Cover: Mizuguchi's Child of Eden for 360 Kinect.  I'm pressed by the concept, but not so impressed that I'd buy a Kinect (not that I could given the dimensions of my game room).

Features:

The Making of barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior (I had forgotten this Commodore 64 gorefest -- it was awesome).

Look back at the development of Dungeon Keeper 2

Feature on the game Retro City Rampage for the PC and Wii.  It's a cool looking pixel art game that is GTA in nature with 8-bit tech.

Feature on some of the better indie games available on 360. I should check them out, they look good and most of them are only 80 Allards each.

Feature on the dude who started Interplay, ran it into the ground and is now making the Fallout MMO because his game of chicken with Zenimax failed.

Feature on downloadable games from the big publishers, how that space is changing from what it once was.

Previews:

They gush over Portal 2, Epic Mickey, Assassin's Brotherhood and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.

They offer light praise for Tron: Evolution, Homefront, Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, Infamous 2 and Valkyria Chrnoicles 3.

They are worried about El Shaddai, Gun Loco, The Last Story

Interviews:

Jamie Jackson for DJ Hero.

Tasha Harris and Tim Schaefer for Costume Quest.

Miles Jacobson for Football Manager

Shinji Mikami in general.

Masayoshi Kikuchi for Yakuza series.

Reviews:

Vanquish: 8, "once you've played vanquish everything else seems slow"

Medal of Honor: 7, "robust, seldom surprising"

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage: 5, "uneven brawler"

Lost in Shadow: 6, "hinting at something beyond a typical platform game, yet leaving players to go through the motions"

Deadly Premonition: 7, "a straightforward whodunnit viewed through the cracked prism of an unreliable narrator..."

Super Scibblenauts: 6, "hard not to like, but...spawning objects has become the end, rather than the means"

EA MMA: 6, "hopeless career mode, disastrous realtime tutorial, uninspired commentary and lack of cohesive presentation..."

Shaun White Skateboarding: 7, "never hits Neversoft's golden-age standard, but comes much closer than...you would expect..."

The Ball (PC) : 6

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light: 4 "Some strong ideas here deserve more finesse..."

Layton 3: 7, "Puzzle hunting is the only hassle in an otherwise laidback world..."

Costume Quest: 7, "may not leave you full, but it'll taste pretty sweet while it lasts."

Epic Mickey Highlights: (They spend a page talking about the concept, story and Warren Spector then say,

"The game nestled in among the branding is initiallyrather hard to get a handle on. To Spector, EM's a boldly 'genre-less' experience, an artful action game that hinges on choice and consequence as well as bottom-bounces [ground-pounds? - aspro] and platforming.  At heart, however, what seems to be emerging is a lavish cartoon adventure featuring a well-signposted central campaign riddled with side quests.  Shifting between linear dungeon-like sections and hubs filled with chatty NPCs, the game offers a sneaky stage-managed freedom that should prove intoxicating for completionists.

Choice and consequence are still buried deep within this design, however, with a central narrative that shifts and branches depending on how you approach the situations you're thrown up against, and a populace that will respond to you accordingly.  At the heart of it all is the paint and thinner mechanic, Mickey's primary means of interacting with the world, either by painting in new pieces of scenery or rubbing bits out.

In terms of traversal and puzzle-solving, it's fairly binary stuff, and the game imposes strict limitations on which walls you can bring down and which staircases you can build up.  In terms of combat, however, things get considerably more interesting, as you're given the choice of reducing enemies to a puddle or dousing them with paint to 'friend' them, at which point they'll begin fighting alongside you.

It's a lot to take in, and that's before you approach the rich muddle of collectables and unlockables that Epic Mickey's splattered its levels with.  Thankfully, Junction Point has clearly been taking pointers from other masters alongside Disney, and Nintendo is wisely invoked in both move set and control system as spins and left-trigger targeting slot in alongside a use of Nunchuk and Remote that's all but lifted from Mario Galaxy.

At E3, Epic Mickey showed signs of being an earnest mess, a thuderingly over-thought daydream that was far too busy and cerebral to ever make a coherent experience. As the release nears, however, while it's still unclear whether Junction Point's debut is aimed at tweens or 50-year-old animation historians, the overall experience is starting to come into focus as a generous and distinct action game.  Ultimately, the finished product may be as divisive - and audacious - as Disney's own back catalog."

Thanks for that Aspro. Good read.

Still not sure how it will turn out.