Dead Rising 2 Case Zero

Dead Rising 2 is out later this year and Capcom have released a small teaser for the game on Xbox Live. Usually these small teasers would be called demos, however Capcom have decided to call it a prologue of the main game and are charging 400 Microsoft Points for the privelege. Some might argue that the price is okay because it is separate to the main game but come on, it is likely only separate because Capcom decided to take a knife to the beginning of the game and slice off a section so they could charge extra for it. This is no different to any other game where the developers have excluded things from the main game so they can charge afterwards. It is pure greed and is a slap in the face to the fans who have been eagerly anticipating the sequel to Dead Rising.

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

DeathSpank (the capital S is not a typo) was released on Xbox Live Arcade last week for a mere 1,200 points. This might seem a lot for an arcade game but this game compared to other arcade games, is huge. The game description quotes 10-12 hours completion which is about right and is longer than many full price games which sometimes barely muster up 6-8 hours.

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

Toy Story 3 The Video Game

Platforming games are few and far between lately and those which have been released are generally sub-par games which are rushed and as buggy to hell. Toy Story 3 is a pleasant departure from the run of the mill collect-a-thons and actually has a decent level design and some replayability. It is a rather short game though and can be finished within 3 hours. Do not be scared by the 3 hour mark because alongside the story mode you have the Toy Box where you can spend many more hours.

Toy Box is a whole town which you can build up and do mini fetch quests for different town residents. Quests are very short but there are plenty of them to keep you occupied. I have spent 3-4 hours in Toy Box mode so far and I doubt I am near completion. It is a fun game with plenty to keep you occupied and is available on all formats.

This is not a review, just a passing comment

GOOD/10

Singularity

Singularity was quietly released in Europe on 25th June 2010. When I say quietly I mean really quiet. So quiet that I could not even get a copy of it on launch day in my town. None of the supermarkets had it nor did the game shops, it was not because they sold out, they just did not get any copies. You have to wonder what Activision the publisher were thinking when they make no effort to market a game and then subsequently cry when the sales are bad. Well they will be bad if they do not even bother to get the game into the shops. One week on and I managed to get the game in Gamestation but even then they were only given 3-4 copies.

This game has borrowed (copied) many elements of some of my favourite games. You will see elements from the likes of Bioshock, F.E.A.R and Fallout 3 just to name a few. There is an old saying that imitation is the best form of flattery and the developer here has done very well in it’s flattery and come up with a very accomplished game which is worthy of your money.

The detail in the graphics is excellent and unlike the above named games I experienced no glitches, bugs or graphical issues like tearing whatsoever. It was like they took all these games, mixed them up and actually improved the look and feel to give a polished experience.

The story itself is a little wild and at times has you going from the year 2010 back to 1955 via a TMD (Time Manipulation Device) strapped to your arm. The game is based around time manipulation but unfortunately I do not think they used it enough in the game. There was only a bit near the beginning and some near the end of the game where you went back to 1955. I would liked them to have extended this and had more experiences of going through the time warp. It was a good feature but not used to it’s potential. This did not affect my enjoyment of the game at all, I just think it should have been utilised more within the storyline.

I really enjoyed Singularity and it was a pleasant reminder of some games I had played in the recent past and would definitely recommend everyone play it. It is an accomplished FPS and whilst it may not be worthy of the full RRP price, this is a must-play if you can get it cheaper than what the game shops are offering (£44.99). Available on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Rated 18 Years

GREAT/10

Lego Harry Potter

Let me get my admission out of the way first, I do not like Harry Potter films. I only ever saw one and could not be bothered with the rest but I had to play the game because it is Lego and I have played all Lego video games so far except for Lego Rock Band. So I went in playing this game thinking it was going to be also rubbish. To my pleasant surprise, it was not like Harry Potter really at all and it was not long before I just felt like I was playing a Lego game with wizards and spells. This was fantastic as I was able to brush aside my dislike of Hogwarts and just concentrate on playing the game.

It is classic Lego game fun and while I would not rate is as highly as the previous games – Star Wars, Batman and Indiana Jones it is still definitely a worthy addition to your collection if you are also a Lego fan.

The previous games got bigger and bigger in gameplay space especially the last Indiana Jones episodes so it was a disappointment to find that Harry Potter version feels a heck of a lot smaller. I think this is due to being mostly in the confines of Hogwarts Castle so I did feel at times a little claustrophobic and restricted and it also felt quite linear. I suppose this is not really something I can criticise too much because of course they are trying to vaguely follow a story which was mostly set around Hogwarts and if they strayed too much away from that, die hard Harry Potter fans would find holes in the story. As usual with Lego games there are tons of collectibles – red bricks, gold bricks, postal boxes and some which are unique to Harry Potter like shield crests – each level has 4 quarters of a shield to collect. There are also bonus levels to play for extra gold bricks.

There is really not much I can say about this game further. It is Lego, in the same vein as the other games with a different skin and a smaller playing area. If you are a Harry Potter fan you can add it to your collection, if you are like me and do not like Harry Potter but are a Lego game fan, it is still a worthy game to play because you will soon forget you are playing the series.

One final note for the developer, I think the title is wrong. I know the game is aimed at all ages, but the title Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 really makes it sound like the actual game is aimed at pre-school when it is not.

GOOD/10

What next for Lego games? Spiderman, Superman, or maybe a collection of super heroes would be good?

