Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Another adrenaline pumping, solid and action packed shooter, but an overly familiar feeling with this franchise has set in.

I really like the ratings battle Activision has going on with the Call of Duty (COD) Brand. Each year Treyarch and Infinity Ward studios release the best first person shooter games the genre has to offer and surely this can only be good for us consumers? Infinity Ward of course does the now legendary Modern Warfare series, but Treyarch produced the surprisingly fantastic WWII shooter, World at War, back in 2009 and has now attempted to beat the ludicrously popular Modern Warfare 2, with a new offering, Black Ops. Of course it must look to distance itself from Infinity Ward’s finest but ensure the action packed gameplay and vast multiplayer elements shine brighter, a tough call in a packed and hugely competitive market. So, is Call of Duty still the king of shooters and could Black Ops possibly be better than its close relative and rival Modern Warfare? Black Ops’ setting remains relatively historical, mostly being set in the cold war days of the late 1960’s. You take the role of several different characters, in a first person perspective, mainly from various Special Forces divisions that frequently go on clandestine military black operations behind enemy lines. The majority of the campaign is spent in the shoes of Alex Mason, an American Black Ops soldier who awakes in an interrogation room in 1968. He is interrogated by his captors and the single player campaign is played through Mason’s memories of missions of the last decade. Mason was originally sent to Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion to assassinate Fidel Castro, which he does (or at least he thinks he does) only to be captured upon escaping. He is then sent to Vorkuta Gulag, a prison complex in Russia where he is subjected to years of intense torture and strange experiments at the hands of several scientists, who are looking for a way to invade and take down the United States using an experimental nerve gas called Nova 6. How they plan to do this is a seriously complex and secretive method, where the remainder of the single player campaign is played out through Mason’s memories of the Black Ops missions that lead him to trying to stop such a plot against the free world. But as the story unfolds across various locations around the globe, such as Russia, Cuba, and Vietnam, things are not all they appear to be, as Mason constantly has a set of seemingly random numbers burned on to his mind, he starts to doubt who he is actually fighting for, who he can trust and even who he really is.

What’s good?

The expected action packed set pieces are the highlight of Black Ops. You spend the whole game going from check point to check point through the missions and the enemy will do their best to stop you. A lot of them though are on a fairly huge scale with many troops fighting on each side, particularly the Vietnam missions. There is also an equal amount of stealth missions, more often than not for infiltration rather than assassination, where taking down opponents silently and using their clothes for disguise for example, is the aim. Black Ops regularly differentiates itself from other shooters by often not necessarily being involved in a pitch battle between two forces but rather making your way through such a conflict using it as cover. This is obvious from the beginning in one of the first missions in Cuba where you fight through the Bay of Pigs invasion. Legging it across open fields while bullet ridden hell irrupts around you is something you will be getting used to. You will use machine guns, shot guns, LAW’s (Light Anti-tank Weapon), sniper rifles, jeeps armed with cannons, attack helicopters and spy planes to carve your way through this violent adrenaline filled action packed gun fight. The Vietnam missions stand out the most, especially as the first mission there is the most bullet ridden, explosive and brutal in the whole game, as Vietnamese forces invade the American base you are in and are hell bent on sticking every US troop on the end of a bayonet. You will also infiltrate through dense jungle taking out troops silently, which is literally like something out of Apocalypse Now, and you’re even forced to play Russian roulette after being captured by Vietnamese forces (aka The Deer Hunter). It really is like playing a summary of all your favourite ‘Nam movies and they really are spectacular (they are so good, I actually kinda’ wished the whole game was based in ‘Nam). Others don’t disappoint either, as the prison break mission from Russia, where you don a portable mini gun, is a real adrenaline pumper, as is infiltrating a Russian space rocket base and blowing a huge launching rocket out of the sky, as is piloting an attack helicopter as it launches and assault on a huge enemy freight ship. You will also fight through the roof tops of Hong Kong, pilot the Lockheed Martin Blackbird spy plane while picking out targets for troops on the ground, picking out targets for a helicopter gun ship whilst fighting through the streets of Vietnam (a particularly intense mission), escaping a mountain military base as an avalanche falls on it and even meeting John. F. Kennedy himself makes this a game of many memorable moments with big action, explosions, guns, knives and blood. The constant jumping around of locations, mission objectives, guns, vehicles and soldiers mean they have maintained COD’s ability to avoid things going stale and if you’re a fan of action or first person shooters, there is very little in this game that will disappoint.

Though not modern, there is still some serious and inventive fire power. One thing the COD franchise seems to nail perfectly is guns, and the sheer quantity of them. Black Ops of course is no exception. It doesn’t have the same technology as its Modern Warfare brethren, it’s the 1960’s after all, but still has some cool unique weaponry. There is of course the expected assault rifles with grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, shot guns, sniper rifles and missile launchers, but some of the highlights where, for example, a cross bow that fires explosive tipped arrows. Lots of vehicle destroying and maiming fun is to be had with such a cool weapon. There was also a ludicrously powerful shot gun called dragon’s breath that not only blows limbs clean off enemies but sets them on fire as well (as if having them bleed to death through limb loss was not quite enough). Another excellent one was remote control cars rigged with explosives, that you drive up to the enemy and blow them to pieces (sadly only available as a kill streak reward in online matches). Vehicles play a much bigger role in Black Ops as well as you will frequently be in control of motorbikes, helicopters, jeeps, cars, boats and jets, and you have full control of the helicopter and boat missions, not just the guns but movement as well. As always with COD games it’s a gun nut’s heaven.

Treyarch certainly know how to make their games more brutal, bloody and violent than its Modern Warfare rival. This game is real tester of your stomach as not only does it have the copious amounts of blood you would expect, its how they are delivered that really makes you wince. Within the first few missions you are garrotting someone to death with wire or jamming a knife in the neck of an enemy to severe their spinal chord, and the hand to hand kills you make in the ‘Nam missions are horrific. Grabbing some poor unsuspecting bastard from a raft, pulling them underwater and literally sawing their throat out with a knife borders on the disturbing. You will also pull the pins on people’s grenades and watch them get blown to pieces and brutally torture suspects whilst trying to gather information, and “yes” you are in full control of the torture, it’s not a cut scene. This is added to the fact you blow limbs off people with more powerful weapons, such as shot guns and watch as they slowly bleed to death. It fully deserves its 18 certificate.

The multiplayer stuff is vast and, at last, accommodating to all. The single player campaign is only a portion of the experience in Black Ops as most people will get the most enjoyment out of the online battles. This includes all the things you expect, team battles, mercenary battles, death match, capture the flag etc, with an addictive upgrade system. The more you play the more experience you earn and with that you unlock weapons, weapon customisations and perks. You can add a grenade launcher to your favourite assault rifle, throw C4 explosives instead of grenades use dual magnum pistols as a secondary weapon and pretty much become a multi weapon wielding instrument of death. You also have a list of perks, such as making you run faster, able to take more hits, taking a last stand with a pistol after being killed and their are rewards for kill streaks. This is basically when you kill several people in a row, without dying yourself, you get a reward which ranges from deploying a few remote control cars with explosives mounted on them to drive round and blow up people instantly, calling in a spy plane to reveal enemy positions, deploying an automated turret machine gun and piloting an attack helicopter that circles round the level mowing people down with a mini gun. Where Black Ops stands above others is that it accommodates all players with all skill levels. It uses a ranking system that is based on how much you have played how many you have killed etc and sets you up automatically against opponents with similar stats, so you will never be thrown in the deep end and simply spend your online gaming dying and respawning constantly. I’m not a fan of online multiplayer stuff at all, but even I liked the one offered by Black Ops. It will probably annoy the elite COD veterans initially, but I’m sure you will get ranked up soon enough (it’s not like you have jobs or girlfriends to worry about ayy), but for everyone else this is one of the best yet.

The zombie level is a big laugh. World at War had Nazi zombies, which was a strange but fun addition to the multiplayer, where wave after wave of zombies will try and get into a house your defending, each wave intensifying, and you simply have to last as long as possible. It was daft but really good fun and an excellent addition to the multiplayer aspect as you can take it on with mates. The Zombies return for Black Ops and it is practically identical, with the exception there is a maximum of four players, its set in the Pentagon and you play as (no joke) J. F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro or Robert McNamara. As I said, stupid but fun.

What’s bad?

It’s pretty much a total clone of the last three COD games. The thing that bothers me most about Black Ops is that it is literally an identical clone to the last three COD games. You infiltrate the same snowy mountain bases silently, fight through the same streets picking out targets for a helicopter, land on the same freighter boat and work your through the ships bowels, fight to take the same enemy stronghold, defend the same base with explosives, take out the same anti air craft guns etc etc. It’s just all the same, literally exactly the same. It just feels too familiar now, like a slight update to Modern Warfare and if you have played said Modern Warfare or World at War, there is nothing here you won’t have done before or is executed any better. It is literally a clone and if you’re a big fan of the previous titles, and still play them, it’s hard to find a reason to recommend spending more money on Black Ops.

Eternally re-spawning enemies continue to infuriate in Black Ops. Why, for the love of god why, do Treyarch persist with this idea? They did it in World at War and despite the heavy criticism, they decided to ignore everyone. It’s an issue so heavily criticised that Infinity Ward got rid of it for Modern Warfare 2 and was better off as a result. For those not in the know, this game (like all older COD games) will constantly spawn enemies forever and ever and ever until you advance past a certain invisible line or check point. Or run out of ammo and die. It is interminable! It doesn’t happen for every mission (they don’t re-spawn for stealth missions) but it does happen a lot and is just as infuriating as ever. There are often so many enemies constantly re-spawning, no matter how many you gun down, and you are expected to sprint towards the hundreds of machine gun wielding troops simply to cross an invisible line that will stop them from appearing. It’s just stupid and on the harder difficulties it becomes ludicrously difficult, as one shot kills you. Plus you have to do all the work/advancing as your AI pals will just sit there for an eternity until you advance. The first Vietnam mission is the pinnacle of this as you have to run down a hill with a million heavily armed enemies at the bottom, in order to push over some barrels of flammable liquid, and they will not stop or pause at any point no matter how many you kill. Whenever one is killed he is instantly replaced and you have to spend an eternity edging down this hill millimetre by millimetre. I hated it! Treyarch, why do you do this? Just stop it! It really does put a downer on the whole experience.

Your AI pals are the most infuriating and irritating team mates ever. A criticism of World at War was the retarded nature of your AI comrades and it’s sad to say I think they are even worse in Black Ops. Every mission in the single player campaign has you working through levels with computer controlled partners, often loads of them, and they will constantly drive you mad. They bungle around the level totally disregarding where you are at all times as they will try to run through you if you are in the way of their pre-designated path. They very rarely kill anything despite the fact they blast away constantly and will not advance in anyway whatsoever until you have done all the work. Often they will completely ignore an enemy hiding round a corner, run straight past him, and as you follow, assuming everything is fine as your AI pals only advance when everything is dead, the enemy soldier shoots you in the back. To make it worse they will push you out from behind cover if you happen to be in the way and being fired at, get stuck on you ceasing your and their ability to move, particularly annoying when a grenade explosion is imminent. You try and escape the blast radius only for a moronic computer sprite to run into you gluing you to the spot. They will leap in front of you when aiming down the sites of a sniper rifle, steal really good places of cover leaving you out in the line of fire and generally be of no help at all and really irritate constantly. You will frequently wish they would all simply commit suicide as doing the whole game on your own would be considerably easier.

The enemy will target you and only you. It’s hardly surprising that the enemy is only after you considering how your AI pals offer no threat whatsoever, but this was another frustrating flaw in the single player campaign. Basically all enemies on screen, even if there are a million other people shooting at them will fire at you and only you. It is ludicrous as often they will charge in a kamikaze style towards a flank of your AI pals just to get to you sitting at the back behind cover. It is utterly preposterous. There’s nothing worse than being in a line of 50 troops and all the enemy on screen are shooting at you.

The check points mid mission are way to far apart. A minor gripe would be that the check points on some missions are too far apart. About half the game is set on saving your game after every action set piece, as expected, but the other half of the levels demand you go through at least three or four, which on the harder difficulties is incredibly difficult and takes a very long time. Starting pretty much from the beginning of each level every time you die, which you will do a lot on Veteran mode, is anger inducing stuff. Again it’s just further unnecessary frustration.

It’s too hard to control a vehicle and shoot from it at the same time. A further minor gripe is that I didn’t like having to control the vehicle your in and shoot at the same time. Possibly more a reflection of my skills, but it did seem a bit overwhelming. Its hard enough having to pick out a hundred enemies with a machine and rocket launchers at the same time, whilst avoiding incoming RPG rounds and other enemy vehicles. The majority of vehicle stages are based on the computer players driving and you shooting, as in Modern Warfare, which is simply better as far as I am concerned and putting you in control of everything is a step to far.

Conclusion

It goes to show how spoilt we are as game fans at the moment, as a title as good as COD: Black Ops is just a bit unimpressive. The single player has issues, such as retarded AI pals and the infuriating respawning enemies, but it is still the action packed bullet blazing brutally violent romp across the globe fans will want, the online multiplayer is as robust as ever and now more accommodating to newcomers and you can slaughter zombies with your mates, yet it just doesn’t blow you away. This is Black Ops’ biggest problem, that an overly familiar feeling has crept into this game and it feels too much like your just going through the motions, like some DLC for another COD game. Please don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid and decent game, but in the same way World at War was excellent but not quite as good as the first Modern Warfare (which I still think is the best shooter ever made), Black Ops is very good but not quite as good as Modern Warfare 2. If you’re a fan of said Modern Warfare 2 and still play it, which I am sure is a hell of a lot of people, there is not really any incentive to hand Activision another £50 of your cash. The single player isn’t quite as entertaining, the multiplayer is just as good/identical (with the exception of Black Ops being friendlier to newcomers) and the zombie level is not as entertaining as Spec Ops mode (the two player levels) in Modern Warfare 2. Considering Black Ops has already broken all sales records I have no doubt it will sell in ludicrous numbers so my opinion is utterly irrelevant, but I maintain, despite how good it is, and it is really good, unless your completely new to the franchise/genre, I cant think of many reasons to buy it. CA.

Summary

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.5

Everything is simple and easy to use and the control scheme is the same as all previous games, perfect and instinctual. Getting online is a piece of cake and you are set up against similarly ranked people automatically.

Is the story any good? – 8.0

Its told in a epileptic fit inducing way, far too many flickering images and flashes, but is otherwise interesting, fast paced and full of unexpected twists.

How does it look? – 8.5

Very good if a bit un-noticeable. Character animations are vastly improved, especially facial features and general movement, and all levels are teeming with detail, especially the ‘Nam missions. Not quite as eye popping as slightly better visually awesome titles, such as God of War III or Vanquish.

How does it sound? – 10.0

Background music always suits the action and the character you are playing, especially the Rolling Stones in the ‘Nam boat mission. Gary Oldman provides voice acting again, and his Russian is as good as ever.

Is it good to play? – 8.0

Action packed, gun blazing, brutally violent and explosive. The COD experience to be expected. Online multiplayer is as vast and addictive as ever and more accommodating to newcomers. Eternally respawning enemies, very unaware and stupid friendly AI and a few other gripes make the single player not quite as excellent as perhaps it should have been. It’s not quite as good as Modern Warfare 2 in general.

When will I get bored? – 8.0

Single player doesn’t take too long (around 6 to 7 hours), but the online multiplayer and zombie levels will keep you playing for a while, especially with addictive ranking and upgrade system. A general feeling of “I have done all this before” is very apparent however and interest is likely to not last as long as previous titles.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

This identical copy of Fallout 3 may look a bit out of date now, but this enormous game is still one of the most addictive & enjoyable experiences to be had on a PS3.

I was never a fan of role playing games (RPG’s), but 2008’s Fallout 3 totally won me over, and gave me a gaming experience unlike anything I have ever played before. It mixed action with role playing elements, gave a really engrossing story and a ridiculously vast nuclear war devastated wasteland to explore, with huge amounts of customising, side quests and exploring to do. It was so addictive that I just couldn’t get enough of it and it was easily in my top 3 of the best games I have played so far on the PS3, and the vast majority of the gaming world agreed with me as it won many accolades of “game of the year 2008”. As you can imagine I was anticipating this follow up, Fallout: New Vegas, with huge amounts of eagerness. So can lightning strike twice, can Bethesda Studios make another masterpiece? This game is an action RPG set several hundred years into the future, but from the perspective of how society perceived the future would be in the 1950’s. So you have nuclear powered tail finned cars, robot waiters, duke boxes etc. In 2227, inevitably, mankind wiped itself out in a nuclear war between the USA and China. Few people survived but the humans that did, being humans, emerged from the ashes as greedy and willing to kill each other as ever before. Several hundred year’s later people are surviving but society is struggling to be restored and technology is still few and far between. The concept of every man for himself is the most widely adopted attitude. Las Vegas somehow managed to avoid the apocalypse and is still a vibrant neon town, powered by the Hoover Dam which is still functioning, but is in the charge of a mysterious overlord with a robot army, called Mr House. Several societies battle for power in the nuclear wastelands, such as the “New California Republic (NRC)” and the “Legions of Caesar” for example, each one wanting to enforce their particular rule over others. You play a simple courier who was delivering a package when a group of gangsters intercepted you, robbed you and shot you in the head, leaving you for dead. Luckily though a robot finds you and takes you to a nearby doctor, who heals you. Several days later you emerge from the doctors house and go on a mission to try and find out why those people tried to kill you, what was so precious about your package and survive the savage nuclear wastelands long enough to find out.

What’s good?

As before (in Fallout 3) the sheer size of the game is mind boggling. It isn’t quite as big as the capital wasteland of Washington DC, from Fallout 3, but it’s still a monster of a game. Walking across it in its entirety would take hours. There are far more towns and settlements to discover, than its predecessor, including the fully modelled New Vegas, which represents Las Vegas from the 1950’s, so this is casino’s run by mob bosses and crooks in general. There is no subway system as in Fallout 3, but you can still go in practically every house and building and there is still a myriad of underground sewers, caves, bunkers and vaults to explore. There will always be something worth getting in all nooks and crannies so exploration of the wasteland is highly advised. For example, I came across a small group of heavily armed robots defending a crashed aeroplane, and after killing them I found a huge bazooka like laser cannon. I also found a mini nuke launcher, called a Fatman, in a cave which had a nest of night stalkers in it (half dog, half lizard, mutated beasts). There is also the noticeable gang element to New Vegas, as there are loads of these societies. All are very different such as the organised, but desperate, “New California Republic” army, the drugged up rapist murdering psychopathic “Fiends”, the warrior tribe “The great Khans”, the supremely cool “Brotherhood of Steel” (my favourite), the heavily armed “Boomers” and loads more. There are also loads of companies to work for as well, such as caravan companies, weapons dealers, tradesmen, mercenaries, casino’s etc, and all require investigating and communicating with as most will offer you work with high reward, or attack you causing you to slaughter them and fleece their corpses of all their fine weaponry and armour. For example, the “Fiends” will attack anything and everything on sight and are armed to the teeth, but gunning down just a small group of these lunatics will enable you to pick their cold dead hands of their very fine arsenal. You should wander into “Fiend” territory now and again, despite the risk, as you are far better off in this desolate future killing and stealing from those who mean you harm, than earning and purchasing things honourably. The sheer amount of content blows Fallout 3 away and it vastness is unmatched by anything you will have played on the PS3 before.

It trumps its predecessor in the ludicrous amount of game time you will get. Fallout 3 was a big game in the huge amount to do, but New Vegas has taken that and just gone ballistic. I got 5 hours into this game and I was yet to undertake the first mission from the main story. It packs out the hours spent playing by having an untold amount of side missions. They are literally everywhere, in every town, from everyone you speak to. It encourages you constantly to chat to people all the time, and it will always serve you missions as a result. Although not technically essential, side missions are hugely influential, as performing the main story mission is much much harder if you don’t utilise all the favours gained from others in this world. Getting into New Vegas, for example, will cost a fortune, however if you get on the good side of a gang boss called “the King” it’s completely free. This of course involves doing missions for him. Doing missions for others can ultimately end up with them accompanying you on your wasteland trek, and company is often a hugely beneficial asset. Added to this is your need for experience points, the vast majority of which will be gained from missions, to level up your character to make him a jack of all trades. If the vast amount of exploration to undertake didn’t already consume a huge chunk of your life, the sheer amount of missions and tasks alone would still cease your social life. It is a serious amount of game for your money.

This game has so many moral choices to make. Although Fallout 3 had choices to make it never went too far into it and you were often better off being good anyway as the advantages were more obvious. New Vegas completely evens out the playing field though as being “good” or “evil” have a totally equal amount of pros and cons. An innocent old woman wants money for some items you badly need so do you a) pay her or try and barter her down and then pay her, or b), blow her head off with a shot gun and rob her. New Vegas has no issue with either. Depending on how good or bad you are affects how the whole game plays out, including the main story, and especially how others treat you. This packs out the already huge amount of content even further as nearly all main story missions have at least two alternative ways of dealing with a quest, normally involving doing the decent thing or having the back stabbing murderous approach, but please be aware its carefully constructed so that neither moral choice will ever have an advantage over the other. I worked for some very unpleasant energy weapon dealers, in a shop called “silver rush”, which gives you bad karma and makes others dislike you, but the rewards for doing so where huge, with the most sophisticated weapons and armour being handed over as payment, along with loads of money. I also hated “Ceaser’s Legion”, as they are slave dealers, but working for them, which again has negative impacts, allowed me access to an essential character in the game. On the other hand, if you are super nice and helpful to the “Boomers” you receive essential help from them later on in the game. Don’t ever be afraid to mix it up, don’t always choose the path of good, as there is no method that serves you better than another. Never have I come across a game before that gives you so much free will to play with.

