So everyday when I load up a gaming news site, another anticipated game is officially delayed. Today it was Capcom’s turn to announce Dark Void is now a 2010 game. So now we’re onto announcing games that no-one is anticipating. Word on the street is next week Ubisoft will announce a delay for “Imagine: Gold Diggers.” The eagerly anticipated Fall 09 game will be pushed back for “better exploitation purposes.”
So these games are going back for two reasons. 1- extra polish time and 2- Publishers have finally realised that if they throw everything at November- that they will end up with some high profile sales casualties. So Splinter Cell Conviction won’t compete with Assassin’s Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2 and ODST.
I’m down to four games coming out in November that I want (because, like many, I was burned by the first AC game). Super Mario Wii, Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 (which i wasn’t planning on rushing out to get) and Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (Uncharted 2 is September). It looks as though I will be banging away at MW2 multiplayer for a few months without a feeling of guilt at all of the other games I have sitting around (as happened in late 2005 when I was glued to CoD2 for four months solid). I’m sure you driving enthusiasts will least least be sated this year.
So 2010 is looking crowded with the games that were coming out then anyway now competing with the delayed titles. This will be interesting
Crackdown 2
APB
Splinter Cell Conviction
Mass Effect 2
Red Steel 2
Army of Two 2 (maybe not that interesting)
Alan Wake
Bayonetta
Bioshock 2
Dark Void
There’s more of course. I Am Alive and the next ghost Recon are so delayed they’re now going from march 2010 to march 2011.
Anyone else’s wallet breathing easier?
In this Post Red Faction: Guerrilla world, I am avoiding open world single player experiences in favour of the highly directed and cinematic Ghostbusters game. So far I’m having a mixed reaction to it. Against the prevailing wisdom, I’m playing on Normal which is relatively difficult. Coupled with a system freeze whilst playing hasn’t made a 100% positive impression.
But it does hold promise. It feels like Ghostbusters- which isn’t a natural fit for most of today’s most popular genres. It’s not a platformer, a shooter or a brawler. At least it isn’t where I’m up to. And at least someone learned lessons from Luigi’s Mansion.
What I’m liking:
- They got the Ghostbusting bit right and the Ghostbusters right
- Original cast providing the voices
- All of the music from the film is used and not just Ray Parker Jr’s song on repeat
- Gameplay is different from every other game
What I’m not liking:
-Cinematics seem lacking in cinemacity. They’re as lifeless as most ingame cutscenes. You know why. Animators are good at animating people, they’re not necessarily good directors, camera operators or editors.
-It seems the difficulty is a bit much on normal.
I’ll stick with it for a bit.
Battlefield 1943 got a bit more playtime. It’s a lot of fun to just dip in and out of. I missed most of the original Battlefield hype in 2002 as I wasn’t that thrilled about multiplayer gaming but I eventually played a bit of it and its expansions as well as Desert Combat in the lead up to BF Vietnam. So unlike many, I’m not reliving anything by playing BF1943, its a newish experience for me. I loved Bad Company and its great to see its engine being used with the ‘classic’ BF1942 maps. And boy does it work nicely on a console. I had BC on PS3 and I’m playing this on 360 can I can’t pick which one is better. I also believe EA is running servers for the game, WHICH HELPS A LOT! I only wish Activision would follow this lead on MW2.
Tomb Raider underworld arrived and I played about 10 minutes after installing. It should make for a pleasant diversion after Ghostbusters becomes too tiresome.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3 and PC. Developed by Volition. Published by THQ
Red Faction is the third in the Red Faction series since 2001′s original PS2 and PC title. The first game was a fairly linear First Person Shooter in the vein of the original Half Life with much vaunted Geo-Mod technology allowing you to make holes in the terrain. A great idea in theory but in reality it merely enabled you to widen doors by an inch. Red Faction II followed a few years later but wasn’t as well received as the original. It wasn’t as good. It was shit.
Fast-forward four or five years, and after years of inactivity in a series forgotten about by most, Volition released Red Faction Guerrilla for PS3, 360 and soon enough, PC. Rather than allowing you to carve your name in large letters in stone, RF:G lets you destroy almost structure, building, device, vehicle on the surface of Mars. Not quite everything but enough to make it interesting. Its like a poker game with the Grim Reaper (when you run out of money you’re betting the only thing he’s interested in).
