Sandbox

With all due respect, your sister’s a slut.

Gareth

The original Mafia was released way back in 2002, around the same time as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It gained very favourable reviews for its story and being a more realistic take on the open world format. A lot has changed in the gaming world in eight years however, so have 2K Czech managed to bring Mafia 2 in line with the world’s expectations?

Forgetabouddit!

Mafia 2 puts you in control of Vito Scaletta as he works his way up through the Mafia. You’ll start off as a no good kid who, thanks to circumstance, has to do some dirty work to make money fast, but end up enjoying the lifestyle and taking more and greater risks. It is this story that will keep you playing Mafia 2 and at times it can be quite powerful, though if you’ve seen Goodfellas or any other gangster movie you probably won’t be surprised by any of the twists.

At first you might think that Mafia 2 is a GTA-clone, with an open world where you accept missions and create havoc. You would only be partially correct. True, Mafia 2’s world is open from the beginning and you can create havoc if you so choose, but you don’t accept missions because there are only story missions and there will only ever be one at a time. Unlike GTA where you’ll have a choice of which missions you want to do at what time, even though you’ll do them all eventually, Mafia 2 has no choice. There will be one marker on the screen and you will have to go there if you want to make progress.

Not necessarily a negative in itself, but there is nothing else to do. As I mentioned you can go around shooting up the place, robbing stores or crushing cars, but to what end? Sure, you’ll get a bit more cash, but there is little to spend it on. You can buy new suits or modify your car but there is no point in that unless the cops are after you. You can buy guns but you’ll have plenty just from playing missions. I played Mafia 2 through from start to finish (on hard) in a few days, simply going straight from one mission to the next. I still enjoyed it, I just don’t understand why there had to be the illusion of a living world when it’s actually incredibly empty.

Hey, who died and left you as baaawwws?

The missions themselves are much like you’d expect. Drive from here to there, shoot this and that, repeat. There are a few interesting scenarios in which these actions take place but people who curse GTA for its lack of variety won’t find anything here to appease them. The shooting mechanics themselves are quite good, sometimes. There are moments when you’ll spray a guy with a ‘Tommy Gun’ and he’ll wince and crumple as you’d expect, whereas other times enemies will run out into the open only to turn around and run back exactly where they came from, or will stand out of cover to reload. Also I have not had so many long range shotgun based instant deaths as this since Rainbow Six: Vegas.

Mafia 2 also has a habit of taking control away from you and fading to black to inform you that something is happening or to do something cool, and will then give control back to you. Why I can’t be informed that the police are now after me whilst playing, or simply by noticing with my eyes I don’t know. Mafia 2 is obviously fond of the cutscene. A little bit of fuss has been made about the length and frequency of the cutscenes but I personally didn’t mind this and it certainly isn’t a patch on Metal Gear Solid, I would just have preferred to be able to continue playing with voices talking over the action at points, or let me shimmy across the ledge myself instead of just watching it happen. I guess that could be classed as a minor niggle, but it would have added a cool bit of variety to the proceedings, rather than just driving and shooting. There are a couple of stealth sections which are genuinely a breath of fresh air simply because you get to do something different.

Jase Secondary Review Mafia 2 is not perfect by any means. There are plenty of niggles but you’ll have fun soaking up the atmosphere of 1950s and ’60s America. It starts off really strong, then moves to doing jobs and building up your cash. Sadly it soon becomes apparent that cash is fairly useless. There’s nothing you need to buy or invest in. It’s hard to feel attached to the open world or derive a sense of progression because of this. The majority of the characters are forgettable with only your buddy Joe providing any sort of meaningful relationship. The rest are just cookie cutter mafia guys who’s motives are never explained on anything other than the most superficial of levels, it’s disappointing. Driving in Mafia 2′s period cars was a treat for me. The cars all handle quite similarly which meant that I could hop in anything and feel comfortable. The way the gunplay in Mafia 2 functions leaves a lot to be desired. You could take so few bullets before dying coupled with the checkpointing meant that I did spend a lot of time repeating sections. This was by and large due to being one shot killed by some shotgun flavoured prick. Not great game design in 2010. I stuck to the missions and got a fair amount of enjoyment out of Mafia 2. Is a solid experience not revolutionary but il be interested to see what this developer does next Secondary Score: 6/10

My biggest negative with the game is that there is no real sense of progression. Obviously if you’re following the story you’ll feel progress is being made, but from a strictly gameplay perspective there will be times where you are literally sent back to square one. You’ll learn to counter punch about half way through the game which will stay with you forever, but when the story dictates it there will be moments when you lose all your weapons and all your money, even any nice clothes you’ve bought. Like I said earlier, these things are easily replaced or have little use anyway, but I would like some sense of progression in the game, whether it’s a huge amount of money or a swankier pad or a huge collection of powerful weaponry. Instead all I have to go on is the chapter number.

Still, Mafia 2 has a decent atmostphere which, as Alan Wake proved, can make up for a lot. Set from the mid ‘40s to the early ‘50s, the developers have taken every opportunity to make it feel like you’re running around committing criminal acts in this time period and not simply running around with a ‘Tommy Gun’ in modern day. From the cars you drive, to the music that you hear throughout, even the collectibles (actual real life vintage Playboy pinups) keep you immersed in the world. It’s just a shame that you have such a narrow view of this world. It would have been nice to be able to travel Empire Bay and just go dancing, or whatever the hell they used to do back then and not simply have to constantly kill. According to Mafia 2 gangsters wake up everyday to a phone call which starts a job and then as soon as they finish their job they go home and go to bed. Although with so little else to do I don’t really blame them.

If you enjoy a gangster flick, or believe a decent story is enough to pull you through ten hours of gameplay then you may well find an experience worth having with Mafia 2. If you’re an open world fan and expect this to tide you over until the next GTA or Saints Row then you’ll be disappointed.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars6/10

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/mafia-ii-xbox-360/feed/ 0 http://www.peoww.co.uk/crackdown-2-xbox-360/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/crackdown-2-xbox-360/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:15:16 +0000 Gareth http://www.peoww.co.uk/?p=4844 Review – Crackdown 2

3rd Person Shooter/Platformer/Sandbox

Killing in the name of (again).

Gareth

The original Crackdown was released back in 2007 and was most well known for simply containing a multiplayer demo of Halo 3. A lot of people bought the game just for that demo, but many that gave Crackdown a chance came away pleasantly surprised. Yes, it was an open world game but it was far more of a superhero simulation than a GTA-clone. You could leap buildings in a single bound, throw around cars and simply cause mayhem. And best of all you could play the entire game in two player co-op.

It's gone all 'Prototype'. Bah.

Here we are three years later and Crackdown 2 is being released. Whereas the original was created by Realtime Worlds, Crackdown 2 has been made by Ruffian Games. Generally I worry when I hear a series has changed hands, but Ruffian is partially made of people who worked on the original Crackdown so let’s not pass judgement just yet.

Upon starting the game anyone that has played the original will be right at home. You start off with a mini-tutorial this time where you go through the basics of jumping and attacking but you’ll very quickly get into the game proper and the déjà vu kicks into overdrive. You’ll see enemies fighting with Peacekeepers, Agility Orbs and explosive barrels – basically the same sort of things as the first game. There are minor differences here though. The enemies fighting the Peacekeepers aren’t one of three gangs anymore, there is only one ‘gang’ and that’s ‘The Cell’, an anti-Agency (the guys you work for) group. Also, freaks now roam the streets at night.

Freaks aren’t particularly tough but gather in huge numbers and can slowly chip away at your shields if you get caught in a group of them. During the day time they go into hiding underground and clearing out these nests are one of the major missions in the game. There are also ‘Freak Breaches’ which are areas on the surface which must be sealed to stop freaks pouring out of them. There are two other major mission types in the game, one is taking over Cell territories and turning them into Agency drop points (where you can request weapons and vehicles), and the other is activating Sunburst beacons which allow you to destroy the freak nests.

With car handling like this, luzzing cars at heads is your best option. Is still fun though.

Unfortunately every single one of these missions simply involves killing a certain amount of enemies, whether Cell or freak. That’s it. There’s no escort missions or get a package from A to B or any stealth missions, every mission is just point and shoot and survive. But honestly, the main missions aren’t the real draw of Crackdown 2 as anyone who’s played the original will know. You can easily complete the storyline (though there is little story to speak of) in just over five hours if that’s all you do, but Crackdown 2 has a lot more to give.

