I'm calling quits...
It's becoming increasingly difficult to write about games on a regular basis and still sound enthusiastic, and on top of that there are so many other aspects of my life that I yearn to record on here, so with that, I am declaring 24HG-UK closed.
But wait, it's not over. I've set up a new blog not far from here, with less confinement in my mission statement. It simply exists for me to vent about all the geekery I get up to on a daily basis. Gaming is present, along with Movies, TV, Comics, Books, Music, and even a bit of real life should I ever chance upon it.
I'll leave this blog here for posterity though, sometimes I do like a good read through and a chuckle as I sit by the log fire with my pipe and a glass of brandy, and maybe one day we can all share this site with our grandchildren. Or something.
But for now it's goodbye from here, it's been a good two years, and I hope to see you all over at Professional Crastination as I close the door on 24HG-UK and lock it tight.
This key is useless now. Discard? Y.
Friday 21 October 2011
Sunday 28 August 2011
I wanna be the very best, like no-one ever was, to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause!
We're currently in the throes of a midlife crisis here at 24HG-UK towers ladies and gents. It all started with my acquisition of the X-Men Animated Series on DVD, then my rekindling a fondness for the soothing tones of Limp Bizkit. And now, to cap it all off, I've been playing Pokemon.
Not the old versions mind, although I do have both the Yellow and Gold editions and a working Game Boy Colour to hand, but this year's Black version on the DS (the standard DS, puzzlingly enough, as it was released about two weeks before the 3DS arrived, which strikes me as a bit of a missed opportunity), and it is absolutely brilliant. Not that it's any different to the old colours of course, thanks to Nintendo's policy of never changing anything, but that doesn't matter, it's not broken so it need not be fixed, as it were.
I had forgotten how much of an asshole the Pokemon AI can be at times though, upon facing my first Gym Leader's Lillipup, which pumped up it's attack power to astonishing levels right up until it's health was in a critical state, then wiped out all six of my Pokemon in six moves without me getting a turn, the bastard. Not phased though. I just need to train mine some more before I sink further into my youth. Ooh look, Comix Zone is on the PSN store...
More on Nintendo and their unwavering opposition to risk-taking, I've also put a few hours into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. I do acknowledge that when the game first arrived on the N64 all those years ago it did radically alter the former Zelda template, but having recently finished Twilight Princess it's glaringly obvious that nothing has changed since then. Once again, however, it's not really that much of a problem because Ocarina is still an incredible game.
One thing though, that really could and should have been altered, is the map in the HUD. Twilight Princess' map switched between floors as you did, making multi-tiered dungeons for more manageable. Ocarina's didn't, and still doesn't, annoyingly.
That's just one minor complaint though, in an otherwise great game, still as impressive now as it ever was, and thanks to a 21st century makeover, it's looking beautiful too. The only thing missing is a touch screen mini game where you catch Link's annoying fairy sidekick Navi in a jam jar and burn the little fucker with a magnifying glass, but no game is perfect, right? Well, not until November anyway.
Hunted has outstayed it's welcome, and as such I've moved on to Red Faction: Armageddon, which ditches the open-world sandbox of it's predecessor Guerrilla for a more traditional underground corridor shooter style that the series was built on. You play as Darius Mason, descendant of Guerrilla's protagonist Alec Mason (Not to be confused with Call of Duty's Alex Mason), a bald man with goggles seemingly surrounded by fellow bald men with goggles (seriously, the game looks like a Chronicles of Riddick convention) who inadvertently condemns the whole of the human population of Mars to life underground by destroying the planet's seemingly solitary terraformer, and then in a completely unrelated event, awakens an ancient race of large surly insects a few weeks later. What is he like?
While the ability to raze buildings to the ground with a lump hammer still... erm... stands, the game seems to have more of a focus on rebuilding and repairing, both of the shattered remains of society that seem to be left every time Darius decides to joke about organizing a riot on Facebook or put a cat in a wheelie bin, and of the environment which inevitably suffers after each hefty firefight, and this concept is seemingly symbolically the franchise as a whole, Armageddon being the closest in tone and concept to the original out of all three sequels. Darius keeps a magic machine on his wrist that unleashes Red Dwarf-style nano-machines to reconstruct anything in it's path, which works as fast as you can run, allowing for some genuinely impressive escapes when things get tough.
