Category Archives: PlayStation 3

PlayStation 3, Previews, Regular previews, Video, Xbox 360

Lollipop Chainsaw (Preview)

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Just looking at the Suda 51 name and Juliet Starling’s outfit, you know this is going to be another bat-shit crazy game from the Japanese auteur and Grasshopper Manufacture. What I didn’t expect to see at the developer walkthrough with Producer Scott Warr at Warner Bros Interactive’s Gamescom HQ was some of the most engaging action of the week.

You are high-school cheerleader Juliet Starling who forgoes further extra-curricular activities in favour of a spot of vampire zombie slaying and it looks like they’ve chosen her 18th birthday (cutting it close, Suda-san) to come and find her at school. We’re not asking why zombies are there; let’s face it, if no film in history can give us a decent explanation, why should we expect any more from Suda 51’s pigtails-and-chainsaw vision? Juliet attends San Romero High, an on-the-nose reference reference to the classic zombie director, who still manages to get his dues despite his last few films being absolute shite.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Goldeneye: Reloaded (Hands-On Preview)

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If you don’t have a Nintendo Wii, then you may have ignored their Goldeneye remake. Hell, you might have a Wii, but the prospect of taking it out of the box to mangle your childhood memories with bastardised controls just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Well now the N64 classic, a game that many regard as the best movie tie-in ever and one of the finest multiplayer games in existence, is getting the HD treatment it deserves. Fuck knows why emotional potato man Daniel Craig is in it though.

Goldeneye: Reloaded isn’t an entirely faithful HD reworking, it’s more of a ‘reimagining’, which if you remember Tim Burton describing his remake of Planet of the Apes the same way a few years ago, isn’t always a great thing. In fairness though the game scored well on the Wii and it’s bound to be better than the last Bond title we saw on the HD consoles, Blood Stone.

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Hands-on previews, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store), Video, XBLA, Xbox 360

Joe Danger: The Movie (Hands-on Preview)

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2011 can just end already. First, it was Bioshock Infinite making the wait pure agony, now I can add Joe Danger: The Movie to my most wanted list. Hello Games are well on their way to creating another classic. Seeing as I gave the first game 9/10, I was damn keen to play the sequel at Gamescom 2011. And I did. Every time I passed the stand. By the time I officially met up with Sean Murray and Grant Duncan of Hello Games I thought I had it all worked out. Then they showed me some of the tougher but doubly awesome levels. Now I really hate 2011.

Before I carry on with the platitudes, I’ll quickly re-cap the first game for newcomers: a mainly 2D motorcycle stunt platformer that encouraged linking tricks while getting to the finish line as fast as possible. Gold stars could be won for each event by collecting all the icons, landing on all landing pads and comboing 100% of the level. The controls were simple as you could jump high and perform multiple flips in the air and land doing endos and wheelies to chain stunts; you could even adjust your trajectory in mid-air forwards and backwards.

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Hands-on previews, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store), XBLA, Xbox 360

Renegade Ops (Hands-on Preview)

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From Avalanche Studios, the minds behind the Just Cause series, we have the new twin-stick vehicle shooter, Renegade Ops. A downloadable title, that’s less than a month away and looks like one of the hottest downloadable titles at Gamescom 2011.

The twin-stick shooter controls for these armoured vehicles are comfortingly familiar -left for driving, right for aiming and shooting- and allow you to enjoy the simplistic gameplay immediately. An extra boost of speed and braking is handled with the face buttons. A secondary weapon is assigned to R1, while L1 initiates a special ability like EMP strikes to stun enemies, extra armour, helicopter backup or a flare to mark a target for an airstrike, with their use limited while they recharge over time.

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Hands-on previews, PC, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Saints Row The Third (Hands-on Preview)

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Since Saints Row 2 surprised us all by being a hell of a lot better than the original and for many, a more enjoyable game than GTAIV, we’ve been waiting to see how the next game would handle the pressure. Well, just remember it was a bit bonkers before and it’s not prepared to put its pants back on quite yet.

With just one hour to play the new game, we couldn’t believe how quickly it went. The first part of the demo is a bank heist with your Saints Row buddies, and all of you are disguised in oversized Johnny Gat heads, including Gat himself. It would appear that the Saints might have chosen the wrong bank to knock over though. As soon as they let their guards downs, all the bank tellers pull out some serious military grade hardware and open fire.

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First Person Shooters, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Brink (Review)

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Hopes were high for Brink. Cool character design, mixed with Mirror’s Edge FPS platforming and served as an objective-based shooter that could instantly take the fight online, replacing bots for real people. With all these elements and a name that implies it’s already on the edge, it’s a tough task on the hands of developers Splash Damage.