When you start the game your agent will be stronger than the average person, but he won’t be anything too impressive. As you perform certain actions, such as killing an enemy with guns, explosives or your fists, you’ll slowly gain experience and grow stronger in those specific fields. You have agility (upgraded by collecting Agility Orbs from building tops) which allows you to jump higher and run faster, strength (upgraded by physically attacking people) which makes you stronger, allowing you to pick up trucks and throw objects further, driving (upgraded by completing races and running over enemies) which unlocks new Agency vehicles, firearms (upgraded by killing enemies with guns) which unlocks new weapons and explosives (upgraded by killing enemies with grenades) which unlocks new grenades and makes your explosions bigger.

You can upgrade these skills in any order and at rate you wish and I imagine this is what will grab most players. It won’t take a huge amount of time to get your agent to level five in everything but while it lasts you’ll be hooked trying to get your agility/strength/whatever to the next level to see how badass you become. By the end of the game you can glide across the city, drive a tank, fling trucks around like they’re toys and cause massive explosions with a single grenade.

By this point you’ll probably be invested in the collectables as well. There are the aforementioned Agility Orbs (of which there are 500), but there are also Hidden Orbs (300), Live Orbs (which can only be collected with a co-op partner, there are 80), and Renegade Orbs (30 agility and 15 driving). Renegade Orbs are new to Crackdown 2 and a pain in the ass. They are basically the same as regular orbs except for the small fact that they move. You have to chase them down either on foot or in a car and it can be a painful experience, but luckily there aren’t that many of them.

There are also 52 audio logs to be found around the city which develop what little story the game has, so that’s 925 collectibles altogether. It sounds like a huge amount but the difficulty seems to be pitched just right so that you’ll easily find most of them and by the time things become difficult you’ll want to find the last ten or so of each. So the real meat of Crackdown 2 doesn’t come from the main game itself, but what wouldn’t even amount to sidequests in most games.

Rich Secondary Review Bah! I knew it. I fucking knew it. I was happily waiting for Crackdown 2 to roll around after loving the previous game to DEATH but as it got closer I realised something. It’s not going to be as good. As sure as night follows day, I knew it would never match up to the original’s charming brilliance. While Gareth here can tell you the ins and outs of it, here’s the short version. Same game as before. Less pretty. Same area to run around in but now lacking the personality that the gangs gave it. No longer do you get the residential, industrial and financial district feel. Now it’s one big urban mess with some cunts in it. At night the cunts are like zombies. But for all the obvious disappointments, it’s Crackdown all over again but with more players (four player co-op all over your mum) so await the inevitable price crash and pick this is up for sub-£20. That’ll balance out the catholic guilt that you’ll get from buying the same game twice. Secondary Score: 6/10

There are also Stunt Rings you have to drive a vehicle through, Wingsuit Rings you have to glide through, Rooftop Races and Road Races. Also I have yet to mention that the game is playable throughout in up four player co-op. As soon as you add just one friend to the mix the game becomes quite a bit easier (there are multiple difficulties however), but also the possibilities for fun increase infinitely. Try a little two on two football with a beach ball or just have everyone equip magnetic grenades and see how much havoc you can cause.

Hardly worth mentioning is the multiplayer mode they’ve added for the sequel. There are three modes, Rocket Tag where one player is the target and everyone is equipped with rocket launchers, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. I’m not a massive online shooter fan anyway, but these held my attention for all of five minutes before I loaded up the single player game again. There are a few people playing these modes but unfortunately the ability to jump stupidly high and glide around loses something when everyone can do it and you’re confined to relatively small arenas.

The biggest negative you can level at Crackdown 2 is that it is simply far too similar to the first game. The graphics have improved a little and are certainly more solid with a greater draw distance and they seem to have realised that the collectibles were the real draw of the original and so have added a lot more, but the lack of variety in the main missions, the fact that there is little story to uncover and the multiplayer are all a big let down. If you loved the original Crackdown and are gagging for some more then there is no need to wait, this is exactly what you want. Others who never played the original will find a really enjoyable and addictive game here, but you will also be able to find the original game for much, much cheaper and there is little reason to recommend Crackdown 2 over it. I have enjoyed it though. I’m looking forward to some more co-op sessions in the near future and lord knows I can’t stop at 492 agility orbs out of 500.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars 7/10

Power-up Racer

PGR4 with blue shells?

Ian

It would far too easy to dismiss Blur as Wipeout Kart except with real cars in real world locations. Indeed on the basis of the multiplayer beta many will have written it off as an also ran and probably bought Alpha Protocol on the same day instead. Such judgements are no doubt depriving Bizarre Creations of deserved plaudits, though it means Activision miss out on cash at the same time so it’s not all bad!

Relive your choice of horrible Charlie Sheen movies.

This is the first racing game from the premier British developer since the Microsoft deal expired and Bizarre seem to have made a conscious effort to get away from the comparative realism of the Project Gotham series.  As you may have seen from the beta, the racing is with normal cars in a variety of locations (UK, US, Spain, Japan) with the added fillip of Wipeout style power-ups.

Some are mundane (Shield, Repair), some are amusing (Mines, Barge) while others are downright game-breaking. The worst culprit being the three lightning fields you can conjure up ahead of the main field. All well and good if you’re not in the lead, but if you are then the trouble starts. I’ve had races where I’ve been romping ahead and before you know it I round a corner and lose most if not all of my lead as I hit ten+ lightning patches and end up feeling like an extra in a fucking Highlander sequel.

The game itself is very much one of two parts with a single player career mode and a ranked multiplayer mode.  Single player career mode has a feel not unlike the (bugged) Dreamcast classic Metropolis Street Racer. Admittedly this has more to do with the fact you can unlock forthcoming race series well before you’re ready to attempt them than anything else, but still the feeling remains.

Bizarre Creations Guideline #1: All promo shots must have literally nothing to do with the in-game graphics.

Each race series has a number of set tasks that range from the humdrum to borderline chore  that you need to carry out before you’re allowed to confront each boss character (and by beating them getting a lovely achievement).  The item-related achievements are designed in a similar way, for example two of the criteria for the Medic achievement require that you heal 500 blocks of  cumulative health & win a race on critical damage while holding a repair power-up. In effect the essence of achievements personified in that it makes you play the game a certain way.  When you beat a boss (one of whom looks uncannily like Scroobius Pip), you unlock their car as well as a unique perk such as an extra energy bolt or improved shields.

The race venues themselves are the fairly typical Barcelona, San Francisco, New York affairs with the notable exception of the UK based tracks. Hackney in Sarf London & Brighton seafront. The latter being pretty realistic as Marine Drive is (was?) a popular boy racer cruise spot. Sadly there’s no Vauxhall Novas on the car roster so you don’t get to drive just like some of these angry young men often do.

In a genre dominated by games with terrible licensed soundtracks, Blur is a welcome departure. No Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party or pop punk dross here. Just fairly subtle dance tunes that fit the mood of the game, pretty non-intrusive stuff. In fact the soundtrack is disabled by default which is another welcome departure.

The kudos system that’s been around since MSR and the four subsequent PGR games appears to have disappeared, only it hasn’t really. It’s been reinvented as a fan-gathering exercise, where flashy moves that would previously have garnered kudos get you fans instead, a nice touch and a bit less abstract than kudos was.

