After sending this game to the United States only for customs and excise to grab hold of it like it was some anthrax package, needless to say this review is somewhat overdue. A game never intended directly to be reviewed by myself but Craig our U.S correspondent. As days crept by I had the distinct notion that the game wasn’t going to show up, so intervention was required – rental!

Alice: Madness Returns is the latest game by Spicy Horse and is a return to the series that has been left pondering whether it would see the light of day again. American McGee’s Alice (the original) only found itself on the PC at the time but the sequel fortunately is multi-platform. If the game deserves credit off the bat, it’s that any new purchase of this game comes with a digital download of the first game and as it stands you can only get this via the code as it is unavailable to buy via Xbox Live or Playstation Network. So already you are getting some bang for your buck. It is this free gift so to speak then that props the score of this game up, because the actual gameplay in Alice is very rudimentary. Fortunately the combat system is smooth and varying use of combat is required to dispose of certain enemies. Long range attacks will be required for airborne enemies and dodge and commit style of attack is required for goblins whom are protected with teapots on their heads. The range of weaponry – whilst sounds inventive are basic platformer based weapons we see time and time again but with just a re-branding of them. You’ll get to smash people with a hobby horse which works in the same way as a sledgehammer, the vorpal blade works much like any sword would. Alice also has access to a timed bomb device and of course a gun which shoots out…well…see for yourselves.

Whilst the combat is fluid and makes up the best part of the game, it’s the generic platforming sections in this game that really makes it difficult to become truly engaged. Throughout the different worlds and theming you encounter you are essentially doing the same thing over and over again, negotiating floating platforms and shooting up vaccums to take yourself higher up a level. The boss encounters are pretty fun but they lack the grandeur seen in some games such as Shadows of the Collosus or God of War. The storyline also felt a little lost on me too. It’s fair to say that Alice: Madness Returns has a story that is about as plausable as Shadows of the Damned except at least Shadows of the Damned actually had a decent level of humour about it. Visually this game ticks pretty much all of the boxes, throughout your progress in the game you’ll be astounded just how many different colour cycles the Unreal engine is pushed through, it’s a beautiful game with a considerable amount of time invested in the character and location design to step along with the odd world that Alice is experiencing. The game does have collectables which gives it some replay value, the ability to shrink alice down to walk over invisible platforms and through keyholes will help you negotiate hidden areas within the game that fortunately are not always remotely obvious. Alice can collect a variety of items but the most important of these items is teeth. Once Alice collects enough teeth she can upgrade her weapon at any time she feels necessary, none of this weight till i reach a shop or vending machine crap. I liked that upgrade ability and it proved to be very helpful as the game came to it’s end as I felt upgrading particular weapons were a strategy of sorts.

Alice is a sluggish romp (the game that is) it doesn’t grip you enough with the storyline to forgive it’s mundane platforming and the enemy variety isn’t frequent enough to really appreciate the combat to it’s core. It is then, a average game with an insanely twist – delve deeper into the rabbit hole if you dare! P.S don’t be fooled by the wonderland exterior, this game is very gruesome at times!

The king of Tennis games is back! Virtua Tennis 4 shoots out of the serve machine with a huge swinging kick! Sega have once again shown the world how to make tennis games right and boy did they do it again this time! With the exception of the rubbish motion controls – Virtua Tennis 4 is back at number one seed!

James Joell-Ireland gives us a review of WSC Real 11 for the Playstation 3 of which the mentioned unique move controls are mentioned too. Can this latest installment put some life back into a flagging series, or does the game once against sit in the realms of mediocrity?

Homefront has been penned by John Milius (Apocalypse Now) and the plot twist and turns most certainly contain the trademarks of his work – sadly with the in-game engine running all of this narrative (an in-game engine that doesn’t really play too well for delivering emotional character renders or has the graphical might to pull this off) it detracts away from really absorbing the story and feeling emotionally pulled by it. It would have been better to have CGI cutscenes between chapters in places to really add that sense of drama. Whilst it doesn’t grab you by your seat there are some moments that play with your heart strings but I’ll spare the detail as we don’t want to ruin it or you. Matching this up with other single player FPS games it would be fair to say that some of its conventional FPS annoyances seep through which can make the whole experience frustrating at times. Enemy spawns are deliberately used to create firefights and increased the longevity of the game and on Normal difficulty expect to get spammed with grenades and die some really cheap deaths – probably a good idea that we never did any live single player video capture for this game as the amount of obsenities that we screamed whilst playing this would be enough to turn a nun blue.

Another problem with the single player is that there really isn’t much scope for altering up how you complete missions. You are ordered to follow your team mates consistently throughout the whole game and whilst this works well for the more stealthy aspects – given the opportunity to lead rather than be lead would have added more strategy to the play. It’s especially annoying when you want to go down a rat tunnel or through a door only having to wait for your team mates to catch up – lazy bastards. With those gripes aside the only other critisism is the graphics. Homefront is not blessed with blissful visuals, the games graphics sits halfway between Hour of Victory and Call of Duty 3. Whilst the graphics are sub par for consoles this far into their development cycle – it goes without saying that some of the residential areas that are created have a spectactular amount of detail, from school playground equipment to a war torn White Castle, they have created an experience as realistic as they could with the engine that they have.

The shooting mechanics in Homefront feel satisfying though the Grenade throwing is ropey with the game struggling to hold the grenade animation at the Gas Station, a minor bug perhaps that never was found in the QA. The games atmosphere is realised with a ever evolving back score and the constant sound of shelling reminds you – you are in a fight much bigger than just the area you are in. Homefront does a nice job of mixing up the action and one of your main attributes will be controlling Golliath which is basically a remote control humvee with a .50cal attached to it – satisfying.

Homefront is a slow starter but past the 1 hour mark it starts to get more interesting, it’s single player is arguably too short but I do feel that really depends on your skill level. The game is probably enjoyed best on Easy difficulty as the game has a habit of using cheap tricks to increase the difficulty level (grenade spamming). It’s a steady FPS with an interesting plot but one which lacks polish and any sense of invention. However, it is the multiplayer that sets this game apart from the rest of the pack. Homefront’s multiplayer gives you everything lacking from Battlefield and Call of Duty: Black Ops and melds it into such a strong experience that it is quite frankly the finest Multiplayer experience we’ve played this generation, but more of that on our Multiplayer review!

Grayson Hunt is a silly old c*nt – his actions have costed lives but his intentions have always been good. Whether Epic games intentially gave Grayson a rather rude cockney ryhming slang equivalent is highly unlikely, but in a way it’s rather fitting. After receiving Graysons own cologne to promote the game along with a set of his bullets and kisses, we were finally reading to kick some serious ass – literally.

When Bulletstorm was in development we couldn’t help think that the single player experience would end up being a tacked on extention without soul, something that given the unique style of gameplay shows can easily be forgiven for stereotyping the game into that bracket – but for those wanting 100% verficiation I am happy to state that the single player has some real meat to it and whilst sets the series up for the inevitable sequel – produces some heart pounding moments and plot twists that will keep even the most ardent gamer interested.

