I recently had a chance to get some hands-on time with the Xbox One’s slate of launch titles in San Francisco.

Here are some quick thoughts on the system itself and a few of the games that made a strong impression:

The system

The Xbox One system mimics the appearance of a DVD or Blu-ray player with its sleek lines and minimal surface markings, which fits in line with Microsoft’s desire to make the system your one-stop entertainment center. Save for the big logo on the right-hand portion of the console, there’s little that would indicate it’s a video game console at first glance.

The controller is largely unchanged with the exception of the dashboard button, which is now at the top of the controller and away from the other buttons. The Start and Back buttons have been renamed Menu and View, respectively.

The D-pad is recessed into the controller and the edges have been rounded; playing a fighting game on an Xbox One controller is a more pleasant experience than using the 360’s.

One thing I disliked about the Xbox One controller was how Microsoft has reshaped the left and right triggers. They now slope outward, which leaves your index fingers in an extended position at rest, as opposed to curled in a 90-degree angle with the 360 triggers. Pulling them doesn’t have that same trigger-like feeling. It’s a minor quibble, but I’m perplexed why Microsoft felt the need to change something that was perfect.

Combo weapons are back in Dead Rising 3, but you won't have to lug items back to a workbench to make them.

Dead Rising 3

Gamers jonesing for some survival horror action won’t have to wait long to find it on the Xbox One. Capcom Vancouver — formerly Blue Castle Studios — brings us more comical zombie-smashing fun with Dead Rising 3.

Dead Rising 3 takes place in Los Perdidos, a fictional California city, 10 years after the events of Dead Rising 2. New protagonist Nick Ramos must survive the hordes of the undead and escape the city before a military strike comes and eradicates everything.

With four different neighborhoods, each with its own character, Los Perdidos easily dwarfs settings from the first two games. The most impressive thing was the lack of load times moving between building interiors and the city at large. Equally amazing is the number of zombies that can be onscreen at once.

I enjoyed the simplified weapon-combining system in Dead Rising 3. Rather than having to lug the correct items to a workbench, Nick can craft items on the fly as long as he has the stuff he needs in his inventory. It’s as simple as accessing the menu and pressing a button to start MacGyvering weapons of mass undead destruction. The trade-off is that poking around in a menu leaves you susceptible to the shambling hordes, so finding a safe spot becomes paramount.

Combining weapons goes a step further in Dead Rising 3 with the addition of more combo vehicles. I was able to combine a motorcycle and a steamroller to make a “Rollerhawg,” which is already as ridiculous as it sounds before you notice it also has a built-in flamethrower. Players will have to search for blueprints to unlock new weapons and vehicles.

Dead Rising 3 will feature the ability to save anywhere and also no time limits, a first for the series. Fear not, traditionalists — there’s a so-called Nightmare Mode that features the saving system and the fiendish time-based missions from the earlier games.

I only got to see the tip of the iceberg with the demo version, but it looks like Capcom Vancouver promises plenty of the same zombie-squishing antics from the previous Dead Rising games, but only bigger and better.

Jago is among the original characters returning in the reboot of Killer Instinct.

Killer Instinct

It’s been 17(!) years since the last Killer Instinct game, but all the intense combo action is back in a big way. Double Helix gives the series, last seen in 1996, a next-generation reboot.

If you’re my age, you were probably in middle school when Killer Instinct crashed the 2D fighting game roost occupied by Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. It didn’t have nearly the impact of those two games, but the ludicrous combos and over-the-top game announcer (“C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!”) certainly left warm and fuzzy memories for many gamers.

Double Helix is looking to recapture the feel of mid-‘90s quarter-crunchers and give it a next-generation update. I was wondering how Killer Instinct, a franchise long dormant, would hold up against modern 2D fighters. The early verdict is an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Killer Instinct’s combo system mystified me back in the day, but Double Helix has streamlined the combo engine to make it more accessible. There are six attack buttons, three punches and three kicks, with each producing an attack of differing speed and damage.

Each character has special moves that open combos; hitting an attack after the combo starter connects leads to an auto-double, which is an automated string of hits. Linkers extend the combo and let you transition from special moves to auto-doubles.

A knockdown meter begins to fill as the combo grows; if it fills up before you perform a combo ender, the opponent falls down and the combo is over. By chaining together starters, auto-doubles and linkers, you can pull off some flashy and ludicrous combos.

At any time, however, the defender getting combo-ed can break out of it with a Combo Breaker (complete with the awesome sound effect), by pressing the punch and kick buttons that correspond to the strength of attack the attacker is using. For example, pressing medium punch and kick will break up a combo if the attacker used a medium attack. The caveat is that guessing wrong or mistiming the Combo Breaker will lock you out, meaning the attacker can go to town for three seconds.

Longer combos obviously lead to more damage, but also leave the attacker susceptible to Combo Breakers if they’re too predictable with their choice of auto-doubles and extenders. Light auto-doubles are quick and harder to break but do less damage, heavy auto-doubles deal more but are slower and easier to react to. It creates a fascinating meta-game of balancing the risk and reward of longer combos with keeping the opponent off-balance.

Filling the meter at the bottom of the screen unlocks Shadow moves, which are beefed up versions of special moves that deal more damage and can’t be broken. When the meter under the character’s life bar fills up, it unlocks Instinct Mode; triggering unlocks powers unique to each character.

The demo version featured Sabrewulf, Jago, Glacius, Thunder and a new character, Sadira. I first picked Jago. He’s kind of like what Ryu is for the Street Fighter series, with a similar move set that includes fireballs and a Dragon Punch. I drew upon muscle memory from a more than decade-and-a-half ago and start pulling off special moves and some decent combos with some degree of precision.

