Should I Buy? – LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4
30 Jul 2011 3 Comments
in Review Tags: DS, Game, Harry Potter, LEGO, Microsoft, Nintendo, PC, Playstation, PSP, Review, Sony, Wii, XBOX
This is a rather special edition of Should I Buy, as it’s being written to commemorate the release of the final Harry Potter film. Still, you all know of J.K. Rowling’s seven book phenomenon, so I don’t need to reiterate the premise or other such details here.
I did review this game before, along with several other LEGO games from Traveller’s Tales. However, they really do warrant being talked about individually so that’s what I’m going to do here.
LHP is the result of the LEGO game formula being refined through its four previous incarnations. And that’s really tangible here. Instead of trying to shoe-horn in unnecessary combat or stray from the events of the books or films to create dramatic sequences to the extent that the LEGO Star Wars games did.
The game derives most of its gameplay through using your various magical abilities to manipulate your environment so you can proceed. While this is hardly new to the LEGO formula, they’ve clearly learnt from past mistakes. While it can still be unclear what you’re meant to do at times, the game cleverly changes the aesthetics of the puzzle enough so that you never really realise you’re only ever using the same dozen or so techniques.
Instead of the traditional hub from which you jump into any of the available levels, the game takes a more narratively structured approach. Once you’ve gone past the first level, you’re free to wander around Hogwarts Castle to your next lesson or level by following Nearly Headless Nick. Or you can simply explore the castle, looking for secrets and unlockables.
A lot of these can’t be found until you learn new spells though, which in turn require you to play through the game to acquire from the various lessons. This means that the castle opens up gradually to you as you play, and at certain times of the plot it’ll be covered in snow or soaked in rain as it was when the events you’re playing through took place.
Diagon Alley is a location that you can return to at any time, and serves as a more traditional hub alongside Hogwarts. Here you can buy characters from Madam Malkin’s, play secret levels at Gringotts, replay levels from the Leaky Cauldron and many more. All of these feel very characterful and shows how much attention was paid to LHP in the design phase. My favourite touch though is that if you want to switch your character while exploring Hogwarts to somebody with a special ability you need, you have to brew some Polyjuice Potion.
There are a few frustrations with the game however. I can understand that they needed a lot of characters for us to find in the huge castle and all the levels, but why would I want to play as a Milkman? Or Harry’s Dragon Task outfit as opposed to one of the six other outfits I have for him? This kind of ‘reward’ is anticlimactic and unsatisfying.
Speaking of which, the levels do suffer somewhat from the lack of external conflict. What combat there is is very simplistic, with all enemies but Dementors requiring only a spell or two to defeat. And even then Dementors only require one hit from an Expecto Patronum, which only certain characters have and takes ages to cast. They don’t show up often either which is something I praised earlier and indeed it’s not something they should have changed but the levels don’t ever feel tense.
They’re also rather short. If the puzzle or solution is not obvious, blow up everything in site until it does. They’re fairly fun and never really dull, but outside of the context of the story, they don’t have the same excitement factor or length that previous titles did.
Still, the game has bosses! Surely they must heighten the atmosphere right? To an extent. They tend to just be puzzles you have to solve while under attack. They’re not terribly complicated, and don’t feel like bosses in the way ones from a Final Fantasy or a Zelda game do. They’re not bad, they’re just not bosses like you’d expect the Basilisk or Professor Quirrell to be.
All that aside, I do still recommend this game. It’s fun, charming and slightly more cerebral than the other LEGO games, though not too much so that a child playing the game couldn’t figure it out with some patience. The only reason I’d say not to buy it is if you’re looking for a way into the Harry Potter universe. It’s taken for granted that you know what’s going on and that knowledge will come in handy. Sure I know to touch Quirrell to harm him, but the game doesn’t tell an uninitiated to.
If you’re a Harry Potter fan, then this is a great game regardless of your age. It has a real tangible affection for the source material and the trademark LEGO humour is as strong here as ever.
Price: XBOX 360: £18 (CEX)
PS3: £15 (CEX)
Wii: £12 (CEX)
DS: £15 (CEX)
PSP: £10 (CEX)
PC: £5 (CEX) £19.99 (Steam)
Guest Review – Assassin’s Creed
28 Jul 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Assassin's Creed, Game, Review, Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed
Here’s writer Neil’s second piece
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”
Assassin’s Creed by Ubisoft was a pioneering title in the whole parkour/sandbox genre of games. The story begins with a brief tutorial with the player taking control of Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, an assassin from the 12th century in the Holy Land. After a few minutes the screen whites out, and we are introduced to our second playable character: Desmond Miles, a bartender in the year 2012. When we first meet Desmond, he is inside a machine called an Animus. T
he Animus is a machine which reads the subjects DNA for memories of their ancestors. This serves as the main plot device in the main story. It is revealed that Desmond has been kidnapped by Abstergo Industries, a pharmaceutical company. They are using him to find a so called “Piece of Eden”, a clue to which is buried deep within his genetic memories. However, whenever Abstergo try to access the particular memory they require, Desmond and the Animus desynchronise. So, in order to build up synchronisation we have to follow the story of Altaïr. What’s that? Convenient for the story? Sure is!
Gameplay consists of several different varieties; Free-running/parkour, intelligence gathering, combat and stealth assassinations.
The bulk of the game consists of free-running, and travelling between the four main cities in the game; Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. The free-running aspect of the game incorporates impressive motion capture programming as well as real world physics which gives it a very natural feel. If a wall, ledge or foothold looks slightly too far away for it to be feasible in a real world context, then the chances are the same is true in game. However, with the game being set in the middle of the third crusade, buildings are run down enough for walls to be generally easy to scale.
A slight dampener on the free feel of the game is the “inaccessible memories”. Basically these are areas that you can’t access at that point in the game. If you stray too far into these areas Desmond will lose synchronisation with Altaïr. The programming is very unforgiving in this respect, even triggering desynchronisation if knocked into one of these areas by an enemy.
At the start of each mission, Altaïr will have to prove to the head assassin in each town that he is well enough prepared for them to allow him to be able to go in for the kill. This means intelligence gathering. Generally this comes in three flavours; intercepting/stealing documents, interrogating witnesses and eavesdropping. After a few missions this can get very repetitive, and seems to just have been incorporated to draw out gameplay.
The game does allow for players who prefer to go all out and attack things head on, however. With two mêlée weapons to choose from, a sword and a dagger (each having pros and cons depending on the situation), combat works well within its own confines. Although it can feel artificial, with enemies essentially waiting in line to be dispatched by the player, rather than attacking all at once or with any real strategy.
Each mission culminates in a stealth assassination, using Altaïr’s hidden blade. There are obstacles to be climbed and guards to be avoided when approaching your target, with each assassination having different short cuts available for those who can find them. Essentially though, whether you decide to take the stealth route, or charge in is of very little consequence.
After each assassination, you are confronted by numerous guards and forced to either outrun or kill them all before you can go about your business.
Aside from several issues with the pace of the game, the story is pretty decent, albeit clearly only paving the way for the sequels, for which this game is a good jumping off point. That in itself would be a very good reason for you to purchase and play through this game, however you’ll have to take it with a pinch of salt. My suggestion, rent or borrow rather than buy if you can.
Price: XBOX 360: £6 (CEX)
PS3: £6 (CEX)
PC: £5 (CEX)
News – The strangest Final Fantasy ever
27 Jul 2011 7 Comments
in News Tags: 3DS, DS, Final Fantasy, Game, News, Nintendo, Rhythym Game
I’ve decided that in addition to the tri-weekly reviews to start adding news and opinion pieces to my blog as a supplement. These won’t be on any regular schedule, more of an ‘as and when basis’. I also can’t guarantee I’ll cover every pertinent piece of news going, just what I feel like.
I’ve chosen as my first such piece something that’s not exactly new, but it is something that I find very conceptually interesting. Now those of you who know Final Fantasy will probably know that it can be a pretty strange beast. Since its creation over twenty-five years ago its built up a rich internal mythology of themes, monsters, species, archetypes and injokes that can baffle outsiders at first glance.
