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.

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!

James Joell-Ireland from wedogames.net brings up the latest and best puzzle game out on Xbox Indie Games. Made by Ishisoft the lone developer behind some great scoring games such as Johnny Platformer’s Biscuit Romp and Saves Xmas. How does the same developer fare in the puzzle arena? Watch the video and find out!

Ever since the dawn of man there have been nerds. And since the dawn of these nerds known typically in its Latin name Nerdus Maximus, required some sort of outlet to allow them to live out their fantasies of trolling around dungeons so as they could slay Goblins, Undead Skeletons, and of course dragons. It was a long hard road for the nerd as it waited year after year until finally on a cool misty morning way back in the year of our lord 1974 the call was answered. Dungeons & Dragons was its name! And while John Travolta was busy looking like a fruit cup on the dance floor, nerds were silently rejoicing in basements and YMCA leisure rooms everywhere.

Now here we are in 2011, D&D is alive and well as ever. In the near four decades since its original conception it has since spawned several revisions in the form of comic books, action figures, cartoons, full length featured films, and last but certainly not least Video Games. Some of the most early renditions landed on some ancient platforms like PLATO, Intellivision, and some very old home computers. Since then it has moved on bringing us games like “Pool of Radiance” for the NES, countless renditions for PC & Mac and now finally D&D receives and HD coat of paint in Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale. Developed by our mates over at Bedlam Game Studios out of Atari, promises to be a dungeon crawling good time.

The game takes place in the Forgotten Realms on the fictional continent of Faerûn in Daggerdale, a region in the Dalelands. Players will enter areas such as the Tower of Void and the Mines of Tethyamar. Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale centers on the desperate struggle to defeat the evil Rezlus and his Zhentarim in their attempt to invade and conquer the Dalelands. Players are charged with the task of restoring order to the Dalelands by unlocking the secrets of the Mines of Tethyamar, defeating the evil within the treacherous Tower of the Void, leading to the final confrontation with Rezlus himself.

The first thing we are going to want to do before setting out on our epic quest is to create a character. All the classic types are here; as you can choose from being a Dwarven Cleric, Human Fighter, Elven Rogue, or the Halfling Wizard. No matter which character you choose you will be able to kit him or her out with a wide assortment of weapons, armors, and clothing to make the character really feel like your own. Starting off I am choosing the Elven Rogue since that is the character I typically play in RPG’s like Dragon Age: Origins which on a side note has many similarities to the gameplay aspect of Daggerdale. But more on that later.

Once you’re done selecting your race/class and abilities, weak though they may be, that will change very soon once you begin leveling up. The actual gameplay is like a perfect marriage of Origins and Diablo. Combat is fluid and fast-paced without being over the top. Lesser enemies can be dispatched with ease and great cunning. As a Rogue I was easily able to switch from melee combat to the use of my short bow so as to keep distance from much more alarmingly sized foes. Overall I would have to say the combat is great. It’s engaging and most importantly fun. There is an noticeable pick up and play quality present here that you don’t see too often in role-playing games.

While this is definitely a hardcore dungeon crawler it didn’t skimp on the RPG elements. Upgrading your character is done via earning xp, which you receive for killing enemies, completing side objectives and handing in quests. With leveling up comes unlockable weapons, armor, and abilities to make your character stronger for the much more difficult enemies that lie ahead. The games flawless inventory system works very well and it is easy to manage. If you are new to these types of games I don’t think you will feel over whelmed with the amount of customizing that takes place.

On the presentation side of things Daggerdale is surprisingly pretty damn good. The environments are beautifully done, however repetitive they may come. But that is expected in a dungeon crawler. The game takes place in a dark place similar to that of the Deep Roads. And while some areas are re used for different missions, I never got tired of going back to loot and pillage more coin and upgrades for my character. The audio is good as well. It creates an atmospheric feeling that reinforces the simple fact that you are in a gigantic fucking cave where voices tend to echo and the constant sound of dripping water is ever present.

If you are feeling lonely and don’t want to tackle this game on your own don’t worry because you are in luck. Daggerdale not only has a split screen option to play with a friend or spouse, but you can also jump online with up to three additional players. You aren’t aloud to repeat any classes in the online though. The game has 4 specific classes/races and you may only select one of each. So if your with a group of dicks fighting over who get to be what, than find a new group of friends mate. The cooperative drop in/out mode is completely seamless. A mate can drop in to assist with a few quests and then pop back over to their game and bring along any goodies they picked up while playing with you.