Armageddon functions well as a shooter, it's decent. There's no cover system, which would have worked a treat with the rebuild mechanic, and each weapon only has a single function, but everything else is present and correct, if a little old school. The only major problem I have with it is the same thing that bugged me about Halo 2, that you're faced with room after room full of hundreds of bad guys at times, and plugging away at identical aliens for hours on end gets very, very monotonous. And as such, as with Halo 2, I often find myself just legging it past my marauders. Also, as good as Armageddon is (and it is), it fails to live up to Guerrilla's standards. There's still no greater thrill than bombing a 120mph garbage truck into a high-rise building and seeing it collapse on top of you.
Can't help but think though, why didn't he just rebuild the terraformer at the beginning of the game, and avoid all of this hassle? What is he like?
Not the old versions mind, although I do have both the Yellow and Gold editions and a working Game Boy Colour to hand, but this year's Black version on the DS (the standard DS, puzzlingly enough, as it was released about two weeks before the 3DS arrived, which strikes me as a bit of a missed opportunity), and it is absolutely brilliant. Not that it's any different to the old colours of course, thanks to Nintendo's policy of never changing anything, but that doesn't matter, it's not broken so it need not be fixed, as it were.
I had forgotten how much of an asshole the Pokemon AI can be at times though, upon facing my first Gym Leader's Lillipup, which pumped up it's attack power to astonishing levels right up until it's health was in a critical state, then wiped out all six of my Pokemon in six moves without me getting a turn, the bastard. Not phased though. I just need to train mine some more before I sink further into my youth. Ooh look, Comix Zone is on the PSN store...
More on Nintendo and their unwavering opposition to risk-taking, I've also put a few hours into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. I do acknowledge that when the game first arrived on the N64 all those years ago it did radically alter the former Zelda template, but having recently finished Twilight Princess it's glaringly obvious that nothing has changed since then. Once again, however, it's not really that much of a problem because Ocarina is still an incredible game.
One thing though, that really could and should have been altered, is the map in the HUD. Twilight Princess' map switched between floors as you did, making multi-tiered dungeons for more manageable. Ocarina's didn't, and still doesn't, annoyingly.
That's just one minor complaint though, in an otherwise great game, still as impressive now as it ever was, and thanks to a 21st century makeover, it's looking beautiful too. The only thing missing is a touch screen mini game where you catch Link's annoying fairy sidekick Navi in a jam jar and burn the little fucker with a magnifying glass, but no game is perfect, right? Well, not until November anyway.
Hunted has outstayed it's welcome, and as such I've moved on to Red Faction: Armageddon, which ditches the open-world sandbox of it's predecessor Guerrilla for a more traditional underground corridor shooter style that the series was built on. You play as Darius Mason, descendant of Guerrilla's protagonist Alec Mason (Not to be confused with Call of Duty's Alex Mason), a bald man with goggles seemingly surrounded by fellow bald men with goggles (seriously, the game looks like a Chronicles of Riddick convention) who inadvertently condemns the whole of the human population of Mars to life underground by destroying the planet's seemingly solitary terraformer, and then in a completely unrelated event, awakens an ancient race of large surly insects a few weeks later. What is he like?
While the ability to raze buildings to the ground with a lump hammer still... erm... stands, the game seems to have more of a focus on rebuilding and repairing, both of the shattered remains of society that seem to be left every time Darius decides to joke about organizing a riot on Facebook or put a cat in a wheelie bin, and of the environment which inevitably suffers after each hefty firefight, and this concept is seemingly symbolically the franchise as a whole, Armageddon being the closest in tone and concept to the original out of all three sequels. Darius keeps a magic machine on his wrist that unleashes Red Dwarf-style nano-machines to reconstruct anything in it's path, which works as fast as you can run, allowing for some genuinely impressive escapes when things get tough.
Armageddon functions well as a shooter, it's decent. There's no cover system, which would have worked a treat with the rebuild mechanic, and each weapon only has a single function, but everything else is present and correct, if a little old school. The only major problem I have with it is the same thing that bugged me about Halo 2, that you're faced with room after room full of hundreds of bad guys at times, and plugging away at identical aliens for hours on end gets very, very monotonous. And as such, as with Halo 2, I often find myself just legging it past my marauders. Also, as good as Armageddon is (and it is), it fails to live up to Guerrilla's standards. There's still no greater thrill than bombing a 120mph garbage truck into a high-rise building and seeing it collapse on top of you.
