By Matthew Scott Hunter
FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (T)
**
2K Games
Wii, Xbox 360
It’s clobberin’ time, and it will be from the moment you start this game until the end credits roll. Unfortunately, in gamespeak, “clobberin’” means “mindless button-mashing,” which is what you’ll be doing through hordes of identical baddies. And since the Thing and the Human Torch are the most effective clobberers, Reed Richards and his bride-to-be will merely be tagging along most of the time.
The game tries to balance the characters by giving them unique abilities that must be utilized at specific points in each level, but this is how those points play out: Sue uses her telekinesis to move an object out of the way so that Reed can stretch to a switch that opens a door so that Johnny can fly over lasers and deactivate them so that Ben can reach the one section of wall inexplicably fragile enough for him to break through so that the whole team can repeat this process in the next room. There are many words I could use to describe this routine. “Fantastic” is not among them, but several of them do contain Four letters.
THE SIMS 2: PETS (T)
**1/2
Electronic Arts
When I first played “The Sims,” I was frustrated that it took an hour of Sim-time to do something as simple as picking up the newspaper, which left no time for bathroom breaks, which ultimately led to my Sim peeing on the floor. In “Sims 2: Pets,” it takes an hour for my Sim-dog to fetch the newspaper, and then HE pees on the floor. So my feelings on “The Sims” remain the same, but lovers of micromanagement will doubtlessly delight in painstakingly praising and disciplining their virtual pets.
TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX: VEGAS (T)
***
Ubisoft
PlayStation Portable
Like a good gambler, “Rainbow Six: Vegas” for PSP quits while it’s ahead. Instead of cramming a watered-down version of the console game into a UMD, the PSP version offers an all-new mission for your two-man squad, and both the mission and controls play to the handheld’s strengths. The downside is that the five short levels are over before you know it, but at least you’re leaving Vegas a winner.
SIMCITY DS (E)
**1/2
Electronic Arts
Nintendo DS
As cool as it is to carry an entire functioning city in your pocket, the size of the DS’s dual screens frequently makes it feel as though you’re gazing at your sprawling metropolis through a tiny key-hole. What’s worse is that the grid-squares you tap to issue orders to your city engineers are barely larger than the tip of your stylus, making it all too easy to bulldoze a school when you meant to clear a spot for a playground in the grid square next door.
When Las Vegas Weekly contributor Matthew Scott Hunter realized his career as a lab technician was seriously interfering with his gaming, he pink-slipped himself into a successful career as a freelance writer. Bug the hell out of him at [email protected]