There is a lot of customisation and personalisation to do. Customising, or levelling up, your character is pretty much the aim of the game. You can choose superficial stuff of course such as your sex, facial feature arrangement, facial hair, hair, eye colour, your armour/clothes, everything. But the main purpose is to add to your experience points. Every thing you kill and every mission you complete adds points in order for you to evolve your character’s skills and abilities. You can make him/her linguistically suave, physically strong, a good shot, a good trader, a lock picking expert, a computer hacking genius, improve your healing ability, the list goes on. Plus, there are loads of levels of this each with it’s own set of “perks”, which include being able to carry round more supplies, having heightened senses at night, increasing your luck when aiming for a critical strike, increasing your abilities with explosives, energy weapons or normal guns etc. The more game time you put in the more levels of experience you will unlock until you can pick the hardest of locks, heal someone who’s on deaths door or barter every merchant to give you seriously discounted supplies. The clever thing is, however, that New Vegas limits the amount everything can be upgraded so you will never be able to have maxed out points of every skill. You have to decide in advance how you are going to approach this wasteland, what sort of character you are going to be. For example, in Fallout 3 I had made a physically strong character who was able to kill the largest of mutated beasts with his bare hands and carry shit loads of stuff, but couldn’t argue his way out of a paper bag and got financially buggered by every trader. This means I could never convince anyone to do anything making many missions very difficult to overcome, and always got ripped off by traders costing me a fortune in caps. So in New Vegas I wanted a character who was linguistically mighty. So it was awesome having the ability to convince a stone to give me blood, however the consequences of this slapped me hard round the face when I realised it was at the cost of not being strong enough to hold my weapons for aiming, so I was constantly missing my targets, wasting ammo, being killed a lot and couldn’t carry many supplies with me to go long spells of surviving in the wasteland. You have to approach every situation using your pre-selected advantages and make the best of problems where you have none. The depth and detail of choice and its implications is immense and even more so than its predecessor.

V.A.T.S is still awesome. The Vault Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) is one of Fallout’s unique combat systems. Whenever you encounter an enemy you have the choice of, simply by the push of a button, to enter this mode which allows you to pick an enemy and then choose what part of him you want to shoot at. If you shoot a leg, it will disable the enemy, shoot an arm and he may drop his weapon and if you choose his head you will likely blow it off resulting in a “critical strike” (I’m sure you can guess what that means). You have an unlimited time to choose these targets, once in VATS mode, but it is restricted by your action points (AP’s) displayed in the lower left hand side of the screen. You only have a certain amount, so you can’t use it indefinitely, and they slowly build up over time. You can also take various chemical concoctions that will increase their regenerative ability temporarily. Once your chosen target is selected it will zoom out and show you a slow motion replay of what the kill looks like. Although its not quite as effective as you might think (more on that in a bit) I have come across few more satisfying experiences than watching, in slow motion, your character blow a mutants head clean off with a double barrelled shot gun, blood and limbs splattering everywhere. It is so very rewarding, in a slightly disturbed way, and I have yet to get tired of it. It is often the best method of killing and you should use it a lot.

There is a seriously huge amount of fire power in New Vegas. A criticism I had with Fallout 3 was how unspectacular the weaponry was. It did the job, but other than a few highlights, it didn’t do much to ignite your love of fire power. New Vegas rectifies that though with a huge amount of crazy futuristic weapons. The Gatling lasers, missile launchers, shotguns and machine guns remain, of course, but now you have things such as the immensely powerful Gauss Rifle, a laser sniper rifle that can decapitate at a considerable distance. You also have a laser “Tommy Gun” (basically a smaller Gatling laser), much more variety of hand to hand weapons, such as the ludicrously destructive chainsaw or power glove, a punching mitt that can literally blow your enemy to pieces with one punch. I could go on. There is also a new weapon that combines the two best words possibly in gaming: “Grenade Machinegun”. Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds. The AK47 has gone, but you can use a myriad of carbine weapons, such as an M16 machine gun, a magnum revolver and rifle, all very powerful. There is also many different shot guns, not just the few found in Fallout 3, and many varieties in general of all weapons. I also found several special guns, such as a rocket launcher called “Annabelle”, a mini gun called “The Avenger” and a grenade launcher called “Thumper”. These special weapons often require you to kill their particularly tough owner, but they have an advantage over its normal brethren such as being more powerful, holding more ammo etc. Plus, of course, the legendary “fat man” remains, and if you don’t know what that is it’s a device that launches “mini nukes”, which are exactly as the name states. They are small nuclear missiles that vaporise anything in a glorious, yet miniature, mushroom cloud. Its particularly entertaining to launch one through VATS and watch it in slow motion, as your target feebly tries to leg it, blow everything sky high. You need to be fairly careful when using it however as ammo is seriously scarce, far more rare than it was in Fallout 3. Power armour is also back and still awesome, though you have to work harder to get it, but it is still particularly cool and very effective. Of course everything has to be maintained and repaired to keep it at full maiming capacity, and there is an untold amount of customising to do on most weapons, such as adding sights, larger magazines etc, and there is different ammo available for every weapon, such as explosive or armour piercing rounds. If you like fire power and weapon customising this will be your nirvana.

This game oozes atmosphere like no other. One thing you will notice is that Fallout doesn’t do things in halves; it has to have ridiculous quantities of everything. Huge amounts to do, vast wastelands to explore, an obscene amount of guns and ammo, but what it has most of is atmosphere. Bethesda Studios really know how to suck you into a game and make you incapable of turning it off. Atmosphere comes from the world that’s been created, for example, very early on you meet a trampy looking wastelander who pleads with you to rescue his sister on top of a hill from irradiated geckos, and upon doing this you find nobody on the hill accept some supplies. The bloke then turns up behind you, states he used you to get rid of the geckos and now needs to kill you to claim the supplies, which he of course tries to do. What a cruel but realistic introduction to this savage wasteland. I also found a house in the mountains full of giant super mutants that were intelligent and you could converse with. There was another mountain that had a massive “nightkin” (a huge dark blue super mutant) dressed as a woman, complete with hat and wig, and broadcasts on the radio bizarre messages of hatred. I found a club in a sewer called “The Thorn” that rears mutated creatures and gets them to fight for sport. There’s a gang called “the Kings” where every one of them is dressed as a 50’s greaser. I got a cyborg dog with an exposed brain called “Rex” as a companion. In a town called “Freeside” I saw two children chasing a rat, and upon shooting the rat, the kids fell on it and started eating it. I explored many deserted vaults often filled with ghouls (mutated human killing machines) and one that was filled with killer plants as a result of an experiment that went wrong. I even found one vault that had become deserted as the computer that ran the vault had become corrupt and demanded a human sacrifice once a year or the oxygen would be turned off. I couldn’t resist going into the sacrificial chamber, where you walk down a brightly lit hallway and into room with a single chair in the middle. It then plays you a really creepy film about accepting death, appreciating your life’s achievements, before the walls drop down and a load of turret machine guns turn you into Swiss cheese. It was disturbing to say the least. I was even walking through the wasteland at one point and came across a man kneeling over the bloody corpse of a woman. As I approached he took a gun out and shot himself through the head. Who comes up with this stuff? “Imaginative” doesn’t come close to describing the mood and atmosphere in this game, it is fantastic.

What’s bad?

As with Fallout 3, glitches and bugs make this a technical nightmare. Fallout 3 was ridden with glitches that often left you stuck and having to restart from a previous save point, and unfortunately New Vegas takes this technical inferiority to new extreme levels. It’s embarrassing for Bethesda Studios. Playing this game is a lot like walking across a very rickety old bridge, such as you would find in an Indiana Jones film. It’s going to collapse; it’s just a matter of when. It pauses, admittedly very briefly, constantly, and every time it does there is fairly decent chance it will crash entirely. This isn’t every half hour or once in a while, this is every ten seconds or so, I kid you not, it’s that bad. Other characters get stuck on each other and their surroundings constantly, or sink into the backgrounds so they have no legs. Then things will start moving randomly, such as metal cans falling repeatedly from the sky, wasteland animals walking up trees (as funny as it is to watch), people standing perfectly still but gliding across the floor, people talking without moving their mouths and just lots and lots of cock ups. It’s easily far worse than the already seriously dodgy predecessor and this is really something that should be improved upon, from previous games, not allowed to deteriorate. There are deeper problems as well as you can get completely stuck as glitches will suddenly not allow you to go through a door which is vital to a mission or a character you have to meet will get stuck on a surface and you can not remove them, or they will simply not be where they are supposed to, meaning the mission can never be completed. I could never gain favour with a gang called “The Great Khans” as I couldn’t complete a mission for them as I had to talk to some woman who simply wasn’t where the pip boy indicator showed, and never was. It is literally tough luck! I also had serious issues with the controller input as if things got a bit frantic on screen, and I needed to change weapons, simply fast selecting them (using the directional buttons) stopped working. Even the fire button ceased on several occasions, leaving me to hammer the trigger whilst screaming “shoot you bastard, I’m pressing the fucking button!” only for there to be a huge delay whilst the game catches up with the input and several minutes later, well after the danger has passed, the gun then starts blasting away unprompted, as a result of my earlier infuriated crazed button mashing. I can’t imagine getting huge games like this to work flawlessly is easy, but other large games, like Rockstar’s “Red Dead Redemption”, can manage it, so I’m not sure how much I can excuse Fallout New Vegas for its glitch ridden technical crapness.

I still have issues with V.A.T.S. Although I love using VATS, and watching your character blow a raiders head off, it is really only effective at close to point blank range, as it was in Fallout 3. If you are anything less than right up close to your enemy you will almost certainly miss. The problem is that you are not really fully in control of whether you make direct hits on your enemy or not. As you pick which part of the body you want to shoot at it displays a percentage number next to it which indicates how likely you are to actually hit. Obviously the bigger the body part, like the torso, and how far away they are, the more or less likely you are to hit it. If it’s below the 80% mark however, I would not bother. This throws the percentages into question, as surely at 50% it should be 50/50 whether you hit or not, but you will miss every single time. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but it does seem to encourage VATS to only be used for particularly close up messy kills. VATS also encourages you to target limbs for the best killing effects but it is so inconsistent. I have unloaded many double barrelled shot guns at point blank range in the enemies face and he is fine and continues to attack you. I have also shot pistols from a mile away, at an enemies’ leg, and it hits him straight between the eyes for a “critical strike”. The inconsistency does take a lot of the skill out of the game and can often involve luck more than anything else. I prefer to rely on my skill personally, and if I miss it doesn’t bother me as much if I know it’s my fault.

Shooting and combat is still a bit rubbish and clumsy. Although it’s better than Fallout 3, as you can now aim down the sights, aiming and shooting is still very difficult. Just because the cross hairs of your rifle are lined up at an enemies head does not mean you will incur a head shot, as unless you’re close, crouching, aiming down the sights, with 100% condition weapon and not moving you will almost definitely miss, whether you like it or not. If you are doing all you can to be as accurate as possible then the enemy will shoot you way before you even knew he was there, or started to aim, or even had your gun drawn! Plus, trust me when I say, the enemy is a much much better shot than you. Your gun’s accuracy and damage dealt are affected by its condition and your skill abilities but generally you will not have full accuracy skill and not a hint of damage on your weapon until you have put in some serious hours into the game, so you basically miss a hell of a lot. It is frustrating. There is not really anything you can do to be more skilful than your enemy as it nearly always comes down to who has the more powerful weapon or the best armour. Skill is pretty much irrelevant. You can jink, duck and dive, but, as I said, you will definitely miss if you shoot whilst doing this. Plus, the enemy is, again, much more accurate. It’s not terrible it’s just so simplistic and out of date by today’s standards. I just found it annoying as I am doing everything right and it is still not having the desired effect. I keep telling myself that it’s not a FPS as such and that I shouldn’t expect such traits, but there is far too much shooting and killing to be done, in first person, to let this fact go.

The enemies can be ludicrously difficult! Of course this depends on the difficulty setting, which you can change at anytime in the main menu, but even if you have it on the easiest difficulty it will still present you with foes that will appear to be indestructible. My main issue is the amount of fire power it takes to kill some enemies, as it is just preposterously stupid. I mean a seriously, ridiculously, unbelievably, ludicrously, hideously, unfeasible amount of damage needs to be done. Killing some thugs that try and mug you is easy enough, as is killing some small RAD scorpions or bloat fly’s, a simple hunting shotgun to the face solves such niggling issues. But often you will come across some armoured raiders, some nasty huge poisonous mutated insects and, the most abominable of all, Deathclaws! I appreciate that playing a game on a hard difficulty is supposed to be hard, but unloading a double barrel shotgun into a raiders face, at point blank range, and it does minimal damage is just ridiculous. That is a one shot kill that is not even easy to pull off so it really shouldn’t take a further 47 point blank shot gun shots to the face to kill what is basically a normal person. It is ludicrous! Even worse is when giant insects, particularly fast moving giant fly’s called “Cazadors”, swarm you and each one delivers a poisonous sting that effects your ability to aim and shoot, so even if you had the required 4782 machine gun rounds to kill one of them, you couldn’t fire anyway or have enough ammo to kill the other six. Then you have the Deathclaws, not only the hardest non-boss enemy in the game but possibly one of the toughest enemies ever encountered in gaming ever. Mere point blank shotgun shots to the face don’t affect this guy at all; I mean it will literally do nothing! You need at least 2 mini nukes to make a direct hit before it is killed, or around 3 or 4 missiles or several Gauss rifle head shots, on the easiest difficulty, otherwise you’re a dead man. Plus bear in mind that’s just one Deathclaw which you will never encounter as they are always found in packs. Let’s just be clear about this: that is TWO NUCLEAR MISSILES to make direct ground zero contact on a flesh and bone organic creature! To make it worse this thing has an unavoidable attack that will kill you with one hit, unless you have the toughest fully repaired power armour on, and even then it only takes two or three hits. This makes missions where you have to take out a horde of them, with even tougher alpha male and female variations, a total ridiculously impossible nightmare. Believe it or not though, even Deathclaw’s are out done in the bullet sponge competition when compared with the end of game boss. I won’t reveal too much detail but it is literally just a man with some armour on. I had to switch it to the easiest difficulty to do it (pathetic I know) and I launched (yes I counted) 167 explosive round grenades at him from my grenade machine gun to kill him. 167 explosive grenades, which are more powerful than the normal 20mm grenades, at point blank range on a flesh and bone human! There isn’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how ridiculous, and I mean RIDICULOUS, the amount of punishment some enemies can brush off and it leaves me wondering if anyone at Bethesda Studios actually played this game before it was released? Did they not think they were overdoing it slightly? Basically, be prepared to unload round after round at enemies, as they shrug off such things as a missile to the face (for fucks sake!), and if you come across more than one Deathclaw, run. Run for your life!

The game still finishes after the last mission, whether you like it or not. As with the previous game they have maintained this incredibly annoying feature in New Vegas. Basically, when you have completed the last main story mission the game is over whether you like it or not. To be fair it does warn you this time by having a menu pop up before the final mission which states that if you continue now you can’t go back, which is fine. However, you acquire so many awesome weapons and experience whilst doing the final mission that you really didn’t have the money for while doing the game, so if you were looking forward to using them whilst continuing your exploration through the wasteland, then tough luck.

The graphics look really out of date. The funny thing is, I remember how good I thought the graphics of Fallout 3 were, at the time and considering the size of the game. New Vegas uses the exact graphics engine as Fallout 3 and it’s strange to see how much a difference two years makes. The graphics look really out of date by today’s standards, and are by no means bad but when compared to other games out at the moment, such as the eye popping “Vanquish”, they do look like something from the PS2. You can live with it, don’t worry, but things have clearly moved on since 2008.

Conclusion

As much as I loathe using the expression, Fallout New Vegas, much like its predecessor, is a game that has the “X-factor”. There is just something about it that makes it so addictive and hugely enjoyable to play, despite the many things wrong with it. There is a hell of a lot wrong with it, I assure you. Particularly the ludicrous fragility of the game with its constant crashing and technical feebleness, bad graphics, really simplistic and often futile shooting, enemies that absorb a stupidly, soul crushingly, monumentally, ludicrous amount of fire power (It is beyond anything feasible) and an ending that comes and ends the whole game whether you want it or not. It frequently infuriates and frustrates and I don’t think it’s as good as Fallout 3. Cloning a previous older title then shoe horning content into it at a cost of quality doesn’t make it better in my opinion. But despite all that sucks, I still absolutely loved it. It is a strange feeling that only someone who’s played Fallout can understand. It’s like finding an old toy you loved as a child, and even though in reality it’s broken, rubbish and useless to you, you still love it more than anything. It was like crack to me for the hundreds of hours I spent playing it and I just couldn’t get enough of it. The thrill of saving enough caps to buy a favourite gun is so satisfying. Exploring an underground vault that’s filled with mutated inhabitants trying to figure out what happened to them all is thrilling and scary. Exploring a mutated beast filled abandoned mine looking for survivors is exciting. Hacking computers and finding ridiculous emails in abandoned robot factories is pointless and hilarious. Setting off a giant orbital laser frying many people is a brilliant moral choice and just the entire bizarre, humorous, violent and desperate atmosphere Fallout New Vegas creates is ridiculously addictive and keeps you playing and exploring for more gaming hours than you will find on anything out right now. If you liked Fallout 3, New Vegas is your next fix, and if you have never played any Fallout game, New Vegas will be an experience worth having. CA.

Summary

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.5

Your “pip boy” is as excellent as ever and will be overly familiar/identical to anyone who played Fallout 3. Will be a little overwhelming if this is your first go. Very well thought out, you don’t need to be an RPG fan to get the hang of it and the controls will offer you nothing unexpected or unpleasant.

Is the story any good? – 9.0

Main story is very engaging, intriguing and can alter depending on your in game decisions. The hundreds of side quests range from tragic to hilarious, but never dull and add to this wasteland atmosphere.

How does it look? – 6.0

3 years ago they impressed, but now they look really out of date. There is a lot of detail, but everything is so wooden and rigid and just looks like an old graphics engine doing its best. Not terrible, but not good either.

How does it sound? – 9.0

No music as such but all voices and eerily quiet wasteland sound effects are very atmospheric. All music changes with the scenario, such as when your attacked, or exploring a vault.

Is it good to play? – 7.5

VATS are awesome but combat is very “old-school” and often futile. Skill has very little to do with it. Character interaction and general exploring is fantastically addictive and very immersive. It is the most glitch ridden, fragile and technically feeble games I have ever played however, it really is bad, and some enemies are so stupidly tough to kill it will drive you mad.

When will I get bored? – 10.0

For those who want the full experience, ice ages will come and go before your addiction is fulfilled. There is an unbelievable amount to do in terms of exploration and side quests and a stupendous amount of guns and ammo to discover and accumulate. Be prepared to sacrifice your social life.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Not very daring or innovative, but there is a lot to enjoy.

Another geek-fest game and it will inevitably have to vault the two main hurdles that most games of this type will have to, which is to please all the fans and make it appealing to casual gamers as well. It’s clearly a tough one to do as I can only think of one or two games that have managed it, “Batman: Arkham Asylum” being one of them, “Alien Vs Predator” being one that did not. The problem for “War for Cybertron” is that it’s all very well allowing you to transform at will, making all the right noises on the way, but if behind that nerd pleasing process is a dull, boring, repetitive shooter then it simply wont do. So does War for Cybertron transcend such difficult tasks? This is a third person shooter that’s set in the world of transformers, specifically on their home planet Cybertron, and is more of a prequel to the whole franchise. It’s set towards the end of the war on Cybertron, for example, Optimus is not a “prime” yet and Starscream has not yet met Megatron and is an Autobot. In this game you will play as Decepticons and Autobots doing an equal amount of missions generally blasting your way through each of them. For the Decepticons, Megatron is intent on taking over Cybertron using the controversial and volatile Dark Energon. If he can get hold of and use some Dark Energon he then plans to infect the core of Cybertron with it which will result in him having to fight all the Autobots who mean to stop him from doing this, including a huge ludicrously powerful Autobot guardian called Omega Supreme. As an Autobot you will have to fight the Decepticons back permanently as they try to take over the Autobot home city and try and find a way to stop Megatron from infecting Cybertron with Dark Energon. This is a full on all out war on this planet between massive heavily armed robots, that can transform into jet fighters, cars and tanks at will and use ridiculous amounts of fire power to blow the living crap out of each other.

What’s good?

It’s a transformers fans ultimate fantasy. I’m not a massive transformers fan, but I can’t help love the franchise being an 80’s child, and I have no doubt this game pushes all the right buttons for fans. You will get to play as all your favourites in this, Optimus, Megtron, Iron Hide, Starscream, Bumble Bee, Soundwave, and fight them, and they all have all their traits incorporated. They all transform at the click of a button into futuristic looking versions of the vehicles we all know and love, with a few exceptions such as Soundwave turning into a car. Having him turn into a 1980’s “ghetto blaster” in this game probably wouldn’t serve him very well, and remember this is way before they all came to Earth. They all sound fantastic as all voice actors from the series and films have been drafted in and “yes” they still make the famous and essential noise when they transform. The world of Cybertron has been beautifully re-constructed (more on that in a bit) and everything that you loved about these massive robots from the TV shows and the comics has all been included, and luckily it doesn’t have much to do with the bloody awful films. The story is also pretty interesting, intertwines the two campaigns very well and reveals a lot of storyline many transformers fans will be unaware of, how Optimus became a Prime, how Megatron took over Cybertron, how various characters came to be who they are and all sorts. Playing as Optimus and Megatron is as satisfying as you would imagine (although rather disappointingly they never actually fight each other) and it will definitely do almost everything fans will be wanting.

