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Pure Analog Control is probably the headline-grabbing addition to MLB 11. This marks the first time that the previously button-only game has embraced the use of the right analog stick on gamepads. Now you can hit by pulling the stick back and pushing it forward. You can throw in the field by pushing the stick toward the base of your choice. And you can pitch by pulling the stick back until you reach the sweet spot on a vertical meter and then pushing forward until you release the ball. The pitching interface is one of the best ever seen in a baseball game. You have a tremendous amount of control, at least once you get accustomed to how delicately you need to push the right stick to move the ball around the strike zone. Get too rough when pushing forward, and you hit batters in the back and bounce balls to the plate. With experience, you can start painting corners, although your work on the mound never seems automatic, as it can with button-push pitching systems. The system is challenging and realistic, yet also possible to master with lots of practice. In short, it is absolutely fantastic.

6302978NoneThe World Series champs take on local rivals.

Analog hitting and fielding aren’t nearly as good. The hitting feels weak. It’s a nice system when it comes to timing, since you need to rear back and get into position and then lean forward into pitches in a smart manner to make serious contact. But even then it never feels like you’re getting good wood on the ball. There is an odd disconnect with analog control that doesn’t exist when hitting with the buttons. Throwing in the field is more problematic. The hardness of your tosses is measured by how long you hold the stick, but everything is way too twitchy. A red-yellow-green bull’s-eye icon below the player with the ball shows the hardness of the toss, but everything happens so fast that it’s impossible to make any use of this information. Hold a fraction too long, and your resulting overly hard throw is in the dirt or way high. Hold a fraction too short, and you double-clutch or toss an underhand lob if you’re throwing to a nearby base. It’s easy to make throwing mistakes and tough to get the new fake-throw mechanic to work at all. While the pitching control uses a well-tuned scale of motion, the fielding controls feel improperly calibrated.

But, these control quirks aside, MLB 11 is great on the field. It is more authentic than its predecessor in many understated ways. At-bats feel more lifelike. Batters now fight off pitches more successfully and hang in there with a lot of foul tips. You can get a piece of pitches now that would have struck you out last year, thanks to a new contact button swing. At the same time, AI batters no longer all hit like they’re the second coming of Ted Williams. You can actually fool them now, instead of having to fight tooth and nail for every K. Pitching is more realistic too, partially because the above two factors make you feel like you’re always in a tight (but winnable) battle, and partially because there seems to be more of a gap this year between the majors and the minors. There is a real step up every time your player is promoted in Road to the Show. Making it to the bigs and seeing the snap on breaking pitches is scary after getting used to what the scrubs throw in AA ball. You pay for this with the overall length of games now reaching around an hour, but what you’re doing for those 60 minutes or so resembles real pitcher-batter duels more than ever. Stats are solid across the board, due to lifelike game results. There are no crazy offensive explosions or anything else to make you shake your head in disbelief; it’s just baseball, pretty much exactly as it is in the real world, right down to the number of hits recorded and the pitch counts in an average game.

MLB 11′s presentation remains mostly incredible. There are some minor jaggies, and one annoying animation hitches every time the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher when you’re viewing the action from one of the behind-the-mound camera angles, but sunlight, shadow, and stadium architecture combine to place you on what sure seems to be a real ball diamond. You can watch the sun move through the sky during late afternoon starts and can pretty much tell the time at any given moment. The changing light conditions establish a feeling of time and place that makes games seem more real. On-field animations are so varied that you rarely see a player do the exact same thing twice. Every little stretch, argument with the home plate ump, foul off the tootsies, and routine catch in the outfield appears unique. New editable camera views taken from major league broadcasters let you perfectly mimic how games are presented on TV, too. Audio effects in the stadiums are also well done, from the crack of the bat to crowd noise that swells at key moments. Commentary is merely OK. Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell are joined in the booth this year by former Dodger star Eric Karros, but a fair bit of the dialogue has been recycled. Campbell’s color commentary also seems out to lunch a great deal of the time, mixing up the number of outs, making reference to teams having a great season right around opening day, and so forth.

Great use of stadium architecture, along with light and shadow, really brings big-league ballparks to life.

