The X Button

Fine Time

Here's a secret of mine: I like shooters, but I've never liked Darius games. I find the weapons boring, and the series' motif of gigantic mechanized fish bosses just strikes me as repetitive and bland. Darius Burst is targeted at the Darius fan, in particular the one who holds the PlayStation's G-Darius as the apex of the series. Burst also has lots of huge marine-life robots to gun down, and its weapons offer the chance to counter enemy fire by pushing back with lasers or destroying oncoming bullets with the right attack. It has few overt modern concessions (aside from an anime-girl pilot named Ti2), but the game's pretty 3-D visuals are well-suited to the PSP's wide screen, and the soundtrack is a racing mass of tunes from Zuntata, the Taito-backed composing team with its own little cult following. Maybe it'll win me over in time, just like Gradius V made me like Konami's theretofore awful old-school shooter series.
Import Barrier: Minimal. Some on-screen dialogue and talk of tuna sashimi may elude English-speaking players.
Chances for a Domestic Release: Pretty good, since there's a downloadable version on hand. Square Enix, Taito's current master, already released Thexder Neo here in the same manner.

It should surprise no one that Queen's Blade finally became a video game, since the Queen's Blade franchise has already invaded (and, some say, ruined) many of Japan's geek venues. The surprising thing is that it's a somewhat mainstream title built on Bandai Namco's Super Robot Wars series. Like that compilation of giant-robot superstars, Queen's Blade: Spiral Chaos is a strategy-RPG where tiny characters position themselves on grids and leap into flashily animated side-view battle scenes. Since this is Queen's Blade, those battle scenes find the characters bursting out their armor, jiggling all over the place, squirting acid from demonic breasts, or suggestively spilling milk all over themselves and getting horribly ashamed about their table manners. That's the essence of Queen's Blade: Spiral Chaos, though Namco Bandai went through the trouble of building multiple plotlines into the game, plotlines that players must explore in full to see all of those things for which words like “risqué” seem inadequate. There's also a new character driving the storyline. Her name is Cute, she's a knife fighter, and a figure of her comes with the game's special edition. Both editions feature a special pause screen, just in case your parents walk in.
Import Barrier: The dialogue's all in Japanese. Not that anyone buying this will care.
Chances for a Domestic Release: Very low, unless Media Blasters' North American release of Queen's Blade becomes an industry-resuscitating smash.

Among fighting series that no one expected to see again, Toshinden rated somewhere down around Bloody Roar and Killer Instinct. Yet Tomy brought it back, and this new game has few connections with those older Toshindens that initially dazzled and later disappointed many on the PlayStation. The Wii game introduces an entirely cast of characters, including a book-wielding woman, a cat-maid girl who changes into grown-up form during combat, a blade-lugging schoolgirl, a freckled superheroine in a bodysuit, two futuristic swordsmen, and other standard anime warriors that are nonetheless the best designs the Toshinden series has ever seen. The game's mechanics play it simple, with plenty of aerial combos and exaggerated anime attacks. Balancing the characters was probably not a priority for developer Dream Factory, which hasn't made an evenly matched fighter since Tobal 2 back in 1997. Still, Toshinden has a mess of anime style, and Tomy clearly hopes that the game and its attendant manga series will prove a multimedia hit with the fighting-game fans who don't care about structure or competition.
Import Barrier: It needs the usual rigging that Japanese Wii games require to run on domestic systems, and the finer points of the story mode will be lost on English speakers. Other than that, it's a fighting game.
Chances for a Domestic Release: It's possible, but there's little nostalgia for the Toshinden name over here.

Bayonetta may be the industry's next major action game and an amazing spectacle from the creator of Devil May Cry, but I can't help but think of all the ways in which it could fail. Perhaps the game's many attack methods, from Bayonetta's shoe-mounted pistols to her hair-formed dragon, will prove confusing. Perhaps the God of War crowd won't take to an action game starring a woman, not even a woman with bizarre sex appeal and one-liners too awful to be unintentional. And it would be unfortunate indeed if Bayonetta didn't do well, because Hideki Kamiya has filled it with the most lovingly unhinged carnage ever seen in an action title. Somewhere there's a plot about ancient witch grudges, demons, and annoying sidekicks, but Bayonetta's best points lie in slicing through angelic foes, picking up all sorts of weapons, and facing bosses in shockingly inventive duels. It all looks impressive, Bayonetta's strangely small head notwithstanding, and it tests just how insane action games can get on modern systems.
Get Excited If: You thought that Devil May Cry 4, God of War II, Ninja Gaiden II, and Ninja Blade just didn't go far enough.

Darksiders has tenuous links to anime and Japan's game industry, but it exhibits the work of Joe Madureira, the artist who brought manga-inspired style to mainstream superhero comics back in the 1990s. He also created a comic called Battle Chasersby mixing Final Fantasy with Capcom fighters, yet Madureira's heart always seemed to belong to video games. After working on the canceled action-RPG Dragonkind and contributing to other games here and there, he's showing off in Darksiders. A gory action title, it follows the horseman War in a search for the powers behind a premature apocalypse, and that's a fine excuse for all sorts of graphic bloodshed and towering creatures straight out of '90s comics. War's horse plays a major role in combat, and that might set the game apart from the usual on-foot violence. Darksiders also runs into puzzle-filled labyrinths, though one hopes they're not cut from the tedious, item-throwing school of puzzle-filled labyrinths.
Get Excited If: You're still mad about Battle Chasers getting canceled.