Transforming is an essential part of gameplay and not just a gimmick. One of the things I liked most about War for Cybertron is that High Moon Studios have really thought about the aspect of transforming into tanks and fighter jets and its implications in battle. I assure you it is not a gimmick in anyway. For starters transforming looks and sounds awesome, and often the game forces you into parts of the levels where you cannot progress on foot. Unavoidably the levels where you transform into fighter jets are a lot more fun, as you can fly in any direction or dimension, and often have to fly down tunnels avoiding lasers or collapsing objects. It’s also really good fun to transform, blast across the ceiling of a level to a particularly annoying sniper, transform back in mid-air, land just in front of him and knock his head off with a big hammer. Very satisfying stuff. Ammo can dwindle quite a lot so it’s also good to be able to fall back on your ability to turn into a tank when your guns have emptied and blow the living shit out of everything. Transforming also opens up completely different pros and cons with manoeuvrability as you are often way faster in car form which comes in handy when running for cover or avoiding taking fire. Learning to use your two forms is an essential part of this game and, luckily, one of the most enjoyable.

The action packed gameplay is pretty intense. I can’t deny the actual gun slinging in Transformers is really simple and unimaginative (more on that in a bit) but it’s compensated by having a huge amount of it and constantly intensifying the fire power to make it really exhilarating. You will have a choice at the beginning of each mission to play as one of three transformers, no matter which one you pick the other two will be accompanying you. You can hold two guns and when you transform you will have a different gun altogether. The guns are the expected machine guns, shot guns, sniper rifles and missile launchers and each transformer has a unique ability, such as making a shield in front of them, cloaking, increasing fire power etc. You also have a quick melee attack when up close that will make your chosen robot form a huge sword, axe, hammer etc on its arm and batter an enemy with it (it ends there though, as there is no combo’s or anything like that to be had). You can also interact with huge gun turrets, a particularly destructive weapon, which can be removed from the turret and lugged around with you. Although this will vastly affect your manoeuvrability, their vast fire power is always an asset. The enemy will come at you in various guises as well, from huge “Brutes” that have shields and hammers and can only be defeated by shooting them in the back, cloakers that are really hard to see and attack in swarms, massive robots with enormo Gatling guns and plasma cannons, flying robots that descend from above and perform bombing raids on you and the (predictable) epic boss fights. None of this stuff is revolutionary or jaw dropping but it’s very well executed and super intense. You are encouraged/forced to just go mental with your chosen robot character, literally blasting, firing and hacking your way through everything, constantly, whilst using the skills of transforming, never ever pausing or trying to hold back and simply don’t stop firing until everything is a pile of wrecked metal on the floor. You are frequently forced into “last stand” scenarios where wave after wave of enemies will come at you, your ammo and health dwindling per wave, and it will test your skills of survival and your aim to the extreme. There is nothing here you wont have done before but if you like your fire power, action, explosions and huge boss battles (who doesn’t?) then there is still a lot for you to like here.

Some of the battles in this are, surprisingly, epic. I say “surprisingly” as this game is quite serious and it’s serious about the struggle in which you are engaged in. The thought of giant robots clubbing each other is a ludicrous one but War for Cybertron paints a very different picture. For example, on the first Autobot mission you have to walk through several Autobot strongholds with the few survivors left fighting to their last breath, and the dead and wounded lying around you. As you walk out into the battlefield you will see your fellow Autobots lining up behind cover, trying to resuscitate fallen comrades, and performing trench warfare style pushes for territory. They all talk to each other as well, recognise you as they say “hail Megatron” etc, and shout things like “for Cybertron!” as they charge into battle. This really isn’t a childish cartoon world. All they need is some regimental gear and to start writing endless reams of poetry and it could be a top quality World War II game. Added to this are the action set pieces which are really quite something. Some of the battle scenes are crazy, with many Autobots and Decepticons going at each other trying to take territory or defend it, with heavy weapon robots slowly advancing on you and other enemies transforming to dive bomb from above or escape to recover health. It’s not dissimilar in anyway to other games more notorious for their epic fight scenes, such as Resistance 2 or Modern Warfare. The boss battle with Omega Supreme, which lasts two levels, is incredibly fast paced as this behemoth chases you down through Cybertron regularly knocking down buildings to get at you, then you have to fight him directly as he rains missiles at you from above and uses his ludicrously huge laser cannons to literally blow your cover to pieces. The Autobot equivalent battle with an equally huge Decepticon called Trypticon is just as impressive, as you have to fly through the body of this giant taking out strategic parts of his anatomy (a particularly awesome level!). The last stand missions where you have to defend something for a certain time take the intensity trophy as wave after wave enemies come at you in many different forms all requiring different tactics as your ammo dwindles and your health borders on death. The Decepticon mission where you have to defend against an Autobot onslaught, whilst waiting for bombers, is seriously intense as is the Autobot mission where you have to defend Ratchet, as Decepticons will come at you from all angles in all guises. This is a seriously good one for action fans and don’t underestimate the slightly childish connotations of Transformers, as this game takes things very seriously.

It’s a seriously visually stunning and gorgeous game. As always there are lots of really good looking games in the world, but I felt War for Cybertron deserves a special mention is it really is stunner. The transformers all look fantastic, with levels of detail you won’t believe. You can see bits of them moving around, tiny things such as gun barrels or feet, when standing still and the transformations are fantastic to watch. The biggest eye opener is the level design as the planet Cybertron looks unbelievable. High Moon Studios have clearly put a lot of work into the workings and visual appearance of the setting and it won’t disappoint.

There are predictable but competent multiplayer modes as well. When done with the single player there is much to do with your friends. Firstly you can play through the whole single player campaign with two mates online. Then there is a survival mode where you and two friends have to ward off wave after wave of enemies and basically survive as long as you can. Then there are the predictable online battles where, not only can you use unlocked characters like Arcee, but the more you play, the more you can level up your character with upgrades and some customisation. The options are laughably limited and can only be used online but its better to have something for the online obsessed rather than nothing.

What’s bad?

It gets really repetitive. Despite the excellent execution this game is really really repetitive, as it doesn’t at any point venture beyond a simple strafe and shoot game. That is literally what you will do the whole way through. There is no cover system, no puzzles to solve, no hand to hand combat, despite having a melee weapon attack, no huge robot vehicles to take control of, literally nothing other than running around and shooting. The guns vary a bit, but are all far to clichéd and obvious, and the thrill of transforming is really the only thing in this that doesn’t get old quickly. Other than that, it really doesn’t do anything so anyone that’s expecting anything particularly innovative is going to be very disappointed.

The incentive to re-play is little to none. To add to the repetitiveness of the gameplay, is the fact that reasons to keep coming back are few and far between. There is nothing to explore, as it’s incredibly linear, with no bonuses to find, super weapons to unlock, secrets to find, nothing. It doesn’t even have any slight customising to be done, weapons to upgrade, or anything. How hard would it have been to allow some colour changes on the transformers, or to add some battle decals for achievements, or something? How about getting money by killing enemies to buy or upgrade weapons and armour? None of this stuff exactly reinvents the wheel and is found on most games, but it requires some investment in your time, a reason to pick it up again. This is just so totally unwilling to expand on anything. How about some nods to the comic book fans, such as some character details or storyline, such as the vast quantity found in “Batman: Arkham Asylum”? Games don’t necessarily need such things, but one as simplistic as this should have at least one thing to encourage a re-play. The multiplayer or online matches do have customisable abilities, which you get based on achievements, i.e. killing others, but it is ridiculously simple, very limited and hardly worth it. Furthermore, why is it not an option to integrate it with the single player campaign? How hard could it have been? The only real incentive to play through again is to achieve completion on harder difficulties, or, mainly, to play as different transformers. But they have even managed to kill this incentive as the different transformers really only differ very slightly, as there is only around 3 variations of abilities and skills. There just isn’t enough content for my liking when compared to other games.

The boss battles are childishly simple. Another game with vast bosses, and it just isn’t enough to have a very large boss now, as large foes seem to be burned into the gaming industry mandatory bible. They all have them, which is fine, but there needs to be more to it now. Transformers is the perfect example of having huge bosses that are all for show, but don’t really require any skill at all. They are all so ludicrously easy to kill even though they are the size of sky scrapers, could easily crush you with one finger, form and fire laser cannons that could punch a hole in a planet and rain missiles down on you like a monsoon. It’s just stupid. They perform these ludicrous apocalyptic attacks and they just don’t go any where near you, or are incredibly easy to dodge. They may appear quite tough when you first encounter them, but you will soon workout how to evade their attacks and expose their stupidly obvious weaknesses. It just feels like your going through the motions of another huge but seriously flawed boss battle. The battle where you fight Omega Supreme from a gun platform is a good example as he transforms into a laser cannon that sends out a blast that looks like it could create a black hole, and destroy anything that goes within a four mile radius of it. But all you have to do to avoid it is walk behind a thin wall, wait for him to stop and you are completely impervious to harm. If you go up onto other platforms to the right or left then he doesn’t actually touch you at all! It’s just stupid, and as entertaining as they are from a visual perspective the bosses lack some proper balls.

The initial load screen takes an interminable amount of time to load every time you turn it on. For the PS3 there is a lengthy installing process the first time you play, which is annoying but can be forgiven as it is a one off. But what really annoyed me is that every single time you switch it on from then on it has to perform a “check” and spends about a minute loading. “Only a minute” I hear you say, “who cares”, but you, now, stare at a blank wall for exactly one minute and see how long it feels. It’s interminable. You always have to stare it as well as you need to press “start” twenty times to get through all the intro title screens and you just sit there wanting to play the game waiting for the count down to get to 100%. It drove me mad.

Conclusion

My biggest issue with Transformers: War for Cybertron is that I cant help but feel it has ventured too far into relying on the brand name, “Transformers”, but doing very little to make a particularly outstanding game. It’s by no means bad but does nothing for those of you who expect more from a transformers game, other than the ability to transform. There’s nothing to unlock, nothing to find or buy, no customising, except online where it’s really limited, and you will generally just run around and shoot. It feels like it’s as good as a pretty forgettable game can be. In years to come people will still be talking about/playing “Street fighter II” or “COD: Modern Warfare”, but no one will remember War for Cybertron. Saying that though, and despite this, I can’t deny there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had here. The combat is simple, but really intense, transforming never ceases to be cool and the game is designed to force you to learn the skill of knowing when to transform, as often if you don’t you will be killed. The boss battles are epically huge, if a bit simple and easy, and it is graphically utterly stunning. Those who expect innovative games and those who don’t give a flying crap about transformers will probably be less thrilled, but High Moon studios have shown that you don’t really need to change the face of gaming to still get a lot of (predictable) enjoyment out of a title. CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 8.0

It’s quite simple and instinctive for anyone that plays games regularly, so nothing will be of any surprise, but you do have to seek out tutorials yourself and a few game options are not so clear, changing the difficulty level for example.

Is the story any good? – 8.0

It’s not anything spectacular, but even if you’re only mildly interested in Transformers this will keep your interest up. Lots of previously untold back story, and the two campaigns are interwoven well.

How does it look? – 9.5

It’s a real stunner, especially environments/levels. The Transformers all look incredibly detailed and the transforming ability looks awesome as well.

How does it sound? – 9.5

Sound effects are all good as is back ground music. The highlights come from the voice acting, Optimus, Megatron, Starscream and, of course, Soundwave, all sound fantastic, and the legendary transformation sound effect.

Is it good to play? – 8.0

It’s intense in places, and you are forced to learn when to transform to aid you in combat, and there are loads of guns, grenades, rocket launchers and turrets to blow the living crap out of everything, including huge boss battles. It gets really repetitive though, it’s incredibly linear, and does nothing you won’t be expecting.

When will I get bored? – 7.0

Single player takes a fair few hours, you can play 3 person co-op as well (online only though, not on the same screen) and there is a rewards based online multiplayer mode, all of which will take up your time for a fair amount. But lack of secrets, rewards, upgrading with any depth or anything at all really, gives few reasons to keep coming back for a very long time.

OVERALL – 8.0

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

It only has one trick up its sleeve, but it’s a very good one.

Black Rock Studios, the developers of Split Second: Velocity, are of course no strangers to arcade racers, having frequently dabbled in the Need for Speed franchise and other such racers. But Split Second seemed to come out of nowhere into a market filled with racing giants such as the aforementioned “Need for Speed”, but also including the mental but mighty “Motostorm”, the legendary “Burnout” and another new rival, the much critically acclaimed, “Blur”. So surely Split Second has to do or be something special to be noticed in this crowd? The game is an arcade racer based around the concept of a reality TV show, where racers drive for money and victory, by racing fast and, more interestingly, taking out their opponents. It’s the way in which you take out your opponents that is what’s interesting here as all tracks are almost completely fully destructible. You must destroy bridges, rip apart roads, drop bombs, crash planes, shoot missiles and generally blow up everything around the course to take out your opponents, as you will never win by speed alone.

What’s good?

Luckily the whole concept the game is based on is its most impressive feature, which is the “power play’s”. As you drive around the very simple tracks you will build up your power play bar, which is in three sections and when maxed out (fill up all 3), you can trigger a super power play. You build this up by power sliding, drafting (driving directly behind your opponent), jumping or marginally avoiding disaster. The power play bars don’t take long to build up but when they do get ready to watch everything explode. You don’t shoot anything specifically yourself, missiles or guns etc, but instead you set off explosives around the environment the tracks are based in an attempt to cause road side explosions that may cause your opponents to crash, or even better demolish buildings and cause other such vast things to come crumbling down onto your opponents taking all them out at once. Small blue symbols appear above your opponent’s vehicles when they are in the potential firing line and then you must time your strike well. Now, this can range from blowing up a taxi at the side of the road, which uses one power play bar, to blowing up a train bridge, that crashes down onto the race track launching a huge speeding locomotive off the rails and come crashing down onto the race track crushing all cars that happen to be in the blast radius. The taxi explosion is a normal power play but the destruction of a bridge is a super power play, that uses all three of your power play bars. What really summed it up for me was in only my second race, and thus far had only really seen exploding cars and barrels, I triggered a super power play. In the background a huge skyscraper was suddenly lit up with explosions, like a controlled demolition, and it slowly came thundering down onto the track, the very top of which landed inches from my front bumper, and it caved in the entire road, crushing all opponents ahead of me and completely altered the track as my car flew down into the subway system and a whole new set of corners was opened up to the race track. It was so spectacular and unexpected my jaw never got off the floor for the rest of that race. The falling buildings are quite spectacular, but the game doesn’t end it there, as it will hurl enormous freighter air craft at you the size of Jumbo’s, that come crashing down onto the track in front of you in a biblically huge fire ball, ignite entire power stations, tip over ocean liners in a dry dock, bring down huge suspension bridges and cause city destroying landslides. It is stupendously ridiculous! The super power plays are not as common but they are unbelievably spectacular and entertaining, and even the smaller normal power play’s rarely feel tame, as igniting a petrol tanker at the side of the road so that it blows an opponent completely off the track and into the air, is still a hugely satisfying experience. I’m not sure how original the concept of blowing up parts of the track in a race is, but I have certainly not seen it before, and even if you have, the execution of it in Split Second is absolutely epic and will appeal to anyone that likes racing fast and blowing large objects up in order to crush opponents.

The tracks are fantastic and perfect settings for destruction. I won’t lie to you, the tracks are childishly simple, but as your blasting round them you will start to realise that you really don’t want them to be any more complex than they are. Upon encountering the few hairpins there are, for example, you will start to curse the pressure of juggling a tight difficult corner whilst helicopter homing missiles rain down on you from above, the shock waves of which batter your poor vehicle all over the place, which will require driving skill to keep under control. They are simple, but necessarily so. On the destructive side, they are spot on though, so expect to encounter ocean liner ship yards, airports, enormous dams, power stations, sewers and places that don’t generally explode, but you sure as hell would like to see them do so. All will have something vast to demolish that will be a massive visual treat, and give you a huge buzz when they atomise your opponents. Each also has shortcuts that can be activated by using your power play bar and often you are better off using these shortcuts rather than going for the violent option as they will give you a significant advantage.

There are several different interesting events, other than simple races to do. Luckily, Split Second does a bit more than simple races. There are plenty of fast paced races, sure, but there are the expected eliminator events, where the person in last place is blown up every 20 seconds or so until there is only one person left, and detonator events, which is basically a time trial where you get a specific car and have to do a timed lap as power plays are triggered automatically and you basically have to avoid destruction and beat the time. These are pretty good, if rather predictable, but there are also events where a heavily armed attack helicopter will shoot missiles at you as you race round the track, and for each wave of barrage you avoid you get points, and basically have to survive as long as you can, the longer the better. This event is updated later on in the game as you have to do the same thing but you get the opportunity to build up your power bar and use it to deflect missiles back at the helicopter taking it down in as quicker time as possible. They are not only challenging but an interesting unique take on destructive racing. My favourite though was the survival events where you have to charge round a wide even more simpler track, whilst huge trucks spit coloured barrels at you which you have to avoid. The blue ones damage your car slightly and slow you down, where the red ones kill you instantly. You basically have to pass as many trucks as you can and you will often have to enter sudden death mode where all trucks will spit red barrels at you constantly in order to win. It is utterly chaotic, as there are other dummy cars driving round that often get caught up in the carnage, and the combination of bouncing rolling barrels all over the track, exploding vehicles everywhere and trying to keep your speed up and pass these juggernaughts is difficult but rewarding.

There are the expected tracks, vehicles, decals and other rewards to unlock. The cars all look fantastic in Split Second, often better looking than the ones the automotive industry produces. If you know your cars it will be obvious which ones have their styling cues stolen from, and there is a lot of them to unlock. All have varying gifts of speed and toughness, grip and drifting abilities, and some variation will be required as, for example, the trucks are better at the survival events for their weight and durability. The further through the single player campaign you get, the more points, and therefore cars, you get, the further along you get the faster and better the car. There is also the decals which are loads of little challenges throughout the game which when achieved will be ordained upon all your vehicles. These include, simple things like winning 5 races or destroying 3 opponents, to more complex harder things such as doing a 300 yard drift, doing a 200 yard jump, taking out 5 opponents with one power play and getting first in every single event. You can easily complete the single player campaign without achieving all of these so it gives an extra incentive to re-visit it and show off your achievements online. Speaking of online, there is the expected “simply jump in and race random people” mode, which will cycle through tracks until you get bored, and you can set up your own race with friends, and use AI opponents to fill in the gaps. All of this is rewarded with an experience points system. Nothing amazing, but it is certainly solid enough for the internet dorks, their foul language and dirty gameplay.

It’s got split screen racing. Don’t fancy going online and just want a mate round for a quick race? Split Second has it covered with a simple split screen race option. “So what” I hear you say, but lets not forget how easily an old school two player game is not considered these days. Not only is it one of the most basic, easiest and most enjoyable aspects of an arcade racer, but it is often forgotten in today’s online obsessed elitist gaming society, filled with the most vile of teenage nerds, that shout a torrent of racist abuse at you because they are not very popular at school and you ruined their one chance that day of not being a total loser that masturbates constantly in their parents basement, by dropping a building on their car. Burnout: Paradise certainly forgot it, and was a worse game for it considering its excellent multiplayer roots. Good show Split Second!

What’s bad?

There just isn’t enough to the racing. Unfortunatley the biggest problem with Split Second is that other than hitting power plays there is very very little to the racing at all. For starters, all the tracks are really simple and rarely involve you hitting the brakes or steering much, its literally point and squirt and memorising tracks will only give you a marginal advantage. Then there’s the fact that in order to win races you must wreck your opponents, through power plays, but you get no reward whatsoever for ramming them, grinding them, bashing them, forcing them into obstacles etc. Absolutely nothing! So all physical contact does is slow you down, and for such a monumentally destructive racing game I thought that was crazy to not involve in any way. There’s no boost or nitrous to use at all either, so other than the stats of your car, you have no advantage over your opponents. Plus, there are only two different types of vehicle, the expected category’s of big, tough, but slow and super fast, light but fragile, and they are not too dissimilar, at least no where near the difference in vehicles experienced in “Motorstorm”. You see, I feel arcade racers need this stuff, it’s what makes the Burnout series so awesome, and the Motorstorm series so chaotic and mental. The power plays are brilliant, but they are just not enough for me, and “no”, it isn’t complicated enough as it is and things such as a boost meter could have easily been included without it being overwhelming. I think they are going to see how well this initial concept sells and more than likely ramp it up for the inevitable sequel, but for now you are left with something that’s just a bit too uninvolving and after the initial shock of your first super power play you will realise this game really only has one trick up its sleeve.