This has lead to some pretty trippy games like Crystal Chronicles and Chocobo Racing. Recently it lead to the Dissidia games, a pair of fighters that combined some of the series most iconic characters in epic one-on-one battles. After the release of the second game project leader Tetsuya Nomura (who is also the brains behind Kingdom Hearts and a veteran videogame artist) announced to the chagrin of fans that if Dissidia was to return, it wouldn’t be as a fighting game.
And boy was he telling the truth. Instead it looks like its successor is what Square themselves have described as a ‘theatre rhythm game’. The game in question, titled Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, hasn’t had many details released for it yet but it looks to be the heroes from Dissidia on a quest to restore light to a crystal.
The game is planned for the 3DS, though there’s no word on a release date, plans for localisation or even any gameplay footage. What can be gleaned is that the game requires you to touch the notes on the screen with your stylus, with different colours requiring different techniques.
It’s been announced that fifty tracks will be present in the game, though only a handful have been revealed. It looks like this is intended to be a musical fanservice for fans as the released tracks include series classics like ‘Battle on the Big Bridge’, ‘One Winged Angel’ and ‘To Zanarkand’.
The graphics are appropriately cutesy, with the logo, a traditional emblem unique to each game, basically being semi-chibified version of the Dissidia logo.
Bizarre mashups seem to be all the rage these days, titles like Super Smash Bros Brawl and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 as proof. And is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy the weirdest of them all? Oh dear Bahamut yes. Do I want it? Yeah. If only for the novelty.
Should I Buy? – Dynasty Warriors 5
26 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Dynasty Warriors, Game, Koei, Microsoft, Playstation, Review, Sony, Video Game, XBOX
Some days you don’t want to dine on fine cuisine, or even on on your regular culinary fare. You just want junk. It’s cheap, quick, tasty and satisying in its own way. And that’s pretty much how I view the Dynasty Warriors franchise. It’s my gaming junk food.
Despite this review being for number five, there’s no need to have ever played the previous entries as each game is set in the same conflict with the same characters, with each game adding in a new fighters and redesigning the maps. The conflict in question is the Three Kingdoms Era of Ancient China, both the actual history and the popular historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Basically, the previous Imperial Dynasty, the Han, fell out of power due to internal corruption and the lack of a strong successor to the line and China pretty much fell apart into a giant, bloody civil war.
And so the game places you in the shoes of one of 48 different fighters who you then lead through a series of historical battles. Exactly which ones is dedicated by the character you pick, with five for your average character and eight if the guy lead a kingdom. The intention was to give each character a storyline based on their historical actions but all too often a character’s actual goals are either so damn vague or gets completely forgotten that ‘uniting the land’ becomes their big ending.
A few characters avert this and almost forge credible storylines. Sun Ce’s story only goes as far as he historically lives, and then hints at the illness which killed him for example, and Zhang Fei’s stops after he rescues his sworn brother from what was historically his death. It’s ones like these that make for the better storylines, as they feel a lot more credible and almost manage something resembling a narrative arc.
Still, with characterisation so broad and voice acting so hammy plot was obviously not a major concern. Instead, this game is all about the battles. And yeah, these work. The maps are well refined and uncomplicated, each one will be teeming with enemies to fight and an effort is made to insert reasonably historically accurate events into each map like fire attacks, betrayals and ambushes.
A lot of these events require player intervention to turn out positively as the people necessary to accomplish them tend to die or fail to reach the required area in time if left to their own devices. While this can be annoying when playing the battle for the damn hundredth time, you’re pretty much doing all the work on every map anyway. If you go out of your way to activate the events that lower enemy morale your allies will start to eat through the enemy forces and kill the generals, but never while you’re onscreen and 99.9% of the time you’ll be the one killing the enemy commander.
The fighting itself is simple. Square is attack. You can mix this up with Charge attacks by pressing triangle. When your Musuo bar is full, press circle to do a really big attack. There are other things like archery and horseback riding that can mix things up, but not enough to ever be important.
The amount of attacks you can string together is determined by your weapon. The only way to acquire new ones is to pick them up from certain crates or defeated officers. Whether or not this weapon will be useful is random, you can get an awesome top tier weapon on your first battle or never encounter anything beyond your base weapon in your entire playthrough. This rarely happens, but it can be incredibly frustrating and really cripple your performance.
For the most part the characters are unique enough for the game to get away with its ridiculous roster size. A few like Xiahou Yuan and Huang Zhong are a bit too similar, and some like Diao Chan feel unbalanced or just plain bad. Their personalities are pretty much all one note as well. Ma Chao is ‘angry honour guy’, Cao Ren is ‘doesn’t like war guy’ and Sun Shang Xiang is ‘tomboy’ etc. Characterisation isn’t too much of a concern, but the game constantly tries to make you care throughout their storylines. At least you can laugh at the bad voice acting.
Despite the fact I’ve spent pretty much the whole review finding flaws with this game, I still recommend it. Like I said, it’s junk food. The gameplay is solid enough to play this for hours and even the battles you’ll see dozens of times like Chi Bi and Hu Lao Gate never get truly annoying. Plus, through playing these games and reading the in-game encyclopaedia I’ve learnt a lot about what is a really fascinating period of Chinese history and that’s always a plus.
Price: PS2 – £3.50 (CEX)
XBOX – £7 (CEX)
Should I Buy? – Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
24 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Game, Multiplayer, PC, Review, Steam, Valve
Now there’s actually three expansion packs to Relic’s Dawn of War, but only one that’s really worth talking about. While the first one, Winter Assault was a so-so standard addition only really significant for introducing the Imperial Guard faction and the third one, Soulstorm, was a rushed, unbalanced, incomplete piece of trash from a different studio. Which is a real shame because it also introduced the perennially overlooked Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar.
Dark Crusade was almost a game unto itself. Each of the three expansions technically are, they’re stand-alone additions which mean that you don’t need the original to install it or play the campaign, but you do need the Activation Key from the others games to use the factions not introduced in the game in multiplayer.
So why is Dark Crusade such a worthwhile addition to the Dawn of War experience? First off it adds some properly balanced factions, the anime-esque Communist influenced Tau, the tabletop game’s newest addition renowned for their shooting prowess and close combat squishiness and the living metal, soulless automations the VAT Inspect-er the Necrons who themselves were fairly new. Think Cybermen, but competent.
These two races had obviously had a lot of work put into them to differentiate them from the other factions. The Tau, like their tabletop counterparts, use their Fire Warriors and powerful vehicles to decimate the enemies from a distance and rely on their Kroot allies to engage enemies at close range. However, about halfway down their tech tree (gaming term used to describe the progression of research and upgrades in a strategy game) you get to choose which of two military doctrines to follow based on the Tau’s two basic army compositions from the tabletop game. One path gives you access to more close combat orientated choices and are suited to drawn out battles of attrition while the other lets you spam firepower to hit the enemy hard and fast, but doesn’t give you much in the way of defensive options.
The Necrons are even more unique than any other faction. They don’t need Requisition, instead their slow, inevitable rise is embodied by the fact that so long as they have power they can keep building. They don’t have much variation in their units and the strategy is pretty much “wait until you can overwhelm the opposition in an endless tide of undying genocidal death”. Does feel good though.
These factions aren’t enough to make this game worth buying a Dawn of War collection though, this is because of the new campaign. Instead of a set of pre-programmed missions you instead choose one of the seven factions to lead and set about conquering the planet of Kronus. Each of the seven factions wants it for a different reason, and everyone’s fighting each other for it. Even the two Imperial factions.
Each turn you move your army to a different territory to attack and try to take it from the other faction in a battle on that map. Some of these are more important than other, offering members of your Honour Guard for purchase or conferring special abilities onto the controlling faction. After your turn, you can be attacked and the computer will attack itself, not just have all six other factions gang up on you, though they won’t remove any of the other factions from play.
When you invade a faction’s home territory you’re thrust into battle against massive fortifications and several unique challenges. These are huge, characterful battles that fall in the tough-but-fun challenge bracket.