Adam Secondary Review In Racing games need to do something interesting for me to care. Bizarre Creations’ Project Gotham series had the Kudos system, where you won by being stylish. Blur has the Fans system, where you win by being a massive dick. Shannon’s Demands I don’t mean winning in the literal sense of coming first or anything, but in the sense of screwing over other drivers. Whether through a forward-fired mine (re: Banana Peel), a well-aimed longshot (re: Green Shell) or an EMP wall, (re: Blue Shell) it’s never been more fun to overtake someone. As a result it’s a hard game to truly lose. Even if you don’t come in the top three, you may yet see your name in lights for getting the fastest lap or taking the most hits. Bizarre Creation All of these endeavours feed into the game’s morish unlocks system, which appears to have been lifted straight from Modern Warfare. Unfortunately for a game with pretensions of becoming Modern Carfare, it currently has a small online player-base of about 2000, with certain modes having no-one playing them at all. It’s just as well then that the vanilla 20-player races are all you’d ever want from the game – especially when some of them take place in Hackney and Brighton. Park Life ect. Aside from being a near-perfect marriage of licensed realism and arcade fun, Blur’s greatest achievement is that I never minded finishing near last, because I would have had to fight for every place and had a blast doing so. Basically as long as you have someone in your rear-view mirror, you’ll be as focused as Bob Peck until you cross the finish line. Secondary Score: 8/10

The multiplayer is the real meat in the sandwich with persistent ranking in the manner of the Modern Warfare games, only rather than getting shot from across the map with a Barrett .50 cal, you get opponents with imbalanced perk load-outs that you won’t have unlocked yet. Or in my case probably never will. There’s a variety of different playlists (lowbie up to level 10, standard racing with or without powerups), demolition derby style etc)  so you’ll be sure to find a game type that suits how you play the game. Regarding the perks, they come in three flavours: defensive, offensive and showy and you’ll find yourself modifying your settings every time you unlock a new one.

A real problem with racing games is there’s often so much to do, you can feel overwhelmed after a break from the game. Forza is particularly guilty in that respect. Blur addresses this issue succinctly by providing a ‘Previously on Blur’ recap, not unlike the start of a 24 episode. Only without Jack Bauer and the threat of random violence.

This game has pretty much been resident in my Xbox since the day of release so Bizarre must’ve been doing something right as the last of their racing games to have done the same to me was the utterly compulsive PGR2 on the original breezebox.

In summary then, a mildly diverting singleplayer game with a few niggles, utterly compelling multiplayer that’s ultimately the hook that’ll get you coming back time and again. Hence the score below. Without the multiplayer it’d be a point less.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/blur-xbox-360/feed/ 0 http://www.peoww.co.uk/alpha-protocol-xbox-360/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/alpha-protocol-xbox-360/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:11:48 +0000 Mark http://www.peoww.co.uk/?p=4822 Review – Alpha Protocol

3rd Person Action, Espionage RPG

Smert Shpionam?

Mark

I might be wrong but I suspect the life of a spy isn’t as glamorous as James Bond, Jason Bourne and Napoleon Solo would have us believe. Rather than the staples of fast cars, exotic locals and alluring women the real life of a spy is more about hiding in bushes, shooting Brazilian electricians and trips to the local STD clinic. So until a video game developer buys the Harry Palmer licence we’re never going to live the sheer drudgery of a real spy’s life. So in the meantime there’s this, Alpha Protocol by Obsidian Entertainment (Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights II and the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas)

The Max Payne audition was going well.

The path to release hasn’t been the easiest for Alpha Protocol with a dev team made up of programmers yanked off the now sadly cancelled Aliens RPG to make a winter ‘09 release date only for Sega to pull it from the schedules at the last moment for this summer 2010 amid the much stronger than normal summer competition from the likes of Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Dead Revolver: Redemption. Has the extra six months development time been put to good use or will Obsidian have yet another ‘good but rushed’ B- RPG like KOTOR II? Let’s see.

At its heart Alpha Protocol has all the right western RPG you need for a classic: action packed combat, stealthy sneaking, directable character interaction, 12A rated sex scenes and moral choices a plenty. I could be lazy and describe it as an espionage version of Mass Effect but I won’t, even though I just did. You play Michael Thornton yet another white American from the brown eyes, short hair casting school whose life takes an interesting twist as he’s recruited by Alpha Protocol an ultra secret covert organisation tasked with maintaining worldwide political stability.

Judo chop!

The game starts with you creating your own particular version of Mike from three archetypes each specialising in combat, stealth or espionage skills or choosing your own mix from the list of skills like pistol, rifles, sabotage, stealth, martial arts etc. You gain experience points throughout the game that help Mike to level up giving him AP points that can be spent to improve his skills as he goes along. Low level skills give him small bonuses to the related activities but with additional skill ranks he’ll gain abilities that can be activated for a short time like bullet-time style aiming, temporary invisibility, quicker reloading and the like. He can also gain perks by performing certain actions during the game like befriending or enraging other characters, performing a set number of critical hits with a weapon or choosing particular dialogue paths that’ll lead to many different and varied outcomes some not as you might expect.

Being a western RPG Alpha Protocol is full of choice in not just how you play the game but how you have Mike behave. You can load him up with automatic rifles and a shotgun and blast your way through the different missions shooting first and questioning after or if you’re a liberal pussy like me sneaking around using pistol tranquilliser rounds, CQC takedowns and bringing in enemies for questioning rather than executing them outright.

This is what the computers in hell show.

If you don’t favour the direct approach you’ll have access to a wide catalogue of labour saving equipment from EMP grenades that can fry electronic locks and stun enemy sentry turrets, explosive mines, incendiaries or noise generators to lure enemies into ambushes.

The EMP grenades in particular come in very handy as they’re a great way to bypass what is easily the most off putting aspect of Alpha Protocol: the minigames. There’s three types of games all of them timed that cover picking traditional key locks, bypassing electronic locks and hacking computers. The picking game has you squeezing both triggers to find a sweet spot on the lock’s tumblers and requires a gentle touch that can easily be gained through practice and patience. The bypass game works like a mini maze with you tracing the right numbered node to its connector that snakes and twists around a circuit board before the timer runs out.

Colin Secondary Review My name is Michael Westen, I used to be a spy until… Ignore all the faff about trying to combine the best elements of Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer and James Bond and ignore whatever similarities you may think the game has to Mass Effect and its ilk. Ignore the fact that Sega hasn’t had the best of luck with it’s games lately and lets just examine what we have, a third person stealth em up with RPG style levelling up and meaningful conversations and in-game choices. There’s no shadow meter, no cone of vision, just old fashioned enemy line of sight. This works relatively well (so long as you’ve spent some points on stealthy attributes or sneaking armour), however if all hell breaks loose or you accidentally get spotted the enemies gain the spooky ability to see through walls and track you down with great efficiency, very annoying and as such you may just want to restart a section. The non-sneaking combat is pretty dire, accurate headshots usually require stationary targets and unless you have forever to line up critical shots you’ll be at the mercy of the dice roll whether you hit your target or not. As in many action RPGs mini-game hell is in full swing here. You’ll be bypassing circuits (meh), picking locks (erp) and hacking computers (aaarrrggghhhh!) with relative frequency depending on how you tackle the mission. Most of these are rather difficult but almost in a good way, you’re forced to decide if it’s really worth bothering when failure will set off the alarms and send half a dozen Russian bodyguards your way, with their afore mentioned x-ray vision. Towards the end of every few levels you will face the inevitable boss and depending on conversational skills, you may be able to avoid conflict – if you can’t be prepared to endure some pretty crap set pieces that will force you to embrace the games awful combat. Despite these flaws there’s still a great premise and a lot of fun to be had here. Playing as a stealthy ninja you obviously get one side of the experience but what I have is a game that makes me want to come back for more (not in a sad-masochistic kind of way) – I would recommend people give this game a bash unless you’re hoping for a fun run and cover gunfest. Oh and if you do pick it up, tell them Chuck Finlay sent you. Secondary Score: 7/10

The hacking game though is by far the most off putting, annoying, pernickety minigame since Elder Scrolls V had that bullshit persuasion minigame. Using both sticks you have to match two number sequences to the same numbers on a screen of changing numbers. Sounds confusing yeah? Well fuck me if it isn’t damn near impossible at first, sure with time you can train your eyes to see past the moving numbers but with the double stick controls and a too short time limit I doubt many would bother. It’s never essential to be able to hack a computer or complete the other minigames but playing the game without trying to hack anything or wasting thousands of dollars and Mike’s precious inventory slots on EMP grenades isn’t really an option. It’s a choice but one you really do have to make in favour of playing the minigames.

The choices don’t stop at the combat as the game’s dialogue trees will often give you three different stances when talking to someone. There’s the cool, emotionless professional ah la Jason Bourne, the charming James Bond suave path or the Arnholt ’do what I say or I’ll shoot you’ aggressive path. It’s worth paying attention during the dialogue sections as not only will you gain bonus experience points for paying attention but there’s perks to be had for consistently roleplaying a particular character type or being totally inscrutable and choosing a mix of all three give the situation Mike is in.

