Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PS2, Wii
Well, Guitar Hero for rock fans who only like Aerosmith. That should cut down the need for things like advertising, sales, etc.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock developed by former Tony Hawk developers Neversoft, puts paid to the rumour that the Guitar Hero series would be milked into the ground. They managed to keep the series humming along quite nicely. But then Guitar Hero Aerosmith comes out as a full price game, completely screwing up the first sentence
So really, it’s just Guitar Hero III with Aerosmith models on stage whenever you play an Aerosmith song. And do you want to know why I like GH Aerosmith compared to III? Its purely down to musical taste. I’m not a huge Aerosmith fan, but I love the type of rock they play.
GH III was weighed down by too much modern crap and indie bands which are like modern crap but not as popular.
It could have just been a downloadable pack, there’s really little reason for this not to have been the case, apart from money. It its first month, this game did not appear very highly in the NPD sales figures for NA, but considering the only costs in this game are a bit of licensing of Aerosmith’s tunes, I can’t see Activision stopping anytime soon.
Why should you play this? If you like hard rock, ’70s rock or if you just like Aerosmith. Or if you love GH and want more of the same. Now since the next iteration of Guitar Hero adds bass, drums and a mike, this is the last time the guy with the axe is the star of the show.
C1 Rating: 1/3 (Aerosmith fans should make this a 3/3 however)
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, PS3, PC. Developed by Traveller’s Tales. Published by Lucasarts (NTSC)/Activision (PAL)
It’s the third Lego game based on Lucasfilm source material. And probably the best so the pressure’s on Lego Batman. Lego Indy takes the storylines from the first three movies and turns them into plastic heroin.
Maybe that was pushing it a bit far but what you have is a charming (if
sometimes obtuse) action game with puzzles, combat, vehicles and Short
Round able to destroy metal barrels with his bare hands.
Lego Indy has refined the formula laid down in Lego Star Wars but reducing the number of characters in your party (usually 2, sometimes three in some of the Temple of Doom levels) and very occasionally 4 (as in the final level of Last Crusade) but without characters who only have one talent that is occasionally used and is otherwise a drain on the fun (ie C3PO). Of course now you have phobias (Indy can’t go near the snake pits, Elsa won’t go near the rats, etc). You also don’t have unlimited ammo in guns and can only use weapons dropped by enemies (when they have them). A few shots and you’re empty. Of course any character can pick up a spanner to fix a machine or a shovel to dig up Lego treasure and small characters have their hatches leading to secret areas but on the whole this has refined the approach. There are puzzles based on Simon Says provided one of you characters has a blue book that’s usually sticking out of their pocket and some boss battle where its not immediately apparent what the fuck you have to do to progress (the worst was the thugee on the rock crusher)
That said there’s still some annoying crap such as often respawning on the edge of the cliff you fell off anyway, areas where you are constantly overwhelmed by enemies, some of whom now wield RPG’s that blow you to Lego bits with one shot. Obscure puzzles and boss battles are annoying but you’ll generally work stuff out without too much drama. I scratched my head a bit, but then I’m not very bright. But I think the Comedy 64 is more over-rated than Kristen Bell so I can’t be all that dumb.
Graphics don’t really matter much as they look the same on most platforms but they are quite pretty on 360 with background textures of non Lego items being rather nice. Lego is Lego and as such Marion looks like a tranny, but one without a penis so its not all bad for Indy. Lego Indy, of course has no genitals either so….
The Score is great and It’s nice to hear the music from Temple and Crusade since you can’t buy the fuckers on CD at the moment. The sound effects are also crisp, but many of them are the same as the ones from Lego Star Wars.
So I loved Lego Indy. Would I buy Lego Batman? Well, One Lego game a year is enough and I love Indy and Star Wars so much more than Batman. But I would be up for a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull game, just so I can hear people trying to popularise “nuke the fridge” and be burned like a goat’s bitch. Oh wait.
C1 Rating: 2/3
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by DICE. Published by EA.
Let’s get this out of the way. There is no PC version. Nor is this the free to play Battlefield Heroes. Let’s also get this out of the way: It’s frickin’ sweet!
