Stuff for Dads

  Two Worlds (Xbox 360)

Rated: 12.

Story: Forsooth! Thou art a mercenary in a fantasy land where orcs and humans are at war. Malevolent, yet mysterious, forces have kidnapped your beloved sister who verily doest wear too much make-up and not enough clothing. Prithee, knave, go track down the rogues and rescue her before it is too late, lest the god Aziraal be freed from his tomb and the world turned to darkness! Ye gads!

Gameplay: Yep, it's a role-playing game. Wander towns and countryside, talking to people and getting sent on quests, in an effort to increase your character's level, improve skills and get your hands on really big swords. You can go pretty much wherever you like from the start, choosing to stick to the main story or to merely explore.

There are various political factions in the game and completing quests for each of them raises your reputation with that faction, opening up new quests and possibly putting you at odds with one of the other factions.

Fighting is a mix of archery, spell-casting and hand-to-hand, and takes place from a third-person viewpoint.

Save System: Manual save at any time. There's no auto-save but this usually isn't a problem since, when you die, you immediately come back to life at the nearest shrine without any other penalty. Shrines are seldom far away. You'll want to save often, though, in case the game crashes. (It does that quite a lot.)

Comments: As with Mass Effect, it would be easy to fill a review of Two Worlds with a list of all the elements of it that are broken. Once again, I will try to resist, however. Two Worlds should be applauded for it's ambition and the freedom of choice which it gives players. The game provides an open world waiting to be explored and leaves you to get on with it. There's very little telling you where to go. Pick a direction and see who you meet and where you end up. Even the main story missions leave you to your own devices most of the time. For once, you really do feel like an adventurer heading off into the unknown, trying to make a name for yourself in an unfamiliar land.

Er, apart from when you're feeling totally lost or simply annoyed because you're looking for something in particular and you've no idea where to find it. The trade-off for all the freedom is that it's very easy to walk right past vital people and information. For instance, most of the faction members in the game won't give you missions until they trust you, but the only way to gain their trust is to complete missions for their faction. The few members who will trust you early on are often standing behind a rock in the middle of nowhere. If you're really unlucky, when you do stumble across them, they tell you to go infiltrate another faction, whose trust you'll also need. This can be irritating.

There are other issues. I should probably just write that list:

• Eye-wincingly awful graphics. It's not so much how they look; it's the constant, headache-inducing juddering.
• Questionable design choices. You can't use lots of skills until you find someone hiding behind a rock who's willing to train you. This limits your combat options for ages for no good reason. On top of that, lots of the skills are useless. (On the plus side, for a relatively small amount of gold, you can regress your character and spend all your experience from scratch, allowing you to change tactics halfway through the game once you know what works and what doesn't.)
• Fiddly interface. The game was designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind. Navigating the inventory can be a chore, the map screen's a mess and selecting spells is far too much hassle.
• Dreadful dialogue and voice acting. Forsooth! Mine ears are bleeding! Me thinks I shouldst turn on the subtitles.
• The reputation/trust system is broken. Deliver three packages for one faction and they consider you a living legend. Obliterate the rivals of a different faction and they still barely acknowledge your existence. Eh?
• Buggy. Crashes, glitches and odd events.
• Uneven difficulty. In some sense, the game is pretty easy - death is only a minor inconvenience. Unfortunately, it's a very frequent inconvenience. Early on, even the lowly wolves wandering the landscape will eat you for breakfast by attacking in packs. Run away to pick them off from a distance and you'll just bump into another pack and maybe some bandits and possibly a bear. Before you know it, you've got a Benny Hill chase scene on your hands. Later in the game, when you're big and tough and have excellent weapons and armour, many enemies can still kill you with a single hit. What's the point? Quests descend to running in, grabbing the required item and running out again pursued by a line of angry monsters. (Added amusement can be obtained by humming the Benny Hill theme tune, however.)
• Annoying mounts. Horses are infuriating to control and won't go through teleports, so they're often more trouble than they're worth.
• Unremarkable Collector's Edition. The bonus disc is lousy and isn't designed for the 360 e.g. it contains PC desktop wallpapers rather than Xbox dashboard themes. The pen-and-paper role-playing game is merely a D&D clone and the rulebook contains almost no background information on the world. It's unplayable in itself and doesn't give any insight into the computer game.
• The list goes on...

Overall, the list of Two Worlds' faults is longer and more instantly damning than the one for Mass Effect. I came much closer to giving up in disgust with Two Worlds. It really shouldn't have been released in this state. The truth is, though, I actually enjoyed Two Worlds more than Mass Effect. It's better paced and has far more to it.

I suspect that both development teams ran out of time. The Mass Effect guys plugged up the gaps and polished and tested what they had. The Two Worlds devs continued putting in all the interesting stuff they'd planned, sent it to the DVD factory at the last minute and crossed their fingers. Two Worlds is always intriguing and always has something new for you to find but it just feels like a beta version. It's buggy and barely works at all. That said, if you can put up with the horrendously jagged edges, there's a decent game underneath.

Conclusion: If you absolutely loved Oblivion, you might tolerate this long enough to appreciate its charms... a bit.

Graphics: Quite nice on occasion if you squint and don't try and move your character at all. Actually start to walk around, however, and it's a disaster. Stuff materialises out of thin air on a regular basis and the whole thing judders along like it's just going to give up and die at any moment. The frame-rate dips into low single figures every time you attempt to turn the camera around.

Length: That depends. It's possible to whizz through the main quest and reach the end of the game relatively quickly but, then again, it's also possible to spend countless hours exploring. So, anywhere between medium and very long, really. Somewhere in the middle is probably best - explore a fair amount to get the most out of the game and then hurry along to the end before the graphics make you go blind.

