For those of you who don’t know much about Team Ico, they are the brilliant minds behind ICO and Shadows of the Colossus. If you haven’t played those games, then you’ve really been missing out on one of the best series ever and with Team Ico releasing The Last Guardian soon, it would only make sense to give gamers who haven’t experienced the epic feel of this series a chance before the third installment in the series drops.

For those who are speculative on this, the boxart was revealed yesterday as well as a Wal-Mart listing at their main website. Looks like somebody let the cat out of the bag before Sony could officially announce it themselves.

Rating: Mature 17+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

The Scoop: Fun and addictive hobo bashing action exclusively for the Xbox 360!

The Setup: Dreaming has become a very routine process while maturing through our teenage years into adulthood. Just about everybody I know has had a dream at one point in their lives. Whether it’s to become an astronaut, a professional wrestler or the next Babe Ruth, we’ve all had dreams. But have any of you had the dream to completely obliterate a whole city full of ruthless drug addicts and hobos? If so, then your best bet would be to completely skip the real thing and get the next best thing by picking up a copy of Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Don’t look forward to many guns

Speaking honestly, not many games have creeped me out in a whole. Certain things have given me the sudden urge to shit my pants before but nothing has ever come close to being as freaky as this. Wait until about midnight, turn out the lights and play some of Condemned and you’ll be lucky if you get through five minutes without changing games. This has happened to me several times even though I’ve played and beaten the game more then once.

The story of Condemned is stellar but nothing amazing. You’re going to assume the role of agent Ethan Thomas who becomes a pawn in a vicious turn of events all dealing with a dark and gruesome underworld filled with drug addicts, hobos and killers all wanting to rip your heart out. Who plays these kinds of games for a strong story though? On to the hobo bashing!

The gameplay and environments is where a lot of the games strength comes from. Most of the environments we’ll find ourselves exploring will consist of a dark and abandoned subway, a dark and abandoned school, a dark and abandoned library, a dark and abandoned hotel and a dark and abandoned farm. Not in that order of course.

Brutal enemies in dark environments is common

The number of achieveable weapons is massive as well as you can “murk” enemies with crowbars, lead pipes, 2×4′s, fireplace pokers and even mannequin arms just to name a few. It’s completely brutal. All this and add a few guns in the mix and vuala, we have ourselves a complete arsenal of goodies to kill the baddies with. Not to mention our little CSI gadgets that we barely ever use. They weren’t all that great anyways so who cares?

I did see some problems with the maneuvering of your character though. I HATED… no no no… l-o-a-t-h-e-d the fact that he moved so effing slow 95% of the time. Now don’t completely ignore the ability to sprint… for all of five seconds before you tire and need to regenerate your stamina meter. It got ridiculous at times and I must say, it somewhat killed the game for me until I got used to it. I don’t know if it was created that way intentionally or what, but I felt it very unecessary to make your guy so slow. He’s not even fat or old! No excuses!

The use of health packs did mend my broken heart though. Health packs equal realism… kind of. This regenerating of health crap after ten seconds though is completely lame and I was very stoked to see that Condemned came equipt with a health bar and numerous health packs.

What’s Hot:

• A huge step forward for the horror genre in terms of originality and on the scare meter
• Some of the most realistic and brilliant AI I’ve ever seen
• The enviornmental sound really set the tone for a heart pounding experience
• A massive variety of weapons to use against old hobos and thriving drug addicts
• The best lighting in any game… ever

What’s Not:

• The character models didn’t hold a candle to the look of the enviornments
• Some of the voice acting seemed a little weak at times
• Very short game. Can run you to as little as five hours if you skip all the collectibles and exploration
• With no bonus features or additional content, there’s no real reason to go back and play through the game again

