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.
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REVIEW: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Reviewed on DS. Also on PSP (eventually) Developed by Rockstar Leeds. Published by Rock Star.
So GTA 1 and 2 could have easily been ported to the DS but Rock Star tried something different. They designed and made an entirely DS-focused game from the ground up. Chinatown Wars manages to cram everything you loved about the full size console GTA games without the empty feeling that the PSP entries left you with.
You play as Huang, a young rich punk whose daddy, a Liberty City crime boss is brutally killed. Huang arrives in Liberty City with revenge and ambition in his heart. After the first cutscene, you know they haven’t dumbed this down for kids. This game has a wickedly delicious and decidedly adult sense of humour.
So the mission structure is the same as every GTA since GTAIII. You travel to the mission briefing, then travel to where the mission takes place. Except here, you can skip cutscenes and skip the travel back to the mission area after you’ve been killed. HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH!
You control this with a mix of D pad + buttons for some actions and stylus for other things. The stylus is used for menu stuff, managing your email and GPS devices as well as minigames such as hot wiring cars, filling molotov cocktails with petrol at the filling station amongst other things. It generally works pretty well though I found (on my DS Phat at least) that I found driving smoothly quite impossible and my giant alien spannercrab-creature hands were cramping during any driving sections. I found this to be a challenging game, but not because its a bad game. Its just hard.
Graphically, its a quite simple 3D engine with some weird choices in regards to scale (pedestrians are as large as cars) in order for the models to be discernible. The sound suffers somewhat on DS but manages to make you feel you’re playing a GTA game. There’s a not great deal of dialogue, but there is some. No talk radio, of course and cutscenes are static images with text to move the story along. And the text is disarmingly funny and very biting in way I don’t remember Liberty City Stories was.
Chinatown wars plays well, is funny and is essential to any DS owner over 15 years of age. Handy for commuting or travelling.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
Now playing: GTA Chinatown Wars
I’m currently on holidays with the wife. To sate my gaming desires whilst on the road, I’ve bought my DS Phat with GTA Chinatown Wars and my PSP 1000 with God of War: Chains of Olympus. Of course, I can’t charge the PSP battery enough so that CoD CoO can update the PSP’s firmware (one nice thing about the original DS and the Lite is that you don’t have to worry about this bullshit). So Chinatown Wars is the game du jour.
GTA:CW is Rockstar Leeds making a 3D GTA game from a top down perspective. Its got all the colour, edginess and humour of a full console version without the feeling that something is not quite right, as was the case with the two PSP iterations.
Your stylus is used appropriately, to manage your menu items, emails, GPS map, etc and the traditional dpad + buttons used for driving, moving and combat. This being a DS game, there has been an attempt to add stylus gameplay into the mix, such as using touch screen actions in minigames- such as hot wiring cars.
It works, mostly. Maybe its because I’m sill playing on the original DS, but I’ve found using the dpad to be somewhat painful after a short time. The game is still fun, but jeez it is hard. Its not easy to pin down why, but I found myself having to replay missions again and again.
Happily, the makers have taken one of many people’s criticisms of GTAIV to heart. If you fail a mission, you see the mission briefing (skippable, of course) and then you have the option to skip the travel to the missions by pressing select. Hallefuckinglujah!
So if you’re going to make your game hard, at least make retrying easier. Thanks Rockstar Leeds. Theeds.
Controller1.com Focus Test BANJO- -KAZOOIE Nuts and Bolts
This week we play Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. Do we end up opening up the DS half way through? Only by listening to this podcast will you find out.
Controller1.com Focus Test: There are still games on DS
We have a look at Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Peggle.
updated so missing audio file is present
The Greatest Video Game EVER MADE!!!
I can barely see the screen I’m that giddy with excitement. This is probably the greatest thing to happen to the human race since sliced bread, penicillin and Alyson Hannigan. In June 2009, The Great Giana Sisters DS will be released.
I KNOW! HOW AWESOME IS THAT! HOLY FRENCH BREADSTICKS IN A PORN FILM, PEOPLE!
Now as you all know, The Great Giana Sisters is one of the best video games of all time. It’s one failing – if it can be considered a failing, because to me it’s its greatest asset – is that it’s best played on a Commodore 64.
The Nintendo DS is one of the greatest game systems of all time. It’s one major failing is that, unless you’re one of the cool kids with a homebrew cart, is that there is no way to play Great Giana Sisters on it.
WELL NOW THAT PROBLEM IS OVER. One of the greatest games ever made is coming to one of the greatest gaming systems ever made so therefore it will be THE GREATEST THING EVER DONE BY HUMANKIND.
Seriously, everyone out there who are still making video games: Just stop. There is no point any more. You’ve been bested. It’s like making music after The Beatles did Rubber Soul. You’re kidding yourselves. Video games have now reached their zenith and we can wrap it all up and go home.
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO I MEAN DAMN
Dear people who are making this: I love you. I love you so, so much, with a love that is as pure as it is somewhat creepy. Send us beta releases so we may fawn over every pixel, sound effect and gaming bliss contained therein.
Now excuse me I need to clean myself up.
LEGO INDIANA JONES
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
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