Rating: Very nearly 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360, Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

Rated: 12.

Story: It's 180 years in the future and humanity has spread to the stars using ancient alien devices called mass relays which form a web of faster-than-light routes across the galaxy. Turns out, though, there are plenty of other races using the relays, too, and humankind must earn status and respect in the interstellar community.

You are Commander Shepard, a human military officer, who has been singled out to be humanity's first SPECTRE operative - a special agent working for the galactic government. You quickly find yourself zipping all over the place in an effort to thwart a plot which threatens all sentient life in the galaxy.

This being a role-playing game, you get to run menial errands for all sorts of people on the way...

Gameplay: You and a couple of computer-controlled companions wander round closely confined alien environments. Events are viewed from a third-person perspective. Combat plays more like a squad-based shooter than an RPG, taking place in real-time. You get to hide behind objects and actually aim your weapons but you can pause things to give orders to your friends.

Much of Mass Effect is spent exploring and talking to people. Conversations involve choosing replies from a limited set of responses but the set up for this is slicker than normal for this type of game. People ask you to find/kill/persuade something/someone for money/information. (Delete as applicable).

You also get to drive round rocky worlds in a tank quite a lot.

Save System: Auto-save on entering new areas. Manual save available when not in combat.

Comments: It would be easy to fill this review by listing the many faults of Mass Effect. Almost every aspect of it is broken. I will resist, however. The game should be admired for its ambition. It's a galaxy-spanning space opera involving an epic story and difficult moral choices. It is Babylon 5: The Game, at last.

Except, obviously, it's not set in the Babylon 5 universe. Also, all the characters are really generic and it takes itself far too seriously and the interface is clumsy and...

Nope. It's no good. I can't resist after all. The thing is knackered in just too many ways. Here's a selection of the problems:

• Technical issues. Mass Effect looks quite nice in screenshots but in motion it's full of stuttering and pop-up.


• Irritating inventory system. Comparing and equipping items is so clumsy that I began to dread finding new stuff. It nearly always turned out to be junk anyway.


• Dull back-story. The developers have gone to a great deal of trouble to create a detailed history for the game and they're desperate to share every detail. It's not that interesting, however.


• Unrewarding character advancement. Improving your character is normally one of the main draws of an RPG but there's little customisation here and going up a level often doesn't bring much reward.


• Uninteresting characters. You really wouldn't be upset if half of your team fell out an airlock.


• No sense of scale. Planets are big places. How come everything of note on each world you visit is in the same square mile?


• Lazy level design. Many levels are small and linear; some are just plain incompetent - the two useful areas of your ship (the ones you have to visit all the time) have some pointless corridors and a lengthy loading screen disguised as a lift between them.


• Tacked on side quests. There are lots of missions to undertake that aren't part of the main story. These all take place on barren, barely distinguishable worlds with lots of mountains that are tiresome to navigate in the tank. The destination is always a mine, a warehouse or an underground bunker. Every mine is identical to the next but with differently placed crates. The same goes for the other types of location and any spaceships that require being boarded. Poor.


• Ropey combat. This isn't Ghost Recon. Ordering your companions about is inexact and hampered by a dubious camera. Enemies often just rush at you.


• Silly missions. You're a special agent on a quest to save the galaxy; why do you have to buy your own equipment? Does humanity seriously have no one else to switch off a rogue computer on Earth's moon? Is this really the time for prospecting? Why hasn't anyone else found the artifacts you keep tripping over?


• Slow pace. Cut-scenes, conversations, lots of running backwards and forwards, stacks of loading screens and plenty of uneventful driving.

There are other minor issues (and probably some major ones that I've blanked from my mind) but, essentially, nothing seems finished. There's just an air of 'this will do' about it all, as if the developers were relying on hype and the fact that RPG fans are used to putting up with this kind of thing and would buy the game anyway.

They got away with it. Despite its flaws, Mass Effect is vaguely enjoyable, it had strong sales and there are glowing fan reviews all over the internet. It's a big budget, non-Japanese, science fiction role-playing game featuring space travel. As such, there really isn't much competition on consoles apart from the Knights of the Old Republic games. I guess it will have to do while we wait for that proper Babylon 5 game that will never happen. I'm not sure I can face the two planned sequels, though, unless the developers put some real effort into fixing most of the problems. They won't get away with it again.

Conclusion: If you loved Knights of the Old Republic you'll like this... a bit.

Graphics: The game features possibly the best character models ever but dumps them in often uninspiring environments. Motion stutters and details sometimes pop into view a second or two late.

Length: Medium if you just whizz through the main story. (Recommended.) Very long if you do all the side quests. (Don't do it. Really. It's not worth it.)

Rating: Just barely 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  BioShock (Xbox 360)

Rated: 18.

Story: It's 1960 and, after the passenger plane you're traveling in crashes at sea, you swim to a small island which acts as the entrance to the underwater city of Rapture. Created as a capitalist utopia free from socialism, censorship and organised religion, Rapture is a sprawling Art Deco wonder where the dream of freedom has gone disastrously wrong. Most of the inhabitants have been driven mad by using too many gene-altering drugs, those in authority battle for power, and water is starting to pour in. As an untainted outsider, the opposing factions seize on you as a means to salvage something from the wreckage...

Gameplay: Realistically, you could play this as a straight first-person shooter. Rapture is full of psychos who would like nothing better than to kill you. Your only option is to kill them first and there are plenty of guns lying about. Just running around shooting things would be missing the point, though. Bioshock can be as much an adventure as a shooter. You can hunt out hidden resources, hack the automated defenses to help you, listen to the audio logs left by doomed citizens, 'research' enemies' weak spots using a special camera and acquire magic-like abilities using genetic upgrades.

