You already might have heard of Flight Control HD for your iPhone and iPad, but if you don’t have Apple mobile devices, it’s okay; they’re making one for your PS3.

We love the design so far.

Yes, some of us are all for the hardcore RPGs, MMOs and bloody FPS, but that doesn’t mean we can’t play cleverly designed games like Flight Control HD. And if you believe in PlayStation’s Move controller, you’re in luck because Flight Control HD will support the controller as well.

The game will be available on September 15, 2010 for major regions around the world (except the U.S. market). Japan, however, will get the treat on October 21, 2010. Our guess would be the localization. Once we get more information, we’ll update this page so stay close!

“Highway to the Danger Zone. Ride into the Danger Zone”

Back when Tom Cruise was not nuts, he was Maverick. I imagine every kid who grew up in the 80s knows Top Gun. Hell I grew up in Japan, and I knew Top Gun. Well here it is folks, Top Gun the video game.

As you may have guessed, this game is a free-flying air combat shooter. With your trusty Radar Intercept Officer Goose by your side, this game will take you from when you first enroll in flight school, to defending and attacking bases.

Top Gun will not only feature single player, but 5 different multiplayer modes, allowing up to 16 players to duke it out in dogfight battles. Fans and gamers will be able to relive their favorite Top Gun fights, or just have a good ol’ dogfight this summer, on PSN, Windows PC, and Mac. In the mean time, we have below a very extensive features list.

KEY FEATURES:

• Talk to Me Goose: With all-new dialogue and storyline written by the film’s screenwriter, Jack Epps, Jr., players talk trash with Iceman, Merlin, Slider, and the rest of the flyers from the film.
• You’re a Hell of a Pilot. Maybe Too Good: Feel the need for speed! With arcade controls, players defy the laws of gravity as they dodge enemy planes using inverts, dives and spins.
• Too Close for Missiles, I’m Switching to Guns: Players go up against the best as they outmaneuver and shoot down bogeys using short and long range missiles and Vulcan cannons.
• This is the Real Thing. This is What You’ve Been Trained for: Top Gun features three single player and five multiplayer modes.
• Flight School: Players enroll as Maverick at Top Gun Academy and train to handle the breakneck speeds of hitting the “after burner” and the “tunnel vision” that poses a threat during high G-force maneuvers.
• Campaign Mode: After training to be the best of the best, players join the fight above the Indian Ocean for 11 total missions at various times of day.
• Horde Mode: Bogeys like fireflies all over the sky! Solo players get to test their flight combat abilities as they take down endless waves of enemies of increasing difficulty. Top scores will appear on leader boards. Remember, no points for second place.
• Online Multiplayer: Players can enlist in the US Navy or join the Soviet air forces and go head-to-head with opponents in five different modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Top Gun (choose your wingman and compete against enemy pairs), Bombing Run (defend and attack mobile bases) and Capture the Flag. Players can choose to battle at three times of day across multiple environments.
• Tower, This is Ghost Rider Requesting a Flyby: Players take their RIO along and buzz the tower!
• It Takes a Lot More Than Just Fancy Flying: Players can unlock six sonic jets with varying speed, maneuverability and weapon load.

o For the US Navy:

• F14 Tomcat: The classic Top Gun plane, this heavy piece of machinery isn’t the most maneuverable of the birds but still boasts an undercarriage capable of carrying an abundance of missiles to blast down enemies.
• F16 Falcon: Perfect for high-speed dogfights, this is the fastest and most nimble jet, but payloads are smaller, so players must make every missile count!
• F/A-18 Hornet: An aircraft balanced in all aspects of speed, agility and firepower.

o For the Soviets:

• MiG-31 Foxhound: Forgoing maneuverability and weapon load for speed, this is the fastest jet.
• MiG-29 Fulcrum: This agile plane can handle a small payload of weapons, making accuracy even more important.
• Su-27 Flanker: An evenly balanced aircraft across speed, agility and weapon load.
• The Plaque for the Alternates is Down in the Ladies Room: Unlock up to 12 Trophies.
• Fly Into the Danger Zone: Top Gun features the classic compositions “Danger Zone” and the “Top Gun” anthem.

