This Is My Joystick!
Total War: Shogun 2 was a huge game. I’ve played through it and thoroughly enjoyed it, fighting my way across Japan to vie for position of the Shogun.
Now, Fall of the Samurai is taking us all back to Japan, only this time, guns and cannon are the name of the game. It is also perhaps the most exciting of Creative Assembly’s games, blending together both medieval-style units and firearms in a way that is almost perfect.
Since the start of the year I have started to play more and more fighting games. In fact, I play a tournament every month now and take part in weekly play sessions, so the release of this Street Fighter X Tekken piqued my interest. In recent times the beat ‘em up genre has made a massive comeback, what with the massive success of Street Fighter IV; and its many sequels.
So, when Capcom made the announcement that they were going to be developing the first in an unexpected crossover with Namco’s Tekken, many fans were excited, although this excitement was met with some concern over balancing the two different game styles.
I am pleased to say that they have made a damn good go of it.
We made it. I don’t know how we managed it or what kept us going along the way, but we’re here. Mass Effect 3 has finally arrived!
It’s a game that comes with a ton of expectation and a lot of promise, but has also elicited its fair share of concerns. Step forward Multiplayer modes, Kinect support, greater combat emphasis. Over the last two years, Bioware have piled on the announcements, all of them frightening die-hard fans, rather than exciting them.
Of course, now I have the game in hand, there’s only one final announcement left to make. Is this the fitting conclusion we all want it to be, or did Bioware unceremoniously sabotage this memorable journey at the last hurdle?
Read on if you dare…
I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that when I hear the words ‘New’ and ‘RPG’ in the same sentence my cynicism kicks into overdrive. So many times have we RPG fans been promised the next step in role-playing only to be given another failed attempt. We’re faced with either playing it safe and defaulting to the reliable classics, like Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, anything by Bioware, or risking our hard-earned moolah on another probable turkey.
So when I read about a little-known new game called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, my hopes were not exactly in the clouds. Developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, it promised slick combat, a vibrant world and epic quests, but so do they all. It also boasted direction by Elder Scrolls alumni Ken Rolston, story by novelist R.A. Salvatore and art by legend Todd McFarlane. Still my cynicisms were not banished. Imagine my surprise, then, when the demo blew me away to the point where I pre-ordered the game.
Picture the scene as my heart melted and I uttered the words ‘This is my dream game’ closely followed by ‘I hope the full game doesn’t get boring’. Well now it’s out and about, I can tell you I was right. Here’s why…
Aliens kidnapping humans and submitting them to painful tests is nothing new. How refreshing then, that puzzle game Warp turns this age-old cliché on its head, by letting you play the role of the alien desperately trying to escape your human captors.
Using, of course, some nifty alien abilities while solving some clever puzzles.
When I bought my first Xbox 360, I had just enough cash to grab a few bargain games to play on it. These ended up being the massively popular Gears of War, the Xbox hit Fable and a little-known-to-me shooter called The Darkness. I had no idea that it would end up being one of the most original and enjoyable FPS games I’d ever played.
Based on the successful Top Cow comic series of the same name, it followed mobster hit man Jackie Estecado as he discovered an ancient secret that had cursed his family for generations. Manifesting as a malevolent voice and deadly, snake-like tentacles in equal parts, The Darkness was hell-bent on taking full control of Jackie and using his body to exact its grim will on the Earth. The game translated this very well, with players controlling Jackie as he discovered his dark family past and fought with The Darkness, as well as his mob-boss uncle Paulie.
While the last game was popular it didn’t break any records and its palpable, noir atmosphere and visceral shooter/melee combo combat was lost on many. It seems it did well enough to warrant a sequel, however, so let’s see if it was the right choice to make one.
The world of Syndicate isn’t new, but upon playing Starbreeze’s re-imagining of the series, it may as well be. Thrust into the role of an agent protecting the interests of global leader, Eurocorp, you face a world that has long resisted war, yet failed to escape its anarchistic clutches.
Moving away from the RTS origins of the series, Starbreeze have gone for a whole new approach with Syndicate, now fifteen years since the series first debuted.
Is it the right one?
Batman is arguably the single most recognisable comic book hero ever. Dating back as far as 1939, The Caped Crusader has been seen in numerous TV shows, Movies, thousands of comic book stories and, I might add, a fair few video games. Via all these mediums, the Dark Knight has been portrayed as a supreme detective and crime fighter with unquestionable moral beliefs, determined to clean up the streets of Gotham City.
Naturally, a hero of such magnitude is bound to pick up a few fans along the way, some of whom are likely to be a touch on the wacky side (Andy Knight, I’m looking at you buddy) and it is from here that Monolith Productions have invented Gotham City Imposters. Never mind taking the role of Batman, you will take the role of a man who thinks he’s Batman in an effort to stop another man (who just so happens thinks he’s The Joker) from running amok in your City.
So can a game of wannabes elevate itself above the crowd? Read on to find out…
When Alan Wake was eventually released after many years in development hell, it only turned up on the Xbox 360 (as reviewed here). However, way before it even saw launch, it was being paraded as the game to show off DirectX 10 and Windows Vista for several years, presumably before they realised it may not be such a good thing.
Luckily for all us PC gamers, Remedy have finally managed to bring the game to PC via Steam and let me tell you, this is the perfect way to play this gripping story all the way through.
Bizarrely enough, I quite enjoyed the original King Arthur Roleplaying game. When it came out in in 2009, it felt like a different take on the Total War formula, with the addition of magic and elements of a text adventure. Admittedly, it certainly had its issues, and it was nowhere near as polished as Creative Assembly’s offering.
Nevertheless, I was more than slightly intrigued by the announcement of a sequel. Unfortunately, King Arthur II has quite a few problems that almost cripple it…
Comics are forever being made into films, TV series and games, so full are they of good ideas. From the legendary Sin City and Walking Dead to the indie hit series Scott Pilgrim, comics have been the go-to medium for inspiration for ages. While most developers are content with stripping the big names down and hopping on various cultural bandwagons, it seems TikGames have gone the opposite way entirely and brought a cult-hit graphic novel to XBLA.
Scarygirl, in its native form, is a character and brand encompassing a range of toys and said graphic novel, which is apparently critically acclaimed and much-loved. How creator Nathan Jurevicius managed to get a game made of his work, little known outside the comic book world, is a mystery. How he got Squeenix to publish it is an even bigger one!
No matter though, because it’s out now and I opted to take the plunge and see what all the fuss is about.
The name Futuremark should be one that most people who like tinkering with their PCs should know quite a lot about. They make 3D Mark, perhaps the most famous benchmarking tool for the PC to date.
What most people don’t know is that Futuremark also make games; their first was a PC first-person shooter called Shattered Horizon, which looked fantastic but was deeply flawed at launch. Then they made Hungribles for the iOS, which was a little more successful, and is supposedly quite fun. Now they have returned to Steam with the Unstoppable Gorg, a new and different take on the good old tower defense genre.
Call me insane, but there are times when I just don’t want to think about what I’m doing in a computer game.
It’s true!
Sometimes the only thing I want to do is just get into a game, grab a gun and kill things without so much as a thought to a level, a task or puzzle. So this might explain my love for games like painkiller and Serious Sam, neither of which require any level of brainpower whatsoever. In the case of Serious Sam, there’s also some fairly decent humour to keep you on your toes, but in the end it’s good old-fashioned fun. You don’t need to think; you just enjoy the experience and go with it.
Man has always loved to play God, and perhaps no video-games can better satisfy this desire than the city-building genre originating from the likes of SimCity. The well-established Anno series from Ubisoft has explored this category of simulation and strategy through multiple historic periods, giving the opportunity to establish and nurture civilisations in the classic eras of 1404, 1503, 1602 and 1701. Yet, what happens when you begin to run out of interesting centuries in the past? Why, you go to the future of course!
Developed by Related Designs and Ubisoft Blue Byte, Anno 2070 is a bold new step for the Anno series. After a long hiatus from games of its ilk, I was enthusiastic to indulge my megalomania and erect vast cities in my name (quite literally in fact; I semi-ironically renamed my populations to variations of Jamestown, James Island etc.). What remained to be seen was if they could stand the test of time.
