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.
Review time is finally here. After three days I've seen everything there is to see.
What did I see? Well, not much really. I completed the game on normal after about 5, 6 hours. And I hardly flew through it either. Various points were challenging and would keep me in the same place for 10 minutes. It was short! Really short! And with no real replay value, or online play that's no good for a game. I never sell my games, but if I did, this would no longer be in my collection.
Not because it's a particularly abysmal game. But because I've no further use for it.
So, to move away fro the time aspect, let's talk abot the good parts.
The game was fun! Essentially this is true. The ability to grab stormtroopers by the throat, fill them full of electricity and then throw them at other troopers to watch them explode is a great idea. The whole force system worked incredibly well, and, for once, there was a Star Wars game that wasn't obssessed with items. There is no way to complete this game without using the Force, using lightning, grab and push techniques in different ways. Having said this, it left a rather sore vacuum where the Lightsaber used to be. The Lightsaber is a favourite weapon and it seems to have been added at the end. The idea seems to be that a nightstick could do as much damage as this Lightsaber. Needless to say, the lightsaber was missed.
The system of levelling up was very effective in some ways. The idea that you get points for performing complicated combos was a good one, as was the idea of getting points by collecting holocrons in tricky to reach places (reminiscent of the Golden Feathers in Banjo Kazooie). Once levelled up you receive points to spend in three areas: Combos, Attributes and Force powers. The Attributes makes you regain health faster etc. and is an overall essential part to such a system. The Force Powers get stronger with every level up (out of three possible points each). The Combos, however, are absolutely bloody pointless. I didn't use half of the ones I bought. To be honest, didn't know how. And didn't need to either. As far as I can work out, combos just look cool, they don't do anymore damage. I'm sure some of them are good, but there are several thousand, and they're just a waste of time.
The storyline was... eh. It was poor. Despite some really good voice acting (surprisingly), as a Star Wars fan, I was disappointed with it, and disappointed that George Lucas had been partly responsible for it. I can't spoil the ending, but it's unbelievable beyond belief, and at least the very last resolution doesn't make the Apprentice some sort of Star Wars God. The Vader aspect of the story was nice though, and links in with his desire to kill the Emperor with Luke. Really happy to hear you'd play a bad guy for once, I was, again disappointed with the fact you very soon turn good. The romance aspect was rushed and surprising. It was just generally poor. And the idea that this Apprentice could drag a Star Destroyer out of the sky when Yoda struggled with an X-Wing is just laughable.
Then the graphics... An improvement on the demo for sure. But still... a lot of movable objects seemed pasted onto a basic background. The graphics on the whole were nice. Some of teh art design was really nice, but a lot of them, such as the force graphics were a little under done, and don't look as impressive as they should. A lot of the background graphics are good, and only occasionally succumb to overcomplicating. But the levels often have glitches in them, and end up with you falling to your death.
So as I mentioned, the Force powers have been slightly overplayed. Well, a lot. I can see why too, for dramatic effect. But if you're a Star Wars fanatic, you'll probably hate the idea that you are effectively walking around godmodding everything in sight. On a site I'm on, the Admin said the Force Unleashed would lead to huge amounts of godmodding noobs. They're probably right.
So.. yeah, a short review. But, my God, this game was short. Way tooooo short. Fun, but short. The Force based idea was a good one, and full of innovation. The gameplay was sometimes painfully glitchy, all too often. But despite all its flaws it was fun! I see this a stepping stone to a new type of Star Wars games, Force-centred, and not so clunky and RPG-ey. Were they to merge this system with a smooth Fable-type combat, and then add a decent and long storyline, this game would be a 9 or 10. As it is, we shall leave it at a 7.5. Which is still more hours than the game lasted.
My Xbox is back. Brilliant service. I'll write about that another time.
What is important, is two MASSIVE demo's dropping today, Firstly, Fracture. The Lucas arts game where you can alter the terrain? downloading it right now.
