The RetroModern Gaming blog V2.0

Batman: Arkham Asylum review

2012-01-13T13:24:00.001Z

With the recent release of Batman: Arkham City I thought it was about time I finished the previous game. I am really not sure why I hadn't already, it's had members of the press and gamers raving about it ever since it was released. I will also be reviewing the sequel at a later date as I bought and completed it within a week of it going on sale. I think whether or not this game is any good or not doesn't need much clarification, but here are my thoughts anyway.

Publisher: Warner Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady Games
Expect to pay: £10 - £15

Graphics: 9 out of 10
The only criticism that that I really level at the visuals of Batman: Arkham Asylum is the same grotesque gigantism that effects other games that use the Unreal engine (most noticeably the Gears trilogy). Most characters are really strangely proportioned, and look like they have quite the steroid problem. In some cases like Bane and Killer Croc this works, but Batman himself is a bit too much of a beefcake for my liking. Other than this though the graphics are excellent. The game really does do an excellent job of bringing the comic book world to life and making Arkham feel like a real place. Don't go thinking that the Asylum is just one building - a short way into the game the whole of Arkham island opens up to you, with many different places including a medical wing, penitentiary, a mansion and even botanical gardens to explore.

The whole game takes place at night which is in keeping with the setting and characters that we're dealing with, but none of the game is overly dark. A lot of atmosphere is added by having the large full moon looming in the night sky and recognisable buildings such as Wayne Enterprises viewable from certain places on the island. The environments that you will be sneaking and fighting your way throughout are quite nice and varied, and even though you end up backtracking to several areas a second time they have been changed significantly your next time through.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
I am going to touch on the voice acting first because Rocksteady Games have absolutely nailed it by managing to hire most if not all of the people most well known for playing the different characters from the Batman universe. First of all we have Mark Hamill as the Joker, a role that he wears like a glove and seems to have great fun doing so (even though he keeps saying that he'll never play the character again). All thoughts of Luke Skywalker disappear the moment the Joker starts to speak, and Hamill has many lines throughout the game as he will frequently make comments or order his henchmen over the tannoy system. I think overall, besides the addictive and well designed game play, it was wanting to find out what the Joker would say and do next that kept me playing just that little bit more each session.

Backing up Hamill are two highly experienced voice actors that play Batman/Bruce Wayne and Harley Quinn respectively - Kevin Conroy and Arleen Sorkin. If you have watched the animated series you will know instantly that these are the same people reprising the roles here. I can't really imagine what the game would have been like if they hadn't manage get these people in the roles as they fit them so perfectly. It also helps of course that the overall story of the game and the writer of the dialogue for these characters is none other than Paul Dini, a writer who is well versed in these characters and the universe already.

Supporting the voice work is the soundtrack, and the duo of Nick Arundel and Ron Fish have done a very good job of composing an original score that fits the Batman mythos. DC and Warner could have been lazy here and just used the Danny Elfman or Hans Zimmer music from either of their movie franchises (like they did with LEGO Batman), but they have done a proper job instead by hiring Arundel and Fish and it has paid off. Sound effects play their part too of course and the Batarang, Bat Claw and other gadgets all sound spot on. Also, punches and kicks sound really weighty and painful as you beat the crap out of dozens of poor henchmen over the course of the game.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
Rocksteady Games have done a truly outstanding job of making you feel like you actually are Batman. Firstly, the hand to hand combat: you can string moves together with ease and flow from one move to the next taking out up to 12 bad guys in the same fight (they do tend to stand around patiently and wait to get beaten up, but whatever). Then there is the array of gadgets that you gradually get access to, which both allows you to access new areas of the Asylum and take out bad guys in new an interesting ways. Stealth plays a part in this game, as many of the enemies carry machine guns and tough as Batman is, he can’t survive a full clip being shot into him. Instead, you must make use of the conveniently place gargoyles around the grounds, watch the movements of the guards and then glide down and give them a boot in the face. Or perhaps hang upside down from the gargoyle and wait for an unsuspecting goon to walk underneath, before descending upon him and stringing him up.

The developers shake things up to keep you on your toes throughout the game, by adding explosives to the gargoyles for example, so that you can’t stay on one for more than a few seconds – or by putting alarms on the Joker’s henchmen that go off if they are knocked out, sending another, tougher wave after you. Every so often you will face off against a boss, who is usually one of Batman’s famous foes like Bane, Poison Ivy or Killer Croc. These boss fights have come under a fair bit of criticism in reviews, mainly because they all boil down to the same thing – you look for the bosses weakness, exploit it, they retreat and send in a wave of standard goons, you defeat them, repeat twice more, you win. While they are a little repetitive they didn’t really get on my nerves that much, and the quality of the rest of the game more than makes up for this small quibble.

Innovation and Cleverness: 8 out of 10
There are things that happen in this game that rival the Psycho Mantis encounter in the original Metal Gear Solid for sheer creativity and spot on understanding of the Batman license. To go into details here would be to totally spoil the impact for anyone who hasn’t yet played the game, and I’m not going to do that. Suffice to say though that the unique talents of some of Batman’s arch enemies come into play throughout the story in some very interesting ways. Aside from this, I also like how the usual boring old things like collectables actually give you more insight into the background of the characters, because they take the form of patient interview tapes.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
The main story will take a decent enough chunk of time to play through, say a dozen hours at least, but the game is so good that you will probably find yourself powering through the game faster than you realise. Bolstering the length of this title somewhat are 300 Riddler Challenges, which vary from simply finding trophies throughout the world, solving actual riddles and targeting the item that makes up the solution, or destroying a certain amount of Joker teeth. I didn’t really go out of my way to find and complete these when I played the game, and at the end I had completed 80 of them, so there’s still plenty of scope for completionists to get many more hours out of the game.

Overall: 9 out of 10
Not only is this one of the best super hero games ever made, it is one of the best action games full stop. Fans of the Bat are going to absolutely love it, and those that haven’t really got into his comics or movies before may well end up converted after spending a night in his cape trying to thwart the latest evil scheme of the Joker and his cronies. The sequel promises to deliver all that this game has done and more so, by expanding upon the confined space of the Asylum and giving you the whole city as your playground. Batman will have to go up against many more famous foes such as the Penguin, Mr Freeze and Dr Strange, but he will be helped by Robin and possibly by Catwoman, depending whose she she’s on this time. It promises to be one of the highlights of this year in gaming despite being surrounded by so many other amazing titles in the schedule. If the original has passed you buy though, it is still worth picking up as it is an excellently designed game full of atmosphere and fun gameplay.

RMGB Awards 2011: Part One

2012-01-12T14:30:00.006Z

Welcome to my selection of the best games that were released during 2011, broken down by format, genre and then some overall awards. It's been a few years since I last did this, mostly because I normally don't play enough new games within a given year to be able to make an informed choice. This year though I was able to buy all the games that I wanted, due to having a nice redundancy payout from my previous employer. However I still didn't have enough time to play all the big games that were released, especially those towards the end of the year, so instead I will just have to include them in the honourable mentions category at the end and try to come back and review them in future. The awards will be split over two days, with the first covering each individual format plus a few other categories such as Most Disappointing Game, and the second covering the various gaming genre, Most Anticipated Game of 2012, and my actual game of the year. So without further ado, let's get on with the show...

Best Xbox 360 Exclusive

Winner - Forza Motorsport 4
Where Gran Turismo was once the undisputed king of realistic driving games, now the Forza series has stolen the crown without a doubt. Forza 3 was really the game that pushed the series to the heights that it now enjoys, but the fourth entry in the series adds further refinements to the gameplay and the presentation. Forget the worthless Kinect modes - instead, enjoy a lengthy single player career mode, a gargantuan range of events to race in, and a true online community of racers, tuners and painters. Where in the third game you could progress to level 50 fairly quickly, this time the cap is a massive 150. What's more you have a separate level for each car manufacturer, which goes up to 50.

Runner Up - Gears of War 3
Whilst the two previous entries in the Gears trilogy were certainly good games, Epic Games raised the bar considerably with the final part of the Marcus Fenix saga. The single player campaign is much more diverse in both location and colour palette, and each of the major characters from Delta Squad get their own moment in the spotlight before the curtain falls. The Horde and competitive multiplayer modes have also been significantly overhauled, and a persistent levelling mechanic added across all the various modes. With the promise of significant single player DLC recently coming to fruition with the release of the Raam's Shadow pack, Gears of War 3 cements its place as one of the finest Xbox 360 releases from 2011.

Best PS3 Exclusive

Winner - Uncharted 3
Whilst Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a very hard act to follow, Naughty Dog have almost but not quite bettered it with their third instalment in the series. This time things get rather personal as we get a glimpse into Nathan Drake's past and his friendship with Sully, before racing an ancient organisation to be the first to discover the mythical Iram of the Pillars. Drakes pride may just cause him or one of his friends their lives, as he journeys around the world, finding clues, solving puzzles and getting into many life threatening situations. This game once again shows the developers technical and storytelling prowess, and not only a fantastic single player campaign, but also a in depth mutliplayer mode and a co-op mode.

Best Wii Exclusive

Winner: Xenoblade Chronicles
The outcry from US gamers who believed that they would never see this game released in their territory was well deserved, as this is a truly remarkable RPG and one of the best games ever released on the Wii. Playing rather like an offline MMO, and delivering hundreds of hours of gameplay, Xenoblade Chronicles also pushes the hardware to the limits of its performance with its huge breathtaking vistas and epic score. Thankfully Nintendo have recently announced that the game will indeed get a US release later in 2012, thus serving as a fitting swansong for the Wii before it is usurped by its successor, the Wii-U.

Runner Up: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
It may have taken until the Wii is on the way out as a viable gaming platform, but Nintendo has finally captured the full potential of motion control with the release of the latest in the Zelda franchise. Though the graphics are beautiful for the most part, the Wii does occasionally start to show its age, and the MotionPlus controller does have to be recalibrated just often enough to make it become a minor annoyance. These issues are just enough to knock Skyward Sword down to the runner up position.

Best DS Exclusive

Winner: Solatorobo
Solatorobo is actually the sequel to a much loved yet little played PS1 game called Tail Concerto. Both games take place in world populated by anthropomorphic heroic canines and antagonistic (or just plain naughty) felines as the travel amongst a chain of floating islands in their airships and robotic walkers. These games have all the charm of a classic Miyazaki animation such as Castle in the Sky, and are essentially action RPG's that also feature flying sections quite heavily.

Runner Up: Okami-den
The original Okami was one of the most beautiful games to be released on the PS2, and this DS follow up does a brilliant job of shrinking everything down whilst maintaining same style. Quite literally, in the case of the wolf god main character Chibiterasu, who is the smaller, cutesified son of Amaterasu from the first game. The controls are not quite perfect which prevented Okami-den from stealing the top spot, but in every every aspect this is a great action adventure game and easily rivals the Zelda games available for the DS.

Best PSP Exclusive

Winner: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
I reviewed a game in the Legend of Heroes series in the early days of this blog and gave it quite a high score. In hindsight it wasn't quite as good as I said at the time because it has an appalling translation, mediocre story and unremarkable mechanics. When you compare this latest entry to that one, the difference is quite astounding. You can still tell they share the same lineage, but XSEED have spent much more care in localising Trails in the Sky, and combined with the charming graphics and excellent soundtrack it all adds up to a fantastic package for fans of playing RPG's on the go. The battles are still a little traditional, but you probably wont care as the rest of the package is just so much fun.

Most Disappointing Game

Winner: Fable III
Compared to Fable II, it just felt that Molyneux and Lionhead Studios had basically phoned in this entry to the series. Most of the enemies you encounter are reused from the previous game - in fact the whole experience feels like a hand-me-down and not the least bit fresh. I did still quite enjoy playing through it but compared after all the excellent new mechanics of the second game in the series it just didn't do enough to stand out in a year that has seen a staggering amount of top class games released.

Runner Up: L.A. Noire
The new facial animation technology developed by Team Bondi and implemented in L.A. Noire is extremely impressive, and the grimy setting is also a fascinating place to explore, but mechanically this game was not without it's problems. The main one was the interrogation scenes - you would often press the button to challenge a suspect and expect protagonist Cole Phelps to say one thing, only for him to completely go off on one without warning and basically accuse whoever happens to be in the hot seat of murder. The other issue I have is the the pacing - the game is entertaining up to a certain point and then it feels like it should have ended, only it keeps going for many hours past this point. A briefer game would have actually been more enjoyable in my opinion.

Worst Game of the Year

Winner: Hyperdimension Neptunia
I am always keen to try out as many RPG's as I can that are released throughout the year as it is my favourite genre, but boy do I wish I had never tried this one. Stupid anime characters that barely feature any animation whatsoever explore the most boring random dungeons ever seen, or star in barely animated cut scenes that contain some of the worst dialogue and misguided attempts at humour ever to be included in a video game. Whatever you do, do not buy this game!

That's it for part one, come back soon for part two which will include genre awards, the most pleasant surprise of the year, and my overall game of the year!

Announcing... Dragon Quest Fest!

2011-10-17T14:17:00.000+01:00

So... the week long series of reviews isn't going to be happening this week. Sorry about that.

However, I am going to start a project that may take a little while to complete but should be worth it in the end: Dragon Quest Fest.

In some ways this has already been started because there are reviews of Dragon Quest VIII and IV already on the site, but I am gradually going to add reviews of all of the other main entries in the series and perhaps DQ Monsters Joker 2 as well. My review of Dragon Quest IX will be published as part of my week of reviews which I really hope will happen next week now, and Dragon Quest V shouldn't be too far off either as I am just reaching the end of the second major part of the game on my commute to work.

Unfortunately, when I changed templates a while ago my review of DQVIII got mangled in the process, so my first job is to go back, fix all the paragraph spacing and weird extra characters that were added, find some screen shots to liven it up and some video if there is some available. There will also be one other special article on the series as whole that I hope to get up by the end of this week.

Tons of content coming soon!

2011-10-10T13:44:00.002+01:00

Greetings ladies and gents

Just wanted to let you know that quite soon in the near future (perhaps next week) I will be posting every day Monday-Friday! Woo and indeed hoo!

I have played my way through quite a few games over the last month or so and am ready to deliver my verdict on them. I will also try to get some more meaningful content up this week. In the meantime here is the plan of action for the week long review frenzy:

Monday - Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
Tuesday - Dragon Quest IX (DS)
Wednesday - Shadows of the Damned (Xbox 360)
Thursday - Dungeon Siege III (Xbox 360)
Friday - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (Xbox 360)

As you can seem most of these are slightly older games, but not to worry - we don't do deadlines here! I am currently playing my way through Rage so I should have a review of that up fairly soon after release at least, and my Gears of War 3 critique was quite timely for me. Besides all this stuff, I will also start working out what to put in my yearly Gaming Gift Guide soon. The autumn and winter months are seeing another bumper crop of amazing releases this year so there will be plenty of games to consider for my various top 10's.

Until then, enjoying playing whatever game is keeping you occupied at the moment, and make sure you keep checking the blog for new stuff!

Wibblefish

Gears of War 3 review

2011-09-29T09:25:00.000+01:00

So finally, with the release of Gears of War 3, the story of Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad comes to a close. The first part of the trilogy was released in the early days of the 360, and although 3rd person cover based shooters had been seen before, they were never as polished as this. The first Gears also brought some other new ideas to the table, such as the addictive Active Reload mechanic, which rewards good timing with extra damage. It was a great game at the time but in light of what has come along since I would only give it a 7 out of 10 if reviewing it today. Then a few years later the middle chapter in the story was released, which improved the graphics, added a whole load of extra monster types to keep things fresh, and most notably added the excellent Horde mode into the mix. It was a very good sequel and today would still be worthy of at least an 8 out of 10. Is the closing part of the trilogy another step forward? Let's break it down...

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Epic Games
Expect to pay: £40 (for the standard edition), silly money (for the other editions)

Graphics: 9 out of 10
The first two games in the Gears of War saga have had plenty of criticism for their mostly brown and red colour palette, and for that fact that a lot of the game is spent in dark areas underground. In start contrast to this, Gears of War 3 takes place in a variety of environments, that are not only outdoors for a good chunk of the time but also extremely colourful. From the decks of a ship, to a beach, underneath the waves of a clear blue sea, and inside a luxury hotel on a tropical island, each act of this game shakes things up and really helps to keep things interesting. Added to this are a huge number of new baddies to pit yourself against, both from the locust horde and the lambent, which have been seen in previous games but are now running wild and threatening the existence of the whole of planet Sera. I don't want to spoil the many surprises so I'll just mention one encounter that features an old "friend" but in a new way. The corpser that you may remember facing off against during the first game in the series makes a return, but this time she has brought her entire family. Tiny corpsers and adolescent versions of the spider like beast will come to their mothers aid in an exciting boss battle, that comes not at the end of an act, but in the middle. There are plenty of similar situations throughout the game but this was my favourite.

Another common criticism of the Gears trilogy is the look of the characters: namely that they all look like they're jacked up on steroids. While they are still indeed some chunky looking a-holes, I think they have actually toned this down a little bit this time around as Cole Train in particular doesn't look quite as ridiculous as he has previously.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
John DiMaggio, Carlos Ferro and company are back as you would hope and in fine form for this third fantastic fracas. Most of the major characters: Marcus, Dom, Cole Train, Baird and Anja get their moment in the spotlight as the story progresses and their voice actors do a fine job of it. They are ably supported by some familiar voice talent: Jennifer Hale, Dwight Schultz and Yuri Lowenthal all play at least one character - there's a good chance you will know them when you hear them.

The soundtrack is also up to the par of the previous games in the trilogy, with plenty of new music backed up by new renditions of themes that were composed for the other two games. You can't help but feel the excitement well up in the final act when some the recognisable them kicks in - it signals that the end is coming and it is time to kick the queens ass once and for all.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
Everything that was present in the previous games is back again - the way you can easy snap into and out of cover, the active reload mechanic, the many weapons including the lancer with its chainsaw bayonet, the explosive torque bow and the supremely satisfying longshot sniper rifle. Epic Games have retained all that was good about the previous entries in the trilogy and expanded upon them. So now we have new weapons such as the retro lancer which packs more raw power that its more modern equivalent but suffers from terrible recall, and the deadly One Shot which can literally obliterate anything in a single well aimed shot.

On top of this, they have added a levelling mechanic that is prevalent across all game modes, including single player, and a wealth of ribbons, medals, characters and collectibles to find or unlock. There is plenty of game here to keep the average player entertained for quite some time. Horde mode makes a welcome return but it has had tower defence elements added to shake things up - now you get 30 seconds between rounds to buy defences including barricades, turrets and decoys. You will need them too because your opponents are more vicious than ever, and every 10th round is now a boss wave that could see you going up against a couple of Brumaks for example, or perhaps three very angry lambent berserkers!

That is not all though, because a new mode has been added to Gears 3: the Beast mode. It turns the tables on Horde and sees you playing the part of the locus. At first you a limited to low level fodder such as tickers and grunts, but as you earn experience you will unlocked the ability to play as tougher and tougher creatures like a Theron Guard or a the Kantus. Things are topped off by a fun range of competitive multiplayer modes including old favourites like Execution, and a co-op campaign that has been expanded from two players to four. My only complaint is that I would have like more consideration to have been made for lone wolves such as myself to be able to play Horde with the assistance of three bots. I don't think this would have been too hard to implement: the Unreal Tournament series had bot matches years ago.

Innovation and Cleverness: 7 out of 10
Though this is the third part of a trilogy and therefore quite iterative in its nature, Gears of War 3 still contains plenty of clever touches. The single player stages are excellently designed and full of set piece moments that put most big budget actions films to shame. The controls and the weapons feel right and are very satisfying, and the whole game just exudes polish.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
There is a LOT of stuff to keep Gearheads occupied in this game: single player over 4 different difficulties, co-op for up to four players, a special arcade version of the campaign, an expanded Horde mode, the brand new Beast mode, multiple competitive multiplayer modes, 100 levels of character advancement, dozens of ribbons, medals and achievements, 15 COG tags to find and even more stuff to collect. Phew! That sounds like plenty to be going on with for the time being if you ask me.

Overall: 9 out of 10
Gears of War 3 is a very fitting swansong for Delta Squad, but it is not the end of the franchise as a whole. For starters we've been promised campaign DLC that introduces a new cast of characters and paves the way for the next Gears of War title. My guess is that will be a Halo Reach style prequel set in or around the Pendulum Wars that occurred before Emergence Day - humans fighting amongst themselves over the emulsion fuel. I look forward to it and now, having finished the Gears 3 campaign for the first time, am about to settle into several months worth of levelling up over countless Horde, Beast, and competitive matches. See you online!

Wii Hidden Gems #2 - Little King's Story

2011-09-21T14:26:00.000+01:00

It has been way, way too long since I wrote the first entry in my Wii Hidden Gems series, and seeing as the article is one of the top five most popular posts on the blog I thought it was time to highlight another title from the consoles back catalogue that I feel doesn't get quite as much love as it deserves. This time I will be covering Little King's Story, a strategy game that was published in 2009 by Rising Star Games in Europe and XSeed Games in the US.

Publisher: Rising Star Games
Developer: Cing
Expect to pay: £5 - £10

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Little King's Story features extremely colourful graphics that are very whimsical in nature. They are quite cartoony yet quite stylised and detailed, and they suit the host platform very well. There can be quite a lot going on at the same time yet the game doesn't slow down, even when you have dozens of your loyal follows trailing along behind you. There are quite a few boss battles throughout the course of the game, both optional and obligatory, and they are usually quite large in size. It can be quite a challenge to keep all of your little soldiers alive when you are being charged by a giant bull, squashed by a huge toad or attacked by the Oni King and his many minions, to name just three examples.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
This is where Little King's Story really gets a lot of its charm. Despite the music consisting almost entirely of classical music that has been out of copyright for centuries, the soundtrack still manages to amaze due to the way the various compositions have been remixed and implemented into the game. You will most likely recognise a good deal of the music from the moment it starts up. Speech consists of a gibberish language that the characters speak that sounds vaguely foreign but in actually fact is just a bunch of random noises. Depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing it could get quite annoying after a while.

Check out the video above to get a feel for the aesthetics of the game.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10

As for the gameplay, well... it's Pikmin, isn't it? Except in a fantasy setting and a few more RPG overtones. If you have never played a Pikmin game, you control one character - in this case the eponymous Little King, and then roam around the game world with minions of different types trailing around behind you. Each type of minion serves a purpose - use soldiers to take out monsters, carpenters to build bridges, etc. You have to be careful not to let your non combative minions too close to monsters because they will not be able to defend themselves very effectively.

So armed with your different types of followers, you slowly explore further and further into the game world, uncovering loot and slaying bosses as you go. You can bring back the stuff you have found to your kingdom where you can either sell it to help fund the further development of your kingdom (which is required to progress) or sometimes keep items for yourself to equip. The game can actually be quite tough in places but it does allow for a certain amount of grinding because smaller monsters do reappear over time.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
While the game does undoubtedly steal a lot of the design from Pikmin it does bring it's share of new ideas to the table and overall is a better (not to mention longer) experience in my opinion. As the Wii never got it's own new Pikmin game (the re releases don't count), this makes for a very good substitute.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
Quite some time ago I happened to spot Little King's Story in the bargain games rack of my local Morrison's supermarket for a fiver. That my friends is an absolute bargain and if you see while stocking up on groceries you should really chuck it in your basket or trolley without a moments hesitation. There are quite a lot of stages in the game so it will take you quite some time to finish, but I'm not too sure whether you'd come back and do it a second time. Luckily though the game is getting a sequel for the PS Vita - hopefully it will sell more copies this time, but maybe not if handhelds are as dead as most video game journalists would like you to believe.