So you start off as Alec Mason, a miner fresh to Mars. Within about 10 minutes, your brother is killed and you decide “what the hell, let’s overthrow the government!” Of you go with your trusty hammer and a pistol making mayhem wherever you go. The missions structure is interesting because there are various ways to progress. The Martian Landscape is divided up into six sectors, which, at the start of the game, are all controlled by the baddies, the EDF (Earth Defence Force). Each area starts with a number of control points, which you must get to zero in order to unlock a story mission in order to move on to the next section. There are only a few actual story missions in each area but dozens of side missions such as rescuing Red Faction members under house arrest, stopping a traitor from delivering info to the EDF, cause a diversion by causing mischief with a mech suit and so on. There are also a number of RF establishments throughout each worlds, such as a garage, admin building, barracks, etc, which you can destroy in order to reduce the EDF’s control over an area. You also need to collect shrapnel from any EDF property you destroy in order to pay for weapon upgrades and destroying EDF property is the best way to make a mountain of coin.
The Ghost of Crackdown lurks in this game in the amount of freedom you have to complete most of the destroy EDF property missions, though this isn’t a game that prides itself in getting you to inaccessible places like Infamous. Also- The Crackdown Voice Guy’s the leader of the Red Faction, though you never see him.
So how does it play? It is the more fun than a visit to Mardi Gras after you’ve just inherited a bead factory. Even though the game starts off as a third person shooter with a hammer as a melee weapon, the hammer turns out to be your secret weapon. You soon ditch the rifles and concentrate on explosive devices to get you through a mission. These upgrade rather nicely and each weapon has a tutorial of sorts in the form of optional side demolition challenges. These basically give you a limited supply of a particular weapon and a building you need to destroy within the time limit. These are great for practice and also yield a lot of shrapnel for upgrades to your arsenal. You can help the EDF in missions or you can blow up buildings in order to unlock those story missions.
There is a downside on that the game’s balancing needs work as normal mode is not particularly easy and I found myself dialling the difficulty down to medium for the last 5-10% of the game. Its mostly good but the aggressive AI of the EDF drones gets a bit wearing on missions like “Dogs of War.” There’s also a story in the game but it’s so slight that skipping the FMV scenes won’t crimp your enjoyment of the game.
Graphics are, to my eye, fairly pretty and the framerate (on 360) is pretty solid, but then it has some screen tearing (which can affect some people quite alarmingly). Sound is also quite good apart from the glitch I encountered when I first loaded up the game. The sound was actually disabled and all of the sound faders in the sound option where set to zero.
So, do you like to tool around blow shit up? Then this game is for you. The game makes you play story missions to progress but these are usually quite decent and fun to play. Depends on whether you ever get past the first island in a GTA game or not. Of the six areas, not all of them are as populated with missions as others but expect to play this game for between 12-17 hours. There is so much to do that there is little scope for not having fun. If you can’t have fun playing Red Faction Guerrilla, maybe you should reconsider gaming as a hobby and go and play WoW instead. Be aware, this game gets insaaaaanely difficult towards the end. So much so that with six missions to go I felt I had to dial the difficulty from normal down to casual. Even then I struggled with the final epic mission so much that I’ve done something I’ve not done in years (apart from GTAIV)- I turned on all of the cheats, otherwise I’d be dumbing the score down to a 2/3. I think the game is great apart from that insane spike at the end. Either that or put some more checkpoints in these epic missions Volition.
If you like Open world games, freedom to complete missions anyway you like, blowing shit up, get this.
Controller1.com Rating 3/3 It is easily the most fun 2009 release we’ve seen so far (it gets really hard though)
This week’s podcast is the culmination of months of research, days of rehearsals and hours of set-up.
AKA- Topics George made up by reading Edge during the recording.
Reviewed on XBLA Also on PC. Developed and Published by Telltale Games
Sam & Max: Save The World is a two year late, few dollars short re-re-release of the Season 1 episodic PC game made by those cookie cutter developers at Telltale, now available on the Xbox Live Arcade service. For 1200 points, or $15USD, the bundle comes with all six episodes from Season 1 and nothing but.
The game plays like a traditional point and click adventure, but with the benefit of not making you feel completely retarded when you get stumped on the very first puzzle in the game. In fact, the entire game slaps you on the head over and over on how to approach a puzzle, even so much as to blatantly give the solution without saying it (or “Hints” as we call them.) All of Telltale’s games have this casual approach to appease the masses while focusing on the writing, and environments, which is what most people play these games for anyway.
