There are four games coming out this week for DSiWare.

Title: Flips: The Bubonic Builders
ESRB: E for Everyone
Genre: Other
Number of Players: 1
Cost: 500 DSi Points ($5)
Wi-fi Support: No
DS Download/Wireless Play: No
Camera Support: No
Mic Support: No
Developer/Publisher: EA

Title: 4 Travellers: Play Spanish
ESRB: E for Everyone
Genre: Education, Multiplayer
Number of Players: 1-4
Cost: 800 DSi Points ($8)
Wi-fi Support: No
DS Download/Wireless Play: Yes (wireless mp)
Camera Support: No
Mic Support: No
Developer/Publisher: AGENIUS

Title: Dracula: Undead Awakening
ESRB: T for Teen
Genre: Shooter
Number of Players: 1
Cost: 500 DSi Points ($5)
Wi-fi Support: No
DS Download/Wireless Play: No
Camera Support: No
Mic Support: No
Developer/Publisher: Chillingo

Title: Elemental Masters
ESRB: T for Teen
Genre: Fantasy Card Game
Number of Players: 1-2
Cost: 800 DSi Points ($8)
Wi-fi Support: No
DS Download/Wireless Play: Yes (wireless mp)
Camera Support: no
Mic Support: No
Developer/Publisher: Ibxgames

Go ahead and check these games out in the DSi Shop Channel now, have fun!

Two Wiiware titles, and one virtual console title will coming at you this week. Here is the info for each of them.

Wiiware

Title: Dracula: Undead Awakening
ESRB Rating: Rated T for Teen
Genre: Shooter
Number of players: 1
Online Connectivity: Yes (Leaderboards)
Cost: 1,000 Wii points ($10)
Created by: Chillingo

Title: Max & the Magic Marker
ESRB Rating: Rated E for Everyone
Genre: Platformer, Puzzle
Number of players: 1
Online Connectivity: No
Cost: 1,000 Wii points ($10)
Created by: Press Play

Virtual Console

Title: Final Fantasy II
ESRB Rating: Rated E for Everyone
Genre: RPG
Number of players: 1
Cost: 800 Wii points ($8)
Console: Super NES
Release Date: 10/19/1991
Developed/Published by: Square Enix

Be sure to drop by the Wii Shop Channel and check these games out.

Also if you didn’t know the Resident Evil 5 “Gold Edition” is being released this coming Tuesday, March 9th, 2010. On the PlayStation Blu-Ray both DLC episodes will be included. The Xbox 360 edition will contain Voucher Codes for the DLC. Now on to the review.

Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares Review
By Hernán E Colón

This DLC takes place in Ozwell E. Spencer estate, one of the key founder’s of Umbrella. Resident Evil fans will notice how familiar the place looks. Doors will open slowly in first person view and you can examine the main door three times to enable the classic camera mode; and there are more references to the classic Resident Evil throughout.

The atmosphere is just as creepy and tense as classic Resident Evil games. The only new bits of story are found in diaries and most of the cut scenes are the complete flashbacks you see in the main game. The new enemy is called Guardian of Insanity and is very powerful!, but walks slow because of a huge anchor that it carries. Throughout this chapter you will find different types of weapons depending on the difficulty you play and the Guardians will show up in different places randomly which adds a bit of replay value. There are a total of 18 hidden stars to find but only help on your final score for the leaderboards.

It took me 1:37 to finish it on my first try. One thing to note is that there is no saving system and that means you will need to finish this DLC in one sitting. A total of 5 new achievements/trophies to collect. You also get to play as Barry Burton and Excella Gionne on the Mercenaries mini-game.

If you’re looking for more Resident Evil 5 or want an excuse to come back, this DLC is a good chance to do so. For 400 Microsoft Point or $5 on the PSN I’d say this DLC is worth a try.

Well there you have it. DLC that is actually worth picking up! Let us know what you think of the Lost in Nightmares Episode in the comments below and look for a review of the second DLC Episode Desperate Escape in the next few days.
A big thanks from everyone here at Evolved Gaming to Hernán for doing a review and for Capcom for providing a review voucher token.