Battlefield Bad Company has been touted by EA as a Single player Battlefield game with a multiplayer component. The single player is like Call of Duty with longer distances between the objectives. A storyline ripped from the Clint Eastwood classic Kelly’s heroes and some destructible buildings but really the reason to play this game is from some of the best online gameplay for this type of game (PC or console).
The multiplayer was downplayed for whatever reasons EA had, but they’ve made one hell of a game. There are two modes, Gold Rush and Conquest mode (which was recently added in a patch). Conquest mode is the old control the flags while the tickets count down from the original Battlefield 1942 game. Gold Rush is altogether more interesting and truth be told, all I’ve actually played online. You either play as Attacker or Defender. Attackers have to destroy the two gold crates of each base of the opposing team. They can do this by firing weapons, using tanks or missiles or by setting a charge (a la Counterstrike). Once each base has its two crates destroyed, the defenders have to pull back to another base, the attackers inheriting the destroyed base for their next assault.
You have tanks, light tanks, jeeps and occasionally choppers as well as turrets and missile launchers. Its very well balanced unless you want to use grenade launchers which are gimped (to the point of being useless). The choppers don’t dominate like they did in a PC game of Battlefield though they are a lot easier to fly. The artillery also works rather well with some bases having a giant field gun and some classes offering unlockable mortar strikes and guided missile airstrikes. But no class is totally overpowering so it works and works well.
And jeez it works well. I thought it would be a while before a multiplayer game could tear me away from CoD4 for any decent period of time. I’ve been playing this on PSN and the only gripes I have will eventually be fixed the more Sony copies the Live infrastructure. This title apparently uses servers for both PSN and Xbox Live and to be honest, this has been the most consistently playable on line console game I’ve played.
Graphics are very pretty, control worked very well and the sound is suitably huge and excellent (though my amp found the levels too much to handle). Why PS3 version for review? It’s multi region and cheaper for me to import but I played the Xbox demo and it too ran well.
I likes it a lot.
C1 Rating: 2/3
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Kojima Productions. Published by Konami
So I’ve finished MGS4. It’s raised more questions than in answered such as “what the fuck happened in all of the cutscenes that I skipped?”
So Metal Gear Solid 4. Is it the game that saves the PS3? Well, judging by E3′s Sony conference I think Sony hoped so. Will it? Well it is a very expensive way to play one game. System seller, yes but how good is it?
In short its very good. But…
(MAYBE SOME MILD SPO…OMG SNAKE IS OLD)
The gameplay has changed to a more modern 3D Camera so the fixed cameras of old have been given the flick. That said, control is decent, not bad, but not as bad as it could be. I still found the control of Snake to be a little clunky. But at least in this game you actually control the real Snake for the entirety of the game, even if he has prematurely aged. You have a vast array of gadgets, though you don’t need very many of them at all, the Solid Eye is really the thing you’ll want equipped 95% of the time . This is the thing that looks like an eyepatch- it just shows you a HUD displaying the collectible pickups and also offers night vision (which is next to useless). There’s also an array of weapons which are locked, though a new character Drebin will buy from you or unlock if you want to pay him, and every weapon you collect you automatically earn points towards his store. You can buy from him from the pause menu at any point (which means you NEVER have to run out of ammo. It also means respawning items and ammo are gone).
You rarely need to sneak in this game. Some bits are a lot easier if you do, but you don’t fail if you’re seen. The word stealth is avoided and you’re told to ‘sneak’ a lot. But truth is, guns blazing works in many instances. In some levels, you’re in the middle of a battle, yet enemy troops will stop fighting against their foes and start hunting you down- which is silly. The boss battles are generally pretty good, not ridiculously convoluted, nor super hard, apart from the encounters in the final act. Of the five acts in the game, the 4th is the best by far with so much action, that you’d wish that there was more of the bang bang and less of the chit chat. Its also a game that writes the handbook on fan-service. Every one of Snake’s allies (and many of his foes) appear in on form or another.
