Episode 1: Little Riddle’s Deadly Dilemma
Episode 2: The Mystery of Riddle Manor
It’s about time PSN got some murder mystery puzzles games going. Professor Layton on the DS has had his own way for much too long now. So the creators of the Buzz! quiz games whisk us off to the “Quintessentially quaint” countryside village of Little Riddle. Continue reading Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle Episodes 1 & 2 (PSN Review)
All your votes are in and counted. So who were the winners of the Game Hub Games of the Year Awards 2009? There are a few surprises amongst the obvious ones. Fortunately for all the nominees, nobody got zero votes (somebody got one though). So here are the Top 3 for each of the 13 categories:*
*I wrote this article for game-hub.co.uk after I arranged the voting categories a few weeks earlier.
Follow this link to be taken to the article at Game Hub.
With no new Devil May Cry anytime soon, Kratos and God of War III probably thought they’d own 2010. Yet he’s having to face off a triple offensive of Darksiders, Bayonetta and Dante’s Inferno, one after another. Out of the three, original Devil May Cry director Hideki Kamiya has changed tactics the most by sending the sassy temptress Bayonetta in instead of yet another angry man. Hoping to charm her way in, before going berserk in a way we forgot Japanese games used to do. Continue reading Bayonetta (Review)
The hack n’ slash genre is back in force this year with the first quarter playing host to Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno and God of War III. Amidst the hype of these three big names Vigil Games have been pretty quiet promoting their effort Darksiders. Turns out keeping their heads down and getting on with it has paid off as we have our first surprise of the year. Continue reading Darksiders (Review)
This will be the first Lord of the Rings game since Warner Bros. Interactive obtained the license from EA. Warner are using this game to rekindle interest in the Tolkien franchise before the new Hobbit films and their inevitable film tie-ins in 2011. Continue reading The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest (Wii Preview)
Ok, so the new Video Delivery Service has been online in the UK for a couple of weeks now and the collection of titles is fattening up nicely so it’s about time we got stuck in.
First up I tested an SD version of Escape from LA (101 mins) starring Kurt Russell. The file size was 1570MB and my ‘20 Mbps’ broadband was running at its typically poor Friday night rate of around 10 Mbps. Wanting to test how good the film would play while it was downloading, I gave it a few minutes head-start, during which time it got up to 5%. Continue reading Testing the PSN VideoStore on PS3
You are Sean Devlin, an Irish racing car driver who becomes The Saboteur on his road to revenge against the Nazis. While the visuals are painfully average and the open-world gameplay offers nothing new, you might just get find yourself sucked right in anyway with fun gun battles and the optional stealth approach.
A neatly condensed Paris and its nearby countryside make up the landscape of the game. You help out members of the French resistance and British spies to help liberate Paris and send the Germans scurrying back to sausage country. Continue reading The Saboteur (Review)
With Devil May Cry’s creator, Hideki Kamiya directing, it would be fair to say that Bayonetta could be Dante’s ideal date, as comparisons between the two are obvious. Bayonetta might just prove to be a little bit more, well….mental. And we like it. Continue reading Bayonetta (Preview)
Who would have thought one of the Wii’s most engrossing games of recent months would totally forgo any motion controls and be a 2D side-scrolling RPG slash-em-up? That’s right; you can sit and play this Wii game all afternoon without worrying about waking up the next day feeling that familiar tightness in every muscle. Well, your thumbs might take a slight pounding, but nothing the little brutes can’t handle. So dust off the pad for this one folks. Continue reading Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Review)
It’s been years since the last F1 game and it’s a little surprising to see Codemasters test their newly acquired license on the Wii first, but probably a wise decision seeing as Dirt 2 and Forza 3 are keeping the non-Wii crowd busy for now. While Codemasters’ modern classics of Dirt 2 and Grid were developed in-house, Sumo Digital are in the driving seat for this one. Sumo do have a history of racing titles, but admittedly nothing that comes close to Codemasters’ recent output. Continue reading F1 2009: Formula 1
How do you make a game of the megabucks-making gorno series? Well developers Zombie ran into trouble when their original publisher went bust, but Konami swooped in and picked up publishing rights and seemingly had an influence on the game itself too. So we’re left with this inbred Silent Hill knockoff with more torture scenes and poor hand-to-anything coordination.
You are Detective Tapp (played by Danny Glover in the first film) who after his injuries has been nursed back to health by Jigsaw purely for the purpose of f**cking him around in his own purpose built asylum. Jigsaw’s lair is suitably littered with dozens of his victims’ destroyed corpses in various devices you’ll recognise from the movies. Jigsaw’s game is to try and convince Tapp to forget his obsession with catching him (this’ll help). Continue reading Saw Review – Pure Torture
Well, it took more than a while but UK PS3 owners can now rent and buy films over the PlayStation Store by downloading them straight to their hard-drives.
