Major League Baseball 2K10 Review

PS3 owners go positively gaga every year over Sony’s highly praised MLB: The Show. PlayStation 2 and original Xbox maniacs adored EA Sports’ MVP Baseball 2005, a game that’s still applauded as one of the best baseball extravaganzas ever. Even way back in the dinosaur days of the early ’80s, when Microsoft’s Windows was but a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye, there was Major League Baseball for the Intellivision—justifiably the best-selling title ever for Mattel’s memorable old-school gaming system. We could prattle on if we weren’t under certain word-count restrictions, but the point is that most every console of note has had a really great baseball game to accompany it.

All, that is, except the Xbox 360, where, due to a Major League Baseball licensing agreement that expires in 2012, America’s pastime has been under the command of 2K Sports since the very beginning. Sadly, the long-term results have been…middling. And never more so than last year’s iteration, the universally derided MLB 2K9.

But with the dawn of a new real-life season—or at least the dawn of a new and incredibly protracted real-life spring training season—comes another chance for redemption, both on the field and over here in virtual-land, too. And this year, the gang at 2K Sports took that chance and, to its credit, ran with it.

Okay, so MLB 2K10 isn’t a perfect 10 in

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Review

(Eds Note: Awakening is being offered both as downloadable content and as a full retail release in stores. Both feature identical content; however, the retail disc is playable as a standalone product, able to either import a Dragon Age Origins save or begin a new Orlesian character without any disk check that we could find. As such, we'd recommend the retail disc over the DLC, if you have the option. )



In the age of DLC, expansions are a tricky proposition. It used to be that any PC developer could throw some new campaign content on a disc, sell if for 20 dollars and call it a day. Now, players expect to see DLC for everything, and the obligations for expansions have increased accordingly. Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening would seem at first glance to fill that role well. It’s been positioned as not just the next chapter, but the next book in the Dragon Age fiction. It covers the expansion bases with more spells, more skills, more gear, more characters, more, well, everything, really. But where its fully priced

Final Fantasy XIII Review (Xbox 360)

In a recent interview with 1Up.com, Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase brazenly declared that Square Enix’s latest high-profile, role-playing release shouldn’t actually be classified as an RPG.

You know what’s sad? He was right.

Good role-playing games offer choices, engrossing worlds and the opportunity to figure out the best way to trounce your opponents on the battlefield. Final Fantasy XIII offers none of those things. It treats players like students taking a college exam—there’s only one right answer. And if you even dare to question authority…well, get used to academic probation in the form of the “Game Over” screen.

Here’s what it boils down to for longtime fans: Final Fantasy XIII is the antithesis of the original Final Fantasy. Twenty years ago, that game asked players to create a team of warriors in order to take down the nefarious Chaos, and you could