It was Colin McRae’s Dirt that first introduced me to off-road racing in video-games. Eschewing standard rally tracks at times for simply getting down and dirty in the mud, it was a solid racer that glorified 4×4’s and off-road buggies, with slick, slippy-slidy fun.
Yet you could say that Dirt was presenting off-road driving in a fantasy world. Sure, the mud made handling your vehicle a challenge sometimes; but there was no on-the-fly fiddling with differential gears or tire pressure, no rocking backwards and forwards in vain hope to break free of deep slurry, and no winching yourself out of otherwise hopelessly sticky situations.
What’s that? None of that realistic stuff sounds like any fun for a video-game? Oh. It would appear that 1C Company didn’t get the memo, because in an attempt to show how off-road driving should really be simulated, they’ve released, erm… Off-Road Drive
When fair-weather folk talk about who took down Sauron and his armies, that furry-footed hobbit, Frodo, gets all the credit. He took the ring to Mount Doom, they say, and he cast it into the fires from whence it came, they cry. Sure, his Fellowship get a lot of credit as well, but everyone outside of that group seems to be forgotten. Middle Earth is a big place, you know.
Clearly as affected by this as I, Snowblind Studios have a little story of their own to tell, and it isn’t focused on a Baggins. War In The North takes place at the same time as Lord of the Rings, but is focused on another, smaller fellowship created by a Man, an Elf and a Dwarf.
With a laundry list of high-profile releases at the end of the year, WITN is in danger of being forgotten under the Modern Warfares and Just Dances of the world. Being a film tie-in, you’re probably thinking that’s just as justified.
However, I’m here to tell you that War In The North is one of the most fun cooperative experiences I’ve had all year…
Remember when FPS games were all about shooting the shit out of things? Remember when covering behind walls was not an option? Remember when your health didn’t actually regenerate after you had been shot? I do, and it was these classic points of the old-style first person shooters that made them so frenetic and pant-wettingly tense at times.
One of the developers that stood up with the likes of iD was Croteam, who released a little-known game at the time called Serious Sam: The First Encounter. Years have gone by, but some still herald it as one of the best FPS games ever made. Now Sam is back in a prequel to explain how it all started, but is it a great return to nostalgia, or does it feel tired and worn?
You know that object that’s been in your parents house since you were born. You’ve grown up with it and you’ve never questioned its existence in the house, until one day, when it caught your eye for a really unexpected reason and you asked your parents where it came from and they told you how it has a long, deep and rich history?
That’s what it feels like reviewing Minecraft. Apart from the rich, deep history, it’s been sat on my computer for a couple of years now, to a point where I haven’t really questioned its presence until Mojang officially ‘released’ it at Minecon. Oh yeah, you’re a game, aren’t you, Minecraft? Forgot about that.
What does this actually mean for us, as Minecraft’s players? Not much, apparently. New versions of the game will still be released sporadically with new features and added extras, and as such, the game won’t lose the in-development feel that it’s had, except for the fact the ‘Beta’ notification has been taken out of the top left of the screen.
After the impressive efforts by Criterion with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, it was a little disappointing to see the masters of arcade racers being pushed back from developing EA’s latest entry into the NFS franchise.
It gets to a point now whether you wonder if the series is ever going to be consistent year in and year out, and with that apprehension in your mind, it’s no wonder why fans of the series tend to get nervous. As the franchise itself is so heavily ingrained by high sales figures it is little wonder why EA chop and change developers, and some would argue that the series’ bold new direction this year is backed up by the idea that it needs new hotness to progress onwards for another decade. Is NFS: The Run another solid effort, or is this one worth taking the next exit to avoid?
Harry is very attached to his wand; you could even say he uses it more than a mobile phone (who does that these days!?). It’s definitely got him out of some tough scrapes. It’s also provided him plenty of laughs. Whether he’s summoning a patronus to quell dementors, or splattering cake in the face of his distant relatives, Harry is pretty invested in his little wooden wonder-stick.
However, as he grows older, so his problems get much worse. Whereas Years 1-4 of LEGO Harry Potter were filled with a great deal of wonder and excitement, in Years 5-7, darkness is definitely spreading and the only way to stop it is to confront Lord Voldemort once and for all.
How does the generally charming, easy-going LEGO franchise deal with such ferocious source material?
This is going to be an odd review, mainly because it isn’t one. I’ve always found it interesting when games such as Skyrim, with hundreds of hours of gameplay to offer, can be summed up on release day, plot and all, by publications far and wide. The chances of them having actually completed the storyline is very slim, even if they received the game weeks before release. Even if one poor soul had to rush through the main quest so he could write about it, in doing so he would have missed the point of Skyrim; to get side-tracked, drawn in and generally lost in the world. No one can give a full impression of a game this massive after only a week on the shelves.
So this won’t be the definitive TIMJ review of Skyrim. It won’t even be my definitive review of Skyrim. Unlike pretty much any other game out there, it’s impossible to give you guys a normal review even after playing it every night since release day. I’ve only just scratched the surface, and even if you too grabbed a copy on the 11th, I doubt you will have got much deeper than me. It’s a vast game with an incredible amount to offer, way too much to experience in just a week. So instead I’m going to talk about how Bethesda have put the work in and improved almost every aspect of The Elder Scrolls since the diamond classic Oblivion, and look at a few areas where the ball has been dropped, as well as give you my overall impression so far.
Amongst PC gamers (and even many console gamers nowadays), practically everyone is familiar with the real-time strategy and real-time tactical genres, whether your thing is rushing foes with zerglings in Starcraft, relishing in the epic historical battles of the Total War series, or commanding supremely in Supreme Commander. You’ve no doubt spent many an hour as the omnipotent floating General-deity, feverishly clicking away from a birds-eye view to force soldiers to enact your will.
Whereas I’m well-accustomed to the more prominent titles in the genre, however, the Men of War series has passed me by over the last few years. Developed by a variety of different teams, the franchise has enjoyed moderate sleeper-hit success amongst diehard strategists, with several standalone expansion packs accompanying the original game. The latest, Men of War: Vietnam, has been handled by 1C Company (also the publisher for the series), and sees the license delving in to the tense warfare of Baghdad.
… Okay, just making sure you’re paying attention.
Saints Row and I have had something of a mixed history. The original game was one of the first that I actually got paid for reviewing (man, I cringe so hard, reading that review back), and without a comparable experience on the system at the time, I adored it. At this time everyone was comparing it to Grand Theft Auto and, to be fair, the comparisons to Rockstar’s games from last-gen were there for all to see.
Since then, the two franchises have taken different directions. GTA matured over its three iterations, leading to a bleaker, grittier piece of social commentary in GTA IV, while Saints Row took no time in filling the void of pure, unadulterated childishness. Volition undeniably ramped that aspect up something chronic in the inevitable sequel, to the degree where the two franchises were no longer competitors.
Somehow, though, despite my best efforts, that sequel just didn’t click for me in the same way it seemingly did for everyone else. My indifference led me to start it, and give up pretty quickly; something that I just wasn’t expecting to happen. There were probably just more interesting games to me at the time and that, coupled with the game’s slow start (who would have thought a prison break would be a slow start?) left me feeling apathetic towards it on every level. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Still, everyone else adored it, and that success has ultimately led to the recent release of Saints Row: The Third. A title expected to skew the series’ sketchy perspective on reality even further.
Silly it might aim to be, but is it a good game?
Football Manager is now in its eighth year since Sports Interactive split with Eidos and teamed up with Sega, but as all fans know the genes of the series derive from the original Championship Manager title way back in 1992. In whatever form it’s taken, it has been widely regarded as the most in-depth management Sim for a very long time.
Like many of us football fans, I have spent a few long nights with various versions of both the original and subsequent Championship Manager, and more recently the Football Manager Series, desperately wanting to get in “one last game”, which soon becomes “just finish the season”, before ultimately leading to “I’ll just go through the free agents and my short list to get the squad sorted for next year…”.
Naturally, all this meant that when a review copy of the recently released Football Manager 2012 arrived at TIMJ I was very quick to raise my hand, don my Parker and take to the training pitch in a bid to lead my country to World Cup glory (via multiple promotions a few Champions League titles and the odd run-in with a virtual Ken Bates style chairman).
