After the long wait since first seeing glimpses at San Diego Comic-Con last Summer, Injustice: Gods Among Us arrived last week. After all the hype behind it with its roster of heroes and villains facing off against each other in a Mortal Kombat style fighting engine, “What could go wrong?” we pondered. Famous last words right? Well, luckily the team behind Injustice: Gods Among Us at NetherRealm Studios pulled through and gave the best DC fighting experience to date that could possibly rival that of the Marvel vs. Capcom series.

The Long

On the surface, there is a huge appeal to seeing who could win in a fight between Batman and Superman. Comic fans won’t deny that but to create a successful fighter, NetherRealm couldn’t play by traditional comic book rules. While Superman and Batman may be on a level playing field in a comic setting where brain matters as much as brawn, no one is ever going to believe that the Green Arrow can beat up Superman or Doomsday… like ever (sorry Arrow fans). So while the appeal of the game is the premise, it is the nuts and bolts under the hood of Injustice: Gods Among Us that make it a solid fighter.

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So I did it. I finally gave in. After months of avoiding Facebook invites from friends, family and total strangers, it was only after the recommendation of our own Matt Raub when he talked about how addictive it was that I decided to give Candy Crush Saga a chance. And now I see what the hype is about.

On the surface, one could attempt to say that Candy Crush Saga is a ripoff of the classic “Match 3″ formula that made titles like Bejeweled so successful. But it takes bits and pieces from various other “Match 3″ games into an incredibly simple but addictive formula. Early levels involve hitting a certain amount of points within a specific number of moves.

Quickly the gears get clogged up when levels change shape and it isn’t just the perfect square that they are used to. And then comes the jelly which players must not only hit a minimum score on but also make matches over specific squares to clear them. And once you think you’ve mastered that, then you have “ingredients” which are pieces that you must work down to the bottom of the screen by eliminating the blocks below them.

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Welcome to the Monday Freeview, the newest weekly feature here at The Flickcast that gives you the heads up on entertainment that comes at everyone’s favorite price: $Free.99. Every Monday we’re going to take a look at the latest and greatest in free entertainment whether it is free games, trial periods, apps or just about anything else geek that isn’t going to cost you an arm and a leg… Well actually it won’t cost you anything because, as we said, it’s free.

This week we’re going to take a peek at Bombermine. No, don’t worry, it isn’t a Minecraft ripoff unlike 95% of XBox Indie Marketplace. It is actually a reimagining of the Bomberman series but in glorious MMO fashion. When you hop into Bombermine, you find yourself in a seemingly unending map with just a single bomb as you try to take out as many competitors as you can in each game’s 20 minute time period. Like classic Bomberman, players collect increased bomb capacity, bomb intensity and speed along with various other power-ups and power-downs.

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Epic franchises have been doing crossovers for years. It was only a matter of time before the team behind The Lord of the Rings movie franchise took notice of the success of other film blockbusters like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones and how well they all did when they met the LEGO world. Not only did the toys sell, but their video games were all certified hits. LEGO The Lord of the Rings promised to again do something never before done in a LEGO crossover.

The Long

Unlike LEGO Batman and its sequel which were original stories, LEGO The Lord of the Rings took the path of Star Wars and put the entire film trilogy and its most epic encounters into LEGO form. Unlike Star Wars though, LEGO The Lord of the Rings included actual voiceover taken directly from the film. That means the most iconic scenes, though given LEGO twists and humor in many cases, have the authentic audio from the movies. Hearing LEGO Gandalf utter, “You shall not pass” to the Balrog is unexpectedly still incredibly powerful even though, for all intensive purposes, it’s a toy saying it.

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The Call of Duty series is the gaming industry’s equivelent of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster film. While the story might be slightly convoluted, millions of people flock to it and spend their hard earned money on a explosion filled, high octane, testosterone laced good time. In addition to the campaign, Call of Duty: Black Ops II includes both the standard mutliplayer and the Zombie mode from Treyarch which has given the studio something for people to remember them by.

