Category Archives: Action

Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Wii, Xbox 360

Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 (Review)

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Ignore the messy Harry Potter titles that EA have been squeezing out over the last few years. If you’re after a game that will please Harry Potter fans, look no further than this Lego-flavoured compilation spanning the last four films.

For the most part, you’ll control the familiar trio, with other characters popping up occasionally. Harry has his cloak, Hermione unlocks swot boxes and Ron can access his brother’s Wesley boxes for destructive fireworks or wall-climbing shoes. As is standard with the Lego games, you can play local multiplayer. The screen will split when it feels it is appropriate. We found it to be a nightmare though. Splitting when it didn’t need to and giving one player loads of space and the other a corner. The divide also made a nasty habit of dizzyingly spinning around.

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Action, Platformer, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Wii, Xbox 360

Disney Universe (Review)

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Buying titles for the little gamer in your life can be a difficult task. Especially if they’re of the age that bright colours and fun take precedent over playing GTA. So you’ll want to get it right this Christmas.

Disney Universe is a good place to start in addition to De Blob 2 and the tougher Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One. It’s cheery, inoffensive, impossible to hit a Game Over screen and has so many playable characters that kids might even still be playing it by New Year’s.

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Action, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Saints Row: The Third (Review)

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GTAV will have to wait its turn. We’ve been looking forward to Saints Row: The Third for a while now and after the dirty delights of SR2, we can’t wait to get stuck in again with the current console generation’s most enjoyable open world crime series.

After pissing off The Syndicate, the Saints are forced out of Stillwater despite being the world’s most famous street gang. Instead, they’re dumped into Steelport and have to start from square one again. Their rise to power pits them against The Syndicate and the gangs of Morning Star, The Deckers and The Luchadores, the latter of whom are led by Killbane, voiced by Hulk Hogan. With this fresh start, the series is welcoming to old and new players.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (Review)

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Nathan Drake returns for another top-rate adventure. After hearing his very distant relative, Francis Drake, must have taken a detour on the way back from one of his famous voyages we’re off to search for clues to see if he discovered the lost Arabian city of Ubar.

The story takes time to delve into Nate’s past, allowing us to explore how he met Sully, who now plays a larger role than the previous games. It never feels like padding and fans will enjoy the insight into the friendship. Don’t worry, Elena and Chloe are still around too.

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Action, Platformer, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One (Review)

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Co-op multiplayer Ratchet & Clank. The series has been consistently fantastic without it, but we’re always keen to watch a great game grow. But with co-op, we knew there would be concessions to the game we know and love. Would this sour the overall experience though? In short: no, this is still a great Ratchet game, even as a single-player experience.

If you’d prefer to play through the game alone (also the best way to build up your arsenal), just choose a character and get going. With Ratchet, Clank, Captain Quark and Dr. Nefarious all working together against a common enemy, you can choose to play as any of the four. An AI partner follows you around to help in gunfights and co-op tasks if you’re flying solo. Co-op partners, either local or online can drop in or drop out at any time, which allows you to progress through the game as you choose.

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Action, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Batman: Arkham City (Review)

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After the chaotic events of Arkham Asylum, only the corrupt world of Gotham City would let the madhouse’s warden become mayor and allow him to hire Dr. Strange to cordon off a whole section of the city for a new asylum/prison. Dr. Strange being the head-case he is, it isn’t long before innocent civilians find themselves locked up without warning or trial. Soon enough, we’re walking Batman himself through the prison gates too, albeit as Bruce Wayne.

It’s going to be another long night for the Batman. Arkham City takes on an open-world approach with various missions available around the city map. It’s clear that films like Escape from New York have heavily influenced the landscape. Electricity is limited and streets are littered with trash, barricades, burnt out cars and mobs of angry thugs. Famous in-mates like Two-Face, Penguin and Joker all have their own areas and gang members. Despite the place being a shit-hole, they’re still all having a massive turf war.

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Action, Platformer, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection (Review)

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This collection was one of the first of the HD re-releases to be announced and since then we’ve had many more come and go. With the long development time, you’d expect perfect conversions, with little need for rose-tinted glasses to help you get through it. So let’s take a look.

For many gamers, this will be their first taste of these games, and after going back to check the PS2 versions you can see there are clear improvements thanks to the high-definition remodelling. There are also a few downsides, but more on those later.

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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

God of War Collection Volume II (Review)

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If you thought the PSP wasn’t capable of hosting spectacular action games then you’d be very wrong, as Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta are a fine pair of beasts. But let’s face it, Kratos was always way too angry to settle being stuck in your pocket.

While the first God of War collection and the Sly or Prince of Persia HD trilogies were upgrades of already good-looking PS2 games, this has taken more of an effort coming from the PSP. Sporting the best visuals the handheld ever saw, these games are now re-born with their potential fully realised in HD.

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Action, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Review)

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The Games Workshop space faring Warhammer 40k universe has been begging for a proper action game for years. Having provided so much inspiration for video games it’s about time it had one.

Relic Entertainment have served 40k well already with their Dawn of War strategy games on the PC, but now they face a different challenge with an assault on the crowded action shooter genre. This is no Gears of War clone though; you’re playing as a Space Marine, the toughest soldiers out there. These seven-foot tall genetically engineered killing machines don’t need a cover-system; they’re all about fighting through the pain.

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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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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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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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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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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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Action, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Reviews

Thor: God of Thunder (Review)

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I wanted one thing from this game: for it to be better than last year’s Iron Man 2 game that I gave a 5/10. Thor needn’t worry though as this is a much better tie-in.

Rather than follow the earth-bothering, flannel-shirted nature of the movie, this game simply takes place in the fantasy realms of the Thor universe in a separate story-line, which turns out to be a good move.

Famed comic book writer (and unfortunately the scribe of the afore-mentioned Iron Man game), Matt Fraction, has penned a very basic plot, but it is at least unobtrusive. We’ll presume he saves the compelling material for the comics.

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Action, PlayStation 3, RPG

Yakuza 4 (Review)

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It can be a bit of a tough sell trying to get pumped up for Yakuza 4, seeing as it’s been out in Japan for a year and they’re getting close to the release of the zombie-packed sequel Yakuza of the End. But hell, Yakuza 3 was a pretty damn awesome beat em’ up adventure game and we won’t be seeing the Kamurocho walking dead anytime soon so let’s just try and enjoy it.

Unlike the past games you’ll be playing as four different characters, each of whom has their own storylines although their paths occasionally cross. Each of them also has a different fighting style and access to some exclusive character-specific minigames and side-quests.

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Action, PSP, Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest (PSP Review)

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The take on this familiar tale is that of Samwise Gamgee retelling the story to his children from the fireside’s warmth back in the Shire, focussing solely on Aragorn’s adventures. Naturally he’s added a few extra details here and there to keep things interesting.

Which is actually a quite decent excuse for a few elements that are out of sync with the film, such as spiders in Moria, a Balrog chase scene, fights with Wildmen in Rohan or having to fight your way out of a goblin infested cave on the way to Weathertop. Continue reading The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest (PSP Review) →

Action, PSP, Reviews

God of War: Ghost of Sparta (Review)

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Looks like Ready at Dawn Studios have done it again. They’ve only gone and made the best action title on the PSP, again. God of War: Chains of Olympus provided a PSP prequel to the original PS2 game and now Ghost of Sparta looks to fill the gap between God of War 1 and 2.

The story follows Kratos as he searches for his younger brother, Deimos, who was taken from him when they were both young Spartan children. We finally get some answers about Kratos’ facial scar and his red tattoo. We also get to find out what really happened to the legendary city of Atlantis.

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