Fans of Toy Soldiers were ecstatic when Signal Studios announced not one, but two new add-ons were on there way in less than 48 hours. The Evil Empire DLC finally lets you play as the Soviets while Napalm has you fighting in ‘Nam (Vietnam). Each offers a slightly different experience but both are solid experiences overall.

Evil Empire gives fans what they’ve been asking for, the chance to play as the Soviets. You will fight against the capitalist United States while utilizing their various weaponry. As always the power vehicles such as the helicopters, tanks, and jets, are a blast to use, and the Soviets have a new helicopter, the Super Hormone, which allows you to decimate hundreds of foot soldiers.

After completing the mini-campaign, there’s even some extra content with a new mini-game, Pop-a-Pig, a new versus map, Muddle, a new survival map, Ironfisted, and the new Survival mode, Trauma. The latter, challenges you by costing you a point off of your toy box for each turret you place. However, you’ll have a little extra aid with the new Orbital Strike barrage.

Napalm on the other hand has you fighting off more Vietnamese soldiers. It has a new interesting concept with the toy boxes however. In the first mission, you have to defend a secondary toy box from sporadic detachment which makes a beeline for your secondary toy box. Another mission in the mini-campaign has you defending three toy boxes. Yeah, it can get pretty hectic. The chance to utilize the new laser tank and take down yet another flying fortress is something fans will appreciate.

Just like Evil Empire, Napalm also gives you a new Survival mode, Commando, a new versus map, Fervor, a new Survival map, Double Dealing, and a new mini-game, Hang Time. Commando has you defending your toy box with just Commando or Ivan, no turrets are here to aid you. Of course, Napalm wouldn’t be true to it’s name if it didn’t give you the napalm barrage which lets you light those enemies up.

Each pack will set you back a modest 400 Microsoft Points ($5). Overall, they’re more of the same. Granted the same is still pretty darn good for an arcade game. We had more fun with Evil Empire, but Napalm offers a little more bang for your buck with its mini-game. In the end the choice is up to you.

Pros:

• Laser tank!? Awesome.
• More spectacular bosses.
• Finally get to play as the Russians.

Score (for both): 7.0 out of 10

Welcome to our first video review! To celebrate we’re also going to give away not one, but two (!) copies of Minecraft (XBLA). Just follow the instructions in the rafflecopter widget, and enjoy the review! (Don’t forget to subscribe to us!)

Have you ever wondered if there was more than one way to play shooters then just on a battlefield? Well good news for any of you that have, Deep Black is a new kind of third-person shooter that takes place mostly underwater. The game is an arcade shooter with both single player campaign and online multiplayer modes. Although this is just the first half of the storyline (episode 2 is said to come out sometime later this year), it gives you plenty of information and content.

Story: Set in the year 2047, you play as Syrus Pierce, a retired soldier who is forced back into action by his former Lieutenant to stop a terrorist group from acquiring biological weapons. The game doesn’t really offer any history on the characters, nor does it weave much of a story; with most of the dialogue taking place during some quick cut scenes between you and your contacts back at HQ. It’s a game about action, so the story may not be crucial but it would have been nice to at least get some back story as to what’s going on. You literally start the game in the training mission and never see anything else about why you were brought back in service.

Gameplay: In a world that has become unsteady – chaos and terrorism reign – you desperately fight for world supremacy and possession of sophisticated biological weapons. You explore this underwater world filled with futuristic droids that you button mash to death and enemy soldiers that you harpoon. It’s a joyless, grace-free slog dominated by repetitive stop-and-pop shootouts, lifeless, linear environments, and inconsistent weapon physics. Not to mention full-stop gameplay pauses during certain actions (like detonating a robot with an EMP grenade), obnoxiously tacky dialogue, missed audio cues, and overwrought enemy death screams that replay incessantly.

Graphics/Sound: Although the designers took time to add some small details to the various underwater scenes, they aren’t anything special to look at. They are tolerable but its no Final Fantasy 13. The sound would be looked at relatively the same, nothing to get overly excited about. The dialog is difficult to make out, you almost have to enable and read the in-game captions.

Multiplayer: Unfortunately there is no co-op mode in Deep Black (although to be honest, we’re not sure we’d play it). We really can’t say much for the multiplayer mostly because there were not matches to be found, but we do know that its 4v4 and from what we’ve heard it’s not that great (I guess not finding a match speaks for itself).