Can't help but think though, why didn't he just rebuild the terraformer at the beginning of the game, and avoid all of this hassle? What is he like?
Wednesday 3 August 2011
I'll take your brain to another dimension, pay close attention...
I haven't forgotten to post again, truth be told I've just not been all that arsed about gaming over the last couple of weeks, so I've had little to write about.
I suppose the biggest news is my acquisition of a second-hand Nintendo 3DS, Which set me back a meagre £149.99, less than the proposed price cut and I'll still get the freebies from the Ambassador Programme. Also, the dumbassed previous owners had left an 8gb SD card in the machine, further sweetening my deal. If you're reading this by the way, I deleted your holiday photos.
The only games I've picked up, and indeed the only currently available 3DS games that I'm interested in, are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition (Yes, I'm fully aware that they are both games I already own, I'll buy what I want, you're not my real dad), and I'm saving Zelda for my week in Wales next week, but I'm suitably impressed with SSFIV. It looks better than I ever expected it to, with character models that look almost on a par with it's PS3 counterpart. The backgrounds don't hold up all that well, being made up of layered, stationary 2D sprites, and it gives the whole thing a look like one of those 3D picture box things from Art Attack. The backgrounds are also very low-res, but that's only noticeable in the cutscene before you fight Akuma in Arcade Mode.
As far as gameplay goes, it's about the best version of SFIV I've played (keep in mind I haven't had a go on Arcade Edition yet), must notably because it's got the unreasonably priced DLC costume packs bundled within. Also, the touch screen displays shortcuts to two of your character's Specials and their Super and Ultra, which takes the skill out of it somewhat, rendering them even easier to pull off than Mortal Kombat's all-too-accessible X-Ray moves, but it makes some of the ridiculously difficult moves like Zangief's Ultimate Atomic Buster actually useful, and the charge moves like Guile's Sonic Boom able to be pulled off without being overly obvious to your opponent.
So yeah, good game. The only other thing I've really been playing, albeit at a snail's pace, is Bethesda's Hunted: The Demon's Forge on PS3, and, well, it's alright. I commented the other week on how every game tries to rip off God/Gears of War, but Hunted is the first game I've played that tries to do both. The two lead characters are each equipped with a Bow for cover-based shooting, and a sword and shield for close combat, with sadistic elf Elara specialising in archery and tribal-covered meat head Caddoc majoring in, well, being a meat head. To be honest, the close combat is that dull, boring and most importantly difficult that I've spent just about all of my time behind the cross hairs of the bloodthirsty elf, partly to take advantage of Caddoc's seemingly unlimited reserves of health when under the AI's supervision, and partly because the ranged combat is pretty fun, infinitely more so than the tiresome swordplay.
Occasionally the game attempts to plagiarise a third genre too, the Dragon Age/Dungeon Siege archetype of RPG, with levelling up, short conversational segments and a magic system that is utterly pointless, as it brings nothing to the table. And to say it prides itself on it's split-screen coop multiplayer, it handles that woefully - the fact that even on a widescreen TV the screen is split horizontally, resulting in neither my wife nor I being able to see pretty much anything even on our 40" screen because our letterbox views were too tiny, is unbelievably under-researched, and to add insult to injury the already sub-par graphics are noticeably downgraded too. As this was my first impression of the game, I can't say I was too delighted.
But after a couple of hours with the single-player game, despite it's faults, I find myself strangely endeared. For a game so destined for failure, a surprisingly deep history has been crafted, reminiscent of that of the Dragon Age series. I keep hearing about towns that I'm unable to visit, and discover myself wondering what they look like, how the architecture looks and so on, and with every hint at the fate of the apparently all but extinct Elven race that Elara hails from, at the hands of the so-far-unseen Minotaurs, I yearn to learn exactly what happened and itch for revenge. Yes, Hunted is an okay game, but it's an okay game in a sea of excellent games this year and as such will fall into obscurity.
So, as a parting note as I head off to the Welsh countryside, I put forward a conundrum that has bothered me for some time: Why is it that Bethesda's grasp of the open-world RPG is completely unrivalled - nobody else even comes close to the experience of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 - yet they seemingly find it so hard to conquer any other genre?
