This is a quick preview of an app that has appeared on the iphone and android app stores. It is called Qustodian and you can download it for free by visiting the following link:

http://uk.qustodian.com/campaign/affiliate/u61SDX

It is simply a way of mainstream organisations (big brands) telling you about the latest products and services. The best part of this app is that you get paid to receive these subtle adverts and earn small amounts of money each month to hear about them. BONUS!

Anyway, I thought it was quite interesting so I thought I would share it with you in this quick blog about it.

You can support “We Do” by downloading the application today for free! Simply click on the banner below; (Come on! It’s free!)

Hey it’s Craig Baker back once again from wedogames.net and today I have some new video footage hot off the press for you guys from our new staff member Aiden Tingley who visited Game Fest in Birmingham NEC over the weekend. Here he speaks to one of the EA representatives about the forthcoming FIFA 12 review.

DeathSpank was first promoted as the brainchild of Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island fame. He left before the game was released but stated that he had finished all his contributions to the project. When the second DeathSpank was announced soon afterwards, it was revealed that both games were made in tandem, so it may be safe to assume that Gilbert had his say in the sequel as well. But The Baconing is all Hothead Games, and it shows.

The first game was a parody of fantasy games. You fought “orques,” quested for unicorn poop, and hacked up a kindly talking tree, all so you could defeat an evil king in a castle. The second game introduced more modern weapons, but it at least justified them in this fantasy world as the weapons of a grand humans/orque war. The third game, however, opens with DeathSpank overlooking a sci-fi cityscape as it gets destroyed, then suddenly he’s running around a semi-fantasy world again, albeit one with supercomputers and clone machines.

This free form approach to genre allows DeathsSpank to go to some interesting places, like inside the mind of a supercomputer that’s not all that super, but it also feels slightly wrong for the character. The first game had a consistent creative vision. Its monsters, quests, and characters were always meant to be satirical of fantasy, and even the hack-and-slash RPG controls evoked memories of other hack-and-slash fantasy RPGs. The Baconing has lost that consistency, which isn’t a bad thing per se, especially if Hothead wants to move out of Ron Gilbert’s shadow, but it does make the game feel awkward at times, as if the character isn’t supposed to be here. (That said, I do love the cyborques, i.e. cyborg orques, which is easily my favorite pun in the game.)

It doesn’t help that your path through the world is very linear compared to the first two games. You only explore a small swath of land at a time, and once you find the Bacon Fire for one area (the game’s MacGuffin), you move on to a completely separate area. Even all the side-quests are confined to their individual sections of the world, which means there’s very little reason to ever revisit old locations. This isn’t one big world, just a series of smaller maps connected end to end, which makes the game feel much smaller than its predecessors.

Mechanically, this is pretty much the exact same game that you’ve played twice before (assuming you’ve played the previous DeathSpank games). Weapons are equipped to each of the face buttons, and you get an attack multiplier for varying your attacks. When you fill a meter, you can hold down one of the buttons for a super attack. Some quests require you to combine items from your inventory like a classic adventure game, but such quests are a jarring change of pace, since they’re so few and far between.

One of the few changes is blocking. Your ability to block attacks no longer runs out. You can hold up a shield for as long as you want. Previously, when your blocking meter ran out, DeathSpank would bash any enemy nearby, knocking them back. Now you can do this move by simply letting go of the block button, so it can be used more strategically in battles as a form of crowd management.

The new co-op character, Bob from Marketing, is quite fun. He’s a hammerhead shark that shoots lasers from his eyes, can swim underground to escape danger, and can gain health by eating corpses. However, it’s sad that there’s no online co-op, so unless you’ve got someone to play with on the couch next to you, you won’t ever see Bob or Steve the Ninja or Sparkles the Wizard or Tankko the Warrior. It’s a shame to waster such fun characters.

While DeathSpank has never been laugh out loud funny, there’s enough clever wordplay and quests in The Baconing to keep you smiling throughout. The corrupt mayor who gives you a quest to stuff ballot boxes, the mind-controlling barnacle who gives you a quest to spread his spores across the ocean, the leprechaun mob boss who asks you to blow up some protestors’ bus, all of these characters are fun to talk to, even if their settings feel out of place in a DeathSpank game. Perhaps that’s why his name is missing from the title.

While DeathSpank himself is still entertaining, his gameplay is growing monotonous, and the “un-open” world doesn’t help. The second game at least introduced a sailing aspect, which didn’t change anything fundamental about the game, but it was a nice change of pace. The Baconing has nothing new like that. Sure, you can sail some more, but we’ve already seen that. Maybe next time Hothead should change more than just the setting.

