• "Tom Sawyer (Original Version)"
• "Red Barchetta"
• "YYZ"
• "Limelight (Original Version)"
• "The Camera Eye"
• "Witch Hunt"
• "Vital Signs"

Sonic returns to the Nintendo DS in an all-new frantic adventure complete with dizzying dives, near vertical curves and brain twisting loops. Sonic Rush Adventure will retain the DS action that fans loved so much from Sonic Rush, as well as providing a new high seas adventure where Sonic clashes with ruthless pirates. Players will set off from Windmill Village as Sonic and blast their way through seven action-packed and widely diverse levels. Sonic Rush Adventure will make full use of the DS Download Play feature and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which enables gamers to compete with friends in wireless racing and mission-based battles.

Guide Sonic through numerous action stages in the fast and furious single player mode, whilst collecting valuable items and materials that enable Sonic and Tails to track down the villainous pirates. With a fleet of up to five ships, including a submarine, water bike and hovercraft, Sonic Rush Adventure uses the Touch Screen technology in exciting new ways. Use the Nintendo DS Stylus to help control vessels as they race across the ocean gathering rings, performing tricks, and torching pirate boats, whilst engaging in fierce ship-to-ship battles. At the end of each level, epic 3D boss battles spanning both screens will test gamers skills to result in an ultimate showdown with the evil boss character, Captain Whisker.

Sonic Rush Adventure allows players to bounce, fly, swing, ride and run through grand environments of lush forests, an ominous ghost ship, snow covered mountains, pirate villages and a vast underwater sea cave. Along the way there will be a variety of enemy characters to battle against including robots, skeleton warriors, pterodactyls, and a robotic triceratops.

The R.O.S.E. Online official site has announced that the game is now available for public download and that the game’s official servers are live.  New users will be given a 7 day free trial upon registering and downloading the game.  Players who were in the beta are also able to transfer their accounts over to the official game.  Happy hunting! ]]> Sat, 03 Dec 2005 03:21:00 -0600 Brian Mohr http://www.gamebump.com/go/sonic_rushes_to_stores http://www.gamebump.com/go/sonic_rushes_to_stores http://www.gamebump.com/go/sonic_rushes_to_stores# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

SEGA has announced that Sonic Rush has released for the Nintendo DS.

In this version, Sonic is working with a new character Blaze the Cat as you must search for Sol Emeralds so they don't fall in the wrong hands. Scott A. Steinberg, Vice President of Marketing at SEGA said, "Sonic Rush combines the gameplay finesse and level design of the class 2D Sonic titles with fully 3D character models, bosses and effects."

The game also features a 2-player battle mode and more. Sonic Rush will retail for $34.95.]]> Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:19:00 -0600 Aaron Dunlap http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_la_rush_xbox http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_la_rush_xbox http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_la_rush_xbox# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

A rock-solid game design paradigm these days is as follows: take the popular elements of two-to-three best-selling games and squeeze them into one game in half the time at a quarter of the cost. Today's subject is L.A. Rush from Midway, and its victims are the Midnight Club, Grand Theft Auto, and Burnout franchises, as well as (I suppose) True Crime: Streets of LA. There were no survivors.

L.A. Rush tells the archetypal tale of the underground street racing champ who has all of his cars stolen by a zoot-suit wearing opponent. As is the logical thing to do after having all of your cars stolen, our young hero by the name of Trikz decides to re-enter the underground racing circuit with nothing but his beat up old jalopy and steal back his cars. Obviously, when your cars are stolen away you wouldn't want to involve the police, because... down with the man?

Anyway, LA Rush is a pretty straightforward street racing game that takes place in a free-roaming and full-fledged Los Angeles, California. The meat of the game takes place in straightforward races in an underground circuit where you'll try to rank up to compete with the pro's for big bucks, but there are a few more modes to keep things semi-interesting. As you progress, your friends will clue you in on the locations of some of your stolen cars that you'll need to go steal back. The second you get in the new car, however, some thugs (about 500) of the bad guy will come careening at you in blue SUVs. For some reason or another, they'll try like the dickens to destroy your car before you can get it home.

