sprites & bites

Gaming, iPads and a few biscuits on the side…

Monthly Archives: October 2008

Tomb Raider Underworld Demo

You would have thought after years of the Tomb Raidergames being criticised for awkward jumps and dodgy camera angles that the developers would take note and do something about it. It appears that they have ignored these pleas and the evidence is in the new downloadable demo on Xbox Live.

Far from improving the game it is the same old controls with the same old frustration and the demo leaves me feeling cold. I usually have a rule of not judging a game by its demo because demos often do not reflect the finished game, but in this case I feel justified in thinking that it is crap. I was expecting something fresh and new and some fixes of age-old problems.

Instead I have a feeling of a rehashed old game and that the developers have made no attempt to bring us something new.

Frustrating jumps, difficult to see angles, dodgy camera angles, and what is with the sonar map? It is useless. It is like looking at an old videogame from the 8-bit days. If they are going to give a map at least make it useful. Milking a cash cow springs to mind.

I will not be buying this game, it is just the same old shit, different name.

Saints Row 2 Review

Sandbox games are quite common nowadays but it is rare that one jumps out at you as being a great game. Some of them, like The Godfather, are pretty mediocre and have you driving from place to place doing the same routine and have nothing special to offer. The most famous sandbox series of course is the Grand Theft Auto series and every sandbox game after that gets compared to the last GTA offered. In this case it is the most recent GTA 5. GTA5 looks so much better than Saints Row 2 graphically, but in many respects Saints Row 2 is the better game because it is much more fun with a lot more to do on the side.

Now that is where my GTA comparison will end because I feel that Saints Row 2 is a game that deserves to stand on it’s own merit. The game is chock full of things to do on the side. Not just your drug courier missions or car collecting for garages but the developer has looked past these tired old missions and given us some great fun things to do. One of the side missions was to drive a truck full of poo and to spray it all over the buildings indicated to cause damage to the buildings. You have to reach a certain amount of damage caused for that level to pass. Another side was racing a mini vehicle dressed in a flameproof suit. You have to get to the checkpoints and at the same time riding over bombs to explode them and cause damage to cars and people around. But my favourite has to be “FUZZ”. You dress as a policeman and drive around attending crimes to stop the criminals – you have a cameraman in tow to collect footage for the reality show “FUZZ”. There is a footage bar to complete and the more crimes you clean up you increase the bar to its fullest. Each level is a little harder and you are requested on different occasions to use certain weapons like an RPG or flamethrower to create the maximum footage. The police are on your side as homies during these fuzz missions so if there is one nearby they will jump in your car and help you out.

The main missions themselves are quite varied and my only gripe with them was that I had to fill up my respect level to play the main missions. This involved doing side missions. Sometimes this involved a long drive to the nearest activity to play the activity and the drive all the way back to the mission point. Now whilst the side missions were fun, they sometimes got int he way of what I wanted to do. Some days I just wanted to drive through the main storyline to get to the end and do the activities when I wanted, but they were forced upon me.

Back from the original game are the strongholds. You takle over a stronghold by beating the goons and then that area of the map becomes yours. There are 45 areas to beat. Your strongholds can be attacked at any time though. In the last game the attacks were very frequent and quite disruptive to the flow of the game, but this time around it was pleasant to have only a few attacks to deal with. I think I had 3 through the entire game from start to finish.

Visually the game is not a stunner like some other recent games but it does look quite good. I had a few framerate issues on a couple of occasions but nothing major. One thing to note, this game is buggy. I had crashing of the console, bugs and glitches people getting stuck, homies not following me, and stupid AI who would stand there and do nothing. But despite all these flaws I kept coming back for more. If this game had not been as much fun as it was then it would have been binned days ago.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the openness of sandbox games.

GREAT/10 – A buggy game but such a lot of fun.

Call of Duty 5 Beta

Out of the blue without warning I got an invite to the Call of Duty 5 beta. I certainly was not expecting it this weekend but it was attached to my profile on www.callofduty.com so you might want to check yours too to see if there is an invite.

So I downloaded the beta and was expecting a fantastic World War 2 online experience. Except I was wrong, it is just like Call of Duty 4 but with older guns. In my opinion, Call of Duty is not like it used to be online with versions 2 and 3. Something has changed and I do not think it is positive. I cannot even put a precise finger to the problem but it just seems like the games are just run and gun, death after death and just a repeating sequence like that. Call of Duty 2 and 3 were fun, 4 and 5 just not fun at all. Now I know that many millions of people will disagree with me, but that is just my personal opinion.

Some notes about the game:

There are dogs – vicious dogs. You can call upon your dobermans to attack the enemy and death is not pleasant. You can shoot these dogs dead. Thing is though, unless you are lucky to hear the call from your team for the dogs being released there is no other indication these dogs are on your side so you may end up killing your own dogs. If the RSPCA get wind of this they will blow their roof.

