This week we take a look at the online game The Great Flu, which is available at www.thegreatflu.com.

Developed not by game designers but by a team of Dutch virologists, it’s an interesting pastime, though I have found a better group of games out there.

More of my take in a minute. First, a guest opinion — that of Palm Beach Post researcher Niels Heimerinks, who let us know about the game in the first place, after the jump.
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Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
Review score: A

Let me start with a disclaimer: I’ve made it through less than 30% of Sacred 2’s main quest and I’ve seen less than 20% of Sacred 2’s world. After over 30 hours of play, though, I feel justified in posting a review.

Sacred 2 is an action-RPG loaded with hundreds of quests, thousands of items and a menagerie of monsters. Gameplay is combat-driven so don’t expect to sneak around like a thief and you pick the good or evil path before launching the game so there are no moral quandaries to get in your way. If you need to feel immersed in a fantasy world, then Sacred 2 isn’t for you – but if you’re looking for a game that offers Diablo-style action and WoW-level of addiction, I highly recommend Sacred 2.

In the fraction of the game I’ve seen, I’ve learned that there’s some problem with elves and I’m guessing a Fallen Angel comes into play at some point, but I really don’t care. Not that I’m not interested in being the hero who brings salvation to Ancaria, but I’m having enough fun investigating crop circles, attending rock concerts, and collecting troll hearts. Sure there’s a plot to follow, but the flavor of the game comes from the multitude of side quests available. I eagerly scour cities looking for people with ? floating above their heads, never knowing if I’m going to be asked to wipe out a skeleton army or merely tell guests that the wedding’s off.

Just one more quest, I tell myself and then I get sucked into a mini-campaign or find a class-specific quest I’m compelled to do because I’m a good little Dryad. Yes, I am your typical wood nymph who longs to pepper enemies with arrows and cast her voodoo. She’s one of six preset characters available. Avoiding Gauntlet-style archetypes, Sacred 2 opts for classes like an angelic warrior (Seraphim), a resurrected soldier (Shadow Warrior) and an automaton resembling the Egyptian god Anubis (Temple Guardian).

Each character has different combat skills and magic available to them (called Combat Arts and grouped under three Aspects). Using my voodoo, I can envelop enemies in thorns and use shrunken heads to summon ghosts. With 15 Combat Arts to choose from, in addition to Offensive, Defensive and General Skills to hone, Sacred 2 has a pretty deep RPG system. Combine this with the variety of armor and weapons available and, even though I can’t change my character’s gender or make her ears pointier, I still feel like I’ve shaped her creation.

There’s always a concern that porting from the PC to a console involves a dumbing down of the interface, but the controller works great and allows for intuitive button mapping. You can assign potions to the D-pad and attacks to the face buttons and you can even use the trigger buttons as “shift” buttons letting you easily access up to twelve different attacks, spells, or combinations — in no way is the absence of a keyboard limiting. I have noticed that the controls could be tighter — the game doesn’t always recognize that I want to shift from my longbow to sword. Also, targeting isn’t precise — many times I’ve launched a flurry of poisoned bolts at a rat instead of the horrible monster next to it.

Sacred 2 favors open-world exploration over traditional dungeon crawling. This isn’t to say that you won’t spend a fair amount of time in cellars, caves and sewers fighting subterranean fauna, but Ascaron has built a huge fantasy world and – by Lumen! – they want you to see it. Grassland, desert, mountain, jungle – name an ecosystem and you’ll find it somewhere in the world of Ancaria. This is an incredibly detailed world. There are remnants of battlefields, strange machines, ancient graveyards and other wonders which you just happen upon if you stray from Ancaria’s network of roads.

Sadly, much of Ancaria’s beauty is lost to me because I’m either running like mad or hightailing it on horseback. Sacred 2 doesn’t have random encounters — it just has encounters. There’s no patch of wilderness which isn’t crawling with monsters who have the sense to travel in packs. It’s cool happening upon goblins fighting spiders, but it doesn’t take long for them to join forces against you. Once I barely stayed ahead of a pack of skeletons, bears, minotaurs, goblins, boars, and goblins riding boars.

