How Atari Can Really Take Advantage Of The Digital Age

While the company has seen its share of ups and downs (and a few sideways moves) over the past few decades, there's something about Atari that makes me hope they'll be around in some form for as long as people are around to play video games. Primarily a publisher for a good deal of the past decade, since 2004 they've been tapping into their history to produce a few different plug & play console variants in the Atari Flashback line. These units feature not only many classic games, but unreleased as well as homebrew tittles have managed to make it into the mainstream thanks to the small but dedicated team contracted to put the Flashback project together. As good as these systems are, I think Atari can bring things to the next level in a really cool way.

Review: Venetica

Platform: PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC)

Developer: Deck 13

Publisher: Atari

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Official Site

Score: C+

As a huge fan of role-playing games developed around the world for at least 20 years, one thing I've learned is how to appreciate the best parts of every game no matter the overall quality. Simply knocking a new title for what it doesn't have compared to similar entries within the genre is a wee bit too easy for some critics that fail to see that not every game needs to be "state of the art" nor "perfect" to be an enjoyable experience. US gamers never saw retail releases of imperfect Euro-made epics and non-epics such as Hard to Be a God, Vampire World, or Dragonfire: Well of Souls, but each of these (plus many others) have appeal as singular experiences thanks to levels of immersion distinct to each game. Deck 13's Venetica is another one of those really interesting games with similar rough spots that keep it from becoming an instant classic. However, once you overlook its quirks, it's an ambitious project that features an attractive and interesting lead character as well as a few nice twists to the standard RPG formula.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 Gallery: Atari & Eden Want To Keep You Indoors For A While...

If you've never had the chance to play the original Test Drive Unlimited on the Xbox 360*, you missed out on one of the more addictive pure driving games on current generation consoles. While you could in tons of events in offline or through the innovative M.O.O.R. (Massively Open Online Racing) system, the real thrill (for me at least) came in hitting the road in any car and just driving around Oahu for hours. Uncovering every inch of highway for one of the tougher Achievements was a blast and it was pretty cool to see lots of people played the game in the same way. With Test Drive Unlimited 2 hitting PS3, PC and Xbox 360 on February 8, 2011, here's a look at some of Eden Games' nicely rendered cars from a few angles. I'll add older screens to this gallery sometime next week.

TDU2 takes place in Ibiza and an upgraded version of Oahu from the first game (accessible once you've "leveled" enough), so it's going to be a must-play for me, as I'm insanely curious to see what's new, what's changed and how well the overall game experience has turned out.

Random Release News (Or If It's Tuesday, It Must Be DLC Day...)

Yikes - plenty of new games and games news hit the inbox today, so instead of individual postings, a rapid-fire approach is in order. In general, August is flying out with a big ol' bang and September is rolling in with an even bigger set of booms. Here we go with part one: