The ominous safety warning and disclaimer that precedes the game acts as a sinister precursor to the first time you kick a wall, housemate, sofa or yourself in this motion-controlled martial arts PSN title.
Unlike, say Sports Champions, which allows you to play from a lot closer than it recommends, Kung-Fu Live really does need the epic space suggested. So if you can’t clear a square space sized (at least) 2.5 x 3 metres, then forget it. Various player heights can throw up a few problems too.
Read more…
By the time the inevitable zombie apocalypse does come around, gamers will most certainly be the best equipped to survive. Well, as long as the apocalypse comes with extra lives, save-points and pause buttons.
Gamers have really taken zombies to their hearts in recent times with Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, COD’s zombie modes and the undead have even burst into Japan’s next Yakuza game. So will our love for the groaning shufflers go on, or will our enthusiasm fade like a Romero movie fan watching his latest 21st Century zombie-flick-flop?
Read more…
Talk about delayed, Castle Crashers originally appeared on XBLA in 2008, it then hit the US PSN Store in August, which is where the demo ensnared me. I’ve had to wait until now for a European release PSN release. But was it worth the wait? Hell yes. Hell, yes.
This retrotacular title is a side-scrolling beat-‘em-up with a few simple RPG elements thrown in for good measure. It’s great fun on your own, but to get the most out of this game you should really fire up the multiplayer. You can have up to four players with drop-in co-op action. You can even play it online, but this can throw up problems when you both want to be the same character (because it’s the only one you’ve spent ten hours levelling up) so one of you will be on Level 30+ while the other is Level 1. At least you can revive team-mates. Read more…
A brave mission indeed releasing this PSN first-person-shooter less than a week before Call of Duty: Black Ops. It would have fared much better on PSN a few months back, when it was originally released on XBLA. So does Blacklight have the game to back up this ballsy approach? Well…
The main focus of the game are the online matches. There are a few single player levels but the one-life approach means you’ll only bother until you have a grasp of the controls. You can play them co-operatively but the only way I got this to happen was when trying to get into a deathmatch, it seemed to default to it when there were only two of us in the match lobby. Read more…
The Last Chapter is the expansion pack to Soldner-X 2: The Final Prototype which I found to be an enjoyable, if over-priced blast. It packs in three new levels, 11 Trophies and 13 new Challenges. The challenges though, in true Soldner-style,require you to actually earn the right to play them. There’s even a new difficulty mode, Massive Attack, to unlock. When you get around to unlocking Extra Hard that is.
The extra levels can be played through straight away, you don’t have to replay anything for hours on end in a similar way to the way levels were unlocked in the main game. The levels themselves are excellent to play and outpace the original game’s content immediately. Enemy numbers and their attacking fire patterns are perfectly balanced between manic and fair. Read more…
You’ll be glad to hear Sonic 4 features no story, no talking, no towns, no RPG elements and most definitely no Werehogs. This is very much traditional 2D Sonic from the glory days of the Mega-Drive that saw the best titles for Sega’s blue spiky mascot in Sonic 1-3 and Sonic & Knuckles.
There are four main stages with four acts each, the seven special stages and then the final boss. You can access the four main stages and first three acts in any order. All the stages are basically remixes of old ones with the main differences being HD shine, some new textures and the layout being put through the randomizer. Episode 1 features, a Green Hill Zone-style outdoor location to begin with followed by a labyrinth with underwater sections, a night-time casino and an industrial factory. They look nice, but there’s no avoiding the disappointment of getting nothing genuinely new. Read more…
EA have announced a new retro-style shooter for PSN and XBLA. You’ll be controlling a tiny ship about the size of a blood cell, inside the human body. The MicroBot’s purpose is to eradicate diseases at a cellular level by shooting the hell out of them. Drop in/drop out co-op will also be included. We’re even more excited because it reminds us of one of our favourite 80s movies, Inner Space, which in turn went on to inspire episodes of Family Guy and Futurama. You’ll have to wait until winter 2011 to get your hands on it, but check out the latter part of this trailer to catch a glimpse of the gameplay and strangely calming graphics. Read more…
This is it folks, Sonic 4 is finally here and in glorious 2D, surely this is gonna be awesome? We’ll have a review for you soon. There’s more too: Dead Space Ignition is a mini-game/comic hybrid to help build up some momentum before Dead Space 2, the new demo forThe Force Unleashed II should be thundering down your broadband pipe soon enough andWRC fans can now buy the deadly Group B cars too, those trees won’t know what hit ‘em. Read more…
If you fancy a simple game that you can just sit there for hours with, then look no further. That’s right; this is a PlayStation Move game that you can play sitting down. Finally!
The aim of this point and click-style game is to safely land as many planes and helicopters as possible. You select an aircraft and draw a line for it to follow to the runway or helipad that matches its colour. The Move controller could do this sort of thing in its sleep as it proves easy to learn and will cause an immediate addiction to anyone you pass it to. Read more…
The top down shooter genre is getting quite crowded on the PlayStation Store, so each new release is going to have to really work for our money. At over £10, Alien Breed: Impact is reallygoing to have to work for it.