However, Sacred 2′s deadliest feature is that you can’t pause the game. While the single-player setup is perfectly fine for misanthropes like myself, Ascaron really wants you to enjoy the multiplayer experience (2 player offline or 4 players online) and has created a pseudo-perpetual world MMO type experience. The end result is that if you stop to look at a map, level up, or muck about with your equipment, it won’t take long before something comes up and starts chewing on you. It’s much safer to do any charactery thing in cities, where you’re mostly safe. Luckily, the world of Ancaria is filled with transporters and respawny stones, so you can warp around to cities you’ve already visited and run to the blacksmith to have a magic necklace dropped by a diseased sheep welded to your quarterstaff to make it fiery.

I think Ascaron has a low opinion of my social life, because should I ever complete this massive game, I’ll need to replay it to see where the evil path leads me. And then there’s the other characters for me to try out and they each have their own quests. And I heard there’s an expansion on the way, which is like hearing that Slartibartfast is adding a new continent when I haven’t even seen Paris yet.

See all of the video-game fashion

The classic Nintendo controller is one of the most recognizable video game peripherals, but how well does it translate into a fashion accessory? The folks behind the NES Buckle are hoping you’ll pay $30 for this piece of nostalgia (crafted from a real working controller) and they aren’t the only ones seeking to cash-in on video game fashion.

Would you pay $35 for a Space Invaders tie? $29.99 for a Pac-Man hat? $42.99 for a Mario Bros. themed hoodie?

Let us know, is this geek chic I Love the 80s or What Not to Wear?

Wikipedia tells me that Terminator Salvation is an interquel, which is a good term for a movie tie-in which takes place two years before the actual movie. The game follows John Connor (not Christian Bale), a foot soldier in the war against machines. Terminator fans know that Connor has a destiny, but it’s one that seems more remote every day. Skynet has inexhaustible resources and each battle takes irreplaceable human lives. In the ruins of Los Angeles, is there still a future worth fighting for?

Re-reading the above paragraph, I realize that I’ve described a compelling story. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t present in this game. Sure there is an introductory voiceover which introduces us to the pathos of the Terminator universe and there are scattered cutscenes which extol humanity, but this doesn’t come across in the gameplay. Compared with Terminator Salvation, Gears of War seems like a meditation on violence, which is too bad since the beginning of Salvation promises a Gears of War-like experience.

After all, Terminator Salvation is a third-person shooter set in urban decay. John Connor is accompanied by Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), the Dom to his Marcus, and together they fight against an enemy which overwhelms. Combat is largely cover-based and you even press Y to focus in on points of interest.

Armed with an assault rifle, Connor is immediately up against swarms of flying Aerostats and, soon after, Spiders — heavily shielded crab-like machines. You won’t survive out in the open, but the game has a deep cover system. Almost every structure on the battlefield offers some form of protection from which Connor can pop up and take out enemies or lay down some blind fire. Once you’ve clung to a wall or overturned car, you can use the thumbstick to open a radial menu and dive to another location. Using this method to move around the battlefield, you can flank enemies and fire on their unshielded areas.

Countering the cover system is a strong enemy AI. Spiders won’t let you fire on their backs for too long before swiveling and counter-attacking. Later, the menacing T600 endoskeletons will be unleashed and they seem designed for the sole purpose of hunting you down. Fortunately Connor’s weapon choices grow to include shotguns, grenade launchers and devastating pipe bombs.

Get a few chapters into the game and you’ll realize that Salvation has a typical war movie setup — our men are trapped behind enemy lines and it would be suicidal to rescue them, but isn’t this what makes us better than the enemy?

Connor assembles a group of like-minded troops who have heeded his “come with me if you want to die” call, and plunges in. It would make sense for them to occasionally do some flanking of their own, but they are engaged in battle theater — shooting without aiming and dying dramatically.

If there’s anything you want in a movie tie-in, it’s the feeling that you’re the star of an action movie. There are no wow moments in Terminator Salvation. No great set pieces. No thrills or chills. Just a steady march through post-apocalyptic L.A.

Terminator Salvation is actually a good looking game, but level design is linear and repetitious. Skynet keeps throwing the same three models against you, no matter how deep into enemy territory you creep. Any half hour of Salvation resembles any other half hour – save for a few rail shooter sequences which break up the monotony if nothing else.

Looking at everything I said above, I would still probably recommend this game if it didn’t clock in at under four hours. It is utterly reprehensible that shovelware like this is being presented as a triple-A title. While Salvation does have offline two-player co-op, there is no online multiplayer component. There are no secret areas, easter eggs, collectibles, or unlocks. In short, Terminator Salvation has no replay value whatsoever.

