I said I'd repost it, so I've dug it from the depths of Videogame Space and slapped it on here for your pleasure. Note that I hadn't played Assassin's Creed II by this point, and that would have nestled nicely in third place, and in my disorganisation I'd forgotten about the release of the epic Street Fighter IV somehow, which would probably have slid in nicely between Batman and Killzone 2. Tekken 6 wouldn't have placed higher than Borderlands, so with the other two additions isn't really worth mentioning. I assure you, I've been working on 2010's GOTY since the first of January, so there will be no schoolboy errors this time around. So, for posterity, enjoy.
Originally posted on the 15th of December 2009.
As the year is coming to a close and a lot of people are complaining about the lack of great games over the last 12 months, I decided to compile a list of games that have made 2009 a great year for me, and why. So without further ado, ten must-have 2009 games that have rocked my little world.
10: SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny - Namco, PSP.
Far from just being a port of SoulCalibur IV, Broken Destiny took the already impressive fighting game and expanded on it, adding two new characters (including God of War's charismatic hero and all-round nice guy Kratos) and a handful of great new features including a continuous play system based on Tekken: Dark Resurrection's Arcade Mode. The character creation facility from SCIV also makes a return, and it is possibly better than it's parent game's offering. Namco have definitely proven that they are the kings of PSP fighters, Capcom need to sit up a bit.
9: X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Raven Software, XBox 360.
Movie adaptations are usually kiddie-friendly rushed for release pieces of horse shit, and it was utter boredom that drove me to download the demo for Wolverine from the PSN store. When I later received the game bundled with my XBox 360 Elite in September, I expected it to get boring very quickly. It turned out to be an absolutely thrilling God of War style slash-em-up with bucketloads of gore and no sign of Ryan Reynolds anywhere. It's hard to imagine how this game could have been better for what it is.
8: Borderlands - Gearbox Software, XBox 360
Borderlands is a rare game, in that it completely polarizes it's audience. On one hand you have those that love it, and on the other those that hate it, and you'll find it very hard to find anyone sitting on the fence between. In a nutshell, Borderlands is a MMORPG, but without the MM part (although it still plays like one). Then take the fantasy setting and change it into a barren planet full of rednecks and mutants and liberally scatter about a thousand different guns around the game world and you've got it. Throw three friends into the mix and it all spells great fun, if you're at the same skill level that is.
7: The Conduit - High Voltage Software, Wii
The Conduit is actually the most recent game that I've played, and it really impressed me in a way that I didn't think anything on Nintendo's pre-school toy could. It's an awesome FPS that tells the story of an alien invasion orchestrated from within America's own government, and apart from the shitty ending and the fact that at times it's so fucking hard it can drive a grown man to tears, it's great from start to finish.
6: Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Terminal Reality, PS3
When I was a child I had a huge suitcase full of Ghostbusters action figures. I watched the cartoons religiously, loved the films (apart from the library ghost, that scared the shit out of me) and was so jealous of my friend's firehouse play set. I played the Megadrive game so much that me and my friend had written lyrics to the background music. So every second of this game was a fanboy delight for me. And I had my chance to finally get revenge on the library ghost. Just don't cross the streams...
5: Killzone 2 - Guerrilla Games, PS3
I had never even played Killzone 1 until this year, so the series was entirely new to me. Where Killzone impressed me, Killzone 2 absolutely blew me away with it's absolute chaos and phenomenal graphics. Where Gears of War is very organized in it's 'walk to an area, have a fight, repeat' mechanic, Killzone 2 just throws panic and constant action at you at every turn. There's even an attempt at emotive storytelling too, but it gets lost under the machismo and buzzcuts, which are more important in a military FPS.
4: Batman: Arkham Asylum - Rocksteady Studios, PS3
What, as low as number 4? Yeah, Batman is a fantastic game and would probably be at the top spot in a lot of people's lists, but I can't help feeling that it got caught up in the hype of The Dark Knight, which was hyped for a lot of wrong reasons, but let's not get into that. Arkham was, for those who've been living at the Earth's core for the last year, stated as the ultimate Batman experience, melding combat and detective work with a look that stays true to the comics and yet doesn't look too dissimilar to the more recent films (and indeed those from 20 years ago), and features the voices from the incredible Warner Bros. cartoons. Although not that original it sits at the top of the field in everything it does do, and as with Ghostbusters I'm a bit of a fanboy. The collector's edition Batarang was shit though.
3: Shadow Complex - Chair Entertainment, XBox 360
A surprise for me, I tried the trial version of this game on a whim, and it absolutely blew me away. I immediately got me some Microsoft Points and downloaded it. The game is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer in a similar vein to Super Metroid, but with less aliens and more evil subterranean masterminds. Aside from great shooting and simple yet effective melee combat, the platforming is like a 2D Tomb Raider, it actually reminds me of Generations Lost on the Megadrive. And with the platforming element, the only voice that could be used for the main character is Nolan North, which brings me to...
2: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Naughty Dog, PS3
I was a huge fan of the first Uncharted where a lot of people understandably overlooked it due to it's zero media coverage and exclusivity to a console that looked like it might die on it's arse, so in the 10 months between Uncharted 2's announcement and release I was practically shitting myself on an hourly basis. I think (I'm pretty sure) that the first one is better in my eyes anyway, but that doesn't stop Among Thieves being a fucking incredible game in every way that kept me hooked from start to finish with it's amazing graphics and Oscar-worthy narrative and voice-acting. The game is an absolute thrill-ride and aside from a pretty annoying train ride and an underwhelming last boss it's pretty much perfect.
