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For a game where you ride office chairs and other wheeled objects down city streets,Kung Fu Rider is something that most people expect to have explained to them. However, it doesn't need an explanation, and the game knows this: the title screen shows you all you need to know: private detective Toby and his bubbly (in more ways than one) secretary Karin hide behind their doorway as a group of mafia goons wait outside for them. The two argue with each other for a few minutes, worrying about their fate, but once you start the game, they're already on the run when they find an aforementioned wheeled object in the street that they use for a makeshift getaway. No muss, no fuss.

Well, there is some fuss, as you have to complete some tutorial missions before you finally hit the mean streets of Hong Kong to escape the bad guys, but beyond that, the game is fairly to-the-point. Basically, you accelerate by flicking the Move controller downward to sort of "pump" the vehicle forward, which makes sense. But to really make a smooth path to the goal, you'll have to perform jumps, dashes, dodges, and kicks to clear out obstacles, including the gangsters coming for you.

To this day, a derisive descriptor for most Wii titles would be, "it's like Game X, but with waggle!" It's pretty stupid and lazy, and definitely fits the "snarky forum quip" category more than the "reasonable critique" one, but on occasion, it's brutally accurate. And so shall I appropriate that forumism for Sony's Start The Party!, which can be described as, "It's EyeToy: Play, but with waggle!"

Like EyeToy: Play, Start The Party! is a compilation of simple little minigames that each feature a camera or motion-control-specific game. There's Group Play (hotseat-style multiplayer where up to four players pass the Move Controller around for various challenges) divided into Party (a pretty standardized list of minigames divided into quirky game-like rounds) and Party Mix (a more randomized array of minigames); and there's Solo Play which further divides into either Free Play (choose among nine minigames) or Survival (where you progress through a randomized array of minigames until you fail). One goofy aspect to the party gameplay that uses both the Move Controller and the PlayStation Eye's microphone is that, on occasion, you can draw or record over your opponent's current avatar.

You can't avoid comparing PlayStation Move's bowling motion controls to Nintendo Wii's. And, basically, they're the same: you hold a controller in your hand and you swing your arm. But what Wii Sports Bowling stripped the sport down to its basics; you threw the ball down the lane and tried to knock over all the pins. High Velocity Bowling for PlayStation Move, however, brings real-life variables into play, things like oil patterns on the lane and the quality of your bowling ball, in an attempt to create a more challenging, well-rounded gaming experience. Unfortunately, if you're looking for a fun, simple, pick-up-and-play bowling match, you'll find yourself frustrated by HVB's counter-intuitive controls.

The first thing I noticed was how difficult it is to use the Move controller to navigate through menus; the loose feel makes it too easy to skip past items I want to select. The game shouldn't require that much finesse to simply set up a match, but it does. Once you do start playing, you'll discover that you aren't simply just bowling; instead, you take control of a character with specific attributes and limitations. To be honest, this completely put me off the game at first. Why wasn't I able to throw the ball the same way from one bowler to another? But it actually does create an interesting challenge for you to learn how to best use (and win) with a character in order to upgrade to the next bowler or the next higher-quality ball.

After two long years (and more than a million copies sold), Castle Crashers is finally available on PlayStation Network, bringing with it a couple of minor feature enhancements, and most notably, functional online play at launch.

Revisiting the game on PSN, I found the game to be just as original, vibrant, and damn near brilliant as when I wrote 1UP's original review (read that for expanded impressions) in 2008, as the multiplayer gameplay and overall presentation are still a knockout. Despite the strides seen in downloadable game quality in recent years, Castle Crashers retains a timeless feel; if you didn't play the Xbox Live Arcade version, the game should feel like a totally new release, unencumbered by the ravages of time. Sure, the game can be repetitive, and the humor is a bit crude at times, but the appeal of bashing cartoonish goons, leveling up your colorful knights, and being chased by a monstrous beast remains remarkably strong. | read more »

First, the obvious: Sports Champions is basically Wii Sports (or rather Wii Sports Resort) for PlayStation Move. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just like Wii, Move is soon going to be inudated with cheap, hastily put-together minigame collections, and at its heart, Sports Champions is just that, a minigame collection. But like its Wii Sports cousins, it's composed of games you'd actually want to play. They all control well, and in some cases, they're superior to what you get on Wii.

The game is easy to understand: you can choose from six different events (Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Archery, Beach Volleyball, Bocce, and Table Tennis), with single- and multiplayer modes for each. They can all be played with one Move controller, but some events (particularly Archery and Gladiator Duel) let you use two of the bulbous wand controllers simultaneously. Playing through the game on your own earns you rewards (like new costumes or event-specific items) you can use to customize your chosen character with, and the difficulty on each event is scaled well -- easing you in with some introductory matches and pushover opponents, before putting you up against increasingly more skilled A.I. opponents. Unfortunately, the avatars you can pick from consist of an assorted mix of sports and ethnic stereotypes that don't fit in all that well with the game world, and whose differences don't make any substantial impact on gameplay.

When first booting up Tumble, I fully expected this Move launch title to be an HD Boom Blox copycat, minus the cute charm factor. And then while making my way through the slow-paced tutorial -- complete with that unenthusiastic, personality free, nearly monotone voice-over people seem to associate with "futuristic" -- I was worried I'd also be missing out on the absolute satisfaction of knocking down block structures like in Boom Blox. Indeed, the first real level of Tumble merely requires you to build a relatively short and rudimentary tower from rectangles and squares. Surely, we've all moved past this since preschool?

But, soon after, I found myself ever so carefully placing blocks one after another, building my tower taller and taller in order to reach the Gold medal ranking for height. Then the game would introduce a new type of block: a heavy one, a slippery one, a sticky one; blue ones, red ones, odd-shaped ones. Sometimes I'd have to build around moving obstacles or start my tower on a tilted platform. And for every few "build a tall tower" levels, Tumble includes an imaginative one requiring you to blow up structures for points, or solving an especially tricky build-goal, or directing lasers through the proper mirrors. You can progress to the next level by meeting the Bronze medal requirement, but the temptation to aim for Gold is a nice dangling carrot for repeating levels even after you make your way through the 50+ levels. And I found myself having fun... | read more »