Can Football Manager 2012 make all my dreams come true, or is it destined for a life scratching around the lower leagues before seeing out its days in the Isthmian League?
I’ve almost had enough of the Sims this year, having reviewed three iterations of the series on two different platforms. There’s only so many times you can really say the same things about it, which makes reviewing each one an incrementally difficult proposition. The Sims is the Sims; it is what it is, and usually you’ll know if you like it or not.
I was sent a review copy of Sims Medieval a while back, but already being a good period after release and with more important and urgent games to review between then and now, it was put to the wayside. Thanks to a delay with another review copy I’ve been expecting, I’ve had some time spare to take a look.
I’ll admit, I was dreading a lazily re-skinned Sims title, but what I actually got was a lite-RPG in Sim’s clothing. Let me boldly state now: The Sims: Medieval is a complete breath of fresh air for the series.
It’s almost as if an introduction isn’t needed for this game. If you haven’t heard from the franchise before then you’re most definitely not a gamer, or at least an incredibly bad one. The possibility of being able to trawl through a video-game shelf in your local store without coming across one of the Call of Duty titles has gone so low I can’t even see the amount of numbers after the decimal points, let alone count them.
So reading this review is like entering a home you’ve already become accustomed to. Welcome in, make yourself at home. Would you like some tea? Your favourite cup is where you left it last time; shall we talk about Modern Warfare 3?
Ever since EA stopped making good versions of Sim City, several companies have tried to make their own versions of the popular city building game to saté the demand of all the mayoral wannabes.
Perhaps foremost among these is the Cities XL series, which has been digging out itself a niche. Now, Cities XL 2012 has just been released. Does it add much to the series? Or is it more of an incremental upgrade not worth the planning permission?
Synchronising three timelines together into one story is a difficult narrative arc to get right. Some writers struggle trying to convey one character’s journey, let alone trying to handle three adventures at the same time. It’s a bold undertaking from Ubisoft, not only trying to draw conclusion to the story of Ezio Auditore, but to allow Desmond Miles’ adventures to continue, whilst revealing new secrets and details about the life of the original Assassin, Altair.
Yet, here we have Revelations, confident that it can juggle such a responsibility, preparing us for the ultimate experience. Is this the definitive Assassin’s Creed game that Ubisoft have been striving to make since the very beginning, or is this a series that should disappear back into the shadows from whence it came?
Let’s face it: we’re already inundated with shooters at the moment. Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3 are amongst the many titles that have allowed us to spray bullets in each other’s faces lately. Unsurprisingly, it’s all getting a little too déjà vu for some. After all, these sequels are not only similar to their predecessors in each respective franchise; you could argue that the series themselves are becoming more alike with each iteration.
Cue Tripwire Interactive, offering something a little different for the discerning, gun-toting connoisseur. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is a World War II FPS…
… ‘Hang on a minute!’ I hear you exclaim. ‘Yet another World War II shooter? I thought this was meant to be something different; the World War II genre died a death years ago for being too samey!’ Well, don’t click that ‘close tab’ button in disgust just yet.
Red Orchestra 2 has more than a few tricks up its grubby, blood-soiled sleeves, opting for a uniquely realistic but mostly accessible simulation of the hackneyed and overworked era.
Uniting established fictional universes can either be a masterstroke of genius, or an impending experimentation of doom. For something so drastic and enterprising, there is no middle ground for it to sit back on. That’s why the ambition rarely reaches the stage of execution, and if it does, either lives on in infamy or is razed to cinders, never to be heard from again.
One of the more successful efforts sees Marvel, with its web-slinging super hero and victims of scientific experiments gone wrong, going up against Capcom and its justice seeking lawyer and camera-snapping zombie hunters. The house that built Iron Man against the sponsor of the world’s greatest Street Fighters.
It’s a unity that seems to work harmoniously together, and yet creates a beautifully anarchistic play-pen for these characters to throw down the gauntlet and blow chunks out of each other with offensive arsenals.
Now the radically glorious brawler is back for a second turn this year, but with a few added bells and whistles. Question is, with so much rich competition out in the final months of the year, can it possibly be worth another glance?
I’m going to put this out there before I go in-depth with this review: I know shit-all about Warhammer and even less about Warhammer 40,000. I know that Warhammer as a brand is a fantasy table-top game, sold in Games Workshop stores around the globe, and I know that people spend hours meticulously hand-painting the figurines to play with. I know that there are some games on the PC that are related to this franchise and that they’re mainly RTS games. That’s where my knowledge ends.
So, it was a huge surprise to me when Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine took my fancy following the demo. Still not entirely sure what the hell was going on but eager to learn, I volunteered to tackle the full release…
Welcome to Arkham City. If you are looking for clean streets, green parks and a peaceful existence away from the hurly-burly of modern-day city life… you’ve really come to the wrong place! Here you’ve got criminals roaming the streets, buildings decaying all around you and a severe bat-infestation, but if that is your thing then make yourself at home. Just be careful, because once you are in, you might not want to leave…
If the recent revolution in Libya has taught us one thing, it’s that freedom and liberty are more than worth fighting for. As we watch millions of people brave gunfire and regime reprisals to make their voices heard, most of us are counting our blessings and feeling pretty lucky to live in a democratic nation.
Many of us even support our Arab neighbours; I myself give to the Red Cross and was pleased to hear that they got support to the Libyan rebels extremely quickly. What must it have been like for Gaddafi, watching his people rise up against him and take up arms to overthrow him? Can we possibly understand what that’s like?
Well, not really. None of us run a dictatorship, let alone one that has been active for 40 or so years. Yet many of us are fascinated by the prospect of running a country, and through many games over the years we’ve had our chance.
Now Kalypso Media and Haemimont Games have returned with the fourth iteration of their Tropico series, a game which lets you start your own little tropical paradise and attempt to lead it to prosperity. Having played Tropico 3 a lot and thoroughly enjoyed it, I jumped at the chance to see what improvements and innovations the new title brings.
It seems that after a lifetime of not really bothering with the Sims as a series, with this very piece I’ll have reviewed two of the games in relatively quick succession (with another on the way). The Sims 3: Pets is the latest title out of EA’s stable (fnar fnar!), introducing dogs and cats (and horses, in the PC version) into the plate-spinning life simulator that is the Sims 3. What separates this Pets edition over the previous expansion from Sims 2, is that you can now control the animals that are in your household; after all, they’re part of the family!
Released as an expansion pack on PC, but as its own separate game on other formats, EA have put a lot of marketing power behind this title. Do pets win prizes or is it a big, steaming dog turd?
It seems like ages since fans have begged Sega for high-definition ports of some of his early adventures. It did take Sega ages but the publisher finally caved in (to a certain extent) this year, with the arrival of Sonic’s twentieth year in the video-games industry. Sonic Generations is not your usual Sonic game, since all of the zones in it are remakes of those found in previous games.
Recent games might not have been in the hedgehog’s best interests, but there is no denying that people still have fond memories of the Mega Drive games. Is it enough, though, to call for development of a new game consisting of old Sonic levels, or is this another step in the wrong direction?
For years now, I have been entertained by Team 17’s Worms. Back in the early days of PC gaming, Worms was my go-to game; all my friends would come round and we would play the multiplayer by taking turns on the mouse, creating teams of worms with hilarious (and sometimes rude) names. After years of producing 2D games things were beginning to get a little stale, and in the early 2000’s Worms took the path taken by many games of the era, and made the jump from 2D to 3D. Now, in 2011 those 3D worms are back…
Bioware have always kept stories within their worlds very exclusive, and rarely outsource. It’s a testament to the quality of their in-house staff, and also to how highly they value their franchises.
For the first time ever, though, they’ve broken the mould, and allowed The Guild star, Felicia Day, to help create her own character within the Dragon Age world, pen a web series based on their popular franchise, and star in a piece of downloadable content featuring her newly created character.
A nerd’s paradise, for sure, not only has Redemption started airing on YouTube to rave reviews, now Mark of the Assassin has infiltrated gaming marketplaces. However, with Dragon Age II being a sore spot for many, and the victim of regular trade-ins and dust collection since March, can even Day enrich the franchise with her natural charm and enthusiasm?
id Software is often the developer labelled as the daddy of the modern-day first-person shooter. While their pedigree in that field is without question, and something we witnessed first hand at the Eurogamer Expo, it’s been a really long time since they’ve given us something new. Instead they’ve focused on great sequels, polishing their idTech5 game engine and re-releasing their classic games across multiple platforms.