It’s a solid D.

After two CyberStorm Entertainment employees die suspiciously, Detective Peter Sebeck discovers their deaths were caused by elaborate death traps set by revered game designer and CyberStorm CEO Matthew Sobol. Officers storming Sobol’s mansion find themselves in a standoff against more tech-powered traps, but the greater challenge is that the deceased Sobol is doing all this from beyond the grave.

A daemon, a hidden computer program, is part of Sobol’s postmortem plot not to hack computers, but to hack society. Recruiting disaffected individuals and channeling billions of dollars, Sobol’s Daemon organizes a global cabal capable of bringing down corporations and threatening governments.

Lending equal weight to online and offline action, Suarez has some scenes set in CyberStorm’s computer games, which the Daemon is using for recruitment. Beating a mod for the WWII-themed, Over the Rhine, wins the approval of the game’s baddie SS Obesrtleutnant Heinrich Boerner. Later The Gate (CyberStorm’s fantasy MMO), is the setting for a stakeout.

More than a techno-thriller, Daniel Suarez has created a plausible scenario about what a determined individual can accomplish in a wired world.

Wrapping up the major platform briefings, Sony hit E3 today with their presentation showing what’s in-store for their console and handheld system. Cutting through the marketing, here are the three things Sony fans should be saving up for.

PS3 Motion Controller
Nintendo has the Wiimote. Microsoft has Project Natal. Sony has a prototype. Looking like a small baton with a ping pong ball attached to the end, PS3′s motion controller works in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of the controller which could be a stand-in for a tennis racket, pistol or flashlight. A motion controller in each hand lets the user dual-wield. Imagine a Zelda game where you’re Link, blocking attacks with a shield while striking with your sword. Still at the tech demo stage, this has a lot of promise and I’m hoping Sony can stick to their Spring 2010 launch date.

PSP Go
Showing that Nintendo isn’t the only company that can make their portable device more portable, Sony showed off the PSP Go. Half the size of the PSP, this sleek and sexy handheld slides open like a cell phone. With built-in wifi and Bluetooth capabilities, the PSP Go goes beyond games allowing for better access to and storage of videos, music and pictures. Full PSP games can even be downloaded to the Go, bypassing physical media. The only question is will the $249 entry price be too high, especially since Nintendo’s DSi is only $169.

The Last Guardian
When the “games as art” argument rears its head, two games come to the forefront: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s no wonder that the company behind them, Team Ico, would have created the beautiful and mysterious The Last Guardian revealed today. The trailer shows a young boy hunted by knights in an eerie ruin who is befriended by a giant griffin. Haunting and poignant, this game is set for a 2010 release.

E3 continued today, with Nintendo’s Media Briefing at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the video game industry’s annual trade show where major players gather to reveal anticipated games and new technology. While Nintendo’s presentation wasn’t as well received as yesterday’s Microsoft briefing, here are three things for Nintendo fans to get excited about (and I should note that I love the DS and Nintendo has some cool things planned for the DSi, but the Wii was the star of the show).

New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii
Can there be anything new about Mario? After all, the last New Super Mario Bros. was a 2006 DS title and the venerable plumber has been hanging around since 1981′s Donkey Kong. With that said, Nintendo has something interesting here — they’ve taken the core 2D platform design and turned it into a 4-player co-op game. Or at least co-op in spirit — I’m thinking this game will be the new Gauntlet, where screwing over fellow players is almost as much fun as working together.

Wii Sports Resort combined with Wii MotionPlus
Nintendo’s Wii captured people’s imagination with a motion-sensitve controller which made you feel like you were actually swinging a baseball bat or throwing a punch instead of pulling the strings on a computer-generated puppet. MotionPlus (a new attachment for the Wiimote) ups the realism by allowing faster and more sensitive motion-tracking. As shown in the Wii Sports Resort trailer, this means archery, golf, water skiing and a host of other sports have now reached the next level of immersion. Can the ultimate lightsaber game be too far behind?

