Poker Pals supports AI two player, local pass and play but ultimately online multiplayer with a friend or a random person. There seems to be no issues with online and it generally works very well. Myself and a few friends had an issue with the game not notifying on iOS5 but I found the fix for this was to go the the device settings – settings ->notifications -> Pals HD – and change the alert type from a banner to alert box.

Sadly, the game is missing online chat which is a great shame, many good iOS board games have online chat now and it is something that should be added to give a better feel of a social game.

Now onto the real issue I have. After having purchased the game for iPad, I found it was quite addicted so purchased it for iPhone too. The problem is that the second device will not accept my username and gives an error that username is already taken – yes it has been taken, by me!! But it seems that I cannot purchase it for two devices and play it with the same username. This is far from the usual behaviour for iOS games and it is something Chillingo must fix as soon as possible, it seems when they made this fun game they forgot that some people may have multiple devices. I am sure they will fix it, but in the meantime do not buy it again for a second device.

So all in all, a fun game, very addictive but has a few issues and tweaks that they need to resolve. I would like to reiterate though apart from the issue above and the tweaks I would like added, I have found no problems with the gameplay itself. Oh and as a BTW, there is an achievement for beating Difficult Davey, I did it after about 10 tries but I swear he cheats. And speaking of achievements, there seems to be a bit of a bug – I magically unlocked a load of achievements I never actually earned! 

It is not all bad though, because the “prologue” (demo) is on Xbox Live Arcade there is a free trial available. So that is a demo of a demo of the real game. Try as they might to gloss it over as a short separate story, this is a demo of the main game and they are charging for it. If this is the way of the future for Xbox Live demos then I want no part of it. 400 points may not seem a lot but it is a slippery slope to more tight arsed practices.

DeathSpank is an RPG with the usual elements of collecting items, levelling up, fetch quests and mini dungeons.  Your goal of the game is to seek an artifact but in true video game style, your quest for the artifact is blocked by doing many other quests first for weird and wonderful people en route.

The graphics are cute and have a hand drawn 2D effect to them. Scenery look like paper cut outs and it really fits in well with the games design.  I experienced no graphical glitches but there was the odd occasional screen tearing which never was a bother.

To help you along the way if you get stuck, you can collect fortune cookies and these unlock hints if you are lost and not sure what to do. My only criticism of the game is that there are not enough fortune cookies. A number of times the game does not do a great job in guiding you on what you have to do and the clues can be very vague, leaving you to possibly use up your fortune cookies too soon.  There is no hand holding to tell you where you are suppposed to be heading so your only option is to visit the entire map looking for where you are supposed to be going, or to use these fortune cookies.  I would liked to have seen an optional radar for those like me who needed extra assistance in working out what to do.

DeathSpank is an excellent addition to the library of XBox Live Arcade games and is a very good single player experience. For those unable to work alone, there is also local co-op mode as well and you can complete the game side by side with a friend.  Some games are not worth 1,200 points, but this one definitely is worth your money.

EXCELLENT/10

Firstly, the combat has no depth whatsoever, it is a simple press X to swing your sword and that is it. There are special powers you can upgrade to but these actually make the game a bit too easy. I am all for easy games, but eventually I was getting a one shot kill and there was no challenge. There are also not many puzzles and those that were there did not require much brain power to work out, apart from one where I resorted to looking on the web as it had me stumped.  Breakable pots and vases only contained power or health and it would have been nice to have found some collectibles. The only collectibles in the game were stone statues which you had to break – for more power and health. The other thing is the look of the game feels very dated. The previous Prince of Persia on the Xbox 360 looked stunning but this game feels like a step back before that, just not good at all.

The platforming sections – swinging jumping etc, the controls worked well but it was dull. It was the same old jumping from pole to pole, swinging from swings and evading razor saws on walls. There was just no variety at all and I felt the game was just a rehash of older versions.

I really would not recommend anyone buy this game at all unless it is in the bargain bin. It is short, it has no depth and is just old tired ideas mashed up into an omelette of nothingness.  Buy cheap, rent or avoid.