So, after a hefty wait, RAGE becomes the first new IP from id Software since Quake in 1996. Does it live up to the heritage that they’ve been reminding everyone of recently?
I love bacon, and I know I’m not alone. Hell, even the veggies like bacon! So, one has to wonder, what isn’t there to like about a game called The Baconing? Surely, it will be filled with slices of pig, all frazzled and fried into streaky meaty goodness, ripe for sticking between two slices of bread with some brown sauce for a good, early morning hangover cure. Surely, the Armageddon of our world wouldn’t be so bad if we were to be engulfed by hog?
Well, Hothead Games clearly think so, and obviously have a phobia of Trotters and Troughs, as they’ve tasked their intrepid hero, DeathSpank, to rid the World of such an impending doom. However, with this being his third outing, and with such a hero being compared to bacon, one has to wonder, is Spanky-two-hands the one overstaying his welcome?
Despite a solid heritage on the PlayStation, the Driver franchise left a lot to be desired during the last console generation (particularly Driv3r, abysmal in both name and design). Like a disgraced uncle who got a little worse for wear at the last family reunion, flashing his nieces and vomiting over the vol-au-vents, it has been too embarrassed to show much of its sheepish face for a few years now.
In a last bid attempt to revive the series, Ubisoft have released Driver: San Francisco on this generation of consoles for the first time. Does the ol’ gal have some life left in it yet, or is it barely worth its weight in scrap?
Watching daredevil motocross drivers on big bikes hurl themselves up big ramps, and twist their bodies around in impossible postures while flying through the air can be quite exhilarating. Doing it yourself is much less appealing to most of us. Doing it on a console from the comfort (not to mention relative safety) of your favourite gaming chair is a much more attractive proposition… unless that proposition comes from Red Bull X-Fighters.
In the words of the third-best manager in English League history: ‘Some say that football is a matter of life and death; I assure you it’s much more important than that’. This is why every year, without fail, millions of gamers get excited when autumn arrives. The trees turn from green to brown, shorts are replaced by jogging bottoms and EA Sports release the latest game in the behemoth that is the FIFA franchise.
Over the life-cycle of this generation of home consoles, FIFA has not only gone to the top of the football tree, it has left its competitors behind in a swamp of Ultimate Team Pack wrappers, dreaming of the day they too can get a full 11v11 online match running.
Although I have been quick to champion the possible return to greatness of the other big football franchise (review forthcoming), it is pretty clear from the sales, the forums and my friends list that FIFA is still the daddy. Question is, does it justify this position? Read on to find out.
It has been an incredibly long time since an arcade game release that has got me totally addicted to high-score leaderboards. Then, just like a bus, two come out in the same week. Firstly we have Burnout: Crash (review forthcoming), and secondly we have a little-known game called Rotastic, from a small known developer in the heart of Paris. If you loved the addictive qualities of Popcap’s Peggle, then you are going to fall in love with Dancing Dot Studio’s simple but addictive arcade gem.
Okay, let me get straight to the point. SBK: Superbike World Championship 2011 is a great example of when video-games in the simulation genre are so busy aiming to be technically realistic, they forget to be a game, and any element of fun is lost creating the real-world experience. As for myself, I have never driven a powerful superbike, so I do not know what it feels like. I have tasted two-wheeled speed when I was in my late teens, however, ‘hooning’ about on my 50cc Honda moped.
It felt fun, and even moving at a top speed of 41MPH, there were times it genuinely felt quite fast and dangerous ( especially the time I came off the thing and broke 2 ribs and my wrist). That, however, is where I feel the game’s creators Milestone Studios miss out on key reality elements. When driving your all-powerful superbike in SBK 2011, it is seriously lacking in any sense of fun, speed or danger.
What do you do when the world is threatened by the might of an evil super villain, who has nothing better to with his time than to systematically destroy the world and all life on it? The answer? Well, according to the leaders of the world in Renegade Ops, the answer is actually very little. When that threat is the nefarious Inferno, it seems like he really doesn’t mess around. However, you can set your fears aside; General Bryant isn’t going to take this one lying down.
Instead, he is going to amass a team of specialists (‘Renegade Operatives’, if you will), and hook them up with enough weaponry and destructive power to leave the enemy begging for them to stop. With his crew by his side, it is time to take on Inferno and make him pay for ever thinking about being a party in the destruction of the Earth.
The Madden franchise is one of the games industry’s longest running sports series’, endearing fans of Gridiron action for well over a decade.
So, another year and another Madden release, but will the 2012 offering take the series forward with new features, or is it just more of the same, hiding behind another high-profile cover athlete?
Despite half of the developed world claiming to have no religion, and religion itself slowly being purged from every aspect of daily life to be replaced by realism and science, we just love to play God. From the careful nurturing of Civilization to the all-powerful nature of Black & White, ‘God games’, as they’ve come to be known, have dominated PC top-ten lists since time began.
They haven’t done so well on consoles, however, most likely due to the difference in gamer preference and the notable absence of a mouse pointer. From Dust, an XBLA release by Ubisoft’s sunny, south-of-France studio Ubisoft Montpellier, is set to change all that. With a simple, controller-based system and a shit-ton of hype preceding it, can it really be the one to break the mould? I think not, and here’s why…
I admit that in order to play a certain type of game, you don’t exactly need to participate in the activity in real life. I don’t work for criminal gangs and mob bosses, or spend time joyriding in cars stolen from my neighbourhood, but I still enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto. It’s rare that I visit magical fantasy worlds and slay dragons for my holidays (sadly), but that doesn’t stop me from being absolutely psyched for Skyrim.
That said, my general apathy (and incompetence) as far as sports are concerned has effectively caused me to steer clear of practically all games in the genre. I couldn’t care less about the yearly rivalry between FIFA and PES, and nor was I excited about SEGA’s latest release in their Virtua Tennis Series. When a reviewer was needed for Virtua Tennis 4, however, I bravely stepped up to the role regardless (I know; I’m an inspiration).
With absolutely no knowledge of the real-world game of tennis, or previous video-games of the sport, I wouldn’t get your hopes up for an overly informed review. Nevertheless, read on as I serve up my own spin on the game (and hopefully not too many more terrible puns).
The future is coming, and with it comes promise of a better life, a better world and even a better kind of humanity, through the marvel of technology. In fact, the future is closer than you think. As time has gone by, technology has been marching closer and closer to the human body itself.
It started out with a massive computer sitting in a warehouse somewhere… then it got a little smaller and moved onto a desk in your house… then it got even smaller and jumped onto your lap. Then it got even smaller still and leapt into your pocket, and we’ve already seen examples of it jumping into the body itself: artificial limbs, glass eyes with miniature cameras, and even artificial hearts. The future is closer than you think, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a wake-up call for you stand up and take notice.
Sometimes video-games can be a little bit out-there, giving us a real chance of escapism, such as Mr Mosquito or Toe Jam and Earl. On other occasions they can be supremely realistic and offer a chance to live out our childhood fantasies, like Call of Duty or FIFA. Rock of Ages from ACE Team certainly falls into the former category; this is of course unless your childhood fantasy was to roll a giant boulder down a hill on a mission to storm a castle while avoiding angry bulls.
Released this week to the XBLA for 800MP, I have loaded my catapults, built my towers and given my boulder one almighty shove, to see if this strange mix of attack and defence can bowl a strike. Read on to find out if it did.
Holidays are a necessity. We all need a break from the insanely fast-paced nature that the 21st Century dictates. Without time to relax and unwind, we’d probably all be bouncing off the walls, our eyes spinning inside our head and our tongues permanently poked out, looking like a cross between a gargoyle and a caffeine-fuelled cartoon character.
Naturally, the concept of rest and relaxation varies from person to person. Some choose to go to remote, countryside landscapes, others choose to go to theme parks and ride turbulent rollercoasters. Then there are those who love the all-inclusive beach resorts that offer free food, drink and sun. For the cast of Dead Island, this final option certainly seems to be the most enticing.
