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.
My recent DLC binge netted me the Lost and the Damned and the CoD World at War Map Pack 2. I had intended to skip the GTA DLC since I had not come close to finishing GTA IV before getting sick of it and moving on to fresh gaming pastures. I think the reason I got it was some need to use up my Internet Bandwidth quota since 25GB a month goes a long way if you aren’t into Bit Torrent. Infamous also made me feel that going back to the slower moving GTA IV engine might be a step backwards but I tried it anyway.
I like it so far. I’m only a few missions in but it seems to be a nice take on Liberty City without feeling like a simple retread of IV.
The storyline with the bikers seems a lot easier to get into, less introspective than Niko and Roman, played less for laughs and more for drama. The guys of the Lost MC are fucking assholes of the first order but they make great videogame characters. Of course as a member of a motorcycle gang, you will be riding around on a hog for most of the time and unless you preferred these in GTA IV, they take a while to get used to riding these and firing a shotgun at the same time. Its also got that custom GTA difficulty about it but then I’m finding I’m enjoying it in this post-infamous world.
Johnny Klebitz, your hero for want of a better word, is a little more obviously fucked up thank Niko. He’s a biker and he just wants to keep to business. The leader of the gang, Billy, has just come out of rehab after being busted and is aching for action, such as starting turf wars with rival gangs etc. This being a GTA game, there ares no tea parties, group hugs and wondering if this is what its like When Doves Cry.
Also, despite me saying I’d had enough of WaW with a PC playthough, a 360 playthough and months of multi on both systems, I got the extra maps anyway. And because I’d been away from the multiplayer for so long, I immediately sucked more than a Wii game called Let’s Tidy Up After Ourselves in the NPD top 10. But after relearning not to suck, I’ve started to enjoy the new maps and not just stick to the three zombie maps. We have Corrosion, which seems to be some sort of refinery level where its Soviets v Nazis; Banzai, aan outdoor jungle level with a wooden bridge, waterfalls, tunnels and bamboo huts; and my favourite, Sub Pen, a really nice US verses Japan level that’s small and intimate but large enough for small or medium size groups.
Its interesting to note how in both of the map packs released for WaW so far, Treyarch have shied away from the larger tank based levels which were the more popular ones in CoD3. The tanks in WaW are just irritating since they dominate the levels and the anti-tank options are limited. The jury is still out on dogs but they are preferable to fucking helicopters, which is what I dread most about the upcoming Modern Warfare 2.
Just as a site update: The site has had fewer updates due to my work moving offices this last week. My studio is in disarray so there’s nowhere for us to record a podcast yet. Hopefully we can have something for you by next week. The first one might be a tad echo-ey.
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
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.
Have you ever asked someone about a game and their answer is something along the lines of “It was great but the last boss was a bitch of a last boss?” A similar question on a popular videogaming forums led me to consider games where the last bit coloured their overall enjoyment of the game. The more I thought about it, the more I realised there were multiple games where I liked it apart from the last encounter. Sometimes it made me hate the game an other times, it was juts one of those things where the worst bit happened to be the last bit. Here’s my list.
FAR CRY: INSTINCTS. This was the original Xbox version of Far Cry. Its not really a port, more of a re imagining of the PC version. I had both versions and found the Xbox game that much more fun to play, so much so that I tried to finish it. Then suddenly the last boss ramped up the difficulty on a game that wasn’t particularly easy to begin with. I tried for about an hour and a half to beat him and just when it looked as though I was finally going to beat him, he got stuck on some terrain and wasn’t responding to my shots. After wasting an hour or so trying to beat this prick I gave up. I mostly enjoyed the game, but I remembered that bastard with a hate-filled heart.
KILLZONE 2. I mostly liked this game. I won’t say loved but it was mostly very good, just not very innovative or varied. I enjoyed playing it even though it felt a little familiar. But then I got to the final encounter. I won’t describe it too much except its one of those instances where the game decides to pull the rug out from underneath you and be a puck-ass bitch. It ignores everything its taught you to date, then pads out the encounter with cheating AI and general bullshit. I find it hard to not have my overall experience coloured by this encounter and its the single biggest reason why I’d never play KZ2 again.
GEARS OF WAR: The encounter on the train was fairly brutal for me (and I played Gears 1 on Casual mode). It went on and on and the Krill kept killing me or the boss kept owning me faster than a Mexican jumping been who’s really gotta go. I managed to find the right weapon and beat the bastard but… blimey!