The new part of the store launched at a Soho London party this week with a live performance from Little Boots and a set from radio 1 DJ Annie Mac in what essentially felt like Continue reading PSN Video Delivery Store Launches in the UK: An In-depth Look
The game that has been looming over the Christmas release schedule is finally here, after most of the competition has fled for a release early next year, leaving you plenty of time to clean up online.
The first Modern Warfare wowed shooter fans with its gripping story scenes and peerless multiplayer, and you should prepare to feel the love again. There are a few flaws in the single player game but they’ll fade into memory soon enough as the multiplayer experience dominates Modern Warfare 2. Continue reading Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Review)
This ‘fright simulator’ loosely borrows from the films to provide a few cheap jumps and puzzles. You control a girl that enters an abandoned warehouse to retrieve her wandering dog. Naturally it’s cursed, now you are too and you better start to work out how to appease the spirits of these spiteful child ghosts before they claims your soul, or something.
You navigate your way around the darkness in a first-person viewpoint with your wiimote controlled torch that works well when moving forwards but struggles to keep up if you try and turn too quickly. Poking around the chilling locations in the dark does feel quite immersive though as you are in direct control of what you aim the light at. Continue reading Ju-On: The Grudge (Review)
Insomniac live up to their name once again by providing another Ratchet and Clank game that’ll keep you playing long into the night. The only problem facing the series is the lack of competition to keep it on its toes. Nevertheless this is still an awesome addition to the series.
Following on from the end of Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty, Ratchet is still looking for his robotic side-kick, Clank, who has been kidnapped by the returning nut-job, Dr. Nefarious who wants to use Clank to gain access to the Great Clock that controls all time in the universe. So yeah, there’s a fair bit going on, but there’s a quick summary at the start of the game to refresh your memory and ease in newcomers (welcome by the way). Continue reading Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (Review)
Former racing car driver, Irishman in Paris, Sean Devlin, is out for revenge against the Nazi’s after some of his friends are murdered. He’s not trying to save Paris, but his actions are certainly going to help the city and endear him to her citizens and have the resistance calling on him for a favour or two. Expect a noir inspired adventure rather than your traditional overly-patriotic WWII story. Continue reading The Saboteur (Preview)
After over 120 hours of play, this is the end of Fallout 3. The vault dweller isn’t rummaging around post-nuclear war America anymore though. Or post-nuclear war earth for that matter.
After being foolish enough to investigate yet another troubling radio signal he’s beamed up to an alien spaceship poised above the planet. He wakes up on a table surrounded by little green men with imminent laser probes getting too close to comfort. Continue reading Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta (Review)
Brendan Griffiths takes a look at some of the best upcoming games at the Leeds leg of the Eurogamer Expo including: Aliens Vs Predator, Avatar, Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno, Dark Void, God of War III, Heavy Rain, Saboteur and Split/Second.
It’s not often that UK gamers get to go to an expo; it’s even less often that a show manages to climb its way north of London, so it’s no surprise that the Eurogamer Leeds Expo sold out in advance for its two dates at Saviles Royal Armouries Square for the 27th/28th October.
While the queue went around the building it didn’t take long to get in once the doors opened and despite the event being sold out it never seemed overcrowded in the two halls used. The gaming areas were made up of stools in front of TVs or playing stands like you might see in shops like Game and HMV. There was a mix of HD screens for each game. Some medium sized, others 50 inch monsters. Although, sitting on a stool two feet in front of 50 inches of brightly coloured Ratchet & Clank was a bit overkill, I had to lean back to avoid my face melting.
But on to the games I managed to get a bit of extensive time with. Continue reading Eurogamer Leeds Expo: Summary
Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black) is the best roadie in the business, but modern times have seen him forced to work with some awful bands as he’s seen his beloved heavy metal get watered down to suit a ‘tween demographic’. After saving one of the dipshit band members from certain death onstage, Rigg’s huge stage set collapses on him. As his blood drips into his Motorhead-esque belt buckle a metal monster erupts from the stage wasting the band, and Riggs is transported to a whole new dimension. It’s got the crazy turned up to 11 all the way from here on in. Continue reading Brutal Legend (Review)
The Winter Olympics might be a while off yet but Mario and Sonic have got an early assault planned for space under Christmas trees again after the massive success of their first Olympic Games title on the Wii.
It’s a more relaxed affair this time around with most of the games being about balance and leaning rather than frantic arm swinging. If any players have been glued to Wii Fit they might just have an edge here. Continue reading Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Review)
The No Sleep Gamer 