I suppose the biggest news is my acquisition of a second-hand Nintendo 3DS, Which set me back a meagre £149.99, less than the proposed price cut and I'll still get the freebies from the Ambassador Programme. Also, the dumbassed previous owners had left an 8gb SD card in the machine, further sweetening my deal. If you're reading this by the way, I deleted your holiday photos.
The only games I've picked up, and indeed the only currently available 3DS games that I'm interested in, are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition (Yes, I'm fully aware that they are both games I already own, I'll buy what I want, you're not my real dad), and I'm saving Zelda for my week in Wales next week, but I'm suitably impressed with SSFIV. It looks better than I ever expected it to, with character models that look almost on a par with it's PS3 counterpart. The backgrounds don't hold up all that well, being made up of layered, stationary 2D sprites, and it gives the whole thing a look like one of those 3D picture box things from Art Attack. The backgrounds are also very low-res, but that's only noticeable in the cutscene before you fight Akuma in Arcade Mode.
As far as gameplay goes, it's about the best version of SFIV I've played (keep in mind I haven't had a go on Arcade Edition yet), must notably because it's got the unreasonably priced DLC costume packs bundled within. Also, the touch screen displays shortcuts to two of your character's Specials and their Super and Ultra, which takes the skill out of it somewhat, rendering them even easier to pull off than Mortal Kombat's all-too-accessible X-Ray moves, but it makes some of the ridiculously difficult moves like Zangief's Ultimate Atomic Buster actually useful, and the charge moves like Guile's Sonic Boom able to be pulled off without being overly obvious to your opponent.
So yeah, good game. The only other thing I've really been playing, albeit at a snail's pace, is Bethesda's Hunted: The Demon's Forge on PS3, and, well, it's alright. I commented the other week on how every game tries to rip off God/Gears of War, but Hunted is the first game I've played that tries to do both. The two lead characters are each equipped with a Bow for cover-based shooting, and a sword and shield for close combat, with sadistic elf Elara specialising in archery and tribal-covered meat head Caddoc majoring in, well, being a meat head. To be honest, the close combat is that dull, boring and most importantly difficult that I've spent just about all of my time behind the cross hairs of the bloodthirsty elf, partly to take advantage of Caddoc's seemingly unlimited reserves of health when under the AI's supervision, and partly because the ranged combat is pretty fun, infinitely more so than the tiresome swordplay.
Occasionally the game attempts to plagiarise a third genre too, the Dragon Age/Dungeon Siege archetype of RPG, with levelling up, short conversational segments and a magic system that is utterly pointless, as it brings nothing to the table. And to say it prides itself on it's split-screen coop multiplayer, it handles that woefully - the fact that even on a widescreen TV the screen is split horizontally, resulting in neither my wife nor I being able to see pretty much anything even on our 40" screen because our letterbox views were too tiny, is unbelievably under-researched, and to add insult to injury the already sub-par graphics are noticeably downgraded too. As this was my first impression of the game, I can't say I was too delighted.
But after a couple of hours with the single-player game, despite it's faults, I find myself strangely endeared. For a game so destined for failure, a surprisingly deep history has been crafted, reminiscent of that of the Dragon Age series. I keep hearing about towns that I'm unable to visit, and discover myself wondering what they look like, how the architecture looks and so on, and with every hint at the fate of the apparently all but extinct Elven race that Elara hails from, at the hands of the so-far-unseen Minotaurs, I yearn to learn exactly what happened and itch for revenge. Yes, Hunted is an okay game, but it's an okay game in a sea of excellent games this year and as such will fall into obscurity.
So, as a parting note as I head off to the Welsh countryside, I put forward a conundrum that has bothered me for some time: Why is it that Bethesda's grasp of the open-world RPG is completely unrivalled - nobody else even comes close to the experience of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 - yet they seemingly find it so hard to conquer any other genre?
Wednesday 6 July 2011
Devil in a Blue Dress
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.
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.
Tuesday 28 June 2011
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Aw man, I went and did it again didn't I? Forgetting to post and shit*. It was only like three months this time though, cut me some slack. I'm just going to summarize what I've been playing since we last met.
I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.
I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.
LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.
The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.
Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.
It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.
Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.
Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.
*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.
I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.
I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.
LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.
The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.
Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.
It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.
Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.
Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.
*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.
