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 Limbo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Limbo. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Hey little sister, who's your Superman?
We haven't forgotten you, oh no. I've been caught up with brushing up on my bass guitar skills (sic) and finally discovering this Facebook thing, and my cohort Trev has been busy playing Guild Wars with his siblings none stop, and there are simply not enough hours in the day (hence our still-present title). In the relatively small time I have spent gaming though, I've managed to polish off a few more noteworthy games.
Firstly, I've had another run through Ghostbusters and Batman: Arkham Asylum, two of last year's best games. I've been itching to replay Ghostbusters since I saw the credits roll the first time around, and as I had just finished watching the two films, it seemed like fate when I opened the shame box (the pile was getting a little untidy) and the digitized faces of Murray, Ramis, Aykroid and Hudson met my gaze.
For the absolutely criminal amount of people who ignored the game upon release, Ghostbusters is a continuation of the movie canon, set in 1991 and focusing on the impending threat of a Gozer cultist intent on bringing the asexual flat-topped deity back to the big apple. You play as an unnamed recruit (I say 'unnamed', you get called everything under the sun during the game), hired to test the team's experimental equipment, and retread some classic environments such as the New York City Public Library and the Sedgewick Hotel in a Gears-style 3rd person shooter.
It's a standard affair most of the time, shoot enemies until they drop, that kind of thing, but it really shines when you come up against 'proper' ghosts, who must be whittled down and trapped, just like in the films. There's a real feeling of weight when you're trying to reel in your quarry, and they are thrashing about and generally being unruly, and it's often quite tricky, and thus rewarding, to finally lock the little blighter away. And the whole thing is carried on the shoulders of the awesome comic stylings of the original cast. Plus, the graphics are still great, a rendered Ernie Hudson actually fooled a friend of the wife into believing it was filmed footage. With it's loyal fan service and easter eggs (dancing toaster anyone?), Ghostbusters is essential for any child of the eighties.
Arkham was more strategically placed in the shame box, as the teasers for Arkham City made me salivate with anticipation. Not going into too much as I've already covered B:AA in the blog, but it still looks amazing and I really immersed myself in the combat system this time around, reversing moves, beating up thugs with their own weapons and silently picking off terrified inmates left right and centre, whereas last time I was just hammering the square button until my thumbs bled. I don't think I've seen a combat system this fluid, except maybe in Assassin's Creed, but compared to Arkham the fights in AC seem lifeless and slow. Bring on Arkham City, and soon.
After tiring of Oblivion once more, after another 100+ hours trudging through Tamriel, I skipped a few games in the box until I got to the first 360 game in there, a lovely little game known as Prey. Prey is a 2006 FPS, focusing on a Cherokee alien abductee known as Domasi 'Tommy' Towadi as he gets up to all kinds of hi jinks on board an alien mother ship as they try to go about their business, the cheeky little scamp. Of course, the aliens' business is naturally the abduction and consumption of entire races, so Tommy's interfering is a noble act.
The game is relentlessly old school, forgetting the two-gun system and regenerating health seen in just about every FPS since Halo, instead focusing on a more Doom-like approach. But before you go into flashbacks of having all of your health sapped by a Cyber Demon and running around screaming, frantically searching for a health pack, Be aware that Tommy, being a Cherokee, is very attuned to the spirit world, which regurgitates him back into the world every time he pops his clogs with a refilled health bar and a warm fuzzy feeling inside. But that's also Prey's downfall, after the first couple of levels death isn't even an inconvenience, and it makes the game far too easy even on it's hardest difficulty setting, on which I was able to polish the game off in 8 hours.
But where Prey is physically easy, mentally it's a very difficult game. The environment is often sickeningly gruesome, with the alien ship's seemingly biological parts glistening as if slimey, and mutilated people, some dead, some alive, litter the halls. Tommy's main objective is to rescue his girlfriend Jen, and when you finally find her, you will probably witness one of the most powerful and emotive set-pieces in videogame history. You can get hold of Prey now for about £3, and I thoroughly recommend it. It's nostalgic to a simpler time in FPSes, but pioneered some features that later games took all the credit for (Portal springs to mind, for one). You need Prey, and I need you to have it.
