Hi all 3 of you that read this.

Sorry for the delay, but I have a shiny new laptop and am now writing this watching Being Human (awesome TV show!)

Anyway, I will just do a quick round up this time, I have played a few games.

First off Bayonetta on 360 - 7/10

Bayonetta is very similar in style to Devil May Cry. You play a witch and something has happened and you are in purgatory and you have to get out by fighting variuos demons and the like.

It's OK, there are literally 100s of combos for you to lean and string together, but you will find one or two that work and do them over over again, and still get through the game. That's what I did.

The graphics are ace, and some of the end and mid level bosses fill the screen, but are fairly easy to beat. I completed the game in about 8 hours. You could play through again, on harder levels etc, and getting more medals, but I couldn't be bothered, plus my brother wanted it back as it was his!

Left 4 Dead 2 - 360 - 7/10

Another biggie for the 360, again its OK I played through on the single player, it was OK, the AI was pretty good, very much like the first one, just different scenarios. I had a go at the multiplayer, but kept getting kicked out for running around and shooting zombies and not being too careful, hey ho!

Infamous - PS3 - 7/10

As usual with PS3 games the main colour pallette is from the brown section of the colour wheel, you are a bloke who is in an accident and you can now harness electricity and do things like zap people and fly and glide and stuff. It's not bad actually, BUT,it is no Prototype!

I know the games I have skirted over are just 7/10s but they were quite average, but still quite good.

I have really been hammering MW2 multiplayer, especially Domination, but in the next few weeks I will be getting

Bioshock 2
Alien vs Predator (demo should be out now)
Splinter Cell Conviction

So expect reviews of those soon!

Once again sorry for the cop out update!

JA

Game: Alien Breed - Part 1
System: Xbox 360 (live)

Pros – It's like playing Aliens, in a Smash TV style!
Cons - Bit to-y and fro-y!
One word summary - Alientastic!

Score - 7/10

A lot of game journalists have been talking about this game for some time, talking as if it was the second coming!

If you are not aware of Alien Breed, it was first released on the Amiga many years ago, and it was awesome, but that was then, and this is now.

The story is you are a dude in space and you have to sort your ship out so you can escape. But there are *duhduhduuuuuuuuuuh* aliens on the ship! There are big ones, small ones, ones that spit stuff at you, and some other ones too.

It uses the Unreal engine (powers Gears of War etc) and it looks awesome, you see the action from a top down perspective, like as mentioned before Smash TV, you can turn the camera round so you can see all areas, but we will come to that. Thing is with the graphics, they look ace, but you cannot zoom in and get a good look at the modelling which is a shame.

The controls are pretty good, you move with your left stick and aim with your right, but it ios not auto fire you have to use teh right trigger. I would have liked an unlockable arcade mode so you could have it on auto fire, that would be awesome, take note Team 17, who aren't reading this anyway!

The problem I had with the controls is the camera, as mentioned above, you can move the camera around, BUT for me it went round the wrong way using the L and R bumpers, and there is no way of changing the setup! I spent too long going back and fourth with the camera, and especially in tense moments, was VERY annoying.

There is a fair amount of variety in the game, oh wait a minute, ther is not. A mission, any mission is this

- Get so far, find a locked door/broken equipment/outside
- Find the key/spanner/spacesuit
- Go back

And THAT IS EVERY LEVEL! And you have to do it about 10 times PER level!

So why the 7 out of 10. Well, despite its faults, its a really entertaining game. Well thought out, some cool aliens and some tense moments, and if you have a 5.1 set up, your sub will get a real work out.

I just hope the next few chapters are going to have more variation!

The release schedule is looking pretty poor, but I will try and review some older games I have just got like End War and Infamous (its OK, just no Prototype!)

These week I will be playing


Trials (360) - STILL - now we have the BIG pack, which is AWESOME game of the year just got better!
Splosion Man (360)
Guitar Hero 5 (Wii)
Infamous (PS3) - It's OK

Feel free to add me as a friend on PSN (Alfzilla) or 360 (Spidermanalf)

Game: Assassins Creed 2
System: Xbox 360 (available on PS3 too)

Pros – Superb gameplay and graphics!
Cons - Story feels forced.
One word summary - Stealhykillaliscous!

