No trust, all I got is lies, boring, alright...

Once more, such is the peril of playing RPGs, I haven't had time to play anything new and interesting. In fact, I only finished Fable last night, and I'm still knee-deep in Dragon Age, my newly acquired Angry Birds addiction has further hampered my productivity.

To avoid abandoning my weekly schedule and slipping again, like I did last year, I began planning this week's post almost immediately after uploading the last one. I had thought of possibly doing a 'what if?' post, detailing games I would like to see, however unlikely (my favourite of which being Batman: Shattered Dimensions), But scrapped that as the list became dominated with crossover fighting games. Then I had the idea of a look into the upcoming games that excite me, which initially seemed like a great choice, until I realised that between Mortal Kombat, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim, I could write and speculate for about a week without even considering the other impending releases.

I've been thinking about what I would consider Game of the Year for the years before I started this blog, so I decided to try my hand at Game of the Decade, taking the single best games from each year and ranking them against each other, only to abandon the idea when some of the games I wanted to include were far outshone by better but more obvious and boring games released in the same year, case in point: Animal Crossing and The Sims 2 were both released in 2004, unfortunately the same year as GTA: San Andreas. Piss. It was going to go to Oblivion anyway.

All is not lost though, I finally got around to downloading the Kane and Lynch and Legacy of Kain character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which were simultaneously better and worse than I thought they'd be, if such a thing is possible.

They failed to live up to my expectations in regards to how they operate. You can't just use the character to your content, pairing up Lara with Raziel, or, amusingly, Kain and Lynch. Kain and Raziel have to be together, Kane and Lynch have to be together, Lara and Totec have to be together. I was also hoping the characters might play differently, like the Vampires having their respective Reaver swords and being able to use Telekinesis, but to be honest I expected reskins of Lara and Totec and wasn't too underwhelmed when that's all I got.

But the great thing about the character packs is that they aren't just reskins. They have their own stories, which is why they can't be paired off with other characters. Starting a new game plays the ending from the main campaign, cleverly spoiler-free, as Lara bids farewell to Totec after a job well done and comments that the ruins she's leaving behind will likely never be found again. Famous last words, as the fantasy realm of Nosgoth shares an identical temple, and a meddling duo of Vampires once again releases the villainous Xolotl, who drags them to Earth with him, meaning that they must work together to return to their homeland. Or, if you like, Death Row's favourite miscreants Kane and Lynch will stumble on the temple a meager two days after Lara's departure, once again unleashing the demon unto the world, and adopting the heroic role to save the day.

The characters are fully voiced, bringing back the iconic double-act of Simon Templeman and Micheal Bell as Kain and Raziel, and Brian Bloom and Jarion Monroe are back as Kane and Lynch. There's also an air of humour to the game too, as every sentence that spews from the mouth of Kane or Lynch is littered with bleeped-out expletives for comedy effect, and Kain and Raziel's introduction is instigated with the Star Wars style line: 'Meanwhile, in another world... And kind of in the past...'. Made me chuckle anyway.

I personally can't wait to play through the LoK story, it's the closest I'm going to get to a new Legacy of Kain game for a while anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that they just re-used the character models from Legacy of Kain: Defiance, I was hoping to see how a proper, current generation Kain might look. Oh well, when it comes to being a Legacy of Kain fanboy, you get what you're given.

Last off, a glance to the right will show you our new Facebook page. Be sure to 'like' us on there. See you guys soon.

Dammit Tony, they've got Kim!

I've just spent the last week playing 24: The Game on the PS2. Damn Good.
Not only did I get to be Jack Bauer, The game is so far ahead of it's time it's untrue, and I'm kicking myself for not playing it back in the day. It even has physics! It runs on the Havok engine! And not to mention the much coveted cover system, from a time when every game wasn't centered around hiding behind a wall.
Also I've been messing around with Assassin's Creed (forcing myself to replay it because I played it on release and hated it) and Punisher: No Mercy, both on PS3. I've actually really enjoyed Ass Creed this time, although why a slightly-tanned American would be running around in the middle east killing people is beyond me. Maybe they have oil.
No Mercy is, well, it's Unreal Tournament III really. Fair enough, I can play as The Punisher, which would have sold it to me if I couldn't already play as Solid Snake and Cole Train in UTIII. I could argue that it's only £6.29, but you can pick up UTIII for around that now anyway. It's good, don't get me wrong. I still say buy it, but but the PS2/XBox Punisher game first. That's Brilliant.
I actually bought a bunch of games this week too. Killzone 2 is a mere £19.99 at Morissons right now, and Little Big Planet was on Deal of the Week at Blockbuster for a Tenner, so I snapped them both up, and I raided the dreaded '4 for £20' bin and came away with Beowulf, Golden Axe Beast Rider, Dark Sector and a friend got Kane and Lynch. Expect a look at Beast Rider next week.