I felt like a middle-schooler playing in an arcade again; the only thing missing was a row of quarters on top of the joysticks signifying the queue of gamers waiting to take on the winner.

The developers took a lot of care refining each characters along certain fighting-game archetypes. Jago is the typically well-rounded and beginner-friendly character, similar to Ryu in Street Fighter. Glacius is slow, but can attack from anywhere on the screen, making him ideal for controlling space. Thunder has a variety of throws and command grapples, so he’s kind of like Zangief.

We played the game on some slick joysticks by Mad Catz, which will presumably be on sale either separately or package with a special edition. They’re certainly worth picking up if you crave an authentic arcade experience.

Killer Instinct will be available on launch day as a free digital download, with one character available to play each week on a rotating basis. Additional characters can be purchased for $4.99 each. That’s pretty steep for a DLC character. The Combo Breaker pack for $19.99 includes the launch lineup of six characters, as well as the first two DLC fighters. The Ultra Edition for $39.99 has all of the above, plus an emulated version of the original Killer Instinct game. Finally, the Pin Ultimate Edition, retailing for $59.99, throws in a display case for collectible pins designed by Penny Arcade.

Why the tiered pricing system? Microsoft’s Torin Rettig said in an interview with Polygon that the idea is to give players what they want and none of the content they don’t. With the cast of characters in your average fighting game nearing almost 40 or 50, it’s likely players won’t bother learning all the characters, choosing to specialize in a few. The a la carte approach lets them acquire the content they will actually use.

Younger gamers may not be tempted by solely by nostalgia the way someone my age would, but Double Helix has a strong showing on its hands that any fan of fighting games can appreciate.

The quick-time events in D4 make good use of the improved Kinect sensor.

D4

From the mind of video game auteur Swery65 comes Dark Dreams Don’t Die, or D4. If you crossed Heavy Rain with the film Memento and added some of Swery65’s previous games (Deadly Premonition would be a good example) for flavor, and you’ll have a fair approximation of what D4 might be like.

The player is a private investigator named David Young whose wife has been brutally murdered. The event caused him to suffer amnesia, but also gain the ability to travel through time by coming into contact with other people’s mementos. David uses this power to solve crimes for his clients.

D4 adds an interesting take on quick-time events by using the Kinect controls. Instead of pressing a button to trigger an action, the player has to duplicate certain on-screen motions with their arms and hands.

The demo scenario had David engaged into a fistfight and I had to time my motions to successfully perform the next action. For example, I swiped my right hand from right to left to simulate throwing a punch, then quickly moved my left hand in the same motion to block a counterattack.

But it’s not just all timed hand motions. One instance had me cupping my hands to my mouth to simulate using a megaphone. Another had me pantomiming swinging a baseball bat. It’s a lot more engaging than the typical quick-time event, which typically consists of “Press X to not die.”

The decision to integrate the Kinect with the Xbox One seemed to be a dubious decision at first, but D4 takes advantage of many of its capabilities. Sure you can still use the controller to play the game, but pressing buttons seems pretty bland when you can be pretending to pick things up or throwing fake punches instead.

Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate dials down the cheesecake, to a point, but it's still bizarrely fascinated with its female characters' physiques.

By EMMANUEL LOPEZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Dead or Alive has had quite an image makeover in the past year.

In Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate, the latest installment of Team Ninja’s 3D fighting-game series, the emphasis is less on babes in skimpy outfits kicking butt and “advanced jiggle physics” and more on creating a top-notch fighter.

Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate is actually a compilation of last year’s game that incorporates material from the PS Vita port, DOA 5+; it adds yet more content in the form of new fighters and system tweaks. If you already have a DOA 5 save file, your save data and downloaded add-ons will transfer to Ultimate.

The roster of combatants is as large as ever. Dead or Alive mainstays Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate and Ryu Hayabusa (the protagonist from Ninja Gaiden, Team Ninja’s other flagship franchise), join a diverse cast of assassins, pro wrestlers and more. Returning from earlier Dead or Alive games are Ein (Hayate’s amnesiac alter-ego from DOA 2) and mercenary Leon.

Demon slayer Rachel and ninja apprentice Momiji cross over from the Ninja Gaiden series to join the DOA roster. Jacky Bryant brings the number of Virtua Fighter guest fighters (Jacky’s sister, Sarah, along with Akira Yuki and Pai Chan were introduced in the original DOA 5) to four.

If you’ve been keeping count, that’s a grand total of 29 combatants, each with his or her distinct fighting style.

The tutorial mode in Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate is extremely thorough.

Not sure where to begin? The meticulously in-depth Tutorial mode would be a good place to start. It covers everything from the fundamentals to more advanced material like combos, character strategies and setups.

Even veteran players will appreciate getting a refresher course or studying up on weak spots in their game. Players familiar with 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter or Tekken will feel at home with DOA’s fighting system, which borrows from both while adding a few bells and whistles. It’s a system that’s intuitive and accessible, yet deep and intricate as well.

Practice mode is the laboratory where you can experiment and learn to become familiar with whichever character you choose. The training dummy can be set up to respond to a variety of in-game situations, letting you test out possible combos and setups for your character. If you’re a frame data cruncher, you can enable that option.

When you feel you’ve got the chops, you can test your mettle in the standard offline single-player modes: Story, Arcade, Survival and Time Attack. The Story mode is virtually identical to the original DOA 5, a convoluted narrative that tries to shoehorn the entire cast into a plot that sort of makes sense. Each mode, with the exception of Story, can be played solo or as a tag team.

Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate's tag-team mode.

In addition to offline versus play, Ultimate’s various online modes will keep you well-stocked with opponents. The standard lobby mode is on par with most fighting games these days. In between matches, idle lobby participants can observe matches while chatting with each other. New in Ultimate that was missing in the original DOA 5 is the ability to play tag matches online.