James Ireland brings us the latest simulator creation from Condo Media and Astragon. Is it much fun at the port putting containers on ships? Well probably not but does the game actually work and keep enough variation to continue the interest after the initial hour or two of play? Find out.

It’s been over ten years since the release of the original Deus Ex game launched for the PC and ever since then its fans have been craving a sequel deserving of carrying the brand name. A piss poor attempt was made with the follow up game titled Invisible War. Now here we are and its 2011 with a new developer taking on its very first project with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The boys at Eidos Montreal had a lot to live up to as far as fan expectations go and making a transition to consoles has proven to hinder some pc developers in the past. Let’s find out if they can deliver on the hype leading up to the games release and come full circle with an engaging multi-platform sequel to the epic Deus Ex franchise.

For those that aren’t familiar with the franchise, Deus Ex is a cyber punk RPG/FPS set in a future where technology has taken over and perhaps gone too far. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is set 20 year prior to the events of the original game in the year 2027. The player controls Adam Jensen, head of security at Sarif Industries. After an attack on the labs of Sarif, Jensen’s tale begins as he investigates the reasons behind the attacks. We quickly learn that there is a division between those that believe augmentations are a crime against man and those like Sarif Industries who make there billions on selling augmentations to the masses.

Deus Ex: HR takes place in a large open world. Interacting with different people and exploring is what makes Human Revolutions worth your time. Chiming in at around 25-40 hours for a single play through, this game definitely offers a large variety of missions and side quests to keep you busy. The games story and the way it forces you to make decisions has the game practically begging for multiple play throughs. The player can also chose to not only affect the story but also how the game is played. You can go at it stealthy, guns blazing, and even use your ability to speak to negotiate your way through certain situations. Upgrades and augmentations help to aid you in what ever play style you choose. So if you want to play the game stealthy you can choose to do so and apply your upgrade points to the different stealth augmentations like an invisibility cloak to aid in sneaking past bad guys.

As far as the games overall presentation goes, I have to say that I was impressed. The games art style is impressive and despite being almost exclusively set at night time, the game manages to deliver a colorful and vibrant world. The voice acting for Deus is also top notch and the soundtrack provides a nice background for the game.

Overall I am completely enjoying my experience so far with Human Revolution. I am looking forward to a second and possibly third play through. With its stunning graphics, addictive gameplay, and fantastic RPG elements I have no problem giving this game a near perfect score. Everyone at Eidos Montreal deserves some kudos for a job well done on their first game. You can pick up Deus Ex: Human Revolution today in North America and on Friday, the 26^th in Europe and Japan.

Ever wanted to play a modern iteration of Spy Hunter but with a futuristic twist? Then you’ve come to the right place. Haiku Interactive have done just the thing but at a scintilating 80 microsoft points.

RC Heliocopter sim games are a few and far between, to be honest the last one we played was back on the Playstation One. Cranking in at only 80 Microsoft Points, PixelBit’s Helicopter Challenge brings excellent value for a game that contains a couple of hours of entertainment, but is it any good? Watch the video review!

Pixelbit Snooker & Pool, a budget game on Xbox Indie Games for 240 Micosoft Points but is the game actually any good? Well, why not watch the video review and find out?

Last year Toy Solders came onto the Xbox Live Arcade scene with its unique blend of tower defense and third person shooter gameplay. The first game took place during World War I against the evil German army. This time around in Toy Soldiers: Cold War we are given a “what if” scenario. As in what if the Cold War had escalated further and Russia decided to advance its military might throughout Europe. Let’s find out together if the boys in Bothell, Washington from Signal Studios can capture gold again.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War takes place in a large variety of settings. You will do battle against the Vietcong resistance in Vietnam and also face the mighty reds all over Europe in a variety of different gameplay scenarios, and finally in the later stages of the game you find yourself defending Mount Rushmore and Washingtion, D.C. The games campaign mode sees you battling your way through eleven different stages, increasing in difficulty and ferocity as you move along.

The core gameplay element of both Toy Soldiers games is tower defense. And what you are defending is your Toy Box from advancing troops. The way you do this is your decision. You will have a variety of different locations where you can place heavy weapons like machine gun nests, anti-tank, anti-air, artillery, mortar teams, and even a cannon that fires a poisonous gas to kill advancing soldiers. Placing these different weapons at strategic places is the key to victory. All of these weapons will work passively, but you can also take control of a particular unit at anytime and destroy your foes. Taking control of your defensive units is the bread and butter of the Toy Soldiers series and is what really sets this franchise apart from other games of the genre. The game also offers the ability to upgrade, repair, and sell your units at anytime so you can adjust strategy based on the given wave of enemies you are about to face.

