MC Groovz Dance Craze Review. MC Groovz may feature The Fresh Prince's 'Parents Just Don't Understand,' but dancing to its poorly stepped, overly lengthy tracks just makes us feel like Carlton Banks. MC Groovz Dance Craze is a rhythm game for the Nintendo GameCube developed and published by Mad Catz. The game is a Dance Dance Revolution clone and was bundled with Mad Catz' Beat Pad accessory. The game was originally announced via a press release on November 2, 2004. About Genre Music Rating Rated 'E ' for Mild LyricsSummary Produced by the long-time peripheral maker Mad Catz, MC Groovz Dance Craze puts players on the dance floor for songs from popular artists. Mc groove dance craze bands.

Defend the human race in Freespace 2. The sequel to the game Descent: FreeSpace is Freespace 2.This game lets you continue in the fight against the Shivans. Not only that, you also have to fight off others like the rebellious Vasudan and Human forces. Use your words clip art.

Undoubtedly one of the best 3D space combat games ever made, Freespace 2 by Volition is a superb space opera of epic proportions.The strong emphasis on plot development combined with spectacular graphics and story-based missions make Freespace 2 a worthy contender to Origin's more well-known Wing Commander games. In fact, in my humble opinion the fun factor of Freespace 2 far surpasses that of Prophecy Gold, the last Wing Commander game, by a considerable margin. The game begins with an alliance of humans and alien Vasudans attempting to rebuild their armies 32 years after the end of 'The Great War,' the battles of which were the subject of Freespace. You play a member of the GTVA, a Human-Vasudan alliance which is fighting a group of human rebels who call themselves the NTF.Freespace 2 improves upon the excellent Freespace in every respect.

Pre-mission elements such as the briefing session and ship configuration are superbly presented, with a lot of details and options to choose from. Frequent cutscenes made with rendered graphics are captivating, especially because outstanding voice acting makes them as absorbing to watch as real-life actors in Origin's Wing Commander IV. The game's emphasis on the plot is not just window-dressing, either: as in Wing Commander, your choices as well as mission successes and failures determine how the plot will develop, and ultimately what ending you will see.

Even during the missions themselves, your objectives may suddenly change when new backstory-related developments take place. Being able to think 'at the seat of the pants' to quickly adapt to changing circumstances is the key to winning in Freespace 2.In terms of gameplay, Freespace 2 is basically a 'bigger and better' Freespace. Capital ships now have awe-inspiring proportions and are able to fight each other. This makes for many a memorable scene when you are caught like a tiny fly in the middle of capital-ships-only combat with cannons and turrets and huge beam weapons that are wider than your spacecraft. The game universe is much larger than in Freespace. Volition also adds a lot of nice graphical details, such as the cool-looking (and appropriately opaque) nebula, on top of much prettier 3D graphics.

There are many new ships in the game in addition to all the ships from Freespace, more varied and more powerful weapons, and more diverse missions.The strategic aspect has also been much improved: your success in some missions depend as much on your strategic choices as your joystick expertise. Should you send a couple of wingmen ahead to recon enemy ships, or have them protect vulnerable ships? Should you take out the enemy bombers first, or the agile fighters?

In-game choices such as these can spell the difference between life and death.In addition to the superb single-player campaign, Freespace 2 includes full multiplayer support: up to 12 players via LAN or the Internet (PXO and SquadWars.com), or head-to-head via modem. In any of these modes, you can choose to fly co-op, team-based, or free-for-all dogfight, with many different missions to choose from.

And to add even more bang for the buck, the game includes FRED2, a full-featured editor that you can use to create your own missions and campaigns.With an epic-sized space operaic plot, gorgeous graphics, top-notch space combat action, optional missions and multiple endings, and virtually unlimited replayability, Freespace 2 is a must-have for all armchair space pilots. And a worthy entrant into our Hall of Belated Fame.Review By HOTUD.

It was only four months ago that my coffee-stained, ash-strewn desk found itself supporting a brand new PC, a machine that now, thanks to the ever-increasing demands of PC gaming, is prematurely approaching early retirement. At the time I naively thought it would take years to fill its cavernous 10Gb hard drive. Now, just a few months later, I'm having to hunt down the smallest of text files to fit the next game on. FreeSpace 2 didn't help matters. Needing a massive 1.5Gb on full install (I wouldn't have it any other way), it's ironic that a game calling itself FreeSpace leaves you none at all.

Still, I managed to find the room from somewhere and now the game, sequel to the best space combat game in living memory - if you've yet to reach the grand old age of two -has taken up semi-permanent residence. I say 'semi' because just two minutes ago I completed the game after five hard days of incessant dogfighting and capital ship assault. During that time, my palms have poured sweat, my eyes have run dry and the coffee machine has popped its Colombian clogs. I don't know if I can go through all that again.

Like its relatively youthful predecessor, itself barely a year old, FreeSpace 2 is a punishingly addictive game. Five days may seem like a relatively short life-cycle for a game, but it's the intensity of those five days, the sheer unadulterated excitement that takes hold throughout the 40-odd missions that makes FreeSpace 2 such a joy to play. Even a game that could take you months to complete would be hard pushed to provide the same level of relentless chair-bound agitation. Of course, once completed, the question is whether you would want to try over again? I'm not sure I would, but maybe that's just me.

