[DustyShinigami]

Dead Rising 2

Positives:

+ The graphics are quite an improvement over the first game. Environments now have way more zombies on screen than the first game – 7,000 to be exact!
+ Gameplay is still the same and intact from the first game, which is really good fun. Slaughtering zombies with everything you can find/grab never gets old. Practically every item can be used. You can bludgeon, slice, set fire, crush and throw things at zombies etc, eat food for health, dress up in different clothes/outfits, drive vehicles, improve your stats - by levelling up and/or obtaining ‘special’ magazines - gambling and even shopping. The game world is your playground!
As well as doing whatever you want, there’s a new story to follow, a new character to play as (Chuck Greene), a whole new world to explore – the Las Vegas-like Fortune City; survivors to rescue, Chuck’s daughter – Katey – to save each morning with Zombrex, and bosses/psychopaths to fight etc. Bosses (the whole game in fact) are very hard to beat and can lead to frustration during your first playthrough. Thankfully, everything becomes a lot easier the more you progress/play through the game; you’ll level up and become more agile and stronger.
Combo Weapons, Combo Cards and Maintenance Rooms add a new gameplay mechanic, which allow you to put two separate items together and make newer, more powerful weapons. Some of them are pretty humorous to use and add to the over-the-top nature of the game. Some combinations don’t make any sense, however. For example, combining a flashlight with gems make a Lightsaber. It’s just like in a typical adventure game. Combo Cards will show you which items can be combined for specific weapons. These can be obtained either by experimenting with items on your own, defeating bosses, rescuing survivors, or hunting for hidden cards around Fortune City.
+ Thankfully Dead Rising 2 ‘feels’ easier than the first game. Dead Rising is punishingly difficult as you only have one save slot, difficult bosses, save areas at quite a distance from each other, and a time limit to race against whilst trying to tackle main story missions and rescuing survivors with really poor A.I. Dead Rising 2 is still difficult, but not as much. There are now three save slots to use, the survivors’ A.I. has improved, and it just feels like there’s enough time to tackle each main mission and side mission. Levelling up and becoming faster and stronger helps a great deal too. For additional help…
+ Online co-op has been added. Now you can play as another Chuck Greene and help someone with the main storyline and/or rescue survivors. Either that, or create chaos together against the undead. As well as co-op, there’s a competitive multiplayer mode called TIR – Terror Is Reality. This is an in-game reality TV show that supports up to 4 players. You’ll compete against each other and tackle 4 rounds of zombie slaying for the most points. Each round involves killing zombies in different, and sometimes, amusing ways. There are 9 different challenges in total, which are shuffled each time you play. Whether you win or lose, you’ll get money at the end of each show, which can then be transferred to your main save file/game for Chuck to use. Thanks to its over-the-top nature and comments from the two commentators, TIR is pretty amusing to play.
+ Although there doesn’t seem to be a lot of it, the music is good and unobtrusive. There are some catchy jingles that play in the mall (with one or two from the first game), separate jingles that play in the casinos and hard rock/alternative music that plays during boss fights. The mall and casino music are probably the only memorable tunes that play, though.

Negatives:

- The game suffers from long loading times, which greatly interrupt the flow of the gameplay. It’s especially frustrating when you’re racing against the clock.
- The game suffers from frame rate issues. They’re ridiculously bad that it was almost like playing a latest title on my PC!! I wish game developers would stop trying to push the consoles to their limits! Yes, the graphics tend to be great looking, sure, but the performance is sacrificed as a result. I’d sooner have the graphics quality sacrificed a bit for a smoother experience.
- Just like the first Dead Rising, the characters are shallow and aren’t particularly interesting, the story is nothing special, and the dialogue is average and uninspired.
- Multiplayer and co-op are a mixed bag. With co-op it sometimes takes the game ages to find someone playing the single-player campaign, and when it does, there’s no guarantee the other player will want you to join and may refuse you. If they refuse you, you’ve then got to let the game start the search all over again. It’d be good if the game gave you a list of all the available ‘games’ being played that are joinable and where the ‘host’ currently is in the campaign. But because there isn’t, you could end up being anywhere. It’s not very handy if you’re after playing with someone randomly and aim to beat the game with them from start to finish. Another issue with co-op is that you can’t go anywhere you want whilst the other player is somewhere else. You have to go the same way as the other player.
As for multiplayer, playing TIR is only good for winning money; in the long run it’s nothing particularly special. It’s a bit annoying you can’t choose which ‘games’/‘challenges’ to play. So if you want to play a certain challenge (and beat it for achievement purposes), you’ve got to sit through and play the same ones over and over again before you can have a go at it. Then there’s no guarantee of actually beating it.
Another annoyance is that you have to sit through the same opening cinematic for the show every time whilst waiting for a team/game to be found. And I’m not sure if it’s a problem my end or the game, but whenever I was the host of a team nobody ever joined/showed up.
- Motorcycles are annoying and a bit flimsy to control
- Thankfully this never happened once to me (unlike the first Dead Rising), but because of the game’s difficulty and timed missions, the game will be frustrating to new players and a lot of restarts will be required. Once you’ve run out of time and failed a mission – that’s it – you have to start the game all over again. Thankfully, to ease the pain slightly, your current level, XP and money earned will carry over into a new game.
- The intelligence of the A.I. has improved in this game, but sadly, survivors are still slow.
- Minor gripes involve things such as: Chuck picking up objects nearby that you don’t want (especially when in a rush) – something similar to Hitman could’ve been incorporated that enables you to hold a button and select from a small pop-up window objects that are nearby; Chuck having problems walking over objects on the floor – chairs, plant pots, signs etc (again, especially annoying when in a rush and get grabbed by a zombie) – but not the bodies of zombies that are either alive or dead ; enemies attacking and grabbing Chuck at annoying times – like when checking his watch for the time or seeing your objectives, and, like in the first Dead Rising, NPCs’ mouths aren’t in-sync when they talk during in-game scenes.

Overall:



Personally, I felt that the first Dead Rising didn’t really need a sequel. However, it’s a good game and sequel that addresses some of the issues from the first game, but sadly has some new ones too.

[Dwagginz]

Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena

I'd tried a demo of this many moons back and quite enjoyed it. I don't tend to play many games like this, but I thought I'd give the full game a go as I could get it in a double pack with Golden Touch (The sequel of sorts) for a small fee. Oh, and I did think Samantha was kinda cute

I think that Hidden Roses was a good game, but it could get a bit annoying. You collect a lot of objects with seemingly no use (Why do I need to catch butterflies? Why?) but I think that applies to all Hidden Object games. One thing I felt it did poorly was make tools and the objects you need share the same portion of the UI, and by that I mean you could only have one of those "sets" showing. When you picked up a tool it switched the menu (For a few seconds) to tools, thus hiding the list of objects you need. There was also a delay, with some items at least, between finding them and being able to pick them up, which sometimes resulted in your scanner "not working" for a couple of seconds as punishment.

But, on the other side, it keeps you engaged. It breaks up the hidden object scenes by giving you puzzles to solve, some of which use items you find. I think only one puzzle gave me some hassle, and that could be solved by trial and error (So that's what I did to solve it). Another thing it does is link together a number of areas so they're not self contained. You might find a tool in one area, but you'll need it in the next.

Quite happy with my purchase, and I'm going to get on with the next game (Golden Touch) straight away.

[Lucien21]

Star Wars Force Unleashed II

This is not the seque you were looking for. Move along.

The first game married fun combat, a universe that felt Star Warsey and a great storyline.

Unfortunatly while the combat is still fun and the level feel authentic, the story in this one seems tired and rushed.

The game is certainly shorter than the first game and even at that it revisits some of the levels more than once.

This whole game reeks of being a cheap sequel that was rushed out the door with the minimal effort.

Passable fun ()

6/10

[SamandMax]

Call of Duty: Black Ops: This is the first time since the first two Call of Duty games that I think the single player outshines the multiplayer. That's not to say the multiplayer is disappointing, it's not, it's just the same thing we've been playing for the past 4 years with a few minor tweaks. The single player campaign is an ambitious cold war epic that tells a twisty tale of espionage that throws in everything from brainwashing to Russian roulette and somehow makes it all work despite how ludicrous it is.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by SamandMax

Call of Duty: Black Ops: This is the first time since the first two Call of Duty games that I think the single player outshines the multiplayer. That's not to say the multiplayer is disappointing, it's not, it's just the same thing we've been playing for the past 4 years with a few minor tweaks. The single player campaign is an ambitious cold war epic that tells a twisty tale of espionage that throws in everything from brainwashing to Russian roulette and somehow makes it all work despite how ludicrous it is.

