Crystal Dynamics

For all its popular appeal, Tomb Raider was a geekily strict platform game, but one unmatched (arguably to this day) in making your conquests over the land feel real. When you climbed to a great peak using just your hands and the rock around you, you really felt the achievement, the human achievement. Mario offered carefree, balletic fantasy; Lara, with her bone-breaking falls and audible strains of upper-body anguish, kept it very real.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes

Game Description: Tomb Raider: Anniversary retraces Lara Croft's original genre-defining adventure, as she pursues the legendary Scion artifact. New graphics, technology and physics bring Lara's adventure up-to-date and offers gamers a completely new game play experience. Re-imagined, Anniversary delivers a dynamic fluidly and fast Lara Croft, massive environments of stunning visuals, intense combat and game pacing, and an enhanced and clarified original story. Enter into strange, undiscovered lands and solve their deepest, darkest mysteries, open doors to new realms, uncover great rewards and unearth secrets to Lara's past.

It's a shame that given such a potentially provocative issue as the premise of the game, Whiplash chooses to take it nowhere and instead falls back on ineffectual humor, cartoonish violence, and an unimaginative interface.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence.

I was primarily disappointed with Legacy of Kain: Defiance for reasons that Brad lights upon. For me, the game fatally stumbles where it fails to demonstrate any meaningful improvement over its prequels. Despite our general agreement about gameplay however, Brad does gloss over what I felt was a notable triumph—the game's compelling gothic landscape.

Game Description: Follows the epic drama of three major races, vampire, human and Hylden, fighting to control the world, each pursuing their idea of the true prophecy., The next chapter in the epic Legacy of Kain series is a cutting-edge action or adventure game featuring more action than ever before. Take control of two powerful and highly evolved vampires: Kain, an all-powerful demigod, and Raziel, a demonic angel of death. Each equipped with a legendary sword, Kain and Raziel must battle through a world loaded with conflict and intrigue as they attempt to unravel their destinies and defeat the dark forces that seek to condemn their world to eternal damnation.

The last time I reviewed a game in the Kain series (2002's Blood Omen 2) I was appalled at how poor an effort it was. This darkly gothic series starring vampires, intrigue, and pathos has never been home to top-level gameplay, instead being driven by its strong voicework, memorable characters, and sheer cool factor. Despite that, it was such a lousy piece of software that I claimed one more game as shoddy as that one would most likely force me to jump ship and abandon the series. After playing through Crystal Dynamics' most recent installment, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, consider me swimming for shore.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence

According to ESRB, this game contains: Comic Mischief, Mild Language, Mild Lyrics