The Three Rs N3twork is a primarily British viral entertainment network, with standings in many niche interests involved in a variety of different groups. Ranging from gaming to adulthood to video creation.
1/10 - "Just, No." 2/10 - "Avoid." 3/10 - "Gamebreakingly flawed" 4/10 - "Not so great" 5/10 - "Pretty Average." 6/10 - "A few nice touches, nothing amazing" 7/10 - "Not brilliant, fun anyway" 8/10 - "A decent enough game, Well worth a look." 9/10 - "A really good game. Highly Recommended." 10/10 - "An absolute must buy, a defining game for the genre."
So, As promised here's a bit of a natter about Fracture. I'll start with the bold claim, that I was 10x more impressed with this then The Force Unleashed [Reviews due from team members who don't think it's a ridiculous waste of time] which was Lucasarts other recent offering. As a 3rd person shooter, its responsive, and the shooting is well done.
But, That's not why your here. Fractures big claim is that the ground is.. Fluid, if you will. Ground raises and lowers as you play, and the weapons all do a whole bundle of stuff. My personal favourite is the Torpedo, that throws itself into the ground, and burrows towards targets, awaiting your order to detonate. Dirt can be manipulated easily, Right button raises the ground, Left button lowers it, making it easy to alter cover, and it makes the firefights more interesting, to say the least. The Penny Arcade comic up there, pretty much sums up everything I had a problem with in the game. Most of the games "challenges" involve jumping small walls, or lowering the ground to use a tunnel, which feels... Limited, considering the technology and concepts they had at their disposal. It's an amazing concept, and the Tech behind it is brilliant, but it feels like they haven't really taken it far enough. None the less, I'll rent the game when it comes out, at the very least.
So, The Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo is here at last, Go on, go and set it downloading, I'll wait.
So, now we can continue. THIS is what Lucasarts have been working on all this time? come on, quit the joking, show us the real game.
The controls are pretty spot on, I must admit, and sure its pretty fun. But this game was supposed to be the second coming. George Lucas was involved, it was Star wars canon, and it was built on an amazing engine, Although yes, I too agree that George Lucas involving himself may not be a brilliant idea.
And the whole demo felt cheap. We got a 15 minute slice of the TFU pie, and I guess they forgot to put the topping on. The graphics look cheap, and the euphoria engine fails to do anything we haven't already seen done better in Grand theft auto 4. and its easy. I mean, its hard to feel bad ass when the storm troopers you kill feel like blithering idiots with a mental retardation. I almost felt bad as I picked one up, Chucked a light saber into him, and then swung him round like a rag doll killing all his friends.
Yeah, that does sound cool. but it doesn't feel like it when nothing seems to scratch you. And i was playing it on the hardest difficulty setting too. It just feels like a cheapened experience. Oh, and did i mentioned that Darth Vader knights you with a light saber? Its the most retarded thing I've ever seen. And i've seen vin diesel movies.
Oh yeah, And I wanted to be a good Jedi. Stupid game.
In addition to all the tasty, tasty, E3 goodness [Which i'll probably post up some of tommorow, Theres just so much to wade through] the Too Human demo dropped today. Word is, its a sci fi dungeon crawler, think.. Diablo in space, with norse gods.
Impressive eh? Well, the demo weighed in at a hefty 1.1 gig, The demo was typically "fantasy" and there was 5 classes on display, but only one to choose from, the champion. The opening intro looked very nice, with the norse gods seeming like the colonial marines from aliens,weirdly enough.
The game play? well, the controls were very nice and it looks awesome to roll in a dodge, pull dual handguns, and start shooting, and I hadn't even left the initial area yet, Let alone seen any monsters. Controlling your sword is done via the right analogue stick which is a concept i've loved since playing Blade 2 back on the PS2. When I finally reached enemys, I realised something. This game is fucking awesome, Like Diablo on steroids. When you level up there are 3 skill tree's to choose from. The setting is certainly unique, but it plays like the popular "Action RPG's" of the last generation of consoles.
Basically, what i'm trying to say is, I was blown away by this game, and i'm buying it. Try the demo, its free.