Final Verdict: As of late, the horror genre has been dying out. With mose developers focusing on shooters, us horror fans have been really let down and looking as to where we can get our next horror fix. Condemned: Criminal Origins, though not as good as the original Resident Evil, Dino Crisis or Dead Space, it is a pleasant experience if killing in the most gruesome fashion is your cup o’ tea. I must say that I really enjoyed the experience and would bet my corn flakes that you would too. Even if it isn’t your flavor, I’d still recommend it to fans of horror themed stuff as it will be a very nice piece to go with all your Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff memorabilia. Just make sure you have an extra pair of underwear before stepping into the dark and ruthless underworld of Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Publisher:

Rating: Everyone
ESRB Content Descriptors: Crude Humor, Mild Cartoon Violence

The Scoop: From farmhand to hero, Dreamcatcher Games delivers yet another fun handheld for fans of the Playmobil series!

The Setup: Players assume the role of a radish farmer named Brian who dreams of becoming a hero. His dreams soon become true when the evil magician Flimflam captures all of the King’s knights and sends the bad guys to ravage amongst an unprotected kingdom. The only way to defeat the evil Flimflam is to retrieve the Magical Sword of Legends.

An example of Knights combat

Along our journey, players will meet and befriend five different dragons, which can use as a means of transportation around the kingdom, as well as upgrading them to move faster and better attack enemy dragons. There are also loads of items to buy such as potions and weapons as well as new armor which is highly upgradeable to suite your battle needs.

All of this, along with 90 missions and the five minigames, add for a very fulfilling experience and should supply hours of gameplay.

What’s Hot:

• Fun and easy to pick up for anybody with a Nintendo DS
• Great visuals for a handheld
• Lots of exploration gives this game loads of replayability
• Five different minigames allowing for a change in pace during gameplay

What’s Not:

• A lot of the environments look similar after awhile
• Gameplay can become repetitive after awhile

Some very pleasing visuals on the Nintendo DS

Final Verdict: Playmobil Knights is a fun and addictive game for people of all ages and an easy way to get that nostalgic feeling we get when we play with our old Playmobil toys. A very decent competitor for the Lego games that have been released, and hard to pass up at the cheap price of only $19.99!

The Scoop: Though it’s a game targeted towards childrens enjoyment, Playmobil Pirates holds just as much action and adventure as what you’d expect from any other game in the adventure genre, and can be enjoyed by adults as well.

Or we’ll make you walk the plank?

The Setup: In Playmobil Pirates we assume the role of Captain One-Eye, a pirate who witnesses the kidnapping of the mermaid princess and vows to rescue her. Doing so will require One-Eye to go on a hunt for the missing pieces to Blackbeard’s treasure map which will reveal the location of Blackbeard’s treasure giving One-Eye enough money to afford a seacraft to take out the soldiers’ ship.

The main formula of the game revolves around that of a platformer with RPG elements as you can buy different ships to sail the sea and customize them to make them stronger, faster and even add cannons to fight off deadly sea monsters and other boats. Aside from these water sports, the main combat lies on dry land. You’ll often find yourself facing off against many other pirates who stand in your way as well as dodging different obstacles to keep your life meter up. None of the combat is at all violent in any way in my eyes and should be suitable for your children as it’s mainly general sword fighting with some pretty cool combos to add to the action.

With all this being really awesome and all, the best part to me were the missions. With about 50 missions at hand, you’ll have quite a few hours to burn but be warned, it does start to get a little bit repetitious after the first hour. This is why the mini-games give off a great change in pace as you can go throw dice or play cards at anytime during the game.

The main structure of combat showing One-Eye fighting a Soldier

What’s Hot:

• Beautiful scenery and cute character design
• Lots of neat upgrades to mess around with
• Six great mini-games to change the pace of game play
• Some education value includes teaching kids how to navigate a map as well as financial aspects such as buying and selling goods and increasing your hand-eye coordination

What’s Not:

• You’ll be getting deja vu a lot as most of the islands are identical to each other
• Starts to get repetitious after the first hour or so

Final Verdict: Though a little questionable for children, I’d target the product more towards teenagers as some of the subject matter may be a little heavy for ten-year-olds. With the smuggling of rum, the ability to gamble and some minor cartoon violence, I’d say that a teen rating would have been more suitable.