All in all D&D: Daggerdale is a complete RPG experience with all the dungeon crawling elements the series is known for. The best way to describe this game is if Bioware’s Dragon Age got together with Diablo and had some sort of super baby that retained both parents best qualities, you would wind up with D&D: Daggerdale. And with a campaign that covers four chapters it should take around 12-15 hours to complete the main story, but the life of the game is easily extended if you choose to play through again with different characters. This game really does offer an uncanny amount of gameplay for an Arcade release. I would have been happy paying for a full version of this, so 1200 msp or $15 is great deal. You can pick up Daggerdale now on the PC and Xbox 360. Presumably if Sony ever gets their shit together you could get it on the PS3 too. Cheers and Happy Dungeon Crawling!

Also on a quick side note, Atari has announced that Daggerdale is the first game in a planned trilogy, which is amazing news. I can’t wait to see where the franchise goes next. As of now there hasn’t been a release window given as to when we can expect to see the Daggerdale sequels, but stay tuned to wedogames.net regularly and we will be sure to let you know anything that comes along. J

After nearly eight years in development the time has finally come and we as gamers get to play the 1940’s detective epic that is LA Noire. There aren’t going to be many opportunities for us as gamers to experience a completely new genre of gaming. LA Noire offers this and much more in a familiar style of gameplay. Noire may be an open world game, but it is nothing like its GTA counterpart or last years smash hit Red Dead Redemption.

In LA Noire you play as Cole Phelps, a decorated World War II veteran and a young beat cop on the rise. You begin your journey as a relative noob on the job as you walk the beat playing a uniformed police officer. Things start to change quickly for Cole as he gains notoriety for his ability to put the pieces together from a crime scene and incredible interrogation skills. After solving a couple of murders you get a promotion and a new partner and begin working as a detective within the Los Angeles Police Department.

What LA Noire does different from other Rockstar titles is that it’s much more narrative driven. There is a great story to be told and Team Bondi didn’t want us straying to far off course. So if the elements of GTA like being able to do whatever you want than Noire might not be for you. You don’t go out bowling or playing pool with your cousin Roman and you certainly don’t go around shooting civilians for the fuck of it. But that isn’t to say you can’t do a bit of exploring. The boys over at Team Bondi have done an incredible job recreating 1940’s Los Angeles. You can drive around all 8 square miles of this marvelous city. Playing the game almost makes me wish I was from LA just so I could visit the street I lived on and see what certain areas looked like back in the day.

Other than the main story which should take around 15-20 hours to complete there are 40 side missions which are street crimes. You receive these missions as you drive around the city over your car radio. These can involve anything from bank robberies, suicide jumpers, and a man wearing a pot on his head to block radio waves from seeing his thoughts while beating a gas station attendant to death with a baseball bat. All of the side missions only take but a few minutes to complete, but some of them are rather memorable. You can also go around and find collectibles in the city to extend the life of the game and replaying missions to get a perfect score is important if you plan on getting all the achievements.

Enough really can’t be said about the graphics in this game. The character models faces are stunning. Rockstar has set the bar and over the next few years I would expect nothing less than this type of technology being in every game. There is so much information from the graphics alone that the game spans over 3 discs on the Xbox 360 version while the PS3 is on a single blu ray. I am reviewing the 360 version and I have noticed a few times where the frame rate dipped and some tearing was visible. I have installed all three discs to my hdd and it took up over 20 gigs of space. I can’t speak for the PS3 version as to whether these graphical hiccups are taking place, but hopefully this can be sorted out down the line with a patch.

When it comes to the audio side of things LA Noire comes up aces in all categories. The voice acting is top notch and probably some of the best ever to be featured in a video game. Smooth jazz and other music of the 1940’s fills the air creating a beautiful atmosphere to immerse yourself in. All the cars and weapons also sound great, with one exception. As part of my pre order bonus I received a code for the Chicago Piano Gun which is basically a Thompson with a drum magazine. The first time I pulled it from the trunk of my car and fired it the audio never stopped playing. I reloaded the gun and then threw it on the ground but the audio glitched or something and I repeatedly had to hear the gun firing until I restarted the disc.

Overall I have to say I am really enjoying LA Noire. Rockstar games have been getting better with each title they put out and it’s the same this time around. I do recognize that this game isn’t for everybody, but if you ever wanted to be “that guy” who solves murders and gets the bad guy at the end of the day than LA Noire is for you. I for one love watching police dramas like Law and Order or CSI, so far me this game is right up my alley. You can pick up LA Noire now for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in America. If you live in the UK or anywhere else in Europe you will have to wait until Friday the 20^th to get your hands on this goodness.

James takes us on a trip down memory lane, or does he? WWE: All Stars feels very reminicent of the classic Nintendo 64 game No Mercy and there is nothing wrong with that! Join WDG as we venture down the over the top and adrenaline fueled road of wrestling as it should be – totally unrealistic! Catch the video review below!

