Video Game Reviews

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Level-5, Capcom / Nintendo
Reviewed on: 3DS (exclusive)
Street: 08.29
Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke Triton, are back for another mystery, and this time, it manages to snag Phoenix Wright and his spunky assistant, Maya Fey, into the intricate web of magic and intrigue. It all starts on the stereotypical dark and stormy night—a young woman, Espella, is running for her life from witches and gets herself to Professor Layton’s door, asking for his help. Layton naturally offers his expertise, and things get weird, fast. The story then pulls in the Ace Attorney team, and they fit with the Layton duo well. The trials are an interesting twist to the puzzle play that the Layton folks are used to. You switch between Layton gameplay, full of exploring and puzzles, and Wright gameplay, consisting of one complete trial. It has the same decent graphics as the other games, with the same beautiful cut-scenes—there was a parade with cherry blossom petals floating everywhere that was stunning in 3D. The banter between the characters is well written, and I have to say, it was awesome to see Layton and Wright do the “objection” pose together. They definitely played to both sets of fans, and it works out well. –Ashley Lippert

Runers
LGK Games / Mastertronic
Reviewed on: PC (Exclusive)
Street: 09.02
Playing NetHack for the first time was probably one of the most frustrating and unusual experiences of my entire gaming career. Yet, that first taste of the roguelike genre was enough to keep me hooked. With endless, procedurally-generated dungeons and punishing, borderline unfair combat, it was fun to rush through waves of terrifying enemies and see what horrible perma-death would await my character. Runers takes this familiar set of conventions and converts it into a high-speed, twitch-style shooting game. You can collect runes which, by themselves, create a pretty basic roster of spells. As you progress, however, you can find ways to combine multiple runes into new spells that range from insanely overpowered to somewhat disappointing. The random attributes you get at each experience and dungeon level can be a crapshoot, but I enjoyed how some of the traits fit together thematically. Runers lends itself to the same kind of random storytelling that made the original roguelikes so fun and memorable – a rare trait, indeed. For $9.99 on Steam, you could spend hours diving into a seething swarm of rats and wizards, merrily blasting them away with scintillating waves of destructive sorcery. I call that a bargain. –Henry Glasheen

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Frogwares / Focus Home Interactive
Reviewed on: Xbox One
Also On: PlayStation 4, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC
Street: 09.30.2014
You know those people who, during mystery movies, would, instead of just enjoying the film, rather turn the viewing into a competition to see who can figure out the killer first. Then, when the twist is revealed, on cue, claims he/she knew it – while forgetting about the five other theories they loudly pronounced during the movie. Do you know this type of person? Well here’s the fucking video game for them. Crimes and Punishments drops you into the virtual skin of the most famous detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes – and asks you to solve some cases. This fantastic mystery, adventure title doesn’t hold your hand every step of the way either … no, it’s more or less up to you as to how you go about finding out whodunit (though it is quite forgiving if you fuck up). There’s no doubt in my mind that if he was alive today (and he knew what the fuck a video game was)  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself would approve of this use of his beloved characters. So, all of you wannabe crime solvers, pick up this game and let the rest of us watch our movies in peace.   –Blake Leszczynski