“Capcom” has made its come back with the high-profile fighter on the PC games market releasing ‘Street Fighter IV’ following the nearly twenty years tradition in the fighter games. Street Fighter was originally conceived as a one-on-one combat game and meanwhile plenty of changes have been introduced in its formula, though the core components remain up to the present version. The game allows you to select a character and fight against another warrior in the ring. Each character has the advantage of owing a variety of normal attacks combined with special moves that are supposed to be used while you balance the moves of your fight with the strategy in your mind while fighting. The experience that Street Fighter IV is offering is so deep in subtle details that all the time you play it you discover new ways to approach a fight.
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The game introduces a new system called Focus Attack that allows the gamer to knock down an opponent if connected properly and enables the player to absorb a single strike without being interrupted, though some damage may appear it will heal in a given time. Also two meters are present into the game that add up to the number of other systems: the Super Meter – activated when you land attacks and fight in the normal way, and the Ultra Meter – which builds itself up as you suffer damages. The last meter is used to execute Super Combos, elaborate attacks combined with normal techniques or Ultra Combos, more cinematic attacks that lead you to winning a combat.

The player has besides training mode other several Challenge modes that include the Trial mode which guides you into the introductive and advancing combos of every character, from where you have a lot to learn. New players might enjoy the best this mode while facing new characters (Abel, Crimson Viper, Rufus and El Fuerte) to experiment with next to the old characters - Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Guile. Street Fighter IV displays the effort the creators have put into it in the attempt to render a balance and a fine tuning of the game. Some characters show themselves to be more powerful than others but depending on your skills you are still allowed to win over a weaker character doing at the same time some impressive things in the ring.

The graphics is well created with its 3D visuals, revealing great effects for projectiles and Ultra Combos. The online experience went down a little since there weren’t players available online though the game was there for about a week. But leaving this shadow aside there are anyway other aspects that keep the focus of the players still on, especially when it comes to unlockables – subtle details such as switching from English to Japanese voice or adjusting the position of the Super/Ultra gauges and health bar on the screen.

All in one, Street Fighter IV has scored 8.9 on a scale from 1 to 10 being the best in IGN’s reviewing considered to be a well featured game which played on the PS3 and 360 it looks even better with its thrilling levels that can appeal both to casual and hardcore players.

When Akella and Playlogic have released Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales, it was displayed as an exciting RPG adventure with various situations where players were involved in an exciting journey as pirates to swordfight, trade goods, take over cities and forts and so on. Being recently released, its sequel made the object of IGN reviewing in order to check the novelty introduced by the reteamed Akella and Playlogic. Compared to the first game, this new one players can make their own life on the sea performing one the characters they choose: merchant, corsair or adventurer. The characters are ruled by a P.I.R.A.T.E.S. system that dictates the way you can pull out the sword, or how much loot you can carry and how much health you are entitled to. The same system is present in the ship’s behavior ruling over the way you navigate and the way of fighting in combats using your vessels.
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The good thing with this system is that you can improve your skills this leading to a specialization in certain abilities, for instance if you prove good handling with your blade, then you are allowed to become an expert fencer and make additional damage on foes. Next to this feature you are able to build your reputation as a captain by performing several things, such as sailing into ports, getting goods for your crew, hiring new mates on board of your ship. You are allowed to disembark and run different activities on the shore including exploration of different dungeons where buried gold might be found.

The fact that the game doesn’t come with any tutorial at all makes the discovery of all these facets very difficult to approach. And Age of Pirates 2 has ten separate difficulty levels, but even if you set the game on the level of a beginner you don’t get any information regarding what you need for instance to control the ship, or to access menus. This is very frustrating since you are left with the feeling of making your way through the game sensing that you don’t know how to do a thing. Not to mention that beside the fact that it lacks the tutorial it is also lacking information about certain elements of gameplay. For instance, while being onshore, you have different conversations with others in which you are supposed to answer in specific terminology regarding ships and in case you don’t have an internet browser opened you are left with the desire to have these features already developed in your gameplay. Maps are also the object of complaining as you find it hard to understand their directions when you are supposed to maneuver through the jungles of a certain location.

The point is that the game implies so many nautical elements that a player probably should be previously familiar with especially that the voyages and situations are everything but peaceful and common. While being reviewed, all in one the game presented itself with controls that are unintuitive, lack of instructions and for these issues Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships rated a mediocre IGN score of 5.7, hoping at the same time for a better sequel.

“Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?” is indeed a name of a game which is exclusively available as a PlayStation Network download and as odd as its title suggests. The style of the game is that of a tower-defense mixing in elements of ecology and labyrinth building in a note of an eccentric humor that brings you at the same time an experience meant to be deeper than any other game of this sort. The goal in this game is to defense yourself against an enemy force by planning the proper units to act against the enemies’ abilities. Your character actually is on the side of the “bad guys” since you play the evil master of demolition with the purpose of protecting a nd serving an evil general and not allow him to be captured by the “good guys”.
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You have a den to stay in which is built by digging tiles of soil in order to shape some tunnels and open limited areas. While digging the tiles you may find “nutrients” that once dug out give birth to a slime that is the origin which generates the ecology in Holy Invasion. The tile of soil which is more nutritious delivers a stronger creature the moment it is destroyed. Waiting for it to become white spotted you will see that it will deliver a maggot which maturing becomes a combat fly. Waiting longer will lead to the emergence of a lizard soldier, equipped with shield and sword, that feeds itself with maggots and flies.

You need to figure out the ecosystem of your chart and see how to make even the number of your “soldiers” in your army, thus a number too big of lizards will get them to starvation since they eat many maggots, and in this way the army of the “good guys” will have free entrance into your tunnel. There are present other creatures in the game but they all follow the same pattern of their own behaviors and movements.

In all this time when you try to find ways of managing the movement of forces inside your maze the Holy Invasion seems to make its appearance, but you have to deal with the chaotic behavior of some of your units, for instance the slimes that behave kind of other way around than they are supposed to or they can simply die failing to achieve their mission. In other tower defense games, there are options that allow you to build or purchase a unit, but in here you are left only with the hope that the units would finally end up by doing their job. The thing is that you as a player have to learn all the tricks to get your units to behave as they are supposed to, but as proved nothing is quite that predictable. However the “Holy Invasion” delivers the feeling of a nuts game with its strange kind of humor and the sense of a unique aura turns it into an intriguing tower-defense game style.