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: One of Ubisoft’s alltime great games, this short and rather sweet Zelda cum sneaking game decides to have a difficulty spike that looks like Mt Everest after an injection of growth hormones. It wasn’t just hard, it was bitchingly hard. On Mohs scale its just above Corundum.
UNCHARTED: Still one of the best PS3 games, its also got an insanely hard final encounter. You will cuss, you will throw your controller around like a petulant child and you will swear bloody revenge on Naughty Dog.
GRAND THEFT AUTO III: As its the only GTA game I’ve even gotten to the end of, I can’t say whether subsequent games were any better but, Jesus, this one was a doozie.
METAL GEAR SOLID 2/ 4 (tie) For some odd reason, when I played through MGS2 originally, I don’t remember the last boss being particularly hard, but when I replayed it, I was sweating bullets trying to beat this. MGS4 is different. It makes you fighth a boss with a completely new combat system. And its hard. But that’s not thie bad bit. Then you have to watch OVER AN HOUR of cutscenes.
What about you?
We have a look at Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Peggle.
updated so missing audio file is present
Its that time of the year of the year 2008 (stop that!). Gaming mags and websites are running their Games of the year awards. Controller1.com is only a small site and we don’t play everything under the sun but we’d like to see what you think.
This year was one where the heavy hitters were more evenly spaced out through the year. We’ll start by looking at the bigger games that came out in January, February and March 2008.
THE GOOD
Burnout Paradise (360 and PS3)
The only driving game that was so much fun that even non-racing fans could find enough to enjoy to justify a purchase. No retry button but the scale and depth of the game is amazing. You don’t have to be a hardcore racing fan to get a kick out of this game. From races, Takedowns, marked man, burning route (time trials in specific cars) and stunt modes, this game keeps on giving. Criterion and EA have been very good to fans of the series in so far as the many numerous FREE updates have all brought new content and challenges.
REVIEW
DEVIL MAY CRY 4 (360, PS3 and PC)
Some people really love the Devil May Cry series. Think about it, we wouldn’t have God of War without Devil May Cry. That said, now that Jaffe has the recipe, did we need DMC4? DMC fans liked this latest epic- the first game to have a long mandatory install before you started to play on PS3, yet the benefits over the 360 version were barely noticeable.
ARMY OF TWO (360, PS3)
EA Montreal’s coop-focused shooter was the butt(grab) of many jokes in the lead up to its release. It was famously retooled somewhat during a delayed release. The final product is slightly schizophrenic- It doesn’t know if it wasn’t to be a serious shooter with a political message or a braid dead action movie. It tries to be both and manages to still be fun (apart from the being dragged to cover mechanic when your health is low). This game actually sold quite well (on 360 at least) so a sequel “Army of Too” might turn up at some stage. Not essential but worth a play if you like coop. REVIEW
TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX VEGAS 2 (360, PC, PS3)
The first Vegas game was one of the best R6 games released since Ubisoft bought Red Storm. The sequel is one of the worst. It’s so fucking bad that I hope eeryone involved in its production si struck down with terminal bad breath. This game stinks. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE! Which plague, you might ask? Does it fucking matter? A Plague is a plague. It scored and sold very well, unlike the games in the “NOT SO GOOD” section where it belongs>.”
GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (360, PS3, PC)
So this was expected to be the biggest game of the year. It isn’t. Its a good game in its own right, maybe not as expansive and as much fun as San Andreas, but still great. It was very daring but at the same time, kept a lot of the stuff you hated about the old games, things that Crackdown and Saint’s Row managed to get right. Definitely the most overrated game of 2008 (a lot of people fell in love with the idea that this was a near perfect game when it came out but too many cracks appears all too quickly) but still at the least, a very good and even great game. You need to play GTA IV, just be aware its flaws aren’t always minor and easy to overlook.
LEGO INDIANA JONES
The Lego Star Wars releases show that you can make fun games for kids that adults will also respond well to. Lego Indy is perhaps a test to see how well the formula can survive with Jedi involved. Indiana Jones is a huge franchise in its own right and without a Next Gen version full of DMM and the like, this was the game that came out alongside (or near enough) the cinematic return of the Man with the Hat.