Now if all of this is sounding good to you despite the minigame woes I recommend you go and rent, NOT buy mind you, just rent a copy as fans of western RPGs like Mass Effect of KOTOR will no doubt have a blast like I did hunting down terrorist cells, infiltrating NSA safe houses and rescuing damsels in distress. Play it for a few hours i.e. past the tutorial section at the Alpha Protocol base and get deep into the first proper mission with selectable assignments and access to the intelligence network and blackmarket vendors. Once you’re in the thick of it sneaking/shooting goons, questioning/executing terrorist leaders, recovering/selling enemy intelligence you’ll know if it’s worth adding it to your buy list because as a whole the game isn’t what you call… finished.

Glitches both graphical and systemic are abundant. The textures pop in and out like an Unreal beta test and those that stick around look low res and washed out with intersecting tiles all over the place. The enemy AI is nowhere as sophisticated as it needs to be with guards getting stuck in logic loops and dashing to and from cover over and over again until you stop them and their line of sight veering from restricted to highly perceptive seemingly at random.

The story is well crafted and with the different mission resolutions and interactions you could easily replay it multiple times in different ways but the general feel of being unfinished and rough around the edges will scare off many gamers unused as they are to lemon squeezing like we do here at Peoww. If you can love a lemon you’ll get plenty of fun here but if all you’re looking for is flashy FMV and slick but limited gameplay look for you kicks elsewhere as Alpha Protocol is an acquired taste that I for one have grown to love but know that’ll repulse far more than it enthrals.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

8/10

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/alpha-protocol-xbox-360/feed/ 1 http://www.peoww.co.uk/modnation-racers-ps3/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/modnation-racers-ps3/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:33:11 +0000 Colin http://www.peoww.co.uk/?p=4817 Review – ModNation Racers

Racing/Customisation

Madman at the wheel.

Colin

Kart racing (as we know it today) has to be one of those genres that never would have existed had it not been for one seminal title. Wacky racers, impractical vehicles, weird and wonderful tracks and of course weapons about as powerful as the average suitcase nuke all come together to form the modern kart racer. Nintendo have long held the crown in this genre, and by Nintendo I of course mean Mario Kart, but that’s not to say there hasn’t been a fair share of contenders to the throne (suggest your own in the comments field). Sony has decided they want a piece of this pie and are combining kart racer fundamentals to their “Play, Create, Share” brand, has Mod Nation Racers got what it takes to bring about a kart racer renaissance or will this creative Mecca turn out like so much other user generated content pap.

At this point a blue turtle seems like a better alternative.

On the surface ModNation Racers looks as sleek, colourful and cutesy as you’d expect from a kart racer, gameplay is pretty much as one would expect also. Karts race around themed landscapes, drive over speed boost panels, collect power-ups and fly over massive ramps with enjoyable regularity. The aim of the game is to place in the top three after each race and then advance to the next stage. Feeling sociable? Then play some multiplayer, either locally or online and despite the PlayStation Network not being as robust and reliable as some other online gaming services out there, it’s as fun as ever to be annihilated by American teenagers.

So that’s the bare bone basics but there’s plenty other nice little additions the game has before they even bring out the big guns of level creation.

I can see my imminent death from up here.

As with any self respecting karter, weapons play a large part. Once a ‘weapon crate’ has been collected you have the option to fire it forward or drop it behind you, as is the case in similar games. ModNation Racers adds an extra level of depth with the option to power up your weapon by driving over more crates. A fully powered up level three weapon can have a phenomenal impact on the race be it in the form of an almighty barrage of missiles landing upon racers or by allowing you to travel at greatly enhanced speeds and even teleporting you ahead of the competition. As satisfying as it is to release such destruction on the opponents, more often than not you will be cursing the screen when the AI does this to you and being that it’s the most effective strategy, they’ll be doing it a lot.

Karts have a boost ability that is fueled by the usual drifting round corners, damaging opponents and getting huge air time. Boost will help you outrun certain weapons but each kart can use their boost bar to power a temporary protective shield around them thus adding another element of strategy – essential if you hope to stand a change against the afore mentioned WMDs at other races disposal.

Okay, so that’s the basics and even on this level the game is impressive and enjoyable. Of course the real ingenuity in the game comes from the endless possibilities for creating racers, karts and tracks – which quite frankly is amazing.

No point beating about the bush then, just about anything is possible when it comes to designing racers and karts. No point in even pretending I have a creative bone in my body but from all the readily available user creations to download, you can race with anyone from Kermit the Frog, Iron Man, Power Rangers, Batman to Sephiroth, Elmo or Mr Peanut. Literally I’ve spent hours trawling for the finest character and vehicle creations online and despite being completely superficial, there’s nothing quite like driving about in Optimus Prime whilst dressed as the Cookie Monster or racing in Ecto-1 as The Stig.

Track creation is obviously the main focus here and its even easier to knock something race worthy out than it is to crate a racer or kart. Just drive around the general shape of the track as if you were racing it. Once completed you can choose to ‘auto populate’ the track with scenery or give it a bash yourself, insert obstacles, shortcuts, ramps, speed boosts and weapons. Even a numpty like myself can create amusing diversions, although I’m sure it will take a little longer before we begin to see some AAA tracks created by other users. As with LittleBigPlanet, it seems that many tracks are just being created with the sole purpose of unlocking Playstation Trophies as quickly as possible.

Danny Secondary Review Is ModNation Racers a good game? Yes, yes it is and it’s reflected in the score. Is is a great game? Well no not really. The thing is this kind of thing as been done and done well before. Gripshift on the PSP or Trackmania on the PC being two prime examples of this but like I said,ModNation Racers is still a good game. The game itself is pretty average Mario Kart style affair. It has two modes none of which involve arena based fights but either plain drifting or racing so there might be some problems there for some people. The graphics are nice and very clean looking and the game does not take itself too seriously which is great. The loading times might annoy some people as they are longer than the average game and there is slow down with some levels, especially in split screen. While the track editor is very good it’s not as flexible as the LittleBigPlanet editor so don’t think you are going to be able to make Tetris or Mario 1-1 on this bad boy. With that said if you like karting games but for some reason don’t own a Wii or a PSP then this is the game for you as it’s a very nice power-up based racer. Secondary Score: 7/10

As with all creations you can give them a star rating out of five in order to allow the cream of the crop to float to the surface in addition to commenting on other peoples creations, unfortunately the emphasis here seems to be on overtly critical twats just bursting to give their two cents on what they’d have done better to your work of art. Overall the actual system of searching for user generated content has been implemented superbly, whether you’re looking for creations by a particular user, looking for top rated, newest editions or even just searching for comic book characters in the search field it all comes together rather beautifully.

The game isn’t perfect of course, as mentioned previously, the AI racers can provide quite a challenge at times and as most humans would do use the occasional cheap tactic to get the upper hand. Probably the biggest complaint about the game is the load times before starting a race, it’s certainly a problem I can over look for now, but it is still worthy of note. The story mode (and I use ‘story’ very loosely here) is as flimsy as you’d imagine but seeing as this is the area you are least likely to spend your time, I doubt many will complain about its lack of depth.

Having a game whose main focus is on encouraging users to create content themselves makes it impossible to predict what we will see in the future. ModNation Racers offers an incredible wealth of tools but will the average gamer want to spend much time and effort doing this? I strongly believe that the community will rise to the challenge.

ModNation Racers is a great kart racer and a great showcase to the creativity of many gamers out there. There’s a ton of fun to be had and I literally can’t wait to see all the unique and copywrite infringing creations over the coming months. Pick a track, choose a racer and if you’re really lucky, you could end up driving in the PEOWW-mobile.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars 9/10

Sandbox Western

How the Western genre was won.

Gareth

I really enjoyed Grand Theft Auto IV. It gets a lot of stick but I still go back to it today, whether to play Freemode with my mates or just to play the single player. The two DLC add-ons were pretty decent too. So with everyone and their mother raving about Red Dead Redemption pre-release I was quite excited to play GTA in the Wild West. Unfortunately I’m a little disappointed.

This one's for ma paaahhh!

