The tower defence genre has been exploited a million times already but developers Handy Games have managed to create a game which brings innovative new ideas to the genre and a twist on what you’d normally see from a Western styled game. If like myself you’re bored of always being the good guy and seeing a happy ending then you’ll be pleased with what the creative minds at Handy Games thought up. The tide gets turned in their latest game Guns’n’Glory which has you controlling the bad guys, in this case a bunch of blood and money thirsty bandits in the Wild West whose goal is to stop helpless settlers from travelling through the canyons you reside in. Gunning down peaceful men, woman and horses could be seen as a controversial issue by some and therefore if you’re one of these morally correct people, go and plant some trees instead of enjoying this fun game.

Starting off with a small amount of Gold, you must select which units you wish to control by paying them a certain amount of Gold and waking them up from their nap. There are 5 different types of units to control throughout your experience with Guns’n’Glory and the more effective units will require you to splash out more of your hard earnt money to acquire their services. Normal gun shooting bandits cost 75 Gold, with dynamite throwing Mexicans costing 100, fire-arrow shooting Indians costing 125 Gold, Cannons costing 150 Gold and finally the lethal Gattling Gun breaking the bank balance. Dispersing of your enemies (the good guys!) rewards you with more Gold so you can wake up more units and defend the canyon more effectively. You can also upgrade your units in the later levels of the game and therefore decide between buying more units or making your existing units more deadly.

Each level in the game contains a number of different spawn points that the settlers can come from and thankfully a red arrow indicates which area you must defend. However, more settlers often start spawning from other entrances of the map throughout levels and therefore you must re-position your units or wake up new units using your Gold to effectively cover all areas of the map. The ability to simply move your units around the map by clicking on them and tapping on the area you want them to move too adds a strategic element to the game that many tower defence games lack. Trying to find the perfect balance of your units to defend certain areas can be a nice challenge at times; do you evenly spread out your units around the map or strongly protect one area and risk getting over-run at another area? The choice is yours.

You will fail the level if you allow 50 lucky settlers through the canyon without ending their lives. The settlers will tell the local Sheriff who will come and lay the smackdown on your gang, and you certainly don’t want that. The game spans over 10 different levels/canyons you’ve got to defend and this will consume around 2 hours of your time. Unfortunately there isn’t any reason to come back to the game after finishing the levels unless you wish to replay them, and this may make some gamers question when the $2.99/£1.79 asking price is a bit steep. The map which you select which level to play display “Mississippi… Coming soon…” and this suggests that download content and new levels might be coming in the future.

Apart from the lack of replayability and possibly the limited amount of units you get to operate, my only other issue with the game is the lack of a fast forward feature. After the settlers have spawned from all of the entrances in a level and you’ve set up your units for maximum effectiveness, it would be nice to be able to speed up and level instead of having to wait and watch the inevitable happen. This isn’t a huge issue but a fix in a future update would be welcomed. The graphics in Guns’n’Glory certainly won’t let you down as the Wild West is themed brilliantly with sharp, colourful graphics, nice character and level design and with a catchy soundtrack to boot.

If you’re looking for a new tower defence game or simply enjoy wild west themed games, you should check out Guns’n’Glory. I highly recommend at least trying out the free version which is ridden with advertisements, and if you enjoy this version which I think you will, I encourage you to support Handy Games and buy what is an well done and addictive tower defence game.

Bad news I’m afraid guys. I’ll let the folks at developers Mm say it best:

“LittleBigPlanet 2 is a crazy dream, a dream to allow players to make whatever kind of game they want, but also to play though a great adventure of drama and excitement, power-ups, and cinematics. But like all of the most ambitious ideas, it can be a considerable challenge to turn these dreams in to fun games. We’ve all been working like powered-up space ninjas and we’re almost there, but because we love what we’ve made, and we love our little sack-friends, and most of all we love all our fans out there, we couldn’t let you all get together until we knew we were giving you the best experience imaginable. Which is why we’ve taken the hard decision to delay the worldwide release of LittleBigPlanet 2, originally slated for later this year to January 2011.

We know this will come as disappointing news for all you LittleBigPlanet fans, and believe us, we are disappointed too. We are a tight-knit team and we take enormous pride in our work, so to raise the bar we’ve set with the original LittleBigPlanet, a game that has been so embraced by all, we’ve agreed to allow ourselves a bit more time to deliver the experience that our great fans and community deserve. We are truly sorry, but hope you understand that we have to build the best possible game, as it is the foundation of our community.
On the upside, we are going to find a way to give more of you a taste of LBP2 prior to launch, so stay tuned.
Thanks for your continued love and support, it won’t be long – we promise.”