Last, but not least, after seeing the incredible teaser for Bioshock: Infinite, I decided that it was High Time I returned to Rapture and procured a copy of Bioshock 2, for the tender price of £7.99 from GAME. I enjoyed the first one, but felt it didn't need a sequel, and as such dismissed BS2 as a mere cash-in, but truth be told I'm enjoying it far more than I ever thought I would.
Where BS had you playing as a normal man caught up by chance in the ruined atlantian city of Rature, BS2 straps you into the oversized boots of one of the first Big Daddies, bio-mechanical monsters that stalk the streets with their ghoulish little girls extracting a substance known as ADAM from the lifeless bodies of the ill-fated. The extra strength a Big Daddy commands means that every weapon can be carried in one hand, leaving the other open, meaning that a Plasmid ability (a special power such as Telekinesis or Pyrokinesis gained from rewriting your DNA with chemicals) is always at the ready, eliminating the need to switch between them mid fight and making the battles a lot more streamlined. Aside from that, nothing else has really changed, but I'm still waist-deep in it so I could be surprised like I was with Red Dead, no doubt minutes after I post this. But why fix something that wasn't broken?
Okay wrapping it up. Finally gotten around to downloading Alan Wake's first bit of DLC, titled The Signal, but haven't had a go yet. Will do soon. And I've had a good go on the trial versions of Limbo and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, both of which are fantastic pieces of software. The thing is though, I only have the Microsoft Points for one of them, and I can't decide which I should get for the life of me. I'm tilting for the bleak, soul-crushing but ultimately beautiful Limbo though, as I think Maybe I could coax official 24HG commenter Paul into a bit of co-op once Lara hits the PS3 next month. Any views on this via the comments section, please and thank yous.
So yeah, we're still here. Trev's possibly going to crop up at some point with reviews of Nier and Castlevania HD (which is shit by the way, as far as the trial goes anyway), and I'll try and make my visits a bit less sporadic. Buhbye xx.
Firstly, I've had another run through Ghostbusters and Batman: Arkham Asylum, two of last year's best games. I've been itching to replay Ghostbusters since I saw the credits roll the first time around, and as I had just finished watching the two films, it seemed like fate when I opened the shame box (the pile was getting a little untidy) and the digitized faces of Murray, Ramis, Aykroid and Hudson met my gaze.
For the absolutely criminal amount of people who ignored the game upon release, Ghostbusters is a continuation of the movie canon, set in 1991 and focusing on the impending threat of a Gozer cultist intent on bringing the asexual flat-topped deity back to the big apple. You play as an unnamed recruit (I say 'unnamed', you get called everything under the sun during the game), hired to test the team's experimental equipment, and retread some classic environments such as the New York City Public Library and the Sedgewick Hotel in a Gears-style 3rd person shooter.
It's a standard affair most of the time, shoot enemies until they drop, that kind of thing, but it really shines when you come up against 'proper' ghosts, who must be whittled down and trapped, just like in the films. There's a real feeling of weight when you're trying to reel in your quarry, and they are thrashing about and generally being unruly, and it's often quite tricky, and thus rewarding, to finally lock the little blighter away. And the whole thing is carried on the shoulders of the awesome comic stylings of the original cast. Plus, the graphics are still great, a rendered Ernie Hudson actually fooled a friend of the wife into believing it was filmed footage. With it's loyal fan service and easter eggs (dancing toaster anyone?), Ghostbusters is essential for any child of the eighties.