Red Dead Redemption is a fine game. Visually it can be brilliant although the source material doesn’t always make for the most interesting environments and the acting and story telling is as solid as you’d expect for a Rockstar game. In fact the characters are probably my favourite part of the game. John Marston himself is actually a bit of a ‘yes man’, considering his background, but you’ll encounter plenty of people along the way, both important and minor, to make you smile. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Red Dead Redemption is, as I implied during the introduction, a GTA clone set in the Wild West. You play as John Marston, an ex-gang member who has been tasked by the government to capture/kill his old friends who had previously left him for dead. As with any GTA game to do this you meet with people and help them with their little problems (generally killing people), and they will then introduce you to new people who also have problems that need taking care of. Eventually you’ll help someone who can move on the story and then you repeat the process.

Already any non-fans of GTA will be thinking that the lack of mission variety is going to be an issue again and they’d be right. There will be the odd mission early on which requires herding or breaking horses, but these quickly get bumped to sub-mission status as you are constantly tasked with killing/capturing a group of people. If you’ve played GTAIV this controls incredibly similar. You can walk, jog, sprint, jump, climb, enter vehicles (horse/stage coach), take cover and shoot just as in GTA.

What's the number for the local 'bummed by cougar' counsellor?

The major differences here being that you now select your weapons from a wheel with a press of the left bumper, the auto lock-on is handled slightly differently and you can carry more than one weapon of the same type. By the end of the game you’ll have acquired a few of each type and the trusty lasso. Actually, earlier I stated that the characters were my favourite part of the game, I lied. The lasso is. Easily. Combined with the Euphoria Engine (also used in GTAIV) the mischief you can get up to with a lasso is phenomenal. Although I can think of a few more things I’d like to do with it off the top of my head, simply riding past people and roping them in is a treat.

However, I can’t say the lasso is worth the admission price alone. You do get a lot of other things for your money. As well as a very long single player campaign with missions, side missions, mini-games (like horse shoe throwing, poker and animal hunting) and collectables there is a decent sized multiplayer mode. Straight out I’m going to say that the Free Roam mode isn’t all that. In GTAIV I could play Freemode with my mates for hours, just pissing about. Here however you just don’t have the tools to create your own fun like you could in GTAIV. Even things as simple as not being able to swim and a drop of six feet resulting in death (even when riding a horse) lessen the possibilities for fun.

Colin Secondary Review Yeah it’s a game made by them thar fellas, that did that GTA thingermy-jig. Crap puns aside, it’s gonna be the first thing most people think of and fair enough there are a lot of common elements between the games. It doesn’t seem to matter if a Rockstar game is set in a boarding school, the 70’s, New York or any other sprawling landscape, their sandboxes do have a similar feel to them. Large, interesting, (and in this case) very pretty environments await you. There’s bad guys to shoot, people to meet, choices to make and of course, many different activities outwith the main quest to participate in. Combat seems to have been tuned to perfection since the last GTA games. No longer do you have to choose one gun from each type to carry – you can take them all, different levels of auto-aim is included to help you, The ‘Dead Eye’ special ability for shooting is a great extra that makes you feel like even more of a badass, yet not too godlike for your own good and the ability to carry items in your inventory (i.e. health boosts) is an added element of choice that takes away a lot of frustration from premature death (the worst kind of death). Throw in a decent duck and cover system and quite frankly it couldn’t be much better. Story and Characters are surprisingly captivating, without playing into too many clichés and the missions are enjoyably varied, whether you’re assaulting or defending locations, transporting merchants or cattle, hunting down fugitives or wild animals. Although you have free roam to explore the environment from the get go, the story missions at the start of the game take things very slowly, understandably so as there’s many things to learn but I’m sure most would rather jump straight into the action. In short, Red Dead Redemption is exactly what you expect from a sizable sandbox western from the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series. There’s lots to do and rarely does any of it feel like filler material that a certain games developer has shoved in just because they could. Everything you do feels natural, right and purposeful. This is a a game that deserves praise, not just because it’s technically well made and fun to play, but because its different. I’d recommend this game to most anyone and there’s not much else to say other than *insert funny Blazing saddles quote here*. Secondary Score: 9/10

You have the whole map to explore and they’ve tried to give it some structure by giving you little MMO style quests like killing five birds and collect seven of a certain type of flower or what have you, but they’re all quite shallow and despite being touted as a group experience you can only complete quests by yourself making riding around in a posse fairly useless unless you’re going to be using it as a game lobby rather than an experience in itself. Also, brace yourself – there is no lasso in multiplayer. This could have made things infinitely more fun, but unfortunately, along with trains, lassos have been cut.

Completing the quests I mentioned nets you experience which unlocks new character skins, horses, titles and weapons. All very nice, but the weapon unlocks gradually get better as you’d expect and these are taken straight into certain competitive modes which gives more experienced players an instant advantage. Obviously all guns will kill people and the more you play the better weapons you’ll get so if you enjoy yourself then this isn’t going to be a massive problem.

There is the regular deathmatch mode, team deathmatch and various ‘Grab the Bag’ game modes. ‘Grab the Bag’ is basically ‘Capture the Flag’ but the flag is replaced with bags of gold which slow your running speed if you carry too much. I don’t think this is going to distract many people from the more dedicated online games for too long. I had problems with spawn points and the large amount of guns and the weapon wheel don’t lend themselves to switching weapon on the fly depending on the situation.

One interesting addition is the stand off which happens at the beginning of most matches. Everyone stands facing each other in a line (team) or in a circle and you just have to try and kill as many people as possible whilst surviving yourself. I don’t think I’ve survived once, but it makes for a change of pace with its high pressure situation rather than the run and gun gameplay of most games (including this one).

If you love the Wild West and/or GTA then (if you’ve been able to find a copy) you’ve probably already bought this. Although there is little which is game breakingly wrong with RDR I think there are enough little problems which stop this being fantastic. Riding a horse isn’t as interesting as driving a car (I have actually fallen asleep a few times riding from A to B), the random encounters that happen start repeating incredibly quickly and the repetitive mission structure can grate. Gunplay is fun and quite brutal however and, unlike GTAIV, as you progress through the game and achieve certain things you’ll upgrade your character in certain respects which is always welcome.

So not as perfect as you might have been hearing in this humble reviewer’s opinion but a very good game nonetheless. Did I mention the lasso though?

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

Review – Alan Wake

Survival Horror, Action

You put the lime in the coconut and drink ‘em both up.

Colin

Writers eh? Bunch of whiney bastards, sitting around typewriters and laptops alike, punching keys like a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters in the vague hopes that something mildly coherent will be produced. Certainly that’s how this reviewer operates. Despite once thought lost to the annuls of videogame development hell, Alan Wake has finally made it to the consoles (well just the x360) and here’s hoping the experience is anything but nightmarish.

The story goes that Alan Wake (the writer) is on vacation to the sleepy mountain town of Bright Falls with his wife Alice. Despite not having written anything in two years Alice hopes this trip will revitalise the crime novelists creative mind Unfortunately after settling in to their cabin a dark presence seems to take an interest in them and after their initial encounter, Alice goes missing and Alan blacks out whilst chasing after her.

Alan awakes (see what they did there?) to find his wife gone, a week of his wife missing and pages of a manuscript that he has no memory of writing, a manuscript that appears to be predicting (or is that causing) future events and thus the quest begins to find out what exactly is going one, why locals are being possessed by this dark presence, where these manuscript pages come from and what has happened to his wife. Alan sets off trying to make sense of this madness and trying to survive the town citizens that have been ‘taken’ by the darkness.

Oh I see the fog's cleared a bit anyway.

Having ‘light used as a weapon’ as the main focus of the game, Alan is rarely separated from his trusty recharging flashlight thankfully. Without this he is pretty impotent as the Taken can only be killed with conventional weaponry once they have first been weakened by light (either from the flashlight, flares or extra light in the environment). Light alone is not enough to destroy them and as such its time to bring in the big guns – well a few guns anyway.

Despite the fact that Alan Wake is billed as a ‘Psychological Thriller’ there’s a fair amount of combat and ‘in your face’ action involved, at the same time however the game isn’t Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space, so the reduced armoury at Alan’s disposal can be forgiven. Pistol, flare gun, flashbang grenades and handheld flares, with the extra choice of either a shotgun or hunting rifle is your limit.

