Games Reviews Madden NFL 11, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, We Sing: Encore, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, Art Academy, Freddie Flintoff's Power Play Cricket

Murphy Simmonds casts his eyes over the latest gaming releases

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If you like your sportspeople to have necks wider than their heads and a penchant for body armour, then you probably like American football. Essentially rugby reimagined by a teenager, this sport has been superbly captured by EA’s Madden series since the days of the Sega   Mega Drive, to the point that it now arrives yearly as an all-encompassing, all-conquering juggernaut. Whether Madden NFL 11 (4 stars, PS3/Wii/X360, £30-50, EA) offers enough new stuff for owners of Madden 10 is up for debate – a couple of extraneous new modes and updated rosters are fodder for real fans only – but for anyone else, this remains an exercise in bar-setting, to a point that few other sports series manage to raise themselves. Engrossing, deep, comprehensive and every inch the veteran.

The complex art of clicking your mouse on little men and telling them to attack other little men – “real time strategy”, to you and us – has arguably never been realised better than it was in the original Starcraft. That was a sci-fi take on the orcs ‘n’ elves Warcraft series developed by Blizzard, the most infamous perfectionist in all of videogame development, and the proof of its brilliance is that many fans are still active fans of that game a decade after its release. So Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (5 stars, PC/Mac, £35-50, Blizzard) has a lot to live up to. Its design bears the marks of Blizzard’s trademark mix of obsessiveness, caution and control. There is polish coating everything here, from its looks to its cutscenes to the narrative of its solo campaign and the lavishly thought-out missions that comprise it. On the battlefield, the conflict between Protoss, Zerg and Terran forces – gaming’s most finely honed example of rock-paper-scissors – is as nuanced as ever, but its core is little changed. Wise, with so many fans to disappoint. But then Blizzard doesn’t do revolution; it does classic, in both senses of the word. Starcraft II is fresh evidence of that.

Karaoke gaming has blossomed into a hugely popular genre with tremendous casual appeal. Though it’s various proponents – Lips, Singstar, Sing It and so on – each purport to offer something unique, in truth their success boils down to just a few factors: the mics, the voice recognition and the tracklist. We Sing: Encore (4 stars, Wii, £25-50, Nordic Games) boasts decent mics for the price – although longer leads would be handy – and offers a forgiving interpretation of your vocal skills; Singstar, by contrast, can demotivate through its insistence on perfection. The 40-strong tracklist is good, too, essentially a Radio 1 playlist (Mika, Rihanna, Kasabian) with a hint of wedding disco (Gloria Gaynor, Bonnie Tyler). Top notch party gaming, we say.

Grit. Many games try it, but few have the design skills, or the guts, to ape the film industry and convey the kind of serious, grimy, uncomfortable grit which crawls slightly under your skin. Third-person cover-and-shoot title Kane & Lynch: Dead Men tried it back in 2007, and its idiosyncratic tone managed to eke some compulsion out of a fundamentally flawed, bitty game engine. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (3 stars, PC/PS3/X360, £25-50, Square Enix) pretty much doubles the grit – shaky cam, swearing, grubby violence, pixellated nudity and an amoral tone. The result, presentationally at least, is impressive. The gameplay is a step forward from the original, the controls less convoluted and the physics more solid, but the too-short solo campaign quickly becomes repetitive. So too does the (otherwise enjoyable) co-op and the (otherwise inventive) online multiplayer. Style over substance again, then, even though the substance is much improved on the first outing, and the style is almost – but not quite – worth the price of admission.

We’ve always been terrible at art. Back at school, fellow students would churn out intricate sculptures and elaborate triptychs while we sat in the corner stabbing ourselves with a pencil. Art Academy (3 stars, DS, Nintendo, £15-20) looks to undo the damage caused by repressing those memories, teaching drawing, painting and lighting techniques via the touchscreen and stylus. Approach it with the right frame of mind – self improvement, ideally – and you’ll find it’s rather good. No match for the real thing, we’re sure, but cheaper and much less messy. There’s much to be said, too, for how well suited this kind of interactive teaching is to its subject. Previously released as DSiWare, this boxed version adds little for its extra few pounds. It’s excellent value, even so.

If we’re going to go about slagging off American football, it’s only fair that we slag off cricket a bit too – for there can be few sports whose appeal is so impenetrable to the outsider. This ponderous, lengthy and sporadically thrilling past-time has traditionally struggled to find its videogame feet. Brian Lara Cricket on the Mega Drive managed to be enjoyable 15 years ago, and the iPhone’s Touch Cricket is a surprisingly addictive 59p diversion. Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket (2 stars, DS, £15-25, Tradewest) is the sport’s first DS outing, and it tries to circumvent the difficulties of delivering digital cricket with a brighter, brasher, more arcadey take. Though entertaining in the short term, it will probably win more critics than admirers.

Posted on Wednesday 1st September 2010

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