The game, when you’re actually able to play it, is great. the thing that holds it back is the same thing that has held back all of the Metal Gear Solid games. Its probably the only reason why MGS3 sold half as many copies as MGS2 did. That is the story and the cutscenes. Kojima Productions have done two things to fix the perceived problems with the excess cutscenes and exposition. They’ve cut the codec conversations right down. Sure some go on for a bit but the interruptions aren’t so frequent. The other thing is Otacon can brief you while you play rather than going to the codec screen at the drop of a hat. But then there are more cutscenes of people just talking. Oh god there are cutscenes. There’s a lot of waiting around for shit to get real. Shit just takes awhile to get real. It does eventually get real, but there’s no immediacy to the realness of the fecal matter in question. Some of the action-heavy cutscenes are phenomenal. They are astounding. But the ones where its’ just talk are so dull. And the ones where Kojima feels he has to explain every single minute detail of the maguffin are just sooooo heavy-handed, you won’t believe Kojima is not spending all day on MySpace. Oh god. It just goes on. So, you install the game to begin with, that’s about 8 or 9 minutes. Then you have to install each act. which is another 3 minutes. Then there’s the briefing cutscene, which is about 20 minutes. On some levels you face the boss in the middle and when you get to end of the level, there are lots and lots of long cutscenes. When you finish the game and beat the final section of interaction, there are about 65 mins of cutscenes and then the credits before you finally get to your score ranking. Sure you can skip it, but I wanted to see how long this thing took to beat. 20 hours and even though I skipped large numbers of cutscenes, I estimate that approximately 40-50% of the game is a cutscene. Now they’re not bad per se. There’s just a lot of them, they’re pretentious, heavy-handed, incredibly sexist (Naomi, Mei ling), childish (Akiba?), pointless (Sunny), etc. The debrief at the end just takes the cake for over the top (but maybe I skipped a few that were worse). Kojima is obviously a frustrated Time columnist
So the graphics are pretty good. Models actually look a bit polygonal (the game doesn’t do curves very well unless they belong to a woman, in which case we see all of them modeled with jelly physics). Sound is very well done, apart from every cutscene where the foley consists of people groaning, exhaling and making awkward noises. Music is great, though if you don’t like the new score you can just collect things to play on your in-game iPod. Seriously. Kojima is a big Apple fan. That is to say he loves the technology of Apple, not necessarily a fan of New York. Despite the game telling you about you don’t need to swap discs anymore since you’re on the PS3 system on a BluRay disc and characters playing a PSP and controlling a robot with a Sixaxis, there are more ipod, Mac Pro and Macbook pros than any Coldplay video could ever dream to shill.
I liked it and according to the game, I am a Hyena. I just recommend using the ‘skip’ function a lot (though if you don’t, your 20 hour game will turn into a 30 hour game)
C1 Rating: 3/3
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by Criterion. Published by EA.
Burnout, baby, Burnout. Burnout Paradise. As a lifelong conscientious objector to driving games, I am playing a driving game.
So Burnout is one of the first games whereby there’s no discernible difference between the PS3 and Xbox 360. In fact, BP is meant to be slightly better on PSTripple. I bought it on PS3 since its region free and EA’s 360 games aren’t region free. That and the fact the Sixaxis was gathering more dust than an Xbox 360 in Tokyo.
So Burnout Paradise is a driving game set in a sandbox. You can drive almost anywhere in Paradise City and there’s an event at most major intersections. You can have simple races against other cars. Marked Man races in which all the other cars are trying to run you off the road before you reach the finishing line, Road Rage where you have takedown a set number of enemy cars, Burning Route which is a time trial for specific cars and Stunt Event, where you have to string tricks together using jumps, hand-brake turns, boost and spins.
Simple. You choose what you want. And I’m shit at races, I’ve been concentrating more on the other modes to progress. This game has different classes of licenses (Class D and up) and as you progress to a new class of licence, the level of difficulty increases as does the number of events you need to win before you reach the next level. Of course, you can set your own races at any time with a well thought out online system (on PS3 since that’s what version I tested). Or it would if I had any friends with PS3′s and Burnout.
You also have occasion to ‘takedown’ other cars in order to add them to your collection, which is always fun. I found the game to be quite accessible for people like myself who aren’t big driving game fans (remember- one of the main reasons I loved Crackdown was because it was the only GTA game that you don’t need to win races in order to progress). I found the takedowns to be rather easy once you used the right car for the job, and races got easier later in the game, but stunt runs became more difficult for some reason. You can also set up big crashes, but these are more at the mercy of the traffic and where it happens to be at the time. There is no restart event button as there was on older Burnout games but I haven’t worried too much about it.
