty bitty. Pocket sized even. The controller is a little bulky, and the amount of cables you’ll need is a little much, but if you’re going to be gone for extended periods of time and you REALLY want to get in on that hot Deus Ex action, than this is an adequate solution.

But here is where I always find myself coming back to when thinking about or talking about the MicroConsole. The question here is WHY would you do that? The OnLive home computer client is more than acceptable. In fact, it’s the exact same service. So, taking the console around with you is just silly when you will likely just have your laptop with you. It makes sense using it at home, but it not being wireless can really kill the convenience factor. I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but not very many people I know have their router within earshot of their television.

There isn’t a room with a TV in my house that this will work with unless I implement a bridge, which is just silly for me to bother doing when, again, I can just use any of the computers in my house and hook up my laptop to the TV. A bridge isn’t a difficult thing, it’s actually quite simple, but an inconvenience for someone like me that simply wants to power up and go. It’s not elegant by any stretch of the imagination, and I will suspect that if things really take off, we’ll be seeing a WiFi version of the console or perhaps a peripheral. The controller is great, but I can easily just use a third party controller on my home PC and get the same exact experience. Yeah, it’s not on my big screen TV, but it has to get to the point where you will just wind up saying “Screw it, I’m buying an XBox” and get on with it.

The MicroConsole is not a replacement for a PC. It’s not even a replacement for a home console. I’m really in their demographic for this thing. I’m both a console gamer and a gamer that would like to play some PC titles, but just don’t have the rig for it. The console itself is virtually useless to me, because I’m just not in a position to use it like an average console. In reality, the BEST demographic for this console is someone who wants to game on a budget. The console is a hundred dollars straight up, but there are plenty of deals where just pre-ordering a game will snag you one at no cost.

For that hundred bucks, you get a decent sized catalog that has regular sales (I just picked up Arkham Asylum for a dollar), and even the option to subscribe to a Netflix like service that lets you play a large catalog of games ranging from the original Deus Ex to Braid for just 10 dollars a month. It’s a great console and a great service that has come a long way since it’s subscription based beginnings. If I had the appropriate set up for this console, It’d be another welcome addition to my gaming shelf. But given all the hoops I’ll need to jump through, I really will just be better off using the PC client.

Despite my personal issues, I have the console and the less than ideal or elegant ways of making getting it online without being in close proximity to my networks router (and I’m sure I’m not some outlier on that scatter plot, am I?). The hardware is top notch, well built and well worth owning if you feel like OnLive is the kind of thing you could really sink your teeth deep down into.

Hot off the heels of their Back to the Future game, Telltale is back with another license close to the heart of my youth: Jurassic Park. It takes risks, leaving behind the traditional point and click interface of their past games for something a little different.

The first of the two demos I played was exclusively an action scene. Several of the game’s protagonists were stuck on a roller coaster and I had to prevent them from being eaten by a pack of dinosaurs. The solution? Successfully complete a lot of quick time events including button presses and quick flips of the analogue stick. You could sum up the entire action demo simply by saying “Space Ace”.

But there was a weird layer of detachment added to this scene. The character whose actions were affected by my inputs constantly changed. This made me feel less involved with what was happening on screen since no singular character represented the player. Occasionally I’d fail and watch a death scene before snapping back to the last checkpoint. I watched my cart go on the wrong track into a pack of dinosaurs, a young girl falling out of the car to her death and more, all while my death counter rose.

If this was all the game was, I’d be pretty sad. Thankfully the second demo I played was far more interesting, though still different than Telltale’s previous games.

The adventure demo had me in control of a mercenary woman named Nima accompanied by Miles Chadwick. Nima was clearly ignorant of the island, not knowing that it was full of dinosaurs, but Chadwick seemed to know everything going on. These were Dodgeson’s people that Dennis Nedry intended to hand off the shaving cream can full of dinosaur embryos to (before being killed by a dilophosaurus in his jeep). It’s this tie-in to the original story that makes the plot of Telltale’s game so intriguing. Making it so closely linked to the first novel and film without retelling it is a smart idea.