Though a little repetitious, the price is a great deal at only $19.99 and should leave for hours of enjoyment for the right age group.

The first footage of Power Gig: Rise of the SixString was taken at GDC 2010 and has now become available, and we have it here for you at Level Up News!  In the video you can see the folks in the Power Gig booth rocking out and demonstrating the new, fully-functional, six string guitar peripheral.  Not only is the guitar used as a controller in Power Gig: Rise of the SixString,  but it also functions as a musical instrument!

Check out the video:

Check out the official press release for Power Gig: Rise of the SixString as well as official pictures of the guitar peripheral.

Off the topic of poo though, I remember when I smoked, I could eat anything. I mean ANYTHING and I’d remain in awesome shape. Now that I quite, even if I eat something healthy like a bowl of flippin’ grape nuts, I get bloated like I’m about to pop twins out or something. I’m going to try a celery diet xD. The most unhealthy thing in the world, but I won’t get bloated. The texture of the celery will fudge with my tongue though x-x. G-Damnit.

So I beat Heavy Rain. Great game. Everyone should check it out. And check out my review for it because I’m sexxy.

P.S. I also found out in some mexican comics that instead of saying ha ha ha in spanish… you say jajaja xD. That’s so fudging awesome! Later and good luck with the herpies!

Publisher:

Rating: Teen
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Language, Sexual Themes, Violence

The Scoop: I’ve been playing the Smackdown vs. Raw series since it first debuted over 10 years ago. I’m a pretty big fan of the WWE and must say that when it comes down to entertainment and athletic superstars they definitely take the cake. This and the fact that they are the most popular and well organized business through sport entertainment puts them at the top. Is this so for their games though?

THQ has always managed to let fans down on this series. While it is fun to play and the story lines are somewhat entertaining for a playthrough, the games have always seriously lacked in some very important departments and this years edition to the series is no different. While it does compliment the series as being the best edition so far it still could have been a lot better.

It doesn’t get much better then two meat heads smacking each others chests

The Setup: This year, the Road to Wrestlemania mode is back bringing us six superstar story lines we can play through. The superstars include Edge, Randy Orton, Mickie James, Shawn Micheals, a brand warfare story featuring both Triple H and John Cena as well as a storyline for your created superstar. This gives us a decent amount of playing time and should burn quite a few hours. The story lines aren’t as well thought out as the ones we see on television though which I thought was a tad cheap. I mean, what the hell? Why can’t we get a storyline for Legacy or DX or something as well?

We also have the option to play through Career mode which allows us to play as any superstar on the roster and attempt to collect all the belts we can. There is no story in Career mode but it’s still beneficial in the fact that it boosts your stats giving you more strength, speed, better grappling abilities etc. etc.

The higher difficulties have also lost there challenge over the years. Legend difficulty is the highest difficulty and back on the old SvR titles for the Playstation 2 it provided us with quite the challenge but now it does nothing but give the A.I. more chances to do a reversal. This can be easily countered by doing matches that aren’t in singles competition as Handicapped Matches, Fatal 4-ways, Money in the Bank and the Championship Scramble offer quite the challenge due to the fact that we’re facing off against multiple opponents.

Taking a look at the new Story Editor

What’s Hot:

• With complete customization, the possibilities have become endless
• Featuring over 60 superstars, SvR2010 loads of talent
• The new Story Editor has heightened the playability of the game by 110%
• The bleeding in this game is completely awesome. Blood spreads from the head, to the mat and then onto you making for some pretty gruesome looking matches

What’s Not:

• Quite a few graphical errors hold SvR back quite a bit
• The A.I. is quite unresponsive making it easy even on the harder difficulties
• The lack of legends this year really makes WWE Legends of Wrestlemania a mandatory for those who love the old timers meaning more money for THQ and less for us
• The online is super laggy and doesn’t offer much
• The dialogue and voice acting can be laughable at times

Final Verdict: The Smackdown vs. Rawgames have never been perfect. Ever. But this is the best we’ve seen them. With more superstars, more matches and more customization, the possibilities have risen giving us more to do and more replayability. My only qualms are that there are a few missing top contenders as well as the legends that we’ve seen in past games. SvR2010 is neither here nor there but deserves a rental… at least until THQ releases a patch fixing the bugs.

