So last week I commented on the nostalgia factor of Duke Nukem Forever, sequel to an excellent 15 year old FPS from my youth, and it appears we are developing a pattern, as my latest conquest has been Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to 2000's American McGee's Alice, which follows on from Lewis Carrol's famous fairy tales 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'.
Firstly, Disney this ain't, not even the Tim Burton version. It's very dark, and tells the story of an adult Alice, dealing with the death of her family in a domestic blaze and struggling with her own increasing insanity, of which Wonderland itself is a manifestation. Undergoing psychiatric help to cure her dementia, Alice is slowly forgetting her troubled history, and as such Wonderland is ceasing to be, existing solely in her mind. But when new evidence that her family was murdered surfaces, Alice must fight to preserve her memories and recall what happened that night, and in the process, save Wonderland.
Firstly, the game is as schizophrenic as it's protagonist. At times it feels a lot like a child's game, with old-fashioned style platforming gameplay reminiscent of the first Crash Bandicoot games, or more recently Spongebob Squarepants: Creature from the Krusty Krab. The second world in particular, which takes place underwater (ironically very similar in aesthetics to Spongebob's home town Bikini Bottom, with shades of BioShock's Rapture), revolves around talent scouting for cutesy performers to star in a musical play, and is so juvenile I started to question whether I was actually enjoying it. Then all of a sudden you find a room full of sliced up carcases of anthropomorphic fish, and find out that the show is only a ruse (without spoiling too much), and the story takes a darker turn. It was probably intentional, some kind of comparison between Alice's past innocence and darker current self, but it carries off like that a few times and just seems disjointed.
The action is much more up-to-date though, with the obligatory God of War style combat (it seems every game nowadays borrows something from one of the 'Of Wars', be it the God combat or the Gears cover shooting) performing for Alice as well as any other game, and with some Zelda style projectile weapons tossed in for good measure too. Falling to the lower reserves of your health bar gives you a Fallout-3-Nerd-Rage style rage power too, boosting your attack power exponentially for a short time. And all weapons can be upgraded too, in exchange for collectible teeth, no doubt some reference to the original stories that went over my head.
All in all, there is so much to like about the game. The setting is suitably magical and wondrous, and slowly descends into a Silent Hill style nightmare, with some at-times amazing visuals (Alice's hair alone looked jaw-dropping as each strand moved individually, especially in the aforementioned undersea level), and some great voice acting really drags you in - Alice sounds like a Legend Trilogy era Lara Croft, only bat-shit crazy. And from time to time the gameplay is broken up by little mini-games, from great retro Arrow Flash style scrolling shooter sections and awesome Limbo style physics-based 2D platforming, to ill-advised Guitar Hero bits and some god-awful pinball inspired levels, but the standard is usually high. If I was to sum it up using one other game for comparison, I would call it this year's Darksiders. Really worth a go, and with the (albeit very dated) original prequel bundled with the game as DLC on top of the unusually long campaign, you get a lot for your money.
Also last week I forgot to mention Mafia II, which my wife bought for me in retaliation to LA Noire being a bit limp, and was surprisingly enjoyable. Out of all of the non-Rockstar involved GTA clones, I'd probably rate Mafia II as the current best, with a Bully style evolving sandbox city changing with the seasons (and indeed years in this case) and very likable characters that you actually care for. Sure, the graphics aren't great and the story is a bit linear, but the grit of the story and some awesome montage cutscenes make up for those minor problems, and the speed limiter for when safe driving is a stroke of genius, especially as Empire City's finest actually do enforce speed limits, unlike the flatfoots of Liberty City. And it's worth playing Mafia II just to hear Nolan North converse with himself in the street if nothing else.
Finally, rounding things up, it's finally paying off to be a Windows Phone 7 gamer, with fully achievement-equipped XBox Live Arcade versions of Angry Birds, Doodle Jump and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 hitting the OS in recent weeks, all of which are excellent ports. Speaking of Sonic, I played the demo of Sonic Generations too, and the 3D recreation of the Green Hill Zone from 1991, complete with the classic music, turned me into a 6-year-old again. I'll be watching that one. And I had a quick go on Outland on the PS3, which is trying to be a cross between Limbo and Shadow Complex and falls so hard in the process. PS3 owners, don't waste your cash, just wait for the port of Limbo due in the next few weeks.
Showing posts with label Hero series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hero series. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Here you go, create another Fable...
Firstly, hope you guys had an awesome Christmas and New Year. I personally spent the former with God of War: Ghost of Sparta and the latter with Fable III, but I'm sure you guys have a much more bustling social life than I. Secondly, I've made a new year's resolution to get back into regular posting here at 24HG, so hopefully most Tuesdays will see a post from me. I tried a more lenient approach to posting, but I rack disciprine.
I'll start with a short roundup of a few of the games I've been playing but don't have much to say about, initially with the aforementioned GoW: Ghost of Sparta. There really isn't much to say about a GoW game that I haven't gushed before, but one thing that jumps out at me about GoS is the visuals, and that it's clearly the most gorgeous game on the PSP yet, and actually visually surpasses the PS2 GoWs, which is no mean feat. A stand out moment was seeing the rain actually run down Kratos' body (totally not gay), something that is rarely seen on a full-on next-gen game.
On Christmas Day I had a go with the gift I bestowed on my Nephew: Batman: The Brave and the Bold on Wii. It was a pleasant surprise, and a nostalgia trip in two ways: The gameplay harks back to the SNES and Megadrive Batman games, particularly The Adventures of Batman and Robin, and the writing style and humour are reminiscent of the 1960's Batman TV series. But most importantly, it was providing the 4 year old budding geek beside me with a better introduction to the DC Universe than I ever had, teaching him of characters like Captain Marvel, Catman and Booster Gold, who I didn't know anything about until my late teens. And that's why it's the most important game in the world right now.
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has also been on my radar, and has somewhat restored my faith in the series. It's probably the best GH since GHIII, and the strongest setlist since World Tour, but the best thing by far is that some effort has actually gone into the single player mode, and it's not just a hub for online play like GH5 and Band Hero were. It's genuinely exciting to see what each character's warrior form looks like, and the unique ability each character possesses adds a new dimension to the gameplay. I'm not sure about the character-specific setlists though. I'd expect pop-rock queen Judy Nails to play songs from bands such as Paramore, Evanescence and Avril Lavigne, not Queen and The Cure like she has, and for resident goth Pandora to have My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy in her set is a bit criminal. There are differences between goth and emo, Neversoft. One cries and writes poetry, the other cries and self harms. Not sure which is which though.
Moving on to the big names, Fable III is something of a departure from the series so far. It still retains the same core gameplay, but with a few changes such as a refined combat and conversation. The former sees the melee, ranged and magical combat all assigned to a single button each, meaning that regular attacks, special attacks and blocking are all placed on the X button, but it actually really works well. And with the conversation, you actually have to snap to your recipient with the A button before engaging them, instead of just wandering into town and gurning at people until you draw a crowd like on Fable II. Also your hero speaks, a feature that really rubbed me up the wrong way at first as it drives a wedge between you and the character, not letting you fully see them as you because it doesn't leave you to put words in their mouth. I got over it though.
The most curious thing about Fable III is the apparent moral of the story is that being, well, moral will get you nowhere. A lot of the side quests have no positive outcome, and later on, without spoiling anything, every positive choice you make will cost you literally thousands of your precious gold, which you need to end the game in any way successfully. Historically I always have played through games like this once as a benevolent male, then on my second run through as a female who's a bit of a bastard (I'd love to hear what a psychiatrist has to say about that one), but the impending failure of my male hero drew me to up sticks and unleash the bitch onto the world early. Overall it's a great game, but it took me a while to get into it, and while it's better than Fable II, the first Fable still holds a very dear part of me. I'll say this about III though, no other game has ever seen me fight off a horde of Zombies side-by-side with Simon Pegg and Jason Manford.
Between Kratos and the Princess of Albion, I headed off to 15th Century Italy once more to spend time with my old mate Ezio in his latest outing: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. ACB is set directly after ACII, in terms of Ezio's timeline and the background events in 2012, and sees Ezio take the fight to Rome after the Pope's son Cesare destroys his Villa, and Nolan North and the Scooby Gang looking for a new hideout after being compromised at the end of the last game.
For the first couple of hours, the game is a near carbon copy of ACII, and honestly failed to impress me, but it really gets good when it comes to recruiting and commanding your own guild of hoodies; a touch of the L2 button while an enemy is in range sees them quickly dispatched by one of your own. The coolest instance of this was when my prey was passing by a hay bale, and was just swept into it in a split second without any of his colleagues or passing civilians batting an eyelid. Your yobs can also be sent on missions all around the world, presumably to hang around in shopping malls and intimidate old ladies, all the while earning you money and levelling themselves up to greater aid you in time of need.
The game rides on a high for quite a while after that, but falls at the final hurdle when it finally allows you full use of the Apple of Eden, which turns out to be a boring and poorly executed game mechanic, turning combat into a tedious waiting game as you are reduced to watching your enemies fight each other, unable to just draw your sword and sort them out yourself. Coupled with the suitably retarded ending that I've come to expect from an AC game, Brotherhood virtually kills itself in the last couple of hours. But for a while, in the middle of the game, it was awesome.
Last thing I wanna talk about is The Sims 3 on the PS3. I was delighted when I learned of it's release, because I've been wanted a true, undiluted Sims game on a console, and thought that this generation would finally be the one to run it. Well, the gameplay is there, albeit heavily adapted obviously, but the furniture limit that haunted the PS2 Sims games is there, to stop the console running out of memory, thinly disguised as a 'fire hazard meter'. Derp.