The level of difficulty is not very well thought out. The game obviously gets harder the further into it you get, and the faster your car is, but it’s the way in which it goes about the difficulty which wound me up. Rather than making you graft harder for your rewards, like Monster Hunter, or up your skill levels, like Batman: Arkham Asylum, it simply makes the competition ridiculous. Your opponents will simply blast off into the distance at the beginning of the race no matter how good your car’s stats are, and you spend the remainder of the race catching them up, in some cases not at all. Even if you race perfectly, not getting wrecked once, you can still be lying in 5th whilst your opponents increase their lead over you lap by lap. You can be ploughing along quite nicely at full speed and an opponent, even if they are in an inferior car to you, will simply flash past as though you are at the wheel of a golf buggy. They can also lose you very quickly, as the front running cars hit the horizon almost instantly and you never see them again, but you can never really lose them. Even if you race perfectly and wreck all opponents several times they will be mere inches from you the entire race, nudging your rear bumper trying to force a spin or simply waiting for you to make one tiny slip up and then they fly past, and I mean all of them will pass you, not just a few. For anyone that played the rage inducing bile spitting “Midnight Club: LA” this suffers from a similar problem, just an awful feeling of futility. It’s just such a frustrating and un-enjoyable way to make races harder.

You can still crash when control is taken away from you. Whenever you take out an opponent, by getting a helicopter to drop a bomb on it or something, it often goes to a sort of cut scene where it zooms in on your slain opponents wrecked vehicle, so you can watch it barrel roll down the road in a fireball, very similar to the system in Burnout when you “take down” an opponent. The problem with this, which I’m sure you have guessed, is that although you no longer have control of your car you can still crash into stuff. So you can very often be blasting down the road, trigger a crane to drop its load on your opponent up front, wrecking them, and as you wallow in your victory cut scene, someone behind you has decided to detonate the bus you were just passing, which you couldn’t see because the camera was pointing down the road or avoid as you couldn’t control your car. How are you supposed to stop that? In what way could a crash be avoided? The point is it couldn’t, and few things fill me with such rage in a game than to be punished for something you can do absolutely nothing about. It doesn’t happen constantly, but it will happen, you will be angry, you will lose as a result and you will be left contemplating whether your controller or PS3 will survive a high velocity impact with a wall. Stop doing this to us gaming studios, its wrong!

It’s generally a pretty short game. There are 72 races, split into 12 different “episodes” in the career mode, which sounds a lot, but the majority are repeated, and you simply do different things on the same tracks. It is not really boring, but don’t be deceived by the numerical amount of events, there is not that much to do. Once the career mode is done, there are a myriad of trophies/decals to win and online racing, but the incentive to do either is non-existent, other than the thrill of racing. You can’t customise cars at all, with the exception of a very limited number of colours/paint jobs and the achievement decals are placed automatically, so you don’t get a say in the matter. It by no means will be done with in no time at all but falls well short of games like Gran Turismo, Need for Speed: Shift and Burnout Paradise in terms of game time and involvement for your cash.

Conclusion:

This game is a perfect example of showing that if you are going to base an entire game on one simple concept, then make sure you execute it very well, and Split Second does. This unfortunately leads to its biggest flaw, which is that it also does very little else other than the one concept. It is really good fun though, I have to admit, the racing is fast and exhilarating and when you hit your first super power play your jaw will drop. They are ridiculous! As you progress through a predictable but satisfying career mode the tracks seem to become more explosive, the cars get faster and harder to handle and the ludicrous action and fast paced racing will give you a big buzz and it will please those who like their racing uncomplicated, fun and destructive. It will never achieve greatness however, in my opinion, as there is just not enough to it. It needs more than just destructive environments, and sadly it offers little to nothing else. You really want this to be the love child of Burnout and Motorstorm, with a bit of Need for Speed on the side, but it isn’t and I would say it’s not worth picking up over any of them, albeit by a small margin. However, to be fair, there are not a huge amount of racers out at the moment, and if you’re bored of the ageing Burnout and waiting for the new Gran Turismo, Motorstorm or Need For Speed, this will definitely fill in that gap in your gaming hours that lusts for a quick, explosive, exhilarating and uncomplicated speed thrill. CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.0

It’s a very very simple game, that gives you a really good intro race, good on screen prompts where necessary, and all controls will be familiar and instantly instinctive.

Is the story any good? – 5.0

There is not much of a story. The concept of death racing for TV is old and unoriginal, but to be honest, it really doesn’t matter, and the twist at the end is stupid but intriguing.

How does it look? – 9.5

Looks fantastic, especially explosions and fire, and all tracks. All cars look awesome as well. Never tears, glitches or slows down either. Pretty flawless.

How does it sound? – 10.0

I loved the music in Split Second. The music is not by any known artist, but sounds like the music from The Matrix, Reloaded, fast paced drum beats, with dramatic orchestral sounds accompanying it. The music fades in and out when you hit the really big power plays and the sound effects of collapsing sky scrapers is fantastic.

Is it good to play? – 8.0

Its fast paced, explosive stuff, the power plays will blow your mind and give you a huge sense of satisfaction watching a building collapse on to your opponents in front. There is no point in physical contact though, there is no boosting/nitrous, and when not using power plays, there is nothing to it, literally. The difficulty is stupid as well. It just needs more!

When will I get bored? – 7.0

The career mode is decent enough, there is split screen racing, and the usual online stuff. A lack of tracks, differentiating vehicles, little rewards and general simplicity result in a very good but fairly short lived thrill.

OVERALL – 8.0

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Yet another Rockstar masterpiece that is rather predictably amazing, if very familiar.

Rockstar is possibly the biggest name in gaming right now, having founded and produced one of the biggest franchises in gaming history, Grand Theft Auto, it seems they can do no wrong. The last edition of GTA, number IV, was a marvel of gaming technology, where they crammed a vast city teeming with life on to a disk and had real life in pixel form, down to the fact that you could have a full on relationship in the game, dating and shagging etc, go to the pub with your mate, or simply sit on a sofa and watch TV through an endless amount of channels and hours of programming. This was no mere game, it was a whole new life lived out in a digital world. And I have to say I didn’t like it. It was without doubt a technical marvel, but it went too far. A game will always be just a game to me, something you do for fun or a hobby, it should not be something you do instead of living your actual life. Why would you want to get drunk with a mate in a game? Why would you want to go into an internet café and check your email in a game? Why would you want to date in a game? Such things are far more preferable in real life! Who plays games to live out reality? Its ridiculous, plus it just wasn’t any fun, and this is exactly what concerned me with Red Dead Redemption, a seemingly totally new look game for Rockstar but still maintaining the ideals that make their games a cut above the rest. This game is set in the wild west of America in 1911, where the days of horse riding, cattle rustling, shooting Indians, and living off the land are coming to an end, replaced with law, order, technology and civilisation. You play John Marston, an ex gang member/criminal, who left his gang to lead a more humble life without crime, settling down with a wife and child far away from the wild west. However, one day government agents take away John’s family and demand he return to the wild country in order to track down his former gang members and kill them, or he will never see his family again. Reluctantly, John agrees and travels to New Austin in search of his former friends. The first, Bill Williamson, he encounters straight away upon arrival, and tries to have a face off with him, but Williamson runs his own gang now and they outnumber John, shoot him, and leave him for dead. Luckily John is found by a rancher named Bonnie MacFarlane who nurses him back to health. John must now repay Bonnie for her kindness, and set about picking up the trail of his former gang members again, ultimatley tracking down his former gang leader, Dutch Van Der Linde, who disappeared a long time ago, and kill the lot of them. Its pretty familiar territory to anyone that’s ever picked up Grand Theft Auto before, but simply set in a different time. So expect a large and detailed open world, a long and intriguing main story, loads of side quests, lots of weird and wonderful characters to meet and lots and lots of gun fire.

What’s good?

The sheer size of the game is mind blowing. This is a big game in practically every way, from its actual physical size, in terms of the in-game map, to the sheer amount of quests, tasks, objectives, achievements and missions. I don’t think it’s quite as big as Bethesda Studio’s behemoth, Fallout 3, but make no mistake this is a huge game and will consume a huge amount of your gaming life. It will take a long time to ride across the whole map, and, admittedly a lot of it is desert, there are a myriad of towns and settlements scattered all over it, along with random people scattered here and there that may unlock side missions, or have simple pleas for help, such as “my horse has just been nicked, please go after them”. These moral choices open up another theme of the game, but more on that in a sec. The actual main story is vast in itself, as John Marston will have to meet a lot of strange, funny or admirable characters (most typical of any Grand Theft Auto game before) that need help themselves, to unlock further missions and ultimately reach your goal of taking down your former gang members. Then you have the “strangers” missions, which are obtained from random folk scattered throughout the game, that you have to find on your own and are a bit more vague in their objectives, so you have to do a bit more exploration. Then there is a myriad of objectives such as ranks of “sharp shooting” or “survivalist” where you have to shoot a certain amount of birds in flight, for example, or skin a certain amount or type of animal, the higher the rank the harder the objective. Then you can take bounty hunter missions, where you have to track down and kill or catch a wanted criminal, then there’s gang hideout missions where you have to find and flush out criminal gangs in hideouts, mercy missions where someone along your travels will plead with you to help defend them against robbers, or take back their stolen horse, treasure finding missions where you have to find treasure using maps, I could go on. Even after all that you have the usual online aspects (with all the usual internet geeks trying to screw each other over). It’s safe to say you will get a lot of game for your money.

“Dead Eye” and the gun battles in general are brilliant fun. You will spend the vast majority of your time in Red Dead shooting, duelling and killing. Luckily the shooting is executed very well, and is very similar to cover and shooting system found in GTA IV. Press R1 to take cover behind rocks, carts, etc, and simply press R2 to shoot, popping up and down will happen automatically. There is an automatic targeting system that will focus on an enemy if you point the aim vaguely in their direction, but particular body parts, such as head shots, are left up to you. This alone is pretty good fun, but you also will develop the excellent “Dead Eye”. John Marston is a seriously good shot and Dead Eye shows this. When fully upgraded to level 3 (which will happen automatically whilst doing main story missions) you can hit R3, which will slow down time for a period, you use the right analog and R1 to pick out targets, indicated by a red cross and when ready press fire (R2) and watch John take out all targets at lightning speed and with supreme accuracy. It doesn’t always work perfectly (more on that in a bit) but can make scenarios where you are outnumbered by five men baring down on you and shooting, very satisfying to come out on top of.

You can be as nasty or as heroic as you like. As your riding along you see a woman running up to you crying for help, as someone has just killed her husband and nicked their horse and cart. Do you a) speed off in pursuit of this cad and bring him to justice or b) shoot the woman in the face with a shotgun, because it’s funny? If this is a scenario you have ever had difficulty deciding on then Red Dead has no problems with either. That is what is cool about this game is you can be a real bastard and notorious outlaw or a true hero of the west, bringing all evil doers to justice. Choosing your morals throughout Red Dead will alter how the game treats you. It won’t affect the main story, but it will alter how others treat you. You get hero or outlaw points depending on how you act in the Wild West and if you get many hero points, shop owners will charge you less for items for example. In contrast if you kill, slaughter and generally act like a piece of shit, town folk will not want to know you and you will incur the wrath of the law and authorities who will want to claim your life for a reward. Is it better to be feared or loved? The choice is up to you.

It looks fantastic and totally captures the atmosphere of the time period and setting. The mood, atmosphere, or whatever you want to call it, is absolutely spot on Red Dead. It’s a brilliant time setting to pick as the days of the wild west are ending and you can see it as you progress through the game. There are still ranches, great plains and a good deal of cattle herding etc to be done, but there are also train lines, the odd car, machine guns and signs that the new world will eventually take over. The towns are particularly impressive as you often see drunks falling out of bars, get propositioned by prostitutes, and when you head out into the desert there’s wildlife everywhere, along with random people shooting others and it just doesn’t really at any point feel like a game. It’s more like a movie that you control. Added to this is the fact that it fades to night and day, has weather effects such as rain, fog etc, just goes to show the level of detail Rockstar put into their games. Plus it all looks fantastic, considering the size, and simply check out your first sun set when you get the chance if you need convincing of this games fantastic appearance.

What’s bad?

It is without doubt no different to anything Rockstar has done before, ever. Those of you who may have read elsewhere that it is only like GTA in “essence” or “spirit” or other such bullshit are being totally misled. I can confirm now, it is practically identical to GTA in almost every way, with the exception of the time, setting and story. Other than that you may as well be Niko all over again. You meet characters that supply you with missions, have a cut scene, go and shoot a load of people or chase then shoot a load of people, then move on to the next mission. The more missions completed the better the weaponry available to you and further parts of the map are unlocked to you. I found it so samey and unoriginal that it just didn’t excite me, or intrigue me in any way as it just felt like I’ve been here and done it all before. The formula works, don’t get me wrong, and GTA fans will be pleased, if very unsurprised, but it just felt a bit old to me.

Missions get quite repetitive and some are so utterly pointless and dull. There are many many missions available to John, but around 99% will result in you taking cover and killing a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong, shooting is fun and executed very well, but by the end you will start to tire of them, or at least be consistently unsurprised (plus, again, you will have done it all before in GTA). The side missions all suffer from monotony as well, and will always result you in you having to chase down someone who stole a horse, robbed a bank etc, or gathering various dull things, like flowers or animal skins, which is not fun. None of them vary at all either. It’s also a slow starter, and some missions at the beginning are really stupid. Cattle herding is a good example of this as several missions will require you to do thus. I have never herded a cow but I can’t imagine its much fun, and if it is anything like it is in Red Dead Redemption, then it most certainly is not fun and very frustrating. Trying to get the bloody things to go in a straight line is infuriating and simply enhances no enjoyment whatsoever. Why in the hell would you want to herd cattle in a game? Maybe I’m in a minority, but I really struggle to see how anyone would enjoy picking flowers, especially people who play Playstation’s.

“Dead eye” seems to pick and choose when it wants to work and when it doesn’t. I had difficulty with Dead Eye, in respect that it only seemed to work about half the time. I often lined up shots perfectly well on several targets not far apart and it resulted in one of them being shot and he simply doesn’t bother with the others. This is particularly infuriating as Dead Eye is at it’s most useful when your being robbed, which happens a lot, or generally overwhelmed by gun fire, so when the system decides not to work it will ultimately always result in your death. Obviously, I am doing something wrong when it fails to work, but reasons for such failure are non-existent, but you are certainly punished for it. It clearly doesn’t like it when you pick targets that are too close together, or too many targets on one person, or when targets are to far apart or to numerous, or if you take too long, but you will certainly have to figure these things out for yourself resulting in much trial and error, the error always resulting in instant frustrating death.

Duelling is ludicrously and unnecessarily complicated. How in the hell did Rockstar come to the conclusion that the system they chose for duelling was the best one? You would think it would be a case of, when you hear the words “draw”, time slows, and you have a certain time limit to pick a target on your foe and fire, very similar to Dead Eye. The better the enemy at duelling the less time you have. Makes sense, yes? Even if you don’t think so, it is a million times simpler and easier than the system they chose. When the camera zooms out you have to hold down on the right analog stick until it says “draw”, where you have to flick it upwards. It then enters a “Dead Eye” mode, but different, as you will have to use the right analog stick, immediately after you have flicked it up, to pick targets on your opponent. So after you pick a target, you press fire and the duel is won? Oh no no, as every time you pick a target, it fills a bit of a meter up in the bottom right hand of the screen, and you have to keep picking targets to fill the meter up to the top, as if your opponent, who is assumingly plastering you with targets as well, fills his up first, you lose. The plot thickens yet further, as the target used to pick out where to shoot flashes white and red, and if you pick out a target when it is flashing white, it for some reason is more accurate and fills up your meter a bit more than if it were red. Got that? No, it doesn’t make any sense at all does it. It basically always involves you painting your opponent with silly little targets to fill up the stupid meter, and you gun him down as if you had a sub machine gun, not a pistol. It doesn’t feel much like duelling, and it makes the occasionally necessary disarming of your opponent, i.e. shooting the gun out of his hand, almost impossible. Its almost as though they were deliberately trying to think up ways of making it as unnatural and as random as possible, and considering the aspects of the game that Rockstar are clearly brilliant at, I’m shocked this one was deemed fine.

I really struggled to get to grips with the horses. The horses presented me with a problem I never really got the hang of, as they way they are ridden is not instinctive in the slightest. You have to use horses in Red Dead to get anywhere, and you do form a bond with them as the more you use them the better speed and stamina stats they get. But the way they are controlled really bothered me. You have to tap X, instead of holding it down like an accelerator as you would in a car, which is I assume the equivalent of spurring your horse. It’s ok, but just feels weird. Pointing the bloody things in the right direction is the real pain in the arse. You use the right analog to point in a direction and you use the left to control the camera angle, except the directional input is based on a simple forward, back, left and right direction, which does not change at all no matter which way the camera is facing. So basically, if you spin the camera round to aim at some rustlers coming in from your left, which happens a lot, you don’t compensate with the right. If the camera is moved to face John Marston on a horse, you have to turn right to go left, and vice versa as the controls are reversed as a result of the camera angle. It’s ludicrous! It’s like driving whilst having your gear stick, accelerator, brake, indicators, everything, attached to the steering wheel, so every time you go in a different direction your controls are completely reversed. It just massacres your sense of directional control. To make it worse when you’re just walking around it goes back to the normal control scheme you would be used to from GTA. Again, who in the hell thought that was a good idea?

My copy of the game had its fair share of glitches. It is obviously hard to get huge games to work flawlessly. The last huge game I played was Fallout 3, and that was seriously glitched-up, crashing and acting weird a lot, but rest assured Red Dead is not nearly as bad. Saying that, it is not that good either and it crashed noticeably more often than any other game I have played recently. There was also a fair amount of strange things going on as well, such as at several points my horse sank through the floor until I started moving again, cows getting stuck up trees when herding (as funny as it was to witness), and upon running into a village of rebels the graphics failed and there was nothing but a large blank space instead. I often couldn’t take a prisoner from the back of my horse, which seemed to be related to how flat the ground is, I would go to shoot people and they would just instantaneously morph out of the way, like the agents from the matrix films, my horse would run on the spot, sprinting at full speed but simply not going anywhere and just lots of small strange goings on. Other than the crashing, nothing ruins your game, but it of course just looks stupid.

You have to set up a camp if you want to fast travel anywhere. I know I’m nit picking, but again, it is such a stupid thoughtless part of the game. As it can take a long time to get somewhere your often better off travelling instantly, cutting out a long boring journey, but you have to stop and set up a camp to do this, then pick from a list of where you want to go. “That’s no big deal” I hear you say, but I’m afraid it is, as bare in mind you can’t set up camp just anywhere. It needs to be no where near a road, town or settlement, and on flat ground. Everywhere is near a road or town and believe me when I say the game is stupendously anal about these rules. You try and set up camp on anything other than earth that is not spirit level accurate in its flatness perfection and it won’t let you. Then you have to endure small amounts of time loading and a cut scene of John sitting down in front of a fire. It is so annoying! Why can’t you just travel somewhere whenever you want? What difference could it possibly make? Surely you set up camp as a result of not wanting to travel somewhere? Again, someone was paid money to think of this stuff!

Conclusion:

It is so utterly pointless in me giving my opinion of this game as it will sell in the billions regardless of what anyone says. But anyway, rest assured it is rather predictably a game of supremely high quality. Its also one that you have to really get into to fully appreciate, as if you skim through the main story, it wont do much for you. There is a ludicrous amount to do, when you get into it. The single player main story for a start is massive enough on its own, but chuck in the very large open world, loads of side missions, the hugely numerous achievements, weapons and uniforms and then it’s online multiplayer capabilities and you have probably the most game you are going to get for your money this year so far. All this vastness wouldn’t be great if it looked crap and played badly, but it of course looks fantastic, drowned in spaghetti western atmosphere, and the bullet exchanges are really good fun, with excellent additions such as the very satisfying (when you get it right) Dead Eye. My main worry was Rockstar’s obsession with going to far into an open world, which it does dabble with, but luckily this time the amount you immerse yourself into this game is up to you, and not mandatory like it was in GTA IV. Be warned though it is far from gaming perfection, as it has more than its share of glitches, the duelling is stupid and overly complicated, Dead Eye occasionally decides it doesn’t feel like working with no indication of what went wrong, it does get really repetitive and if you are experienced in Grand Theft Auto, there is nothing here that will surprise you. The same Rockstar gaming formula is starting to feel a little old. There is also a myriad of small but thoughtless and utterly stupid things, like the control of horses or the fact you have to set up camp if you want to travel anywhere. These things annoy me as a gamer more than anything, as they are simply so easy to avoid, and just goes to show how far detached developer studios are from real people/gamers and how confident they are in their big brand name. But, despite my extreme irritancies with small things, you would be foolish to pass off a game that gives you this much for your money and executes so many things at such a high consistency of quality, simply because it has it’s very annoying, but small flaws. I definitely preferred Read Dead to GTA IV and you really should buy it if you own a PS3. CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 8.0

It’s a really slow starter, but as a result it’s very forgiving for newcomers. The horses will take some getting used to though.

Is the story any good? – 9.0

It’s a pretty typical revenge story in many respects, that’s interesting enough, but the more you play the more is unravelled, with some serious twists at the end.

How does it look? – 9.0

Initially they don’t appear to be the best, but considering the size of the game, they are not to be sniffed at. The level of detail is crazy, characters all look and move in a life like way, and all light, shadow and weather effects are spot on.

How does it sound? – 10.0

Sounds exactly like a John Wayne film. Very atmospheric sound effects when in the wild, all voice acting is excellent and it generally doesn’t miss a beat.

