Round up of the Latest Releases

WOLFENSTEIN – PC, XBOX 360 & PS3

The Castle of Wolfenstein games have come a long way since their inception many sunrises ago. Wolfenstein is it’s latest incarnation and is the first on the current generation of consoles. Set in World War 2, you are fighting the Nazi German’s and their zombies. You find an old talisman which has special secret powers to unlock. As you progress through the game you gain extra powers to the talisman – powers like the ability to make enemies glow up so you can see them easily and a special power to see hidden doors and secrets. Weaponry comes in the form of the usual WW2 guns – MP4, M23 and the rifle.

The game is made by Activision who are the publishers of the Call of Duty series, this is no Call of Duty but there are influences from those games. The controls are very similar and have the same feel and even the mission markers look just like the Call of Duty stars.

Graphically the game does look good but there are sometimes low resolution detail and you can see they could have put a little bit more into the presentation. It is certainly no deal-breaker though and there are far worse looking games around.

Wolfenstein is of average length and a casual gamer can get through the campaign in 10-12 hours, maybe a little more if you do all the side extras.

Good/10

Shadow Complex – Xbox Live Arcade 1200 points

For 1200 points you are getting a fantastic game which is almost of full retail price proportions and is far better than some of the sludge that has been released lately.

Shadow Complex is a side scrolling 3D platformer/shooter/puzzler all thrown into one tasty package. It is made by Epic Games – of Gears of War fame, so you know that every effort has been made to give you a great gaming experience. It looks good, the graphics are high detail for an arcade game and I experienced no problems. There was only one time when the game showed some screen tearing and that was when riding the minecart.

The game is quite easy to play and even grandad’s would not have a problem with the controls. My finish play time was over 6 hours but I did not take the time to collect all items and visit every room. My stat at the end of the game was only 49% of items to complete so it has the possibility of a good 4-5 hours extra if you are wishing for 100% completion.

Shadow Complex in my opinion is the best Xbox Live Arcade game to date, bar none and is worth every penny I spent on it.

Great/10

Batman: Arkham Asylum

History shows that video games made from movies/comic books have always been very poor, with little gameplay, lots of bugs and look graphically rubbish. It is like the developers are trying to milk a cash cow without putting in any effort.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is here and is definitely one to break the mould. This game looks every bit a high definition game with amazing visuals. I would go as far to say next to Call of Duty 4, it is the best looking game on the Xbox 360 to date. There were no bugs, no glitches, no tearing and no framerate problems except for a bit near the end – some cutscenes with the Joker. I am not saying it is the best game ever, only that it looks the best, nearly.

The game is a bit of a hack and slash button mashing affair when it comes to combat, this makes it a relatively easy game to play except really when it comes to the boss battles. I have to admit I have not completed the game. I have come to a boss battle near the end and I simply cannot do it and there seems no way to change the difficulty. This may be a game which ends up unfinished, which is a shame as I have throughly enjoyed it.

There are lots to collect, from riddler puzzles to trophies and interview tapes with prisoners. There are also challenges to unlock, these can be timed challenges or set pieces to achieve certain goals. The challenges are accessed through the main menu. If you have the PS3 version of the game it does include the Joker challenge missions for free. Sadly the Xbox 360 version does not have these challenges and you will probably have to pay for them if you want them at a later date.

This is a must have game which is worth at the very least a rental.

Great/10

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10

Another year, another EA money spinner of Tiger Woods PGA Tour – we are in double figures now and have made it to 10, representing next year 2010. EA like to feel ahead in the calendar.

First thing I notice after the starting splash screen is a nice new menu, but hey.. “New courses available, press LB” so I press LB and it takes me to the 360 marketplace where I can buy 2 courses at 600 points each – thats two DLC courses ON THE DAY OF RELEASE – clearly EA held them back from the real game to gouge us for extra money. I find this disgusting practice.

So onto the game itself. Graphically the game looks good and EA are improving on the way they render bushes and trees but still they seem unable to do crowds properly. The crowds have so little detail they might as well be matchsticks but this is really just a minor irritation and shows that whilst EA are making a good effort to make the game look good, they are neglecting the crowds.

The game has all of the traditional modes, tournaments and the career play. Every year the career challenges are laid out differently, last year it was the honeycomb grid, this year they are play cards moving left to right through the different courses and have differing levels of difficulty. All of ythe challenges are copies from real life golf incidents with major players over the years, so it is quite good we are actually playing these famous incidents – from long drive challenges, to par 3′s etc and infamous comebacks.

Apart from the way the challenges are set out, not much really has changed from last year. Your personal coach is still there and you have the optional challenges to improve your golf through the coach.

If you really must get the newest golf game every year then this is worth a buy but there is not much more to that of last year, so do not expect huge changes.

inFamous PS3

I have just finished playing inFamous which was out last week on the PS3. It is very much like Crackdown which appeared on the Xbox 360 a few years ago. The only thing different really is that you have super-human electrical energy powers and that the missions have more structure to them. Most of the side missions are very repetitive so after a while I didn’t bother doing those but concentrated on the main storyline missions. On the whole the game was enjoyable but there were times when the difficulty spiked from really easy to very hard and not much in between. Certain sections of the game were really hard they had me swearing like a grumpy old woman and throwing my controller.