Following in the footsteps of a predecessor so good that you have a tough time meeting expectations isn’t a bad problem to have. Still, even though MLB 11: The Show is an undeniably great baseball game, it is stuck in a bit of a rut with just subtle refinements setting it apart from its predecessor. The one real quality addition is the new analog pitching interface, which is so stellar that it is hard to go back to the old pitching controls. You can make a good case for this being the best baseball game ever made, just as you could have made the same case for last year’s MLB, and the one before that. But at this point in the franchise’s evolution, it would have been nice to see the core of the game mixed up a bit more, perhaps with something like more historical league options or extra pure management features for simmers or even full-blown Move support. Though its latest iteration doesn’t improve upon the previous one as dramatically as it might have, The Show is still the king of baseball gaming.

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Challenge is layered in throughout the adventure this time around. Enemies are fierce and relentless in Shooter 2, and because you can die from just one shot, death surfaces early and often. Sharp controls ensure you can dispose of these lethal pests with a few quick blasts, but their frequent and unexpected appearances can often catch you unaware. Enemies appear in previously cleared sections after events are triggered, and if you’re unprepared for a confrontation, you can die before you even ready your aim. The punishment isn’t severe–you only go back a few minutes most of the time–but it can be frustrating if you have to replay the same level repeatedly because the unrelenting opposition is such a sure shot. Shooter 2 is still an immensely fun game when you get in a groove, but frequent deaths cause the pacing to grind to a halt at times, and the luster of these imaginative levels burns away when you’re stuck in them for long stretches.

If things become too difficult, you can recruit a friend to help out. In the offline-only cooperative mode, two ships are unleashed in these subterranean worlds, which give you a chance to complete your task even if one of you gets gunned down. The levels are constructed for one player most of the time, so there isn’t always something for the second player to do, but it’s still fun to puzzle things out together–and an extra gun couldn’t hurt. The difficulty comes to a crushing and thrilling peak in the explosive boss fights. The first such battle is a mere warm-up for what’s to come. The second offering fully embraces the shooting heritage upon which this game was built, and though you will die frequently in this thrilling duel, it’s an exciting rush to overcome its many deadly attacks. But it’s the final boss that provides the exclamation you would want for an ending battle. Just about every trick you’ve learned throughout the adventure is utilized here, and tying these many pieces together into such an incredible fight will make you howl with delight. It provides the finest action sequence in either of these games and will leave a smile plastered on your face while you watch the credits roll.

Back turtle, to the fires from which ye sprung.

An online, one-on-one competitive mode provides an exciting new addition to Shooter 2. Here, two players square off in a battle to see who can rescue the most survivors. Players take turns on offense and defense, and both sides of the coin provide their own satisfaction. On offense, you try to find stranded survivors littered across the playing field and bring them back to your base. It’s a simple concept that’s made difficult by the opponent trying to interfere with your goal. Your opponent has to gun you down before you make your rescue but has the disadvantage of only being able to see you when he has a direct line of sight. Defensive players have to track down their opponents using a truncated radar beam that extends from the ship, which results in a glorious game of cat and mouse. Offensive players have to move deliberately to come out ahead, securing the treasure while staying out of sight of their hunting foes. The only problem has to do with how the unlock system works. By playing ranked matches, you earn access to more weapons and gadgets, but this mode is at its best in unranked matches against someone you know. You have to invest a few hours playing against strangers before you can unlock most of the goodies for use against your friends.

PixelJunk Shooter 2 should be applauded for making the basic concepts from the original game feel so different, but the change isn’t always for the better. The shift in focus from a mostly puzzle-solving adventure to one in which shooting takes priority isn’t always smooth, and your frequent deaths can make repeatedly solving the same set of puzzles a drag. However, it is still a very good entry in the colorful franchise that adds enough new elements to make it worthwhile for veteran shooters to make a trip back under the earth. And the addition of a clever competitive mode gives you the added incentive to dive right into this game. PixelJunk Shooter 2 has some rocky portions, but clever puzzles and thrilling boss fights make it hard to put down.

