VIDEO: DUH TREK (pt1) “Balance of Error”
Controller1.com and Pwnfilm present:
Lurk, Ear Guy and Pwns from the Starship Nintenterprise explore a strange new world, seek out a new life form and boldly run away from it
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Controller1.com Focus Test: Bound in Fail
Today we boot up Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and God of of War: Chains of Olympus. Yep, we load up these games. We see the splash screens and even the main menu.
NOW PLAYING: CALL OF JUAREZ- BOUND IN BUGS
Techland’s western FPS Call of Juarez was one of my cheapie surprise packages. That is it was a PC game from a little-known Polish developer, distributed by Ubisoft and ported to 360. It was a minor hit but enough of one to warrant a sequel. The first game was also quite well made and attempted some simple and mostly effective innovations to the relatively staid single player FPS genre. It was $20 from Play-Asia and well worth that money. Here’s our review of that game
Flash forward to 2009 and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, a prequel to the original game, is released mid year and gets reasonable scores and a PS3 version that’s been the bigger seller in Europe. Unlike the first game, there have been no sudden drops in price so I’ve had to *gasp* pay more than bargain bin prices for it (but still not quite full price).
So we follow Ray (not yet a mad preacher) and his brother Thomas, as they hear the Call of Juarez. You play as one or the other, getting to choose between them most of the time and have the other follow you anyway (though there’s no co-op for those of you to whom that’s important).
So far my impressions (of about an hour or so of play) are:
1- It’s seems a little lacking in soul compared to the first one.
It’s almost as if they made the first one and wanted to do something else, but Ubisoft was waving a cheque under their noses. Of course it is early days and may improve.
2- It’s buggy as all hell. 5 hard locks on two different 360s.
Our next Focus Test subject is, funnily enough, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. It’s an unusual focus test to be sure.
Halo 3 ODST is out, but I will probably wait until the weekend to pick it up.The multiplayer part of it is not essential as I have played all bar the three new maps in this collections when they were DLC. I do like the fact you can install them to your HDD, unlike Halo 3.
Controller1.com Focus Test: Scribblenaughts
Cam and George take a look at the write your own adventure, Scribblenaughts and wonder what dirty words you can get away with.
REVIEW: Shadow Complex
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Chair. Published by Epic.
And so the cavalcade of great downloadables continues. Shadow Complex, by Chair, takes the beloved 2D Metroidvania gameplay and marries it to the Unreal 3 engine. The result is a triumph for gamers.
Shadow Complex sees your character traversing a secret base of a group calling themselves the Reformation. As you move between rooms you encounter enemies to fight, weapons and items to upgrade and nooks and crannies to explore. So if you like old Metroid and Castlevania games, the theory is that you will love this game to death. Well, I don’t particularly care for that style of game and have been having an absolute blast with this.
So you’re frolicking with your girlfriend in the woods when you come across this underground base and suddenly your training your dad wanted you to have makes sense and to cut a long story short insert description of Super Metroid here. So you start off with a pistol and some basic jumping and climbing abilities but you upgrade everything the more you play the game. Your pistol is replaced by successively more powerful automatic rifles, you gain grenades and other devices as a secondary weapon, your jumping and movement abilities are upgraded in various ways and of course you can search for little upgrades (such as the ability to hold more ammo of a certain type) that are dotted throughout the game. The colour pink is notorious for its exclusion from the game’s colour palette.
Combat is , of course, a big part of the game. If you’re able to get near to a foe you’ll be given the chance to melee him or of course you could just shoot them with your weapons, or blow them up or destroy an exploding object near them and listen to their cries as they fall to their death. Your movement is strictly up and down, left and right, but enemies maybe on multiple planes. The game is set up relatively well to aim at those enemies not on the same plane as you but it can sometimes be a touch finicky. Enemies range from guys in masks with pistols to guys in masks with rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers and eventually mechsuits. You will kill a lot of these and perhaps the game is a tad easy in the combat department but even so you will need 6 or more hours to complete the campaign which is pretty decent for a 1200 point game. Like HL2 there is an achievement meter so you can check on your progress towards each new achievement the game has to offer. It’s like weighing yourself before and after you go to the toilet.