The story as it were is that Grayson Hunt and his Dead Echo team mates were carrying out assassinations of rogue men, criminals and cartels – well this happens to incorrect and the game proceeds with their mother ship being taken down by Grayson in an attempt to avenge General Serrano (the foul mouthed fuck that screwed them all over). There are many twists and turns from this point including the introduction of the third main protagonist Trishka Novak. Trishka’s role in the game becomes more apparent as time goes on, but you first meet her on the fallen planet you are attempting to escape from – as the plot thickens you’ll find out you will have something very important in common even if she thinks you are the biggest scumbag on earth. The second main character is Ishi Sato who is another one of the mercenaries in Dead Echo, he isn’t exactly your best friend either after crashing the ship lands him as a mecha-human hybrid. No more said on the plot as we don’t want to spoil it for you but you get the point – it isn’t glazed over –  it has a depth to it that will turn Bulletstorm into as much as a house hold name as Epic’s other franchise Gears of War.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that this game was made by the developers of Painkiller and there is some very noteworthy features why Bulletstorm is so damn destructive and satisfying to boot. People Can Fly have done an exceptional job with the combat system aand have forged an experience that is fresh in todays oversaturated world of FPS games. Your main combat is controlled by a primary gun – a leash which can grab or throw enemies towards you and your right boot – you can combine all of these three actions into one glorious move set which will reward you with skill points which can be used in the game to buy ammo, new weapons and charges for weapons using the in-game drop kits. Weapons are unlocked nicely throughout the game and keeps the play fresh and with the charge feature added to each of the weapons Bulletstorm has arguably some of the greatest weapons in any FPS to date – no word of a lie. Whether it’s the Flail Gun which wraps explosive flails around aliens heads or the guided bullet Sniper Rifle – you are constantly satisfied by how each kill feels. Even using the leash to throw enemies into cactuses, venus fly traps and sharpened walls gives a ridiculous amount of scope in how you can kill your enemies.

What is most interesting about the single player experience is that you are required to strategise the type of weapons needed to progress within the game, whilst it’s not 100% essential – you will find yourself dying regularly and struggling with certain enemies if the right weapons are not used, you can replace weapons at any drop kit as you can only handle three at once. You’ll come across enemies with toughened armor, ones which are too fast for the leash or even snipers and each Act will feature at least 3-4 mini bosses which will either be equipped with the hydrolic drill or bouncer bomb attachment, killing these bosses requires targeted shots to certain areas of the body, a real challenge under constant fire and other enemies at the same time. There are stages where you are set against the clock resulting in frenetic run and gun segments and also at one point in the game you have to kick your way through Burnouts (super fast enemies with ravenous melee attacks which can only be killed by targetting explosive puss marks on their bodies) because the area is heavily explosive – using your gun will instantly kill you. As an experience it’s totally absorbing but not without a couple of problems;

Firstly the loading times between death and restart are woeful at least on the Playstation 3 version, waiting upwards of 30 seconds after each death makes for a tedious experience at times – other times there are set pieces which require you to kill a set number of enemies before something breaks and whilst it looks like you only need to shoot your area, you in fact have to shoot all of the bugs in the area to prevent yourself from dying. Another area i found particularly annoying was when trying to stop General Serrano’s ship from leaving, I got there in record time but there was no option to jump over a wall, leaving me having to die and do it three more times before it kicked in and worked – frustrating then. In fact I think I must have died somewhere near 100 times in Bulletstorm and it’s partially responsible for why this review is taking so long – other than these nags the game is fantastic.

Another great thing about Bulletstorm is that for a good portion of the game it is very colourful indeed, the planet you crash land on is full of vegetation, colourful buildings and beautiful landscapes. It really is a beautiful game to behold, it does suffer from the odd screen tearing issue at the bottom of the screen but it doesn’t really detract from the experience. The game also features some of the best in-game dialogue in an FPS, even giving king Duke Nukem a run for it’s money with some of it’s adult quips – the best part of the dialogue is the growing character relationship between Grayson Hunt and Trishka Novak – she’s the ultimate independent woman that you do not want to mess with!

So with the single player tantelising your balls like some cheap hooker in the backstreets of Bangkok the game also serves up Multiplayer and Echoes. Echoes takes shortened sequences from the single player game, throws out the dialogue and cut-scenes and uses the world for high scoring pleasure. The more elaborate your kills and variance the higher the score, these all link up with a high score leaderboard system and a with each level completed it unlocks a new set of levels taken from places in the single player campaign. You also get rewarded for completing the level as quick as possible. Echoes adds the longevity to the game and is very addictive very much so like the Mirrors Edge time trials. What about the multiplayer? Well, stay tuned for an individual multiplayer review. Bulletstorm is a great romp and is worth your blood sweat and tears! Also make sure you watch the end credits to the end, there is a nice teaser of what is happening in the second game.

I’ve been a fan of Mixed Martial Arts since late 2007. The first show I saw had a fight stopped by the doctor after an elbow to the head resulted in a nasty cut to the head and the doc could see bone. After that I was hooked. Sure some people saw that its brutal and bloodthirsty, but they miss the technical aspects and psychology involved. This Christmas I received the two newest games based upon the full contact combat sport; EA Sports MMA and GreyDogSoftware’s World Of Mixed Martial Arts 3 (WMMA3). I decided to put them to the test.. 3 rounds based upon Career, Graphics/Gameplay and Replayability with a decision based upon the games as a whole.

In the red corner : EA Sports MMA
First into the ring (so to speak) is EA Sports offering. 2 years in development and following in the wake of the 2 UFC games, EA Sports MMA needs to come out swinging. Pre-release pictures wetted my appetite and early reports sounded good. Featuring big names from the sport and the licence for promotions such as STRIKEFORCE, EA Sports MMA is the big name fighter who even non-fans know about.

In the blue corner : World Of Mixed Martial Arts 3
The World Of Mixed Martial Arts series has been around since 2007 from GreyDogSoftware.com as a digital download. Made by Adam Ryland who previous works include the Total Extreme Wrestling series and Wrestling Spirit (and who’s more than likely influenced THQ’s Smackdown Vs Raw horrible General Manager mode). Low budget in comparison to its challenger, WMMA pitches itself as the more cerebral of the two games.