Also I managed to download the Vegas 2 gift pack today, Containing Dark versions of CQB training and murdertown, and Calypso casino from the original game. Its free on the 360 marketplace. Its a worthy reason to try the game, as there appear to be new A.C.E.S as you play, Gifted you 5k exp per level.
Technically, I've played enough hours of battlefield Bad Company to write a full review, but I haven't played enough single player yet for me to consider it review worthy, so I'm going to give you my first impressions.
I'll start with the game engine. The ability to blow a hole in just about any object in the game world is more then just a fad like in the PS2's "Red Faction" titles, it honestly changes the way you think. In single player this is a useful mechanic letting you take out entrenched enemies by blowing their cover away, But in multi player this really shines. After a ten minute skirmish over a defence point, Houses are burning, tank wrecks are burning, smoke columns stretching up to the sky. Its a brilliant game engine, and I'm hoping it becomes a regular addition in First person shooting games.
The single player, which is an aspect I thought would be weak at best, is heaps of fun. You run around with 3 AI teammates, while they wisecrack and help you the best they can. This is a major difference to other squad shooters where you have to babysit your soldiers and order them around, In this they do they own thing while supporting you and thankfully, the AI is sharp enough for it not to be a problem. The fights are pretty entertaining, and it never feels too unfair even when half of Russia is attacking you.
The multi player is where I've been spending all my time, And in addition to it having the magic "battlefield" gameplay that everyone was interested in, Frostbite adds a whole new layer to it. Smoke from exploded tanks can obscure a snipers vision, and the squad system is a brilliant idea, letting small groups of people work together to complete their goals. This brings me to the first of Battlefields major flaws however. No team voice chat. Your put in a squad, and you can only talk to the 3-4 members of that squad. It makes you feel almost isolated from the team, and makes it impossible for the attackers to organise a real offensive. Secondly, The helicopters are ridiculously overpowered, Too fast for an RPG to hit, and to high up for a tank turret to aim at, and the third flaw is the hundreds of snipers populating every game. But that isn't really anything i can pin on DICE or EA.
Expect a review soon, In the meantime, go and buy the game, The multiplayer is a nice change from COD4.
I sunk a few hours into Lord Of the Rings Online today, day one of the free trial, and got myself past the instanced tutorial.
So far, it's a nice change from WoW. If you have ever played WoW, it's pretty similar stuff. A lot of the earlier quests involve talking to people a LONG, LONG way away, which is slightly irritating, but there'sa lot of nice touches. You can earn titles to display, such as "Watcher of the Roads" "Man of Rohan" you know, typical fantasy stuff. And the world, obviously is a lot more interesting and authentic then World of Warcraft. I found myself somewhat irritated with the lack of seriousness in World of Warcraft, and how everything was humorous, sometimes I just like MMO's to take themselves seriously, and LOTRO certainly had that, by the end of the tutorial instance maybe 10 minutes in, I'd been rescued from a jail by a ranger, rescued two hobbits, one with the surname of Baggins, and then watched the ranger get stabbed in the chest by a Nazgul.
I made a Female Human Champion from Rohan, on the Snowbourne server, called Darkwingstalker, just in case I take this up for the long term, which might happen.
To sum it up, it's an 8 gig download, then a couple of patches, but if you fancy a change from WoW, or you're a Lord of the rings fan, you should give it a go, you can get the free trial here
So, I picked this game up today, and i've played through the first 2 of 8 chapters.
This took about an hour. So i'm unsure how long the game will last, but thats the sort of stuff I can cover in a review.
The opening sequence was pretty decent, and It was genuinely pulse pounding stuff trying to escape from the collasping building you start in, the driving wasn't terrible considering its a survival horror game, and it was nicely tense.
The highly promising combine/use combat system is all present and correct, but for some reason my coat is full of batterys and sticky tape and not much of use. This wouldnt be a problem, its just that my trusty pistol is about as damaging to these creatures as a large stuffed animal to the face, and so I felt just a little hopeless.
On the flipside, when I managed to kill one of the monsters in one hit because i had the forethought to set light to my fire-axe for one almighty blow, well. it was satisfying. but at this early stage of the game the most lethal attack I can do is wave my lighter at them and look stern.