The caveat, however, is that people who have the original DOA 5 or Plus won’t be able to play against those with Ultimate. As of this writing, there are no plans to introduce a patch to rectify that. Ultimate is compatible with the free-to-play version called Core Fighters, which is basically a stripped-down version of the full game available for the download on the PlayStation Network only. Core Fighters features four playable characters — Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate and Ryu Hayabusa — and all of the offline single-player modes except for Story, which can be purchased for $15. Additional characters can be purchased for $4.

Interactive, multi-tiered stages have always been a hallmark of the DOA games and the environments in Ultimate deliver the goods. Several stages feature uneven terrain, water or ice, which can affect your attacks’ properties.

Other areas have designated “danger zones;” hitting an opponent into them triggers a special environmental attack. Knocking someone into one of the rings of fire in the circus stage (yes, really) leads to… wait for it… them getting knocked into the air by a charging tiger. In the war zone stage, getting knocked into a danger zone means eating a missile. A MISSILE. It’s outlandish and cartoonish, but certainly in tune with DOA’s flamboyant style.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dead or Alive game without a little eye candy and Ultimate continues in that fine tradition. It’s a flat-out gorgeous game to play. The characters carry a staggering amount of detail and the environment provides some stunning views. It’s often easy to overlook because of the fighting’s frantic pace. Thankfully, Spectator mode lets you construct a mock match, pause and capture the action to your heart’s content.

It’s a fighting game, but make no mistake, Team Ninja knows it’s the on-screen titillation that sets the Dead or Alive series apart, for better or for worse. What other game has an item in the options menu that lets the player select how much breast jiggle they prefer?

Dozens of costumes, mostly for the female characters, allow gamers to play virtual Barbie.

There are more than 200 costumes to unlock or acquire and not surprisingly, the ladies get the lion’s share. Although each character has dozens of outfits of varying skimpiness/shirtlessness, the character customization is rather shallow compared to Tekken or Virtua Fighter; you’re reduced to swapping entire outfits instead of building one from an assortment of shirts, bottoms, headgear, etc.

Gamers who already own the original DOA 5 might be hard-pressed to shell out $40 for Ultimate, but there’s enough new content for fans will enjoy. Those of us who have long been curious about giving DOA a chance will find Ultimate a good starting point, despite Team Ninja’s bizarre fetishization of its female characters. You might still have to pause the game when your spouse or significant other walks into the room though.

Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate, rated M, is $39.99 and available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. For this review, I played the 360 version with a copy provided by the publisher, Tecmo Koei, with a regular controller. DOA 5: Ultimate also supports all joysticks compatible with the 360 or PS3.

Here's a look at Ducktales Remastered, left, side-by-side with the equivalent scene from Ducktales. Images have been cropped slightly because of differing aspect ratios between the two games.

By EMMANUEL LOPEZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Nostalgia’s a funny thing. It’s easy to reminisce fondly over afternoons playing video games (after homework was done, of course), while glossing over stuff like the awkwardness of middle school.

That’s both the gift and curse of Ducktales Remastered, a remake of the 1989 NES game Ducktales, which in turn was based on the 1987-90 cartoon of the same name.

Developer WayForward does a tremendous job preserving the feel of the Nintendo Entertainment System original, while giving it a 21st century makeover. The blocky 8-bit sprites are now wonderfully drawn characters set in beautifully designed backgrounds. Much of the original voice cast from the cartoon is back for Remastered and it’s delightful to hear crotchety billionaire Scrooge McDuck’s Scottish accent again.

After a brief tutorial level, Scrooge McDuck — along with Huey, Dewey, Louie and the rest of the Ducktales crew — is off in search of five rare treasures scattered in places as diverse as the Amazon rainforest to the moon. As with the original, they can be tackled in any order, with two brand-new, original levels that became available after the first five are completed.

Players guide Scrooge McDuck from platform to platform.

Like any old-school 2D platform-jumping game, the premise is simple — navigate the hazards of each stage and defeat the boss at the end. Using Scrooge’s cane as a pogo stick provides a wrinkle, letting him jump higher and defeat some enemies by jumping on them Mario-style. WayForward even took care to retain the distinct “boing” sound effect from the NES game.

Part of the original game’s charm was being able to take multiple paths to get to the end, something that is almost a given in modern platformers. In Remastered, however, the addition of mandatory objectives makes it necessary to explore every nook and cranny. The worst offender is the Amazon stage, which requires Scrooge to collect eight medallions before the next part of the level opens up. At least pausing the game brings up a map that highlights the location of all stage objectives.

Certain parts of each level have been reworked to accommodate this added dimension, which can lead to a Total Recall kind of scenario for those of us who somehow still remember the stage layouts from the original. Like the stages themselves, the boss fights have been re-imagined, although it only makes them more drawn out and tedious rather than breaking any new ground.

Unfortunately, the punishing difficulty of NES-era games don’t translate well in this age of checkpoints and auto-saving. The Easy difficulty takes the sting out of dying with unlimited lives, but calling higher difficulty levels “punishing” would be an understatement.

Getting to the end of Ducktales Remastered will require some trial and error.

Spending an entire afternoon playing a game, memorizing stage layouts and boss patterns wouldn’t be a problem if we were all grade-schoolers again. But for a 30-year-old with a job and all sorts of grown-up hassles, the idea of having to replay an entire level when you’ve run out of lives doesn’t sound like anything that could be called fun.

Remastered gives fans of the TV series plenty of fan service with extras like concept art, character sketches and more that can be purchased with the booty Scrooge collects in his adventures. It provides an incentive to replay the game long after you’ve committed (or recommitted) each stage’s layout to your memory. Scrooge can even splash around in his Money Bin, just like the cartoon. The lack of a “classic mode” where you can play the NES original is a surprising and disappointing omission.