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Regardless of how much time you’ve spent with the Fight Night Champion demo, or with previous Fight Night games, your first act in EA Sports’ latest boxing sim is to pick yourself up off the floor after getting knocked down. You are fictional boxer Andre Bishop, and you’re fighting against a heavily tattooed skinhead in front of your fellow prison inmates in the new story-driven Champion mode. Make it through that fight, which also serves as a decent tutorial, and you then have the option to either continue Bishop’s story or check out other modes reminiscent of those in Fight Night Round 4. Wherever you go you’ll find that Fight Night Champion improves upon its already-great predecessor in mostly minor but meaningful ways.

6301185NoneElderly trainer? Check. Potential love interest? Check.

Upon entering the ring for the first time, you could be forgiven for thinking that Fight Night Champion is a mindless slugfest. That’s not only because it’s easy to throw an unrealistically high number of punches simply by flicking the right analog stick (or pressing the face buttons, if you prefer), but also because you might not yet realize the importance of defending, countering, and conserving your stamina. You might enjoy some success spamming punches on the easiest of the four difficulty levels or against inexperienced opponents online, but you need to master both the offensive and defensive controls to make it through Champion mode or to make a name for yourself elsewhere. Fortunately there’s nothing complicated about the controls, and even if you’ve been reluctant to throw your punches using the right analog stick in previous games you might want to give it a try this year. Previous Fight Night games have required you to rotate the stick with some precision to throw different types of punches, but here those same straights, overhands, hooks, and uppercuts are simply mapped to different directions, so you’re far less likely to throw the wrong punch. It’s an intuitive system, and when used in conjunction with shoulder button modifiers for body punches and more powerful shots, it affords you easy access to a formidable repertoire.

The defensive controls used for blocking, leaning, and clinching are similarly uncomplicated, though it’s only through practice that you can get a feel for the timing that’s needed to open your opponent up for powerful counterpunching opportunities. You might have no intention of playing Fight Night Champion as a counterpuncher, but after being on the receiving end of a few counters (AI opponents are quick to punish you if you leave yourself exposed), you’ll be compelled to add them to your own arsenal. You need to use every move at your disposal to succeed in Fight Night Champion, and that’s especially true in Champion mode, where story events often force you to adapt your fighting style to different rules or situations. For example, early on your fights in prison don’t end until only one of you is left standing, while the flashback fights at the amateur world championships are points-based. And once you turn pro, all manner of obstacles are thrown your way to keep the action from becoming repetitive. In one fight you hurt yourself anytime you use a broken hand, and in the next you have to knock out your opponent with the same hand to prove to everyone that it’s healed, for example. Other memorable fights include one in which a crooked referee has been paid off to rule all of your body shots as low blows, and another that you spend protecting a cut near your eye.

Points-based amateur fights feature in both the Champion and Legacy modes.

There’s no shortage of drama in Champion mode, and while Bishop’s story is riddled with Rocky-esque cliches, it’s still entertaining for as long as it takes you to reach the requisite final fight against a dangerous rival. How long that takes can vary a great deal depending on how quickly you’re able to win fights, but it should be at least five or six hours before you step into the ring as Andre Bishop for the last time if you’re playing at an appropriate difficulty level. Most of the storytelling is done via well-voiced dialogue in great-looking cutscenes, with extra flavor during fights coming courtesy of ESPN’s ringside announcers Joe Tessitore and Teddy Atlas as well as your trainer. The former are occasionally amusing and mostly accurate with their observations, and they even go so far as to comment on your performances in previous fights. The latter, whom you sadly don’t always get to hear from between rounds, often has sound advice for you and doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to letting you know how he feels the fight is progressing. Impressively, the announcers and trainer do their jobs just as well outside of the scripted Champion mode, though in Legacy mode the former are accurate only a little more often than a stopped clock when it comes to detailing the result of your previous fight.