Press UP on the D-pad and you get a bigger version of your radar so you can see positions clearer, whether you have time to do this in-game with what is going on is another matter.

Perks and ranking up system is pretty much the same but with different perks added.

What does disappoint me is that map selection is still random like it was in number 4. I don’t know why they removed the ability to select the map and replace it with the vote to skip option.

The maps themselves are okay. There is one set in a Japanese village surrounded by water. It is dark and you can hide in the water if you so desire. The next is set around some kind of Japanese temple and the other is sort of a desolate and destroyed train yard (again).

There are not many problems with this beta. I had some grenades stick to trees branches and some weird goings on like that, but the worst problem which must be fixed before release is that you will find yourself spawning right in the middle of a fire fight. This is probably the most annoying aspect of the game and I am very surprised it is happening. If I remember correctly, they had this issue with the Call of Duty 4 beta but later fixed it with a patch, so if they took the code from that game they should have taken the patches aswell.

I think that hardcore fans of Call of Duty 4 are going to love this game but I am sorry, like with the changes to Call of Duty 4, I do not like these changes either. It is a marmite game. I am however looking very much forward to the single player game when it is released.

Linger in The Shadows PS3

A couple of nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and somebody was pointing a gun with silencer at me through my wall.  I jumped out of bed and ran into my hallway and there I sat for a good 10 minutes worried someone was trying to kill me until I realised it was all a dream.  Even when I realised it was a dream I carefully went back into the bedroom and checked the wall to see if the gun was there.  It was that vivid that I was convinced it was real.  

This I feel is a side effect of playing too many games, especially ones with guns.  I am sure most of you gamers out there have at one point dreamt about being in a game.  For me it doesn’t happen often, but when it does it is certainly not forgettable. 

What has this got to do with Linger in the Shadows from the PS3?  Well speaking of dreams, this game is like one weird dream.  It is the weirdest, dreamiest game I have ever played, it is like all your strangest dreams rolled into one freaky episode.  In fact it is not even a game, it is an interactive video.  I know after “playing” this game (video) that i will definitely be dreaming about it at some point in the next few weeks.  It is not scary, it is weird – choose any synonym you like… 

Synonyms: bizarre, cranky, curious, erratic, freakish, idiosyncratic, odd, outlandish, peculiar, quaint, queer, quirky, singular, strange, unnatural, unusual

It could be any of those, in fact I would go as far as to say it is quite disturbing.  This video (game) is so strange that every PS3 owner must play it, purely for the experience of knowing what it is like to see a giant cat or a twisted cog or even a flying dog with massive ears.  Even the list of synonyms above cannot explain how I feel about this game.  It is truly unique and not in a particularly pleasant way.  I have no idea what I am doing, there are no help files, no tutorials and you are just thrown into this video with a few icons here and there which mean nothing at all and the video keeps rewinding itself and playing again because I am missing that sweet spot to do something, except I don’t know what or how. 

For the love of gaming gods, everybody has to try this video (game). it is only £1.99 and will serve you with the weirdest game experience you have ever had.  You can then go and dream about flying dogs with gigantic ears.

Brothers In Arms Hells Highway

Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway has been receiving fairly good reviews across the board and I was eager to play this game as I have such a love of World War 2 games.  It is a squad based tactical shooter which I am not usually keen on though.  The controls are quite intimidating at first and it is confusing to start off with how to use them effectively, but with perseverance I found that they were really easy to use and I could use the options to good effect. 

It is not a short game by any means, I suppose it took me between 12-14 hours which is an average length game and 3 times the pitiful length of Call of Duty 4. 

The game is a little buggy in places and occasionally members of my team would get stuck in scenery but if you progress they will come running forward.  The AI is very strong and you must use cover properly or face a quick death.  Your team mates will even shout at you to get to cover if you are not doing it properly. There are some sections where the AI are really hard to break through and one level very near the end took me many attempts to complete.  It is vital you use suppressing fire from the front with one or two teams and flank them from the left or right so they are unsuspecting.  Oddly, the game went from easy to hard to easy to hard and so on throughout the game, not a continual increase in difficulty.  The tank sections were really easy though and the tank guns made easy work of the enemy. 

Visually the game looks good but is not a stunner with the likes of Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock for example.  There’s the odd clipping against scenery and occasional framerate dips but on the whole it is good, but not awesome.  Graphics in the cutscenes looked fantastic though and the models of soldiers were impressive.

The best part of the game though has to be the storyline.  WW2 shooters have never had the best storylines to accompany the games but this story was very interesting and I was compelled to watch the cutscenes throughout – something which I rarely do. 

Despite a few bugs here and there and the spikes of difficulty, I have thoroughly enjoyed this game and I would recommend fans of WW2 games to play it.

GREAT/10