Monday 11 April 2011
Puff the magic Dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the Autumn mist in a land called Honalee
Overtly, for me anyway, 2011 is the year of the Fighting Game. With Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, it's definitely the best year for the genre in a long time. But if you sift through the fisticuffs, there's also an abundance of a genre fast becoming one of my favourites: The Western RPG. Coming to a crescendo with the mighty (we all know it's going to be amazing, why even speculate?) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim later in the year, we've got lesser beasts such as Two Worlds II, Arcania: Gothic IV and Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga to tide us over. But, while they might be met by the eyes of the masses as mediocre shadows of the upcoming social-life-destroyer, one game still stands strong.
That game, for those still paying attention, is the sequel to Bioware's epic, official 24HG Game of the Year 2009, Dragon Age: Origins; Dragon Age... er... II.
Set almost immediately after the first game, DAII sees you in the shoes of a Blight refugee known as Hawke (who can be male or female and have any first name you choose, but must be human. The Dragon Age Commander Shepard if you will), trying to rebuild his/her life in a foreign city after his/her former home was destroyed by the pesky Darkspawn, bumping into lusty Pirates, surly warrior-giants and the most pleasant blood-mage (an art in the DA canon where a mage bonds with a demon to boost their own powers, basically the classic view of satanism) you'll ever meet along the way.
But the thing is, that's it. The story never really goes anywhere, you just waltz into a city, pick up the compulsory rag-tag band of misfits and generally doss around doing stuff for people, and then shit suddenly hits the fan and it's over. And while we're focusing on the negative points, DAII is one of the laziest games I've played in a while. There's only one (admittedly expansive) city and a small handful of wilderness areas, as opposed to the wide variety of settings in the original. The city is littered with warehouses to explore, and each is identical to the last, the same goes for the wilderness and caves, and it makes for some incredibly repetitive gameplay. They've also not bothered with the finishing moves in combat this time, just opting to have your enemies fall apart when you kill them, and while this looked alright in Fallout 3 where the limbs would sever in the middle of a thigh or below the shoulder, leaving a jagged rip in the flesh, DAII's enemies fall into smooth segments, like when you shoot somebody with the grenade launcher in Tomb Raider II. And that looked shit 14 years ago.
But aside from that, the game really excels. The visuals have improved no end over the washed out, low res textures of Origins, to the point that they could even be considered impressive. The combat system has been refined, sped up and simplified in the right areas, and crucially been made real-time in the console releases, and your party members, much like in Mass Effect 2, have been given much more individuality in their appearance (be it Pirate lady of ill repute Isabella's swashbuckling gear or emo elf Fenris' lyrium tattoos). They also have a lot more unique abilities, in Origins your two mages, Wynn and Morrigan, could end up playing exactly the same, or even have their roles reversed should you choose to do so. In DAII, Anders is a designated healer, Merril is a damage dealer and Bethany is an all-rounder.
Mentioning Anders and Merril brings me to my next point, there's a lot here for the nostalgic. Anders himself is now possessed by the spirit Justice, both of which were party members in Dragon Age: Awakening (they were actually my two favourite characters in the game, but now they are one person they, or rather he, seems to have become a self righteous prick), and Merril was a temporary party member in Origins if the player followed the Dalish Elf storyline. Anyone who played the demo will have come face to face with the Dragon-morphing witch of the wilds Flemeth too, sporting a sassy new look, and a bunch of other familiar faces also show up, but I won't ruin things for you there.
I don't like ending things on a low point (once again, as with last week's Dead Space 2 review, I seem to have unwillingly slated the game), DAII does have the 'can't put down' factor and is the closest thing to a Game of the Year for me so far in 2011, but it throws a big middle finger skywards when it comes to consistency in it's continuity. A lot of the races have altered, take the elves for example. In the last game they were just people with pointy ears, and spoke unanimously with an American accent. They are now much smaller and are painfully thin, and their facial structures have changed to resemble the blue guys from Avatar, and while the city elves still retain the Yankee lilt, the wild dalish elves have adopted an Irish tongue (apart from Merril, who is voiced by the unquestionably Welsh Eve Myles, star of BBC's Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood). The Qunari have also metamorphosed beyond recognition, from basically being black guys with white hair in Origins to their new look, resembling Kain from Soul Reaver. It's natural progression as a higher budget is available, I fully understand that (look at the Klingon in Star Trek after all), but for someone like me with borderline OCD over details like this, it kinda twists my melon.