ZEN Studios brings you yet another exciting new table to ZEN Pinball: MARS.

Looks like ZEN studios will be taking their next pinball adventure out into space. We have the features list below:

ZEN Pinball MARS Table Features:

• Dock the space ship and activate the magnetic crane to collect space samples
• Land with the space spider to analyze the ancient Martian symbols
• Call in the satellite to scan distant galaxies, calibrate its solar collector and activate its electromagnetic fields to lock three balls
• Restore the Mysterious Pyramid, then deactivate its defense system
• Spell out MARS to activate the secret portal of lights
• Repair the artificial gravity reactor to stabilize gravity on MARS

We would love to get our hands on a copy for a review. Stay tuned!

When I first saw the screenshots of Wakeboarding HD for PSN, I was somewhat interested because of the water-effects; it looked freakin’ sweet.

Then when we downloaded it for the review, we were surprised with the game size. It was less than 190MB! Granted, it was probably a compressed file but seriously, take a look at the screenshots and see if you could guess that the game was under 190MB.

Cool visual for a game that can fit into a compact disc.

Whatever TikGames did, wow.

So, is this game fun as it looks?
We thought we could answer this question rather quickly as we played for the first 30 minutes. Then, something changed our opinion as we delved further into the game. We’ll get to that part later.

The gameplay is very simple. The player follows the objective while wakeboarding. Sometimes it requires the player to do tricks while at other times you can just forget about tricks and concentrate on something else like collecting items. For the first few stages, we didn’t notice anything special or even fun. The gameplay mechanism seemed so basic that it reminded us of the good old 16-bit gaming era.

Simple gameplay doesn't mean easy though..

We gave it a try anyway, because other than the gameplay, nothing really looked bad. It actually looked pretty good. Wakeboarding HD is colorful and vibrant, and awesome water-effects that I’ve never seen before, especially from a game that could fit into a compact disc media. The basic arcade style gameplay with audio, and BGM was particularly enjoyable for such paced water-sports game. The music sounded right, but not enough songs are there for us to notice. Just a few songs playing over and over again. At least the music sounds good.

WOOOOOT!

As we progressed through the game, somewhere after 6~7 stages, things started to pick up. Same old objectives like collecting items and doing tricks, but the challenge level was gradually increasing, and most importantly, they were enjoyable. Despite how we felt about the game at the beginning, Wakeboarding HD didn’t feel repetitive. Maybe it was the beautifully designed stages set in different environments, or just the right combination of objectives, but it did make the simple gameplay system a bit more fun. We had to play a couple of stages again and again just to beat it, but it felt like we accomplished something for a good amount of fun.

One particular stage was about collecting items while the boat speeds up. The main fun of this stage is that the boat goes so fast, everything on the screen becomes a blur. It just looked and felt so damn cool while playing it. Since the game supports two local multiplayer, we tried the very same stage to see whether it was too much for PS3 to handle or not. Again, we didn’t notice any huge slowdowns or FPS getting choked up. Nice!

As quick as a flash!

This is definitely not a Wakeboarding simulation. And even though challenges are fun, some of us are probably very used to this type of gameplay for years. However, it’s definitely an arcade-style fun, with no deep learning curve to enjoy it. Simple controls, colorful visuals, good mixes of stage objectives and supporting offline multiplayer, this game can provide you hours of fun, without stressing your brains out.

Our Score: 7 /10

Easy gameplay with waves of fun.

You might have seen the game in action yesterday when we uploaded the Wakeboarding HD trailer here.

Today, we’ll give you the screenshots and a feature list:

• High-speed arcade platform gameplay – Jump onto docks and over boats, balance on rails and waves, and launch over buildings and landmarks.
• Crazy tricks and stunts – Flip, grab, roll, and spin as you hurl across the water and through the air. Smash through billboards and boats, splash the bikini-clad babes.
• Feel the surf – The ocean’s beauty and the wake’s ferocity vividly come to life in state-of-the-art water simulation.
• Multiplayer – Race against your buddy in any mission with side-by-side split screen action.

Doesn’t it sound like a super fun?