Ducktales Remastered trades heavily in nostalgia, treating the source material with great care while translating it to the present day. The accessible gameplay might be enough to entice new fans, although the dated gameplay may not hold their attention for very long. But for those of us who grew up with the cartoon and NES classic, Remastered is a fond and worthwhile trip down Memory Lane.

Ducktales Remastered, rated E, is available as a $15 download on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U. For this review, I played the game on Xbox 360, which will be available Sept. 11 on Xbox Live. The publisher, Capcom, provided a code to download the game for review.

"Saints Row IV" opens with humanity being abducted by aliens en masse.

By EMMANUEL LOPEZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

After battling luchadores, fending off assassins disguised as strippers and standing up to a highly trained paramilitary force, it only seems logical that the Saints street gang would spend Saints Row IV battling aliens. Who or what else could stand up to The Boss and company?

Five years after the events of Saints Row: The Third, The Boss is now The President, perhaps the biggest electoral head-scratcher since the 2000 election. The White House is staffed by various allies The President has encountered in the three previous games. A short prologue mission ties up some loose ends from the previous installment, and quickly establishes the bombastic tone for the rest of the game.

Invaders from the Zin Empire, led by the affably evil warlord Zinyak, capture the Saints along with the rest of humanity. The President ends up imprisoned in a virtual simulation of Steelport, the city from the previous game. Think of it as The Matrix, but with more Furries and the part of Neo being played by a green-skinned crossdresser whose voice sounds suspiciously like Nathan Drake, or an anthropomorphic inflatable doll with a soothing Southern drawl. It’s your call. As with other Saints Row games, the protagonist is absurdly customizable.

Even though you’re in the same Steelport, it doesn’t feel like it. By exploiting glitches in the simulation, your character gains superpowers and suddenly the entire place turns into your personal playground.

Saints Row IV does a masterful job of making you feel like a superhero. The entire world can be traversed and explored in a hop, skip and a jump. Crushing traffic with a tank seems mundane when you can sprint at supersonic speeds and vault buildings in a single leap instead.

Later, you gain the ability to hurl elemental blasts, manipulate objects with your mind and more. You upgrade your powers by collecting data orbs scattered throughout Steelport along the vein of Crackdown, or by completing certain side missions.

Saints Row IV's superhero powers fit surprisingly well within the series' goofy fiction.

Despite The President’s growing abilities, the game finds a delicate balance between making you feeling like a superpowered badass and presenting some degree of challenge. The President’s powers don’t supplant the more conventional means of dispensing smackdowns — guns, melee weapons and even your bare hands — but rather complement them. You’re never punished for having a preference, be it hurling tanks with your mind, vaporizing aliens with explosive dubstep beats or mowing them down with a Super Soaker.

Only in a Saints Row game would taking down extraterrestrial invaders be such a letdown. The enemies — an assortment of alien soldiers and robots — are dreadfully bland compared to the colorful rogues’ galleries in previous games. It’s still hilarious to smack an alien with a sex toy baseball bat, but it’s nowhere near as fulfilling as it could be.

Driving and shooting still comprise the majority of missions, but because the game takes place in a computer simulation, it isn’t shy about leaning heavily on the fourth wall. One mission will have The President kicking butt in a 2D beat-’em-up and another is a hilariously executed riff on Metal Gear Solid. It’s a thrill to see what kinds of absurd twists Saints Row IV will throw at you.

The presidential turret, a little-known perk of the Oval Office.

It should be noted the game does suffer from a few technical issues. The frame rate occasionally dips when the action gets too intense and audio clips are occasionally dropped. Sometimes the game would seize up altogether, which is thankfully mitigated somewhat by the auto-saving system. Nonetheless, it’s a terrible buzzkill when you’re going a million miles an hour and leaving a trail of destruction only for the mayhem to grind to a halt.

Along the way, The President will assemble a crew from homies rescued from the aliens. Shaundi, Pierce and others from the series join a few new faces — including actor Keith David playing himself as the vice president (a gag that gets a lot of mileage) and a friendly A.I. — in the fight for humanity’s survival. Unfortunately, several characters didn’t make it for this go-round, but some of those who do come back (Benjamin [bleep] King!) will genuinely surprise Saints Row fans.

Developer Volition isn’t abashed about mining popular culture for laughs, most notably taking shots at Mass Effect and The Matrix, while also cheekily slipping in references to everything from Firefly to Harry Potter. None of it feels particularly ham-fisted or malicious and sometimes they blend together in some laughably bizarre ways. What’s a high-speed spaceship chase without “What is Love?” by Haddaway playing in the background?

Even the older Saints Row games aren’t safe from lampooning and longtime fans will enjoy the callbacks. It’s like a person laughing at embarrassing pictures of themselves in high school. Between the main storyline and the smorgasbord of side missions and activities, expect to log in around 25-30 hours doing everything there is to do in fake Steelport.

Volition is clearly confident with the identity it’s crafted for the Saints Row series and that swagger shows. Saints Row IV is all about taking the slapstick humor and bombastic gameplay from the last game and giving it whatever they were handing out at the Biogenesis clinic. It doesn’t take itself seriously and doesn’t you ask you to either.

“You got the touch, You got the poweeerrrrrr!”

“Saints Row IV,” rated M, is $60 and available on consoles for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and on PC through Steam. For this review, I played the Xbox 360 version of the game provided by the publisher, Deep Silver.

Fans of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will get a chance to revisit that game's setting this fall in Grand Theft Auto V.