Metroid: Other M for the Wii
There was major fail at this year’s briefings, with the consoles attempting to reach out to hardcore gamers and girls not realizing that hardcore gaming knows no gender restrictions. With delicious irony, Nintendo’s best received title was the hardcore Metroid: Other M featuring the badass (and female) Samus. Nintendo plus Team Ninja equals stunning 3D environments, awesome boss battles and fast and furious (and edgy) gameplay.

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2009 is underway and the major players are grabbing their share of the media cycle by revealing hot games and new technologies. Once the major industry show, E3′s relevance has been questioned in recent years, especially since it has served more to confirm rumors than offer surprises.

It’s refreshing that Microsoft has kicked off the show with an impressive E3 Briefing. Here are the three biggest announcements Microsoft revealed today for their Xbox 360:

The Beatles: Rock Band
We knew this was coming on 9.09.09 (number nine, number nine, number nine) and we could have guessed at the track list, but did anyone see vocal harmonies coming? Support for up to three vocalists shows that unlike recent Guitar Hero releases, this isn’t just Rock Band with a Beatles skin. This is a multiplatform release, but the biggest surprise Microsoft pulled off was putting the two surviving Beatles onstage during the announcement. Paul and Ringo may have had an awkward two minutes in the E3 spotlight, but unless Nintendo or Sony have Elvis waiting in the wings, it would be hard to surpass this level of star power.

Social Notworking
I hope you like your couch, because Microsoft is planning to keep you on it. Announced today was integration for social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. Redesigned for your television, it will be easier to keep track of friends, share pictures and highlight your gaming excellence all through your Xbox. As if that isn’t enough, Microsoft is bringing Last.FM to Xbox Live subscribers letting them create and share playlists.

Project Natal
This morning people were talking about Xbox Fluid which morphed into Project Natal during the briefing. I can only assume the pregnant Trixie 360 created this natal fluid confusion. Anyway, Project Natal is Microsoft’s answer to the Wiimote. Bypassing controllers completely, Microsoft showed off the Project Natal concept which uses a camera for facial recognition and body movement tracking while a microphone picks up your voice. Examples shown included miming steering a car to play a racing game, unleashing a martial arts barrage to defeat an on-screen opponent and shouting trivia answers at the screen to win a multiplayer game. Potentially the biggest game-changer, Project Natal also faces the potential of being another gimmick like the EyeToy — or worse — the new Power Glove.

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I’m crouched down in a dark corner of my house, but my dog is still able to see me. This is disappointing because according to The Chronicles of Riddick, I should be completely hidden. But shadows in The Chronicles of Riddick work differently from real world shadows — they are pools of absolute darkness from which Riddick springs forth for the kill.

Riddick was the standout character in 2000’s Pitch Black who became a franchise in 2004’s Chronicles movie. He’s an antihero – a badass who’s willing to kill, yet he also seems to have a moral code. He’s called a villain, but in a future without heroes that label means little.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is two games in one: a remake of the 2004 Xbox/PC game Escape from Butcher Bay and the new Assault on Dark Athena, which picks up where the first game ends. Whether Riddick is escaping or assaulting he faces overwhelming odds, but Vin Diesel’s voice and likeness ain’t going to be no punk.

Of the two games, Escape from Butcher Bay is the superior one. Butcher Bay, half supermax prison and half mining colony, is a massive facility populated with distinctive characters, each with their own motivations. Within minutes of being tossed in a cell, Riddick must learn the rules of the prison while earning respect and — more importantly — favors.

Some inmates want Riddick to solve their problems with a shiv and others want him to gather information. But whether you’re beating down inmates or provoking guards, you’re also learning the layout of the facility and how to access restricted areas.

With escape as the goal, Riddick will have to move between prison towers and the mining facility to find a way off planet. This will not only draw the ire of lowly inmates and basic prison guards, but will eventually put Riddick up against trained mercenaries and heavily armored guards.

While it’s fair to say that gameplay is stealth-based (the games are first-person-sneakers), it’s also combat-friendly. If you’re in a hallway patrolled by guards, you can move from shadow to shadow and stay unseen, maneuver behind guards and execute quick kills, or open up with an assault rifle.

The plus side is that you can find a style of play that works best for you. And failing to be stealthy doesn’t necessarily bring instant death. Some stealth games end abruptly when you’re spotted, but Riddick can make the best of a bad situation by upping the violence. The downside is that Riddick can’t take that many bullets before flopping over — and the game could desperately use a cover system a step beyond ducking behind crates.