I also realised that The Sims is nothing without cheats, forcing you to play through hours of awful, dreary poverty before the game gets fun. A quick scan on GameFAQs shows me that there are in fact cheats for the PS3 version, so before I trade it in for Batman: The Brave and the Bold I'll give it another chance, fully cheat enabled, and see if it grabs me.
So, lastly, before I head into Sim City once more, the 2010 Game of the Year post is coming, along with a 2010 roundup of the rest of the year's games, or at least the ones I've played. I just need to get to grips with a few more of 2010's games first. I'll try and post before January is through. So, with that, I'll see you next Tuesday. Probably.
I'll start with a short roundup of a few of the games I've been playing but don't have much to say about, initially with the aforementioned GoW: Ghost of Sparta. There really isn't much to say about a GoW game that I haven't gushed before, but one thing that jumps out at me about GoS is the visuals, and that it's clearly the most gorgeous game on the PSP yet, and actually visually surpasses the PS2 GoWs, which is no mean feat. A stand out moment was seeing the rain actually run down Kratos' body (totally not gay), something that is rarely seen on a full-on next-gen game.
On Christmas Day I had a go with the gift I bestowed on my Nephew: Batman: The Brave and the Bold on Wii. It was a pleasant surprise, and a nostalgia trip in two ways: The gameplay harks back to the SNES and Megadrive Batman games, particularly The Adventures of Batman and Robin, and the writing style and humour are reminiscent of the 1960's Batman TV series. But most importantly, it was providing the 4 year old budding geek beside me with a better introduction to the DC Universe than I ever had, teaching him of characters like Captain Marvel, Catman and Booster Gold, who I didn't know anything about until my late teens. And that's why it's the most important game in the world right now.
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has also been on my radar, and has somewhat restored my faith in the series. It's probably the best GH since GHIII, and the strongest setlist since World Tour, but the best thing by far is that some effort has actually gone into the single player mode, and it's not just a hub for online play like GH5 and Band Hero were. It's genuinely exciting to see what each character's warrior form looks like, and the unique ability each character possesses adds a new dimension to the gameplay. I'm not sure about the character-specific setlists though. I'd expect pop-rock queen Judy Nails to play songs from bands such as Paramore, Evanescence and Avril Lavigne, not Queen and The Cure like she has, and for resident goth Pandora to have My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy in her set is a bit criminal. There are differences between goth and emo, Neversoft. One cries and writes poetry, the other cries and self harms. Not sure which is which though.
Moving on to the big names, Fable III is something of a departure from the series so far. It still retains the same core gameplay, but with a few changes such as a refined combat and conversation. The former sees the melee, ranged and magical combat all assigned to a single button each, meaning that regular attacks, special attacks and blocking are all placed on the X button, but it actually really works well. And with the conversation, you actually have to snap to your recipient with the A button before engaging them, instead of just wandering into town and gurning at people until you draw a crowd like on Fable II. Also your hero speaks, a feature that really rubbed me up the wrong way at first as it drives a wedge between you and the character, not letting you fully see them as you because it doesn't leave you to put words in their mouth. I got over it though.
The most curious thing about Fable III is the apparent moral of the story is that being, well, moral will get you nowhere. A lot of the side quests have no positive outcome, and later on, without spoiling anything, every positive choice you make will cost you literally thousands of your precious gold, which you need to end the game in any way successfully. Historically I always have played through games like this once as a benevolent male, then on my second run through as a female who's a bit of a bastard (I'd love to hear what a psychiatrist has to say about that one), but the impending failure of my male hero drew me to up sticks and unleash the bitch onto the world early. Overall it's a great game, but it took me a while to get into it, and while it's better than Fable II, the first Fable still holds a very dear part of me. I'll say this about III though, no other game has ever seen me fight off a horde of Zombies side-by-side with Simon Pegg and Jason Manford.
Between Kratos and the Princess of Albion, I headed off to 15th Century Italy once more to spend time with my old mate Ezio in his latest outing: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. ACB is set directly after ACII, in terms of Ezio's timeline and the background events in 2012, and sees Ezio take the fight to Rome after the Pope's son Cesare destroys his Villa, and Nolan North and the Scooby Gang looking for a new hideout after being compromised at the end of the last game.
For the first couple of hours, the game is a near carbon copy of ACII, and honestly failed to impress me, but it really gets good when it comes to recruiting and commanding your own guild of hoodies; a touch of the L2 button while an enemy is in range sees them quickly dispatched by one of your own. The coolest instance of this was when my prey was passing by a hay bale, and was just swept into it in a split second without any of his colleagues or passing civilians batting an eyelid. Your yobs can also be sent on missions all around the world, presumably to hang around in shopping malls and intimidate old ladies, all the while earning you money and levelling themselves up to greater aid you in time of need.
The game rides on a high for quite a while after that, but falls at the final hurdle when it finally allows you full use of the Apple of Eden, which turns out to be a boring and poorly executed game mechanic, turning combat into a tedious waiting game as you are reduced to watching your enemies fight each other, unable to just draw your sword and sort them out yourself. Coupled with the suitably retarded ending that I've come to expect from an AC game, Brotherhood virtually kills itself in the last couple of hours. But for a while, in the middle of the game, it was awesome.
Last thing I wanna talk about is The Sims 3 on the PS3. I was delighted when I learned of it's release, because I've been wanted a true, undiluted Sims game on a console, and thought that this generation would finally be the one to run it. Well, the gameplay is there, albeit heavily adapted obviously, but the furniture limit that haunted the PS2 Sims games is there, to stop the console running out of memory, thinly disguised as a 'fire hazard meter'. Derp.
I also realised that The Sims is nothing without cheats, forcing you to play through hours of awful, dreary poverty before the game gets fun. A quick scan on GameFAQs shows me that there are in fact cheats for the PS3 version, so before I trade it in for Batman: The Brave and the Bold I'll give it another chance, fully cheat enabled, and see if it grabs me.
So, lastly, before I head into Sim City once more, the 2010 Game of the Year post is coming, along with a 2010 roundup of the rest of the year's games, or at least the ones I've played. I just need to get to grips with a few more of 2010's games first. I'll try and post before January is through. So, with that, I'll see you next Tuesday. Probably.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Carry on camping! - 24 Hour Gamer hits the fields...
Yes, this last weekend has seen Me, Trev and our respective other 'alves Susie and Katie took to the North Yorkshire Moors with nothing but a few canvas sheets and grim determination on our side. As usual, gaming was involved, but the weekend wasn't limited to that alone. So without further ado, our weekend.
SATURDAY, 25/9/10: Here I am, Rock you like a Hurricane...
The ride over to Whitby went without fault, aside from the customary return to Sheffield 10 minutes into the journey to lock the front door, but that's a given. It wasn't until we were around three quarters of the way there that the sky turned a threatening shade of grey, and by the time we'd got there our moorland home for the weekend had seen a fair amount of rain and the wind was blowing at over 30 miles per hour, making tent-pitching a bit of a nightmare to say the least. We picked a spot behind a group with a large trailer-tent, hoping that it might provide a bit of shelter from the elements, and after three hours of wrestling with tents and a quick change out of our mud-soaked clothes, we headed into Scarborough, only to hit a fresh disaster when Katie's car dropped dead as we were looking for a parking spot.
Mechanic called and dinner eaten in a local pub (in which a guy at the bar was knee-deep in Just Cause 2 on his laptop), the four of us headed down to the sea front, where Trev and I quickly ducked into the amusements. Unable to coax Trev into a game on Guitar Hero Arcade, we ended up taking up arms against a bunch of not-extinct-enough dinosaurs in Primeval Hunt, a light gun shooter from experts in the field (if ever there were) Sega. The game is centered around hunting certain species of dinosaur in the way a big game hunter would hunt an animal nowadays, stalking them through the undergrowth and taking them down. Of course this comes with an element of danger, one example of which was when a boisterous Triceratops took offense to being shot up the arsehole and charged, and in the later hunts a few unwanted guests arrive in the form of the ever-present Spielbergian T Rexes and Velociraptors, the former of which arrived twice and were taken out with a rocket to the head from each of us.
The weapon in the players' hands in Primeval Hunt is a pump-action shotgun, which can also double up as a rifle and a crossbow in-game, and the guns feature speakers in the barrels to give realism. And to give the game a free-roaming quality, the arcade cab featured a touch-screen map near the shotgun holsters which we could use to pinpoint and travel to our prey. Overall it was an excellent shooter, really fun and the guns were as accurate as they come, especially for shotties. The game is screaming out for a Wii conversion, and the Shotgun layout is perfectly suited to the Wii Zapper, the front trigger of which could double up as the reload pump and the Nunchuck's Z button could be used to fire. Throw in DS connectivity for the touch-screen and they'd be on to a winner. I'd get it on release anyway.
After a quick stint on the 2p pusher machines bore fruit by dropping me a Mario plush and some creepy racist-looking Voodoo Doll, we headed off to get a taxi back too our blustery haven, where we were delighted to find that our tents were mostly still there, and after a brief bonding session with a lovely bloke in a camper van who pulled in next to us for the night (of who's luxury we were definitely not jealous), we spent a few hours drinking in Trev's tent before retiring to our beds, where Trev found that playing Half-Minute Hero in a monsoon isn't particularly possible, and Susie and I were kept awake all night by the drunk Geordie bastards in the trailer-tent.
SUNDAY, 26/9/10: Come with me if you want to live...