Round One:– Career
I was originally going to label this round Story, but neither game features a storyline as such. In EA Sports offering, you begin as a rookie at the gym of Bas Rutten; who retired undefeated and champion in two different promotions. Rutten takes you under his wing through your initial training, your opening amateur fights and throughout your progression of better companies to work for. He also takes out of your hands who you will fight and allows you to concentrate on your training (which is a choice of where to train and what to train up). You put together a series of wins, get offered a contendership match and then finally into a title shot. Winning that gets you noticed by a bigger promotion who then snap you up (dropping the belt in the trash on the way out. Your fighter is an ass.. Better get used to it)

WMMA pretty much veers off in the other direction in that you dont play as any of the fighters, but as the owner of the promotion they work for. You begin by picking a pre-generated character (or go into the editor and create your own) and can select from one of the 8 active MMA companies to take control of. Once employed, you are given free reign to attempt to hire any fighter you feel would fit and then schedule an event to begin building some stars. When showtime comes around, the fights are calculated based upon each fighters stats and a play-by-play recount is given to you. You get no direct say in who wins so you have to be careful who you pair up as you could easily see your biggest known star get his arse handed to him leaving you with no-one to main event for you. After the show, you have to manage your rosters demands, contracts and injuries to ensure that your next event can take place.

Round Two:– Graphics/Gameplay
EA Sports MMA graphics and gameplay should really be broken into two parts; Fights and Training. When you have a fight scheduled you have 8 weeks of training time allocated to you. You can pay to head to a renowned gym that specialises in certain aspects (be it Boxing, Jiu Jitsu, or Muay Thai for example) or train at Bas Rutten’s gym which is pretty generalised. You choose a specific area to focus on that puts you into a minigame based upon that attribute (Improving your punching stat using just means performing certain moves and combos within a time limit) You are given a grade based upon how well you did which in turn relates to how much of an improvement the stats are. However once you have completed that training session, you can just simulate it next time for the same results. After a few fights, training usually becomes a case of picking an attribute to improve, hitting simulate and then repeating for the next 7 weeks and you sit there just watching the screen. Come fight night, the graphics massively improve. You are treated to a decent recreation of a bout beginning with the tale of the tape followed by the walk-ins and fighter introductions. Once the bell rings, the fighters move around realistically and the first time the two fighters touched gloves (a sign of respect) i was very impressed. Strikes looked hard and vicious and you could almost wince during the replays. At some points i did feel a little let down by the controls (strikes are handled by the right analog stick and if you can wind up doing the wrong move if you dont get the direction exact) but these were few and far between

As previously stated, WMMA3 does not allow you to see the fights but get a play-by-play report on it instead. Your time is mainly spent watching the news feeds, scouting fighters and preparing events. The game does feature over 1000 fighters each designed by members of GreyDogSoftware’s community but your majority of the time, you will be facing screens of text information. The play-by-play has been carefully produced to avoid any repetition and can be saved as a text file for re-reading. Gameplay wise, the biggest thing WMMA3 has going for it, is its open-endness. You want a no-rules cage fight.. You got it.. You want to slower destroy another company in your area. Do it. Its upto you.

Round Three:– Replayability
Once Career mode had been played to death in EA Sports MMA, where do you go from here. Online that’s where. Upon activation of the Online Pass, you gain access to online fights with rankings and leaderboards as well as a feature i’ve not seen anyone else.. Live Broadcasts.. EA have set up a section where ranked players are approached to fight on a ‘show’ at a specified time. This show is then broadcast online and in-game with real-time commentary over the match. Exactly how long they keep up this feature is another thing entirely.

WMMA3′s replayabilty is all centered in the size of its game world. With 8 active promotions with varying rules and weight classes as well as another 16 companies hidden in the database to open up later on, its easy to try something new. If however you get bored of that, then you can pick up a community made mod featuring real world fighters and companies to allow you a fresh outlet. You can also use the ‘Quick Match’ mode to set up dream bouts and watch the match unfold.

Results:–
Depending on what you want out of an MMA game will depend upon your decision here. If you want to be able to crush an opponent yourself or sit with a headset on taunting somebody you will never see in person, then EA Sports MMA is for you. Career Mode is fairly basic and doesn’t quite live up to the unique experience it promised, especially when you dont get to pick your opponents or defend your belts before you get moved up to a bigger promotion. Online modes have been given a fair bit of polish and seemed to work well throughout testing. Of course not to mention the joy that is Live Broadcast. However, if you prefer a more strategic long term game that features more than just train, train, train, train, fight then WMMA3 could be more your cuppa tea and has more to hold your attention once EA’s online wears thin (or they shut down the servers) Its up to you to choose. Do you wanna be Fedor Emelyanenko (considered the best heavyweight fighter in the world for the last seven years by major publications) or Dana White/Joe Silva (UFC’s President & Match Maker) Its a draw in my book.. Roll on the rematch next year.

We’ve been to the arctic and we’ve been to the desert, now it’s time to arrive at the city. This is no ordinary city. This is an abandoned city (not and M&S city) that has been hit by ravaging earthquake tremors. This sets the tone for the single player hands on that we had. The track had as falling into subways and narrowly missing skyscrapers falling at the foot of us. Sometimes falling buildings would change the path of the race and dust will obscure the view of the road ahead. Motorstorm Apocalypse looks to be the most fun the series has had to date and you know what? It’s in 3D. Gone are the strategic elements of certain car types per race track, it’s all a focus of survival, quick reactions and mental dexterity. Being quick can be the difference between a win and a crash that sets your car back into last place.

Some things don’t change though, the boost system runs exactly the same as before, with the possibility that you could tee-total your car if you rag it too much. It always makes for a tense finish if you are neck and neck at the chequered flag. Motorstorm Apocalypse has really been marketed for the stereoscopic 3D that it supports and from what we played it was highly entertaining. You get a real sense of depth and the cars back end feels really close to you. Flying objects come throttling towards you and out of the screen, whether it cones, pieces of paper of general shrapnel there will be times where you’ll close your eyes thinking it will hit you. It does come at a cost however. Graphically Motorstorm seems to have taken a step back, it’s now wide knowledge that in order to produce Stereoscopic 3D at a decent frame rate it has to be knocked back down to 720p and with that in mind it takes away from what Motorstorm was about originally, harnessing the power of the PS3 and how damn good the graphics were.

Is the cost worth it? If they can sharpen the textures of the objects hurtling towards you, then yes. If they do not sharpen these areas up I’m afraid the game will be too much of a step back graphically for people. The experience is thrilling and Motorstorm Apocalypse most definitely sets to bring more fun to a series known for being more technical and unforgiving and for us that is a good thing. It shows that 3D once fully established is an enriching experience in gaming and don’t forget you can play the game at a higher frame rate and with better definition if you don’t want to play the 3D version, so it’s all good. The game isn’t due to hit the shelves until next year, but when it does it’ll be releasing at a time where it could be ripe pickings for a new racer to be on the scene.

Rather than follow up 2008′s cell shaded game, Ubisoft have decided to revisit the Sands Of Time storyline for its 2010 effort which coincidently is really at the same time as the film. KA-CHING! Can you smell a cash-in.