1: Dragon Age: Origins - Bioware, XBox 360
No game this year has had me hooked so badly, especially as I'm not an RPG gamer by trait. While not as widespread and welcoming as Oblivion, the game I was hoping that DAO would fill the hole left by, it's expansive main quest and numerous side-quests keep dragging you back for more. Aside from the quests, the relationships that you build up with your entourage through gift giving and social interaction, like a perverted Animal Crossing, and the different paths you can take with every different decision made just compel you to carry on playing, and I found that even before I'd finished it I was already planning my second playthrough. It was only the amassing pile of unplayed games mounting up and my running out of things to blog about that forced me to move on. A slightly underwhelming collector's edition is all that tarnishes this masterpiece.
So that's that then. What, no Modern Warfare 2? No, while I acknowledge that a lot of people love it, it's just not my cup of tea. The campaign was pretty good but not fantastic, but the game was mainly multiplayer and that just doesn't interest me. And, perhaps criminally Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 have both evaded my grasp so far. I was very tempted to add Monkey Island SE and God of War collection, but I figured that involved a bit of rule banding, with neither being strictly 2009 releases. Well, until next year then, with it's fine bounty of Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Batman 2 and potentially a new Tomb Raider. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Showing posts with label Shadow Complex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shadow Complex. Show all posts
Friday, 14 January 2011
Friday, 22 January 2010
Matt Day-Mahn!
You know what makes me awesome? The fact that I buy games that I know to be widely condemned as shit, unplayable smears of filth on a perfectly good BluRay or DVD, wastes of nonrenewable resources used to create the disk, just so I can attempt to entertainingly write about how shit they are for you, the 3 or 4 people who actually read this crap every week. But you know what makes life awesome? When they aren't actually that bad.
Take Hellboy: The Science of Evil as an example. The PS3 version, which is the one I've been playing, received a score of 47% on Metacritic, yet I fail to see what's so bad about it. It's not like Batman, where I'm a complete fanboy, I did love the first Hellboy movie but the second was garbage, the comics do very little to hold my attention and the animated films are a bit on the mundane side, so if I was to be biased I'd be joining them.
The game itself is an enjoyable God-of-War-em-up which places you in the hooves of the titular demonic anti-hero as you (for reasons yet unknown) chase a Witch through a surprisingly atmospheric forest graveyard, bashing the daylights out of everything in your way with your signature massive stone hand, or whatever you find yourself close enough to pick up at the time, from discarded weapons to chunks of a tree to severed parts of enemies departed. As well as the melee combat you also have Red's trusty sidearm, his oversized revolver which can be equipped with various different kinds of ammunition to serve different purposes, from freezing enemies to destroying enchanted doorways.
The game occasionally flashes back to one of Hellboy's previous missions too, the first of which being a trip to Japan which throws quite a few nods to the first of the animated films 'Blood and Iron', with enchanted swords and floating heads, and to bait the fans an encounter with Herman von Klempt and his kriegsaffe, Brutus.
It's good brainless fun, slightly average but not bad, and it will sate my appetite before I get my hands on God of War III, Dante's Inferno and Darksiders in a couple of months. Glad I played Hellboy first though, doubt it would receive such a positive review after the big three.
Also, given this weeks post's title (I couldn't resist even though it's not his likeness), I've hammered through The Bourne Conspiracy on the XBox360, and absolutely loved it.
The game borrows from a lot of others, but the most unlikely (but most apparent) influence comes in the form of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. When Bourne first appeared onscreen I immediately thought, with his appearance being close to Nathan Drake, Shadow Complex's Jason Flemming and Dark Void's William Grey, that he should have been voiced by he-who-shall-not-be-named. But the way he runs, takes cover, flinches from near misses and to an extent fights (he uses Drake's familiar jump-punch move) also echo Naughty Dog's triumph.
The gunplay is what ultimately lets Bourne down, being uninspired copy-and-paste Gears of War style hide and shoot (although with the more realistic weaponry and destructible cover, it also harks back to Uncharted), and as well as being a bit mundane at times it also gets a little frustrating. But the melee combat really shines. Unlike Uncharted, where you could punch and shoot on the fly, when an enemy engages Bourne up close the game shifts into a Shenmue style fighting mechanic, in which combinations of heavy and light attacks can be used, and when an on-screen 'adrenaline meter' reaches the appropriate level, the B button can trigger 'takedown moves' which immediately incapacitate between one and three enemies in a true-to-the-film cinematic fashion, often making use of the environment in typically inventive ways.
Speaking of cinematics, some of the cutscenes are hauntingly close to the film, particularly the failed assassination attempt on the boat and the Paris apartment attack, which was without a doubt a highlight of the game for me. And taking to the streets of a very destructible Paris in a very indestructible Mini Cooper in a Burnout meets The Italian Job frenzy was an absolute thrill-ride. I had hoped the driving mechanic would pop up again somewhere, as it was fantastic fun, but it never did. Anyway, I whole-heartedly recommend this to fans of both the film and the genre, it's available at most preowned shops for around £7 and won't eat up a lot of time, but it's a very rewarding experience.
It's a rare game that challenges a player to question his or her own sexuality. Curiosity led me to Google Dragon Age: Origins' man-on-man sex scene, and I unwaveringly decided it wasn't for me. Yet Band Hero, which the wife brought home on Sunday, had me worried at times at just how much enjoyment I was having with it, not only was I fearing for my heterosexuality but at times, bopping along to No Doubt's 'Just a Girl', I even began to wonder about my actual gender.