It’s no surprise that Black Ops II had huge midnight launches at over a thousand locations across the country but lines of people don’t necessarily ensure a game will live up to the hype. But, Treyarch continues to prove why they are trusted with such a franchise.

The Long

First and foremost, regardless of anything else in the game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II captures shooter gameplay and control on a console at its finest. Everything from movement to aiming and shooting to damage detection all feel perfect in Black Ops II. The default control scheme is perfect for the genre and everything really just fits perfectly into place (at least on the XBox 360 controller) for the FPS experience. If you stripped down the graphics and setting, the engine behind Call of Duty: Black Ops II would still be an ideal shooter.

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It’s been five years since Master Chief finished the fight and saved the earth in the events of Halo 3. Since, there have been an expansion turned spin-off, RTS, prequel and an HD remake of the original, but no proper sequel. As hyped as Black Ops II may be, no game’s fanbase may be clamoring more for a sequel than those of the XBox 360 exclusive Halo 4.

This is the first new proper Halo title made by 343 Industries and the start of a new trilogy for Master Chief called the Reclaimer trilogy. With the lofty task put on this new studio, the results so far have been amazing.

The Long

The biggest fear of Halo 4 was if the game was actually going to still feel like Halo. After all, it has been five years and a new studio working on the game. At the same time, the first person shooter genre has evolved by leaps and bounds since Halo broke open the floodgates of FPS shooting to consoles. Luckily, 343 Industries was able to take both into effect and comes up with a compromise that feels modern while not just trying to be another Call of Duty clone.

Halo 4 retains most of Halo’s signature control elements. Zooming in with a weapon comes from pressing down on the right stick. Melee comes from the right bumper. And the grenade toss happens from the left trigger. If you haven’t played a Halo since Reach, it will only take a few minutes to reacclimate yourself with the controls. There is a reason they have worked so well for the series in the past and continue to hold true to this version of the game as well.

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After three straight games following Ezio through the Renaissance, the Assassin’s Creed series moves on to a new and still somewhat unexpected timeframe of the American Revolution. Since the initial announcement of Assassin’s Creed III, the hype machine has turned out video preview after video preview to help bring back loyal assassins as well as recruit new ones to the franchise’s ranks. The result is one of the most anticipated titles of 2012 (coming out right before Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II) which will most likely outsell its previous versions. But as we have seen in the past, just because a game has a triple A development budget and tons of marketing behind it, that doesn’t necessarily ensure it is going to live up to its potential.

The Long…

When I first stepped into Assassin’s Creed III, the first thing I noticed was how alive the world in front of me was. Being in a theater with hundreds of other guests made it feel like a real event going on around my character. It didn’t feel like just some instance created with a few background characters to fill up the space nor did it feel like the background of a sports game with a generic crowd with repetitive motions wallpapered in either. Instead it felt like my character was a part of a real and tactile world.

This feeling continues to hold true in many other areas of the game, especially the cities of Boston and New York. Constantly, you are surrounded by people all doing very different things. Some might be selling wares, others begging for coins and others just going about their daily business. What helps make this different though is the variety of animations and poses characters on screen go through as they go about their daily life. With a few exceptions (like the subway arrival in one of the game’s later present day scenes), you don’t often see two people on screen doing the same thing at the same time.

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If you have a young male gamer in your family anywhere between the ages of 6 to 36, you have most likely heard of Skylanders. What seems like a simple adventure game takes on the addictive nature of Pokemon style in-game collection alongside real life figurines (a staple of any geek lifestyle). Skylanders Giants comes as the second iteration of what will likely become a yearly franchise for at least the foreseeable future from Activision and developer Toys for Bob that adds some new gameplay dynamics and, more importantly, a slew of new figures for gamers to collect.

The Long

Skylanders Giants kicks things off following the events of the original Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. There is a little bit of meta going on with the story as the antagonist Kaos finds himself in our real world and sees the Skylanders trapped in toy form. After transporting himself back to Skylands, Kaos finds out about a mystical artifact that will allow him to control a robotic army and take over Skylands.