Secondly. LEFT 4 DEAD! the demo isn't up yet, but it shouldn't be so long. Expect articles on both of those if i get a minute :)
Alright when I first saw the advert for Spore, I thought it looked like a little kids game of Black and White and didn't really want to play it (mainly cause I have a Vendetta against EA for not making Dungeon Keeper 3, if you look at my post a couple of months ago). Anyway the other night I have a few friends up for a bit of a laugh some films etc and one of them brought me a version of Spore they had downloaded and cracked, means I can't play online but what you gunna do eh?? Anyway after he installs and then after all the others go to sleep I give it a razz.
Spore, you start as a single cell amoeba floating around in the sea eating smaller amoeba, if any of you have played feeding frenzy you will like this bit, but you eventually evolve, kill and civilise yourself up to the space age, this is split into the Cell stage, Creature stage, Tribal Stage, Civilisation Stage and Space Stage and because I'm a looser with nothing else to do on a Sunday Morning I'm going to review all of them.
Before I start on all the ups and downs of this game, I would like to say, I was glued to the screen from the beginning of the Cell Stage until a little bit of the way through the Space Stage (mainly because I fell asleep on my keyboard and piloting a ship was by then far to much for my bloodshot eyes at 5 in the morning), so no matter what I say against it, it is still a really fun casual game to play.
Anyway now I said that:
THE CELL STAGE
At the beginning should you choose to do the "Cell Stage," (because you can start anywhere in the evolutionary chain (which if you ask me destroys the Challenge of the game if your Lazy, but meh), you are asked a variety of Questions to begin your life as a cell and I suddenly felt like I was 9 and playing Digimon world 1 again, these questions included, are you herbivore or Carnivore (Carnivore =P), what theme would you like (there is nothing to choose from . . . .), Difficulty level (Normal), Name of your planet (something you think is funny).
After finishing answering all of the questions the game feels it needs to ask you, you are treated to cinematic of a meteor, presumably containing you crash landing into some water, thus the Stories of G-Wizz on the planet of Folkestone began.
I think the UI is good, mainly cause it reminded me of my wow interface, this interface is maintained through the whole game, but does have things added on and taken away but I found it flowed nicely.
I found the cell stage annoying and I don't know whether I wasn't doing it properly or whether it is just bad, I found all the bigger cells were nasty to me, whether or not they ate meat, my cell would not move that quickly and turning was near impossible, about 1/4 of the way through the Cell stage you grow to an extent where you can call a mate and "evolve," so I did this and a love infused Cell bigger than me came up to me and I made naughty and farted out an egg which she then proceeded to . . . . well I don't know what she did.
This took me to the character edit screen, though I added different fins with the hope of at least turning faster, it was like armour in age of Conan, didn't look very good, did nothing and cost money.
What I really liked was the customisation, there is enough of it to keep you entertained, but not so much you got bored doing each eyelash, especially bad for me because if things aren't symmetrical I will freak, but it is clear EA were thinking of me and made it so everything is symmetrical, whether you like it or not. But you can make your character (especially in the creature stage) look as wacky or odd as you want, i know it's kind of childish but this is not the kind of game that is intended to be played at all seriously.
Eventually after much swearing and being eaten by bigger cells I was offered the option to grow legs and get out of the sea . . . .
THE CREATURE STAGE
After climbing out the beach onto ground you are given another chance to customise, then sent in search of other beings, so that you may befriend or behead them.
The way you do this is simple . . . .
All you have to do if you want to befriend them is click the green button, go up to them shout at them and copy the commands they do the commands are: Sing, Dance (it's hilarious), Pose and Charm, you aquire these by putting parts on your creature and the better the part the higher level the skill say for example, feet and dance and the higher the level the easier it is to impress the creature, i liked this though it was a pain getting rank 3 pose to impress some cow people. You have to win over about 3-5 of the same species and then you can heal at their nest and get members of them in your pack.
