Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, PS3, Wii, DS. Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision
Mock if you must but for the next few days at least I’m going to party like it’s 2008. I saw a couple of cheap games that I’d been interesting in playing during a lull SO LONG AS THEY WERE CHEAP. The other week I saw Quantum of Solace and 50 cent Blood on the Sand for cheap (AU $30 ea) and I thought “why the fuck not?”
I needed something relatively simple to cleanse my gaming palette after the majesty that was Uncharted 2 and before Modern Warfare 2. Something cheap, short and can’t be looked down as anything other than dumb fun. Quantum of Solace fits that bill quite well. I like James Bond films but I still don’t really know what to make of Quantum of Solace the movie. The title comes from an Ian Fleming short story where Bond is told a story by some stuffy diplomat-type over a cognac, a story about some couple who grew to hate each other. And it’s really quite dull. If I was Bond in the story I would have shot the guy telling the story for being boring. So the movie QoS followed on from 2006’s excellent Casino Royale movie. And then proceeded to ignore all of the lessons of Casino Royale. People didn’t want far fetched Bond plots in 2008.
Why is this important? Well, this game is actually two thirds a Casino Royale game and one third a Quantum of Solace game. A bit of context doesn’t hurt. So you take the Call o Duty 4 engine, give it to Treyarch who were making the better-than-everyone-was-expecting Call of Duty World at War at the same time as this and what do you get? Something that’ s okay rather than great.
As so many games from movies do, any location that appears in the movie is fair game for a full on corridor shooter fest that takes 20-30 minutes to complete. The final scene from Casino Royale is turned into the intro level to this game. Move through level, kill enemies, pick up cell phone’s convenient dotted around the map for intelligence useful (but by no means vital) to your mission. So despite this using the CoD4 engine, it doesn’t necessarily play just like Call of Duty. You run and gun in much the same way but you don’t have melee in the same way. If you get close to an enemy, you can click on the right stick and to trigger a quick time event where you have to press a face button (a different one each time) to takedown an enemy in a nicely animated unarmed
attack.
It feels as though this game took a lot of cues from the first Uncharted game, especially with 3rd person cover and action scenes. You can balance on beams (looking like Treyarch re-purposed some manual meter code from one of their Tony Hawk ports) jump over things and make leaps of faith just because the game says you can press ‘Y’ to jump. You have some hacking minigames which aren’t anything special but then this is a game designed for a very casual audience. That’s code for saying Normal is actually pretty easy.
So how does it actually play? Well it’s fun for a bit and it is thankfully fairly short. In so many ways you think you are playing a game from five years ago in terms of design and quite often the visuals. It also doesn’t run at Call of Duty 4’s standard 60fps frame rate, so it’s hard to see where the extra fidelity is going.
Presentation is fine for a licensed game but it isn’t going to wow anyone in this day and age. We have many of the cast members from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, including a bored Dame Judi and Dame Daniel. Gunfire sounds are somewhat lacking, however, but at least the James Bond theme is used in a more restrained way than some of the EA games on PS2.
So overall- cheap filler when you want something quick to snack on in between the ‘great’ games but there’s no reason to go out of your way to play it.
Controller1.com rating 1/3
Reviewed on Xbox 360 (Also on: PC, 360, Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP) Developed by Terminal Reality. Published by Atari (Playstation versions published by Sony in Europe)
So Ghostbusters, one of the biggest grossing films of 1984, has made into a 2009 video game. Despite there being a Ghostbusters game on the Comedy 64, Terminal Reality though they could improve on this (get out of my head with your thought control, Cameron!), accquired the license and then made this game thinking they had a deal with Vivendi to publish. Then many things happened. Vivendi merged with Activision and the resulting Activision-Blizzard behemoth dropped a number of titles from their portfolio including 50 Cent, Scarface, Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters: The Game. The developers continue, secure a deal with Activision, show off the cute Wii version, proclaim how much better the PS3 is. And then Five minutes before the release of the game comes the whammy for PAL gamers, Only the PS3, PSP and PS2 versions would be available at first since Sony was now co-publishing this as a timed exclusive. Yada, yada, yada, here we are with a review of this game reviewing the region-free 360 version on a PAL console.
So Ghostbusters is that unique beast. It is very faithful to its source material. So faithful it fails. Rather than tell a new Ghostbusters story with all new and exciting demons, the game sees fit to basically revisit the more popular hauntings from the films and expand upon them. So the first three levels consist of Slimer in the Hotel, Mr Staypuft and the Ghostly Librarian. In other words, its Back to the Future part 2. If this is meant to be the third film, why is it a clip show?
Set in 1991, you play as a rookie Ghostbuster being trained by Igon, Stantz, Venkmann and Zeddimore (all voiced by the original cast members) as you learn the ropes. Of course, this being a game you have more than just a proton pack and trap in your arsenal but can use different element beams, use slime and fireballs and even shotgun-style blasts. you generally find yourself in a linear corridor, using your PKE meter to search for paranormal manifestations before zapping ghosts in various ways with your gizmos, all the while being entertained by a really very dull Ghostbusters outing. It’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. Everyone loved the first one since it was so refreshing and funny, but by the thiurd film it was so bloated and full of itself it forget the funny.
While the graphics, sound, atmosphere, design and stroy are all authentic to the first film, the gameplay is where things start to fall apart. It does play a lot Luigi’s Mansion (ironically) but it’s nowhere near as much fun as Nintendo’s game. It becomes repetitive rather quickly- like Assassin’s Creed. You feel like you’re a Ghostbuster all right but like any dream job, it quickly becomes work.
