NCAA FOOTBALL 08 (E)
Rating: ****
Electronic Arts Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Xbox
This year’s “NCAA” offering is all about the psychology of a football team. At any time you can seize control of any specific player, affecting the subtlest nuances of sacks, interceptions, touchdowns, etc. If you perform well, not only will you motivate the victorious player, raising his stats, but you may even inspire your surrounding players, increasing their stats. There are actually upgrades through empathy. Who knew college football players were so sensitive?
The other big addition is the ability to save a highlight reel, which allows you to share videos of your greatest virtual victories online. It’s a nifty feature, but since there are a finite number of player animations, and a catch is a catch and a touchdown is a touchdown, is any gamer really going to capture a play that other gamers will be dying to see? I don’t mean to offend my virtual players and their abilities. I know they’re pretty sensitive this year.
ALL-PRO FOOTBALL 2K8 (E10+)
Rating: ****
2K Sports Xbox 360
Two years after “Madden NFL” brutally murdered 2K Sports’ football franchise by nabbing the exclusive NFL license, the corpse of NFL 2K5 has risen from the grave in the form of “All-Pro Football” to exact revenge! Of course, two years in a shallow grave has reduced “Madden’s” toughest competition to its bare bones, leaving out any franchise mode and all the trimmings that gamers have come to expect from a football sim. Nevertheless, with its core gameplay intact and its roster of legends available for dream-team building, “All-Pro Football” remains an undead beast to be feared.
HOT SHOTS TENNIS (E)
Rating: ***
Sony Computer Entertainment PlayStation 2
Those cartoonish people from “Hot Shots Golf” have decided to take up a new sport. The good news is that they make tennis instantly accessible, so picking up the tennis racket and hitting the court is as fast and easy as picking up the clubs and hitting the fairway. The bad news is that our big-headed avatars don’t seem to improve with this new sport quite as easily … or at all. There’s virtually no customization at the beginning, and whatever player class you choose will have its core stats carved in stone.
PARAPPA THE RAPPER (E)
Rating: **1/2
Sony Computer Entertainment PlayStation Portable
Sony continues its trend of porting old games to the PSP rather than making new ones with this portable version of “Parappa the Rapper.” This original PlayStation release helped to pioneer the rhythm game genre, which puts “Parappa” in a category somewhere between “classic” and “relic.” The rap songs and paper cut-out graphics are as charming as ever, but the push-the-button-at-the-prompt gameplay couldn’t be more mundane and rigid. Whatever happened to freestylin’?
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]