TERA Online’s a MMORPG that’s been getting a fair amount of discussion lately, for a number of reasons – first and foremost the downright beautiful girls gracing just about every screenshot, an example of which you see right at the top of this review. But there’s been buzz about this game going beyond the eye-candy. Talk of how it’s an action-oriented MMO, injecting some well-crafted gameplay into a genre that’s more often known for mere rote button clicking. Well, I dived into The Exiled Realm of Arborea to see what all that talk cashes out to, and whether spending YOUR hard earned cash on this game is a good idea.

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When Mortal Kombat came out last year, it rejuvenated the series.  It moved the action back to a 2D plane, but the characters and backgrounds were all rendered in 3D. NetherRealm Studios pulled out all the stops with the Fatalities, making them even crazier and bloddier.  The fighting engine was built from the ground-up using the Unreal 3 Engine.  The developers wanted to make sure that Mortal Kombat included more strategy with a fast pace, and it was one of the games featured at the Evo Championship Series in 2011.  Now a few months after the Vita launch, Mortal Kombat has made its way to the portable system, but can it stow everything away?

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I remember seeing the booth for the original Witcher at E3 several years ago. The outside of the booth had a dark forest motif with a hanging victim on the side. I thought that they might be going for the shock factor to get attention to their game, especially since they were a small developer. I went inside the presentation room and found out that it would be based on a Polish book series featuring the character Geralt. My skepticism went up higher.

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Sports video games are an interesting beast.  People have been fantasizing about being a sports star for as long as professional sports have existed, and have made a game of it for nearly as long.  Before the days of video games, kids would play baseball claiming they were Mantle, Ruth, Mize and other famous players.  In the 60s, Strat-o-Matic became the first baseball simulation game and kids (and adults) played with it for years before computers and video games even came on the scene.  Even with the current generation of sports games, many players spend hours in Madden, MLB The Show, NCAA Football and the 2K sports titles tinkering with rosters, leagues, franchises and sliders all to try to create the best simulation settings they can to play the game (often creating themselves and their friends in the game as well).

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Have you ever thought about living life as an antique dealer? I don’t mean on the high end, buying and selling priceless, authenticated works of art. I mean the more eclectic end – sifting through people’s attics and garages, trying to find some expensive item that’s been mistaken for a piece of junk. If so, then there’s a good chance Pickers is the game for you. More about this one after the drop.

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Haunted Houdini is the latest adventure game in MumboJumbo’s “Midnight Mysteries” series. This time the plot is based around – of course – Harry Houdini, who has gone missing. And not just “hey, Houdini was in that box and now the box is empty, where’d he go?” missing like the man was always known for. His (deceased and now ghostly) wife can’t find him, either in the plane of the living OR in the afterlife. Is this his greatest disappearing act of all? Or does the afterlife have kidnappers? If you think that plot may be enough to hook you, then read on to find out more about the game!

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Have you ever been sitting around with your Nintendo 3DS and decided, “Man, I wish I could just DRAW on this thing, instead of playing games”? If so, then you may want to have a look at Colors! 3D – a neat little drawing program from the Nintendo eShop. Find out about some of the features and performance inside!

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For players who liked Tropico 4 and wanted more, the Modern Times expansion will be a bit of a disappointment. There is a good chunk of new content, but none of it changes the game in a notable way. At 1200 Microsoft Points, this expansion pack needs more substance.

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Man, Armored Core. I’ve been on and off with this series since the original – back when the Ravens and the first post-apocalyptic corporate warfare mecha-play came onto the scene. I’ve loved it, I’ve gotten bored with it, and I’ve loved it again. And now, here we are with Armored Core 5 offering up multiplayer, tons of customizability, and more. Is this latest experience going to keep me – and you – hooked? Or is it going to end up gathering dust on the shelf while I wait around for another mecha alternative? Read on to find out!

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Wargaming.net wants to bring you into their world of team-based massive multiplayer online armored warfare.  With development going back as far as 2008, it’s clear that Wargaming.net has pushed the armored combat genre into the forefront of the game space with over 3 million players worldwide taking place in global domination – not too shabby for a free-to-play title.  Having put quite a few hours into this title myself, it is easy to see why.  Whether you’re an old school historic wargamer, first person shooter fan, or one of those fanatical RPG fans, World of Tanks has something for you. It draws you in with its amazing graphics, simple and easy to learn controls, and the lure of an RPG-like system for improving your tanks and crew. On top of that it combines them into a package that will immerse you in fast paced combat for hours.  Let’s sink our treads into the mud and take a closer look.