Brink features two campaigns based in the Arc, a futuristic city built for mankind’s rich survivors after the melting of the polar ice caps drowned the world. One story has you playing as the Arc’s security forces, the other shows the same events from the rebels (the former builders of the Arc) perspective, who are trying to escape or destroy the Arc. Yes, someone has been playing Bioshock. Both sides are shown as the potential good guys, but the story is merely filler between matches.

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Hands-on previews, PC, PlayStation 3, Previews, Video, Xbox 360

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Hands-On Preview)

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When the developers first announced there wouldn’t be a cover system for this third-person-shooter it raised a few eyebrows. Now that I’ve seen the suicidal nature of a swarming orc hoard eager to test the might of a Space Marine’s weaponry, it seems it was a great decision.

So forget about turn-based choices, real time strategy and dice rolling, this is the full-on action title we’ve been waiting for. Strategy fans have enjoyed the Dawn of War games, but action fans always intrigued by the rich sci-fi lineage of the series can now look forward to the first decent Warhammer game since Fire Warrior.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon (Review)

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The EDF (no relation to Red Faction’s EDF) games have been something of a cult hit on the 360 for a while now and the series has finally made its way to the PS3 too. New recruits listen up; your mission in this arcade third-person shooter is to defend the planet from an invasion of giant bugs. Ants, spiders and wasps have all been super-sized to form an alien army of nature’s bastards. Over-turned cups and rolled up newspapers aren’t going to cut it anymore.

The carnage over the game’s fifteen levels is simple enough to grasp: kill everything in sight and occasionally plant a demolition charge. The single-player campaign missions match those used for multiplayer, so levelling up is consistent across the board. Playing offline is clearly not the way the game was intended to be played, as your AI team-mates struggle to focus on taking down bosses, although they are impressively reliable for reviving you, which is more than can be said for some players online.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Captain America: Super Soldier (Review)

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After the recent relentless slew of comic book movie tie-ins ranging from hideously deformed horrors to the dizzy heights of ‘not awful’, it’s a great relief to be able to report we have a game we can call ‘good’.

Captain America: Super Soldier borrows from all the right places, namely Arkham Asylum, and stuffs its world with hidden objects to find to appeal to the gamer’s hunger to collect everything possible.

The game seems to run alongside the film rather than portray the same events. But you’ll hear Chris Evens as Cap and see enemy soldiers resembling the movie ones. The story is simple fodder, Cap must clear the way in a Bavarian fortress for the good guys against the Hydra army. The setting is WWII, which provides plenty of faux-German accents. They’re terrible and the dialogue is laughable but it all adds to the game’s charm and will raise a wry smirk and even a laugh or two.

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Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store), Regular previews

Amy (Preview)

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Survival Horror is a well-loved genre that keeps making glorious comebacks until the next game in a series heads in an action-shooter orientated direction. Dead Space 2 and Resident Evil 5 being prime examples of games that went for action over horror. With Silent Hill being dead on arrival every time this generation, our main hopes for actually being afraid of the dark again might be better invested in a new IP, something like the upcoming summer PSN title, Amy.

This new title merges the despair-smothered atmosphere of the Silent Hill and Dead Space games with the ideal of protecting another character through it all, as perfected in Ico and more recently with Bioshock 2’s Little Sisters. It also seems to be attempting to upstage Elizabeth in Bioshock: infinite. Older gamers may also be interested to know that the creator of Flashback (1993), Paul Cuisset, is one of the key creative staff members on board.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, PSP, Puzzle, Reviews

PSP Minis Roundup: A spinning octopus, block dropping and a Ninjamurai?

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a look at some of the PSP’s Minis, mainly because of the PSN crisis and recently a lot of them looked like complete pump. There hasn’t exactly been a deluge of titles since PSN resumed normal service either. Two of the three games we’re looking at today come free with PlayStation Plus, which some gamers might still have as a part of their Welcome Back package.

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First Person Shooters, Party, Platforms, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, Reviews

Ape Escape (Review)

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The Ape Escape games on PS1 and PS2 utilised the dual-analogue sticks of the controller to masterful effect, so it felt natural to be excited about how the PlayStation Move motion controller would add to the game’s experience.

The original games were action-packed platformers where you had to capture cheeky monkeys. The right stick controlled gadgets like nets, catapults and monkey detectors with fantastic efficiency. The logical step for the Move would have been to use the navigation stick or Dualshock to run around and the Move controller to swing your net and other gadgets.