I suppose this is good, I mean, it IS survival horror, and not "KILL EVERYTHING WITH FIRE" horror, but I dunno, maybe Resident evil 4 has spoilt me a little.
In a word: awesome. That’s how I can only describe the behemoth that is Metal Gear Solid 4. The game that myself and so many fans included have been waiting for since the teary eyed salute at the end of MGS3 is here. And it was definitely worth the wait!
Of course my wait was a little more pro-longed, by a whole day, thanks to the postal service and my lovely job (in turn making this post a little later then planned) but that just increased my excitement for when it was finally in my hands. Placing the game in the machine, I was treated to 8 minutes of update time while I watched Snake chain smoke in the background (looking as cool as ever I might add) with the game itself telling me about how to look after the disc and about health risks when playing the game and such. And then once Snake said the words, “Kept you waiting huh?” the game really began. Needless to say I was close to wetting myself, dignified of course.
Going on to the start menu, I decided to try out the virtual training before stepping into the game, and testing out how Snake handled. And he handles very well, with nothing really changing in controls except for using the R1 button to kill. I tried out the CQC techniques, aiming the guns, throwing the grenades and generally tearing the shit out of the non-responsive blank orange humans (cannon fodder) dotting the area.
Then I decided it was time to start the game in earnest. Selecting the Solid Normal mode I started a new game and it began in the Middle East, with Old Snake riding in a truck looking very Assassin’s Creed with a load of militia ‘buddies’. I won’t reveal anything about the story for those who don’t want spoilers, so don’t worry guys!
Then hell breaks loose, and the Praying Mantic PMC pops up and starts shooting at the militia, and I found myself in the middle of a fire-fight with only my knife handy, wondering what I should do. Few kick-ass cut scenes and some running and sneaking about later, things really hotted up when I heard distant mooing in the background, and anyone who’s watched the MGS4 trailers will know that that signals the coming of the Gecko’s. After half an hour I was breathless with excitement at all the new innovations and techniques put in, for instance I was doing the worm past Praying Mantis bad boys, and also how much more aggressive the AI is when they actually find you. And of course there was the Octocamo, which is ingenious I might add! The threat ring implemented in place of rumble also works extremely well and is very handy. And what about how the game looks you might ask? It’s a complete visual treat and the best looking game out at the moment.
Hell I’d even say it’s the best game out at the moment, but I have to complete the game before making that assessment. So now I’m going to stop typing this and pick up my controller again, and next time you hear from me it will be on this game’s review written by a very satisfied gamer, because I believe this game is going to satisfy me immensely. And that’s not a word I use lightly either.
The opening screen to this demo is awesome, with its wailing guitars and speeding cars. I felt more manly just for seeing the screen.
I hadnt heard anything about this game before I saw the demo, and when I got to the main menu I selected "Cases" and a normal difficulty setting. Not really so used to having Cases on a racing game.
See that trailer? ITS LYING. its nowhere near that exciting. Plus every now and then as your driving, you go into a cutscene of you smashing into a car and it setting on fire. YOUR SUPPOSED TO BE THE POLICE! where in the police driving handbook does it tell you to aim for innocent fatalities? Jeez. anyway.
The graphics were pretty bad, and the car handling felt way too off for me. I know I complained about it being too twitchy on GRID, and here was the opposite extreme. it felt way too "light", Despite all the issues, I played it for a few goes, and had a bit of fun with it, in spite myself.
The engine was pretty bad, and the cases reminded me of Felony 11-79 a game which was dated when it showed up on the PSone. It's nice to see something different to the norm tried. But it seems to have fallen flat in the execution. Not a hope in hell i'm buying this one at launch.
oh yeah, and I have played the ninja gaiden demo, and it is good. I'll be picking up the game tommorow.
It's been a good week for new demo releases, with Dragonball Z, Grid, and now this releasing onto the marketplace.
I've been anticipating this game for a while, and so I'm pretty pleased they've released it, just so as i can kick seven shades of shit out of some goons.
