Handheld Reviews

Hot on the heels of the hit movie, Tomb Raider, Activision has released an all new Tomb Raider Adventure on the Game Boy Color. Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword, is Lara Croft's second venture onto Nintendo's handheld system. Curse of the Sword builds upon an already incredible game and is one of the best action games on a handheld platform I have ever played.

RockStar Games brings a port of a controversial, and addicting game to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Grand Theft Auto. GTA allows you to play a day in the life of a professional criminal in heavily populated cities all over the USA. The in-game camera has the view of, "EYE IN THE SKY", very much like having your very own TV News copper chase you around highly detailed and realistic city landscape. You can always "Jack" a car for some joyriding... or just sit on the city corner shooting at whatever pedestrians that dear to walk by. All this fun cant go on forever, you know... reasonably intelligent COPS will hunt you down and put an end to your bloody rampage quickly, if you don't decide to run, that is...

All too often, games based on licenses fail to entertain. No one knows why, it's just an unwritten rule. However, it seems bam! entertainment has found a way around this problem. Their new Gameboy Advance title, Ecks VS Sever, is based on a movie that hasn't even been released yet. Franchise Pictures licensed the game to Crawfish and they created the game from a script. In this case, even though the movie technically came first, some people will be aware of the game before the movie, and compare the other way around. The question still burns though, is Ecks VS Sever any good?

Playing Metal Gear Solid for Game Boy Color you get a real appreciation for the kinds of programmers that the general game players of the world have been blessed with, and the thought that an idea like playing a deep and complex game like MGS on a portable cart based system even got off the ground at all.

As many of you know by now, Lego Island 2: The Brickster's Revenge is a 3D action/adventure game for the PlayStation and PC. Combining the elements of collecting items to achieve various goals with a plethora of mini-games that are more fun to play than any found in Mario Party, Lego Island 2 transported gamers into the world of Lego. With a gaming experience like that to live up to, developing Lego Island 2 for a portable system may seem like a nearly impossible task to accomplish. The Game Boy Color's limited graphic and processing capabilities didn't make things any easier.

Beginning in my NES days, I loved side-scrollers. From Double Dragon to Final Fight, A good side scroller could entertain me for hours on end with one thing in mind: The ability to kick the crap out of anything that moves. Acclaim's X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse steps in to fill your urge for non-stop butt-kicking action.