Combat is basic and added to the fact you will annihilate hundreds of taken throughout the game I can understand the complaints people have had. The generous auto aim, unintelligent enemies and plentiful ammo means you shouldn’t be perishing too frequently, but then again the sheer number of enemies swarming you at times from all directions can give you a run for your money. Add this to Alan’s inability to sprint faster than an asthmatic amputee and you have situations of sheer panic rather than psychological scares.

But ID said this wasn't possible!

The game is split into six chapters each lasting a couple of hours, with each chapter normally involving different styles of gameplay, broken up into part wandering around looking for clues and talking to people, part wandering in the dark where you can be attached at will and normally a driving section thrown in for new measure. The story is obviously key to your playing experience and as such nothing more will be given away. Needless to say, the game makes references and nods to plenty of other sources, be it the lumbering dark smoky presence you could have sworn you last saw in Lost, the hundreds of ‘small town’ references from any number of moves and TV shows i.e. Twin Peaks or even Remedy’s past work – Max Payne. All of these tie together an engaging story that will keep you entertained to the end.

Other positives include the supporting cast. There’s the wise cracking best friend, the unnaturally aggressive FBI agent, the creepy psychiatrist, the ditsy diner waitress, the heavy metal brothers and many more. Although taking up little screen time in the grand scheme of things, the cast are really good editions to the story, even if most of the story does come from Alan’s own inner monologue.

Mark Secondary Review Newton’s palms twitched as his fingers struck the keyboard ‘How did it come to this?’ He wondered. He’d sworn off survival horror games after the twin disappointment of Silent Hill: Homecoming and Resident Evil 5 – Yet here he was having to pony up a couple hundred words on a game so late it made Too Human look like the model of punctuality. His mind reeled at all the things he’d have to describe: the terror inducing shadows that flit through the haunted woods like creatures of pure nightborn malevolence, the deceptively serene province of Bright Falls built with an all too rare eye for detail rather than cut ‘n’ pasted building blocks and identikit streets thankfully populated by memorable characters that linger in the mind like a languid daydream. Best of all he could lay down thick lines of the overly verbose pulp writing stylings all to frequent in the game that easily match and often surpass Wake’s own beloved Steven King while having enough precise detail and obtuse otherworldliness to keep fans of Lovecraft or M. R. James happy. The room suddenly grew cold around him and his lone table lamp begun to flicker as the dark presence approached. “just tell them if it’s a good game, stop fucking around.” growled the darkness that was the dreaded Peoww Ed. “Yes it’s good.” came from the writer’s cracked lips with a hiss. “It’s very good.” Secondary Score: 9/10

The most enjoyable sections of the game for myself involved having an AI companion to travel and co-operate with, not to mention bitch, argue and joke with. At times the game does have a somewhat sandbox like feel to it but if you do divert from the set path then you pretty much just end up wandering aimlessly around empty rooms and dark forest – with the exception of finding the occasional collectable, manuscript or ammo cache. The game does a good job of keeping you in the right direction by directing towards current objectives via the HUD and if you do stray too much from the beaten path, the darkness will begin to envelop you and a constant stream of bad guys will attack you until you get back to where you’re supposed to go. You have the option to go hunting for secrets but other than this there’s a pretty straight clear cut path you’re supposed to follow.

The in-game graphics are decent and the game does a great job of creating the light and shadow effects. Character animations have received some criticism from the press and understandably so. At times things look like a cross between a Gerry Anderson puppet and weird character animation created with Garys-Mod. Not a massive deal and as such shouldn’t really effect your enjoyment or immersion in the game. Aside from the combat, the only other criticism I could think of would be that I was mildly lost on the story on an occasion or two. Despite having played this every night for a week, the “Previously on Alan Wake” segments at the start of each chapter didn’t fully answer all questions I had. Rest assured, these are minor complaints that should not effect overall enjoyment.

Alan Wake is a fine edition to the fledging Adventure Game genre and will keep you playing through to the end. Although a bit hyped up with its Bright Falls live action prequel series, the idea behind the game is impressive and well implemented despite not being as spooky as intended. Characters and story are compelling and even the musical score and licensed tracks should get a positive nod. Frankly, any game with an aging Norse heavy metal band that encourages you to ‘put de lime in de coconut’ gets a thumbs up in my book.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/alan-wake-xbox-360/feed/ 1 http://www.peoww.co.uk/lost-planet-2-xbox-360/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/lost-planet-2-xbox-360/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 13:58:19 +0000 Richie http://www.peoww.co.uk/?p=4777 Review – Lost Planet 2

Third-person action.

As long as we all agree the last one was a bit shit.

Adam

Capcom’s recent attempts to appeal to Western audiences by employing Western studios have resulted in poor sales and a studio closure, but will they fair any better themselves with their own Lost Planet 2? The first game was a surprise hit in America, and somehow managed to earn a dedicated online player-base. It’s this feature that receives the most attention in LP2, to the extent that the a pure single-player experience is arguably absent.

Eliminate impediments!

asd

I think it’s fair to say most people made their mind up about this series after the first game’s demo. It captured my attention with it’s bleak, snowy environment and Starship Troopers-style enemies; complimented by visuals that set a console benchmark. As someone who disliked EDF:2017 for its floaty controls (not the mention floaty ants), I appreciated the clunking, deliberate animations and unforgiving physics that made the character feel connected to the world, despite taking control from the player. It had it’s many idiosyncrasies, that you either came to love or loathe. If you were in the latter camp, then stop reading now and forget about picking up the sequel, because Lost Planet 2 is one for the fans.

Slow-time events

So assured of your dedication to the franchise is the game, that the story at no point fills you in on the back-story, with only a passing reference made to a long-dead secondary character from the previous entry. Oddly enough, he’s the only character with a face or name and for the most part you play as his clones, at least in the NEVEC episodes, where your primary antagonist is also NEVEC, who wear the exact same uniforms as you. Although to be honest they could be wearing a kilt and bagpipes (which I think you can unlock in the character customisation) for all the personality they have. The only characters I came to sympathise with were a bunch a murderous banditos, represented with the same cultural deftness that Capcom employed in Resident Evil 5. All in all, the  narrative is so disjointed that it’s either the product of some of the most avant-garde storytelling yet seen in mainstream gaming, or a developer who dedicated all of five mins thinking-time to it.

Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

What they did spend time thinking about though was set-pieces, which were by far my favourite feature. Whether it’s a train-mounted gun battery vs. a Sandworm; a one-way trip down the gullet of a hexopodal Godzilla; or fighting from the broadside of a Sandcrawler, LP2 is at it’s best when you and up to three friends are working in unison towards a common goal, warning each other to brace for impact and getting thrown around like they’re on the deck of Enterprise. It’s a shame there aren’t more of these arena-based, MMO-style raids, but then the whole single-player is quite short. I’m guessing the episodic nature implies DLC down the line. I wouldn’t say no.

You are a Snow Pirate!

When you’re not ‘killing big’, you’ll be running through traditional, albeit lush looking, linear levels, with the only objective being the less-than-exciting tap the B-button to proceed. Most of the time you’ll be tapping one of the EDN3’s ubiquitous dataposts, which act as radar stations, respawn points and a dispensers of extra battle-gauge and Thermal Energy. Your T-Eng supply is no longer the hassle that it was in the first game, but still acts as the literal lifeblood of the LP universe, fuelling mechs, energy weapons and most vitally, your healing factor. The health regeneration is done really well, allowing you to manually heal at the cost of T-Eng.

Monster Closet Hunter

A lot of single-player games are little more than practise for the multiplayer, but LP2 takes that idea a step further and has the singleplayer basically be an extension of the multiplayer. In-game objectives almost without exception involve capturing and defending points; you earn killstreaks; you respawn instead of restarting; and when you complete a level (or what feels more like a map) you enter a countdown while they load the next ‘map’. Multiplayer was clearly a priority, but since they removed my favourite mode from the playlists, I didn’t put much time into it.

Mastersetpiece Theatre

If you don’t have friends to play with and are unwilling to party up with randoms, you can take bring three AI teammates as backup. While they certainly won’t be leading any charges, (or even piloting their own mechs) they do at least draw enemy fire, and since their deaths don’t cost lives, the game can bizarrely be easier in singleplayer. It’s clear however that the game was designed to be played and, more importantly, enjoyed in co-op, with a competitive scoring system keeping you focused.