So if that sounds appealing to you as a fan of 40K or strategy, then this is a game for you. And if you are planning on buying it I recommend getting it in a pack with the original and Winter Assault.
And seeing as I’ve said that, I should give a brief paragraph to that expansion. The Imperial Guard focus on large bodies of ordinary men that rely on massed firepower and heavy vehicles to compensate for their poor firepower. While they don’t require the same level of micromanagement as the Eldar, they’re still a more strategic proposition than the Orks or…anybody but the Eldar. The campaign allows you to play as the IG, Eldar, Chaos or Orks in preset missions like the first game while the Space Marines are relegated to cameos and support roles.
Price: £5 – CEX
Dawn of War Anthology: £8 – CEX
Dawn of War Platinum Edition: £9.99 – Steam
(Note: The Anthology and Platinum editions are both the original game and WA & DC, just under different names.)
Should I Buy? Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright
22 Jul 2011 3 Comments
in Review Tags: Ace Attorney, Capcom, DS, Game, Nintendo, Review
This was originally going to be a follow up piece to Monday’s Dawn of War review by talking about the expansions but I got news that made me delay that.
Capcom, why do you do this to us? You make Resident Evil 4, then follow it up with the much worse and accidentally racist 5. You make like six versions of every Street Fighter and charge full price for them. You cancel Mega Man Legends 3. You announce Ace Attorney Investigation 2 and Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright then say you’re not releasing them outside of Japan. Just as the world writes you off as a giant evil money-hungry megacorp like EA you go and announce that Phoenix Wright as a playable character in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Now I just can’t bring myself to hate you.
So in honour of that news that’ll be three days old by the time this goes up, I’m going to try to convince you all to buy a text heavy, character focused DS game based on logical deduction and lateral thinking.
The Ace Attorney series originated in Japan as a trio of GBA games that Capcom rereleased on the DS due to their popularity. They also decided to give it a chance overseas, and it proved to be a cult hit. Written and directed by Shu Takumi, the mind behind Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Ace Attorney puts you in the role of the eponymous defence attorney Phoenix Wright and has you defend people in court.
I know, I know, it doesn’t sound like much but it really is. An exceptional translation turns every character into either a deep, complex and sympathetic individual, a memorable ball of quirkiness and insanity or sometimes even both. Throughout this, rookie lawyer Phoenix remains the quintessential everyman viewpoint character while his assistant (a spirit medium of all things) Maya provides a stable source of emotion and humour.
To give anything more than a vague overview of the plot would ruin several of the many brilliant twists and character beats but what I can tell you is that events conspire to reunite Phoenix with his childhood friend turned ruthless prosecutor Miles Edgeworth while laying the foundations of an entire trilogy of this brilliance. And once the plot of the game is over, you get a bonus fifth case created especially for the DS iteration which is one of the longest and most popular in the series. It even has several new gimmicks such as forensic techniques to take advantage of the DS’ capabilities.
The gameplay can be divided into two sections. The investigation portions wouldn’t get particularly interesting until the Gaiden game Ace Attorney Investigations years later, and instead consist of Phoenix and Maya wandering around various locations talking to characters involved in the case and searching for clues. There’s a few problems with the game not moving on ’til you’ve shown precisely the right piece of evidence to somebody or clicked on some seemingly innocuous piece of the environment.
Where the game really shines are the courtroom sequences. You have to cross-examine whatever crazy witness holds the key to proceeding in the case. This is done by ‘pressing’ a statement for more information or showing contradictory evidence. Tearing apart somebody’s testimony is made even more satisfying by being able to shout “HOLD IT!”, “OBJECTION!” or “TAKE THAT!” while doing this, complete with giant red letters and the characters shouting along with a lot of dramatic finger pointing.
I just hope you like reading, cause you’ll be doing a lot of it.
Complementing the brilliant script is an exceptional soundtrack and absolutely charming character models. If you like your games to have great story or actual thought required to proceed there is absolutely no excuse not to buy this game.
Price: £20 (CEX)
Guest Review – Ocarina of Time
20 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: 3DS, DS, Game, Gamecube, Nintendo, Ocarina of Time, Review, Virtual Console, Wii, Zelda
This is a special post, as it’s the first of Should I Buy’s new writer Neil. He’s starting his own personal opinion blog over at: http://corneilius5188.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/annoyed/ too, so go check him out. Also, it’s a celebration of the rerelease of one of the medium’s true classics. Feel free to hunt down the original N64 cartridge online or in stores, but here I’m just gonna list the price for the new 3DS release and the Wind Waker/Ocarina of Time Master Quest bundle for the Gamecube. (Note: the Master Quest version is slightly harder.)
Hey Listen!
Yes, that’s right; it’s time for a review of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If you haven’t heard of this game then where have you been for the past, what, thirteen years? Scratch that, if you’ve not heard of the LoZ series you’ve definitely been living under some kind of rock since about 1986.
For those of you who don’t know, the Legend of Zelda is a long running staple of the Nintendo juggernaut. Each game in the series follows the same basic formula: You play as a brave youngster by the name of Link, the princess Zelda is kidnapped by the evil thief/sorcerer Gannondorf (also known as Ganon in some titles). As Link you must travel across the land of Hyrule in search of the Master Sword, which is the only weapon capable of killing Gannondorf. Are with me so far? Complex stuff, I know.
Now, while Ocarina of Time follows this basic pattern, it’s such a milestone game not just for Legend of Zelda, but the entire medium for a number of reasons. This title was the first in the series to go 3D, giving the game designers wider freedom with the dungeons and puzzles which made the series so popular. It also blended mechanic and plot in ways games had struggled to before and delivering a cinematic experience unlike pretty much anything seen before.
The titular Ocarina of Time is a magical artifact you gain that allows you to play a number of songs with differing effects. Time also plays another role as you’re required to jump between your childhood and seven years in the future. These two things are key to developing the storyline, as Link travels between his past and future selves. This adds more depth to the narrative and offers up two subtly different Links to play as. You can see the juxtaposition between the two worlds, the blissful ignorance of the past and the dystopian struggle of the future.
One of the key aspects of gameplay that is new to this incarnation is the lock on system. With 3D environments giving enemies more room to manoeuvre the Z-targeting system adds a new dynamic to the gameplay that wasn’t in gaming before, though it seems pretty standard now. It makes combat much more fluid and introduces a fairer learning curve. Some enemies can only be defeated using certain tactics or weapons for example, and the dungeon bosses are the best example of this. Challenging foes that force you to rely on a different gameplay technique.
The game contains ten dungeons, spread across the seven in-game years. These consist of classic Zelda puzzle solving as well as introducing newer problems which utilise the 3D aspect of the game. Like the crazy ceiling-walking in the water temple. The old formula is still in use, Link must find a map, compass and boss room key in every dungeon before he can move on.
While this can be repetitive at times, the differences between the dungeons can be refreshing (and somewhat frustrating at times, if you’re familiar with OoT’s Water Temple, you’ll know what I mean). Each dungeon culminates with a boss fight. Each weak to the special item you gained in that dungeon, handy that
As well as the dungeons, side quests and mini games abound in this game. Whether it is trading items with people for a powerful sword, or shooting galleries for quiver upgrades, there are hours of content to distract you from your main quest.
That’s the thing about this game, whenever you play it through you get a sense of freedom. You could rush through all the temples to the final confrontation, not touching the sides on the way. Or you can take a more nuanced approach, finding everything the land of Hyrule has to offer, before continuing with your larger quest.
At any rate Ocarina of Time, in one form or another, is something every gamer should have under his or her belt.
Price: £30 – CEX (Nintendo 3DS)
£14 – CEX (Gamecube)
1000 Wii Points – Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console
Should I Buy? – Dawn of War
18 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Game, Microsoft, Multiplayer, PC, Review, Steam, Valve
“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.”