We awoke to find that the wind had died down quite a lot overnight, although it had had it's toll on our tents, both of which had suffered pole damage and ours was starting to come apart at the seams. Unfazed, we headed into Whitby early for breakfast, where we made a hasty retreat from the cafe we settled on after they undercharged us by about a fiver. The more astute among you will notice that on this day last year I was actually getting married in Whitby, so the wife and I had planned to have our dinner at the Magpie cafe, our favourite eatery in the town. But unfortunately, it's everyone else's favourite too, for good reason, and neither of us really felt like queueing to get in. So we carried on along the seafront, and Trev and myself once again found ourselves in the amusements as the girls had a walk down to the beach.
We found a dusty old Time Crisis 2 cab in the back of one arcade, and had a couple of goes on that, where Trev got his own back after my domination on Primeval Hunt by handling the game like a pro, after I waited ages at the start of the game for my 'turn', forgetting about the foot pedal that pops you out from behind cover, and then spent the rest of the game catching bullets and missiles with my face. We pondered the other machines, and looked for another Primeval Hunt machine unsuccessfully. When Susie and Katie returned, The ladies had a go on Ford Racing: Full Blown (which, once again, I've been instructed to mention that Susie won), while I once again donned my hunting cap for the more conventional Big Buck Hunter. The game has more or less the same premise as PH, just with more likely prey and a lack of touch screen. I chose to hunt the moose, and did pretty well, again sparking a stampede after shooting a buck up the arsehole. After passing all of the trials, I was treated to a bonus round shooting turkeys, of which only four out of the whole 25 escaped my pump-action retribution. The shotgun really is my weapon of choice.
Following that, my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary by taking up arms against the machine army in the excellent Terminator Salvation: The Arcade Game. The game is a standard lightgun shooter, but the weapon in your hand is where the game shines. A full-sized assault rifle with real recoil, it is weighty and effective, and during the game I picked up a chaingun, which actually altered the speed and intensity of the recoil. To reload, instead of shooting off-screen, you tap the bottom of the rifle's 'clip', as if you were actually slamming in another magazine. And under the barrel is a grenade button, where an attachable grenade launcher would be found. We didn't last long, but what we did see of the game was amazing fun, and the visuals were great, with so much happening on-screen at once. And the cabs were readily available all over Whitby and Scarborough, so if anyone chances across it, give it a go. Trev tried to gamble for a knock-off Wii-style console for a bit, but ended up settling for the minor prize he could have had from each go, and walked away with a Machop Pokemon toy.
A cream tea and a walk around later, and we headed up to the whalebone arch to have our photo taken, as we had done the year before following the wedding. The weather, cold, blustery and wet, was a stark contrast to the gorgeous sunshine of last year, so we quickly boarded a taxi back to the site. The wind was now manageable, so we built our kites and spent an absolutely amazing afternoon flying them on the field, before a storm I'd been watching in the valley below swept around and we had to dash inside. Once it had passed, we fired up a barbecue and before long we headed into our beds, where I finished off Def Jam: Fight for NY - The Takeover, then slept a little while before another storm beating against our tent put an end to my rest.
MONDAY, 27/9/10: Country road, take me home...
We awoke to good news, Katie's car was going to live and a new clutch could be affixed before the day was through. Both Tents had to be thrown away, the elements had been unkind once more and Trev and Katie's tent had let in a fair bit of rain. We packed our things and waved goodbye as Trev and Katie headed into Scarborough to get the car, and set off home ourselves through the thickest fog I have ever seen. Upon our return, we split the unspent holiday cash, which amounted to £100 each, and I spend my lot on Halo: Reach, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and a preorder was placed for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which if the demo is anything to go by is both beautiful and brilliant, a perfect marriage of God of War and Uncharted, with the same kind of decayed beauty as Gears of War. So that gives us something to look forward to over the coming weeks. Hasta luego, fellas.
SATURDAY, 25/9/10: Here I am, Rock you like a Hurricane...
The ride over to Whitby went without fault, aside from the customary return to Sheffield 10 minutes into the journey to lock the front door, but that's a given. It wasn't until we were around three quarters of the way there that the sky turned a threatening shade of grey, and by the time we'd got there our moorland home for the weekend had seen a fair amount of rain and the wind was blowing at over 30 miles per hour, making tent-pitching a bit of a nightmare to say the least. We picked a spot behind a group with a large trailer-tent, hoping that it might provide a bit of shelter from the elements, and after three hours of wrestling with tents and a quick change out of our mud-soaked clothes, we headed into Scarborough, only to hit a fresh disaster when Katie's car dropped dead as we were looking for a parking spot.
Mechanic called and dinner eaten in a local pub (in which a guy at the bar was knee-deep in Just Cause 2 on his laptop), the four of us headed down to the sea front, where Trev and I quickly ducked into the amusements. Unable to coax Trev into a game on Guitar Hero Arcade, we ended up taking up arms against a bunch of not-extinct-enough dinosaurs in Primeval Hunt, a light gun shooter from experts in the field (if ever there were) Sega. The game is centered around hunting certain species of dinosaur in the way a big game hunter would hunt an animal nowadays, stalking them through the undergrowth and taking them down. Of course this comes with an element of danger, one example of which was when a boisterous Triceratops took offense to being shot up the arsehole and charged, and in the later hunts a few unwanted guests arrive in the form of the ever-present Spielbergian T Rexes and Velociraptors, the former of which arrived twice and were taken out with a rocket to the head from each of us.
The weapon in the players' hands in Primeval Hunt is a pump-action shotgun, which can also double up as a rifle and a crossbow in-game, and the guns feature speakers in the barrels to give realism. And to give the game a free-roaming quality, the arcade cab featured a touch-screen map near the shotgun holsters which we could use to pinpoint and travel to our prey. Overall it was an excellent shooter, really fun and the guns were as accurate as they come, especially for shotties. The game is screaming out for a Wii conversion, and the Shotgun layout is perfectly suited to the Wii Zapper, the front trigger of which could double up as the reload pump and the Nunchuck's Z button could be used to fire. Throw in DS connectivity for the touch-screen and they'd be on to a winner. I'd get it on release anyway.
After a quick stint on the 2p pusher machines bore fruit by dropping me a Mario plush and some creepy racist-looking Voodoo Doll, we headed off to get a taxi back too our blustery haven, where we were delighted to find that our tents were mostly still there, and after a brief bonding session with a lovely bloke in a camper van who pulled in next to us for the night (of who's luxury we were definitely not jealous), we spent a few hours drinking in Trev's tent before retiring to our beds, where Trev found that playing Half-Minute Hero in a monsoon isn't particularly possible, and Susie and I were kept awake all night by the drunk Geordie bastards in the trailer-tent.
SUNDAY, 26/9/10: Come with me if you want to live...
We awoke to find that the wind had died down quite a lot overnight, although it had had it's toll on our tents, both of which had suffered pole damage and ours was starting to come apart at the seams. Unfazed, we headed into Whitby early for breakfast, where we made a hasty retreat from the cafe we settled on after they undercharged us by about a fiver. The more astute among you will notice that on this day last year I was actually getting married in Whitby, so the wife and I had planned to have our dinner at the Magpie cafe, our favourite eatery in the town. But unfortunately, it's everyone else's favourite too, for good reason, and neither of us really felt like queueing to get in. So we carried on along the seafront, and Trev and myself once again found ourselves in the amusements as the girls had a walk down to the beach.
We found a dusty old Time Crisis 2 cab in the back of one arcade, and had a couple of goes on that, where Trev got his own back after my domination on Primeval Hunt by handling the game like a pro, after I waited ages at the start of the game for my 'turn', forgetting about the foot pedal that pops you out from behind cover, and then spent the rest of the game catching bullets and missiles with my face. We pondered the other machines, and looked for another Primeval Hunt machine unsuccessfully. When Susie and Katie returned, The ladies had a go on Ford Racing: Full Blown (which, once again, I've been instructed to mention that Susie won), while I once again donned my hunting cap for the more conventional Big Buck Hunter. The game has more or less the same premise as PH, just with more likely prey and a lack of touch screen. I chose to hunt the moose, and did pretty well, again sparking a stampede after shooting a buck up the arsehole. After passing all of the trials, I was treated to a bonus round shooting turkeys, of which only four out of the whole 25 escaped my pump-action retribution. The shotgun really is my weapon of choice.
Following that, my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary by taking up arms against the machine army in the excellent Terminator Salvation: The Arcade Game. The game is a standard lightgun shooter, but the weapon in your hand is where the game shines. A full-sized assault rifle with real recoil, it is weighty and effective, and during the game I picked up a chaingun, which actually altered the speed and intensity of the recoil. To reload, instead of shooting off-screen, you tap the bottom of the rifle's 'clip', as if you were actually slamming in another magazine. And under the barrel is a grenade button, where an attachable grenade launcher would be found. We didn't last long, but what we did see of the game was amazing fun, and the visuals were great, with so much happening on-screen at once. And the cabs were readily available all over Whitby and Scarborough, so if anyone chances across it, give it a go. Trev tried to gamble for a knock-off Wii-style console for a bit, but ended up settling for the minor prize he could have had from each go, and walked away with a Machop Pokemon toy.
A cream tea and a walk around later, and we headed up to the whalebone arch to have our photo taken, as we had done the year before following the wedding. The weather, cold, blustery and wet, was a stark contrast to the gorgeous sunshine of last year, so we quickly boarded a taxi back to the site. The wind was now manageable, so we built our kites and spent an absolutely amazing afternoon flying them on the field, before a storm I'd been watching in the valley below swept around and we had to dash inside. Once it had passed, we fired up a barbecue and before long we headed into our beds, where I finished off Def Jam: Fight for NY - The Takeover, then slept a little while before another storm beating against our tent put an end to my rest.