Overall, the graphics of the game are pretty good. All of LA is under your reign, and it looks better than any other full-city games we've seen in history.

The soundtrack is sort of interesting in that you can choose your flavor. From the menu, you can choose between rock, hip hop, and techno music to serenade your driving adventure. Much of the voiceacting (the acting done by voiceactors and not ridiculous celebrity cameos and the ridiculous announcer) is pretty good, save the choppy dialog peppered with more "yo" than a Duncan factory (get it?)

"It's like GTA where you stay in your car," "it's like Burnout with a story mode!" Lies, all of them. L.A. Rush wants to be a lot, tries to be too much, and ends up as too little. Every game it attempts to emulate only ends up as an annoying element of a broken racing game. The "realistic" Los Angeles is too plain; the only difference between any two given areas in the city is the buildings you're driving by or crashing into. They try to trick you into thinking the city is interactive because there are three or four windows and walls that you can crash through, but then the other 9,000 windows and walls are made of magical car-kryptonite that follow your "watch me plow through this two-foot tall cement wall to pull in first place" with "wow, look how pretty my car looks as it flies through the air and crumbles into pieces."

And there's problem number two: the crashes. Trying shamelessly to emulate Burnout's beautiful car wrecks, L.A. Rush slows down time and over-blooms the background so you can watch your car falling apart when you're in a car wreck. The first time you see this, you might be impressed. The second, third, fourth, and nineteen millionth time you see it you'll just throw your controller at a wall and wonder when you'll actually be able to control the game again. Simply put, there is way too much traffic, and the lovely crash sequence is initiated every time you hit one of the many, many cars littering the streets. There's no way to skip the crash sequence, and even holding a trigger button which "fast forwards" only puts you at about 1/4 the speed of time, so for about eight seconds you're ripped from the game and given no control whatsoever over the race. Even after this sequence, it takes too long for you to get back into the race because they place you in weird positions and at a dead halt. The crashes in the Burnout series are so much fun because you can still control your car during them so you can have an impact on gameplay (you aren't totally removed from the game like in L.A. Rush) and because after the pretty crash sequence you're thrown right back into the race going at full speed. Those two elements are what keep the crashes in the Burnout games from being tedious, and they're the two elements Midway left out. Slow motion and over-bloomed backgrounds do not a Burnout game make.

As for the GTA-like storyline, forget it. The storyline here is tragically inane and painfully stereotypical. It's not enough that all the white guys have to act like black guys, but all the black guys have to act like white guys acting like black guys. A game written and directed by basement-dwelling game programmers that tries to appeal to the urban whiteboy poser market is never a good idea.

For all the advertisements in this game, it feels like they should be paying me to play it. Every billboard in the virtual LA is for Axe Body Spray (gamers are smelly) or Rides Magazine (gamers like to read cars being referred to as "whips"). And the name "West Coast Customs" is dropped more often in a given 30 minutes than in a whole season of MTV's "Pimp My Ride"; the tips displayed on the loading screens -- which in most games would be something to the tune of "Hold X to perform a drift while turning" -- is quite often "Stop by West Coast Customs to get your ride tuned up for a low price" or "Head to West Coast Customs to upgrade your wheels" or "West Coast Customs is the ONLY car modification service on planet Earth, go there NOW." Even the mechanics from WCC, the ones who on "Pimp My Ride" always sound like they're reading lines -- because they are -- show up in the game (voiced and rendered) to further pursue the illusion that they're celebrities.

Things like this could always be overlooked, of course, if the game was fun. It isn't, so it won't be. The racing itself is painfully dull. Computer-controlled racing opponents are all on rubber bands and show no AI whatsoever. It seems like they're programmed to take it easy on you, since they always seem willing to let you pass them but once you're in first place they turn into four-wheeled torpedoes. One could take advantage of that gameplay "element" and hang back in third or fourth place for all of the race and pull into first at the finish like, and in my case, one did. You can beat the whole game like this in three or four hours, especially if you don't mind that you can ride the whole game through in second or third place without any harsh recourse.