The title screen and accompanying music is very "Modern Spy Thriller" so I guess at least it looks the part, there's 3 levels on the demo, and I start with "Escape the Embassy" on the respectable "Agent" difficulty. I'm blasted with two loading screens with an insane amount of commands, and suddenly I'm balls deep in combat with three embassy guards. The fighting at this stage feels a little confusing, but I struggled through it and shown "Bourne instinct" now, I don't mean to be cynical here, but how many fucking games recently have had an "instinct" that shows useful objects as outlined when you activate it?
Then there's quick time events. ugh, so far this game was playing like a handbook of Game Cliche's and I'm struggling to get into it. By the time I reached the first boss, I was starting to lose hope, but the boss was a lot of fun, the fist fight in the office, frantically blocking, it was pretty good. Maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel after all.
It feels like your merely experiencing the game, rather then actually playing it, and the further I got into the first level of this demo, the more that feeling was reinforced. Trying to take on two baton wielding opponents at once was a nightmare as for some ungodly reason Bourne was far too hardcore to y'know, pick up a baton and use it against the second guard, oh no. so I escaped the embassy, and the first level was over. I was informed I had achieved a time of 14 minutes and 31 seconds. I wasn't exactly ready to shout from the rooftops about the game, to say the least.
The second level started far better giving me a firearm. The shooting felt a little slow, but it was still responsive, and I'm a big fan of destructible environments in my shoot outs, so that was another tick in the box. In the second level, I found the fights to be so ridiculously difficult that they just weren't fun anymore, every enemy I fought seemed to be some bizarre combination of Chuck Norris and Steven Segal, so I kept my distance. The last boss of the second level was ungodly difficult. While easy to beat in his "first form" After he pulls out a knife he becomes a cheap fucker, Repeatedly using barely damaging knife strikes that are too quick for you to dodge, and interrupts your combo. So there was a lot of satisfaction when I finally beat him and moved on to the third mission, Which was a driving segment.
This level has a lot to live up to, as the Paris chase in the movies has been called one of the best car chases in modern cinema, and its fair to say with how shitty the demo has been so far, I'm not really expecting so much. The chase lasted for about 30 seconds, and was godawful. including an irritating passenger with a tendency to talk all the fucking time.
Frankly, I couldn't of been more disappointed with this game if Jason Bourne himself came round to my house, Stamped on my toys, and kicked my dog. I was expected a lot from this game, and except from the pretty cool looking takedowns, it was one of the worst game's I have played in a long time.
Oh, and did i mention you look fuck all like Matt Damon?
Loading up this demo, I was greeted with an absolutely stunning opening screen, with top notch Cel shading. The title screen kept this up, and initial opinions on the graphical style were good, to say the least, Two presses of the start button was all I needed to get into action, being shown a control screen as easy to understand as ancient Hebrew. "Ki attack?" "Aura spark?" I was clearly out of my depth here, and with that in mind, I selected normal difficulty and hoped to learn the controls on the fly.
And I did, the game still looks beautiful in action, and its really easy to get the hang of, I managed to jump straight into it with a combo, effortlessly looking super cool. Hitting the left trigger made me fly into the air battering my hapless opponent and then we were flying in the air, fighting hand to hand.
then two odd things happened. Firstly, My enemy the unfortunately named "Raditz" realised he had made a mistake about my power, and the screen informed me "Enemy difficulty increased" this led to what could be affectionately known as an "Ass kicking" for me, and then Raditz got kicked in the back of the head by a big green creature, saving me. I wasn't used to this sorta thing in fighting games, and it threw me right off, after a slog, I managed to finish the fight with an uppercut, prompting an FMV which looked straight out on an anime. I was awarded a B for my efforts.
Goddammit this was FUN. I started the second fight on the demo "Yamcha vs Saibamem", and decided to make a real effort this time. I hit start and checked the command list and found a wealth of moves. It seems like Burst limit has done away with the hard to control silliness of the previous Dragon Ball Z fighters, and got itself a nice sturdy base. The second fight was alot more of a spectacle, I was firing off energy beams, and flying through the air chucking my opponent about. This time I finished the fight with a "Wolf Fist Attack" before a nice FMV showing my character get blown to pieces. Woo. Then I played the fights a bunch more times.