Is it good to play? – 8.5

Pretty dam good, but not perfect. Shooting is really good fun and well executed, Dead Eye is awesome, when you get it right, and lots of scenes will get the adrenaline pumping. Dead Eye will sometimes simply not work, with no explanation, duelling is so needlessly complicated, and the controls of the horses will drive you mad, though.

When will I get bored? – 10.0

If you want to get to 100% complete you will be at this one for a long time. Many main story missions, side quests, objectives to achieve, weapons to find, treasures to hunt, criminals to apprehend, random people to help, and the choice to be as moral or as down right filthy as you like. Then there is the online stuff as well.

OVERALL – 9.0

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Dead Space is the new benchmark for survival horror games. Utterly brilliant in almost every way.

Dead Space always looked intriguing whilst I followed its development but it’s so hard to know whether such games will be any good, especially in the survival horror genre where games like Resident Evil reign supreme. It’s all very well throwing vast amounts of blood at you but the amount of gore can’t be a measure of the amount of pleasure you get from a gaming experience. Dead Space aims to go down a different route however, creating a feeling of fear and dread and being something more than a space zombie/mutant shoot-em up. In this game, set in the 25th century, you play an unlikely hero, Issac Clarke, a humble space ship repair engineer with a small crew who are flying out to the furthest reaches of the solar system to respond to a distress call by the USG Ishimura. The Ishimura was the very first of a class of space ship called planet crackers, which means they go to other worlds and moons and tear them to pieces bit by bit in the search for minerals and fuels in general. This vast mining ship was mid planet crack when something went seriously wrong and it called for help. Clarke and a small crew onboard the USG Kellion, arrive at the Ishimura’s last known location to find the ship structurally intact but with no power and no one answering their radio transmissions. The automated docking guidance system malfunctions when they attempt to land on the Ishimura and the Kellion crashes into the dock. The crew survive but the Kellion is broken beyond repair. As they make their way into the Ishimura they soon discover that not one crew member is anywhere to be found, and signs of a struggle and panic are everywhere. Issac and his colleagues are then attacked by a grotesque mutated crew member, called a necromorph, that brutally kills everyone. Issac, Hammond, the security chief, and a technician called Daniels escape, but Issac is separated. What follows is a long and terrifying journey through the small tight corridors of this vast and broken ship where horrific mutated crew members and epically huge repulsive beasts are constantly trying to tear you limb from limb, the whole time Issac is trying to find his girlfriend, who was an Ishimura crew member, discover what the hell happened here and ultimately escape. The story is far deeper than it initially appears, with a government conspiracy, a crooked captain, illegal mining operations, discovery of alien organisms, a strange religious artefact and several other crazy twists that keep the tension building and has your nerves on a knife edge until the end.

What’s good?

It is possibly the most terrifying game ever. Obviously fear is hard to quantify, by generally being opinion based, for example, I do not fear snakes or mice but a lot of people do. Dead Space amplifies a feeling of dread by being more subtle than the obvious copious amounts of gore. Of course it spills blood, organs and limbs constantly as Issac has to butcher everything that moves but it’s the subtle stuff that makes this very scary. From the truly terrifying opening sequence, where you get chased by screaming necromorphs down a pitch black corridor whilst completely unarmed, the feeling of not being safe at any point never leaves. Even when you get a weapon it never lets up. It does this by never really allowing the game to pause, even when you are at a shop, or viewing your inventory the game doesn’t stop and you are still open for attack. Often the horrific beasts that roam the ship will attack you when you least expect it, from all angles. They will burst out of ventilation shafts behind you, from the ceiling on top of you, come screaming out of locked doors at the end of a corridor, from absolutely everywhere and you have to constantly have your wits about you. You will be persistently forced into narrow corridors and small rooms where you will be stuck for a certain time in a confined space while shrieking beasts drop from the ceiling one by one. As I say, it is more subtle fear than simple blood and guts and quick cheap moments that make you jump. That stuff is there but it is just the starter. The real terror comes from working on an upgrade bench, to turn to your right and a multi-limbed beast that produces copious amounts of slobber, is standing next to you about to attack. Having severed a repulsive mutant’s legs it starts to crawl towards you with its arms along the floor, still crying for your blood, whilst you frantically reload your weapon. How about being stuck in a small room, with dwindling ammo, trying to keep at bay a mutant that cannot be killed, merely slowed down by blowing off its arms and legs, which it will regenerate shortly after? Finding dismembered crew members that are still alive, but then commit suicide in horrific ways in front of you, clearly driven mad by fear? It is the most panic inducing, feeling of dread and vulnerability enhancing, claustrophobic stuff of nightmares and your first play through will be one of the most inch by inch excruciating and terrifying experiences in gaming. But I assure you, it is brilliant fun, incredibly exciting and deeply satisfying when getting through everything Dead Space throws at you.

The action is fantastically paced and incredibly inventive. “Action” is possibly not the best word as it invokes thoughts of “Modern Warfare” but Dead Space does deliver it in its own unique way in spades. Firstly the necromorphs have to be killed in a specific way which is severing their limbs. The problem is, is that they are already dead, so you can blow off their heads, punch huge holes in their chests and it wont stop them, which adds to the fear factor. It’s in cutting off their arms and legs where you will defeat them basically disabling their movements and attacks. I’m not sure this has been done before, but it adds a new dimension to Dead Space as you constantly have to aim for the limbs, and even if you blow off both legs they often still come at you crawling along the floor. Being dead, this means they will also come at you in any situation, even when you’re in a vacuum or zero gravity. Issac’s space suit allows him to survive in a space, but only for a short time until his oxygen runs out but the necro’s will still attack then, but it is much more eerie and quiet when in a vacuum as all you can hear is Issac breathing. There are also areas with zero gravity where you are kept on the ground by your magnetic boots (which come off and on automatically) and you can leap to any surface, often fighting monsters on a ceiling or vertical wall. It’s disorientating but adds more fear as the enemy can literally drop down on you from above and generally come at you from any angle. There are several scenes where you will have to man anti meteorite guns to blast away unwanted things hitting the ship or a beast the size of a mansion. You will also get thrust into cut scenes, where you will round a corner and a huge tentacle will grab Issac’s leg and slowly pull him towards certain death, so you have to quickly shoot it in a specific place before you are mercilessly killed. It is not relentless but it constantly keeps the tension building and keeps you guessing what is coming round the next corner.

The weapons and tools are awesome. There is only one gun in the whole game, a military assault rifle, which is basically a futuristic machine gun, that makes possibly the most awesome noise ever, but it is not the best weapon. What you have instead is mining equipment, but before you laugh, this is 25th century deep space mining equipment, massive industrial looking lasers, saws and cutting tools designed to hack up the toughest of deep space moon rock. Taking one of these to a person, even a horrifically mutated one is going to cause damage and that it does. You get a basic plasma cutter initially, which is like a small laser shot gun, but you will soon unlock bigger and better equipment. There is the mighty line gun, a much bigger and more powerful version of the plasma cutter that basically will sever through anything it fires at, but has limited ammo. The fantastically destructive contact beam, which is designed to fire a charged up bolt of energy that will burst a piece of moon rock to bits and easily splatters grotesque monsters into molecules. The evil ripper, which fires spinning saw blades that literally hack the enemy into any shape you want. The force gun (which I didn’t particularly like to be honest) that is designed to blast things away from you and the classic flame thrower. All these weapons offer Issac inventive ways of fending off necromorphs and putting them down for good. Issac also gets some cool futuristic tools to help him through this nightmare. There is a stasis unit that slows down time on specific objects, which is used to repair parts of the ship, but also can be used on enemies so you can blow legs and arms off more accurately. He also has a kinesis module that can be used to pick impossibly heavy items to simply remove them from his path or, more enjoyably, hurl them at charging necromorphs. You can even combine the two, by using stasis on a necro, blowing off an arm with razor sharp bone on it, then use kinesis to grab that arm and blast it back at the necro. You can be as inventive as you like when it comes to splattering mutant space monsters all over the ship.

Necromorphs are a brilliant and challenging enemy. There is huge influence from the films “The Thing”, “Alien” and “Event Horizon” in this game, and the result is a seriously intimidating and panic inducing enemy. They look repulsive for a start, barely recognisable as once human, with large knife like bone structures jutting out their arms, often with bits of human heads and other limbs hanging off them. The normal guys look mainly like mutated people and generally walk towards you screaming, which although scary is nothing compared to what Dead Space throws at you later on. There are also small creepy looking babies that burst tentacles from their backs and shoot projectiles at you. Things with no legs and large yellow explosive sacks on one of their arms, which are basically suicide troops that if get anywhere near you will try and clobber you with their mutated arm and explode Issac into little bits. Dog like creatures with no legs and a long spine like tail with spikes on it, that hurl themselves at you from afar through the air. Often you won’t know they are there until they fly out the darkness teeth and claws ready. Then there is the terrifying mutated soldiers which move at lightning speed and constantly twitch and spasm (The first time one of these comes at you, you are going to shit yourself) and lots of hideous multi tentacle beasts that nearly always come sprinting at you screaming. They are horrible. Dead Space also goes for epic boss battles as well where you have to fight a huge blob the size of a house called the Leviathan (why does every game these days have to have a boss called a “leviathan”?) an enormous beast that you have to blow to pieces with anti asteroid cannons and the end of game boss is the size of a sky scraper, with as many tentacles, mouths, teeth and ways to slice Issac up you can think of. Necromorphs are unlike anything you will have encountered in any game before and will scare, intimidate and challenge the whole way through. Its dam good fun blasting their arms and legs off though.

The story is fascinating and brilliantly detailed. The story is really intriguing in Dead Space and clearly has not been thought up in a lunch break. You gather clues of what’s happened on the Ishimura as you go through the ship in text, audio or video format and it will keep the story building until the end. It’s impossible really for me to comment on the story without ruining everything, but rest assured it certainly puts most of the current Hollywood dross to shame. There’s lots of familiar themes such as how heartless and inhumane big faceless corporations are, mans inhumanity towards man, how religion derives absolute power and corrupts all and several other things that give Dead Space far more depth and intrigue than the simple bullet fest it has so cleverly avoided.

The graphics are particularly fantastic. It is possibly the best looking game ever. Even though it came out in 2008 and we have had games such as Resident Evil 5, Modern Warfare, Uncharted 2 and many other visually imperious titles, Dead Space still stands out. As is always the case in visually excellent games it’s in the details, the finer things, that really make it stand out. When you kill a necromorph, for example, take a look at it and you will see the level of detail it goes into. Teeth, eyes, blood, veins everything is accounted for. The insides of the Ishimura is all incredibly well thought out, with decks for medical, engineering, engine rooms, plant life (for oxygen), habitation decks, a bridge, all the aspects of a vast deep space vessel have been thought of and executed flawlessly visually. It really is stunning.

As always, there is lots to customise and upgrade. Not having an upgrading and customising experience in a game these days is clearly heresy, and Dead Space is no different. Firstly there are shops scattered around the Ishimura where you can spend credits or sell unwanted equipment for money. Credits, ammo and various tools are generally found scattered around the ship, so make sure you always have a good look round, and the store is the place to spend it. You only find one weapon, the plasma cutter, and every other tool of decapitation has to be bought from the store. You can also buy further ammo, as on the harder difficulties you will not find enough scattered around the ship to keep you going, and extra medical supplies. There is also the mandatory upgraded suits which offer more armoured protection and larger inventories and you can store things such as additional weapons (as you can only have four at any time) or first aid kits etc that you want to save for later. Then everything you buy can be upgraded using workbenches. These are also scattered around the ship and although you can’t buy upgrades as such, you apply power nodes to them. These are fairly rare and expensive to buy, so don’t waste them, and can be used to upgrade your weapons to make them more powerful or hold more ammo, upgrade your suit to make the oxygen tank bigger, give you extra life etc, and make your stasis unit last longer. As predictable as all this is, it’s incredibly necessary, executed very well, there is a noticeable difference when you apply greater damage to a weapon for example, and you will never be able to upgrade everything even after several play throughs, so its incentive to keep on playing.

What’s bad?

You don’t get to keep any of your upgrades if you play again on a different difficulty. Dead Space does not do a lot wrong, but one thing that did irritate me was the fact if you play again on a different difficulty you have to start from scratch. It takes at least 3 or 4 goes to get all your weapons and tools upgraded to a fairly decent level, by that time you will probably be finding your current difficulty a bit too easy. But if you try a harder difficulty you lose the lot and have to start over. Admittedly this is better than losing everything every time you play through but it just seems such an odd choice. Also, it might just be my copy of the game, but on several occasions it allowed me to keep my fully upgraded suit but got rid of all my weapons. I can only assume it’s a glitch or something, but it’s a strange decision nevertheless.

All heads up displays are totally useless except your inventory. On the heads up display you have a map, two objectives/mission pages and your inventory but not at any point will you need to look at anything other than the inventory. “Big deal” your thinking, but it is a big deal as, whenever you hit select, it always takes you directly to the map and you have to hit R2 to click to the inventory. This may not sound so bad but you can’t use things such as first aid kits or stasis pack recharges until you go into the inventory and select to use them. When a horde of psychopathic mutant killing machines are trying to hack you to bits, as remember the game does not stop when you look at menus etc, the last thing you need is to have to switch from your map every time. The map itself is incomprehensible to look at and why do you need two objectives screens? You never need to know any of this stuff anyway as you have an automatic guidance system by pressing R3. This shows a line on the floor of where to go next and points Issac in the right direction automatically, which is a bit annoying, but the point is you can never really get lost anyway. They just should not have bothered with it, made it an inventory only or at least have the map etc somewhere else.

Several of the weapons are not great and their secondary fire is crap. Considering you can only carry 4 weapons at a time, you will quickly realise that the only ones worth having are the plasma cutter, line gun, assault rifle and flame thrower. The force gun seemed so utterly useless to me as all it does is emit a blast, that doesn’t really harm enemies, just sends them flying, where they will get up again and continue their onslaught. Only if it is fully upgraded will it do anything great but you are far better off severing limbs, which it doesn’t do. The ripper as well is not much good, as fun as it is to slice monsters up, because it takes too long and you have to be really close up to use it. Getting close to these monsters is a bad idea as they can generally only attack you up close. The flame thrower, although vital against some enemies, has a lousy range as well and takes too long to kill. The whole time you are incinerating a necro it will attack you, so it’s not good. All weapons have a secondary fire as well which is not much help either, particularly the assault rifle which sprays bullets in a circular motion and always hits bugger all. There’s nothing here that takes anything away from the game, but they certainly are not great.

Conclusion

Dead Space is not perfect, but it is so close it seems daft to pick up on the few small things that irritate. If you like survival horror games, sci-fi games, scary games, gory games, games with fantastic stories, games with lots of varying action that looks fantastic, then Dead Space is for you. Infact, if you have a PS3 and don’t give this a go you’re an idiot. It is unbelievably good. As terrifying as it is, its incredibly thrilling blasting the legs off a grotesque looking space mutant as it sprints towards you, screaming and slashing its knife like arms and it simply just executes everything incredibly well and is very well thought out. I can’t say enough good things about it. Its closest competitor is Resident Evil 5, an excellent game, but I found the story in Dead Space a lot more interesting, it’s much gorier, much scarier, and the control scheme is not nearly as infuriating. If you have not played Dead Space yet buy it immediately, and if you don’t, get rid of your PS3 as clearly don’t like games! CA.

Summary

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.0

Very easy to start off with, control scheme is very instinctual, and there’s lots of help menus that pop up and guide you. Will take a few play throughs to get used to the panic inducing terror though (which is a good thing).

Is the story any good? – 10.0

Possibly the best in gaming I have played so far. Nothing cheesy, uninteresting, or expected anywhere, just pure intrigue and excellently thought out plot.

How does it look? – 9.5

Again, possibly the best in gaming so far. Just check out your environments and the finer details on everything. It’s not perfect, as it does have very occasional slow down when lots happening on the screen at once, but generally it’s a visual feast.

How does it sound? – 9.0

No music as such, but the sound effects are immensely creepy and executed excellently. The shriek of a necromorph will send shivers down your spine and all voice acting is spot on.

Is it good to play? – 9.5

Very scary, lots of moments that make you jump, and it often goes out of it’s way to make it even scarier. Ever played a game that’s focused on severing limbs? Me neither, but blasting horrific space mutants into tiny pieces, using deep space mining equipment is incredibly good fun, as well as the varying action set pieces throughout, from defending the ship from a meteor shower, to blasting a beast the size of a house, it’s all seriously exhilarating stuff. Some of the weapons are a bit lame, but it takes nothing away from the entertainment value.

When will I get bored? – 9.5

It’s a single player campaign only, but it will take a really long time to do initially. Realistically you could do it in 12 hours or so, but you will be so petrified the first time round, doing everything inch by inch, so it will take far longer. Even when you’re done it takes quite a few goes to fully upgrade all your equipment and buy/use all weapons so lots of incentive to keep playing. I just wish you could keep your equipment and upgrades if you decide to try a harder difficulty.

OVERALL – 9.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Get ready to crash into traffic, crash into walls, crash into buildings, crash, crash and crash again. There’s also some racing.

Burnout 3: Takedown was probably one of the best games on the PS2, and possibly one of the best arcade racers ever. The concept of smashing fellow drivers off the track in ludicrous explosive metal crunching fashion was not really original or unique, but it was executed so fantastically, looked unbelievable and ran so smoothly it was like nothing any PS2 owner had played before. The sensation of speed was mind blowing and the focus on big crashes was its unique selling point. Most gamers’ favourite aspect was “crash mode” where you speed to an intersection/junction and see just how much carnage can you cause. Getting your mates round and seeing who can cause the most destruction is what made Burnout the king of the arcade racer. All Burnout PSP games had very similar qualities, but now Burnout really gets to rev its engine with its seventh instalment on the PS3, where Burnout Paradise gives you the run of an entire city, with a fully simulated road and motorway/highway network with a racing event on every street. As is always the case when game sequels get expanded and studios decide to fiddle with already winning formulas, does bigger mean better and is change always good? For anyone that has not played a Burnout game before it is basically an arcade racer, where you will have to compete in lots of events that generally involve racing from start to finish, smashing all your opponents off the track and of course crashing. There are lots of cars to win and choose from, and they generally range from being road going tanks that are as tough as meat pie and will flatten all opponents, but can’t go round corners, to being lightning fast and agile but will disintegrate under a slight breeze. All have different uses in different events and all deliver a blistering sensation of speed. The key to Burnout, other than driving like a psychopath, is to fill up your boost meter and continuously nitrous your way to victory. This is done by doing everything you shouldn’t do on a road, such as driving the wrong way down the street, very nearly hitting other road users, drifting, smashing your opponents into walls and other cars, performing ludicrous mile long jumps and flips and generally causing as much road going mayhem as possible. This is not Gran Turismo.

What’s good?

It’s still a proper Burnout game. Although Criterion studios has decided to meddle with stuff that really didn’t need it (more on that in a bit) it has still made a proper mental Burnout game. Anyone who has played any burnout game before will be right at home straight away, only everything now looks shinier and more detailed. For those who have never played Burnout, expect to find really simple driving controls, with a very arcade feel to the cars, that delivers an eye melting sensation of speed and the most over the top chaotic carnage induced racing ever. You will have to smash, bash and crash your way to the win in every event, as there are no points for second place, and it is exhilarating to say the least. Smashing a competitor in to an oncoming concrete pillar, which will show you a cut scene of the car folding like an accordion in slow motion, then taking the chequered flag makes you feel an ecstasy that only the god of driving can experience. Where in contrast, cresting a slight hill at over 200 mph on the wrong side of the road, finding a bus on the other side, which you hit, and having to watch your poor smouldering car batter down the road in a multiple, crumpled, flipping heap and come to a rest as your competitors fly past you, will make you want to create a PS3 shaped hole in your wall. It is a rollercoaster ride of pure adrenaline to pure fury and Burnout never allows you to experience anything in the middle. If you like going fast, smashing opponents into walls and generally driving like a lunatic then Burnout will be a must.

It still has a huge emphasis on crashing. If you love the sound and look of metal twisting and contracting under the pressure of a high impact this will be practically pornography for you. In Burnout you will crash a lot, which is possibly the understatement of the year. You crash so much that often you will do races where 90% of the route has been covered in a wrecked crumpled heap rather than a race car. Do not despair, however, as crashing is what Burnout is about and whenever you do, it shows you a slow motion cut scene of your impact, which all slip seamlessly into the action, never really get boring and make even the lamest of impacts look awesome. There is not a point in the game where you won’t be going “ooooooo” or “aaaaaah” when colliding with a sheer brick wall at top speed and watching your poor car get crumpled to half its length. An addition to the game now is you can start a “show time” crash sequence whenever you want, literally on any street any time, by pressing L2 and R2, and your car will flip into a crash sequence where you have to use X and the directional buttons to guide your wreck down a street causing as much carnage as you can. It is ridiculous as you watch a burning wreck bounce endlessly down a street, but will certainly please those of you who are purely in it for the crashing, destruction and violence.