I know I commented on the demo, saying it was arse, but the full game actually proves itself to be more fun and actually slightly more polished than Guitar Hero 5. The series' cast is back in full force, but they've been bastardized to fit the game's X-Factor aesthetic. Gone is Johnny Napalm's Mohican, tamed to blond spikes. Goodbye Judy Nail's piercings, she's resorted to the awful Avril Lavigne 'mosher' template. And what did they do to Axel Steel...
The band also play a more visible role this time, when a track features a female vocalist the game provides you with one, so you aren't watching a butch metalhead squeal out a girlish ballad. Also, in the case of Evanescence's angst-ridden abortion 'Bring Me To Life', the bits where the guy sings were performed by my avatar, the guitarist. "Ha ha, you're the fat one" the wife pointed out. Her words cut deeper than any knife. I did resent the fact that, when playing 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls, the camera panned to me for the line 'Easy V doesn't come for free'. Not only does it insult my sexuality, now I'm a hooker too. And a real lady, apparently. It makes up for the insults in a very realistically obtainable achievement worth 490 points (seriously) though.
Okay, to wrap things up: Having a bit of a break from Sam and Max after a barmy (yet equally genius and hilarious) song and dance routine about war performed by a bunch of presidential aides just about melted my brain, and have decided that ACII Discovery isn't as good as it first seems, as it's all to easy to wind up stuck between two guards and with the blocking reversals from the other games somehow forgotten about this surely means certain death. And have decided to spend the XBox time between now and Mass Effect 2 hoovering up the last few achievements on Fallout 3, including collecting the Bobbleheads, which I epic failed at when I blew up Megaton without collecting the one from Lucas Simms' house and forgot to save beforehand. I had to go back to the previous save before that, which lost me about three hours' play. And a warning to anyone else starting afresh, don't try to do Operation Anchorage at level 5. It's unforgiving. Ciao.
Take Hellboy: The Science of Evil as an example. The PS3 version, which is the one I've been playing, received a score of 47% on Metacritic, yet I fail to see what's so bad about it. It's not like Batman, where I'm a complete fanboy, I did love the first Hellboy movie but the second was garbage, the comics do very little to hold my attention and the animated films are a bit on the mundane side, so if I was to be biased I'd be joining them.
The game itself is an enjoyable God-of-War-em-up which places you in the hooves of the titular demonic anti-hero as you (for reasons yet unknown) chase a Witch through a surprisingly atmospheric forest graveyard, bashing the daylights out of everything in your way with your signature massive stone hand, or whatever you find yourself close enough to pick up at the time, from discarded weapons to chunks of a tree to severed parts of enemies departed. As well as the melee combat you also have Red's trusty sidearm, his oversized revolver which can be equipped with various different kinds of ammunition to serve different purposes, from freezing enemies to destroying enchanted doorways.
The game occasionally flashes back to one of Hellboy's previous missions too, the first of which being a trip to Japan which throws quite a few nods to the first of the animated films 'Blood and Iron', with enchanted swords and floating heads, and to bait the fans an encounter with Herman von Klempt and his kriegsaffe, Brutus.
It's good brainless fun, slightly average but not bad, and it will sate my appetite before I get my hands on God of War III, Dante's Inferno and Darksiders in a couple of months. Glad I played Hellboy first though, doubt it would receive such a positive review after the big three.
Also, given this weeks post's title (I couldn't resist even though it's not his likeness), I've hammered through The Bourne Conspiracy on the XBox360, and absolutely loved it.
The game borrows from a lot of others, but the most unlikely (but most apparent) influence comes in the form of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. When Bourne first appeared onscreen I immediately thought, with his appearance being close to Nathan Drake, Shadow Complex's Jason Flemming and Dark Void's William Grey, that he should have been voiced by he-who-shall-not-be-named. But the way he runs, takes cover, flinches from near misses and to an extent fights (he uses Drake's familiar jump-punch move) also echo Naughty Dog's triumph.
The gunplay is what ultimately lets Bourne down, being uninspired copy-and-paste Gears of War style hide and shoot (although with the more realistic weaponry and destructible cover, it also harks back to Uncharted), and as well as being a bit mundane at times it also gets a little frustrating. But the melee combat really shines. Unlike Uncharted, where you could punch and shoot on the fly, when an enemy engages Bourne up close the game shifts into a Shenmue style fighting mechanic, in which combinations of heavy and light attacks can be used, and when an on-screen 'adrenaline meter' reaches the appropriate level, the B button can trigger 'takedown moves' which immediately incapacitate between one and three enemies in a true-to-the-film cinematic fashion, often making use of the environment in typically inventive ways.
Speaking of cinematics, some of the cutscenes are hauntingly close to the film, particularly the failed assassination attempt on the boat and the Paris apartment attack, which was without a doubt a highlight of the game for me. And taking to the streets of a very destructible Paris in a very indestructible Mini Cooper in a Burnout meets The Italian Job frenzy was an absolute thrill-ride. I had hoped the driving mechanic would pop up again somewhere, as it was fantastic fun, but it never did. Anyway, I whole-heartedly recommend this to fans of both the film and the genre, it's available at most preowned shops for around £7 and won't eat up a lot of time, but it's a very rewarding experience.