The graphics are superb, mostly running at 60fps (apart from some cutscenes where applied video filters make the game run at a still great 30fps. I also played the 360 demo and that looked and sounded just as good (but with custom soundtracks and XBox Live).The crashes look great (as they should)The sound is also excellent apart from two caveats- 1 half of the soundtrack is music from the first three games (ie crap techno) and DJ atomica is such an amazing bland Ryan Seacrest- clone.
So you have a bunch of Brits making the ultimate ode to American and Japanese cars. I couldn’t give a fuck about Gran Turismo Pay to Demo or Need for Speed or whatever- this is an awesome game.
C1 Rating: 2/3
UPDATE:
Recently, I revisited Burnout for a day, installing the recent patch introducing motorbikes. I like driving the cars in Burnout. The bikes, not so much.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, DS. Developed by Ubisoft Monteal. Published by Ubisoft
Ubisoft presents a Ubisoft Montreal production…
Assassin’s Creed is an enigma of a game. It looks like a gorgeous open world stealth action game. It looks as though there’s millions of things to do in this [cliche] leaving, breathing city [/cliche]. Well looks can be deceiving. Assassin’s creed has a few tricks up its sleeve. You just have to do them over and over again.
Halo creators Bungie have often said that their games are 10 seconds of fun repeated over and over. Well Ass Creed is about 2 seconds of fun repeated over and over again. It’s like Ubi Montreal got wrapped up in how cool the locale and story was and forgot about making the gameplay varied enough (as GTA does so well). Obviously you can’t have bazookas and helicopters in a game set during the middle ages. Or can you?
SPOILERS (even though this game has been out six months, Flamey still has another 3 years before he can even consider it retro enough for his tastes. This spoiler is not all that much of a spoiler since the menus give it away before you’ve even pressed start and the game doesn’t wait 5 mins before it tells you the big twist)
This game is set in the present. Your character is actually accessing a trace memory on his ancestor (similar to the Matrix). Unfortunately, this serves almost no story purpose, kills the middle age realism by having techno looking menus, computer voices telling you you’re fast forwarding and the like. It even feels grafted on in some ways.
So, hi tech conceits and repetition aside, what has Unisoft done for us? Well, the game is fun to play, the towns are interesting to explore and combat and movement is fun, despite the incredibly wanky tutorial. By incredibly wanky, I mean super incredibly wanky in the vein of Final Fantasy wankery. Its pretty and it sounds very good.I quite liked being able to climb buildings though I found having towers more fun than missions because they were more frustrating than fun to be honest. There’s little skill involved in pickpocketing more luck. Interrogating barely works and stealth kills in order to assist an informant where somewhat more fun.
Metal Gear meets GTA meets the middle ages meets the Matrix meets hype and cute producer meets 5 million in sales. If AC2 managed to fix the basic gameplay issues, I’ll be there, since they’re got most of the elements right. As it is, if you can play it for more than a few hours without getting incredibly frustrated or bored, you might like this.
C1 Rating: 1/3
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft, Published by Ubisoft
Not a football score but a game, a sequel in a series that seems to alternate between extremely high quality offerings such as GRAW and the original R6 Vegas title and cheesy expansion packs. Guess which one this is…
The original R6 Vegas title came off four console titles from last gen of descending quality. The first Xbox R6 title was a pretty good game for its time and its follow up Black Arrow was more goodness. Then there was Lockdown and the Classics game (which redid missions from older PC titles). They were shithouse. R6V2 is somewhere in between the two extremes.
GRAW came out shortly after the 360 launch and was a great game with a sequel coming out a year later whose only major shortcomings were its lack of anything new and brevity. It was still kick ass. R6V2 seems to have lost a lot of the sparkle from the original Vegas. Its not so much kick ass as it is suckass.
The gameplay is identical in most respects. The locale is not, as there are health centers in Vegas, Junkyards in Vegas and the convention center, but the casinos are conspicuous by their almost complete absence (I do remember thinking they were a tad overused in the first title, but come on, Ubi. Only one level?). Being able to tag which enemies your fire team will prioritize when you use your snake cam is useful but that’s hardly anything other than expansion pack de rigeur.