Jackanory

Set 30-odd years after The Great War, FreeSpace 2 sees you flying again for the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). Since joining forces to defeat the Shivan incursion in the first game, the Alliance has miraculously managed to survive the three intervening decades, exchanging technologies, ideas and cylindrical meat products. Unfortunately, some human xenophobes see the alliance as a threat and have formed the Neo-Terran Front (NTF), waging a pseudo-civil war against the Alliance with a view to splitting the two races apart.On starting the game, the war against the NTF hangs in the balance. In your role as rookie fighter pilot, your job is to hold off the fighters and take out a few bombers. As the war wears on however, new equipment and machinery become available, and more specialist squadrons require your emerging talents giving you the chance to fly Vasudan ships in special operations.

Although the mission structure is pretty linear, the sorties themselves are incredibly varied. You could be sent to escort a supply convoy to a jump node, when, unexpectedly, a huge battle group appears. Bomber attacks on your capital ships are a particular highlight, shooting down slow bombers as they unleash their ordinance. When you shoot down your first missile - no doubt more due to luck than skill - you'll whoop for joy. Even more impressive are the assaults on Cruisers, Destroyers and Juggernauts - massive behemoths sporting beam turrets that can cut through the hull of the bigger ships like the proverbial knife through butter. Woe betide any fighter that gets in the way of these weapons.

Close Combat

The style of FreeSpace 2s action is much like that of a WWII dogfight simulation, only without the effects of gravity. It's close-up-the-arse action all the way. Buzzing around the hulking cruisers, flak guns track the enemy ships with human precision, while you slip through their jutting structures to line up your next target. Watching your wingmen form up alongside and pummel fire into the still sparking hull of your foe, you almost feel as if you are playing the lead role in Star Wars, Battlestar Gatactica, or any one of a number of sci-fi films where space combat featured heavily. FreeSpace 2 may not be the most original game ever released, but it has been faultlessly designed with a view to making gameplay king. Unlike most games of this type where you are made to feel indomitable, in FreeSpace 2 you are part of a vast navy. You have your assigned duty, so going after a capital ship, no matter how well armed, will almost certainly get you killed.

If you're in a bomber, you must make sure your fighters stay to protect you, while you target the weapons and sub-systems that will make your part in a mission a success. All very well and good if you do manage to exceed your objectives, but most of the time you won't. FreeSpace 2 is nothing if not well balanced.

Let's Talk Graphics

It's no secret that FreeSpace 2 uses the vaguely tweaked graphics engine of Its predecessor. To some that may sound as If developers Volition have just created a mission pack and could have released this as a simple add-on. Perhaps they could have, but that would only have served to devalue the game. Even today the original FreeSpace towers above its peers in its graphical finesse, and yet FreeSpace 2 looks even better. The textures may lack detail close up (very close up mind), but the explosions are still out of this world, especially as the great capital ships split apart. Fires erupt from damaged ships, electrical fires sparkle across damaged hulls and the arc of intense laser fire as two massive fleets engage across the void and will very likely have you running to show your kids/parents/friends (delete as applicable). Epic is perhaps the word I am wrangling for, especially in relation to the size of the battles and ships. Take part in one of the missions in the dense cloudy nebulae, where spacecraft emerge like ghost ships and lightning forks across the vast billowing expanse, and the tense atmosphere multiplies still further.

There's Always A But..

FreeSpace 2 is not without its faults. Again, like any Wing Commander-stye title, the game is a mixture ot escort and assault missions, played out in the backdrop of a galactic war. If L you've played through the L original FreeSpace, you'll probably get through the B first half ol the sequel with a tangible feeling that you've seen it all before To be honest, originality isn't a problem. As you progress, the game gets better and better. When the war is over, you'll sit back and look back on a job well done. I guarantee you will have enjoyed yourself. Whether or not you'll feel that Pound-40 is worth it for a few days play is another matter. If you are one of those people who is quite happy to do the whole thing again on a harder setting or determined to fulfil those secondary objectives you missed first time around, then FreeSpace 2 certainly has weeks of playability - so feel free to add to the score. Me, I'm done. Time to think about freeing more space on my hard drive before FreeSpace 3 appears. Frankly, I don't rate my chances.

The Great Spacewar

Checking out FreeSpace 2s online bits

Reading through the manual, FreeSpace 2 really does boast a frightening array of multiplayer options. As well as straight free-for-all deathmatches, co-operative missions and entire campaigns can be played out online. Get a squadron together and you can even compete in SqaudWar, where teams fight over a number of galactic 'maps', vying for domination. There's even the option for real-time voice communication, speaking to team-mates via a headset, without the need to mis-type phrases and invariably end up vaporised. While a bog-standard 56K modem can just about handle a four-player deathmatch with all the graphical settings at minimum, you will ideally need a faster Net connection to play the game at full whack with pilots shouting down your ear. If you do have the capabilities, FreeSpace 2 is without doubt the best online space game you can buy, dwarfing X-WIng Alliance by miles. I played a few games using more conventional means, and got kicked out with annoying regularity. No doubt the speed of the service will improve with patches, until then I would advise trying the demo, which is admirably well supported - and popular - on the Parallax site.