It is sad to say that people hate the game and ignore the fact that the single player was absolutely well designed! It felt like an action thriller with a few twists and turns. Unlike Modern Warfare, it had a consistent story that didn't jump between tons of characters. It primarily was centered around the one character, who is being interrogated by some unknown character throughout the game. The "What are the numbers" was a great hook. Not to mention the awesome menu design.

[HeBuguM]

Machinarium, i like it a lot, it's very cool game.

[Gledster]

Yay, just finished Monkey Island 2: Special Edition. Loved the game first time round and loved it again in it's new, Special Edition.

Short though, only 7 hours. But then, it's fairly cheap also.

Got Jolly Rover to play next.

[Pepe]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trails and Tribulations

Definitely the best game out of the Ace Attorney series involving Phoenix Wright himself

[Crunchy in milk]

Risen.

Bought it during the 50% off sale on Steam. Glad I didn't pay full fare.

In the beginning the game is visually rich, interesting and full of promise, but its all downhill from there. Combat is pleasing enough but doesn't really evolve much beyond that first minute on the beach. The 'rpg' elements are flimsy, where if you've any sense, you pretty much boost one stat the entire game. The one that relates to your preferred method of combat. Dex if you wanna shoot bows, Strength of you want to hack things up or Mana if you want to shoot...magic.

The story is utterly generic and wafer thin, believe it or not this game features the old chestnut of an acient/dormant lizard race waking to reclaim the world. Yes its that generic.

[orient]

Originally Posted by Crunchy in milk

Risen.

Bought it during the 50% off sale on Steam. Glad I didn't pay full fare.

In the beginning the game is visually rich, interesting and full of promise, but its all downhill from there. Combat is pleasing enough but doesn't really evolve much beyond that first minute on the beach. The 'rpg' elements are flimsy, where if you've any sense, you pretty much boost one stat the entire game. The one that relates to your preferred method of combat. Dex if you wanna shoot bows, Strength of you want to hack things up or Mana if you want to shoot...magic.

The story is utterly generic and wafer thin, believe it or not this game features the old chestnut of an acient/dormant lizard race waking to reclaim the world. Yes its that generic.

I bought Risen recently and I've put a good 3 or 4 hours in thus far. I like the open-endedness. I like how organic the environments feel and how you can go anywhere from the start (pretty much) without the game forcing you onto the critical path.

I have heard that the story kind of goes nowhere, but a game like this is more about your experiences as opposed to the overarching plot.

That said, I haven't played it since New Vegas came out. That will definitely be the next game I finish.

[DustyShinigami]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Positives:

+ Gorgeously detailed and breathtaking graphics as well as some impressive weather effects that add to the gothic atmosphere.
+ It’ll never top Michiru Yamane’s Castlevania music, but this game’s score is great and wouldn’t be out of place in an epic fantasy movie such as The Lord of the Rings. Sound effects are just equally as good. I especially like the sound of falling rocks/debris.
+ Voice acting is pretty solid thanks to the likes of Sir Patrick Stewart, Robert Carlyle and Jason Isaacs.
+ Although inferior compared to previous Castlevania games, the gameplay is generally good fun and involves typical action/adventure fare: combat, platforming and puzzle solving. There are also a number of secrets/upgrades to uncover for the benefit of your health, magic and equipment; trials to beat in each level/stage, loads of new combo moves to buy and artwork to unlock using XP. All this gives the game some replayability.
+ There’s a nice range of enemies that you’ll encounter throughout the course of the game, and, apart from the standard boss fights, the most memorable ones are colossus Titans that make the main character – Gabriel Belmont – look tiny and weak in comparison.
+ There are a number of nods to previous Castlevania games.

Negatives:

- The game suffers from frame rate issues
- The game suffers from fixed cameras all the way through and is especially annoying during combat when in small/cramped rooms. Not once can you move the camera on your own using the right analog stick!
- Levels/stages are ridiculously short and very linear. Not only that, but too much help tends to be given throughout each level. There isn’t even an option to turn off the help prompts. The only times you won’t get them are when you replay a level.
- It doesn’t even feel like a Castlevania game. There’s no Dracula for an antagonist and only the middle part of the game takes place outside/inside a castle. And considering how short and linear the levels are, your encounter with the castle will be over before you know it. And as already mentioned there’s no classic Castlevania music from Michiru Yamane.
The trouble with this game is that it borrows heavily from other games and popular culture and doesn’t really do them any better. For instance, the gameplay/combat is very similar to God of War and the Titan boss fights are similar to Shadow of the Colossus. Now, I’ve never played those games myself, so I can’t say for certain, but the combat, platforming and puzzle solving have certainly been done much better in other games!
Gameplay and boss fights aren’t the only things, though. Other examples include: some lines of dialogue that are very similar to The Lord of the Rings, an encounter with your first spider in its cave smacks of Shelob and her lair from both The Return of the King movie and video game, there’s a Faun called Pan who’s home and character seems to be taken from the movie Pan’s Labyrinth, and most bizarre of all, a dead knight’s scroll randomly states “The cake is a lie!” If anything else, the game feels like (not to mention borrows from) the movie Van Helsing (only it’s somewhat better as it has the gameplay in its favour). For one thing, the action and fighting in the cutscenes are soooo ridiculously over-the-top. And speaking of cutscenes…
- The game is full of Quick Time Events! You’ll encounter them during combat to push enemies off you, for finishing moves, and pushing or pulling objects with Gabriel’s Combat Cross to solve puzzles etc. They’re very repetitive and make the game feel far too easy.
- The characters and story are meh. The characters aren’t particularly interesting and the story is only mildly interesting to follow during the first playthrough. And although the voice acting is done well, it still wouldn’t win any awards. Out of the cast members I think Robert Carlyle’s performance was the weakest, too. Plus, NPC’s voices become annoying at times when they keep repeating the same lines during fights.
The ending is disappointing

Spoiler:

and what the hell is that other ending about after the credits? How and why does Gabriel become Dracula – the very kind of evil he fights (and has fought) against? And I thought Zobek died at the hands of Satan; so how does he come back? I wasn’t expecting an ending like that after the credits and I’m afraid it just didn’t sit well with me to be honest.

- As gorgeous and detailed as the graphics are, every other character (NPC) besides Gabriel is quite plain and they aren’t very well detailed.
- The controls don’t always feel natural or satisfying. For instance, you have to press both the left and right analog sticks down to refill your magic meters and you have to double tap the left analog stick forward to sprint. A lot of the time, especially when in a rush, double tapping wasn’t always responsive and I had to realign Gabriel up for another run up. And then he doesn’t even sprint that far!
- As huge and impressive as the Titan boss fights are they're still a pushover! The Castlevania games are great for humongous bosses, but at least in previous installments they're a challenge. All you have to do to defeat the Titans is climb up them - pressing RT when the game tells you to so Gabriel will hold on as it tries to swing/knock you off - and destroy little 'weak spots' on various parts of its body!

Overall:



It’s alright, but not the Castlevania game I was hoping for I’m afraid. This one was dumbed down and simplified just to appeal to Western audiences. I don’t think this is a game I need to revisit.

[Dwagginz]

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Director's Cut

I won't draw this out too much, to be fair. It started out quite strong, but as the game goes on it just quickly declines. Nico's plotline didn't really have a lot to do with the major story of the game, and it's quickly forgotten about. My biggest gripe, to be honest, is how lazy the developers have been with this. They've added new bits, but the quality of the game goes up and down very quickly. The sound quality gets worse as you go on, and it's interspersed with bits of high-quality sound. The visual quality is also just as random - Some sections look pretty good, others show the age of the game. The game is marred by technical flaws, too. The "continue" button doesn't work correctly, and instead puts you in to the game at a point you've already been past - To get your actual save back, you have to use "restore game". Oh, and not to mention the left click/right click thing (Right clicking an object gives you another view point, and if you don't know that then some areas get VERY frustrating).

On a positive note, I actually thought the game play was pretty good. I liked the puzzles, but I felt some should have been updated to use the mouse better. There's one puzzle which is similar to a safe dial in that you have to put a certain combination in. It took quite some time because I had to use buttons to move the wheels around, whereas using the mouse to turn them would have drastically reduced the time. The characters are likeable, the setting is quite nice. I laughed quite loudly a few times, too, which is always good - I like games with a sense of humour.

Overall, I think the biggest disappointment about this game is the missed potential. It's just so half-baked, and I feel it really suffers. It's inconsistent in quality (And it really stands out when it happens), and it feels like things have just been shoehorned in for the sake of it. However, I did enjoy it and I would gladly play the original or any other games in the series. If it's true they're doing something similar for BS2, then I really hope they work harder on making it more consistent.

[Dwagginz]

Just finished another playthrough of Half-Life 2.

Awesome game, loved it.

[Origami]

I found Half-Life too longwinding for its own good.