Overall though, it's a great game, more suited to a console gamer than it's elder. But, under the mocking eye of the behemoth that is the upcoming Skyrim, Bioware really shouldn't have cut quite so many corners.
That game, for those still paying attention, is the sequel to Bioware's epic, official 24HG Game of the Year 2009, Dragon Age: Origins; Dragon Age... er... II.
Set almost immediately after the first game, DAII sees you in the shoes of a Blight refugee known as Hawke (who can be male or female and have any first name you choose, but must be human. The Dragon Age Commander Shepard if you will), trying to rebuild his/her life in a foreign city after his/her former home was destroyed by the pesky Darkspawn, bumping into lusty Pirates, surly warrior-giants and the most pleasant blood-mage (an art in the DA canon where a mage bonds with a demon to boost their own powers, basically the classic view of satanism) you'll ever meet along the way.
But the thing is, that's it. The story never really goes anywhere, you just waltz into a city, pick up the compulsory rag-tag band of misfits and generally doss around doing stuff for people, and then shit suddenly hits the fan and it's over. And while we're focusing on the negative points, DAII is one of the laziest games I've played in a while. There's only one (admittedly expansive) city and a small handful of wilderness areas, as opposed to the wide variety of settings in the original. The city is littered with warehouses to explore, and each is identical to the last, the same goes for the wilderness and caves, and it makes for some incredibly repetitive gameplay. They've also not bothered with the finishing moves in combat this time, just opting to have your enemies fall apart when you kill them, and while this looked alright in Fallout 3 where the limbs would sever in the middle of a thigh or below the shoulder, leaving a jagged rip in the flesh, DAII's enemies fall into smooth segments, like when you shoot somebody with the grenade launcher in Tomb Raider II. And that looked shit 14 years ago.
But aside from that, the game really excels. The visuals have improved no end over the washed out, low res textures of Origins, to the point that they could even be considered impressive. The combat system has been refined, sped up and simplified in the right areas, and crucially been made real-time in the console releases, and your party members, much like in Mass Effect 2, have been given much more individuality in their appearance (be it Pirate lady of ill repute Isabella's swashbuckling gear or emo elf Fenris' lyrium tattoos). They also have a lot more unique abilities, in Origins your two mages, Wynn and Morrigan, could end up playing exactly the same, or even have their roles reversed should you choose to do so. In DAII, Anders is a designated healer, Merril is a damage dealer and Bethany is an all-rounder.
Mentioning Anders and Merril brings me to my next point, there's a lot here for the nostalgic. Anders himself is now possessed by the spirit Justice, both of which were party members in Dragon Age: Awakening (they were actually my two favourite characters in the game, but now they are one person they, or rather he, seems to have become a self righteous prick), and Merril was a temporary party member in Origins if the player followed the Dalish Elf storyline. Anyone who played the demo will have come face to face with the Dragon-morphing witch of the wilds Flemeth too, sporting a sassy new look, and a bunch of other familiar faces also show up, but I won't ruin things for you there.
I don't like ending things on a low point (once again, as with last week's Dead Space 2 review, I seem to have unwillingly slated the game), DAII does have the 'can't put down' factor and is the closest thing to a Game of the Year for me so far in 2011, but it throws a big middle finger skywards when it comes to consistency in it's continuity. A lot of the races have altered, take the elves for example. In the last game they were just people with pointy ears, and spoke unanimously with an American accent. They are now much smaller and are painfully thin, and their facial structures have changed to resemble the blue guys from Avatar, and while the city elves still retain the Yankee lilt, the wild dalish elves have adopted an Irish tongue (apart from Merril, who is voiced by the unquestionably Welsh Eve Myles, star of BBC's Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood). The Qunari have also metamorphosed beyond recognition, from basically being black guys with white hair in Origins to their new look, resembling Kain from Soul Reaver. It's natural progression as a higher budget is available, I fully understand that (look at the Klingon in Star Trek after all), but for someone like me with borderline OCD over details like this, it kinda twists my melon.
Overall though, it's a great game, more suited to a console gamer than it's elder. But, under the mocking eye of the behemoth that is the upcoming Skyrim, Bioware really shouldn't have cut quite so many corners.
Monday 4 April 2011
Am I following all of the right leads, or am I about to get lost in space?