One thing in the game that a lot of games do which annoyed me is nagging me to do things. For example I had to climb a high tower and activate lifts so my partner could get to the top of the building aswell. The game was nagging me and the partner kept shouting at me to hurry up and activate the lifts. There was no timer on these sections so there was no need for him to keep nagging me to get to the lifts. I am playing the game, I know what I am supposed to do, so stop rushing me!

Moans aside, inFamous does have flair and style and explosions aplenty and also the added bonus of being good or evil with your powers. There are times in the game you have to make moral decisions. This can increase your good karma or bad karma depending on which decisions you choose. Obviously if you are playing for a good character then you will want to increase your good karma as much as possible. Completing missions, committing good acts and so on give you experience points which you can spend on upgrading your powers.

It is a solid game and whilst it certainly for me is not game of the year material, I had a lot of fun and that is what games are about. If you can get past the difficulty spiking then this is definitely a game to try and maybe buy. There is a free demo on the PSN store.

Downloading Full Games

Downloading additional content for games for your consoles is a multi million pound business. From small arcade titles to map packs and older games with backwards compatibility. This multi million pound business is here to stay and will only grow. But what about downloading full games? Sony and Microsoft are of course aiming to get everybody to download games and in the future we will no longer have a physical disc to play them on. They hate the rental market and the second hand trade in market – it costs them sales but that sort of business model requires the support of both the consumer and the retailers – retailers who have supported them for years by selling their consoles and games, are the console makers really ready to bite the hand that feeds them?

It is not just retailers who would die but other sectors aswell. Rental companies like Swap Game or Gamesfrenzy would die, disc manufacturers and disc pressing companies would lose millions and the retailers like Game or Gamestation would shut up shop because there is no point in stocking just consoles. Could they live with themselves for making all those millions of people jobless? Money matters more than morals so maybe that point is dead too.

Having a physical disc is also a reminder that you own the copy of the game. I have countless games downloaded on my PS3 and Xbox 360 that I have never finished. I never finished them because within all the tabs of the interface they got lost and I forgot that I actually bought them.

Top 5 reasons why discs should never die

1) Most customers want a physical disc which shows they have something for their money.

2) Rental markets and second hand markets would fail. Consumers will not accept the lack of right to sell their games on when they have finished with them.

3) With no retailers to sell the games they would have no retailers to sell the consoles. Instant kill.

4) People want to be able to take a game to a friends house to play, they won’t want to lug their consoles around.

5) If I want to buy a game for someone as a present there is no way I am going to buy them a download voucher.

I started out making a top 10 but couldn’t think of any more reasons, if anyone wishes to add some reasons please feel free

Killzone 2 Review

Over the years, the Killzone name has come under fire for being an underachiever. It has been in the centre of many fanboy flame wars on numerous internet sites and forums. The original was branded a “Halo killer” before the first screen shots were released to the public; this made the anticipation sky rocket and overall expectations sensationally high. For the sequel, the expectations were once again high. But this time, Killzone 2 is worth every ounce of hype and sensational expectation it deserves.

So let’s start with the story, you play as Sgt. Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko, a new character with a fresh new background. You play through the entire game as Sev, unlike the original Killzone that had you controlling four different members of your team. You are part of Alpha team, a group of soldiers tasked with invading the Helgan capital and taking down Visari. Every cut scene is expertly created and really helps push the action and the story. Although Killzone’s story isn’t the hottest in town, it defiantly engages you and gives you something to fight for. The voice acting is pretty good; there are no overly intelligent sounding marines but a more realistic grunt that really bleeds into the story and makes it come alive.

Killzone has always been known as a pusher of the Playstation brands graphics, and it’s no different with Killzone 2 offering some of the greatest graphics and screen presence I have ever come across. Some would argue that Crysis for the pc is a much more worthy candidate for best graphics, and although this is true in some areas, Killzone 2 just oozes top notch build quality and amazing effects. Killzone utilizes some very cutting edge technology in a bid to make it the most visceral and entertaining battle experience to grace gamer’s hands. It’s a game that must be played to be fully understood; watching game play videos just doesn’t do the job of conveying a true war experience. Sound, especially if you have 7.1 surround, is a true treat for the ears as every snap, crackle and pop fleshes out the experience even more so. The weight of your character, the kick back from your gun, the rush to cover and the blinding grey scale of your bullet ridden corpse immerses you so much so you truly forget you’re playing a game.

For AI, this game is no idiot. On higher difficulties the Helgast act as a team, always thinking ahead it seems. It’s a real challenge at times to break through, but when you do it’s so very gratifying. I’m sure it isn’t normal to be tricked into thinking you are playing against human counterparts, especially in multiplayer when you realise after 20minuites of playing the enemy team are all bots. There is the odd, very rare time when the AI does something wrong, but perfection in this area can’t be expected.