If you played Fight Night Round 4′s Legacy mode, then you already have a good idea of what to expect from it in Fight Night Champion. You schedule fight after fight for your created boxer, and juggle training, rest periods, and obligations to sponsors and the like between fights. Some improvements have been made, but the career structure is unchanged, and training minigames–though less frustrating than their counterparts in Round 4–are still a necessary evil. Tedious training minigames aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had creating a custom boxer (you can use one of more than 70 licensed and Champion mode boxers if you prefer) and then developing him into a champion, a Hall of Famer, or even the greatest of all time. Creation tools are every bit as powerful as those in other EA Sports games and afford you the freedom to customize your boxer’s appearance using photos taken with your console’s camera, digital photos uploaded to the EA Sports website, as well as dozens of different sliders. It’s still not easy to put a realistic likeness of yourself into the game, but with a little patience you can certainly come up with a boxer that’s recognizable as you–at least from the neck up. And once you’re done perfecting your pretty boy, you have an opportunity to tailor his skill set so that the face you just spent so much time getting right doesn’t become a showpiece for Fight Night Champion’s excellent damage and blood effects. (Blood even sprays out of cuts and shows up on the fighters, on their shorts, and on the mat.)

Andre Bishop’s story is told through numerous great cutscenes.

It’s probably a good idea to play at least a handful of fights before creating a boxer for Legacy mode because that way you’ll have some idea of your preferred style. Choosing the correct style from the seven available for your boxer during the creation process doesn’t lock you into fighting that way for your entire career, but it has an impact both on your starting skills and on how many experience points it costs to upgrade different skills as you progress. For example, if you make an “inside fighter,” you already have some good hooks and uppercuts at your disposal as your career gets under way, but your straights aren’t nearly as powerful and cost a lot to upgrade. Create a “counterpuncher” on the other hand, and you start with a good selection of head shots in your arsenal as well as good blocking, head movement, chin, and heart attributes, but your shots to the body are weak. It’s a great system that encourages you to choose a fighting style and stick with it but also gives you the freedom to experiment with different approaches if opponents are making it difficult for you to stick to your game plan.

The experience points used to level up your boxer’s skills are earned not only in the various training minigames that you take part in between fights, but also by winning fights and fulfilling challenge criteria while doing so. Fight challenges are an excellent addition to Legacy mode; they award you bonus experience points for taking little damage during fights, scoring a knockdown before a specific round, and even for causing a cut on your opponent. It’s not always possible for you to actively pursue these bonuses because just making sure that you win has to take priority, but there’s no better feeling in Legacy mode than knocking out an opponent and then realizing that you completed all of the fight challenges before doing so. That way you have even more experience points to spend on skills, which itself is pretty interesting in this year’s game.

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Leveling up is a mostly automated affair. You earn experience after every fight and buff your strength and defense with each rank you climb. It’s a shame you can’t tweak your stats individually to mold characters in whatever manner you desire, but that lack of involvement is offset slightly by the skills you acquire. You buy skills from magic shops or earn them during special missions, and these give you a bevy of interesting moves to build your characters. Some of these are passive, such as an increase to your HP, while others give you new attacks. Each of the three characters has around 20 different abilities, and every one of them can be upgraded with the experience you earn in battle. Ultimately, upgrading your skills doesn’t provide a huge draw. There isn’t a big difference between a level-one and a level-three ice spell, for instance, so it’s not a great reward for your hard effort. But the new attacks add a layer of depth that makes it difficult to pull away. Areus starts with a basic fire spell and sword swipe, but things get more varied as you get deeper into the game. A host of unique sword techniques, such as leaping strikes, give you new strategies to play around with, and Areus’ dark magic powers veer even further away from his initial path. You earn these new moves at a slow and steady rate, so you always have time to master your previous skill before the next one unlocks. It’s a tantalizing system that does a good job of keeping you invested throughout the adventure.

6299646Sometimes you can let your friends do the dirty work.None

You need every one of your skills as you get deeper into the game because Trinity offers up a satisfying challenge once the basics have been laid down. The mix of weak and strong enemies makes you fight for every victory, which means you could end up dead by the hands of an ordinary grunt if you aren’t careful. It’s the bosses that do the most damage, though. Many quests have you face off against a powered-up monstrosity at the end, often with a dozen or so weaker enemies surrounding it. Trying to build your combo meter by beating up on the lesser foes is a viable strategy at first, but before long, the bosses are so tough that you have to rely solely on alternate methods to survive. Figuring out what each boss is weak against requires trial and error, and it’s a rush to dodge attacks while trying out every move in your arsenal to dent their impenetrable hides. This is where you have to make smart use of all three of your characters. You may need to conjure a clone of Selena so you can unleash deadly air attacks, or coat Dagda in thick armor so you can get close enough to score a hit. The later bosses pack a mean punch, which makes it more empowering when you do come out on top.