Meanwhile, the player finds out that the ancient Giants, who were the first Skylanders, have been found and they can be awakened to stop Kaos and the robotic army. Yes, it does sound like a Saturday morning cartoon but that is a part of the charm of Skylanders Giants.

Just as the story has a whimsical youthful feel to it, so does the character design. All of the Skylanders from the original game return along with eight new Skylanders and eight Giants. The designs stay in line with the different elements of the game like Life (trees), Death (skeletons), Tech (mechanical) and others while keeping the designs of the new characters original as well. The Giants are unique both in their size on-screen and in their design as well. They have a larger than life feel with the way they interact with other characters and objects on-screen.

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If you have a Kinect, chances are that it isn’t the most used accessory of your XBox 360. Though tons have been sold, there hasn’t been great support of good games for it. In fact, many have been downright disappointing like Star Wars Kinect. The shining light for Kinect has been the Dance Central series.

With the first two titles, Dance Central has proven to be one of the best applications of the Kinect technology in terms of accurate recording of the player’s movements and giving a fun experience that actually utilizes the Kinect technology in a fun way. Now, for the third year in a row, the team at Harmonix brings back its dance craze inspired game with incredible results in the form of Dance Central 3.

The Long

If you’ve never played a Dance Central title before, the premise of the game is very simple. Players stand in front of the Kinect controller and mirror the movements they see of the characters on screen. The angle of their arms, legs and body are all monitored by the Kinect as a player follows the motions on screen. The accuracy of the player’s movements determines how well they score on each dance move. Higher scores mean more stars, which have been trend in Harmonix’s music games for some time now.

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The music game genre has been around now for a long time and has gone through many iterations. There have been controller based games, dance pad games, and even plastic instrument games. Now, Harmonix, the team responsible for the plastic instrument subsection of the genre goes back to its roots with Rock Band Blitz. Rock Band Blitz is a controller based rhythm game that isn’t just a rehash of Harmonix’s classic Frequency though. It is a compilation of all that the company has learned from and grown with since they embarked in to the world of gaming and music in 1995.

The Long . . .

The first thing you are going to notice is that Rock Band Blitz isn’t your standard rhythm game where the goal is to hit 100% of the notes on screen. In fact, it is impossible to do so. The reason is because Rock Band Blitz is designed to let players choose their path for which notes they want to play. Instead of a note highway assigned to each different player’s instrument, Rock Band Blitz is a one player game with four or five lanes all running next to each other. The player must make choices on which path to take to hit the most possible notes to get the highest score.

The note highway consists of four or five lanes, depending on the song. Each lane only has two notes that can flow down it at once though, a right or left note. It seems simple enough… until you see the four other lanes of notes passing by. This is where the strategy kicks in quick and gives Rock Band Blitz its legs.

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Two years ago, gamers were greeted with the first true Transformers game. It wasn’t tied into a movie or one of the relaunched tv series. Transformers: War for Cybertron brought players into a third person shooter that is treated as actual G1 Transformers cartoon continuity. Transformers: War for Cybertron captured what nostalgic fans of the series loved about the original 1980′s toy line and show by giving a backstory to the tale that people had already become familiar with. Now, after being interrupted by a Michael Bay movie tie-in, the team over at High Moon Studios is able to continue their piece of the Transformers saga with Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Gameplay

As mentioned, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is a third person shooter. Maybe it is the Activision pedigree or the experience that High Moon Studios has had with the franchise but the shooting is much tighter than it felt in the previous Transformers: War for Cybertron, which was already fairly good. There are subtle assists when taking aim but the control scheme, damage system and hit boxes around enemies all feel reasonable.

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Chances are even if you are a hardcore gamer, you probably haven’t heard about 10000000. And its understandable. With hundreds of apps getting put on the App Store daily, it’s easy to miss a game that isn’t an Angry Birds clone. But of any game recently released that should have mass appeal to gamers, 10000000 is it.