Forgotten Sands is technically the follow up to 2003′s Sands Of Time being set during the 7 years that bridge the original 2 games and sees the Prince being sent to visit his brother Malik right before the castle is attacked by Maliks enemies. After being initially separated from your kin, you seek to reunite with Malik as Malik himself searches for a hidden weapon in the castle. However in typical Prince Of Persia style, all hell breaks loose and its up to you to sort it all out again

For those that have played the original trilogy, almost everything that you loved about the original series is still in place. The prince can still run over walls, bounce between walls to get higher, slide down curtains and flip over baddies in amazing flourishes. What is new in this series is its ability to allow you to freeze water. This allows you to use it to climb or swing to places you wouldn’t be normally able to however its easy to learn and you will soon learn how to jump from a frozen jet of water, unfreeze a waterfall to pass through before refreezing another jet to carry on your way.

For this iteration, the amount of on screen enemies have been ramped up (not hard as POP2008 gave you 1 at a time) with dozens of enemies all waiting for you to kill them. This allows you to flip, flourish and kill in God Of War style frenzies. Outside of combat, you watch as the camera pans around where you need to go to complete the section and then allows you to attempt it yourself. Once completed, the camera shows you the next section and you do it again. While this is nothing new to the series, it would be nice to be able to attempt it myself without the games cues

Forgotten Sands – like the original trilogy before it – is a very enjoyable romp in familiar territory however doesn’t really bring anything new to the actual mythology of the Sands Of Time and could easily have stood as a standalone product. I do now hope that they leave this storyline alone before they oversaturate it, and take another stab its the 2008 story that they created.

You know, I’m brave enough to admit it. I actually sympathised with the character of Naughty Bear. At some point in everyone’s lives, I think we’ll ended up not been invited to an event when all of your friends did. When this happened to us, most of us probably just went up to our rooms and sulked but not Naughty. Naughty gets even.

Naughty decides that he has had enough of his Teddy Bear friends and decides to wipe them off the face of Perfection Island via any means possible. In terms of the storyline for Naughty Bear. That’s about it, but do you really need anymore. What cutscenes there are, are suitably stylised like a early morning childrens show with none of the bears talking and the narrator talking to Naughty directly.

The game itself is broken down into 7 episodes each with 5 chapters in them.  The first chapter plays out part of the story as Naughty hunts down a particular bear and his friends that upset him and kills them. The remaining chapters allow you to repeat this process but with different rules in place ie Not being seen, Not being hit, or only killing Bears with environmental hazards.  However the storyline and missions are just there to allow you to build up Naughty Points.

Naughty Points are obtained by killing Bears and destroying objects in-game. You receive more points by varying your kill methods or by scaring Bears and the higher your points get, the better medal you receive at the end to progress to the next chapter. Later chapters are unlocked based on amount and type of medals you have.

This is where most of the fun lies in Naughty Bear. I laughed pretty sadistically when I snuck up on a bear who was warming his hands by the fire and pushed him into it. This was followed by his friend getting scared by the noise and coming out to find out what’s happened. He found the body and freaked out. This allowed me to sneak up behind him with a baseball bat, spin him around and beat the stuffing out of him. Points galore. On another occasion, I snuck around a corner and gave one of them a fright causing him to run off scared. He ran into a previously placed bear-trap and was stuck. While trying to pull himself free, I came around behind him and snapped his neck before slipping back into the shadows. It was like Tenchu with Teddy Bears. But as strange as it sounds, killing them isn’t the best method for points. Making them kill them themselves is way naughtier. If you have scared a bear too much, he will end himself in a over the top way. Watching them commit Seppuku rather than put up with the torment can score you massive points. If your connected to the Playstation Network, then the highest online score is put up at the top of the screen to give you an idea of what you need to beat.

This is also where Naughty Bear falls down as a game. With a set number of weapons to use and with a limited number of areas to hunt in, the game gets samey pretty quickly. The extra chapters in each episode don’t really add anything and some can be particually annoying (ie not being hit) All the kills are canned animations which get boring pretty quickly and you can struggle to carry onto the later levels. However until you exhaust all your kill options, the game can remain pretty fun.

Then again, if you love mindless slaughter of innocent Teddy’s then you will have hours of fun.

Spike Games first game has finally been released on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. Of course I am talking about Deadliest Warrior the game based on the hit American television show of the same title. On the television show every week two different warriors from history enter into simulated battle and then at the end of each show the battle is re-enacted. The game features the original eight warriors from season one. You can choose from the Spartan, Viking, Apache, Ninja, Pirate, Knight, Centurion, or Samurai. If you are thinking this doesn’t seem like a lot to choose from don’t worry because Spike has indicated they intend to release more fighters in the form of downloadable content. I myself as well as others I have spoken to are hoping to see the Gladiator, M?ori, Shaolin Monk and maybe some of the modern soldiers featured on the show like the IRA or Spetsnaz.

The game play in Deadliest Warrior is not only fast but absolutely brutal. The single player mode contains an arcade mode where you fight your way through all the games fighters including a mirror of yourself. There is also a practice mode where you can hone your skills and combos. And the last single player mode is challenge mode, which is not unlocked until you have completed arcade mode with every single fighter. In challenge mode there is four game types to choose from. Survival, which is a type of horde mode where you battle against never ending waves of unforgiving fighters. Then there is Slice which is a like a regular match except every hit you land will cause your opponents limbs to go flying. After that there is a hybrid of the two modes called Survival Slice which is fairly self explanatory. Finally there is the pointless Target mini game where you are forced to hack down butchered pig carcasses before a thirty second timer runs out.

On the multiplayer side of things you can choose from either ranked or unranked player matches where you can earn battle rating points which determine your place on the online leaderboards. There is also a Tournament mode that isn’t quite set up the way I had expected with eight people playing and trying to get to the finals. In stead you start off in a first round match and if you are successful you move on to the semi-finals where you fight a random person who has also won a first round match at some other point in time. So basically to win a online tournament you are required to win three matches in a row. There is also a local battle option so when your drinking buddies come over you can put away your decorative samurai swords and battle it out in a much safer way.

The graphics in The Deadliest Warrior are surprisingly quite good and could best be compared to something like Mortal Kombat: Deception. When fighters are decapitated or their limbs are severed it may not look very realistic or behave the way one might expect but it still looks really cool. There are certain inconsistencies in the game though, for example if you are hit with an enemy projectile it will remain sticking out of your body but sometimes it will disappear in the middle of the fight. Also during some of the finishing maneuvers the frame rate can drop and at times specifically during the Spartans finisher when he goes to stab the enemy his sword appears to just graze their shoulder instead of penetrating into the neck.

The sound of the game is terrible and sounds like it was recorded through an Xbox headset microphone. The soundtrack of the game is basically the same three boring tracks repeated over and over again and are quite forgettable. Some of the voices sound very distant and for some reason the knight talks like Darth Vader.

As far as achievements go there are twelve in total adding up to 200 gamerscore. Most of the achievements can be obtained by luck just from playing the arcade mode or with buddies. The most difficult of the achievements would have to be Against All Odds which requires you to defeat 25 warriors in Survival mode and Tournament to Kill could be quite hard if you aren’t that good at the game as this requires you to win a total of ten online tournaments. The game also has two avatar awards. The first is an exact replica of the in game Samurai outfit minus the head piece. This is earned by competing the Arcade mode with any fighter on any difficulty. The other is the mask that goes with the Samurai costume which is earned once you have competed the Arcade mode with every single fighter on Deadliest difficulty.