Also of note, is the lack of balance. Playing this on normal is excruciatingly frustrating due to the ghosts knocking you down and killing you with little chance. Knocking the difficulty down to casual gives you a better chance to experience the storyline (and this means a restart of the game). Of course, that’s when you realise the story isn’t much cop. Comedy is all about timing. The timing here is off. Cutscenes drag and its almost as if the developers left gaps for the laugh track (like they forgot which Ghostbusters franchise they were working on. Larry Storch’s unused voice work for this game was phenomenal)
So while its actually fun to play in short bursts, there’s nothing driving you to complete it, unless of course you’re a huge Ghostbusters fan. It also seems slightly buggy in that it can take an eternity for triggers that allow you to proceed to activate. You can often stand around for a while, waiting for some dialogue to trigger which means you can continue. Then you might have to wait for another interminable dialogue exchange before you can continue.
The graphics are relatively decent and the character models are pretty decent. You hear the actual score of the movie rather than Ray Parker Jr’s song over and over again. The sound effects are authentic as are the voices, as mentioned earlier. The main crime of the game is that it makes Ghostbusters boring. A followup with a different structure (this is crying out for an open world games with lots of smaller missions rather than a few missions strung out past their use-by date.
Controller1.com Rating 1/3 (3/3 if you’re a fan of Ghostbusters II. If you can make it through that, you’re fine to put up with this)
Reviewed on Wii. Developed and published by Electronic Arts
Another quick review. Boom Blox was EA’s first partnership with Steven Speielberg since Medal of Honor. And just like Medal of Honor we have the traditional Normandy Level, as well as robust online multiplayer and a somber score by Michael Giacchino. Wat?
Boom Blox is a cutesy puzzle game where you are presented with a puzzle to solve, usually within a limit of throws. You might be throwing baseballs, or bombs with your Wii Remote, or you might be throwing last night’s curry leftovers but wither way you’re presenting your HDTV with a mortal threat so use the jacket and the strap. Like World of Goo and Peggle, Boom Blox also uses a simple physics system as part f the game, which probably explains why the games looks so very N64. It might look like it doesn’t need the RAM expansion pack you got with Donkey Kong 64, but I’ll bet the physics chew up more CPU power than the particle effects.
Boom Blox gives you a choice of gameplay styles, from levels where you have to manipulate two green blox so they connect and explode to levels where you just have to make the diamonds hit the ground, to vanishing blox and even a few levels with a frickin’ laser pistol. Each level scores you on how many points you get and you can squeak by with a bronze score. But Gold is where it is at, baby.
If you already have a Wii, you should hunt the bargain bins for Boom Blox which has sold OK enough to warrant a sequel but I don’t know whether its a game you want iterated on again and again. There’s exploration mode, where you just play a level at a time and unlock the next challenge, Adventure (Why?) and a mode where you can create your own shitty levels that just recreate badly a game from the NES. Well, Mario 1-1 might be hard on Boom Blox but there’s always Little Big Planet for all your knock-off needs.
This isn’t a graphical game, even for the Wii. The art style looks 10 years out of date and the music sounds like it belongs on a PSOne game but it captures the annoying Wii-style music featured in games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Its awful. Wii give up.
So if EA can do something right on the Wii, does that mean there’s hope for the future? No, EA Sports Active says ‘Hi, lard-ass.”
Reviewed on Macintosh. Also on PC, Wii. Developed by 2D Boy. Published by 2D Boy
This cute puzzle game has you building scaffolding out of cute balls of goo. That’s it. You have to direct your little balls of disgustingly cute-but-still- rather-disgusting-if-you-stopped-to-think-about-it towards their doom in a vacuum nozzle at the end of each level. The catch is, you only have a set number of little dungy spheres with which to reach the top. You also have a quota of shitballs you need to suck up in order to complete the level.
There’s not much to say other than go buy this game. 2D Boy are former EA Employees (and isn’t everyone these days) who got together and made this charming game. Probably the only thing worth getting on WiiWare, its made a decent impression if not necessarily a large one in the sales charts. The developers offered the PC version with no DRM and all they got for their troubles was increased piracy. Which is a shame, because the game is brilliant.
A new breed of puzzlers uses physics as part of gameplay. World of Goo, like Peggle uses the physics as part of the game, unlike the shitfest that is Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.
You can build your tower higher, but you also have to build your tower so it supports its own weight. It’s like reverse Jenga. Which means it is good. Because Jenga is shit.
Its quite a relaxing game though it does require some brainpower. It also makes an excellent contrast to the carnage of today’s shooters so is quite a nice way to unwind at the end of a hectic week (as my week has been). The graphics are pitch perfect and the jazzy music score is divine. There’s none of this unicorn shit here, just one fantastic little package.
I urge every reader of this site to try out World of Goo.
controller1.com rating 3/3
How controller1.com rates games:
Numbers are meaningless. But we’re going to give in a scale that makes sense
0- Don’t buy. It is a terrible game that you will instantly regret buying
1- An average game. Rent if you’re still interested or buy it very cheap
2- A good solid game. You should enjoy this but don’t lose sleep if you don’t play it
3- Excellent. You must buy this game
We also realise that we aren’t necessary the target market for some games. A game may not click for us but may be fantastic for others so we often include a qualifying score such as:
Controller1.com rating 1/3 (or 2/3 if you’re a fan of previous games in the series)
The overall score out of three is our opinion but there maybe a higher or lower score in brackets for some people.
If you really must translate our scores into percentages use the following metric:
(on a 0-10 scale this would translate to 0 = 1-3, 1 = 5 or 6, 2 = 7 or 8, and 3 is 9 or 10)
Also- when we review a game that is more or less the same on multiple projects, we list the title in each of the platform is available. We’re reviewing the game, not obsessing over minute frame differences or counting pixels, but we make clear which platform the game was tested on in the review title.
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