Publisher:

Rating: Mature 17+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs

The Scoop: What makes Heavy Rain innovative? The fact that you’re taking on the control of four characters who are that of average people? Or perhaps the story telling that puts recent video games to shame? Sorry people but no super soldiers here or a catastrophic event that could end humanity. Heavy Rain is something that we could all go through. It’s a very dramatic experience and will surely keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

While most video games focus on amazing multiplayer and big guns to kill your enemies with, Quantic Dream decided to take a completely different route with there ground breaking exclusive to the Playstation 3 entertainment console. An incredible cast, amazing graphics and a very dramatic heart felt story make this title not only one of the best games of 2010 so far but perhaps the most ground breaking and innovative game from the past ten years. Heavy Rains innovation stands toe-to-toe with the likes of GTAIV and Metal Gear Solid 4 and I’ll boldly but confidently state that Heavy Rain is the most ground breaking title so far this year.

How far would you go…?

The Setup: Keeping everything spoiler-free, Quanitic Dreams basic idea for Heavy Rain was inspired by something that most parents go through at one time in their lives which would be losing their children. Whether it’s in a department store, a park or even while they’re outside playing, most parents go through that state of panic when they don’t know where their child is after they’ve wandered off. Taking inspiration from a very real occurance adds for an experience which is quite rare upon interactive cinema.

We get a chance to see the story from four different perspectives as we change roles quite often between a devoted father, a photo journalist, a private detective and an FBI agent whom are all searching for the Origami Killer. Switching roles so often makes it difficult to determine who the killer is as we’re following the story on four different perspectives which can really throw us for a lot of twists and turns.

The gameplay is controlled differently from other games as well as you’ll use the R2 button to walk and the left analog stick to control which direction your character walks. It was a little awkward at first but you’ll get the hang of it after awhile. The right stick also gives you the capability to move your head from side to side giving you a slight advantage to do certain things in the game. We also control the main action sequences in the game via QTE (Quick Time Events) which is when buttons will pop up on the screen and you have to press the correct ones on your controller in a matter of time otherwise it might alter the way the game plays through the rest of the time.

Heart heavy cinematic is where Heavy Rain shines

What’s Hot:

• One of the most ground breaking titles for the Playstation 3 console
• The choices you make in this game affect the story and the outcome and with no “game over” sequences, it adds to the thrill of making the right choices
• Heavy Rains graphics are far superior to the competition and pushes the limits of the strongest console this generation
• The soundtrack sets the mood beautifully and is very well orchestrated
• Multiple endings add to the replayability of the product

What’s Not:

• Will be a letdown to extreme action gamers
• Very few freeze screens have caused me to restart my game a couple of times
• Few plot holes may leave gamers scratching their heads

Final Verdict: Though I’m a huge supporter of the product, I’ll be the first to say that Heavy Rain isn’t for everyone. It’s visually moving and one of the best titles to grace the Playstation 3 but not all gamers will understand it. This doesn’t tarnish Heavy Rain in any way though but it does put limitations on its audience as the pacing is different from other games. With that in mind, I’d still recommend this to anyone as everyone should experience it, hate it, love it or in between. Heavy Rain has officially laid the foundation for next-gen interactive dramas and has become a milestone in the Playstation 3 library.

Be sure to also check out the reviews for other great 2010 titles such as Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2 and Bayonetta!

Second Opinion (By Rosemary Baldwin): To say that Heavy Rain stands out from other video games would be a huge understatement, but while I found the game to be extremely interesting for the most part it had several flaws which affected my overall opinion of the game. I felt the character Madison could have been eliminated from the game entirely, as she was not vital to the story line of the game.  The love interest between her and the father completely eliminated the emotional aspect and turned it into something shallow. It completely strayed away from the main story line of the game and the fathers emotions.

