Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; DirectX 9.0c; 2.0 GHz processor; 512 MB RAM; GeForce 5700 or Radeon 9700 with 128 MB; 3 GB hard disk space; internet or LAN connection
Genre: FPS
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

If I close my eyes and imagine a remote island paradise, the smell of salty sea air grips my nostrils, sending me into a brief imaginary vacation with lapping waves, sand between my toes and humidity so intense that each breath is like drinking a glass of water. Since the most tropical place I’ve ever visited is Florida, I can’t really expand much more on this sensory hallucination before I start chasing an actor in a Mickey Mouse costume down a beachfront whilst hurling oranges and muttering obscenities. So, since I’m not well traveled, I have to leave it up to video games such as Crysis, Far Cry and now Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island to provide the rest of the trip for me.

While the Triple-A blockbuster Crysis has raised our expectations for a first-person shooter, Code of Honor assumes that you haven’t played Crytek’s masterpiece at all. Sure, there are palm trees, ruins and industrial-militaristic facilities through which to wander, but all of the exploration, beauty and free-roaming gameplay that made Crysis such a good game are replaced with a half-cocked facsimile and linear progression. Pity, because I had a vision of paradise brewing when I installed the game, but now all I want is a refund for my flight miles and some aloe for the burns I suffered.

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Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

The stars of the “Homestar Runner” web comic return for the second installment in Telltale Games’ five-episode series, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. In this new segment of the point-and-click comedy-adventure series, the sharp-tongued, boxing-glove-wearing luchador has a new mission: world domination.

One fine sunny day, Strong Bad fires up his trusty laptop computer to read his email and discovers that the local ruler, the King of Town, has imposed an email tax on all of his subjects. For every message sent or received, the King is to be paid one cream-filled snack cake. Being a heavy email user, Strong Bad has been especially hard-hit by this new tax, and since this is the first that he’s heard of it, he’s seriously in arrears—he’s been fitted with an electronic monitoring collar and placed under house arrest.

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Publisher: Majesco Entertainment Company
Developer: Coyote
System: Wii
Genre: Action
Release date: Available now
Review by: Christopher J. Troilo

As the Nintendo Wii becomes more associated with family entertainment, many publishers strive to combine engaging activities with the Wii’s unique control system to deliver a title that all ages can appreciate and enjoy. Even with the extremely popular Mario Party series, there still seems to be room in the Wii’s library for a fun, well rounded party game. Majesco, famous for releasing such popular titles as Bomberman, takes its shot by distributing Wonderworld Amusement Park, a carnival-themed game exclusively for the Wii.

In Wonderworld, the player designs a character using the game’s custom avatar generator, and then sends the character out to explore the carnival. Much like Disney-type parks, the carnival features themed locations with matching décor, rides and games. Areas include Spookyville (with Halloween attractions), Space, Pirate and Fairytale.

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Publisher: Gamecock Media Group
Developer: Blazing Lizard
System: XBLA
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

There’s a great line in Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire, “The Player.” A desperate screenwriter pitches potential projects as mash-ups of established properties, describing them as “It’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s meets Psycho,” each more ludicrous than the last. The idea is that audiences crave the familiar, rejecting anything new and innovative. The game industry isn’t immune to this Reese’s school of thought – take two great things and make one great taste – with sequel after sequel cannibalizing the innovations that have come before to seemingly build a better game (when Sonic is employing Bullet Time, you know we’ve got problems.) It’s a notion that developer Blazing Lizard has embraced heartily, melding pirate chic with ninja cool in its recent XBLA release, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball. Based on my time with the title, I can safely say that no one’s got their chocolate in my peanut butter.

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Publisher: DreamCatcher Interactive
Developer: Alcachofa Soft
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista; 1.4 GHz CPU or Equivalent; 512 MB RAM; 3 GB free disk space; 64 MB graphics card, GeForce4 Ti generation or ATI Radeon 9500 (DirectX 9.0c compatible); DirectX 9 Compatible Sound Card; 4x CD-ROM; keyboard, mouse and speakers
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

The gaming public must really love their point-and-click adventures. Publisher Dreamcatcher Interactive pumps them out so fast; it’s hard to keep up. Now they’ve teamed up with Crimson Cow and developer Alcachofa Soft to release Murder in the Abbey, a murder mystery with a very familiar plot.

Brother Leonardo de Toledo, a former imperial advisor, has a keen analytical mind and a dark past. Bruno, his novice, is the teenage son of an aristocrat. They are traveling to a remote monastery to investigate the mysterious death of Anselmo, the abbey’s gatekeeper, who has had an unfortunate encounter with a 200-pound frankincense censer. Before they reach the monastery’s front gate, a shrouded figure tries to crush them with a rolling boulder, and thus begins an investigation that leads to more murders and reveals links to the occult within the abbey’s walls.