With these words Games Workshop have sold one of the world’s most popular tabletop war games, Warhammer 40,000. It’s set in the far flung 41st Millennium where the Imperium of Man rules over millions of worlds and billions of souls die each day to defend humanity from its manifold enemies both within and without. Though the game is both complex and expensive, it’s certainly an immersive hobby with a rich internal mythology. Luckily, with the work of Relic Entertainment, you no longer need to absorb tons of information and pay out hundreds of pounds to experience the challenging, visceral battles of 40K.
This is a real-time strategy (or RTS) for the PC that was originally released back in 2004. It allows you control of one of four different factions, either the Space Marines, the Orks, the Eldar and the forces of Chaos. Each is designed with a different play style in mind. The Space Marines are balanced and flexible, the Orks use massive numbers to overwhelm the enemy with little strategy, the Eldar have a wide range of highly specialised units that require intensive micromanagement and Chaos, which are an up-close and personal elite cadre of psychopaths. Each one draws from their tabletop counterpart without being bound by it. All put together, this makes sure the game is faithful to the source material without ever limiting itself.
Unlike most RTS’ that emphasis base-building, this game instead advocates combat. The usual resource harvesting and base building has been streamlined. There are only two resources to worry about, Power and Requisition. Power is earned simply by building generators, and Requisition by holding Strategic points and Critical Locations. These are special locations on the map that you can order your squads to capture. These are set at routes to your base, chokepoints etc. which gives you two reasons take as many as you can. It also gives you objectives to focus on in battle. If your north entrance keeps getting harassed because you haven’t secured a proper perimeter and defence, you know what you gotta throw your Tactical Marines at.
The base building also boils down to just a handful of proper structures, the rest is all big grimdark tough things like turrets and stuff Once it’s set up, you’ll pretty much never have to bother about it.
You know how in most RTS’ building a unit just gives you one guy? Not here. Instead, it gives you a basic squad which you can then reinforce it with additional members, leaders, advanced weapons etc. that can be used to adapt the squad into different roles. Each race gets variations on different archetypes. There’s the scouts, the standard guys, the jetpack types etc. Still, they manage to strike a balance so that each race feels familiar enough at first that you’ll have a basic handle on them but they’re differentiated enough not to feel like palette swaps.
The game’s campaign only allows you to play as the Space Marines and pits you against the other three factions over twelve missions. It’s not the focus of the game, but it’s much better designed and fun than most tacked-on single player campaigns. It doesn’t hold a candle to the campaign from the expansion pack Dark Crusade, but I’ll get round to reviewing that soon. Overall, this is a great game. The graphics may be dated now, but the whole visual and auditory design is pitch-perfect 40K material.
I’m only going to include the price for the base game below, but the various expansion packs are available in collected editions.
The price is £2.50 in CEX, but you can’t get this by itself on Steam. There are many collected editions on there though that combine the different expansion packs.
Guest Review – Should I Buy? – Magicka
16 Jul 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: DLC, Game, Multiplayer, PC, Review, RPG, Steam
Hi guys! Today’s post isn’t following the every-three-day-schedule I know, but I’ve got a special piece from themickanator who writes The Game Scene over at http://thegamescene.wordpress.com/ So enjoy!
“Do I have any PC gamer friends?” How you answer this question will also be how you should probably answer the title. Magicka is not a game built for single player, but club together with 3 chums and you’ve got a great deal.
The story plays out the typical promising-student-embarks-on-epic-quest-to-save-the-world narrative, but it certainly doesn’t take itself seriously. Without giving too much away, you have to save a powerful but misunderstood wizard to restore peace to the realm, all under the guidance of your teacher who is certainly not a vampire. The dialogue is as light-hearted as the aesthetics, with most of the voice acting being done is a sort of simlish-like language which is a source of many giggles on its own. Despite that, the actual game play is not as jovial.
I said Magicka is not built for single player, and by that I mean that it is nearly impossible to get very far on your own. Let me explain why. You have 8 basic elements under your control, and you can mix up to 5 of them to create more powerful combos and ‘magicks’, special spells which are learned from books along your journey. Controlling your mage and your magic is an unusual system. But not hard to get used to, however, the difficulty lies in the game mechanics.
Mages aren’t fighters, sprinters, swimmers or, well, anything athletic. Your walking speed is just enough to evade pursuing foes, but the more elements you have loaded ready to cast the slower you move. And while casting you are motionless. Oh, and do not cross the beams… However, don’t let that put you off! All these difficulties may be frustrating, but they provide many hours of frustrating fun, and a fair few funny moments.
Now, let us suppose that you somehow get bored of the campaign (or your friends), but you still need your Magicka fix. There are a number of other game modes you can indulge in with your spell-casting chums. There is versus mode, which has 3 variants on death match, and Challenge mode, which mainly consists of survival levels.
These 2 modes can then be further expanded with the relatively huge list of DLC available too. The most notable of these is the Vietnam DLC. Yes, you read correctly, Vietnam. This provides challenge mode with another survival map, and a mission level which records your time, so you can keep trying to better yourself. It really does take place in a Vietnam setting, with enemies (still goblins) and allied soldiers (sadly not goblins or other mages) wielding guns. These guns can also be used in other levels in both challenge and versus modes.
Also, as with most of the other DLC, it provides you with an additional set of robes to choose from. Each set of robes have special abilities and have a different starting staff and sword/gun. All of that for £3.49, and the cheaper DLC going as low as £0.59.
So all in all, Magicka is a fantastic little game with a superb sense of humour, all for a very agreeable price. The campaign, versus mode and challenge mode will keep you occupied for many hours, but it is a game not suitable for the casual gamer or the chronic rage-quitter.
(All prices from Steam)
Magicka – £7.99
Complete Pack (1 copy + all DLC) – £16.99
Four Pack – £23.99 (4 copies of the base game, one for you and 3 to gift to friends so you can play together!)
DLC:
Vietnam – £3.49
Final Frontier – £1.99
Marshlands – £1.79
Party Robes, Frozen Lake, The Watchtower – £1.59 each
Nippon, Wizard’s Survival Kit – £0.59 each
Should I Buy? – Shadow Hearts
15 Jul 2011 8 Comments
in Review Tags: Game, Playstation, Review, RPG, Sony
Now there’s an obscure one. Just wait till I review Hotel Dusk or Vandal Hearts! This is a PS2 RPG from Japan that was developed by a little studio called Sacnoth, later Nautilus. Pretty much the only thing they ever made were the three Shadow Hearts games and its predecessor Koudelka. They’ve managed to achieve the status of cult classic for a mixture of Lovecraftian horror, offbeat humour and colourful cast of characters.
The first game of the series certainly suffers from its share of flaws. The graphics haven’t aged very well, and the only time you’ll hear voices are in one of the game’s three animated cutscenes or those in-battle grunts and phrases it seems all RPG characters have to spout.
Shadow Hearts puts you in the shoes of the Harmonizer (here spelt Harmonixer) named Yuri. He’s a drifter who gets by on his fists rather than his wits, and is occasionally guided into adventure by a freaky headache inducing voice in his head. He tends not to mind, because it lets him punch monsters and Yuri loves to punch him some monsters. This time it’s telling him to protect the young Alice from the evil warlock, Roger Bacon.
And the rest of the game is spent thwarting the evil schemes of this dapper villain, recruiting the usual ragtag bunch of misfits along the way. I say ‘usual’, they’re really anything but your typical RPG crew. You’ve got Yuri, the slightly dim and pervy hero who fuses with demon souls, Alice, the Bible wielding ingenue, Zhuzhen, the happy-go-lucky Taoist sage, Margeuritte, the German secret agent, Keith, the French vampire and Halley (shouldn’t that be Harry?) the magical London orhpan.
You guide these characters through various locations Asia and Europe just prior to the outbreak of World War I. You’ll visit a variety of locations but the enemies will always be monstrous. If you read the bestiary, those monsters you’re fighting are really…well, monstrous. One of the nicer ones is a beast that hides in the sewers and drags obese people down to the dark depths to feed on. One of the NICER ones.
