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"Siren" is a somewhat lesser known series of survival horror games, developed internally by SCE Japan. The franchise is most well known for its Silent Hill-esque game play, supernatural scares taken from the mythology of rural Japan, and for "sight jacking", which allows the player to look directly through the eyes of the enemy. Unfortunately, this newest addition to the Siren mythology does little to improve or reinvent the genre, despite providing a number of truly frightening scenarios and game play concepts that would be more than welcome if they were only developed a little further.



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The latest entry to the modestly received Siren series, Blood Curse (known as New Translation in Japan) is an interesting title. While there are a number of legitimate scares in the game, most of them are derived from the Silent Hill book on creepiness, in that you're more often than not scared of what could happen rather than what actually does. Not to suggest that this is a weakness to the game, but S:BC doesn't dare to tread much new ground, even when its own series is concerned.

In S:BC, an American television crew has traveled to the land of the Rising Sun to investigate the so-called "legend of Hanuda", which states that a village where human sacrifices had once taken place had supposedly disappeared into thin air. The team, needless to say, manages to stumble across the village and naturally, horrors ensue. Although I can't speak for the Blu-ray release in Japan, Sony's choice to distribute the game episodically via PSN makes the experience play out somewhat like a survival-horror soap opera, with occasional interludes to either catch you up to the story so far, or give you a sneak peek at the next episode. The episodic nature of the game seems to work in its favor, with the only obvious gripe being the roughly 10 gigabytes of hard drive storage that a simultaneous install of every episode requires.

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For those of you unfamiliar with Namco's Soul Calibur series, it's the one with the slew of weird characters vying for two powerful swords--soul calibur and soul edge--to rule, destroy, or save the world, and most of the time they look exceptionally good while doing it. Soul Calibur IV continues that trend with 33 characters seeking to use the swords to accomplish their own (often selfish) desires, including two bonus "guest" characters from the Star Wars universe: the legendary Darth Vader and the mysterious "apprentice" from the upcoming Force Unleashed. Though the game clearly fails to revolutionize the genre, it accomplishes everything it sets out to do quite well, and the addition of online play and a very robust character creation system keep the game addictive.

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As with any fighting game, Soul Calibur IV pits you against an onslaught of characters that you must take down by lowering their health bar with flashy moves and powerful combos. Namco also included a soul gauge feature that changes color depending on your performance; block too often or receive too many strong attacks and the gauge will start flashing red, entering a "soul crush" state, at which point you're vulnerable to a one-hit KO attack called a critical finish. To keep things fresh (and because it's mildly entertaining to witness characters fighting in customizable undergarments), equipment destruction is a vital component of any fight; equipment condition is displayed in a three slot vertical bar designating head, upper body, and lower body gear, and enough attacks to the same area will break the equipment.

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Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D is one of the handful of major studio games now available for the iPhone (or iPod Touch) through the newly released App Store. It's a decent time waster, sure, which is what you'd expect from a cell phone game, but given the power of the iPhone and the hefty $9.99 price tag, this game is a waste of time and opportunity. I would wait a bit longer for more impressive, and better controlling games to come around.

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A pocket review for a pocket game:

Nitro Kart 3D is a rather quick port of "Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart" for the Xbox, PS2, GameCube, and N-Gage. Like the other kart game on the iPhone (Cro-Mag Rally), controlls are stripped down to the bare essentials. Acceleration is automatic, or rather, perpetual, and all the player must do is steer by tilting the phone side to side.

The control can be frustrating and take quite a while to get used to. Not being in control of acceleration feels a bit strange as well, like being the passenger in a car and leaning over to take over the wheel. I don't think developers have gotten a handle on the iPhone's accelerometer yet, and so using it will feel a bit flimsy until the programmers have it hammered down.

Controlling the karts always felt sloppy to me, but it can be managed by adjusting the sensitivity. Game modes available include standard "Cup" mode, a pretty simple Story mode, and Time Trials. There is no multiplayer.

This is one of the very first 3D games for the iPhone, so it's hard to gauge the graphics, but from what I've seen of other games they're already a tad sub-par. Textures in the distance appear to manifest before your eyes, and there is a very annoying attempt at a lens flare effect that has watered down to nothing but an indistinct series of blobs that do nothing but block your view.

Again, for the money, you should expect more. This may be one of the best 3D iPhone games, but that's not saying much. Treat this game like a launch title and keep your distance until the real games show up.

Thank you, Atlus.

The bulk of the content on the disc is the original 80+ hour Persona 3 game, dubbed "The Journey" in FES. You play as a transfer student who quickly discovers that his school is the epicenter of a phenomenon known as the Dark Hour, a "25th hour" during the day where time stops for the unaware and a huge tower named Tartarus erupts from the school, the source of an evil plague of beings known as Shadows. Only once you realize you harness the ability to wield the titular entities called personas do you join a crew of your fellow persona-wielding classmates to climb Tartarus and cleanse it of the Shadows over the course of a school year.

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Ahh - looks, feels, and smells like 1999. Now that's bad fish.

Sega Bass Fishing services Wii anglers with a standard variety of modes. Arcade mode naturally features arcade style stage by stage play – catch a bass of a minimum size within a certain period of time or you're out of luck. Tournament mode plays somewhat differently, requiring prolonged competition with other anglers. Nature trip mode loses the restraints of other modes and allows you to fish at your own pace. Actually catching a fish is surprisingly simple and within a minute or two in any mode you'll be able to reel in a bass, even though it might not be the big one.

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Super Smash Bros. Brawl can be compressed to a single rule: to knock your opponents off the sides of the screen. You accomplish this by beating your opponents to a pulp to raise their damage percentage. The higher their percentage, the farther they fly, best done with the namesake smash attack. It's really that simple. But just because the concept is simple doesn't mean it's simple in practice.

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Get ready to drum to the beat.

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