Outside of building and maintaining your heavy weapon units you can also control some battery powered vehicles. These vehicles range from APC’s, Tanks, Helicopters, and you can even take to the sky in a fighter jet and do battle against Russian MiG’s! Your battery power on the vehicles is limited though, and in order to keep going you will have to search around the map for batteries, otherwise you risk blowing up and having to wait for your vehicle to recharge. Another amazing gameplay element was the barrage’s. Once in a while you will see an enemy with a star over it, and if you kill or destroy that target you will earn a random kill streak of sorts. Most of them are a wide range of air strikes, but the one that stands out the most is the Commando! When you earn the commando and decide to call him in you take control of a Rambo looking soldier with an M-60 in one hand and an RPG in the other. And for the next 30 seconds you get to go fucking nuts and blow some shit up. The Commando is unstoppable and doesn’t need to reload, he has one mission and one mission only…KILL!

A much needed addition the franchise was cooperative mode throughout the campaign. I’m happy to say that Signal Studios has heard the fans and added the desired option to jump in with a friend and defend against the bloody communist bastards. Versus mode also returns so you can go to war with a buddy or a complete stranger with the quick match option. Also making a return is the much loved and challenging Survival mode where much like the campaign you take on wave after wave of enemies. The only difference in Survival mode is that there is no end, and you must see how long you can last. The last mode rounding out the play list is a fun set of mini games that pit’s the player in a variety of shooting challenges.

The overall presentation of Toy Soldiers: Cold War is much like the first game. The colors are vibrant and each location in the game is unique and amazing in its own way. The sounds of the battlefield can be heard long after the smoke has settled, and the cries of your soldiers during battle can be entertaining. And who can forget the 80’s inspired soundtrack that sounds like something you would hear while watching Red Dawn.

Overall I have to say this game is shaping up to be another hit from Signal Studios. If you were a fan of the first you will likely love the second game. I for one enjoyed every moment of the campaign and can’t wait to revisit the game again with a friend when it launches. As an added incentive there are some kick ass avatar awards you can simply earn, such as a sweet mullet with a red bandana so you can look like Rambo. Toy Soldiers: Cold War will be available for download via the Xbox Live Marketplace starting on August 17^th for 1200 msp.

WIN 2X COPIES OF DEMOLITION COMPANY GOLD EDITION!

This years blockbuster simulator game scoring an impressive 82/100 on wedogames.net landed this month and it landed with rubble all over the place. To celebrate the launch and the excellent review score, we are giving you a chance to win Demolition Simulator: Gold Edition, two copies in fact. Demolition: Company Gold Edition see’s you rising through the ranks of destruction using a multitude of vehicles to demolish the eyesores and aging structures in your wake. Even if simulators are not your bag, this game has impressed not only our reviewers but our audience too. So…enough of the mumbling. To be in with a chance of winning this is what you have to do!

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Then leave a channel comment on our YouTube stating which building you would love to see destroyed.

Be creative, it could be your rival football club, an eye sore in your local area or a building out of a fictional film. The best and funniest entries will win. So good luck and get destructing! Please head over to Excalibur Publishing if you love simulator games, they are Europes leading Simulator specialist.

As part of the Summer of Arcade tradition, Microsoft typically waits for this time to push out their best Arcade games for the year. So far this year they have delivered upon that tradition with Bastion and From Dust. Releasing this week is a game I have been excited to play since the first time I saw it back at PAX. Of course I am speaking of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (ITSP), from Gagne International and Fuelcell Games. I could tell from the first trailer this was going to be a big hit and now that I got my hands on it I can confirm that this is a hell of a fucking game.

In ITSP you control a tiny space ship in a side scrolling adventure style game with fantastic puzzle elements and lots of gameplay hours for the completionist. You basically buzz around and engage in combat, solve puzzles and unlock new abilities that will grant you access to new areas that beg you to go back to earlier areas of the game for things like collectibles. The core gameplay is something very simple, but the experience of exploring and finding new things is so addicting that you won’t be able to put the controller down. I found it best to compare this game to Solar Jetman for the original NES. It is essentially the same type of game with enhanced graphics and abilities.

The addition of cooperative play has also been brought into the Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet universe. In the games fun and exciting Lanter Run mode, up to three friends and yourself can play together in a variety of gameplay scenarios. The mode is especially fun if you can communitcate with everyone, so make sure you can find some friends to play with.

The visuals in ITSP are vibrant and play a role in helping you navigate between different areas. The boss battles are particularly good looking and always helped to reinforce the fact that you are controlling a tiny space ship in this huge world. The audio is also extremely good, thanks mostly in part to the soundtrack which was done by the Norwegian black metal band, Dimmu Borgir. The amazing music does a good job of immersing you in this world that begs you to keep playing.