What makes the battles in this game unique is the game’s Judgement Ring. Whenever you choose an action, the ring spins and you have to press X when the spinner’s in the highlighted areas to pull off the move. This works fine in battle, but there’s a few variants used outside of battle for no real reason that are just frustrating.
Overall the game’s unique and setting atmosphere along with a sense of macabre humour and its genre savvy characters make this feel really one of a kind. It’s not the most polished or expansive of experiences, but this is certainly one you won’t get in any other series. So if you’re a fan of RPGs (I’m assuming you are to have read this far) then yes. I recommend this. And the sequels too, but those are reviews for another time.
Price: CEX – £18
Should I Buy? – Final Fantasy VII
13 Jul 2011 4 Comments
in Review Tags: Final Fantasy, Game, Playstation, Review, Sony
I’ll be honest with you and say that I’m reviewing this game because the last few have been about titles nobody seems to care about. So, I’ll review something huge to get some more interest! Thankfully, doing this doesn’t violate my rule of a game being cheap and easy to find. Although you can buy an original PS1 version off of Ebay for a squillion pounds fifty, it’s now available in the PSN Store for a much more reasonable price.
So, the PS1 classic has now been made available for download onto your PS3. And should you buy it? Well it hasn’t gained its reputation for nothing. I imagine over the years you’ll have heard of this as a candidate for ‘Best Game Ever’ or ‘Best RPG Ever’ and while I wouldn’t go that far, it is an excellent game.
You play as Cloud Strife, the moody mercenary who’s just been hired by the eco-terrorist organisation AVALANCHE (all caps necessary) to fight against the evil, world ruling megacorp that is the ShinRa Electrical Power Company. As the game unfolds and you recruit your party you find that each has a past tied to the various ventures of ShinRa, from sabotage to war to questionable medical procedures.
The characters themselves are really quite the site. Yes, the overworld models are awful, but that’s not what I mean. This being the first Final Fantasy that was made in 3D and being long enough to focus much longer plots on each of them. So while the cast of characters is strong and memorable most of the time, there are some real oddballs. My personal favourite is Cid, the gruff yet warm hearted pilot that chainsmokes and swears all the time.
If you’ve ever played a JRPG before, you’ll be familiar with the basic tenets of the battle system. When you enter a battle, the screen goes all swooshy and your party of three are transported to a special screen where you and the enemy stand in lines on the opposite sides of the screen and take turns to choose commands from a menu until the other sides are dead.
In order to gain access to special skills, you have to use one of two methods. Most come from equipping magical orbs known as Materia to the slots in your weapons and armour. The more you have it equipped, the more points it earns. After enough points, it’ll learn more powerful versions of its spells. This ensures that so long as you set yourself up right, you’ll always have spells appropriate to point in the game without overloading you with hundreds of different Materia.
Another point to the Materia system is that magic Materia will increase your magical stats a bit, but decrease you physical ones and vice versa for physical Materia. This means that your natural instinct to load up on all the spells will do you more harm than good and could even cripple your chances. The game never really gets round to explaining this though, as it doesn’t with a few of the game’s foibles that might trip you up.
The other way is each’s characters Limit Breaks, as you take damage in battle the bar fills up and eventually you get to unleash one. Characters earn more of these by participating in battle, which means that you’ll be at a bit of a disadvantage when your favourite’s not allowed on the team. The Limit system still works though, and adds characterful moves to tough battles that can really feel like they’re changing the course of the action.
The character models are terrible outside of FMVs and battle scenes, but the pre-rendered backgrounds can be gorgeous.
They’re characterful, using a well thought out and implemented aesthetic style that lets the game’s look stay consistent even when it switches from tribal villages to Gothic sci-fi structures to ancient cities and beyond.
It manages to look a lot better than most modern games, despite its much lower graphical capabilities.
I’m also a huge fan of the soundtrack. This is in my opinion veteran Final Fantasy composer’s best work, with him using the limited MIDI format to create plenty of songs that really evoke the atmosphere or emotion of the scene. Then again if you prefer something more orchestral or modern sounding, you’ll probably disagree with me. But if you like videogame music that sounds like videogame music rather than a film score, I’m sure you’ll groove on it too.
The script has a few translation issues and the story can be confusing at times but it is great. The characters work well, the battles aren’t frequent or repetitive enough to ever become a chore and if you can look past the regular character models the game’s still quite pretty.
Still, those of you who’ve come to this game hearing about how its some unrivalled masterpiece will probably leave somewhat disappointed. Sure, it’s a great game that brought the JRPG genre to the west and exploded Final Fantasy from a pretty much Japanese exclusive series that always lost out in sales to Dragon Quest into a global mega-franchise.
And at the same time it codified the genre for entire continents that had had hardly any exposure to it and delivered story and gameplay depth pretty much unparalleled excpet by Western Computer RPGs of the time.
Final Fantasy VII isn’t just important and well regarded because of just what it is as a game, but also because of the impact it had on gaming culture. It was, pardon the pun, a game changer.
NOTE: The PSN Store site is currently down, so I had to do some scouring to find the prices and they may not be 100% accurate cause I got them from old posts. If anybody knows the current price, feel free to let me know and I’ll edit them in.
Price: $15/£10
Should I Buy? – Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum
11 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: DS, Game, Nintendo, Pokemon, Review, RPG
Is there anybody left in the world that hasn’t played or watched Pokemon? You must at least know what it is. I think I can safely assume you know the premise, yes?
D/P/P comprises Generation IV of the Pokemon games. Basically, each Generation is the new set where they make a new region with a new bunch of Pokemon to catch. This generation takes you to the Sinnoh region, which is based on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Did you see any of the cartoon with that new girl Dawn instead of Misty? She had a Piplup, the little penguin one? Yeah, that’s Sinnoh.
This game gives you a choice of three starters as always, the Water-type penguin Piplup, the monkey like Fire-type Chimchar and the weird half plant, half animal Grass-type Turtwig from Professor Rowan, who then sends you on a quest to see (not catch this time) all the Pokemon of the region.
The game gives you two rivals this time, your energetic friend takes the Pokemon your starter is weak to, and the Professor’s timid son/daughter (depending on your character’s gender) takes the other one. The basic gameplay of the game is unchanged. You still travel between towns, catching and raising Pokemon to do battle with trainers and Gym Leaders to challenge the Elite Four and become the regional Champion.
There’s a story to this one, with the new villainous Team Galactic planning on using the region’s Legendary Pokemon Dialga and Palkia to remake the entire universe. Platinum adds a new member of the villainous team and has the player facing off against Giratina instead, as well as adding one last plot after their defeat and the capture of the Legendary. Oh, and the introduction of the incompetent yet reliable Interpol agent Looker who never really does anything.
Overall, these games feel more difficult than the previous Generations, possibly due to the prevalence of cross-types and improved opponent AI. The new Pokemon aren’t all that memorable, save for a few examples. But that’ll probably be through dreading them rather than revelling in having one.
That said, these games are still as Pokemon-y as sever and there’s no reason not to get one of these if you’re looking for a Pokemon game for your DS.
Price: Pokemon Diamond: £12 (CEX)
Pokemon Pearl: £15 (CEX)
Pokemon Platinum: £20 (CEX)
Should I Buy? – No More Heroes
09 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Game, Nintendo, Review, Wii
Originally conceptualised as an XBOX 360 game by Goichi Suda, known better in the industry as Suda51, No More Heroes was one of the few titles on the Wii that didn’t make hardcore gamers balk at Nintendo’s little money printer. Suda51 made a name for himself in the west with his cult hit Killer 7, a shooter that attempted to emulate the visual style of a comic book.
No More Heroes itself takes inspiration from a myriad of sources, with the game’s boss characters draw from both American and Japanese sources in their creation leading to a fantastic cast of surreal degenerates.
The premise of the game is that you control Travis Touchdown, an angry, cynical, down-on-his-luck, self-centered social reject with an anime obsession. Wonder where they got that from? One day he buys a beam katana from the internet and then uses it to kill a guy in a bar fight. You soon find out he was actually an assassin, and by killing him you’ve taken his place in the League of assassins and can’t get out, so Travis decides to just fight his way to the top.
