Tomb Raider Anniversary
Eidos
PlayStation 2
It's been a tumultuous decade for Lara Croft. Ten years ago, she took the world by storm in Tomb Raider for the original PlayStation. Critics praised the game for inventing a new genre, the "Third-person action/adventure," while applauding the introduction of a female protagonist, virtually unheard of in the day.
Fortunately, like any good down-but-not-out story, Lara is staging a comeback with Tomb Raider Anniversary. The genre itself has devolved and fractured and become saturated with sameness. Ten years is a ripe time to return and remind everybody what all the hoopla was about in the first place.
Tomb Raider Anniversary does several things right, all of them key. First, it's a retelling of the original Tomb Raider game - a "re-imagining," in fact, which uses the same storyline and general locales of the first game, except thoroughly overhauled to appear more natural, organic, huge and shapely - and ornery. Likewise, Lara has never looked better, intimating muscle in those long, athletic legs; the same excessive bosom now actually heaves expressively under a skin-tight top; a well-formed face suggests a sentient twinkle behind big brown eyes - Angelina Jolie's plush bottom lip seems to have worked its way in there, too.
Tomb Raider Anniversary comes with a small set of inconsequential graphical and technical flaws, which are totally tolerable. In fact, the game steers convincingly toward perfection, falling short - quite short - in just one large way, and that is the camera work.
No Tomb Raider game has ever managed to shake the bizarre camera view that will follow Lara around.
To assuage this infuriating flaw is a manual override of the camera's meandering angles using the right analog thumbstick, which makes the whole game more playable, but only through trial and error.
The title's low price befits its shortcomings - to some extent, anyway.
Shadowrun
Microsoft
Windows Vista PC, Xbox 360
It's no coincidence that Microsoft Games Studio's new Shadowrun has been released simultaneously for both PC (Windows Vista required) and Xbox 360. The game's key feature is its cross-platform multiplayer compatibility, in which Xbox 360 players can go online and kill (or heal) online Windows Vista players - and vice versa - thanks to the spiffy technology of Xbox Live and the new Windows Live.
Dual-system compatibility is not a new feature, but it marks the first time it has been done in this generation. Sadly, it's not done with any degree of sophistication, as it was most likely created from a high degree of anxiety to catch up with the Vista/Live hype. Duality Live will most likely be a common feature in future games, but with more elegance, one would hope.
Shadowrun looks acceptably pretty on both platforms - neither dazzling nor "new gen" in the slightest - and technically, its controls are familiar. Nevertheless, it's a bit cumbersome getting a grip on the whole shooter/RPG hybridization thing. It's as much a game of buying the right spells, powers, weapons, ammunition and enhancements in a few scant seconds at the start of each round as it is a game of point-and-shoot proficiency.
As for those actual shooting bits, though most ardent PC gamers will insist their keyboard and mouse are far superior to a console's skimpy gamepad and thumbsticks, you wouldn't know it while playing. Aiming has been handicapped so extremely and the weapons so wimped out that shooting straight is ridiculously difficult for everyone. A solid shot to the chest does little damage.
Worse, beyond the barely pretty graphics and the atypical role-playing-shooter setting, there's not much to it; just an ambitious game that throws in way too many team-play mandates (someone needs to be a healer, someone needs to be a sniper, someone needs not to be another darn elf, etc.), or there's no hope of winning a round. Besides, teams are more-or-less randomly created to begin with and, even then, can only play on just nine different maps.
The whole RPG-mysticism-meets-sci-fi-arena-shooter premise only thinly veils the fact that it's not very good at either. Everyone playing is real and won't necessarily understand the team-based tactics needed nor care to employ them if they do.
Ultimately, Shadowrun is only interesting because of those same people who play it. If you don't hook up with the right, like-minded players, there's little point.
Intercooler EX
Nyko
Xbox 360
You didn't expect your Xbox 360 to double as a 18.5m2 space heater when you bought it, but there it is; the thing runs hot and may be susceptible to failure, especially if you don't blow it out with compressed air every so often (hint: don't use a vacuum cleaner to suck the dust bunnies from your Xbox as those cause static electricity, which is bad).
Fortunately, Nyko has had the kindness of heart - or plain-old market awareness - to create the Intercooler EX for Xbox 360.
Described as a "high-efficiency cooling device," the Intercooler is basically a tri-pack of fans housed in a snap-on shell that attaches to the back of your Xbox 360 right on top of the power jack and internal-fan grill, complete with a new and seriously beefed-up, pass-through power slot with metal housing (as opposed to plastic in previous iterations.)
Available in black to coincide with the new Xbox 360 Elite, the new Intercooler EX (actually the third version) also sports a grooved slot for the 360's WiFi adapter (sold separately) and fits all three Xbox 360 models. (The 360's chassis is essentially identical on the Core, Premium and new Elite systems.)
The Intercooler EX will keep a 360 running noticeably cooler (by 20 percent to 30 percent, Nyko claims) than it would run without, prolonging hardware life and definitely reducing the risk of a catastrophic overheating.
On the downside, the Intercooler isn't exactly quiet. In fact, it's exactly noisy. But you can't really expect fewer decibels from a US$20, three-fan array. Besides, you buy it for the chill factor, not for its ability to whisper sweet nothings or purr like a cat.
Tenchu Z
Microsoft
Xbox 360
Clearly, nobody is better at skulking around in the shadows, finding, tracking, talking to and killing people than a ninja. And that's pretty much all you do in Tenchu Z, a game of dress-up in your best black pajamas.
Adjust your attributes (less agility in favor of more strength is recommended), load up on blow darts and smoke grenades, then go out and skulk, find, track, talk and kill, mission after mission - all 50 of 'em.
Seemingly designed with fans of the black pajama in mind, the game plays long if you're all about the skulk and stealth kill; faster if you just run amok and kill everyone, which will make your enemies more attentive to you for a few seconds before they forget that there's a ninja among them and go back to their posts conveniently situated near some skulkable shadows.
Ironically, pajamas, black or otherwise, are also good for sleeping in. Yawn.
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