Butcher Bay is one of those things where everything went right. Even before the game was brought up to today’s graphical standards, it had excellent voice acting, interesting missions and great level design. The thing that impressed me most about Butcher Bay is the pacing of the game. It plays like a well edited movie, rising to an epic conclusion.

In contrast, Dark Athena’s pacing drags the game down. Much of what worked in Butcher Bay has simply been transplanted here, with the setting shifting from a prison colony to a prison ship. What’s strange is that the boss battle and thrilling finale come at the game’s midpoint. Then the game continues on an island which looks like it’s been pulled from Myst and is patrolled by the Borg and creatures which have escaped from Prey.

By no means is Dark Athena a bad game, it just pales in comparison to the excellent Butcher Bay. Both games are ten hour experiences – longer if you’re seeking out every collectable or completing every side quest – and there’s several multiplayer modes too. Atari is to be commended for releasing the game with the most value since Valve’s Orange Box.

In the Xbox 360 version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine you earn an achievement for killing 2000 enemies.  And I do mean killing.  With his foot-long adamantium claws, Wolverine dismembers, decapitates, and disembowels his way through some of the best standalone superhero gaming since 2004’s Spider-Man 2.

The “video game of the movie” is typically a tired, obligatory exercise.  Based on Wolverine’s last movie tie-in, X-Men 2: Wolverine’s Revenge  (TestFreaks’ FreakScore 3.2/10), gamers would be right to be skeptical of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.   But, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is more than the typical summer blockbuster throwaway title.   Taking cues from God of War, Wolverine is an epic brawler set comfortably between the X-Men movie franchise and the Marvel Universe.

Following the movie’s lead, Origins starts with a pre-admantium Logan engaged in a black ops mission in Africa.  Logan is part of a mutant team which includes his brother Victor Creed whose mutation parallels Logan’s.  Even without unbreakable bones, Logan is still a killing machine.  By alternating weak and strong claw attacks, players can chain combos unleashing savage attacks against machete and machine gun wielding mercenaries.

While it seems like button mashing at first, Origins has a robust combat system which allows Logan to throw enemies to their death, impale them on spikes, and — most satisfying — lunge at them from a distance.  As the game progresses, Wolverine levels up increasing his health and opening up rage-powered area of effect attacks.  Speaking of health, Wolverine’s healing factor is in place, but it’s more of a nice bonus instead of a game changer — think of it as a replacement for the ubiquitous health kits which litter most games.

Origins bounces between a present day adamantium-laced Wolverine, who’s dealing with severe fraternal issues by killing everyone standing between him and Creed, and the Africa mission where everything went south.  The game resembles the movie’s storyline, but has interesting deviations and many welcome additions.  In addition to an expanded Weapon X facility, Wolverine also tears through a secret robotics lab in the Southwest and the duel with Gambit has been stretched into a multistage battle.

The game pulls from the movie’s dialogue, with some original voice work from major cast members including Hugh Jackman (Logan) and Liev Schrieber (Creed).  I imagine the audio sessions which captured the various grunts must have been hilarious.  Aside from solid voice work (including audio logs ala BioShock), sound is largely unmemorable save for some nice ambient effects.

In addition to the expected boss battles and waves of mercenaries, including specially engineered foot soldiers and jungle mutants, Origins throws a few minibosses against Wolverine and it’s here that repetition sets in.  The first time you figure out how to take down a giant lava monster, it’s satisfying.  But by lava monster number three, the satisfaction is gone.  Later Origins introduces another oversized baddie and you’ll realize that you have to use the same strategy.  And then another oversized baddie is introduced.

Games based on movies have a narrow launch window, often giving them an unfinished feeling.  Origins is more solid than most, but there are a few nagging issues with the graphics including some slowdowns during larger battles and some aggravating clipping issues.  Mostly the levels are well designed — and props to Raven for throwing in some hilarious and timely easter eggs — but there’s definitely pressure to stay on the path.  And it’s a little head scratching that so many environmental puzzles are based on Wolverine trying to open doors, since his claws could easily slice through most of them.

However, these issues pale to the experience of forcing a commando to blow off his head with a shotgun or launching an aerial assault against a fleet of helicopters.  The visceral design of X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes gameplay a compelling (and M for Mature) experience.

Rating: B+