Save System: Manual save of exact position at any time, coupled with an auto-save at the start of each level.

Comments: The question of whether videogames are art is perhaps a topic for a future Dear Dave. The answer is 'yes', obviously, but I'm sure I can string a thousand words out of it somehow (and maybe even throw in a couple of hilarious anecdotes about vomiting children while I'm at it). For a start, there's the possibility of examining the unique aspects of videogames, such as the ability to shape the experience via interactivity. Then there's a discussion to be had about where videogame artistry can go wrong by mimicking other media and real life too closely. Beyond that, I suspect there's plenty more to think about as well. One certainty, however, is that BioShock is liable to loom large throughout. It is the closest a videogame has come to traditional art. It looks fantastic from both a technical and stylistic standpoint, it deals overtly with philosophy and morality, and it acts as a springboard to new thoughts and ideas.

A different question, however, is, 'Do people want to play art?'

The answer to this is less obvious. The reaction to BioShock seems to be split between those who explored and experienced and those who just ran around shooting things. Everyone agrees it's good - they just can't agree quite how good.

There are a few legitimate issues with the game.

• Certain levels and tasks feel like padding.
• Everything proceeds in a very linear fashion. The levels themselves are sprawling but the sequence of tasks is pretty much set and there's never any need to return to previous levels. Also, the player's actions don't affect the story until the end.
• BioShock has been billed as the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, one of the finest games ever. Unfortunately, it's a little too closely related. It's been polished up, stream-lined and given a different setting but it feels more of a sequel than an evolution. There's not much new and some of the stream-lining feels like dumbing down.
• It's too easy.

It's the final one of these issues which is the most problematic. It's possible to muddle through BioShock on normal difficulty without a particularly excessive number of deaths even if you're rubbish at first-person shooters like me. Worse, dying just means a quick teleport to the last resurrection chamber you passed, anyway. Within seconds you can be back in the fight, good as new, while enemies remain wounded. Since death is only the most minor inconvenience (it's more embarrassing than anything else) and ammunition is plentiful, there's little incentive to be creative with the genetic abilities. This is a shame, since experimenting with telekinesis and the cyclone traps which launch enemies into the air and all the other powers is one of the best parts of the game. It's usually quicker just to shoot things, however.

Similarly, it's easy to skip over a great deal of the rest of the experience. Much of the atmosphere and story comes from listening to the audio logs but finding them requires thoroughness and patience. Why bother, however, when the game so readily forgives sloppiness and haste? It can be demoralising that brute force and persistence are just as effective as skill, thought and planning. The latter are more fun but can feel too much like effort in some of the less inspired areas.

BioShock is a revelation in terms of style and setting. At heart, though, it's still just a first-person shooter. Turning it into an adventure requires some work on the part of the player. If you're prepared to experiment and explore then you'll find it's a classic. If you just want to shoot things then you'll prefer Half-Life 2.

Conclusion: Not the best game ever, possibly not even the best game of 2007, but a great game nonetheless and a landmark in terms of mature story-telling and artistic design. The first game since Knights of the Old Republic that I'm seriously considering replaying (on 'Hard' this time and probably with the resurrection chambers turned off).

Graphics: Superb. Fantastic water and flame effects, lots of detail and it all runs smoothly. More than that, beyond the technical proficiency, the scenery is actually interesting to look at. I found myself continually stopping just to look out of Rapture's windows.

Beware of the bug that causes huge stuttering, though. This should be fixed by the patch downloadable off Xbox Live. If not, clearing the cache on loading up the game should do the trick. (Hold down LB and RB together immediately after launching the game from the 360 dashboard and don't let go until after the red 2K logo appears).

Length: Medium.

Rating: 5/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

8:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Halo 3 (Xbox 360)

Rated: 15

Story: Alien Covenant forces have landed on Earth in search of an ancient artifact and the swarm-like Flood aren't far behind. You are Master Chief, the last of humanity's elite SPARTAN warriors, and, aided by some renegade aliens and a large number of soon-to-be dead marines, you must save the world both from destruction and from assimilation.

Luckily, you have some big guns.

Gameplay: Shoot things. Hide behind a wall. Shoot some more things. Drive a little. Watch a cutscene. Shoot even more things.

Yep, the only complicated thing here is the plot. You run around in first person perspective and shoot a lot. Get shot yourself and your shields take damage. If your shields go down and you take several hits in quick succession then you die. Don't get hit for a few seconds and your shields replenish. There are no health packs to collect. There are no puzzles to solve. The only thought required is in how best to outflank enemies and in which combination of weapons to carry. For instance, it's possible to dual-wield, holding a gun in each hand, but this only works with less powerful weapons and means you can't throw grenades.

Occasionally, you get to drive a jeep or blow things up with a tank.

Save System: Frequent check-pointing but the game only saves when you quit. This could go badly if there's a power cut.

Comments: I can only assume that all the fuss over the Halo series has to do with the multiplayer. The first one was very pretty but hugely repetitive. The second had more variety and a bit more depth but ended half way through. This feels like a re-mix of the best bits from the first two with marginally better graphics.

The initial levels are disturbingly linear even compared to Far Cry Instincts. Unfortunately, it can still be quite hard working out where to go thanks to lots of little dead ends and decorative doorways, etc. The level design often seems like a succession of glorified corridors. Things pick up in the more open, vehicle-based areas as you speed around like a maniac in a warthog jeep but the lack of significant new weapons and enemies means it all feels very familiar.

Whenever the game does try something different, there's a lack of self-control. What's the point of mixing up the pace with a stretch of dark, creepy organic corridors when they seem to go on forever? The final escape shows what the finale of Halo would have been like without the twitchy vehicle controls and horrendous slow-down but, again, it drags on for far too long.

