It’s about time you got to go on holiday in Fallout 3 after all you’ve been through. The new setting of Point Lookout feels like a lost Silent Hill waterside boardwalk, complete with deserted buildings and an eerie fog smothering everything. Sure, it’s no Hawaii, but choice is quite limited in a post-apocalyptic world.
The majority of this substantial map is made up of swamps populated with rednecks, mirelurks, tribesmen, ghouls, toxic bogs and enough radiated water to wade through to guarantee the vault dweller will never have (normal) children. Continue reading Fallout 3: Point Lookout (Review)→
The team at Naughty Dog and Nathan Drake may just have saved the day for the PS3. The console has had plenty of great games, but many doubters still thought it was missing its ‘killer app’, a true system seller. No longer.
No other game tries so hard to entertain and excite you. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a constant barrage of ‘Wow!’ moments, one after another, just wiping out previous favourites with each spectacle. In just under ten hours the likes of Uncharted 1, Gears of War, Tomb Raider, Arkham Asylum, and God of War become just a footnote in gaming’s distant past. Continue reading Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Review)→
Many PC gamers swear by (and most definitely at) the Operation Flashpoint name. This harsh, tactical first-person-shooter is also making a full appearance on consoles too for a change. It’s comparable in nature with the excellent Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, but based in the very near future.
Dragon Rising is a much fiercer beast than BIA though with its claws severely dug into the realism side of things. So that means one shot could be it for you and you won’t even know what direction it came from. Continue reading Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (Review)→
This is more like it. The first of the Fallout 3 expansion packs that feels truly worthy of the Fallout name. The Vault Dweller is off to Pittsburgh, or what’s left of it. Now aptly renamed as The Pitt, slavers have taken over the city and its still working steel foundry.
You have answered the call for help from one of the escaped slaves who wants to start a rebellion against their masters. As if the misery of working in the Pitt isn’t bad enough, they face the prospect of becoming a Trog, the equivalent of the Capitol Wastelands ghouls, due to a radiation related disease. There’s a cure for this condition but their masters aren’t exactly sharing. Continue reading Fallout 3: The Pitt (Review)→
Last years quality game firmly put FIFA back on top over their Konami rival, so what next? A tougher challenge and enough off the pitch enhancements to last you till well after the end of the season and beyond is what.
The tougher challenge is made evident by smarter AI that closes you down mercilessly and some questionable refereeing. Last year’s problem of players constantly wondering offside has been fixed. Unfortunately it has been replaced with them constantly giving free kicks. While getting flagged offside was annoying the replays always proved that you were. It was never wrong and EA explained they couldn’t show officials to be making mistakes because of the official FIFA branding, fair enough. Shame they couldn’t extend the courtesy to fouling as the replays will leave you baffled as to why you’ve given away yet another free kick as the slightest nudge is penalised. Continue reading FIFA 10 (Review)→
It was a bit of a surprise to all of us finding out that the next game to follow the excellent Dead Space would be on the Wii. It might be an ‘on-rails shooter’ but fans will enjoy this prequel to the original game, especially the first level which has a neat twist that they or anyone that’s seen the anime might appreciate.
The game starts before the Ishimura planet cracker mining ship was overrun by an alien plague causing severe psychosis and mutation in their human hosts. Haven’t played the first game? Don’t worry, the prequel nature of the game welcomes newcomers by letting them play through preceding events. Veterans will enjoy some familiar locations and characters and being a part of earlier events from a different perspective on how the shit hit the fan in the first place, as the first game had you starting well after the infection had already spread. Continue reading Dead Space: Extraction (Review)→
After Broken Steel raised level caps to 30, PS3 players are totally ready to get their teeth stuck into some more missions. This time you’ll get to interact with a bit of Fallout history that you may be familiar with from scraps of info picked up along your travels.
