The Herald-Sun from Durham, North Carolina • 50

PAGE D12 THE HERALD-SUN DURHAM NORTH CAROUNA FRIDAY JANUARY 24 2003 VIDEO Electronic Lord of the Rings The Two Towers" video game (left) gets players right into the action It's altogether more fun than the Vivendi Universal game "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the game is EA game wins over die-hard Tolkien fan despite his negative predisposition fun the big battle scenes from both the first and the second films It's like the old Sega arcade game the crop Spongebob Revenge Shattered blistering BY VICTOR GODINEZ Th Dallas Morning Nam When the Contra franchise defiled the original Sony PlayStation a few years ago old-school gamers lamented how badly the franchise had been neglected Thankfully Konami's Contra: Shattered Soldier for PS2 washes that slimy taste from your mouth Shattered Soldier ditches the three-dimensional game play that dogged the PS titles and instead focuses side-to-side action as you unload on an endless horde of mindless adversaries This marks a return to the style that Contra trademarked back on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles Although Contra looks and plays better than ever the simple two-dimensional game may leave you feeling unfulfilled Even so this game is fiendishly hard Every time you get shot heck every time you get touched you die With a limited number of extra lives and continues restart often You can dispatch most of the low-level grunts with ease but the midlevel and end-of-level bosses require patience You have to learn their patterns: when they move and whether you need to use the machine gun flamethrower or grenade launcher The levels are short but the frustration factor is high So a cheat code: Tb get 99 continues go to the main menu highlight the options button and press left right left right up down up down square circle square circle select and start Once you've stripped away the Herculean difficulty setting you'll realize that Shattered Soldier has some good graphics and blistering action but not much depth New releases: Spongebob to NCAA basketball Panzer Dragoon Orta Xbox $4999 A mysterious young girt and her dragon take on the evil empire in Dragoon Over the course of 10 intense levels you blast endless swarms of enemies from the back of your trusty reptilian steed The presentation in is amazing With an imaginative storyline unbelievable visuals and a great sense of style is a memorable experience as much as a definitely the cream of for the Xbox Squarepants: of the Hying Dutchman PlayStation 2 GameCube $3999 SpongeBob SquarePants makes his first appearance on the next generation consoles in "Revenge of the Flying After accidentally releasing The Flying Dutchman SpongeBob must avoid dangers and find treasures to keep from becoming a soggy mess at the bottom of the sea As expected characters from the animated show also make an appearance not the most thrilling game experience but fans of the series should be satisfied NCAA Match Madness 2003 PlayStation 2 $4999 is vastly improved with its game play but difficult to make it a close contest because it is either too easy to score or too easy to commit fouls (hie of the neatest features is the dynasty mode which encompasses recruiting prep players and top teams refusing to schedule you until your team proves itself There is no online play unlike 2K3" which is still king of the college basketball court Tuesday Skies of Arcadia Legends (GC) Devil May Cry 2 (PS2) Black Bruised (PS2) Black Stone: Magic (XBOX) Motor Trend Lotus Challenge (XBOX) Thursday Project Entropia (PC) game where you try to stay alive by pushing as many buttons as possible to parry and attack You fight as either Aragom the Ranger Legolas the Elf or Gimli the Dwarf through battle scenes such as the fight with the Ores and the Cave Thill in Tomb in the caverns of Moria Thke up the sword ax or bow against swarms of enemies that never seem to stop coming By contrast the Vivendi game starts out calmly in Hob- biton taking you through cute little missions like a kids' gamp Yet this design seems off base Soon the scary Ringwraiths of the books appear and you learn why the game is rated for teens Of course that calm start in Hobbiton can also be translated as boring I wanted to jump intn the action scenes in Moria and had no patience to sell Bag End to distant relatives before setting off on my adventure Even though the game sticks to the linear story of the books it goes off on a lot of tangents that have fanatical attention to the details of world So I was predisposed to dislike the movie-based EA game I figured Vivendi Universal's game would feel much more authentic I was pleasantly surprised that the EA game turned out to be more fun This round of competition clearly goes to EA which focused on a gritty faithfulness to the combat in the movies and made it into a gripping experience You need more time and patience to sink your teeth into the Vivendi game Neil Young executive producer of the EA game says adapting the game from the movie was a much easier task because designers were able to focus on game play They need to create the art and style of the Iblkien universe the films had already done that What they created is a hack-and-slash game that throws the player into the action from the beginning putting you in all of BY DEAN TAKAHASHI Knight Kidder Almost every fantasy role-playing video game owes its inspiration to JRR Tolkien's of the trilogy But there a decent video game adapted from masterpieces until now After the long drought for Tolkien gamers two major games have landed to capitalize on the popularity of Peter film adaptations of the trilogy Electronic Arts used director Jackson's first two movies as the basis for of the Rings: The Two Tbwers" Salts PlayS tation2 game And Vivendi Universal stayed faithful to the plot of the first book with of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" which is available for Xbox PS2 and PC I played the Xbox version Handheld versions of both games are available for Game Boy Advance As a die-hard "Iblkien fan I was inclined to dislike anything Jan 14 Master of Orion III (PC) Resident Evil 2 (GC) Resident Ev9 1 Nemesis (GC) Panzer Dragoon Orta (XBOX) The Sum of AH Fears (GC) The Sims (PS2) Disney Sports: Basketball (GC) HSX Hypersonic Xtreme (PS2) Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends (PS2) VIDEOGAME RELEASES Jan 10 The Omega Stone (PC) Jan 12 Pride FC(PS2) Jan 13 SimOty4(pq Summoner The Prophecy (GC) Jan 15 Robocop(PS2) Jan 16 Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach VolleybaQ (XBOX) Jan 21 Battle Engine Aquila (PS2 XBOX) Rally Championship (GC) Tom dancyk Splinter Cell (PC) Fisherman Bait 2003 (working title) (PS2) ATV Quad Power Racing 2 (PS2 GC XBOX) The Getaway (PS2) Jan 22 Highland Warriors (PC) The Mystery of the Mummy (PC) Monday Black Bruised (GC).