The growing difficulty means you should take part in every quest, optional or story, if you want to make it through to the end. Like most of Trinity, there isn’t much variety in the quests, so don’t expect any huge twists thrown your way. Almost all of them boil down to killing enemies while you venture to a certain point in a dungeon, so it’s hard to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous missions. But what seem like extra quests early on become integral to your survival as you progress later in the game. If you don’t take the time to do every quest and level up as much as possible, battles become crushingly difficult, and you may have to grind just to get your strength up. If you do want to bulk up before heading out, arena missions are always open for your hunting enjoyment. These encounters introduce a ticking clock to keep you moving, and the added pressure forces you to be as precise and efficient as possible. Trinity extends for longer than 60 hours, and you need to do most of the missions if you want to be strong enough to make it all the way to the credits.

Aside from the combat-focused quests, there’s almost nothing else you can do in Trinity. You earn equipment throughout your adventure, and there’s undeniable pleasure when you equip a powerful new sword, but that excitement is short-lived. Each character has only four different pieces of equipment (a weapon, ring, bracket, and necklace), and you don’t even get a variety of armors to play around with. Instead, you earn new clothing at certain story points, and your duds don’t even affect your stats. It’s a shame there isn’t anything else of consequence to do in Trinity aside from the combat. A few diversions could have added immensely to the overall experience, giving you a break from the nonstop bloodshed, but there’s no such reprieve here. Your fierce bouts are interrupted only by mundane trips to town, and those aren’t nearly interesting enough to make you excited for your next visit.

Are you enthralled yet?

At least the varied environments give you plenty of eye-catching vistas to stare at along the way. The early areas send you to underground caves and confined forests, and the murky visuals give the impression of a low-budget game. A cross-hatching visual effect gives these sections a unique feel, but it’s not enough to compensate for the bland view. Thankfully, things become much more pleasing to the eye as you get deeper in the game, and Trinity looks quite impressive at times. In one area, called Sea of Trees, you are fenced in by walls of foliage lining narrow paths. The rich trees are detailed and full of life, and the monsters luring around you add just as much personality to the adventure. Creature design is a strong point in Trinity. There are a huge array of beasts to fight, and all of them have a smart design that makes them stand out from generic tropes. The most impressive are the gargantuan beasts that can squash you in one hit. Facing off against a two-headed chimera is a chilling experience, making it even more exciting when you take it down.

It’s to Trinity’s credit that it stays interesting for dozens of hours when there is almost nothing to do except fight. Excellent controls, a wealth of different moves, and a variety of angry beasts keep things fresh throughout, so you won’t even mind trudging through the same dungeon multiple times. It’s just a shame that nothing interesting was built around this enticing combat. The weak story is difficult to pay attention to and even harder to care about, and the streamlined leveling system takes out much of the thrill of earning experience. Trinity feels like one half of a must-play role-playing game. You may crave more variety, but the combat in Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll is so good it sucks you into this adventure anyway.

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After a decade of anticipation, and a few long months of speculation, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds is upon us at last. This venerable fighting series, renowned for its structured insanity, has finally returned with the same fire and intensity that was its hallmark. However, not all the characters from the previous game have returned this time around–but not without good reason. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was a game so completely dominated by a handful of characters and strategies that the majority of its design was rendered moot. Developer Capcom has since learned from this, and the changes made help distill this game’s combat into a more well-rounded experience than ever before. The result is not the most technically demanding of fighters, but is certainly one of the most enjoyable. The white-knuckle intensity is still here–but this is not the same game you remember from 10 years ago.

6298793Hulk has had just about enough of Dante’s nonsense.480all

In the extravagant world of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, there is rarely a dull moment. You and your opponent each have a team of three characters to battle it out in one frantic, continuous round accented by dazzling finishing moves and triple-digit combos. But beneath all its style, the game’s core combat mechanics have been simplified and work harmoniously to drive you, and the action, forward. Locomotion plays a large role in this, even if the characters are slower than before. This change feels natural in the game’s large arenas and affords you the time to plan out your next move without having to rely on blindly overwhelming your opponent. But even if you are slower, you never want to stop moving. There is safety in mobility when every character can clear the length of the arena in a single bound or pepper you with projectiles from a screen away. Stopping only makes things easier for your opponent.