And that’s pretty much the whole game. You raise enough money to challenge the next assassin tehn go through a mini-dungeon killing all their underlings until you fight the big cheese themselves.
Raising the money can be pretty monotonous. It requires you to drive all the way across the map to a job agency, then drive all the way to the job, then back to the agency to start it again if you need to. And you will, the prices quickly escalate.
And all this driving takes place on Travis’ bike, which is both too fast and too slow. The thing’s too fast to control properly yet the map is so big that it takes ages to drive across. And another thing, the world is empty. There’s a few locations like a bar you can visit occasionally for new moves and the Beam Katana store, but aside from this handful of place you’ve nothing to do but the money grinding and assassination missions.
When you finally get round to these missions though, they are fun. Fighting the faceless mooks isn’t very exciting, but this game excels at boss battles. In battle you hold the Wiimote up, down or in the centre to swing it at different locations etc. All fairly guessable stuff and it works reasonably well. There’s an extra form of challenge from the charge bar of your katana. As you use it, the charge runs low and you’re unable to attack or block. This means you need to find a safe break in the fighting to charge it back up again by shaking the Wiimote.
Each boss uses the tried and tested old school method of giving each boss a truckload of health, a wacky weapon and a predictable attack pattern. But the game doesn’t pull punches, you’ll have to learn how to counter their strategy and as you start to win they get faster, give you less chances to counter and use new moves. All that good old stuff.
This is a game with a tangible fondness for all things retro, and I appreciate that. It’s not just for games either, at times it can feel like the lovechild of Quentin Tarantino and Terry Gilliam.
There’s a lot to wade through to get to the good parts, and whether or not you can stand the grind to get to them is a question of how invested you are in the tense, old school bosses. The game only offers up ten of them, but they’re all pretty memorable and all feel unique.
Price: £3.50 CEX
Should I Buy? – Advance Wars Dual Strike
07 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: DS, Game, Nintendo, Review
The Wars series is like a secret workhorse of Nintendo. It’s been around since the original Famicom, but until Advance Wars for the GBA it’d never been seen outside of Japan. This is the third iteration of the franchise to reach the rest of the world and the first one on the Nintendo DS. And it’s a turn based strategy game. Yep, this isn’t a review for you action fans.
This is a fundamentally different experience from other turn based strategy types from Japan. Advance Wars isn’t about a ragtag bunch of fighters getting caught up in battles with empires and ancient demons. Instead the plot is a fairly light affair about the previously defeated army of bad guys (Black Hole) are under new management and causing huge ecological damage to the previously unseen and relatively unsettled continent of Omega Land.
You lead the Allied Nations on fending them off, slowly receiving backup from more COs of the four good nations. In battle, you can choose which of these COs leads your troops. Each has their own unique bonuses and penalties that they bring to the table, and the game introduces the concept of ‘Tag COs’. This system allows you to choose two COs and switch between them in battle to combine their powers, cover your weaknesses and pull of devastating combos. And oh, the enemy does it too.
As for the actual combat, there are no unique characters that you level up and carry through the campaign. Instead, in each battle you and the enemy gather gold from captured properties to buy different units. These come in varying flavours and the introductory levels make sure to teach you what particular nuance they serve in combat.
And all the old units do. The Anti-Airs are great for downing those nightmarish bombers, which in turn can take out the highly armoured tanks, which decimate lightly armoured vehicles etc. Unfortunately, the new units all feel redundant. The only ones that’s really interesting on a conceptual level are the Piperunner and the Oozium and aside from throwing up an interesting tactical challenge on their introduction, they add as little as the other units.
As for the COs I touched upon earlier, choosing the right one to suit your skills and the situations is a big part of the challenge. Theoretically, you can free-form any team you like, but there are a few combinations that break the game. Hint: Sasha & Colin. Most of the new characters suffer the same problem as the new units, adding nothing but an unfortunate feeling of flabbiness to the game.
Despite all that, this is still a great game. It has a much smoother difficulty curve than the previous two, and the series’ most annoying character doesn’t show up at all. As well as the largest collection of battle maps and most robust multiplayer system to date you can also now earn experience for your COs to give them additional bonuses in battle that can turn them into real powerhouses AND make your own custom maps to wage war on.
The combat flows well, the character designs (if not the sprites) look great and the soundtrack has some real catchy themes. This is one for fans of intellectual games as much as strategic fans. And if you’re not the type of person to get excited tactical games, I’d say it’s worth a try anyway. Hey, it’s cheap, so why not?
Price: £4 (CEX)
Scheduling Change
06 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Game, Review
Hi guys, I’ve enjoyed doing this very much but I’ve had to accept that if I continue with this blog the way I am doing it right now, I’ll run out of stuff to talk about in a few weeks. Now that doesn’t mean I’m stopping the blog it just means that I have slow down.
Instead of a review a day, I’m gonna do one every three days. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays to be precise. Also, I’m gonna do less ‘and all this goes for the sequel too’ so I can talk more about each game without making a wall of text.
The other major change is that I’m opening the field up to GBA, PS2, XBOX & Gamecube titles. There’s a lot of people with the systems still kicking round, and they’re pretty much all playble on current gen machines.
Alright, today isn’t review day so I’m gonna wrap this up. Thanks for reading guys, I hope I’ve helped!
Should I Buy? – Dissidia Final Fantasy Duodecim
05 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Final Fantasy, Game, Playstation, PSP, Review, RPG, Sony
Man that title’s a mouthful. This may sound like some incredibly insular title aimed only at the most dedicated of fans. That’s partly true, this is another example of nerdy fanservice taken to the extreme. However, this title is far from excluding.
A basic knowledge of Final Fantasy is good as it’ll help you know who these characters are, why you should care and help ease you into a lot of the game’s systems. That being said, I’ve spoken to people who’d had no prior experience with the series who loved it.
This is the prequel to the original Dissidia Final Fantasy from 2009 which pitted a hero and villain from each of the first ten main Final Fantasy games against each other in a battle of good vs. evil. It was a love letter to the fans, and its return with Duodecim is bigger and better in just about every way.
The game introduces eight new playable characters to the original’s twenty two. I’ll list them here for Final Fantasy fans: Laguna, Vaan, Kain, Tifa, Yuna, Gilgamesh, Prishe and a super secret villain character.
The Dissidia game use a unique battle system that is basically a beat ‘em up with huge stages and RPG elements. In battle you’re free to run, jump and climb all over the stages while the two characters unleash one of two types of attacks. You have ‘Brave’ attacks, which lower your opponents Bravery points and increase your own. These are the bread and butter moves of Dissidia. Then, you can use these points to launch HP attacks, more difficult to use moves that decrease your opponent’s health by your total Bravery points.
This system really differentiates Dissidia from other brawlers, and helps this game not feel like the clone of some other fighting game. The RPG elements I mentioned work because they’re entirely in the background. As you fight, you level up, learn attacks and support abilities and can equip better weapons and armour. Tweaking these makes your characters very customisable while still keeping each character’s unique style intact.
And each character does have a completely different style. You could loosely define three types, ‘powerhouses’ that have great close range attacks but little else, ‘tricksters’ that are nimbler and weaker, but have special tricks to make up for it and ‘shooters’, characters with primarily long ranged attacks that rely more on tactics to use properly. The unique properties of each character is drawn from their in game personality and abilities, and really makes you feel like you’re fighting as that character you love, much like the Smash Bros. games.
There are also a few new features to the combat, like ‘EX Revenge’ and the ability to call in another character to assist you in combat.
Also, each of the old characters has been rebalanced. In some cases with completely new moves. I want to make special mention of Jecht, who gained the ability to fire lasers from his eyes and throw flaming meteors around, as if being able to backhand the final boss’ attacks away wasn’t enough. And all that time you spent levelling them isn’t wasted, you can start a new game on here with all those levels and skills transferred just as they were. The top level equipment though? You gotta get that again.