There is an unbelievable amount to do. Firstly there is all the different sorts of races. You have your standard racing of course, which is a check point to check point race the route of which is up to you, and the awesome “Road Rage” remains, where you drive anywhere you want but you have to take down a certain number of competitors within the time limit or before you wreck. But now you have “marked man” events where you have to get from one part of the city to the other, as in the races, but you will have several very tough enemy cars trying to take you down before you make it, and stunt drive events, where you have to rack up a certain amount of points by driving like a maniac within a time limit. Points are awarded for jumps, mid air spins or flips, drifting and of course, crashing. Finally there is “burning routes” which are basically time trials you can only do with a specific car, but if you win, you get an upgraded version of the car delivered to your junkyard. These events are scattered all over the city and are literally on every corner, 120 events in all, so there is so many it would be impossible to get bored. Then there is 75 cars to be had in this game and all of them have to be won. You get a few delivered to you but most have to be found driving around the city and you have to take them down to get them. It’s not worth searching for them, trust me, just keep racing and driving and eventually one will drive past you. All cars, once repaired can have their paint jobs customised to an extent as well. It constantly tries to get you to alternate your vehicles as well, as the events are so varied it is not worth holding onto a favourite car for too long as the fast and agile ones are pretty useless in road rage and marked man events, whereas the giant vans and trucks are too sluggish and heavy to race with. It gives you a lot to do and demands you vary your skills so if you want to take this all the way to completion there is a lot to keep you busy.

The sensation of speed is mind blowing. Anyone played the excellent “Need for Speed: Shift”? Well, the sensation of speed in that game is pretty scary in a realistic sort of way, but Burnout craps all over it for the sheer thrill of blasting down a dual carriage way at a warp speed only the Starship Enterprise would comprehend. It is ridiculous! When you start to get the cars with maxed out boost and speed stats the blistering velocity becomes so stupid that it borders on uncontrollable. If you see some headlights of some poor bastard normal road user on the horizon, too late, you are going to hit it. Reaction times have to be reduced to nano seconds to go more than twenty feet without crashing, drifting can only be done in mile wide turns, jumps can launch you out of the game and generally it takes the laws of physics and simply throws them away. Its terrifying, but few games out there offer a speed thrill of these proportions.

The soundtrack is awesome. Obviously this is a matter of opinion, but if you like lots of hard fast rock, speed metal and punk, then you will be quite pleased. Highlights included the “Sugarcult” and their excellent “dead living”, “Alice in chains”, “Seether”, “N.E.R.D.” and the legendary and highly appropriate “Guns and Roses”, “Paradise City”. It does have a few questionable tracks such as the interminable “Avril Lavigne” and “Girlfriend” (oh god it’s so bloody awful!), but generally you wont be disappointed. I like the fact that not only does it suit the game and action perfectly, but it doesn’t try to incorporate varying types of music for all types. Its rock and metal and that’s it. If you don’t like it, don’t play it.

What’s bad?

They have practically got rid of crash mode. My biggest issue with Burnout Paradise is that fact that crash mode has now gone. Hitting R2 and L2 to start a crash sequence whenever you want (now called “show time”) probably seemed like a good idea but I much preferred the setting of them in Burnout 3: Takedown. It just seems so pointless now, as there is no real reward and no particular moment to best hit the crash breaker. Plus watching your wreck bounce down the street is just stupid, compared to trying to hit crash breakers and points multipliers. If this was your favourite event in previous Burnout games, which is highly likely, then be prepared to be disappointed.

I didn’t like the marked man or stunt run events either. These two events are ok, and offer a little variety, but they have basically taken away the most fun things about Burnout for them. Marked man doesn’t involve you hitting anyone at all, just fleeing for your life and trying not to crash. You can try and takedown the enemy vehicles but they are like wheeled granite, i.e. ludicrously tough to take down and they will simply spawn back instantly when you do and you get nothing for it. The stunt run events are pretty pointless as well and you nearly always have to resort to jumps, as these make the biggest point multipliers. There are only a few decent locations for jumps in the city so every time you do a stunt run event you always have to end up going to one of a few places, and do the same thing. Plus doing a spin in midair or flip is impossibly difficult and the time is very limited. These two events don’t necessarily bring down the experience but you will very quickly start avoiding them and heading for the race and road rage events instead.

This game doesn’t work as well with free roam. I really do think Burnout belongs on tracks, as Paradise City is not quite as great as it seems. Firstly it’s surprisingly small, as when viewed on the map it looks huge but you can blast from one side to the other in around a minute and a half. Secondly, there is only a few finishing points in the whole city so every race will end in one of a few places basically making you take the same roads every single time, often the widest and straightest, thus it gets really repetitive. Thirdly, as the route to the finish line is entirely up to you, you will spend the majority of the time flicking between your map and racing which just gets irritating, and if you make one wrong turn, especially in the faster cars or when doing a burning route, you’re going to lose. Again, it probably seemed like a good idea in production but I think it worked much better on tracks.

There’s no split screen racing for you and your mate. Not a lot else to say about it I’m afraid, but if you want to race your pal you will have to do it online and on a different TV. Considering it was possible in all other console titles, and games like Motorstorm have four player split screen, it is disappointing.

Who in the hell thought DJ Atomica was a good idea? There is a guy who comes over the radio from time to time when your generally driving around called DJ Atomica, on Crash FM. Yes, that is possibly the most wanky name ever and he coincidently is the most wanky human being ever. He just has such an annoying, cocky, and arrogant voice, constantly condescends you whenever you lose and generally acts like a tosser. He keeps going on about “wild” parties he goes to and “crazy” crashes hes done and just irritates and annoys whenever he decides to pipe up. It doesn’t spoil the game, but the same thought of “shut your face, moron” will go through your mind every time he spreads his moronic bullshit on the air waves. This total prat should be shot.

Conclusion

Burnout Paradise keeps the ideals of all its predecessors, by delivering a totally chaotic, super fast, crashing and smashing arcade racer. There’s loads of events to keep you busy, loads of cars, the race and road rage events are huge fun, offer big thrills and the sensation of speed is unlike anything you will have played before. If you want to race cars, smash opponents off the track and crash, a hell of a lot, then Burnout Paradise is for you. Unfortunately though, if you have played all previous Burnout games, and thus have a basis for comparison, there is a bit to dislike. Mainly the hugely enjoyable crash mode has been replaced with “show time” which isn’t nearly as good, and a few other additional events, such as “stunt run” are utterly pointless. Plus the free roam of the city isn’t that great and much pausing to look at the map will break the racing up too often which will irritate. It still does most things you will expect, so saying “you will be disappointed” is a bit harsh, but it isn’t as good as Burnout 3: Takedown. The closest competition is “Midnight Club: LA” and “Motorstorm”. They are similar to Burnout but Midnight Club focuses more on customising and Motorstorm is an off roader. Midnight Club is a hard game to like, to difficult, too frustrating, too joyless, so definitely choose Burnout over Rockstar’s racer. But it marginally has to play second fiddle to Motorstorm. There’s not a lot in it but Motorstorm offers just as hectic racing with mighty crashes, but the tracks are really well designed as are the different vehicles and it is just generally a little more fun. Plus it has four player split screen. So if your after this sort of arcade racer Motorstorm is probably worth a visit first. Burnout offers a massively more intense sensation of speed, but to be fair strapping yourself to a Saturn V NASA space rocket doesn’t offer the same sensation of speed as Burnout. Personally I think the best racer on the PS3 so far is Need for Speed: Shift, but it is a lot more grown up and serious than Burnout, and to be fair, you can do far worse than pick up Burnout Paradise for your joy of crashing………I mean racing.CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.0

It’s a very simple game but just executed very well. Nothing here will be a surprise. Incredibly easy to get straight online as well.

Is the story any good? – 0.0

There isn’t one.

How does it look? – 9.0

It doesn’t quite have the level of detail of some more modern racers, or games in general, but it runs incredibly smoothly and never stops or pauses or loads or anything. The slow motion crashes are awesome to behold as well.

How does it sound? – 8.0

If you like fast, hard and heavy rock bands, that suits smashing through traffic and blasting down motorways/highways perfectly, then you will love it. This is ruined from time to time by the verbal dog crap “DJ Atomica” comes up with though.

Is it good to play? – 8.0

It is a crash Nirvana, so prepared to crash a thousand times a race. The sensation of speed is mind blowing, as is the satisfaction of battering someone into a concrete wall and it is generally petrol driven adrenaline pumping stuff. It’s just such a shame that crash mode is no more and several new events, such as “stunt run” are pretty lame. Veteran Burnout gamers will be a little let down.

When will I get bored? – 8.5

A huge free roam city with vast road network and a race on every corner. Yes, there is a hell of a lot to do for the single player and you can take your racing online just as easily. Pretty disappointing to not have split screen though and you will tire of its repetitiveness.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

Ignore the “comic book nerd” vibe, this is one seriously awesome game.

Superhero games, especially ones based on their comic book sources, have often not been great. It’s all very well making a game that will please a select group of virgin teenagers but nothing will ever come of it and normal gamers won’t give a crap. Batman: Arkham Asylum takes directly from the comic book version of Batman, so it has nothing to do with the awesome Christian Bale films, and, thank Christ, it has nothing to do with the Val Kilmer and George Clooney era of films either. Paul Dini, who writes many of the original Batman comics actually penned the script for this game so its influence is purely comic book based and has returned Batman to its original source. Wiping the slate clean and starting again is often a good way to go, so does this Dark Knight game give the Batman experience that fans will be expecting? In Batman: Arkham Asylum you of course play Batman, in a third person perspective and the game opens with Batman, having just captured the Joker, speeding towards Arkham Asylum to incarcerate the laughing lunatic once more. It turns out the Joker attacked Gotham’s Mayor’s office but was foiled by Batman, albeit suspiciously easily. Added to this fact is that many inmates of Gotham’s Blackgate Prison have been moved to Arkham temporarily due to a fire, many inmates of which are part of Joker’s crew. It all of course seems all to convenient and Batman knows this, fearing the Joker is up to something. However, Arkham is the largest most inescapable, heavily armed, super secure asylum for the nuts ever, how could he escape? Even though Batman escorts him almost all the way to his cell, the minute he is left alone in the hands of the guards, the Joker escapes with the help of Harley Quin and, having bribed one of the most senior guards previously, ends up taking over the Asylum, releasing all the inmates and killing anyone wearing a uniform. The Asylum can’t be reinforced as Joker promises to detonate a load of secret bombs hidden round Gotham if anyone is seen entering or leaving the island. It turns out the Joker is after a secret chemical called Titan that was being researched by medical staff in Arkham, for use as a biological weapon. Titan has the same effect on people as the chemical used on Bane, only much more potent and longer lasting, and Joker intends to create his own Titan army from the inmates of Arkham, and dump the waste products into the Gotham river reeking unknown havoc on the city’s inhabitants. Batman, single handed, must stop the clown at all costs, fighting through the many members of his crew, helping surviving guards and doctors, finding the Titan chemical and finding a cure. He must also be weary that all the most dangerous psychos in Arkham, Bane, Poison Ivy, Harley Quin, Zsasz, Scarecrow, Killer Croc to name a few, are all here and are free, or could be freed at any point, and Batman is the first name on their hit list. He is basically in for one hell of a night.

What’s good?

Arkham Asylum is one of those games that doesn’t necessarily excel in one particular area, but manages to be an excellent all rounder in just about every aspect of it. Most predominantly and most obviously though, this game is an almost perfect mix of action/combat and stealth:

Firstly the combat. I am taken aback by just how good the combat system is in Arkham Asylum. It is unbelievably good. Like all the greatest combat systems it is simple, easy to get to grips with the basics, looks fantastic, flows super smoothly, but will require some serious skill to master. You simply attack by hitting the square button, and counter by using the triangle button. That will get you through the game on “easy” and “normal”. The skill comes from the timing of these buttons and using directional input to pick out targets. You have to anticipate when to strike, how many times to strike, and pre-determine attacks to tie in your counter. Although I am in no way a “fighter”, I imagine this is not too far off what professional fighting (Boxing, UFC etc) is like. This enables you to string combos together which is the key to victory, as if you string enough together you can perform savage unblockable finishing moves and throws. This generally involves snapping bones and lobbing thugs into other thugs knocking them out. You can also throw “Batarangs” to slow enemies down mid-fight, and on several occasions you will have to battle a Titan, a giant oversized thug who you can jump on the back of, after dealing some punishment to its mountainous frame, and use to batter the normal peons all over the place. The smoothness and fluidity is outstanding when fighting 20 muscle bound thugs at the same time, and manages to be hugely satisfying, seriously good fun to play and totally glitch free. It constantly moves between slow motion and normal speed throughout the fight as well which is a really nice touch, and it gives you a movie style view when the final crunching blow is made. It is seriously one of the best combat systems I have played so far on my PS3.

Now the stealth. Only about half the game is spent exchanging fists with Joker’s henchmen as the rest of the time you will be taking out guys silently. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not on a par with the “Metal Gear” games, as it is far simpler, but as with the combat it still works very well. Stealth attacks will nearly always have to be performed against guys with guns, and, unless it’s on easy, guns will kill Batman very quickly, so the key is to not be spotted. Batman, fortunately is highly skilled in such things. You can take enemies out from behind silently by crouching, sneaking up behind them and choke holding them for a minute. You can also use air vents to sneak around terrain and suss out who to take out next, and most importantly, you can use gargoyles. These are what they are, but Batman uses them to swing between and get around silently and unseen. You can hang down from them and when a thug walks under you, swing down, grab them and leave them strung up and helpless. Rather annoyingly this attracts a lot of attention but you need only to swing to a few other gargoyles and the henchmen will lose track of you. There’s also a myriad of other things you can do, such as swing between most things unseen, hang from ledges, glide using your cape and of course knocking people down with Batarangs. Batman is a very capable chap and it is hugely enjoyable stalking armed thugs from the rafters and watching them gradually getting more scared as you swoop in for the takedown.

There’s lots of kit to find and upgrading to do. The game starts off fairly simply, with Batman having just a Batarang and his fists. But of course the further you progress the more experience points you will gather, by beating up people and finding things, which unlocks upgrades. This will enable Batman to perform finishing moves, throws, give him harder armour, the ability to throw three Batarangs at once and all the usual stuff. Upgrades to the combos are essential as you have to string hits together to perform the mightier moves, and there are upgrades to allow you to perform them quicker. You can also upgrade Batman’s tools and kit, which is where Bruce Wayne shows himself to be a veritable human Swiss army knife. You will find various bat based tools throughout the game, such as Batclaws, a sort of grappling hook used for pulling off vents and things, explosive gel, used for blasting through weak walls, a scanner, used for short circuiting fences and gates, and a very handy alternative grappling device, used for traversing large gaps in the landscape. Most of this stuff will be used to overcome an obstacle that previously could not be solved and it just adds to good pacing and never lets things go stale. Firing a Batclaw at a thug on a lookout tower and pulling him off is rather good fun to say the least and all tools are way more versatile than you might at first think, plus they can all be upgraded to make them even handier. Finally, I must mention the excellent detective mode. By hitting L2, Batman can use this perspective which basically darkens everything and highlights only things that can be moved, broken, swung on to, and generally are of use to you. There are also several points where you will have to follow a trail, finger prints etc, to find out where to go next or for viewing a room full of armed thugs from the ceiling and it is essential then. It is, again, a simple but generally very well thought out tool that should be used frequently.

There is a hell of a lot of things to keep you playing. Although the story is pretty linear, despite the fact you get free roam of Arkham island, there is so much stuff to find and seek out. Mainly, you have the Riddlers puzzles and trophies to find. There is 250 of them scattered all over the island and will either need to be found or scanned, using detective mode, to uncover them. Despite how big Arkham island is that is a hell of a lot to uncover, and nearly all are hidden away and require some serious investigation to uncover. Then there is the Arkham Asylum Warden’s transcripts again scattered in a load of secret places, which reveal how and why the Asylum was founded, and then you have all the interview tapes which give interesting conversations between the most infamous inmates and their therapists at Arkham. If you are a fan of the comics you will be playing this for weeks and loving all of the unlockable content. If your not a fan, but just want to experience fighting and taking down people stealthily, the best part of the game, no problem. There are many challenges to unlock that will involve having to take down wave after wave of thugs, or stealth kill a room full or armed henchmen, getting more unlockable challenges the faster you do them and the less damage you take. If you just want to quickly beat the crap out of some thugs or see how high a combo string you can get then these are excellent. If you like the comics or have to complete every game to 100%, you will be trawling through Arkham Asylum for weeks.

The encounters with Scarecrow are fantastic. For those not in the know, Scarecrow is one of Batman’s nemesis’, who is a deranged doctor who wears a scary mask and pumps his victims with “fear gas” which makes them hallucinate violently and eventually go mad as a result. Batman’s iron will and ultimate coolness stops him from losing his marbles completely but he still gets affected, and the crazy acid trips he goes on are awesome. Firstly they slip seamlessly into the game, and you really won’t notice Scarecrow is near until normal stuff around you in the level starts to go really weird. Cockroaches will swarm from the walls in their thousands, it will start raining, even though you are indoors, the wind will pick up, Batman will encounter his dead parents lying on the floor, in body bags, you will turn into the Joker or Scarecrow when lightning flashes, and then you will be sucked into Scarecrows world. This is an immensely creepy level, each time you encounter him, where the game turns into a sort of side scrolling platformer, with Scarecrow, huge and satanic, suspended in the back ground. You basically have to make it to the end of the level without being spotted, which is accidently stepping into the pale orange light coming from his eyes as he scans the dark level for Batman. It is like going on the most evil of drug induced mind trips and it’s easily a highlight of the game.

It’s a stunning looking game. Of course there’s lots of awesome looking games on today’s mighty consoles, and having recently played God of War III I can see the competition is extremely high. What is interesting about Arkham Asylum is that it still manages to be fantastic looking and cross two platforms. Play other games that are on the Xbox and PS3, such as Bayonetta, and you will notice they often struggle to be on both. Batman doesn’t, and in HD it really is a good looking game. The most impressive thing has to be the character animations. On lots of other pretty recent games this is often a tough one to pull off but they really are amazing. They manage to move and flex like a real person, but still maintain that comic book-esque look about them. Batman is particularly well defined having every bit of stubble, eye and facial movement enhanced perfectly and even his cape flows realistically and smoothly when reacting to his movements. The cut scenes are identical to the gameplay in quality and the level detail of the Asylum itself is immensely high. It really is flawless and one of the best looking games on the PS3.

What’s bad?

The boss fights are a little unimpressive. There is not a lot to criticise here, but one thing that did play on my mind was how unspectacular the boss fights are. It’s probably the fault of the industry as everything these days has to have epically huge boss fights, but the ones in Batman are a bit tame. Killer croc is a particularly intimidating enemy but he is defeated so easily, by simply lobbing batarangs at his electrified collar and them making him fall down a hole. Poison Ivy is probably the most impressive boss fight, as she puts herself into a massive flower, but again its over a bit too easily and, lets face it, it’s a flower! The game seems to prefer throwing many normal enemies at you whilst dealing with a boss, rather than a proper boss fight, a good example of which is your final duke out with the Joker at the end. You don’t really fight him directly at all, instead you have to fight 3 big waves of normal henchmen. Don’t get me wrong, they are not a walk over and having to dodge a charging titan whilst fighting off 20 thugs is pretty tough, and it is still pretty good fun as you get to use the excellent combat system, but I cant deny they are a bit easy and a bit subdued.

You don’t get to keep any of your upgrades and there is nothing really, other than the satisfaction of victory, to reward you if you play again. I will always have a criticism of games that don’t allow you to keep anything hard earned during gameplay, the upgrades in Batman being one of them. As is always the case with such things, you can’t keep everything as it will interfere with the story, allow you to go to places you shouldn’t in context, etc and all the good stuff you only get to use for the last third of the game or so. I’ve earned it, and I want to keep it basically. Plus even if you do unlock everything you only get one decent bit of kit, which is an armoured Batman costume, but you can only use it in the challenge mode, not the story. So that’s a bit useless, and everything else is just character bios, literature or trophies. They offer relatively interesting information on the characters, but it only really appeals to fans, and if you are a fan you probably know it all already. So despite the huge amount to unlock, it really only offers self satisfaction as a reward for completion.

Conclusion

Batman: Arkham Asylum is easily one of the best games I have played so far on my PS3. It really is good and I know next to nothing about the comics. It’s just such a flawless game with so little to find fault with. The combat is truly excellent, so smooth, so satisfying, so awesome to look at, as is the stealth tactics of taking down armed guards silently. It’s simple but works well. By doing these two forms of attack you will use an arsenal of gizmos and gadgets, all of which unique, very handy and upgradable. It really has captured the comic book world of Batman as well and it looks fantastic. There are many things to find that will unlock further character info and trophies and expand the otherwise linear game further. There are a few things to whinge and gripe about, the boss fights, for example, are a bit tame, and rewards for completion are pretty slim or pointless, but the whole experience is so much fun you really wont care. If you have not played this yet, you are missing out.CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.0

Very simple to get started, and it generally eases you in gently to everything.

Is the story any good? – 8.0

It’s a little predictable and convenient, but does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

How does it look? – 9.5

It’s a fantastic looking game, especially considering it crosses two platforms. Character animation and level detail stand out.

How does it sound? – 9.5

All background music and sound effects are excellent. The thudding of fists against skulls is sickeningly satisfying. Voice acting is borderline perfection, Mark Hamills Joker is absolutely spot on.

Is it good to play? – 9.0

Free flowing combat works so very well, easy to get into, satisfying to master. Stalking armed thugs silently also works well, as does unloading Batman’s arsenal of gadgets. Boss battles are a little underwhelming, but you really won’t care.