The movement is very slick and the best since infamous (which was three months ago so ‘big deal’). At the start of the game there are many areas you won’t be able to access the first time you spot a hidden item, but you will likely encounter it again at some stage. Though the game expects you to backtrack and revisit areas, this only gets painful towards the very end of the game. Of course- it is quite painful at the end when the game more or less says, “hey bud, you need every upgrade.” I just want to finish the game FFS.
The visuals are nice and polished with the design very reminiscent of Metal Gear 2. It is one very pretty looking game though the cutscenes look somewhat rougher. The story is also similar though it is nowhere near as over the top as anything dreamed up by Kojima and co. Conversely, while it is well told and the voice acting is top-notch it is also not as memorable as a girl in a bikini shooting at you. The sound is also top notch, one of the best combos of music, effects and voice in any recent 2D game. I still have that save room sting going around my head. It’s almost like brain cancer, only more melodic. I long for amnesia.
So a 1200 point game that will take easily 6-8 hours to complete and is fun to boot? We need more of these, stat! Of course, we do have an actual 2D Metroid game coming from Team Ninja soon so that should fill the gap for many. In the mean time, I have to work my way to the last boxx battle and finish this thing. Huzzah!
Controller1.com Rating 3/3
Controller1.com Focus Test: Shadow Complex
Part Two of our Double Podcats weekend- Shadow Complex. Clint was feeling a little off-mike. He thinks it sounds mysterious.
Controller1.com Focus Test: Crossovers
The first show of our double Podcast weekend. First up, Crossovers. Prompted by the recent purchase of Marvel by Disney, we have a look at the inevitable crossovers between Disney and Marvel characters and react with a mixture of horror, sadness and arousal.
DREAMCAST 2 LAUNCH ROUNDUP
So 9/9/09 has rolled around- the 10th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast launch in the US. Today, as many Sega fans have been insisting would happen on this date, Sega quietly has released the Sega Dreamcast 2.
The big launch title of course is a Sonic game. Sega have listened to what the fans wanted and so in this game, Sonic runs very slowly in a 3D environment. In this new HD game Sonic has a dark secret- when he drinks a special elixir, he turns into Mr Hyde and goes on a rampage killing Cream in the prologue. The rest of the game features Sonic hunting for Mr Hyde in order to bring him to justice. Other levels feature Sonic wielding weapons such as swords and guns, just like the fans have been clamoring for all these years.
Sega’s Hype Machine kicked into full swing with hundreds of dollars of advertising spending for the big launch. Here you can see the crowds lining up underneath Sega’s subtle advertising billboards in the heart of Tokyo’s entertainment district.
Elsewhere in Tokyo, crowds outside electronics stores not clutching PS3 Slims under their arms were hard to come by. We spoke to a Sega Spokesperson who reassured us: “We have much experience of launching consoles. After recent blockbuster titles such as Dragon Quest IX and Monster Hunter on the Wii, Japan’s gamers are sated and have good games for many hours. When they tire of those good experiences, Sega is ready with titles to fill the gaps in the marketplace with Altered Beast and Virtua Mahjong.”
Sega fans rolling across the street to purchase a Dreamcast 2 with back in title “Chris Thorndyke’s Mansion.”
Sega plans a brilliant marketing strategy for its US and European launches of the Dreamcast 2. Sega will launch the system in one country per month, starting with Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, Finland, North Korea, Tonga, The Falkland Islands, Zaire, etc, until they get around to the United States launch and EU coming around January 2014. Price will be $699 with Sega explaining “our GD Rom2 is just that much better than BluRay.” The Dreamcast 2 will not however play Blu Ray movies, DVD movies or music CD’s but it will come with a built-in infra red internet requiring line-of-sight reception from Sega’s headquarters in Japan.
Dreamcast 2 has already been cancelled.
Controller1.com Focus Test Batman is Wet
Another duel game show- Batman Arkham Asylum and Wet played for your listening confusion. Would it make more sense with video? Well, we ain’t Giant Bomb so go and get stuffed.
Anyhooo- one of these is highly anticipated and the other was more warmly received
REVIEW: WOLFENSTEIN
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by id, Raven, Endrant, Threewave Software. Published by Activision (ORLY?)