MONDAY, 27/9/10: Country road, take me home...
We awoke to good news, Katie's car was going to live and a new clutch could be affixed before the day was through. Both Tents had to be thrown away, the elements had been unkind once more and Trev and Katie's tent had let in a fair bit of rain. We packed our things and waved goodbye as Trev and Katie headed into Scarborough to get the car, and set off home ourselves through the thickest fog I have ever seen. Upon our return, we split the unspent holiday cash, which amounted to £100 each, and I spend my lot on Halo: Reach, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and a preorder was placed for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which if the demo is anything to go by is both beautiful and brilliant, a perfect marriage of God of War and Uncharted, with the same kind of decayed beauty as Gears of War. So that gives us something to look forward to over the coming weeks. Hasta luego, fellas.
Friday, 29 January 2010
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
There's been a decidedly Sci-Fi feel to my gaming this week. As reported, I was attempting to gather up the remaining Achievements on Fallout 3, so it occured to me that I should download and play the 5th and final expansion pack Mothership Zeta. I'd not heard good things about it to be honest, but for the sake of my Gamerscore (which, as any self-respecting Xbox gamer will tell you, is a virtual extension to one's penis), I thought I'd give it a shot.
The add-on is triggered when you find Fallout 3's fabled UFO crash site, previously infamous for the ridiculously powerful Alien Blaster you find there, and are 'beamed up' so to speak, to the titular alien mothership where you are experimented on and placed in an induced coma. When you awaken, you are greeted in a cell by a lady named Somah. She throws the idea out there that if you stage a fist fight the guards will unlock the door, and then the two of you can fuck them up and escape, and surprisingly it works (although she neglected to mention that she's bricks hard and very good at unarmed combat, and that resulted in a crippled head for me). So begins a tale of survival and escapism, involving a cowboy, a samurai, about a million aliens and a 200 year old little girl, but I'll not ruin any of that for you.
I actually enjoyed it, not as much as Point Lookout but definitely as much as The Pitt and more than Broken Steel and Operation Anchorage. It appeased the latent Sci-Fi geek in me, and kept me occupied for pretty much a full day. There are a bunch of new weapons available, my favourite of which was the Alien Disintegrator, a sort of Laser Rifle with a clip capacity of 100 shots and a reload time of under a second. At the end of the story I came away with upwards of 1600 rounds for it, and that's after heavy usage throughout too, so it will most likely see me through the last four Cheevos that I haven't acquired yet. Also to note is the fact that all of the alien equipment is extremely light, most of it doesn't weigh a thing, so you can virtually bankrupt the Capital Wasteland when you get back with your loot, which oddly enough none of the merchants bat an eyelid at. Much recommended anyway.
Fallout 3 has pretty much taken up the bulk of my week, but the big story is today's release of Mass Effect 2, the collector's edition of which saw me £60 poorer this morning. First things first, the collector's content is actually really good. The double-thick cardboard sleeve houses both a steelbook and a cardboard case (a mere mortal collector's edition only offers one of either). The steelbook holds both game disks and a bonus disk (the contents of which are still a mystery to me), plus the instructions, obviously, and a download code for some GAME-exclusive armour, and the fold-out cardboard case contains a plastic wallet-size Cerberus Network membership card (Mass Effect 2's platform for downloading DLC, which costs a completely unreasonable 1200 MS Points for anyone who buys the game preowned), which then grants you access to a downloadable squad member and side-quest, as well as a hardback artbook and the first issue of the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series. It doesn't look like much, but it seems worth it when it's in your hands. It's safe to say that, apart from the Guitar Hero bundles, this is the most expensive game I've ever bought though.
On to the game. I can't say too much, mainly because I haven't had time to form a proper opinion on it just yet. I will say that it doesn't seem quite as good as the first one, it just doesn't feel as deep. The game is more of a shooter it seems, and less of an RPG. Your squadmates, for example, have a default look, which isn't changeable. And the guns have technologically regressed, and now need reloading, like every other FPS. They tried to explain it, something about the advanced weaponry needing extra coolant that needs to be changed, but any way you look at it it's still reloading, and you need to collect the coolant, which is still ammo. The graphics, which were my only gripe with the first one, have been improved tenfold, there's none of the scruffy shadows and the texture pop up is entirely gone. It makes my pasty, deformed Shepard look a lot, ahem, more noticeable. Another plus-point is the fact that you can sprint outside of combat now, and for a lot longer, so you don't have to dad-run around the Citadel anymore.
The new characters (who I won't go into in detail for risk of spoilers) don't seem as likable as the ones in the first game though. I've seen a few returning faces, Seth Green's abhorrent Joker is still around and even more hateful, and Dr Chakwas (an anagram of 'hacksaw', fact fans) is knocking about on the ship. There's also been brief appearances from everyone's favourite bigots Ashley and Navigator Pressley, Cpt. Arbiter (sorry, Anderson) and Udina, Tali and even that Asari I let escape from Saren's lab on Virmire the first time round. There are a few new races too, the only ones I've seen so far are called the Vorcha, who are very theatrical enemies with the way they bare their fangs and growl as they talk. They are basically the monster equivalent of Dick Dastardly.
I'll report more next week, after I've had a bit more time with it. In other news this week, I earned my first ever Platinum Trophy on the PS3, for Assassin's Creed II. For the XBox fanboys out there, a Platinum Trophy is awarded when you collect all of the other Trophies, which usually mirror the Achievements on a 360 game. So in effect, I 1000ed it. And on a similar note, I got that 490 point Cheevo on Band Hero. I'm not addicted to Gamerscore, I promise. I was very proud of myself for not buying Tatsunoko vs. Capcom today, opting to be the bigger man and actually get my nephew a birthday present. Mario Kart Wii, if you were wondering. Oh, and ask Raz7el what happened when we played Dead or Alive 4 today. Laters...
The add-on is triggered when you find Fallout 3's fabled UFO crash site, previously infamous for the ridiculously powerful Alien Blaster you find there, and are 'beamed up' so to speak, to the titular alien mothership where you are experimented on and placed in an induced coma. When you awaken, you are greeted in a cell by a lady named Somah. She throws the idea out there that if you stage a fist fight the guards will unlock the door, and then the two of you can fuck them up and escape, and surprisingly it works (although she neglected to mention that she's bricks hard and very good at unarmed combat, and that resulted in a crippled head for me). So begins a tale of survival and escapism, involving a cowboy, a samurai, about a million aliens and a 200 year old little girl, but I'll not ruin any of that for you.
I actually enjoyed it, not as much as Point Lookout but definitely as much as The Pitt and more than Broken Steel and Operation Anchorage. It appeased the latent Sci-Fi geek in me, and kept me occupied for pretty much a full day. There are a bunch of new weapons available, my favourite of which was the Alien Disintegrator, a sort of Laser Rifle with a clip capacity of 100 shots and a reload time of under a second. At the end of the story I came away with upwards of 1600 rounds for it, and that's after heavy usage throughout too, so it will most likely see me through the last four Cheevos that I haven't acquired yet. Also to note is the fact that all of the alien equipment is extremely light, most of it doesn't weigh a thing, so you can virtually bankrupt the Capital Wasteland when you get back with your loot, which oddly enough none of the merchants bat an eyelid at. Much recommended anyway.
Fallout 3 has pretty much taken up the bulk of my week, but the big story is today's release of Mass Effect 2, the collector's edition of which saw me £60 poorer this morning. First things first, the collector's content is actually really good. The double-thick cardboard sleeve houses both a steelbook and a cardboard case (a mere mortal collector's edition only offers one of either). The steelbook holds both game disks and a bonus disk (the contents of which are still a mystery to me), plus the instructions, obviously, and a download code for some GAME-exclusive armour, and the fold-out cardboard case contains a plastic wallet-size Cerberus Network membership card (Mass Effect 2's platform for downloading DLC, which costs a completely unreasonable 1200 MS Points for anyone who buys the game preowned), which then grants you access to a downloadable squad member and side-quest, as well as a hardback artbook and the first issue of the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series. It doesn't look like much, but it seems worth it when it's in your hands. It's safe to say that, apart from the Guitar Hero bundles, this is the most expensive game I've ever bought though.
On to the game. I can't say too much, mainly because I haven't had time to form a proper opinion on it just yet. I will say that it doesn't seem quite as good as the first one, it just doesn't feel as deep. The game is more of a shooter it seems, and less of an RPG. Your squadmates, for example, have a default look, which isn't changeable. And the guns have technologically regressed, and now need reloading, like every other FPS. They tried to explain it, something about the advanced weaponry needing extra coolant that needs to be changed, but any way you look at it it's still reloading, and you need to collect the coolant, which is still ammo. The graphics, which were my only gripe with the first one, have been improved tenfold, there's none of the scruffy shadows and the texture pop up is entirely gone. It makes my pasty, deformed Shepard look a lot, ahem, more noticeable. Another plus-point is the fact that you can sprint outside of combat now, and for a lot longer, so you don't have to dad-run around the Citadel anymore.
The new characters (who I won't go into in detail for risk of spoilers) don't seem as likable as the ones in the first game though. I've seen a few returning faces, Seth Green's abhorrent Joker is still around and even more hateful, and Dr Chakwas (an anagram of 'hacksaw', fact fans) is knocking about on the ship. There's also been brief appearances from everyone's favourite bigots Ashley and Navigator Pressley, Cpt. Arbiter (sorry, Anderson) and Udina, Tali and even that Asari I let escape from Saren's lab on Virmire the first time round. There are a few new races too, the only ones I've seen so far are called the Vorcha, who are very theatrical enemies with the way they bare their fangs and growl as they talk. They are basically the monster equivalent of Dick Dastardly.