By EMMANUEL LOPEZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Grand Theft Auto V, due out Sept. 17, takes us back to a familiar place — San Andreas, the fictionalized California that served as the backdrop for 2004’s Grand Theft Theft Auto: San Andreas.

It’s been nine years since Rockstar first visited the West Coast in GTA: San Andreas. The question is whether this return trip can capture some of the spirit and ridiculousness of GTA: San Andreas. With GTA V putting gamers in a San Andreas state of mind, it seems almost obligatory to revisit that place and remember how GTA: San Andreas turned everyone’s expectations for an open-world sandbox game upside-down.

Rockstar Games certainly had big plans after 2002’s hugely successful Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The pastel-splashed crime saga redefined the open-world game genre, creating a huge environment to explore while poking fun of a decade that featured MTV and enough hairspray to create a hole in the ozone layer.

So when Rockstar announced a new GTA game for 2004, it had everyone thinking “What could possibly top Vice City?” The easy answer would have been to keep doing more of the same. But Rockstar had a more outrageous solution — make it bigger and make it crazier. Nobody knew how much bigger the game would be. And nobody could predict how crazy it would become.

Some of the craziness to be found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

GTA: San Andreas takes place in 1992 and America’s nursing a hell of a hangover from the neon-soaked excess of the previous decade. Protagonist Carl Johnson is back in his old hood after getting word his mother was killed in a drive-by shooting. He returns to find the place is a mess, his old gang — the Grove Street Families — losing territory and influence to rival groups. Now it’s up to him, his brother Sweet and his homies to take it all back.

As soon as the game begins, the first thing that is apparent is how much area Los Santos, a digital doppelganger of Los Angeles, encompasses. It’s easily larger than the fictional Miami in Vice City. But then you hit the pause button and the game map shows the whole enchilada just waiting to be unveiled and explored. And it leaves you wondering what role all of this real estate will play in the story.

In-game models and textures are crude by today’s standards, but despite the technical limitations of the time, there’s a staggering amount of detail and sense of place across San Andreas. Each locale has its own character, from the sprawling Los Santos metropolis, to the scenic hillsides in San Fierro and the glittery boulevards of Las Venturas. Even the sprawling forests and deserts in between, and the small towns within them have their charms.

However, this world doesn’t exist solely as a canvas for criminal hijinks or as pretty scenery to be admired. It is a game environment that feels dynamic, lived in. Even in 2013, it holds up surprisingly well against modern-day open-world games, even surpassing a few.

A soundtrack with offerings from artists as diverse as Ice Cube to Rage Against the Machine helps frame the time period in which San Andreas is set. Of course, no soundtrack of the West Coast in the 1990s is complete without a heavy dose of the G-funk sound that helped usher in the era of gangsta rap into the cultural mainstream.

There’s something picture-perfect about cruising through the streets of Los Santos in a low-rider, doing drive-bys on rival gangsters while Ice Cube riffs on the great day he’s having or driving a tank and leaving a wake of destruction to the tune of Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome To The Jungle.”

CJ and his fellow gang members are much more developed than previous GTA characters.

An interesting dichotomy begins to emerge as you play through GTA: San Andreas. It is a game embracing its pedigree and yet attempting to move beyond it. Nowhere is this paradox more apparent than in its protagonist.

What sets CJ apart from previous GTA protagonists — Claude, the silent goon of GTA III and Tommy Vercetti in Vice City — is his depth and complexity. Or rather that he has a personality at all. In GTA III and Vice City, the main character’s primary purpose is to serve as the player’s avatar, giving us a means to live out our criminal fantasies vicariously.

CJ is not a violent sociopath like his predecessors. Even though we are free to go off on crime sprees at any time, there’s a conscious effort to portray CJ as a sympathetic figure. The gang life of Los Santos is merciless, but CJ and the Grove Street Families are cast in a more romanticized light, a tight-knit band of urban survivors rather than a group of hardened career criminals. Yet CJ finds himself reluctantly drawn back into a world he tried to escape, becoming entangled in shaky alliances and struggling to do what he feels is the right thing.

Despite some spotty targeting controls and uneven difficulty spikes, GTA: San Andreas is a flat-out fun game to play and explore. Missions vary greatly, even as they border on the absurd at times. It’s a mash-up of wildly disparate game genres that blends together and gives the player an incredible degree of freedom to experience the game however they so choose.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' role-playing elements had its share of detractors.

Role-playing game elements, while providing a sense of realism, occasionally intrude on the main gameplay. One mission requires CJ to have spent some time splashing around in the water to upgrade his lung capacity before it even becomes available. Some of the later stages become rather difficult if you haven’t spent some time grinding out upgrades to your health, armor and weapon skills.

CJ’s story of gangland redemption draws heavily upon early 1990s urban crime dramas, but quickly veers into unexpected areas once the narrative leaves Los Santos. Some missions — sneaking aboard an aircraft carrier and stealing a jet — have a definite James Bond vibe to them, while the casino robbery that forms the main plot thread in Las Venturas could easily pass for an Ocean’s Eleven sequel. It’s an amusing contradiction, but you get the sense Rockstar crafted the story to fit the game world, and not the other way around, and struggled to incorporate all of the cities into it.

The sheer size of GTA: San Andreas proves to be its greatest strength and its biggest liability. The game has this incredible story it’s dying to tell you, but the unbridled freedom it offers players makes it all too easy to get derailed from advancing the plot. These excesses certainly provided the impetus for Rockstar’s scaled-down, narrative-heavy approach to Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. This movement met some resistance from longtime fans, who criticized the dour tone of Niko Bellic’s story and the rather bland rendition of Liberty City. It was with The Ballad of Gay Tony that Rockstar began to reconcile this new style of GTA with some of the over-the-top antics of previous installments, showing that a strong story and ridiculous fun were not mutually exclusive.