It's a rare game that challenges a player to question his or her own sexuality. Curiosity led me to Google Dragon Age: Origins' man-on-man sex scene, and I unwaveringly decided it wasn't for me. Yet Band Hero, which the wife brought home on Sunday, had me worried at times at just how much enjoyment I was having with it, not only was I fearing for my heterosexuality but at times, bopping along to No Doubt's 'Just a Girl', I even began to wonder about my actual gender.
I know I commented on the demo, saying it was arse, but the full game actually proves itself to be more fun and actually slightly more polished than Guitar Hero 5. The series' cast is back in full force, but they've been bastardized to fit the game's X-Factor aesthetic. Gone is Johnny Napalm's Mohican, tamed to blond spikes. Goodbye Judy Nail's piercings, she's resorted to the awful Avril Lavigne 'mosher' template. And what did they do to Axel Steel...
The band also play a more visible role this time, when a track features a female vocalist the game provides you with one, so you aren't watching a butch metalhead squeal out a girlish ballad. Also, in the case of Evanescence's angst-ridden abortion 'Bring Me To Life', the bits where the guy sings were performed by my avatar, the guitarist. "Ha ha, you're the fat one" the wife pointed out. Her words cut deeper than any knife. I did resent the fact that, when playing 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls, the camera panned to me for the line 'Easy V doesn't come for free'. Not only does it insult my sexuality, now I'm a hooker too. And a real lady, apparently. It makes up for the insults in a very realistically obtainable achievement worth 490 points (seriously) though.
Okay, to wrap things up: Having a bit of a break from Sam and Max after a barmy (yet equally genius and hilarious) song and dance routine about war performed by a bunch of presidential aides just about melted my brain, and have decided that ACII Discovery isn't as good as it first seems, as it's all to easy to wind up stuck between two guards and with the blocking reversals from the other games somehow forgotten about this surely means certain death. And have decided to spend the XBox time between now and Mass Effect 2 hoovering up the last few achievements on Fallout 3, including collecting the Bobbleheads, which I epic failed at when I blew up Megaton without collecting the one from Lucas Simms' house and forgot to save beforehand. I had to go back to the previous save before that, which lost me about three hours' play. And a warning to anyone else starting afresh, don't try to do Operation Anchorage at level 5. It's unforgiving. Ciao.
Friday, 8 January 2010
I only speak-a, how you say, "Fractured English". Is how my parents used to speak-a back home.
As planned, last Saturday I braved the Meadowhall shopping centre for a copy of the Assassin's Creed II White Edition, and found solace in the upstairs GAME store, and a quite needy-seeming sales assistant with a ginger beard who assured me that he had the White Edition on the 360 (As I had opted for the PS3 version) and it was a great game. If I'm quite willing to shell out £54.99 of my (wife's) hard-earned cash on a videogame, I don't really need the extra persuasion.
Firstly, the Ezio plastic statuette (as I'm going to call it, action figures have articulation) is of a really good quality. It's quite big at a reported 20cm (I haven't checked), Sacred 2's ended up being about 5 or 6cm tall, even though on the promotional pictures it was taller than the PS3 game case and judging by the size of the Collector's Edition casing I had felt a little cheated when it tumbled out of the box and into my lap, it's sword and wings bent out of shape. She's about the size of the Ryu and C. Viper models in the Street Fighter IV set, but then again there were two of those in the pack. Anyway.
As well as being a fair size, it feels substantial and is very well painted (I first thought his eyes looked a bit dodgy, but in all fairness they do in the game too). Every little detail is captured in a quality that you wouldn't expect from a GAME exclusive pack, way better than the Edward Carnby figure in their Alone in the Dark set. But saying that, I caught sight of the Soap MacTavish model from the GAME exclusive edition of Modern Warfare 2 while I was in the shop, and that was even bigger and just as well made too.
So on to the game. At first, I can't say I was impressed. You begin as Desmond Miles, behind-the-scenes hero of the series, and have to go through a lengthy intro sequence as you escape from your captors from the first game with assassin double-agent Lucy. Now Desmond happens to be voiced by one Nolan North, and it appears that since the first Assassin's Creed (hereby referred to as AC), the good folk at Ubisoft have played both Uncharted games and realised his potential, and have decided to basically make Desmond into a carbon copy of Drake. He quips and wisecracks in his Whedon-esque way, and I'm sure he never used to do that in the original. While (without the proper direction) that is slightly annoying, the real mind-melting irritant comes in the form of Danny Wallace, the jerk who made a career out of being Dave Gorman's mate and copying his brand of doing-something-stupid-for-money comedy, while not carrying it off as well as the other. Whatever he is anyway, he's not an actor, voice or otherwise. That's why they didn't let him play himself in Yes Man, because Jim Carey is both an actor and actually funny. So whenever he pipes up in ACII (luckily you don't see him often, his character is modelled after him and the graphics of ACII aren't great in close-up shots), with his sarcastic prickness, it makes me want to beat him to death with a copy of 'Are You Dave Gorman?'. I still might.
Well, after you finally get in the Animus again, the game goes from strength to strength. It's hard to say what makes ACII better than it's predecessor, but it just is. Everything, from the charismatic hero to the more fluid assassinations just feels 'right'. One thing I have noticed is that AC was very businesslike in structure, you're given a list of people to kill and you have to systematically find and kill each of them. That's it. ACII isn't all about assassinating people (although given the title, it's still the core theme), there are plenty of other things to do, and not just in sidequests too. The main story has you doing a range of things from beating up your Sister's cheating boyfriend to taking part in carnival games in a scene that actually reminded me of Bully in it's atmosphere, the city is decorated in banners and flags and such, quite like the Halloween segment of Rockstar's overlooked classic. There are also assassin's tombs to find, and while you're in them the game becomes more like a traditional platformer, a bit of a homage to games like Tomb Raider, or indeed Ubisoft's own Prince of Persia series. That brand of game has fast become one of my favourite genres.