The story doesn’t measure up to the combat though. If you’ve heard of or experienced the legendarily great Final Fantasy plots, you’ll be disappointed. The voice actors do acceptable jobs (with Kefka again being the highlight, though Gilgamesh rocks too), but the script is really lacking. Then again trying to recreate, or in terms of the earlier story-lite games create, everybody’s character arcs in the few cutscenes they get in their story mode is probably too great a challenge for any writing team.
You should still play through the story mode, it’s just far from stellar.
Probably the best non-mechanic part of this game is the soundtrack. It’s got tunes collected from all the represented Final Fantasy games, most of which were composed by industry titan Nobuo Uematsu. Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT6CmBOcAfw for example, and this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KNssd1wdH8
There are problems with this game, though they’re really just niggling complaints like I don’t like how they’ve restructured the equipment system etc. and fanboy bemoaning of favourite characters, stages and tracks that aren’t included. None of them should put you off of this.
This is one of the reasons to own the woefully lacking in quality titles PSP. Get this over buying the original, it literally has all the old content with more added. If you’re a fan that didn’t get the first one, get this one. If you’re not a Final Fantasy fan but want to try it out or just want a solid game for your PSP, give this one a look.
Just, it may not grab you straight away OK? It may take a few hours for it to really click. Give it that time. It really deserves it.
Price: £20 (CEX)
Should I Buy? – Left 4 Dead 2
04 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: FPS, Microsoft, PC, Review, Steam, Valve, XBOX, Zombie
Pretty much everybody’s putting zombie or suspiciously similar substitutes in their games these days. They’re an easy enemy to make and justify. You don’t need to program any intelligence to them and you’re not gonna kick up any controversy or moral questions by having players blast a creature of folklore into bloody chunks.
Well Valve, of Steam, Half Life, Team Fortress and Portal fame (who doesn’t love Valve?) got in on the action too with a pair of zombie blasting games. Both are very similar mechanically, but I’m more familiar with the second one so that’s what I’ll be talking about here.
The game is a first person shooter in which you take the role of one of four survivors and attempt to blast your way through one of five campaigns. There’s the jerk of an ex-con with a mysterious past Nick, the dim but good natured Ellis, the loud, angry black guy Coach and Rochelle whose…well, rather lacking in the personality department.
If you’re playing single player, or local 2 player co-op then the other roles are filled by bots who are competent, if limited. For example, they won’t use melee weapons. These are perfectly fine to play with, and they will rarely if ever be a load you have to carry.
In each campaign, you work your way through several areas until you reach a place from which you can be evacuated while fending off hordes of Infected. The campaigns each have their own setting and challenges, so none of them feel repetitive or rip-offs of the others.
The weapon choice is simple, you get pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, rifles and melee weapons of varying strength. Each is useful for different situations, and lets you approach combat in different ways. There are a few other unique weapons like chainsaws and grenade launchers that the game’s A.I. ‘Director’ throws up for you.
Speaking of the Director, it’s what keeps each replay feeling fresh. The Director changes the location and frequency of enemy and item placements. If you take down the Horde with big guns at every opportunity, it’ll throw more at you. If you’re doing too well, it’ll spawn one of the dreaded Special Infected to take you down.
L4D2 never feels like a typical shooter, so you don’t have to be an FPS fan to enjoy this. I’m a gamer who plays multiplayer as an exception rather than a rule. L4D2 is one of the games that I enjoy playing with friends. Unfortunately local co-op is only two player, if you want a full group you’ll have to brave random online gaming.
And those Special Infected I mentioned earlier? They really break up the monotony of zombie killing. Each poses a unique challenge to you and your team, requiring you to move out of your usual tactics to face them.
This is a difficult one to say something constructive about. I don’t want to go too far into explaining the mechanics, but criticisms aren’t very forthcoming and the game isn’t exactly innovative. If you want a fun game to play with friends, or a dedicated zombie shooter or hell, just something that’s fun to play then L4D2 is a blast to play.
Price: £15 (XBOX 360 -CEX Price)
£12 (PC – CEX Price)
£14.99 (Steam Price)
EXTRA – As of the time of writing, L4D2 is on a 33% sale on Steam, along with a four pack that gives you three copies to gift to your friend, a pack bundles with L4d1 and as part of the Valve Complete Collection.
Should I Buy? – Fallout 3 DLC
03 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Bethesda, Fallout, FPS, Game, Microsoft, PC, Playstation, Review, RPG, Sony, Steam, Valve, XBOX
Here’s the promised follow-up to yesterday’s review of Fallout 3 where I’ll look at the DLC available for the game. I don’t usually buy DLC, and only got these because they were available on disc bundled with the game. But in this case at least, paying the extra for that disc is worth it. There are 5 DLC campaigns, so I’ll do 5 mini reviews a la my Steam games reviews.
1) Broken Steel (F3BS)
2) Point Lookout (F3PL)
3) Operation Anchorage (F3OA)
4) The Pitt (F3TP)
5) Mothership Zeta (F3MZ)
Broken Steel (F3BS)
Broken Steel is the major DLC campaign for this game, and designed to add a more challenging endgame to experienced players. There are four main features to this DLC. The first, it allows you to play past the ending of the original, and changes the ending in response to fan complaints. Secondly, the level cap is raised from 20 to 30, with all new perks to allow your character to develop further. It also negates that sadistic choice of which of the two awesome level twenty perks to take.
The third part is that it allows you to play a new set of missions that carry on from the main plot, as you track down and destroy the Enclave’s remaining power base. These missions take place in their own special area of the map and don’t allow for any sidequests or exploration but they are action-filled fun.
Fourth is the introduction of three new enemies to the Capital Wasteland. This isn’t something usually worthy of note, but these are designed to be sadistically tough. Even on the easiest setting, these guys can send you running for cover.
For the money they’re asking, this is worth it. But I still maintain that buying the Game of the Year Edition is the best way to go, giving you all five for a fraction of the price.
Point Lookout (F3PL)
This DLC is the one I’d most recommend after Broken Steel. Point Lookout takes you to a Louisianna swamp that was largely untouched by the nuclear devastation, but after centuries cut off from the outside world things have degraded. There’s a ghoul (kind of a sane zombie) from before the war battling the brain of an evil genius in a jar and his army of brainwashed tribals, a bunch of inbred hillbillies that have devolved into grotesque, bloodthirsty sub-humans with a fascination for ritual blood magic and a sinister old man living in his family’s manor.
The swamps are dangerous and foreboding. The atmosphere here is even stronger than the main game. And the strange peoples and quests in this area add a semi-surrealist tone to the whole experience.
Point Lookout is based on exploration and will make even you powerhouse level 30 fear confrontation. It’s an excellent addition to the main game.
Operation Anchorage (F3OA)
I would not recommend this as a separate purchase. Buying this unlocks a special quest line available from the main game map. By approaching the Brotherhood Outcasts you can enter a pre-War combat simulator, designed to train soldiers for one of the pivotal battles against China, the aforementioned Operation Anchorage.
This turns the game into much more of a standard shooter, with little originality beyond setting this in a semi-futuristic snow field. It doesn’t offer up any of the atmosphere or aesthetic of the main game and is only playable once per character. There are some good rewards at the end, but that doesn’t really make this DLC worth it.
It feels like they missed a real chance here, they could have made a campaign that gave us a glimpse into that twisted pre-War military psychology that was going on, or offering up some pathos through showing a more human element some rogue programmer had put into the simulation. Instead, it’s pretty much straight shooter action with the slightest hint of strategy.
The Pitt (F3TP)
I’d probably list this one as third in terms of value. You’re transported to the Pitt, the new name of the remains of Pittsburgh. This place was awash with a terrible disease that turned the inhabitants into sub-human cannibals called ‘Trogs’. But a Brotherhood of Steel Member stayed behind after they purged it off the Trogs and has since forged the survivors into an industrial super power using the old steel mill.
Lord Ashur has created a vast army of slave labour, which he controls with an army of slavers and raiders. He seems like your average evil overlord, but playing through this DLC quickly reveals that in fact, the rebellion you’re brought in to help may well end up being the worse of two evils in the long run.