This game is highly playable on whatever system you have so go play it. REVIEW
And of course,
METAL GEAR SOLID 4 (PS3)
So this was meant to be the swansong of the series but its sold well enough for Konami to invoke the “Bitch” clause in Kojima’s contract. Its a great game. If you own a PS3 and don’t have this then go and get it, This is the reason you bought the damn thing. This game will also make you take up smoking. There’s so much attention to detail in the game that you can sometimes get overwhelmed with options. Here’s a hint, you don’t need 70% of the stuff you have at your disposal. REVIEW
BATTLEFIELD BAD COMPANY (360, PS3)
Not Battlefield Heroes, but a better version of Battlefield 2. It works phenomenally well on PS3 and 360 online. Oh and there’s a decent single player that’s a proper single player game and not just MP maps with bots. REVIEW
SID MEIER’S CIVILISATION REVOLUTION (DS, PS3, 360)
Our own Cam has been playing Civ games since he was in nappies. In fact he still is playing Civ games in nappies. Sid Meier on a console? Outrageous. But it worked. A review is apparently coming (better late than never).
THE NOT SO GOOD:
THE CLUB (PC, 360 and PS3)- Sega and Bizarre Creations attempt to merge the Kudos systen from PGR and a shooter went largely unnoticed. A pity as the demo was fun and I still intend to pick this up (cheaply) to blast through its single player mode
FRONTLINES: FUEL OF WAR. (PC and 360) THQ and KAOS Studios’ version of Battlefield (some of the Kaos guys were originally behind the popular Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat) was not bad, but after a couple of demos and a stillborn PS3 version, the game was just a victim of too many better shooters already on the market. When you’re up against UT3, CoD4, Halo 3, Quake Wars, etc, you need to do something better and with more charm than the competition.
TUROK (360, PS3)
Well, this series was a really big deal back in the N64 days but Turok is not what it was. Actually, it was crap back then, so maybe it is exactly what it was.
HAZE (PS3) Ubisoft
Another overhyped failure, this game was meant to be the PS3’s top draw shooter until Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 appeared. It wasn’t. If you can talk about Haze on a message board without LOL appearing within 30 seconds, and your NOT on the “Official Haze website” you’re having a good day.
THE BOURNE CONSPIRACY (360, PS3) RENTAL OF THE YEAR!
Well no Matt Damon, no Jason Bourne. What’s the point? You might as well mocap Richard Chamberlain.
ALONE IN THE DARK (PC, PS3, 360, Wii, PS2)
Atari and its last remaining internal studio try to scare the shit out of us. They certainly scared the shit out of people who bought this. “Oh my god, I’m an idiot for buying this.”
QUAKE WARS (PC, PS3, 360)
It sorta fizzled on PC late last year and any remaing embers doused on 360 and PS3. Both console versions are to be avoided, for different reasons. The main reason to avoid it is because its Quake Wars.
and in a special sealed section on its own.
THE NINTENDO WII
A trio of Nintendo releases headlines the Wii.
WiiFit: It may not be an 800 pound gorilla, but only because the balance board’s weight limit is 130kg. My mother, who doesn’t like videogames and rarely bought me games as gifts as a child wants a Wii Fit. She doesn’t want the Wii, just the WiiFit. We tried to tell her you couldn’t use the WiiFit without a Wii but she stopped listening at that stage. So she’s getting a Wiifit for Christmas without the required Wii. What the hell do I care?
Mario Kart Wii: Mario Kart was always a big franchise but for some reason the Wii version with its multitude of control schemes (somehow all less than optimal) has managed to outsell the sublime Super Mario Galaxy. Mario Kart on the DS is kinda the reason I hooked up with these bums to make podcasts back on angry-gamer.net. But I hate Mario Kart with a passion because of those fucking snakers. Yes you can’t do it apparently on the Wii, but hatred is a keeper.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: When I used to play wifi DS games with friends on planes, a DS SSB was what i was hanging out for as a really good MP game. But its on the Wii and its very good for the sort of game genre that you don’t get many options for on the Wii.
there’s also:
Boom Blox: Hey look, a third party Wii game. It did OK and is still selling decently (if not charting). Hey EA, make more Wii specific games designed fro the Wii.
Zak and Wiki: Puzzle game. Its a puzzle game. Its not the second coming of our lord and savior Mecha-Christ.
No More Heroes: Yes it was interesting to look at the character design. Then look at the backdrops and go driving around down. The combat was mashing buttons until you use the Wiimote for a finishing move. NEXT!