Overall: 8 out of 10
This is a true shining gem amongst the collection of titles that have been released for the Wii over the years, and an affordable one at that. So if my ramblings here have whetted your appetite at all, go seek it out and enjoy it!

Game Diary: Driver SF - don't let the ridiculous premise put you off

2011-09-06T14:21:00.000+01:00

The Autumn release period is now well under way. In Europe it started with the amazing Xenoblade Chronicles, which I'm now almost 40 hours in. I have taken a peak at a FAQ to see roughly how far into the game I've got and there's still a ton of content to go. I'm definitely taking my sweet time with it though, for example on Saturday afternoon I spent over an hour just walking around one of the huge towns picking up quests to complete later (to be fair the towns are vast in this game, and you have to explore them at different times to day because the NPC's all keep to their own schedule). I'll be plugging away at this game gradually for quite some time to come, so I wouldn't expect a review until November at the earliest I would guess.

This past Friday saw the release of Driver: San Francisco. Now, I must be one of the few people who actually quite enjoyed Driv3r on the last generation of consoles and didn't encounter too many bugs, so my enthusiasm for the franchise hasn't really waned and this game has been on my wanted list since I saw the E3 trailer from a few years back. When the demo appeared on Xbox Live Marketplace last month I was quick to download it and take the game for a spin. It was then that I started to get a bit cynical about the game, as Reflections have come up with a ridiculous coma storyline in order to explain away the new body shifting mechanic that plays a huge part in the new game. I found the idea really naff and almost passed the game up as a result. However, after a particularly bad day commuting which saw me get home from work at 10:30pm, I decided I was going to buy the game after all to cheer myself up (any excuse for a new game). I'm very glad I did.

Once you get a little way in the storyline the shifting and coma ridden Tanner stop being an issue (at least for me) and then become the perfect excuse to take on all sorts of wacky side missions and just have fun. Reflections have very wisely done away with the on foot sections of previous games that never worked very well (I think they fell into the trap of trying to compete with Grand Theft Auto, when they'd have been better off just doing their own thing). The focus here is very much on driving, and the handling feels great - weighty but still on the arcade side. An old 70's muscle car feels completely different to drive than an Audi RS or a VW Beetle Buggy (my personal favourite), and throwing them around an exaggerated approximation of San Francisco is fantastic fun.

The multiplayer is if anything, even better, with many different modes to enjoy. Some of them involve using the shift mechanic to stay in contention (Takedown events see cops chasing one player who's been designated as a criminal, and the rozzers can instantly beam themselves into any vehicle, whereas the perp is locked out of shifting and must use all of their skill to frantically escape). My personal favourite discipline is traditional racing, where up to 8 players take part either in a series of 5 frantic sprint races, or one longer classic race. There are a ton of tracks and many different vehicle types - although you don't get any choice in which you race, the game chooses at random. There is also a qualifying round before each main event and there are several different types - smashing objects, jumping, drifting, overtaking and achieving the highest top speed. I've got pretty good at these race events and consistently place in the top 3.

The one downside about the multiplayer that I can see is the level cap. It only goes up to 38 and I managed to get to level 16 in just one day, so it won't be very long before I've maxed out. I don't think there's a Call of Duty style Prestige mode present in this game, unfortunately. Hopefully future DLC will increase this cap at the same time as adding new content.

I also finally got around to picking up a copy of Demon's Souls for the PS3. I had hesitated for so long because I was aware how challenging the game was and it didn't sound like the sort of thing I would be able to get any enjoyment out of. After hearing how great it is on many different podcasts though, I decided to give it a chance. Though it certainly is challenging, it isn't unfair and the weighty combat feels really satisfying. I've only managed to get past the very first stage so far, but it would seem that your choice of character class makes quite a difference in how tough you will find the game and magic users get an easier time of it than melee fighters, so I may start again as a Royalist and see how it goes.

I did also buy Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I haven't really played enough of it yet to comment. I think I will be putting it on hold until I'm done with some of the other games I've started recently. That's everything for this week - I'll have another post soon which will probably include my thoughts on Star Fox 64 3D.

Game Diary: Xenoblade Chronicles impressions

2011-08-22T13:32:00.006+01:00

It's time to share with you all some of my initial thoughts about Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, which was just released in Europe this past Friday. I have managed to put in just over 20 hours of play time over the weekend, which I feel is plenty long enough for me to comment on the game so far.

First off, the game looks fantastic. The areas that you will be exploring are huge, colourful and extremely detailed, with grass blowing in the breeze, creatures both small and gigantic roaming around the environments, and a very impressive draw distance. It really does show off just how powerful the Wii actually is under the hood, and is also a testament to the programming and design skills of Monolith Soft.

Next, let's get on the game play. For those that have played Final Fantasy XII, then the way that Xenoblade plays should be quite familiar to you, though it lacks the ability to program your AI companions. Basically it is a lot like playing an MMO without an online component. Within a given area there will be a safe town or other such settlement, full of NPC's with dozens of quests to dole out. These quests typical involve killing things, gathering a certain number of resources, or seeking out a particular item hidden away in the zone. Then you will venture out with your party into a wide open expanse of countryside, populated by wandering wildlife that is both benign and openly hostile to you. The game world really feels like a living, breath ecosystem.

Of course there is a central plot that runs throughout the game and you could just ignore the 300 or so quests and stick to that, but where would the fun be in that? Plus you get the benefit of cash, loot and levelling up that comes with carrying out these tasks. Speaking of the plot, it would seem that Monolith Soft have reigned in the complicated narrative that typified the Xenosaga trilogy and delivered something that is much simpler to follow, with cut scenes that rarely run over 10 minutes (which may seem quite long, but scenes from Xenosaga could go on for up to an hour). That's not to say there aren't plenty of twists as you progress through the game, but it would seem the game mechanics were the main focus here, and the game is all the better for it.

I have no idea how far through the game I am at this point, but it wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo and Monolith Soft have delivered an RPG as huge as Final Fantasy XII (which I easily spent 111 hours on without getting bored). I'm now really looking forward to the upcoming Bank Holiday weekend where I can sink a whole load more time into the game (as well as Deus Ex: Human Revolution which is out this Friday). Anyone from the US who happens to read this and is angry that Xenoblade hasn't been announced in their territory could import the game (with or without the optional red Classic Controller Pro) from game.co.uk or gameplay.co.uk (and I really wouldn't blame you, the game is worth the inconvenience and Nintendo of America should really get their act together and release the damn game already).

Below is part one of the Nintendo produced and spoiler free Let's Play series for Xenoblade.

Game Diary: Tales of Fantasy in the Sky

2011-08-11T13:57:00.025+01:00

It's been a little while since I've posted anything, and that's mainly because I've been immersing myself within several fun RPG's at the same time. I am nearing the end of one, just past the half way point of another, and have just cleared the prologue of the third. First of all, we have Tales of Legendia, a game I picked up on a recent eBay RPG spending spree. I have been meaning to pick this game up for years now, way back since around the time of its release in fact. I had heard all about how it was different from the rest in the series due to being developed by a different team. It seemed that people either really liked it or they hated it, and it has become the black sheep of the Tales family over the years.

Having invested over 35 hours into it so far, and with sizable chunk of the game to go, I am of the decision that it is a decent, enjoyable RPG, yet lacking in several respects compared to the stronger entries in the series, such as my favourite, Tales of the Abyss. Instead of making use of the 3D battle engine that has now become the standard, Legendia regresses back to a single plane like the first game in the series, Tales of Phantasia. Random battles also make an unwelcome return, and puzzles are largely absent from dungeons (apart from a single "puzzle booth" per dungeon). This makes the dungeons fairly dull affairs, as you trudge around looting treasure chests, mashing the attack button whenever a battle is triggered, and then actually having to use your brain a little bit when facing the boss. What saves the game from complete mediocrity are the characters.

Throughout the course of the main story, which covers roughly the first 25 hours of the game, you are introduced to the cast of Tales of Legendia. Most of them have some unfinished business in their past or in the case of Grune are just a complete mystery to everybody, and this plot threads don't get resolved until you have saved the world from certain doom at the end of Chapter 7 and have progressed on to the character quests. Each character gets their own turn in the spotlight, where the party helps them work through their issues and achieve some kind of closure, and by this stage in the game you have actually begun to know and care about these guys. The only disappointment here is that the game expects you to go back through the exact same dungeons you've already visited in the first half of the game, except with harder monsters and new treasure chests. This does make completing the game a bit of a chore, but I will get to the end eventually and I am glad that I have finally got hold of a copy of this game.

Next, I have been replaying Final Fantasy X, and am on the home stretch now. What has really struck me is how good this game looks and sounds even today. It was something of a landmark release for the PS2 when it came out, as it featured cutting edge graphics a leap above the already outstanding work that Square had done on the original PlayStation, combined with fully voiced characters. What has also struck is how the main criticism of Final Fantasy XIII could also be applied to X - the game funnels you down a linear series of corridors for the most part, only opening up during the final hours of the story. It also did away with levelling in the conventional sense, and introduced the "sphere grid", with you earning the right to move along the nodes and plug in various types of spheres that are dropped during combat. The basic premise of the game and the way the story is told is quite simple yet very effective. You are told very early in the game that a powerful entity known as Sin is laying waste to Spira, and the only people who can stop it are the summoners, who go on a pilgrimage to every temple throughout the world to gain the power of the Aeons before a final showdown amongst the ruins of Zanarkand. Every step you take in the story takes you one step closer to that inevitable battle, and by putting you in the shoes of "man out of time" Tidus' as he comes to grips with what the journey will mean to him and the people he's travelling with, it really makes it easy to identify with him. Much as I enjoyed Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX, I can't say that I really identified with their protagonists or even really liked them that much. Tidus is one of the better lead characters of the modern FF era.

Next, I have also started playing the PSP title, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky over the last few weeks, and I am really loving it. I have reviewed one of the games in the series before, but as it turns out the original creators of the game, Nihon Falcom had nothing to do with that game. They were hands on with Trails though and the difference really shows, the graphics are decent (even if they are a little dated due to the fact that the game originally came out in Japan about four years ago), the music is absolutely fantastic and really funky to boot, and the battle system is fun and challenging. XSeed Games have done a really good job with the localisation (if if the game can be a bit on the verbose side at times) and have further cemented themselves as the go to company for solid handheld RPG releases. The only company that compares to them is Atlus, who lavish an equal amount of care on their games and usually pack in freebies such as soundtracks with their games. Anyway, I've just finished the prologue and am about 7 hours into the game, and I will continue to play my way through during my daily commute over the next few weeks (or months).

I was planning to replay Final Fantasy X-2 after finishing the first part, but the current lull in the release schedule is about to come to an end so I may put that on hold for a while. At the end of next week, Xenoblade Chronicles is released in Europe for the Wii. Comparisons have been made between it and Final Fantasy XII, a game which I absolutely adored. I am really glad that at last other RPGs are coming along that feature a huge open world full of optional areas and quests - The Last Story, the next game by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and his team at Mistwalker, is another such game. That one hasn't been confirmed an English release yet though so I'm going to avoid learning too much about it to try and avoid the disappointment of it never coming out in the west. As soon as it should be announced though, I will be gobbling up every bit of media I can find about it.

Then the week after we have the next entry in the Deus Ex series. This game is being released in no less than four different editions: Standard, Limited, Augmented and Collectors. I am toying with the idea of going for the Augmented edition (at £50), but there's no way I'm paying £90 on the Collectors edition because I actually want to play the games I buy and the minute you take the seal off the value will have diminished greatly. Regardless I am looking forward to playing the game and I think it will be a big improvement on the disappointing Invisble War that came before. That's all for now, I do intend to return soon with reviews of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Tales of Legendia (once completed) and a retro review of Final Fantasy X. Until then, keep on gaming!

Assassin's Creed II + Brotherhood double review

2011-07-21T14:10:00.005+01:00

Over the last couple of months I have played through both Assassin's Creed II and its follow up, Brotherhood, with only a few days between ending one and starting the other. As they are so similar mechanically, and Brotherhood is really an extension of the AC II storyline, I've decided to review both games at once. I may also follow this up with a summary of the DLC packs that have been released for both games. So now, let's take a stab at summing up two of the finest games of recent memory...

Format: Xbox 360 (also on PS3 and PC)
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Expect to pay: £15 to £20 (maybe a little more if you want the special editions with DLC included)

Graphics: 9 out of 10
The original Assassin's Creed was definitely a pretty game when it was released, but the two releases that comprise Ezio's story so far take things to another level in terms of scope and detail. Firstly, in AC II you have the sheer variety of Italian towns and cities to explore, including Florence, Venice and your fortified hideout at Montereggioni. Then in Brotherhood the action is transported to Rome, and it initially feels like a step backwards to set the new game in just one city instead of the multitude from before. However, Rome is a huge place and each district has its own features and lighting to help set it apart from the others.

You also have various set pieces throughout the game that take you outside of the capital for brief sections of time, such as the missions that have you controlling an ancient tank prototype or manning an early machine gun on the back of a horse and cart. These add some much needed variety to the game and are quite spectacular to take part in. I can't really say that Brotherhood is any prettier than AC II as it is so obviously running on the the same engine and lot of the same textures are reused. This doesn't detract from the experience in a big way though as there is still a ton of variety in the game play, unlike the first game in the series which suffered greatly from its small range of mission types that were constantly repeated.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
Firstly I absolutely have to say just how amazing Jesper Kyd's musical score is on these games. Throughout both stories, he conjures up a soundtrack that would be worthy of the very best movie, with a strong theme flowing throughout the many compositions. Though much like the graphics some of the music in Brotherhood has been reused from AC II, much of it is still new or remixed in some fashion. It was a pleasure upon completing both games to sit and watch the credits scroll past, as it meant you got the opportunity to listen to the music is all its glory.

The voice work in these games is of a similarly high standard, as Ubisoft have hired genuine Italian actors to play the parts, ensuring that the accents are authentic and don't sound phony like so many games do. For extra authenticity you can even have full Italian voice overs and keep the English subtitles, though even if you have the game set to English the characters still lapse into the odd bit of Italian from time to time (mostly when there's swearing involved). There are a few celebrity voices amongst the cast including Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Elle from Heroes), Nolan "Nathan Drake" North and the UK's very own author and DJ, Danny Wallace. The final component in this category, the sound effects, are also on par with the rest of the game as sword strikes, shots from your hidden pistol, and Borgia towers exploding all sound exactly as you would hope.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
As I've already touched upon briefly the first Assassin's Creed was a decent game that suffered from repetition in a big way. There were only a handful of different mission types that you would repeat over and over again from one city to the next. The developers had quite a momentous task in building the first game, and it would appear that the temptation to just get the game out of the door became too much and they released it before it was quite ready for public consumption.

Assassin's Creed II takes everything that worked from the original game and layers on many new things to do, cities to visit, and people to stab. The main story itself is fairly lengthy and varied - on top of this a short while into the game you are given a whole town to develop (Montereggioni). This is entails renovating buildings and shops, buying paintings to hang in your villa and more. The more money you put in the more cash is generated every 20 minutes, more than enough to keep you stocked up with the latest armour, weapons and vital healing potions.

By far the most enjoyable part of both this and Brotherhood are the optional breaks that you can take to do a spot of tomb raiding. These linear stages play out like something from Prince of Persia (both games share similar climbing/platforming mechanics). Sometimes these levels can be a test of your controller dexterity, others are more combat focused, and some are a mixture of both types. Your reward for completing all six in both games are some nice achievement points and access to the best armour in the game. Brotherhood takes things one step further and introduces new criteria that you need to fulfill in order to achieve 100% synchronisation, which not only applies to these tomb stages but to every memory (mission) in the game. They can include things like using a particular weapon to take town your target, finishing a mission within a time limit, or not losing any health. You can earn some more achievement points and a special item if you manage to 100% every mission in the game (including optional ones) but it isn't required to see the end of the story.

Both games also include hidden codes on particular buildings left behind by subject 16, another person who was forced to relive the memories of his ancestors by the Templar owned Abstergo corporation. These puzzles usually aren't too taxing, and often involve a little bit of trial and error. Successfully completing them unlocks a brief movie snippet which gradually builds up into a longer clip that teases some of the secrets behind the story of the games. Now I'm going to cover a couple of things that set Brotherhood apart from the previous title: namely the ability to enlist assassin recruits and the multi player.

After around four "segments" (chapters) into the game you can start recruiting potential assassins from the general populace and train them to be efficient killers. You first have to help them fight off the guards that are assaulting them, then once you have saved their life they will join your cause. From that point on you can send them on missions at any pigeon coup or your home base on Tiber Island. Recruits start at level 1 and go up to 10 before being embraced by the order completely and taking part in their initiation ceremony. The missions themselves are chosen from a list that vary in difficulty from one to five points, and when you select a recruit you can clearly see the likelihood of them completing their mission successfully and indeed surviving. To increase the chances of success you can send up to five recruits at once, and should they come back having achieved their goals (which takes a given number of minutes) they will each get a share of XP towards their next level. Sometimes rare items will also be awarded, many of which are used to unlocked certain armour and weapon sets from vendors.

The most useful aspect of having your recruits is the ability to summon them in the field and have them take out your targets for you. The amount of recruits you can send into combat at any time is tied to the number of Borgia towers that you've destroyed, up to three at a time maximum. A quick press of LB will call them into to take on whichever enemies you've currently got targeted. If you have all three pips charged and ready to go, holding down LB for longer triggers an arrow storm move where multiple enemies are shot down quickly. The recruits will earn some XP when you summon them as well, but not as much as sending them off on missions. As they progress through the levels you can equip them with better armour and weapons, thus increasing their effectiveness. It's a great mechanic that adds another layer of depth to the game.

The other thing that differentiates Brotherhood from the second game in the series is the addition of multi player. There are a variety of game modes including solo and team based games, but basically they all involve hunting down your fellow players and killing them as quietly and inventively as possible. Simply rushing straight towards your target and leaping at their neck will earn you the bare minimum reward, but by carefully stalking your prey or using special abilities you can earn much more. There are 50 levels to progress through and each one unlocks something, be it an ability, a new character skin or something else. Abilities include disguising yourself as a different character model for a brief spell of time, or using a hidden pistol.

I did find the multi player a bit unbalanced for low level players (I've got up to level 8 so far) because those who had already reached level 50 had access to abilities such as poison that allows them to kill you without getting anywhere near you, and an ability that allows your target to see who's coming after them. There were many times that I would be carefully trying to deduce which of several similar looking people I was supposed to kill, only for them to hit me (thus losing the contract). The other problem I had is something that effects many multi player games that aren't Call of Duty or Halo - the number of people playing starts to get a bit thin on the ground after a while. I found it hard to find a match unless I was playing at peak times. So my advice, if you want to check out the multi player mode of Brotherhood, is to either check it out right now while there's still people playing it, or just wait until Revelations is released which will include a refined version of it.

Innovation and Cleverness: 8 out of 10
Ubisoft got the traversal mechanics just right with the first game in the series, but the game felt empty and I lost interest before the end. By introducing so many new aspects to Assassin's Creed II, they've crafted one of the finest open world games of recent years. Then with Brotherhood they've done it again. The Borgia towers, the recruits and the multi player all shake things up once again and help to keep the experience feeling very fresh, despite essentially using the same engine as before.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
There is a decent amount of content in both games. I would say that the main story mode of Brotherhood is somewhat shorter, but on the other hand the amount of optional missions has increased so on the whole they're about even. Then the multi player mode gives you a whole other type of experience to try out, and it works pretty well. It certainly makes a refreshing change from playing another FPS online.

Overall: 9 out of 10
Ubisoft has made turning out a new game in this franchise every year appear almost effortless. When you look at the amount of stuff crammed into each game and how polished they feel, it's actually quite amazing what they've achieved (especially compared to Duke Nukem Forever). Today you can pick up both of these games in editions that also include their DLC for less than the price of one new release, and they're definitely well worth it. I have great confidence that Assassin's Creed: Revelations will develop the franchise even more, and I look forward to the eventual release of Assassin's Creed III even more. I wonder which time period we will be in next?

Child of Eden review

2011-07-08T13:40:00.002+01:00

At long last, the fantastic music/on rails shooter hybrid Rez gets a pseudo sequel in the form of Child of Eden. It shares many elements with its predecessor yet also manages to make its own mark with its use of the Kinect sensor and the Genki Rockets soundtrack that is present throughout every stage. Does it live up to the brilliance of the older game? Let's jump right in and see...

Format: Xbox 360 (also available for PS3)

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Q Games
Expect to pay: £40

Graphics: 9 out of 10
The visuals within Child of Eden are a fantastic blend of bright neon colours, sea creatures, insects, cogs and other imagery, depending on the theme. Whereas most of Rez had a techno industrial vibe, the themes used for the various levels in the follow up are much more organic in their nature. For example the second level is entitled Beauty, and features many colourful flowers that bloom when you shoot them. When you shoot down the enemy bullets during this stage they make the sound of raindrops. Most levels feature multiple boss encounters, usually one around the middle and another at the end, and these are impressive multi stage battles. My favourite of these comes at the end of the fourth stage, entitled Passion. This level shares the most in common with the design of Rez, as it takes place within machinery and features a fast paced techno tune. The boss is a giant green machine which keeps you on your toes by making you constantly switch between your two weapon types (more on this is a little while). Overall the graphics of Child of Eden are great, but it's when they are combined in synch with the music and the game play that the game truly becomes something special.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
At the most basic level, Tetsuya Miziguchi and Q Games have used various tunes by J-pop group Genki Rockets (which is itself a project by Miziguchi). However, things are a bit more complex that that because not only are the tracks remixed, they've also been cut up, split into their separate channels and rearranged into unique forms just for this new game. It works extremely well as the tunes usually build into a crescendo by the close of a level and gradually the vocals are introduced. The Genki Rockets tracks that have been used are the singles from their Heavenly Star album that can be downloaded from iTunes. Since buying the game I have bought the album myself and am loving it.

Besides the music, the sound effects add another layer to the experience and are created directly by the player. As you lock on to your enemies and shoot them down, various effects are released such as a hi hat or the aforementioned raindrop sound. This ties into the game plays well because if you lock onto the maximum 8 enemies at a time and then fire on the beat, you get a perfect score bonus. This is fun when playing the game with a controller because the force feedback rumbles in time with the beats, but it truly comes into its own when playing the game with Kinect. In order to stay in time, it helps to groove along with music, and when you're using your body to control the game this will probably happen without you even realising it.

Check out some footage of the early stages of the game, thanks to GhostRobo

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
Child of Eden takes place over 5 levels initially, with an additional challenge stage that is unlocked once you've completed it for the first time, and a series of different visual skins that are gradually made available by earning stars. The stars are handed out at the end of each stage and the quantity received depends on the percentage of enemies and bonus items you manage to shoot, your total score and how much health you have left. Because it's harder to be precise while using the Kinect controls instead of the controller, the game is slightly more lenient with you. Those who play with the controller will have a smaller targeting reticule, the thresholds for awarding stars will become more stringent, and each control method also has its own scoreboard (which is only fair, to be honest).

The control method that you favour will depend on you as a gamer, and what your living situation is like. Though you can technically play the game with the Kinect while sat down on your couch, it is a much more enjoyable experience when played whilst standing up. I don't have much room to move furniture around in my flat unfortunately so it is easier to use the standard controller. Whichever option you go for, they both work, and this game shows the true promise of the Kinect when it is applied to a "proper" game, and not the usual mini game collections that have littered the Wii release schedule for years and what we've seen from the Kinect to date.

While this review splits the game into graphics, sound and music and game play, with this particular game these three aspects are so inextricably linked to the overall experience that you really have to consider them all together. Those expecting another Rez run the risk of being disappointed because the music is of a different style which may not be to the taste of everyone. I also don't think that any of the levels quite match up the to the excellence of Area 5 from Rez, though its counterpart does come quite close.

This is the trailer that was revealed back at E3 2010, where I fell in love with the music.

Innovation and Cleverness: 7 out of 10
While the overall structure of the game and the concept is fundamentally the same as Rez, the implementation of the Kinect sensor shows its true potential as a platform for serious games and so Child of Eden deserves a respectable score here.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
This may be the one potential sore spot for gamers - the five main levels of the game can feasibly all be unlocked and completed within a couple of hours. For some, they may decide they've seen enough there and regret spending £40 on such a short lived experience. Others like me will probably consider Child of Eden less of a game in the conventional sense and more of an interactive album - something that you will come back to time and time again. The different visual effects do help to add a little variety, but don't really change the game at its core. If you're someone who tends to play through a game once and move on, then I would recommend renting Child of Eden as it's definitely worth experiencing. I'm glad I have another game to go along with Rez and the two Space Channel 5 releases in the "interactive album" category.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Child of Eden is a fantastic experience that I think falls just short of the brilliance of Rez. It deserves to do well, but I fear that the majority of gamers are content to keep playing "Generic Military Shooter X" rather than trying something different. Saying that though, as long as we have game designers like Tetsuya Miziguchi in the world, and publishers like Ubisoft and Sega that are willing to give them the freedom to design the games that they want to design, I will be happy.

Game Diary: Dog people, robots and airships

2011-07-04T09:05:00.008+01:00

I have been commuting to and from London on a daily basis for over two weeks now, a trip that takes just over two hours, and only now have I started playing games to pass the time. I depart so early in the morning (and I am definitely not a morning person) that I often just want to chill out on the way in, and I had a fairly sizable backlog of podcasts that I hadn't been listening to while I was off work. Now that I've settled into the routine and caught up with all the episodes of Retronauts Live, Weekend Confirmed and others, I will be spending more time with my 3DS, Caanoo and tablet. A little while ago Ocarina of Time 3D was released of course, and while it is undoubtedly a fantastic game, I've already completed it - twice, on older hardware. I do intend to play all the way through eventually but at the moment it's not really firing my imagination. There is another game that has just been released this past Friday though, that I find thoroughly engaging, and it goes by the name of Solatorobo.

During the PS1 era, a game was released by the name of Tail Concerto, which took place in a world of talking dog and cat people. I have played small portion of this game, but enough to know that it was a high quality action game. Solatorobo is a sequel of sorts to that game, and it takes place in the same world but centres around a new cast of characters. In it you play Red the Hunter, a vulpine bounty hunter who stomps around on a giant robot while helping out the local populace for money. A short while into the game, you can also use your robot to fly for a finite amount of time, and also enter into full on air races that play rather like an airborne variant of Mario Kart. The are many side quests and distractions throughout the game, including finding kittens who have stolen somebodies photo collection, and a fighting arena.

This is just scratching the surface, and I'm only a few hours into the game at the moment so there is a lot more to see and do. Most missions in the game take 10 minutes at the most to play through, so it is an ideal game to play on the go. Despite running on the original DS hardware rather than the more powerful 3D, the game looks great too, with the sort of hand painted anime look and European style towns that frequent many of Miyazaki's best works. It's definitely a keeper, and looks set to become on of the true hidden gems of the Nintendo DS. It's currently not released in the US, but XSEED Games have plans to bring it out there in the Autumn. If their past releases are anything to go by, they will have some lavish packaging to go with it, so it may well be worth holding out for. Should something go awry though and the game doesn't come out as planned, at least now they have the option of importing the game from Europe. It would be well worth the effort.

My Child of Eden review is still on course for later this week, but I want to spend a bit more time playing it with Kinect, as most of my play time so far has been spent using the controller.

Game Diary: Honeycomb Edition

2011-06-29T08:58:00.005+01:00

I'm writing this entry on my brand new and shiny Acer Iconia A500 Honeycomb tablet, so it might be a little shorter than usual. Originally I had considered an iPad 2, but having weighed up the options a while an Android based machine seemed like a better option for me. The integration of flash, cheaper overall price, and easy integration of Gmail and Blogger were all major pluses. I'm still getting used to the tablet (can't figure out how to remove icons and widgets I don't want), but I have been impressed by the technology so far. Games like Riptide GP and Samurai II look fantastic thanks to the Nvidia Tegra 2 graphics chip that gives the machine its raw power, and its lovely big screen makes it a joy to watch movies on. There are even PlayStation emulators on the Android Market, but I haven't had a go with these yet.

Besides the tablet, I've also been playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Child of Eden and Shadows of the Damned lately. Brotherhood is awesome, but feels like and extension of AC2, especially as I came from playing that game without much of a break. It takes a fair old while to unlock the ability to recruit young assassins to your cause but once you do it adds a great deal to the game play. Child of Eden is everything I had hoped for from a follow up to Rez, official or not, and you can expect a review very soon. Shadows of the Damned shows its Resident Evil 4 heritage quite clearly in its game play, yet it is much more playful in tone. For instance, your guns are all tranformations of your talking demon skull companion Johnson, who is constantly cracking knob jokes throughout the game. I've only played the first act so far, and it's been great fun, so I hope this games doesn't get overlooked by the masses in favour of more established IPs.

I'm going to sign off for now as typing this takes forever on a touch screen keyboard, though I may add a bit more when I get to work. Keep an eye out for that Child of Eden review in a day or two.

Red Faction: Armageddon review

2011-06-20T09:18:00.020+01:00

Red Faction: Armageddon is the fourth game in the franchise from Volition, following on from Guerrilla that was released a few years ago. This time, Volition have eschewed the free roaming elements that they introduced in the last game and have instead decided to focus on a much more linear single player campaign. They have also introduced a race of hostile insect like aliens that have been dormant under the surface of Mars, that is until your character Darius Mason unwittingly wakes them up. I remember when I watched the first announcement trailer that I was concerned that this game would have gone from something unique to just another space marine shooter, and these concerns remained until I checked out the demo a month or two ago. I had a great time with what I played there, so from then on I looked forward to playing the full game. So now it's time to find out how Armageddon stacks up against the rest of the series and the competition...

Format: Xbox 360 (also available for PS3, PC)
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition
Expect to pay: £40

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Red Faction: Armageddon is a very competently put together product. Things that were a little rough around the edges with Guerrilla have been given an extra layer of polish this time around, and the graphics have an extra bit of detail that was lacking last time. The destruction that the series is known for is back in this entry, as you would expect, but it is not quite so prevalent within the confines of the underground network of tunnels, and sadly takes a back seat towards the end of the story. The alien race that it unleashed are a somewhat generic selection of bugs, from small an fast crawlers through to hulking behemoths, and absolutely huge monoliths. Things move around the screen at quite a pace, even while the buildings are collapsing all around you and the scenery is exploding all around you.

Those who played Guerrilla may recall that a device known as the Nanoforge was discovered towards the end of that game, and it plays a big part of the gameplay in Armageddon. Now you can reconstruct many buildings, bridges, etc. using this device, which not only looks really cool but also allows for some more interesting tactics. Should the cover that you're hiding behind get blown to pieces during a particularly intense firefight, you can just hold down the left bumper on your controller and recreate it, good as new. A good deal of Armageddon's story mode takes place in the pilot seat of a vehicle, including mech suits, walkers that resemble spiders, a trip down a river of lava on a barge, and a brief flying sequence. All of these vehicles are well armed including machine guns and more often than not, heat seeking missiles. They are fun and help to switch up the pace of the main campaign, and stomping around blowing the shit out of anything that moves is always a laugh.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
I really liked the creepy and atmospheric music used throughout Armageddon, it reminded me of a really good science fiction action movie and it fitted in perfectly with the action. The noises that the alien life forms emit are suitably horrific, and when you're all alone in a dark tunnel, with monsters creeping up all around you and low on ammo, can heighten the tension nicely. Finally the voice acting is perfectly fine, certainly not the best I've ever heard but there was nothing to make me cringe.

Just one of the many nasty bugs that will terrorise you throughout the campaign.

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
A great deal about Armageddon is a joy to experience - the destruction is just as cathartic as it was last time around, and enhanced with the introduction of some fun new weapons. Chief among these has to be the magnet gun, which allows you to attach objects and enemies to each other and then watch as they are thrown into each other. Another gun creates a localised singularity which drags in any enemies to the blast, and then there's an extremely powerful plasma beam weapon that can slice straight through almost any structure. My personal favourite weapon has to be the rain gun however, which acts like a sniper but allows you to shoot straight through solid structures and target enemies using their heat signature.

Bolstering these exotic weapons are a selection of arms that you would expect to find in any self respecting shooter: an assault rifle, pistols, a shotgun and more, which leads me to one of the failings of the game. During the early to middle stages of the single player mode, things are relaxed enough for you to be able to play around with the more interesting weapons, but towards the end of the campaign the aliens will bombard you in such high numbers that it's simply much easier to fall back to the standard fare. The shotgun in particular was a good friend to me when things started to get overcrowded. There is no end to the stream of enemies during the closing stages either, you have to slog your way through them until you reach your objective. Combine this with a noticeable lack of destroyable scenery during the last hour and you have quite a dull and frustrating final act.

Besides the main story mode of the game there are two other modes: Infestation, which is basically a carbon copy of the Horde mode from Gears of War 2, and Ruin, which is a variation of Wrecking Crew from Guerrilla. Infestation is implemented well and many games have copied Horde mode for a reason: it's great fun. There are plenty of maps to fight your way through and your not obligated to play online with other people - if you wish you can go it alone and the game adjusts accordingly by giving you more lives. In Ruin mode (which you have to enter a code on the back of the manual to access) your objective is to cause as much destruction as possible within a limited time frame. There are no enemies here, just you, your weapons and many structures to flatten. The more buildings of high value that you can chain together, the larger your multiplier can get and therefore your score. There are set targets to reach in each map before you can play the next one and full leaderboard support.

Innovation and Cleverness: 7 out of 10
Armageddon deserves some points here for the fun new weapons that it introduces and the mechanic of rebuilding things with your nanoforge. The actual GeoMod 2.0 destructibility is pretty much as it was in Guerrilla however so I can't really give Armageddon any credit for it.

Value and Replayability: 6 out of 10
The main mode of the game is a bit on the short side at 6 hours, but as you would hope there are multiple difficulty levels. There are enough maps to play through in Infestation mode to keep you going for a while, but Ruin probably won't hold your interest for very long. You may want to wait until the game as gone down in price a bit before picking it up.

Overall: 7 out of 10
Though I was disappointed to have reached the end so quickly, and the last hour was somewhat tedious to play through, overall I did have a fun time with Armageddon. The controls and the level of polish have been tightened up since Guerrilla, but all things considered it is not quite as good as its predecessor.

Game Diary: The Streets of L.A.

2011-05-23T15:20:00.005+01:00

This past Friday saw the European release of L.A. Noire, and thanks to all the loyalty points I had accumalated from buying the Nintendo 3DS and a few other games in the interim, my copy didn't actually cost me anything! I've been playing it quite a bit over the weekend, and so far my verdict is that while Rockstar have another high quality game on their hands, I don't think it quite matches Red Dead Redemption, at least for me. I thought the first few missions as a patrolman were rather short and disjointed, but this does pick up when you get promoted to the traffic desk. From then on the cases are considerably longer, and involve scouring the crime scene for clues, interrogating witnesses until you find enough evidence to put someone away, or catch them out in a lie. Then you usually have to chase them down, either on foot or in a car.

The main technological breakthrough that L.A. Noire offers over other games is in the facial animation - never have video game characters looked so convincing. This aspect of the graphics is incredibly impressive, and necessary for the game to work properly - as without the facial ticks of the people you're interviewing, it would be much harder to tell if their withholding information. Nevertheless, outside of this, I don't find the graphics particularly amazing. The 360 version in particular suffers from some unfortunate glitching and slowdown - something that the PS3 version has managed to avoid, from what I've heard. I will save my final verdict for when I've managed to beat the game though.

Sorry for the continuing dearth of posts - things will pick up soon. There's a chance that I may get a job in London, and if that does indeed happen there will probably be a change in focus for this blog. For a little while at least, I will be spending quite a while each day commuting, so there will be less time to play on the 360 and PS3 at home and much more time that could be spent with my handheld consoles. I recently bought the latest version of the GP2X, known as the Caanoo, and it has many improvements over the original model, including a faster processor, inbuilt rechargeable battery and bigger screen. I'm loving it so far and have begun playing Final Fantasy V on a SNES emulator, one of the few games left in the series that I haven't played. Check the video below (not made by me) for an overview.

Game Diary: Backlog Blitz

2011-05-09T15:13:00.002+01:00

For the last week I have been on "holiday" (technically, I'm unemployed, but chilling out for a couple of weeks before I really focus on finding another job), so there hasn't been much activity here. I'm going to make up for that this week however with at least one review and potential for more, as my time off has been spent enjoying many games from my backlog. First off, I dusted off my copy off Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and gave it a spin. It's a very competently made wild west themed first person shooter. Battles are fast paced and exciting, the graphics are decent and it does capture the atmosphere of a classic western very nicely. Some of the features of the game do remind me of Red Dead Redemption, except Call of Juarez came first. It is getting a sequel, but they are bringing the franchise into modern times which I think is a bit of of shame. There's room for one wild west franchise on the market if you ask me, but maybe sales figures say otherwise.

I have also been playing a fair bit of WRC 2010, another game I picked up over Christmas, and it's a great, realistic rally simulation. The graphics aren't quite as detailed as games like Dirt 2, but if you're looking for a realistic representation of rallying, then there are no alternatives. They got the important stuff, like the sensation of speed and the feel of the handling, just right. As for other games, I'm playing through Final Fantasy XIII again, trying to get to the end again - except on the 360 this time. Making good progress here - I've just cleared chapter 8. I picked this up with a very generous leaving gift from the colleagues in my department, along with some other new games - the first Call of Juarez which isn't nearly as good as Bound in Blood unfortunately, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena which is an update of the Xbox game with new content. I knew the original was a great game but I never owned it, so I'll finally get a chance to check it out. Lastly, I also bought The Godfather, EA's sandbox game based on the film. It's not bad, no GTA but a decent game nonetheless.

Although this is a gaming blog, from time to time I also like to focus on movies, and as there are some potentially great ones coming out over the next few weeks you can expect some mini reviews here and there. We have Thor, Hanna, Attack the Block, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and more. I will also be starting an 80's movie club, where I will watch two randomly picked movies from a chosen year during the 80's and then tell you what I think. I have already watched one of the two films from 1980, so you can expect the first entry fairly soon. In the meantime, carry on gaming, and reconvene here in a day or two for that Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood review.

Game Diary: PlayStation Notwork

2011-04-27T13:15:00.007+01:00

Another week has gone by and most of my gaming time was once again taken up by GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City - this time on the Lost and Damned portion of the game. I actually took the time to finish all of the optional side quests and events and achieve 100% completion. This entails: winning 12 bike races, completing 25 gang wars, dealing with 5 pieces of “dirty laundry” for the corrupt politician, Stubbs, stealing 9 bikes, and killing 50 seagulls. All of this will take a considerable amount of time, but for the most part it is all entertaining. This is with the exception of the seagull killing, which is very tedious. Luckily other people have gone to the trouble of finding all the birds and making a map – there’s no way I would have had the patience to track them down myself.

My current GTA bug has spread to the PSP, and I have begun playing Chinatown Wars which I picked up around Christmas time. It’s very much a throwback to the very first GTA game, with its overhead viewpoint, but it is in full 3D. There’s a ton of stuff to do in this game as well, and I’ve barely scratched the surface yet – I did complete a quite addictive game that involves you branding your gang members with tattoos though. Plus my current enthusiasm for Rockstar games has me eagerly anticipating the release of L.A. Noire at the end of May - I expect the story telling and free roaming elements to be of their usual extremely high standards, but the game is also set to shake up the genre just as much if not more than Red Dead Redemption.

I also bought a copy of DC Universe Online last Saturday, but events that you may already be aware of have prevented me from playing it. First Sony were telling everyone that they were performing routine maintenance to the PlayStation Network, then a few days later they were admitting to being hacked. Now, almost a week after they first shut down PSN they have informed everyone that their personal details (name, address, email, credit card info) may have been stolen. Luckily the card I have on file isn’t my current one, but it is still quite a worry. I can only imagine what kind of damage this will have to Sony, both financially and from the amount of trust they will lose with their customers.

Finally I spent half an hour checking out the first level of Dead Space Extraction for the Wii – the on rails shooter that is the a prequel to the first game in the series. I was surprised just how good the game looked, and the controls have been very cleverly implemented too. I will play some more and possibly be back with a review soon. Episode 2 of my RMGB Radio podcast should hopefully be up this weekend, and I am hoping it will be a slightly more professional affair than last time, as I’m going for a semi scripted approach. You can expect recaps of all of this months written reviews, a new one for Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, and plenty more fantastic video game remixes. Make sure you tune in!

Game Diary: Return to Liberty City

2011-04-18T13:17:00.007+01:00

I've managed to finish quite a few games and get a nice variety of reviews up on the site over the last few weeks, and I'm trying to keep this momentum going at the moment. Ghostbusters and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands were both rentals from Lovefilm and they both lend themselves to this quite nicely as they can both be finished within around ten hours. Usually if I hang onto a game from Lovefilm for too long then I start to feel that I'm wasting money, so it was good to turn these around within a week of receiving them and still feel like I had played them thoroughly enough to be able to critique them.

After finishing PoP, I felt like starting another new game, and turned to The Backloggery for help. If you haven't heard of this site, it is somewhere that you can enter your game collection and then log your progress in games, keeping tracking of what you've beaten and completed as well as how large your backlog is. I've managed to build up quite huge pile of unfinished games over the last few years, so the fortune cookie feature of the site is quite a useful tool. Basically you can use it to randomly suggest a game from your own collection for you to play. I tried this last week and it came up with Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, which is a double pack of the two DLC packs that were released for GTA IV: The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony.

I decided to try The Ballad of Gay Tony first, which sees you playing as Luis Lopez, business partner to Tony Prince, the owner of two Liberty City nightclubs. By borrowing money from some thugs with mafia connections, Tony has managed to get the both of you in a whole heap of trouble and the rest of the game is spent basically trying to dig you out of this mess. Suffice to say though, things don't go according to plan and things get a whole lot worse before they get better. Those who have played GTA IV will have noticed how much more restrained it was compared with the craziness of San Andreas, and The Ballad of Gay Tony brings back a lot of the outlandish missions and ridculous characters that populated the PS2 titles. You will be tasked with blowing up a ship with a military helicopter, stealing a railway car, and throwing a blogger from a helicopter before parachuting out and saving him before he hits the ground.

There's a decent amount of content here at around 10 hours for the main story missions and a whole lot more if you want to complete the required quota of drug wars side missions, manage the nightclub (and perform favours for spoiled celebrities), enter a cage fighting tournament, base jump from 15 locations around the city, and finally kill a whole lot of seagulls. Doing all this will easily double the amount of time spent on this game - I have only bothered to complete the drug wars side missions so far and that in itself took hours. Of course this is only half of what Episodes from Liberty City has to offer - I intend to begin the other half, The Lost and the Damned this evening. You don't need to own the full version of GTA IV by the way, Episodes runs from the disc as a standalone title.

I probably won't write a full review of this title as I think I've covered all the pertinent information here, but if I were to give it a score it would definitely get a solid 8. The shorter nature of these two DLC offerigns is quite appealing, as the main entries in the GTA series have never managed to sustain my interest long enough for me to complete one. I still have my Super Mario Galaxy review coming, and I will see what Lovefilm has in store for me next in a day or two. In the meantime, I'll be causing mayhem around Liberty City with Johnny Klebitz and The Lost biker gang.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands review

2011-04-14T13:44:00.013+01:00

It's been a pretty good few weeks in terms of the number of games I've been playing through to completion, and here I am again with another review. This time it's for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, a sequel to the Sands of Time trilogy that was released at around the same time as the the PoP movie starring Jake Gylkenhaal (though thankfully it is not related in any way).

Format: Xbox 360 (also available on PS3, Wii, PC, DS and PSP)
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Expect to pay: £10 - £10

Graphics: 9 out of 10
Like many other pieces of media based around the Arabian Nights mythology (for example, the Tales of the Arabian Nights pinball table), Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands looks gorgeous. The game takes you through a succession of increasingly exotic locales from the battlements of a grand palace, through treasure vaults, royal baths, the throne room and beyond. Everything is extremely well detailed, the animation of the prince is nice a fluid (as you would hope from a game carrying the Prince of Persia name) and you will look forward to seeing where the game takes you next.

Throughout this adventure you will be given various special powers, including the familiar ability to rewind time that was first seen in the Sands of Time game. Not long after this you will be granted the power to temporarily freeze water, and from that point on you will be using it very often to turn waterfalls into walls, and spouts into columns and bars that can be clung to or swung from. It's a nifty new element to the formula which both looks nice and gives you a sense of satisfaction when you manage to successfully navigate your way to the top of a room after you were standing at the bottom mere moments before and wondering how on earth you were ever going to get there.

Unfortunately not everything is perfect, however. In some of the busier battles against the legions of King Solomon's Army, I did encounter some quite nasty slowdown. It was not just a dropped frame here and there, the game actually slowed to a crawl on more than one occasion. Until you get close to the conclusion of the game combat is not too frequent though, so the slowdown wasn't a huge detriment to my enjoyment of the game.

Sound and Music: 7 out of 10
From the little bit that I have played of the Sands of Time trilogy, I did recognise that the voice of the prince is the same (Yuri Lowenthal, who is a pretty prolific video game voice artist - chances are if a JRPG gets an English localisation, he will be playing at least one part). I thought that the voice of the prince didn't really match up with his physical appearance though, and sounded a little on the weedy side - but maybe that's just me. The musical score makes use of the sort of Arabian instrumentation that you would expect, and gets more upbeat and exciting when you are traversing your way through a trap filled room or fighting off a bunch of skeletal sand dudes. It adds to the sense of urgency and excitement nicely.

Game Mechanics: 8 ouf of 10
Now as I have said, I've only played a little bit of the previous Prince of Persia trilogy. Something about them never quite clicked with me, and I haven't felt the urge to continue with any of them, until now. It may be my imagination, but from what I recall of the older games it was not as obvious how to get through a particular room, whereas in this game as soon as I started climbing and swinging around it was quite clear to me what I was doing. It was more a test of my platforming expertise rather than puzzle solving, with the exception of one puzzle involving a giant gate and some cogs that I found really tedious.

To veterans, maybe the fact that the solution is more obvious that previous games is a bad thing, but I found it to be an improvement. I also enjoyed the steady introduction of more powers throughout the game. As well as the time rewind and water freezing that I've gone over already, you will also be able to use magical vultures to get from place to place, boost your way towards distant enemies (frequently used to cover gaps that you wouldn't otherwise be able to jump) and restore bits of the ruined environment that have crumbled away.

Besides these abilities that a doled out to you at key points in the story, your character also gains experience from slaying enemies and upon levelling up, you can choose from a range of other skills. This include increasing your health bar, the length of time you can keep water frozen for, the number of time rewinds you can have saved up, and a number of other abilities designed to aid you in combat. They are all elemental in nature so will get Trail of Fire and Whirlwind for example. I only really used these against bosses or on the odd occasion when I was overwhelmed by lesser minions, because most of the time I found I didn't need them.
The enemies that you fight throughout the game go from your common skeletal looking guys who are quite easy to dispatch, through slightly more armoured varieties, wizards that are able to summon endless hordes unless you dispatch them quickly, and huge sword wielding Titans. Your standard roster of fighting abilities include quick but weak sword strikes, a more powerful version that takes a few seconds to charge up, and a kick that can be useful in unbalancing shielded foes so that they are vulnerable to a quick stab through the gut. You can also jump on the shoulders of smaller enemies and then perform execution moves or throw your enemies of the edge of the environment to their doom (though being undead skeletal type geysers made from sand, I would say they're already quite doomed).

For most of the way through the game, the difficulty curve rises steadily so that you are getting better at roughly the same speed that the game is throwing new stuff at you. However, in the final hour the difficulty jumps up to potentially joypad throwing levels. I died time and time again during one particularly nasty section, but I persevered and got past it eventually. The end of game boss that followed was a pushover by comparison.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
I liked the new powers that were introduced in this time - in particular the water freezing mechanic. I also thought that the levels and environments were always cleverly designed throughout the game - awe inspiring at first glance, giving way to enjoyable platforming and adventuring.

Value and Replayability: 3 out of 10
The Forgotten Sands is by no means a long game, weighing it at around 10 hours or less, and in addition it is quite an addictive one so I found that I had reached the end mere days after I had started it. After getting to the end of the main game, there are a couple of challenge modes, but these don't last very long either - I mainly used them to that I could finish leveling up my character and purchase the remaining abilities so I could earn the Achievement that goes along with it. The game is definitely worth a rental though or picking up on the cheap (it can be found for as low as £10 nowadays).

Overall: 7 out of 10
This is the first of the modern Prince of Persia games that I have really got on with and it has inspired me to go back and revisit the older trilogy. Its fairly short length and lack of things to do outside of the main game do go against it somewhat, but if you just want a short, fun game to play through over one of the upcoming bank holiday weekends, I would recommend it.

Dragon Age II review

2011-04-12T13:28:00.015+01:00

Although Bioware's sequel to Dragon Age: Origins was eagerly awaited by myself and many others who had enjoyed the original game, in actuality the sequel has been turned out by Bioware and EA quite quickly. Unfortunately this shows in a few key areas which I will get into shortly. Is the game an improvement on the first one in the series nevertheless? Time to investigate...

Format: Xbox 360 (also available on PS3 and PC)
Publisher: EA
Developer: Bioware
Expect to pay: £30 - £40

Graphics: 8 out of 10
The graphics in Dragon Age II are a noticeable improvement over the first game, with much more detail and higher resolution textures all round. There's also much more variety in the colour palette. The characters all have a slightly stylised look to them, and I like it. What I don't like however, is the rehashed environments - my main gripe with the game that I alluded to in my introductory paragraph. Every cave you venture into is basically the same one, likewise for warehouses, gang hideouts etc. Although the map layouts vary a little bit here and there, all Bioware have really done is block up doors and add invisible walls here and there. It just feels somewhat lazy and rushed, and I wish they'd taken the extra time and released the game later rather than put it out in the state it is now. It prevents a good game from becoming a great one.

Other than this, I did also notice some slowdown during some of the more frenetic battles, but this didn't happen too often. In terms of armour design, the stuff that you can pick up for your main character looks cool, but other than the odd upgrade for your party members that you can either find or earn by becoming their friend or rival, you can't really change their armour which is a shame. While on the one hand it helps to streamline the game and the interface (which needed some streamlining, it has to be said), it also makes it feel a bit dumbed down.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
The quality of the sound overall in Dragon Age II is on par with that of it's predecessor. There does seem to be an attempt to move away from celebrity voice actors this time around though, with the few exceptions being Eve Myles as the new elven mage character Merrill (she is Gwen in Torchwood) and Kate Mulgrew reprising her role as Flemeth. I also recognised the voice of Fenris straight away but it took me a while to place exactly where from. Eventually it came to me - Gideon Emery also played Balthier in Final Fantasy XII. Anders makes a welcome return from his stint in the Awakenings expansion pack (something that I hoped would happen in my review) and his original voice actor reprises the role. Music is once again strong with hints of some of themes from Origins intertwined with new compositions.

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Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
For those who choose to play Dragon Age II on a console, then I would say mechanically it is a definite improvement over that the of the first game. Now when you press an attack button you get an immediate one to one response, and everything moves around at much faster pace while also feeling far easier to control at the same time. At the Casual and Normal difficulty levels, the game plays like an action RPG most of the time with the occasional need to pause the game to administer healing potions or tell your mage to heal, but on Hard or Nightmare it is a much more tactical experience. I preferred to play on Normal, but those weaned on the semi turn based style of Baldur's Gate on a PC may prefer the higher settings, it's purely a personal choice.

For the most part, I applaud Bioware's decision to streamline the inventory screen and the rest of the interface. Now it is easy to see how good a piece of armour you've picked up is compared to your characters level just by glancing at how many stars out of five it has at a given time. It is also much more obvious when loot you pick up is important and when it is simply trash to be sold for money, and I found myself running out of inventory space far less often than I did in the first game (of course, it does help that you have a chest to stash excess items in at your uncles house, but I found I seldom needed to use it).

I didn't seem to connect with all of the recruitable characters as much as I did with those of Origins. For the most part I tended to stick with my favourite party of Varric (an excellently written character and the unreliable narrator of the tale), Avelline, and Anders. The others all got a look in when the story required in but Sebastien for example is nowhere near as interesting a character as Shale, who was the DLC character last time around. The fact that you have to pay to be able to get Sebastien this time instead of being an added bonus for early purchasers of the game only serves to make him that much more rubbish.

Finally, I have to mention the storyline a little bit while trying to avoid spoilers. It's a much more personal tale for the most part about the life and loves of one particular person, rather than the epic battle against the forces of evil that the first game was. I actually enjoyed this but I know that many of this games detractors cite this as one of its weaknesses. The way things played out for my character in the end were actually quite tragic based on the decisions I had made along the way, and this only served to make it better in my opinion. There are definite hints that another sequel is planned throughout the story and that much bigger things are happening in the world outside of Kirkwall, so it looks like those who didn't like the more focused events this time will be happier next time. Once again Bioware lets you import your save from the last game like they did with Mass Effect and it's sequel although the results are less pronounced this time. It mostly effects which side quests are available and minor pieces of dialogue rather than having a big impact on the story.

Yes, there is at least one dragon in Dragon Age II

Innovation and Cleverness: 4 out of 10
Not a huge score in this category in terms of innovation, but as usual Bioware have shown their flare for storytelling, dialogue and multiple ways to play through the game.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
My first play through as a damage dealing warrior came in at 35 hours or thereabouts, and I definitely didn't do all there is to do. This isn't actually possible in a single play through as the range of quests you will be able take on is governed at least in part on whether you imported a Dragon Age: Origins save, what became of your hero, who ended up on the throne and whether certain characters survived through to the end of Origins. As an example of this, if you sided with the werewolves in the Nature of the Beast quest in the first game, you will be able to do an optional follow up quest in this one.

The balance of the character classes is much closer this time, with rogues being greatly improved. Then there are several different ways to play each class, for example a damage dealing warrior or a tank, a ranged rogue or a close up sneaky stabby one, and a healing or damage dealing mage, or indeed a balance of both. Most of the recruitable party members can be romanced this time around, with the exception of Varric (I think), and you can play your character in a variety of different ways, from the valiant hero who is keen to help everyone with little reward, the mean bastard, and those who are only in it for the money. All this means that you can quite easily play through the game at least twice and get quite a different outcome.

Overall: 8 out of 10
On balance, the things that Dragon Age II does better than Origins (the faster combat, the streamlined interface) are weighed out by the things it does worse (repetitive dungeon environments, shallower interaction with your party members, a denouement that is a bit weak compared to that of the first game), so I'm going to give it the same score. I definitely don't think it's anywhere near as bad a game as many people are making it out to be, and I look forward to future DLC and sequels.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game review

2011-04-10T14:24:00.020+01:00

It's been 22 years since Spengler, Stanz, Venkman and Zeddemore were last on our screens officially as the Ghostbusters. Since then there have been several cartoons, two fan made movies (Freddy vs Ghostbusters, and Return of the Ghostbusters), yet no sign of the original cast reprising their roles for another adventure. Until now. Atari and Terminal Reality have teamed up to deliver a game based on the franchise that is both written by Harold Ramis and Dan Akroyd, and also stars them alongside fellow members of the original cast Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and William Atherton. Will bustin' make you feel good? Let's have a look...

Format: Xbox 360 (also available on PS3, Wii, PSP and DS)
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Terminal Reality
Expect to pay: £10 - £20

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Other than the usual problem of the characters looking like they're made out of wax, and poor lip syncing during the cut scenes, Ghostbusters is a very nice looking game. The proton stream looks and behaves as you would expect, ghosts are well designed and in keeping with the source material, and everything moves around at a frantic pace no matter how much chaos is on the screen. It may be a very small thing to mention but I really liked the fact that the developers had taken the time to put the light reflecting in Egon's glasses during cut scenes - it's little bits of attention to detail like this that show that they've put a lot of care into this project.

I do have one other minor niggle with the graphics, in that things can get a bit too dark even with the brightness setting turned all the way up. This is especially noticeable during a level set in Central Park, where the blackness of the environment combined with the games propensity to not give you much help as to where you should be going next can conspire to get you well and truly lost. Otherwise though, the 360 version of the game does a good job of delivering a realistic representation of the Ghostbusters universe. The Wii version however, looks very different, with cartoon style visuals, and although the stories are similar, it should really be considered a separate game.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
This is where the game truly shines, because as stated in my intro, many of the cast members of the original motion picture have returned to do the voice acting for their characters. Unfortunately this doesn't include Sigourney Weaver or Rick Moranis, but you can't have everything. It's a treat to hear the likes of Dan Akyroyd and Bill Murray both deliver classic lines and perform a whole new story for us. Because the dialogue has also been written by Ramis & Akroyd, it too is also of very high quality.

For extra layers of authenticity, you not only get genuine Ghostbusters music including both the theme tune by Ray Parker Jr and the rest of the soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein, but you also get sound effects taken directly from the films, including the proton pack, and the siren of the Ecto-1. It's enough to make you weep sweet tears of nostalgia just listening to it!

Game Mechanics: 7 out 10
Capturing a ghost in this game consists of several stages: first you have to weaken it by blasting it with one several different types of proton pack beam (more on this in a minute). Then, you have to wrangle it with you capture beam, and direct it into a trap. Either hold it over the trap for a few seconds, or (new to the game) slam dunk the ghost directly into the trap for an instant capture. As well as types of ghost that you have to capture, there are also minor types that you just have to destroy - these usual consist of possessed object such as candelabras that have come to life.

Initially you will just have access to the familiar proton stream as seen in the films but as the game progresses Egon will invent several new types of beam including ones that behave like shotgun blasts and a machine gun, as well as a slime stream. This particular stream can be used to remove caustic black slime from the environment, reveal hidden doorways, and in its alternative mode of fire, be used to tether two objects together. This is used in many of the games puzzles - for example in a sewer level you need to fire one end of your slime tether at a weight holding a sluice gate closed, then the other at the floor to pull the weight down.

I would say Ghostbusters is a very enjoyable game 80% of the time, but it does have a few minor problems holding it back from being an amazing game. Firstly, the game doesn't do a particularly great job in telling you what you need to be doing next in certain places, and sometimes it turned out I actually had done what I was supposed to do but hadn't walked over the hot spot to trigger the next event. At other times it's a case of going into your PKE meter view and scanning the environment until you find something ectoplasmic or otherworldly. My other problem with the game I have already mentioned - the overly dark graphics. However these minor issues don't prevent this game from being the best game licensed from a movie in years.

Before I move on, I would also like to mention the online multiplayer side of Ghostbusters, as it's great fun and adds a lot of life to an otherwise short game. You can team up with up to 3 other players and capture ghosts in one of four environments: New York Times Square, The Public Library, Central Park or the Sedgewick Hotel. There are various game types including Survival, which is this games version of the Gears of War Horde mode, Thief, where you have to protect 4 artifacts from being carried away by mischievous ghosts, and a Slam Dunk competition where you have to speedily slam more ghosts into traps than your opponents. It's great fun both working together and against real players online. As is the fashion these days, you earn cash from each ghost captured and can level up your character. When certain requirements are fulfilled, rare Most Wanted ghosts will appear - for example once you have won a round of every game type in Central Park, special ghosts will come out. Capture them all (no easy feat) and you will earn an Achievement.

Innovation and Cleverness: 5 out 10
The slime tether mechanics have been cleverly integrated into the game and are involved in the majority of the games puzzles, and the way the proton stream acts and feels like its movie counterpart is very smart. Terminal Reality deserve kudos for delivering a game that not only looks and sounds like the films, but plays like you would hope it would too.

Value and Replayability: 6 out of 10
The main single player campaign is pretty short at around 10 hours. There are things for completionists to find such as logging every ghost in Tobin's Spirit Guide, finding haunted artifacts throughout each of the levels, and context sensitive Achievements (for example, find an item that doesn't belong at a bar mitzvah in the Sedgewick Hotel level and destroy it to make it kosher). I would give extra points here for the highly enjoyable multiplayer mode but there's a bit of a problem here - not many people are playing it any more. If you have 3 other friends who own the game that you can bust ghosts with, then this will likely last you months, but if you can't find anyone online to team up with, you'll be pretty much stuck with the single player mode I'm afraid.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Ghostbusters fans will be overjoyed with this game as it delivers everything that they could ever want from a video game based on their beloved franchise. It is a fine, if brief, experience despite the few problems I had with it. I hear that now that interest in the series has been rekindled thanks to this game, a proper Ghostbusters III film is in pre production. I will await this with trepidation as other classic film series that have been revived recently have varied in quality between mediocre and abysmal. If the third movie falls though and doesn't get made, then fans can be happy in the knowledge that this game is a a true continuation of the Ghostbusters story, as it feels 100% authentic.

Game Diary: DQVI, Okamiden, Assassin's Creed II

2011-04-04T13:03:00.018+01:00

Okay, firstly... that podcast, huh? I hope you've listened to it. If not, I would encourage you to go do that now. It's not the slickest production in the world seeing as it is my first stab at it and I don't have the most outgoing nature anyway, but I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out. You can hear my thoughts on the 3DS and four of the launch games (full written reviews will arrive in time), as well as a ton of the best remixes of video game music thanks to OverClocked ReMix. I hope to have episode two up around the end of the month, and it will be a slightly more scripted affair this time so hopefully I won't stumble over my words quite so much.

In other news, I have completed my first playthrough of Dragon Age II, so a review is imminent. I will also have a review for Super Mario Galaxy up this week. Besides these two games, my recent gaming time has been taken up by Dragon Quest VI, Assassin's Creed II and a little bit of Okamiden. Dragon Quest VI will be very familiar to those who have played IV or V on the DS, as it runs on exactly the same engine. Where IV's shtick was giving each of the main characters their own chapters before they met up to save the world (here's my review), and V's was the fact that you played as three generations of the same family of adventurers, this game was the first in the series to include a job system. I have only just got to the point in the game where I can change class (after 10 hours of play), but this game differs from Dragon Quest IX in that any abilities learned carry over when you change class, so in theory you can become all powerful if you're prepared to put enough time into it. For some, this breaks the game, but I'm not especially bothered by it. Not yet anyway. Okamiden is a bit of a strange one, because while on the one hand Capcom have really captured the look and feel of the original Okami on the DS, the platform does struggle somewhat to deliver the sequel that fans were clamouring for. The d-pad controls are pretty terrible for starters (though drawing with the celestial brush is perfect for the system), and the pacing at the start of the game gets bogged down in far too much text. You just want to get stuck into the adventure, but the game just plods along at a snails pace. This was also a problem with the original game but it didn't seem quite so pronounced when everything felt new. Okamiden also has a tendency to retread old ground from the original game, and while it is kind of nostalgic to see the same village from the PS2/Wii game at first, after a while it just seems that Capcom were reusing old art assets to save money. It's also something of a shame that the game has been released just as Nintendo transitions from the old DS to the 3DS, as it will most likely be overlooked just like the first game was. Why Capcom didn't wait and make a much better game on the 3DS is beyond me. As for Assassin's Creed II, this one has been on my backlog pile for ages now and I really want to play through it so that I can pick up Brotherhood. I actually did play a fair amount of it before, but I have decided to start again from the beginning. It's such a great game, leaps and bounds above the first one, which was a good idea that suffered from far too much repetition and banal gameplay. The second time around, Ubisoft have crammed so much in there to find and do, and I find I actually want to explore the various cities and discover everything. I think I'll be playing this one for quite some time, and really enjoying myself while I do so. That's it for this week, keep your eyes peeled for those reviews!

RMGB Radio Episode 1

2011-03-27T21:23:00.010+01:00

In the first episode of RMGB Radio, I give my first impressions of the newly launched 3DS, along with four of the launch games: Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Pilotwings Resort, Ridge Racer 3D and Super Monkey Ball. There is also plenty of music courtesy of OverClocked ReMix (http://ocremix.org/).

For the full show notes, please click here.

Game Diary: A little bit of everything

2011-03-21T13:11:00.007Z

Firstly, things have slowed down somewhat in Dragon Age II - after completing the first two acts in the space of the first weekend, I have only played 6 hours or so of Act 3 and there are still a ton of quests to do. I will continue to play through the rest of the game this week, but am happy to take my time over it. Aside from my main character (a warrior), I have also dabbled with the other two classes a bit. I have decided to make my rogue and evil son of a bitch who treats who absolutely hates mages, in contrast to my warrior who is out to help everyone and does everything in her power to help the cause of the mages (and her partner is Anders).

Next, I want to talk a little bit about handheld gaming and immersion. Over the years, I've heard from several friends that the reason they've never really got into handheld gaming is that they don't find it as immersive as playing a game on a large TV. Personally though, I found it to be quite the opposite. I've spent many hours at home, in my favourite armchair, with my handheld of choice and a pair of headphones - it's like a window to a pocket universe. Now that the difference in power and technology between handhelds is less than it has ever been, and the capacity of 3DS cartridges outstrips DVD by quite some margin, I am really excited to see what developers will be able to achieve on the new machine. I don't expect any of the launch games to truly exploit the power of the 3DS, as they have been made on a tight timescale, but games like Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Pilotwings should hopefully demonstrate the potential that it offers. I'll be picking my 3DS up at midnight on Thursday - exciting stuff!

The third topic of conversation I had on my list is my nephew, and the games that he likes to play. Because his dad and I have been playing both modern and retro games around him, he doesn't particularly distinguish one from the other - to him, they're all just games and he'll happily spend hours on the MAME cabinet playing something like Streets of Rage 2 just and much as he will playing LEGO Star Wars on the Wii or Blur on the Xbox 360. I find this incredibly refreshing. Maybe eventually he will start to become prejudiced against old games, but I hope not.

Finally, I am planning to make the blog slightly more Nintendo centric. They make the best games by far in my opinion and yet aside from the odd review here and there the content of this blog hasn't really reflected that fact. I am currently (re)playing Super Mario Galaxy, and I will put a review up once I've managed to collect all 120 stars. I'm up to 40 already which is a pretty good start, so in between Dragon Age II sessions I will continue to plug away at it. I also hope to start doing more videos - hopefully some video reviews to go alongside the text, as well as more in the Nintendo Night series, and Classic or Crap. I still don't have a decent camera unfortunately, but I will look into getting a used one on eBay maybe.

That's all for this week - next weeks article is sure to be full of my first impressions of the 3DS and the games, so be sure to check back in if you're interested!

Game Diary: Here be Dragons

2011-03-14T13:07:00.006Z

Right, so I picked up my copy of Dragon Age II on Friday afternoon and I've pretty much been glued to it ever since. I've put approximately 25 hours into it all told and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself - in fact it's a shame I've had to tear myself away from it so I could go to work. The storyline seems to be much more focused on character this time around and not quite so much on huge world changing events, though things to start to ramp up during the second act and I expect by the end I will be saving the world as usual. I love the fast paced combat, it feels so much more visceral and direct compared to the first game, and much more suited to playing on a console.

While I'm on the subject of a Bioware RPG, I would like to go over a little bit of my gaming history and how these games have managed to replace another genre that until recent years has been on the wane -that of the graphic adventure. If we rewind time to around what is arguably the "golden age" of the point and click adventure game, around the early to mid 90's, most of my playing time was spent on games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and a bit later on the Discworld games. I used to enjoy these game so much that I would follow every single option on each of the dialogue trees to see what they said and what the outcome would be. Of course in these games there was seldom any chance of failing the game from choosing the "wrong" option, so experimenting was encouraged in this respect.

Towards the end of the 90's though, these games began to fall out of favour and I had to start looking somewhere else for my adventure fix. While I had previously dabbled with borderline RPGs such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana, I hadn't yet played a turn based RPG. Then in 1997, I first tried Wild Arms (stopping about a third of the way through) and a few months later, Final Fantasy VII. This was the start of my addiction to RPGs, and while many better games than FF VII have come along since, if it hadn't come along and I hadn't been caught up in the hype, I might not be playing these games today (although I expect something else would have been the trigger eventually).

Anyway, fast forward to the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox - the first game by Bioware that I played. At last, here was a company that had combined the exploration, levelling up and customisation that I loved from RPGs, with the conversation trees from my beloved graphic adventure games. It was a marriage made in heaven, and I also really enjoyed the Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy that was quite new to games at the time (but nowadays is almost a standard feature, especially in a Bioware game). Graphic adventures have of course had something of a resurgence in the meantime thanks to the likes of Telltale, and I do enjoy these games, but RPGs are where the real action is at for me. I always look forward to the next Bioware RPG, safe in the knowledge that it will deliver a high quality experience that is rich in both action and character development, and from my time spent with Dragon Age II that is exactly what they've achieved yet again. In anticipation to the games release, I also started replaying Dragon Age: Origins, and I am going to see this through to the end, before transferring my character to the Awakenings expansion and then importing the data into Dragon Age II.

Importing your Dragon Age: Origins and Awakenings save data does have an impact on the game, mainly in the side quests - there are certain quests that will appear based on your decision of the previous game. For example, who you decided to put on the throne, and whether Nathaniel Howe survived the events of Awakenings. By putting these hooks into their games Bioware really enrich the experience for those who have played the previous games, without alienating new players - another genius touch. I can't wait to get home and continue my adventure within Kirkwall and the surrounding areas. I'll be back again with another game diary next Monday, and possibly a Dragon Age II review quite soon, depending on when I finish it.

Tales of Vesperia review

2011-03-09T13:40:00.000Z

In its native Japan. the Tales series is something of an RPG powerhouse, with Namco Bandai typically announcing 2-3 new games in the series at the same time. For many years, western fans of the series would look on in despair as the games remained unlocalised. Things started to pick up a bit with the release of Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube, but still many entries in the franchise were only released in Japan. It came as something of a surprise then when are few years ago they announced that Tales of Vesperia would be coming to the Xbox 360 - a machine that has struggled to find a foothold in Japan - but the upside of this would be that a US/European launch would a sure thing to make sure the game sold enough copies to be worthwhile. The game was actually responsible for a sales spike of Xbox 360 consoles in Japan, the series is that popular.

This particular entry in the series focuses on the character of Yuri Lowell, who resides in the lower quarter of the capitcal city Zaphias. After the only source of clean water within the quarter is vandalised, he gos in search of the culprit and ends up teaming up with a runaway princess, a snarky genius mage and a dog that acts like a human. Eventually the fate of the entire world rests on the shoulders of this eclectic group (funny how that alway happens in JRPGs).

Format: Xbox 360 (Enhanced PS3 version available in Japan)
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Tales Studio
Expect to pay: Around £25

Graphics: 10 out of 10
I personally believe that this is the best looking game available on the Xbox 360 so far. It looks absolutely stunning in HD, with vibrant colours and the level of detail that you would expect from the very best Japanese anime, except it's completely 3D. I'm well aware that not everyone likes animated films so the perfect rating given here applies to my personal tastes. Nevertheless it is a great technical achievement to make this visual style work within the context of a 3D game.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
I am not particulary fond of Motoi Sakuraba's musical compositions - they have a tendency to sound very similar to one another (and he has worked on a LOT of games). There are one or two nice tunes throughout the game (for example the music that plays in the town of Aspio), and I do like the fact that the overworld and battle themes change three times throughout the game as you progress in the story, but his work doesn't come close to the likes of Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger/Cross), Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII), Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), Noriyuki Iwadare (Grandia), Michiko Naruke (Wild Arms) or Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy I-X).

The voice work is of quite a high standard, which is not unusual for a game in the Tales series. I am particulary fond of the voice of Rita Mordio, the genius mage and researcher of Blastia (the technology that keeps most of the machinery in the world running including protective barriers that cover entire cities). She really does a good job of making the character likeable despite her acidic tongue, and having heard her in several other games recently, she sounds quite different here. The only thing that lets the voice work down slightly are some of the minor characters - for example old men and women always sound like young people doing a feeble old person impression for some reason.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
Tales of Vesperia (and all the other games in the Tales series) is an action RPG through and through. Battles are triggered by bumping into roaming monsters on the overworld or within dungeons, and you can also gain an advantage by sneaking up on them from behind, or a minor disadvantage if they get the drop on you. You take control of one of the four members of your party (Yuri by default, though you can choose to control any of the others if you wish) and hack and slash your way through groups of foes.

As well as basic attacks there are more powerful special moves which are unlocked as you level up and can be mapped to different buttons on the controller. On top of this there are also attacks that are triggered if you manage to stun your opponent or make them stumble, and these deal out very large amounts of pain (usually enough to kill minor monsters instantly). Finally you can also go into overdrive once your meter is filled to the top, which increases your attack power until the bar is drained. Battles are typically fast paced and you have to keep an eye on the health of your party and be ready to step in with a healing item or Life Bottle should the worst happen.

At the end of each battle you are awarded grade points based on how long the battle took, how much you were hit etc., and these points can be saved up and spent either on the secret Nam Cobanda Isle on various mini games, or on various extra features before starting a second playthrough. Another great thing about this game is that you can hand over control of your three other party members to real people if you have enough controllers and friends to be able to do so - this is one of the few RPG series that does this and is a great idea.

Aside from the battle mechanics, the game features many dungeons for you to explore, and they nearly always feature their own gimmick. There is often a light puzzling element (just enough to keep the old brain cells engaged between the battles), and the dungeons are just right in terms of length at around an hour earlier in the game to close to two hours when you start to get near to the end. All in all Tales of Vesperia doesn't differ all that much mechanically from other recent entries in the series, but it is just as good as ever.

Innovation and Cleverness: 4 out of 10
I'm afraid to say that Tales of Vesperia isn't particularly innovative, it being yet another entry in an RPG series that already has many titles to its name, but try not to hold that against it.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
Tales of Vesperia is a pretty lengthy game, weighing in with at least 50 hours of gameplay, and quite possibly more. There are many optional scenes that you can stumble upon (which can be seemingly random, but look at a FAQ and you will see they are all triggered in some way), and hundreds of skits that can either be read or ignored depending on how you want to play the game. Upon completion you could go through the game again and make use of your accumulated Grade Points, but personally once was enough for me.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Tales of Vesperia is yet another fun, fast paced entry to an excellent RPG series. It is technically flawless, with beautiful visuals and not a single bug or glitch encountered during the many hours of play time I put into it. It is not my personal favourite game in the series - that honour goes to Tales of the Abyss (which is due to for a rerelease on the 3DS), but should you fancy something a little different from Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fable, et al, then this is a very worthy alternative.

Game Diary: Handheld Heaven

2011-03-07T13:02:00.008Z

This weekend I shut out the outside world and got down to some serious gaming, and it was glorious. The majority of my time was spent playing my trusty DSi - despite its successor only being a few weeks away, the old system still has a ton of quality software to offer (that will also still work on the new system thanks to backwards compatibility).

First off, my copy of Radiant Historia finally arrived after a bit of a delay. I have basically played through the introductory portion of the game, which covers the main mechanics of the game and a few battles. The main twist that it has going for it is the time manipulation - at certain points in the game, a "node" is created in history, and you can use the magical book known as the White Chronicle to go back and follow a different path. I'm not sure yet whether there is only one "correct" path through history, but I do know there are multiple endings and side quests that utilise this feature. Visually the game is reminiscent of 16-bit RPGs - nothing too flashy, but nicely drawn, and audibly the game benefits greatly from a fantastic soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura (probably best known for her work on the Kingdom Hearts series).

Another DS RPG has been getting the bulk of my attention, however - Dragon Quest VI. Despite not having completely finished Dragon Quest V or IX yet (the end of these games tend to be a bit grind heavy) I was keen to begin yet another entry in the series. When DQIX came out before this one, I did have my doubts whether Square-Enix would actually bother localising it into English at all, but I'm glad they did. This is the first time that the third and final part of the Zenithia trilogy has been officially translated (a fan made patch for the SNES ROM has existed for quite some time). I'm now around 8 hours into the game and only just getting to the point where I can change my character class, which is quite a long way in if you ask me. Presentation wise, the game is pretty much identical to DQIV and V, as you would expect as it uses the exact same engine and a lot of the art assets as those two games. There may have been an awful lot of Dragon Quest put out on the DS, but I still love these games.

Apart from these two, I was somewhat surprised to discover that I had a craving to play some more Dragoneer's Aria last week, despite it not being especially polished in any particular area. The thinness of the plot and quick loading times (for the PSP) actually make it the perfect game to while away the time during the daily commute, and now my PSP travels with me to and from work and fit roughly half an hour of play time in each way, which is usually enough to gain a few levels.

Finally, the award for the least appealing game of recent times has to go to Bulletstorm. Having heard and seen quite a bit about this game on the various podcasts that I listen to/watch, I most definitely have no desire to play a time that is so immature. I don't care if an interesting and innovative combo mechanic is buried underneath all of the swearing, I have no intention of going anywhere near it. Thankfully there are so many other excellent games coming out I don't have to give it any more thought - for example Dragon Age II is now less than a week away! You can bet I will be reviewing that one once I've had time to play through it. Farewell for now.

Game Diary: Budget RPG Bonanza

2011-02-28T13:17:00.005Z

It's time once again for my weekly game diary, and with pay day just having been and gone I have picked up a few new games over the weekend, all of them RPGs. I played a few hours of each, so this article will mostly consist of my first impressions of them.

First up, we have MagnaCarta II - nothing to do with the real historical document, but rather a quasi real time RPG with a Korean art style - something you don't see a whole lot of. I'm betting I haven't seen everything that the battle system has to offer, having only just got out of the first town and completed a few quests, but there's an interesting chaining system in place and you have to be careful not to leave your characters open for reprisal when they go into an "Overheat" state, which leaves them temporarily defenceless. I'm afraid I don't find the main character particularly like able, and the opening few hours of the game are somewhat slow as well, which means that this game will be placed on the giant RPG backlog pile for a while, until I get through some titles which are obviously higher quality all round.

Next, I was browsing through the selection of PSP games in my local Gamestation, and what with the announcement of the NGP and the general lack of interest in the system these days, most of the games are now extremely cheap, so I managed to find a few RPGs that were £5 each. First up in Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon, which is a spin off from Natsume's farming sim as the subtitle would indicate. I do find this series quite addictive, and this one in particular is very nicely presented and has a much greater emphasis on the storyline than most in the franchise. I think of the three games that I picked up, this is the best of the bunch.

Finally the other PSP RPG came down to a choice between Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light and Dragoneer's Aria - both developed by Hit Maker. I wasn't too sure which one to pick up between them, but looking at the back of the box, Dragoneer's Aria was the more recent of the two and had better graphics. It turns out that RPG Fan and RPGamer consider it to be the lesser of the two games, but I've actually had a pretty good time with it so far. I was taken by surprise by a battle with some random monsters who wiped out my party and undid over an hour of progress, however - and at that point I put it down. I am in the mood for a handheld RPG though - first I need to finish Dragon Quest IX as I am so close to the end. There's a fair bit of grinding needed before I'm strong enough to defeat the last few bosses, however. Then there's Radiant Historia which should be on the way to me by now.

Other than these three games, the only other one I've put significant time into this week is Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. I have been enjoying the plot, which is based upon the huge Civil War event that shook up the Marvel universe a few years ago, and it's fun to play a more action oriented game for a while. My character of choice is Wolverine, because of his regenerative abilities. It makes him pretty hard to take down in a fight. I did also try playing as the Fantastic Four for a while, with my character being Ben Grimm, but I don't like them as much as the X-Men.

That's pretty much all for this week - I didn't get much further on Shadow Hearts: Covenant this week I'm afraid. I remembered exactly why I gave up playing it the last time around - the dungeon layouts are long and complicated, the battles are pretty tough, and the random encounter rate is fairly high. Despite this though it is definitely a great game and I will persevere. OK then, watch out for my Tales of Vesperia review which I am nearly done with - I just have to rewrite some of it which I think is a bit too wordy at the moment.

Game Diary: Why?

2011-02-21T19:01:00.011Z

I can count the number of regular readers of this blog (that I know of) on one hand. I'm lucky if somebody looks at it for more than one minute. Many of the reviews that I spend quite some time writing don't get read by anyone. Why then, do I keep on going? What's the point? Well, the answer is really that I'm doing this for myself. My love of gaming extends far beyond just playing through a game, setting it aside and forgetting about it - it also involves soaking up every bit of gaming culture I can find, be it in print or online form, as an audio podcast or a video. I also quite enjoy writing, though I think I lack the skills (and discipline) to ever get through writing a novel. For as long as I can remember I've written game reviews, way before the Internet was part of our daily lives, and ultimately I do this for one person - myself. When I play really good game, I want to crystallise my thoughts in to something substantial, so that it becomes firmly embedded in my memory and I have something to go back to and reread myself later.

That's not to say that I don't get jaded sometimes. This site is a labour of love and it's a shame it doesn't attract a bigger audience. I have been doing this to try and change this and they are starting to have a small effect. Of course what I would really love to be doing is working for a gaming magazine or web site - a way to combine what I love doing in my spare time with my job, but that may be something of a pipe dream at this point. In the meantime I will continue to post new articles, and work on the print archive of the RPG reviews that I've written over the years. This project is currently on hold until I have some cash to buy a copy of InDesign and some training to learn how to use it, as I would rather make something that looks nice than try and rush it.

On to other things now. I have completed the first part of the Shadow Hearts trilogy (for the second time) and am ready to start the second. Not sure if there will be enough time to finish it before Dragon Age 2 arrives though, as I hear it's a much bigger game this time around. I also spent a few hours playing some Resident Evil 5 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. I initially wasn't blown away by either of these, but now I've taken some time to get to grips with them I think they're both really great games. Finally, I've reordered copies of Pilotwings Resort and Super Street Fighter IV 3D for the 3DS. I really can't wait for the launch date to arrive now, it's going to be amazing. I might also pick up Super Monkey Ball 3D and Ridge Racer 3D depending on how they score in early reviews. I'll post again in a few days with my Tales of Vesperia review, so catch you then.

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Part 1 of the amazing Shadow Hearts: Coventant intro

Part 2 of the amazing Shadow Hearts: Coventant intro

Fallout: New Vegas review

2011-02-16T12:58:00.018Z

With Fallout: New Vegas, Bethesda have handed the reins of the franchise over to Obsidian Entertainment for this latest edition in the series. They are a good match because many members of Obsidian actually worked on the first two games, including the director of this game, Chris Avellone. Many of the ideas that would have gone into the first abandoned version of Fallout 3 have been resurrected here, such as the Roman Empire wannabes that go by the name of Caesar's Legion.

In Fallout: New Vegas, you play the part of a courier who has been shot in the head and left for dead by Benny, just one of many characters in the Nevada wasteland who are trying to get hold of the package you were trying to deliver - a platinum poker chip. After being rescued by a mysterious cowboy robot that goes by the name of Victor and being patched up by the doc in the small town of Goodsprings, you dust yourself down and set out to piece together why you were betrayed and the current whereabouts of Benny. Or, you could just ignore the plot and explore the world at your leisure - this is a Fallout game after all and this one in particular offers more freedom than ever before. However, it would seem this freedom comes with a price, and that is poor quality control, as New Vegas suffers from a plethora of bugs both benign and game breaking. More on this later.

Format: Xbox 360 (Also available on PS3 and PC)
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Expect to pay: Around £20

Graphics: 7 out of 10
While you could argue that as the game is running on the same engine as Fallout 3 and therefore the graphics are almost identical, meaning that I should award it the same score, there's really no getting away from the fact that the Gamebyro engine is starting to show its age. NPCs still have the same glassy eyed, plastic faced expressions they did almost five years ago in Oblivion, so I hope after this that the engine is going to be retired, and that Fallout 4 when it appears will make use of the new one being developed for Skyrim.

Despite many of the monsters being repeated from Fallout 3, there are also quite a few new ones, including the absolutely disgusting Cazadors - huge bugs that do obscene amounts of damage and poison you as well - and chimeras - dog/snake hybrids. Moving on to the world map and the environment, it initially looks smaller than that of Fallout 3, but there is easily just as much content present here as there was before. A lot of the locations don't seem to have much purpose at present however - whereas most locations has something to do or find in the last game, this time there were many places that seemed to be of little interest. Some of these may be related to future DLC, time will tell.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The music in Fallout: New Vegas is the same mixture of classic tunes from the 40's and 50's and a more cinematic score by composer Inon Zur when you have the radio switched off, and the actual music itself is great. There just isn't enough of it by a long chalk, especially when you consider how many hours the game could take you to complete. If you keep the radio on you will hear the same few songs over and over and over again, and the announcements from Mr New Vegas also seem to repeat more often than those in Fallout 3. PC owners have a distinct advantage over console players in this regard as there are mods out there that add new radio stations with 100 or more new songs to listen to.

Obsidian have gone for another all star cast for this game, and this time the recognisable talent includes: Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends), Felicia Day (The Guild), Zachary Levi (Chuck), Danny Trejo (Machete) and Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica), besides Ron Perlman who returns as the narrator yet again. All of them do a very solid job and don't sound like they're just trying to say "Hey, listen to me, I'm Mr Famous Guy sounding just like I do on that show/film you watch!". As for sound effects, a lot of the them are reused from Fallout 3 but there are plenty of additions for the new horrible critters you encounter and are very well done across the board.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
Now, a lot of the mechanics of Fallout: New Vegas remain pretty much the same as in Fallout 3, so rather than repeating myself I will mainly focus on what's been tweaked or added for this game, and direct you to my review of the previous title for the rest. The first thing which is small but significant addition is true iron sights. Now you can finally look down the sights of you weapon of choice and actually stand a chance of hitting your intended target outside of VATS combat, which makes the whole thing more interesting straight away.

Another good addition are the various factions that you can align yourself with throughout the game, including major players like Mr House, the NCR and Caesar's Legion, as well as smaller groups like the Boomers, the Great Khans and the Powder Gangers. As you complete quests for these factions or kill their members, you standing with them will increase or decrease and will have an impact on the ending of the game. Conversely though, while the Karma system is still present in this game, it is almost meaningless this time around and has little effect on the game.

There is also a new Hardcore mode in the game, which changes various aspects - ammo has weight, you have sleep and dehydration meters that have to be monitored, and stimpaks won't heal broken limbs, only doctors bags or a visit to an actual physician will do. These things all change the gameplay up considerably, as you can't just loot every bit of ammo you see, and have to rely on food and water far more heavily than you do otherwise. It adds an extra layer of realism for those who are looking for it and can definitely seen as a good thing.

What is definitely not a good thing however, is the amount of bugs present in this game. I had put around 40 hours of play time into the game when I suddenly started getting a random message about some DLC being missing and then being dumped back to the main menu. This effected all of my saves and prevented me from playing the game as that character entirely. It was towards the end of October when this started happening and it wasn't until the release of the first DLC, Dead Money, on December 21st that it was finally fixed. That's almost two months where I was unable to use the product I had paid money for, and to rub salt into the wound the game went down to £20 during that time as well. I seriously considered giving the game a 5 or a 6 overall because of the serious nature of this bug, but new players won't encounter it any more. That's not to say there aren't still a variety of other bugs left to be fixed, because there is. I will definitely think twice about buying another game developed by Bethesda or Obsidian on the day it's released in future!

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
Some reviewers have criticised this game as being little more than expansion pack to Fallout 3, but I feel that is being extremely harsh, as the tweaks to the gameplay have changed things quite a bit. The engine definitely feels somewhat creaky, but Obsidian are certainly working it hard (quite literally to breaking point unfortunately).

Value and Replayability: 8 ouf of 10
Fallout: New Vegas is just as huge as its predecessor but because you can finish the game and see four different distinct endings depending on your path, plus many other more subtle variations depending on how you've finished certain quests, it offers far more scope for experimentation and replay. This is the greatest addition that Obsidian have made in my opinion as it's really interesting to help defend the town of Goodsprings and hand the strip over to the NCR on one hand, and then take over the town for the Powder Gangers and overthrow the entire area for Caesar's Legion on the other.

Overall: 8 out of 10
While the additions made to the gameplay are all good, on the whole I didn't quite enjoy Fallout: New Vegas as much as Fallout 3. I think the overall tone had something to do with this, as the last game was very scary and atmospheric for a lot of the time and this one felt a bit sillier overall. There are far less encounters with feral ghouls and super mutants this time around (though they are certainly present) which I also kind of missed. Then of course there are the bugs, and I can't let them slide without a minor penalty of some kind. So all this combined means that New Vegas deserves one point less than the previous game. See the clip below to see one of the sillier bugs in the game!

Game Diary: Shadows and Dust

2011-02-14T13:04:00.008Z

I completed Tales of Vesperia last night! Woohoo! I won't say too much more about it because I don't want to duplicate stuff that I shall be putting in my review, but I'll just say that I really enjoyed it for the most part. My final play time came in at 45 hours, and there will still quite a few optional side quests and plot strands I could have explored. Though the game was quite linear in the early stages, but the end of the game you had the freedom to zip around the map, visiting towns and dungeons as you see fit. RPGs with decent overworlds are becoming something of a rarity, so it's nice to have a more recent contribution to the genre with one. I'm not entirely certain when I will manage to get a review up, as I want to spend some time on The Gamecube Vault and get my long delayed Fallout New Vegas review written first, but hopefully next week at the latest.

Finishing ToV gives me a little time to fit something else in before the release of Dragon Age 2. Now, a few weeks ago I put a couple of polls on the side bar to try and gauge what to play next. The votes I've received so far are unanimous - I should play Shadow Hearts: Covenant and focus on games I haven't completed before. So I am indeed going to play Covenant, but it's been so long since I played the first Shadow Hearts and it's a fairly short game, so I'm going to replay that first. I should hopefully get it done in time for Dragon Age 2, and then after that I will move onto Covenant, with the longer term goal being completion of the third game in the trilogy, From the New World. The Shadow Hearts series is something quite unique in the JRPG genre, as it blends HP Lovecraft inspired horror with quirky characters and humour.

The Shadow Hearts trilogy.

Of course, last week I mentioned the 3DS, so this week it's the turn of the NGP (which will always stand for Neo-Geo Pocket to me, but never mind). Sony is finally giving its fans a second analogue stick, which is a good thing, but I hope it doesn't have the side effect of unleashing a tidal wave of inferior spin offs of PS3 titles. Hopefully the inclusion of touch controls on the front and back as well as motion controls will see developers using their creativity in a similar fashion to that of the original DS, and we won't be drowned in first person shooters. All in all, I'm finding it hard to get quite as excited about Sony's new handheld, mainly because it's still quite a way off, but as the release draws near I expect that will change, and you can bet your life I will get one.

In other news, I picked up a great book on Friday: 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. There is some great stuff in here and it will take me a fair old while to read, but flicking through there are a few things that I wouldn't personally have put in there - Army of Two one of the games you must play? No way. I also wouldn't have put so many Metal Gear Solid games in there. The first one for the PS1 definitely, 3 and 4 maybe, but certainly not Portable Ops. Regardless, it remains a worthwhile purchase for gamers, and once I've had a chance to work how many I've played it will be interesting to see the results.

Game Diary: Looking Forward

2011-02-07T13:20:00.013Z

Firstly, following on from last weeks column - Namco has announced that Tales of Graces F is going to be released in North America. This is great news as that means that due to the fact that the PS3 is region free (something I only learned recently) I can import the game. In regards to Tales of Vesperia, I now have 30 hours on the clock and am still enjoying it immensely. The plot is starting to get pretty heavy now, and is very compelling. Yesterday afternoon I had intended to just play for a little bit, but set some events in motion that I had to see through to the end before going to bed. I did eventually get through that particular plot strand just before I normally turn in, and now have all my party members back with me. That means I can take some time to explore the world and enjoy the many optional activities, such as guild quests, giganto monsters, and mini games aplenty. My target is to have completed the game by the 11th of March, and there's still over a month to go so that shouldn't be a problem at all.