Using a virtual reality pod you can get involved with the famous battle at Anchorage, Alaska where the US forces had to repel the Chinese invaders. It’s not just a game though. Some members of the Brotherhood of Steel Outcasts need you to beat it so they can gain access to a sealed vault in a bunker, promising you a share of the spoils. Free stuff? Plug me in kiddo. Continue reading Fallout 3: Operation: Anchorage (Review)→
James Bond, The Bourne Trilogy, and 24: all great viewing, brimming with gaming potential but they’ve never quite replicated the same excitement and intensity in gaming form. None of them really made you feel like one of the starring JBs. Bond’s Quantum of Solace was a decent shooter with some nice cover-based gunplay but never really felt like a Bond movie. Bourne’s effort was basically a long line of QTEs with some ropey gunplay and 24 tried to do too much and resulted in an average Jack (Bauer) of all trades and master of none. Continue reading Alpha Protocol (Preview)→
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 arrives with memories of its predecessor filling most gamers’ hearts with a self-doubting terror from being made to feel utterly rubbish at games and having to call it a day by the time the motorbike ninjas arrived. Only the old school, challenge hungry, were really up for that madness.
Don’t worry if the first one handed your ass to you on a plate though as the sequel is much more accessible. That doesn’t mean you can happy slap it into submission, but you’ll probably make it half way and maybe even whisper it… finish it.
It’s been a long wait, made all the worse by 360 gamers having these DLC downloads months before the PS3, but the expansion packages for Fallout 3 have finally started to arrive.
The first of which is Broken Steel. It’s more of a taster and a foundation for the new adventures of Fallout’s post-apocalyptic hell (that we love so much). The new chapter starts two weeks after the final events of the original game. No spoilers here for those of you who aren’t there yet, but you WILL have to finish the main game before the extra missions and plot are made available to you. So I hope you’ve kept a save near the end of the game. Continue reading Fallout 3: Broken Steel (Review)→
After becoming something of a cult classic on the PlayStation Network it was only a matter of time before somebody realised this would work even better on PSP. For those of you who haven’t played the PS3 version this is a tower defence game. You build defence towers out of trees, using a limited supply of money in order to defend your village’s twenty inhabitants from multiple waves of invaders.
The towers are designed to be effective for ground or air attacks with some of them spreading themselves thin to do both. There’s plenty to choose from if you can afford them. There are canons, freeze guns, Telsa (electricity spewing towers), mortars, flamethrowers, crossbows, anti-air guns, lasers and electric barriers. Continue reading PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe (Review)→
After the heyday of the duelling beat em’ up in the ‘90s it’s surprising how slow the genre has been to get going on current generation consoles. Virtua Fighter 5 and Street Fighter 4 eventually turned up and dazzled everyone for about a month while Soul Calibur added a bit of polish but left most fans shrugging in indifference as it offered nothing new. So what chance does The King of Fighters XII have? Looking at the lack of current competition (I’m pretty much ignoring the ever-delayed Tekken 6 until it decides if it wants a PS3 or PS4 release) it might be worth a look. Continue reading The King of Fighters XII (Review)→
This is an essential lesson in how 2D gameplay is still a force to be reckoned with. Trine’s levels are deceptively simple with the aim generally being to progress to the far right of the map like many past classics but with some physics based gameplay puzzles. This platformer looks far from retro though with some gorgeous fantasy realms inspired level design that sparkle with HD richness. Continue reading Trine (Review)→
Rubi: a hired gun, thief, errant son deliverer, car roof surfer, the works, with no questions asked. Along as said ‘Wet work’ involves shooting in slow-motion, wall-running, diving, sliding around on her knees (stop it) and stabbing things a lot. Gameplay wise it’s PS2-era Prince of Persia meets Stranglehold.
Style points earned from racking up combos of kills in slow-motion or with the sword can be used to upgrade Rubi and her weapons with extra health and moves or for extra damage, ammo and faster rates of fire. If you played the demo and felt a bit under whelmed it’s a pleasure to say that the full game does feel a lot better once you’ve got some upgrades under your belt. Continue reading Wet (Review)→
EA has decided to reinvent their own wheels as the Need for Speed brand disowns its street racing vibe in a much cleaner break than 2007’s NFS: Pro. Shift is the full transition to track racing to try and compete with the likes of Gran Turismo and Race Driver: Grid. They’ve managed to successfully re-invent FIFA over the last couple of years, so maybe they’ve got a shot.
