It's only March, but we already have a shoo-in for Mayor Goodman's least favorite game of the year. Getting Up puts you in the sneakers of Trane, an up-and-coming urban artist, fighting the oppressive politicians in the city of New Radius one tag at a time. Armed only with your spray paint, you'll set off into the night, platforming to the best brick canvasses you can find, and occasionally fighting a fascist anti-graffiti squad. Like its subject matter, the game has a lot of gritty, artistic flair, featuring an outstanding soundtrack and top-notch voice-acting.
Unfortunately, there isn't much room for player creativity. All of the tags have been designed for you. Even the places you must put them have been pre-selected, so Lara Crofting your way to some precarious perch to throw up a pre-rendered tag isn't any more rewarding than getting up there to seize an item, the way you would in any third-person collect-a-thon. It's still a fun game, but with a little more artistic freedom, it could've given real-life taggers something else to do—provided the good mayor hasn't already removed their thumbs.
FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 3 by EA Sports (4 stars)
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360.
Rated: T.
This game has been hyped for so long, you'd think Don King was promoting it. Now that it's here, it weighs in a little heavier on features than Round 2, but not enough to change weight classes. But the fight mechanics are as good as ever, and the new Flash KO can lead to extraordinary reversals worthy of hours of trash talk.
RUGBY 06 by EA Sports (3.5 stars)
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox.
Rated: T.
You'll probably have to sit through a few in-game tutorials before you'll begin to enjoy Rugby 06, but enjoy it you will. AI's been heavily improved over last year's, but the player models still look fuzzy and undetailed. So if you sit far enough away, you could pretend you're playing Madden ... with backward passes.
RESIDENT EVIL: DEADLY SILENCE by Capcom (3 stars)
Platforms: Nintendo DS.
Rated: M.
Zombies? That's so 1996. Ten years after the original Resident Evil hit the PlayStation, we've been spoiled by RE4, making it difficult to revisit and enjoy earlier entries from the series that spawned the term "survival horror." This re-release of the game that started it all still has nostalgia value, and even includes the infamous voice-acting and FMV scenes.
Matthew Scott Hunter has been known to mumble, "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" in his sleep. E-mail him at
[email protected].