It’s difficult to describe GTA: San Andreas without spouting off a litany of superlatives. The one word that keeps coming to mind, however, is ambitious. The brazen juvenile humor, rampant violence and pointed satire are there (even when it isn’t, as in the case of the notorious “Hot Coffee” scandal). But GTA: San Andreas shows a Rockstar daring to stretch itself and take a mature approach to elevating the open-world genre as a viable storytelling medium, providing the blueprint for recent masterpieces such as Red Dead Redemption.

Even though we both had Petaluma addresses and crossed paths at video game industry events, I had never formally met Giant Bomb’s Ryan Davis, who died July 3 at age 34. But I followed his entertaining Twitter feed and, of course, knew of his and Giant Bomb’s history and popularity. Video gamers are all poorer for having lost him, and he’ll be especially missed by listeners of the Giant Bombcast, the weekly podcast he hosted. (The latest episode is a tribute to Davis.)

Davis’ Giant Bomb colleague and friend, Jeff Gerstmann; father, Richard Davis; and wife, Anna Davis, talked to Press Democrat Staff Writer Sean Scully about the online celebrity many Sonoma County residents may not have known was in their midst.

An excerpt:

Video games “would be 45 minutes in the podcast, but we’d go on for three hours … we wanted to expand beyond geek culture,” Gerstmann said.

Davis was a breakout star, with his big laugh and broad humor and his eclectic interests, including music, unusual clocks, hummingbird feeders, and a weirdly intense love of his New Balance model 574 shoes, a love so passionate that podcast followers would send him photographs of their own pairs, his wife said.

“There was something inherently genuine about the way he carried himself on camera and in the podcasts” that helped him connect with an audience, she said. “I think that showed or resonated with people.”

As his fame among gamers grew, she said, people would recognize him on the street and ask for autographs and pictures. Davis was always friendly and cooperative, but he would often confess later that he was uncomfortable with all the attention, such as the day he was recognized in line for the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland, where the couple went every year to celebrate Anna Davis’ birthday.

You can read Ryan Davis’ Press Democrat obituary here.

Side note: I have worked at The Press Democrat for more than 12 years, and this is the first time I can recall an obituary photo in which the subject was pretending to be a pirate.

Note: This review of the single-player campaign in “The Last of Us” is the first of a few posts I will be rolling out on the game over the next week or so.

Naughty Dog proved with its popular “Uncharted” trilogy it could make the video game equivalent of an “Indiana Jones” movie. Its latest effort, “The Last of Us,” however, has loftier, artier goals. The zombie-infused road movie packs the dramatic and emotional punch of a violent, art house film, as its two protagonists try to survive in a world seemingly bent on their extermination.

Even as part of a video game landscape rife with post-apocalyptic wastelands, “The Last of Us” is unrelentingly bleak. Set 20 years after a modern-day fungal plague inspired by cordyceps  turns the majority of mankind into homicidal, zombielike maniacs, the game starts with Joel, a middle-aged smuggler who is hired to escort a 14-year-old girl named Ellie out of Boston but instead ends up on a nearly yearlong, cross-country trek with the girl.

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The pair traverses a United States that’s been made almost unrecognizable. What little government is left has organized citizens into tightly controlled quarantine zones, where food is rationed and residents are routinely scanned for signs of the infection. Outside the zones, those hardy enough to survive can flourish, so long as they can keep swarms of rabid infected, fungal spores, raiders and the military at bay. In other words, nearly everyone who Joel and Ellie meet wants to kill them. Even characters with good intentions are understandably suspect.

Even if the infected in “The Last of Us” can look a little ridiculous, particularly at advanced stages of infection, the game’s message is clear: Shoot your enemies and keep your friends at arm’s length. You’re as likely to have your throat ripped out when a friend betrays you as you are to have your heart ripped out when he’s bitten by an infected and asks you to put him out of his misery.

Whereas the “Uncharted” games were carefully designed and scripted to the point of occasionally feeling like a modern-day “Dragon’s Lair,” “The Last of Us” allows players more freedom. The levels are still largely linear, but they’re opened up considerably. Players will be doing plenty of crouching behind conveniently placed waist-high cover, but the overall gameplay rarely strays far from the game’s core concept – a pair of survivors trying to eke out their way in a hostile world with limited resources. You’ll be carefully setting traps and sneaking around enemy-filled environments looking for stealthy kills more than you’ll be popping out from cover for a head shot.

The game is generally organized into “encounters,” or run-ins with infected, raiders or the military. Sometimes lengthy bits of scavenging, exploration and narrative exposition bridge the gaps, allowing Naughty Dog to show off some of the best-looking graphics this console generation has to offer. At times, the 7-year-old PlayStation 3 shows its age, with foliage popping in off in the distance. That said, “The Last of Us” is visually as close to the pinnacle as we’ve seen from this generation of consoles. The game even streams upcoming content as you play, sparing players any kind of load screens once the game is booted up.

In keeping with its tale of scavengers getting by with what they can find, Joel has the ability to craft health packs, shivs and other disposable items with bits and bobs he finds strewn about the world. Scavenged spare parts allow Joel to upgrade his weapons, while supplements upgrade Joel’s abilities themselves.

Combat sequences in "The Last of Us" are visceral and appropriately intense.

Naughty Dog does a great job at making sure gameplay in “The Last of Us” doesn’t interfere much with the story the game is telling. The action is occasionally a bit heavy on shooting, and Joel’s seemingly supernatural ability to “hear” enemies and see their silhouettes when he enters a special “listen” mode is jarring until you decide to just roll with it. That’s also the case with computer-controlled companions’ tendency to run right past enemies without blowing your cover. It’s a necessary concession to resolve a conflict between stealth gameplay and the road-movie story, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t occasionally awkward.