It’s clear that a lot of time, effort and money have been thrown at the game with a Top Gear style dream collection of ludicrously expensive, top name cars such as the Zonda and Bugatti Veyron all fighting for dominance on dozens of familiar tracks from the USA, Europe and Japan. Continue reading Need For Speed: Shift (Review)→
They’ve done the desert and the tropics so now the MotorStorm tour has decided to cool off and head to the Arctic. There are 100 events to rip through in such frostbitten locations like ice caves, mud bowls, gargantuan bobsleigh tracks (or should that be tubes?) and mountain passes.
The biggest problem facing the PS3 MotorStorm games is they don’t exactly ease you in gently. And if the general lack of interest for last years rock hard sequel has shown anything, it’s that the series needed to relax a little.
Apparently new developers Bigbig Studios may have agreed, as it’s obvious from the off that this time around you’ll be winning races early on and not constantly begging for a top half of the field finish. Continue reading MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (Review)→
What you have here is the best rally game this generation of consoles has seen, it might even be an all time racing great worthy of the late, great Scot. It even (just) survives an ill-advised X-games style make over outside the races.
As a rookie driver you’re given a free Subaru Impreza (very nice) and unleashed on a world map stuffed with over 100 events in Japan, China, Malaysia, Croatia, Morocco, London, Utah, LA and Baja. Continue reading Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (Review)→
Ever wondered what would happen if John Woo and Tarentino made a movie together?
This third person acrobatic shooter is a plethora of 70s style exploitation and Grindhouse cinema cheese forced through the Max Payne bullet-time blender. You play as Rubi (voiced by Eliza Dushku), a sassy hired gun seemingly raised by Sarah Conner on John Woo movies and bourbon.
What we have here is a third person shooter with a nice slice of swordplay. It’s more Uncharted than Devil May Cry though. The old exploitation cinema influences are obvious but perhaps more to an older generation of gamer. Gamers of recent years will instantly make comparisons to games like Total Overdose or 2007’s Stranglehold. The latter being the shadow it will have to emerge from. Continue reading Wet (Preview)→
Nintendo have generously (finally) decided to give away the internet browser feature on the Wii. And as PS3 users will attest, browsing the web from your sofa is awesome.
There’s even better news for those of you about to explode in fury for paying 500 points for it in the past. Nintendo has said you’ll be able to help yourself to a 500 point NES game from its Virtual Console range around the end of October. There has also been a Flash update meaning better video viewing for some sites such as YouTube. You might want to download it to an SD card rather than the Wii’s memory though as it takes up over 200 blocks. Continue reading Nintendo Give Away Wii Internet Browser→
What is it that makes the world of Batman so cool? Costume? Detective skills? Unmatchable martial arts? His gadgets? The ability to strike terror into the hearts of criminals? The setting? The sheer madness of his foes?
It’s all of this and developers Rocksteady Games know it, and have shown the best understanding of the Dark Knight yet.
Story The story begins with Batman delivering a gibbering Joker to Arkham Asylum. Only problem is that it seems he gave himself up way too easily. Like Michael Schofield in Prison Break, the Joker has a hidden agenda in getting locked up (ok, what he wants to do inside is slightly different). He manages to escape the useless Arkham guards before they’ve even put him in his cell, with a little help from the ever-doting Harley Quinn (brilliantly acted). So it’s up to you to chase after the Clown Prince while he leaves a trail of released psychopaths and familiar villains. Continue reading Batman: Arkham Asylum (Review)→
Gaming reviews, previews and features by Brendan Griffiths
It’s about time you got to go on holiday in Fallout 3 after all you’ve been through. The new setting of Point Lookout feels like a lost Silent Hill waterside boardwalk, complete with deserted buildings and an eerie fog smothering everything. Sure, it’s no Hawaii, but choice is quite limited in a post-apocalyptic world.
Rubi: a hired gun, thief, errant son deliverer, car roof surfer, the works, with no questions asked. Along as said ‘Wet work’ involves shooting in slow-motion, wall-running, diving, sliding around on her knees (stop it) and stabbing things a lot. Gameplay wise it’s PS2-era Prince of Persia meets Stranglehold.
The No Sleep Gamer 