Fighting you press the red Button select a target then spam 1-4 on the keyboard until they are dead, skills for combat work the same as social skills, if you kill any 5 of a species they become extinct, but all the leftover ones start spinning around glowing and acend into the heavens, did they have some desperate mental link with the others meaning if they died then they to would also die.
Basically every time you befriend of Kill another creature you get bits on your experience bar, you can change your appearance as much as you want, you get new pieces you can fit to yourself by finding them on the floor or killing/ befriending enemy creatures. If i tell the truth this is my favourite part of the game, probs because it's the closed to an RPG this thing gets bar the space Stage.
I loved customisation and i have made a variety of wacky and odd creatures as there is a creature creator on the main menu and your creations will appear randomly on worlds along with all Maxis other things.
With the Creature stage I had a genius way of telling whether another species was going to live or die, this was if they are cute they live, ugly they die. It worked out quite well 6 species and myself lived another 20 were killed.
In order to unlock everything on the creature stage so as to fully customise you creature, you need to befriend/ kill everything and find all the bones lying around on the floor, this got a bit tedious being that I could have moved on to the next stage after doing about a quarter of this, but i persevered and eventually wound up getting everything and moved on.
THE TRIBAL STAGE
Ok now this is the point in the game where it went from being a basic almost RPG kind of gameplay into a very Basic RTS which to me I thought was a brave move, though not a very good one in my opinion, I said the creature stage was my favourite and then being forced to change my style of playing entirely . . . well I wasn't very happy, alright the objective was the same, either make friends with other tribes or kill them.
They kept the same interface, a very wise move as I was not about to learn the whole game again (though the game felt it still needed to give me a camera tutorial anyway) aside from you now had different Units, they are Spearmen (up close killing people), Spearmen (Ranged killing people), Shaman (Healy person) and farmer (domestic person). Don't get me wrong I did enjoy the tribal stage, it's just I felt doing basic breakdowns of gaming genres may be good for kids and casual gamers, but it's not so good for people who play intensivly, though it is still a great load of fun.
Rather than your usual RTS where you expand, you are centralised to one camp, from this camp you buy weapons or instruments (they kill or win over other tribes), you also create babies, though I was slightly alarmed when I did this and an egg came bouncing out the tent like it was a conveyor belt for some mass production army. Basically all the units start off the same and you must send them to the buildings you buy with food to equip them with spears, staffs or spears.
THE CIVILISED STAGE
Now it was at this point in the game I think Maxis went a little loopy, they keep the RTS gameplayish, but from here on out you don't really control your creation anymore, instead you design a town hall, Tanks, Planes and boats and start trying to control the world, i was a little freaked when my head dragon man told me i was going to either buy other cities or burn them down, also how did you jump from using primitive magic up to tanks in one go, anyway who am i to pick holes it's not like I get to criticise, oh wait yes i do ^^.
Alright you can now dress your creatures in nicer clothes, but they are now tiny dancing around with fireworks in your cities doing nothing but partying by the looks of it, which i did not tell them they could do, so there is really no point in dressing them up.
Design for all the buildings and tanks planes etc is nowhere near as fun as it was in the creature stage, tho i just spent most of my time being a nerd and making star destroyers =), which leads me on swiftly to the final stage . . .
THE SPACE STAGE
It was about 10 minutes into the space stage I got bored, mainly because i looked at the galaxy and thought , this is huge no way, but i kind of got the general gist, now you have nothing to do with your creatures, no more fighting, you spend the rest of the time exploring, abducting animals from other planets and taking them to people, then again i havn't got very far so i could be completely wrong.
All in all Spore is in no way a game to be played seriously, it is a fun casual game, there is not a huge amount of depth to it, but i really did enjoy playing it, i'm hoping that when i summon up the courage to have a go at the space age that i am wrong about it and ther is more to it than probing odd creatures.
Either way it is the most fun i have had in ages and i do reccommend it i give it a 7.5.
