Xbox Live’s Block Party kicks off with Toy Soldiers. Toy Soldiers is a tower defense game. If you have been watching the trailers and following the press you might not have known this. I’m sure with good reason the PR team behind the game decided to exclude this information since there is an over abundance of tower defense games already on XBLA. When tower defense is done well and made to feel fresh again, it can be a lot of fun. Signal Studios has done this with their first XBLA release, Toy Soldiers.

Gameplay

The campaign allows you to experience 24 action packed missions playing as both the Allied and Central armies. Your goal on each map is to defend your toy box from wave after wave of oncoming troops and vehicles. This is done by building different defensive structures on specific build sites. Each map has a set number of areas where you can place your defensive structures, so you have to chose wisely. To be able to build you have to be able to afford the construction, and money is earned from every kill. The main feature that sets this apart from other tower defense games is the ability to control of any structure and take out the enemies on your own. You are able to zoom-in to the weapon’s point of view, use the left stick to aim and the right to fire. As you progress you also gain the chance to pilot airplanes and drive tanks as well. The easier difficulty provides a lot of fun for the casual player. As you increase the difficulty the game presents you with a real challenge. When set to the hardest difficulty, the towers no longer fire on their own. This means you know have to be able to bounce around to each one in order to take out the enemy. The bosses in this game are larger toys in many forms such as a huge tank, a railroad gun, and a zeppelin aircraft. Once the campaign has been completed, you then unlock the survival mode where you fight against countless waves of enemy toys desperately trying to defeat you. Also included is a two-player versus mode. This is playable locally in split screen or online. Here, each side sends waves of soldiers at the opponent with the Y button, but they also have to build units in order to defend their toy box from the waves being sent by the opponent. Toy Soldiers offers a lot of different options to players and should provide hours of entertainment.

Graphics/Sound

The game stays true to its name and provides a toy like feel to all the models. The environment looks and feels like a WWI recreation someone would have in their basement. The backdrops for each level are painted on a piece of wood and certain areas are open so that you can see the rest of the room. The character animations are one of my favorite parts of the game. The soldiers have a look similar to the plastic toys but feature exaggerated animations. This really adds a lot of fun to the feel of the game. Seeing a soldier firing a gun at enemies while bouncing around in the seat was a nice touch. The sound effects are done well and help add to the feel of the game. While getting close to what war might sound like they also manage to keep the effects close to what plastic figures exploding would sound like. The music selection was excellent. Period specific music plays during loading and helps carry the WWI feel into the game.

Overall

Toy Soldiers is the best tower defense game on XBLA. It takes a genre that over time has continued to grow stale and brought new life to it. There were plenty of times that I was playing and never even thought it was a tower defense game. If you have been a bit skeptical about picking this up, at least give the demo a try. This is an excellent XBLA release and already one of my favorite games this year. Toy Soldiers is available now for 1200 MS Points.

When Hollywood decides to make a movie based on a video game I always get nervous. Their track record hasn’t been so good. Movies like Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Hitman and most other movies based on games, aren’t really classified as good movies. With the newest movie based on a game, Prince of Persia, coming out soon we’ve decided to dust off some of these old movies and give them another chance. Think of it as a sort of retro movie review. And what better way to start us off than the one that started it all, Super Mario Bros.

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If your like me, you have always thought that having a clone of yourself would make things a lot easier. You could have your clone do chores, get you something to drink, and in the case of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, help you get pie. That is the angle The Odd Gentlemen, the games developer, have taken with their debut title. A quirky puzzler with a silent film style art design, P.B. Winterbottom offers a nice pick up and play feel that a lot of people can enjoy. (more…)

It is a dark time for our country. We are in a recession. People are struggling to survive. Rising crime rates, bank foreclosures and evictions are happening all around. Martial law has been enforced. Who will save us from these tough times? None other than Lex Luthor, newly elected President of the United States.