Pros:

• The campaign was alright overall.
• Gameplay is easy to follow and fun if you can get over the repetitiveness.

Cons:

• The multiplayer is already dead.
• There’s not a lot of action in the campaign so it get kind of boring after a while.

Score: 6 out of 10

One of the scenes from a battle in Defenders of Ardania

We guess we should start off by saying Defenders of Ardania is not the worst game on the market, not by a long shot. It’s just not one of the best ones. When looking at screen shots of the game, anyone can tell it’s not a very graphics intensive game. The game relies heavily on the real time strategy, it employs players, not the tower defence game play it promises.

The campaign story for the game is actually pretty good for a game of this calibre. It’s the same old strategy based story, where you need to defend your “tower” against a multitude of intruders. Being released around the same time as Game of Thrones being released may have been the most surreptitious decision they made in their favour. Fantasy is back on the rise, and the campaign story allows players to actively feel like they are a part of the story and their actions do make a difference.

The mechanics of the gameplay get in the way of actually enjoying the game. The lag on the multiplayer was a little too much, and the actual battle sequences were long and drawn out. In some ways, they were very much reminiscent of Prototype 2, a review that will be up later. It got to the point where the game became boring at certain parts because it was so predictable. Usually in tower defence games, the gamer knows only the means they must use to get to their end. With the introduction of an offensive feature, players move away from the typical defense strategic game playing experience, and the fun can get lost in all of the confusion the game provides.

While the game never promised to be a highly graphics intensive experience, the cube-like features to the game did take away from the overall experience. After playing for more than an hour, the physical settings tire out the eyes and the eyes yearn for anywhere else to look at but the screen. That being said, for a game at this price and with a pretty good campaign, the lack of graphics can be overlooked for a while.

The multiplayer was an interesting aspect to the game. Multiplayer battles take place on 18 different maps around Ardania. While the multiplayer was a fun addition at first, after a while the same problems persist and enjoyment is lost. The battles are even lengthier with no actual ending. They drag on and after five minutes the whole aspect of playing becomes menial and subpar. While points are given to Paradox Interactive for trying to make the tower defence strategy genre more interesting to a wider group of people, it does not do well.

All in all, the game is worth a download if you’re very much so into the strategy based genre of games. If you’ve never played these types of games, and don’t have much patience, this game is not for you. While the campaign is interesting, and there are new additions to the genre that have rarely been used (like the attack feature) there are too many faults in Defenders of Ardania.

Pros:

As the final content provided by the Season Pass (fans may also purchase it for $10), Forces of Nature appears to be an ode to the fans.  Epic has brought back Raven Down, Jacinto, Guardian, more previously exclusive character skins, and six new weapon skins.

For those who didn’t play much Gears of War 2, Guardian lies along the lines of Capture the Leader. One member of each team becomes the leader, and as long as that leader stays alive, the team can keep respawning. Once that leader is killed, however, you lose that ability to respawn and it is do or die. This leads to frantic moments that old fans have been asking for.

Artillery is an abandoned military base. A storm is brewing, however, and when the alarm sounds a twister will move close to the map, kicking up dust and debris. With a Scorcher and Torque Bow/Digger in the middle of the match, there are multiple approaches to each round. For once, the One-Shots are placed in a position where it can actually do some damage and lay down some covering fire. We had a ton of fun playing Guardian on this match since it’s relatively close corners around each spawn while the middle of the map remains open.

Cove on the other hand is a Stranded settlement which lies along the coast. Due to this, fog periodically rolls throughout the map. With long lines of sight, and a sniper’s nest in the center of the map, the map really changes it’s attitude when the weather rolls in.

Aftermath is the remnants of a COG park after it has suffered a tsunami. During the game the map will be hit with aftershocks and begins to flood. These two factors can influence stealth and aiming at random moments, keeping things a little interesting. The map has a lot of twists and turns and verticality which are certainly interesting to toy with when it comes to strategy.

Raven Down returns relatively unchanged, only covered in snow. Jacinto, however, has been overhauled. The city has been invaded by imulsion and new paths have opened up, completely changing the ebb and flow of the the match. The paths underneath the towers have been connected so you can now flank those who camp up top, while at spawn you can go left or right. The right brings you around front, towards the staircase which brings you below. It’s certainly a huge improvement and one that we greatly enjoy.

It’s disappointing to see previously exclusive skins released to all to have but we understand where Epic is coming from. As the last guaranteed DLC for Gears 3 Season Pass holders, this was there chance to finally get everything out there. Many are happy to finally be able to get their hands on Mechanic Baird and the Savage Hunter looks absolutely terrifying.