Score - 8/10


Assassins Creed 2 is a slow burner.

A really slow burner.

The first hour or so, you will be thinking, "he gave this game 8/10, what was he thinking" all I have done so far is moved a babies leg and run around a bit!" But stick with it, it gets really good!

The story is you play this bloke in present day who is a direct descendant of an assassin in 16^th Century Italy, and you have to get some information that you can use in present day. And to get the information you have to go back in time using a machine called an Animus. That is looked after by two techy ladies and Danny Wallace!

I know it sounds stupid and far fetched; the story was not too bad, but to be honest I did not pay too much attention to it.

You play 95% of the game in the Italian world, as an assassin.

The game is pretty much like a sandbox game where you can go wherever you want, as long as it has been opened up to you. And when it is opened up to you, you will be running up church spires and diving off roofs in no time!

After some faffing around and a tutorial that works like most of the Zelda games, where you are sent on a task, and learn new moves while on it, the game opens up and you meet allsorts of people like Leonardo Da Vinci and youe Uncle Mario (when you meet your uncle Mario, every game fan will smile broadly at his opening sentence.)

Anyway there is a family tragedy and your main mission is to work out why what happened did.

This will take you all over Italy killing people and searching for things.

I realize I have been rambling so I will break it down into sections.

Graphics –

Amazing, the amount of detail on yourself, the buildings and the town is phenomenal. Cannot climb to the top of a building? Look around, there will be a little ledge you have not seen and you will be able to climb it. The towns are all full of people and soldiers going about their business, and they all look great. Some of the best graphics I have seen.

Action and killings

The main bulk of the game has you running around rooftops looking for your next target, but to get there, you have to run around and dodge soldiers, or you can just assassinate them, its dead easy, run up to them and press a button, dead, but don’t kill too many, otherwise people will recognize you and wherever you go soldiers will attack you. To stop this, simply look for wanted posters of yourself and take them down.

You can perform allsorts of assassinations, and they are explained to you in the training, there is also a good combat mechanic, not as good as Arkham Asylum, but you can block/parry/steal weapons and kill people, all fairly easy. You can also buy new moves from your weapons trainer.

Side Missions

There are LOADS! The main side missions are

- You get a town to look after and you can buy art work etc for your villa to increase tourist traffic, and you can also ‘do up’ the town by building brothels and armaments and things like that.

- You also find out there was a bod like you before you that has left clues all over the place that you have to find and solve. These puzzles are HARD! The later ones can only be solved by going on the internet! I spent a lot of time on gamefaqs.com getting the solutions, they are THAT hard, unless you are an expert on cryptography

- Find armour from other assassins. On main buildings there are hidden entrances where you go in and perform acrobatic skills through a maze of ledges and frames to get them (these were my favourite!)

Other than that you can do paid for assassinations, find feathers. races and beat people up. This will keep you busy for a long time.

I completed this in about 12 hours, that involved doing up my town to over 80%, doing all the main missions, finding all the armour and solving all the hidden puzzles.

If you collect achievements and trophies make sure you get the kick someone on a glider, as you CANNOT replay missions when you have completed the game! You do have full access to all the levels you have unlocked, so you can collect all the feathers, and do other missions and get more money for your town.

Overall this game is entertaining and perplexing, but overall great fun.

If you can get over the first couple of hours!

I am also looking forward to invading Team 17 on Monday, cannot wait!

JA

This week I will be playing

Left 4 Dead 2 (its OK, but dull in single player!)
CoD MW2 (360) - Special Ops on Veteran now!
Trials (360) - STILL!
Splosion Man (360)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Killzone 2(PS3) - still plugging through, it's just not that great!

Feel free to add me as a friend on PSN (Alfzilla) or 360 (Spidermanalf)

Game: Lego Indiana Jones 2
System: Xbox 360 (available on PS3 too)

Pros – Ace Lego graphics, cool music, funny cut scenes!
Cons - Can be confusing!
One word summary - Legoliscous!