In fact, Halo 3 seems something of a backwards step from Halo 2. The second playable character, the Arbiter, is reduced to recurring sidekick status, removing much of the gameplay variation. Some of the depth has gone as well because the relative power of the weapons seems to have been tweaked for the worse. Previously, there were pros and cons to every combination; now, there's much more of a hierarchy of usefulness. What to carry involves less tactical choice than Halo 2 and simply becomes a case of hunting out the stonkiest weapons available.

Which is all quite negative...

Halo 3 isn't a bad game, though. It's generally fun, has high production values and the exceptional cutscenes make you want to see it through to the end. It's just that every other first person shooter has long-since nicked Halo's ideas and the series itself hasn't progressed much since 2001.

Essentially, if you've played Halo 2, then you'll know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, however, then you won't have a clue what's going on - go and play BioShock or The Orange Box instead.

Conclusion: It's Halo 2 in hi-res but not quite as much fun. At least the story reaches a conclusion, though. Good for a weekend rental if you've got a cold and don't feel up to much.

Graphics: Everything's quite pretty and there's a proper non-widescreen mode which is unusual these days. Much of the game feels too familiar to really make an impact, however. Occasionally descends into a succession of repetitive corridors. Parts of the last two or three levels are visually lacking.

Length: Short.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

12:00 PM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Stuntman: Ignition (Xbox 360)

Rated: 12

Story: You're an up-and-coming stuntman. Drive like a madman round various film sets to increase your reputation and unlock new jobs. Stunt your way through thinly-disguised imitations of James Bond, Batman and The Dukes of Hazzard (amongst others) and then watch the film trailer.

Gameplay: You get to drive all kinds of wheeled vehicles, from bikes to an articulated lorry. You have to follow a preset course round the sets, pulling off stunts, like jumps and handbrake turns, in the correct locations. Wander too far or miss too many key stunts and it's back to the start of the level. A high score requires stringing an exciting sequence together by adding extra stunts of your own.

Save System: Auto-save after every successful run. Since levels are typically only a minute and a half long, this is a game that can be played in quick bursts.

Comments: Videogames everywhere!

We've had Halo 3, Stranglehold, The Darkness, The Orange Box, PGR 4, Metroid Prime 3, Phantom Hourglass and BioShock already. Mario Galaxy, Kane & Lynch, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Ratchet & Clank: Future, Uncharted, Umbrella Chronicles and goodness knows what else are all turning up soon.

And that's before taking into account various revamped sports games, unknowns like Blacksite and decent also-rans like Jericho, Overlord and Eternal Sonata.

This is just crazy. Between the beginning of 2006 and the end of this summer, most of the seven current console formats (PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, GBA, DS, Wii & PSP) barely had a handful of games of real note each. If it weren't for the launch of the Wii, last Christmas might just as well have been cancelled as far as videogames publishers are concerned.

Not this year, though.

Suddenly, shop shelves are crammed with triple-A new releases at forty quid a time (fifty for the collector's edition). The result? Games like Stuntman: Ignition are in the bargain bin after only a few weeks. Six months ago, it would have had no competition whatsoever. Madness.

Stuntman isn't helped by the fact that any attempt to describe it makes it sound infuriating. It's a driving game but you don't race - you're told where to go and what to do and if you get it wrong you get shouted at. Great. What this description fails to cover, however, is the huge adrenaline rush of dodging through traffic, leaping a ravine, pulling a sharp turn and hammering through the ruins of a building that is floating past on a river of lava.

The levels are inventive and most are very short, so it's not a chore to repeat them over and over, learning where the key stunts are and working out the best ways to string them together. A small drift here or there is enough to alter your line and make each run different from the last. Unlike some games, it seldom feels like you're constantly having to re-do trivial challenges in order to practice the tricky bits. There's always room for improvement in every part of a level and only a couple throw in a gnarly, show-stopping situation right at the end.

Stuntman: Ignition is a fun, action-packed, grin-inducing game... most of the time. Unfortunately, the scoring system is broken. A spectacular drive with a couple of seconds where nothing happens in the middle will score less than a sloppy drive that misses key stunts but keeps up a constant stream of near misses and swerves. Although finishing all the levels doesn't involve too much frustration, getting the full five-star rating most certainly does. Even then, however, there's still always the feeling that 'just one more go' will do it and, importantly, restarting a level doesn't involve any loading - mess up and you're back in the action in a few moments.

I'm not a great fan of driving games and I normally hate having to replay sections more than twice. Nonetheless, I found Stuntman addictive and entertaining. It's definitely worth a quick rummage in the bargain bin. Then again, you may be too busy working out when to find time to play a dozen other games.

Madness...

Conclusion: Old-school gaming, involving quick reflexes and memorisation, brought up-to-date for those of us with short attention spans, aging reactions and a desire to go barrel-rolling over ridiculous explosions while on fire.

Graphics: Competent. Looks great when moving at speed (i.e. most of the time) but can lack texture when examined closely.

Length: Short if you just want to get through all the levels. Much longer if you want to collect all the five-star ratings.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Overlord (Xbox 360)

Rated: 16

Story: You are the aspiring evil overlord of a fantasy realm. You must travel to different parts of the land to pacify the locals and defeat all the heroes who ganged together to defeat your predecessor. Along the way, you need to collect the stolen magical components of your tower and amass enough gold to forge new armour. You'll also need cash to buy some pot plants to keep your girlfriend happy.

Gameplay: You run around in third-person, hacking at enemies and casting spells. The main emphasis, however, is on controlling the small army of goblin minions that follow you around. Among other things, you can send them off to fight creatures, find treasure, obtain items and work levers. As the game progresses, you get to control more minions and gain access to different types:

• Brown - good fighters.
• Red - immune to fire and able to throw fire themselves.
• Blue - can heal other minions and travel through water.
• Green - immune to poison and able to jump on the back of larger monsters.