I've decided on a self-imposed gaming hiatus, in a bid to free up some time to get this site up to date, so I'll hopefully be posting quite a bit in the coming week or so. There's so much shit I want to write about, and it seems that every time I fire up a console something is added to the list, so there comes a time when one just has to sit back, catch a breath and put pen to paper, so to speak.
I'll start with Dead Space 2 I guess, it was the first game I played during the 2011 annual laptop disaster so it's only fair. I was extremely late to the party with the first Dead Space, not only picking it up late but developing an irrational hatred of it about a third of the way in (I think I was intimidated by the apparent difficulty of the game at first, it seemed like ammo was very short in supply and the enemies just keep on coming, but things loosened off a bit later on) and shelving it. I corrected myself a few months ago and discovered what an absolute joy the game was to play.
Dead Space 2 then, is more of the same in terms of gameplay. I opted for the PS3 version for the perks of Dragon Age II DLC, Free Dead Space Extraction and not having to swap the disks, and I kinda regret this choice. Firstly, the controls are far better suited to the 360 pad, the chunkiness seems to fit with the way Isaac moves on screen. Playing the game in daylight (I only have a 360 in the boudoir) subtracted from the horror of the experience, Extraction is virtually unplayable without a Move controller, and to top it all off the DAII DLC is non-console specific, linking to your EA account and not through the PSN store or XBL Marketplace.
I suppose the biggest difference to the prequel is that Isaac, the main series' alien-zombie stomping protagonist, now has a voice, and consequentially refuses to shut the hell up. And suddenly this silent sentinel, this extension of your own psyche stuck in a deep-space hell filled with terrifying (albeit overly brittle) perversions of nature, suddenly has his own personality. And boy oh boy, is he a cock. He's informal, macho and at times bratty, totally the opposite of the Gordon Freeman archetype silent scientist, and what that conjures in the imagination.
But it's still a great game though, these aspects only lightly tarnish the refined Resident Evil 4 style engine, and the incomplex but engaging narrative. Being set in a colonial space-station set out like a city, as opposed to the Space Hulk/Nostromo/Discovery One/Red Dwarf hybrid of the first, the Bioshock similarities of the first (the uninterrupted gameplay and Isaac's aesthetic reminded me of 2K's opus the first time around) seem all the more apparent: echoes of Rapture are everywhere. There's also a bit of Silent Hill thrown in with cliched trips through a hospital and school, the latter throwing some relatively unmutated child-like monsters that could have been ripped right from the foggy ghost town itself if I didn't know better.
So original Dead Space 2 isn't. Visceral aren't really known for their originality though, Dante's Inferno anyone? There are a few new enemies and a couple of new mechanics, such as hacking minigames and being able to blow out a window to suck enemies into space, before closing it again before the vacuum consumes you (A bit like on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed actually), but it's mostly just a refined version of the original, gameplay wise anyway. I read somewhere that the game reminds the writer of Resident Evil 2, in that it's just like the original but bigger and better in every way, and I think that just about sums it up. Although as far as I'm concerned, Dead Space is still superior to it's sequel. Same goes for Resident Evil actually.
Mortal Kombat then. I've absolutely caned the demo since it became available to the masses the other week and to say I'm excited is like saying Hitler was a bit of an arsehole. The thing that is immediately apparent, once you've taken in the unrivalled violence and brutality anyway, is just how unique the game is; since the 2D fighting game revival we've seen Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue as the most dominant in the genre, and as far as first impressions count, all three of those are very similar experiences. Mortal Kombat still retains the feel of the series since Deadly Alliance, matching speed and fluidity with character-specific combos and signiature moves. The new X-Ray moves are wince-inducing too (Johnny Cage's actually made me want to go and have a little cry), and although easy to pull off, they require some expert timing; performing such a move consumes (sorry, konsumes) a full special bar, and they are very easy to evade it seems.
Finally, we've got the fatalities. It's been 5 years since we've had a real, true Mortal Kombat game (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon), and even that didn't have true fatality moves. 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was toned down to achieve a teen rating at the request of Warner Interactive, so said moves were far less grotesque, and as a result we've been starved of the privilege of a satisfying way to murder our aggressors since Mortal Kombat: Deception in 2004, seven whole years ago. The sheer brutality of the finishers on offer here makes it worth the wait. If the whole game maintains this level of intense violence and joyous gameplay, then the Mortal Kombat series is back where it belongs, as the second-best fighting game franchise on the market. Flawless Victory.