It's a fantastic game. It's had me playing for just about a solid week, and that includes a pretty much all-day session on Tuesday while I was snowed in without my laptop for comfort (the power pack has died, and I've been forced to borrow a top of the range £630 Sony VAIO monstrosity on Windows 7 to blog for the last couple of weeks), and I'm yet to get bored with it. It's rare that that happens nowadays. I wish I'd played it before I'd written my 2009 top ten, because it deserves a place in there.
In other news, I actually was at the end of Butcher Bay last week, but the game had glitched and not given me a minigun when it was supposed to have, rendering me unable to get past the two walking tanks in the next room. I have tried reading guide after guide on the internet, and each one tells me I'm supposed to have a minigun so I'm just going to YouTube the ending before I start Dark Athena when I get around to playing it. Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond appeared on the PSN store last night and as I was actually quite excited to play it, I downloaded the trial version and was severely underwhelmed. If the developers had just copied Shadow Complex's right stick aiming and auto-aiming into the background it would work, but using the same stick to aim and move is just awful, and having to press a button to aim at background enemies is very inconvenient. Plus, the game is fucking hard too. And with three weeks to go to the sequel, I've started yet another playthrough of Mass Effect, but since the blog's conception this is the second time I've played it, so I won't go on about that too much. Forgot how awesome it is though, in gameplay and art direction, so it's boosted my excitement tenfold. Wonder if GAME are doing a midnight opening?
Friday, 11 December 2009
My name is Michael Ford. I'm probably the only one left who knows the truth. I know because I was there.
You know when you read a bit of information for an upcoming game, and you instantly know that it's garbage? When they say that, for example, Two Worlds is "Oblivion on Steroids", or when the guy on GAME Radio tells you how revolutionary Women's Murder Club is? Well, I've decided to christen that 'The Molyneux Factor', after the charismatic leader of Lionhead Studios' blunder with the original Fable.
There is a point to this, and that point is that I've been playing The Conduit this week, and I distinctly remember reading that the developers High Voltage Software, who aren't exactly renowned for the quality of their games let's face it, had claimed to have created an engine on the Wii that allowed graphics an visual effects that are "comparable" the those on PS3 and XBox 360 games. Well, they lied. It's about on a graphical par with Halo 2.
And the silly thing is, as with Fable before it, they didn't need to lie about the game because it honestly is fantastic.
For anyone who isn't in the know (and with the game's zero media presence, who'd blame them), The Conduit is a Sci-Fi FPS set in Washington DC shortly before and during an invasion by an insectoid race known as The Drudge. You play as a government agent named Michael Ford sent to recover a device known as the All-Seeing Eye (basically a spherical Sonic Screwdriver) and disrupt terrorist activity in an airport, until you are quickly double-crossed by your admittedly shady looking employer and end up working with said terrorists (who are actually pretty stand up guys) when aliens start popping up everywhere.
I initially had worries with this game, as the Wii isn't exactly well equipped for First Person Shooters with the lack of a second analogue stick. Turning is done by pointing the remote at the side of the screen, thus disrupting your aim which isn't exactly ideal. It is possible to use the Nunchuck stick to turn the player, but that gets rid of the strafe function and after virtually a decade of twin analogue FPSes it makes the game surprisingly difficult to play. It was this control method that ultimately made me stop playing Red Steel, but somehow it seems more manageable on The Conduit.
And another thing that struck me right away was how much the game felt like the original Perfect Dark, far more so than Perfect Dark Zero ever did. The visual style is so much more reminiscent of it, and the way the gun moves depending on where you're aiming is exactly the same. I even found an experimental handgun that looked just like the Mag-Sec 4. If they just changed the name of the aliens from Drudge to Skedar and upped the human technology a bit, it could definitely pass as part of that series.
And as I finished Tomb Raider Legend shortly after posting last week, I've moved on to Tomb Raider Anniversary. That game is fucking hard! Not in a keep dying kind of way, it's just that every room you enter is a huge puzzle, and most of the time the only way to solve the puzzle is by doing about three other smaller ones. It's so mentally taxing compared to Legend, which really is mainly jumping and shooting. I suppose I never noticed before because I hadn't played them side by side. It's obviously not out of my capacity to finish the game, as I have done before, but god, you just lose the will to live when you've spent ages solving a certain puzzle, you strut out of the room feeling great about yourself and you're immediately presented with another. More than a few times I've favoured sleep over carrying on because of this, and that hardly ever happens.
I finished Matt Hazard last Saturday too. After you 'complete' the game, the enemy then forces you into a deathmatch with his IRL henchmen, and all the enemies have stupid names above their heads and stuff. I laughed at that, but the funniest thing was when you finally see the person behind the sexy female avatar who's been helping you through the game and she turns out to be a geeky man! Anyone who's ever used PS3's Home should find that funny. If not, you're dead inside. If Matt Hazard: Bloodbath and Beyond is as much like Shadow Complex as I've heard, then I am very much looking forward to it.
There is a point to this, and that point is that I've been playing The Conduit this week, and I distinctly remember reading that the developers High Voltage Software, who aren't exactly renowned for the quality of their games let's face it, had claimed to have created an engine on the Wii that allowed graphics an visual effects that are "comparable" the those on PS3 and XBox 360 games. Well, they lied. It's about on a graphical par with Halo 2.