Wakeboarding HD will be available at March 25th, 2010 in North America, and March 18th for Europe gamers. The price will be $14.99 / €14.99 so skip a lunch or two and try them out if it interests you.

There are certain concepts, or genres that just seem cool to me.
Wild West themes, assassination missions, air combats… And finally, real sport simulation games. Because it’s so hard to put real-world physics into the virtual 3D world, it’s a very challenging task to make such games, and I think of it as an art form that requires mathematical precision.

That’s why when I heard about Hustle Kings for PSN (for PS3), I was really excited because I saw the word “physics engine” while reading about it. Though I’m not an avid pool table game player, I do love the game, and I usually I to play a game or two whenever I spot one.

Look at those details my friends. It looks amazing.
We can’t wait until we get our hands on it, all over those cues and tables.

It’s available now on PSN for $9.99. You can also check out the game details page for more information. – http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/Hustle_Kings

If you’re a console gamer, you probably heard about the independently developed game called “Braid.”

It was a big hit on XBLA, and finally PS3 owners get to play this famous platformer.

• Untraditional platforming. You can never die and never lose, but challenge is always present and focused on solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to play and replay tricky jumps.
• Puzzle-rich environment. Travel through a series of worlds, searching for puzzle pieces and solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes and setting up pockets of dilated time. The game play is always fresh and new and the puzzles inspire new ways of thinking.
• Aesthetic design. A painterly art style and lush, organic soundtrack complement the unique game play.
• Nonlinear story. A nonlinear fiction links the various worlds and provides real-world metaphors for your time manipulations; act out these themes at your own pace, exploring playful “what if” universes.
• Forgiving game play. The game doesn’t force you to solve puzzles in order to proceed. If you can’t figure something out, just play onward and return to that puzzle later.

The game will be running at smooth 60FPS, and will cost you $14.99. The title will be available on November 12th for North America audience, and shortafter for Europe.

Hwaaachaaa!

That’s the best kung-fu impression I can do in writing. I wouldn’t say I’m a die-hard kung-fu flick fan, but I do enjoy them occasionally. And like others, the kung-fu genre has gotten its share of video game incarnations. Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao is one of them, albeit not the most successful one.

Invincible Tiger is an Arcade title by Namco Bandai Games America for the X360 and PS3. Like any quality kung-fu flick from the 70s, the story is fairly linear: There’s an ancient artifact known as the Star of Destiny that gives its user control over an army of immortal warriors, and the Evil Overlord has come to claim it. It is up to the former Legendary Warrior, Han Tao to recover the Star of Destiny from the Evil Overlord.

The gameplay is your basic 2D brawler. You have the punch, kick and jump buttons for your basic maneuvers. With a combination of the punch and kick buttons you can string three hit combos. Pressing the () button allows you to interact with glowing objects, which I’ll explain later.

There’s no side-scrolling in Invincible Tiger; all of the action takes place in a single area. Theses areas are fairly large with multiple tiers. For example, the first stage puts you in front of an old chinese house. You can fight on the ground, the second floor balcony, or you can take your brawl on to the roof a la Croughing Tiger. The glowing objects I mentioned earlier can be vines hanging down, or doors you can go into to access another tier. You can also pick up barrels, pots, and somtimes weapons that enemies have dropped. Once you have cleared the area of all the enemies, you move onto a boss.

As you fight off hordes of thugs, thieves and ninjas, your Yin Yang gauge fills up. The circular gauge can fill up in two different ways; the white bar fills up with offensive actions like attacking, and the black bar fills up with defensive maneuvers, like dodging, or even getting hit. This gauge does a couple of different things. You can use it to heal yourself when you’ve taken damage by meditating. Or, you can fill it up to unleash Hyperstate, where Han’s attacks do more damage with speed increase. The more balanced your gauge is, the longer your hyperstate lasts (hence the Yin Yang).  This gauge also serves yet another purpose. If you keep the gauge filled, it acts as a point multiplier. Speaking of points, you get different multipliers for meeting different requirements, such as varying you attacks, keeping your Yin Yang meter balanced, and killing as many enemies as possible without taking a hit.

