A Critical Hit! – Video Game Reviews

Publisher: dtp entertainment / Developer: Ronimo Games / Platform: PSN, XBLA

2D platformer/shooter?  Class-based multiplayer?  Comic book-style graphics?  I’m in.

I have what may be a crippling weakness for 2D platformers (and western RPGs, and anything with SNES-era music/graphics, but that’s another story…), and Awesomenauts looked like a promising investment since its relatively small announcement a few months ago.  Despite some threats of bankruptcy from its publisher, Awesomenauts still released on XBLA as promised, but was it worth all the trouble?

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Publisher: Autumn Games, Konami / Developer: Reverge Labs, LLC / Platform: PSN, XBLA

As a fan of fighting games, the last few fighting game releases have not been too kind, in my opinion.  Street Fighter X Tekken was a fun idea but ultimately resulted in a flashy, unbalanced mess.  Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 – er, sorry – Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 had a great roster of characters but wasn’t really tight enough to be considered a solid fighter to me.  Soulcalibur 5 has solid fighting, but the incredible lack of single-player content and the sudden disappearance of about half of the series’ well-known characters was a bit disappointing.

Of all the recent fighters, BlazBlue and Mortal Kombat seemed – in my opinion – to be the only games that held up well in terms of gameplay while simultaneously offering enough content and things to do to really feel like a fighting game that was both as fun to learn as it was to play.  Skullgirls, the most recent fighting game to come out, looks to pay as much homage to great fighting games as it does try its best to become one itself.

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