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11

Another year, another Tiger Woods game with much more of the same. The problem with sports games is that they never really change much because the rules of the game are set in stone so it takes a huge amount of imagination to bring a new sports game with the same rules but something which packs original punch. Unfortunately, EA Sports year in year out seem quite incapable of using that imagination to give us something refreshing and new and the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 is the same old. Granted, you can now play in the Ryder Cup, but that is just another tournament added to the list of tournaments already playable in the tournament mode.

EA Sports have tried to change the game slightly and have added a new “true aim” mode which is supposed to replicate proper golf and which is turned off by default so you have to enable it. Sadly, in their rush to try and bring something new, they forgot to tell us how to use it. This is exactly what the manual says:

True-aim is an all-new, more authentic way of playing golf in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Rather than utilising an aiming circle, players using True-aim must use an in-game marker to see the distance ot the target and then adjust their swing accordingly. This results in a more realisitic way of playing and gives players even more control over their swing.

Sounds easy yes? Except when you switch to True-aim mode you are presented with not an individual marker but about 8-10 different GPS points and there is no explanation at all on how to use them or switch between them.

Another lack of explanation is for the new Focus mode. And this is what they say:

Use the all-new focus feature to take even more control over your game. Your golfer’s focus is displayed as a red meter in the lower left corner of the hud. As you perform advanced maneuvres such as power boost, spin, putt preview or shrinking the aim circle, focus decreases. Once focus is completely depleted, advanced maneuvres are no longer available. As time passes, focus is slowly restored.

This is all pretty self explanatory and on the whole it works very well except I cannot get it to work for boost accuracy in the training section so I keep failing. The instructions are clear to a point but when you exit to take your shot there is no instruction on how to actually apply it to the shot and so my training is failing. Needless to say I exited the training and just played the game as I used to. Now I am sure some bright spark will come along and explain how to do these, but if something which should be simple requires explaining, then EA Sports have failed.

Let’s talk about the putting. This is one of my biggest gripes of the later Tiger Woods games, it is that I cannot use the putting grid very well. I struggle to read it and understand the speeds and putt accurately. I can manage about a foot either side of the hole but anything greater than that and my putting is a mess. EA Sports have been criticised by many gamers for this before – not for having a putting grid, but for having no real alternative to read the green for those who hate the grid. Sure they have the putting line by pressing LB (Xbox 360 version) but this can often be very vague and it is limited in use to how much focus meter you have. The putting line uses up quite a large chunk of focus so there are many times when you can only use it once per putt or even have no chance to use it at all because you have not enough focus, so you are left to using the putting grid – if you know how to use it well.

Gone are the monetary prizes for your skills and now you have the XP system known from RPGs and adventure games. You get XP points for completing challenges and general play of the game. These can be spent on upgrading your skills or buying items from the club shop. You have to balance out your desire for new kit against upgrading your skills. My personal recommendation is to ignore the pro shop until you start getting lots of XP and concentrate on upgrading the skills only at first. Certainly there are a few early challenges which require you to have a certain amount of power to pass so power should be an early priority. Speaking of challenges, there are 48 challenges to play ranging from completing 3 or 4 holes in a certain par or more challenging types of 9 holes. They are a little challenging this time round as not only do you have to beat the par score of the opponent but you also have a minimum amount of greens-in-regulation (GIR) or fairways-in-regulation (FIR) – so as an example one of Retief Goosen’s challenges is that you have to beat his score of -1 under par but also minimum of 7 out of 9 greens in regulation. So its a double challenge as you may pass on one but fail on the other.

Generally I feel the game is an okay upgrade but it seems to lack some punch and something new to the table, those bits which are new are quite poorly explained and the whole game just barely feels like a new game at all. As I said at the beginning it is just the same of golf churned out with a few bells which at a push let out a little ding.

Be wary of buying the game second hand if you wish to play online. EA now have a unique code on each manual which unlocks the online play. If the code is used then you have to pay to unlock the online play. A bit cheeky but I can understand a bit that they want some money from the second hand market although being the largest game developer in the world, they certainly do not need the money and many customers will see it as penny pinching.

I am disappointed with this game, its just another rehash but if you are one who has to buy every iteration of every Tiger Woods game then it is worth buying, just do not expect any groundbreaking new things. I would class it more as an expansion pack, but then that is the way all sports games are nowadays.

GOOD/10 (at a push)

Is the iPhone 4 Antenna Problem Software based?

The iPhone 4 was released today and it was soon evident there was a problem with the signal dropping when people were holding the phone. Many videos showing the evidence have been posted up on various forums and video sites proclaiming a mass manufacturing error. @ghalfacree has duly noted to me that this is likely to be an OS4 related issue and a fault in the displaying of bars rather than a fault with the phone, like Apple claim.

So I thought I would test my iPhone 3GS model loaded with OS4 and voila I could replicate the problem. Within 20 seconds of holding the phone, my signal went from 5 bars down to one. I did this process 3 more times to rule out a fluke and the same happened. Some people have shown videos to show calls dropping on the iPhone 4 but as Gareth states, if the phone thinks it has a low signal it will drop the call. Now I am no scientist or a technical buff, I leave that to the experts, I can only tell you that this happens on the 3GS too on OS4 so it is highly likely to be a software issue. I await a patch from Apple to fix it.

sprites & bites

Gaming, iPads and a few biscuits on the side…