I'll report more next week, after I've had a bit more time with it. In other news this week, I earned my first ever Platinum Trophy on the PS3, for Assassin's Creed II. For the XBox fanboys out there, a Platinum Trophy is awarded when you collect all of the other Trophies, which usually mirror the Achievements on a 360 game. So in effect, I 1000ed it. And on a similar note, I got that 490 point Cheevo on Band Hero. I'm not addicted to Gamerscore, I promise. I was very proud of myself for not buying Tatsunoko vs. Capcom today, opting to be the bigger man and actually get my nephew a birthday present. Mario Kart Wii, if you were wondering. Oh, and ask Raz7el what happened when we played Dead or Alive 4 today. Laters...
Friday, 22 January 2010
Matt Day-Mahn!
You know what makes me awesome? The fact that I buy games that I know to be widely condemned as shit, unplayable smears of filth on a perfectly good BluRay or DVD, wastes of nonrenewable resources used to create the disk, just so I can attempt to entertainingly write about how shit they are for you, the 3 or 4 people who actually read this crap every week. But you know what makes life awesome? When they aren't actually that bad.
Take Hellboy: The Science of Evil as an example. The PS3 version, which is the one I've been playing, received a score of 47% on Metacritic, yet I fail to see what's so bad about it. It's not like Batman, where I'm a complete fanboy, I did love the first Hellboy movie but the second was garbage, the comics do very little to hold my attention and the animated films are a bit on the mundane side, so if I was to be biased I'd be joining them.
The game itself is an enjoyable God-of-War-em-up which places you in the hooves of the titular demonic anti-hero as you (for reasons yet unknown) chase a Witch through a surprisingly atmospheric forest graveyard, bashing the daylights out of everything in your way with your signature massive stone hand, or whatever you find yourself close enough to pick up at the time, from discarded weapons to chunks of a tree to severed parts of enemies departed. As well as the melee combat you also have Red's trusty sidearm, his oversized revolver which can be equipped with various different kinds of ammunition to serve different purposes, from freezing enemies to destroying enchanted doorways.
The game occasionally flashes back to one of Hellboy's previous missions too, the first of which being a trip to Japan which throws quite a few nods to the first of the animated films 'Blood and Iron', with enchanted swords and floating heads, and to bait the fans an encounter with Herman von Klempt and his kriegsaffe, Brutus.
It's good brainless fun, slightly average but not bad, and it will sate my appetite before I get my hands on God of War III, Dante's Inferno and Darksiders in a couple of months. Glad I played Hellboy first though, doubt it would receive such a positive review after the big three.
Also, given this weeks post's title (I couldn't resist even though it's not his likeness), I've hammered through The Bourne Conspiracy on the XBox360, and absolutely loved it.
The game borrows from a lot of others, but the most unlikely (but most apparent) influence comes in the form of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. When Bourne first appeared onscreen I immediately thought, with his appearance being close to Nathan Drake, Shadow Complex's Jason Flemming and Dark Void's William Grey, that he should have been voiced by he-who-shall-not-be-named. But the way he runs, takes cover, flinches from near misses and to an extent fights (he uses Drake's familiar jump-punch move) also echo Naughty Dog's triumph.
The gunplay is what ultimately lets Bourne down, being uninspired copy-and-paste Gears of War style hide and shoot (although with the more realistic weaponry and destructible cover, it also harks back to Uncharted), and as well as being a bit mundane at times it also gets a little frustrating. But the melee combat really shines. Unlike Uncharted, where you could punch and shoot on the fly, when an enemy engages Bourne up close the game shifts into a Shenmue style fighting mechanic, in which combinations of heavy and light attacks can be used, and when an on-screen 'adrenaline meter' reaches the appropriate level, the B button can trigger 'takedown moves' which immediately incapacitate between one and three enemies in a true-to-the-film cinematic fashion, often making use of the environment in typically inventive ways.
Speaking of cinematics, some of the cutscenes are hauntingly close to the film, particularly the failed assassination attempt on the boat and the Paris apartment attack, which was without a doubt a highlight of the game for me. And taking to the streets of a very destructible Paris in a very indestructible Mini Cooper in a Burnout meets The Italian Job frenzy was an absolute thrill-ride. I had hoped the driving mechanic would pop up again somewhere, as it was fantastic fun, but it never did. Anyway, I whole-heartedly recommend this to fans of both the film and the genre, it's available at most preowned shops for around £7 and won't eat up a lot of time, but it's a very rewarding experience.
It's a rare game that challenges a player to question his or her own sexuality. Curiosity led me to Google Dragon Age: Origins' man-on-man sex scene, and I unwaveringly decided it wasn't for me. Yet Band Hero, which the wife brought home on Sunday, had me worried at times at just how much enjoyment I was having with it, not only was I fearing for my heterosexuality but at times, bopping along to No Doubt's 'Just a Girl', I even began to wonder about my actual gender.
I know I commented on the demo, saying it was arse, but the full game actually proves itself to be more fun and actually slightly more polished than Guitar Hero 5. The series' cast is back in full force, but they've been bastardized to fit the game's X-Factor aesthetic. Gone is Johnny Napalm's Mohican, tamed to blond spikes. Goodbye Judy Nail's piercings, she's resorted to the awful Avril Lavigne 'mosher' template. And what did they do to Axel Steel...
The band also play a more visible role this time, when a track features a female vocalist the game provides you with one, so you aren't watching a butch metalhead squeal out a girlish ballad. Also, in the case of Evanescence's angst-ridden abortion 'Bring Me To Life', the bits where the guy sings were performed by my avatar, the guitarist. "Ha ha, you're the fat one" the wife pointed out. Her words cut deeper than any knife. I did resent the fact that, when playing 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls, the camera panned to me for the line 'Easy V doesn't come for free'. Not only does it insult my sexuality, now I'm a hooker too. And a real lady, apparently. It makes up for the insults in a very realistically obtainable achievement worth 490 points (seriously) though.
Okay, to wrap things up: Having a bit of a break from Sam and Max after a barmy (yet equally genius and hilarious) song and dance routine about war performed by a bunch of presidential aides just about melted my brain, and have decided that ACII Discovery isn't as good as it first seems, as it's all to easy to wind up stuck between two guards and with the blocking reversals from the other games somehow forgotten about this surely means certain death. And have decided to spend the XBox time between now and Mass Effect 2 hoovering up the last few achievements on Fallout 3, including collecting the Bobbleheads, which I epic failed at when I blew up Megaton without collecting the one from Lucas Simms' house and forgot to save beforehand. I had to go back to the previous save before that, which lost me about three hours' play. And a warning to anyone else starting afresh, don't try to do Operation Anchorage at level 5. It's unforgiving. Ciao.
Take Hellboy: The Science of Evil as an example. The PS3 version, which is the one I've been playing, received a score of 47% on Metacritic, yet I fail to see what's so bad about it. It's not like Batman, where I'm a complete fanboy, I did love the first Hellboy movie but the second was garbage, the comics do very little to hold my attention and the animated films are a bit on the mundane side, so if I was to be biased I'd be joining them.
The game itself is an enjoyable God-of-War-em-up which places you in the hooves of the titular demonic anti-hero as you (for reasons yet unknown) chase a Witch through a surprisingly atmospheric forest graveyard, bashing the daylights out of everything in your way with your signature massive stone hand, or whatever you find yourself close enough to pick up at the time, from discarded weapons to chunks of a tree to severed parts of enemies departed. As well as the melee combat you also have Red's trusty sidearm, his oversized revolver which can be equipped with various different kinds of ammunition to serve different purposes, from freezing enemies to destroying enchanted doorways.
The game occasionally flashes back to one of Hellboy's previous missions too, the first of which being a trip to Japan which throws quite a few nods to the first of the animated films 'Blood and Iron', with enchanted swords and floating heads, and to bait the fans an encounter with Herman von Klempt and his kriegsaffe, Brutus.
It's good brainless fun, slightly average but not bad, and it will sate my appetite before I get my hands on God of War III, Dante's Inferno and Darksiders in a couple of months. Glad I played Hellboy first though, doubt it would receive such a positive review after the big three.
Also, given this weeks post's title (I couldn't resist even though it's not his likeness), I've hammered through The Bourne Conspiracy on the XBox360, and absolutely loved it.
The game borrows from a lot of others, but the most unlikely (but most apparent) influence comes in the form of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. When Bourne first appeared onscreen I immediately thought, with his appearance being close to Nathan Drake, Shadow Complex's Jason Flemming and Dark Void's William Grey, that he should have been voiced by he-who-shall-not-be-named. But the way he runs, takes cover, flinches from near misses and to an extent fights (he uses Drake's familiar jump-punch move) also echo Naughty Dog's triumph.
The gunplay is what ultimately lets Bourne down, being uninspired copy-and-paste Gears of War style hide and shoot (although with the more realistic weaponry and destructible cover, it also harks back to Uncharted), and as well as being a bit mundane at times it also gets a little frustrating. But the melee combat really shines. Unlike Uncharted, where you could punch and shoot on the fly, when an enemy engages Bourne up close the game shifts into a Shenmue style fighting mechanic, in which combinations of heavy and light attacks can be used, and when an on-screen 'adrenaline meter' reaches the appropriate level, the B button can trigger 'takedown moves' which immediately incapacitate between one and three enemies in a true-to-the-film cinematic fashion, often making use of the environment in typically inventive ways.