A fair portion of the quests have you disguising yourself as yet another slave, which makes a nice change from the combat-centric quests that make up most of the Fallout 3 experience. These quests don’t last too long though, and you’re quickly forced to make a moral choice that for once is not cookie-cutter good or evil but instead incredibly complex. The game doesn’t even award you any Positive or Negative Karma for deciding.
Mothership Zeta (F3MZ)
Why isn’t this DLC great? You’re abducted by stereotypical 50′s style aliens in flying saucers and have to win your freedom by fighting your way out with a bunch of warriors plucked from different eras of history while also slowly uncovering details of just what the aliens have been doing with all these people over the years.
For some reason, none of it works. The new characters feel flat, the new weapons don’t balance the game’s seriousness with their intended comedy, the level design is bland, repetitive and uninspired and the clues you get rarely evoke a reaction, visceral or otherwise.
In fact, I’ve never even finished this DLC. Half a dozen times I’ve got halfway through and reloaded a save before I started it out of boredom. Don’t buy this separately. If you want to buy one individually, get Point Lookout or Broken Steel.
Price: PS3 DLC – $9.99 – £9.99 – 800 Points Each
XBOX 360 DLC – $9.99 – £9.99 – 800 Points Each
PC DLC – $9.99 – £6.75 Each (Games for Windows Live)
Game of the Year Edition: £12 (PS3) – £18 (360) – £12 (PC) – CEX Price
Operation Anchorage & The Pitt disc – £4 (360) – £3 (PC) – CEX Price
Broken Steel & Point Lookout disc – £6 (360) – £4 (PC)
Steam Prices: GOTY Edition – £14.99 DLC Price – £3.99
Should I Buy? – Fallout 3
02 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Fallout, FPS, Game, Microsoft, PC, Playstation, Review, RPG, Sony, Steam, Valve, XBOX
Holy Gameplay Trailers, Batman! Did you guys see the new Arkham City trailer? It looks amazing! I cannot wait to play that.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/trailers/3638-Batman-Arkham-City-Gameplay
Anyway, down to business. The Fallout series is one with a troubled history. The first game was released in 1997 and was a critical success and a cult classic. Its sequel Fallout 2 performed similarly. Then the series was taken out of the hands of its original creators and made first into a divisive tactical game and then a disastrous shooter game.
With its original studio shut down, it looked to become a relic of gaming’s past until it was revived by Bethesda Softworks with Fallout 3, an RPG-shooter hybrid. The series is set in the future of an alternative timeline where the Cold War happened between China and America which continued into the 21st Century though culture stagnated in the 1950′s and hasn’t moved on since. Eventually the world nuked itself to death but humanity survived.
You grow up in one of the underground Vaults, where remnants of humanity have dwelt for the past 200 years with no contact from the outside world. And this childhood actually comprises the game’s tutorials. Under the guise of bullies, classroom tests, birthday parties and more you create your character’s look and statistics and get introduced to combat and morality. This is all very immersive , and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Eventually however, the time comes for you to leave the Vault to find your recently escaped father (Liam Neeson).
And from there, you’re given free range to do pretty much whatever you want within the game’s parameters. You’re free to explore the crumbled wastelands of the Washington D.C. and interact with the peoples therein.
The game’s main plotline revolves around finding your father and unravelling his past. However, you can choose not to do this for weeks while you explore the Capital Wasteland and get embroiled in side quests.
All the equipment you can use has it’s own ‘condition’ bar. This means you have to scavenge equipment as well as medicine in order to keep yourself and your gear in working order. This mechanic serves two great purposes. For one, it fits very nicely into a world where everything is built on the bones of the old as a blend of mechanic and aesthetic. Secondly, it means you can’t just pick up the most powerful weapons at the beginning of the game and expect to rely on it.
Combat can be taken care of in first or third person views. Personally, I’d recommend using the first person view, as something about the aim in third person seems a little off.
The freedom that the game gives you is great, as this is an environment you can quickly draw you in with its great sense of worldbuilding and atmosphere. Though the game world leaves you with a lot of neat little secrets and stuff to find, it’s not very populated. The game has about five proper, revisitable settlements and depending on whether you play as good or evil you’ll probably end up destroying one of them.
Despite this, being able to wander around an office building which has no relation to any quests and find a series of internal emails on the computers that tell a story of the people who worked there is fantastic. These kinds of touches are all over the place and really help the world feel alive. Or dead. Or dead but with people living in it again. Whatever it is, it makes the world feel like that.
Unfortunately, there’s not much to really say about the gameplay. It’s perfectly serviceable gunplay mixed with some simple to understand, yet deceptively deep RPG mechanics whirring away close enough to the surface that you’re mindful of them, but not so much so that they ever really intrude on the game.
Now that this game is so cheap, there isn’t really a reason not to buy it. Don’t expect any handholding once you leave the Vault though, and if you’re a shooter fan with no interest in RPGs then you should just go back to Gears of Halo Duty Warfare 5. The five different DLC packs add a lot to the game’s quality, and I’ll do a write-up of those soon. As a note, instead of having to download the DLC packs to your console, buying the game of the year edition would give you all those on disc, so you might wanna wait on buying this till you’ve heard about the DLC and whether you think it’s worth it.
Price: PC – £6 (CEX) £14 (Steam)
PS3 – £5 (CEX)
XBOX 360 £7 (CEX)
Should I Buy? – Bioshock
01 Jul 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Bioshock, FPS, Game, Microsoft, Playstation, Review, Sony, Steam, Valve, XBOX
Yes. Now. In fact, you should buy it yesterday. Better yet you should go back in time to buy it on launch day so Irrational Games get more money to keep doing things like this. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a gamer, this is something that everybody who loves a good story should play.
The story of the game is that you’re the last survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Waking up, you see what seems to be an ornate lighthouse not too far away and so you swim towards it. Soon you enter the once great underwater city of Rapture, now a place of madness and anarchy. You become embroiled in a battle between two powerful and enigmatic men to decide the future of the city.
The actual story of Rapture, its denizens, its purpose and its downfall are slowly revealed throughout the game. You can collect diaries of various characters to help you piece together the game’s timeline. And what a story it is. The founder of Rapture and its nominal leader Andrew Ryan’s personal philosophy is based on the ‘Objectivist’ philosophy of Ayn Rand.
You don’t have to understand any of this philosophy to understand the game, I didn’t and I still had a blast. The game is basically deconstructing this philosophy and showing how a world based on the philosophy of only furthering your own goals and living under no restrictions leaves a lot of people angry, betrayed, or virtually enslaved to the few who rise to the top. It also shows what happens for example, when doctors are free to research and refine their techniques with no ethical inhibitions.
That’s long enough without talking about the gameplay. It’s a first person shooter with some minor RPG elements, mainly in the way of buying and equipping upgrades. The weapons are fairly standard fare, at least until you get the gun that can shoot fire, ice and lightning. As well as weapons, you get access to a range of ‘Plasmids’, special tonics that alter your genetic code so you can use magic-like abilities such as telekinesis, the ever reliable lightning and even keeping a swarm of killer bees in your hand. Though you can only use either your weapons or Plasmids at any given time, switching between the two is as easy as pressing the other shoulder button.
The environments you move through are all dark, chaotic and semi-destroyed but each looks different and has a different person whose carved it out as their personal kingdom. Particularly chilling are the mad plastic surgeon of the medical centre and the sociopathic artist of the pavillion, both of whom seem to have developed serious perfectionist/thanotos complexes.
Like most FPS’s these days you’re lead through each area by people giving you objectives over the radio, though things aren’t quite as plain as they seem.
Each of the game’s systems are well balanced and together with the novel challenges of Rapture this means that while this game follows many of the conventions of the FPS genre the game never feels cliché or formulaic.
This is a game of brilliant storytelling and solid atmosphere. It’s hard to think of a time when this game missteps. Instead of trying to think of one, I’ll just say that you need this game now.
Price: PC: £5 (CEX) £13 (Steam)
XBOX 360: £6
PS3: £8