And the silly thing is, as with Fable before it, they didn't need to lie about the game because it honestly is fantastic.
For anyone who isn't in the know (and with the game's zero media presence, who'd blame them), The Conduit is a Sci-Fi FPS set in Washington DC shortly before and during an invasion by an insectoid race known as The Drudge. You play as a government agent named Michael Ford sent to recover a device known as the All-Seeing Eye (basically a spherical Sonic Screwdriver) and disrupt terrorist activity in an airport, until you are quickly double-crossed by your admittedly shady looking employer and end up working with said terrorists (who are actually pretty stand up guys) when aliens start popping up everywhere.
I initially had worries with this game, as the Wii isn't exactly well equipped for First Person Shooters with the lack of a second analogue stick. Turning is done by pointing the remote at the side of the screen, thus disrupting your aim which isn't exactly ideal. It is possible to use the Nunchuck stick to turn the player, but that gets rid of the strafe function and after virtually a decade of twin analogue FPSes it makes the game surprisingly difficult to play. It was this control method that ultimately made me stop playing Red Steel, but somehow it seems more manageable on The Conduit.
And another thing that struck me right away was how much the game felt like the original Perfect Dark, far more so than Perfect Dark Zero ever did. The visual style is so much more reminiscent of it, and the way the gun moves depending on where you're aiming is exactly the same. I even found an experimental handgun that looked just like the Mag-Sec 4. If they just changed the name of the aliens from Drudge to Skedar and upped the human technology a bit, it could definitely pass as part of that series.
And as I finished Tomb Raider Legend shortly after posting last week, I've moved on to Tomb Raider Anniversary. That game is fucking hard! Not in a keep dying kind of way, it's just that every room you enter is a huge puzzle, and most of the time the only way to solve the puzzle is by doing about three other smaller ones. It's so mentally taxing compared to Legend, which really is mainly jumping and shooting. I suppose I never noticed before because I hadn't played them side by side. It's obviously not out of my capacity to finish the game, as I have done before, but god, you just lose the will to live when you've spent ages solving a certain puzzle, you strut out of the room feeling great about yourself and you're immediately presented with another. More than a few times I've favoured sleep over carrying on because of this, and that hardly ever happens.
I finished Matt Hazard last Saturday too. After you 'complete' the game, the enemy then forces you into a deathmatch with his IRL henchmen, and all the enemies have stupid names above their heads and stuff. I laughed at that, but the funniest thing was when you finally see the person behind the sexy female avatar who's been helping you through the game and she turns out to be a geeky man! Anyone who's ever used PS3's Home should find that funny. If not, you're dead inside. If Matt Hazard: Bloodbath and Beyond is as much like Shadow Complex as I've heard, then I am very much looking forward to it.
Friday, 16 October 2009
Oh Crap!
If the title of this post didn't give it away, I have been lucky enough to have a few early hours with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves this week, as my preorder with GAME paid off and Mr. Drake plopped gently onto my doormat on Wednesday, a whole 2 days before release. Well, not that gently, it looks like the fucking postman tried to get it through the keyhole first; there's a dint in my shiny Collector's Edition tin. Either way, I got it early and that makes me feel like a proper journalist, even though I still had to pay for the fucking thing.
Now, I could go on all day gushing about it, believe me I could, and I've only had a few hours with Nate and co. The only thing I can think of that's bad about it is that the snow looks like marshmallow and the explosions aren't as pretty as those in Drake's Fortune. The graphics are phenomenal, and so is the animation and voice acting, but then again they were in the original so it goes without saying.
What some people would perceive as a negative point, but it really isn't, is that not much has changed since our hero set off to steal El Dorado from Nazi zombies. Nate's gained a few new moves in classic Lara Croft fashion, including monkey bars and the free-climbing thing ripped straight from Tomb Raider Underworld, and the cinematics have been turned up to eleven with the charismatic protagonist being forced to clamber through a train wreck hanging off a cliff with his intestines hanging out, or leaping through a window of a hotel block that's collapsing (A bit of a change of pace from causing the destruction last week).
Drake's picked up a couple of new friends and foes too, the most obvious of which being Chloe Frazer, Drakes new bit of fluff and all round 'can we trust her?' kind of girl. She's tanned, has dark hair in a ponytail and speaks with a very upper class Australian accent that's not too far removed from southern English. If you squint, it's Lara. Elena has made an appearance though, and it's very much hinted that there's still a spark. Do the right thing, Nate.
And the other main game I've been playing this week, with me virtually stalking Nolan North, is Shadow Complex. In a nutshell, the game is about a guy named Jason, who looks like Drake, moves and dresses like Drake, Can punch harder than bullets like Drake, has the same voice actor and if you say his name in a mock retard voice it sounds like Nathan. His last name is probably Nrake. It isn't actually, it's Flemming.
Anyway, Na... Jason is out potholing with his girlfriend who he's known for about 4 hours and they come across a secret military base full of people who all stole the guy from Dead Space's pyjamas and want to invade America with lots of ATST walkers and stuff. Now Jason's surname must be Bourne actually, because he happens to be an unstoppable killing machine and goes about destroying everything and wiping out about a third of the population.
