sprites & bites

Gaming, iPads and a few biscuits on the side…

Monthly Archives: November 2008

Call of Duty World At War

When it was announced that the Call of Duty series was going back to WW2 after the wonder of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, fans across the globe cried many tears wondering why go back to a tired old genre when modern warfare was so successful.

But I have to be different. I love WW2 games and was very disappointed when Call of Duty 4 went to modern warfare. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good game but it was not what I wanted. So I had a lot of delight when it was announced they would go back to World War 2. Not just WW2 though, not just the French towns and farms of old, but a new area. Cue the Pacific and Berlin!

Call of Duty World at War takes you to the Americans fight with the Japanese in the Pacific and the Russians pushing the Germans back to Berlin.

The game is very bloody and brutal and even some of the loading screens showed real life WW2 footage of deaths. This was quite shocking, one scene showed a blindfolded man being executed (shot in the chest). I am not sure these sort of real life scenes have a place in video games but it does supplement the game quite well showing the real horrors of the war as it was back then.

The difficulty of the game was quite hard at times. There are scenes where not only you have to deal with the enemy front, left, right and behind, but you also had to deal with them hiding atop trees above you. Then of course you have to deal with the Japanese soldiers who played dead who suddenly jump out at you and attack you. These were quite easy to spot though as when going into a new area you knew you never killed them so they must be still alive.

Graphically the game does look amazing and quite rightly so as it runs the engine which was used in Call of Duty 4. I would say this game looked a bit better though at times, especially when large explosions were involved. The game was longer than Call of Duty 4 and I managed the single player in around 7-8 hours.

I enjoyed this game so much that it is another contender for my game of the year.

This is not a full review and just a basic outline of the game but if I were to review it my score would be a healthy GREAT/10

LittleBigPlanet Frustration

This game is really clever and a great enhancement to games trying to emulate true physics, but it is so frustrating. Some of the jumps are really awkward or feel near impossible. When it comes to a point when I am trying a level twenty or so times then it is losing the enjoyment and just becomes a chore.

I don’t want games to be a chore I want them to be fun. At times, this game is not fun at all and I just want to throw it in the bin tonight. Tomorrow I may feel differently, but today I am crying.

Fallout 3

What a great game. I just finished the main story last night and have a great sense of satisfaction and money well spent. I am extremely disappointed that you CANNOT continue your game in the world after the final quest, so I have to go back to a previous save now to do all the side quests I missed.

The game was very similar to Oblivion, but many times better. In Oblivion I could travel for miles wandering around and not meet anybody and not be bothered, but here in Fallout 3 every step I felt there was something around the corner. I stepped with a real fear that something would jump out on me. I think the cause of that was the post-nuclear-bomb setting. The ruins, the desolate buildings and burned out cars, I was always moving with excitement and intrepidation about what was coming next. Even in areas I had been before and killed all enemy, I felt like something else was around the corner.

Graphically it looks fantastic but I did have a few issues with tearing at times and a few framerate drops. The most annoying thing though was that quite often after saving or fast travelling I would lose my hotkey settings for weapons so had to keep re-assigning them. An annoyance but at least I had no crashes or game killing bugs.

Fallout 3 for me is definitely a candidate for Game of the Year, I think the only one that can beat this now is Call of Duty: World at War, we will see about that one next week.