Does this suggest we could see a possible Demo or a Beta?

BioShock Infinite was announced a couple of weeks ago via an impressive 2 minute long trailer and we’re now finally treated to the first gameplay footage of the highly anticipated title; and my God, it is looking incredible! It seems irrational games have taken the creepy atmosphere straight from the underwater city of Rapture and transferred it to an astonishing city in the sky called Columbia. Check out the MUST WATCH gameplay footage below:

Bungie have today released some jaw-dropping statistics for their unmissable title Halo Reach. Everybody knew the game would be popular and played by millions, but I doubt even Bungie could have predicted the following statistics wen you consider the game has only been out for one week:

31,000,000 Games have been played since launch
98,000,000 Player-games have been recorded
8,214,338 Daily Challenges have been completed
255,996 Weekly Challenges have been completed
78,499,560,895 Total Credits have been earned
953 Man-years have been spent in matchmade games
1365 Man-years have been spent in campaign
854,107 files have been uploaded
577,804 recommendations have been sent to friends
4,619,455 files have been downloaded

Impressive stuff, and much more to come I bet.

The folks over at Sony are hellbent on giving us more ways to have fun in LittleBigPlanet 2 and explore the world. The introduction of a grappling hook is the latest addition to what is shaping up to be an incredible sequel to an already awesome first game. Check out the video below to see the grappling hook in action:

Ubisoft have just released a trailer containing tons of juicy gameplay footage of their upcoming game Assassins Creed Brotherhood. The highly anticipated title seems to stick mainly to the already seen gameplay in previous titles whilst adding some nice new features; crossbow and Gatling gun anyone? Check it out for yourself below:

The launch of Codemaster’s F1 2010 is just over a month away and the advertising campaign is in full flow. Check out the latest, very impressive, trailer:

Huge news guys! 2K Games have jut announced that they are currently developing a new title called BioShock Infinite. The team who developed the first BioShock are back with this latest project which takes us away from he scary underwater city of Rapture and instead takes us to the complete opposite; a floating city in the sky called Columbia. You play as a former agent who was been sent to Columbia to rescue a woman called Elizabeth who has been imprisoned there since she was a child. Sounds amazing to me and I’m psyched! Can’t wait to hear more. In the mean time, read the official press-release below and watch the incredible trailer:

2K Games and Irrational Games Announce BioShock® Infinite

BioShock Infinite is in development for the Xbox 360(R)
video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation(R)3
computer entertainment system and Games for Windows(R), and is not yet
rated by the ESRB.

Great news for all the zombie slayers out there! Capcom have announced that they are ahead of schedule with the development of Dead Rising 2 and the game will now release in Europe on the Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 24th, with the PC release scheduled for September 28th.

Europe will for once have a game before the US! The game is still scheduled to hit US shelves 4 days after Europe, on September 28th. Bring on the Zombie slaying fun times!

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is just over a week away from release and Square Enix are finally done with their huge advertising campaign for the game via this action packed launch trailer. Check back here at WeDoTech to read a review of the full game coming in a few days, but until then, feast your eyes on the trailer:

The Gamescom event in Germany will be kicking off in a few weeks and this latest trailer of the Uncharted 2 challenging Enslaved will be shown there. The trailer tells us the action adventure game will be released on October 8th, and I personally can’t wait! Check out the fantastic trailer below:

Developer Diaries seem all the rage these days when it comes to promoting an upcoming game, and Ubisoft have jumped on the bandwagon with the release of the first developer diary for the highly anticipated Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. I personally can’t get enough of dressing up like a white dove, sneaking among the rooftops of surreal places and silently taking people out, so bring it on!

News on Bethesda Software’s upcoming shooter Brink has been sparse over the last few months but now we’re finally treated to the first Developer Diary which tells us about the games storyline. I swear the game used to look better than this… Check the footage out for yourself below and make your own mind up:

It was announced yesterday that the Real Madrid midfielder Kaka will star alongside Manchester United star Wayne Rooney on the front cover of EA’s upcoming FIFA 11. This seems like a very strange decision when you consider the past season was arguably Kaka’s worst season to date, with him being injured for a large portion and just playing poorly for the remainder… Oh well. Check out this short trailer made to tease us a little bit more:

LittleBigPlanet 2 is predominantly about creating some awesome levels of your own and sharing them with your friends, but the latest trailer released suggests that the sequel will contain a story mode consisting of at least 50 levels! More bang for our buck, and no doubt this adventure mode will be playable co-operatively with friends; good times. Check out the trailer below:

Codemasters recently confirmed DiRT 3′s development is well under way and they’re now ready to show us this first trailer, albeit all CG, of the highly anticipated rally racer. The trailer does indicate that we can look forward to racing in more varied locations this time round and also in different weather situations; something the EGO engine is very capable off. Codemasters sure know how to make some beautiful CG videos…