10000000 is the epitome of taking current trends, combining them and doing it right. First, the basic gameplay revolves around gem matching. Players drag rows and columns right and left or up and down to match either swords, magic staves, keys, chests, shields, wood and stone to accomplish various tasks. Swords and staves attack. Keys unlock doors and chests. Shields provide armor. Wood and stone provide resources for later. Chests grant gold and items.

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Younger players may not understand why there is so much love for the Tony Hawk series. Their most recent memories involve a “skateboard” that was “filled with technology” that didn’t actually work right with Tony Hawk: Shred. But at the turn of the millennium, Tony Hawk Pro Skater was one of the hottest games on any platform.

It was the height of the extreme sports phenomenon and Tony Hawk Pro Skater and its early sequels helped make Tony Hawk a household name, something completely unheard of for an athlete who wasn’t playing one of the big four sports. Now, almost thirteen years later, the team at Robomodo wants to give players the chance again to relive their favorite moments from Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for the first time in Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD.

Gameplay

The first thing old school players of Tony Hawk Pro Skater will notice is that the HD remix holds up and ages well. It is still just as fun as it was years ago to hop on a rail, do a kickflip into a manual and then grab some big air with a 720 Superman off a vert ramp. What they will also notice though is the XBox 360 controller’s sensitivity makes it a little difficult at first to get used to the game’s multiple instances where they must balance. Whether it’s a grind, manual or lip trick, the analogs on the 360 are almost too responsive and once a player gets a little bit off the rails, they are going to need to bail or take a nasty fall.

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After Batman: Arkham City last year (which was up for Game of the Year here on the Flickcast) set the bar so high for super hero video games, it took a special kind of hero to get us pumped for the next big thing in super hero gaming. And while the movie-tie in (another stigma this game was forced to overcome) doesn’t set new bars for comic book games, it does bring back some of the best things in Spider-Man gaming of the past ten years to give players the Spider-Man experience they have grown to love and crave.

Gameplay

How many times can you swing through a digital New York as everyone’s favorite webslinger before it starts to get old? Last time we checked The Amazing Spider-Man was the fifth time a full virtual Manhattan was available to players to traverse over the course of a Spider-Man game and yet somehow Beenox has managed to find a way to not only keep it engaging but also has added elements to make it even more exciting. In The Amazing Spider-Man, there is an element of speed in the way that Spider-Man travels from one location to the other both in the visual design choices and in the addition of the “Web Rush” feature.

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The name itself is somewhat deceptive. LEGO Batman combined with the DC Super Heroes. Is it another entrant into the LEGO Batman franchise or the start of a new series focusing on more of the greater DC universe? And with trailers featuring members of the Justice League, why didn’t they go with LEGO Justice League or at least LEGO Batman 2: Justice League? LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes gives a lot of what is expected as well as some interesting gameplay and story design choices as well.

Gameplay:

At its core, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is a puzzle solving game with light combat elements. Players must figure out how to traverse from point A to point B in a room using the special techniques and powers of the game’s heroes. Both Batman and Robin have multiple suits, each with different power sets, to aid in this and are aided by Superman’s unique abilities later on. Superman can’t walk through electric fields, but Batman has a suit that can. Robin can’t melt gold beams but Superman can shoot his heat vision to accomplish the task. And for some reason, Robin has both a hazard suit to clean up toxic waste and a snow suit which lets him freeze stuff.

Interspersed between puzzles is light combat. Enemies can often be taken out in a single hit and multiple targets can go down quickly with a quick shot from the batarang. Combat is also one of the fundamentals that hurts the gameplay. During the levels where players can be both Superman and Batman or in a later level where players can be Wonder Woman, both characters are essentially invincible. There is no threat as they have steel health hearts and cannot take damage. And because both can fly as well, there is no fear of them falling during platforming sections. The second players realize this, the excitement of the combat sections is lost.

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