If you are a fan of the television show or fighting games in general this game should appeal to you. I myself am not a big fan of fighting games but I did enjoy this game. In the end it could have been a little more realistic but for 800 msp or $10 you are getting what you pay for and then some.

Craig Baker

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Ignition Entertainment has revealed  the first  insight  into  the back story, setting and weapons of their upcoming multiplayer-focused first-person-shooter Blacklight: Tango Down, currently in development at Zombie Studios.

Blacklight Tango Down is a fully featured Unreal Engine 3.0-powered game set to release this summer exclusively through Xbox LIVE^® Arcade, PlayStation®Store, and through digital distribution channels on PC, making it one of the most advanced games ever released solely through downloadable channels.

WHAT IS BLACKLIGHT?

Blacklight: Tango Down is set in the near future and revolves around a special operations military group called “Blacklight.” Blacklight is the SECDEF’s (Secretary of Defense’s) personal direct action team comprised entirely of “Tier One Assets.”  These elite soldiers are extraordinary operators recruited from all branches of special operations, including Combat Applications Group (Delta), SF, DEVGRU (SEAL), RANGER, and CIA MSP.  All combatants are hand-selected and trained specifically to be equipped to deal with fast-moving, ambiguous and unstructured situations.  This is the player’s role in the game.

THE WORLD OF BLACKLIGHT: TANGO DOWN

Blacklight: Tango Down’s near-future setting is not that different from our own time and will appear hauntingly familiar to gamers but also distant enough to be surprising and unsettling.  It is a universe that has been overtaken by the exploding speed of technological progress and is left suffering from the unbridled failures that those advances create.

The technological overbuild has created a bleak environment which has transformed once vibrant and familiar cityscapes into dark and endless virtual billboards and danger zones.  An ongoing viral epidemic ravages society and the military’s drive to control and use the virus as a weapon has only created more devastating strains.  Civilians and governments struggle through ongoing unrest.  Order can only be imposed through force and fear.

The military’s attempts to weaponise the virus has lead to what some call “Q-Fever” or SIV (Sentient Insanity Virus) and the people it infects are known as SIVs.  The virus destroys a person’s humanity, transforming them into frightening creatures that are less capable of utilizing tools but are far more aggressive and impervious to pain.

SCIENCE FACT, NOT FICTION

Blacklight: Tango Down is set in a universe that is based in Science Fact, not Science Fiction.  The future combat technologies and weapons featured in the game are based on the bleeding-edge military developments and breakthroughs of today.  Whereas currently, in our real world, these items may exist only in the laboratory or in conceptual designs, in Blacklight: Tango Down, these advanced military tools are deployed mainstream and make up the military reality of the game.

This “science fact” equipment includes exciting new future weapons and support systems, like EMP grenades that disable opponents’ electronic visors, Digi-Grenades that distort the optics of enemies, reactive body armor and widely customizable weapons.  The most iconic piece of Blacklight technology is the “Hyper Reality Visor,” a head piece that uses its own electronic pulse and nearby electro-magnetic fields to render the world in a new way, allowing soldiers to see what is otherwise invisible.

Check out these screenshots, and I must say, it’s looking good for an XBLA/PSN game!

Slashing through my soul since Wednesday…

After a slight issue with actually receiving Dante’s Inferno due to the postal service not being able to fit a CD case sized object through my clearly A4 sized letterbox, I didn’t actually get a chance to play this game fully until Wednesday of this week, I just sat at home with my last two cans of Mountain Dew and played through the Gates of Hell demo that was put onto the Playstation store a few weeks back, hoping I could gauge a good idea of what the game would be like. Unfortunately the demo didn’t really show too much, and so when I finally got a chance to get into the game on that Wednesday night, I really wasn’t expecting half of the stuff that I came across.

The poem, Dante’s Inferno, depicts the nine circles of hell and describes each one with meticulous detail, essentially, this is what this entire game is based upon. You play as Dante, a former crusader who went  to the city of Acre crusading and basically murdering anything that moved (apart from women, because there is a lust circle in this game…) His girlfriend – Beatrice, is taken by Lucifer, and Dante goes after her into hell, in order to save her and be the hero of the day. From the start of the game you can tell Dante as a character won’t be too deep, as your first task is to simply slaughter a whole bunch of people with a pole axe. This sets the task and gameplay style for most of the game, and within the first ten minutes of it, you will have killed nearly sixty people and cut the grim reaper in half with his own scythe AND stolen it from him, Pretty cool eh? Well, the truth is, like this game, hell goes downhill, and if I get this out of the way now, the story is not that great, and the ending is pretty terrible.

A whole new twist on going out with a bang.

So after Dante returns home from a tough day of sewing a cross to his chest, you will be treated to a nice cutscene with a man with a crucifix in his eye and a dead lady with a tit hanging out (for no apparent reason I might add.) This ‘Lady’ is Beatrice, Dante’s lover, who’s soul leaves her body in a dramatic fashion, showing some more boobs and then the enemy – Lucifer, she is taken away by Lucifer and after Dante yells; ‘BEATTRIIIICCCEEEEEEEE’ (you will hear this a lot) the nice looking cutscene goes to the in game graphics, which I will talk about later.

So once Beatrice has been taken, you get to see for the first time the enemies that you will be fighting for six hours or so, the minions of hell, the minions are fairly well designed, but don’t quite stand up to the gluttons that are found a little later in the game. One thing this game doesn’t do too well is first impressions, when that first minion pops out from under the ground, the gravestone being destroyed just looks a little shoddy, however, the show must go on. So whilst messing up some ghouls, you may have noticed the convenient wall of fire that is blocking your path, I don’t have a problem with limiting where your character can go, but when the fire looks this rushed, and is unexplained, (presumably it’s from hell) it definitely needs a mention, most of hell is fire after all.

So after walking into a church and being treated to some more boobs, you will see hell for the first time, the walls of the church crumble away, and there it is, a big red and orange hole that you will be inevitably entering and traversing. After murderising some more minions and getting blood all over the church basement floor, you will instantly get the feeling of being an all powerful can-slash-the-shit-out-of-everything character, reminiscent to Kratos of the God Of War games, and when I first played this section, I giggled with a slightly strange glee, not quite like when I played borderlands for the first time, but close enough to make me cringe at what I had just done. Once the gates have been reached you finally enter Limbo, the first actual section of hell in the game.