Each of the six episodes can be completed in about an hour if you take the time to check every nook and cranny, but doing that usually rewards you with an unfunny joke or flat one-liner. The puzzles in the game aren’t going to really stump you, but there were a couple points where I wanted to throw my controller through the wall and had to resort to a guide, only to be slapped in the face at what was the most obvious answer. The game runs pretty smooth, surviving the transition from PC to 360 rather well, but not without the occasional hiccup.
The problem with episodic games such as these, is that there is no variety involved, and each game uses the same assets, so you will be exploring the same scenes but with slight variation to them. The grand design of each episode is the same as well, so you know what to expect and how to approach it. From the start, you discover the case, head to that area, which acts as a hub, and in order to proceed to the next (and usually final), you are often given 3 sub-tasks to complete. With this knowledge in mind, it’s pretty impossible to even get lost, and loses a lot of the surprise on what’s ahead. This doesn’t help that you are often subject to Sam & Max’s dry blabbering and commentary on things. Max says something conservative, and Max follows up with something zany and, like, totally comical and zany! Riveting.
Overall though the humor just might not be very accessible to someone like me. You, on the other hand, this could be up your alley. For only $15, it’s still a pretty damn good value for what you get. There’s no replay though, like with most adventure titles, you play it once, you’re done with it. There’s leaderboards for some reason, but it’s only for how many lines of dialog you’ve head. The season has its high points (Reality 2.0) and its (extremely) low points (Abe Lincoln Must Die!), but on an average it teeters around the middle mark. It’s been said that Season 2 is leaps above this set, so if you’re interested in more, feel free to continue onward.
Reviewed by Demi
Review disavowed by Cameron
(Thanks to Telltale Games for providing us with a review copy)
Ever since people started buying expensive tsotske’s with free games like GTA bundled with it, publishers have been putting out limited editions of their big games. From Stranglehold being bundled with Hard Boiled to Halo 3 bringing feline cranial protection to the masses, it’s a trend that continues unabated. Infinity Ward have just announced their Modern Warfare 2 Super Platinum Elite Exclusive bundle that comes complete with night vision goggles, an art book and some other items of a collectible nature.
Of course, MW2 is expected to be the big hit this year, but what of the other Special Editions coming out? How do they top IW’s offering?
Splinter Cell Conviction is a another highly anticipated game coming out later this year. Sam Fisher our erstwhile hero, goes to prison. Ubisoft have put together a fantastic package for this game.
For $89.99, you get:
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction game
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction game slick
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction 8-page instruction manual
A piece of white paper with the words “Tom Clancy’s” printed on one side
Tom Clancy’s Soap
Not to be outdone, EA and Harmonix’s big game this year is Beatles Rock Band. Now while the instrument bundle is priced higher than the equivalent Rock Band bundle, the special edition take this to a whole new level.
Rock Band Beatles: Too Soon Edition features:
Rock Band Beatles Game
Rock Band Beatles memorial photo of the late John Lennon
Rock Band Beatles urn with “filling.” (May contain traces of Genius. We can therefore guarantee no McCartney)
And lastly, Activision, these days the most altruistic of publishers, are releasing a new Tony Hawk game alongwith a unique skateboard controller.
The Ride package includes:
Tony Hawk Ride game
Tony Hawk Ride controller
A letter from Activision
A roll of bills to cover purchase, storage and disposal costs.
My friends, I’d like to talk to you about the wonders of series reboots. They’re all the rage and very popular with the kids, though reboots have been part of videogames since the very beginning. I will say it started with Donkey Kong being constantly alternating between protagonist and antagonist in his early incarnations.
I mean, is each new console Legend of Zelda game a remake or a reboot. They are essentially telling the same story each time a different way with mostly the same characters. A few variations here and there but essentially the same. Perhaps its more of a remake.
Tomb Raider has been rebooted a few times but each time, its more of a technical and design reboot rather that reinventing Lara herself. The latest leaked shots of a new Tomb Raider, with a smaller bosomed Lara have hit the net. In reality it’s likely to be more of the same but it counts as a reboot. Even if it is the same, calling it a reboot with words like survival horror and open world bandied about like common gutter trash, gets those who claim to be jaded by the series more interested in the new game. By “jaded” I mean “run out of tissues.”