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The Tales series has been around for over fifteen years and has spawned over twenty-five games, although not all of these have come westward.  The latest, Tales of Graces f, is the twelfth in the series from Namco Bandai.  Tales of Graces f  (or ToGf) is an updated version of Tales of Graces which was released only on the Wii in Japan.  Luckily for western fans of Japanese RPGs (and especially the Tales series), Namco Bandai decided to bring the title over on the Playstation 3 after they updated it in Japan.  The ‘f’ in the game’s title indicates ‘future,’ which leads to the main addition to the game — a ten-hour prologue to the game which answers a number of questions that the main storyline didn’t answer.  Also, the developers have added new story scenes, secrets, costumes as well as an overall upgrade to high-definition graphics.

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Dungeon Master, Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder, the mere mention of these iconic series can take a long time PC gamer back to the days when they would break out their graphing paper, fire up their PC, and spend hours exploring  and mapping out a fictional world.  Time has passed since then and thanks to Moore’s Law PCs are more powerful now and games are much more open and advanced, the Dungeon Crawling genre has been passed by. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any room for a Dungeon Crawler in today’s market and the “alleged” four man team at Almost Human Games is out to prove it. I say alleged four man team because I find it hard to believe that just four guys were able to create a game as deep and impressive as Legend of Grimrock.

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Ever since the original Sims released in February 2000, two things have remained true. Making people get jobs and take showers can be enjoyable in a video game, and there will always be a ridiculous number of Sims expansion packs. We now roll into the Sims 3 sixth expansion pack, but is Showtime worth your hard earned simoleans?

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A little over a year ago I reviewed Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. Going into the game I had very low expectations. After all this was a fighting game based on popular anime, these types of games are hard to pull off. But the developer, CyberConnect 2, managed to do the impossible creating a really good fighting game based on the entire Naruto Shippuden universe. I went on to give the game a score of 87 which I stand by after several dozen more hours put into the game. Now CyberConnect and Namco are back at it with the third release in the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, entitled Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations. So the question is, does Generations pack enough new content to make past Ninja Storm players come back for more? The answer is a definite yes.

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If there was ever a crossover king in the video-game world, then Capcom would wear the crown. While X-Men vs. Street Fighter was the first game to feature two different universes colliding in a fighting game, all of the characters were based on Capcom fighters. Eventually we got Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, and the respective sequels. Capcom has worked with another company’s properties, with their Capcom vs. SNK and Tatsunoku vs. Capcom games. Now they have joined in a new partnership with Namco Bandai to mash up the Street Fighter and Tekken universes together. While both companies will be producing their own games, Capcom is first out of the gate with Street Fighter X Tekken.

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My very first experience with Double Fine Happy Action Theater was an odd one. One day I decided to download a bunch of demos including Happy Action Theater to my 360 via the Xbox website. The following weekend, I fired up the 360 to let my seven-year-old son play some Fruit Ninja Kinect. When he got tired of chopping up fruit, he asked if he could play something different, and then started Happy Action Theater. Not knowing what to expect, we waited for the game to load.

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There is a board game called Betrayal at House on the Hill.  In the game, three to six players move around a haunted house and discover rooms within the house.  Symbols on the house tiles determine what kind of action is taken when the tile is laid down.  Eventually one player turns into a traitor and the mission for that specific game is revealed.  The game is mostly luck based, and there isn’t any reasoning as far as who becomes the traitor.  Yet, I enjoy playing it for the experience.  While there are winners and losers, no one really cares because of the fun experience we have.  This is the feeling I had while playing Asura’s Wrath.

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Upon playing Army Corps of Hell  for the first time, I was allured by the hellish art direction and heavy metal soundtrack blaring as you conquer the world one stage at a time. It’s as if someone were sifting through their music collection, came upon the heavy metal albums they head-banged to in high school, and found inspiration out of that moment of nostalgia which led ultimately to the development of this game. Army Corps of Hell  gets a lot of things right, and it’s great to have another worthwhile title in the Vita’s library, but at the current price tag it’s a hard sell. Let me tell you why.

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