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Platforms, PlayStation 3, Puzzle, Reviews

Akimi Village (Review)

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Many console gamers have avoided this kind of game on facebook for years, but put a genre back onto consoles and I just can’t help but take a look. Akimi Village is a light-hearted building sim where you control a giant avatar, plodding around a floating island helping the Akimi recreate their world. The genre is almost non-existent on PSN, but XBLA regulars might remember NinjaBee’sKeflings’ games, which are very similar to this one.

Most of the land is shrouded in a dark cloud called ‘The Gloom.’ Any Akimi folk under this cloud are unable to work and you can’t build on the land either. You must plant healing acorns to clear the land of Gloom and liberate the wondering little dudes. These elusive acorns can only be earned by rebuilding the settlement.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Infamous 2 (Review)

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Our electrical star of Infamous, Cole MacGrath, begins the game with an encounter against ‘The Beast’ an almost god-like deity, hell bent on destroying everything. Cole is unable to stop the destruction of Empire City and is forced to retreat south to New Marais while he prepares himself for round two.

The city of New Marais is inspired by New Orleans, so the settings include recreations of the Latin Quarter, swamps, vault-packed graveyards and also the poorer areas of the city. After the eternally grey Empire City, the new setting is an inspired choice, especially the eerie swamps and the neon lights of the city’s nightlife district. The colours of some of the sunsets are real showstoppers too; seriously, you won’t see better skies anywhere else. The terrible real-life effects of Hurricane Katrina are also mirrored, as Cole arrives years after a flood, to find large areas still submerged with a few nods to the lack of government support New Orleans suffered. It feels tastefully done, as ignoring such an event when basing your location on New Orleans would have been insensitive.

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First Person Shooters, Platforms, PlayStation 3

Sniper: Ghost Warrior (Review)

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After being released on 360 and PC to scathing reviews you have to wonder how much twelve months of bad publicity affects the decision to release the same game on PS3. Especially seeing as PS3 gamers are more used to quality 360 hand-me-downs like Bioshock and Mass Effect 2.

Let’s give this a fair go though. It can’t be that bad, maybe the devs have fixed the problems since the original release. The schizophrenic AI that went from blind to instantly knowing where you are and telepathically informing every soldier on the base being one of the main complaints. Well that’s still there, so not a great start.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, Reviews

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise (Review)

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This is what we’d like to see more of, good Wii games in HD, instead of violating our beloved HD screens with scart leads. The series has already had its second game on the Wii, but this is just the first game polished up. So don’t fret if you’re new to it, but perhaps feel a bit annoyed they didn’t put both titles on one disc for the asking price.

The story in this bizarre beat em’ up is one of an assassin named Travis Touchdown (see how close they came to making Travis a cool name?). Not happy with always being strapped for cash, Travis decides to take out the Top 10 ranked assassins to become the new number one and score with a hot French chick. Kill Bill, meets Highlander with Suda 51 refereeing if you will.

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Features, First Person Shooters, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Killzone 3 Multiplayer Round-up

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We’ve had plenty of time to get stuck into Killzone 3’s multiplayer since release although the PSN crisis interrupted our play for a while. Since then there’s been a patch to tweak gameplay and multiple double XP weekends to tempt us back. Missed out? Then check out what you’ve been missing online and offline.

The 32-player multi-mission Warzone matches from Killzone 2 return and will be very familiar to series fans. Newcomers will probably recognise the contents from other shooters. However, unlike the competition, you’ll play all the following modes in one match. With the winning team being those who can win the most modes or ’rounds.’
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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, Reviews

SOCOM: Special Forces (Online Multiplayer Review)

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I recently enjoyed the single-player side of SOCOM: Special Forces and gave it a shiny 8/10 for its efforts. Now the PSN is finally back online I’ve had a chance to get online with the game and see if the multiplayer was worth the wait.

Matches can feature up to 32 players, but many match-types seem to limit the action to 20. Even so, there’s no sign of lag at all, even during busier matches. I suppose the servers get a break seeing as there’s rarely a full field of players alive at once, someone’s always a wrong turn away from having to respawn. At least you only have to wait a few seconds to get back into the fight.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, Reviews

SOCOM: Special Forces (Single-player Review)

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After a brief dalliance with the FPS genre for the 256 players and 5 minutes of fun MAG, Zipper Interactive return to their long-running third-person military shooter series.

Thanks to the recent PSN crisis I was afforded more time to play the single-player side of the game. It was a great surprise to find that there’s a great campaign to be played through along with some addictive stand-alone solo levels.

The last game, which barely made it to UK PS3s, was online only and was the sort of game you were relieved you only rented. Back on the PS2 the first game had too many squad commands, with dodgy voice-commands if you were foolish enough to trust the headset and was a very dry experience for only the most patient gamers. But respect where it’s due, SOCOM was an early success on the PS2’s babysteps into online gaming.

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