Not to be confused with the Wii U exclusive of a similar name, LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins chronicles Chase McCain’s first run-in with Rex Fury. It takes place two years prior to the events in the Wii U game, but shares many similarities as it’s an open-world game set in the same metropolis. Is this 3DS entry capable of bringing the charms of LEGO City to players that may not yet own a Wii U and at the same time appeal to those wanting to build upon their at home LEGO adventure?

Players of the Wii U game will instantly recognize the confines of LEGO City. All of the areas in The Chase Begins are versions of the same locales you previously visited in the console version. It all looks very similar in layout, but the size of the environments has been scaled back and some boroughs of the city have been completely eliminated. Since this is a prequel, I guess they technically haven’t finished the construction of those areas in the city yet. For a portable...

In 2011, Techland’s Dead Island brought zombies to the lush tourist island of Banoi and I rabidly sunk my teeth into its creative mixture of first-person role-playing, looting, melee-ing, and cooperative play. It was a game that had issues, but they could often be overlooked in favor of the many unique ideas contained in the large open world - a world that was even more ridiculous when you brought along three friends. The game deservedly performed well, so it isn’t a shock that there’s a sequel out nineteen months later. Was that quick turn-around enough time to address the shortcomings of the original and build upon its successes?

Set on the new island of Palanoi, Riptide picks up right after the end events of the first game and includes a refresher on the story up to that point. The game is a stand-alone entry, but I found it hard to shake the feeling that this was more of an expansion than a true sequel. To begin with, you have the option of either importing...

Gears of War has been a flagship franchise for the Xbox 360, with each release receiving marketing blitzes that engrained Emergence Day and Tears for Fears cover-songs into gaming culture. But the release of Judgment doesn’t seem to have that same must-experience type of atmosphere surrounding it. Maybe that’s because Epic has shared development duties with People Can Fly, maybe it’s because the title doesn’t have a number following it, or maybe it’s because it’s a spring release in the looming shadows of a wave of new consoles. Should any of these reasons make you wary of taking on the Locust one last time - this generation?

To begin with, I’m a fan of People Can Fly and the work that they did on their previous title, Bulletstorm. They know how to make fun shooters and the shooting mechanics have always been the foundation for what makes Gears games great. Judgment sticks very closely to the established formula. A couple buttons have been remapped (switching weapons...

Don’t know anything about Naruto? Don’t fret; my knowledge consists solely of what I’ve gleaned from playing portions of the videogames over the years. With Naruto Powerful Shippuden, you don’t even need that rudimentary background. This super-deformed brawler is from development house Inti Creates that has helmed numerous recent Mega Man games, so it has some two-dimensional gaming know-how behind it. Is that type of pedigree enough to create a game that appeals to even those ignorant of the goings-on in Hidden Leaf Village?

Believe it or not, Powerful Shippuden in fact isn’t entirely a Naruto game. Instead, the egotistical blonde ninja shares the spotlight with Rock Lee (a character I was totally unfamiliar with before this game). I don’t know whether it’s the Chibi-style the game employs or whether he is always like this, but I found Lee’s antics to be far more enjoyable than those of Naruto. His outgoing, bumbling and geeky persona really lends to the game’s...

If you bought a Wii U the day it launched (as I did), it’s been a lean few months waiting for something new to play. Chances are you’ve been eyeballing LEGO City: Undercover as a hopeful beacon in the distance for quite some time. After building a successful videogame franchise based off combining LEGOs and popular licensed properties, can LEGO City succeed without the aid of Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, or Bruce Wayne?

This is definitely a huge, open-world LEGO game; being set in a city means the comparisons to Grand Theft Auto are unavoidable. But with the level of absurdity that can occur in LEGO City, it may be more apt to liken this title to a kid-friendly Saints Row. That’s the only other series I can imagine with the guts to pull off smashing through a metropolis riding atop a mechanical T-Rex skeleton while dressed as a samurai... or a clown… or an astronaut… or as a samurai clown astronaut. The goofy charm of the LEGO games is just as endearing as ever,...

Calling a game Generation of Chaos: Pandora’s Reflection is a little intimidating for those not familiar with the long-running PSP Japanese strategy series. Oddly enough, the mouthful of a title is actually in direct contrast to the bite-sized battles contained within. Developer Super Sting (a collaboration of Sting and Idea Factory) has scaled back the complexity contained in the previous entries in the franchise in favor of a more streamlined approach. Does this small strategy game with the big name successfully conquer the casual tactician in me?

Many of the mechanics you’d expect to find in a tactics-style experience are present in Pandora’s Reflection. You have your different classes of characters and you order them around the map in real-time to engage the enemy’s troops. As the small sprite-like characters bump into each other, turn-based battles are triggered. These combat sequences are where Pandora’s Reflection tries to differentiate itself from competitors....

Mark of the Ninja wasn’t on my radar. In fact, I had never even heard of it until we briefly passed by it in the indie section of PAX last week and paused a few seconds to admire the graphics. Or maybe I had heard of it and just never committed the rather plain name to memory. I’m hoping that the forgettable naming, the lack of pre-release buzz, and the non-ceremonious Friday XBLA release don’t doom this game. This 2D stealth game from the makers of Eets: Chowdown and Shank is absolutely something you should be playing. I can hear a lot of you asking, “But what about me? I hate stealth games. Should I ignore this because stealth games suck and are no fun?”

