Heavy Rain made with a cheap video recorder is a good way to think of this game. The video footage is blurry on the small screen but in fairness, as a Minis title it has to be a small file size and it’s a lot of footage compressed into 80MB.
This ‘interactive (college student-esque) movie’ has you playing as a potential murder victim from a first-person perspective. Everything is shot on camera with no real graphics to speak of. The ‘story’ is simple, escape from captivity and get out of the woods before the hooded axe murderer catches you.
Another block puzzle game for the PSP. It’s simple, colourful and cheap. What’s not to like?
The setup is very similar to the classic Lumines games. Blocks come down from the top in three different colours, either in squares of four, a block of six or a line of three. Rotate them on their way down to line up five of the same vertically or horizontally. Try and get as many connected to the line as possible for a combo.
The last block of the five needs to be put in last as you can’t add to a highlighted group afterwards like you can in Lumines. After the timer at the side of the screen reaches zero, a line will sweep down from the top and clear away any linked squares. Sometimes it takes ages to arrive, 25 seconds can feel like a lifetime when your screen is filling up.
The best fun to be had on two wheels so far this generation has been with Burnout’s hell-powered bikes, with Moto GP and the first SBK game missing out on the love, failing to please arcade or simulation fans.
SBK X has split itself into three modes (Arcade, Simulation and Multiplayer) right from the start menu to try and please arcade and sim fans alike. But have they spread things out too much? I’ll split the review into the same three parts to cover all bases.
‘What a difference a few extra months in development makes,’ was what we all thought when Arkham Asylum finally arrived. With an even bigger delay preceding the eventual arrival of Obsidian’s Spy RPG many gamers started to worry about the condition of the nevertheless eagerly awaited title.
The idea of being able to actively affect the story with your own choices in conversations and via your actions had minds swimming with possibilities of combining gameplay styles of the legendary JB trio of James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer. Continue reading Alpha Protocol (Review)→
After the platforming success of Little Big Planet, it’s good to see someone taking a similar approach to racing games. ‘Race Create Share’ is the new tagline for this arcade kart racer with user generated content at its core.
Players can create their own racer characters -or Mods as they’re known here- then create a vehicle for them too. The most exciting part of the game though is the track creator that has a huge amount of depth, but not at the cost of ease-of-use. And as a feature, it’s a great success. But what about the rest of the game? Continue reading ModNation Racers (PS3 Review)→
If you’re the type of gamer that squealed with delight seeing the huge list of retro RPG game included on last years Mega-Drive compilation, this game is most definitely for you. In-jokes to the genre are the norm here along with a long list of frustrations and an almost inevitable argument between fans (and probably lawyers) about it being a homage or rip-off of some Nintendo game with a green midget.
The games unique twist is the updated retro graphical style. The story explains it in an amusing way, as the old 2D Kingdom of Dotnia is rarely visited anymore so they revamp their world into ‘3D’ to get with the times, hoping everyone will love them again. It’s not ‘put on glasses’ 3D, everything is made from cubes instead of squares. The whole story would probably fit on a beermat (evil guy stealing orbs, kingdom threatened, you hero). Continue reading 3D Dot Game Heroes (Review)→
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.
This is a collection of traditional Indian village games that range from kite flying to board games. The story mode features a young Indian man from America, coming back to his family’s village to learn about the culture. We say learn about their cultures, but he really just wants to mess around and learn how to play the local’s games. It’s a pleasant enough way to ease in western gamers who have no idea what the games are, but should also prove handy to players that already understand them as the controls get explained before each game.
You walk (so very) slowly between areas, talking to villagers about the games. The only real reason to play is for the tutorials on them. I’d advise quickly learning how to play then quitting out and playing them from the mini games menu where you can choose your sides and so on. Continue reading Desi Adda: Games of India (Review)→
Expectations were low for this PSN shooter that’s old news for 360 and PC gamers. Oh look another space marine shooter on a distant planet. Wake up at the back though because Section 8 is actually pretty good.
The short single player campaign is pretty much an introduction to the controls and the game modes, which involve running to an enemy base, taking control of a module by pressing X, waiting around for a meter to fill then running off to another one, all while your AI teammates prance around doing sod all. Continue reading Section 8 (Review)→
Approaching a new beat ‘em up name for the first time can be a tricky affair, with no familiar character to go for at the character select screen, your first impressions of the game are severely at risk. Do you pick the huge mass of muscle, the one with a sword, the one made up of a Studio Ghibli oil slick nightmare or simply the one with the biggest boobs?