Before I go into enemy design and graphics, I would just like to talk about the gameplay. Basically, it’s just a hack and slasher, not dissimilar to God of War, which also has a few rather poor platforming sections in it. The main reason I call these platforming sections poor is mostly due to the camera angles, which are fixed. This means that trying to make a tricky jump with a bad sense of perspective will often go wrong and some aspects of the platforming are just cheap, with sections that will get you killed (fucking ropes) and others making you stop your flowing combo of jumps and swings to pull a lever or push a barrel of some sort. There are a few decent puzzle sections in the game, none of these are too complex and can often be worked out in about five minutes or so. The hack and slash gameplay is the usual button mashing affair and the controls are solid, with your face buttons doing various attacks and jumping, and you L1 and L2 buttons accessing magic attacks and blocking. If you get used to the controls and know what moves you can chain together, you might actually use them properly, instead of smashing x, square and triangle all the time. The combat seems to suffer from an unfortunate repetitiveness, most hack and slash games will consist of the same thing throughout, but it is normally spaced out nicely, generally I found this game quite boring, whether it’s fighting the same wave of enemies just with a different backdrop or the fact that there are only about five types, just with different characteristics about them.

The design in this game is brilliant yet sick at the same time, to think that a person designed the demons and environments is a very odd thought, and when you see enemies such as the gluttons (with mouths for hands and saggy man boobs) it is hard to imagine how they were thought up. This game has pretty much everything to make you feel odd, Tentacles out of vaginas, boobs with dead babies coming out of them,  vagina shaped doors, penis shaped columns, trees with screaming faces on them, people trapped in walls, people being burned-raped-stabbed-impaled-crushed AND spiked, decapitations, rivers of fat, people in boiling blood, giant worms that eat you and creepiest of all, Babies with sword arms. Yes, babies, not quite as scary as Giygas from earthbound, or what I am currently playing, Sweet Home (thanks ironfury, I won’t sleep for a week.) The enemies are incredible, from giant demons with wings and huge swords to minions that suicide bomb you and fat man boob wielding gluttons. The designs for Dante are ok, but for some reason he is topless in his main costume, which in fairness wouldn’t be the best form of protection compared to a condom in the lust circle (sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The boss designs are pretty cool, but not massively memorable, and unfortunately, the Lucifer they went for is generic and quite stereotypical.

The graphics are pretty decent I suppose, however, I mentioned the fire in the start of the review, and throughout the game it is noticeable that the fire looks quite 2d. The walls of people trapped look pretty horrible, and are clearly layered video as they look incredibly flat and there are hardly any 3D effects on them at all, this is a shame, as I think that that extra depth would have made things look a lot better. Character animations are fairly smooth and fighting looks nice and the blood and gore complements it so well, despite being incredibly graphic and over the top. Unfortunately the graphics don’t really hold up to the games out today, which is an awful shame, because I think that with simple improvements they could be very good. The cutscene CGI is very good looking, and if they had used that as the in game graphics (Don’t say it can’t be done, look at uncharted 2) this could have been very nice indeed. There are also some cartoon cutscenes that help break up the storyline of the game, these look nice, but are unfortunately rather short.

The final challenges that are at the end of the game are pretty ridiculous, some will be mega easy and the others might take some time to complete, I like to think I am fairly good at this sort of game, but there was a challenge at the end of this in which you had to kill around 50 enemies without losing your combo, this is a pretty tough challenge, simply because, getting hit will break a combo, stopping button mashing for a second will break a combo and accidentally grabbing enemies will also end a combo. It’s as if the game throws a big ‘Fuck you’ in your face towards the end, what with the story’s ending and these challenge sections let alone the bullshit final boss’ attacks, it just seems odd that essentially there isn’t a reward for going through this.

The game is around six to seven hours in length, and I finished it in about 6 and a half hours, even if you are a trophy whore, there isn’t much reason to come back and play this game through again, as finishing the game on any difficulty will get you a gold trophy, and it isn’t required that you try the game on a higher difficulty to finish the trophy set.

To finish up, Dante’s Inferno is a game that simply could have been better, improvements on the graphics would be a start, but the fact of the matter is, I found the game quite boring, sure it was fun in some parts, but the bullshit ending after all of that frustration just made me sigh rather than saying ‘OH MY GOD, MORE!’ to the(minor spoilers) ‘to be continued…’ at the end. By all means pick this up, but remember, you can always wait for God Of War 3, or get hold of Bayonetta for a cheaper price than this.

-Dean Case

Stunningly beautiful but frustrating!

When it was announced that a puzzle platform title involving a wizard, thief and knight was going to be launched on the PSN, it certainly caught our eye and with good reason too. The PSN is establishing itself for being the downloadable platform for quality titles that think outside the box and though Trine bares references to a number of titles, it’s certainly inventive when it comes to melding it all together.

Look at that leap!

The storyline of the game is very much like a fairytale whereby three different characters all were looking for treasure and you find yourself melded together as switchable characters. The developer Frozenbyte has cleverly introduced the beginning of the game by playing a very short segment of each character to lead to the plot line start. Each character in Trine has its strengths and weaknesses and all have a variety of weapons that can be used throughout the game. I don’t want to give them all away because I want you to discover them and discover them you shall because Trine’s side scrolling world is such a beauty to behold that you simply admire the fantastic textures and rich detail that has gone into play. People say that the world of Pandora is extremely impressive, well you are going to get that same level of mouth dropping with Trine. Whether it be beautifully ruined Aztec’s, rainforests and rainbows or dark dungeons wallowing in a mist of intrigue, the level design is simply exceptional.

That's a huge chunk of wood

The balance of action and puzzle based objectives in Trine is an interesting one. It’s kind of like eating a Trifle whereby all the best bits are at the top and the commonalities are at the bottom and we’ll get on to that, but in balance I would say that there is more action than puzzle elements, especially Level 13 onwards as enemies constantly re-spawn resulting you into combat. As said, each character has special skills and abilities and through collecting green potions that upgrade your XP you’re able to upgrade those abilities or find treasure chests to give you unique properties or additional weapons. The knight predictably is more combat orientated and uses a sword and shield system (you can get other weapons). The thief uses a bow and arrow and has the ability to swing across platforms on a rope like device. The wizard on the other hand has no weapons but instead is used more as a tool to provide planks and boxes which can be drawn, as well as using telekinesis to move objects around the map. Thankfully, if you can find it, he can produce a magical spell based weapon, but you are going to have to find it. The wizard also gets access to another object creating device but, as stated I won’t be drawn into ruining the experience for you, so you’ll have to find out for yourself, but it’s pretty cool!

In terms of puzzle difficulty, there isn’t too much difficulty about it. Puzzle elements are mainly left to try and get hard to obtain experience potions and chests rather than progression through the level. The enemies start to spawn at a prolific pace from Level 8 onwards and slowly become a tiring distraction to deal with due to the lack of actual enemy types. There are only so many skeletons and bats you will kill before they become ridiculously annoying as they re-spawn consistently towards the back end of the game. This frustrated me as I had the impression that Frozenbyte used this constant re-spawn technique to long out the game and make it appear longer than it actually is. Other than that there are no other gripes with this game.