AVERAGE/10

Alan Wake your character is a horror book author who has writers block and decides to go to Bright Falls with his wife Alice to take a break and end his writers block. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned, Alice goes missing and he sets on a frightening tale trying to get her back.  The world is twists, full of horrors, the darkness of evil consuming the population of Bright Falls.  To remain spoiler free I will not mention the story further, only to say that I found myself questioning the storyline several times because it kept twisting – this is not a negative note, it is saying that I was kept on my toes trying to keep up with the twists in the story and at one point I had myself thinking I got the story all wrong, but it was the story playing with my mind.

Graphically the game has its superb points when the environments look polished with high detail. Unfortunately the game looks bad in places on my big 40″ TV. Sometimes the background appears a lower resolution so while you have Alan Wake looking good, the area in the background looks pixelated and like I say on a big TV this is evident. ON a smaller TV this may not be so noticeable.  There is also an element of screen tearing at times when Alan is forced to walk places and follow people, it is no game-breaker but can be a tad annoying at times.

They have included some excellent songs in the game and the sound effects match the spooky atmosphere in the game.  There is a big fail with one part of the sound though. When someone is talking as part of the story, sometimes you can hear conversations in the background so it plays two conversations at once and it can be hard to distinguish the two apart. Turn on the subtitles and it is even more of a mess. You end up with two lots of subtitles one above another with no indication as to which subtitle is which.  If anyone has the sound turned down or is deaf and relies on subtitles this is very bad because there is no indication which are the storyline conversation words and which are the background conversation words.  It is not very well implemented at all and they should have had it so when storyline conversations come up, the background conversations are muted.  I would say this is the one thing that ruins the game sometimes and it is very distracting.

So for those obsessed with numbers, with the graphical issues and the sound/subtitles issues I have to mark this game down, I would have expected more from a game in development alledgedly for 10 years and it is a disappointment to have these flaws. However, whilst I would have knocked away 2 points from the score giving an average 8, I think the storyline has enough gusto to carry the game into a 9 score. Because the game is all about the story and you will find yourself gripped from the very beginning and emotionally driven to solve the mystery and find Alice – dead or alive.

GREAT/10

Alan Wake is available now on Xbox 360 only. Rated 15 years and over.

Don’t forget also you can download filmed episodes of the Bright Falls series on Xbox live marketplace. They add to the story of Alan Wake and are free to download.

BREAK IT DOWN BLOG is the place to find the review and it carries some screenshots and gameplay videos as well. I will review the game sometime soon but in the meantime see what Riyad at the Break it Down Blog thinks of it. It is a review for the PS3 version although I would imagine the 360 version will be similar.

I will post my own thoughts on the game in a few days time.

Eight lucky competition winners, all of them gamers and fan of
F.E.A.R. 2, will be taken to a secret location where will not only
have to face their own personal fears but also have the chance to
play the new game in real life!

Here’s a sneak peak at the location of the event: LINKY

The whole world can tune in and watch and participate in the event.
The program starts at 7 pm GMT (8 pm CET). Viewers will have an
immediate effect on how the evening progresses. They can follow, vote
and decide which fears the contestants will have to face – in this
way everyone can be part of the live event and become part of the game.

So send the children to bed early, get some beer/wine/orange juice/whatever and enjoy the transmission over at the WHAT IS FEAR WEBSITE

Personally I am hoping for some giant tarantulas

Anyone can enter and all winners will have their expenses paid to get to London for the event.

For more information and to enter, visit www.whatisfearlive.com

Closing date for entries is 2nd February 2009

Now this “I am Alive” moment is not actually about my near-half-death-ness but it is about a new game on the horizon called “I Am Alive” and being developed by Ubisoft.

The official trailer reminds me of a series recently on UK television called Survivors where people were scrapping others for food and water.

This game may not see the light of day this year but I for one will be watching it closely.  It may end up being another game I am watching for a long time with no solid release date, just like Alan Wake. The game will be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Check here for a list of known features of the game so far, it certainly seems an intriguing and unusual game.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ6Aely9YrQ

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