When will I get bored? – 8.0

Potentially you can lose months of your life doing this, as there is the sizeable main story, and hundreds of Riddler puzzles, secrets, character bios and trophies to unlock. Then there is challenge mode for those that simply want to beat up henchmen and stalk armed thugs. But you don’t get to keep any upgrades, if you’re not a comic book fan the unlockables won’t mean much to you, and if you are, you will probably know them all already.

OVERALL – 9.0

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

It has its moments but its hours and hours of dull, skill free button mashing, stupid story telling, awful pacing and repetitive boss fights. The worst thing I have played on my PS3 so far.

I must instantly state that I wasn’t that fussed on the Devil May Cry series, the creator of which, Hideki Kamiya, directed Bayonetta, and his influence is very noticeable throughout this game. I didn’t necessarily dislike Devil May Cry but the pacing is pointy and the combat is too overblown, too complex and too unrewarding for gamers who’s skill levels are anything less than elite. Don’t think of me as an opinionated ignoramus though as I’m not fussed on RPG’s either but I tried and loved Fallout 3, so I am always more than willing to experiment. I did however pick up Bayonetta with a suspicious mind set, regardless of how critically acclaimed it was, so did it manage to prove to me that my cynical nature is well and truly unjustified? Hundreds of years ago, in an ancient town called Vigrid, there were two factions preserving the balance between light (Paradiso/Heaven) and dark (Inferno/Hell): The Umbra Witches, which drew their powers from the dark, and the Lumen Sages, that drew theirs from the light. The two factions had two powerful gems called the left and right eyes of the world which they used to oversee their just passage of time. But at some point way in the past, these two gems went missing and the two factions disappeared from society. Bayonetta comes into the story after awakening from a 500 year sleep with no memory at all and a small red gem in her possession. In the twenty years after her long sleep she has become quite a notorious angel killer and figure of dark powers, and although she has flash backs from time to time, her memory has not really returned at all. She still has the red gem in her possession and believes it is the “left eye” from the “eyes of the world”. When she discovers that someone may have found the “right eye” she goes off on a mission to find that someone and hopefully regain her broken memories. Things, as always, turn out to be not that simple, as angels are constantly trying to kill her, as are the Cardinal Virtues, 4 huge angelic beasts, and she uncovers a heavenly conspiracy that could bring about the end of the world. Plus she also wants to find out who she is and where she came from etc.

What’s good?

The action and combat is easily the highlight of Bayonetta. If you like you’re combat to be visually creative and over the top, with little skill required, then this will probably be what you are looking for. Bayonetta punches and kicks and uses her four guns to spin all over the place like a death wielding merry go round. Firstly the sheer number of combos has to be noted as it will feel infinite. You can combine the square and triangle buttons (punches and kicks) in so many ways, mostly resulting in ludicrous and big moves, that you won’t know where to start. Then there’s the most impressive thing which is the use of Bayonetta’s “wicked weave” technique, where she uses her hair – yes it sounds daft, but stick with it – to form shapes of enormous feet and fists to perform pulverising mighty finishing moves that will splatter the largest of angelic beasts into little pieces of halo’s. She also uses her mighty mane to perform finishing moves that involves her using her hair to form even more outrageous hellish beasts, such as massive wolves, spiders and birds, to tear the larger bosses into many bloody little pieces. She also performs individual moves such as a powerful punch, that blasts enemies away, a handy heel slide, where she zooms along the floor blasting away and a break dance move where she spins all over the place firing wildly. It is crazy. She also gets some additional weapons, like some shot guns instead of her pistols, a very impressive samurai sword and a whip, that unfold a whole new set of combos and death moves. All weapons dropped by enemies can also be picked up, such as huge lances, axes and claws, that will unleash more combos still, that generally involve slicing and dicing angels into little pieces. Bayonetta cant block attacks (more on that in a bit) but she does have the rather excellent “witch time” counter. Just before an enemy lands a blow you can hit the R2 button and she will evade and trigger “witch time” which slows time to a crawl, for a limited period, and you can use this time to batter the slow moving enemies as they feebly miss you completely. It is totally vital when evading and doing damage to many enemies at once. She also shape shifts to deal with certain environments, such as turning into a panther to give her super speed and agility. Finally there are my favourite torture attacks. When Bayonetta has enough magic built up she can summon various enormous torture devices, such as guillotines, chain nooses, iron maidens, epically huge chain saws, and various other implements of torture with spikes and chains on them, to cut and slice enemies into taking huge damage and get turned into a bloody pulp. You will charge through the action in this game with all these enormous feet, fists, beasts and torture devices blasting from portals all around you wondering how in the hell you are performing them. It is a visual treat and ideal for those who like hugely over the top action.

The enemy and boss fights are unique and on a grand scale. The enemy in this are really interesting and although compromise the armies of heaven, they look like nightmarish creatures from the depths of hell, but painted white. You have normal angels which look like evil eagles, but also huge clawed fast moving beasts, creepy looking bright white female figures, with no eyes, that fire lasers at you, and giant axe wielding ogre type things with cherub faces. “Weird” is one way of describing them, but I found them very unique and thought they looked fantastic. These guys are mere appetisers for the boss battles though who are huge in scale. Everything seems to have an enormous boss battle these days, so it’s nothing new, but it will please those who like grand scaled boss fights. They will come at you in all sorts of crazy ways, ranging from pretty standard lunges and punches, to sprouting huge green eyes on purple tentacles that fire lasers at you. You will fight an enormous upside down head, with two dragon heads attached to it with wings, a huge face with massive arms and rotating fire spouting fingers, huge flying boats with oars that fire enormous missiles at you and all sorts of truly deranged but seriously impressive angelic monsters. It’s like going on the mother of all acid trips at various points.

There’s all the usual customising and weapon purchasing. Where would an action game be these days without a shop to buy new skills and weapons? Probably not very popular, so Bayonetta is no different. Halos are the currency for weapons and skills in this world, along with heavenly LP records and other jewels and things you can find by having a mooch around. Rodin owns the shop “Gates of Hell” where you can purchase and upgrade your weapons and skills as you go through, the more expensive they are, or the rarer the item is, the more damage it will do. Bayonetta is already pretty well equipped before you buy anything anyway, so it’s not vital to buy stuff but the option is there if you like that sort of thing. You can also buy lollipops, enchanted gems etc to give Bayonetta more health, make her deal more damage for a time and all the usual stuff you would expect from any game these days.

What’s bad?

The load times and screen tearing are interminable. Never have I seen a game struggle so much to be on a Playstation 3. It cannot do anything without a good 5 to 10 second load, literally. Every time you pick up an object, a book revealing some story, go into a cut scene or even press the sodding pause button it will have to load. Out of the several hours it takes to complete the game I reckon a good third of that time will have been spent staring at a load screen, in silence. I had previously read it was quite bad and I made the mistake of thinking “a few seconds here and there can’t be that bad surely” but I assure you, having been through it, you cannot possibly live with it or at any point not be annoyed by it. There is a screen tearing issue as well. The graphics are generally pretty good, and the in game graphics work just fine, but the cut scenes, to which there are hundreds, are awful. They just stutter, fragment, pause, lose quality and never ever look how they are supposed to. There are far too many cut scenes for a start (more on that a bit) but all these problems simply make an already crap part of the game even crapper. I hear the Xbox 360 version isn’t as bad, but still suffers quite a lot.

The button mashing combat gets dull very quickly. There is obviously a market for button mashers, an aspect of gaming I will never understand or appreciate, as there seems to be so many of them churned out, but Bayonetta easily takes the gold medal home as king of the button mashers. It definitely looks good, but you can quite literally do this game with a blindfold on by just hammering every button at your disposal. What makes it worse is that it seems to discourage learning moves and combos as the enemy will give you no chance to attack using logic or calculated combos, and if you get stuck at a certain place you are far better off just switching your brain off and battering those buttons. You will soon be victorious by doing so, rather ridiculously. How does that make sense? Its even worse on the “automatic mode” which will literally do everything for you, you need only control the movement of Bayonetta, plus you will destroy every enemy by lightly sneezing in their direction, as they get killed so quickly and easily, and it is just so utterly pointless and ludicrously easy. There is an even easier difficulty but I didn’t bother with it. What’s the point in playing a game you don’t have to play? Who could this possibly appeal to? There is also far too many combos to get to grips with, you simply don’t need that many as it’s far too overwhelming and far too easy to perform a combo you didn’t mean too, as some can be completely ineffective at the wrong time. God of War III doesn’t have that many individual moves but manages to be one of the best combat systems ever made. Like everything in Bayonetta it’s just far too over the top. The fact she can’t block either gets very frustrating and such a fighting heavy game really needs some sort of block action. I found myself constantly going for a block button that wasn’t there and simply taking damage instead. Although the witch time counter is quite good it’s not instinctual in the slightest and not at any point did I get used to it. There are also mini game sections where you have to input specific buttons at certain times, just like God of War, but only a super human that can stop time itself will have reactions quick enough to deal with them. Even if you know what’s coming it’s unbelievably difficult to get the timing just right and you will always have a million goes at each one before success. The action and combat is a perfect case of all style and no substance.

The story is monumentally stupid and told in a monumentally stupid way. Not only did I not understand the story in any way, but I didn’t really like it either after I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s basically identical to the story in Devil May Cry 4 where some deluded powerful being is trying to create a deity that will bring about the destruction of earth, but will usher in a new Eden in the process blah blah blah. Then there’s something about a left and right eye, one for light and one for dark, that I also never really fathomed, some sort of festival on an island, or something, I didn’t really get it. It ranges from very familiar ground to total confusion, and then they had to chuck in an utterly stupid and pointless love interest, some amnesia, the ultimate plot detail of choice for writers who are totally out of ideas, and a small girl which, even though I’ve had her explained to me, I still don’t understand. This unoriginal, confusing and cheesy tale wouldn’t be so bad if it were told well, but it is most definitely not. Everything is told in cut scenes which come thick and fast persistently interrupting the game after every little battle, which are still images (so its like looking at photos) in a film strip style. They are about as visually appealing as wallpaper samples, just as informative and you will care as much about the story as a result. You learn very little until the very end as well, and when it finally all stops you won’t feel like much has been explained, or that much has been achieved, and you are only marginally better informed. After the credits you are then treated to one of the most awful and pointless music video cinematics, with Bayonetta dancing to a techno beat with angels in the back ground as back up dancers. It is squirm inducing, sphincter tightening bollocks, has no relevance whatsoever and you can almost hear the noise of a thousand masturbating teenage boys whilst it’s on.

The characters are total rip-offs and their dialogue is overly cheesy and irritating. The various other characters are rip offs from other more renowned characters, such as a Danny De Vito look a like called Enzo, who even sounds just like him, and a Morpheus rip off who constantly comes out with lame stereotyped babblings, such as “right on baby” in a Barry White styled tone. Bayonetta herself is the queen of talking shite throughout the game coming up with such crap as “as long as theirs music, I will keep on dancing” and the awful cheesy dialogue between her and another Umbra witch, called Jeanne, is even more excruciating. It’s like they are both Bond movie villains. After not too long the rubbish script and persistent gobshite all the characters spout gets very dull very quickly and you will instantly be skipping all cut scenes on your second play through, after a good long loading screen though of course.

The pacing is awful. My main issue is that the action and story telling just stops and starts constantly, so frequently and without warning. It generally goes that, after half an hour of loading, you will have a long and laborious story based cut scene, followed by another long and laborious cut scene describing what enemy you are about to fight (twenty minutes of loading in-between them as well), you have a 5 minute battle (or if its on easy, a 5 second battle), walk up a road for a few seconds and then another long and laborious cut scene. Rinse and repeat thereafter. Occasionally a puzzle is thrown in, but they are all insultingly simple. You are never allowed to simply just get on with it, or fight a few battles one after the other and it constantly just stops and starts. After not too long you will start getting really impatient with the persistently interrupting cut scenes, and compared with games such as God of War III, where combat and story telling flow seamlessly into each other, it is infuriating.

The enemies and boss fights are constantly recycled and very repetitive. Despite the originality of the enemies there is really only a couple of different types, the only difference being how many they throw at you at once. “So what” you may think, all games do that, which is true, but the problem is Bayonetta does it with bosses as well. Despite the impressive size and look of the bosses they are constantly re-used. There are only a couple of bosses but tons of boss fights so the same boss will be thrown at you again and again, often with two of them instead or something equally uninspiring and lame. When you defeat the massive thing with long arms and spinning fingers for the third time, you start to wonder how many times you have to kill the dam things. They are all defeated using an identical technique as well, as they all have tentacles or multiple heads, and you have to hammer away at them for a bit, then run up their arm and slap them round the face a bit, and repeat. Then later on you will have to do the same thing again as they will be recycled. Why do they keep getting brought back to life? Of course there is no explanation. Why not come up with another boss, it’s not like the game or its creator is short of creation? It just makes the unique and fantastic looking bosses repetitive and dull.

The camera angle is constantly facing the wrong way. How hard can getting a camera angle right on a computer game be? All it needs to do is show you what’s going on or what’s coming at you and give you enough space visually to react. The camera in Bayonetta seems to be on a mission to obscure as much as conceivably possible as often as possible, by constantly focussing on her face. This isn’t so bad about half the time when in combat areas, as you move all over the place attacking enemies, but when in an action scene where you are running away from something. It will automatically focus straight on her and you can’t see a bloody thing, and considering most things come at you from the front in such situations you get hit all the time and you can do nothing to avoid it. You can move the camera angle, sure, but it is so slow that ice ages will have come and gone by the time it is facing in a decent direction, and if you are, for example, trying to outrun a lava tidal wave, you do not have time to move the view at all and you have to resort to trial and error. It sucks!

Conclusion

This game feels like it was designed by a load of 40 year old men, who have never had much luck with the ladies, where clearly unpopular nerds at school, have never been cool or had many friends, and were asked to design what they believe is a “sexy” and “sassy” game, for 14 year old virgin boys. It’s trying far too hard to be cool and stylish, which will always make it an automatic failure in that department, and it is just cheesy and irritating. Regardless of how cool it is, my main issue is there just isn’t that much to like here. I’m not a fan of button mashing games at all, but this is really the pinnacle of requiring absolutely no thought, skill, talent or anything at all to play through, especially on the automatic mode. You can quite literally do it with your eyes closed, and often you are better off that way, as long as you keep battering those buttons. Little to no directional input is required, only the slight pausing occasionally of mashing buttons and Bayonetta will do something ever so slightly different. Added to the fact the story is mindlessly confusing or “an explosion in an Edam factory” cheesy, then there’s constant intrusive cut scenes that are no fun to watch in anyway, as they are not even proper cinematics, the repetitive boss fights that all manage to be exactly the same to fight regardless of shape and size, the awful stop and start pacing and the infinite amount of time the game spends loading every conceivable action you can think of, makes me really struggle to think of reasons to bother playing it. Plus the graphics tear and jitter constantly and the music sucks. Yes the combat looks good, visually, and the bosses are huge but I assure you it is a case of all style and no substance. The “Witch time” counter is quite good, but it really needs a block as well. To make it even worse still is that the competition has it well and truly beaten. You want to play an action game, with hundred-hit-combos, epic boss battles and in this perspective? Then play God of War III. Kratos is still the king and it is one of the best action games ever. Not a fan of Kratos? Then you have Batman: Arkham Asylum, again, a relatively similar but far superior game in every way. Not a fan of Bruce Wayne and you absolutely have to button mash and fight demons and angels? Then you have the hugely impressive Darksiders. Not only is it very similar to Bayonetta, but it is again a far better game in every conceivable way, especially in button mashing combat and story telling, plus, I personally would rather play as “War” the horseman of the apocalypse, than a Barbie doll from “the dark side” with magic hair. Do you like the Devil May Cry series and reckon Bayonetta is a worthy heir? Definitely not. It looks similar but the combat is nothing like it and she isn’t nearly as cool as Nero, neither is her story as interesting. Bayonetta may give you a quick, cheap thrill, but that’s where it will end and even if your heart is absolutely set on this game, despite all that sucks and the many far superior titles, I would still only recommend giving it a rent as it will get dull quickley.CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 8.0

It’s easy to get into, yes, in the same way it’s easy to saw off your own legs. Simple things are not always pleasurable. Will be very familiar stuff for most gamers.

Is the story any good? – 5.0

No. The whole witches vs sages thing is mildly interesting, but it’s ruined by total confusion and cheesy crap. A seriously lame love interest coupled with amnesia, for Christ’s sake, will put a bored uninterested expression on your face throughout.

How does it look? – 7.0

The enemy and bosses look really unique and most in game graphics look really good. Cut scenes tear, jitter and generally dick about though. It really struggles to be on the PS3.

How does it sound? – 7.0

Sound effects of battle and boss fight’ music is really good, proper dramatic, but all normal fights are accompanied by the same awful jazz song with a techno beat. It’s not of a bad quality it is just a seriously lame tune that irritated me constantly.

Is it good to play? – 5.0

The combat looks impressive, the bosses are huge, and it may initially please, but after not too long you will realise this is the ultimate in talentless, unskilled, repetitive button mashing. Ray Charles could complete this game, no problem. Very little directional input required, far too many combos to learn, all not distinctive at all, the few puzzles there are, are infantile in their simplicity, coupled with constant loading, constant interruption through awful cut scenes, constant recycling of bosses and several ridiculous action set pieces, such as riding a missile, makes this a far too over the top game with all style over substance.

When will I get bored? – 8.0

Potentially there is a lot to keep you playing as there is lots of expensive skills and weapons to buy that you cannot get after just one go, and lots of secrets to find. I got bored half way through my second go, personally, and the competition has it well and truly beat.

OVERALL – 6.0

Review created by C. Armstrong.

Contents
Introduction
What’s Good?
What’s Bad?
Conclusion
Summary

God of War III 22/03/2010 – It’s easily the most stunning, brutal, bloody and epically huge entry in the series, but, it pains me to say, its not the best.

If you type in “greatest game ever” into Google you are more than likely to come across Kratos and “Santa Monica Studios” God of War series (that’s how I found it many years ago). The tale of a bald, pale, burly killing machine has got to be one of the greatest in gaming history. It had outstanding, smooth, flowing combat that was easy to get into and rewarding to master, the graphics also pushed what the PS2 was capable of and you were guaranteed vast monsters, titans and gods to battle, the size of which no one had ever encountered before. Now wielding the power of the PS3, this is the third and final chapter in the tale and fans, to which there are millions, will be expecting, nay, demanding the ultimate in the franchise. We don’t have to consider whether this game will be bad or not, as it of course amazing, but given the weight of expectation, does it pay true homage to one of the best series of games ever, does it become the ultimate finally and the ultimate God of War game, as it should be? In this third game you play Kratos once more, the cursed Spartan general who inadvertently murdered his own wife and daughter, as he joins the mighty titans in their assault on Mount Olympus to eradicate the Olympians once and for all, in particular Zeus, the king of the Gods who betrayed Kratos and will stop at nothing to see him tortured in the pits of the underworld for an eternity (if you want to know how Kratos got into this situation I highly recommend you play the first two PS2 games). After Kratos and Gaiya (the leader of the titans) fight Poseidon, whilst climbing mount Olympus, they get within firing range of Zeus, who then shows them why he is the most powerful of immortals, blasts them with a particularly potent lightning bolt, and Kratos gets tossed from Mount Olympus and into Hades’ realm of the underworld. Having had his powers and weapons stripped off him by his quick swim in the river Styx, he meets Athena once again, who is still a god but without physical form, who tells him that Pandora’s box still exists and still holds the power to kill a god, but it is now protected by the Flame of Olympus, a power source from which Zeus draws his mightiness and something that neither a mortal or god can touch. Athena gives Kratos the Blades of Exile, to earn his trust, and he now has to escape Hades and the underworld, find out how to eradicate the flame of Olympus, open Pandora’s box once more and use its powers to kill Zeus, the whole time slaughtering any Olympians or titans that stand in his way. It’s business as usual with the God of War franchise as it’s another epic Kratos quest, where you will have to traverse a world nestled in Greek Mythology, kill a hell of a lot of enemies in ludicrous hand to hand combat, solve puzzles, meet other characters along the way and have some seriously huge boss battles.

What’s good?

It’s hard to pick one thing that is the best in God of War III, but probably the most impressive, at least the most jaw dropping, aspect is the sheer epic scale of it. It’s ridiculous in places. God of War games have always pushed the boundaries of having vast settings and battles and fighting monsters the size of sky scrapers. Now with the power of the PS3, Santa Monica Studios have gone mental. Fighting titans such as Kronos and Olympians such as Poseidon put the piffling tiny little Colossus of Rhodes, from the second game, to shame. One of Kronos’ finger nails is the size of a mansion for example, and don’t think for a second he is just in the back ground, as he is actually a fully interactive boss fight, where you will have to dodge his massive attacks (understatement of the century) and climb all over his city sized frame, that constantly moves, to defeat him. From the word “go” you are straight into a boss fight riding on the back of the titan Gaiya, who is an entire level on her own and you will traverse her arms fighting enemies whilst the titan is moving all over the place forcing Kratos to fight hanging from a ceiling one second to climbing a wall the next, the whole time Olympians are fighting titans in the background. The labyrinth is also a particularly impressive and difficult level, as you have to go through room after room that’s laden with horrific booby traps, as well as zooming up the path of Eos, a giant windy tunnel that goes up through Mount Olympus, along side the stupidly huge “Chain of Balance” that links mount Olympus to the underworld. The views of the pits of Tartarus are jaw dropping, as is the whole underworld/Hades realm, and Mount Olympus itself, which you have to scale, is ludicrously vast. The camera will zoom in and out regularly at particularly vast action set pieces to really give you the epically biblically huge scale this game is based on and it does not once stop to load, pause, or stop for a cut scene or have any interruptions whatsoever. It is honestly beyond any boundary you will have seen before in terms of enormity and it will blow you away.