Knowing which minions to use is the key to every situation.

Save System: Annoying. The game saves automatically if you move between areas. It also saves the first time you find each of the teleport gates scattered around the landscape. Some areas take half an hour or more to work through, though, and there's no simple way to force a save. Worse than that, upon loading the saved game, all your minions have been returned to storage and there aren't always handy summoning points to get them back.

Comments:

Dear cousin Sauron,

After our recent conversation, I have decided to follow your example and set myself up as evil overlord of a generic fantasy domain. Things have been going well. I have amassed a small army of faithful minions and we have roamed the land together, bringing a new age of darkness to the world.

I started small, freeing some slaves, smashing crates belonging to the peasantry and then forcing a number of the local women to wear bikinis. Then I bought some pot plants. After that, I moved up a notch, dispatching the monstrous rulers of several kingdoms and keeping their stolen treasure for myself rather than returning it to its rightful owners. I met a girl, I fell in love, she sent me to fight some zombies. We bought some new carpet.

Eventually, I killed some villagers just for the fun of it and because their limited repertoire of one-liners was beginning to get on my nerves. No one seemed to notice much, however, and they'd been replaced by a new set of identical villagers when I returned five minutes later.

I'm beginning to think that I should have been a hero all along. Maybe I could polish up my armour and put my gremlins in pixie outfits. What do you think?

PS Unlike you, I did manage to rid myself of a group of troublesome halflings. Mine were evil halflings, though, so I don't know if that counts.

It would be easy to describe Overlord as a cross between Pikmin and Fable. Because it is. It looks like Fable, it starts out playing like Fable and then you collect some minions and it turns into Pikmin in Fable clothing.

Given the game's influences, it's a shame it isn't a bit better. Nothing is desperately broken but nothing is really that great either. There's just a feeling that the game lost its way somewhere along the line. Most obviously, a lot of the time, it's hard to tell that your overlord is particularly evil. I can't really see Sauron agreeing to rescue a damsel's luggage, for instance. An exploration of the nature and motivation of evil could have been educational. Instead, we have comedy evil without malice or repercussions or, indeed, much evil. What's the point?

If the game was consistently amusing, then it might get away with it but it's just too long. There are too many sections that feel like padding. This is a particular problem at a point about an hour or so into the game. (You know, suspiciously round about where the demo ends). Up till then, the script is witty, it's fun trashing things with your minions and the basic combat is adequate enough. Unfortunately, it's hours more before the next variety of minion appears. With only a small number of brown minions and not much spell power, there's very little strategy to be employed. You're left to trawl through linear dungeons, bashing halflings and getting your minions to smash vast quantities of barrels to obtain treasure.

It's only once you've unlocked all four varieties of minion that the puzzle and strategy elements of the game really take off. The problem is, you could complete Pikmin in the time it takes to get hold of them. That's rather a while to persevere before things get going.

On top of this, the camera is often unhelpful and the controls are difficult to tame. Given time and space, it's possible to send groups of minions left, right and centre to set up a cunning plan but trying to do it in the heat of battle is like herding toddlers in a toy department. They go all over the shop. Often, there's not much to be done except rush the enemy with waves of minions and hope for the best.

Overlord does have its moments. It's occasionally hilarious and having a horde of minions to command is entertaining. It's especially satisfying when some careful planning pays off. If only the level design was sharper, the controls were better and a few riskier decisions had been made at the concept stage...

Ho, well, there's always hope of an improved sequel, I guess.

Right, I'm off to genetically splice some other games and make my fortune. Watch out soon for Grand Theft Halo, Tetris Raider and Brain Training: Cute Puppy Edition. At least one of them is bound to be great!

Conclusion: A good idea that doesn't reach its full potential. Only fantasy fans will bother to plough on to the end.

Graphics: Competent. The distant camera position means it's difficult to make out detail on the characters, however, and the background scenery lacks visual impact. It's all just too similar to Fable to really impress.

Length: Long.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

1:00 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Xbox 360 console

Prices:

• Premium console: £200 including 20GB hard-drive, wireless controller, headset & a dual composite/component AV cable. (Component works on HD tellies; composite is a slightly rubbish connection for normal TVs).
• Arcade console: £160 including wireless controller, 256MB memory unit and composite AV cable.
• Elite console: £260 including 120GB hard-drive, wireless controller, headset & HDMI cable.

There are plenty of bundles and deals around and you should really expect a couple of games thrown in as well at these prices.

Don't bother with the arcade console pack. A few games don't work without a hard-drive and a hard-drive will also improve load times in some games. The premium pack is a better deal than buying an arcade pack plus a hard-drive separately.

Don't buy second-hand. The design has changed slightly so that new consoles are more reliable. The disk drives are also (allegedly) faster and quieter. Microsoft have retrospectively extended the warranty of all 360s from one year to three years for problems involving the 'three red lights of death'. They'll fix or replace consoles with this problem for free but it's a hassle and takes a few weeks. For the amount of money you'll save, you're as well buying new.

Extras:

• VGA cable: £15 (for using a computer monitor).
• RGB SCART cable: £15 (an essential purchase if using a non-HD telly).
• Wired controller: £25.
• Wireless controller: £33.
• Wi-fi adapter: £60.
• HD-DVD player: £130. (UPDATE: Now defunct.)
• Media remote: £20 (but you can just use a normal controller).
• 20GB hard-drive: £70.
• 64MB memory unit: £23.
• Annual subscription to play online: £40.

If you're wanting a console that plays HD movies, can store lots of downloads, you can play online and that connects wirelessly to the internet then you're looking at well over £400 for the full Xbox experience. Suddenly the PS3 looks like a bargain (and that lets you browse the internet, not just download things).