©2010 The Evolved Gaming Network. All Rights Reserved.

Topics: Super Street Fighter IV, Infinity Ward/Activision, Shiren the Wanderer, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, Heavy Rain, & Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Intro music performed by “In Flames” off their album “A Sense of Purpose”
Outro music performed by “Outkast” off their album “Idlewild”

Direct link [right-click, save as]

Now you and I both know there is no way in hell Resonance of Fate will ever out-sell FFXIII, but that’s not saying it cannot be a better game.

Of what I’ve seen so far from Tri-ace’s next RPG saga, the combat system looks to be one of the most interesting and strategic systems in an RPG yet. It doesn’t hurt that this title also looks beautiful and revolves around gun combat unlike most traditional JRPG fare.

Expect a review here @ RJG.com. Till then, feast your eyes on these screens and visit: http://www.sega.com/rof/index_us.html#/home

Two of RJG Staff members chose to fight the everlasting battle between Alien vs. Predator. Which side did they choose, and how did the fight turn out, find out more after the break.

Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Sci-Fi Firs-Person Action
# of players: 1 player offline,2-18 online
Price: $59.99
Consoles: PS3, 360, and PC

B4’s Opinion:

I’m not too knowledgeable of the Aliens vs. Predator franchise, and have not played too many of the video games based on it. I’ve seen the one okay movie(AVP), and the one terrible movie (requiem), and played the arcade game, but that’s about it. What I felt like this series was missing was a storyline that actually brought you in,and made you care about what was going on. I’m sad to report that AVP has not faired much better in this regard whatsoever. That, tied in with the glitchy controls, bland level design, and lack of polish in the MP modes makes AVP an afterthought in my opinion.

I’m not saying that the concept here isn’t intriguing at all, it’s just not very well thought out. The idea of splitting the story into three different sections (Alien, Predator, and Marine) is a nice concept if, and only if it actually keeps the storyline consistent amongst all three campaigns. All you need to know is that the Marine Campaign requires you to escape from the fight between Alien and Predator, the Alien campaign requires you to destroy the predator, and vice versa for the Predator campaign, that’s about it. Argue it with me all you want, but it was the best way I could put it all together for you.

The variety as to what you can do with each of the three different characters did make the gameplay unique to a certain extent, but each one faulters in one area or another, making the experience more tedious than fun most of the time. It was fun to be able to jump from the top of buildings, and do stealth kills as the predator, but the melee attacks were awful, and wouldn’t respond half of the time, especially when you were fighting the aliens. This was also a major problem when you were playing as the Alien.

The Aliens had an excellent sense of speed to them, but the mechanic of climbing up walls could often leave you feeling disoriented. The Marine Campaign did have solid first-person shooter controls, and was very helpful in telling you where to go next because of the straight-up hud system that it had, but the flashlight would only illuminate a short distance in front of you, and the gameplay itself was just lacking any sense of excitement, until the end at least, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The overall design wasn’t bad, but it was bland and repetitive. I would have like to have seen a campaign that spanned across three different, but what I got instead was the same levels from a different characters point of view. The character models of the different creatures looked really good up-close, and the voice acting was decent, but very cheesy. The music was tense, dark, and moody, and really played into the idea of making you feel scared. I won’t go into too much detail about the multiplayer modes, but I will say that they are very fun to play, but using your xp just to unlock skins instead of actual character upgrades did piss me off a little bit.

To sum it all up, AVP was a somewhat fun and unique game that to a certain extent captures the style of the franchise. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in some fun first-person action and creative ideas. (C+)

- Matt H.

X3R0’s Opinion:

If you’re looking for a game that does a decent job combining all the aspects of the Alien vs. Predator series, then this game is something to look at. If you’re looking for a new game to play, then this game isn’t for you. Yes, the 2010 release of Aliens vs. Predator is, in my opinion, the best in the series, but it falls short at becoming a game that everybody will rant and rave about. Aliens vs. Predator is filled with issues, beginning with occasional glitches, poor combat mechanics, and an overall simplistic storyline, but it does have some qualities that makes this game stand out.