Overall I have to say that Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a must purchase. It is this years Limbo or Shadow Complex. I would look for this to be an early contender for Arcade Game of the Year. If you play this game and don’t enjoy yourself you should seriously check for a pulse. You can purchase ITSP on the Xbox Live games marketplace starting August 3^rd for 1200 msp.

A simulator game that is worth buying? For the first time since German Truck Simulator, a simulator game has come out with distinguished build quality and is actually allot of fun to play. Astragon’s Demolition Company: Gold Edition does that very well indeed. Check out our comprehensive 16 minute video review that will no doubt have you walking down to the local Gamestation and picking up your most unusual game purchase yet!

In a quest to review a seriously bad game, I suffered a bad experience that left me ill. I am not epileptic but this game seriously made me feel like I wanted to heave. I have decided to review it with some dramatisation but the seriousness here is that this game has been allowed to reside on Xbox Indie Games without a decent flashing imagery warning. I suggest two things here. 1) The author provides a game update making it clearly known the game uses lots of flashing images. 2) This game is removed from Xbox Indie Games until such time it passes validation. I was obviously angry with the author of this game and subsequently this video contains the following:

ADULT LANGUAGE AND EXTREME FLASHING IMAGERY!

The latest condenser microphone from Blue. The yeti is tall as a yeti and strong as a yeti too. This beautiful microphone packs one hell of a punch and is great value. Watch our video review below.

By now we all know that the majority of movie tie-in games are mostly laden with crappy over used game mechanics, lack of development time and a distinct lack of imagination which causes gamers to want to blow their brains out that they’ve just spent upwards of £35.00 on a brand new title. Hollywood has already given them the sandbox of possibilities yet the crunch period often ruins the results. High Moon Studios are back again but this time with Dark of the Moon. War for Cybertron was an admirable effort from the development studio but is their latest title?

The game’s basic premise is to go around killing decepticons within various locations of the world. Each level on the single player involves you using a different robot and with that you’ll have different abilities, whether that be grenade launchers, armor piercing rounds, laser projectiles etc etc. The most fun part though is transforming into your disguised machine, this can be anything from a jet aircraft, suped up hot rod car or for those that enjoy simulators a big rig. It’s the transforming element of the game that yields it’s funnest moments, even if the car handling is a little sketchy keeping the driving locked in to the right analogue stick. Bizarrely though it’s in the transformed mode where arguably you are at your most dangerous. The weaponry feels ridiculously powerful considering this is the method you are using to become mobile and agile against enemy fire. It is then that an element of strategy is taken away from the game when one was added from giving us this ability. High Moon should have left the most powerful tech to the auto-bot pose, the mightiest weaponry when you are least mobile, in a risk/reward style play. Unfortunately the only real strategical element you will get from the game on the single player at least is by hiding behind cover to avoid enemy fire. Easy is too easy and medium is actually on the difficult side at times when you factor in some of the random enemy spawning, especially in locked out arena areas. Whilst the game serves up some nice moments it’s all too linear and all too repeatative. It’s quite surprising when you factor in the different robots you get to play with but fighting wave after wave of decipticon for pretty much every level in the game, within locked out areas just becomes rather frustrating and when you throw in respawning after dying several times (due to totally bullshit enemy spawning), it’s enough to drive you crazy.

The game itself is pretty short, though it’ll feel like a lifetime with the repetition going on. Graphically the game is average and the sound passes you by with some poor robot dialogue and just the audiables of the reminicent iconic theme tune from the films filtering through throughout the game. None of the music actually adds to the atmosphere of the experience. If credit is due anywhere it’s with the games multiplayer and the single player FMV’s. These are nicely rendered and engage you enough to keep you playing and was for me the only thing that kept me playing the game past the second hour mark. The boss fights within Transformers aren’t anything special but they serve up a nice inter-change from defeating the decepticons the same way, one mission involved squashing a huge decipticon boss with the foundations of a building, nice.