This is the beginning of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, the sixth movie in the DC Universe Original Animated Movies. Fans will be happy to hear Kevin Conroy as Batman as well as Tim Daly as Superman and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor. The voice acting by them is superb and one of the reasons is much of the voice over work was done with the actors in the same room so they can play off one another. (more…)

What do you do with a monster that’s impossible to control, so dangerous that not even Iron Man and the members of S.H.I.E.L.D. can stop him? Exile him to another planet. And what do you do if you’re the one being exiled? Well if you’re the Hulk, you bust open the ship in transit and crash land on a different planet altogether. These are the opening scenes of the recently released animated DVD Planet Hulk.

The original plan was to send Hulk away to a deserted planet full of vegetation and game and with no intelligent life forms. He can’t hurt anyone there and no one can hurt him. Needless to say, Hulk is not happy with this, and like I said, destroys the ship in transit and crash lands on a planet named Sakaar.

Upon landing he is captured and thrown into gladiator games where he must kill or be killed. If he can be triumphant in three games, then he wins his freedom.  All of this is done for the enjoyment of the Red King, who rules all, and the inhabitants of Sakaar. While fighting in the games, he befriends his fellow captives and works together with them to get through the first couple games.

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Manga: Karakuri Odette (vol 1)
Creator: Julietta Suzuki
Publisher: Tokyopop
Age rating: T (Teen age 13+)
Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi
May include: Mild violence, moderate gore,
moderate language and tobacco reference/use

Karakuri Odette is the story of a cute little android named Odette who wishes to experience the life of a normal teenager. She wants to learn more about what it’s like to be “human”.

To do so, she asks her eccentric creator, Professor Yoshizawa, if she can attend high school like any normal kid.  Since he doesn’t seem to be able to say no to his precious creation, he enrolls her in the local high school and that’s how Odette’s adventures start.

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A few months ago I was shopping for a new headset. Since I use a headset for work, I wasn’t going to settle for any cheap one I could find on the market. I was looking for comfort, reliability, sturdiness and good sound quality without paying a fortune.

After a few days of research, I found one that met all my needs; the GameCom 377 from Plantronics.

So what is all of the fuss about this headset?  (more…)

Well the people at LapWorks developed several “LapDesks” (Desks that sit on your lap) that can be used in these situations.

I’m a gamer and work with a laptop on a daily basis. So I was thrilled back in July when I received one of these “LapDesks”.  Now that I’ve used it for several weeks, I can tell you all about it!

Futura Gamer's Desk

The LapDesk I tried out is called the Futura Gamer’s Desk (with Regular & Max MouzPad). It retails at $54.95 on the LapWorks website.

At first, I thought it was quite expensive for a few pieces of plastic but when I realized what I could do with them I changed my mind

First, it can be used as a portable desk that you can use almost anywhere. You just lay it on your lap and it can be used either to support a laptop or the keyboard and mouse of a desktop. You’ll be comfortably sitting in an ergonomic position and your performance will be as good as if you were sitting at a computer desk. (more…)

Splosion Man is Twisted Pixel’s follow up to their much acclaimed platformer The Maw. And as good as that game was, Splosion Man outshines it on every level. Microsoft featured the title in this year’s Summer of Arcade on Xbox Live and it’s easy to see why.

The concept of the game is simple, you are a science experiment gone wrong. You are now made up of a molten fiery substance and have the ability to explode. Hence the title Splosion Man.

After becoming a freak of nature your life is centered around two goals:

1. Escape from the laboratory.

2. Kill every scientist in your path (revenge is a bitch).

That’s it. There’s your plot. Simple but extremely addicting.

Read the rest of the review after the break…

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I hate the way people tiptoe around indie games in general.  The industry’s approach to the vast majority of these shittastic independent game developers wreaks of a mother telling her daughter that she has a “nice” singing voice, only to have the daughter try out for American Idol later in life and get publicly destroyed by Simon Cowell.  I tell you this so you can be sure that when I tell you Time Gentlemen, Please is one of the best adventure games I’ve played in a very long time, you’ll know I’m serious. (more…)