Developers NinjaBee are most famous for their Xbox Live Arcade Hit Cloning Clyde which released way back in 2006, a time when the XBLA was still a new experience to many and downloading games wasn’t as common. The side-scrolling platformer made a big impression and ended up being one of the highest rated XBLA games of the year. Since then, NinjaBee have released Dash of Destruction (remember that Doritos game which handed us all a pathetically easy 200 gamerpoints?) and more notably A Kingdom of Keflings, a game famous due to it being the first XBLA game to implement the use of your Avatar. NinjaBee have been quiet on the scene since 2008 but are now back with their latest title, Ancients of Ooga. Although not related in story wise, Ancients of Ooga is said to be Cloning Clyde’s spiritual successor; so can the game live up to Clyde’s high standards and provide another fun platforming experience for us Xbox 360 owners?

A tribe of odd looking creatures called the Ooganis were happy with life until a race of monster called the Boolis showed up. The Boolis offered the Oogani tribe some tempting slugs to eat, and even though the Oogani chiefs advised the tribe to stay well away, the temptation was too much and the Ooganis ate a bunch of the slugs. Little did they know that the slugs were infact intoxicating and would bring terrible things to the tribe. The Ooganis become fat, lazy, and worst of all locked their once loved chiefs up in cages and allowed the evil Boolis to burn and kill them.

A few of the Oogani tribe couldn’t take anymore and wanted their freedom back, and therefore summoned the Great Spirit of Ooga, played by you. Using the power of the Great Spirit, you must travel to the Oogani villages and convince all of the tribes to join a massive revolt against the Boolis and earn their freedom back, along with reviving the murdered Oogani chiefs and bringing order back to the land. The story has a good premise and could have worked well but unfortunately is presented to us rather poorly throughout the game. The majority of the story is told via text in speech bubbles which you must read due to the lack of voice acting, and there seems to be a large amount compared to other games. Some well produced cut-scenes would have been perfect to make the game more entertaining and flow more fluidly.

The gameplay itself mixes platforming elements with basic puzzles which you must solve to reach the next section. You will control a number of Oogas throughout the levels and must “possess” different Oogas to be able to progress through certain areas of the game, and this is easily done by scrolling through the available characters with the left and right bumper buttons and pressing A when you have the desired Ooga selected. Different Oogas have unique abilities such as being able to breathe fire balls or run through brambles without losing health, and therefore you must use the correct Ooga for each situation.

You are very unlikely going to spend a long time pondering which Ooga to use due to the simplicity of the game, and this also applies to many of the puzzles throughout the game which are extremely basic and a piece of cake to solve. If you do happen to get stuck, holding the left trigger will display a map which tells you your objectives and clearly shows both your current position in the level and where you must travel to. The map and simple puzzles make large portions of the game a breeze to play through and offers relaxing and stress-free gameplay; which can be a nice change from the frantic, fast-paced first person shooters I normally play. The game introduces a new mechanic for carrying objects around a level. In the land of Ooga, you can chew, swallow, or throw-up pretty much any other character or carryable object in the game. Apart from the entertainment factor, this mechanic must be used to solve certain puzzles and progress though the game.

Ancients of Ooga boasts a lengthy campaign which can take upto ten hours to complete, but unfortunately the gameplay becomes repetitive in no time at all. This could be due to the game making you carry out the same tasks over and over again. Pulling levers, possessing different Oogas and retrieving items to keep the tribes happy will be the main tasks given to you, and the game doesn’t differ much from this. When you eventually encounter some evil Boolis throughout levels, you’ll attempt to stay well clear of your enemies due to the games poorly implemented combat system. There is no depth or skill to the combat at all and you will often die a cheap death due to not being able to run away from the Boolis’ annoyingly long swipe and high motivation to take you down.

The land of Ooga does look decent and can be pleasant on the eye. While the game lacks some shiny textures that others display, the Oogas themselves are well detailed and the games animations will provide some laughs along the way. Allowing your character to stand there and perform random dances can often be more entertaining than the actual gameplay. The soundtrack has a tribal theme which suits the game well and thankfully won’t annoy you too much.

If you’re looking for a simple platform puzzle game with a lengthy campaign, Ancients of Ooga could be 800 Microsoft Points well spent. However, the repetitiveness and ease of gameplay might put some people off, so look elsewhere if you’re looking for a more challenging title. There are superior platform puzzle games available on the Xbox Live Arcade but if you’ve experienced all of these or are looking for a game with a bit of character, Ancients of Ooga is worth checking out.