Comments: As I've said before, if you're thinking of getting into gaming then your best bet is buying a PS2 or second-hand Xbox and a pile of second-hand games. You'll be able to try out plenty of different genres of games cheaply. (Sadly, desirable second-hand GameCube games are hard to find these days). The latest generation of consoles is still expensive and the selection of games is limited (particularly for the PlayStation 3 and Wii). With Christmas approaching, however, if you have an aging console already, you may be thinking of upgrading. The supply of decent, new games for the last generation of consoles has dried up. For better or worse, developers have moved on to the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

First things first, the new generation of consoles are much more complicated than previous generations. There are screens and screens of menu options and it will probably take a couple of hours to get the 360 set up to take the best advantage of your AV system and to get familiar with it.

When you first get a game going, you may be a little disappointed.

The graphics aren't going to blow you away. They're impressive but, let's face it, your mum won't be able to tell the difference between the 360 and your last console. The increase in power is less obvious than between previous console generations - it's most notable in things like level of detail, draw distance and number of objects on screen at once. On a normal telly, even you may struggle to tell the difference between the best Xbox games and a mediocre 360 title. Hook a 360 up to an HD display and shove in BioShock, however, and you'll be amazed.

There are plenty of game demos available. You can even download them while playing other games. Most weigh-in at more than half a gigabyte, though, so you'll need to check your broadband connection doesn't have a usage cap. There are also music videos, game extras and small games to download for a fee. A limited selection of films can be downloaded but they're relatively expensive, you can only rent them and HD versions are around 5GB in size! You can put your own music collection on the hard-drive and use it as the soundtrack to games.

The machine itself looks nice (if you care) but whirrs incredibly loudly when in use, making more noise than my washing machine on rinse. It also gets very hot - hide it in a drawer to blank out the noise and you'll need oven mitts to pick it up afterwards. Seriously, give it plenty of room to breathe.

Hmmm... This isn't coming across as too encouraging. On the one hand, the 360 is expensive and has a number of flaws. On the other, of all the consoles I've owned, my 360 is the only one I've become emotionally attached to. It's provided me with a great deal of entertainment and relaxation. That's down to the range and quality of games available. Highlights include:

• Oblivion - An enormous first-person fantasy role-playing game. There's a beautiful world you can roam freely, hundreds of quests and all manner of things to do.
• BioShock - A first-person adventure. Trapped in an underwater '50s utopia gone bad, you must explore the wreckage, using guns and your genetic mutations to fight off the mad residents.
• Hitman: Blood Money - Yes, you too can be a professional assassin! Oddly, however, this is as much a puzzle game as an action one. You have to figure out how to take down your targets as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. The levels are particularly imaginative, ranging from Mardi Gras to a red-neck wedding.
• Gears of War - Third-person shooting. Bald marines take on the alien horde.
• Saints Row - Gangster sim. Grand Theft Auto III with better graphics and most of the gameplay niggles fixed. Result.

On top of those, there's Grand Theft Auto IV, Halo 3, Kameo, Crackdown, Dead Rising, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Command & Conquer 3, a stack of Tom Clancy games, plenty of racers (most notably Burnout Revenge) and vast numbers of shooters.

Many other titles are on their way soon(ish), including: Fable 2, Fallout 3 and Too Human.

Of the downloadable games, most seem over-priced attempts to wring a few pounds from nostalgic gamers. Pac-Man really isn't as much fun as you remember. There are a few worthwhile offerings, however: Worms, Bomberman, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest and adaptations of strategy boardgames Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan.

The 360 will also play many games written for the original Xbox. Each game requires a patch to be downloaded to make it work, however. (It's possible to send off for a DVD with all the current patches on it). Which games are compatible and how well they work is somewhat pot-luck. Check online before making any purchases.

Conclusion: Any console is all about the games.

At the moment, the 360 has the games I want to play - western role-players and third-person adventures - and there's almost nothing on PS3 I'm interested in that I can't get on 360. The Wii has some fun, novelty titles, a couple of good games and a pile of substandard ports and party games.

It's telling that when my 360 turned itself into a giant doorstop and Microsoft reckoned it would take a month to fix, I felt bereft. The Wii couldn't tide me over and I couldn't see the point of buying a PS3. I just wanted my 360 back.

Pros:

• Excellent selection of games.
• Downloadable demos.
• Acclaimed online service.
• Premium console is good value.
• Plentiful, cheap supply of older and second-hand games.

Cons:

• Warm and loud. Like putting a fan heater under your telly.
• Reliability issues.
• Expensive if you buy all the extras.
• Requires an HD display and surround sound to really shine.
• Few games for children.

Rating: 5/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), computer games, Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

8:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Online rental tips

The internet is awash with reviews of online rental companies that read something like, 'This service is rubbish! I had ten Xbox 360 games in my queue but they sent me the four-year-old PS2 game at the bottom.'

Often these critical reviews are less to do with the stock levels of the company involved than with a mixture of misfortune and inexperience on the part of the reviewer. If you want to get the best from a rental service, then you need to use a little strategy. No one gets their top choice all the time; everyone gets their bottom choice on occasion. That's the nature of the system. Plan for it.

To go with today's review of LOVEFiLM, I've put together a few tips that should help maximise enjoyment and value for money when using an online games rental service. (Plenty of the tips apply to online DVD rental, too).

• Only add games to your list which you really want to play. There's a temptation to bung anything which sounds half-decent into your rental queue. Resist. By all means, try something new, but choose carefully.