That is until their blissful nirvana is marred by cannibalised corpses and swimming pools discoloured with blood. Suddenly, they wish they were back home, stuffing envelopes and making daisy chains out of paperclips.
Dead Island is one of most talked about games of the year, and one that certainly seems to have people on the fence. Now that the wait is finally over, I tell you, once and for all, whether the whole experience is worth taking a vacation for…
Spoofs have been rife in entertainment for decades, and are usually spawned on the heels of an enormously successful intellectual property. That applies to films, to books, and inevitably applies to games. Back in 1996, Duke Nukem 3D came on the scene and brought character and pizzaz to a genre that was as wooden as Pinocchio’s bollocks. It was a game that changed the way we look at the first person shooter genre forever, and had critics and fans singing its praises like a choir of sexually aroused revolutionists (pixel nips and triangular tits are way better than your 2011 curves!) So it was inevitable that someone would come along, put a spin on all of that and make their own concoction of carnage.
Introducing Croteam and Serious Sam.
Sam had the same hard-ass demeanour, the same obsession with big guns, an uncanny resemblance to Duke and, to top it off, he liked his naked chicks. When advertising the game, they really couldn’t have made it more obvious if they tried. And then, when people actually got to play the game, they could see just how far removed this was from Mr Nukem’s exploits. It became one of the few FPS experiences that actually managed to instil panic and terror in the player, with the sheer numbers of enemies that would descend on your position at any one time. What started out as a bit of a joke turned into something much greater.
Now, after a hiatus, and conveniently when Duke Forever finally hits our shelves, Sam is back in a big way and bringing more tongue-in-cheek than ever with him, but will he have the last laugh?
Call of Juarez: The Cartel is the third game in the Western First Person Shooter series from Techland, and moves the series from the badlands of Mexico to a modern day setting on the streets of Los Angeles. That is not to say that there aren’t still some links to its predecessors, with a few levels still based in the Mexican planes, and both the chief hero and villain being descendants of those in the earlier titles.
Out now for both PS3 and Xbox 360, and with a PC version due in September, all the major platforms are covered here. Read on as I pick up my six-shooter, to see if the modernisation has helped or hindered what has become something of a cult series, since its debut back in 2006.
I’ll be honest: Dragon Age 2 disappointed me [if you remember, Debbie rather liked it – Andy]. I was a big fan of the original game, but found that its sequel fell quite short of the mark. Confining the player to a city for 80% of the game with only a few brief excursions outside, it became tedious deep into the second act. By the time you reached the end, you’d gone past the stage of caring. Really, I expected much more from the series, and from Bioware. It seems I wasn’t alone either; the outcry against Dragon Age 2 still continues and seems to outweigh the positivity at every turn.
Bioware have heard the feedback, and claim that they’ve been listening. Upon announcing the DLC, they said that they will be focusing on the things that people love about Dragon Age, and moving away from the foundations set by Dragon Age 2 which they disliked.
Now that I’ve got my hands on Legacy, I can tell you that it is definitely a step in the right direction…
I am (just about) old enough to remember the original release of Boulder Dash back in the Mid Eighties. In fact, it is one of the first computer games I ever played on my nice ZX Spectrum as an impressionable five-year old. 25 years on, as part of Microsoft’s now infamous “Summer of Arcade”, the game has been lovingly re-created and given an XL makeover by Catnip Games.
The usual questions regarding “classic” remakes inevitably follow, so I have taken to the time machine and entered 1984 gaming to see if the new version can equal the original and acquire the “classic” tag all over again.
Whenever the name “Alice in Wonderland” is mentioned, one of two images spring to most people’s minds. The cuddly yet strangely disturbing Disney telling or the original text penned by the literary legend Lewis Carroll. Recently, however, a new imagining of the tale has been creeping into our cultural history, a version that is quickly becoming the definitive one for many. American McGee, iD Software (the guys behind a little game called Doom) veteran and gaming visionary showed us his twisted vision of the classic in 2000, introducing us to his broken and insane Alice and scaring the shit out of us with his ruined Wonderland.
Fast forward eleven years and, despite the fact that most of the world has forgotten about it, Alice is back to finish what she started. Alice: Madness Returns, developed by McGee and his Shanghai studio Spicy Horse, is out now for all the consoles and the PC, which is what I’ve been playing it on. Alice has been away for a long time, almost as long as Duke, so can she still compete with the best out there? Titles like Darksiders, Enslaved and Prince of Persia have brought new innovations to the action platformer genre, while the style itself has fallen out of favour in recent times. Does all this really matter? Not at all, and I’ll tell you why…
From First Person Shooter to Third Person Sandboxer, the Red Faction series shows that THQ developer, Volition, aren’t afraid to reinvent the wheel when it comes to one of their cult franchises. The first Red Faction was famous for its ‘Geomod’ technology that allowed players to deform the terrain and structures around them with explosive power, making Keycards a thing of the past. After a lengthy hiatus (for the gaming world, anyway), in 2009, Volition brought the series into the current generation with Red Faction: Guerrilla, and boy was it impressive.
Alec Mason’s tale of a political power struggle on a terraformed Mars stayed with me for quite some time, and after playing it, I was happily labelling it as one of the most polished Sandbox games I’ve encountered. The upgraded destruction was easily the most memorable aspect of a largely enjoyable game, as nearly every building you looked at could be destroyed in some way, shape or form. Toppling entire buildings was a joy to behold as you could almost feel damaged structures struggling under their own weight, before satisfyingly crashing to the ground in a destructive orgasm of steel and concrete.
Two years later and Volition are back again with their next instalment, and once again they’ve decided to change things up. Is it for better or worse?
As part of writing for games, you will always receive shovelware to review. Unfortunately most of them come from the educational or kids lines, where the games don’t receive the money or attention they deserve. Luckily one educational game that has received the time and money to make it a decent game is Fate of the World, the latest game from the team behind BBC 1’s Climate Challenge.
I’ve declared my love for Street Fighter a few times on here since we started, not least when I reviewed Super Street Fighter IV last year. My entire youth was spent playing Street Fighter games in some capacity, and to this day the series still means a lot to me and my life with games.
Now, Capcom have decided to see out their fourth iteration of their seminal fighter by releasing a DLC pack that will update your copy of Super Street Fighter IV, making it the definitive and final version that they’ll release. Available now on Xbox Live & PSN for 1200MP and £11.99 respectively, and soon on retail disk; is it worth your cash?
Way back in October last year, I was fortunate enough to go to Earls Court for This Is My Joystick and take in the Eurogamer Expo for the first time. Whilst there I managed to get some hands-on experience with a few promising titles that we have subsequently seen hit the shelves with varying degrees of acclaim. Titles such as FIFA, PES, F1, Gran Turismo, Killzone 3 and Medal of Honour were all on show and at various stages of development, but as I left the Exhibition Centre there was only really one game that I was thinking about; Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.
The game, created by inXile and published by Bethesda, is a third-person Dungeon Crawler that is very much geared towards co-op play. The early demo was covered in some detail by Jacob, who also had some hands-on time at last year’s E3 and we have been tracking the game ever since. The Xbox 360 version finally hit the shelves on June 3rd and I was quick to get my hands on a copy to find out if the final product lived up to the early promise.
I took my time in reviewing Duke Nukem Forever. Not because I decided to conduct some weird, parallel ritual to its development time or because I was waiting for others opinion. I did it because I wanted to make sure I got this review absolutely right. That I was giving a semblance of sacrifice through carefully considering my words, hoping it goes some way to help justify the efforts of numerous developers who have worked on this game and have done for the last thirteen years.
No game has ever taken this long in being developed and, as a result, the Duke Nukem name has gone from being one of the most beloved and iconic in our industry to a laughing-stock. Back in ’96, Duke was ripping other games and their developers to shreds, revelling in his own self-worth at how much ahead of the pack he was. Now, he’s fallen so far behind, the competition doesn’t even acknowledge that he even existed.
So, is Forever the comeback Duke needed, or will this be the final nail in his coffin? Can he really make an impact all over again?
