Dan and Brendan spent Saturday afternoon playing cheap games from Morrisons – instead of working on GameTank (ahem) – here’s what they thought!
SECTION 8 [X360] (£6.99): Multiplayer focused first person shooter using the Unreal Engine. Hard to get into but once you’ve mastered it it’s good fun. It has a competent campaign mode, and there’s massive potential here but ultimately it doesn’t match the standard of the games around it such as COD and Halo. But for £6.99 it’s enjoyable enough to burn away a lazy afternoon to.
LEGO BATMAN [PS3] (£14.99):
Not quite as instantly likeable as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones versions – possibly as this is a new story and not based on any films – but still charming enough to suck you in and keep you playing. Any platforming fan should enjoy the well crafted levels, insane number of collectables and unlockables and the ‘pick-up-put-down’ easiness of just getting on with it. And it’s a great price too.
DAMNATION [PS3] (£12.99): A third person alternate American history shooter. The controls were a bit cack-handed and the combination of shooting, puzzle and elements of platforming didn’t work together quite as well as perhaps the developers had intended. The platforming parts in particular weren’t up to Prince of Persia’s standards and got repetitive very quickly. Although impressive to look at from a distance, the locations were very samey and on some of the longer levels it makes progress feel dull and slow. The weapons though are imaginative – such as the Railway Spike Gun where you can spike opponents into the walls. Uncolourful characters, a lacklustre story and glitchy graphics make this game well worth £12.99. But no more!
ALPHA PROTOCOL [X360] (£34.99): T
his wasn’t on the budget stand but we found the time to play it and were a bit shocked at the quality of the title. There have been some good reviews and some bad – but at the end of the day this has been a bit of a shock. We were expecting much more but this is just a bit of a standard title with run of the mill graphics, frustratingly slow progress and the espionage RPG element just doesn’t grab like it should. In a few weeks time expect to see this on the same budget shelves we got the rest of the games off.
[We found these games at these prices in Morrisons Redditch on June 20th – just round the corner from the Chicken Pakoras and mini-doughnuts on Market Street]
Its E3 week, the videogame world is buzzing with news and predictions and twitter is buzzing with game related gossip. Its a pity then that all the games released this week are absolute rubbish. I’m not lying, just have a look at the list below this article. Seriously, if the best release of the week is a Cricket game then we know we’re in trouble… So, on that note instead of writing up a piece on Project Runway for the Wii, I’m going to stay with the E3 theme and tell you all about my views on the upcoming race for Motion control superiority. Sweet.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And in the case of the videogame world it’s also a form of greed. For those of you who don’t know Microsoft and Sony are in the process of jumping feet first onto Nintendo’s motion controller band wagon in a bid to steal large portions of the mound of money that is harvested from the casual gamer market. Trouble is Nintendo have been doing this for ages and as the system slowly becomes a shovel-ware populated joke, is it too late for the other companies to take advantage? Will the quality of games for the hardcore gamers dimish, and leave true gamers like myself gasping for air in amongst a sea of cooking, pet pampering and fitness titles?
Today at E3 Microsofts ‘Project Natal’ has been officially renamed as Kinect an equally absurd name which I can only guess is a corporate boardroom mishmash of the words kinetic and connect. Probably because they hope to get the whole family moving together and connecting with each other at the same time.
The demo which took place earlier today at E3 excited some but depressed many, including me thanks to my motion control scepticism. You see, instead of unveiling an amazing control system for a revolutionary new FPS where you can toss grenades by doing an over arm throw motion , or an immense Godzilla style game where you crush whole cities with a stamp of your foot they instead chucked out the already milked genres of Bowling, Dancing, Fitness and Party games. Boooooooring. Its all been done. 4 years ago. INNOVATE DAMN YOU!
The only slightly impressive demo to note was one of a new Kinect controlled Star wars game, where you wield a Lightsaber and use the force simply by moving. Slamming your arms down by your side fires a bolt of Force lightning while, pushing them out in front of you lets you Force Push Stormtroopers to their doom. Sounds good in theory and if you watch this video it also seems to work with telepathy, because the on screen action seems to happen a fraction of a second before the player on stage moves. Either that or it’s a pre rendered video with an actor copying the actions. But Microsoft wouldn’t make that mistake again would they?
But what about Playstation? Well, a report I read recently from someone in the BBC who has tried Kinect and the new Playstation Move motion controller states that Move is more responsive that Kinect. It probably is to be honest, but what kind of amazing game did he try Move out on? Oh, a tennis game. And a bubble popping game. Weak. Come back to me when you can wield a massive broadsword and decapitate foes in a Conan game. That would be immense… Or if you could use two controllers in a driving game so one could be the steering wheel and the other could be used to shoot out of the window. Yeah, that would be pretty sweet…
Trouble is, chances of these types of games happening very often are going to be slim if Nintendo’s track record are anything to go by. Yes you may think I’m being negative, yes you may think I’m being overly critical but if its a choice between sitting on my sofa, joypad in hand playing Fallout New Veags, or looking like this family while playing a rafting party game, you don’t need to be a genius to know what me, or most hardcore gamers like me, would pick.
Released this week:
Project Runway – Wii – Jun 18th
Shrek: Forever After – XBOX 360 – PS3 – Wii – Jun 18th
Big Beach Sports 2 – Wii – Jun 18th
U-Sing: Girls Night – Wii – Jun 18th
Free Running – Wii – Jun 18th
International Cricket 2010 – XBOX 360 – PS3 – Jun 18th
