I remember the first time I checked out Shoot Many Robots.  Demiurge Studios had invited me up for a beer in their suite at GDC last year, and there introduced me to P. Walter Tugnut, a Southern shooter with a severe robot issue on his hands.  Just with the introduction of a beer and the main hero’s name, I knew that the team was going for a different kind of run-and-gun title with Shoot Many Robots.  Now that the final game is here, under the watchful care of Ubisoft, it’s still got the same charm that won me over last year.  (And no, that wasn’t the alcohol.)

Real life rarely plays an effect in a video game.  Sure, you can be “killed” by certain characters, but only after taking so many shots and not actually recovering by taking cover.  Very rarely do real-life damages play a part in games.  So when they do, players could be startled.  “I died from climbing up a wall?!”  Ubisoft’s I Am Alive takes these life-like physics into heavy consideration, putting you in an apocalyptic world where survival comes first, then finding your scattered family.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has explored the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. The latest game in the franchise is sticking closer to home. Assassin’s Creed III has been confirmed by the game maker to be set during the American Revolution. This offers a ripe area of exploration that hasn’t been visited in gaming save for an obscure RTS game, American Revolution: Battle for Freedom.

Dungeon Hunter has had a successful run of releases across various platforms, and why not?  Gameloft effectively channels in the classic Gauntlet vibe with this game, providing hours worth of hack and slash fun, whether alone or with friends.  But the main appealing factor was the game’s price.  Up till this point, you could get your skill set on for no more than $13.  But with the PlayStation Vita version of the game, titled Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, you get the same old dungeon crawling action for a startlingly hiked price.  Worth it?  Not really.

Last year at E3, Ubisoft surprised us with a vacation gone awry in a little game called Far Cry 3. The trailer depicts an island being ruled over by a psychopathic regime, and your only means of escape are by taking the fight back to them and let the guns do the talking. Now a new gameplay trailer has emerged, displaying how big a fight it is to escape the island and how explosive some of the moments can be.

Consoles and PC's have had a slow month interms of new AAA quality games arriving for your respected platform. While January got off to a slow start, it quickly recovered to bring us high quality tittles through digital distribution. Plenty of great downloadable arcade tittles were made available through XBLA, PSN and Steam, giving us many hidden gems on the digital marketplace. Let's look back at the games we reviewed over the past month.  

Know what pains me in this industry?  When a truly magnificent game goes unnoticed due to a lack of an ad campaign or a "push", if you will.  That's how I feel about Rayman Origins, which I consider one of the best games of 2011.  Unfortunately, it's barely cleared 50,000 units sold, showing signs that the project is a failure.  No, it's not.  It's a tremendously fun game that shouldn't be missed by anyone -- even if you're not crazy about platformers.  Thankfully, Ubi appears to be giving it another shot, this time on the PlayStation Vita, just in time for its launch.