These are some of the best maps to be released for the game in some time. We had a blast playing on the reimagined Jacinto and thoroughly enjoyed the return of Guardian. Forces of Nature is a must for any hardcore Gears of War fans.

Pros:

• The return of Jacinto
• Guardian is still a blast
• New levels are fun

Cons:

• Most of the skins are just rehashed previously exclusive content.

Score: 8.5 out of 10

A copy of this downloadable content was provided for review.

Story: Starting out on a bright day right outside Atlanta doesn’t seem half bad, but add in the fact you are in the back of a squad car while a zombie apocalyspe unfolds around you, and it gets much worse. You are Lee Everett a felon being transported to a different prison when literally all hell breaks loose. After a high speed car wreck you are given the old get out of jail free card and you start your journey. Lee meets up with six year old Clementine who’s parents are currently missing and in the few hours of gameplay that follow, you will be in care of Clementine and interact with many other surviours and walkers alike.

Gameplay: Take everything you know about zombie games and throw it out the window. The Walking Dead is not after your twitch reflex, but your heart strings. Taking the emotional approach is a great way to expand the zombie narrative along with help revitalize the point and click adventure genre to a new audience. Controls are simple; look around and examine items or talk with NPCs to figure out how to progress the story. Some will think this a boring and mindless game but we found ourselves so intrigued with the characters and the trial and error puzzle solving that we beat the first episode in one sitting.

Graphics/Audio: Why can’t all cel-shaded games look this beautiful? The Walking Dead looks exactly like someone took the graphic novel, colored it and added animation. Crisp colors just pop out while muted tones remind you how grim the future looks. The audio is as sharp as the cel-shaded graphics are, while the voice acting is solid all around, even Clementine’s actress puts in a great preformance (unlike the television shows child “star”).

Overall: Even if you don’t consider yourself a fan of either zombies or point and click adventure. We can’t stress enough how much you must give this game a chance. It has a low cost at $5 and the quality of story is on par with AAA titles as of late. We will admit that we are huge fans of both the comic and the series so we knew we would love the game, but it still managed to impress us. The fact that it is episodic is a small let down only because we want to press on. We understand the monthly installments will keep us occupied until the new season starts but it still leaves us wanting more.

Pros:
-Great story
-Graphics are spectacular
-The return of point and click adventure

Cons:
-Episodic release
-Only 100 achievement points
-Puzzles are far too easy

Score: 8 Out of 10

A copy of this game was provided for review.

Bloodforge tells the tale of Crom, a man who has seen the horrors of war, but has given them up to live with his wife. One day he goes out hunting, and finds himself exhausted so he takes a nap. He is awakened by his nightmares only to realize that his entire village has been destroyed. He arrives just in time to save his pleading wife from the monstrous looking enemies. After he makes sure the area is safe, he heads inside his house, which is on fire, to find his wife. When an enemy stumbles out, he impales him. Something isn’t right though as the visage fades, revealing the enemies true identity, his wife. Crom does nothing but sleep for days until he is awakened by a boar. Afterwards a crow, who claims to be a goddess informs you of who has caused this treachery, sending Crom on a quest of vengeance.

Along the way various gods and servants of the gods will attempt to stop you, the destroyer, as they’ve ominously labeled Crom. Defeating these enemies is relatively simple, with three different weapons to choose from a sword, war-hammer, or claws for melee and a crossbow for ranged. Each of these can be upgraded multiple times throughout the campaign. Combat is mapped to the X, Y, and B buttons with X being a quick attack, Y a powerful attack, and B firing the crossbow.

When the enemies are stunned before death, a heavy attack will send the game into a quick killcam so you can watch your enemies be decapitated in various gruesome ways. Bloodforge represents it’s name well with blood constantly scattered across the environment and your screen. However, it is worth noting that players will quickly find the most efficient combos to use and then use them over and over again, resulting in the same executions. It does get old by the time you’ve completed the game and does put a damper on how awesome the combat feels to begin with.

That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have its issues. The lock on is rather loose which causes you to often attack nothing but air when an enemy is right next to you. Health pickups are rather sparse as well, and with no difficulty selection, casual gamers will likely be turned odd by the number of times that they will die. This also brings up an issue when it comes to bosses. Entering a boss with a sliver of health will result in a very long battle which will require multiple tries using rather boring tactics as you are only restored to around 25% health when you die.