The overall story of AvP encompasses all three arcs into a cliché story. As I mentioned before, the story is short and simple, either run to safety, escape, or hunt…that’s it! There seemed to be potential of this game having a very good solid storyline if there was more time spent with it. It was exciting to see the story split up amongst the different characters, but the shortness of the overall story took away from getting connected with the characters.

Besides the story being short, the overall combat system wasn’t the greatest. The Marine combat is by far the closest to a straightforward shooter while the others are based on stealth and melee, and the melee isn’t anything to right home about. As the Predator you’re able to jump around from tree top to roof top utilizing the Predator equipment found in the movies. You first start off with just the basic, wrist blades on each hand and a laser. As you progress through the Predator missions, you begin to pick up more weapons that make the game more enjoyable, but you’ll still be utilizing the wrist blades more for attacks, which was a burden majority of the time. The burden comes from encountering some glitches and unresponsiveness while I was battling the Aliens and it felt like you were playing a bad boxing game…punch, block, punch-punch, block, rinse and repeat.

As you played the Aliens, you have the opportunity to move about practically anywhere you want to via the walls, ceilings, or floor. Your enemies stand out a lot more than the other two characters as the alien recognizes living beings based off of pheromones. The alien utilizes no weapons other than melee, but the speed and openness makes up for that. Between the speed and the open exploration, you’ll end up disorientated quite a bit.

The biggest complaint I have about the game is the sense of direction. If you don’t pay close attention to what is going on, you will end up not knowing where you have to go and spend countless minutes figuring it out. The Marine’s radar had an arrow showing you which way to go, the downside to that is, it floats all over the place. It seemed too sensitive to location. The Predator uses a beacon design, only showing you the end location, so it is up to you to figure out how to get there. Playing the alien has the worst direction help I have ever seen in a game. I simply doesn’t have anything.

It may seem that this game was a complete failure, but there are quite a few things that make this game unique. The way the story is separated and kind-of interweaved into the other story arcs is very interesting. As you play the different characters you’ll see subtle events that either happened or hasn’t happened yet in other story arcs. The graphics of the Predator and Alien looked sharp! There were a few times between the sounds and the visual effects, I thought I might have been watching a Predator or an Alien film. There were many sound effects that seemed they were taken from the films, i.e. radars blips, sounds of the Aliens and Predators, the gush of air when the Predator takes his face mask off, and the transition between the sight modes.

The multiplayer is probably the most exciting part of the game! With its seven different modes, you’ll have no reason to say there’s nothing there for you. Game variants range from Death Matches to Domination, with dash of a “Horde” and “Zombie” modes. The only complaint that I see about the multiplayer is the lack of encouragement to keep on playing. The experience you gain won’t benefit your online characters, except in looks. That’s right, the only thing I noticed that my experience got me was more character skins.

Although AvP gives a decent video game nod to the franchise, it needs more substance than how many ways can you kill an enemy. The game is very creative giving you the three sides of a basic story, but it lacks at drawing you in, leaving you with no emotional connection to the characters. The multiplayer experience is fun, but with no perks, other than character skins, you’ll soon be shelving this title for one of the many other games coming out this spring. (B-)

- Mike K.

This is Evolved Gaming Episode 77!

This week Cory, Drew, Zac, and special guest: the Founder and Editor of The Broken Controller, Andrew (aka: TastymouthfulBC), bring you what they have been playing and

The News:

• PSN is down, experiencing game crashing errors
• SOCOM hacker hacks Sony blog, convicted
• Nintendo trademarks Last Window/Hotel Dusk 2 in Europe
• Mass Effect 2 Firewalker DLC coming in March
• Steam UI beta live; Half Life 2 achievements spotted
• Rejected Fallout 2 Child Killer icon
• Starcraft 2 beta keys being sold for $300
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 being released on May 23
• DSi XL releasing in US on March 28 for $190
• Warner Bros acquires Arkham Asylum dev Rocksteady
• Final Fantasy producer says FF7 remake would be “unrealistic”
• Final Fantasy iPhone games on sale