I'll start with Dead Space 2 I guess, it was the first game I played during the 2011 annual laptop disaster so it's only fair. I was extremely late to the party with the first Dead Space, not only picking it up late but developing an irrational hatred of it about a third of the way in (I think I was intimidated by the apparent difficulty of the game at first, it seemed like ammo was very short in supply and the enemies just keep on coming, but things loosened off a bit later on) and shelving it. I corrected myself a few months ago and discovered what an absolute joy the game was to play.
Dead Space 2 then, is more of the same in terms of gameplay. I opted for the PS3 version for the perks of Dragon Age II DLC, Free Dead Space Extraction and not having to swap the disks, and I kinda regret this choice. Firstly, the controls are far better suited to the 360 pad, the chunkiness seems to fit with the way Isaac moves on screen. Playing the game in daylight (I only have a 360 in the boudoir) subtracted from the horror of the experience, Extraction is virtually unplayable without a Move controller, and to top it all off the DAII DLC is non-console specific, linking to your EA account and not through the PSN store or XBL Marketplace.
I suppose the biggest difference to the prequel is that Isaac, the main series' alien-zombie stomping protagonist, now has a voice, and consequentially refuses to shut the hell up. And suddenly this silent sentinel, this extension of your own psyche stuck in a deep-space hell filled with terrifying (albeit overly brittle) perversions of nature, suddenly has his own personality. And boy oh boy, is he a cock. He's informal, macho and at times bratty, totally the opposite of the Gordon Freeman archetype silent scientist, and what that conjures in the imagination.
But it's still a great game though, these aspects only lightly tarnish the refined Resident Evil 4 style engine, and the incomplex but engaging narrative. Being set in a colonial space-station set out like a city, as opposed to the Space Hulk/Nostromo/Discovery One/Red Dwarf hybrid of the first, the Bioshock similarities of the first (the uninterrupted gameplay and Isaac's aesthetic reminded me of 2K's opus the first time around) seem all the more apparent: echoes of Rapture are everywhere. There's also a bit of Silent Hill thrown in with cliched trips through a hospital and school, the latter throwing some relatively unmutated child-like monsters that could have been ripped right from the foggy ghost town itself if I didn't know better.
So original Dead Space 2 isn't. Visceral aren't really known for their originality though, Dante's Inferno anyone? There are a few new enemies and a couple of new mechanics, such as hacking minigames and being able to blow out a window to suck enemies into space, before closing it again before the vacuum consumes you (A bit like on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed actually), but it's mostly just a refined version of the original, gameplay wise anyway. I read somewhere that the game reminds the writer of Resident Evil 2, in that it's just like the original but bigger and better in every way, and I think that just about sums it up. Although as far as I'm concerned, Dead Space is still superior to it's sequel. Same goes for Resident Evil actually.
Mortal Kombat then. I've absolutely caned the demo since it became available to the masses the other week and to say I'm excited is like saying Hitler was a bit of an arsehole. The thing that is immediately apparent, once you've taken in the unrivalled violence and brutality anyway, is just how unique the game is; since the 2D fighting game revival we've seen Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue as the most dominant in the genre, and as far as first impressions count, all three of those are very similar experiences. Mortal Kombat still retains the feel of the series since Deadly Alliance, matching speed and fluidity with character-specific combos and signiature moves. The new X-Ray moves are wince-inducing too (Johnny Cage's actually made me want to go and have a little cry), and although easy to pull off, they require some expert timing; performing such a move consumes (sorry, konsumes) a full special bar, and they are very easy to evade it seems.
Finally, we've got the fatalities. It's been 5 years since we've had a real, true Mortal Kombat game (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon), and even that didn't have true fatality moves. 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was toned down to achieve a teen rating at the request of Warner Interactive, so said moves were far less grotesque, and as a result we've been starved of the privilege of a satisfying way to murder our aggressors since Mortal Kombat: Deception in 2004, seven whole years ago. The sheer brutality of the finishers on offer here makes it worth the wait. If the whole game maintains this level of intense violence and joyous gameplay, then the Mortal Kombat series is back where it belongs, as the second-best fighting game franchise on the market. Flawless Victory.
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