With the more prosaic locales in most of the game, the graphics seemto have taken a big hit. Lightning is flat as a pancake most of the time and the frame rate can really struggle on some levels (particularly the health center). The brief MP game I played looked awful, like an early Xbox 1 game. It was even flatter than the Single player campaign after being flattened by a steamroller driven by a very large man.
Sound is a mixed bag as some of the voice work is barely audible and yet more use of the same sound effects these guys have been using since at least 2003 with Rainbow Six 3.MP was pretty ordinary as well. I played a Team Deathmatch game on LIVE – lag was fine but the gameplay seemed like an old R6 3 user map with spawn points almost always in the line of fire from camping whores. So massive fail there.
I ended up stopping playing this game’s SP about two thirds of the way through since it just wasn’t any fun and was frustrating enough to prevent me finishing.
I wouldn’t recommend this unless you looooooooooved the first one so much you need more. It would make ordinary DLC and is quite poor when its supposed to be a sequel that Ubi’s charging full price for.
AVOID LIKE HERPES
C1 Rating: 0/3
Reviewed on Xbox 360 and PC. Also on PS3
Developed by Valve (PS3 version by EA). Published by Valve (PC via Steam) and EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
Half Life 2
Working my way through The Orange Box, as you do, I thought I would collect some thoughts on HL2′s campaign, which is the only part of the Orange Box I had played previously. It’s also the longest part of the
Orange Box, unless for some strange reason you’re still playing Team Fortress 2.
Half Life 2 tells the story of Gordon Freeman when he arrives in City 17. Between Half Life 1 and 2, there have been a fair few unexplained events happening off-screen. Earth has now been taken over by the
Combine, who exert their control through a traitorous human. Gordon takes charge of the resistance, get a girlfriend and shows Bioshock (Bioshock? Bioshock?!) still has a way to go in unseating Half Life 2.
It’s funny that in an industry where every successful and original game is copied relentlessly that no one has really tried to do the type of story and varied gameplay, and really no one who’s tried has
got it right, with the exception of Bioshock (Bioshock? Bioshock?!). This thing just doesn’t feel all that dated.
Graphics hold up very well on 360 and the sterling audio work carries over with nary a glitch. The game runs smoothly on 360, load times aren’t excessive and the controller works well. It took me about 14-15
hours to play though the second time, maybe a bit longer – its hard to estimate re-tries, and even on its own would have been worth the price of admission.
The weapons are all interesting takes on the standard FPS fare, though you have some oddities such as the crossbow being the only long range weapon and the Combine rifle. Sometimes it feels as though your
character is a bit too large for the corridors he’s traversing but on the whole, a very entertaining experience.
Half Life 2 is one of those games you have to have in your collection, either on PC or on Xbox 360. There’s also an Xbox 1 version from a few years back, but like the frame-rate optional PS3 version of Orange box, this is best avoided.
C1 Rating: 3/3
Episode One
Well, almost through the Orange Box, Meh-pisode One is the least interesting single player element in the Orange Box.
I finished it in about 3 hours (probably 4 with restarts) so its not a very long experience, but it really is ho-hum compared to the brilliance in evidence throughout the rest of The Orange Box.
Meh-pisode One carries on from the rather unusual ending of HL2. You and Alyx Vance have to RE-ENTER the Citadel (which has all these things that weren’t there before). At least here you get to spend alot more time with Alyx Vance, who clearly has the hots for Gordon Freeman. It is an expansion pack since there are all of two new character models (one of which, the Stalker does almost nothing thataffects gameplay) So Gordon and Alyx go through an underground car park, Gordon and Alyx go through a disused Hospital, yada, yada, yada. Nothing to see here. Move along. So why play it?
Well, I hear Episode Two is the dogs balls. It’s supposed to be fantastic, even more fantastic than HL2. So even through I read that Meh-pisode One was ordinary, I knew I’d have to sit through it in order to ‘get’ Ep 2.
So it wasn’t bad, but I had never played it, I would never had missed
it. It’s like most PC expansions packs, you really can’t see the point.