Score - 8/10


I love the Lego games, I have 1000g on nearly all of them apart from the original Star Wars one. Have you tried completing the flying levels on that without dying!

So when they announced Indy Lego 2, my preorder went in, but, I thought, how are they going to make it that much different from the first one, as that was ace!

Well they have and it is good!

This game covers all 4 Indiana Jones films that anyone who knows anything knows started off awesomely awesome, and got worse as they progressed.

The game is split into hubs, in each hub are the levels you have to complete, but also in the hubs are bonus levels and races, that you have to complete to get extra items such as characters, that you need to unlock to get access to all the bonus levels. Some of these are very random and tricky.

As the first three films have already been covered, they only get 1 hub each; where as the Curse of The Crystal Skulls gets 3 hubs. They are a 50s town and an atomic town, a campsite, and a jungle hub, basically the film split into thirds. Luckily there is no level where you have to swing with monkeys!

There are some very funny cut scenes in this game, all marked with the usual Lego humour, you cannot skip them, but why would you want to they are hilarious!

Once you have completed all the levels, there are bonus levels to get through too, and once you have got through those you can edit all the levels too in a special editor level, where you can also create your own levels, however I did not spend too much time with those as I just did not have the patience, but the bit I did, was OK, and if you have the patience, I am sure you could create some great levels.

If you are playing this with a partner, as it’s a 2 player, it’s really good, as the screen spits into 2, and not just straight down the middle, it moves around so each player can get the best view, and then when you are close to each other you go back to the one screen, clever stuff. At one point I had to use the 2 player option to complete a puzzle as it was all about angles and you could not see half of the screen you needed to see, but that was the only time which leads me quite nicely to the bad stuff -

The bad stuff, firstly the manual is RUBBISH, normally I don’t bother with manuals as I am man! But there were parts of the game that are really complex and things that are not explained, like why do some arrows glow green and yellow, and some just yellow! What do you need to do to get access to other levels (unlock other characters), and lots of other little niggly things like that.

But that’s the bad stuff, not much really, just a few annoyances.

To say that this game is primarily aimed at kids, I found it really hard, well some bits were, but I managed to 100% all the main hubs in about 8 hours, but I had to get help on certain bits via the interweb as I was truly stuck!

This is a great game and will keep you busy for a while, and if you have kids even longer!

Last time you will remember (if you don’t just look down) I was trying to get a day out a Rockstar North and Team 17, well Team 17 have agreed to let me on the premises, so I am looking forward to that! I will let you know how it goes!


This week I will be playing

CoD MW2 (360) - Special Ops on Veteran now!
Assassins Creed 2 (360)
Trials (360) - STILL!
Splosion Man (360)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Killzone 2(PS3) - still plugging through, it's just not that great!

Feel free to add me as a friend on PSN (Alfzilla) or 360 (Spidermanalf)

OK first off, CoD Modren Warfare 2 is awesome.

I am not going to do a big review as it has sold millions and also had loads of controversy. Especially the airport level, that can be skipped and played through without shooting anyone.

I saw an interview wuth a woman, adn she said she watched that level with her 15 year old son, and they both cried. Then another guy said 'you do know the game is an 18, and your son should not have been watching it' which was quite amusing.

ANYWAY, the game is ace 9/10 buy it, if you are over 18 obviously.

So, Christmas is coming up, and I am being asked what console should we buy, so here is my little guide, of what console is good for what, and what you need to buy with them!

I will also include some games that you can get that are not rubbish!

Here we go.

Wii

Pros

- Great for younger kids.
- Has things like Wii Fit and Mario for it
- Games are quite cheap.
- Good online back catalogue to download.
- Built in Wireless dongle
- Miis

Cons

- Not HD
- Lots of shovelware (really bad games sold cheaply)
- Not very good if you want 'hardcore games' like your Gears Of War and Killzones.
- Difficult to set up to play with your friends.


What you will need extra

- Extra controller and nunchuk
- Rechargeable batteries and charger for remotes, and also Wiifit board if you get one.