The gameplay coupled with the grand presentation and production values sets this game apart from the rest. The controls for me are spot on, but do come with the chance to change them to suit particular styles of play. So far I have spoken very highly of Killzone 2, but there are some small things that could be improved on. The addition of Co-op would have been great, especially online co-op. Who knows what future updates could give us, maybe whole new singe player experiences. Some parts of the excellent multiplayer could be improved like party support, but overall, the multiplayer feature of Killzone 2 really shines through and is sure to be one of the most immersive online experiences this year. At first it is slow and seemingly hard to get into, but as you play through it the full flavour of the multiplayer starts to kick in as a bevy of options show up. The experience is extensive and easily customisable to suit your needs on the battlefield. Stats and an amazing replay option on the Killzone web site are real advancements in multiplayer, as is the way game modes change on the fly in matches. Killzone 2 can truly be seen as a new bench mark in multiplayer, although not a total evolution, it has plenty to it to define itself from the rest.

To sum up, Killzone 2 is the FPS the Playstation 3 has been waiting for. This game helps to push the console apart from the competition. If this is a taste of what’s to come this year from Playstation, we are in for a treat. This high quality gaming experience cannot be missed, so grab it now and join the battle!

Excellent/10

By E-ROLE

FEAR 2 Project Origin Review

Previous F.E.A.R games have been quite repetitive in their environments and are famous for having long corridors with samey rooms and not much variation in between. So I approached this game with the feeling it would be more of the same. How wrong was I? The developer Monolith has given us a game which has a big variation in the environments and also a different style to some of the levels. Sure there is still some corridor fighting, but it is no longer just an office block with countless computer rooms all that look the same.

Some examples of the scenes you will encounter are a school, a hospital, a railway station, and the scene of a plane crash in a town. Hospitals, schools and train stations have been done to death in games and Monolith will lose a little bit for lack of imagination, however they have done the levels with such flair and detail that it would be rude of me to mark them down especially given the brilliance of some of the open levels in the game which were so much fun. In fact all of the game was fun and it is very sad that I have now finished the game as I did not want it to end.

In addition to the locales mentioned above, there are also a couple of levels where you step inside a giant mech-suit with rocket laucnhers and just stampede through the town destroying everything. You can get out of the suit at any time to gather ammo and health left behind or indeed you can do those sections without the suits but they might be quite hard to complete. There are also several sections where you use a gun turret to kill everything in sight.

One of my favourite bits of the game is where you are chasing after a spirit that keeps bringing up soldiers like puppets on string. Annoyingly fun stuff.

As with all F.E.A.R games before it, the AI in the game is brilliant and I don’t know of any game I have played yet which can surpass it. The AI will run for cover properly, they will upturn furniture to provide cover and they will crawl through spaces to get to you. They are always moving and running from cover to cover so it is sometimes diffcult to pin them down. This is where the slow motion (press Y) comes in handy. I rarely used it, however if you have a big firefight with lots of enemy moving at you at once you can press Y to slow things down and have more time to aim.

“Alma” the ghostly child returns but is older now and is a young woman and is there to provide you with the scary bits of the game. Games do not usually scare me, but if you are of a nervous disposition you might find it scary yourself. For me, the scary parts concentrated the mind and sometimes I was concentrating so much on the ghostly goings on I could hear myself breathing. In comparison to the older games, this has more weird spooky things happening than before so if you liked the previous games then this is a winner.

There is one very important thing you need to know. The demo is a slicing up of various little sections of the game. It is not a set level but little pieces of most of the levels. Personally I think because of this, it does not give the game justice as the demo is a disjointed mess with the action going from one area to another very quickly. So please do yourself a favour and do not judge this game on the demo alone, it is there to give tasters of the various action within the game but the retail version of the game is very different.

Ammo and health is aplenty on easy mode and you could get by without dying if dying is your frustration. The game took me approximately 10-12 hours to complete.

Graphically, the game is highly detailed and looks every part a current generation game. It has some amazing effects especially when it switches to weird spooky mode. The sound effects are equally as awesome and you would definitely want your speakers turned up – children and neighbours permitting.

I urge everyone to play this game. Hide behind your sofa with your Dr Who Collection if you wish, but you must play this game. Beg or borrow if you must, or if you cannot afford it now, wait until it is a little bit cheaper, but in my uneducated opinion you would be doing yourself a dis-service if you did not play this game sooner or later.

This game is amazing and is one of the best games I have played in a few years and it is clear that Monolith have taken the time to deliver an experience that is well detailed and most of all, fun to play.

EXCELLENT/10

F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin is out now in stores on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Find more FEAR 2 reviews at GameRankings and TestFreaks.

FEAR 2 Live Event

On 12th February 2009 there will be a LIVE event in London where 8 gamers from around Europe will compete against each other and be the first to play FEAR 2: Project Origin.

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

sprites & bites

Gaming, iPads and a few biscuits on the side…

Category Archives: ps3