C1 Rating 1/3
Episode Two
Well, I have finally finished going though everything in the Orange Box, and believe me by the time you’ve played through all of Portal, TF2, Half Life 2, Episode and Episode Two, you certainly feel as if
you’ve gotten your money’s worth…
So Episode Two is about 4-5 hours of gameplay continuing on from the end of the rather ordinary Episode One. Episode Two is much better, with the sense of deja vu you get playing through some sorta familiar level types is less than Ep 1.You have a level in a mine infested by Ant Lions, with a new variant
that spits acid at you and luminescent Ant Lion Grubs which restore one point of health everytime you step on one. Then there’s a new car to drive and the Magnusson devices at the climax. So its more of the
same with some tweaks but there’s enough of an improvement over Episode One that playing through this if you have Orange Box is a must.
Graphics are still decent, slightly better than the earlier installments and framerate never misses a beat. Sound is still great with the voice acting being a particular highlight. The ending battle is somewhat more intense than anything outside of TF2, and it almost goes on for too long but once you have a stratgey
in place, it’s not as daunting as it appears at the start of the battle. I found the difficulty levels throughout to be better than Half Life 2 or Episode One so it wasn’t too easy or too hard, just
right.
So, would I play Episode Three? Well, that depends on how is made available to 360 or PS3 users since I don’t want to end up buying the game on Orange Box again (I have already bought Half Life 2 when it
came out and TF2 on PC as well). If I can just buy one part at a reasonable price (by reasonable I don’t mean the ridiculous prices on Steam where all of Orange Box on PC is $50 but TF2 on its own is $30)
and on console, I might give it ago. At the moment, I am a bit Sourced out and will take a long break from HL2-based games for quite a while (unless Day of Defeat for Xbox LIVE is announced).
C1 Rating: 3/3
PORTAL
Portal started off as a HL2 mod that become a phenomenon in its own right. a short 306 hour puzzle game played in first person mode, Portal has several things going for it. Unique gameplay that’s going to be hard to replicate without being so obviously a clone; a presentation that will never be matched for originality, humour and creepiness- a veritable meme factory; and that song.
The 360 version of Portal as part of the Orange Box is great. Its a short review for a short game. You just need to play Portal. rent orange box, or just by the PC version on its own but go out and get this now.
Team Fortress 2
Lastly, my least favourite part of the Orange Box. Its my least favouite but its not bad, it just doesn’t click with me like it does for so many who believe it to be Jesus’ son. TF2 is a class based team game based around capturing control points(battlefield), or collecting intelligence (capture the flag) and similar gameplay types (since this review was originally written in late 2007, other modes have been added and are not reviewed here).
Its one of the games you either get it or you don’t. The ones that do love this to the point where WoW was just a footnote in videogaming history. Its obviously a very well put together and quality game that I totally don’t get despite owning the PC and 360 version (the 360 version of TF2 is the only unplayable part of orange box on 360,)
C1 Rating: 1/3
overall Orange Box: rating 3/3
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360 Developer: EA Montreal. Publisher EA
“Well, well, well. Electronic Arts. We meet again. How long has it
been? Three years, you say?”
Well, it hasn’t bee quite that long since I played an EA game (it
would have been Godawfulfather on 360), but near enough. So first off.
Army of Two is not a bad game but not a great game. It is, however, a
good game. It’s been nearly a year and a half since Gears of War was
first released and it looked as though every third-person shooter
would mimic its ‘stop and pop’ dynamic. But here we are in early 2008
and so far only Uncharted has borrowed it wholesale. Army of Two looks
like EA’s response to GoW.
Now usually, EA doesn’t rip stuff off without just renaming things.
Look at Skate, they have a completely original control scheme for
that. Look at the aforementioned Godawfulfather, they added in some
extra control methods as well as the ability to browbeat people. So
here, they’ve taken Gears of War’s cover dynamic and also taken the
idea of Co-op and made a game where even the single player mode is
still a Co-op game. It’s been a while where you have to direct a non-
playable squadmate so thoroughly as you do in Army of two.
So in Army of Two, you have two guys Rios and Salem and you choose
which one you play as and the other tags along. You guys are old army
buddies working for a private military contractor called SSC. The
whole plot revolves around a, er, plot to replace government run
military with a private army. And it’s laid on very thick. Apparently
a lot of tone changes have been made to the game, it is fairly serious
and earnest compared to the more satirical tone of previews. The story
points are hammered home so bluntly and reiterated over an over that
its impossible to not know what’s going oon in the story. The story
just isn’t all that interesting, however.