Well, very intelligent reader, I agree that most stealth games are the absolute worst. However, YOU should be playing Mark of the Ninja. Sometimes games are designed so well that they transcend their genre and Mark of the Ninja does just that. I get fed up with most games that make me sneak around because they...

I remember seeing Retro/Grade at last year’s PAX and thinking it was a novel idea. The combination of a music rhythm game with a 2D space shooter certainly caught my eye and by the size of the crowds around their booth, I guess I wasn’t alone. Able to be played with either a guitar controller or a standard DualShock, this indie game certainly has made a good impression at various shows over the past two years. Did the playful concept and flashy graphics translate over to a finished game that hits all the right beats?

The beginning of Retro/Grade actually starts at the finale of Rick Rocket’s universe-saving space conflict. The head-bobbing space pilot has just blown the final boss to smithereens when a time-bending cataclysmic event causes Rick to retrace all of his destructive ways in order to set things right. (And now Pitbull’s time-travelling opus has crept back into my brain. Yes, Pitbull, to understand the future we have to go back in time. I know.) So to...

Papo & Yo is a hard game to tackle in typical review fashion. Most games’ plots don’t delve much beyond defeating the bad guy that has either kidnapped the princess, threatened to destroy the world, or both of those things. There aren’t a whole lot of games (especially on consoles) that attempt to tackle much more serious thematic elements, let alone approach them in the metaphorical way found in Papo & Yo. I’m fairly certain I’ve never played through another title as a young boy dealing with an alcoholic, abusive father. That’s a fairly weighty subject matter for the medium, but does Papo & Yo successfully convey those emotions amidst a game that’s worth playing?

The young boy you play as is named Quico and the game plays out in the imaginary place he uses to escape from the horrors of his household. The surrealistic favela of Brazil that he dreams up is at the same time both heartwarming and depressing. It’s a beat up and tattered world of urban buildings highlighted...

As we reach the last week of the Summer of Arcade, no clear cut standout has emerged from this crop of heavily promoted titles. The line-up has been solid, but not as stellar as what we’ve come to expect from previous years. The only hope for a critical acclaim rests on the shoulders of Dust, the titular hero in An Elysian Tail. Can this swordsman, his flying feline companion, his talking sword, and his flock of furry friends come to the rescue?

Microsoft was right to hold Dust: An Elysian Tail as the final game in this year’s Summer of Arcade. It’s clearly the premier game of the bunch and one of the best original games that has come to Xbox Live Arcade’s library. It’s easiest to describe the structure of Dust as similar to a Metroid or XBLA’s own Shadow Complex. It’s a 2D action-platforming game with locales that can be more thoroughly explored once you’ve gained new abilities – like double jumping or getting colored gems that open up new passageways. On top...

I’m ashamed to say that I never got around to playing the first Darksiders. I have no excuses. It’s been sitting there on the shelf for years and for whatever reason I’ve never played it… even though it’s always sounded like a game I’d greatly enjoy. I even told myself I’d get to it this summer in preparation for the release of Darksiders II. It didn’t happen. I’m confessing all this so you will know that I’m coming into the series fresh. That said, is Darksiders II a good place to mount up for newcomers to the apocalypse?

I can safely say that players who never found time for the first game will have no trouble jumping directly into Darksiders II. The game quickly gets you up to speed on what transpired with the Horseman War in the first game and introduces you to the new protagonist, Death. I never felt like I was missing any vital info and the game is incredibly welcoming to those new to the series. That’s certainly in no small part due to Darksiders II being...

The Summer of Arcade shuffles into week three with the zombie-infested streets of Seattle in Deadlight. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed games that have ever come out of this annual promotion are 2D platforming puzzlers from independent developers. Is Deadlight the next great game in a lineage that has given us the likes of Braid, Shadow Complex, and Limbo?

Well, the game certainly has the aesthetics and production values down pat. Sitting somewhere between the visual-styles of Shadow Complex and Limbo, Deadlight features a high-contrast backlighting that heavily silhouettes everything in the foreground. This includes the hero of the game, Randall Wayne and the zombies he so matter-of-factly refers to as Shadows. It’s a very appealing game to look at and it animates well (other than the odd lack of transition when jumping to climb ladders in the background). The story, told through in-game dialogue as well as graphic novel-style panels is done well enough,...

Xbox Live’s second week of Summer of Arcade brings the launch of the casual Kinect-enabled catapult game Wreckateer. Microsoft seems to have a good deal of confidence in this title as not only was it selected for one of their largest promotions, but it also had a prime spot in their E3 media briefing this year. Does all that faith in this title translate into something that’ll have you springing off your couch to play?

The concept behind Wreckateer is a certainly a solid formula. You don’t have to look further than Angry Birds to see that flinging projectiles at destructible fabrications is both highly popular and profitable. And though Wreckateer changes the perspective from 2D to 3D, the underlying game is very much the same. Replace the different species of birds with different shot types, replace the abstract structures with castles, and replace the green pigs with… well, goblins that resemble green pigs. There are also some different floating bonus icons thrown...