Games

- Mario Galaxy
- Mario Kart
- Wii Fit


360

Pros

- Good all round games machine
- Excellent exclusives (Gears/Halo etc)
- Tends to beat PS3 in head to head test (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/xbox-360-vs-ps3-face-off-round-22-face-off)
- Very easy to chat to people on line
- Has excellent on line exclusives (i.e. Trials HD)
- Excellent joypad
- HD gaming goodness
- Avatars
- Excellent of you love shooters

Cons

- Not great with the media streaming, unless you hook it up to a PC and TVersity
- If you want to play online you have to pay (about 25- 35 pound a year) but you there is a free service where you can still download games and demos, you just cannot play online.
- Have to pay for wireless connection by buying a dongle (about 30 quid)

What will you need extra

- Firstly make sure you get a 360 with a HARDDRIVE! This means do NOT get the Arcade!
- A HDMI cable if you want to connect via the HDMI port, it does come with HD cables though, just not HDMI. Do not spend loads of money on these! One for a 5er is just as good as one for 50 quid, as it is a digital signal!
- Maybe another joypad!
- A battery pack AND charger! You can buy JUST battery pack, so make sure you get one WITH a charger!
- A USB keyboard would be handy for typing emails to people and as you can now get Facebook etc on there, it'd make things easy.
- If you are going to play online, a gold account. You get one month free out of the box!

Games

- Gears of War 2
- CoD MW 1 and 2
- Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
- Bioshock
- Burnout Paradise
- Any Lego game!
- Lips
- Crackdown

PS3

Pros

- Excellent media player, has built in blu ray and will play most files, just connect an external harddrive with films that you have leggally gained, and away you go.
- Has some excellent exclusives (Drakes Fortune/Infamous)
- Built in wireless dongle.
- Online gaming is free
- Can connect your PSP
- Can d/load old PS1 games
- Pads have built in rechargeable batteries.

Cons

- Just not as good as a 360
- Talking online and group chat is hard to do. And no cross game chat (you cannot play game A and your friend game B and still talk)
- Joypads are not that great.
- Online gaming is not great

What you will need

- If you want to talk online, a Bluetooth headset (can be bought quite cheap from Play.com)
- An extra pad
- A HDMI cable if you want to connect via the HDMI port, one for a 5er is just as good as one for 50 quid, as it is a digital signal. The PS3 ONLY comes with really poor cables for your TV!

Games

- CoD MW1 and 2
- Drakes Fortune 1 and 2
- Killzone 2
- Singstar
- Little Big Planet
- Burnout Paradise


As you can see each console has its pluses and minuses. But it essentially breaks down to this

If you have young kids and you liek to play every so often  - Wii
If you are a hardcore gamer - 360
If you want to play the odd game but watch films more - PS3

But if you are REALLY hardcore you will have all 3 anyway!

I have not bothered with handhelds as the DS and DSi seem to be uling everything anyway!

I am sure there are loads of you who will disagree with me, but thats fine, just put your comments on the bottom and I will try and have a PROPER discussion with you, so no 'M$ sux PS3 is leet you n00b' as that is just silly!



OK, silly season is upon us with a LOAD of games being released, I am getting Assassins Creed 2 and Lego Indiana Jones 2 this week alone, and my bro is getting Left 4 Dead2, so I will try and review what I can, but I also thought it would be cool to see local game developers like Team 17 and Rockstar North and talk to them, as they are near us (Ossett and Leeds) so if that is something you are interested in reading let me know! Otherwise I won't bother wasting their time!


Thanks

JA

Game: Wet
System: Xbox 360 (available on PS3 too)

Pros – Excellent graphics, nice set pieces, entertaining!
Cons - Main game is a little short!
One word summary - Grindhousebloodandsnotgamingtastic!

Score - 7/10

You know those games that you think look good and you really want to play, but you do not want pay full whack for them, well Wet was like this for me. And when i saw it for 15 quid from Zavvi.co.uk I could not resist!

The first thing you notice with this game is the way it is presented. It's like a Rober Rodriguez film, not his Spy Kids nonsense, I am talking Desperado and El Mariachi, really dirty looking with lines on the screen and things like that, it's cool at first, but then it did my head in. BUT you can turn it off and all is well.

