Ant Nation

Developer: Art Co. Ltd.

Publisher: Konami

Release Date: Sept. 9, 2009

Systems: Nintendo DS (reviewed), Wii

ESRB Rating: E-10+

Official Web site

In a nutshell: If an ant's life is really this slow paced and dull, I don't know how they get through the day...

0:00 The hauntingly bad box art for this game has been staring at me from my game shelf every day for over nine months now. Once I play it, I can take it off my shelf and put it away in storage. So let's get this over with...

0:01 A chirpy, 12-note tune plays and then the plain title screen goes silent. Scrolling green grass at the bottom. Everything so far screams "very low-budget."

0:02 A series of static images show ants being sucked up by a tiny UFO and... dropped in a lake? In a lab with an ant on the front a white haired bearded man studies the ants. He thinks he can harness the ants to destroy all other bugs? Maybe? Really I have no clue what these pictures are supposed to be representing.

0:03 Ah, the professor is addressing me now. "Use the ants I've given you to defeat the alien ants!" Um, OK.

0:04 An overhead shot of the battlefield. The game's tutorial tells me what each on-screen button does. Most of them seem wasted on calling up menus or switching between the top and bottom screen. "Now the only way to learn the controls is by playing." What kind of a tutorial is THAT?

0:05 "Alien ants are out to plunder our natural resources!" says the professor. "Take these ants! Use them to defeat the aliens and protect our planet!" Why wasn't this portion of the story FIRST?

***-->CONTINUE READING AT<--***

***-->JOYSTICK DIVISION<-***

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Battleforge

Developer: EA Phenomic
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: March 23, 2009
System: PC
ESRB Rating: T
Official Web site

In a nutshell: Warcraft + Magic: The Gathering = the most addictive substance known to man?

0:00 I was big fan of Magic: The Gathering back in grade school, so part of me has high hopes this will satisfy my long-dormant collectible card game jones. Another part of me is pessimistic that just an hour will be enough for me to really get into it.

0:10 OK, I'm not going to go into much detail on the mess of stalled downloads, frozen computers and lengthy file checks that preceded getting this game's 2.6 GB of files downloaded and working on my computer. Suffice it to say I'm docking the game 10 minutes of play for the mere annoyance. I could easily take the whole hour, because it took much longer than that overall, but I'm not that petty.

0:12 Lots of animated logos precede the title, which appears in a blaze of light and fire amid some purple smoke. EPIC!

***-->CONTINUE READING AT CRISPY GAMER<--***

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Galcon

Developer: Phil Hassey
Publisher: Imitation Pickles
Release Date: 2007
Systems: PC (reviewed), Mac, iPhone
ESRB Rating: N/A
Official Web site

In a nutshell: Real-time Space Risk

0:00 A glowing write-up on Boing Boing Gadgets combined with a "free to play in your browser" price point made this one a no-brainer for me.

0:04 Four minutes spent registering for the site and installing a bloated Firefox plug-in... Still better than the average PS3 game...

0:05 On to Practice mode first to figure out what the heck is going on. A simple, one-page instruction screen pops up. Click a planet, use the scroll wheel to choose a percentage, then right-click another planet to send that many ships in real time. Seems relatively simple.

0:07 The tutorial level is already done ... exceedingly simple, of course. Really liking the interface ... makes it easy to keep track of the situation without having to scroll around the map or overly interpret what you're looking at. I like the little "pshew!" sound the ships make when they attack a planet, too.

0:09 Tutorial 2 is a little tougher, but not substantially. The game recommends taking the big planets with a few ships, then using their production powers to gain a tactical advantage. I'm a bit shocked by how fast this strategy works.

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Developer: Underground Development
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Systems: PS3 (reviewed), Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Linux
ESRB Rating: T
Official Web site

In a nutshell: Putting the FPS in RTS.

0:00 I played and loved the first two Quake games, but I couldn't tell you a thing about the Quake universe "mythos," as it were. Here's hoping such knowledge is not necessary to appreciate this game.

0:01 "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars needed to perform an initial installation. This will take 8 to 9 minutes." Of course.

0:09 Now the game is "loading data." A much faster process, but still just as annoying.

0:10 We're off! A bunch of logos appear on the underside of a massive spaceship. "They search the galaxy for the sole item their existence requires. Harvesting... and consuming everything in their path ... and now they have arrived here." Roughly a bajillion more megaships appear in the sky above the Earth. There's a glowing red portal with a metallic ring shaped like the Quad-Damage item from Quake. A bit too cute for my tastes, there. Cut to title.

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer

Universe at War: Earth Assault

Developer: Petroglyph
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: March 25, 2008
System: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PC
ESRB Rating: T
Official Web site

In a nutshell: Oh man, we're all screwed.

0:00 I'm not very good at or interested in real-time strategy games, but good reviews, the Sega name and an Xbox 360 version convinced me to try this one out.

0:01 A starry sky... oh, no, it's actually the electric lights of a planet, with the sun rising in a thin corona. Some military guys shoot through the dust then get attacked by alien walker thingies right out of "War of the Worlds." Driving rock music accompanies the carnage. Suddenly, some bright white mechs straight out of "Gundam" show up, along with sleek metal robots straight out of the Star Wars prequels. The music turns all techno as they fire missiles at the big walker, bringing him down. Fade to title.

0:03 I'm afraid I'll have to go through the video tutorial. Sorry if this turns out to be boring. I learn that Resources have to be collected. "Without adequate raw materials on hand, your army is doomed to failure." Good advice for real life, too.

0:06 The research tree is apparently "a rich feature of Universe at War," if the game does say so itself -- and it does.

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer