EL33TONLINE Reviews

Review: The House of the Dead 4 (PS3)

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Before the age of armchair gaming, massive multiplayer meet-ups and 3D handheld gaming, ordinary folk would gather in arcades, their pockets heavily burdened with game tokens while queuing in line for their favourite game. There would always be at least one shooting game with those bright coloured plastic guns promising a few fleeting moments to absolutely annihilate hordes of monsters, zombies or general bad guys. Sega brings back those fond memories, drags all that action into your room of living and trades those plastic guns for the PlayStation Move controller in The House of the Dead 4.

For fans of the franchise, this game is basically a port of the 2005 arcade game, slicked up with some high definition graphics, nifty motion control, a few special edition freebies, co-operative play and online leaderboards, all bundled into a sizeable PlayStation Network downloadable game weighing in at over four gigabytes. With the promise of no more ‘insert coin to continue’ prompts and given the modest pricing, all of this is (in true zombie fashion) a no-brainer. In the timeline of The House of the Dead games, this fourth instalment serves as an interquel, bridging the first and second stories and is played out by one of two agents, either James Taylor or Kate Green. After an earthquake shakes your headquarters and re-awakens all manner of evil creatures, you will have to escape certain nuclear destruction equipped with an automatic weapon and a handful of grenades.

Expect the same rhetoric in storytelling, some unashamedly basic dialogue and dubbing. It makes no attempts to hide the fact that it cares more about getting straight into the action and shooting wave after wave of mutated monstrosities. Don’t expect any moments of profound character development, or unsurprising twists in the plot, just the promise of more willing candidates for your living room target practice. Speaking of which, I must admit that the best part about The House of the Dead 4 has got to be the control system. For an on-rails shooter, where you don’t actually have control over your character’s movement directly, the targeting mechanism has to be quick, accurate and rewarding. I was not disappointed with the Move’s pinpoint precision and speedy response to my flurry of trigger pulls. It was a good showcase for how well the Move handles under high stress and the rapid pace of overwhelming targets that House of the Dead 4 serves up. While it is possible to play with DualShock controller, I’d highly recommend the Move controller and possibly the Sharpshooter accessory if you have one lying around.

The basics of the gameplay involve aiming the Move controller at the screen, which controls the reticule of your weapon. Squeezing the trigger unleashes a burst of bullets so keep an eye on your ammo. To reload your weapon, you simply shake the controller, which can get rather tiresome when you’re reloading every five seconds (it would have been great to be able to shoot off-screen to reload as in classic arcade shooter style). In addition to your sub-machine gun, you have a limited number of grenades - which you can throw by pressing the ‘Move’ button – for those claustrophobic moments. At the beginning of each stage, you get three lives which are depleted as you take damage. Once your lives run out, you can continue if you have enough remaining continues. You can earn extra lives by shooting hidden objects through the levels and additional continues by achieving perfect scores for truly outstanding marksmanship.

In ‘Free Play’ mode, you can set the difficulty level and amount of lives and continues you will have before you start the relatively short but action-filled game. You will face eight levels of solid shooting each with a challenging boss fight and twenty-eight unique opponents who not only look different but will behave and attack in new ways to keep you on your feet. Local co-operative play is drop-in / drop-out which is perfect if your partner doesn’t have the stamina to make it through an entire playthrough. It would be remiss of me not to mention the high quality graphics and variety in both environments and creatures. Even with the fast pace of the game, the new high definition models show just how far these shooters have come compared to their lower resolution polygon predecessors. Sega delivered well by cramming in as much detail as possible to make The House of the Dead 4 as gory and explosive as any other in their family.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of this genre of games, but I must admit that once I got into the rhythm of regular reloading and honing in my headshot skills, it became hard to put down the weapon and just walk away. While it probably doesn’t have the best story and it may not be the best shooter out there, The House of the Dead 4 will definitely provide some solid brainless hours of fun which can be shared with friends. It proves to be more than just another reason to dust off your motion controllers - it’s a perfect fit for the PlayStation Move.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Warren

Review: Datura (PS3)

Mon, 14 May 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Datura is a PlayStation Network exclusive from Polish developer Plastic and Sony Santa Monica. Costing just R75, it’s a short-lived experience with little replay value but should appeal to people who enjoy PSN titles such as Flower and Journey that focus on having an emotional impact on the player rather than entertaining them with thrilling gameplay. Datura is designed around the motion controls that PlayStation Move affords, but can also be played using a combination of the DualShock 3’s buttons and its SixAxis capabilities.

Plastic’s last PSN title was 2008’s Linger in Shadows – a very surreal and impressionistic tech demo of sorts that only lasted a few minutes. Datura has a similar visual style to Linger in Shadows – one that appears more painterly than traditional graphics yet still maintains realistic proportions and colours. It’s a striking technique that makes Datura feel like you’ve stepped into a fascinating painting. Thankfully this title is quite a bit longer and more interactive than Linger in Shadows was, ensuring that you won’t want to leave its atmospheric world until you’ve spent a good hour or so exploring all it has to offer.

Datura takes place in a foggy, insect-filled forest with two main sections separated by a sturdy gate. You can walk from one side of the forest to the other in about two minutes flat so it’s not a very large area at all. You play from a first-person perspective and must basically walk around the forest looking for things to interact with. Handling certain objects or stumbling upon ‘event triggers’ will transport you into the middle of a variety of scenarios, most of which offer you a binary choice between being bad and good. For example, there’s one point in Datura where you are whisked away to a frozen lake and must choose between freeing a person trapped under the ice and chipping away at another section of the lake to unearth a trophy that will earn you the ‘Greed’ trophy on PSN.

You have a basic map to help you find your way around the forest and touching white-barked trees will fill in the surrounding area on your map. This only proves useful on your first playthrough, however, since Datura’s world is so small that by your second playthrough you’ll have it fully mapped out in your head. The sturdy gate that separates the two main areas of the forest basically serves to keep you in the first area until you’ve completed Datura’s first four challenges. There’s also another locked gate in the second area that requires four additional challenges to be completed before you can witness Datura’s (unsatisfying) conclusion.

These eight challenges effectively represent the bulk of Datura’s gameplay and feel more like separate tech demos than anything else – something that is made even more apparent by the fact that this title doesn’t have a coherent narrative. One challenge has you playing a xylophone while another sees you throwing fruit at a sleeping pig. Whether you choose to play Datura using Move or a DualShock 3, frequent control issues hamper the experience. There was one section where I needed to use a crowbar to open a boarded-up door that I found impossible to complete using a standard controller, while throwing a ball at a stack of tin cans using Move just doesn’t feel as realistic as it should. Basic movement using Move is also an issue because you aren’t allowed to pair it up with a navigation controller. You have to hold down the ‘Move’ button to walk forward and hold down ‘X’ to go into ‘free view’ mode. Datura’s control system feels clumsy most of the time (the Move setup more so than the standard controller one) and I’m very surprised that a top studio like Sony Santa Monica didn’t raise a red flag regarding this issue.

The best aspect of Datura is undoubtedly its audio-visual presentation. As I’ve mentioned, the graphics are spellbinding in their own way and the music and sound effects do a great job of enhancing Datura’s ambience and its ability to resonate on an emotional level with its audience. I must just point out that this title made me quite motion sick after about twenty minutes of gameplay so if you’ve ever felt queasy playing certain first-person games in the past then there’s a good chance this will give you motion sickness too. While Datura’s brevity, incoherent narrative and control issues ultimately hold it back from greatness I still think that Plastic is a studio with a lot of potential. In my opinion Datura is a much richer experience than Linger in Shadows and explores some interesting surreal scenarios that just need a bit more fleshing out and tying together to form something of substance that gamers can hold on to. If you’ve got R75 to spare and want to experience one of PSN’s most artistic and bizarre titles, then be sure to add Datura to your download list.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Tom

Review: Awesomenauts (Xbox360)

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

I enjoy games like DOTA and the spin-offs like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. The new DOTA game in development at Valve has my interest, but at the end of the day I just don’t have a mind to compute the increasingly difficult spells, recipes and builds to have the perfect warrior. What I need is a toned down, action-packed version of these games, and this is kind of where Awesomenauts comes in.

I would classify Awesomenauts as an ‘action tower defence role-playing platform shooter.’ It sounds complicated, but it ties in really well and comes out of the other side as a slick game that surprised me by delivering a whole lot more than I first thought would be possible. In its very basic form, Awesomenauts is a platform game that sees you controlling a character for either the red or the blue team. Each character has three different skills available and you use these to attack the enemies trying to attack you. On the various two dimensional levels you will find each team’s base. These need to be protected from the enemy, and as such each team also has a few turrets that will make mincemeat out of anyone that comes too close. Luckily you do not fight alone. In your team you will have two team-mates. These can be AI in the training games, or they can be your buddies either on the same console, or via the internet. Your team will also spawn creep every so often to distract the enemy long enough for you to attack their base.

Thus far, Awesomenauts may sound pretty interesting and simple, and it is, but there is more to it. Your character collects loot from downed enemies and these can be used to purchase upgrade items at the shop. The list of upgrades is customizable and you pick them before each round. Up to this point you will be excused for thinking the game offers very little innovation, and if you thought that it’s an amalgamation of those games I mentioned before, you would be mostly correct. What Awesomenauts has above and beyond those other games is character, and bucket-loads of it! Awesomenauts as a whole has a fantastic cartoon feel to it, with each character completely individual and unique. Each one has a small story that gives you some background on why they are the way they are. They also have wacky accents that vary from ‘Texas Cowboy’ to ‘French chef’ to ‘Robot.’ There may only be six characters right now, but more are promised and if the support is there I am sure these will come sooner rather than later.

Choosing the correct character is also vital. Some of them are considered tanks that absorb lots of damage, while others are healers that will keep your team’s members topped up to give you the upper-hand during those close battles. The humour of Awesomenauts also had me in stitches. Froggy G, a frog type character, has an item to purchase called ‘Hammer Pants’ which adds splash damage to his attack. Disclaimer: Pants may or may not actually contain a hammer.

The action is also more intense than when I play DOTA or one of its kin. That may be simply because I am too slow during those games to actually make a difference. What makes a huge difference in Awesomenauts, though, is the way co-op games are handled. Online has obviously been catered for and the 3v3 games can be played with friends or random strangers. If one of these strangers withdraws from the game they are automatically replaced by an AI, but often not as good as the player was. This is good as the game keeps it momentum without really punishing the team that lost a player, without giving them the upper-hand from the AI. Local co-op is another story though. With the screen split into quadrants, three sections are used for actual gameplay, while the fourth quadrant is a shared map. This works surprisingly well and alerting your team-mates to where the action is becomes very simple and quick.

Awesomenauts took me by surprise. It is fun and fast and is dripping with great style and design. If you feel that DOTA-type games are interesting but too complicated, then look at Awesomenauts. If you feel your average action platformer lacks some depth, then look at Awesomenauts. If you want to have hours and hours of fun for only $10, then look at Awesomenauts. The Good: Great style; Easy to learn, hard to master; Cheap fun! The Bad: Not to everyone’s tastes; Very little else The Ugly: There is no actual hammer in my pants?

Rating: 4 stars
Contributor: Oltman

Review: Fable Heroes (Xbox360)

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Throughout gaming history there have always been games that grow from a single release into multi-release franchises. From the Resident Evil series through to the Call of Duty mega-blockbuster monolith, these franchises usually boast big groups of loyal followers and tend to survive multiple generations of platforms. Sometimes these franchises grow so big that someone somewhere in the ‘Ivory Tower of Industry’ decides, for reasons not disclosed, it’s time to spread the franchise’s wings and move into other genres within the current franchise universe. Often times this bold move proves to be a dismal failure (think the X-COM series with X-COM: Enforcer, Command & Conquer with Command & Conquer: Renegade) but once in a while the move works and a sub-genre grows out of it (think of Halo and Halo: Wars, or Fallout and Fallout 3).

The birth of Fable Heroes makes the Fable franchise the latest to fork out of its established comfort zone and into uncharted territory, from a strict RPG series to an arcade hack-and-slash beat ‘em up. The real question is, does Fable Heroes raise the franchise to new heights of adoration and success, or is it best relegated to the dustbin of disappointment and failed ideas? In Fable Heroes, players (up to four supported in co-op mode) control one of twelve Hero Dolls and traverse the various levels beating up familiar adversaries from the Fable series while collecting gold coins to spend later on upgrades. The facts suggest Fable Heroes is not just a branching out, it’s a bold and revolutionary move for the franchise.

The general feel of the game is akin to the Lego series of games in so much as players also destroy enemies and the environment to collect coins for later use and that each playable Hero Doll has a slightly unique weapon and ability, allowing for varying strategies of play. The drop-in / drop-out co-op creates a seamless experience between AI-controlled team-mates and buddies that want to hop in for a stint to lend a helping hand (or just steal those valuable coins). Any associated profiles will automatically integrate with the puppet being controlled and load up the profile’s own upgrades with that puppet meaning players who join late can still track their puppets’ progress while dropping in. Each level follows a standard protocol - hack, slash, steal gold and follow the clearly-defined path. At the end of each level players are given the option of facing a boss battle or playing a mini-game, such as kicking chickens into a goal or having a sled race.

Once the standard levels are completed, the ‘Dark Albion’ option is unlocked which gives players a chance to run through the same levels again, only in a much darker and more sinister environment. The nature of the game doesn’t really encourage co-operative play as much as it tries to create a sense of competitiveness between the party members and although it’s not a true co-operative experience, the thrill of outrunning your team-mates is as entertaining as the competitive co-operative nature of games like Castle Crashers. The end-of-level upgrades are laid out in the form of a Monopoly-esque board game where players have to move from spot to spot to purchase their upgrades, with additional die rolls being earned during the level through acquiring bonus dice or earning extra ones with gold. Although somewhat obscure, the upgrade phase of the game is curiously quite a bit of fun despite its tedium.

What stands up in favour of Fable Heroes is the generally happy-go-lucky feel of the game. The music is decidedly triumphant in its child-like audacity and plays an overwhelming role in creating the sense of bravado associated with being the heroes. The gameplay is straight forward while also being varied enough to keep things fresh. The developers opted to try and revive the old platform experience into a new style of 3D platformer but this doesn’t always execute so well. The camera angle sometimes becomes most unhelpful and there is a general sense of not being able to see what is always going on, which is a concern more often than it ought to be and proves frustrating, distracting from the immersion into the game.

Considering the original Fable series is a series of role-playing games with mature content, one would expect that the majority of fans of the franchise would by now be in their late teens at the very least. Subsequently, as a Fable game, I don’t really see how the usual group of Fable fans will find much to enjoy about this family-friendly title. It’s got no role-playing features, lacks any sort of drama, and the controllable characters are all Dolls - floppy arms, button eyes, and all. As a relief from the usual Fable-fare, Fable Heroes certainly does a great job of pulling you out of the usual RPG experience, but it’s definitely a spin-off of the mainstream Fable series, which Fable purists should be aware of. Fable Heroes has sufficient variety in the levels and adversaries and ample replayability, however, which means young ones will be kept entertained for hours and the drop-in / drop-out co-op caters for those anxious hands-on parent minders, and the game is fun enough that the more mature minders won’t be bored playing alongside their kids during the babysitting duties.

With the ‘family-friendly’ aspect of this (up to) four player co-op arcade game, I consider the bold move by Lionhead Studios one that paid off when it could just as easily have flopped. This game - for what it’s intended to be, a family-friendly romp through the Fable universe - is great fun! For gaming parents of gaming kids, Fable Heroes is Absolutely Fable-ous. The Good: The Credits level is probably the best set of Credits I’ve ever seen in any game; Drop-in/drop-out co-op; Really family-friendly. The Bad: Camera angles can become confusing; Game isn’t a true Fable experience.

Rating: 4 stars
Contributor: Bryan

Review: Ridge Racer Unbounded (PS3)

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Ridge Racer Unbounded is a sizeable departure from previous Ridge Racer games, and almost seems like a spin-off of the series because the signature drifting gameplay is not included. The dominant mechanic this time is city destruction, and while this can be fun for a while it didn’t keep my interest for nearly as long as Ridge Racer 7 did.

The minimal plot of the game is expounded in the first 30 seconds of the game: You are a member of the ‘Unbounded,’ a bunch of people that race cars through Shatter City destroying things for fun. Your goal is to rise up the ranks of the Unbounded by winning races. Other than that opening video the plot plays no part in the game, and everything is begun from a menu of districts. Each district in Shatter City has seven events in it, and there are nine districts in total. Each event within a district requires points to unlock, and while racing points are earned by coming in the top three and by fragging other players, as well as by destroying buildings or destroying collateral objects. Points also go towards your ‘Rank,’ and as you Rank up you unlock cars. Dominate enough races and you unlock the other districts which get progressively faster as you move from ‘Street’ to ‘Race’ to ‘Super’ cars. The packaging of the game is very simple, but what’s important is the racing itself.

The main type of event is ‘Domination.’ In these events you race against eleven other cars over two to three laps of a track, and the goal is to get into the top three. If you come third you ‘Pass’ the event, if you come second you ‘Complete’ it and if you come first you ‘Dominate’ it. As mentioned before, dominating events (such as Domination) is vital if you want to unlock the other districts. These events follow a rhythm quite different from the previous few Ridge Racer games – instead of focusing on technical driving skills and drifting to build up Nitrous, Ridge Racer Unbounded focuses on city and opponent destruction. You can still fill your ‘Power’ gauge by drifting and drafting, but it fills quicker by earning rewards, such as going over 215Km/h or fragging another car (or three), or destroying buildings. In order to destroy buildings (which you literally drive straight through) you must activate Power. Your car will ram through the wall of the building and come out the other side, effectively making a short-cut in the track. Often this leads to your car getting air or earning some other reward which fills your Power gauge up again. Stringing these Power uses together is the key to racing well in Ridge Racer Unbounded.

Drifting, meanwhile, is very different to previous Ridge Racer games – in Unbounded it does not get you around corners for ‘free,’ but you instead have to control your speed and drift if you want to make it round corners well. Instead of being a smooth, drift-dominated ride, Unbounded is a lot like other arcade racers, and so loses some of its Ridge Racer feel. Other event types in the game include ‘Drift Attack,’ where the goal is to get a number of points by drifting, ‘Shindo Racing,’ where there is no building destruction or fragging of cars, ‘Frag Attack,’ where the goal is to frag as many other cars as you can in a time limit, and finally ‘Time Attack,’ where Power is earned from destruction and you must escape the district within a certain time. Time Attack events sometimes take place on stunt tracks which have all kinds of ramps on them and are extremely difficult to navigate fast. These provide some variety, but Domination takes up almost all your time with the game because they’re far more difficult than the other event types and feel more fleshed out, too.

Unbounded’s chaotic racing can be frustrating - sometimes it feels like all I’m doing is repeating an event until everything goes my way and I win – I couldn’t feel much of a sense of progression as I played. If anyone takes you out or you crash, it’s tickets for your chances in the race. This doesn’t seem to apply to the AI racers – I’ve seen cars get fragged and then appear right in front of me again as they respawn. As you level up and unlock more advanced cars the events can get slightly easier, but the new cars don’t help more than a little so a tough event remains a tough event. I also expected that as I got better I would be able to go back to those tough events that I scraped through (or failed at) and pass them with my improved skills, but I found them just as tough as before because of the huge amount of rubber-banding and chaos that takes place. Knowing the difference between collateral objects (which you can drive straight through) and immovable objects (which will destroy your car) is almost impossible at times and I found myself crashing when I really thought I could ride on through, impervious. I should mention something that is usually frustrating in racing games but isn’t here – load times. You can restart an event (which I did a lot) instantaneously, and loading a new event doesn’t take more than 15 seconds.

The master racer in this genre is Burnout Paradise, and Ridge Racer Unbounded comes nowhere near that – the controls are far more loose and controlling cars is needlessly difficult and frustrating. The tracks are also very similar to each other and only have right angle turns because they are made out of city blocks pieced together in various ways - most unlike Paradise City which felt like a living, breathing city, Shatter City doesn’t ever develop a personality of its own or have enough variety within it. Ridge Racer Unbounded does allow you to create your own tracks, but the block approach to track layout means no matter what you do the track doesn’t feel particularly different to the already existing tracks. Ridge Racer Unbounded is a racing game that’s fun for a good while because of the thrill of destroying buildings and all sorts of collateral objects, but once that thrill wears off and you progress a little further in the events the racing becomes frustrating in its arbitrariness and it starts to lose its appeal as each event starts feeling like the one before.

Nevertheless, I was engaged with the game for over ten hours before I felt I had had enough, and if you’re in the mood for an arcade racer you can do a lot worse than Unbounded. The game probably rewards a lot more dedication, but with the tracks so difficult to learn because of their similarity to one another, it would require more dedication than I could give.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Peter

Review: Trials Evolution (Xbox360)

Mon, 07 May 2012 06:00:00 +0000

I consider myself quite competitive. I won’t say I am a bad loser, but if you beat my high score on something I will repeatedly try to somehow regain the lead. Trials HD had me doing the same levels over and over simply to beat my mate’s score. It turned ugly when we both went a weekend without sleep. Trials Evolutions filled the gap in our lives when we had no more competitive spirit left in us. It was the light at the end of the tunnel, but does that mean we want to head towards the light? Trials Evo (which is how developer RedLynx refers to its game) is more than just a sequel to Trials HD: It could just be the best sequel of the year! So the light in the tunnel is the beginning, not the end!

Trials is a two dimensional motorcycle racing and stunt game. By using fairly realistic physics you drive your bike around tracks, trying your best to complete the tracks in as short a time as possible, while staying seated on top of it. Flat out speed often ends up being a killer, so judging when to floor it (or twist it since we are all bikers) is part of the fun. Trials Evo adds to this simple formula by not only include one of the most ridiculous and amazing singleplayer campaigns we’ve seen in ages, but by also playing host to a fantastically exciting and competitive multiplayer game. Now add custom tracks and an track editor that could be a programming tool for whole new games, and you end up with a title that not only ticks all the feature boxes, but pastes little shiny stars in each and then seals them with gold, too! The singleplayer campaign follows your rider through increasingly difficult and frustrating tracks, while a simple license test does nothing more than boost your ego before bringing you crashing back down to earth. Each license unlocks a new and faster bike that is required for the next set of tracks. You also unlock new gear for your rider so that you can look the part for your next online race. Change the colour of your bike, add a few stickers and let your rider go it without a shirt to look all macho, all in the name of uniqueness!

The categories vary from ‘easy’ all the way through to ‘I am so frustrated that I am about to chuck my controller through the TV.’ The landscapes used in the levels are extremely varied, with high in the sky levels (where a mistake will see you fall down to earth for a long time), to waterfalls and wall-rides, factories and forests, piers and planks, cliffs and crevices. The obstacles range from slight slopes to insane inclines, some even seeing you climb vertical walls. The variety of tracks far overshadows the original Trials HD’s offering of tracks. While you are facing the terrible tracks, you are gently reminded of your friends’ performance on the current level. A little dot with the friend who has done the best time on the map will show you just how far ahead or behind you are, often being more of a distraction in your pursuit of the dot, rather than a goal for you to chase down and conquer.

Multiplayer, both online and local, has been added for the first time in the Trials series. This competitive mode will allow you and your friends to either race for best times on a traditional Trials track, or in the super slick ‘Supercross’ mode. The traditional mode, only available online, is pretty much the same as the singleplayer game where an obstacle track needs to be traversed in the shortest amount of time with the smallest amount of resets. Supercross mode is where the real fun is at. Up to four players race on what may appear as an easy track, all alongside each other on the same screen. Get left behind and you get reset at the next checkpoint. Crash and you get reset. Because you are reset at the next checkpoint, however, you can easily catch up and even win races by resetting at the last second to jump to the next checkpoint. At the end of each race your reset amount will count against you in the points allocation, though.

The competitive bug crept up again while playing Trials Evo. I had to take to the easier tracks with newer bikes to beat all my friends’ times. I also had to introduce my other friends to the game simply so I could beat them, too. When they then started beating me as they got comfortable with the game I spent long nights trying to beat them again. It was a vicious cycle. When the tracks in the races gets boring you can try your hand at the special challenges which comprise a variety of different modes that have very little to do with racing. Some challenges let you ride a set of skis, others let you fly an alien hover craft. Some even try to see how far you can go on a single tank of petrol. The variety seems endless.

This variety is also clearly reflected in the level of creativity that emerges from the custom track download option. Yes, you can create your own maniacal tracks and upload them to the Trials servers and get them rated by other players. Every now and then RedLynx posts their favourites and this will obviously get you a big boost in popularity. These tracks are also not limited to your average Trials type tracks. They even have a top down shooter built on the track editor. I have no idea how they do it, but you can do this yourself! The amount of tracks combined with the need to outsmart and outperform your buddies in Trials Evolution will give you near endless replay value. Now consider that this game costs only 1200 Microsoft Points and you can simply not fault this game. Yes, the physics can act a bit weird and yes, my controller needs to be stronger. Through all the trials and tribulations, however, this is in my opinion simply the best value you will find on a gaming console today. Stop reading and try to beat my time instead! I dare you! The good: Amazing value and loads of fun! Endless possibilities with zany new tracks, now also to be enjoyed with friends! The bad: Uhm… It should give you protective gear for your controller… The ugly: Burning riders falling from great heights onto explosives are ugly… but oh so pretty!

Rating: 5 stars
Contributor: Oltman

Review: Asphalt: Injection (PSV)

Mon, 07 May 2012 05:00:00 +0000

The PS Vita’s launch line-up included four racing titles – Ridge Racer, ModNation Racers, MotorStorm RC and Asphalt: Injection. Of these four games, only Asphalt: Injection features licensed vehicles and tracks based on famous cities, making it the obvious choice for gamers with a soft spot for flashy sports cars like the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento or the BMW M3.

Asphalt: Injection draws a lot of inspiration from the Burnout series. You can slam into your opponents to perform a takedown and drain your boost meter to close the gap between you and the pack leaders. Thankfully, there’s enough variation and original elements in the game to separate it from the likes of Burnout 3 and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and ultimately Asphalt: Injection feels like a solid racer in its own right. While Asphalt: Injection lacks the high-octane licensed music that is present in most racing games these days, it has an otherwise attractive presentation that consists of well-designed menus that can be navigated via button presses or the touch screen. Most players will want to dive straight into ‘Career’ mode where you can unlock tracks, cars and tuning upgrades that can then be used in ‘Free Race’ mode. Interestingly, ‘Multiplayer’ mode grants you immediate access to all of the game’s 47 vehicles so you’ll find that most online players pick the fastest cars so they don’t have to eat their opponents’ dust for the entirety of the race.

Asphalt: Injection’s Career mode has a very familiar structure. There are twenty leagues to participate in, with each league featuring around five events. Doing well in an event will earn you up to five stars that get added to your overall star balance. New leagues, cars, tuning upgrades and sponsors unlock at certain star milestones so you’re encouraged to slowly work your way towards speedier rides and new leagues featuring fresh city-based tracks to race on. Once a new vehicle or tuning upgrade is unlocked you’ll still need to buy it using cash awarded for completing events, although I found that I always had more money than I could use since so much content was locked behind a ‘stars needed’ banner. The Career mode is pretty addictive if you’ve got time to spare, and constantly being fed new cars and tracks as you raise your star balance feels very rewarding.

There are ten different event types that are confined to the Career and Free Race modes. Unfortunately the only event that is supported in Multiplayer mode is ‘normal race.’ Some of the other event types include ‘Duel’ where you race against one other opponent and ‘Urban Destruction’ where you need to rack up a certain number of dollars in damages by wrecking signs, boxes and even the cars of innocent drivers who cross your path. Other entertaining events worth a mention include ‘Elimination,’ ‘Cop Chase’ (survive a few laps without being rammed off the road) and ‘Collector’ where you need to collect more purple icons than your opponents by driving through purple ‘gates’ in the road.

Asphalt: Injection features fifteen tracks loosely based on famous cities like New York, Cape Town and Tokyo. These are not supposed to be authentic recreations of actual streets but rather the tracks are designed to reflect the spirit of the city, and in some cases the country, where the race takes place. For instance the Tokyo track features a stretch of road that is decorated with torii gates, arched bridges and cherry blossoms. Most of these tracks split up into multiple routes at various points, and it’s sometimes unclear which path is a short-cut and which one is the long way round. A big part of succeeding in Asphalt: Injection has to do with choosing the fastest possible car for the event in question and using power-ups to your advantage. The tracks are generally very wide and you hardly ever have to brake or drift around corners, meaning that speed is the name of the game here. There are multiple boost/nitrous oxide power-ups scattered around each track and you’ll need to drain your boost bar at the right moments to either ram your nearest rival off the road or catch up to the frontrunners. Your opponents don’t have the ability to boost but despite this they always appear to drive much faster cars than you. There’s no rubber-band gameplay mechanic at work here (as far as I’m aware) to keep the eight competing racers within striking distance of each other, so you’re completely reliant on nitrous oxide and temporary speed boost power-ups to pass the rest of the field.

Multiplayer mode is quite a lot of fun if you’re playing with friends using the PS Vita’s Ad Hoc feature. Up to eight players can take part in the ‘normal race’ event type and you can choose from any of the game’s fifteen or so tracks. Online multiplayer seems fairly well-implemented as you can engage in a ‘Quick Match,’ host a race or search for available hosts. Unfortunately I ran into some pretty serious lag during all the online races I entered, with cars disappearing off the screen and jumping around the track. A great feature of the Multiplayer mode is that you get sent a photo of any player you ram off the road at the precise moment that the takedown occurs. Revenge/unprovoked aggression never felt so sweet!

Graphically, Asphalt: Injection is not a bad-looking game for a launch title. The 47 licensed cars are all faithfully recreated and you can admire them in all their glorious detail in Garage mode. Many of the tracks are impressively atmospheric, with rain-soaked sections of road and an ice cavern representing some of the highlights. The frame rate feels like it’s somewhere between 40 and 60 frames per second but there are times when your car’s movement appears somewhat jerky. The vehicle physics are also a bit of a disappointment, with drifting feeling very unrealistic and your car bouncing off walls and flying at odd angles when you get a lot of air. Of course it’s unfair to be too harsh on this aspect of the game since it’s designed as an arcade racer and doesn’t strive to be a simulator like Gran Turismo does.

While it doesn’t really bring anything new to the racing genre and can get repetitive at times, Asphalt: Injection is a worthwhile purchase for Vita owners who are looking for a solid handheld racer to fulfil their need for speed.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Tom

Review: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations (Xbox360)

Fri, 04 May 2012 05:00:00 +0000

If you like fighting games and you like Naruto, then you’ve come to the right place! Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations is the latest in a long line of the ‘Ultimate Ninja’ series and the second instalment released for the Xbox 360. Being a fan of the manga I’m really excited that it’s finally made its way over to our shores and if you’re a fan it doesn’t disappoint. Don’t worry, however, as non-fans won’t feel lost at all thanks to the game’s fantastic story telling.

The ‘Generations’ subtitle suggests that the latest Naruto fighting game spans across the multiple generations in Masashi Kishimoto’s epic shounen story, something he does really well in Naruto and you don’t have to go any further than the opening cinematic to see the grandeur of the concept. All of the characters from the manga enter the battlefield, charging at each other in full battle cry with the older and younger versions of Naruto coming together in a climactic finish - it really gets you ready for the explosive action in the game!

The explosive action isn’t all that new, though, because at first glance Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations doesn’t seem much different from it’s previous incarnations. The argument ‘if ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ does hold up but some improvements would have been appreciated. For example, the ultimate jutsu (or mystical ninja technique) attacks have been updated and do still look awesome, but are limited to only one ultimate Jutsu per character. Most notable of all is that the developers have have changed the control scheme to allow for more flowing attacks and combat, but what it really results in is far more button mashing than ever before as there is only one attack button. It got a bit out of hand especially when I found out that there is actually a special combo for bashing the attack button fifteen times in a row!

Admittedly, the combat does flow much better now compared to previous games and the gap between true ninja players and plain old button mashers still exists thanks to the extremely precise timing required for the movement and substitution systems, so no real harm done. A good player will still dominate because, as a wise ninja once said, one cannot button mash what he cannot touch (or see in some cases). Even the newly added ‘awakenings,’ whereby characters’ powers and attacks are enhanced when they are near death, cannot always save you. Playing through the story mode in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations can get really immersive, and even though I’ve read the manga and know what is going to happen, I can still get caught up in Kishimoto’s storytelling. The anime adaptation made things cooler by letting us finally see those amazing fight scenes and now the game goes one better by letting us actually participate and perform those spellbinding signature moves ourselves, and look really stylish in the game - you really feel the power! No need worry about your favourite character not being in the game, either, because Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations has the biggest character roster in the series to date - we’re talking ‘Dragon Ball Z’ big here!

You’d think though, that with Naruto Shippuden being such a popular show and everything, they’d have more cut-scenes in the story mode, but no. Cut-scenes, although anime quality, are few and far between with the majority of the story being told through stills and voice-overs which also aren’t always the greatest (as are most dubbings of anime), but thankfully you have the option to revert back to the original Japanese voice-overs which vastly improved the experience for me. The story mode is very long, going all the way from the young Naruto arc all the way through Shippuden, up until the Jinchuriki arc, and will surely account for a good few hours of play. There are also an endless number of hours to be spent in the online and offline versus modes that take place in the incredibly detailed arena’s from the story mode, with all the characters that you have unlocked. This is, however, another area that I feel was skimmed over on.

For those unaware, Naruto is a ninja and so are his friends, and ninja’s make use of all their surroundings in a fight so where, may I ask are the destructible andinteractive environments? Even the 2D PlayStation 2 variations of the game had interactive elements in their location design! The developers did try to make up for this omission with the absurdly large array of tools that can be used in battle, but these range from completely useless to mildly irritating. As you progress through the different modes of the game your battles are ranked and, depending on your rank, you unlock certain things. These things range from playable characters to ultimate jutsu video’s to trading card pictures. Now I can appreciate character bio’s and extra cut-scenes, but it’s beyond me why anyone would want to make their own Naruto trading card in-game, so I feel that the vast majority of the unlocks are simply novelty items. I would have preferred more animated cut-scenes or extra ultimate jutsu’s instead.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations is a lot of the same with a few new things thrown in and is definitely a worthwhile purchase for any Naruto fan thanks to the exciting story and vast characters roster alone, but despite its polish, if you’re looking for a fighter that will keep your attention beyond the story mode, and if you’re not a Naruto fan, you may want to think a bit more before running off to the store.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Jody

Review: Bloodforge (Xbox360)

Fri, 04 May 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Crom wiped his bloodied sword on the cloak of the man lying dead before him and surveyed the scene. Although the battle had been short, it had been vicious and unmerciful. Various body parts littered the ground while blood and viscera decorated the area as if a paint factory had exploded. Crom smiled. “Nice early morning exercise really gets the blood flowing.”

When I started playing Bloodforge I was taken through a few cut-scenes that I couldn’t skip (always a downer for me because I am quite the impatient type) and a bit of fighting (very violent and very gory fighting – always a plus) which centred around two buttons. At first, I felt that the game was a bit of a button masher that was exciting for a while but then got quite boring. There were a few fighting moves that I could combine to get some interesting results (like decapitation, disembowelment, evisceration - you know, the good stuff) but they really weren’t enough to get me raving about the game. Fortunately, and excitingly, the game soon develops and the scope of the whole experience changes. The plot is soon expanded to incorporate gods, the fate of the world and a legendary passageway called ‘The Bloodforge,’ which no man has ever travelled and survived. The attack moves were also expanded and soon a crossbow was added to my arsenal, while additional ‘spirit’ moves were introduced that transformed Bloodforge from a two-button masher to a game incorporating all of the buttons used in different combinations. As I continued I also found new weapons like a massive war hammer and some really evil looking boneclaws (basically making you look like a less attractive Wolverine).

As you travel through the Bloodforge, you earn mana that can be used for various ‘spirit’ attacks. You also find a gauntlet that absorbs blood and enhances your power as it absorbs more and more guts and gore. Crom’s goal is therefore to kill people as savagely and as bloodily as possible to enhance the power of the gauntlet throughout the game. The gods are quite heavily involved throughout the narrative of Bloodforge and, although they seem a bit fickle at times, they seem to have quite a few powers, some of which they graciously share with our hero. Obviously, you have to earn their favour by giving them sacrifices of (you guessed it) blood! The setting of Bloodforge is very well realised indeed and the creators have to be given credit for contributing to the look and feel of the game. It is dark and desolate and most of the colour is muted and strained. It really does feel like a world where you have to kill or be killed. In fact, there are three main colours: Black, white and, of course, red, which dominate the game. There are other colours but you hardly notice them.

Bloodforge is a savage game in which our hero, Crom, slices and dices his way through a variety of bad guys (who all look the same when they are minced…) and, as such, this game is definitely not for children. I would say that this is the type of game that is aimed at adults only. I am always very serious about the age restrictions on games because I get very annoyed when videogames are blamed for some of the world’s ills (especially by parents who let their kids play inappropriate games eight hours a day). It’s up to us, as responsible gamers, to ensure that only those people meant to play certain games, are the only people that do, in fact, play them. If you aren’t able to separate fact from fiction or are likely to kill people with swords after playing computer games, then Bloodforge isn’t for you. Everyone else, I recommend you play it and have some fun chopping baddies up into itty, bitty pieces.

There are a few negatives about Bloodforge but nothing enough to detract from the pleasure of the gaming experience. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that you can’t skip the cut-scenes annoys me but, fortunately, they aren’t long enough for me to throw my hands up in the air. Also as mentioned, the game starts quite slowly and I think there may be a few people who might stop playing too early. Believe me, the game develops in complexity and the gameplay becomes more advanced, so stick with it. Another negative thing is that the map is a bit like a maze and you can spend quite a bit of time running around the same places that you have already been (a hint is to follow the red lit arches). I think a map would have helped out quite a bit but, once again, this problem isn’t too onerous and there is plenty of action to keep you entertained.

A big plus about Bloodforge is the bad guys, with special mention going to the ‘King’ that guards the entrance to the Bloodforge - he actually throws other bad guys at you to fight! This guy is a colossus with a huge magic eye and he is quite tough to defeat, but it’s a lot of fun doing so. Although there are quite a few mundane baddies in the game (the normal, run-of-the-mill savage who basically just contributes to your blood collection), there are some senior baddies who are very creative. The game throws a lot of bad guys at you but, instead of this getting boring, the variety is such that the excitement is maintained and you have to use different strategies to defeat different enemies. Button mashing will simply not work for some of the monsters you fight and you have to think about how to defeat them.

I would highly recommend Bloodforge if you’re looking for a fun and exciting action game that doesn’t require too much time to get into. This is the sort of game you can play when you have half an hour to kill or when you want to sit down and really take savagery seriously. I enjoyed playing it and, once you get over the slow beginning (and if you are willing to sit through it again), you can play it over and over. (Note: I find that a lot of people rate a given game in comparison to other similar games and perhaps this is due to the fact that we, as gamers, are spoilt for choice. I think this is a pity and I feel that a lot of people judge a game on what it isn’t, instead of what it is. I prefer to rate each game on its merits and have done so with Bloodforge.)

Rating: 4 stars
Contributor: Russell

Review: The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition (Xbox360)

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:30:00 +0000

It would be a difficult task to do The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition justice merely by singing its praises in this review. This game is a breath of fresh air for the RPG genre that somehow manages to excel on both a technical and artistic level. Polish studio CD Projekt RED has crafted something truly special in The Witcher 2 – a complex, compelling narrative that does an excellent job of consistently accommodating player choice. There are not many games that make you feel like you’re part of an epic work of fantasy fiction, so with this in mind it’s safe to say that The Witcher 2 sits alongside the very best examples of interactive entertainment.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition is an updated version of last year’s award-winning The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for PC. The Enhanced Edition features all the tweaks and new content added to the PC version via a series of patches, as well as additional cut-scenes, quests, areas and even a few graphical refinements. The game consists of three chapters and spans two discs, although you’ll be spending the majority of your playtime on disc one. The Witcher 2 will easily last you between fifteen and thirty hours on your first playthrough, and it’s definitely worth taking it for another spin as the game’s narrative is structured around two paths that diverge at the end of chapter one. Like its predecessor, The Witcher 2 is based on a cult series of short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. You are the white-haired witcher Geralt of Rivia – a professional monster-slayer who was genetically modified as a child so he could possess superhuman powers. The game’s narrative concerns itself with Geralt trying to regain his memory amidst a large-scale power struggle between various forces.

Another witcher with unknown motives has begun to assassinate kings and Geralt sets out to confront this enemy before further assassinations lead to even greater political instability in the kingdom. There’s a lot more to the narrative than this brief synopsis, however, and elves, dwarves and sorceresses soon enter the equation to make the story both richer and more complex. I can’t say I fully understood every story element that was introduced during the course of my adventure, but thankfully the game comes with lengthy and detailed descriptions of every location, character and quest so all the information you need is there for those of you who want to delve deeper into the incredibly elaborate tale of The Witcher 2. There are many times when the game’s narrative takes a turn in one direction or another based on your choices. The wonderful thing about these decisions is that they aren’t based on black and white morality like most other RPGs – often they are more about personal preference and which story strand you want to see play out. There are also plenty of optional side-quests that are designed to further flesh out the game’s world and its characters. These are some of the most interesting and cleverly designed side-quests I’ve had the pleasure of playing, and surprisingly they often offer the same degree of player choice as the main quests.

The combat in The Witcher 2 takes some getting used to and should prove challenging to newcomers. Thankfully you can adjust the difficult level at any time during the game if things aren’t going your way. Geralt carries two swords – one steel (good for slicing through humans) and the other silver (good for dispatching monsters such as wraiths) – as well as knives, bombs and traps. He also makes use of a few offensive and defensive magic spells that can save your hide in tough situations. Geralt can only brandish one weapon at a time and doesn’t carry a shield so you’ll use your sword to block incoming attacks and your free hand to cast magic. You can roll out of harm’s way and as you upgrade your abilities he will become more adept at counter-attacking and handling groups of monsters. You can also coat your sword with various oils that will boost your attacks for a few minutes.

If you enjoy the combat aspect of The Witcher 2 then you’ll probably want to try out Arena mode. This is separate from the main game and sees you trying to defeat increasingly difficult waves of enemies. When you die your accumulated score is posted to the online leaderboards and you can see how your efforts compare with your friends’ as well as the rest of the world. You’ll earn weapons, armour, items and skill points for each wave of enemies you defeat, as well as cash that you can use to hire one of three NPC mercenaries to accompany you into battle. Although The Witcher 2 is as close to perfect as you could reasonably hope for, there are still a few issues worth mentioning. You can’t warp to previously visited areas of the map nor can you put down a waypoint. While most missions show you on the map where you need to go next, certain quests require you to explore a wide area until you stumble on the ‘trigger’ for that mission. This can sometimes feel like fumbling around in the dark and can prove frustrating.

Another issue I have with the game concerns interacting with people or objects. The ‘talk’ or ‘search’ prompt only appears when you’re a particular distance away from your target, and this often feels strangely random. You’ll be right next to an object yet you can’t interact with it because there’s no prompt. Also, when you come across an assortment of loot you can’t select which items you want to pick up – you automatically take everything. This proves very problematic when you’re nearing your weight limit and can’t afford to carry around unwanted items. There’s also an area in the game where doors have been added to the Xbox 360 version in order to make up for slower loading times compared to the PC version. These doors don’t make sense in terms of the level’s architectural design and actually confuse you on certain quests because you assume that they lead to people’s homes rather than to the next open section of this particular area.

The Witcher 2 dazzles from a technical standpoint, though. You’ll need to install the game to your Xbox 360’s hard drive to get the best possible visual experience, and once you do you’ll be treated to faster load times and texture streaming. The Witcher 2 has some of the best lighting I’ve ever seen in a game, and the artistic direction is amazing from start to finish. The game’s world feels lived in and the level design is a lot more complex and naturalistic than many other contemporary RPGs. The main characters all have fantastically detailed costume designs and their appearances are pleasingly non-generic. I particularly appreciated how the central female characters are conveyed in The Witcher 2 as they are portrayed as strong, feisty individuals, each possessing a unique set of complex motivations. The game’s ambient sound effects and music also complement the beautiful locales and emotionally charged cut-scenes that lie at the heart of The Witcher 2. There are some truly epic and moving moments in this game that would have only been half as effective had the sound effects and music not been up to the same high standards as the graphics, script and voice acting.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition is an essential purchase for RPG fans whether you choose to play it on PC or Xbox 360. This is one title that constantly impresses and surprises as you explore all it has to offer. The Witcher 2 is one of the best examples of how the games industry is maturing by offering an adult-themed narrative that explores situations, emotions and complex moral dilemmas that are usually reserved for books or films. If you’re looking for interactive entertainment as its most accomplished, don’t squander this opportunity to be bewitched!

Rating: 5 stars
Contributor: Tom

Review: Anomaly: Warzone Earth (Xbox360)

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Near the beginning of the year, I did what any responsible gamer should do and supported the Humble Bundle game collection in recognition of all those late nights and caffeine binges endured by independent game developers. Little did I know then that I’d be treated to such a wealth of creative and novel games. One such game was Anomaly: Warzone Earth which has now made its way into the annals of Xbox Live as a downloadable Arcade game.

Probably the most concise way to describe this tactical strategy game is that it’s a tower defence game in reverse, or if you like, a tower offence game. Traditional tower defence games will typically have you building structures to protect a path or route which then gets flooded by wave after wave of enemies - often called ‘creeps.’ Anomaly: Warzone Earth takes that all too familiar pattern and flips it on its head. Now you get to be the creep - so to speak - and strategically plan your route, leaving a path of destruction in your wake. What’s even more impressive is the reach this game has across different platforms. It made its d�but to the gaming scene last year on the Mac and Windows platforms, followed later by iOS and Android Marketplace appearances and now finally has finally been repackaged with bonus content, exclusive to Xbox gamers. It’s worth noting that no matter the platform, Anomaly: Warzone Earth seems to consistently adapt and prove itself as an innovative and addictive addition to the strategy game genre.

Before we go any further, let’s check out the context for the game’s story. The game is set in the near future, the year 2018, and follows the aftermath of an asteroid crash in Baghdad which unravels into an alien invasion. The narrative follows the Commander of the fourteenth platoon and the unfolding events that happen as you investigate the crash site and set out to eradicate the unwelcome invaders who have taken control of the surrounding zones. Along the way you’ll make contact with allies, unlock more powerful vehicles for your arsenal and occasionally provide safe convoy to mission critical vehicles. Anomaly: Warzone Earth begins with a cinematic video - worthy of any high budget game - painting the backdrop in which the action takes place. The visual treatment of the video, together with vivid and highly detailed in-game graphics, will very soon have you forgetting that you’re actually playing an Xbox Live Arcade game. I was downright impressed that they fitted all this content into a relatively small game download and a modest price tag. After the introductory video, you get straight into the action with on-the-job training in a quick tutorial and the story continues to be told through more generic in-game video sequences.

So Anomaly: Warzone Earth is all pretty on the outside, it has a decent enough story and a unique approach to traditional strategy games, but how does it actually handle? Very well. The controls have been well adapted to the Xbox controller and have been kept simple yet flexible enough that it doesn’t feel dumbed down. The game is incredibly fast and responsive even with all the explosions and particle effects going on around you. The gameplay is separated into three main phases: Route Mapping; Squad Selection; and Direct Control. Route Mapping happens at the beginning of each stage as you plan the most efficient path from ‘A’ to ‘B.’ Here you will have to avoid routes which will put you in danger, choose alternate routes which play to your strengths, and make sure to collect as many resources along the way to upgrade your squad. You can also change your route at any point to adapt to environmental changes or for strategic advantage. Squad Selection is where you choose which units will be deployed on the field and happens straight after route mapping and can also be revisited as you progress through the stage and collect credits.

You get a full spread of units from basic APC’s and tanks, to missile launchers and shield units. In addition to buying more units you can upgrade your existing units and change the order in which they appear. Finally, ‘Direct Control’ is where the most fun will be had. You play as the Commander on the ground and will spend most of your time collecting power ups, drawing enemy fire by creating decoys, repairing critically damaged units, tagging enemies for air-strikes and generally doing whatever it takes to get your squad safely out of danger. Once you’ve exhausted the story mode campaign, you will unlock other game modes like ‘Squad Assault’ which is a collection of survival type mini-games which increase in difficultly with each wave. There is also a new game mode called Tactical Trials, exclusive to Xbox 360, which has a completely unique virtual reality style and is aimed at those who hunger for more intense and challenging scenarios where one mistake will result in mission failure. Together with the main campaign, there is over ten hours of tactical time to keep you satisfied.

As far as Xbox LIVE Arcade games go, Anomaly: Warzone Earth sets the bar quite high and even if you’ve played it on your phone or computer, it’s still worth grabbing this from the Xbox Live Marketplace - it’s clear this game wasn’t just another platform port. So, if you’re tired of all those tower defence games where you’re overwhelmed by masses of creeps, why not give Anomaly: Warzone Earth a try and take the fight to them for once.

Rating: 5 stars
Contributor: Warren

Review: The Splatters (Xbox360)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Meet The Splatters. Little brightly coloured blobs of goop that are pure masters of acrobatics. These little guys live to entertain and go by a very simple motto - “Life’s short, so die with style.” To this end all these colourful liquid paint blobs want you to do is help them blow themselves up with style. And they die. All the time.

In this simple yet addictive action-puzzler, players will unlock and master various stunts in order to perform breathtaking moves to get through each level in the most show-stopping and crowd-pleasing way possible. Remember, you’re not doing this only for The Splatters, but for the hordes of adoring fans from around the world that are bearing witness to your deft mastery of the U-Turn, Airstrike, and Ballistic stunts! No pressure whatsoever!

Not just ‘clean’ fun - it’s Kosher too!

The Splatters is an Xbox LIVE title that brings new meaning to the term getting your hands dirty, as you take control of The Splatters in more than sixty challenge levels in a bid to spectacularly detonate all the bombs in each level. It’s the first release by game developers SpikySnail Games, and I have to say it’s a great debut for this small Israeli studio.

In each scenario of The Splatters there’s the easy way to finish a level, and then there’s the breathtaking marvellously show-stopping way. If you want to just get by with a one star performance the choice is entirely yours, but if you really want to make a Splatter’s life (and, erm, death) worth remembering you’ll go for the spectacular three star finale. To achieve this you’ll need to come up with gravity-defying manoeuvres to send each Splatter through as many hoops (that’s metaphorical show hoops, you understand) as possible on their way to clearing the level of all the bombs, which is much easier said than done when you’re combining challenging puzzles with a frantic action arcade pace.

Worms + Peggle = The Splatters!

The Splatters fast-paced puzzle-solving destruction feels something like a mix between Worms and Peggle. The Splatters share that same impish mischief that our lovable Worms of destruction have, and the necessity to come up with sometimes unconventional approaches to clear a level with limited resources is much akin to the Peggle series. The puzzles in the game range from simple minor elements to complicated and intensive challenges. Even when it feels like all else has failed, there’s always one more idea that eventually comes to mind in order to clear the level, and that’s the beauty behind The Splatters - the realistic physics simulations and variable stunts mean you’ll never play the same game twice!

The emphasis on destruction and the distinctive visuals combine with the arcade-like gameplay to make an addictive action puzzle-solver. The competitive nature of the score-mongering goes hand-in-hand with Splatter TV, which is an in-game feature for sharing game clips and picking up new moves and strategies from other players from around the world. If there is one thing I’d like to have seen it is a hot seat or co-operative option to really bring the game to life, but I suspect if The Splatters picks up enough of a fanbase it will follow a similar route to the likes of Portal, with an eventual sequel coming out with multiplayer support. At least one can only hope so, and I have no doubt a sequel will be on the cards once this game gains traction. All in all, with its fast-paced puzzle solving and vibrantly messy kaleidoscope of colours and lovable little critters, as a simple and ‘clean’ entertainment package, The Splatters is well worth it at 800 Microsoft Points. Puzzle gamers who don’t mind a bit of reaction times measured in will no doubt enjoy this little masterpiece. The Good: It’s good, “clean” fun for all ages; quality gaming for an Xbox LIVE title; puzzles are challenging and gameplay is simple but enthralling. The Bad: I always long for multiplayer and co-op would have been great.

Rating: 4 stars
Contributor: Bryan

Review: Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (3DS)

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0000

The original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was a PlayStation 2 exclusive that came out in 2004 and it’s notable in the Metal Gear Solid series because it takes place before all the other games and explores how Solid Snake’s father earned himself the prestigious title of ‘Big Boss.’ The game is very much in the style of a classic James Bond film from the 1960s, with political tensions between the USA and USSR providing an excellent backdrop for espionage, romance and double-crossing. Metal Gear Solid 3 also focuses heavily on surviving the jungles of the Soviet Union – you’ll need to hunt for food and treat your wounds if you want to reach the epic conclusion of this Cold War themed adventure.

The 3DS version of MGS3 is pretty much a carbon copy of the PS2 original. There’s no new content (from what I could tell) except for a fresh batch of camouflage patterns. The game does include some nifty new features, however, such as the ability to create your own camo based on any photos stored on your 3DS. The controls, heads-up display (HUD) and menus have also been redesigned around the 3DS’ touch screen, which is a welcome change as the map is permanently displayed on the bottom screen as well as quick, touch-based links to various sub-menus such as item/weapon inventory, Codec, and Cure. Having the map constantly visible is a very handy feature as I remember often getting lost in the PS2 original and having to bring up the menu so I could see where I was in relation to my destination. Of course the best new feature in the 3DS version of Metal Gear Solid 3 is the 3D itself. The 3D effect is implemented very well in this game, and is especially impressive since it was retrofitted onto an existing title. The Metal Gear Solid series is infamous for its lengthy cut-scenes and MGS3 is no different. I found myself playing much of the game with the 3D off and then turning the 3D slider up for the protracted cut-scenes as these look even more fantastic than they did in the original when you add depth. For instance, there are many scenes when multiple characters occupy the same shot and 3D allows you to clearly see the distance between them – something that makes their interactions seem that much more realistic.

Although Snake Eater 3D is a faithful port of the original there are some elements that suffered during the transition to the 3DS. The textures are a little less sharp and look ‘muddier’ overall than they did in the PS2 version. Metal Gear Solid 3’s environments aren’t particularly colourful, consisting mainly of greys, browns and dark greens, therefore these slightly muddy textures and drab colour palette may put off some 3DS gamers who are accustomed to seeing more vibrant graphics on the handheld. The biggest issue by far, however, is Snake Eater 3D’s sluggish frame rate. The first few levels are not too bad in this regard, but later in the game you’ll encounter bosses, environments and cut-scenes where the frame rate slows down to an unacceptable crawl. This really breaks your sense of immersion and can make some of the boss battles unnecessarily challenging, simply because your controller inputs take so long to register and Snake moves in slow motion thanks to the lousy frame rate. I’m very surprised that Kojima Productions released the game with these significant frame rate issues intact and should definitely be held accountable for not optimising this 3DS port as well as you would expect them to.

These gripes aside, Snake Eater 3DS is a wonderful game for 3DS owners who are playing Metal Gear Solid 3 for the first time or who want to revisit this classic on a portable platform with intuitive touch screen controls and well-implemented 3D. I’m a big fan of all the Metal Gear Solid titles but I think MGS3’s plot has many compelling elements that other games in the series are missing. Metal Gear Solid 3 has a number of intriguing personalities who are often interlinked in interesting ways. ‘The Boss’ – Naked Snake’s mentor – is probably one of the strongest female characters in videogaming while Snake’s nemesis Colonel Volgin is a brilliantly characterised maniac who is genuinely intimidating at certain points during the narrative. All of these characters are fully voiced by a talented cast of actors and the script is both well-written and ingeniously connected to actual historical events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis that took place during the Cold War. Some of the cut-scenes even include archive video footage from these events, lending a strong sense of authenticity to the plot. As far as I’m concerned, MGS3 is the closest thing to an interactive James Bond film that gamers currently have at their disposal.

Snake Eater 3D also has plenty of depth, both in terms of story and gameplay. You can blitz through the game on ‘Easy’ in about nine hours, but if you play it on a higher difficulty setting and explore everything Snake Eater 3D has to offer, you could easily spend about twenty hours on a single playthrough. There are hidden camo patterns, items and weapons tucked away in difficult-to-reach areas, not to mention the dozens of fauna and flora you can use to boost your stamina gauge or even startle/poison/damage guards with. Part of the game’s charm is messing around with different items to find out which camo patterns best conceal you in different environments, what foods boost your stamina gauge the most and how to treat your wounds. For instance, after swimming in some murky water you’ll most likely have leaches sucking at your blood. Snake loves smoking so naturally he has a cigar in his possession. Who knew that cigars were so effective at burning leaches off your body?!

If you’re after an interactive history lesson then Snake Eater 3D delivers better than almost any other game out there. There are literally hours of Codec conversations to be had with the knowledgeable members of your support crew. One of them is a weapons expert who will give you a fascinating lesson on whatever item you’ve currently got equipped. Another member of your support crew loves movies with advanced special effects and is also highly knowledgeable about the animals and plants of the region the game takes place in. These conversations are mostly optional so it’s really up to you how much chatter you want to listen to during your adventure. If you’d like to get the best possible insight into Snake’s complex personality, however, then you’ll definitely want to hear his retorts and the humorous exchanges that take place during the hours of additional dialogue contained in these Codec conversations.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D will hold the most appeal for gamers who love a compelling story backed up by gameplay that allows for a custom approach to the various scenarios on offer during the course of your adventure. You can play Snake Eater 3D as a stealth game or as a shooter depending on your taste, or you can mix up your play style at any point should the situation call for it. The game’s storyline is enriched by the hours of optional Codec conversations on offer but if you want to chart a direct course to the plot’s conclusion then you’ll probably want to bypass them altogether. Although Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D is a port of a game from 2004, it still holds up remarkably well as a stellar example of the compatibility between cinema and games. With the Metal Gear Solid series presently in a state of hibernation, Snake Eater 3D is a great way to pass the time until Hideo Kojima’s next masterpiece is released.

Rating: 4 stars
Contributor: Tom

Review: Fez (Xbox360)

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Wow! When games seemingly take forever to be released, to the point where you actually forget about the title, they often end up falling short of expectations - Duke Nukem Forever is the best, most recent example of this. When a game is a creation of love and is made by an extremely small team, however, you know that every moment spent making this game is done with care. The result: something rather beautiful! Fez from indie developer Polytron is the best, most recent example of this.

Gomez is a little two dimensional guy living in a two dimensional world, but when he comes into possession of a magical fez (those funny red hats with a tassel on top) everything changes. The world can now be spun around in 90 degree increments, but while this is possible, poor little Gomez is stuck in 2D. Soon enough, it’s up to him to restore order to the world he knows. The ability to rotate the world opens up a world of possibilities. It is difficult enough to get your head around what exactly is going on while playing the game, so trying to describe it is even more difficult, but here goes: Gomez only sees the world as a two dimensional world similar to other platform games and simply lacks the third perspective that gives everything depth. So if you turn the world through ninety degrees, a platform that is actually far in the background can end up being right next to Gomez since he sees no depth. This is the magic that makes Fez stand head and shoulders above pretty much every other game I have played in a very long time!

Rather than just turning the game into an endless barrage of levels with increasing difficulty, you actually have a mission. You need to collect little yellow cubes that combine to make bigger cubes. Enough of these cubes will allow you to open certain doors that lead to new levels. I would think that this game mechanic of twisting the word around could get tired pretty quickly, but the Fez is not the only magical item here - the level design is simply magical! Mind-bending puzzles abound in a world created with a ton of detail. Little birds, lizards and frogs are found all throughout the world, and the other characters you meet along the way are equally colourful.

Traversing the levels in Fez requires you to enter doors and portals to other stages. Finding these doors is one thing, but getting to them can be an equally daunting task. Now add all these little levels together and the map of the game world becomes a spider web of links and passages. Thankfully it’s easy to see what discoverable items are still left in a specific part of the map - if the map glows gold you know you have all that is to be discovered. The game will also list the items in that part of the map so you know what to look for early on. Some levels in Fez require you to not turn the world around, but rather parts of the world. In other sections, the map turns by itself at set intervals, or just a few platforms turn on their own. Keeping focused can be difficult. Now add bombs that destroy certain parts of the world, depending on which way the world is turned, moving platforms that require certain turns and even teleporting, and you get an idea of how complicated this simple little game really is.

It’s amazing that the game gets away with such a rich world when it’s essentially created in an old pixelated style. Everything is blocky and square but the game never feels old - not for a second. The sounds and music also has a distinctive 8-bit feel to it, but again it never feels outdated. How Polytron did it is a mystery to me! Along the way Gomez will fall off high ledges, drown and even sometimes make a move that could kill anyone else, but Fez is not out to punish players. Gomez will not die. There is also not a single act of violence in the game. When you play Fez you will feel relaxed, tranquil and totally serene. Until the puzzles start to get really difficult, that is. It just goes to show that games can calm you as much as anything else.

Fez is one of those little gems that only comes along every so often - the kind of game that can sweep you off your feet and carry you to far off magical places. It’s totally unique and has charm dripping from every corner. If more games are made with the same amount of detail, care and love, then the world would be a better place because of it. The trippy story coupled with the weird and crazy world simply adds to the experience. I just cannot fault Fez anywhere, and I’m not used to that! The Good: Weird and trippy world; Totally unique and interesting gameplay; Pretty to look and relaxing to play The Bad: Seriously? Uhm… I don’t have a magical fez and that’s bad. The Ugly: I still don’t get some of the puzzles and how they tie together, but by dumb luck I got them!

Rating: 5 stars
Contributor: Oltman

Review: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 (Xbox360)

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Golfing games sure have changed a lot from where I was younger and playing ‘Leaderboard Golf’ on the PC (“Um… looks like he hit a tree, Jim”) and I sure was excited to play Tiger Woods 13 when it arrived. Even though I was highly anticipating this game, however, I was unprepared for just how good it actually is. I have always felt that golf games are very difficult to translate into controller movements so I haven’t been too keen on them in the past, but I think Tiger Woods 13 just showed how wrong I can be.

Over the years there have been some memorable quotes regarding golf. Woodrow Wilson wrote that “Golf is a game in which one endeavours to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.” Arnold Palmer said that golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated and Gary Player said that golf is a game of luck - the more you practice, the luckier you get. One thing is for sure though – Tiger Woods PGA 13 will give you a very good understanding of all of these quotes before you are done with it. Tiger Woods 13 is not a shallow game and you should be prepared to play a lot of golf during the course of it (Nicely done - Ed). One does not, however, have to be a golf fanatic to enjoy this game and there are quite a few different modes to ensure that you are kept very interested.

If you just want to get straight into the action and play some golf, then the four-player ‘Quick Play’ mode is a good place to start and is especially good fun to play with friends. My kids play this mode and they are learning all about golf thanks to Jim Furyk (the blue guy) and Bubba Watson (the red guy). In ‘Tiger Woods Legacy’ mode, however, you’re able to play through some of Tiger Woods more historical events. These include his first appearance at age two and continue right up to his prospective future. Admittedly, this is a seriously boring section of the game but I suppose it does teach you some skills that can be used throughout the game. It’s also a nice history lesson for those people actually interested in the man.

My favourite mode in the game, however, is ‘Create a Golfer Mode’ which allows you to mould your own in-game avatar and then develop that golfer throughout his (or her) golf career. Starting on an amateur circuit (you can choose from the British or American amateur circuits) you slowly progress to the PGA tour. Interestingly, as you progress, you can qualify for the Masters by winning various tournaments. I thought that this was quite a simple game when I qualified to play in the Masters as an amateur. I was quickly taught the error of my ways though as I hacked my way around the course and finished on 22 over after two rounds, failing to make the cut. After a while, however, I started developing the knack of the game and was soon promoted to the PGA tour again. Holding your own in the PGA is quite a difficult prospect but, as you play you earn experience points which you can put to good use by increasing your golfer skills. The skills are ‘Power,’ ‘Accuracy,’ ‘Workability,’ ‘Recovery’ and ‘Putting.’ They are pretty self-explanatory so I’ll let you learn all about the skills should you decide to play the game.

As you may be aware by reading my previous reviews, my favourite kind of game is one where you develop a character. This mode, therefore, really suits my game play and I really look forward to developing my character to a highly ranked golfer (hopefully together with some of the El33t Peeps in the El33t Links Golf Club). As you play different modes using your created golfer, you earn experience points which you can use to increase you skills (shot power, accuracy, putting and so forth) and you also earn Coins (the in-game currency). Coins can be used to buy various things such as boosts to use during play and to purchase other interesting items from the Store. One limitation that I discovered during the redeeming of coins was the fact that this can only be done when you are connected to Xbox Live. I thought this was a bit silly as Offline players would be seriously disadvantaged when trying to grow their golfer.

While playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, you can find out how you are progressing in mastering certain golf courses in the handy ‘Master the Course’ option. Every time you play a specific course, your course mastery is updated and this is an interesting perspective to the game which is quite large and might lead to some confusion about which courses you’ve played and so forth. Similarly, you can develop your skills and check on your progress in ‘Skills Development.’ I didn’t spend much time on this mode because I am a great believer in developing skills as you play (some people may call it impatience – I call it being practical), but this is the place to go if you want to get your bunker shots just right or to improve your putting. Online play in Tiger Woods 13 features three main modes, and most players should start by joining or starting a golf club. This is a great way to enjoy the game with friends from around the world. I created a club called El33t Links and I hope some of you will buy the game and help me to conquer the golfing world. I have played a few guys from all over the place and it is definitely clear that Golf is a truly international language.

If the fancy club lifestyle isn’t for you, you can get straight to it in head-to-head mode, which allows you to play against opponents online if you don’t want to join a golf club. This is very similar to Country Club head-to-head but without the Country Club aspects such as status and so forth. Lastly, if you think your skills are up to the task, you can enter online tournaments for a chance to win some very nifty prizes. I didn’t really get involved in this part of the game but, as my skill progresses, I might feel comfortable challenging some of the more fanatical players of the game. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 gameplay is very good and you can either play with the Kinect or with a regular controller. I found the Kinect a bit simplistic, so I prefer playing with the controller. My kids loved playing with the Kinect though and they managed to get a very well hit 14 over on one of the courses. This was without aiming their putts though, which added on quite a few shots. I thought driving and the iron play was just too simple with the Kinect but it was still good fun. So, for more of a challenge (or maybe, a different challenge depending on how you look at it), I use the controller.

The controller gives you a lot more control over your shot and you can develop shots that are specific for certain holes. You can hit a high fade or draw the ball around a dogleg (I beg yours? - Ed) should you develop the finesse required – I must confess that I tried it a few times and I am a very long way from developing the finesse required. A quote that I have used a bit before is that the controller is easy to learn but difficult to master. You can pretty much have fun right from the first ball you hit but your accuracy and skill definitely improves the more you play. As per most of the EA Sports games like FIFA, NHL, FIFA Manager and Tiger Woods, the subsequent editions are not too different from the previous ones. As a Tiger Woods PGA Tour newbie, however, I was blown away by some of the things that I discovered. The online potential of the Country Clubs is massive and should provide much online fun between friends or if you are just feeling like taking on the golfing world - I had my butt handed to me on a few occasions. Most of the stuff I have read online indicates that, if you have Tiger Woods 12, you should carefully consider investing in Tiger Woods 13 (pfft, what do they know anyway?) but if you are new to golf games, this is the game for you.

As I continued to play Tiger Woods 13, I honestly could not find anything negative about the game. There are things that I didn’t like but these aren’t flaws in the game, just my personal tastes. Things like using the Kinect and the Tiger Woods Legacy part of the game were not my cup of tea at all, but they are there if you want to use them and many people will find this to be the best part of the game. I must admit that the Kinect is clumsy and quite frustrating and I do think there is a lot of development required for the game to be considered a good Kinect game but, like I said, my kids love the Kinect and the game is worth it just for them. If you don’t have a golf game or a previous version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, I would definitely buy this game. If you have Tiger Woods 12, think about it long and hard and consider whether the additions to Tiger Woods 13 will enhance your experience of the series (I think the online play makes it worth it). If you already have Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, join El33t Links and let’s hit a few balls. See you on the tees.

Rating: 5 stars
Contributor: Russell

Review: Confrontation (PC)

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000

When genres combine to form new types of games, I get excited. The less a game falls into a specific class of game the happier I get because a certain amount of thought must have gone into the actual decision of what genres to mix. When a game is supposed to fall into one genre and uses the control scheme of another, however, then it tends to feels a little off. It’s been a while since a top-down or isometric role-playing game with a more traditional style of play has come across my desk. Confrontation can be described as an old-school RPG with ideas in the Baldur’s Gate era of party-based strategic combat, but with a few new touches added. That description more than anything else got me intrigued.

The problem is that for all its great attempts at getting you interested, Confrontation just doesn’t hold my attention like more modern games have in recent years, an I’m afraid that I’m getting to that point of my life where I will switch off the PC and just play silly console games that give me instant gratification (Steady on… - Ed) Confrontation is set during a time where four factions are about to face off for control of the land of Aarklash. The rest of the story is sort of irrelevant as it is extremely linear in its execution and you have no real choice of how the story plays out.

You do have a choice of characters that you can add to your party, and even though you unlock up to twelve of them you will inevitably have your favourite few that you take into battle with you the whole time. The decision of who comes along is a very important one, and can be compared to raids in World of Warcraft where specific classes are needed to fill specific roles during the battles. Making sure you have someone that can absorb a lot of damage and someone else to deal a lot of it is crucial. Combat becomes very strategic during gameplay. Being an old-school RPG you can pause the action, issue an order and then watch the character perform that action in real-time. Besides giving you the time to evaluate your options and make a decision, it regrettably has the added bonus of dragging the game on a bit. Battles take far too long if you over analyse every move and attack, and I soon learned all the abilities and their short-cuts to the point of where I had no need for the pause button.

A big annoyance was that the game’s built-in codex could only be accessed from the main menu. I honestly didn’t even know the codex existed until I stumbled across it in the main menu. Leaving the game to access this does not help when you are in combat and would like to get more detail on the enemies you are facing. Thankfully, the codex offers little in way of helping with what the enemy actually does so its use is debatable. Controlling your squad feels remarkably like controlling a real-time strategy game. The drag to select and right-click to move or attack feels just too clumsy for the intended action focused games. Selecting all your units and sending them in to attack the nearest enemy yielded a few results, but often the biggest hurdle for my soldiers to overcome was their navigation skills. During some of the narrower levels it was impossible to move the party as a whole, as units would get stuck behind their team-mates and not be able to reach the battle. I often found myself using the pause button to manoeuvre the team into position before unleashing hell. Expecting them to walk around other characters to work a lever and open a door is just too much to ask, it appears. The camera also doesn’t lock onto a character and you need to double click his icon on the rather cluttered interface for the camera to zoom to him. Having the option to lock onto someone would be nice.

Each character has a standard attack and up to four special abilities. The spells and effects do a decent job of portraying this fantasy world, but the overall effect is let down by the amount of detail in the rest of the world. Some levels make great creative use of height to use available map space, but others just seem barren in comparison. The game does excel in its music and each area has an accompanying soundtrack that does great justice to the composers. Sound effects are decent, and the voice acting a little repetitive during battles. I was hoping for a little variety when repeatedly clicking on the same characters but I soon realized I will only drive myself mad, rather that the character.

When it comes to multiplayer I must admit that I have only been able to find two games, both of which did not complete. The problem was finding another player to play against - the lobbies are empty and I couldn’t find any matches. Multiplayer appears to be a deathmatch of epic fantasy proportions with some steampunk and horror thrown in for good measure, and this without the advantage of the pause button. Knowing your characters and their abilities become crucial. Regrettably I died way too soon to be of any real help here. I really hope that in the next few weeks as more and more people play I will get more time in the multiplayer arena. Before entering these arenas you get to customize your party’s colours to make yourself unique, but not only do you get to make over the twelve characters from the Griffin Faction you play in the campaign mode, but also the 36 from the three other factions. Customising them all can take a very long time to get right, and I felt the default colours were random enough.

Confrontation is a role-playing game with real-time strategy controls and has more than a parting resemblance to Warcraft and even some Warhammer games, but lives up to neither of those games’ reputations. As a role-playing game it employs a lot of strategy to be successful in combat that will surely please the strategic minds among the gamers out there. For me, Confrontation simply dragged on too long. I kept playing, expecting it to get better but it never did. What you get in the first five hours will be with you for the rest of the game and nothing new will surprise you.

I may be coming across as negative, but Confrontation most certainly has its place in the world. The game is still fun, even at the worst of times, while its flaws are easily overlooked to add in a bit of charm. With a bit more support and maybe a bit bigger budget it could have been a real contender. As it stands it is a good but flawed role-playing game with strategic combat. Is that your cup of tea? The Good: Interesting homage to some classic RPGs; Deep strategic combat. The Bad: Unoriginal setting and visuals The Ugly: If a donkey only knocks its head once, what does it say about the AI?

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Oltman

Review: Little Deviants (PSV)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Little Deviants was one of Sony’s first-party titles that featured heavily in the PS Vita’s pre-launch marketing campaign. Essentially a mini-game compilation designed to showcase the Vita’s wide array of non-traditional control options, Little Deviants is a budget priced title that offers a few hours of enjoyable interaction with the handheld and occasionally provides an inspiring glimpse at what type of gameplay experiences are possible on the Vita.

The game begins with a short cut-scene where you see a spaceship being shot down by some agitated robots and crash landing on a square planet. The spaceship is smashed into dozens of pieces and its inhabitants – a band of globular creatures with names like Goopher, Pyruss and Frostal – are set upon by an army of robots and zombies. The player is tasked with controlling these ‘little deviants’ and exploring six regions of the planet in order to recover the missing pieces of their spaceship. Each region has five mini-games and completing these with a bronze medal score or higher will unlock a new mini-game and grant you one of the missing pieces, thus taking you ever closer to rebuilding their spaceship and leaving the mysterious planet and its antagonistic inhabitants far behind.

Little Deviants forces you to play each mini-game and earn at least a bronze medal on it in order to unlock a new event. Once you have completed a certain number of challenges the next region will become available, thus granting you access to a new mini-game to try out. Any mini-game you’ve unlocked can be played individually in ‘Games’ mode. It’s here that you can compete against your friends’ high scores and attempt to climb the global or Near leaderboards. This feature of Little Deviants definitely extends its replay value if you’re the competitive type, although don’t expect to be able to listen to your own music or podcasts while you chase high scores – unfortunately this game is one of the few PS Vita titles that automatically blocks custom soundtracks.

All the mini-games in Little Deviants are designed around the PS Vita’s touch, tilt and augmented reality (AR) functionality. The only physical buttons you’ll ever need to use are ‘L’ and ‘R’ during driving or AR challenges. I found this focus on non-traditional control inputs refreshing as I’m not yet used to interacting with games in this way. Little Deviants reacts to your inputs in a very responsive and accurate manner, and you can even tweak which angle you’d prefer to hold the PS Vita at during the tilt-based mini-games. I found that holding the system parallel to the ground felt the most natural during the many challenges where you need to roll the little deviants around a course simply by tilting the PS Vita.

While many of the mini-games in Little Deviants are variations of a core idea (such as rolling around a course), some of them really stand out as fantastic examples of what the PS Vita is capable of. My favourite were the challenges that required me to hold the Vita vertically, thus greatly increasing the scope of the level. One required me to tilt the Vita in order to guide a little deviant through a trampoline-filled course while destroying any robots that appeared by tapping on the front touch screen. Another tasked me with protecting a hot-air balloon from robotic birds by tapping them before they could cause any damage, and if I let any through, I could patch up the holes they made in the balloon by drawing a cross over the puncture. Many of the mini-games have multiple stages (sometimes over ten) and each of these levels has stars scattered about that must be collected if you want to earn a respectable score at the end of the challenge. Quite a few of the mini-games are time based, so you’ll need to roll over or collect timers to keep your chances alive. Other challenges contain health pick-ups or items that temporarily grant you special powers. This variety keeps the game from growing stale although certain mini-games are still a little too similar for my liking.

One of Little Deviants’ most impressive features is its graphics. The game runs incredibly smoothly and has a very clean, colourful look to it. The textures are vibrant and are rendered at a high resolution, resulting in a level of visual detail that surpasses a lot of the download-only PS3 titles I’ve played. PS Vita gamers who are looking for a showcase of the system’s capabilities should definitely check out Little Deviants. In reality it’s nothing more than a well-executed mini-game compilation designed around Vita’s non-traditional control features, but some of these mini-games (like those that are played holding the Vita vertically) really tap into the exciting potential of the system. Little Deviants will give you an entertaining, interactive tour of your PS Vita’s capabilities and serves as a great introduction to many of the system’s most compelling features.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Tom

Review: Silent Hill HD Collection (PS3)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +0000

It is with some disappointment that I am reviewing another HD collection on the PS3. It is not disappointment at the review process, but rather at the way these HD remakes are treated. Simply upping the resolution and sticking it onto a Blu-ray does not a good game make. So why am I so disappointed?

The Silent Hill franchise holds a special place in my heart. As one of the first PlayStation games I ever played, the first Silent Hill game shook not only my own idea of scary games, but that of everyone living in my digs watching me play the game. The scene with the rattling locker in the school had all of us jump. I remember I played Silent Hill 2 but it had no stand-out moments for me, and the third game simply slipped past me without getting me interested in any further titles. But what I do know is that these titles are all revered as some of the best horror survival games of all time.

The Silent Hill HD Collection includes Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. The games remain largely unchanged and untouched even. The resolution has obviously been upped to modern HD levels, and the menu interface has been upgraded to make full use of the extra screen real estate without changing the look and feel of them. The games have a crisper and cleaner feel to them as a result of the higher resolution, but unfortunately the low quality models are just made more obvious by this. Bad animations and low level model work worked well on the PlayStation 2, but now they just look silly. A few textures had an overhaul as well, but I honestly cannot tell the difference on where these are placed. The games still look like they belong on a PlayStation 2 rather than on its younger brother.

Each of the two titles can be played with new voice-overs, and switching to the old voices does reveal a bit of a robotic voice clearly not on a very high payroll doing most of the voices. The newer voices are much more emotional and believable. The town of Silent Hill still haunts its occasional visitors. The fog waits to pull back and reveal the next grotesque monster like a theatre curtain revealing the next act of a show. Monsters are still as scary as they were, but the control system has been upgraded a little. The new 2D mode is a lot more modern, but now throws the difficulty out the window. The awkwardness of the old control scheme actually added a lot of tension to the game, and now it becomes too easy to run away.

Overall the games feel like they are actually being played on an older console system which is not flattering to the high end PlayStation 3 hardware. Besides the obvious visual cues, you often run into frame rate problems. At first I thought it was my character getting tired and running slower, but it was in fact the frame rate dropping. Combat is easier with the new control scheme, but still horridly slow. In an attempt to build more tension the combat feels like your character is dredging through thick syrup while swinging at any enemies. This is clearly as a result of the improved control scheme combined with more modern horror titles like Alan Wake that includes brilliant control and combat.