It has the best visuals ever seen in gaming. They are stunning. Think how good looking several PS3 titles have been, such as Uncharted 2, Resident Evil 5, Dead Space, all hugely impressive visually and they have nothing on God of War III. They have all these incredibly vast beasts and bosses, a lot of them made of fire, water and various textures that are hard to simulate digitally, and not one has the tiniest detail missed. You can even see the finger prints on the titans hands whenever you get picked up by one, or grabbed. That’s the level of detail this game has. Kratos himself is possibly the best looking character in gaming with every muscle, hair, vain and tooth digitally sculpted to perfection. As he is slaughtering enemies their blood will splatter over him, which is done in drip by drip detail, I kid you not. The particularly gory “brutal” kills/finishing moves are unbelievable as you will literally spill intestines, bladders, lungs, you name the organ, in a splatter on the floor and they are all flawless visually. The fire effects are perfect, the water effects are perfect even when a water beast the shape of a horse with crab legs is attacking you it never once loses its visual perfection. The level design as well is eye watering with fine detail and brilliance. Just take a look around every temple you set foot in, it is brimming with detail, to the shadows cast, the light effects a torch has on surrounding objects, even the reflection in shiny floor surfaces. It is unbelievably good and is without doubt the new graphical benchmark for all PS3 games.

The action, combat and fighting is just as full of combos and has a few neat additions. Those of you familiar with Kratos’ moves will be instantly right at home from the start. Even after his dip in the river Styx, and has to build up his skills and moves once more, its still pretty familiar stuff. The light (square) and heavy (triangle) attacks remain the same as does the ability to combo with them, and combo you will. You can toss enemies into the air as before, perform a “cyclone of chaos”, grab enemies mid-air and smash them into the ground and generally splatter ghouls and demons all over the place. You can also upgrade everything with souls as in all other games which unlocks new moves and skills and does more damage etc. There’s a few pretty decent additions now though, such as using “L1 + triangle” to grapple enemies from a distance and shoulder charge them. This is really good for knocking bigger enemies back or stunning them and it’s absolutely vital when trying to get at foes that fly. It also allows Kratos to stay in the air longer whilst slicing enemies up, a very vital part of Kratos’ skills when trying harder difficulties. When you grab enemies you now have two choices, punching them in the face several times then ripping their heads off (by repeatedly pressing circle) as before, or picking them up, running round and using them as a battering ram to damage many enemies at once (pressing square). This is a particularly useful new skill when swarmed by many enemies at once, which happens frequently. Another addition is Kratos, with a select few beasts such as a three headed fire breathing dog or massive club wielding Cyclops, can now jump on such monsters and use them to attack other enemies. Again it’s very vital and quite satisfying to use a giant Cyclops to batter a shit load of smaller enemies all over the place, before ripping its eye ball from its head. There are some new weapons as well (more in them in a bit) but a particularly useful and satisfying one is the Nemean Cestus, two huge gauntlets that are basically used to pummel all enemies to death. Some of the moves associated with the gauntlets are such good fun and regularly smash and batter enemies all over the place when used at the right time. Ploughing into a huge swarm of enemies with a few powerful strikes with the Nemean Cestus really sends them all flying and splattering against walls, floors and ceilings, particularly enjoyable when in the Labyrinth as most surfaces are laden with spikes. Kratos has new magic attacks as well that are assigned to weapons, making them much easier to use, such as an attack that surrounds you with shields and spears and rains arrows from the sky. Not only does it make you temporarily invincible but does huge damage to many enemies at once and is often a life saver. You will also blind enemies with the head of Helios, and summon souls to attack enemies for you. You can also use the sword of Olympus but it is now a special move that you have to build up over time, and, when ready, you press L3 and R3 and you get a short stint of Kratos going ballistic with it slicing the living crap out of everything (its identical to the “rage of the gods” from the first game and “rage of the titans” ability from the second game). It’s good for when the chips are down. If you have not played God of War before then you are in for a treat as it is easily still one of the most satisfying combat systems available in gaming, as all God of War games have been.

There are treasures to find and a battle arena to keep you playing. This time round you don’t get to keep your weapons you pick up throughout the game (more on that in a bit) but you do get treasures as an alternative. You find these as you play through the game, such as Poseidon’s Conch and Hercules’ armour, and you can activate them when playing through the same difficulty a second time round (you have to complete the game on a specific difficulty before you can use them). They will make Kratos more powerful by making enemy attacks do less damage or giving you unlimited magic for example. You can also play through as Kratos in a different costume (called “Fear Kratos”) which makes you deal quadruple damage, but also receive quad damage yourself. None of these things are particularly necessary (and I would rather have the gear I collect to be honest) but they will give a bit of incentive to play through a few times on different difficulties. You also have the challenges and battle arena which basically give Kratos some objectives in a small arena, such as killing a load of enemies with just your bare hands or making sure the number of constantly spawning enemies doesn’t go over 50, a particularly fun and mental challenge. They are all particularly tough, but pretty good fun and will add to the length of playing time and value for money.

It is easily the most brutal, bloody and gory instalment so far. With Kratos you expect a vast amount of blood but he really does himself proud in this title. You will frequently rip heads from bodies with your bare hands, tear beasts in two with your blades, pull eye balls from heads, slice open beasts spilling their organs on the floor, amputate limbs, snap necks, pull wings off harpies and generally perform any and all brutal kills you can think of. Of course he has done similar things before, however with the new visual detail it really does seem more horrific. This is nothing compared to the wrath he saves for the Olympians. Obviously he is out to get these guys mainly, Poseiden, Hades, Helios, Hermes and Zeus (with a few other mythological figures thrown in), and the manner in which he slaughters these guys is truly horrific. He rips heads from bodies, gouges out eyes with his thumbs, severs legs, chokes to death, pummels their faces so hard you can see their skull, stamps on heads, knees in faces and gives Zeus one of the most almighty pummelling’s I have seen an enemy take in a game for a while. At a few occasions you will get a first person view of what its like to be an Olympian that Kratos is pounding into the ground, and it is very haunting being on the receiving end of his wrath for a change. Every time you defeat a boss hold on to your stomach as you are in for a truly blood soaked finally.

What’s bad?

The extra enemies on screen at one time are not a good idea. Of all the additions to this game, most of them good, one that really does not work is the vast amount of enemies on screen at one time. You can get up to 50 enemies vs Kratos now, which sounds cool and Santa Monica boasted at length about this, but it just doesn’t work. The previous titles were forgiving with their attacks, to an extent, as the combat system can’t cope with such intensity, and rightly so as it worked perfectly. This time round they totally swarm you. Literally you will be bombarded from every conceivable angle, constantly, without pause or allowing for a single error. You simply can’t deal with it. Whilst you’re attacking 4 or 5 enemies in one direction, another 10 will stab you in the back, the whole time a massive centaur is running round trying to skewer you with his lance, whilst archers shower you with arrows, flying harpies dive bomb you from above and fire breathing beasts attack you from afar with flame moves that cover most of the ground you are fighting on. It’s ridiculously over the top and maddening in places, I don’t know what they were thinking! What makes such a thing even worse is that if Kratos was well equipped to deal with such ludicrous amounts of attacks it would not be so bad, but he isn’t. There are some moves to allow you to deal with this sort of thing but not enough to fully counteract the total number of enemies on screen and you certainly won’t have the necessary weapons or upgrades until about a third of the way through for such skills to be of any use. You only have a few attacks that hit many enemies at once and I only reckon two of these are actually useful: the grapple where you use them as a battering ram, which you can only do to a select few enemies, and the gauntlets’ spinning attack. The blades of exile’ cyclone of chaos combo is just too weak to be useful and the various heavy attacks with the blades take too long to charge up and are too slow. By the time Kratos has got round to swinging a heavy attack he could have been stabbed at least ten times. I’m sure having Kratos battle 50 enemies at once seemed like a good idea on paper, but it really doesn’t work, and they should have left the combat alone.

Sticking pins in your eyes is preferable to some of the fights in this game. They are utterly interminable! Remember the huge rotating spiked pillars in the underworld from the first game, where if you get touched you fall and have to start again, and it takes around 3 years of your life to do and you would rather live in hell for that time? Remember that infuriating circular room that Kratos has to lower by hand from the second game, whilst a spiked ceiling comes down on you, the whole time skeletons are attacking you and grinding the lowering mechanism to a halt? Remember that room in Persephone’s castle, from the PSP title, that’s very small with two massive armour plated Cyclops’ smashing pretty much every inch of the limited floor space, the whole time harpies are dive bombing you and you can’t hit them as they are constantly in flight? Remember how much you screamed in fury? Remember wanting to attack your console with a meat clever, or saw your own legs off rather than persevering with these horrible, shitty, bloody awful, rage inducing, agonising set pieces? Well the sadists at Santa Monica Studios have kept that theme going here, with a few extra servings of fury added on top. Some of the fights in this third one are going to make you vomit blood. Such as towards the end when you have to fight a massive fiery three headed dog, that spits hundreds of smaller fiery dogs at you, at the rate of a fiery dog producing mini gun, that run after you and explode dealing massive damage, the whole time it either claws you or fires enormous fire balls that have huge range and both do loads of damage, meanwhile two goat things with massive scythe weapons (the hardest non-boss enemy in the game) are trying to turn you into luncheon meat. Also taking into account the fact that the massive sodding dog has to be killed three times as you have to hack off each head individually, each severing of which makes the dam thing a whole new boss battle again. Trying to deal damage to anything is unbelievably difficult, let alone stringing combos together, let alone constantly doing your counter, let alone evading the enemies’ attacks, and your space to manoeuvre is pretty limited. There is another on top of the labyrinth where two Minotaur’s are trying to cut a chain that’s suspending the platform your standing on, and you have to stop them otherwise its instant death, the whole time a million enemies are attacking or literally holding you back, including medusa’s, that love turning you to stone (to which you die instantly if you are in the air or get hit once), further Minotaur’s, archers shooting from a distance, the lot. You are going to want to tear every hair on your body out. Don’t even get me started on the end of game fight where you have to fight about 20 Zeus’s all with the same “thunder clap” move that can kill you in two hits, if you’re lucky, or the final fight in the labyrinth where literally every enemy in the game will be hurled at you at once, 10 times over. It’s almost as though the developers sat down after making a fight sequence and thought “well, we have made this one practically impossible, so what can we do to make it even harder?” It is more than likely a trade mark thing as all God of War games have some fight scenes in them that are horrible, but it doesn’t make them fun regardless. I know I should just do it on an easier difficulty, or simply switch it off and not bother, but that is admitting defeat, defeat is a weakness, and I am a man dammit! We can’t show weakness. Dam you Santa Monica Studio’s for preying on my pride, ignorance, stubbornness and lack of skill once more. Dam you to hell!

There are too many enemies that are so hard to kill it is ridiculous. Not only do they do things like become invisible so that they can still hit you but you can’t hit them (for fucks sake!), disappear into the floor and only popping up to do Kratos heavy damage and then disappearing again, the whole time you cant touch them (for fucks sake!), but they can take so much punishment it seems like they are indestructible. You will honestly be battering away at these guys for a ludicrous amount of time and often you will get a lot of them at once, along with other weaker enemies all looking to get a hit in when your back is turned, as well as a few minotaur’s charging around. Obviously there are things you can do to counteract their overwhelming strength and numbers but opportunities to do so are slim and if you make a mistake they will kill you very quickly, especially on your first play through and on a harder difficulty than “easy”. The first time I encountered the hooded things with dual curved blades, I spent so long hacking the crap out of them and yet they kept coming, that I thought they were indestructible and had to be fled from or trapped or something. There are moves you can do to counteract these infuriating enemies, such as pulling the hooded dudes out of the ground, but, as always with God of War games, it is not clear at all what moves will work on specific enemies and what ones wont, as some moves don’t have any effect on certain enemies at all. You can’t throw a lot of enemies, for example, and a lot of enemies block all your heavy attacks, so it’s a bit of a lottery. Why could they have not ironed such things out? I can’t see how someone at Santa Monica Studios played through this and thought “yeah that’s fine”. They don’t need to be that tough; there is too much going on elsewhere for it to be necessary.

As in all previous games, there are far too many situations where enemies can hit you and there is nothing you can do about it for my liking. This generally happens when you’re grappling an enemy and attempting to finish them off, performing a counter or cinematic move in general or when the enemy “dog-pile” you and you have to wiggle the analog frantically, which will take at least a few seconds. They can still hack away at you in many different scenarios and there is nothing you can do about it until Kratos has finished his movement and you regain control. It’s infuriating! Whenever you try and throw or do anything that isn’t constantly battering all 50 enemies on screen at the same time, which of course is impossible, they are going to slice you up at some point. This isn’t so bad on easier difficulties of course, but on the harder ones it pushes your sanity to the limits as the only way to get through such difficulties is to not take damage. To be fair, those familiar with God of War will be unsurprised as it is a problem in all games (except “chains of Olympus”), but why has it not been fixed? This should be the ultimate in the franchise, surely?

The story is more questionable than any other title and the characters are all less admirable. Despite the grander apocalyptic story this time round it is easily my least favourite in the franchise. They have re-introduced Pandora’s box from the first game which again Kratos is trying to open, then there’s the seemingly totally unnecessary flame of Olympus, which Zeus draws his power from, which isn’t touched on very much at all and then just gets kind of forgotten (why could Pandora not just be the key to the box on its own, the flame really is not necessary? Kratos kills Zeus in a way that has bog all to do with it). Kratos also starts off with powers yet again, that he then loses by falling into the river Styx and going into the underworld yet again, and he has to build up his powers yet again. Don’t argue that this is necessary as the underworld is a vital part of the God of War gaming experience, which it is, as there are reasons for him to go into the underworld later on in the game, such as to confront Kronos, so why bother killing him again? It’s literally jumbled together from bits of the previous games and I was wondering why Santa Monica Studios didn’t come up with something better, or at least more original. Kratos himself is different this time, as despite the fact he is a total butcher, slaughtering all he comes across, you always felt sorry for him, as he was a tortured pawn in more powerful hands and always the underdog. He isn’t this time, he’s too mighty and powerful, he dispatches Gods too easily and just comes across as an arsehole who wants to screw everyone over in order to get his own way. You don’t really feel sorry for him much at all (until right at the very end) and he is definitely just a bad guy rather than a good guy with a tragic history (Darth Vader style). Some people may like this, but it’s certainly not the same character I enjoyed playing as in all the other games. Zeus comes across as a school bully as well, rather than a mighty Olympian, as he does in the second game, and he just laughs at Kratos all the time and constantly says how much of a failure he is (why is he failure? Zeus wants him dead as he sees him as a threat. What’s that got to do with failing?) It’s more pathetic than intimidating. Hercules is a bad guy in this as well, which just seems wrong in this Greek mythology based world, and Atlas, the largest and possibly the most interesting titan that’s been in all but the first of the previous titles, isn’t in it at all. It does end rather well, and its definitely not a happy ending (how could such a story end happily?) however, they still leave a bit of controversy after the credits and it so isn’t worth it and if this is supposed to be the end why did they just not end it without question? The story is just an example of how bigger isn’t always better, and I really thought it was the weakest in the franchise so far, as though they were running out of ideas.

You don’t get to keep anything after completion. This one really puzzled me as that had always been a feature of God of War (except the first one), that all health upgrades, magic, weapons, skills, you name it, could be kept and played through again from the beginning, thus adding to your reasons to play again. You cant this time though. You lose everything if you have another go and you have to build it all up again. Why have they decided to get rid of this feature this time? Well I know why, as you have to back track some levels this time round and there are various areas that you can’t access in context with the story and if you had all the weapons/tools, you could, and cut out a huge chunk of story or a boss battle which obviously doesn’t work. But why not just don’t allow the weapons or magic to be used, or not be used, in the context of advancing the story, but allow you to still beat the crap out of the enemies you encounter? Why not just have a tab stating “you can’t access here right now” or something? We will understand, considering we have just played through the bloody thing. It really is baffling. Plus, unless you are incredibly anal and willing to shag Aphrodite a hundred times (long story) you wont have enough time to buy all skills and max everything out anyway, leaving you to only upgrade the blades and gauntlets (as they are the most useful in battle) every time making it repetitive, dull and ultimately pointless. Even if you do get every conceivable soul you won’t have the best skills until right at the very end. Another tinkered with feature that simply didn’t need tinkering with.

The other weapons are not great again. This will come as no surprise to any Kratos fan as, other than the gauntlet of Zeus in the PSP’s “Chains of Olympus”, nearly all his alternative weapons in all the games are pretty crap. This game is still no different as you get some cool new weapons, that look as though they would be excellent, but they are pretty much the same as your blades of chaos/exile. The Nemean Cestus are brilliant and quite vital, as are the blades of exile but Hades hooks (huge purple hooks that Hades uses to take souls) and the Nemesis Whip (triple bladed whips that blast everything with electricity) are nothing special whatsoever. They are just far too similar to the blades of exile but with a few flaws that make them not worth using. Hades hooks are too slow and almost identical to the blades of exile, but with less moves, and the nemesis whip, although deals lots of damage, cant hit many enemies at once and often leaves you open for attack mid-combo. They are not bad, but not that great either and certainly don’t add anything to the game.

Conclusion

When you first switch this game on you will be blown away. It is on a scale more huge and epic than anything you will have seen before, the visuals are mind blowing, and you will be right at home with Kratos, instantly performing all his awesome combos, throws, air attacks and some really good additions to the combat and magic attacks. The battle with Kronos is truly jaw dropping, as is the first fight in the game with Poseiden, and the flight up and down the path of Eos is adrenaline pumping stuff. Plus you really will have a serious duke out with Zeus, that up’s intensity to mental levels. However, and it pains me to say, after you get used to the epic-ness, the stunning graphics, the brutality and the blood you start to notice that all the flaws, problems and infuriating fight sequences that are affiliated with all God of War games, are still there. Most added features are quite good, but not at any point do you think “how did I ever cope without this skill?” The sheer quantity of enemies is a new problem, which may have seemed like a good idea, but Kratos hasn’t really been upgraded to deal with this and it leads to several battles that will make you want to insert your Playstation into someone at Santa Monica Studios. In addition to such new problems is the fact you don’t get to keep anything you earn or upgrade throughout the game, quite why they decided to get rid of this after the last two titles is beyond me, and the story feels a bit collaborated. Then there is all the stuff that has always been there, and has yet to be rectified, such as having too many enemies that can take a ridiculous, and I mean ridiculous, amount of punishment, the opportunities to harm them are rare and it’s a total lottery of what moves will and won’t work. Plus the stupid amount of enemies on screen at one time can hit you at every conceivable opportunity, whether you can help it or not, and there are still several battles in this that make you want to simply not bother and turn it off. It is not worth the anguish and it often becomes an infuriating, overwhelming, total button mashing chaotic nightmare. Yes, I am being harsh as it probably sounds to you like I really didn’t like it, which of course couldn’t be further from the truth, however, I feel it is harsh but fair. Saying “you will be disappointed” is not true, as it’s very similar to all previous, hugely popular, games, but being a fan means I was a bit let down, personally. If this was the first in the franchise I would have been hugely impressed, but Santa Monica Studios have had three titles to get this perfected, which, considering how spot on it was to start with, I reckon they should have done by now with this third instalment, and they just haven’t. If you’re a fan of God of War this will be essential gaming, but don’t expect it to be 20 times better, or better at all, than any previous title: It isn’t (I still think the first game is the best one). If you have never heard of Kratos, this will probably blow you away, as in many ways it’s unbelievable, but may I recommend you wait a little longer as Sony will be releasing the trilogy for the PS3 (HD versions of the PS2 games for the PS3) soon and this is a trilogy that has to be played in its entirety to be fully appreciated. CA.

Summary:

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 8.0

Should feel right at home for God of War fans, and all new moves will become familiar quickly. It doesn’t do much to nurture you if you have never played it though and you are straight into a fairly tough boss fight. No mercy for the weak basically.

Is the story any good? – 7.5

It does what it needs to do, sets up a quest for Kratos and a final battle with Zeus, but it’s a bit unoriginal, a bit woolly, and Kratos has become a self centred bastard rather than a tragic hero.

How does it look? – 10.0

They are the benchmark for all PS3 games from now on. Stunning and flawless in every conceivable way.

How does it sound? – 10.0

All the usual full orchestral background music and choir and it’s generally an assault your ears. All voice acting is excellent.

Is it good to play? – 8.5

It is mostly excellent free flowing multi-combo combat and most additional moves are really enjoyable. Plus it’s horrifically gory and quick time events are little more forgiving than before. But none of the new stuff adds anything that makes it better and the huge number of enemies and enemies that are way too tough make it more of a frustrating button masher than it has been before. Maybe it should have stayed on the PS2.

When will I get bored? – 7.0

It takes a decent amount of time to do initially, but it’s the shortest in the franchise, and you don’t get to keep any weapons or upgrades. There are treasures you can find and use that give certain powers during a second play through, and an additional costume that makes Kratos do quad damage, but it’s not the same. The combat arena and challenges are quite good fun but short lived as your not going to spend hours of your life doing them.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.