I wasn't expecting much of this game when I loaded the demo, but i was pleasantly surprised, its a really tight fighter, with more then its fair share of visual flair, and apart from a few little niggles I have [More then a few times the fighter I was laying into suddenly teleported behind me] I'm pretty much going to pick up the game at launch.
So, For a start, it seems like the race driver series has dropped it's TOCA name tag. This pleases me, as I've hated everything TOCA branded since the series emerged on the PS one. From the start, it looked promising. It asked me to Enter my name and country. After entering my name, it greeted me. That was awesome/Weird. "Hello Jake" it said, sounding almost natural, and prompting a desire to go back and call my self cockfuctus as an experiment.
It called me Clive. Which says alot about anyone named Clive really. The menu was pretty nice, even though the music was fucking irritating, and i easily found myself on the "Grid World" screen, Contemplating different driver offers, with separate bonuses. I took the contract with Span-K racing, Firstly because it reads as Spank Racing, and secondly, because that's gotta be cooler then the ominous sounding "Team Orange". It put on another options screen "JUST LET ME PLAY" I was thinking, eager to escape the options music, but generally i found the experience alot slicker and easier then the last game I talked about, Operation Darkness.
So you can imagine my surprise, and disdain when the game crashed on the loading screen, and It looked like I'd have to brave the stupidly irritating menu music again. Turns out Xbox live had gone down the exact instant I tried to load.
I put my game face on and undeterred, headed back to the game, this time settling for the bad ass nickname of "Ace". The graphics were brilliant but the driving was a little twitchy, and I immediately wrote off my car, hitting a wall at 94 MPH according to the friendly stats screen when you crash. this happened a great many more times as I adjusted to the driving, and then the game crashed again, so i decided to call it a day, being suitably unimpressed thus far, and royally irritated by the games announcer and the options music.
So, experience over, what did I think? I thought it was a pretty decent game, Even if the handling was twitchier then a 4 yr old on speed, and it looked pretty. I also really like the Flashback system, where after you screw up a race, you can go back to any point in the reply and start playing from there, which is a really nice idea for a racing game. All in all, i think I'll check out the reviews of GRID but I don't think I'll be purchasing it.
I've had this Demo sitting on my 360 for just under a week, but i've only just taken a GTA breather.
The title screen reminded me somewhat of Devil may cry's , and told me in glowy red text to press the start button after the rating for "MATURE", Telling me it was full of scenes of violence. That made me slightly excited, nothing wrong with Excessive violence after all.
then it went downhill fast, with a million controls shown to me in a loading screen, and a lovely tactically map. This was my "Interlude" screen. I was of the opinion that an interlude broke up the action, but i hadn't seen any thus far, The menu screen looks like it was ripped out of a Japanese playstation game, with its grey boxes, and the pictures of the soldier's could of been ripped straight out of any number of japanese games.
Anyway, after confusedly stumbling through the "set up" without much success in understanding the game, I managed to get to another menu screen telling me to set members, A few button presses told me I was starting the battle, then I saw a pretty average start up screen. Suddenly, I realised what type of game this was. A cut out character of one of my soldiers popped up, and a grey box appeared with his speech.
It reminded me heavily of Vandal Hearts on the Playstation, not that this is a bad thing, as it was a good game, but Vandal hearts was a game thats roughly a decade old. When the battle started, i realised that this pretty much was the bastard child of Front Mission 3 and Vandal hearts, But I strived to give it a decent game anyway, for experimental purposes.
I thought the idea of Revolutionaries from WW2 transforming into werewolfs was pretty cool, and i'm a big fan of that thinking, I'm also a stickler for games like Front mission, Vandal Hearts, and X-com, and this game is very similar to them.
However, The main enemy of the game was without a doubt the camera angle, and it felt far too slow. In spite of my best efforts to pay attention, it felt tedious,and I quit the demo midway through the battle out of sheer boredom
I woke up to see the familiar play.com parcel at the bottom of my stairs, and I pretty much skipped with excitement, Nothing else on order but GTA, so that meant it was time.
I took it out of the Bag
And then spent 10 minutes trying to open the cellophane. Inside theres a "liberty city guidebook" and a one month free Xbox live trial, the disk has niko's not so smiley face on it.
now, im not so bothered about that shit, so I put it in my 360, and close the tray. i've been waiting for this for about 2 months, and i feel like a fucking two year old in a sweet shop.