If you find yourself caught between a rock and a hard place, you can always resort to the three different types of magic. Each does something different but ultimately they just kill enemies for you. One freezes enemies in crystal allowing you to kill them before they are consumed by a shark/snake demon. Another causes a giant hand to come out of a rift and pull enemies back inside with it. These abilities are nifty, but we tended to use them only in the most dire situations.

The graphics are simply amazing for an arcade game and this shows with the horrific bosses which were actually pretty disturbing. At one time we had to put the controller down and walk away for a second because it was so much to handle. However, they’re rather devolved, resorting to dealing damage once “X” happens and then having to do a quicktime event a couple times before felling the beast.

The online is that of a leaderboard, simply allowing you to challenge your friends and see the results in real time. Other than that there isn’t a ton of replayability to be had.

Bloodforge is not for the faint of heart but it is certainly one of the more creative experiences to be had on the Xbox Live Arcade. If you can stomach the difficulty and gore, we certainly recommend that you at least give the trial a shot. Crom isn’t the most interesting or unpredictable hero, but he provides a good means of experiencing a wonderful universe and story, albeit one with a lot of flaws.

Pros:

• Gorgeous graphics.
• Enemy design is unique and disturbing.

Cons:

• No difficulty selection.
• Not a ton of health pickups to be found.
• Combat can get repetitive.
• Camera has it’s issues.

Score: 6.5 out of 10

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.

The new and improved Trials Evolution has arrived and it’s still as unforgiving as ever. All of the basic mechanics are the same, maneuver yourself from one end of the track to the other with as little faults (falling off your bike) as possible, all the while keeping in mind that this is also a time trial.

The game has a more structured single player experience which definitly eases you into the flow of things better than it did in the previous game.  We had a much easier time making it to the credits since RedLynx decided to only make the challenges up to hard mandatory to complete the game, anything after that is gravy. The bikes now handle in a more manageable manner and don’t feel like they’re lighter than air, further decreasing the difficulty curve.

The skill challenges which feature crazy activities which range from flying a UFO to rolling a marble, return and are more fun than ever. Each challenge feels daunting, but manageable which makes for a lot of fun as you try to beat your friends scores. The same is true when you play any track hoping to top your friends.

Speaking of friends, all of this action can be taken online for some four player races. However, not all races physically display your opponents, the ones that do are called Supercross, while the challenges simply display your friends (or opponents) as ghosts. They even make it easier for you to decide which tracks to race on, a randomize option selects a random number of tracks – up to seven – and then randomly fills those slots with all of the available tracks. Unfortunately, this does not include downloaded tracks for some reason.

Gone are the days of being stuck inside a warehouse, instead be prepared for the equivalent of Halo‘s Forge World. This vast expanse features a variety of terrains and environments, all ready for you to make it your own. Combined with the new Pro Editor which allows for the creation of first person shooters, top-down shooters, and even more; RedLynx has prepared Trials with the goal of making it last, and that they have certainly accomplished.

Through the variety of categories, players can quickly find the newest and the best tracks made by the community. RedLynx even has a section where they can designate their top picks, early on, these have tended to be maps created by the team to be released to the public. Not enough can be said about this level of potential for support, the developers don’t have to pay to put out DLC, and they can do so on their own time, without charging the fans anything for the new tracks.

For 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) you get a game that won’t run out of content any soon. You might lose your voice from swearing, but levels like the Gigatrack truly put the awesomeness of the game in perspective. RedLynx has built one of the must play titles on Xbox Live Arcade in Trials Evolution.

Pros:

• Fixes many of the flaws that Trials HD had.
• Multiplayer means real time trash talking.
• Pro Editor makes the possibilities limitless.

Cons:

• Soundtrack is love or hate.
• Still some really frustrating checkpoints.
• Driver and bike customization isn’t as fleshed out as we’d have liked it to be.

Score: 9.5 out of 10.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.

The smell of fresh cut grass and the sound of the fat peanut vendor yelling for your attention seem to be the only things missing from this years baseball masterpiece that is MLB The Show 12. At the core of both versions is the most realistic and authentic baseball experience ever imagined.