Acronyms without Meanings

The game is pretty short and designed for multiple playthroughs, separating its six episodes into bitesize chunks of about 3 chapters, with each chapter constituting a couple of missions and maybe a boss. If you run out of battle gauge (ie a shared pool of lives) during a chapter, you restart that chapter. This is a deal-breaker. You’ll need the patience of a saint or an achievement whore to put up with the some of the encounters. The mission can take up to 20 mins, so you can lose a lot of progress if you screw up or the game screws you over. This is made even worse by the fact that any experience or unlock tokens are lost, which was probably the reason you were grinding the level again to begin with.

Gareth Secondary Review Co-op play can elevate a good game to greatness or a poor one to playable, Lost Planet 2 is somewhere in the middle. It can be very enjoyable, with some excellent set pieces and a good sense of humour when it comes to emotes and nametags. Unfortunately the core game doesn’t play as smooth as you’d like.  Characters are quite slow, which I can live with in the smaller environments, but the sprint button feels near enough useless. The grappling hook isn’t very versatile and the ‘tricks’ you can do with it aren’t explained anywhere in game. Hell, a decent grappling hook could have helped to forgive this game a lot, but as it is it’s a missed opportunity. Animations can take too long to play out leaving you wide open, there are no checkpoints within the chapters (even after a results screen), the method for unlocking stuff is insane (but strangely addictive) and the most likely cause of death is a one hit kill, generally from being knocked flying off the map. Still, with friends, I had fun. There isn’t even necessarily a massive feeling of team work, but sharing the experience of fighting a giant monster with three friends is great. If you are thinking about playing through Lost Planet 2 alone I’d advise against it. Your ally AI is poor and the missions will take you much longer as it will be just you attacking objectives by yourself, when the game was designed for four players. There is also a multiplayer mode with quite a few game types, but it suffers from the same control problems as the single player. If you played the multiplayer mode on LP1 then you’ll know what to expect. If you played LP1 and loved it then you should probably give this a go, especially if you have friends to play with. If you hated LP1 I can’t see this changing your mind and if you’re lacking in the LP2-owning friend department then this is much harder to recommend. Secondary Score: 6/10

Mr Sangfroid

Unfortunately it’s only through copious amount of grinding that you’ll start to unlock actual new weapons in the game fundamentally flawed slot machine unlocks system. While the nicknames and emotes bring a lot of much needed levity to the proceedings, (and I certainly prefer having someone /dance on my corpse than teabag it) what I would much rather bring is a flamethrower or a portal grenade. But these will be off limits until they come up at random, which probably won’t happen since there are far more useless dogtags than weapons. This is a great shame because in many instances they’re by far the best weapons in the game and frankly some of the only new additions.

Hot Blooded Awesomness

That’s probably my main issue with LP2. Although it’s been three years since the last game, a lot of content has been recycled, with your primary arsenal, mechs and Akrid adversaries relatively unchanged. In addition to Modern Warfare-style perks and a commendable set of character skins, a few improvements have been made to the actual game, such the ability for mechs to merge and perform multiple transformations. Unfortunately I didn’t even realise this was possible due to the controls being hidden away in layers of menus dating back to the Permian. (or at least a generation where you could get away with expecting people to read the manual)

I’ve covered wars

In ignoring the criticism of the first game and expanding upon the multiplayer at the expense of the campaign, Capcom will have done little to broaden the appeal of the series. Even as someone who loves co-op gaming, I’d rather have seen a purely single-player story, will co-op offered in the style of Modern Warfare 2’s Spec Ops. Hopefully the third game will see a return to the norm (and Wayne).

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars 6/10

Skating

At least it doesn’t come with a plastic board.

Rich

Welcome back to the EA Review Hour.  Our regular features are back, so we’ll be discussing whether or not this sequel adds anything new, exactly how much you can expect EA to sodomise your wallet and how dreadful the soundtrack is.  You know, the standard EA discussion points.  Actually scratch that.  Yes, it’s a sequel too far (that’s if Skate 2 wasn’t already).  Yes, EA have made the content sharing an unlockable feature that is free if you buy the game new but 800M$P if you’re renting or going the pre-owned route (truly, their cuntery has only just begun).  Oh and yes, the soundtrack is fucking dreadful.  Apart from ODB and that weird tune from Silence of the Lambs.

More EA non-gameplay promo shots to comment on. Bleh.

With that out of the way, let’s discuss the game and the handful of minor improvements Skate 3 brings.  The first main change is that, after two titles being set in San Vanelona, the action has moved to the fictional city of Port Carverton.  The truth is that the new locations are really just reinterpretations of the old ones with the usual mix of residential, business and industrial areas along with a myriad of skateparks ranging from street-based efforts to massive transitional vert parks.  It does all feel incredibly familiar despite being a new city but does have the benefit of being skater-friendly which means no fucking about with security guards and all that nonsense.  It’s a small change but a very, very welcome one.  I mean you wouldn’t put pitch-invaders in FIFA would you?

The city itself looks a little nicer than before benefiting from Skate 3’s clearer visuals and objectives are highlighted with bright blue lines which makes identifying your spot a doddle.  Customisation of your skater (via the game) or logos (via the EA site) is still horribly limited though and needs a massive upgrade for the next game (which will probably have a stupid name like Skate:grind Skate or Skate 2011).

As mentioned before, there are a handful of updates to the gameplay.  By far the most welcome is that there are no longer separate lists for single player and co-op challenges.  Now any objective can be completed with or without a friend.  Co-op play is a help on some challenges and a hindrance on others but is the recommended way forward as playing with a friend makes the game far more enjoyable.  The challenges can now be attempted at Easy, Normal and Hardcore difficulties with the game letting you mix them up as you like.  The overall difficulty is a whole lot less than the original Skate and its easier sequel. 

People skating. Whatever. Care.

Another welcome improvement is the introduction of a new challenge type, 1UP, that sees you competing with other skaters to beat their score until one of you loses a life.  It’s a great mode and, even better, it replaces the S.K.A.T.E. mode (although that is still available as a multiplayer mode).  This change is as close to an acknowledgement from EA that the analogue controls aren’t as super-precise as they need to be as we’re going to get.  The ‘Hall of Meat’ bailing challenges also seem to be a lot more enjoyable this time around. 

Of course, EA have added a few token moves.  These are underflips and darkslides and, typically, they add basically nothing to the gameplay and probably won’t be a big part of your repetoire when hunting down big scores in tournaments and the like.  They are easily accessed though, so you can’t complain, and at least EA haven’t gone down the awful parkour route yet.  Or thrown in BMX bikes.  Eesh… 

Lurk Secondary Review I’ve reviewed the previous two Skate titles and quite frankly after the last one I was really scratching my head as to how they were going to improve on the previous game. They’ve only added a couple of new moves - underflips and darkslides – and, strangely, they managed to improve the game by removing a lot of stuff.  The annoying S.K.A.T.E. games are gone, replaced with the much more friendly and fun 1UP games. Horribly strung-out online achievements have fucked off, in fact all the online gamerscore stuff was finished in about an hour between Rich and myself. There are also no no-skate zones meaning you don’t find yourself getting knocked off your board by dickhead security guards. My main downers with this game are the fact that there’s very little in the way of new places to skate. Many of the places seem to be from the previous games and just given a makeover. Also, and this is a big one for me, due to EA being money grabbing cunts, if you buy the game new you get a code in the game, this code allows you to upload stuff to the EA Skate servers as well as download. Whilst this might not be a big thing to some people, the fact there are achievements that you can only get by uploading and downloading fan made artifacts into your game. EA are charging 800 points for this if you’ve bought the game second hand or are renting it. This is all made more annoying by the fact that at the time of writing this these servers are up and down more than a whores drawers. At least they didn’t name the game Skat3, because that would have been another demerit. Secondary Score: 8/10

EA do seem quite keen to push the team aspect of this game, allowing you to create you own team and customise more graphics for them.  There’s a lot of stat-tracking going on which is all well and good but if your human buddies aren’t online, some of the team stuff can be completed with an AI team-mate.  This usually involves you winning and them dragging you down to a defeat.  Although, in the AI stakes, at least the brain-dead fucking pedestrians from the previous games aren’t such a problem now, especially as they can be shooed away with gestures from the d-pad.