Speaking of cinematics, some of the cutscenes are hauntingly close to the film, particularly the failed assassination attempt on the boat and the Paris apartment attack, which was without a doubt a highlight of the game for me. And taking to the streets of a very destructible Paris in a very indestructible Mini Cooper in a Burnout meets The Italian Job frenzy was an absolute thrill-ride. I had hoped the driving mechanic would pop up again somewhere, as it was fantastic fun, but it never did. Anyway, I whole-heartedly recommend this to fans of both the film and the genre, it's available at most preowned shops for around £7 and won't eat up a lot of time, but it's a very rewarding experience.
It's a rare game that challenges a player to question his or her own sexuality. Curiosity led me to Google Dragon Age: Origins' man-on-man sex scene, and I unwaveringly decided it wasn't for me. Yet Band Hero, which the wife brought home on Sunday, had me worried at times at just how much enjoyment I was having with it, not only was I fearing for my heterosexuality but at times, bopping along to No Doubt's 'Just a Girl', I even began to wonder about my actual gender.
I know I commented on the demo, saying it was arse, but the full game actually proves itself to be more fun and actually slightly more polished than Guitar Hero 5. The series' cast is back in full force, but they've been bastardized to fit the game's X-Factor aesthetic. Gone is Johnny Napalm's Mohican, tamed to blond spikes. Goodbye Judy Nail's piercings, she's resorted to the awful Avril Lavigne 'mosher' template. And what did they do to Axel Steel...
The band also play a more visible role this time, when a track features a female vocalist the game provides you with one, so you aren't watching a butch metalhead squeal out a girlish ballad. Also, in the case of Evanescence's angst-ridden abortion 'Bring Me To Life', the bits where the guy sings were performed by my avatar, the guitarist. "Ha ha, you're the fat one" the wife pointed out. Her words cut deeper than any knife. I did resent the fact that, when playing 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls, the camera panned to me for the line 'Easy V doesn't come for free'. Not only does it insult my sexuality, now I'm a hooker too. And a real lady, apparently. It makes up for the insults in a very realistically obtainable achievement worth 490 points (seriously) though.
Okay, to wrap things up: Having a bit of a break from Sam and Max after a barmy (yet equally genius and hilarious) song and dance routine about war performed by a bunch of presidential aides just about melted my brain, and have decided that ACII Discovery isn't as good as it first seems, as it's all to easy to wind up stuck between two guards and with the blocking reversals from the other games somehow forgotten about this surely means certain death. And have decided to spend the XBox time between now and Mass Effect 2 hoovering up the last few achievements on Fallout 3, including collecting the Bobbleheads, which I epic failed at when I blew up Megaton without collecting the one from Lucas Simms' house and forgot to save beforehand. I had to go back to the previous save before that, which lost me about three hours' play. And a warning to anyone else starting afresh, don't try to do Operation Anchorage at level 5. It's unforgiving. Ciao.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Today must be my lucky day, baby, you are the Prototype...
My name is 24 Hour Gamer, and my wife is addicted to Dragon Age Origins.
She decided to give it a try last Friday, and subsequently spent eight hours straight playing it. Like me, she's struggled with the complexity of the game but as an Oblivion veteran the setting appeals to her.
I'm not going to go too much into Dragon Age this week, I've been on about it for the last two weeks, but without spoiling too much, I had a 'Wrex moment' last night, that I wasn't very happy about. I'm getting the feeling that by this time next week I'll have finished the game and be able to give a final verdict on it, and I'm tempted to name it my game of the year. No other game this year has kept me going for 29 hours without me getting bored, Borderlands took me 27 hours to finish but is nowhere near as deep and rewarding. And there's still probably a few hours left to do on Dragon Age.
I decided that leaving the 360 version of Alone in the Dark alone was probably the best idea, before it destroys my interest in a buggy mass of glitches, and the PS3's Inferno has now established itself on my Christmas list. Instead, I've opted to play Prototype as my secondary game this week.
Prototype does nothing new, instead it's like a 'best of' collection of aspects of other superhero games. It has the jumping of Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, the climbing of Spider-Man 2 and it's sequels, the combat of Wolverine, the gliding from Arkham Asylum (if you want to get anal about release dates, Batman Begins then), Car Throwing from Crackdown, and (I may be clutching at straws here) Venom's absorbing people for health from Ultimate Spider-Man. But it does all of that very well indeed.
The game places you under the omnipresent hood of Alex Mercer, who begins the game on a morgue slab, about to have an autopsy. He wakes up from his apparent death, and after the initial panic of narrowly avoiding dissection realises he has complete amnesia, and the ability to do, well, whatever the fuck he wants to thanks to a virus he's contracted. With the help of his sister, Dana, he finds another infected person, and sets out to free her from her prison, only to discover she's completely mental and wants to infect the entire city. So it's your job to stop her.
Alex, while being very much a hero in this story, is not a very nice man. There's none of the "don't hurt the civilians" from other superhero games, Mercer can and does indiscriminately murder anyone he feels, to the point that it's actually physically difficult not to kill any innocents (as I've already mentioned, you need to consume them for health). They always see to fly into a panic, and instead of running away from you, they just scatter in all directions and quite often end up between your claws and an enemy's throat.
And aside from that, killing them is actually really entertaining. It's great fun sprinting into a crowd and grabbing a passer by before they've even seen you coming, running up the side of a building without even breaking stride and tossing them to their doom, or picking up a car and, again, sprinting through a crowd watching the bodies fly. Strangely enough though, every time I do grab a random New Yorker, they always seem to be female, and there's no safe way to let them go. All you can do is throw them and hope they don't decapitate themselves on a lamp post during their flight.
I tried out the demo for Band Hero. Although a rocker at heart, I thought playing songs like Walking on Sunshine would be great fun to play, but said song is on the demo and it really wasn't that great. Guitar games have gotten so stale that it doesn't even matter what you're playing, it's all just pressing buttons and strumming in rhythm. So DJ Hero must breathe new life into the series, right? No, I played it in Gamestation this week, it's shit. Also had a bit of a go with Mini Ninjas, which is forgettable (and I couldn't help but notice that they stole the enemy death effect from Zelda: Wind Waker) and Galaga Legions, which very nearly sent me into an epileptic seizure. I don't recommend it.
Finally, everyone sign up to Playfire. I have a profile on there, and it's a great networking site for gamers with an addictive award scheme which is like a cross between Achievements and Trophies. Check it out.
She decided to give it a try last Friday, and subsequently spent eight hours straight playing it. Like me, she's struggled with the complexity of the game but as an Oblivion veteran the setting appeals to her.
I'm not going to go too much into Dragon Age this week, I've been on about it for the last two weeks, but without spoiling too much, I had a 'Wrex moment' last night, that I wasn't very happy about. I'm getting the feeling that by this time next week I'll have finished the game and be able to give a final verdict on it, and I'm tempted to name it my game of the year. No other game this year has kept me going for 29 hours without me getting bored, Borderlands took me 27 hours to finish but is nowhere near as deep and rewarding. And there's still probably a few hours left to do on Dragon Age.
I decided that leaving the 360 version of Alone in the Dark alone was probably the best idea, before it destroys my interest in a buggy mass of glitches, and the PS3's Inferno has now established itself on my Christmas list. Instead, I've opted to play Prototype as my secondary game this week.
Prototype does nothing new, instead it's like a 'best of' collection of aspects of other superhero games. It has the jumping of Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, the climbing of Spider-Man 2 and it's sequels, the combat of Wolverine, the gliding from Arkham Asylum (if you want to get anal about release dates, Batman Begins then), Car Throwing from Crackdown, and (I may be clutching at straws here) Venom's absorbing people for health from Ultimate Spider-Man. But it does all of that very well indeed.
The game places you under the omnipresent hood of Alex Mercer, who begins the game on a morgue slab, about to have an autopsy. He wakes up from his apparent death, and after the initial panic of narrowly avoiding dissection realises he has complete amnesia, and the ability to do, well, whatever the fuck he wants to thanks to a virus he's contracted. With the help of his sister, Dana, he finds another infected person, and sets out to free her from her prison, only to discover she's completely mental and wants to infect the entire city. So it's your job to stop her.
Alex, while being very much a hero in this story, is not a very nice man. There's none of the "don't hurt the civilians" from other superhero games, Mercer can and does indiscriminately murder anyone he feels, to the point that it's actually physically difficult not to kill any innocents (as I've already mentioned, you need to consume them for health). They always see to fly into a panic, and instead of running away from you, they just scatter in all directions and quite often end up between your claws and an enemy's throat.
And aside from that, killing them is actually really entertaining. It's great fun sprinting into a crowd and grabbing a passer by before they've even seen you coming, running up the side of a building without even breaking stride and tossing them to their doom, or picking up a car and, again, sprinting through a crowd watching the bodies fly. Strangely enough though, every time I do grab a random New Yorker, they always seem to be female, and there's no safe way to let them go. All you can do is throw them and hope they don't decapitate themselves on a lamp post during their flight.
I tried out the demo for Band Hero. Although a rocker at heart, I thought playing songs like Walking on Sunshine would be great fun to play, but said song is on the demo and it really wasn't that great. Guitar games have gotten so stale that it doesn't even matter what you're playing, it's all just pressing buttons and strumming in rhythm. So DJ Hero must breathe new life into the series, right? No, I played it in Gamestation this week, it's shit. Also had a bit of a go with Mini Ninjas, which is forgettable (and I couldn't help but notice that they stole the enemy death effect from Zelda: Wind Waker) and Galaga Legions, which very nearly sent me into an epileptic seizure. I don't recommend it.
Finally, everyone sign up to Playfire. I have a profile on there, and it's a great networking site for gamers with an addictive award scheme which is like a cross between Achievements and Trophies. Check it out.
Friday, 13 November 2009
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days, through the fire and the flames we carry on!