As I mentioned you can collect treasure in the game, which have unique properties for each individual and you can change whom wears these amulet’s and rings as you please. Perhaps the most useful you will find is the ability to swim under water without oxygen, your character will create gills in their neck so they can breathe underwater for however long they wish, a useful tool considering the game starts to focus around water based navigation when it goes underground. As for the environments themselves you’ll contend with water, fire, acid and much more and as stated about the graphics and level design, these all beautifully tie in with each other. In terms of puzzles, they aren’t mentally based, sometimes you’ll need the wizard to draw you a box or move a platform over so the thief can swing from it, or you’ll require your thief to use her fire arrow to create light in a few levels where light is sparse, a nice touch.

Such beautiful environments

Trine has plenty of trophies to be had also, some from the ridiculously difficult and others to just fun based trophies either way it’s the perfect game to be used once completed, to hunt out the other trophies on offer. For those 360 players that are feeling a little gutted right now, I can announce that Atlus are working on an XBLA version, but for now this game resides on the PC and PS3 only. Before I get to mention, the combat is pretty much faultless, the shield and sword based system that the knight uses is a master stroke of simplicity but even though the combat feels great, the enemies don’t and they are a tad cumbersome. In terms of sound the game creates an audible atmosphere which works well in with the environments. Some kudos also needs to go to Frozenbyte for the voice actors. They could easily pass for being in a big budget title like Fable. Overall then Trine is a super piece of entertainment however it needed more different enemies to come up against and perhaps the shift of balance to reside a little more on the puzzle side. Trust me come level 15 you will be totally pissed off with having to kill any bat or skeleton again and in hindsight battling through the last two levels is a chore. Don’t let that put you of though, despite its faults this game is just too beautiful to miss out on. It’s worth every penny.

The first Assassins Creed game is a little bit like marmite, you either love it or you hate it, everything in the game was nicely pulled off, but the needless filler side missions are what brought the entire thing down, and until the PC version was released, these missions and a fairly short story was all there was to do in the game. The second instalment in the series truly is something, with over 200 missions and a vast array of side missions and Tid bits, this is a game that will eat up your life, and most likely drag you away from the mindless and repetitive shooting of Call of Duty.

I can’t really explain the storyline of the game without this review containing massive spoilers, however, I’ll try my best to explain everything without getting too far into the game. The game opens where the first game left of, you playing as a bartender called Desmond who has been captured by Abstergo Labs, a company nothing short of evil and the same taste in architecture as a James Bond villain. Abstergo have a machine called the ‘Animus’ which allows Desmond to go back to his ancestors time periods in order to find things out or learn valuable skills from them. The first game sends you back to the third crusade to play as a master assassin known as Altair, who is disgraced and sent back to being a rookie after a bodge mission in the opening ten minutes of the game, this is where Assassins Creed 2 differs from the first game, the first mission you play as Ezio (our new main character) is literally as a new born baby (no kidding) and we see him progress from a young nobleman into a full blown will-cut-your-head-off-if-you-look-at-him-wrong Assassin, and this journey is accompanied by an incredibly deep, dark and exiting storyline, but not a completely humourless one (for those of you who haven’t already heard about the Mario part, either go look it up or play through to it yourself, I laughed so hard I was almost in tears.)

The missions in the game aren’t as boring and repetitive as its predecessor and there is a much wider range of build up and other optional missions to do, including some amazing Assassins Tomb sections, which are optional, but have an absolutely awesome prize for finishing all of them, these pieces will put your free running skills to the test and occasionally drop you into some incredibly crowded fights. The actual assassination missions in the game are pulled off a lot better than in the original, with many different ways to pull them off and not so much build up, for example, you can literally sprint at your target holding R1 and tap square to take them out, then have a massive fight on your hands afterwards or you can take out all of the resistance stealthily beforehand and then finish your target with the light slash of a poisoned blade afterwards.

The game play is almost identical to the first game, but with improvements on everything, the free running flows much more nicely, the combat is much smoother and requires some skill with timings and anticipating enemies moves, but once you get the hang of the system you can make some great looking action movie style fights. There are a few new mechanics in the combat system, including disarming, which is incredibly useful but requires good timing, and the use of smoke bombs, medicine and various other new weapons. The dual hidden blades can be a godsend when approached by a group of guards who think you are suspicious and are about to attack, as you can take out two of them at once thus lowering their numbers and making the combat easier for you. There are various fun ways to take out enemies, and the classic throwing knives are still in the game, although take a bit more skill to use than they did in the first game. New additions to assassinations include pulling guards of the edge of buildings by stabbing them where it hurts and throwing them behind you, all the way up to dragging guards into the hay carts that are still conveniently placed near high jumps, which brings me onto the next section quite nicely.

The graphics in the game are very good, but it takes some time and a few missions to see the full potential of them. With bustling towns and busy cities up to a peaceful countryside, the game has a huge variation of environments waiting to be found, and with the loading times at a fairly decent amount for the huge areas in the game, you won’t be waiting long to explore your favourite places in the game, nor will you have time to make a cup of tea after every kill like in the first game. Ubisoft Montreal are known for their games such as the Prince of Persia series, and the exploration available in the game is fantastic, with lots of collectables to find and some amazing overhead views of your environment available if you are willing to climb high enough, the game truly delivers with its environments. Character animations are nice, and in contrast to the first game where guards could free run as well as you, they now struggle to get over obstacles, aren’t as fast, and larger enemies don’t even bother to chase you down. Ezio as a character looks awesome, and I am expecting to see a few people cosplaying as him at MCM expo next year, the amount of detail gone into all of the costumes, armour pieces and weapons truly is astounding, however there are sometimes clipping issues with Ezio’s cape and shoulder pieces, as well as shadows in some of the cutscenes, however, if you don’t have an eye for those sort of issues, they are barely noticeable. The games interface and menu system definitely deserves a mention, and is very crisp and smooth, it also gives historical and background information on various aspects of the game, from buildings to prostitution (did you know that the government supported it until the 15^th century? I sure didn’t.) The game can be pretty brutal in some places but the gore isn’t as over the top as say Borderlands, but the legendary ‘Break his legs’ from the first game is something everybody who has played it will remember, despite conveying the true brutality of history.

The game contains several optional puzzles, some of which are quite tricky, when they are all completed a video is unlocked which adds to the dark back-story of the previous captives of Abstergo in the first game, these puzzles are located on various landmarks and if failed can be retried from the menu. The puzzles range in difficulty and some of them took me a long time to figure out, and some I could spot within seconds.

To finish up this review, Assassins Creed 2 was good enough to drag me away from COD and Tekken 6, so is definitely worth a purchase if you are an addict, but on a more serious note, this is one of the best games I have played all year, and for me, it’s up there with Fallout 3 and the Final Fantasy games. Ubisoft have really done a great job on this one, and fortunately I had a chance to play it at Eurogamer Expo earlier in the year, and to give you an idea, the ten or fifteen minutes I played it for there, guaranteed a purchase from me. I’m going to give this one full marks and a thumbs up.