[Dwagginz]

I sort of agree, but also don't. I found at times it could be a bit long winded, but it quickly made up for it.

I think the episodic method Valve used worked MUCH better, but it's such a shame that they've not capitalised on it as much as they should have. We should be on Episode 3 or 4 now, not 2.

[SamandMax]

James Bond 007: Blood Stone - I was really looking forward to this and maybe that was my problem, I had too high of expectations for something that was never meant to be that good. The story is awful, incoherent and unfinished (the game literally ends at the end of the 2nd act) and while the gameplay isn't unplayable, it's so dull that you find yourself losing interest in it by the end of the first level. The biggest slap in the face is the fact that every single cutscene in the game is ruined because of the massive "push start to pause" icon that appears in the bottom of the screen and never goes away. This is a James Bond game, probably the most cinematic license you can get, and they absolutely ruin it with utter incompetence. How are you supposed to enjoy the surprisingly well done title sequence when half of the screen is covered with buttons that'll let you skip it? I've played a lot of Bond games and this one's near the bottom of the pile with 007 Racing and Tomorrow Never Dies.

[Lucien21]

Costume Quest (PS3)

The downloadable game from DoubleFine.

A mini RPG based around kids trick or treating at Halloween. Knock on doors and collect candy, complete quests and battle trolls in the search to rescue your sister/brother (depends on who you pick at the start of the game).

Gather a party of 3 kids and kit them out with various costumes that you construct. Ranging from Unicorns to Ninjas and spacemen each costume looks cute in the game world but once you enter battle mode they become the idealised version of the costume as imagined by the kids. The foil and cardboard knight becomes a real knight, the Ninja can sneak, Robot is a transformer etc.

You can also upgrade each costume with status or attack patches.

So it's RPG-lite, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. Full of the charm and wit of a normal Tim Schaffer product it will put a smile on your face for the 4-5 hours it takes to complete.

Not the hardest game in the world and like most RPG's the battles and knocking on doors can be a bit repeditive, but the charm and the short lenght make you want to play to the end.

A lot of fun.

9/10

[zane]

Just finished darkstar. Its a pretty sweet sci-fi FMV game featuring the mst3k cast. I thought it would be kindv like a tex murphy game, but really its much more like myst with lots of lever pulling and open exploration. The game is entertaining and the atmosphere is great, but its got a wide variety of bug issues. Also some of the things you need to find are in really obscure places, and moving from spot to spot is slow and can get tiresome. But id still rate the game around 8/10. Its a solid adventure, and a really neat piece of video game history.

[Dwagginz]

Samantha Swift: Mystery from Atlantis

Yawn. Just yawn. The hidden object aspect became painful, the story was thinner than the previous games and it just wasn't as good. The series seems to have gotten worse with each iteration, especially as each one adds more and more features or changes them. The scenery became busier and busier, the objects became irritatingly hard to find and the scanner became utterly useless. The quality of the game itself was poorer, too. It seemed like there were less and less unique scenes (Some were 'ported' from Golden Touch/Hidden Roses, as were a lot of the pictures of Samantha herself), and the final confrontation was a one item, one click affair, unlike the end to Golden Touch.

I've seen some screenies of the fourth, and I'm downloading the Big Fish trial in the hopes it's better, but I'm not counting on it.

[Dwagginz]

Scarlett and the Spark of Life (iOS)

It's a fun little game with a great sense of humour, and a good cast of varied, but endearing, characters. There's also a larger story evident in this episode, but it (rightfully) takes a backseat to the more immediate plot. It uses the touch controls well, but I think it has a few flaws.

Firstly, the area transition can be a bit tempermental - You have to get it just right to go to the next zone, and I think it could have been alleviated by making the trigger into a bar that stretches down the side of the screen. Secondly, there's very little music and no voice acting, the only sounds are the short pieces that play at certain times, the handful of sound effects and the musical notes of one puzzle. Finally, I felt the animations were poor. Scarlett walks around as if her feet are tied, Gherkin runs in an utterly ridiculous manner and... Uh, I think that's almost it for animations.

I think the pricing is a bit of a joke, though, as there's not a lot of replayability here due to the shortness of the game and the linearity of the game (Puzzles have just one solution, for example). To ask £1.79 ($2.99?), in my opinion, is somewhat a cheeky price for such a short experience.

It's a good game, well... It's a good first episode, and I'm sure the second will be just as good, but I cannot honestly recommend it as a 'must buy' at its current price because it's just not got that value for money aspect.