Like Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted” games, “The Last of Us” is heavy on banter between its two leads as they travel cross-country, but instead of “Uncharted’s” corny, Harrison Ford-style come-ons we get to listen in as Joel and Ellie, played perfectly by Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, grow to trust, then rely on, then love one another. Ellie’s evolution from burdensome tagalong to pistol-toting wing-girl and, eventually, surrogate family member is captured perfectly throughout the 20-hour-plus run time.

None of it would work if Naughty Dog hadn’t done such a masterful job writing the script and casting the game. Everyone from Baker – who excelled as Booker DeWitt in this year’s other narrative masterpiece, “BioShock Infinite” – on down to supporting players such as Brandon Scott and Merle Dandridge absolutely nails his or her part. “Uncharted” star Nolan North’s turn in a supporting role was so contrary to the actor’s usual work for Naughty Dog that I missed it completely until the credits rolled.

The tense encounters, grim tone and perfectly spun, often heartbreaking tragedy mean “The Last of Us” is best played in one- or two-hour chunks. It should be savored, not rushed through and “beaten” quickly like so many other blockbusters.

The high-stakes encounters and well-written script literally had me tossing and turning a few nights, replaying plot details in my mind and more than once waking up with a jolt because it’s just so damned hard to ever let your guard down and relax in Joel and Ellie’s world.

“The Last of Us,” rated M, is $60 and available for the PlayStation 3. For this review, I played a copy of the game provided by the publisher, Sony.

Follow Eric Wittmershaus on Twitter and join the GameWit blog group on Facebook.

Racing games – and by extension racing game fans – tend to fall into distinct two camps. Some players enjoy getting under the hoods of virtual cars, tweaking and tuning their racer to suit their needs. Others will relish zooming along at ludicrous speeds and whipping a ride around a corner with reckless abandon. Codemasters tries to find that sweet spot in between with “Grid 2,” the sequel to 2008’s successful “Grid.”

Thanks to “Grid 2’s” “True Feel” system, the game conveys a definite relationship between your wheels and the road. A car will respond appropriately if you’re taking a corner too fast. But while something can be said for sound racing techniques, the game is also rather forgiving of reckless driving. In fact, it encourages it.

In the single-player campaign, you are a driver working for an entrepreneur who’s trying to get his league, the World Series of Racing, off the ground and into the spotlight. To do so, you must compete against various racing clubs, with each victory raising the brand’s profile and persuading racers to take part in the World Series. You’ll hop across the map, trading paint with drivers in diverse locales including Chicago, Paris and Dubai.

“Grid 2’s” slick visuals make the scenery at each venue pop. The Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe loom in the background as you negotiate the corners in Paris. The Pacific Ocean stretches to the horizon and beyond as you navigate precarious cliffside roads in California. It’s tempting to slow down and take it all in, but with cars whizzing by at ludicrous speeds, sightseeing will have to wait for test drive outings.

Not long into the campaign though, you start to feel you’ve seen it all, especially when each season has you scurrying around the same five or six tracks before moving on. The 20-plus courses – and derivative configurations of each – available in the “Project Gotham” or “Forza Motorsport” series makes “Grid 2’s” dozen or so offerings seem paltry in comparison.

“Grid 2” disguises this fact by including a wide variety of racing types, besides the standard race and time trials. Overtake challenges task you with passing traffic for points, while you must fight to stay ahead of the pack as the field is whittled one by one in Eliminator. Drifting competitions play out like a high-speed ballet; you slide your car around corners in eye-catching displays of automotive control in hopes of nailing the high score. New to “Grid 2” are Liveroutes, which provide a stiff test of reflexes; the mini-map is disabled and the randomly generated track unfolds on the fly.

You start out with a small fleet of cars but eventually accumulate variety of rides, all of which look like they rolled off the set of the latest “Fast and Furious” movie. Each car has strengths and weaknesses: some are better suited for flinging around corners, while others reward technical precision. Finding the right car for the race is critical. Gearheads will be disappointed at the limited degree of customization available. There are no parts and upgrades to acquire, but you can at least make your car look as pretty (or gaudy) as you want it.

When you’ve got the right car, with the right kind of track, everything clicks. But no thanks to shoddy opponent programming and dodgy collision mechanics, a race can become a nightmare in a split second. Computer-controlled opponents have no qualms above pushing you around the track, and can do so with impunity. Trying to ram an opponent has about the same effect as if you were driving a Smart Car trying to run an M1 Abrams tank off the road. Most of the tracks are narrow city streets, so the difficulty quickly jumps to “the third level of ‘Battletoads’” hard. Some races do penalize or even disqualify you for collisions, so nothing is more aggravating than having to redo a race because of a crash you didn’t cause.

The Flashback feature from the original “Grid” returns, allowing to you mitigate some of your high-speed gaffes by rewinding a small section of the race. You are only granted limited use of Flashback, so judiciousness can be the difference between a podium finish and picking digitized tire shavings from your grill. Most of the time, though, you’ll be using Flashback because a computer-driven car spun you out going around a corner.

The online component is separate from the single-player campaign. You can take part in races or complete weekly challenges to earn cash and experience, which can be used to unlock higher-end vehicles and purchase upgrades for your fleet. Souping up your ride is a little more hands-on, but still terribly limited.

Up to 12 speed demons can compete in a single race and “Grid 2” does a fairly good job matching up competitors, not only by level, but also by driving style. Codemasters’ RaceNet keeps track of your online career and you can share replays of your automotive smackdowns through Facebook or Twitter. You can also set up friendly rivalries among other users. Either you can race head-to-head, or asynchronously compete by seeing who can post the best time on a given track.

