The First Hour

Golden Axe: Beast Rider is the long anticipated entry in the classic Sega-developed series; Golden Axe. The franchise began life in 1989 as an arcade game but was later successfully ported to both the Master System and Genesis with multiple sequels and spin-offs to follow over the years. This installment doesn't play so much as a sequel, but rather as a re-imagining of the first game in which the evil Death Adder must be vanquished. It was developed by a relatively unknown developer; Secret Level Games.

Editor's Note: Mike B. is a brand new guest writer here at the First Hour, you may also see him around here as Mike in Omaha. He's enthusiastic about game writing and has even been to E3! I haven't even been west of Wyoming. In all seriousness though, great to have him on board and keep an eye out for more from him in the future. And like always, if you'd like to write for the First Hour, just shoot me an email and we'll talk. Back to Mike's review.

Call of Duty: World at War is the fifth Call of Duty game as the series once again, goes back to World War II. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was simply one of the most amazing games I've ever played, and I awarded it the first perfect score for a first hour review ever (I don't give numerical scores anymore, but I'll let you all know if I play one better). World at War was released in 2008 on all modern consoles and the PC and uses a modified version of the Modern Warfare engine. I will be playing the Windows version.

I was a bit disappointed to hear that Activision chose to set their latest during World War II, since the technology in Modern Warfare is part of what made the game so great. I wasn't planning to play the game, but I received a free copy with my graphics card, so how could I refuse to play at least the first hour of it? Of course, the multiplayer portion of the Call of Duty series is undoubtedly one of the more popular aspects, but I will be limiting my time to the single player campaign.

Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. Let us hope there is never another one like it.

Peggle: Dual Shot is the Nintendo DS port of the popular puzzle-casual game, Peggle. It was released early this year and is a compilation of both Peggle and Peggle Nights. Peggle has appeared on a variety of platforms, but made it big when a themed demo of it was released with The Orange Box. The gameplay of Peggle is pretty simple, it's a bit like Pachinko, where you shoot/drop balls from the top of screen and watch them bounce off pegs (Peggles). Yeah, that's really about it, but if you know anything about the Japanese and their Pachinko, you know they can be addicted, and so will you if you pick up Peggle.

It's all so deceptively simple, but you'll be hooked. Each stage has a collection of both blue and orange peggles, the goal is to knock out all the orange pegs with 10 or less shots. While this remains constant throughout the game, each stage is set up differently, featuring new challenges, and there are also power-ups available to you. Plus the whole game is wrapped in this oddly endearing yet creepy package starring a bunch of furry animals. Well, here's my review of Peggle: Dual Shot.

Pinnacle Station is the second, and probably final downloadable content for Mass Effect. Unlike the first DLC, Bring Down the Sky, Pinnacle Station is not a new set of story-based missions but is instead a series of arena challenges. This is a bit disappointing considering Mass Effect 2 is probably about six months away and BioWare could have explored that game's future content by introducing some new characters, locations, or even the new alien races. But sometimes you just have to take what you're given, and Pinnacle Station is the patient fan's reward.

I honestly don't have anything against arena fighting, and I was just looking for any excuse to put Mass Effect back into my Xbox 360. I was one of those gamers that actually enjoyed the combat in the game, especially on the higher difficulties. While more story would have been awesome, more combat that doesn't take place in the same warehouse as all the other big fights is also very welcome. So here's my first opinion on Pinnacle Station played on the Xbox 360 with my level 60 Soldier on Insanity.

I recently finished a great fantasy book that is just ripe for turning into a video game. I actually began writing a short review about Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, but it quickly turned into an examination on book and movie based games and how they're designed. I quickly determined that there are two common methods of taking the original source and putting it into a gamers' hands, and I pretty much just threw the rest of the review away at that point (I hope to get around to it someday, this site does have book reviews for a reason). For better or worse, here's my examination of the two design mechanisms chosen when creating a game from an existing franchise. There are many factors that come into play when deciding between them, and honestly I think they often make or break the game.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is an action RPG released for the Xbox and Windows in 2003. Before KotOR, Star Wars games had plenty of success in the action genre, but had never ventured far beyond the standard platformer, space sim, or shooter. BioWare changed all that with Knights, and in the process kicked off their own line of very successful console-first RPGs. Many fans would call this an incredible amalgamation of LucasArts and BioWare, of Star Wars and Western RPGs. I'll save my judgement for after I save (or destroy?) the galaxy.

I played the game a bit during college when it first came out, but never got into the "series" until Jade Empire and then later Mass Effect. Since I'm experienced with their newer games, it will be very interesting to see how they evolved since Star Wars. Let's get into the first hour of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Hitman: Blood Money is a stealth action game for the Xbox 360, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Windows. It's the fourth game in the Hitman series and the last to come out. I will admit, I was influenced in playing this game after seeing the movie. I think that is probably the first time a film adaptation has done that, pretty special considering that's one of their main reasons for existence. I had never played a Hitman game before, and I will admit, I really enjoyed it. It's almost a sandbox game considering everything you can do, and no two gamers will play it the same way. What's nice about Blood Money is that someone without any experience with the series can come in and enjoy it. So maybe this review will convince you to check out the game like the movie did for me.

I wrote up a first hour review of the game a few weeks ago, check it out if you're interested.

Remember the old days when video game were hard? Back in the NES days of Mega-Man, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, and the like? These games were all about skill, requiring split-second timing, precision button presses, acute pattern memorization, and that was just to get past the first level!

More recently, game developers cater to a broader audience and make games that are so easy we could beat them in our sleep. There's no challenge, no thrill of achievement, no bragging rights... hey ya dern kids, get off my lawn!

Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly set out to change that with I Wanna Be The Guy, which is available for free download to play on Windows. It's a throwback to the days when video games were difficult. It's in the style of an 8-bit action platformer, and it's hard. How hard? Let's find out.

Note: It will be of use to inform you of my process of writing this review. I made an audio recording of myself narrating as I played the game, then listened to it and wrote the review based on that recording. I noticed some strange things towards the end of the hour because of this. Read on:

Rogue Galaxy is a 2006 Japanese role-playing game for the PlayStation 2. I was given this game about a year and a half ago and never got around to playing it. Well, the time has come to give it a go, so no better way to play it than to just try out the first hour. Role-playing games don't always fare that well on the First Hour, but there have been a few exceptions. I'm hoping that Rogue Galaxy can join that group. It features cel-shaded graphics and action-focused battles, which definitely brings up pleasant memories of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

The game was developed by Level-5, most famous for their Dark Cloud series that was also very popular on the PlayStation 2. More recently, they created Professor Layton on the Nintendo DS, worked on the much-anticipated Dragon Quest IX, and developed White Knight Chronicles on the PlayStation 3. These guys have been mighty busy it seems. But for right now, let's focus on the first hour of Rogue Galaxy.

Battalion Wars is a GameCube exclusive real time strategy/action hybrid developed by the British second-party team Kuju and published by Nintendo. Real time strategy is a popular genre but has been mostly unsuccessful on consoles, due primarily to the lack of a mouse. Battalion Wars tries to solve this problem by introducing a new control scheme, as well as allowing the player direct control over any unit on the field at any time.

Battalion Wars was initially announced as the console entry into the Advance Wars series, billed "Advance Wars: Under Fire," and later was spun into a new series. Did the new control scheme and 3rd person shooter mechanics bring the long-hoped-for innovation to console RTS games, or will this be a massive mess of mangled controls and muddled objectives? Only I know, and I'm going to tell you.

Paul Eastwood returns with another action oriented game, if you like his style, check out his first hour reviews of Freedom Fighters and Enter the Matrix!