Following up on the financially successful and critically welcomed Dead Rising from four years ago, Capcom is releasing Dead Rising 2 at the end of the month. As a precursor to DR2, the developers of the game, Blue Castle Games, are releasing a Xbox Live Arcade title, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. This downloadable title (priced at $5) sets the stage for the opening of Dead Rising 2 and also allows the player to start building their character stats up early. The narrative is structured around Chuck Greene, a father trying to keep his daughter Katey safe from becoming zombie food. Also...

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I haven’t been a fan of Gameloft as an iPhone developer, however profitable they may be. Similar to Electronic Arts, they churn out titles and typically value presentation over gameplay. Some of their recent releases, like the Hero of Sparta series or Assassin’s Creed series, have had spotty quality paired with high price tags. I was uncertain, but hopeful, about Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, only because the superhero genre is already underwhelming on the Apple platforms. In any case, Total Mayhem wraps a story of escaped super-villains around our favorite web slinger and it’s up to young Peter Parker to make New York City safe again. While the story is actually one of the weakest parts of the game, there’s definitely comic book flair to the presentation....

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Taking a completely different development route than the highly successful, critically acclaimed Metroid Prime 3: Corruption that came out of Retro Studios, Nintendo partnered up with the makers of Ninja Gaiden, Team Ninja, to create Metroid: Other M. Typically to other Team Ninja games, this version of Metroid is presentation heavy in respect to cutscenes. The story is positioned between the events of Super Metroid (SNES) and Metroid Fusion (GBA). Samus gets pulled into a perilous situation on the dormant Bottle Ship and joined by Commander Malkovich with the Federation Army in tow. The narrative is partly designed to unwrap the events on the Bottle Ship...

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Making his first apperance on the Playstation 3, Earthworm Jim HD is a suped up version of the now 16 year old zany Earthworm Jim game from Super Nintendo days. Those that remember the craziness of the original will be right at home here, but Gameloft does very little in the form of explanitory narratives to give new players the backstory on our action-infused earthworm. They did include descriptions o the level and a comic to flesh our the story slightly, but the game is tremendously confusing. The basic backstory is that Jim has been empowered with a super space suit and has to fight off the minions of the evil queen to protect the galaxy.



Different from the original, you will notice a smattering of changes to the design of the gameplay. First...

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Recently upgraded in the past week with iPhone 4 Retina graphics, Doodle Jump is probably one of the simplest games I’ve played on my iPhone, but easily the most addictive. It’s the type of game that you can whip out at the coffee shop while waiting on your Grande Mocha-chino or whatever overpriced drink Starbucks is hocking these days. There’s no narrative in Doodle Jump beyond the quest to jump higher. The game puts you in control of the cute little, pea-shooting green doodle creature that has four legs for jumping and a snout for firing off projectiles. The Doodle looks a little bit like Qbert from my old C64 days.

Using the iPhone’s accelerometer, the player can tilt the device to the left or the right to move the doodle around the screen....

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