I remember a time when there were plenty of realistic and punishing shooters available on the market (it wasn’t that long ago either, even for consoles!), but in times when even Ubisoft are taking Ghost Recon in a faster-paced, action route, the hardcore market is looking remarkably bare. To me, it’s a great shame that while the Call of Dutys’ seemingly rule the market, those after something a tad more cerebral have to lose out. Defiantly, Codemasters are back with Red River, another entry into the Operation Flashpoint series; a squad-based shooter that’s well known for its brutally punishing nature and requirement for tactical foresight.
In spite of its flaws, I have to admit that to being a fan of the previous game, Dragon Rising. It was tense, challenging and absolutely thrilling from start to finish (former Staff Writer, Brian, agreed in his review), so you can probably imagine how I must have been eagerly awaiting the new game something chronic. So, did it make the grade?
SNIPER: Ghost Warrior was originally released on the PC and Xbox 360 around a year ago to universal panning from the critics, earning itself an average of only 45/100 on [Metacritic] for the 360. Dodgy technical integrity and questionable design decisions left SNIPER with a bitter, acquired taste that many would have rather spat out. This begs the question: What possible reasons could City Interactive have to port the game over to PS3?
Well, firstly, the game actually didn’t sell too badly despite its shortcomings, amassing one million sales altogether in the first seven months. I don’t know whether its decidedly badass name and pretty picture on the front cover saved the day here, but either way, SNIPER shifted enough copies to justify a sequel; Ghost Warrior 2 is headed to store shelves later this year, for all three platforms at once.
A slightly more compelling excuse for SNIPER PS3 arriving to the party almost a year late, than merely to prepare Sony fans for the sequel, is that (according to the advertising spiel) the game has been ‘massively enhanced’, this time round. Sadly/thankfully I didn’t get to experience the apparently messy original on PC and Xbox 360, so I’m approaching the PS3 version with a fresh outlook, untarnished by any past mistakes. Will SNIPER: Ghost Warrior have its sights set for a dead-on hit this time round, or is another miss inevitable?
Point-and-click adventure games have been like buses for me lately; I hadn’t played one in years and then, all of a sudden, two came along for me to review at once. I was impressed with WizarBox’s efforts in my Gray Matter review, and next on the agenda is Black Mirror III. Developed by Cranberry Productions, Black Mirror III concludes the series trilogy which began back in 2003.
Gray Matter has set the bar for a quality modern point-and-click adventure game, with beautifully drawn locations, a fascinating storyline, and surprisingly good voice acting and background music. Can Black Mirror III live up to these standards, or should it take a good, hard look at itself in the… you know?
Portal 2 has been one of the most anticipated games in recent history, and with so much hype around the release, James ‘O’ looks at the sequel to one of Valve’s most popular games ever, the genre-revolutionising Portal. Released on PC, Xbox and PS3 back in April, Portal 2 is a great example of how a small game like Portal can grow up and stand on its own two feet against other behemoth titles in the gaming industry.
There aren’t many games out there that I can look back to as being landmark titles in my gaming life, but one of them would easily be the Colin McRae Rally series. While I’ll never class any of the series among my favourite games of all time, the reason I recall it with so much importance is it was one of two titles back in the 90s that helped change my mind entirely on the merits of the racing genre (the other was Gran Turismo, if you’re wondering). Since the series’ inception in ‘98, a lot has changed in its transition from simple Rally simulation to the off-road extreme Motorsports powerhouse it has become in recent years, but the most felt change came with the passing of the titular man in tragic circumstances in 2007.
With McRae gone but not forgotten, Codemasters have decided that now is their time to move on, with DiRT 3 being the first off-road game from them in eight iterations to omit the McRae moniker that would no doubt have otherwise adorned the box. It’s fitting then, that while respecting what came before, Codies have taken a chance on implementing what could be a big part of the series’ future in Gymkhana. The burning question, though; is that future bright?
More than ten years ago, the real-time strategy genre was still budding. It was back in the summer of 2000 that Starcraft took the world by storm to become one of the most popular games of the history of our hobby but in the same month of July, basically back-to-back with Blizzard’s giant, another strategy game, slower paced but no less interesting, was released by Creative Assembly. It was Shogun: Total War. Despite not reaching the massive popularity of Blizzard’s early masterpiece, Shogun managed to carve for itself a very strong niche of followers and enthusiasts, that still lives and thrives to this day.
It’s also not surprising that the success of the first title spawned sequels, with the Total War series exploring history from the middle ages to the Napoleonic wars, through three different publishers, and a lot of awesome user-created mods. After all those years, it was only natural for the Creative Assembly to revisit their origins, going back to the Sengoku Jidai; the Japanese “period of the country at war”, with Total War: Shogun 2.
For those of you not familiar with Moto GP, it is effectively the Formula 1 of motor bikes. The season comprises eighteen race weekends across fourteen countries and includes insane speeds, superstar riders and all sorts of cutting edge technology just like its four-wheeled cousin.
Moto GP 10/11 is the latest video game iteration of the sport, developed by Monumental, and follows this year’s schedule. Does it match up in video game format to Codemasters F1 title? Read on to find out.
Dragon Age Origins, to me, was always something that could have been brilliant, but just fell a little too short the second it started to take itself too seriously. I remember playing Origins very clearly; sure, there was some light humour here and there but it was always good to put Alistair and Morrigan in the same party if you were up for an extra laugh to distract from the heavy nature of the plot.
Until I played the demo for Dragon Age II I was expecting to feel the same about the sequel. I thought it was just going to be another western RPG filled with over the top lore, sprinkled with a healthy dose of dragons and magic. I am so glad I was mistaken, as this has now turned into a potential winner for my game of the year so far.
As a huge fan of both Warhammer 40,000’s Imperial Guard and games from Relic, it’s pretty much a given that I would love the latest expansion pack to Dawn of War II. This is an expansion pack which brings those weak, squishy masses of humankind to Relic’s tactical game. However, the game is also perhaps the best entry of the series, bringing all the races from all of the games and finally shedding some of the oddities that flawed the previous iterations.
For those gamers who don’t know, Warhammer 40,000 is a sci-fi universe set in the 41st Millennium, and is ravaged by war. It’s the perfect set-up for games, and Relic’s Dawn of War series has been the prime example in recent years.
Two Worlds was released from Polish developer Reality Pump in 2007 to mixed reception. While its ambition was praised, the graphics, gameplay and voice acting were all heavily criticised. I played it only briefly and felt it had so much unrealised potential. When I received its sequel to review, with a problematic release in the UK, I was apprehensive to say the least. The over-complexity and clunky mechanics of the first game were still etched in my mind, and being the cynical bugger I am I fully expected this one to be more of the same. Was I right to be so jaded in my prediction? Hell no, and here’s why…
If solving traffic problems using public transport floats your boat. If you have been waiting for almost a decade for another Traffic Management simulation to surface on the PC. If you like buses, then Sarbjit Bakhshi has just two words for you about Paradox Interactive & Colossal Order’s new ‘Cities in Motion’ game: ‘Hubba, hubba!’
In computer gaming days of yore, point-and-click adventure games were all the rage. I have fond memories of playing the Monkey Island series on my Amiga, along with others like Indiana Jones and even Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. This eclectic genre of gaming has lived on, albeit nowadays in more of an underground, cult form. I haven’t dabbled in any point-and-clicks for ages, so was excited at the prospect of getting my hands on the latest title by WizarBox, Gray Matter. I’m feeling generous, so I’ll go along with its Americanised spelling and try not to complain too much.
One reason why Gray Matter is particularly promising is that the development team included Jane Jensen, the person responsible for the popular point-and-click Gabriel Knight series from the 90s. With this experience and heritage under its belt, will Gray Matter bring the genre refreshingly up to date, or will it be too stuck in the past?
Sometimes cars get fed up of driving around in circles and racing for the finish line. When this happens, what should they do? Well, how about arming themselves to the teeth with missiles, machine guns and bombs, and blasting the utter shit out of each other instead? This is the concept behind Crasher, a new MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game (don’t worry, I’ve never heard of the genre either), from the fledgling game studio Punchers Impact. Crasher is available for download now from the Steam Store.
Sounds awesome on paper, but will the developer’s inexperience and low funding get in the way of them reaching their ambitions? Will Punchers Impact come out on top with their efforts, or will they ultimately just Crasher and burn? (Ugh, that was awful…)
In a nutshell, Torchlight is the self-assured offspring of World of Warcraft and Diablo. Not surprising, considering a lot of the development team behind the game worked for Blizzard on the original Diablo games. For those that may not know, this was a real cult classic on PC back in 2009 and for good reason; it’s a throwback to the RPG’s of old and blends the very best elements of the genre together into one package.