There is a plot to the game, but to be honest when there was a cut scene I skipped it (the ones that I could) there was something about revenge and drug deals and stuff. There was lots of swearing though!

Oh yeah it's an 18!

The voice talent in the game is pretty cool with Alan Cummings and the Eliza Dushku lending their vocals!

OK, the game. You are a female assassin, and your job is to kill everything in sight. You do this with guns and a sword, and your acrobatic skills. You have to earn style points to buy upgrades, they are the usual stuff, more powerful weapons, more acrobatic skills. The acrobatic skills are there for a reason, you earn style points for killing people with pazazz! So shoot someone in the head, get 10 points, run up a wall and jump backwards, land on your knees and shoot them in the family jewels, you will get more points. Shoot half a dozen people in row and the multiplier kicks in so you get more points. Simple really.

But its not all running and gunning there are some really good levels. One of the levels is almost reliveing that scene from the second matrix film jumping from car to car, with a few QTEs (press A here press X there) and another involves a shoot out falling from an exploding plane (eurghhh my cat's got a cold and sneezed all over the screen, cat snot smells like cat food!) there are few others but those 2 are the best.

Every so often, there is a mini cut scene where someone runs up to you and you shoot them in the face, and you get covered in blood, and it then shows a close up of your face and an alarm goes off, and then the whole level is played in a Tarantino does manga style. there are only 3 colours red, white and black. These levels are very stylised and great fun to play often racking up a body count of 70 80 people! Which is ace!

Once you have completed the game, you can play the game over again, but this time you can play through in score attack mode, which is entertaining enough, and worth a few play throughs!

This game is like Lara Croft without the rubbish puzzles, but with the acrobatics mixed made by Rodriguez and Tarantino in a bucket of blood. 

And if you can get it for about 15quid, well worth it!


This week I will be playing

MODERN WARFARE 2


Feel free to add me as a friend on PSN (Alfzilla) or 360 (Spidermanalf)

Game: LOADS
System: All

Pros – It's a games show in Yorkshire!
Cons - Too many people, not enough games!
One word summary - Expoliscous!

Score - 5/10


I was so excited about this! This was billed as a game show like you see in US or Japan, full of games, booths full of skimpily dressed women (how else do you appeal to the sun/water/girl shy average gamer (yes who'd have thought I used to be like that, before becoming as suave and sophisticated as I am now, although I was always clean!) and games and FREEBIES, you know tat you don't need like pens/posters/hats/T-shirts etc.

Unfortunately it was not like that!

My mate Mark and I got there about 10.30 with the doors opening at 11, and the queue was HUGE! Check the link out (I am in my wheels about 59 seconds in, after the advert, I am not in GTA!)

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/eurogamer-expo-2009-kicks-off-in-leeds

So there were quite a lot of people there, it was estimated there were about 2000 people there. Which is a lot.

When we went on there just banks of games. Each bank had about half a dozen screens on showing one game each bank. There were a few that had a few more games, but the games that were on 1 or 2 screens were not biggies.

The other banks had upcoming greats like

Heav Rain - looks AMAZING in real life, although it did look like you did a lot of watching, and then went through a few QTEs (quick time events where you have to press X at a certain time and things like that) and then make a few decisions to push along the story
God of War 3 - If you loved the first 2 (if you didn't WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?) then you will love this!
Alien vs Predator - Looked good, but was set on multiplayer, so you couldn't get a good sense of the single player
MAG - The menu looked OK, until I broke it and a woman snatched the control off me and turned it off.
Dantes Inferno - Like Gow3 above, just less good!

They also had a load of games (about a thord of the games there) that were alread released like
Halo ODST
Need For Speed Shift - Menu looked OK for 10 minutes while it loaded, and the 2 mins of gameplay was rubbish. 
Brutal Legend
FIFA 10 and a few others.

One of the most frustrating things was games like Left For Dead 2 that were set up for 2 players, but guess what, you no 2 player action, and that was on a few games, most frustrating!

There was another hall as well, that was a little but better as there were a few booths there from Team 17, Ubisoft and some universities, they were there about recruiting, I had a nice chat with a few people, and got 1, 1 free pen, my only freebie of the day! Apart from the game I won! YAY!