The developers of this game must be trying to harbor some distain for "the man" among young gamers, since for some reason there are always dozens of cops within honking range of your car at all times. Your little GTA-ripoff corner map shows the position of police cars on the map as blue dots, and most times the map is swarming with them. There's even a GTA-ripoff "wanted" indicator made up of four stars at the top of your screen (right above the GTA-ripoff money indicator) that light up as cops take more of a liking to you. This system is completely broken, because all the cops will do is chase you until you stop -- at which point they'll fine you around $100 and leave you alone. You're released right where you were, even if you were chugging at five stars.

It doesn't even make sense why the police will start chasing you. It isn't like you can steal cars (can't get out of your car) or run over old ladies (pedestrians are just background art), so one cop will start chasing you if you drive by him too quickly and, since it's impossible to lose the swarm of police that attach themselves to you within seconds, you either need to run away until you make a mistake and get pinned down, or until you realize that it saves a lot of time to just stop and pay the fine. This only really matters, though, when you're in free-roaming mode, and the only thing you do in free-roaming mode is go from race to race or mission to mission. The realistic LA becomes simply an overcomplicated menu screen to get to where you need to go; there's no point to roaming through the city, there's no tokens to collect, nicer cars to steal, convenience stores to rob, or prostitutes to employ.

There was a time when these mediocre knockoff games were standard fare, released by no-name companies that had the decency of putting how awful they were right on the cover. Now, even the largest of companies will stake their reputation and half of their back account on a game that puts how much it wants to be another famous game right on the cover. Trying to cash in on the respect of the [City] Rush franchise, Midway has constructed here a champion of mediocrity and poor taste. From the unbelievably dense traffic with the inescapable crash sequences, to the poser-fest plot and the explosion of brand placement, this game is a definite multiple-offender. Don't buy this game looking for a GTA experience oreven a good racing game; buy it because you love white guys with cornrows who are named Trikz.

Rubber-band racing is one thing, but when every "feature" is annoying -- bad news.

The cutscenes and city model are pretty good-looking, everything else is pretty bland.

While the music is all pretty vanilla, at least you can choose your flavor of vanilla.

like to rip your controller in half from frustration, fun ahoy!

No online races and no reason to play this game more than once, if at all.

]]> Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:35:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_rose_online_rush_on_seven_episodes_pc http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_rose_online_rush_on_seven_episodes_pc http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_rose_online_rush_on_seven_episodes_pc# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Matthew Call.

R.O.S.E. Online, which stands for Rush On Seven Episodes, is a new MMORPG which will soon hit the market in North America. Currently the game is in an open beta phase, which means that anyone who wants to can register for and download the game for free. The game is being developed by Korean developer Gravity, the maker of Ragnarok Online. It's important to note that this review covers the European version of the game, and was conducted on ROSE's European server.

The storyline of ROSE centers on a war between two gods. Arua, the goddess of Good, created seven worlds which were good, happy places until Hebarn, god of Evil, took control of the seventh world and caused everything to go amok. Players are thrust into the middle of this conflict and must restore order to the seven worlds.

The star feature of ROSE is the graphics engine. The visuals have an anime look to them, which is distinctly unique to the genre. Cartoony visuals are nothing new to MMORPGs, but anime style cartoon graphics are unique. The graphics are certainly the game’s most appealing feature, as they greatly enhance the atmosphere of the game and help to slightly make up for its shortcomings in other areas.

Since the game features seven worlds, players are also able to travel between the worlds; each is quite large and features a unique set of environments and enemies. This enables players to have a large amount of freedom and leaves much to be explored within the game. If players tire of an area it is relatively simple to travel to a new world and get a fresh start.