So surely we’re guaranteed a quality release on Xbox 360 with that kind of pedigree? It would certainly seem that way, although, there’s always the danger of trying to port games such as these onto a console that they will suffer for the translation, be it an issue with frame-rate, controls or things having to be taken out of the game.
So, after many hours of extensive play, This Is My Joystick asks the question, is Torchlight everything we hoped it would be?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sparked controversy for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons being Activision’s rather steep pricing for its numerous map packs. A decade ago, new first person shooter maps on PC were added by the developers as a free gratuity to the community, or created by dedicated modders. It came as no surprise, therefore, that many gamers uttered a sharp intake of breath at the sight of the Stimulus Map Pack on the Xbox Live Marketplace for a hefty 1200 Microsoft Points, or £9.99.
What made this questionable ‘deal’ even less inviting was that only five maps were included, and two of these were simply recycled from the previous Modern Warfare game. Nonetheless, eager Codders bought the DLC in droves, along with the subsequent map packs for the title. Fast-forward to today and Call of Duty: Black Ops has just received the first map pack of its own, rather appropriately named the ‘First Strike’ pack. Pricing is once again set at 1200 MSP, so the question on everyone’s lips is if the package is worth its premium price this time round (unless you’re one of the really dedicated fans/mugs who would buy it regardless).
Fallout: New Vegas is a flawed masterpiece, by now, most of you will be well aware of that. There’s many things the game has done right, aspects which set it apart from its predecessor, and established elements improved for the better. Yet, the game was lathered with appalling, game breaking glitches at launch and remains, despite numerous patches, to be a sloppily presented end product that went gold too soon.
That being said, I’ve spent many hours of my life in the Mojave Wasteland, exploring every nook and cranny, promoting myself from a mere courier, to the very element that will shape the future of New Vegas forever. By no means is New Vegas a small game, but it seems Obsidian aren’t taking any time off from the vast desert wasteland, producing even more content for their open World epic.
The question is, should you go back? Well, This Is My Joystick will throw themselves back unto the blazing heat of the sun, suffering the landscape with parched throats, scorched feet and submitting themselves to radiation poisoning and sleep deprivation to tell you whether you should invest any further into Obsidian’s version of the Fallout series. So sit back, strap your Pip-boy on and let us indulge you with our findings.
Please note: Dead Money is currently only available on Xbox 360, however, on February 21st, will be made available for Playstation 3 and PC. From then on, all future New Vegas DLC will release simultaneously on all three formats.
It’s been a very calm two-year break since Dead Space. Neighbours are no longer calling in to check on you every time they hear a scream, fearing that you are being brutally murdered. It’s that time again though, and Isaac and his pals, the Necromorphs, have come back to haunt our dreams once more, causing more concern for those around us as blood curdling screams rip from our throats while we get our virtual heads ripped off.
If you haven’t finished the original Dead Space, close this page down and do it now before you even think about reading the rest of this review. Visceral have not been shy about spoilers in Dead Space 2 , including vital plot points from the first game which will play a major role in the second part of Isaac’s story.
As a youngster I was kind of infatuated with motorbikes, not racing bikes but motocross. This developed after years of watching kickstart after school and riding the mini bikes at the fair at every opportunity. This diminished as I got older but when I got married a few years ago I couldn’t help but take advantage of the stag-doo option of Quad Biking and loved it. As such, when the review copy of Nail’d hit the TIMJ offices I was quite keen to get a look in.
Nail’d is a new arcade racer developed by the creators of Call of Juarez and Chrome: Techland for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Billed as the “fastest off-road arcade racing game”, it is something of a hybrid of Motorstorm and Pure with an added dose of Billy Whizz. I have recently been spending time with the Xbox 360 version to find out if it’s a Nail’d on winner. Read on to find out.
These days we are overwhelmed with choice when it comes to first person shooters; Call of Duty, Battlefield, Left 4 Dead, Killzone and Halo series just to name a few. Why then would a small, comparatively low-budget first person shooter such as Breach deserve our attention, when there is so much more on offer of a higher calibre? One good reason may be that it’s available on the Xbox Live Arcade for just 1200 points, the same price as a map pack for a certain one of those such games…
Breach, developed by Atomic Games, promises different classes with unlockable weapons and gadgets, three maps (with a nighttime variation of one of them as a bonus), and destructible map elements. The downloadable title Battlefield 1943 released not too long ago at the same price point and was a run away success, so can Atomic Games replicate this achievement or will their efforts, all in all, be just another Breach in the wall?
When I first got into gaming, I realised that I took to it naturally. Before I knew it I was looking for the next game to challenge me, this proved quite difficult, mainly because I was finishing games so quickly. That’s when I started to play RPG’s for both the length of the story and the fantasy and mystical premise. I was completely hooked and I will admit, I would rather invest my money in a good RPG than any other genre.
Moving on several years and a few thousand games later, I rented Divinity 2: Ego Draconis from Lovefilm only to be disappointed with the whole game. Everywhere I went within the world I found issues with it that just put me off. It wasn’t that it was broken or anything, just that it didn’t feel rewarding getting anywhere within the game. I wasn’t sold and after giving it more than a few hours, I sent it back, unfinished.
At the end of last year, I received Divinity 2: Dragon Knight Saga. This version intrigued me as Larian Studios had not only created an entirely new game engine fixing a lot of the issues they had in the original port, but they had also included two games in the package. The first was a rebuilt Ego Draconis (the game that made me feel like killing myself) and the second named Flames of Vengeance; a completely new adventure, released as an expansion on the PC. This game describes itself as a 100 hour adventure, and off I set to see if this game was going to make me change my mind about the series.
When the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Multiplayer was announced, many people were ecstatic about its new and innovative ideas. However, a big group of PC gamers felt that it was a little too familiar to something we had played before. That was The Ship, a gem of a game where players had to murder carefully selected opponents in interesting ways without incurring civilian casualties or letting security see them welding a revolver. Now Outerlight’s latest game has graced Xbox Live Arcade and Steam and it’s a fitting sequel to the original covert murder them up.
Marty McFly is best remembered for two things. Rocking out to “Go, Johnny, Go” and Hoverboards. It was a role that idolised Michael J Fox back in the 80’s and made him a household name overnight. The Back to the Future films are legendary and many critics claim you need to see them before you die (which I would strongly advise you do, by the way). Even twenty years after the original was released, the film still holds up incredibly well with today’s standards and remains one of my all time favourites. Yet, despite the brilliance of the trilogy, it strikes me as odd why the series never received an equally quality computer game?
Well, times may be about to change. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, not only was the original movie re-released in cinemas with extra polish and a blu-ray version was released, Universal Pictures signed an exclusive deal with Telltale Games to produce an episodic gaming series based on the franchise with all-new stories. As exciting as it was unexpected, this five-part series has Christopher Lloyd reprising his role as ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown with Bob Gale (one of the original writers) serving as a consultant for the games script. To make things even more exciting, Bob Gale himself has stated, unlike the previous animated spin-off and comics, he considers these five games to be a part of the Back to the Future series and counts them as part of the main trilogy, thus proving that this is more than just a simple cash-in attempt. The first episode takes place six months after the events of Back to the Future Part III and sets the tone for the following four episodes. To date, the series has been released on PC and MAC with a PS3 and iPad version due in 2011.
Has it been worth the long wait? Does it hold up to the legacy of the series? This Is My Joystick is here to answer all your questions.
Please note: Episodic games tend to follow a different review structure to our normal reviews, as such, this is an ongoing review. Keep checking back here for our thoughts on all the other episodes in this series as they’re released.
Here at This Is My Joystick we have often stated, both collectively and individually, that modern gaming lacks a bit when it comes to innovation. We have bemoaned the endless cycle of regenerated franchise titles such as FIFA or COD as uninspired or repetitive, so when Create arrived in the office there was a genuine clamour and the hands went up almost in unison to claim the review copy.