-Dean Case

It’s time to take a quick venture down the infancy of the PS3. Let’s face it there wasn’t a great deal of games around that were particularly great when the game first came out, but one that was quirky and pretty addictive that made use of the Six Axis controller is none other than Super Rub Dub. The premise of the game, is quite simply to collect rubber ducklings and make them all sink down a hole out of the level map, simple but most great games can often be pretty simple.

There are over 60 levels in this game, and thanks to a DLC update there are now 9 different duck characters to unlock, from scuba duck to devil duck. These are all rewarded depending on your online stats and progression of gold/silver/bronze medals. These medals are awarded on your time, but the real addiction to this game is to try and beat the world leaderboard which is updated in an overall stance and a monthly leaderboard.

Unfortunately Super Rub Dub was too old to get some of that Trophy loving, but needless to say it still stands well without prizes to unlock. Without the online leaderboard this game would be difficult to recommend, as it really is the only thing that keeps you coming back after completing the game. For what you pay in ratio to the content that you get, it’s cracking value for money and you even get to be the prey on bonus levels by eating all the ducklings with a robot shark. A nice touch.

There is no denying that Super Rub A Dub is most certainly one of the more original titles out on the PSN, it’s cute, charming and has a soundtrack that is for some odd reason addictive. It’s also very casual gamer friendly, well for the earlier difficulties anyway.

Graphically the game has some very realistic water effects that look impressive to this day and physics in the water are noticed once playing levels start to include tides and borderless edges. It’s great to have the variation an extra obstacles to keep the challenges fresh. Another great way of actually getting decent times is to shake the six-axis to make the ducks jump over objects. It could even be argued that the game can be strategic if you are really aiming to get the awards of being best in the world on certain levels.

Overall Super Rub Dub achieves a pretty addictive game where many Nintendo Wii titles would simply fail, its ridiculously cheap and the content you get will keep you playing for at least 7 odd hours, especially in the later difficulty levels. If you’ve perhaps overlooked this game, we would recommend giving it a blast, you won’t regret it.

We all know that Xbox’s Sky Player has been having issues, but it was recently announced that SCEA will be partnering up with online movie and TV streaming company Netflix sometime next month, there will be no additional charge for current members and the service is $8.99 a month (about £5 at today’s exchange rate.) For the monthly payment you will be able to stream an absolutely thousands of Tv shows, Films and other releases. Jack Tretton CEO and president of SCEA said:

“The PlayStation 3 system has always been about more than just gaming, and it will soon be the only platform in the industry to offer consumers such a variety of convenient options for enjoying movies and TV shows. Whether you want to watch content on Blu-ray disc and DVD, download it from the PlayStation Network’s video delivery service, or stream videos instantly from Netflix, the PS3 system is the only solution that offers it all.”

Whether or not this is a fast and last minute retaliation from Sony towards Microsoft we will have to see when this is released. Another issue would be this currently is only confirmed for the USA, and whether or not we will get this service in the EU or be able to use our American PSN accounts to use the TV service is something that Sony could either do very well with, or make a huge mistake.

For DVD’s and Blu-Ray streaming an “instant streaming Blu-Ray disc” is required, this will apparently be free for Netflix members and “leverages Blu-Ray’s BD-Live technology to access the Internet and activate the Netflix user interface on the PS3 system.” We will just have to wait and see if this can be another selling point for the PS3, or just make the Xbox look better overall.

-Dean Case

Wow, when the opening word for a review is this, it can either be incredibly good, or very bad, in this case, it’s definitely not the latter. However, the first thing I thought when I started up the game was ‘Well this sucks’ but soon my mind had changed and mushroom wars soon became one of my favourite and most addicting games I own.

Mushroom Wars is an RTS, and for those of you who aren’t willing to be opened up to anything other than Call of Duty, I suggest you close this article now. I enjoyed most RTS games that I have played, unfortunately my PC is pretty terrible, so trying to run any of the more modern ones on it would have some bad results to say the least, so when mushroom wars came along, I was pretty happy. First thing I had to do was look the game up, I hadn’t heard of it, seen any trailers, and didn’t even know what genre it was, but the first thing that came to my head when I saw it on the Playstation Store was ‘Fat Princess Rip Off’ well I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t judge this game by its cover. The gameplay is one big domination mission essentially, with no fighting armies like an age of empires game, more like strategic placement of troops in buildings, upgrading, defending and attacking at the right moments to capture all of the enemies buildings, or specific important target, it’s a simple Idea but is pulled of very well, with a quick and easy to use upgrading system that can be used to create satellite towers, turret towers and upgrade the size of your barracks to hold more soldiers and an incredibly easy to use navigation system (which is one thing I was slightly curious about before I got into the game.) The game has a main mission mode which see’s you conquering a map with various objectives, and a skirmish mode, which is essentially a free battle with various setups from one to four teams.

Graphically, Mushroom Wars delivers with a crisp, cartoon style reminiscent of Worms and with bright and good looking colours, stand out fonts, and well designed characters, the game seems like a lot, but the simplicity of the graphics really makes me love this game a lot more, there is no overcrowding on the screen, the scoring system is placed neatly at the bottom in a nice neat line, showing possession, morale, and number of soldiers. Buildings are in predefined positions around the map, so putting them in the wrong places isn’t a risk, and some people may say this deters from the tactics involved, but I completely disagree, as setting up a line of barracks behind a line of turrets is pretty standard, and so Mushroom Wars requires you to be much more tactical about which buildings you convert into which. Teams are clearly coloured so there is no confusion between who is who, and various team styles (mage, aliens, and regular soldiers) have different style turret fire, which is clean and doesn’t clog the screen.

The music in the game is great, and sounds like a mix of Drum and Bass beats with a retro NES feeling and the odd hip hop vibe, audio whilst playing is simple and minimal, with laser blasting noises and sounds coming from the soldiers when you order them around. There are some screaming sounds during the capturing of a building and a nice fire sound effect in the background when a building is nearly captured.

The game is pretty tough towards the later levels and you will definitely have to think about your tactics and how you are going to use your troops, and for me this often involves capturing some turrets, rallying all of my troops in one of them, and then watching all 400 or so of them march across my screen to take down one tiny enemy base which is brilliant, although it doesn’t always work, the AI is good and uses good tactics instead of moving around randomly, and will attempt to do things such as wait around until you send out some troops, then take the base they came from, or, whilst attacking, go to other buildings around the area so that the advance can move nearer the target slowly but surely.

On the whole, the simplistic, clean and clear graphical style of the game really stands out for me, with simple objectives and controls adding to the enjoyment factor, the game caters for your five minute boredom killer to an entire squandered hour, and I can guarantee you will come back for more after you have gotten the hang of everything. For the average PSN price of £7.99 the game also has lots of replayability value in the main campaign and is very impressive on the whole.

10/10

-Dean Case