Online play is as it was before with the usual mix of modes and locations.  That said, getting a game seems a lot harder now which may be due to people not bothering or EA’s online service being typically rubbish.  Either way, the online achievements in the game should take no less than an hour to get through for experienced players which is better than the massive grindfest that was Skate 2.  Of course, the customisation options mean that most of your opponents will be dressed as complete cunts.  Still, it’s an EA game and their communities are always the worst.

With plenty of skate park building options, there is scope for some longevity – you can also download parks from other players – but after two Skate games, and all of Skate 2’s DLC, most players will be bored of this in a couple of weeks.  That’s not to say it’s not a great game.  It is, and it’s an addictive one as well.  But Skate 3 proves that, as with Tony Hawk Pro Skater¸ this genre can only really support a few titles in a series before jumping the shark.  Hopefully, Skate 4 will either bring some fresh gameplay to the table or, better yet, just won’t happen.  But, for now, I have to admit it was nice to burn through Skate 3, mainly with Lurk, and I did enjoy it. 

Of course, I’m going to hate the fucking thing once EA get all the DLC out of their system.  Fucking EA.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

Fighting

Tournament Edition Pro Hi-Def Remix Turbo etc.

Danny

So, another year has rolled around since Street Fighter IV and not only do I feel really old for typing out that sentence but Capcom have released a budget priced ‘Game of the Year’ style re-release in Super Street Fighter IV. If you are of the more of our cynical readership you are probably thinking two things. Firstly, isn’t this just a cheap cash in like back in the good old 16-bit days? Secondly, isn’t picking Danny to review this a bit redundant? I mean he loves fighting games, so he’s going to be pleased no matter what. Well allow me to respond first by saying that’s harsh! Admittedly I do love a fighting game and while it’s true that Super Street Fighter IV is essentially just building on the previous title, Capcom have expanded this game in a way that the fans of the first game all would of wanted, even if there are some slight niggles.

Bruce Lee vs Kylie Minogue. It's a dream come true.

In fact let’s go though some of those niggles and get them out of the way now. First of all -  what the hell Capcom? The special ‘bonus’ for owning Street Fighter IV is lame. Two extra colours for my fighters that make them look like they are ‘inked’ or ’sketched’ which is all very nice but a bit of a lame bonus and what happened to the Gallery?  Or the Time Attack and Survival modes? I enjoyed those modes and it must of taken you more effort to take them out than to put them in, surely?

Survival and Time Attack I can kind of understand, being that I might be the only guy who enjoys that kind of thing, but taking of the Gallery is a really stupid idea in anyone’s book. Then there are some (and please correct me if I am wrong on this!) unintentional untranslated voiceovers for some of the characters’ ultra moves while they are in English dub mode (Makoto’s first Ultra springs to mind!) which really stand out, only the ‘Shotos’ are allowed to randomly yell stuff in Japanese in the English dub!

Trial mode presents its own problems too but is mainly there to teach players combos by giving them a list of buttons to press. Unfortunately, it does all of this without proper context of when to press them and where on the screen the player needs to be.  Also it doesn’t explain how to perform some of the more complex techniques like charging or attacking while in the middle of an attack for example. So unless you are already a Street Fighter veteran of some kind, you are probably going to have to run to the internet to look up videos on how to beat these, which is unacceptable.

In Soviet Russia game plays you!

Hell, say what you like about the Virtua Fighter and Tekken games but at least their equivalent of the combo practice mode has the option of allowing the game to show you how it’s done. Capcom could have made the game even more accessible to beginners with proper tuition (like with the videos for SSF2T on the Capcom Classics Collection vol. 2) but they chose the lazy route which is a shame since there are achievements and trophies for beating every character’s trials which might annoy some people (hnnnnnghhh! – Ed).

Like I said these are minor niggles (well apart from the Trial mode one, as it seems I have dedicated two entire paragraphs to it!) and, these aside, this is a fantastic game. Capcom made sure to add a lot of fan service to the game but not in the lame ‘well here are some pictures we drew’ kind of way. Capcom decided that the best way to win over the hearts and minds of people who brought the first SFIV would be to add in some old favourites from past Street Fighter games, as well as a few new faces, bringing the new character count up to ten and the total roaster up to thirty five. We have Dudley, Ibuki and Makoto from the Street Fighter 3 series, Guy, Cody and Adon from Street Fighter Alpha series and Dee-Jay and T-Hawk from Super Street Fighter 2. All of which are lovingly rendered and really capture the spirit of their old 2D counterparts.

Capcom have not just been slapping in new  characters though. They have also been making improvements to  the old guard as well. Every character now has a choice of two ‘Ultra’ moves which the player must pick from at the start of a fight. Each of the old characters have also been brushed with a fine tooth comb of gameplay balancing as well. Let’s just say that a certain one-eyed Mauy Thai practitioner has been weakened some what so he’s not so abusable but still remains a strong fighter in the hands of a skilled player. It’s not just the really strong characters either. I noticed many of the characters have had changes made to them like Fei Long no longer has his invincibility frame during his ‘chicken wing’ move, so it can’t be used as a wake up move any more for example.

Some tweaks are for the better and some for the worse, but it brings the crappy fighters and God-like fighters just that bit closer together and every character now has new movies during Arcade mode which are about as bad as they where before but they do continue their various stories on from the events of Street Fighter IV.

By far one of the most important improvements that SSFIV brandishes is that it has a much more robust online suite now. Eight player lobbies are in and so are team battles and the free DLC Tournament mode once Capcom get their arses in gear and make it available on XBL and PSN. The netcode has been streamlined and plays remarkably well even with six other people watching you fight. There is also a fantastic replay mode which allows you to host and view other peoples replays of previous matches. This can be a useful tool to learning a new character as well as entertaining to watch if you the kind of person that watches people play in matches over YouTube.

Grizzly Secondary Review Street Fighter 4 was a bit good. A mix of classic gaming action with some of the best graphics to grace the current consoles and one of the most balanced fighting games to boot. A question that is on a lot of peoples mind is this. Should this have been a standalone release? Why not DLC? In the end I think that Capcom have added enough to warrant a full retail release, affording the game with added visual flair, ten new characters and an overhaul to its online component. Very few beat em ups employ such a large cast of fighters which are balanced as well as fun to learn and the new blood in the form of Juri and Hakan make very welcome additions to the roster, boasting both interesting and accessible vessels to uninitiated players. Super Street Fighter 4 is truly a game for party players and the new lobby system compliments this fact brilliantly, making it easy to get friends together for a tournament in which everyone can watch a game being played, meaning you don’t have to go to rigmarole of explaining an epic match after it happened. All in all Capcom have pulled this out of the bag, sprinkled it with gold and with a dash of raging fan service and have created a fighting experience which just about achieves perfection. Here’s to Super Street Fighter 4 Championship Edition. Secondary Score: 10/10

The presentation in SSFIV is fantastic. Capcom have done a really good job with the new soundtracks (yes there are two in this game!) and arenas which capture exactly what the Street Fighter series is about. On a technical level the game has received some slight polish from what I can tell from the PS3 version as it no longer suffers from what horrible lack of anti-aliasing which the previous game had problems with. The new stages themselves are really colourful, vibrant and full of motion. Seriously I don’t think these backgrounds could have been done in a 2D game without it costing an absolute fortune because there are so many people, animals and objects moving around and interacting with each other, it’s just fantastic (the rhino level is the best I’ve seen in a SF game – Ed).

The animation of the fighters is as smooth as ever and the new characters do not look out of place at all. I think it’s definitely safe to say that Capcom have nailed the whole asthetics thing and the best thing is that the game moves and acts just like a proper 2D fighting game while keeping some of the benefits of a 3D engine like multiple dynamic camera angles during Ultra moves for example.

Super Street Fighter IV is a fantastic game at this budget price even if you already own the previous game. It would have been perfection in my eyes if wasn’t for the aforementioned niggles but I still had (and still having) so much fun while playing Super Street Fighter IV online with friends and offline.  This is probably the best Street Fighter game for anyone who is new to the series to jump into, yet it’s also fantastic for longterm fans of the series as well as being a must-have for all fighting game fans in general.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars 9/10