This is because Dragon Age 2 is released on that day, and I already have my copy of the the Signature Edition pre ordered. Many people voiced concerns that the game would be considerably dumbed down compared to the first game because what Bioware was saying and showing indicated that they were taking the franchise down a much more action oriented path this time, but from recent footage and what I've heard about it, those fears were unfounded. The game has been streamlined and made more suitable for consoles, that's for sure, but it looks as if it will offer the same amount of depth as the original. I have faith that it will be another fantastic RPG from Bioware, who have yet to produce a bad game.

Click on the image to view full size and see what the Signature Edition entails

The act of pre ordering Dragon Age 2 was at least premeditated, but I have also pre ordered another game that I hadn't intended on buying quite so soon. That game is Radiant Historia for the DS, due to be released on the 22nd of February. You can blame Atlus's canny marketing for this one, because first my interest was piqued after listening to a representative from the company talking about the game on the Active Time Babble podcast. It does sound like a very good game - a JRPG that will take around 30 hours to get through on the first playthrough, but due to the implementation of a time travel mechanic also features many more hours of optional content and multiple endings. Comparisons have been made to Chrono Trigger, regarded by most as the pinnacle of RPG's on a 16-bit system. What sealed the deal and made me bite though is the limited edition first run of the game that comes with a soundtrack CD featuring special piano renditions of some of the songs by composer Yoko Shimomura. I received an email from Video Games Plus saying that I would have to order by the end of the weekend in order to secure a copy, and that was enough to get me adding the game to my cart.

Of course there is also another major release on the horizon - that of the Nintendo 3DS. I have also pre ordered my console, and should just about have enough money to buy it by the time it's released on the 25th of March. Of the two colours that have been announced, I will probably go for the blue one. The most exciting thing about the machine for me is not actually the fact that it plays games in 3D - not by a long stretch, but actually the combination of a more powerful handheld with a nice big screen and cartridges that can hold up to 32GB of data. It truly has the potential for some amazing games. The actual range of titles available on launch day is a bit of an unknown quantity, as though around 50 games have been unveiled, they are all scheduled for the "launch window" - which is up to 6 months after the launch of the actual machine. The ones I'm looking forward to though are the next Mario Kart, Pilotwings and Kid Icarus: Uprising. I don't really need another version of Ocarina of Time, as I have the N64 cartridge, the Zelda Collectors Edition disc for the Gamecube and the virtual console release for the Wii.

That's almost all for this week, the only thing left to say is that I hope to have a write up of the South Coast Slam that took place this weekend just gone fairly soon, where I will tell you what I consider to be the five best games of the show, along with the top five picks from my brother and good friend Kim. I'll also be back with another game diary entry next week.

Game Diary: Tales of Tales

2011-01-31T13:00:00.012Z

Readers of this blog will no doubt have noticed that the content mainly consists of reviews, and I would like to widen the range of articles I write. One of the new things I would like to do is have more diary style entries, covering stuff that I've been playing recently, so this is the first of hopefully many of these. I will probably do this once or twice a week, depending on whether I actually have anything interesting to say!

So, recently I've found myself jumping between many different RPG's, as I tend to do after just having completed one I've been playing for ages - namely Fallout: New Vegas. I like to test the waters, try some games out before committing to one and sticking to it. Something that has been influencing the games I've been trying a lot recently is the RPG Backtrack podcast - they've recently done episodes dedicated to Skies of Arcadia which really tempted me to replay it for a third time, and I'm now listening to one about the Harvest Moon series which is making me want to dig out my copy of Magical Melody and buy Innocent Life from the PSN store. They also recently dedicated an episode to the more recent entries in Namco's Tales series, which has resulted in me playing Tales of Vesperia for the Xbox 360, and this is the game that I now intend to stick with through to the end.

I picked up Vesperia back when it was released in Europe, played it for 13 or so hours and then got distracted by something else and put it aside. I decided to start over from the beginning on Saturday, and by the end of the weekend had got past where I had got to last time. Firstly, the graphics in this game are absolutely gorgeous, right up there with the very best stuff on the 360. Of course, this depends whether you actually like the anime style - if you prefer something more gritty then it may do little for you, but being a fan of all things Studio Ghibli I love it. Character wise, the cast isn't quite up there with that of my favourite game in the series so far, Tales of the Abyss, but I'd say they're stronger than Symphonia for the most part. Yuri Lowell is a likable lead character, and Rita is nice and snarky, but Karol can be annoying and Estelle is just far too pink for my liking.

The game has some very enjoyable dungeons, with puzzles that are just taxing enough to give you something to think about but not so hard as to have you get stuck. The plot is OK, but as is usually the case it's more the way the cast of characters interact with each other throughout the cut scenes and the many optional skits that really keep you entertained. Once I get all the way to the end and complete the game, I will come back with a full review.

There are also a few other Tales games that I need to investigate - I've been interested in Legendia for the PS2 for a while now as it sounds very different from the rest of the series. It was developed by some of those responsible for the Soul Calibur series for one thing, and the structure of the plot sounds fascinating. For the first half of the game you follow one character, and the second half of the game is made up of a series of character quests whose length adds up to roughly the same as the first. I have seen it for about £20 on eBay in the past, but a quick look recently only brought up two copies, both of which were selling for £50, which is a bit much for me right now. There's also Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, a Wii sequel to the Gamecube classic (read my ancient review here). I've played a fair bit of this already, but will probably start over when I get around to going back to it again.

Finally, there's Tales of Graces F, and Tales of Xillia. The first is a PS3 port of a very buggy Japan only Wii game, which fixes the myriad problems with the original release and upscales the graphics. Apparently it is looking quite likely that it will get a US release at least, so I should be able to import it. The fate of an English port of Xillia is still unknown, but hopefully it should come over eventually.

I usually find I need a little break from the series after playing through one Tales game, as most of them are actually pretty similar in terms of style and mechanics, but I would like to play through the rest of the games in the series I've yet to complete yet. I'll probably intersperse them with other games, such as Rogue Galaxy, Wild Arms 5, and the two Shadow Hearts sequels. I would say I have enough RPG's in my collection to keep me playing for quite a few years. Will that stop me from buying more though? Er... no. Speak to you again soon.

Impressions: 360 RPG Double Bill

2011-01-24T13:16:00.007Z

Over the last few weeks I've been putting a fair few hours into some RPG's for the Xbox 360. Both of these are ports of games that were originally released on the PC, and they both suffer a little in the transition - the graphics are noticeably rougher, the frame rate suffers in places, and the interface of both could be better. Nevertheless, if you don't own a decent gaming rig at the moment (like I don't), they're still worth checking out.

Divinity II: Ego Draconis
I've been a fan of the Divinity series for years now, ever since I took a chance of the original game and ended up loving it. This sequel has transformed the series from a Diablo style hack and slasher (except with more depth and conversation options) into a 3rd person free roaming affair. The difficulty level can be harsh in places, because there's only a finite number of beasties to kill (once their dead, they stay dead) and vendors never replace their stock of healing potions. Things get considerably easier once you pal up with a necromancer and get him to reanimate a creature out of various body parts for you, as you can get your enemies to beat on it instead of you. The big selling point of Divinity II is the ability to turn into a dragon, but you don't get to do this until quite far into the game (10-15 hours in) and once you do it's initially a bit of a disappointment. There are barriers everywhere, which first have to be taken down on foot before you truly get to explore in the air. A newer version of the game, with improved graphics, reworked gameplay and a new expansion called Flames of Vengeance, came out about a month ago, known as Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. If you've got the extra cash, this is the version to go for.

Risen
Risen has been hailed by many as a spiritual successor to the Gothic series, being made by the same developer as those games. At the start of the game, your character is a stowaway on a ship which very quickly gets smashed to bits by a giant creature called a Titan, with you being washed up on the beach of a mysterious island. As you explore, you will discover three different factions on this island - a group of bandits, some mages and the Inquistion - who capture anyone they find wandering around outside the town and force them to join their ranks. Everyone on the island is obsessed with ruins that have sprung up out of the ground (along with lots of nasty creatures), and the possibility of them containing gold.

Risen is a very open ended game, you can basically wander where you want for the most part (while staying away from the white robed Inquisitors). It is very tough in the early stages, as levelling up doesn't really offer much benefit until you've found a trainer and built up some gold to pay him with. Eventually you will have to choose which of the different factions you want to align yourself with, which will have a slight impact on the abilities you can use (mages can use all magic spells, inquisitors a select few, and bandits none, for example). This game suffers from an ailment that all too many 360 games have - namely text that is far too small for a television screen. The inventory system is also a bit of a bugger to use with a 360 controller, and just compared to the PC version the graphics are washed out, low in detail and suffer from an incredibly low draw distance. Despite all these problems, I would still recommend spending the £10 it will likely cost you to pick up the game preowned.

I'll continue playing these games until I've completed them, and then I'll be back with a full review of both. In the meantime, I have the daunting task of reviewing Fallout: New Vegas - a game that I have something of a love/hate relationship with. See you soon.

5 great gaming sites that you should visit

2011-01-11T13:06:00.008Z

Today, I am going to potentially introduce you to 5 of the greatest gaming sites currently in existance. I visit all of these on a regular basis and they produced work both of a quality and quantity that I can only aspire to, quite frankly.

1. RetroGaming with Racketboy
Here you can find many fascinating and well researched articles on all aspects on retro gaming. What are the the hidden gems that you should be picking up for each system, what are the rarer and more valuable games? What are the best games of a given genre for your favourite platform. Where can I view some of the best user created art for a particular game? Chances are, you can find the answer to all these questions and more at this site.

2. GiantBomb
When Jeff Gerstmann left GameSpot a few years ago, a handful of his friends and colleagues followed suit (including Ryan Davis and Brad Schumacher) and together they formed GiantBomb. The site has become one of the biggest gaming databases around, but still features the professionally written reviews, excellent videos (from the in depth Quick Looks through to the hilarious mailbag vids) and one of the best podcasts out there.

3. GameSpite
Now, while I prefer to read the main body of work (GameSpite Quarterly) in print form, there are still plenty of entertaining blog posts penned by Jeremy Parish to read, and some excellent gaming banter to be found in the forums. The crew here have a real passion for games and also really know their stuff, which makes this site indispensable.

4. RPG Fan
I used to visit RPGamer more, and I still listen to their podcasts - but these days I think the premiere site for RPG information has to be RPG Fan. The site has a really nice layout and colour scheme, and chances are if there's a particular game in the genre that you want to know more about, they will have an article or review for it.

5. GameGavel
Gamers that are getting increasingly tired of eBay's exorbitant listing fees would do well to check out GameGavel, a dedicated gaming auction site where the focus is more on the exchange of games and gear, and less on making a profit. Some real bargains can be found here. Fans of GameGavel and the Retro Gaming Roundup podcast (where SoCalMike is a host) should also check out his series of swap meet videos on YouTube, called Big Game Hunter.

Bioshock 2 review

2011-01-10T13:45:00.002Z

Before I get into the main part of the review, I would like to make a confession. While I did buy the original Bioshock, it seems I may not have given it a fair chance. After playing for a few hours, I began to get fairly bored with it - I found it quite linear and was quite jaded with first person shooters in general. Recently though my appetite for the genre has returned a bit, and I started to think that maybe the game deserved another chance. Despite this, I was hesitant to pay out cash for it a second time. When I saw that a preowned copy of the sequel was only £5 in Gamestation though, I decided to pick it up. After all, who can refuse a quality game when it is on offer for next to nothing? Not I, that's for sure. Having completed the game, I now still wish to go back to the original and give it the chance it deserves. In the meantime, here's my review of the follow up. There may be spoilers for the first one!

Format: Xbox 360 (also available on PS3 & PC)
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Marin
Expect to pay: £5 - £10

Graphics: 9 out of 10
Bioshock 2 looks great, but then so did the original and this makes use of the same engine. While you do return to Rapture, time has moved on a little and so there are new plasmids (genetic enhancements that bestow you with super powers such as the ability to throw fireballs), splicers (denizens of Rapture who have screwed up their genetic make up, and are intent on killing you) and types of Big Daddy (the giant, diving-suit wearing protectors of the freaky Little Sisters, of which you are one). I especially like the combination of freezing somebody in ice and then smashing them to little pieces with a blast from the double barreled shotgun.

From time to time you will find yourself submersed underwater and stomping around amidst all the little fishies and other sea life. You don't have access to your weapons during these interludes, they're more there to add atmosphere to the game and give you a brief breather as you transition from one part of the city to the next. The story takes you through half a dozen or so locations from amusement parks through to shopping boardwalks and the like. The environments all look very nice but are quite self contained and feel just like levels of a video game, rather than a living breathing city (I'm told the segue from one section to the next was more subtle in the original game). All in all though, Bioshock 2 is definitely no slouch where the visuals are concerned.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
Bioshock 2 is also a solid performer in the audio stakes, from the voice over work, to the noise of the weapons, the shrieks of the Big Sisters, and the score. Armin Shimmerman (Quark, Principal Snyder) reprises his role of Andrew Ryan (albeit in the form of various recordings and automated amusement rides, as your character bumped him off in the first game). The English accent of the young Eleanor doesn't sound quite right in my opinion but this is pretty much the only problem I have with the audio.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The first few chapters of the game ease you in gradually, reintroducing you to the concepts of plasmids, gene tonics, Big Daddies, Little Sisters and the like. Within a few chapters, you will have the ability to throw bolts of lightning (stunning splicers, or killing them outright if they happen to be standing in water) and set people on fire, as well as getting the rivet gun. As you proceed, more and more weapons are made available to you, and a wide array of active plasmid powers, and passive gene tonics and made available to you via special Gatherer's Garden vending machines. The currency used to buy new abilities isn't cash, but genetic material called Adam.

You can obtain this goop by finding another Big Daddy out in the wild with a Little Sister in tow, bumping him off and adopting her as your own. She will then sit on your shoulder, until you decide to send her out to find and extract Adam from corpses. The moment you set her down, you will be attacked by splicers until she is done, so it's best to set up defenses before you begin. You can use various methods to protect yourself, such as hacking any missile or machine gun turrets so that they fight for you, doing likewise to security cameras which then send out armed drones on your behalf, or setting down special "trap rivets" that stick to walls and ceilings and fill enemies with shrapnel the moment they activate them. Once the quota of Adam has been gathered, you can scoop up the Little Sister again and repeat the process one more time. After this, you have to decide whether to save the Little Sister, or do something nasty to her that yields more Adam, but definitely makes you a bad person.

This decision as well some others related to the objectives throughout the main storyline dictate which of several ending variations that you will get to see. It's a little bit of a binary choice but it at least gives you a reason to play through the game a second time to hear different reactions to your behaviour from the NPCs and see a different ending. On top of all this single player action this is a completely separate multiplayer mode which I dabbled in a little. It's pretty solid and appears to have a decent amount of people still playing it, but can't really compete against the likes of Call of Duty or Halo: Reach.

Innovation and Cleverness: 5 out of 10
There are obviously a lot of clever ideas in Bioshock 2 but most of them originated from the original game, including the research camera that improves your skills against certain types of enemy the more you film them with it. The general consensus from people who have played both games is that the first one was better, but the second is still as worthwhile purchase fans.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
As this blog is aimed at real gamers who spend their actual hard earned money on games, the fact that is game can currently be snapped up for a fiver means it scores pretty big in this category. As mentioned you can play the game at least twice to see the different story outcomes, and after that there's still a perfectly decent multiplayer mode to while away some time with.

Overall: 8 out of 10
I really enjoyed playing Bioshock 2, for the atmosphere, the action and the way you can pick and choose your plasmid/gene tonic load out to play the game the way you want to play it. I may well go back and play through the first game properly now, but it is still surprisingly expensive to pick up, compared to its sequel. I also look forward to the next game, Bioshock Infinite, which takes the franchise into the skies. Whether the story has any ties to the events in Rapture remains to be seen.

Dead Money - Fallout New Vegas DLC review

2011-01-06T13:04:00.007Z

Dead Money, the first (but certainly not the last) piece of downloadable content for the incredibly buggy Fallout New Vegas, was released on December 21st 2010. Upon firing up the game after downloading it, you receive a radio signal inviting you to the grand opening of the Sierra Madre Hotel and Casino (your level cap will also be increased to 35). Should you follow the signal to an abandoned Brotherhood of Steel bunker, however, you will be knocked unconscious and wake up to discover that you now have a bomb collar around your neck. Should you attempt to leave the hotel, it will detonate. You are given the task of gathering together three other people who have been trapped in the complex and convincing them to help you break into the casino and the mythical treasures within.

Let me get this straight - Dead Money is definitely aimed at the more hardcore Fallout fan, as there are quite a few new mechanics in play here that make this DLC incredibly tough, and for me at least, incredibly frustrating to play. Firstly: around the Sierra Madre complex, there are clouds of poisonous gas that sap your HP. At times, you have no choice to go through these clouds. Next: there are radios and speakers scattered around the environment that will set off that collar around your neck should you stay in their vicinity for too long. Some of them can be destroyed, others are shielded and either have to be avoided or shut down via terminals if this is possible. There are also strange and creepy "ghost people" roaming the streets that will hunt you down and kill you. Knocking them down won't deal with them permanently, you have to dismember them with a spear or other sharp weapon. What's more, all of your equipment is taken away from you by your captor when you first arrive and supplies are in incredibly short supply.

Now I dare say many fans of the series will actually relish the challenge on offer here, but I found it really frustrating and after a while, not at all fun. I guess I like my open ended RPG experiences which let you explore - which most of the time the Fallout games are - but when they force you into a certain situation like this DLC does and The Pitt for Fallout 3 also did (but not quite so extreme), I can't honestly say I'm a fan. So, the score I'm giving out here is purely based on my opinion and how much I enjoyed (or didn't, actually) this DLC. If you played the main game on Hardcore mode, or like challenging gameplay, then give it a shot.

Overall: 5 out of 10

Mafia II review

2010-12-08T13:10:00.003Z

Mafia II, as the name would imply, is the sequel to the original title Mafia that was released for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2002. Where the original was set in the 1930's and based around the exploits of protagonist Tommy Angelo, this time around things have moved forward to the 40's and you now play as Vito Scavelli. Together with his buddy Joe he falls in with the Mafia within the fictional city of Empire Bay, and gets into a whole heap of trouble along the way. Things very rarely go smoothly for him. If you've seen the classic movie Goodfellas, Mafia II has a very similar vibe and the story takes place over quite a large period of time, much like the film. While it is tempting to compare the game to the Grand Theft Auto series, to do so would really be doing it a disservice because while the game does take place in a vividly realised city, it is a much more linear and cinematic experience. Those expecting to be able to roam around and find lots of activities to distract them from the main plot will be disappointed - knowing what you're getting here before you go in will help you appreciate what you do get that much more. So, let's break it down and see what's what...

Format: Xbox 360 (PS3 and PC also available)
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Czech
Expect to pay: £20 - £25

Graphics: 9 out of 10
Mafia II looks absolutely fantastic. The earlier chapters of the game take place in the winter, so the city is blanketed in snow, the ice on the road shines in the sun, and white flakes are falling all around you. There is a great amount of attention to detail too, with dozens of citizens going about their daily lives realistically. When things heat up and the bullets start flying the game does a good job of keeping up with the action, with no noticeable slow down or tearing, and the same can also be said about the driving. The cars, while not licensed on any real life vehicles, do look like they could belong within the time period quite easily.

During cut scenes where you get a close up view of the various characters the game looks equally good, and while you can still tell it's a game you are looking at and not real life the lip syncing is a good deal better than many games out there. While these days a good looking game on the current generation on consoles is pretty easy to find, Mafia II does a very good job of keeping up with the competition and you will definitely not be disappointed in this regard.

Sound and Music: 10 out of 10
Mafia II performs outstandingly well on all fronts in the audio department. The voice actors all do an extremely good job of reading their lines, and those who are supposed to have authentic Italian-American accents do so. The various, pistols, shotguns and the fantastic period Tommy guns also sound like their real life counterparts (or at least, their heightened reality movie versions).

Where Mafia II is really remarkable though is in its use of music. Just like the two most recent Fallout games, it gathers a collection of genuine classics from the era it is based in, from war time songs during first third in the game, to tunes that exemplify the birth of rock and roll like Rock Around the Clock in the latter stages. I was initially concerned that there was only a small selection of songs and they would soon start getting repetitive, but once the story moves in to the 50's, there is a much great range of music to listen to, and three different radio stations to switch between when driving around. The original score, composed by Matus Siroky and performed by the Prague FILMharmonic Orchestra is used fairly minimally, mostly to add drama to the cut scenes, but it is of an equally high standard.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
I was slightly tempted to drop the score in the category down to 7 out of 10 because Mafia II doesn't really give you any opportunities to explore the wonderfully realised city of Empire Bay, but like I said in my intro this isn't really trying to be a competitor to Grand Theft Auto and neither was its predecessor, so to penalise it for that would be a little unfair. No, in reality it is more comparable to other 3rd person action games, and in that regard it stacks up very favourably.

Firstly, lets take a look at the combat. While you are often over run by dozens of enemies at a time, you never feel like the game or the controls let you down. The camera angle is good, aiming is easy enough and the action is smooth and fast. More often than not, if you find yourself dead it was because you rush in to quickly and were overrun. It's much better to stay in cover, line your shot up and wait for your enemies to expose themselves than to blunder in and end up with a shotgun in the back. Usually you will go into battle with others fighting by your side (usually your buddy Joe), and the AI does a good job of covering you and genuinely helping you out. Don't think you can rely on these characters to do all the hard work for you though, you will still have to pull your weight in these shootouts.

Driving around the city is comparable to other games of this ilk, but Mafa II lets you switch on a speed limiter which is handy when your trying to keep your car in one piece or you'd rather just casually cruise around the city and soak in the sights. Should the rozzers chase you, you have a few options to aid your escape - you can take your car to a garage and pay to have the plates changed, have it resprayed a different colour or have the engine upgraded so you can leave them in your dust. Going to a clothing store and changing your outfit can also help you lose your wanted level. A good deal of the game will see you behind the wheel of a car, most missions involve you driving somewhere specific, before fighting your way through a scripted shooting sequence on foot.

Early in the game you will get into a fist fight, which basically serves as a tutorial for hand to hand combat. From then on you will have to fight people sporadically throughout the story, and like the other aspects of the game it is well implemented. You can dodge and block enemy attacks, strike back with light or hard punches, and execute finishing moves once you have worn down your opponent sufficiently.

As for the storyline of the game, it's pretty good stuff, full of betrayal, criminal escapades which more often than not go horribly wrong, sprinkled with plenty of foul language and violent scenes. All of this takes place over a decade or so, and as previously mentioned there is more than a hint of Goodfellas in the style and tone of the game, so those who love their classic gangster films or a TV series such as The Sopranos should find plenty to like here.

Innovation and Cleverness: 5 out of 10
There is nothing especially innovative about Mafia II, but what is present is high polished and well implemented. You always feel like you're in control, whether in a shoot out, in hand to hand combat or driving, which is extremely important in an action game like this but overlooked surprisingly often.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
Mafia II took me around 15 hours to complete, which is a pretty decent amount for an action game. The story and gameplay is good enough that I may go back and play through again on hard sometime, but it is a bit of shame in the way that 2K Czech didn't put a few more side missions or distractions around Empire Bay, because the city is beautifully realised and deserves to to be explored more thoroughly. They did address this in the first DLC that was released (which I will review at a later date) but it would be nice to have a bit more here. It's by no means a deal breaker though, and now that the game can be picked up for around £20 it should not adversely influence your decision to purchase the game.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Mafa II is an incredibly solid action game - well written, mechanically sound, and most importantly good fun. If you enjoy the gangster genre then you should definitely track down a copy.

