'UNTOLD LEGENDS: THE WARRIOR'S CODE'

'UNTOLD LEGENDS: THE WARRIOR'S CODE'
Platform: Sony PSP.
Genre: Role-playing.
Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment.
Rating: T for Teen.
Grade: C.
Role-playing games have found a new home on the hand-held PSP, where gamers are enjoying the ability to create characters and enhance their abilities for a short period of time or fulfill entire quests in a single setting, depending on their schedules. At least, this seems to be the case since more and more RPGs are finding their way to the PSP system.
New to the fray is "Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code," a sequel to the previous "Untold Legends" PSP game, "Brotherhood of the Blade." "Warrior's Code," however, treats "Brotherhood" like the scary uncle in your family and acts like it doesn't exist, starting with an entirely new story line and bearing no resemblance to its predecessor. The new game is smart to do so, since it is a much fuller game-play experience than "Brotherhood."
After your standard archetype of evil takes over the world with his minions of equally evil souls, you choose between one of five preset character types, ranging from your typical RPG choices like warrior, mage or thief. The entire game can be summed up in a very rudimentary fashion: enter room, slay all foes, collect money and other assorted goodies, move into next room, wash, rinse repeat.
It's not as bad as it sounds, though; repetitive as it might be, there are some nice things to highlight in this game, the biggest being all the enjoyable online modes. You can join up with other players online and go through the story mode as a team or participate in other modes of play like capture the flag and death match and countless others you've seen before. Having these modes be online is a nice bonus because otherwise the repetitive nature of the single-player mode might kill this game.
Visually, "Warrior's Code" could be better, if only because it comes from a Sony division, which by now it should have a firm grasp of the graphics capabilities of its own machine. The audio is what you would expect; there are no big surprises or disappointments there.
Most RPG fans will enjoy this hand-held version, if not because it vastly improves upon its precursor than because it aptly mixes both button-mashing fighting games and RPG game play.
Chris Campbell, Scripps Howard
'RAMPAGE: TOTAL DESTRUCTION'
Platform: GameCube, PlayStation 2.
Genre: Arcade.
Publisher: Midway.
Rating: E for Everyone.
Grade: D.
Sure, there's some nostalgia to be appreciated from the fact that "Rampage: Total Destruction" stays with its arcade roots and gives you two-dimensional levels and gigantic monsters to wander aimlessly around a city and reduce buildings to rubble. Anyone who played this game in an arcade will recall mindlessly mashing buttons and somehow finding enjoyment in its simplicity.
But let's be honest, those were the days of a joystick and an A and B button. With today's consoles and its multitude of buttons, visual options and so on, it's hard to really engage in this game. "Rampage: Total Destruction" is more or less the same Rampage game that existed two decades ago, only with shinier graphics.
While playing "Total Destruction" you spend more time wondering what could have been: 3D levels as you tear apart downtown skyscrapers and really rip them apart from the foundation to the ceiling, crushing tanks and munching on hapless citizens all in the name of good fun. Of course, the same is true now that was then; the characters bear no difference from each other in terms of style of fighting and game play. That's a shame. You'd like to think some character-specific fighting styles would have come a long way here.
A trip down memory lane is nice every now and then, but Midway scores better when it keeps the game as it was and packages it with a host of others from the 16-bit processor days. Putting it out now, on its own, with the original arcade game as bonus content (a slap in the face to anyone who sees that much difference between the two) and little to no changes other than some slicker packaging only makes this a weekend rental at best.
Chris Campbell, Scripps Howard