So at heart a third person shooter with a team-mate, you must use
something called aggro to advance. Basically, one of you shoots at
the enemies while the other doesn’t. This allows the aggrometer to
swing towards one of the characters and most of the enemies will
theoretically shoot at them now. The other character, providing they
show restraint, can sneak closer to enemies and outflank them. The
designers were so in love with this dynamic, that they force it on you
in several places by having to use this tactic to get behind some
enemies who can only be taken from behind. Like A-G CEO Demi Demforth
IV in the prison shower. You also have some sections where you drive a
hovercraft (but it really doesn’t do much since you drive and your
partner shoots the gun). You can also hi-5 your partner or punch him
if you like (which seems a remnant of earlier builds). You also have a
rage mode when your Aggrometer has built up to make which is kinda
like bullet time (or gives you a stealthy advantage if your partner
goes into Aggro overtime mode). There’s also Back-to Back, which is
almost exactly like a similar bit in Stranglehold.
The only think I really disliked about the gameplay was the health
mechanic. You have recharging health like most games do these days but
at some point you get hurt so badly, you need your partner to heal
you. And nine times out of ten, you’re getting shot at whilst your
partner Tries to heal you (meaning he has to start again from
scratch). You also can only use weapons you buy at certain parts of
the game (at some checkpoints and from the main menu. Though you can
swap weapons with your partner. Which is nice. This is just the
single player and I enjoyed it. But this is a game that has co-op so
baked into its heart that you really need a friend to play the
campaign to get the most. There are some versus modes but irts really
single or co-op where this game will spend most of its time. Again,
its not a long game, but it will provide fun for the co-op fans.
Graphics are decent on PS3, running at (or near enough to) 30 frames a
second. Sound is pretty good, though the voice actor for Rios (the big
bald white guy) talks very slowly when he’s trying to reiterate the
plot. The story is a bit over the top but the settings are well
realised. I particularly love the locale of the last level (a
hurricane ravaged city), which made a change from relatively generic
Iraq, Afghanistan and Chinese levels, which were good, but have been
kinda done to death (and better in the case of Call of Duty 4)
So overall, a good buy on 360 or PS3 for guys looking for a game where
they can play through with pals. Probably not worth it for single player alone.
Would I want to play Army of Two II? Hmm, depends on how they build on
this.
C1 Rating: 1/3 for SP (2/3 for coop)
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Dev: Bioware. Publisher: Microsoft
Well, fucken done and dusted. And now that it’s an EA game, even though EA had nothing to do with development or publishing or distribution, they make all the money and of course, soon enough this game will forever be known as Mass Effect 1. Or, the game that the sequels aren’t as good as…
So Mass Effect is a big RPG, more in the vein of Jade Empire than KotOR, even if the universe is just the same as Bioware’s old SW game just with the force renamed Mass Effect, and guns instead of Lightsabres.
You play as Commander Shepard who, depending on how you customise at the start of the game, is either a man or a woman who early in the games joins the Jed… er Spectres, but depending on your early choice at the time you customise can either be a soldier, or a biotic (jedi forces) or a technician. So play as a soldier to start with. You basically chase the big bad across the galaxy, and along the way you take on side quests. The side quests are all exactly the same: you visit all of the points of interest and recover artefacts (pressing buttons in sequence in response to the prompts), then visit a base that looks the same on which ever planet you visit and clear out a few bad guys. Or you can board a ship that always looks the same and has the same layout and defeat a few enemies there as well.
On the main hub level, the Citadel, the quests there are more of the talk to this guy and talk to that dude type stuff. My favourite part was one that a lot of other people disliked, the Mako. I enjoyed driving around the planets because I could drive up cliffs and over mountains instead of corridors and valleys.
So the game has pretty graphics, mostly a decent framerate and nice sound and VO, even the cutscenes are a bit more involved than the conversations in KotOR. It took about 25-26 hours on medium to do most of the side quests (maybe 70-80%). I liked it and now I don’t want to see another game for at least 24 hours.
PS-I didn’t get no full digital nudity!
C1: Rating 2/3. (The score would have been 3/3 if not for the highly repetitive side missions)