Mass Effect 2 DLC Round Up

2010-11-10T13:40:00.021Z

Mass Effect 2 is without a doubt one of the standout games of 2010, in fact I would go as far as saying that it is my pick for game of the year, narrowly beating competition from the likes of Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. This time around, Bioware really got the balance of shooting action and RPG customisation/exploration right, and the game just exudes confidence and style from every pore. If you haven't played the original game yet, I would suggest that you go back and give my review a read. Then, come back here and we'll get stuck into looking at the DLC that has been released over the course of the year. The forthcoming PS3 version of the game promises to include all of this extra content on the disc, making it the definitive version of the game.

1. The Cerberus Network
Now for those who bought a brand new copy of Mass Effect 2, activating the included code and enjoying the downloads that are included as part of the Cerberus Network is a no brainer. But for those who have picked up a copy of the game and therefore don't have a valid code, is the 1200 MS points really worth it? Well... almost, I'd say. What exactly do you get?

Normandy Crash Site: This is a fairly brief diversion where you visit the wreckage of the Normandy Mark I, find 20 dog tags of your fallen comrades (so that their families can be notified), and place a memorial at the site. There is no combat involved and it should only take about 20 minutes to complete. More interesting as a piece of nostalgia for those who played the first game than for people new to the franchise, I would say.

Zaeed - The Price of Revenge: Zaeed is a mercenary for hire who join your squad on the condition that you do something for him - namely help him get revenge on the Blue Suns, who he is a former founder of. He's not a particularly interesting character and is not fully integrated into the game like those who shipped on the disc, so you won't be having any in depth conversations with him back on the Normandy.

Firewalker Pack
This is a series of 5 new missions that are designed to introduce you to the Hammerhead, which is the Mass Effect 2 equivalent of the Mako. Most of the missions take place in or around volcanic regions, and involve you finding resources, boosting, leaping and hovering from place to place while avoiding lava, and blowing up Geth with your cannon. It's pretty good fun and adds an new element to the established gameplay, but it looks like the Hammerhead is ultimately doomed to be under utilised because the only other place it's appeared so far is in the Overlord DLC. Maybe Bioware has some more DLC up its sleeve that will bring it back again, we shall see.

Cerberus Weapon and Armour: I used the armour as it looks fairly cool and makes your character quite a lot more poweful, but personally I didn't bother with the weapon (the M-22 Eviscerator shotgun) as I was more than happy with those that I already had.

Arc Projector: Another extremely powerful extra weapon, this time one that can electrocute an entire squad of enemies within seconds. Again, I just stuck to the default weapons for my playthrough.

Overall: 6 out of 10
This stuff isn't that bad but not especially mind blowing either - the Firewalker pack is definitely the highlight. Worth checking out if you have the code to sign up to the Cerberus Network for free, but not worth spending 1200 MS points on if you don't.

2. Stolen Memory

This DLC centres around another new character, Kasumi Goto, a master thief. In order to obtain her loyalty you have to help her recover a black box containing vital secrets from the mansion of Donovan Heck, a deadly master criminal. Like with the Zaeed DLC, there is no mission involved in getting Kasumi to join your squad, and no conversation options once she is on the ship, but she will chip in the occasional piece of dialogue if you choose to take her along on other missions with you. She is at least an interesting character with the useful ability of turning invisible and striking her opponents from behind. This DLC isn't especially long for 800 MS points, but it is fun while it lasts and there is less emphasis on combat and more on story and atmosphere this time.

Overall: 7 out of 10

3. Overlord
This download sees you travelling to a remote Cerberus funded research station where an experiment to connect a human brain with a VI has gone horribly wrong, resulting in the deaths of nearly everyone stationed there at the hands of the formerly dormant Geth that the scientists were tinkering with. It is your job to force your way into the station, find out exactly what's happening, shut down the VI and recover as much data for the Illusive Man as possible.

This is a fairly lengthy mission, at least two hours, and is as well designed as anything found in the retail game. The on foot shooting sections are broken up by brief segments in the Hammerhead vehicle, but there is no combat while driving around this time, it's more just for getting to A to B. There are some achievement points to be earned and some decisions to be made based on your paragon/renegade preferences, so there's a little bit of replay value. All in all I would definitely recommend getting this one if you want more Mass Effect 2 action.

Overall: 8 out of 10.

4. Lair of the Shadow Broker
This time the story and action revolves around Liara T'Soni, your Asari friend and potential love interest from the original Mass Effect. She has been secretly plotting revenge on the Shadow Broker for years, but no one knows his true identity or where he can be found, until now. Shephard recovers some intelligence that may indicate where the Shadow Broker may be found, which sets the scene for a dangerous game of cat and mouse on Ilium and the eponymous lair.

This is another combat heavy download but the story is decent as well, especially if you invested hours into the first game and developed your characters relationship with Liara. There is some new gameplay included here in the form of a brief chase sequence in a taxi, which is highly reminiscent of the scene from Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. Again, there are a bunch of new achievements to unlock, and this time after a successful mission you unlock access to dossiers about the various characters from the game, which is entertaining reading for fans of the universe.

The length of Shadow Broker is roughly the same as Overlord at just over two hours, and the quality is about the same too, so again I can recommend spending the 800 Microsoft points on this.

Overall: 8 out of 10

Broken Steel - Fallout DLC Review

2010-11-01T13:09:00.007Z

Broken Steel signified the mid point in Bethesda's Fallout 3 DLC campaign, and it slots in rather awkwardly amidst the other four self contained mini campaigns, being a direct continuation of the main games plot. Though I would personally recommend buying and installing before you play any of the the other DLC packs in order to take advantage of the increased level cap and the new perks that go along with it, I personally decided to play it last (note: while I have played Operation Anchorage it was such as long time ago that I don't have a clear recollection of it, so I intend to replay it as my evil character this week and come back with my thoughts by the end of the week).

Broken Steel directly addresses a problem that many people had with Fallout 3, namely that once you completed the final mission of the main storyline the credits rolled and in order to continue playing you would have to reload an earlier save before you set certain events in to motion. This is a bit of a pain in a game that is ostensibly a free roaming experience, so Bethesda listened to their fans and now you have another option that allows you to play on and take part in several missions that show what befell the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel after Project Purity.

The missions in Broken Steel are good fun and take place in a combination of existing locations and a major new one. The main plot lasts a little bit longer than that of the other DLC packs as well, around 5-6 hours. Then of course you have the 10 extra levels of experience. When I played through all the of DLC, I was still only level 26 at the end of it all, so from that point on I explored all of the places that I had yet to visit in the wasteland (which was quite a few as it turns out). Fallout 3 is an absolutely vast game, but a good deal of the content is entirely optional so have further impetus to get out explore is a good thing.

Also, the new perks featured in Broken Steel meant that I was finally able to complete the annoying Nuka Cola Challenge side quest and earn the achievement points. In the original game I hadn't realised that you were supposed to save the bottles of Nuka Cola Quantum that you find and hand them in to one of two particular NPCs, so I actually drank a lot of them as healing items. Thankfully Bethesda must have realised that people might do this, and they added a perk that converts every 10 normal bottles of Nuka Cola into a Quantum. There are also other perks that reset your karma to neutral status, allow you to walk over traps without triggering them, and give you increased resistance to radiation, so by the end of the game you can pretty much make your character an unstoppable killing machine. I have also noticed many of these perks make a return in New Vegas.

All in all, Broken Steel is the DLC that many Fallout 3 fans were waiting for all along - it fixes certain problems, enhances an already brilliant game and allows you to wander the capital wasteland for as long as you wish. It's well worth the Microsoft points!

Overall: 8 out of 10

The Pitt - Fallout 3 DLC Review

2010-10-28T13:17:00.002+01:00

The Pitt was the second of five pieces of DLC released for Fallout 3, and personally is the one I enjoyed the least. First, a bit of background. This time, after receiving an emergency radio signal, you will encounter an escaped slave looking for help to free his fellow captives from the ruins of what used to be Pittsburgh. The unfortunate masses are forced by those in power to labour away in the steel mills, and venture out into the hazardous, Trog invested city to salvage steel ingots that can be fashioned into ammunition. Trogs were once normal human beings, but a disease has swept the city, causing many of its occupants to de-evolve and turn into these feral creatures. You have been tasked with both helping to free the slaves and also to help deliver the cure to the people, which is currently in possession of the leader of the slavers.

It appears that The Pitt is aimed at the Fallout 3 hardcore player, something which I certainly am not, despite having now invested over 80 hours into the game. I prefer to play on Easy, enjoying the exploration, the thrill of combat and towards the end of the game the over powered weaponry. Not long after starting this side story, all of your equipment is taken away from you (you can get it back later, so don't worry too much) and for a while all you have to defend yourself with is a brand new weapon to Fallout 3, the auto axe. You will be able to pick up guns from defeated slavers, but ammo is pretty sparse and there are many Trogs that you will need to kill, so you may run out pretty quickly.

As you'd expect, The Pitt isn't too difficult when played on one of the lower difficulty settings - but what it is, is annoying. It's fairly linear, the graphics aren't very varied (and nowhere near as nice as in Zeta), and the lack of ammo/decent weapons is a pain. Don't get me wrong, it's not a boring waste of time like some of the DLC I've been unfortunate to waste my money on (Dragon Age, I'm looking at you), but for me at least, The Pitt is definitely the weakest of the bunch. Those who struggled through the main game on one of the harder settings and are looking for a challenge may well enjoy it though.

Overall: 5 out of 10

Mothership Zeta - Fallout 3 DLC Review

2010-10-25T13:12:00.005+01:00

Mothership Zeta was the fifth and final piece of DLC released for Fallout 3, and in my opinion it could well be the best of the bunch, or at least of equal standing to Point Lookout and Broken Steel. It all depends what you want to get out of it really. If for you the best part of Fallout 3 was exploring the wasteland at your leisure, discovering quests and places of interest at your own pace, then Point Lookout would probably be the best choice. On the other hand if you would like a more linear experience, packed with high powered weaponry and unique enemies, then Mothership Zeta really delivers.

Some of your may have already stumbled upon the downed UFO out in the wasteland and picked up the Alien Blaster, an extremely powerful energy weapon. Well, this vessel is the starting point of Mothership Zeta, and it sees you being beamed aboard a ship populated by ETs that strongly resemble the classic Roswell alien from the legends. You are taken captive and thrown into a cell with another prisoner, and decide to work together to get out of there before your alien abuctees have an opportunity to test out their anal probes, or whatever else it is they may have in store for you.

After knocking out one of the guards, you can arm yourself with a Stun Baton until you get an opportunity to pick up a gun with a cool sounding name like a Disintigrator or Atomizer, before running amok on the ship, blowing up reactors and sabotaging the aliens attempt at destroying the world. It will probably take you between 3 and 4 hours to complete the quests contained within Mothership Zeta, and you will have great fun doing it as the graphics featured here are some of the best to feature throughout Fallout 3 and the DLC packs, with a steampunk vibe going on, lots of lovely shiny metal and some nice smoke effects. Reducing aliens to their component molecules is always good for a laugh as well. So all in all I heartily recommend downloading Mothership Zeta, but would suggest that you also buy Broken Steel as well so that you can take advantage of the increased level cap, or if you don't own Fallout 3 at all you could get the Game of the Year Edition which includes the main game and all of the DLC - which is amazing value for money and will probably take you a long while to complete.

Overall: 8 out 10

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Point Lookout - Fallout 3 DLC review

2010-10-18T13:34:00.010+01:00

Point Lookout was the fourth of five DLC releases for Fallout 3. Way back when I put together my Fallout 3 review I promised that I would come back with my thoughts on the various DLC packages once I'd had the opportunity to check them out. Now, with Fallout: New Vegas less than a week away I have finally played through one of them, namely Point Lookout. Better late than never, eh?

I enjoyed this for the most part because it gives you a new, fairly large area to roam around in at your leisure, with quite a few locations to explore (and an achievement if you visit them all). There's a decent amount of gameplay to be had, too, with a main quest line that will take several hours to complete, a couple more optional quests, and of course many incidental and optional areas to discover. Throughout your time on Point Lookout you will come up against creepy rednecks, a tribe that has set themselves up in the local church and are obsessed with the native Punga fruit, and plenty of ghouls and mirelurks. Because I had already played through most of the main campaign by the time I came here I was armed to the teeth with a mini gun, combat shotgun, an alien blaster and full Brotherhood of Steel armour, but should you decide to visit earlier with the limited weaponry available towards the start of the game you may struggle a bit.

One of the optional quests you can complete in Point Lookout involves finding an evil book, which you can then take back to the mainland and destroy in the extremely creepy and ghoul infested Dunwich building should you decide to do so. Many people had already noted the references to H P Lovecraft throughout this building but had failed to locate the book mentioned in the audio logs that you can find - well now this DLC will finally help to solve that mystery.

Visually Point Lookout is a bit of a dreary place, which I suppose is in keeping with the atmosphere of Fallout 3 but a little more variety in the colour palette would have been nice. I also don't think the new areas were quite creepy enough - there were no scares that matched being assaulted by ghouls in the pitch black underground areas of the main game, or coming face to face with a Super Mutant Behemoth, for example. All in all though Point Lookout is an enjoyable experience and it was great to revisit the Fallout 3 world after all this time. I'm going to try and crack on with at least some of the other DLC packs this week, before picking up Fallout: New Vegas on Friday.

Overall: 7 out of 10.

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Video Game Swag: GameSpite Quarterly Issue 5

2010-09-14T09:13:00.007+01:00

I've just finished reading the latest hardback edition of GameSpite Quarterly, this time devoted to the NES and its 25 year legacy. The book is split into seven sections which cover the major events that occurred during the lifetime of the console including the launch of Nintendo Power magazine, Nintendo's many legal battles, bootleg cartridges and more. Sprinkled amongst these articles is coverage of all of the key games that were released for the platform, both good and bad.

As always this is a excellently written tome put together by Jeremy Parish and his team of regular contributors from the GameSpite web site. It weighs in at over 440 pages and as Jeremy has already said they're not likely to ever produce such a long book again due to the insane amount of work that goes into it. I have recently bought GameSpite Year 1 Volume 1 as well and the evolution from that early book to this latest one is clear to see - with fairly mundane and simple layouts put together in the free BookSmart software giving way to extremely professional looking articles that have been set out in Adobe InDesign. While in the face of it the book isn't cheap at just under £24 for the deluxe hardback and just under £12 for the standard edition, bear in mind that this is a print on demand enterprise put together in what little spare time the creators can afford. For the stingy or hard up, all of the content will eventually appear free of charge on the web site, but the books do make a great addition to any retro gamers library.

Wii Hidden Gems #1 - The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces

2010-09-08T13:53:00.033+01:00

So here I am with the first of my new Wii Hidden Gems series - which incidentally will be full blown reviews rather than using the format of my older Hidden Gems articles. The Sky Crawlers game is based on a series of novels by Japanese author Hiroshi Mori. His books have been adapted into an anime film, the game which I'm covering here and a manga series. The basic premise is somewhat strange - although the world is actually at peace, in order to prevent a full blown war from breaking out amongst the aggressive human population, several corporations stage battles for show. Both the film and the game make reference to "Kildren" - genetically engineered children that are immortal unless shot down in battle, when they are simply cloned and the copy is sent out again with a new identity. The game is a combat flight sim developed by Project Aces - the same team that have worked on most of the Ace Combat series, and it shares many similarities with those titles. Now that I've filled you in on what the game is about, let me try and explain why you should give it a try.

Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Project Aces
Expect to pay: £10 (source: Amazon Marketplace)

Graphics: 7 out of 10
Sky Crawlers is by no means an ugly came unless you happen to get fairly close to the ground whereupon the textures and general lack of detail leave you in no doubt that you’re playing on a machine that has less power under the hood than Xbox 360 or PS3. There are a nice variety of different skyboxes throughout the missions creating the atmosphere that you are flying against a sunset or during a thunderstorm for example. The various different planes (more of which can be unlocked) all look good and like they could feasibly be real machines, and importantly there is no trace of slowdown when there are a lot of bogies in the sky. Aside from the in game graphics another major visual component of this game are the anime style cut scenes, which have been given the same level of polish as the feature film. You don’t get to watch one of these after every mission but there is over 30 minutes of animation spread between the games 17 missions. All in all Sky Crawlers is a decent looking Wii game but obviously if you put it up against its fully HD counterpart on the other current generation consoles then it is going to suffer.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10 I’m going to mention the voice acting first because surprisingly I feel that it is a good deal better than the voice work in the English dub of the film. Whereas a lot of the acting felt stilted and lacking emotion in the movie the VA’s tend to do a much better job. I definitely recognised the acting talents of Heather Hogan as Lt. Orishina (probably most well known for playing Collette Brunel in the Tales of Symphonia games).

The music is also nicely composed and features Celtic influences which helps gives the Sky Crawlers universe its own unique feel. The music was also a strong component of the animated film so its good to see this carry across from one medium to another.

Neeooooowwwww... dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga!

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
As mentioned previously, The Sky Crawlers takes place over 17 separate missions, some of which have multiple sections. These predominantly involve shooting down other planes, but there are a few missions which diverge from this pattern to involve taking reconnaissance photos, destroying generators before shields can be activated, or protecting a downed sea plane from both naval and aerial attack.

I have to praise Project Aces/Namco now for being considerate enough to provide multiple controller options for the game. The default controls sees you using the nunchuk in your dominant hand as the joystick of your plane, and the Wii remote as your throttle control. You can also perform various evasive maneuvers by carrying out motions with the remote, and these can be very important in some of the trickier missions as they allow you to position yourself directly behind an enemy plane and take them out efficiently. These can sometimes make the missions rather too easy though and reduce the amount of actual dogfighting skill necessary to take down the opposition. You can also use either a Gamecube controller or a Classic controller, which is typically something that only Nintendo is thoughtful enough to offer. I have played many Wii games which are hampered by there insistence that you must use the motion controls and nothing else (Tiger Woods 2010 comes to mind).

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out 10
Though I have said that the Classic controller is my preferred control method for playing Sky Crawlers, the motion controls are in fact very well implemented and do a good job of making you feel that you are in control of a plane. There is also the small but very useful addition of a zoomed in targeting reticule that appears one you are in a certain range of your target, which makes lining up shots in the the middle of a hectic dogfight much easier.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
It will probably take you in the region of 10 hours to play through the main story mode on the default difficulty setting. Then you have the option of either playing individual missions again in free play, or playing through the whole story again a second time on the hard setting. Though the amount of play time you will glean from this game is by no means huge, it is quite possible to find a new, sealed copy of the game for £10 which means that I still recommend that you pick it up, especially if you're already a fan of the film. The game and film are best experienced as part of a package, as both of them fill in missing details of the others storyline and are more understandable (not to mention enjoyable) once you are aware of all the back story.

Overall: 7 out of 10
Sky Crawlers is a game that is likely to fly under the radar of many, especially in the west where there original series of novels haven't been translated. Fans of anime and aerial combat games should definitely take the time to check this cross media project out, as there's a lot to enjoy.

Wii will rock you.

2010-09-08T13:09:00.011+01:00

Please forgive the rather tired and obvious pun - it's been a long week and we're only at the halfway stage! Today I would like to announce some plans that I have, although I'm not going to do anything rash like commit my self to a schedule or anything like that as that is a surefire way to guarantee that it won't actually happen! Anyway, I've been thinking for a little while that it would be nice to shift the focus away from Xbox 360 for a little bit and onto other platforms - beginning with the Nintendo Wii. The Wii has been very under represented on this blog and also gets a fair bit of stick from both hardcore gamers and journalists alike - with even the best games the system can offer often receiving the dreaded "It looks good, for a Wii game" comment.

I would like to readdress the balance a bit by introducing two new series of articles - Wii Essentials, and Wii Hidden Gems. The first will include games that should be in anybodies Wii collection and will cover some of the more obvious titles that I have been meaning to talk about but never have for one reason or another - such as Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime Trilogy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and others. The second will try and unearth some of the Wii's less well known but no less deserving titles. Games like Little King's Story, A Boy and His Blob, and Sky Crawlers. The first of each of these will hopefully appear fairly soon but like I said I'm not going to doom this enterprise to failure by promising exactly when they will appear. Once I get into my stride and get a few of these up I may well follow up will something similar for some of the other platforms that I haven't given much coverage - the Nintendo DS, or more retro coverage for example. I'm quite excited to get working on this at the moment, so maybe I will strike while the iron is hot and start working on the first one now! I've even created logo's for them, look:

In future, clicking on these banners will take you to all of the articles within each series - for now they will only bring up this one though!

First Impressions Round Up 31/08/10 - 360 Fest

2010-08-31T15:57:00.013+01:00

Another new month is around the corner and with it another batch of new(ish) games. I spent a bit of time over the bank holiday weekend checking out some recent Xbox 360 titles. The poor old PS3 and Wii aren’t getting much of a look in at the moment, mostly because the allure of my shiny new black 360 hasn’t worn off yet. I do have a couple of Wii games that I need to check out soon though. Without further ado let’s get to it…

Just Cause 2
I was a big fan of the original Just Cause and its blend of crazy stunts, free roaming game play and destruction, but there wasn’t really enough variety to it. The setting pretty much looked the same from one side of the archipelago to the other, and the liberation missions were extremely samey. This time though there is a much wider array of environments – from snowy mountainous areas, through tropical rainforests and deserts. There’s lots of fun to be had just exploring the world, discovering and completing all the challenges and mucking about with the physics engine. Try connecting one end of your grappling hook to a gas canister and the other to the a bad guy before shooting said canister, and watch as hilarity ensues!

Mafia 2
On the surface, both Mafia 2 and Just Cause 2 appear to be free roaming action games in the template of Grand Theft Auto, but once you actually spend a bit of time with Mafia 2 it becomes clear that it is actually a much more linear affair than the games publicity would have you believe. The city of Empire Bay is beautiful and the game is incredibly cinematic, but there is actually very little scope to go off and explore at your leisure. Even if you were to do so, you would find very few distractions throughout the city other than the odd garage where you can upgrade your car or a bar where you can get drunk. I also have concerns over the length of the game because I’ve only been playing for a couple of hours and I’m already as far as chapter 4. Let’s hope the storyline slows down a little as you get further in.

Brutal Legend
I actually picked this one up about a month ago but it’s taken this long to put it in my 360 and give it a spin, mainly because I had already played the demo and that was a fairly decent sized chunk of the game in itself. I’ve now got a bit further than that and rescued the head bangers, and I’m enjoying it so far even though the vast majority of the metal references are going straight over my head. Roaming around the over world a bit was fun, and I’ve yet to encounter the allegedly broken RTS sections.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Played through the first level of this Live Arcade tie in with the Edgar Wright film. It’s a retro style scrolling beat ‘em up in the same vein as Final Fight or Streets of Rage, and it follows the plot of the film/graphic novels pretty faithfully. The levels do seem to be a little on the lengthy side so I was starting to get a little fatigued by the time I encountered the first boss, but the game does support up to 4 players in local co-op play which would be great fun. Alas though, I was playing it on my own which feels a little dull.