And I guess this is what leads to my biggest disappointment with the spate of HD Collections. These should rather be sold as Collector’s Edition games with more than just an increase in resolution. The perfect example of an HD remake of a game is Monkey Island. Not only do you get the classic game with the classic graphics, but you can switch at any time to the newly improved game with better graphics and sound. And it is not just some algorithm to improve the original imagery, it is entirely re-done and improved. Even the Halo Anniversary edition game managed to allow you to switch between the old and new engine without interruption, so there is no excuse for these games. With this HD collection I feel even more short-changed than before thanks to it only including two games, where others tend to at least be a trilogy in the series. Since the PlayStation 3 does not include any form of backwards compatibility anymore, a move that at the time made no sense other than saving costs, these HD remakes have been coming out on a regular basis, forcing players with classic collections to fork out for the same game again.

If you have an old PlayStation 2 lying around then I suggest you rather find a native copy of these games to play. They graphics are actually smoother, the controls will add great tension, you get to play the games as they were originally intended and finally you will save yourself a few Rands in the process. The Silent Hill HD Collection is the weakest of the recent batch of games to receive this treatment and I hope that future attempts will improve the quality of the games significantly. The Good: Still scary even though the audience is now desensitized; eerie music; new controls. The Bad: New controls cause combat to suffer; feels and looks old. The Ugly: Frame rate issues abound!

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Oltman

Review: Dungeon Hunter: Alliance (PSV)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:24:00 +0000

Among the deluge of launch titles on the PlayStation Vita is a port of an iOS game, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance. While just about all the launch Vita games I’ve played, even the ports, have been good to great, this one remains a generic hack ‘n slash action RPG that is fine to play for about three hours but wears out very soon after that. You play as the resurrected King of Gothicus, sent back from the dead to kill the Queen of Gothicus whom you resurrected from the dead only to discover you had done something one shouldn’t do and now she was the embodiment of evil. A brief cut-scene explains all this and then it’s down to the business of slashing through thousands of goblins, zombies, spiders and all other denizens of bad places in order to kill the evil Queen and fix the problem you created.

Killing creatures mainly involves pressing X. Sometimes as they die from running into your flailing spear they will leave bits of gear lying on the floor for you to pick up, and this, along with a level-up every once in a while offers the most interesting part of the game – collecting loot and selecting gear. Every so often something will be one stat point better than your current apparel and in a brief moment of excitement you will replace it and then get back to smashing drakes. You can try to be a bit more strategic when fighting by creating two different outfits and switching between them with up or down on the D-pad, but I found you never really got time in big fights to do so, so I came up with one solid outfit and used it. One option that offers some variety is the special attacks you can assign to Square, Triangle or Circle. As you level up you gain these attacks by assigning your skill points to them. They use up mana, so you can’t perform them non-stop, but they offer a bit of extra oomph when you’re facing the bigger enemies. They often don’t look like anything impressive though, and feel a lot like slightly more powerful regular attacks so they don’t break up the monotony nearly enough to keep the fighting interesting.

You know you’re getting to the end of the dungeon when a bigger guy appears, called a boss. The general strategy I employed to defeat these more formidable opponents was was to stand in front of the foe, use a special attack until my mana ran out and then mash X, as normal. When my health ran low I’d press the left shoulder button to drink a potion and get full health and mana again and repeat the process. If I’ve been clever enough choosing weapons and armour and I have enough potions then this works, but it’s very unsatisfying. I couldn’t find a more effective way of dispatching these bosses than this because they’re surrounded by hundreds more minions which make doing any kind of tactics impossible (or, I should say, too much work for me to want to try pull off). In multiplayer this might be better as some people could be assigned to clearing out the riff-raff while you bash the boss.

Once you’ve cleared a dungeon of its boss characters it’s time to head back to the village or town and talk to a person who will tell you where to find the next dungeon you should clear out. The pacing feels decidedly off to me – there is no town where you can wonder around and chat to people who tell you their little stories: that their father has popped out to buy some fish, or that their daughter is out playing and they’re worried about them. Yes, you can go to a town, but the people are not communicative but for a very few, so it gets boring very quickly and you may as well go to the next dungeon. Sadly there is no respite from the incessant hordes of cannon fodder for your hammer other than to assign your skill points or compare the just-looted sword with your current one.

A few features are added to the PS Vita version, or at least their control systems are tweaked from the PlayStation 3 version. Sometimes the fairy that accompanies you will start beeping, an indication that treasure is nearby. Then you can use the rear touch pad to move the fairy around to where she beeps faster and so find the buried treasure (which is more loot, of course). You can also activate the fairy’s special attack by double-tapping the screen where you want it to happen. I found this was difficult to get right and the attack always seemed to happen in a different spot to where I wanted it, but you might have more luck with it. The Vita version of the game, like the PS3 version before it, includes the ability to play alongside three other adventurers. You can do this locally via Wi-Fi, or over the Internet, and doing this would add a lot to the fun of the game, as any co-operative play does.

Dungeon Hunter is clearly inspired by Diablo-like games, and it is technically quite similar to games like Diablo or Torchlight. However, its generic-ness makes it feel soul-less. I had to go back to the extremely bland manual to even remember what the plot was or who I was to write this review. All kinds of enemies are thrown in with a one line explanation about where they come from (the gate to the evil world was opened when the Queen was raised to life), and it seems like they’ve just been thrown in from as many nations’ myths as possible without any consistency. It feels like they’ve been placed there to be hunted, and not so much hunted as scythed through. That’s not to say the game has been thrown together – as I said it’s technically solid, but it certainly was created without any attempt to make a world I would care about or want to engage with unless I liked looting for looting’s sake. For this reason I quickly stopped caring and stopped bothering to engage with it. For me this happened after only about three hours, and I soldiered on for significantly more to see if anything changed, but as I encountered more seemingly random dungeons with more arbitrarily placed hordes and not much to entice me to carry on other than the chance of a random drop being a rare weapon, I stopped.

Rating: 2 stars
Contributor: Peter

Review: Catherine (Xbox360)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Catherine has intrigued those following it from the start: a game exploring feelings about relationship fidelity, where your choices have an effect on the outcome – what possibility! Then the main game mechanic of climbing a tower made of boxes to escape your nightmares was shown and was intriguing enough on its own for me to want to try play it (weird story or not). Atlus deserve a lot of credit for creating a game that is original and conceptually interesting in so many ways that it’s hard to fault it, but it has flaws which detract from the experience it could be, while offering hope for a deeper future in games.

You play the game as Vincent, a 32 year old guy who has a long-time girlfriend called Katherine. The story is mainly told through anime-style cut-scenes (both hand drawn and in-game generated), and in one of the early scenes Katherine mentions the idea of getting married, which kicks the whole story cycle off. Vincent must now figure out whether he’s going to keep things the same or take the step of marrying Katherine. Soon enough, someone named Catherine shows up, Vincent gets drunk and wakes up with Catherine lying next to him. Meanwhile, he’s started to have nightmares, and there are news stories of 30-something year-old guys dying in their sleep for no reason on the TV.

The scenario set-up is clearly fascinating – is Vincent having an affair? Is Katherine really pregnant? Just who is Catherine? Why is Katherine trying to kill Vincent in his nightmares? I should add that the story involves some horror-style twists and explanations, so it will continue to surprise you until the end. It also has horror-style dialogue. For example, conversations between Vincent and Katherine are really awkward and strange for a couple that have been dating for years, and conversations (or lack thereof) between Catherine and Vincent are even weirder. These things are not ever really explained, and the cut-scenes can be very frustrating to watch as ‘you’ say really inane things and generally act spinelessly. Nevertheless, the progression of the story is interesting and adds a great arc within which the nightmares receive more significance.

The nightmares are where you will spend the majority of your time with Catherine (the game I mean, not with Catherine the in-game character). In these dreams, Vincent appears in his pajama shorts with ram horns on his head and a pillow in his hand. He enters the nightmare at the base of a tower made of blocks and to escape he must climb to the top. Each night’s dreams are broken up into a number of climbing sections, with a respite in between them where Vincent can chat to other climbers who are all stuck in the same nightmare (although with different issues chasing them). Other climbers look like anthropomorphic sheep, as if they’re all being led towards their doom. While on the landing between climbing sections you can discover new techniques for climbing by listening to other climbers’ conversations, purchase an item that will help in the next climb or you can save your progress (essential because if you run out of retries it’s game over). When you’re ready to move on you enter a lift which takes you to the base of a new tower.

The actual climbing involves solid puzzle-solving and speed of thinking. Vincent can only climb up one block at a time, so you have to maneuver blocks around to create ‘stairs’ up the tower. Blocks are held in place as long as they are touching another block next to or below them with one edge, which makes it possible to configure blocks in a huge variety of ways. It’s also often mind-bending to imagine how you might move blocks around to make it up, but as you get further in the game this gets easier as you understand how the blocks work better. Unfortunately at this point things also start getting ridiculously difficult (I played on the normal level, and I’d recommend playing on easy if you’re more interested in the story part).

As you’re climbing up the tower the blocks beneath you are falling away, adding significant time pressure to your climbing. In the final stages this pressure is increased as something (or someone) is chasing you, and the only way to defeat them is to get to that final exit door before they splatter you against the blocks. There are some things that help – a few checkpoints are scattered about, although they really are few and far between. You can also undo your moves up to a point by pressing the select button, which helps a lot when you’re trying to figure out a way up what is a seemingly vertical block-face. Items you pick up along the way can help a lot if you use them at the right times, but enemies in the form of other sheep trying to climb also get in your way and might knock you down to a lower position if you don’t knock them out the way first.

The block-climbing mechanic is kept fresh with the addition of new block-types regularly (ice, trampoline, traps, crumbling and exploding blocks, for example), but I don’t think it would be interesting enough for a full-priced console game without the story context. In the same way, the story without the puzzle game mechanic wouldn’t grip you because you wouldn’t be ‘experiencing’ the issues Vincent is dealing with. Combining the two is clever because it allows you to take an active part of the struggles of the character. Sometimes, however, the nightmares can be really frustrating. There are parts of the later towers that feel like pure trial and error because there is almost no way you can work out the path without being able to pause and look (which is not possible). Sometimes it feels like the game is laughing at you as much as Vincent’s nightmares are laughing at him.

Sometimes the plot can be very frustrating too. The little choices you make along the way don’t seem to have much effect on what happens other than perhaps affecting Vincent’s thoughts at certain spots in the cut-scenes and the final ending of it all. That they have any effect at all is great, but it highlights the lack of control we have over videogame plots generally, even though we’re asked to play ‘as’ the main character. I found my involvement in Vincent’s minor choices meant I wanted to be more involved with his major ones and that he kept making the wrong choices. Fortunately you can affect the final outcome of his relationship with Katherine, but even then I wasn’t convinced I should be caring about it since there was almost no sign of there being a real relationship.

Catherine is a bold play by Atlus – a full retail game that is part puzzle, part interactive story with adult themes. I appreciate the attempt at a story that explores experiences in a deeper way by placing you in the nightmares of the character. The frustration of the puzzle parts late in the game and my frustration with the dialogue of Vincent and Katherine (and Catherine) detracted from this. Some dialogue was great and explored relationship issues in a very interesting way, but usually those were secondary characters in the Stray Sheep, a bar in which much of the between-nightmare discussion takes place. If you’re interested in the concept I’d suggest playing the game on easy – the puzzles should still be challenging enough to be interesting and you’ll get to enjoy the plot.

Rating: 3 stars
Contributor: Peter