Anyway i'm really looking foreward to reviewing force unleashed on the Wii at the end of this week, random dave will be doing it on the 360, but until then i'm going to go and make some bizzare creatures.
Too Human- the game that everybody and nobody wants to play. At once. Paradox? You'd think so, unless you saw the recent turd-flinging contest between developers, media, fans, and random people that was the Too Human release aftermath.
Too Human is indeed a strange beast, a game who's development I've followed for several years now. For those of you who don't have much background (how could you not?), Too Human is developed by Silicon Knights, the much-lauded developers of titles such as Eternal Darkness, MGS: Twin Snakes, and a Legacy of Kain title. It takes place far in the past, as a sci-fi re-imagining of Norse Mythology, offering a unique take on cyclic history and old Scandinavian tales. You play as the god Baldur, a member of the Aesir corporation, a Private Military Company specializing in cybernetic implants. You are charged with defending humanity's last vestiges from the impending robot invasion. Sound generic? Read on.
Let me start off with one of this title's hot subjects: the story. To put it in the simplest terms possible, Too Human's story is phenomenal. That being said, the storytelling and presentation is something you wouldn't expect from a game that was made after the year 2000. Silicon Knights, a development house notorious for its stiff and fairly emotionless animations, decided against Motion Capture use in Too Human. As a result, main characters often fail to convey their feelings adequately, despite generally admirable voice work. Ironically, it's two of the main characters, Baldur and the rambunctious Thor, who's voice talent needs to be changed before the next iteration of Too Human. Overall, cinematics fail to do justice to the writer's epic re-telling, often leaving you yearning for more, scratching at the surface to get at the beauty you can see just under its crust. The game starts to pick up and start getting things right just in the last level, with the last cutscene leaving you going “Why the hell wasn't the rest of this put in one game?”.
In terms of graphics, another catch-22 presents itself. The art style- is entirely magnificent. The large, open environments, gigantic backgrounds and detailed, interesting designs never cease to impress. The graphics themselves are (can you guess what's coming next?) a fairly large let-down. Average by all means, they don't do much other than show you how great things could have been. Polygon count is low, facial definition is spotty and oddly low on polish, although it's an area that you'd expect to see a story-driven game to excel in. Hair is the worst offender, looking flatter than Amy in Soul Calibur 4. Weapons and armor are designed beautifully, with detail and uniqueness enhanced by the color rune upgrades available on the cheap in the Weapon and Armor stores. Some skins can border on ridiculous, and there seems to be a mild case of “WoW Shoulders” going around town; but you can never say that you don't really feel bad-ass. The game does a great job of making you look like god from the beginning, and somehow manages to keep the feeling of awesomeness rising as you level up continually, all the while updating with more ridiculous names every time. Looking at screenshots of the game in '06 while it was still on the Unreal Engine 3 is an exercise in sadness, as you can clearly see much smoother models and what is apparently an actual head of hair for Freya; but I digress.
Gameplay is the real meat of Too Human, and that is where it tends to excel. Many harp the controls for their “unintuitiveness”, their tendency to be “too clunky” and “retarded man, like a button masher but WTF NO BUTTONZ NO WAI”. I have to chalk those complaints up to people who just can't get into something new, however. The controls work beautifully- allowing all the combat action of a button mashing game without the finger fatigue, allowing for long dungeon-crawl-style play sessions without having to get repeated Carpal Tunnel surgery. Targeting and locking on is all handled by the right thumbstick, movement with the left. Once close enough to an enemy, you may hit the attack button and perform a slide, speeding up and hitting the enemy with your godly... hoverskates? Who knows. It just looks cool. As you continue to build a combo count, your speed increases and you begin flying around the map with frightening speed. Shooting is done with the triggers- simply hold one or both down and point the stick in the direction of an enemy. Tap the right stick once (twice for pistols) to adjust targets and shoot multiple enemies. If you happen to have trouble with the guns targeting dead enemies repeatedly, take both fingers off the trigger and manually re-target your intended baddie. It works, but it takes skill. In addition to these main mechanics, you have special attacks. These consist of Ruiners, Spiders, Battle Cries, and Sentient Weapon Abilities. Ruiners are Area of Effect attacks, triggered with the right bumper. They use Combo Meter, the game's equivalent of Mana. You build Combo by battling, forcing a good mixture of combat and special moves that results in a well-rounded experience. Battle Cries are rather self explanatory, they are group skills that apply buffs for as long as they run, and they also require Combo. Spiders are another story. Press Y, and you have a little AI buddy come out and do something, whether it is deploying shields, attaching bombs, or being an amazingly bad-ass support turret. They have limited charge times, and have a long downtime. Sentient Weapons work by deploying a shadow version of Fenrir, your sword, which goes out and literally destroys anything in its path. It's amazingly fun to use.