This game also provides a multiplayer mode both offline and online, where you can team up with a friend (or stanger) to take on the Evil Overlord and his goons. In a co-op game, you have separate health bars, but share the same lives and the same Yin Yang gauge, calling for some stratgey and planning.

So, first the good. It’s well presented. The backgrounds look cool and are very reminiscent of a kung-fu flick, with barrels and pots that the hero can use to wreck havoc or make his escape. You seen vertical lines run across the screen at times that really recreate the feel of an old flick. A cool visual feature the title offers is the ability to set 3D settings. Through the Main and Pause menus you can choose from two different 3D settings: Anaglyph 3D that functions on all TVs and Digital 3D that requires a compatible TV and possibly an emitter. This definitely adds to the visual experience.

However, no matter how sweet a game looks, unless it has a good story or plays really well, it’s just NOT enjoyable. Obviously, the storyline is a falls a bit short in carrying the game through. So it’s gotta be in the gameplay. Unfortunately, the gameplay in Invincible Tiger doesn’t quite cut it either. But its not the concepts that I mentioned earlier that fall short; it’s the execution.

The biggest issue I had with this title is the controls. They feel really sloppy. In the initial stages, the waves of enemies are smaller, and don’t provide too much of a problem. But as you progress, enemies become tougher and more in number, and that’s when you really start to have out-of-body experiences. Here’s what I mean: Like any good ol’ hardcore beat-em ups, enemies try to trap you between them. And like any hardcore beat-em up character, Han has a combo that attacks both sides. But that attack only comes out on the third strike of a combo. As I’m pressing the right combination of buttons, Han is sometimes caught in an animation (or sometimes he’s just standing there), and the first input doesn’t register. So while I’m trying to do one combo, Han starts doing another combo, the result of which is him being beaten silly. After awhile, you just start to give up on strategically using combos, and just mashing. This can get old pretty quick. After a bout an hour or two of gameplay, the action just started getting repetitive, and frustrating.

But the boss fights are another story. You actually need to strategically dodge and attack at the right moments to inflict damage. There are a total of five bosses in the game, and each challenge you with a unique strategy that you must employ to defeat them. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get frustrating at times. But the frustration doesn’t get in the way of the fun and satisfaction you gain from defeating the boss.

Now let me set it straight that I love beat-em up games. I really do. Even though I get seriously frustrated at times, it all seems worth it at the end. But with Invincible Tiger, the satisfaction didn’t quite even out with the frustration. The game looks great and has some great sound effects. But the gameplay gets repetitive quick, and the sloppy controls result in a lot of frustration. The online co-op capabilities are pretty sweet, but again, you encounter the same issues you would in single player.

If you’re a die hard kung-fu junkie and want a video game fix, or you like that drop of frustration in your beat-em ups, this game may suit you well. This game had a lot of potential, but could not quite tap into it all in its execution.

Our Score: 6.5 /10

Great potential, not so great execution.

*Although I did write about multiplayer co-op, I was not able to play it. I didnt’ have anybody to play it with on my console, and after about 45 min in a lobby, I decided to give up. We’ll update the article as soon as I get some multiplayer actions.

It’s official now.

ZEN Pinball for PSN, made by ZEN Studios, is now making (or already in progress) a pinball table for Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. It is scheduled to be released on October 2009.

ZEN Studios hinted us that it’ll have a Sky City Tokyo themed. And they promised that just like the original Ninja Gaiden series, it’ll be fast-paced combos, ball slicing effects, lots of flashy contents with tricky platform jumps.

As we mentioned it on our review, ZEN Pinball for PSN is one of the most accurate pinball machine simulators we’ve ever seen, and most importantly, very fun to play. If you want more information, visit the official ZEN Pinball website.

One of the best pinball machine simulator so far, ZEN Pinball, will finally have its first DLC. And better yet, it’ll be a Street Fighter II Tribute table! This very first DLC for ZEN Pinball be available through PSN in August 2oth.