Telltale Games are back with another Lego: Star Wars game, but will the game be any good? Is the system tired and exhausted or does this stalwart series have much more to offer. James Ireland gives us the low down on the Xbox 360 version in this video review.

So – you’ll have the standard TDM which is in any FPS, due to the variety and craft in the map designs this game mode actually feels as though you can run strategic battle plans with it. The highlight is Ground War, there asre three zones of which you must control and the longer you stay in control the more points you gain. Once you hit certain points target the game will end. It’s ground war where the team play really comes into effect, whether it’s splitting up forces to attack certain zones, checking your team mates inventory to see what they can spawn or even having one of your guys dedicated as recon flying around in an AR-Drone. These game modes run at 24 and 32 player match equivalents though there is a skirmish mode which cycles through TDM and Ground Control on a much smaller level of players. As I write this Kaos Studios I don’t believe were quite prepared for how many units they have sold for this game so they are bringing in mode dedicated servers to the fold to keep up with the demand. Yes, I said dedicated servers – that means less lag and more frag baby! The third game mode is Battle Commander. It takes the TDM and Ground War modes and throws in an AI-controlled commander that will set up special missions and place bounties on players during a multiplayer match. This feels paticularly satisfying when vying for killing a bounty target and for doing so you are rewarded with Battle Points accordingly.

Battle Points are the equivalent of XP however there is a major difference. Levelling up ranks are tied to killstreaks and match wins. Battle Points are tied specifically for completing kills, assists and completing objectives and can only be spent in the current match. These points do not carry over to the next match but can be used in the same match to buy certain weapons you have unlocked in the game. There are two slots where you can live purchase additional equipment for battle and then you obviously have access to the Armory too. There is usually a power weapon and something smaller like a UAV plane or RPG. The power slots can be airstrikes, helicopter drones or tank drones and depending on how much BP you have on the respawn you can also buy vehicles to spawn in (or spawn in other peoples vehicles) to start the new battle engagement in. So you can imagine the sheer wealth of gameplay opportunity is on offer.

Just switching back to the Battle Commander game mode variation again, Battle Commander is a consistently changing game mode. Players can use kill streaks to earn ability boosts and gain an advantage in battle. When facing an opponent who is on a streak of his or her own, players can earn Battle Points by hunting down those players and ending their streak. Players in Battle Commander missions always start at a base level of 1-star. Once a player gets closer to becoming a 5-star, the A.I commander will assign more of human players HUD to go after the player on the streak to end it once and for all. Remember, there are perks for gaining these stars so it’s pretty addictive trying to get to the 5 star level. For instance at 5 stars Wallhack is available.

If you happen to want to system link this game you can play up to 16-players on the system link. Levelling up on Homefront stars off fast initially, ranking up to level 5 can sometimes take less than an hour and that’s probably because of the THQ pass requiring people to enter the battle code to rank up furter (an attempt at counter-acting pre-owned game sales). As you progress from around Level 9 onwards the ranking up system slows down to keep you addicted. Something that Black Ops perhaps overlooked was that you could prestige rather quickly. As an experience Homefront is one of the best I have ever played on this generation of consoles, it blows both Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty’s: Black Ops out of the water and that’s even without matching up to either game graphically. Admittedly there are less customisation options in Homefront that Black Ops gives but Black Ops cannot offer the same level of team work experience so it doesn’t really fall into the equation.

You still are able to unlock camo for your guns and the weaponry on offer is pretty varied, a good amount of machine guns, SMG’s, snipers and explosive weapons are available – not to mention the copius amount of vehicles, drones and unmanned devices which can be used to decimate your opponent. All of a sudden an RC-XD seems rather boring. It’s the maps that really shine for me, each map is extremely different from the other, the variety in landform, building structure and access to Ground War locations creates for a real visceral experience which requires planning and teamwork if you are ever going to win consistently. Maps range from country barns, a decimated town, a cliff top area with two high rise points and an section of abandoned highway which has been torn with bombs just to name a few. As we write this we’re already in contact with KAOS for birds-eye view shots of the maps so we can start doing some strategy coverage for this game.

The game keeps a handy tab of your challenges and also ranks you upon your global leaderboard and the lobby system is easy to use and connect to enabling you to go with your party from game to game without issue. Graphically the game is one the weakest points, whilst not bad they do not match the visual polish of many other FPS games out there but as stated earlier what it lacks in polish is made up for it’s engaging form of combat. Homefront’s multiplayer will blow your bollocks off, it is that good! We really hope that KAOS make some affordable MAP packs to keep the game fresh throughout it’s lifecycle and hopefully we may see one more additional game mode, which is something along with the graphics that prevented this game from getting a perfect 10. Worried about spawn campers? They also will have it coming to them, idlers also get kicked! Get your frag fingers ready!