• Don't add games you know you won't like. Which sounds obvious but... I've never got past level three of any game with Tom Clancy's name on it and yet I keep being impressed by great reviews and gorgeous screenshots. I keep renting them. I keep getting bored. I'm going to stop. (T.C.'s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 does look good, though. The reviews are great and the screenshots look gorgeous...)



• Rent more than one game at a time. Three is a luxury but two is essential. Otherwise, if you rent a game you don't like and send it back straight away, you'll have nothing to play for a week or more.



• Play one game at a time. Finish a game, send it off, play the next while the Royal Mail does its thing. You really don't want to keep swapping between two games, finish them both early on a Thursday evening and have nothing to play until Monday at the earliest.



• Try a new game as soon as you get it. Yes, I know this contradicts what I just said but it's the single exception. If you don't like a game then it's important to find out and send it back as soon as possible. Don't wait until you've got another game finished and sitting on the shelf ready to post.



• Never give a game a second chance. If a game hasn't got you at least interested within five minutes then proceed with caution. If it hasn't got you hooked after an hour or so then it's just not going to. Don't leave it a few days and try again - put it back in the envelope and get something else. There's no point playing a game that spends its entire time promising to be good at any moment when you can swap it almost painlessly for something that actually is good.



• Don't add games just to make up the numbers. You'll need to add a certain number of games to your list to activate your account. If you can't manage this then don't bother renting. However, if your list drops below this level later on, don't panic. Chances are that nothing bad will happen except you'll have to wait an extra day or two for them to have one of your listed games in stock. This is less time than it will take for you to receive and send back a game added to your list for the sake of it.



• Buy more consoles. As a housedad, time is limited, so why waste it playing rubbish games? Convert the money you save from renting into a new console. This way you'll have a wider choice of quality exclusive games.



• Finally, whatever you do, don't give the kids any indication you've rented a game they might be interested in. They will want to see it. Then they will want to play it. Then they will want to keep it. This cannot end well.

Now go and give it a try. Enjoy!

Labels: advice, computer games, rental, Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

7:59 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Far Cry Instincts Predator (Xbox 360)

Rated: 16+

Story: Jack Carver gets too close to some tropical islands in his boat and finds himself caught up in the experiments of a mad scientist. (Stop me if you've heard this one before...) He gets some superpowers, a couple of big guns and a little help from the CIA, and sets off to shoot himself a stack of mercenaries and mutants.

Gameplay: First-person shooter (FPS). It starts out with plenty of sneaking round and setting traps and then moves on to more fast-paced gung-ho action as Jack gradually gains powers such as regenerating health, night vision, claw attacks and super speed.

Save System: Regular checkpoints where progress is saved automatically.

Comments: First-person shooters are stuck in a rut. In the fifteen years since Doom came out, level design has got better and graphics have improved enormously but we're still running around looking for gate switches while shooting armies of moronic cannon fodder who have a tendency to stand next to explosive barrels.

OK, OK, there have been other advances. Let's see: vehicle sections, stealth sections, sniper rifles and, er... Did I mention that graphics have improved enormously?

We've had attempts to do something differently, most notably Thief, System Shock and Deus Ex. It's possible to argue, however, that none of these really count. Thief is more a stealth game than a shooter and the other two are role-playing games with guns - they share more in common with Vampire: Bloodlines and Oblivion than Half-Life. Maybe Boiling Point, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic have struck more of a balance but I don't know. My PC would cough blood and die trying to get them to run at a decent framerate.

Why haven't first-person shooters evolved into proper first-person adventures? Surely there must be something between shooting everything in sight and complex character building. I guess Metroid Prime shows some of the potential of the genre but it's littered with 'interesting' design choices: re-spawning enemies, widely spaced save points, awkward controls, clumsy platforming and frustrating difficulty spikes. These are mostly throw-backs to the 2D origins of the Metroid series, though, and hopefully Metroid Prime 3 will fix things. Personally, I'm hoping when it's finally released, Bioshock really will be Shooter 2.0 as claimed and the FPS can at last move on.

In the meantime...

The original Far Cry on PC was supposed to be a change of direction for the FPS. Out with linear levels of dark identikit corridors, in with large open outdoor environments in the tropical sunshine. Far Cry: Instincts was the game re-imagined for consoles i.e. with areas hemmed in by rocky outcrops to make the whole thing linear again. Far Cry: Instincts Predator is the hi-res Xbox 360 version of Instincts with the addition of the Evolution expansion. The expansion brings back more open environments again.

Still with me? Still care? Good.

So what have we got? Plenty of running around looking for gate switches while shooting armies of moronic cannon fodder who have a tendency to stand next to explosive barrels. To spice things up there are vehicle sections, stealth sections, sniper rifles and, er... graphics that are an enormous improvement on Doom. Hmm... This all sounds strangely familiar...

Far Cry is at its best in the sunny jungle. The environments often allow different routes and sneaking about. Later on, Jack can run super fast, allowing for screen-blurring Burnout style mayhem. Levels set inside are pretty generic and a chore but there aren't too many of them. The levels in darkness are just too dark. There are plenty of exciting moments, though, for those who persevere. (And, of course, a final boss who's irritatingly hard to kill even when you've read a walk-through and you're playing on easy. But what were you expecting?)

The Evolution expansion is better than the main game. It's much shorter but that's because there's less padding. On some of the levels objectives can be accomplished in any order and it just feels that there is more than one way to go about things more of the time. This is helped by the fact that adrenaline supplies (which fuel Jack's powers) are much more plentiful, allowing for a faster pace. The vehicle sections and other changes in gameplay are more evenly spread as well. Only an ill-advised platforming section in the final level gives cause for teeth-grinding.