I found myself in the delightfully familiar locale of where Nedry’s jeep was stuck. Despite not seeing the can in the jeep, Chadwick insists on checking it more while sending Nima to accomplish the far more dangerous task of searching the surrounding area.

Nima has tracking skills. By holding buttons corresponding to different areas, I could have Nima closely examine various elements of the environment such as footprints. Strangely, I had to hold the corresponding button down until my search was complete. The whole thing gave me some serious Heavy Rain vibes.

Never did I find myself walking around as any character. Instead, I could bring up a shortcut menu to move to different areas of the environment. While in each environment, I could use the analogue stick to move the camera around a bit allowing me to examine more things.

In fact, examining things was the name of the game here. The closest I came to encountering a puzzle was when certain areas I attempted to examine were too dark. I had to move up to the jeep and adjust the lights mounted on top to aim at different areas to aid my search. I also occasionally conversed with Chadwick, but my dialogue choices seemed of little consequence. I either chose the right answer, or something else then the right answer. Hopefully the puzzle and dialogue aspects will get more complex further into the final game.

Eventually, several dinosaurs showed up and I transitioned into another quick time event driven action scene, complete with checkpoints and a few failures on my part. It at least felt more interesting transitioning from a calm scene to an action one, but it’s still hard to get too excited about quick time events in 2011.

I left a little torn about Jurassic Park: The Game. On one hand, the setup for the story has grabbed my attention. But on the other hand, the action gameplay is not particularly enjoyable. It’s definitely feeling more “interactive fiction” than game so far, even moreso than a traditional point-and-click adventure game. But if the adventure parts introduce more actual puzzles instead of the “look here, now look here” execution I’ve seen thus far, I could forgive the action scenes.

How many airplane racing games can you think of off the top of your head? Any? Without resorting to Google, all I could come up with was one third of Diddy Kong Racing. This is exactly why I was instantly fascinated by Digital Reality’s SkyDrift. It’s in a sub-genre that’s rarely explored.

You could call it “Mario Kart in the sky”, but that really isn’t fair to the game. SkyDrift may be a weapons-based racer, but it’s far more deliberate and skill-based than any racing I’ve ever done in the Mushroom Kingdom. The fact that you need a second analogue stick to control your plane’s knife position is proof enough that the game is deeper than some of its contemporaries.

Using both sticks doesn’t just make you better, the hairpin turns throughout the cavernous tracks make adjusting the angle of your plane absolutely vital. This is especially true when making quick decisions. This comes up often as the tracks have plenty of branching paths to explore.

Some of the paths will help you shave some time off your lap, while others can be a great source of weapon drops. In my time with the demo, I traveled through valleys, caves, icy waters, and the occasional man-made structure as I shot at my opponents to slow them down.

Flying dangerously is actually rewarded. The more you hug the ground and walls (without crashing), the more you can fill your boost meter. It’s up to you whether to risk it all in order to gain the extra boost you need to overtake your opponent.

Weapon drops are not randomized. Instead, they have clearly marked symbols similar to Blur, so you can actually form strategies and grab the specific power-ups that will be useful to your cause. There are six power-ups in all including missiles, EMP, mines, machine guns, shields, and health refills.

You can hold a few different ones at once and cycle through them. Picking up the same power-up twice will actually change it into a stronger version. Or you can choose to get rid of it altogether by converting it into boost power, further expanding your options.

Each of the eight planes has their own strengths and weaknesses along with a variety of skins to change up the look. Eight is also the number of players in a race, both in single player and online multiplayer.

As a sucker for unconventional racing games, I found myself really enjoying what I played of SkyDrift. Moving in all directions certainly adds a lot more ways to cut lap times than being stuck on a road, and the many branching paths of each track kept them very interesting. I look forward to checking the full version out when it releases this summer.