Stories by: Ahoy_and_Avast

Before I start, here's a quick disclaimer: I am going to reference God of War in this review -- a lot. That's because the development team behind Heavenly Sword ripped a lot of chapters out of David Jaffe and Corey Barlog's playbook. It's not a stretch to think of this title as 'Goddess of War' as it also features a complex narrative that centers on a troubled main character and is married to a deep and substantial combat system.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is, for the most part, Nintendo's first established franchise to really utilize the Wii's motion-sensing strengths. With the exception of WarioWare Smooth moves, Nintendo's franchises on the Wii have consisted of repurposed GameCube games (Twilight Princess and Super Paper Mario) or titles with traditional control schemes that make little to no use of the Wii's features (Mario Party 8, Mario Strikers Charged and Pokemon). Playing through Corruption, you get the sense that this game was developed with the Wii in mind, a feeling that precious few titles have thus far evoked.

Lots of effort goes into the creation of mediocre games, but man-hours of labor alone are no substitute for loving craftsmanship. You can tell when the developers just weren't trying, and every aspect of Vampire Rain bears those revealing scars.

The biggest complaint lodged against the FPS genre is that there is little diversity amongst the themes and settings used in the games: distant planets, WWII and modern cities clearly dominate the landscape.