The screen goes black, and then the rockstar labels come up, followed by the title screen, and then a beautifully drawn loading screen, i mean, it looks really sharp even on my non HD TV. Then theres the intro, Nico's on the boat, theres a guy getting whipped in a cabin, you see alot about nico here, but the main note is how fucking likable he is, instantly. maybe it's the eastern european accent, maybe its the light stubble, who knows? i did warm to him by the time the intro had finished though.
The driving is pretty different to how im used to, the cars are responsive, but you just need to be a little careful untill you get the hang of it, a couple of missions later, i have a mobile phone, and i'm watching out for scumbag albanians while my cousin gambles the last of his money in an all or nothing bid to pay the loansharks.
Soon i was joined by a friend, we had nothing better to do, so we soon got hold of a firearm, and started a shootout in a clucking bell, The shooting is so much tigher then the earlier offering of San Andreas and Vice city, and the Hand to Hand has been improved alot too
3 hours later, we're still playing it, and I give the game a resounding thumbs up. Expect a review in a week or so, but i think i've only scratched the surface of Liberty.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of the Battlefield: Bad Company closed beta. I wasnt so hot on the it, because I couldnt stand the Teamkill fest that was Battlefield 2 on the 360.
Anyway, Today I loaded it up, and I was most impressed. Getting into a game was easy, and fast, and I found the game remarkably easy to get to grips with, as the controls are largely similar to Call of Duty 4's including the remarkably overpowered knife kills.
Play is simple, the defenders have 3 bases. They start at the first Base. and at each base are two crates of gold. The attackers have to destroy the two gold crates. When that happens, the Defenders fall back to their second base, with another two gold crates, and the attackers spawnpoint moves to the first base. This continues till either all 3 bases are destroyed, or the attackers one out of respawns, its an interesting game mode, and keeps the combat fairly focussed on a small area. I played for about two hours, scoring about midtable for the whole thing,and in general found the whole experience to be pretty enjoyable, Unlocking new weapons is done with unlock points, earnt when you rank up, and you earn awards for doing certain things in combat, on the weapon screen however, there were 8 weapons with the text "unlock via the Xbox live marketplace" under their unlock criteria, and this being an EA game, it wouldn't suprise me if they charged over the odd's prices for unbalanced weapons, so everyone is forced to buy them.
I enjoyed the Scenery destruction, it changes the way you think about cover, as a well placed grenade or rocket can destroy the cover, leaving you in the open.
as for flaws, i noticed there was a metric shit-ton of explosives. Every class has something explosive, and generally alot of ammo with it, as an assault I spawned with 6 Grenade Launcher rounds, and 5 normal grenades. Also, the weapon customisation is non-existant, which is a shame, as I have gotten used to being able to snap a new sight onto my assault rifle, and i reckon it would of given the game abit more depth. Obviously, these are only small flaw's so im not so fussed, and I'll probably pick the game up launch day.
I hadn't really heard much about the iron man game before the demo hit. I was pretty excited about the demo though, i mean... It is iron man. That pretty much sums up my first opinions of the game, from Download to the end of playthrough.
I did like the game alot, you can customise your suit, and weaponary, and theres a few different variants. However, then i played the game. and it all went downhill from there. I thought the graphics were nice and shiny, but when i ran fowards, it didnt feel like iron man. Also, iron man sounds like an utter girl. its all the little details that make a great game, and for iron man, they were all wrong.
not meaning to be deterred by the walking, i took to the skies, i mean, he can fly after all. I promptly flew into the wall a few times, then by luck rather then judgement, smashed through an enemy tank, and then, into a wall again.
Combat wasnt particularly satisfying either, Being a simple case of blasting tanks and missile sites with your repulsor beams, or hitting it in the worst looking melee i have ever had the displeasure of seeing.
I mean, im sure i could have a bit of fun with it, but the controls are a bit akward for me to do anything except fly at the speed of sound into the rocks in the desert, and it doesnt feel like i'd expect an Iron Man game to feel. so, i'm pretty bummed out about it.
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