The sense of progression feels a lot more tangible in multiplayer. It’s a strange choice on Codemasters’ part to implement completely different systems between the single-player and multiplayer modes. In comparison, single-player feels a lot more shallow and arcade-like. If you crave more immediate competition, Grid 2 does offer a splitscreen mode.

Like a racer trying to find the ideal racing line around a turn, “Grid 2” attempts to strike a balance between pedal-to-the-metal arcade action and the exacting technical precision of sim-based titles. It certainly has the look of a racer, but you can’t help but feel the game overextends itself trying to appeal to the broadest base possible.

“Grid 2,” rated E, retails for $60 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and $50 on PC. For this review, I played an Xbox 360 copy of the game provided by the publisher.

“Resident Evil: Revelations,” originally released last year for Nintendo’s 3DS, attempted to take the series back to its roots by marrying survival horror elements from the earlier games with the action-oriented gameplay of recent installments. Fans responded positively, and it seemed only fair that console gamers be treated to the same experience, but now with a few layers of polish.

Calling the game “Resident Evil: Revelations” is kind of a misnomer, as very little light is shed on the series’ main mythos. Instead, the game is set between “Resident Evil 4” and “RE5,” shortly after the formation of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. Aside from a few oblique references to Africa, “Revelations” feels more like a self-contained side story than a sequel.

Franchise regulars Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield take center stage in “Revelations,” as the BSAA investigates Il Veltro (“the greyhound” in Italian), a shadowy terrorist group threatening to unleash bioweapons on the world. The plot unfolds at a dizzying pace; jumping between flashbacks and different characters can be jarring at times. But overall, it’s the standard “Resident Evil” fare of conspiracies and double-crosses, although much less convoluted than previous titles.

The game is split into bite-sized episodes, alternating between Jill’s and Chris’ perspectives, while occasionally sprinkling in playing time with the supporting cast. An episode can be completed in roughly a half-hour or less, which is perfect for a handheld, but on the shorter side for a console.

There are instances where it’s clear “Revelations” started out life as a game for a handheld. A few graphical textures are a little rough, particularly on the map screen. The voice acting occasionally falls out of sync with the characters’ animations. For the most part, “Revelations” survives the jump to HD.

Most of the action takes place with Jill and her partner, Parker Luciani, aboard the Queen Zenobia, a cruise ship adrift in the Mediterranean. Exploring the deserted vessel’s labyrinthine halls hearkens back to the sprawling emptiness of the first game’s mansion. The dark, cramped quarters emanate an oppressive sense of dread, with a threat seemingly lurking behind every corner.

Unfortunately, the setting is marred by lackluster level design. Save for the occasional room, the Zenobia is a confusing maze of cut-and-paste corridors, with a couple of simple puzzles (if they can be called that) thrown in. Further compounding the problem is the amount of time spent backtracking through those drab hallways. Some chapters have Jill and Parker running from one end of the ship to the other to complete an objective. It’s easy to get lost aboard the Zenobia, but not for the right reasons.

The more action-packed segments — usually involving Chris and his partner, the shamelessly flirty Jessica Sherawat — provide a nice palate cleanser without needlessly dominating the game and turning it into a Michael Bay movie.

Some of the characters are equipped with a Genesis bioscanner. Similar to Samus Aran’s visor in the “Metroid Prime” games, it pinpoints items and can analyze the makeup of enemies to synthesize healing items. Even with items the bioscanner provides, it feels more like table scraps than a cornucopia, making the choice between fight or flight more urgent.

The computer-controlled partners provide a small measure of comfort against the mutated hordes, but they’re not terribly helpful. Enemies rarely acknowledge their presence, which allows them to take pot shots that seem to do little to no damage. The illusion does make for a good show during some of the more frantic encounters.

Raid Mode can be tackled solo or cooperatively.

There’s no co-op option for the single-player campaign. Instead, there’s Raid Mode, the unlockable bonus mode in the 3DS original, a kind of arcade-style minigame that pits players against retooled sections from the main game. Raid Mode can be tackled solo or cooperatively, either locally or online; the best times and scores are posted online at ResidentEvil.net.

Rewards and experience are doled out for completing each stage, with bonuses assigned for fulfilling optional objectives, such as not taking damage or killing all the enemies. Increasing experience levels lead to access to better weapons and upgrades, which in turn can be purchased with points. Having the right equipment can make the difference between life and death on the more difficult maps.

It’s a welcome diversion from the main campaign, and can also be enjoyed in small stretches.

“Revelations” provides a fresh spin on a formula that started to show its age in “Resident Evil 6.” Even though there are a few hiccups from making the jump to consoles, longtime fans of the series will find there’s a surprisingly robust amount of content. If they missed the boat on the 3DS original, the console port is worthy enough to satisfying any craving for old-fashioned survival horror.

 “Resident Evil: Revelations” is rated M and costs $50 for the Wii U, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The 3DS version retails for $40 but can be found for less than that. For this review, I played an Xbox 360 copy of the game provided by the publisher.

Starting Friday morning, with a review of “Resident Evil: Revelations,” you’ll be seeing a new name on this blog.

Please welcome Emmanuel Lopez, who joined The Press Democrat’s sports department earlier this year after previously working for the Bay Area News Group.

Emmanuel is a longtime gamer who’s a bit more into fighting games and racing games than I am. He’s actually good enough at “Dark Souls” to finish it. Like me, he plays a little bit of everything.

As for me (Eric), I’ll still be posting stuff occasionally. My post frequency has dropped off considerably as I’ve taken on new roles at The Press Democrat, but I’m still playing games and talking about them. You can find me on Twitter and both Emmanuel and me on the GameWit blog Facebook group.