Movement keeps the battle flowing and changing as you duck in and out of your opponent’s reach, each side frantically searching for that break in the other’s defenses. Sometimes opportunity is easy to spot. Other times you have to make your own luck. In either case, when it’s time to strike, the number of tools you have in your arsenal is intoxicating. You might unleash a fierce flurry of blows, summon another character to take a quick shot, or employ a snap back attack for a more favorable match-up. When on the defense, a well-timed advancing guard can punish a nasty rushdown player, while a crossover counter can rescue a teammate under fire. Regardless, after each encounter you take away a little something to add to your repertoire–be it practice with your favorite go-to combo or knowledge that a new assist isn’t all that great. There’s a constant sense of progression as you endlessly experiment with new tricks and new combinations.

From beat to beat and blow to blow, it’s the little touches that sell the experience. It’s that slight pause at the start of a hyper combo–a breath just wide enough to fit a single expletive before the hammer falls–or the feeling of weight right as you launch someone into the air. It’s the fact that combat can just as easily take place vertically as it can horizontally. The addition of the new launcher button helps expedite this process. And once you’re airborne, a few quick hits lead you to an important crossroads: either end the combo safely or press your luck. If you go with the latter, you can bounce your opponent in one of four directions, after which you switch characters and continue the combo. That is, unless your opponent inputs the same direction as you, in which case you’re the one who’s sent tumbling down. It’s a gamble, and one that keeps both sides of the beatdown engaged.

The cast is slower overall this time, but some character are still pretty nimble.

All of this would be enough, but then there’s the x-factor. True to its namesake, the x-factor is your wild card in any match. Activated by pressing all four attack buttons, this ability temporarily increases your character’s attack power and speed–and resets his or her current animation. Its potency and duration are determined by the number of team members you’ve lost, making it an excellent last resort to turn the tables on your opponent. But its applications run deeper than that. The simple animation reset lets you chain together moves that would otherwise be impossible, such as two super moves back-to-back. Or, if an opponent manages to flank you while you’re caught helpless in a big attack, you can burn the x-factor to cancel that attack and face your opponent. The amount of diversity gained for something so simple makes this new feature a valuable tool rather than a mere gimmick.

Combat in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is an enjoyable blend of violence and intimacy. Surmounting your opponent is just as much about getting in his head as it is about getting around the controls. Some people like to mix things up and have fun, while others just want to win no matter the cost. Whatever your calling, finding characters who fit your style of play is paramount. This game offers a wide array of variations on a single character theme, as most of the rosters’ techniques are executed in the same way. Several of the basic moves and combos you learn for one will easily transfer to several others. However, while these inputs may be similar, their outputs are wildly different. Every character brings something unique to the experience, and the game quickly moves from the tedium of learning individual commands, to the joys of mastering their timing and situational uses.

At the heart of the game is Ryu, whose iconic trio of moves–the fireball (hadoken), the uppercut (shoryuken), and the hurricane kick (tatsumaki senpukyaku)–serve as the foundation for many others. Some characters, such as Morrigan and Zero, emulate this style closely while adding their own variations to the execution. Arthur and Chris are characters who explore a single aspect of this style, the fireball, with a variety of different projectile attacks. Dante takes it to the extreme with a staggering lineup of 32 unique attacks. If you’ve ever had trouble perfecting the motions for these moves, the game address this with a new simplified control option. This aptly named simple mode condenses each character down into a few key moves which can be executed at the press of a button. While this severely limits your offensive options in battle, simple mode’s simplicity makes it ideal for series newcomers.

Who likes to rock the party? Dormammu likes to rock the party.

Is this game’s roster perfectly balanced? No. If it were, it would have only two characters who each played exactly like the other. Battles aren’t won on spreadsheets using numbers and averages. They are won with experience, mind games, and a bit of luck. Capcom delivers a roster where every character feels powerful and fun to play. In a game this over-the-top, there’s a way around everything. One strategy isn’t going to work in every situation. The deadly trio of Storm, Sentinel, and Magneto is still a mighty combination. But this time so is everyone else.

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