The game takes place on a huge space vessel overrun by aliens. Most of the crew are dead, you’re the only hope yadda yadda. The atmosphere owes a lot to Dead Space, but hey you might as well borrow from the best. Read more…
£2.49 and 191 levels. BAM! That’s what we call a good deal! This is a 2D puzzle/platforming game that starts off with easy puzzles before soon leaving you scratching your head wondering what the hell to do next.
You control Archibald on his skateboard trying to find his way out of Professor Klumpfus’ creepy mansion/laboratory by hopping across gaps, avoiding mutants, flicking switches, moving boxes and teleporting, with the aim of reaching the exit door for each of the levels. Read more…
It’s been a while since I’ve dusted of my old PS1 GTA games, so will this be a nostalgic experience or a grim reminder of why some titles are best left in the past?
The top-down view in the crime-sim raises obvious comparisons with the old GTA games, but for a £3.49 PSP Minis title it definitely has my attention. Read more…
Hidden object games are a nice match for the PSP Minis range, with their relaxed nature passing the time on a commute or ad break with ease. Route 66 scored well with a 7 a few months ago, so let’s see what G5 Entertainment can come up with.
There’s an actual story here, as a young archaeologist (that absolutely does not look like Lara Croft) is searching for her father who went missing while searching for the Crystal Portal. It’s not exactly Fallout 3, but the effort is appreciated. Read more…
If Demon’s Souls was like getting your head kicked in and asking for more, Joe Danger is like waking up in hospital the day after with Katy Perry sat by your side telling you she’s murdered Russell Brand and everything’s going to be just fine.
360 owners have been enjoying Trials HD, but Joe Danger has leapt over the competition – and a few school buses and shark tanks for good measure to top the podium. Boost, jump and trick your way to the finish line racking up gloriously brave combo multipliers on the way. The game works on multiple 2D planes like Little Big Planet, but with set points for ‘changing lanes’. Read more…
Ah minigolf games and Demon’s Souls in the same weekend. Will my pads survive? Will my sanity hold? Probably not.
£6.29 gets you an impressive amount of crazy golf shenanigans with 144 holes, 6-player local or online multiplayer and a course editor to create your own knuckle mawing middle finger salutes to reason. Read more…
With over 800 games on show at E3 2010, some were always going to fall between the cracks of coverage as we all clamoured over the like of Gears 3, Killzone 3, Halo, Need for Speed, Call of Duty, Zelda, Kinect and Move. We’ve covered our picks of the big games, so let’s have a look at some other titles that we feel deserve a little push too. Read more…
Last month I was pleasantly surprised with Gaijin Entertainment’s effort to tackle Burnout with Anarchy: Rush Hour. Well they’re off starting fights with the big boys again, stepping into Blur’s and Split/Second’s territory. Admittedly this game started off life on the PC and predates the newcomers.
So it’s a car-combat racing game with destructible environments set in the future. The tracks tear through the crumbling remains of (our modern day) versions of London, Bangkok, New York, Moscow, Prague and so on. The first thing you notice is how good the game looks for a PSN title. Although a little rough, there’s a lot of detail built into each track. They bristle with colour and run at a smooth frame-rate. It’s certainly a better looker than Anarchy. There are lots of branching routes and even short-cuts to unlock. Pretty impressive design overall. Read more…
Prime your eyes for a full on assault with the return of the high-def retro shooter, Soldner-X 2. It’s side scrolling, in space, you shoot to the left, dodge a lot of lasers and try not to die.
You can initially choose beginner or normal difficulty levels, but the game will also adapt on the fly. If you are doing really well, it will throw more enemy fire at you, while easing up (a little) if you’re getting perforated constantly. Your ships handle with a nice balance of smooth flying, but quick and nimble enough to perform some beautiful dodging. You have a health bar rather than the typical one-hit-per-life syndrome many of us grew up with. I’m not complaining by the way, PS3 pads are expensive items. Read more…
Within the first minute of playing Rocket Knight I knew this was going to be a killer title. Right from the off you’ll know how to play this game just on instinct, everything just flows so naturally.
Rocket Knight acts as a sequel to the Mega-Drive game, taking place 15 years later. While the visuals have moved with the times, the core gameplay respects the classic side-scrolling 2D platformer model. Read more…
Anarchy: Rush Hour is a plucky little PSN game that has quite simply waltzed up to Burnout in a bar, spilt its drink, snogged its girlfriend then ran outside jumped into a car and sped off. After backing into Burnout’s ride first for good measure.
For £5.49 you won’t find a more interesting racer on the store. It’s really rough around the edges but, there’s a lot of fun in here too. Read more…
The ominous safety warning and disclaimer that precedes the game acts as a sinister precursor to the first time you kick a wall, housemate, sofa or yourself in this motion-controlled martial arts PSN title.