If you’ve ever played any of the previous installments you know how deep the game can be. This year Sony takes that to a whole new level with the addition of Diamond Dynasty mode (PS3 only). Fans of Ultimate Team mode in EA’s sports games will feel right at home here; build a team of players made up and from the MLB and have them compete in a full blown online franchise against others. Diamond Dynasty also goes a bit deeper allowing you to allocate training points into your players and to fully customize your team down to the warm-up jackets. We probably spent four hours creating our team, the Tokyo Giant Lizards, before even having full roster to take the field.

MLB: The Show also retools the batting and pitching this year. After last years terrible analog pitching, we are given a pulse pithing option that kind of reminds me of Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball for the N64. Place the pulsing circle where you want the pitch to be and press “X” while its at its smallest point for the most accuracy.  As for batting,  in addition to the standard analog and button pressing batting modes, zone batting has been tacked on. Players are given an oddly shaped yellow “zone” that represents the bats sweet spot, line it up with that incoming fastball and watch it fly over the fence. This does however, dumb down the game a bit because after a few games we had to up the difficulty level because it becomes really easy given the size of the zone.

With all of these new features The Show still delivers the same baseball experience – with it’s Franchise and Road to the Show modes – but on a much higher level. With the Vita you can play the same games you would on your Playstation via cross platform play. just upload your saves to the cloud server and play anywhere you go. We were able to take our RTTS player with us on our walk to work and manged to get in a few Franchise games during our downtime. The fact that the Vita version loses little to no graphical power or gameplay really shows how much love was put into the handheld version. The only huge discrepancies between the two versions are the touch screen menu controls and lack of Diamond Dynasty mode on the Vita. All other game modes are intact and play just the same on both versions.

MLB: The Show 12 shows just how good a sports game can be. The cross platform play is something we think all sports games should take advantage of . However, it does need to be retooled because buying two copies of the same game is a tad daunting. The Show is solid all the way around on both platforms and like we said before there is little difference between versions. Baseball fans this is a must have and if you don’t own a Vita this should/could be the reason you’re looking for to pick one up.

Score: 9 out of 10

A copy of both games were provided for review.

Writers Note: I would also like to apologize to our readers and staff for the review taking so long. I had some home and work troubles come up, but all is well now. Thank you all for your patience and can’t wait to bring you guys and gals more.

Booting up Fez, one is greeted with a two dimensional world set around this village. However, today is a special day according to the elder as he summons you to the top of the town. Then appears this mysterious cube and we gaze upon it in awe. Things quickly go awry as the cube explodes, but luckily for you, it’s already done its job. The world is now full of two-dimensional worlds which you can navigate with the left and right triggers. Your goal now is to travel through the worlds attempting to gather all the pieces of the cube, and their relative anti-cubes, so you can put the back together before the universe folds back in on itself.

Every once in a while black holes (which are actually squares) appear in the game to remind you of the impending situation. Maneuvering around them can be challenging but because of Polytron’s approach to the game, dying does not punish you at all. Trial and error is a key mechanic in the game, and as such, the developers simply respawn you right to the location you were at right before you died.

We can’t stress how cool the mechanics are. Most, if not all puzzles require you to utilize this in an intuitive way to bend space to your advantage. Since this is a 2D game, each level consists of four separate interpretations of that world. Because you can navigate each world as you see fit, the challenge is to maneuver to the correct position before rotating the world to make another path available. By doing this, illusions are created. However, in Fez these aren’t just illusions, it actually lets you traverse the world as it appears and not as it logically is. This is a very hard concept to explain as it took us a good 15 minutes to fully understand the potential behind this. If you want to get a deeper understanding of the concept, we certainly recommend downloading the trial.

Understanding why things look the way they do in different perspectives helps, but isn’t required. The game doesn’t pressure you into learning the ropes, rather it just throws you in and let’s you experiment at your own pace. The truly amazing thing about Fez is its simplicity, but it certainly doesn’t lack complicated puzzles for the more hardcore fans. To achieve 100% completion and higher, you’re going to have to solve some of the most intricate puzzles we’ve ever seen. Among reviewers, some of these had already been named before release; The Waterfall, The Bell, The Clock, each has it’s own identity. The ability to ignite conversation is one of the marks of a great puzzle game, and Fez certainly has that.

The blend between beautiful level design, the soundtrack, and the vibrant world has us reminiscent of SuperGiant Games’ Bastion. In short, it’s the little things that make it such an awesome game. Fez is one of those meditative, deep experiences on Xbox Live Arcade that everyone should at least attempt to experience.

Pros:

• Beautiful levels
• Great soundtrack
• Intuitive mechanics

Cons:

• Some glitches and/or bugs.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.