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say I majored in Tony Hawk in college and in my spare time took some mechanical engineering classes. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 still find spots in my top five favorite games of all time. Heck, the series is the reason I bought a PlayStation 2 just weeks before the Xbox I had on reserve (to play THPS 2X) launched. My future wife didn’t even blink an eye when I told her I’d have to wait almost half a year to play THPS 3 if I hadn’t impulse purchased a PS2 that very day. (That’s probably when I knew I should definitely marry her… it’s hard to find that special someone that understands your addiction to videogame skateboarding.) And as the years passed I continued to eagerly anticipate each game in the series. I was on board even when they added so many unnecessary and convoluted mechanics like the Matrix-inspired “Nailing the Trick”. I could look past these misguided additions to the games because the core mechanics I got so much satisfaction...

Nearly two years after its original release, Zen Studios continues to provide a steady flow of tables for Pinball FX 2. The latest add-on, Avengers Chronicles, marks their third pack of Marvel-themed tables. This time around, the tables aren’t based upon specific superheroes, but rather retell specific events in the Marvel Universe in pinball form. At this point, we expect nothing but top quality tables from Zen, but does this extra attention to story launch this pack to new heights?

Based upon and using assets from the summer blockbuster, The Avengers table brings a new aspect to Pinball FX 2: the ability to choose your pinball. Prior to launch, you select one of six balls that are each themed to correspond to one of the Avengers. This not only provides a nice visual flair, but each hero’s ball provides unique alterations on how the table scores. The table layout itself is also closely linked to the individual superheroes. Ramps for each character activate the...

Two out of three CAGcast hosts and millions of tweens agree, iCarly is a fun show. While I am a regular viewer of the long-running Nickelodeon comedy, I’ve never played any of the many videogames the series has spawned. I decided to rectify this when I heard the consistently great WayForward Technologies developed the recently released iCarly: Groovy Foodie! It also didn’t hurt that screenshots for the game reminded me an awful lot of one of my favorite classic games: Tapper. Was buying this game an endeavor iDelighted in or was it a purchase iRegret?

The premise of the game is that Carly and Sam have been sentenced to community service after Sam had an incident with a hot dog cart. In order to avoid juvie, the cartoon likenesses of our heroines must feed waves of hungry on-comers marching down four serving lines. Rather than just a straight-up Tapper clone, Groovy Foodie mixes in elements of Diner Dash and Plants vs. Zombies tower defense mechanics. As the customers...

One can never have enough juice for the iPhone. Between all the Tweeting, streaming of music, and playing of Pocket Planes, I know I can’t get through a day without needing to make sure I can get a precious recharge. I took my iPhone into the very depths of battery-devouring hell last week as we attended E3. While there, our phones are pretty much all we use to keep our calendars straight, map out our way to after-parties, take photos, and upload our special brand of E3 coverage to CAG. I was therefore very excited that Third Rail’s Slim Case showed up for review days before I left for Los Angeles. Was this case and battery solution up to the task?

In short, I’m happy to say I never ran out of charge during a single day at E3. There are a lot of extended battery products for the iPhone out there, but what makes the Slim Case somewhat unique is that the 1250 mAh Li-Poly battery is actually detachable from the case. The drawback to this approach is a somewhat non-appealing...

Here is my unboxing video based on the box based on the products based on the videogame based on the movie based on the boardgame Battleship.

Baseball season is upon us and with it brings the age-old tale of pitcher Ed McAllister. Ed gets injured, loses his pitching arm, has that pitching arm replaced with a bionic arm, and then uses that bionic arm to kill demonic mechanical mascots by hurling baseballs at them. It’s America’s pastime as only developer Grasshopper Manufacture can capture it. I won’t lie, the concept sounds bizarrely awesome, but did this Kinect Arcade game wind up as something beyond an oddball pitch?

Diabolical Pitch is structured like a shooting gallery. Your character is stationary at the bottom of the screen and as the creepy carnival contraptions make their way on screen, you’re tasked with tossing baseballs at them until they explode into a shower of coins. Instead of pulling a trigger to shoot, you perform a throwing motion with your dominant arm. As you can imagine, this is far more tiring than just moving your index finger; by the time I’d played through the entire game in...

There were three factors that led me to purchase MLB 12 The Show for PlayStation Vita. The first was that I had a $20 gift card to Wal-Mart and I’d started feeling bad that my local store hadn’t appeared to sell a Vita game since launch. The second was, of course, that my hometown Reds are going to finish the season 162-0 this year in route to winning the World Series and that put me in the mood for some baseball. And the third was that I had always heard good things about Sony’s baseball franchise and figured I’d be likely to get more innings in with the portable version.

The Road To The Show mode is where I’ve spent the majority of my time. This is where you create a player and play as him from the Minors all the way to potentially getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. I created a pastey, red-headed left fielder and was impressed to see that both my first and last name were selections in the menus. This meant the announcer actually called me by name and not...