Now that I've covered the 3 core components, let's discuss replay value. In a game like Too Human, a dungeon crawler with hybrid Action game combat, you'd expect to want to play the crap out of it. Not so. Although the level cap is 50, it is a tedious and rather boring journey to reach it. Completing the game gets you about halfway through, landing at level 26 or 27. The rest of the game is endgame exploring and looting, something that quickly becomes tiresome. The game has 4 large areas, of roughly 1-2 hours each. The second level is an anomaly, often taking more than 3 hours to complete. That would be all fine and dandy if it weren't for the annoying Token system. Collect tokens by playing through sections of the level, with the best boss loot only available if you've gotten every token in the level. Tokens are very annoying to gather, although you can do a section of a level, leave, and come back later still possessing that token, allowing you to break it into bits. The problem is environment variety. Only the Ice Forest is really distinctive, and even that is just another oddly bumpy floor with lights that takes you through the annoying door with more enemies. The only incentive is Epic loot, but even that fails to draw in your attention long enough to spend 100+ hours on the game (although people report having done exactly that already).
So overall, in conclusion? Too Human is a fun game. A good game. Not great, above mediocre, and certainly not bad (I'm looking at you, Jim Sterling). If you enjoyed the demo, this game is for you. If you thought it was ok at best, give it a rent. It's a good weekend-buster (averaging 12 hours of length) for the lull before the explosion that is the Fourth Quarter of Release Hell. The game certainly isn't without its design flaws, but several innovations shine through that leave me instilled with confidence in the second iteration in this trilogy. I would recommend a healthy background in Norse Mythology before you dive into this, if you'd like to get into the story. This game hits slightly between the 7 and 8 mark, so I'll leave you guys with a rousing 7/10. A solid addition to any library, it should be tried (in demo form) by anyone remotely interested.
"Hey wait a minute", I'm sure most of you are saying as you glance at the title to this article, "Football Manager? Why don't you cover a good game?" Well. You can all sit down and shut up, Because I love the football manager series like my own firstborn child.
First, The facts. It releases on November 19Th, and will release on the PC, mac, and uhh.. psp. Managing director Miles Jacobson has stated there wont be any home console versions of 09, compared to 07 and 08 which were both released on the xbox. Now, A shiny video for you to watch.
The guy focuses on Football manager handheld first, Talking about the ability to select more then a single league, Like the PC version, and a choice of... TWO SKINZ. OMG. The handheld version also has a 2d match engine. so yeah, it looks like the PSP edition has been brought up to speed with.. Football manager 2007 maybe?
Now, On to the PC version.
expect more feedback from the assistant manager, which is great, And an expansion of the medias involvement. There are press conferences, Allowing you to cultivate relationships with journo's and the public, and transfer rumours.
You can ask your players to learn special moves, theres a total rewrite of the transfer system, and the match engine is now in 3d. Although, i'm sure that LMA manager 2003 had a 3d match engine. You know, Back on the playstation.
And the big news?? You can play as a female manager. the guy was really excited about this.
While researching for this blog, I came across a pretty decent site called The True Football Manager, Where a guy reports on his antics in the game. Check it out if your into footie management games.
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