Choose carefully my friends because you won’t pick up a brawler this year with such a diverse set of fighters. There might only be twelve to choose from, but any similarities are minor. There aren’t any Ken, Ryu and Akuma-style remixes of characters here. Pick the wrong one and you might get a rough start. However, things start to look up once you find a character that suits your own individual style. Continue reading BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (Review)→
These are the final three episodes of the murder mystery / puzzle game. Solving random puzzles involving maths, logic and common sense helps bring you one step closer to finding the perpetrator of that episodes crime, with the episodes linking together for the grand finale.
For those of you not familiar with the series you can pick up a bundle with all six episodes for £19.99 on the PSN. You play as one of four detectives (another three people can play along too) from the Blue Toad Agency. As you interview villagers and suspects you have to complete a puzzle before they’ll talk. Most of them have very little to do with your investigation. Continue reading Blue Toad Murder Files: Episodes 4-6 (Review)→
Rather than use missiles and the like to defend their city, these citizens have decided it’s easier to fly onto these giant approaching warships and saw parts off them until they crash out of the sky. Bizarre, but brilliant. It’s a bit like an inverted update of the retro game Qix.
The story doesn’t exactly grab you, but it’s charmingly animated and the mad gibberish language that everyone speaks may give gamers fond memories of Okami. It’s the gameplay that’s fantastically strong here though. It’s alarmingly simple, yet has that vital ‘one-more-level’ feel to it. Continue reading Patchwork Heroes (PSP Review)→
This is more like it. After recent incarnations of the more realistic (dull) plane combat games like Tom Clancy’s Hawx or Blazing Angels, it’s good to see a more fun-minded arcade game return. You won’t find a more fondly remembered fighter plane game than After Burner either.
Rather than succumbing to modern pressure, the series still seems to play in its familiar style of blasting towards the horizon, with players concentrating on avoiding enemy gunfire in a relatively 2D space. Continue reading After Burner: Climax (Preview)→
It’s all about the Spring Sale this week as Matt explained in the first part of this week’s Roundup. The obvious PSP deals to go for there would be the excellent God of War: Chains of Olympus which is a prequel to the first PS2 game. Go on; go through all four games in a long, blood-soaked weekend. The three GTA reductions are pretty good looking too. The rest of them can be found cheaper on UMD though to be honest, not necessarily second hand either.
There are some permanent reductions too. There’s only one PSN game in there, Inferno Pool which might be worth a gamble at the price. The PSP title reductions are typically a waste of time for anyone happy to buy UMDs still. Continue reading PSN Roundup Part II→
Deflector is a basically designed yet challenging puzzle game, similar to some mini-games you may have played in bigger titles before. The aim is to deflect a laser beam into a receiver on a complex grid with you looking at it from above.
This is done by placing mirrors on the grid and rotating them to bounce the laser off in a new direction. Before setting the mirror in place you must make sure -via a dotted line that indicates the resulting path of the laser- that it will not hit any environmental objects that will end the game. These objects include apartments, trees, bombs and explosive barrels. Take a quick look at this video for an example of the early levels. Continue reading Deflector (PSP Minis Review)→
If the likes of Final Fantasy XIII and White Knight Chronicles haven’t been hardcore enough for you as JRPGs, then this game from Tri-Ace would love to dominate you in a cruel way that your sick mind will love.
The cutscenes are nice to look at despite large amounts of foppishly designed miserable emo teens and them not really explaining anything well at all. The towns of the game world make a decent effort of cramming in a lot of detail too. The dungeon or linked arena levels are very sparse and repetitive though. Continue reading Resonance of Fate (PS3 Review)→
Kratos and God of War III have patiently sat atop Mount Olympus watching the likes of Bayonetta, Darksiders and Dante’s Inferno clamber their way upwards in their efforts to usurp him. He’s let them get tantalisingly close, before stirring and smiting them from the mountain in amused rage at their audacity.
The end of the trilogy begins where GOWII ended, with Kratos clambering up Mount Olympus with his new Titan buddies for the climactic war to kill Zeus and any gods that cross his path. There’s seemingly nowhere for the Olympians to hide anymore seeing as he’s dispatched pretty much every mythological monster they’ve thrown at him already. Continue reading God of War III (Review)→
Gaming reviews, previews and features by Brendan Griffiths
Heavy Rain made with a cheap video recorder is a good way to think of this game. The video footage is blurry on the small screen but in fairness, as a Minis title it has to be a small file size and it’s a lot of footage compressed into 80MB.
The No Sleep Gamer 