02 Dec 2010

Grace of the Chase and the Thrill of the Kill: "Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit" and "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood"

By Luke Hamilton

'Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit'

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I'm not a fan of racing games, as they tend to be far too similar to each other. Only the Burnout series caught my attention, primally satisfying in its exhilarating action with a focus on wrecking other racers and events designed to cause as much destruction as possible. So when I saw that the developers of Burnout were making this year's Need for Speed title with a cops-versus-racers theme, I salivated like Pavlov's dog. While not as chaos-oriented as Burnout, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii) is still a wickedly fun experience.

02 Dec 2009

"Assassin's Creed II": A Minor Masterpiece of the Renaissance

By Luke Hamilton

Assassin's Creed got a justifiably mixed response when it was released in 2007. I loved it for its free-running style in a giant open-world setting and its perspective on religious history, but I also loathed it because of the repetitive missions and the lack of combat AI. With the newly released sequel, the developers go a long way toward fulfilling their promise to address players' complaints about the original.

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