My name is 24 Hour Gamer, and I am addicted to Dragon Age Origins.
It's always daunting for a non-RPGer to take his or her first tentative steps into a Role-Playing Game, they blind you with stats and classes and items with all kinds of different names (why can't a healing potion be called a healing potion in every game?) until before you know it you find yourself curled up in a foetal position fully clothed in the shower, sobbing, with the names of various plants and what kind of healing properties they have Sharpied all over the walls. Just me?
I've been playing light RPGs for the last couple of years, games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Borderlands, Fable 2, Mass Effect and (cough) Two Worlds, all of which I can still play like an Action/Adventure or FPS if the mood takes me, and foolishly I thought I would be ready for Bioware's latest epic. "It can't have the combat system that made me cry like KOTOR, surely" I thought. "Bioware has learned with Mass Effect that real-time combat is the way to go, it'll be like Fable" I thought.
"Oh, fuck." I realised as I played it. But I'd spent £45 of my hard earned cash on this, I wasn't going to just give up like I did with Star Wars, so I persevered, and now, a week later I am beginning to obsess over Dragon Age, like I did with Oblivion before it.
I'd like to talk about the party members. I picked up my last one last night, a Dwarf called Oghren with the best moustache I've ever seen. They don't just chip in every now and then with conflicting emotions regarding choices to be made like in Mass Effect, everything you do influences what they think of you, whether they like you or not. It's like a violent version of The Sims. But I've not really noticed anything interesting about the characters, there isn't a single Garrus or Wrex among them, nobody I find interesting enough as a person to keep them with me. Shale, the stone Golem was okay, but he was that strong he was getting all of the kills and thus all of the experience points, so I had to drop him from the team. So I opted to just go with all the characters that wanted to nail me, because it made the dialogue between them interesting; Morrigan, the witch from the swamp, Leliana, the redhead assassin and Zevran, the male elf. Yes, there are gay sex scenes, nipple sucking intact. I'd love to see what the Daily Mail has to say about that one.
I've had another dip into my shame pile this week and dipped my toes into Alone in the Dark, expecting to retract them straight away as a wayward turd floats up to me. But as it happens, my expectations were so low that I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals especially are noteworthy, quite reminiscent of The Darkness, and the cinematic effect of being in a crumbling building almost rivals Uncharted 2. Almost. The main problem I had was with the controls and camera view, and apparently there's a driving section that reduces grown men to tears. But I've read that all of these issues were resolved in the PS3 version, subtitled Inferno, so I may just throw the 360 copy back on the shelf and try and find the PS3 one cheap.
And that about wraps it up. Had a quick go on Aliens vs. Predator 2 on the PC in the week, and it's hard to imagine ever being scared by the sub-PS2 graphics, but once upon a time it terrified me. But saying that, so did Silent Hill and Dino Crisis on the PS1 so what can I say? And had a quick go on Guitar Hero World Tour on drums with my Wife and my friend Paul over XBox Live, and half an hour of it nigh on killed me. I am so out of shape. Maybe I ought to try that Wii Fit that's collecting dust in the corner.
It's always daunting for a non-RPGer to take his or her first tentative steps into a Role-Playing Game, they blind you with stats and classes and items with all kinds of different names (why can't a healing potion be called a healing potion in every game?) until before you know it you find yourself curled up in a foetal position fully clothed in the shower, sobbing, with the names of various plants and what kind of healing properties they have Sharpied all over the walls. Just me?
I've been playing light RPGs for the last couple of years, games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Borderlands, Fable 2, Mass Effect and (cough) Two Worlds, all of which I can still play like an Action/Adventure or FPS if the mood takes me, and foolishly I thought I would be ready for Bioware's latest epic. "It can't have the combat system that made me cry like KOTOR, surely" I thought. "Bioware has learned with Mass Effect that real-time combat is the way to go, it'll be like Fable" I thought.
"Oh, fuck." I realised as I played it. But I'd spent £45 of my hard earned cash on this, I wasn't going to just give up like I did with Star Wars, so I persevered, and now, a week later I am beginning to obsess over Dragon Age, like I did with Oblivion before it.
I'd like to talk about the party members. I picked up my last one last night, a Dwarf called Oghren with the best moustache I've ever seen. They don't just chip in every now and then with conflicting emotions regarding choices to be made like in Mass Effect, everything you do influences what they think of you, whether they like you or not. It's like a violent version of The Sims. But I've not really noticed anything interesting about the characters, there isn't a single Garrus or Wrex among them, nobody I find interesting enough as a person to keep them with me. Shale, the stone Golem was okay, but he was that strong he was getting all of the kills and thus all of the experience points, so I had to drop him from the team. So I opted to just go with all the characters that wanted to nail me, because it made the dialogue between them interesting; Morrigan, the witch from the swamp, Leliana, the redhead assassin and Zevran, the male elf. Yes, there are gay sex scenes, nipple sucking intact. I'd love to see what the Daily Mail has to say about that one.
I've had another dip into my shame pile this week and dipped my toes into Alone in the Dark, expecting to retract them straight away as a wayward turd floats up to me. But as it happens, my expectations were so low that I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals especially are noteworthy, quite reminiscent of The Darkness, and the cinematic effect of being in a crumbling building almost rivals Uncharted 2. Almost. The main problem I had was with the controls and camera view, and apparently there's a driving section that reduces grown men to tears. But I've read that all of these issues were resolved in the PS3 version, subtitled Inferno, so I may just throw the 360 copy back on the shelf and try and find the PS3 one cheap.
And that about wraps it up. Had a quick go on Aliens vs. Predator 2 on the PC in the week, and it's hard to imagine ever being scared by the sub-PS2 graphics, but once upon a time it terrified me. But saying that, so did Silent Hill and Dino Crisis on the PS1 so what can I say? And had a quick go on Guitar Hero World Tour on drums with my Wife and my friend Paul over XBox Live, and half an hour of it nigh on killed me. I am so out of shape. Maybe I ought to try that Wii Fit that's collecting dust in the corner.
Friday, 2 October 2009
No gun shooting, for Rudy tonight... No retributing, everything is alright...
I'm back!
Spent the last week in Scarborough, having been married and stuff. It was a great ceremony, and aside from a stupidly parked van and some obnoxious wankers in a pub, a great week. But oh, this blog is about videogames, and two weeks have passed!
The first week at home I spent mainly playing through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, trying to get it fresh in my mind before Uncharted 2 plops through my letter box in a couple of weeks. I don't care what anyone says, in my opinion it's probably the best current-gen game so far, speaking from a single-player perspective. In fact, only the XBox fanboys who are content to do the exact same things over and over again on multiplayer Gears or Left 4 Dead seem to have anything bad to say about it, and that's mainly about a lack of multiplayer, which will change in a few weeks. They seem to overlook the absolutely gorgeous graphics and animation, brilliant voice-acting and the fact that the gameplay, while doing nothing new, is among the best in it's field.
Anyway, ranting aside, I went to Scarborough armed with my PSP, and while I was there I got very much acquainted with Resistance: Retribution. At first I was unsure, with the frankly unconventional controls and Razzy-worthy dialogue and voice-acting, but it ended up dragging me in, and is actually more entertaining than Resistance 2. The main character, James Grayson, is a far cry from the solemn, heroic Nathan Hale: He's foul mouthed, racist and sounds like a mixture of Ray Winstone and Kano from Mortal Kombat. In the opening scenes of the game he stumbles upon his brother, Johnny, half way through being converted into a Chimera, and is forced to kill him for his own good. He then clicks his heels, tips his hat and sets off to kill all of the Chimera by himself, like a Cockney Punisher.
Well, a Cockney Punisher who occasionally slips into an Australian accent anyway. The accents are inconsistent throughout, at one point a soldier went from being Scottish to English and back again in one cutscene like an Oblivion hobo. The game was obviously acted out by a non-British cast. But the one-liners in the game did keep me entertained and had me struggling for a title to this post. My favourite was 'I will rape your skull'. God bless.
It also keeps the feel from the first Resistance, more of a wartime aesthetic, as opposed to the futuristic and very American feel of R2, which in my opinion was one of the things that lost the series' appeal. The other main things that R2 changed were the limited weapon capacity and regenerating health as seen in, well, every other shooter around at the minute, losing the series' uniqueness, and both are back to the retro styles in Retribution too, which is nice.
The game looks gorgeous too. In fact, if you have a PSP just buy it for fuck's sake. Unless you're french, that is; it's really quite racist in places. It's definitely one of the stronger titles on the handheld though.
One of the first things that my new wife did after the day was hand me my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade. Granted, she was playing on easy to my hard, but it was very one-sided. Realising afterwards that it is really just a port of Guitar Hero III, where the hard setting is slightly out of my comfort zone, we had two rematches with me on medium, both victories for me, and another on hard, hers again. Great fun. Afterwards we cooled down with a game on House of the Dead 4, which is strongly in need of a console port.
Also in the arcades we had a go on Outrun 2, which was great fun and reminded me that I still need to get Outrun Arcade on the PS3 or 360. Then we stumbled upon something else...
Paradise Lost is an arcade game from Ubisoft, sporting the artwork and environments from FarCry. You basically sit on gun emplacements and hold the trigger down while knobheads in Crocodile Dundee hats run into your line of fire and collapse into frankly weird shapes thanks to the sub-par ragdoll physics. The best part of the game, in fact, was the fact that in the continue screen you can alter the speed of the countdown by pressing the triggers and grenade buttons. And that is saying a lot. A bit of a read on Wikipedia tells me it is actually supposed to be an arcade version of FarCry. I suppose so. And Susie requests that I tell everyone that, for what it's worth, she had a higher kill count than me, and therefore won.