ZEN Pinball Street Fighter II Tribute Table features:

• Enter the World Warrior Championship fighting as Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile and battle against Sagat, Evil Ryu, Vega, and Balrog, then win the final round of the championship against M. Bison!
• Discover combo shots, animated punches, kicks and special moves as you fight against opponents using ramps and a variety of orbit shot
• Multiple in-game challenges featuring objects, art and memorable items from Street Fighter™ II
• Table soundtrack, sound effects and voices from the original Street Fighter II

If you have a PS3 but didn’t know about this game, youcan always visit www.zenpinball.com, or you can check our review for more information.

Before we talk about The Punisher: No Mercy, I want to say this first. I had high hopes for this title. Yes, the game originates from the renowned comic series, The Punisher, but that wasn’t the only reason. The game was being developed by Zen Studio. If you followed our reviews since the start of our website, you might remember Zen Studio as the developer of Zen Pinball, one of the most sophisticated pinball machine simulator so far. That’s why we were more excited than usual when we heard that Zen Studio is in charge of The Punisher: No Mercy project. Let’s take a quick look at the gameplay.

The game itself isn’t in such a bad shape, but sadly, it doesn’t take too long before the players begin to spot problems. To put it as simple as we can, it’s a “M for mature 17+” rated game that has multiplayer aspects even in single player mode. Nothing more, nothing less. No matter how many different ways we’ve tried to experience the game, it’s safe to say that this game is definitely designed for online multiplayer sessions.

The single player experience follows the story of The Punisher (of course), and the comic-style presentation looks cool. That doesn’t mean the story telling is good though; it wasn’t easy for us to understand what the game was trying to tell us. Fortunately(or unfortunately), miscommunication between the game and the player doesn’t matter much because every single level is pretty much the same. The player kill a certain number of bots within a certain amount of time. You kill, die, respawn then kill some more before you die again for another respawn. It’s basically a series of arenas with bots, like Unreal Tournament back in the day. It gets old rather quickly unless you’re a die-hard fan of the genre.

Talking about Unreal series, this game is based on the Unreal Engine 3, and it also utilizes the PhySX engine from nVidia. The graphics is sharp and very well detailed. But this isn’t going to really impress many gamers though due to the lack of good design. What’s the use of shiny, high quality textures if the enemies look like background thugs from 80′s movies? The main characters do look good, but you don’t get to even see them while you’re playing unless you fight them in the boss battles. And you hardly find any amazing in-game physics in the game. Yes, it’s a budget priced title, but I did want to see more from the UE3 and the PhySX engine. The audio is alright, and surround sound is a welcomed addition to such a genre where spotting your enemy by sound can be crucial. But for some reason the default audio settings were set to have loud sound effects and 50% BGM volume, making it hard to feel the dynamic sound until we tweaked a few audio volumes here and there. We came across a small audio bug where after the player dies in single player, the moment before you respawn, the BGM disapears and you hear nothing but silence. Weird.

The overall online gameplay experience wasn’t too bad though. You can use items you’ve unlocked in single player mode in your multiplayer sessions, and special skills called “mods” will also add another layer of strategy to the game. It might not be as deep into gameplay as some of the popular titles out today, but this kind of gameplay kind of takes me back, and reminds me of the good ol’ Unreal days.

Personally, I would actually prefer 60 frames per second with a bit lower texture quality or less polygon numbers, especially in online FPS multiplayer sesesions. Many gamers do own LCD HDTV that has about 6ms responsive time, and with 30 frames per second, it could make sensitive eyes a bit tiring. I also think that the cussing with F and S words between characters wasn’t worth the M rating from ESRB, but these are my personal preferences so it may not matter much to you.

So, will this game be for you? We can’t say for sure. I mean, I’m not a hardcore FPS gamer that beats every FPS out there, but when I play, I do stay on the top of the scoreboards in online matches. I couldn’t decide if The Punisher: No Mercy is a good buy or not for the price. This PSN title cost $10 which isn’t too expensive, but there are many good FPS games out there for PS3 already. I guess if you’re really a fan of the comic series, or if you played all the other good FPS games out there for the PS3 and are looking for more, this can be a fun title. But if you’re used to high quality FPS, this can be a turn off for your fragging needs.

Our Score: 7.5 /10

This old-fashioned FPS might bring some satisfactions to the hardcore FPS gamers, but that’s where it stops.