So that’s the single player, what about the multiplayer? I was quite surprised by the multiplayer if I am honest. The lobbies are very similar to that of COD and the ability to veto certain maps for a movie tie-in game I thought was a nice added gesture. You can customise your character by it’s liveries and weaponry and as you raise up through the ranks, new abilities and upgrades will become available to you. There several robot classes which included the transformer vehicles of rigs, jet aicraft, cars and tanks. This helped spicen the gameplay up and each vehicle you use has an individual rank attached to it. These can be switched each re-spawn should you want too as well. The ability to transform adds a half decent layer of strategy, but kills do not feel satisfying at all. It’s the spongy bullet impact that once again detracts you from fully becoming involved in the multiplayer experience. You are at times left wondering how the hell you died, even though you had a round of bullets in your opponent prior to them actually killing you. The maps themselves are pretty decent, from high rise buildings, to mountain tops, each map will give you the opportunity to cover, perch and stealthily move around undetected. There are only three multiplayer modes but anymore than that and it would be difficult to get a game. Standard DM and TDM applies and Conquest also makes an appearance. I actually liked this multiplayer experience more than Section 8: Prejudice and that deserves some praise.

Overall you could tell that High Moon Studios were pushed for time. There was never any big enough moments in the game to feel like you were really kicking ass and the moments you did spend with over robots in the single player never felt utilised properly. Destroying wave after wave of enemies works for games like Earth Defence Force but in this environment more invention wouldn’t have gone a miss. Especially considering we are looking at a movie license which has unlimited scope to what it could achieve.

Ever wanted to play god with the planetary system? Now you have the chance to do that with Solar 2. Solar 2 is the latest development from Murudai software and the game is not only weird, wacky but also pretty good to play too. Will it grab your attention, not massively but it’s a great time killer and finds a nice place between filling short spaces of time. A mobile version would be very worthwhile!

In what has so far been a very slow Summer in the gaming community there hasn’t been many good games coming out. Techland looks to change that this week with the developers third installment into the Call of Juarez franchise. Call of Juarez: The Cartel looks to break away from the cowboy western style game it had previously been and moving into a modern era Los Angeles. Let’s find out together if Techland can do what it sought out to do and bring some life into a mediocre franchise.

Like in the previous games you don’t have to saddle yourself with one particular character. This time you have three choices each of which is like a caricature of the agency they work for. The female FBI agent is Kim Evans, followed by DEA special agent Eddie Guerra, and last but not least LAPD Senior Homicide Detective Ben McCall. As in the McCall brothers. I’m guessing he is a descendent in some way of the brothers in the original games and the only reminance of what used to be an old west shooter. Playing as each character will give you a different perspective on the overall story and a slightly different ending. But the unforgettable story and underdeveloped characters hardly makes it worth your time.

The basic gist of the story is that there was a bombing somewhere, that of which a Mexican cartel was responsible. So in order to bring down everyone involved an inter-agency task force is assembled. Each member of the team has a spotty record and something or other fucked up going on in there life. Once brought together they begin shaking down gang bangers at the street level and working there way up the drug dealing food chain until they get to the top. You quickly however lose any interest in the story because of things like terrible voice acting and characters that you really don’t care too much about, no matter how hard they try at times.

The best factor of this game is without a doubt the gunplay. Shoot outs are fast and hectic with civilians rushing around to dodge your bullets. Kicking in doors becomes repetitive about mid way through the game and is almost as if you can predict what’s going to happen next. But all the while me and the friend I was playing with had a great time shooting bad guys with our silenced TMP’s that had a really pimp digital forest camo paint job on it. Thanks Gamestop! There are also a few annoying parts where you encounter helicopters, but they are easily enough dispatched if you make good use of cover. Even on the hardest difficulty I found this game to be rather easy when compared to say Call of Duty on Veteran difficulty. It was challenging, but at the same time I never felt like I couldn’t run out like Rambo guns blazing and fuck some shit up.

The multiplayer in The Cartel really surprised me. First you select whether you want to be a cop or criminal. The two game modes are standard team deathmatch and missions. Missions is like a mixed objective mode where you can be blowing up a door one minute and protecting or killing a high valued target the next. There are lots of weapons and other perks you can unlock as you level up on both sides. Overall I found the multiplayer rather enjoyable and fun. My only gripe is the game doesn’t offer a party system. Once in a game you can select a partner and stay with that person, but getting a friend in the same game as you can be like pulling fucking teeth.

When it came to presentation in the previous Juarez games, they weren’t winning any awards. And while that still may be the case there definitely have been improvement. Particularly in the area of lighting. The lighting effects throughout the campaign and multiplayer were very impressive at times. The audio is alright as well, nothing to sing about, but the game does offer a decent soundtrack.

So at the end of the day is Call of Juarez: The Cartel worth your $60? I would say no, but just for now. I would maybe give this one a rent or wait for it to drop in price a bit. I say this because most people aren’t going to play the campaign more than once and the mp while it is good, it doesn’t offer that lasting appeal of games like Battlefield or Call of Duty. But other wise this is what I would call a good weekend game. Some thing you could play through fairly quickly if you rented it and feel satisfied.