The game, ridiculous story aside, is an absolutely thrilling homage to Metroid games of old; a 2D side-scroller with 360 degree aiming thanks to the second analogue stick. As you progress through the game you find power ups in the form of new pieces of armour that give you the ability to run faster, jump higher, hit harder etc, and each new area you explore or each life you snuff out gives you EXP to level up, giving the game an RPG element too.
I can't think of much else to write about here, but the game is better than most retail games. The Unreal Engine 3 is showing it's age a bit now though, maybe it's time to think about a new one Epic. But yeah, who cares if the story was written by a homophobic jerk, the story is balls anyway. Get it for the gameplay.
In other news, I went and traded my copy of Street Fighter IV for the collector's edition this week. Raz7el from The Chronicles of Ridiculous convinced me to get it on the 360 so I could destroy him on it, so I did. We are both upsettingly bad at that game. And I downloaded the Demos of Brutal Legend and Star Wars: Republic Heroes, but Mr. Drake stopped me from playing them. He is more important. Now I think I'm gonna go play Prince of Persia, watch Hulk vs. Wolverine and hide in Nolan North's garden.
Now, I could go on all day gushing about it, believe me I could, and I've only had a few hours with Nate and co. The only thing I can think of that's bad about it is that the snow looks like marshmallow and the explosions aren't as pretty as those in Drake's Fortune. The graphics are phenomenal, and so is the animation and voice acting, but then again they were in the original so it goes without saying.
What some people would perceive as a negative point, but it really isn't, is that not much has changed since our hero set off to steal El Dorado from Nazi zombies. Nate's gained a few new moves in classic Lara Croft fashion, including monkey bars and the free-climbing thing ripped straight from Tomb Raider Underworld, and the cinematics have been turned up to eleven with the charismatic protagonist being forced to clamber through a train wreck hanging off a cliff with his intestines hanging out, or leaping through a window of a hotel block that's collapsing (A bit of a change of pace from causing the destruction last week).
Drake's picked up a couple of new friends and foes too, the most obvious of which being Chloe Frazer, Drakes new bit of fluff and all round 'can we trust her?' kind of girl. She's tanned, has dark hair in a ponytail and speaks with a very upper class Australian accent that's not too far removed from southern English. If you squint, it's Lara. Elena has made an appearance though, and it's very much hinted that there's still a spark. Do the right thing, Nate.
And the other main game I've been playing this week, with me virtually stalking Nolan North, is Shadow Complex. In a nutshell, the game is about a guy named Jason, who looks like Drake, moves and dresses like Drake, Can punch harder than bullets like Drake, has the same voice actor and if you say his name in a mock retard voice it sounds like Nathan. His last name is probably Nrake. It isn't actually, it's Flemming.
Anyway, Na... Jason is out potholing with his girlfriend who he's known for about 4 hours and they come across a secret military base full of people who all stole the guy from Dead Space's pyjamas and want to invade America with lots of ATST walkers and stuff. Now Jason's surname must be Bourne actually, because he happens to be an unstoppable killing machine and goes about destroying everything and wiping out about a third of the population.
The game, ridiculous story aside, is an absolutely thrilling homage to Metroid games of old; a 2D side-scroller with 360 degree aiming thanks to the second analogue stick. As you progress through the game you find power ups in the form of new pieces of armour that give you the ability to run faster, jump higher, hit harder etc, and each new area you explore or each life you snuff out gives you EXP to level up, giving the game an RPG element too.
I can't think of much else to write about here, but the game is better than most retail games. The Unreal Engine 3 is showing it's age a bit now though, maybe it's time to think about a new one Epic. But yeah, who cares if the story was written by a homophobic jerk, the story is balls anyway. Get it for the gameplay.
In other news, I went and traded my copy of Street Fighter IV for the collector's edition this week. Raz7el from The Chronicles of Ridiculous convinced me to get it on the 360 so I could destroy him on it, so I did. We are both upsettingly bad at that game. And I downloaded the Demos of Brutal Legend and Star Wars: Republic Heroes, but Mr. Drake stopped me from playing them. He is more important. Now I think I'm gonna go play Prince of Persia, watch Hulk vs. Wolverine and hide in Nolan North's garden.
Friday, 9 October 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to switch the PS2 back on...
Firstly, and it occurs to me that I haven't actually mentioned this so far in this blog, I have spent months scouring every videogame shop I've seen for Jaws Unleashed on either the PS2 or XBox, and finally the other day I saw it sat in plain view on a shelf in the newly reopened Playtime in Sheffield for £14.99. And today I sat down with it for the first time, and there's half an hour I'm not getting back.
The game involves eating things, which is what I expected, and fair enough is fun as hell. When you can actually see what's happening that is. The camera spends most of it's time either looking at the side, front or top of the shark, and it pretty much breaks the game. So to say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
I've had quite a bit of spare time this week, and have got a fair bit of gaming done. The first game I played through was Halo 2, as I said last week I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. Now, I know I played neither Halo nor Halo 2 on their releases, or even in the right generation, so they are bound to feel a bit dated, but neither have really grabbed me. I spent most of Halo 2 slogging through the endless waves of respawning enemies just wishing the game would end so I could stick it back on the shelf and never lay eyes on it again. In fact, by the end of the game I was just running past all the enemies as they fought each other, because it was quicker than having to take down each enemy's shield and then killing them in turn, not to mention scrabbling round on the floor for new weapons all the time because you can't collect ammo for the best ones. And then there was the bug...
