Games that you must play!

Perfect Dark Zero marks the return of bounty hunter Joanna Dark. This time around, she's travelling the globe avenging the death of her father. Now I agree, the story's not all that hot but the game has an excellent original soundtrack - in fact, one of the best I've heard. The gameplay is pretty smooth and the slick packaging will put you in awe of this game, and for a change, you don't have to roam around aimlessly because the game actually tells where to go.

But what I really like about Perfect Dark Zero is the gun-play. Now the thing, I found weird about the game is that the enemy keeps on talking to you while fighting you, but I can live with it but what I can't live with is the amount of locks you have to open - they are like this mini-game, you don't want to play. I would say, if you had to pay Rs 3,000 and buy this game please give it a miss, but if it comes for free, more the merrier on the ratings front!
 
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10

Dead or Alive 4
Believe it or not, this is the same DOA by Tecmo you first played on the Sega Dream cast, and then on the PS2 and the Xbox. But now Tecmo's out with an exclusive title for the Xbox 360 and it sure as hell looks good.

In terms of gameplay, the game hasn't gone through too many changes but the online mode works like a charm. You can take on any gamer sitting in Uzbekistan in a matter of 10 seconds. But what made DOA such a cult is its attention to detail for every character and the locations you fight in. And yes, in this edition, both of them are completely out of this world! There is a good mix of old and new characters, and the way they move and handle is something only you can experience yourself. But the locations take the cake for me, in one word the are just amazing.

But this game too comes with its own set of problems. The story mode is too short and the cut scenes make no sense whatsoever. But as a consolation, once you complete the game, the videos that you unlock are quite stunning. But this game is to hard for a new bee to pick up and is not like Mortal Kombat and Tekken, where you could get away with button mashing. But all said and done, this is a game you have to buy and luckily Microsoft is giving this game free with Xbox 360 in India. On the ratings front

Game play: 8/10
Sound 7/10
Graphics 9/10

Here are some of the top- five rated games:

At no 5 is Dead Rising
You're trapped in a mall full of zombies and you have two choices; you could break down and cry like a little girl or you could lay the smackdown on the living dead, using nearly everything the mall has to offer. Even though, the demo's pretty short, it offers a good amount of replayability and dark humour - I mean which game allows you to bludgeon zombies with soft toys.

At no 4 is Lost Planet
Lost Planet is a third person action adventure in which you'll have to survive a hostile frozen planet and face off against Snow Pirates and a whole bunch of weird aliens called the Akrid, who bear a strong resemblance to the bugs from Starship Troopers, which we all know, can never be a bad thing. Even though the demo isn't huge (around 350 MB), it offers a generous amount of gameplay in the form of two distinct missions and if you think that isn't reason enough; take one look at the visuals and you will understand the meaning of next generation.

At no 3 is Burnout Revenge
I admit, I'm a big Burnout fan, and that's the only reason this game made it to this list, even though the demo's nothing to shout about. The demo is actually pretty disappointing, as it consists of only one road-rage event - no crashes, no races, no eliminator, nothing. But in the end, it is Burnout and if like me you'll lap up anything and everything Burnout, go ahead and try the fastest racer on the planet out in high definition.

At no 2 is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW)
Having played the PC version, I wasn't too keen on the 360 version, but I did download it nevertheless, and surprisingly was pretty impressed with it. Not only does it look really good, but it plays much better (the third person camera angle worked for me) and is loads of fun as compared to its PC counterpart. If you get bored of the offline demo (which by the way contains one story based mission), you could download the online demo and fght it out with players via Xbox Live.

At no 1 is Fight Night Round 3
I know it's another rehash, but you have to see this bad boy in action to believe it. Every hair, every muscle, every pore on your boxer's body stands out in high definition with every jaw breaking punch creating ripples on your opponent's cheek in slow motion. If like me, you haven't played the PS2 or the Xbox version, I strongly recommend giving this demo a shot.

Radhika Sharma & Sagar Gokhale