So, Far Cry Instincts Predator has everything you'd expect from a modern FPS apart from a snappy name. On top of this, it has a lengthy single-player campaign and is set somewhere sunny for a change. It's always competent, frequently pretty and often exhilarating but seldom ground-breaking. Then again, it's not the game's fault it's stuck in a genre that's been going nowhere for fifteen years.

Conclusion: About as good as single-player first-person shooting gets. (You know what I'm saying...)

Graphics: There are plenty of beautiful views but everything's a bit ropey up close. The framerate sometimes judders in Evolution.

Length: Medium.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.1), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Lost Planet (Xbox 360)

Rated: 16+

Story: Humanity is trying to reclaim a 'lost' colony. Quite why they're bothering is anybody's guess - the entire planet is covered in snow, monsters and annoyed people with guns.

Gameplay: Shoot things. A lot.

This is a third-person action game. Run through the linear levels shooting bug-like aliens and snow pirates then climb into a mech-suit and shoot them some more. There's a boss at the end of each level. Sometimes you need to climb things using a grappling hook. There are lots of very explosive barrels lying around.

You get the picture.

Save System: Auto-save at the end of each level. Quitting the game saves up until the last checkpoint but there's no definite way of telling when you've just passed one.

Comments: The Xbox 360 release schedule has been somewhat barren for the last six months or so. Besides sports games, licensed tat and Tom Clancy sequels, we've had Gears of War, Viva Pinata, Star Trek: Legacy, Battlestations: Midway, Bullet Witch, Crackdown and this. That's not a long list and it ranges wildly in quality. It does, however, explain why Lost Planet has done relatively well. People are desperate.

There's not a great deal to recommend here. I suppose you could argue there are plenty of enemies on screen at once and the explosions are quite spectacular but that's about it. Sometimes there are so many enemies, though, it feels like a chore shooting them all (especially as generators need to be destroyed to stop creatures re-spawning) and it's often easier to run past. Getting caught in a barrage of explosions means being thrown about all over the place while not actually being able to see anything - which is slightly less than spectacular.

The bosses are impressive but there are too many off them and they can be frustrating even on Easy difficulty. (Yes, I know I'm rubbish. I throw like a girl, too). It quickly becomes a case of pegging it through the level to get to the boss and then running round it in circles shooting the weak-spot, hoping to get lucky and not die.

The story doesn't make much sense and seems overly familiar. It's the usual Capcom tale of treachery, revenge and experiments gone wrong but less interesting and dressed up in snow and robot suits.

Bored now...

Conclusion: Fun to begin with but severely limited. You'd better really love shooting things.

Graphics: Technically very good but not very inspiring. It all depends how much you like looking at snow.

I use a VGA cable and a non-widescreen monitor. Using any available resolution other than 1280x720 caused heavy screen-tearing. Unfortunately this resolution only gave me the option of widescreen output so the image appeared stretched vertically. Annoying (and identical to Dead Rising).

Length: Short.

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.1), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Crackdown (Xbox 360)

Rated: 15

Story: You are a genetically-enhanced law enforcement agent charged with the task of ridding Pacific City of three criminal gangs by taking out the gangs' leaders.

Gameplay: Run, jump and drive round town in third-person, looking for the hideouts of the six generals from each gang, and then take them out. How you do it is up to you. Rush into the lobby guns blazing, ram down the back gates in a truck, go crazy with a rocket launcher or leap across the rooftops straight to the penthouse. Once the generals of each gang are dead, the kingpin's defences are weakened, making a successful assassination more likely.

Increase your speed and agility by collecting enough orbs scattered around in awkward to reach places. Increase your weapon skills and strength by killing enemies. Increase your driving abilities by nailing special jumps, beating time-trials and running enemies over.

Save System: Auto-save whenever you achieve an objective. You can save and quit at any time but stats and progress are remembered not location. Loading a save game means re-starting at a supply point. It seldom takes more than a couple of minutes to get anywhere, though, so this isn't a problem.

Comments: Initially this feels like a basic GTA clone. You drive around a bit, run into a building, shoot some goons and then move on to the next target. Rinse and repeat. There are no proper cut-scenes, not much of a story and no missions exactly. You have to track down likely locations for the gang leaders and then fight your way in. That's it.

Once you've upped your stats a bit, however, things get more interesting. Then you can jump around like a superhero and rain down explosive destruction from above. Exhilarating leaps between sky-scrapers become common place. Frantic fire-fights break out all over.

Your health returns if you don't take damage for a few seconds but so does that of the enemy and they get frequent reinforcements so you can never slowly pick them all off. A mad adrenaline-fuelled dash to the general is often the best approach followed by a tense, chaotic exchange of bullets to see who dies first.

This is much more than a GTA-clone. At times it feels like an evolution of Tomb Raider with nail-biting jumps over vast chasms where you will your agent to reach out just that little bit further. Other times it's like Spider-Man 2 or Hitman. Working out the best way to reach a target takes some exploring and a little thought. Lots of fighting is usually unavoidable, though.

It's where the game tries too hard to ape GTA where things fall down. The 'races' where you have to drive or run through checkpoints in a set amount of time are pure padding. Indeed, driving cars hardly seems worth it most of the time - leaping about can be quicker and is far less likely to get you in trouble for killing passersby.

There isn't a linear set of story missions like in GTA but essentially this just leaves twenty-one assassination missions. That's not very many and some variation would have been nice. Collecting orbs is a good change of pace but any sequel will need fleshing out. Still, Crackdown is excellent entertainment while it lasts.

Conclusion: Great fun but short and occasionally repetitive. Some of the ideas are under-developed.

Graphics: Great. They have a slight cel-shaded look about them which normally annoys me but it's hardly noticeable in the heat of the action. Huge draw distance.

Length: Short.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.1), Xbox 360 (vol.1)

 
Agree? Disagree? Got a question? Add your comment here.

9:20 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post