People cite Resident Evil 4 as a reboot even though it’s the same storyline. It just has a more modernised control system than the original’s tank controls. Resident Evil is less about survival horror and more about horror at how many buttons you have to press to change ammo.
Prince of Persia is one of the most recent Reboots of a franchise that has already been rebooted several times. The most recent Prince of Persia from 2008, itself a reboot of the series from 2003 which was a reboot of the 2001 Prince of Persia 3D which was a reboot of, well, you get the point. To be fair the 2008 prince is Persia is more reborn. And then when you play it you realise it is actually an abortion of a game.
Is Call of Duty 4 a reboot? The gameplay is very little changed from the original Call of Duty but the change of setting was enough for people to think of it as new. A lot of people who would describe themselves as hardcore shied away form the early CoD games. They were popular with the casual gamers but the edgier setting of Modern Warfare has attracted guys who live for the bleeding edge. “I cut myself on the CoD!” The fact that World at War, a return to WWII, has sold very well in its own right shows that a well made game is a well made game, regardless of when it is set. But the guys who love their CoD4 won’t even consider World at War. So CoD4 is not a reboot, just more of the same. They’re in the same universe (or at least, no reason to assume they’re not in the same continuum)
But maybe the gaming reboot is a myth. All it is is a retooling of the games, keeping what works whilst jettisoning the material that doesn’t. Perhaps adding a few new gameplay elements but compared to a Batman Begins or JJ Abrams Star Trek, Games just play with superfluous things. Occasionally, such as a certain kids game that was a cheesy platformer being rebooted into a serious LOTR style epic would count as a reboot, since it changes the origins and the style of characters and gets rid of platforming in place of combat. But nothing on the level of Casino Royale, which took Bond from bloated over-indulgence of Die Another Day and brought the series down to earth, but conversely took it to greater highs.
I don’t see Fallout 4 being a prequel. You want a Fallout game in a post-apocalyptic world. Mirror’s Edge with no Parkour or Medal of Honor set in WWI.
Red Faction: Guerilla, my current gaming fancy, is half and half. It completely changes the gamplay from the first two Red Factions, going from a first person shooter to a third person blow the crap out of everything. Linear maps to open world. Its still set in the same universe by having this be a later Red Faction uprising. So is it a reboot or does beating the game mean you’re going to fail anyway since the next game is going to be another uprising? Like the feeling of elation at the end of Terminator 2 only to have Terminator 3 come and undo the good work.
Clint displays why he is a mental giant as we listen to him bitch about playing The Lost and Damned DLC for GTA. Watch how he ignores where his motorbike is in order to drive around in a car
and complain why he’s in a car in a game about a biker. Laffs ensue.
So after months of playing CoD WaW as my main multiplayer game at home (Killzone 2, Gears 2, Left 4 Dead or Resistance 2 didn’t really light my fire), a new game that I know will entertain me for a while has been released. I have purchased it for 1200 Microsoft Points and I have enjoyed the sweeping vistas of the tutorial level. Here are my impressions of the game so far.
Battlefield 1943- according to press releases and previews is a Download-only product shipping with three maps with the promise of more to come. Using the same engine as Battlefield Bad Company, it looks very pretty and sounds amazing.
You are greeted with the above image when you boot up the game and then asked to make an EA.com account if you don’t already have one. I must have about three lying about the place but made another just for the purposes of playing this game. You are given a few options- Jump into a quick match, play with friends, play the tutorial level or tweak your options. I elected to Jump into a quick game.
I have to say, I was blown away by the graphics on the what I saw next. My jaw dropped to the floor, so astonished at the sight that greeted me. It was amazing. Words cannot adequately describe this game. You have to experience it for yourself. But here’s a spoiler:
So it seems every man and his dog is playing Battlefield 1943 and EA’s trusty 286 server can’t hold up to the strain. EA is promising to remedy the situation and has ducked out to Best Buy to see if they can get another NIC. Until then, its best to think of the game in this way- At least PC gamers can’t play it yet.
So who you gonna yada yada. Busting makes me fell yada yada. A Twinkie the size of Clint.
Its all here in our latest Focus Test. Hopefully, normal service has been resumed.
also, if you haven’t already seen it, c1.com’s own Gothbusters in HD