Puzzle Quest 2
The extremely addictive puzzle/RPG hybrid game returns with even stronger RPG elements than before. There are lengthy dungeons to explore and many side quests to be found, as well as new treasure looting and door bashing mini games which add a little variety to the main puzzle mechanics. Equipable weapons have been added as another way of doing damage to your adversaries in addition to the skulls and spells that were present in the first game, and there is plenty of game to be found here for your 800 points.

That’s it for this round up – the promised Alan Wake and DeathSpank reviews are on the way, and one for Dragon Quest IX may not be too far behind. I'm also waiting for another trio of GameSpite books so I may have a thing or two to say about them once they arrive and I have consumed them.

Red Faction: Guerrilla review

2010-07-05T13:05:00.038+01:00

The Red Faction series has been around for quite some time now, having made its debut on the PS2 back in 2001. It is famed for its "GeoMod" system, which allowed for realistic destruction of buildings and environments. Now, this is the first time I've actually played an entry in the series, but from what I hear, the original GeoMod was by no means perfect as it only let you destroy preset parts of the environment. Things were improved slightly for the sequel, and now for Guerrilla we have GeoMod 2.0. Instead of letting you blow chunks out of the entire environment, you are limited to being able to destroy man made structures, but this isn't a huge problem as Volition have crafted a sprawling open ended playground for you to smash into pieces. Without further ado, let's get stuck into the main part of the review.

Format: Xbox 360, (also available for PS3 & PC)
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition Inc.
Expect to pay: £10 - £20

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Visually Red Faction: Guerrilla is extremely solid, with big chunky vehicles, large environments that flow into one another without any loading times, and a frame rate that for the most part remains stable (only showing signs of slowdown when there is extreme amounts of carnage going on). Thanks to the fact that the various districts of Mars are at differing stages of being terraformed, Volition are able to avoid everything simply looking red or brown. Granted, the first few environments you find yourself exploring look like something taken directly from Total Recall, but later on you find yourself in the the slightly greener environs of Oasis, and later still the dark and oppressive surroundings of Eos, where the evil Earth Defence Force are based. The vehicles range from sturdy looking trucks, through buggies, recreational vehicles that look a bit like the Johnny Cab from the aforementioned Arnie film, huge tanks, and robotic walkers that are immensely satisfying to pilot and smash things to bits with.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
First of all, I absolutely love the music in this game. During downtime within your base or just travelling to your next district of devastation, the music is very serene and somewhat melancholy. Once you start ripping things apart though, the tempo increases to match and it really gets the blood pumping as you raze buildings to the ground. The various weapons sound suitably meaty, and the vehicular emanations reflect the typing of transport you're driving - so electronic whirring from some space age looking hatchback, and a deep rumbling from a behemoth tank. As for the voice acting, I would say it is solidly done but not in danger of winning any acting awards. The most recognisable voice is probably that of Michael McConnohie, who plays the Commander. Fans of Crackdown will most definitely recognise him, and he's been in dozens of other games too. It was absolutely no surprise to see Nolan North and Yuri Lowenthal among the cast list too, as they seemingly sign up for any VO job they're offered - though I'd be hard pressed to identify them as specific characters this time around.

Vehicles are not only useful for getting to A to B - they are also a great source of protection from bullets, especially when the area is swarming with enemies.

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
The basic structure of the game goes like this: you are given a new area of Mars to explore. The EDF are in control of this area and you need to take over, by completing Guerrilla Actions (more on this in a minute), destroying EDF property of varying importance, and completing missions that comprise part of the main storyline. The the Guerrilla Actions include Transporter (driving a vehicle back to a safe house within a time limit), raids on EDF buildings, protecting an area from an EDF incursion, House Arrest (breaking fellow faction members out of imprisonment), Demolitions Expert (blowing stuff up against the clock and with limited resources), and my personal favourites - Heavy Metal (causing wanton destruction in a big stompy robot exoskeleton), and Collateral Damage, where you man a rocket launcher on the back of a bike driven by a nutcase, and have to destroy as much EDF property as you can. Successful completion of these actions lowers the influence of the EDF on that sector, and increases the morale of the Red Faction. Before you are able to liberate an area completely, the EDF influence must be reduced to zero. Then you can take part in the liberation mission (having completed the proceeding story based missions as well), and access to the next area is granted where the whole process starts again.

The reason I have only given the game a 7 in this area is because of the controls. These days, you would expect a shoot em up to follow the majority of other games in the genre and have the zoom/iron sight mode on the left trigger, but for some reason Red Faction: Guerrilla has this mapped to clicking in the right stick and the left trigger is melee attack. Even late in the game, I would go to zoom in on an enemy and instead flail at thin air. I did check out the options menu to see if I could remap the controls, but unfortunately not. On normal difficulty, the game can be quite tough, as enemies can swarm you and take down your health incredibly quickly. I was dying all over the place, and eventually switched to Casual, having a much more enjoyable time as a result.

Freeing an area of Mars locks you out from completing particular types of Guerrilla Action if you haven't done so already, but fear not, once you finish the last story mission they will all become available to you, thus allowing you to get the Achievement for completing all 104 of them should you choose to do so. I should also mention that completing missions and destroying buildings grants you salvage, which is the currency that you can use to buy new weapons, shields and other useful items throughout the campaign. In the early stages of the game I found the sticky mines incredibly useful, and later on the rocket launcher upgraded with its heat seeking ability was a godsend. You can also buy a jet pack at a quite advanced stage in the campaign, which is another extremely useful little gadget for getting in and out of trouble.

As well as the single player campaign there is also a multi player mode. However, I've yet to experience this and unfortunately I doubt I ever will as it seems that nobody plays the game on the Xbox Live servers any more. PC owners should still be able to find somebody to play with, and I hear it is actually a pretty good multi player mode. It's a shame that a good half of the Xbox Achievements are based around the multi player though as there's not much chance of unlocking them now.

Innovation and Cleverness: 7 out of 10
Taken separately, sandbox games and third person shooters are of course nothing new. But by combining them together will the Martian setting and unprecedented amounts of destruction and mayhem, you have something rather special on your hands.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
Some reviewers think that we shouldn't take the cost of a game into consideration when critiquing it, and fair enough - but this blog speaks for real people who can't afford to buy every major release as soon as it comes out, so I feel taking the current market value of a game into consideration at the time the review is written is a valid thing to do. In this case, you can now pick up Red Faction: Guerrilla on its own for about £13, or as part of a 2 for £20 deal in the major retailers. Might I suggest Batman: Arkham Asylum as a possible companion to this game if you don't own it already? Two of the finest action games of 2009 for £20 is a real bargain.

The single player campaign didn't really take very long for me to finish - I'd estimate about 20 hours maximum. I must stress however that so far I've only completed 50 of the Guerrilla Actions - it would take a decent chunk of time to go back and do the other 54. I definitely feel that I've got decent value for money out of the game.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Red Faction: Guerrilla is a fun, chaotic, cathartic, yet sometimes frustrating trip to the planet Mars, well worth seeking out for those who love to blow things to smithereens. A follow up, Armageddon, has already been announced, and it would appear that it is shifting things back to a more linear structure, and also adding aliens to the mix. I have concerns about this because it means the game is in danger of becoming just another marines vs aliens shoot em up, and we've already go plenty of those. I'll reserve judgment until the final game appears though.

Need for Speed: Shift review

2010-06-25T13:20:00.018+01:00

I picked up Need for Speed: Shift back in the middle of December with some of my birthday money, and it has taken until now to reach level 50 and complete the World Championship. I did stop for a while though and also took a slight detour away from the main campaign to play the Ferrari and Exotic DLC packs, which I will also incorporate into this review. Whilst I have quite enjoyed some of the recent NFS games such as Most Wanted and Carbon, I wasn't that keen on the Underground games or Pro Street, so this break away from illegal street races and the modding scene was quite refreshing.

Format: Xbox 360 (also available for PS3)
Publisher: EA
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Expect to pay: £20 - £25

Graphics: 9 out of 10
As you would hope and expect from a game with the word Speed in the title, Need for Speed: Shift feels convincingly fast, more so that Forza Motorsport 3 in fact. When you first get into some of the more powerful cars in the game, you may (or at least I did) struggle to stay on the track as the corners leap up on you with alarming velocity. The game also looks very pretty all round, with a stable frame rate, excellent in car view and well designed user interface. You are constantly getting feedback from the game as you earn stars, unlock badges and gain levels (more on this later), enticing you to play on just a bit more. There are also some great tracks in the game, based on real world circuits and cities, such as Spa, Brands Hatch, Road America and a London River track.

Sound and Music: 7 out of 10
I'm no expert on how one car should sound compared to another but the engine noises all sounded distinct and convincing to me. By default, the licenced soundtrack is turned off but after a while I decided to switch it on and give it a listen. Firstly, the choice of music isn't really to my tastes (it's quite hippity hop orientated), and secondly there isn't really a lot of it, so you'll be hearing the same tracks over and over again very frequently. In the end I preferred to play my own music that I'd ripped to the hard drive of my 360.

Racing around the London track, one of my favourites.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
Firstly, how does the game feel? It's not quite as realistic as the Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo series, yet not as arcadey as PGR. The closest comparison I can make is Race Driver: GRID - you can't just throw the cars around the corner, but things feels ever so slightly exaggerated.

The main career mode of the game is split into 4 Tiers of events, followed by the World Championship. There are quite a lot sub events within each tier, which fall under various types: standard races, hot lap events (beating set times), time attack (getting the fastest lap within a set time limit), knockout, drift (my least favourite), Endurance, and series of 3-5 events. In order to progress to the next tier, you must earn a certain amount of stars, which are given out for podium finishes, earning certain amounts of profile points during races, and various bonus objectives such as beating a certain lap time, staying on the racing line or for a clean race.

You earn these aforementioned profile points by carrying out certain manoeuvres during a race, split into two categories: precision and aggression. Precision includes such things as clean overtakes, driving on the racing line, etc, whereas aggression points are awarded for bumping into your opponents, drafting them and sliding around corners for example. These profile points also act as a form of experience, and as you reach certain totals you will level up. Levelling up brings with it various awards, such as extra sponsorship money, more garage slots or the ability to take part in many different Invitational Events. Whether you're a precise or aggressive driver will influence the order in which this Invitational Events are unlocked, so if you fall within the Precision category you will be more likely to be invited to time trial events, whereas if you fall under the Aggression banner you will get knockout and drift events.

Making you reach certain star thresholds in order to progress through the career is all well and good, but there are so many Invitational Events on offer that you will probably have unlocked access to the World Championship way before you've finished with the other tiers. This initially caused me to lose interest in the game but eventually I came back, and I'm glad I did because taking part in the events is fun in and of itself (apart from the Drift events which I detest - not because they're bad, but because I'm not very good at them and don't find them fun). Now, on top of all these things there are badges, awarded for achieving various milestones within the game - such as driving a certain distance in a European car, mastering all the corners of a track, or pulling off a particular number of perfect starts (when the shift indicator is green). The badges come in various flavours - Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Epic - you earn certain amounts of them you will also unlock achievements/trophies. I was still earning badges right towards the end of the game.

If you just play through the main game without going online, then you probably won't hit level 50 by the time you've done all the events. If you decide to purchase the two DLC packs though, there's plenty to see you through all the way to the level cap, and some nice achievement points for bothering to do so. As for the packs themselves, both of them offer decent value for money for 800 points apiece, and playing through them will take a fair old while. The Exotic pack is ever so slightly longer and offers a set of new tracks (one of them being a version of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit), but both packs feature a set of new cars.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out 10
While it is hard to truly innovate in a racing game these days, or one grounded in reality at least, the stars, experience and badges and attractive design of the interface help give Need for Speed: Shift a style and flavour of its own.

Value and Replayability: 7 out of 10
The career mode will take you a decent chunk of time - it took me many many hours of playing hit level 50 and get to the end of the game, and I haven't even done absolutely everything (I still need to go back and do most of the Endurance events, as I never seem to have the time to devote to them). Those who want to squeeze the game for all of its achievement points will have to earn every star on offer in the game, and get every single Epic badge - which is no small task let me tell you. Since the game was released the price has fallen quite a bit, so you can now pick up the Limited Edition version for £23. If you love your driving games, it's well worth the money.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Need of Speed: Shift is an extremely solid, highly polished game. For petrol heads, it's not quite in the same league as Forza Motorsport 3, but it's a pretty close call. If you have already finished Turn 10/Microsoft's game and you want some more racing action, then definitely give this one a look.

Top 5 Announcements from E3 2010

2010-06-21T13:12:00.013+01:00

Here it is, my list of what I consider to be the most exciting announcements to come out of last weeks Electronic Entertainment Expo. I'm only focusing on stuff that we didn't know about before E3 happened, although I will be including a short list of other stuff that I'm interested in afterwards.

5. Driver: San Francisco
I know the Driver franchise has fallen out of the public eye thanks to the buggy and decidedly average Driv3r (despite having several decent enough games since), but I really enjoyed the first two games back on the PS1. The series seems to be returning to its roots, with Tanner being reinstated as the main character. The developers are promising that the handling will still feel like the Driver that we know and love, and hopefully they will deliver a solid, entertaining game that will help turn the fortunes of the franchise around.

4. Kirby's Epic Yarn
Just one of several good looking platform games coming to the Nintendo Wii (see also Donkey Kong Country Returns and Epic Mickey). What really sets this one apart is the art style, as the backgrounds look like made of fabric and the characters out of string. Reminds me a little of Paper Mario, except you know, with knitting instead of paper. There appears to be solidly designed platform game behind this visual gimmick though, making this one to watch out for.

3. Back to the Future and Jurrasic Park game franchises from Telltale
This was actually unveiled a few days before E3 began on the Telltale web site, but I think it's fair to include it here. They have managed to secure a deal with NBC Universal to produce two episodic game series based on these much loved film properties. I would imagine that they will be within the graphic adventure genre as that is where Telltale excel, but I could be wrong...

2. The Nintendo 3DS
This has of course been rumoured for several months now but now Nintendo has officially unveiled the next iteration of its DS hardware. Rather than being just a minor upgrade like the DS Lite and DSi, this is a brand new console. The main selling point is of course the stereoscopic upper screen that allows you to play games and watch films in 3D without the need for glasse, but the console will also feature motion and gyro sensors, an analogue swipe pad, improved graphical and processing capabilities, two cameras on the front to allow you to take 3D photographs and perhaps most importantly full backwards compatability with all of the old DS cartridges.

There have been some very exciting game announcements for the platform already, including: Kid Icarus Uprising, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Super Street Fighter IV, Saints Row, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Professor Layton, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Assassin's Creed. For the complete list, click here.

1. Child of Eden
Many of my favourite games of the last decade were thought up by one man: Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Space Channel 5 Parts 1 and 2, Lumines, Every Extend Extra and of course, Rez. All of these games share something in common: they fuze music, graphics and game play together so that each part is important as the other. Child of Eden is his next project, and is a spiritual sucessor to Rez. It looks and feels very similar from what I've seen so far, and promises to make full use of the Microsoft Kinect camera to immerse you within the game. I can't wait to get ahold of it sometime during 2011 - in the meantime I'll just have to make to with replaying Rez yet again!

Also of note:

and many, many more...

Red Dead Redemption single player review

2010-06-10T13:10:00.032+01:00

I have bought every major entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, but haven't completed a single one of them. Every time I've either just lost interest and drifted away to other games, or got stuck on a particular mission. While Red Dead Redemption belongs to the same stable of sandbox titles from Rockstar, it goes way beyond anything they've done to date in my opinion. It held my attention for around 35 hours spread over about three weeks, and very few games manage to do that these days before I get distracted by something else. Let's explore why this is a very strong Game of the Year contender...

Format: Xbox 360 (PS3 also available)
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar San Diego
Expect to pay: £30 - £40

Graphics: 10 out of 10
The vistas throughout New Austin, Mexico and West Elizabeth are truly stunning. Your HUD basically boils down to a handy mini map/compass combo in the bottom left corner of the screen, with the rest being taken up by the game world. By keeping things simple Rockstar keeps you fully immersed in the living, breathing world that they have created, and it truly is impressive stuff.

While certainly not the first game to feature wildlife, I have never encountered anything quite as diverse and believable as the range of animals to be found here. Rabbits, armadillos, coyotes, wolves, elk, cougars, bobcats, grizzly bears... the list goes on and on, and they all interact with each other as you would expect. So you will see village dogs chasing chickens for example, or a big cat take down a deer. Every animal in the game can be killed, and then you can gather resources such as pelts, meat, horns etc. which you can sell in the shops throughout the land. Likewise there are many different types of plant life that can be harvested for saleable materials.

The wide open landscapes make a very refreshing change from the bustling, cramped environs of Liberty City, and you can while away many an hour simply exploring on your horse, seeing what you can find or triggering one of the many random events. A full day/night cycle is of course included, as is dynamic weather conditions such as rain, thunder storms and the occasional bit of snowfall up in the mountains. When the heavens open, pools of water slowly form on the dry ground, which is a nice little detail.

The many characters that you meet are very well designed as well, each one looking convincingly lifelike and having their own little quirks. They vary from the like able such as the Marshall of Armadillo, or Bonnie McFarlane, to the strange, such as Seth with his fascination with the dead, to the downright detestable like Bill Williamson or Agent Edgar Ross. I encountered a few graphical glitches during my time with the game, such as an invisible train that meant that parcels appeared to be floating in thin air, but in a game of this size and scope such things are unavoidable.

All in all Red Dead Redemption is one of the finest looking games available for whichever system you decide to buy it for, and the good stuff doesn't end there!

This sort of view is pretty common in Red Dead Redemption

Sound and Music: 10 out of 10
First off, the music. The Morricone inspired soundtrack suits the game perfectly as you would expect, and the style and instruments shift as you move from the US into Mexico. There are also a few songs scattered throughout the game at key points in the story by Jose Gonzalez, which boost the cinematic feel of the game. The voice acting is also very competently done, with Rob Wiethoff and Antony De Longis proving excellent performances as John Marston and Marshal Leigh Johnson respectively, backed up by solid performances from the rest of the cast.

If you happen to have a 5.1 surround sound system or better, the positional audio can actually be helpful to you, as you may hear gunshots in the distance and be able to deduce where they are coming from based on which speaker they are coming from. Speaking of gunshots, there is quite a large range of weaponry, from pistols, through to shotguns, repeaters, rifles and mounted machine guns. They all sound unique and are based on the real life weaponry.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
Rockstar have taken the basic blueprint of a GTA style game and refined it until it is almost perfect. There are many small improvements that have been made to Red Dead Redemption, from the way that missions are now sensibly broken up into smaller segments with checkpoints, to the overall difficulty curve that means that the game gradually gets tougher as you get better at it, it seems that all the years spent making games like this have finally paid off in this, their masterpiece.

As well as the main storyline missions that will have to be tackled sooner or later if you want to beat the game, there is a ton of optional stuff to see and do as well. First off, there are 18 optional quests for strangers that can be taken on, which vary from the simple to the weird. These often consist of multiple parts, and you will sometimes have to carry on with the story or just allow a few days of game time to go by before you can continue them. In addition to these, there are 4 sets of ambient challenges that can be taken on and completed at your leisure: survivalist - which involves find various plant life in the wilderness, sharpshooter - which entails shooting stuff (usually wildlife) as you might expect, hunter - finding, killing and skinning various animals, and treasure hunter - figuring out where gold is hidden based on treasure maps with clues on them. Reaching certain levels in each of these challenges and completing them entirely bestows various benefits on your character, and finishing them all gives you the title of "Legend of the West" along with access to a special outfit.

Like Rockstar's previous games, Red Dead Redemption also features a whole range of optional mini games: from gamblers favourites such as poker, blackjack and liars dice, through to arm wrestling, a game of horseshoes, five finger fillet, horse breaking, killing or capturing bandits from wanted posters, or a side job as a night watchman. You could quite easily spend many an hour on these distractions alone (liars dice is my personal favourite). As you travel the country, random events are also triggered at fairly regular intervals - such as a lawman needing help to round up some escaped criminals, a shopkeeper being robbed, or someone about to be hanged unless you can arrive in time and shoot the rope around the victims neck. Taking time out to help people will boost either you honour, fame or both. As your fame increases you will actually hear the dialogue of random passers by change as they begin to recognise you, and they may even ask start giving you gifts.

Of course, honour can be affected negatively as well as positively if you decide to go on a killing spree in a town for example, which also comes with a price on your head. You can clear your name either by paying off your bounty at a train station, or by using a pardon letter. The bigger the bounty on your head, the better the US Marshall's assigned to take you down become, and there's also the likelihood that gunslingers throughout the land will form posses to try and take you down.

For the most part, I didn't have much trouble with the controls, with the odd exception of the auto targeting snapping to a random animal instead of an outlaw during some of the gunfights. After a while you get used to pressing the left trigger to lock onto an enemy, shifting the left stick up slightly to line up with their head, and then firing a shot off with the right trigger to take them out. For large bands of enemies or beasts, you can click the right stick to enter Dead Eye mode, where you can paint targets in slow motion before blowing everyone away. Should you decide that stealth is the way to go, you can also click the left stick to sneak, and then either use throwing knives or simply get up close and slit the enemies throat. This sometimes make more sense that going in guns blazing if there's a large number of heavily armed bandits - sneak around, take a few of the ones on the outskirts out silently, then mop up the rest.

I did encounter a fair few bugs whilst playing through the game, some of them being just graphical glitches such as invisible train which meant that boxes looked like they were floating in mid air, and other more serious bugs which caused the game to freeze up altogether. While these were very annoying when they occurred, the game auto saves very often which meant I seldom actually lost any progress. All in all though, Red Dead Redemption is a stunning technical achievement.

In your face!

Innovation and Cleverness: 8 out of 10
Sandbox games are nothing new, but the execution of Red Dead Redemption raises it above everything that has come before. Just the staggering range of wildlife that adds an extra layer of realism to the game world ensures the game a pretty high score in this category. The little I've seen of the multi player, with its own version of the open world for you to roam in and the ability to form posses, should also be taken into consideration (though it is by no means perfect). Although it took many years to make, it would seem that the hard work put in by Rockstar has really paid off.

Value and Replayability: 9 of 10
Should you decide to rush through all the story missions as quickly as you possibly can, you could probably "complete" the game in under 20 hours, but you'd be completely missing the point. Take your time to explore the world, help out all of the strangers, enjoy the many mini games on offer, and raise your Fame and Honour points, and you can spend many many more hours on just the single player portion of the game alone. When you add in multi player and the promise of more DLC packs on the horizon, you will keep coming back for a long time to come.

Overall: 10 out of 10
Not so long I go I handed out my first 10 out of 10 to Mass Effect 2, but Red Dead Redemption equals it in every way in my opinion. It is every bit and deep and involving as any RPG I've played in recent times, so if you loved exploring the wasteland in Fallout 3, the world of Fable 2, or the galaxy of the aforementioned Mass Effect 2, then you will love wandering in the wilderness of Red Dead Redemption. Giddyup!

Below you can watch the 30 minute Red Dead Redemption film directed by John Hillcoat (The Road). It is made up of cut scenes from the earlier parts of the game, so if you'd rather play through the story unspoiled at your own pace, don't watch it.