I found the other characters extremely interesting, especially Scott Shelby. I also found it odd that no one used an umbrella in the rain and still looked good even when rained on.  I watched my son play the whole game and was captivated by the story and visuals but when realism of the story became shallow with Madisons character I lost interest and was truly disappointed in the shocking ending. By the stretch of the imagination I rate this game 3 stars.

Artwork by: Mobiletone

This picture you see here amused me so much to the point where I had to ask the illustrator if I could post it on Level Up. He kindly obliged and here we have it, a recreation if you will of one of the Little Sisters you’d see in BioShock going #2 and to throw in some love to Sony, theres a PSP chilling out on the floor. Now I admit… I’ve done this with my Nintendo DS before and yes, it makes the process go a lot quicker and a lot more enjoyable.

So by all means, go to http://threespeech.co.cc to check out more stuff by Mobiletones.

Rating: Mature 17+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language

The Scoop: I went out and bought this game about three days ago. Though the first was rather repetitive, I didn’t fear the same for Assassin’s Creed 2 as I knew people who had already played the game and did nothing but brag about it. I can admit and say that I spend a really big majority of my life sitting on my ass playing video games and to prove it… three days of owning Assassin’s Creed 2 and I’ve played the game for 20+ hours.

The setting is absolutely brilliant. All the historic landmarks that are present in the game are uncanny to that of the real thing as well as some great accomplises, most importantly being Leonardo Di Vinci. With the setting being just as amazing as the first and the new game mechanics, Assassin’s Creed 2 proves to be better then the first in every way.

The Setup: In the second installment we are brought to Italy during their renaissance period in the late 15th century. Spanning a ten year timeline, this time around we assume the role of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young man who becomes an assassin under unexpected terms and finds himself caught in a war between the assassin’s and the templars.

As in the first, were playing as the assassin through returning protaganist, Desmond Miles who once again finds himself going into the animus. The story is more well constructed this time around with loads of familiar faces that we might have seen in our third grade history class. It’s surely a great history lesson and makes for one hell of a video game.

What’s Hot:

• Gameplay: The gameplay has expanded from the first giving us more weapons, the ability to swim as well as some new hiding spots really add to the world of Assassin’s Creed. That and a few other surprises really add up to a joyful experience. Climbing up buildings is also a lot more frequent this time around as theirs no real pausing during the climbinb process as there was the first time around.
• Graphics: The visuals are gorgeous. Theres little to no rips in the texture and the design of the Italian Renaissance period is very admiring. The motion of the mouths with the spoken words are also on key as well as the
• Sound: The voice acting is spot on. The english language offers for some amazing Italian accents really giving off a nistolgic feel to the product. That and the option to switch to six other languages gives gamers a lot of options to choose from. The ambience is really something else as well. The sounds of the rivers to the outside discussions between other groups it impressive as well. Pile all this onto an amazing soundtrack and you have some delicious listening entertainment ahead of you.

What’s Not:

• Glitchy: Though the game is generally a smooth running title, it can get rather glitchy at times which can actually screw up gameplay making things harder on you during those fast paced chase sequences.
• Partner AI: Throughout the game you’ll call upon several thieves, merc’s and stellas to watch your back in different ways. Whether their methods of madness be violence towards the oncoming pursuit or to sway them with their sex appeal, they tend to get in your way a lot. I also often found myself getting chased down by guards for no apparent reason, even when my bounty level was all the way down. This proved to be quite the pain in the arse.

Final Verdict: With the majority of mixed console action games going down the tubes lately, it’s decent to see a great game like Assassin’s Creed II clean up all the broken pieces of the late mixed console action-adventure titles. Though it doesn’t come up to the standards of games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves it’s still worth a playthrough and definitely a contender in the action-adventure genre. Out-doing the first ten to one, I’d recommend this game to any style of gamer.