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Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows 98/Me/XP(sp2); Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon 1Ghz; DirectX 8.1 compatible video card; 256 MB RAM; 1 GB hard drive space
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

The golden age of the point-and-click adventure game as we knew it is behind us, replaced with dynamics and immersion unknown in the cursor-driven hits of yesterday. Aside from a few recent palpitations in the form of the Sam & Max and Dreamfall series, nothing overtly unique has come out of the gates and floored us the way the old LucasArts and Sierra gems could. Is this because back then we could see ourselves dragging our mice across the screen in search of that final clue, since it was the height of what PCs could do at the time? Or is it because modern gamers have become jaded and expect full, vibrant 3-D worlds to explore? Perhaps mouse-driven adventure lies dead in the streets, still waiting for some upstart developer to come along and put a defibrillator to the cold heart of the genre.

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Publisher: Koei
Developer: Koei
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Pentium III 1GHz; Windows XP/Vista; 256MB RAM; 2GB Hard Drive Space; 1024×768 High Color display; 32MB VRAM; DirectX 9.0c or higher; 3D accelerator video card; 16-bit stereo 44KHz
Genre: Strategy
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, stretching back thousands of years marked by tremendous civil and military upheaval, so it’s not surprising that a game series based on Chinese history would also be one of the longest-running in the history of the industry. Starting on the NES in 1990, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series has appeared on almost all of the world’s gaming consoles, including the SNES, many of the Sega game systems, the first two Playstations, and the PC. In developer KOEI’s latest entry in the series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, gamers are once again transported back to an era of feudal warlords and shifting alliances.

The RTK series is based on an epic historical novel by 14th-century writer Luo Guanzhong that covers the period from 169 to 280 AD. In the final years of the Han Dynasty, a warlord pretending to be a traveling healer incited a revolt now known as the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which eventually led to a devastating civil war that divided China into three kingdoms until the nation was reunified in the late 3rd century.

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Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

Ritual failed to make the Sin Episodes last longer than one installment, and Valve has stretched out its planned release of the entire Half Life 2 series from one year to more than four (with Episode 3 still in development), but Telltale Games seems to have found the secret of episodic content. The company is already in its second “season” of Sam & Max adventures, and has released the first of five planned monthly episodes of a new saga, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.

Strong Bad is the star of Matt and Mike Chapman’s web comic, Homestar Runner. Sporting a luchador’s mask, boxing gloves and a snarky attitude, Strong Bad lives with his brother, Strong Sad, a giant whining version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man who spends almost all of Homestar Ruiner in his bedroom, refusing to come out except to participate (reluctantly) in the game’s tutorial. They share their three-floor suburban home with a strange, orange-striped combination of Pikachu and Garfield known as The Cheat, who waits patiently at the dryer for Strong Bad to kick him into it.

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Publisher: Atari
Developer: Namco Bandai
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

For a sport that single-handedly fathered the entire video-game bloodline following the release of Pong, tennis seems to get short shrift in gaming these days. Sure, there are a smattering of games released each year—usually timed to coincide with Wimbledon—but compared to the vast iterations of baseball, hockey and of course, football, that are released almost monthly, tennis often languishes on the sidelines. It’s a void that Namco Bandai hopes to fill with the release of Smash Court Tennis 3.

Smash Court Tennis 3 is actually a port of a PSP title released in 2007. While it features the facelift one would expect in the transition to more powerful hardware, this is the exact same game released on Sony’s handheld. That said, the Xbox 360 version of offers a full menu of features to fill your solo and multiplayer needs, so newcomers to the series should find something of interest here.

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Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Games
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Racing
Release date: Available now
Reviewer: Michele White

Ever want to try your hand at maneuvering the banking turns of Daytona or tackle the challenge of keeping a car intact in the demolition derby that is Darlington? NASCAR’s 2008 season may be speeding to the checkered flag, but even if your driver is already out of the chase, you can get an early start on the 2009 season with EA’s NASCAR ‘09. Jeff Gordon (no need to stand up and cheer/boo) is standing by to be your tour guide and mentor in the world of the NASCAR big leagues.

The autosave feature is the first option that presents itself, and I highly recommend its selection to prevent the loss of a great position in a 500-mile race that you find yourself without the stamina to finish in one sitting. Next, Jeff will ask you to choose your driving style: normal or pro. He recommends normal, but those familiar with the NASCAR series will want the options available to them with pro. Finally, you get to give Jeff’s car a test run to become familiar with the controls, and so it’s off to Michigan in the number 24.

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