Arkham was more strategically placed in the shame box, as the teasers for Arkham City made me salivate with anticipation. Not going into too much as I've already covered B:AA in the blog, but it still looks amazing and I really immersed myself in the combat system this time around, reversing moves, beating up thugs with their own weapons and silently picking off terrified inmates left right and centre, whereas last time I was just hammering the square button until my thumbs bled. I don't think I've seen a combat system this fluid, except maybe in Assassin's Creed, but compared to Arkham the fights in AC seem lifeless and slow. Bring on Arkham City, and soon.
After tiring of Oblivion once more, after another 100+ hours trudging through Tamriel, I skipped a few games in the box until I got to the first 360 game in there, a lovely little game known as Prey. Prey is a 2006 FPS, focusing on a Cherokee alien abductee known as Domasi 'Tommy' Towadi as he gets up to all kinds of hi jinks on board an alien mother ship as they try to go about their business, the cheeky little scamp. Of course, the aliens' business is naturally the abduction and consumption of entire races, so Tommy's interfering is a noble act.
The game is relentlessly old school, forgetting the two-gun system and regenerating health seen in just about every FPS since Halo, instead focusing on a more Doom-like approach. But before you go into flashbacks of having all of your health sapped by a Cyber Demon and running around screaming, frantically searching for a health pack, Be aware that Tommy, being a Cherokee, is very attuned to the spirit world, which regurgitates him back into the world every time he pops his clogs with a refilled health bar and a warm fuzzy feeling inside. But that's also Prey's downfall, after the first couple of levels death isn't even an inconvenience, and it makes the game far too easy even on it's hardest difficulty setting, on which I was able to polish the game off in 8 hours.
But where Prey is physically easy, mentally it's a very difficult game. The environment is often sickeningly gruesome, with the alien ship's seemingly biological parts glistening as if slimey, and mutilated people, some dead, some alive, litter the halls. Tommy's main objective is to rescue his girlfriend Jen, and when you finally find her, you will probably witness one of the most powerful and emotive set-pieces in videogame history. You can get hold of Prey now for about £3, and I thoroughly recommend it. It's nostalgic to a simpler time in FPSes, but pioneered some features that later games took all the credit for (Portal springs to mind, for one). You need Prey, and I need you to have it.
Last, but not least, after seeing the incredible teaser for Bioshock: Infinite, I decided that it was High Time I returned to Rapture and procured a copy of Bioshock 2, for the tender price of £7.99 from GAME. I enjoyed the first one, but felt it didn't need a sequel, and as such dismissed BS2 as a mere cash-in, but truth be told I'm enjoying it far more than I ever thought I would.
Where BS had you playing as a normal man caught up by chance in the ruined atlantian city of Rature, BS2 straps you into the oversized boots of one of the first Big Daddies, bio-mechanical monsters that stalk the streets with their ghoulish little girls extracting a substance known as ADAM from the lifeless bodies of the ill-fated. The extra strength a Big Daddy commands means that every weapon can be carried in one hand, leaving the other open, meaning that a Plasmid ability (a special power such as Telekinesis or Pyrokinesis gained from rewriting your DNA with chemicals) is always at the ready, eliminating the need to switch between them mid fight and making the battles a lot more streamlined. Aside from that, nothing else has really changed, but I'm still waist-deep in it so I could be surprised like I was with Red Dead, no doubt minutes after I post this. But why fix something that wasn't broken?
Okay wrapping it up. Finally gotten around to downloading Alan Wake's first bit of DLC, titled The Signal, but haven't had a go yet. Will do soon. And I've had a good go on the trial versions of Limbo and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, both of which are fantastic pieces of software. The thing is though, I only have the Microsoft Points for one of them, and I can't decide which I should get for the life of me. I'm tilting for the bleak, soul-crushing but ultimately beautiful Limbo though, as I think Maybe I could coax official 24HG commenter Paul into a bit of co-op once Lara hits the PS3 next month. Any views on this via the comments section, please and thank yous.
So yeah, we're still here. Trev's possibly going to crop up at some point with reviews of Nier and Castlevania HD (which is shit by the way, as far as the trial goes anyway), and I'll try and make my visits a bit less sporadic. Buhbye xx.
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