The party system in ROSE is also slightly different than in other MMORPGs. In ROSE the number of players allowed in the party is determined by the level of the players in the party. The higher the level, the more players are allowed in the party. This encourages small groups in the beginning but opens up the possibility of huge groups later in the game. The guild system enables large numbers of players to group together and even attempt to take over entire worlds. When a guild owns a world, it gets a cut of all financial transactions that take place on that world, creating a massive cash flow for the guild. While this is innovative, the developers will need to ensure this feature doesn’t lead to price gouging in the game.

Last but not least of the good features is the style. While I’ve already mentioned the unique graphics in the game, they’re only part of the overall experience. The characters in are, for lack of a better word, cute. Also the game doesn’t limit itself to medieval-type weapons and equipment. In addition to the typical staff or sword, players can also use guns and other hi tech equipment like dune buggies. Controlling a sword-wielding, buggy-riding cute anime character as he (or she) drives around the world is an entertaining experience.

While ROSE’s look is unique, that is unfortunately about all that sets it apart from other MMORPGs on the market today. ROSE’s greatest weak spot is the lack of a well developed storyline. There is little in the game that gives the player a reason to feel motivated to play it. Quests are few and far between and are usually of the “kill-seven-enemies-of-this-type” variety. There often is not a reason to kill the monsters, other than the fact that the game said the player should. This means that instead of feeling like part of a greater story, players often resort to power-leveling and exploration for their gaming.

The game’s combat system also needs some work. Combat is simply point and click, then sit back and watch. Until the player reaches level 10 he only has one attack to choose from and watching the same combat animation over and over again for ten levels gets tiring. The enemies also leave a little to be desired. Some of the first enemies the player encounters are giant jellybeans. It’s one thing to be wasted by a cute little bunny rabbit or something, but a jellybean? That’s just embarrassing.

The sound in the game is neither good nor bad. There is little to set it apart from other MMORPGs and the music repeats often enough that it becomes annoying after a while. The combat sounds are decent, but could use more variety and power behind them.

Last of all, the character creation feels a little flat. There are only four character classes to choose from: soldier, muse (magic user), hawk (ranger), and a dealer. Each class has a few different looks to choose from, but the only real customization options the player gets to use control the character’s hair, gender and face. This leads to several players using the same or very similar models in the game.

ROSE is a decent MMORPG, especially since it is in beta and currently available free of charge. The anime look makes the game worth checking out for fans of anime RPGs and sets it apart in what is now a crowded genre. Unfortunately the game is not groundbreaking, and players can easily feel disconnected as there is not much of an overall storyline. The game is still in beta, so there is a chance that the developers will fix many of its flaws before its official launch in North America. If you like anime ROSE may be worth checking out, however there are plenty of other MMORPGs out there that offer a more engaging and entertaining experience. If you'd like to try the game out for yourself, feel free to give it at go by clicking here.
 

Not very original and the game needs some kind of engaging storyline.

Not state of the art, but the anime style is impressive.

Decent, but nothing that really stands out. Music repeats too often.

It is an MMORPG, so much of the fun comes in grouping with other players.

There is always more to see or do, and players will make friends with other players online.

]]> Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:07:00 -0600 Brian Mohr http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_system_rush_ngage1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_system_rush_ngage1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_system_rush_ngage1# This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

System Rush for the Nokia N-Gage is a futuristic racer in the same vein of Tron. The game puts you in the role of a good computer hacker who must defeat enemy hackers to get the code. System Rush features 15 levels for battling.

The game graphically is very reminiscient of Tron; it even has the outlined blue lighting that is seen in the movie and games. This particularly is interesting and makes it stand out on the small N-Gage screen. Graphically, nothing is too outstanding as you're driving by very plain and not visually-stimulating boxes.

The controls are pretty simple. More important than that, though, is the gameplay which will feature two-player bluetooth play, shadow racing against other players, downloads, and even the ability to do jumps off the side walls.

Overall, System Rush is shaping up to be a very interesting release this fall for the N-Gage. The game instantly reminds you of Tron and that sort of works for it, but then with the addition of shadow races and 2-player, System Rush is definitely a game to look out for.]]> Sat, 21 May 2005 22:44:00 -0500