Piloting

Welcome back to a semi-regular feature here at GameCritics.com: TouchTalk. While this series was inspired by one of my old features, the Bargain Basement, I've got an all-new focus for an all-new phase in gaming. Rather than highlighting discounted gems in the used section of a retail shop, I'll be reviewing downloadable mobile games and apps that you might want to check out… and maybe some that you'll want to avoid.

You got Your Bullet-hell in My Side-scroller!

HIGH It's… so… damned… pretty…

LOW Flying through the debris chute and failing to avoid the lasers.

WTF Why are the other powers not in story mode?

GameFly sent me Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale the other day, and while I haven't had a whole lotta time to get into it, I did play a few multiplayer sessions with my youngest son. The time we spent on it basically amounts to me standing still while he beats on me with a variety of different characters, but he enjoys it and that's good enough for us.

War. What is it Good for? Giant Walking Mecha.

HIGH I managed to keep a crewmember alive for two consecutive missions. A personal best!

LOW Kinect-based quicktime events in a timed mission against a boss that can one-shot me.

WTF Twenty of my thirty crew members died by the halfway point of the game due to my incompetency. Why am I in charge of the platoon again?

Friends in Time

HIGH You can't beat the feeling of imminent death suddenly giving way to absolute victory.

LOW Your friends don't like it when you curse the television so.

WTF Who's the wife when a bison fathers a wolverine?

Being a 3DS and Kinect owner as well as a fan of Japanese robots/mechs, two neighboring games on the main exhibition hall of PAX East immediately caught my attention: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor for the Xbox 360 and Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the 3DS. Both games are updates to game franchises that were once considered innovative back when they were first released.

Nostalgia's Running Thin

HIGH Lifting off just as zombies swarm in from all sides.

LOW Yet another incredibly cheap jet attack death.

WTF There are zombies chewing on you! Why are you shooting at me?

It's easy to figure out why gamers lusted after this thing when developer Capcom released it back in late 2002: It's the mech equivalent of a racing game's steering wheel—on steroids—complete with the foot pedals and about a bazillion other useless doodads.

Stupidity in Disk Form

HIGH The music is fairly catchy.

LOW Playing the game.

WTF How exactly was this inspired by Gradius?

Jets!

HIGH The greatest quick time event of 2011. It's fantastic. There's no better way to end a game.

LOW The bombing run mode repeatedly failing to activate.

WTF Jets with regenerating health? What?