Wolfenstein is your virtual grandpa’s axe when it comes to the first person genre. A sequel of sorts for 2000′s well received Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the latest game is just Wolfenstein (“It’s pronounced WOLFENSTEEN!) and was released to consoles and PC’s in a wave of silent apathy. You’ll hear a lot of “I heard that was crap,” from people who haven’t played it but that’s par for the course. Look at the number of different developers and you’ll see why this game has a split personality. Firstly single player…
So you know it’s a WWII-set first person shooter, right? You still play as BJ Blaskowitz, an American agent behind enemy lines, kicking ass and taking names. In past games, the Nazi’s have been secretly developing supernatural and occult weapons. Here, the results of those experiments are walking around town in clear view, sipping cappuccinos in the sidewalk cafe’s. As well as the usual assortment of WWII-era weapons and a few SF additions, you also have four ‘Veil’ powers which grant you a shield, bullet-time, super powered bullets and the ability to see secret areas. Fortunately, the game doesn’t expect you to rely on either conventional weapons or Veil powers throughout, though it’s rare you will ever be far from a place to recharge your Veil power meter. Of course, that’s if you’re not in an area with a Veil Inhibitor active…
There is a somewhat ‘open world” vibe to the hub area, but one that hasn’t been fully developed so there is still some loading between areas of the city. There are also three factions of ‘resistance’ operatives where you can buy upgrades and be given missions (GTA-style). However, the town is almost completely devoid of life apart from resistance fighters and Nazi troops. On the up side, there’s an impressive amount of destructibility in the world. Not Red Faction: Guerrilla levels but enough to make things interesting. You can’t fight City Hall but you can blow the shit out of anything not nailed down.
It plays well. Very well. It’s a lot of fun to run and gun, use your veil powers and cause havoc in the heart of the Third Reich. The difficulty level is mostly well-balanced, apart from the odd checkpoint that’s just a little further away than would be ideal. The shooter part is quite solid, if slightly old-skool feeling but it’s the addition of the Veil powers that mixes things up a bit. Since the game is designed around you needing the powers to conquer certain areas, it fits in well.
I would call it surprise of the year, even more so than Red Faction: Guerrilla which at least had some marketing behind it. When Activision cock-blocks somethings- they go go all out. If you do manage to find Activision’s marketing for this title (at the bottom of locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with the a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”), expect about eight hours of single-player goodness unless you’re either expecting to hunt down the collectibles (which will take longer) or you have superhuman reflexes (in which case, why are you playing games when you could be out there saving lives? Haven’t you seen Heroes: Season One?).
You are able to upgrade your weapons and Veil powers with the money you collect during the game by adding better barrels, scopes, reducing recoil etc, but the game makes you choose by not making not possible to buy everything. The more SF weapons are particularly satisfying to use on some of the harder enemies but the Veil powers coupled with a standard assault rifle are not to be underestimated.
And then there’s the multiplayer- the videogaming equivalent of Back to the Future part 2: You’re looking at something that looks like an early XBox1 game but has one or two new things bolted on but ultimately is just a confusing dated mess. It has three modes but is worth avoiding altogether if you have any affinity for the original MP for RtCW or ET. It’s a pity because it could have been great but will cause so many older Wolfenstein fans to denounce the game as without any value. Multiplayer is without any value in this title.
The graphics and sound are a mixed mag. The graphics are eye-bleedingly bad in MP but in SP they vary between adequately nice and very nice. Some areas look a little plain while others are very ‘whoa.’ It’s not until you get the veil powers you realise why some environments don’t ‘pop.’ Activate the Veil and the visuals change quite markedly with different lighting effects, howling winds, floating spectral creatures called Geists and more- including lots of secret areas. The sound is mostly very good though there’s just something about the character speech of the resistance fighters that bothers me. They mostly have convincing German accents though the acting is a little too stilted- something you can get if you use actors rather than actors who do lots of video gaming voice-overs. Also, the lines repeat waaaaaaaaaay too much and much too soon.
Overall this is a solid title that should give you a fun single player experience with a dip your toe in MP experience (though I would just stick with BF1943 if you want WWII multiplayer). I do feel that there are some underused elements- such as the hub world which could have offered many more missions than the game ultimately did (I guess we’ll have to wait for Saboteur for an open-world WWII game). The game is generally quite polished and runs well on consoles. Wolfenstein doesn’t go on for two long nor does it feel insanely easy or too hard. Recommended
Controller1.com rating 2/3 (for singleplayer only. Multiplayer is shittier than a dirty nappy)
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