Overall we managed to mooch round for about 2 hours, had a look at some cool games and then eat at Pizza Express so it was not all bad!

Overall it was only 6 quid for the ticket, but it was dissapointing. If they do have another one, I think it needs BOOTHS and some Stalls, and not a HMV stand in the entrance charging full RRP for games, 45quid for FIFA 10, I don't think so!

Game: Ghostbusters
System: Xbox 360 (available on PS3 too)

Pros – ITS GHOSTBUSTERS! And you get to kill the Stay Puft Marshmallow man!
Cons - The AI of the Ghostbusters is not the bet!
One word summary - Slimeriffic!

Score - 8/10

You remember Ghostbusters. That awesome film made in 1984 (25 YEARS AGO!) Blimey! I remember seeing it at the flicks, I am so old!) well the film is based on the characters from that film! All the characters are there

Pete Venkman
Egon Spengler
Raymond Stanz and
Winston Zeddmore

The game is based just a few years after Ghostbusters 2 (the film was OK, but just not as good as the first!) and you are the new guy, you are never given a name, just referred to as 'new guy' or 'rookie' or just 'kid'.

The story is there is a new exhibit in the NY Museum, and of course something happens and all sorts of ghost shenanigans happen. You get to visit all the locales from the film, the museum, the library, the Hotel and the Ghostbusters HQ! If you have seen the films (who hasn't?) then you will recognise everything that is happening in the game.

There are some old ghost favourites, Slimer, the Librarian (you find out why she is dead and she is quite pivotal to the game plot!) and the Stay Puft marshmallow man! They are all well animated as with all the rest of the ghosts. And if you scan them with your PKE meter (a ghost hunting mobile phone type device) you get a little back story to them all.

The game itself is great, you get your ghost hunting back pack, that is upgradeable, there are different types of stuff it fires out, you start with the famous proton beam, but then you get a slime attachment, freeze attachment and a good old fashioned gun attachment, I say gun, it shoots positively ionised ions or something, either it way it is good! When you are shooting a ghost you get a little health bar round it, and once it gets quite close to the bottom, your photon beam will 'lasso' the ghost and then you have to trap it. All this is done with a few button presses and easily executable, and is awesome doing it, especially if you love the films!

The graphics are really good, I mean surprisingly good, everything is well animated, well drawn and solid where needs be and see through an ghostly when needed whether you are in the library in this dimension, or the library in an alternate dimension (it does get a bit crazy!)

But the best thing about all this is the voices, they are all done by the original actors themselves, so you have Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis et al, even Peck (the guy who shut them down in the first film), the mayor and the receptionist come and reprieve their roles, in voice form, and the fact the script was written by Harold Ramis (Egon) and it is really entertaining and amusing. Especially Bill Murrays lines!

The cut scenes are ace too, I actually WATCHED them, even though they were skippable, as they were entertaining and informative, and most importantly not over long!

The game itself lasts about 8 hours, and it is none stop fun. I played through on Professional (hard) level and it was not too taxing, the annoying thing was the other Ghostbusters dying and having to revive them.

If you want it to last longer there are over 40 artefacts to find throughout the game, I found about 30 of them without looking too hard. So you are looking at 2 play throughs really. You would have to do 2 play throughs anyway if you want max 'chievements/trophys, as there is an achievement for destroying loads of stuff, and an achievement for destroying hardly anything! I enjoyed blowing everything up. But that's just me!

Anyway, all in all this is a great package, it has great gameplay, fantastic graphics and a funny script, and is well worth picking up.

If you have a choice between the PS3 and 360 versions, I would advise the 360 version, as the PS3 suffers from a lot of screen tear and slow down, apparently! (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/17/ghostbusters-on-ps3-lags-behind-360-version-developer-explains/)

This week I will be playing

Trials (360) - STILL - almost have all golds!
Splosion Man (360)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Guitar Hero 5 (Wii)
Killzone 2(PS3) - It's OK

Feel free to add me as a friend on PSN (Alfzilla) or 360 (Spidermanalf)