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.

Demon possession is the gift that keeps on giving!

Cursed Mountain. We don't talk about Cursed Mountain in my house.
It's not really that bad a game, it's just so fucking frustrating that I was in danger of putting my Wii remote through the TV, so I had to stop playing it about half way through and move on. It's mainly one factor, the healing process. You see, to heal yourself you have to visit a shrine-type-thing and light incense. There's always a shrine there during a particularly difficult fight, but it takes around 6 seconds to do the deed and by that time you've been assaulted by three or four angry spooks and your health is lower than when you started. Couple that with unskippable cutscenes which you have to watch countless times when you inevitably die just after they've played and it's enough to make you want to garrote yourself with the Nunchuck cable.
So Cursed Mountain went the way of Sacred 2, banished to the shelf with it's tail between it's legs, and before the Wii was able to recover from actually being used, I had slammed Sam and Max Season One in the drive and was eagerly awaiting "The Wii's first Sitcom".
Sam and Max is a collection of six bite-size episodic Point-and-Click adventure games featuring two "Freelance Police Officers"; Sam is an anthropomorphic dog in a trilby hat who talks like a 1930s movie detective, and Max is a sociopathic rabbit with a penchant for violence.
The game is absolutely baffling in how random some of your tasks are, I am through but two of the six episodes and have had to consult a guide on more than a few occasions. This is obviously a conscious decision though, as the game is very self-parodying of the genre. When a conveniently needed item is given to you by a completely unrelated NPC, Sam will comment on how convenient that is, etc.
The humour is pretty good too, I applaud any game that uses the word 'bollocks', especially an American one. As far as the genre goes, S&M isn't the best but it's still great and very original. A bit more polish for the Wii conversion would have been great, there are times when the speech skips itself and the framerate drops sporadically but it's nothing game-killing. I think I'll be able to get through it without smashing a controller.
Had a bit of a go with the demo of Dark Void, the latest offering from Capcom this week. Wait, what's that I hear? Is it, yes it is! Nolan North ladies and gentlemen! Well, even I'm starting to get a bit bored of him, and that's saying something. Great voice-actors should be a once every-so-often treat, like Simon Templeman (The voice of Kain, of the Legacy of, for those who don't know). If you hear their voice every time you fire up a console, it kind of dulls the pleasure. Like eating Steak every day. Anyway, Dark Void at least does Nolan North well, giving him a very natural role not too dissimilar to Uncharted's Drake, and for the first few seconds while you're on foot, the game feels decent. Then you employ Dark Void's gimmick, the Jetpack, and it all goes tits up. The controls are all wrong, it's boring, it's silly, no, this won't be getting a purchase this side of 2 for £20. Had a quick go on Assassin's Creed II Discovery on the DS the other day and was pleasantly surprised. Way better and more polished that Altair's Chronicles was. I'll definitely give it a proper go if I can tear myself away from Tetris DS for long enough.
I got Rogue Warrior the other day. Yes, I know, I've seen the reviews, I know it only got an aggregate of 27 on Metacritic, but fuck it. It was £14 in Cash Converters and it's only been out a month and a half. If it's so bad (Manhunt 2 bad) that I have to get rid of it, I should make my money back in Gamestation. For now, it's nestled in my Shame Pile, so time will tell. It's gotta be worth it to hear Mickey Rourke rap.