Fortunately for me, all this interest caused so much confusion that I was able to nip in and pinch it from under the noses of my colleagues, the question now becomes was EA’s new multi-platform game worth the effort? Read on to find out.
Ah, Assassin’s Creed. This series has been somewhat of a puzzle for me. I very much enjoyed the first game in spite of its obvious flaws and in my circles I often found myself to be one of the few defenders of its free-running thrills. It featured what was undoubtedly one of my favourite game engines of all time, but thanks to an undeniable amount of repetition, it certainly couldn’t be considered one of my favourite games of all time. With the second game I pre-ordered as soon as I possibly could, awaiting it with high hopes, but later cancelled once I’d played a very early and clunky build at Eurogamer 2009. In fact, I only just picked up the sequel in the light of this very review of Assassin’s Creed’s first foray into what I was led to believe was a ‘spin-off’.
I found playing the sequel a bit of an eye-opener, instantly wishing that I hadn’t cancelled that pre-order last year. I found myself in awe of how Ubi had listened, then provided more of the great elements of the first title, while adding a better mission structure and removing all traces of the grind that nearly ruined it as a franchise in the eyes of the media. It is probably now fairly regarded as the big title that Ubi had hoped in 2007. Even with that turnaround of success, Brotherhood worried me; was it a lazily developed cash-in, just a year after the last game? Would it really add anything revolutionary compared to last year’s instalment? Can the game engine really lend itself to an enjoyable online mode?
The answers to those three questions in short are; no, yes, and hell yes! Want more detail? You know what to do to find out!
What looks like a game, sounds like a game, plays like a game but really isn’t a game? Anything labelling itself a geopolitical simulation, that’s what. Rulers of Nations, sequel of Commander in Chief, is one such product and unfortunately it is not a good game by any stretch of the imagination.
When people talk about the most successful and lucrative gaming franchises ever made, names like Call of Duty, Gran Turismo, Halo, Sonic, Mario and Zelda will more than likely be the first names that creep into people’s heads. Yet if you were not to mention Bejeweled, you really would be doing a disservice to PopCap and ignoring a massive demographic of gamers out there who play it all around the world. The release of Bejeweled 3, while it may not be as newsworthy to some as Black Ops and Gran Turismo 5, is a huge gaming announcement and on paper, has potential to be the biggest release that PopCap have ever done.
Of course, many would question, what else can you do with this game that hasn’t been done before? Are PopCap merely doing this for another cash injection? Can Bejeweled 3 offer enough to really make it worth the bother?
Let’s get this out-of-the-way first of all; Civilisation V is the best Civilisation game so far. If you don’t have it on your Steam account and have even the smallest interest in some turn-based strategy, stop reading this and go and buy it. You won’t be disappointed. However, if you aren’t sold yet, let me explain why you should be losing hour after hour to this masterpiece.
The Amiga defined a generation, bringing with it some classic titles that are still as beloved today as they were back then. Alien Breed, created by Team 17, is a reimaging of one such classic Amiga title and has been released in episodic instalments via digital download mediums across multiple formats throughout the year. Descent is the third and final instalment in this new Alien Breed series and follows the continuing story of Theodore J Conrad, an engineer aboard the spaceship Leopold as he struggles against a wave of unrelenting aliens.
Does Conrad and Alien Breed go out with a bang or will this last episode redefine the series for the worst?
Blood Bowl was originally released in 2009, by Cyanide studios. Based on the Games Workshop Warhammer board game of the same name, it made for a bizarre mixture of American football and turn-based strategy. This year however sees the release of Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition, a revamped version including a Story Mode, all new teams and arenas to play with.
I’m new to the franchise myself, and so this review will be primarily for those interested in experiencing the game for the first time, with the added bonus of the extras in the Legendary Edition. The question is, should you even bother, or will no amount of additions sweeten a helplessly bum deal?
If you were to tell me that Telltale were going to make a poker game, I’d laugh at you and tell you to go somewhere else with your madness. If you were then tell me you were playing Max, Strong Bad, The Heavy (from Team Fortress 2) and Tycho from Penny Arcade, I would kindly ask you to go away. Add to that some TF2 unlocks and I’d probably be calling you crazy.
Guess what Telltale just released on Steam?
Following on from the huge success of Fallout 3, it was hard to know whether it was best to play it safe and keeps things the same, or take a bit of a gamble with something different to keep it fresh. Fallout: New Vegas has actually managed to do a bit of both. Retaining all the charm that made its predecessor such a hit, New Vegas delivers some impressive extras making your journey through the Mojave Desert all the more enjoyable.
I picked up the Collectors Edition which included a set of poker chips from the casinos featured in the game, a graphic novel acting as a sequel to in-game events, a pack of cards from mini-game Caravan, and a ‘making of’ DVD, all packaged very nicely in a collectors box.
Even if you don’t like Call of Duty, you have to admit that last year’s Modern Warfare 2 did rather well at its launch, drawing in a huge number of sales ruined only slightly by the Infinty Ward snafu a couple of months later. However, this year is Treyarch’s year and they are taking us to back to the Cold War. Can it match up to last year’s blockbuster or should this game never have got off the boat?
Ever wanted to be a spy? I have. When I was a kid I used to play spies with my mates, chasing them around my village with my plastic gun, catching them and interrogating them after a juicy shoot-out. Just like James Bond. Now, courtesy of Alpha Protocol from Obsidian Entertainment I can find out if I would really be any good at it. Taking its cues equally from Mass Effect and Splinter Cell, this ‘espionage RPG’ tells the tale of a super secret government organisation tasked with keeping the world in check and stopping dastardly terrorists from blowing everything up. The big question, as always is whether it’s any good. Let’s find out…
I must admit, I’m only something of a casual Formula One fan; I love to watch the races, have a general idea on who is competing for what each year but I have absolutely bugger all knowledge about the technical levels of which fans usually spend hours following and debating. So having last played an F1 game back on the PSOne, when it was announced that the license would be changing hands from Sony to Codemasters, I was a little intrigued on how it would pan out and how much will have changed in a decade. This is Codies’ first year bringing the franchise to the ‘big two’, having focused only on the handhelds and the Wii last year, so I was very much looking forward to seeing how they managed the precarious task of balancing fun vs. realism in a sport that people can be very particular about.
Ah Ubisoft. Your cunning plans of using evil DRM were thwarted via the gaming public so you decided to go with the sensible option on your latest strategy game. A good choice too, as R.U.S.E. is an excellent entry into the RTS genre that takes a familiar setting and puts its own spin on it through the use of cunning plans.
Pro Evolution Soccer and its predecessor, International Superstar Soccer, have been one of Konami’s biggest selling franchises for a generation. For years it was regarded as the flag bearer of console football but over the past few years it has seen EA Sports FIFA not just catch up, but overtake and disappear into the distance.
Konami have been talking of taking back their crown for the past couple of releases with no real substance but this year promised to be different. Heck, even I stated on my demo impressions that the potential was there for a title challenge. I’ve been interrogating the full release to see if this challenge is genuine or if PES once again fails to deliver.
I’ll be brutally honest; I’d never heard of Krome Studio’s Blade Kitten before being offered the review code. After a short research session courtesy of Google, I was able to determine that it was by the guys behind MS’s much ignored (by me anyway) Gamesroom and based on a webcomic of the same name by the company’s co-founder, Steve Stamatiadis. With this in mind, I had no idea of what to expect going in. To be honest I’m still not entirely sure what I think at the moment…
Team 17 are known today entirely for their incredibly popular Worms franchise, which has sold many millions and had many of us addicted to shooting each other’s worms with high powered weaponry. Some people who remember back to the days of the Amiga might also know them for Alien Breed, a tribute to the Aliens movies and a rather good game. Recently the game was resurrected as an episodic series, the first episode being released for both Xbox Live Arcade and PC. Unfortunately, it was eclipsed almost entirely on Steam by Valve’s free alien shooting gallery Alien Swarm. Can the second episode from those boys from Wakefield correct the balance?
Mystery P.I. is a point and click puzzle game created by Spintop Games and published on Pop Cap games for what I believed to be quite a hefty price tag for what it actually is. My initial thoughts before playing the game, purely based upon what I had read about it, was that it would be similar to the Broken Sword series, or possibly Sam & Max. Unfortunately, I was proved very wrong.