Scrap metal is a top down demolition style racing game brought to you buy Slick Entertainment, creators of the hit title N+. Coming from slick Entertainment I had high expectations for Scrap Metal, I loved N+ so I hoped I would be able to find the same love in Scrap Metal.

If you’ve ever played Twisted Metal, then you should know that cars with guns strapped to them are a recipe for badass. Well sometimes that’s the case, not really so much with Scrap Metal. Let’s start off by talking about my biggest complaint; the controls. The controls felt quite sloppy, I found myself constantly resetting my car or getting stuck and weapons didn’t seem to help out much, even after you’ve upgraded everything you could on cars they still didn’t seem to be weapons of destruction like I had hoped.

One thing I will give Scrap Metal is the amount of missions and roster of vehicles it brings to the table, although you are only given 4 garage spots for your vehicles so unlocking 20 doesn’t really do you much good. Make sure to save your upgrade cash, you may end up wasting your cash early on upgrading vehicles that really do you no good.

Overall I feel Scrap Metal at 1200 ms points ($15) is too steep of a price, although you do get over 60 races and quite a few different modes, a nice roster of vehicles and decent online play, the sloppy controls and lack of fun factor is just not enough for me to justify the purchase. If they happen to release a patch to fix the controls, then I would most likely change my mind about how I feel about Scrap Metal, but until then, it’s just not my cup of tea. Try out the demo first and see if it’s something that you might enjoy, or possibly wait till the price drops before you go spending your space bucks on this title.

Scrap Metal was provided for review by the publisher.

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Scrap Metal

Platform: XBLA; Rated E10

Developer: Slick Entertainment Inc.

Publisher: Xbox LIVE Arcade

Release: April 10th, 2010

Diner Dash is an action strategy game, published by Hudson and created by Playfirst, that puts you in the shoes of Flo, Ex stockbroker turned restaurant owner. The object of Diner Dash is to run your restaurant and earn a certain amount of money each day to meet your goal, in order to run your restaurant you have to do all the front end duties of any normal restaurant and try to keep your impatient customers happy, You have to sit your customers, take their orders turn in their orders, bring them their food, take their money and clean the tables. Sounds like a lot of work right? Well, it really is, but in a good fun way.

Diner Dash consists of 2 different game types in single player, career mode where you have to meet a daily goal in 4 different restaurants and endless mode where the game only ends when you lose enough customers to take away all 5 stars.

Career mode is fun and extremely challenging, keeping your customers and meeting your goal means sitting your customers strategically, each of your customers are different colors. After you sit them and they finish eating you can sit a new group of people. If you match the colors that sat in the seat before you get a bonus that counts towards your overall goal. The more people of the same color you sit in the same seat the higher your bonus multiplier becomes. This is extremely important and helpful in the later, extremely difficult rounds.

Endless mode lets you go on as long as you can, throwing tougher customers at you but also allowing you to purchase upgrades like extra tables, faster shoes for lo to walk in, faster ovens and even a drink station to help you please your customers more efficiently.

Diner Dash also includes a couple of multiplayer modes to add to the fun, You can go head to head in tip wars and time wars, play co-op endless mode or play Team Dash online or locally. Team Dash puts 8 players into 4 groups of 2 to compete in endless mode, time wars or tip wars. Only issue I found was without friends to play online, I really couldn’t find any games to get into.

Overall Diner Dash is a great game and very addicting, I found myself spending hours at a time playing through it trying to complete career mode and even playing endless mode. Anyone can easily pick up Diner Dash and start playing it with little issues. If you’re looking for a game the entire family can enjoy and in the mood for some friendly competition, you definitely need to get Diner Dash, for a $10 price tag, you will easily get more than your moneys worth.

Diner Dash was provided for review by the publisher.

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Diner Dash

Platform: PSN, Xbox LIVE, WiiWare; Rated E

Developer: GameLab

Publisher: Hudson Soft

Release: November 25, 2009

Shadow Complex is a side-scrolling action game created by Chair Entertainment, creator of Undertow, and Epic Games. The story is based on a novel by Orson Scott Card, Empire and will tie in to the books sequel due out later this year. You play as Jason Fleming, who out with his girlfriend Claire happen to stumble on a secret military-like base. Claire is kidnapped and it’s up to you Read more →