To wrap this up, my old XBox 360 came back, but the wife bought me an Elite anyway, along with Guitar Hero 5, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Ninja Gaiden II, Prototype, Red Faction Guerrilla and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which should keep me occupied for a while. Also got Halo 2 on standby too, as I have only played the first one up until now, and I'm quite looking forward to hopefully making a late discovery as to what the fuss is all about. Verdict next week.
Spent the last week in Scarborough, having been married and stuff. It was a great ceremony, and aside from a stupidly parked van and some obnoxious wankers in a pub, a great week. But oh, this blog is about videogames, and two weeks have passed!
The first week at home I spent mainly playing through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, trying to get it fresh in my mind before Uncharted 2 plops through my letter box in a couple of weeks. I don't care what anyone says, in my opinion it's probably the best current-gen game so far, speaking from a single-player perspective. In fact, only the XBox fanboys who are content to do the exact same things over and over again on multiplayer Gears or Left 4 Dead seem to have anything bad to say about it, and that's mainly about a lack of multiplayer, which will change in a few weeks. They seem to overlook the absolutely gorgeous graphics and animation, brilliant voice-acting and the fact that the gameplay, while doing nothing new, is among the best in it's field.
Anyway, ranting aside, I went to Scarborough armed with my PSP, and while I was there I got very much acquainted with Resistance: Retribution. At first I was unsure, with the frankly unconventional controls and Razzy-worthy dialogue and voice-acting, but it ended up dragging me in, and is actually more entertaining than Resistance 2. The main character, James Grayson, is a far cry from the solemn, heroic Nathan Hale: He's foul mouthed, racist and sounds like a mixture of Ray Winstone and Kano from Mortal Kombat. In the opening scenes of the game he stumbles upon his brother, Johnny, half way through being converted into a Chimera, and is forced to kill him for his own good. He then clicks his heels, tips his hat and sets off to kill all of the Chimera by himself, like a Cockney Punisher.
Well, a Cockney Punisher who occasionally slips into an Australian accent anyway. The accents are inconsistent throughout, at one point a soldier went from being Scottish to English and back again in one cutscene like an Oblivion hobo. The game was obviously acted out by a non-British cast. But the one-liners in the game did keep me entertained and had me struggling for a title to this post. My favourite was 'I will rape your skull'. God bless.
It also keeps the feel from the first Resistance, more of a wartime aesthetic, as opposed to the futuristic and very American feel of R2, which in my opinion was one of the things that lost the series' appeal. The other main things that R2 changed were the limited weapon capacity and regenerating health as seen in, well, every other shooter around at the minute, losing the series' uniqueness, and both are back to the retro styles in Retribution too, which is nice.
The game looks gorgeous too. In fact, if you have a PSP just buy it for fuck's sake. Unless you're french, that is; it's really quite racist in places. It's definitely one of the stronger titles on the handheld though.
One of the first things that my new wife did after the day was hand me my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade. Granted, she was playing on easy to my hard, but it was very one-sided. Realising afterwards that it is really just a port of Guitar Hero III, where the hard setting is slightly out of my comfort zone, we had two rematches with me on medium, both victories for me, and another on hard, hers again. Great fun. Afterwards we cooled down with a game on House of the Dead 4, which is strongly in need of a console port.
Also in the arcades we had a go on Outrun 2, which was great fun and reminded me that I still need to get Outrun Arcade on the PS3 or 360. Then we stumbled upon something else...
Paradise Lost is an arcade game from Ubisoft, sporting the artwork and environments from FarCry. You basically sit on gun emplacements and hold the trigger down while knobheads in Crocodile Dundee hats run into your line of fire and collapse into frankly weird shapes thanks to the sub-par ragdoll physics. The best part of the game, in fact, was the fact that in the continue screen you can alter the speed of the countdown by pressing the triggers and grenade buttons. And that is saying a lot. A bit of a read on Wikipedia tells me it is actually supposed to be an arcade version of FarCry. I suppose so. And Susie requests that I tell everyone that, for what it's worth, she had a higher kill count than me, and therefore won.
To wrap this up, my old XBox 360 came back, but the wife bought me an Elite anyway, along with Guitar Hero 5, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Ninja Gaiden II, Prototype, Red Faction Guerrilla and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which should keep me occupied for a while. Also got Halo 2 on standby too, as I have only played the first one up until now, and I'm quite looking forward to hopefully making a late discovery as to what the fuss is all about. Verdict next week.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords eternally retold...
How did I get so far in life without the Killzone franchise?
Yes, Killzone 2 is now over, and I loved every minute. Even the bits that were so brutal it hurt, like fighting the ATAC on the roof, or the final assault on the palace, were both great set pieces.
I really don't know what to say about the game, other than it was awesome. The sheer chaos that was experienced during gunfights is unmatched, Gears of War's skirmishes seemed really tame in comparison. To quote a friend of mine; "Killzone 2 really depicts well what happens when the shit hits the fan", and I think that about sums it up.
Since Killzone was over, I've been playing SoulCalibur Legends, which I picked up a while back for a fiver from Blockbusters. After all the negativity, I was expecting the game to be virtually unplayable. Now, while it is shit, it's not offensively so. It's like a PS1 game that you remember fondly, or a mini game tacked on to a 1-on-1 fighter like Tekken Force, or indeed SoulCalibur's own Edgemaster Mode. And part of me is certain that it was originally conceived as the latter.
The game starts you off as Siegfried, and as you progress you pick up stragglers and other Soul Series mainstays. So far I've been latched on to by Sophitia, Astaroth and Dead or Alive reject Ivy Valentine, the latter two I have always perceived as being bad guys. I could have been wrong. Just seem to be strange choices when there's awesome people like Mitsurugi in the wings. Oh, and I decked Cervantes, but he wasn't up for joining me.
The voice acting is hilarious as expected, and every battle can be won pretty much by sellotaping the Wii Remote to an epilepsy sufferer and making him watch anime, but it's fun, and that's what counts. Whether it will still be fun later in the game, time will tell.
Of course if I'd parted with £40 for it, I'd be mortified, but for a fiver it's really not that bad. Could be worse, could be Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
When I tried my wireless PS2 pad finally, it didn't work. Turns out my PS2 had blown a fuse, typically the fuse that supplies power to the Dual Shock 2's motors and any wireless joypad's receiver, so I had to get myself a new PS2, and get rid of the old one. Well, I didn't have to, but y'know. Long story short, if you're going to trade a console in at CEX, be prepared to wait half an hour for them to test it, and bring some ID. And if you get served by the same girl that I did, smack her in the eye, the surly cow.
What else, what else... Oh yeah, tried Guitar Hero III on hard the other day, seeing as I can cruise through World Tour at that difficulty. Failed the first encore. That game is so much harder. And had a go at Motorstorm on multiplayer last night for the first time in ages to christen my mate's new PS3 Slim. There was a guy teleporting. If you have to cheat to enjoy a game, what's the point? Oh yeah, and I'm indifferent to Dissidia. The Final Fantasy VII freak in me will no doubt buy it though.
Yes, Killzone 2 is now over, and I loved every minute. Even the bits that were so brutal it hurt, like fighting the ATAC on the roof, or the final assault on the palace, were both great set pieces.
I really don't know what to say about the game, other than it was awesome. The sheer chaos that was experienced during gunfights is unmatched, Gears of War's skirmishes seemed really tame in comparison. To quote a friend of mine; "Killzone 2 really depicts well what happens when the shit hits the fan", and I think that about sums it up.
Since Killzone was over, I've been playing SoulCalibur Legends, which I picked up a while back for a fiver from Blockbusters. After all the negativity, I was expecting the game to be virtually unplayable. Now, while it is shit, it's not offensively so. It's like a PS1 game that you remember fondly, or a mini game tacked on to a 1-on-1 fighter like Tekken Force, or indeed SoulCalibur's own Edgemaster Mode. And part of me is certain that it was originally conceived as the latter.
The game starts you off as Siegfried, and as you progress you pick up stragglers and other Soul Series mainstays. So far I've been latched on to by Sophitia, Astaroth and Dead or Alive reject Ivy Valentine, the latter two I have always perceived as being bad guys. I could have been wrong. Just seem to be strange choices when there's awesome people like Mitsurugi in the wings. Oh, and I decked Cervantes, but he wasn't up for joining me.
The voice acting is hilarious as expected, and every battle can be won pretty much by sellotaping the Wii Remote to an epilepsy sufferer and making him watch anime, but it's fun, and that's what counts. Whether it will still be fun later in the game, time will tell.
Of course if I'd parted with £40 for it, I'd be mortified, but for a fiver it's really not that bad. Could be worse, could be Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
When I tried my wireless PS2 pad finally, it didn't work. Turns out my PS2 had blown a fuse, typically the fuse that supplies power to the Dual Shock 2's motors and any wireless joypad's receiver, so I had to get myself a new PS2, and get rid of the old one. Well, I didn't have to, but y'know. Long story short, if you're going to trade a console in at CEX, be prepared to wait half an hour for them to test it, and bring some ID. And if you get served by the same girl that I did, smack her in the eye, the surly cow.
What else, what else... Oh yeah, tried Guitar Hero III on hard the other day, seeing as I can cruise through World Tour at that difficulty. Failed the first encore. That game is so much harder. And had a go at Motorstorm on multiplayer last night for the first time in ages to christen my mate's new PS3 Slim. There was a guy teleporting. If you have to cheat to enjoy a game, what's the point? Oh yeah, and I'm indifferent to Dissidia. The Final Fantasy VII freak in me will no doubt buy it though.
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