Every so often (well, every 10 minutes or so), the background of the level would emboss itself on the screen, obscuring my view sometimes so badly that I just couldn't play it and forcing me to quit out of the game and restart it. I don't know if this was a problem with playing the game on the XBox 360 or not, but I was led to believe that before Gears of War reared it's steroid-filled head Halo 2 was still the most-played game on XBox Live, and I can't imagine that Microsoft would allow such an awful bug in a game that's still being played so much without patching it.
On a more positive note, I had an hour on Halo 3 after I finished it, and that was much better.
The other game I was mainly playing this week was Red Faction Guerrilla. Now, this game is an odd one, because it starts off a blast, genuinely fun to play, but quickly gets repetitive in the middle before regaining the spark at the end. But the middle really is so boring that very few people will actually see the end, and that really is a shame.
The game centres around a bunch of people who go to a recently terraformed Mars looking for a mining job, and when their employers start shooting them, they decide that instead of contacting the Union or simply quitting, they'll hole themselves up in hidden camp sites and emerge every so often to bother them, usually by fucking up a building or something, with the hope of eventually liberating Mars. Not that they'll be anything left of Mars after they've driven a truck through every building on it.
Yes, the story is bullshit. But the gameplay itself is great, every game needs this level of destruction in it. There is no greater feeling than the one you get when you Hijack a JCB and plough through a tower block, or when you steal one of those Power Loaders from Aliens and... plough through a tower block. The only problem is that sometimes the gravity doesn't seem to work, and buildings can be held up by toilet roll tubes and blu-tack, but that's random physics for you.
Also there's the throwbacks to Red Faction, and to a lesser extent Red Faction 2, that suitably send me into a fanboy delight. You even revisit the ruins of the Ultor corporation, although it doesn't have the same feel as returning to Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4. And it's a bit morbid when you find out that Parker, the hero from the first RF is now a mental hobo and Alias from RF2 managed to die in the martian wastes. You don't expect such things from hero characters.
To finish off, I tried out Shadow Complex finally and today bought some Microsoft Points to buy the full version. I got a 2100 Point card, so I'm torn between either Monkey Island SE or Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta for the rest of the points. Either way, I need Shadow Complex, and I think I have a man crush on Nolan North. The wife also bought me a year of XBox Live today, and I intend to get into online gaming a bit more now. Hopefully ODST will be a good introduction for me. I managed to resist buying Left 4 Dead today.
The game involves eating things, which is what I expected, and fair enough is fun as hell. When you can actually see what's happening that is. The camera spends most of it's time either looking at the side, front or top of the shark, and it pretty much breaks the game. So to say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
I've had quite a bit of spare time this week, and have got a fair bit of gaming done. The first game I played through was Halo 2, as I said last week I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. Now, I know I played neither Halo nor Halo 2 on their releases, or even in the right generation, so they are bound to feel a bit dated, but neither have really grabbed me. I spent most of Halo 2 slogging through the endless waves of respawning enemies just wishing the game would end so I could stick it back on the shelf and never lay eyes on it again. In fact, by the end of the game I was just running past all the enemies as they fought each other, because it was quicker than having to take down each enemy's shield and then killing them in turn, not to mention scrabbling round on the floor for new weapons all the time because you can't collect ammo for the best ones. And then there was the bug...
Every so often (well, every 10 minutes or so), the background of the level would emboss itself on the screen, obscuring my view sometimes so badly that I just couldn't play it and forcing me to quit out of the game and restart it. I don't know if this was a problem with playing the game on the XBox 360 or not, but I was led to believe that before Gears of War reared it's steroid-filled head Halo 2 was still the most-played game on XBox Live, and I can't imagine that Microsoft would allow such an awful bug in a game that's still being played so much without patching it.
On a more positive note, I had an hour on Halo 3 after I finished it, and that was much better.
The other game I was mainly playing this week was Red Faction Guerrilla. Now, this game is an odd one, because it starts off a blast, genuinely fun to play, but quickly gets repetitive in the middle before regaining the spark at the end. But the middle really is so boring that very few people will actually see the end, and that really is a shame.
The game centres around a bunch of people who go to a recently terraformed Mars looking for a mining job, and when their employers start shooting them, they decide that instead of contacting the Union or simply quitting, they'll hole themselves up in hidden camp sites and emerge every so often to bother them, usually by fucking up a building or something, with the hope of eventually liberating Mars. Not that they'll be anything left of Mars after they've driven a truck through every building on it.
Yes, the story is bullshit. But the gameplay itself is great, every game needs this level of destruction in it. There is no greater feeling than the one you get when you Hijack a JCB and plough through a tower block, or when you steal one of those Power Loaders from Aliens and... plough through a tower block. The only problem is that sometimes the gravity doesn't seem to work, and buildings can be held up by toilet roll tubes and blu-tack, but that's random physics for you.
Also there's the throwbacks to Red Faction, and to a lesser extent Red Faction 2, that suitably send me into a fanboy delight. You even revisit the ruins of the Ultor corporation, although it doesn't have the same feel as returning to Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4. And it's a bit morbid when you find out that Parker, the hero from the first RF is now a mental hobo and Alias from RF2 managed to die in the martian wastes. You don't expect such things from hero characters.
To finish off, I tried out Shadow Complex finally and today bought some Microsoft Points to buy the full version. I got a 2100 Point card, so I'm torn between either Monkey Island SE or Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta for the rest of the points. Either way, I need Shadow Complex, and I think I have a man crush on Nolan North. The wife also bought me a year of XBox Live today, and I intend to get into online gaming a bit more now. Hopefully ODST will be a good introduction for me. I managed to resist buying Left 4 Dead today.
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