When Electronic Arts acquired Criterion several years ago, one thing that always rattled my brain was why they never utilised them to re-invigorate the Need for Speed license and raise their games from mediocrity to the truly exceptional. For me, Burnout Paradise taking the free roam avenue wasn’t the best move forward but keeping a structured affair with multiple routes the best form of practice. Well, it appears that Criterion finally got their chance as the NFS series once again took a polar shift from realistic to arcade one fell swoop. Firstly though let me iterate that when I say Arcade I do not mean to the lengths of Outrun or Sega Rally. Hot Pursuit still has plenty of simulated depth in terms of how cars handle from each other, but without the petrol head spectacles and a Haynes manual between your eye balls. Needless to say if you prefer spending your racing hours tinkering with your suspension than actually having fun then this game isn’t for you.

Need for Speed has the DNA of Burnout Revenge coupled with some of the handling and similarities of Undercover. Its single player progression bares a lot of similarities to Burnout along with the almost identical looking world map that was featured in Burnout 3: Takedown. The unique twist for this re-invention of the memorable Playstation One title is the fact that you can progress through the game playing the law and against it. The experiences are both enjoyable as you use an array of realistic weaponry to outrun or destroy your opponents. Playing as the Police doesn’t mean you get stuck with any rusty rides either. In order to compete with the racing scene in Seacrest County the Police are also equipped with some of the worlds most powerful machines known to man. Hurtling down the variety of landscapes in rare beauties from Maserati and Aston Martin is an experience to behold. The events range from winning races, winning races and outrunning the police at the same time, time trials and take down events which either take place in a group of cars or on a 1vs1 basis. Progress through the game with good results and you’ll unlock a car almost every single race.

The unlock system is very similar to what we already know with previous Criterion games. If you complete events under a certain time band, position and takedowns you’ll get classed into rankings. Better rankings equals a bigger wanted level or respect level within the police force. For completionists it opens up a scope to play the game for longer. The environments are vast and switch between day and night scenarios and these are beautifully represented. One race you are racing up in the mountain peaks on wet asphalt (looks amazing) and the next you’ll be out in the arid desert as dust clouds sweep up in the pack in front of you. It’s a visual experience that never bores. Even the look of the Police car sirens lighting up tunnels are one of the many jaw dropping moments in the game. Needless to say that the crashes are represented in slow-motion jizz-building-magma satisfying kind of way, well you wouldn’t expect anything less from the studio that pull off fender benders with such ferocity?

It’s the weaponry that makes the game work so well, if you are with the Police you’ll get access to spike traps, EMP’s, road blocks and a chopper which will push ahead of the pack and lay down spikes against your racing opponents. With the street racers you’ll get the EMP’s and spikes but also a turbo boost and system jamming equipment. The system jamming equipment doesn’t really have too much of an effect in single-player other than rescuing you from being shot with an EMP but online it is a totally new ball game. Before I brush onto the multiplayer components (which are essentially the same as Single Player but against human opponents) I wanted to talk about Auto-Log. Auto-Log really steps the videogame into the social networking generation. Everything you do with the game online will be represented. Auto-log is the equivalent of an online Facebook just without the embarrassing photos and the ability of being FRAPED. You can upload images to your wall, send challenges to your friends and also receive recommended challenges on the basis of how your friends are competing in the single player and online components of the game. It’s recommendations and utilisation of the social media aspect are nothing short of Zuckerberg genius. The games photo mode serves a real purpose as you can show off all your collection on your wall.

Now for the games real highlight, online. You can play straight out 8 player races, or work co-operatively 4vs4 Police Vs Racers action or play Interceptor. Interceptor is the mark of genius. There are no finish lines, just 1vs1 Police vs Racer action. You have to either destroy your opponent or outrun them and because you are not restricted to where you can go it offers strategy within a racing game unlike any other. When I played online I had to make sure I drafted little behind my opponents to avoid getting hit with spikes, count what weapons my opponent has already used and then when I had to be on the other side of the law my plan of action grew even more intricate. When playing a random BNP sympathiser (BNP was on his PSN ID, sad bastard) I gunned my Zonda down a bearing straight and switched on my system jammer. Not only does the jamming device take out your ability to use weaponry, it also takes out the HUD. This means that your opponent cannot see you on the race map. So with hindsight I used the jamming device to park into one of the shortcuts, let my opponent zoom past me so I could reverse and start turbo boosting down the opposite way to outrun the BNP Cop! This moment was perhaps one of my best and memorable in online gaming, outdoing the wow factor of when I heard voices in my ear on Test Drive Unlimited. What I am trying to say here is that finally, Need for Speed is a game that has real online substance and quite frankly is the best game I have played online all year!

If I was to be critical with the game anywhere, it would be that when unlocking the core amount of cars is extremely easy – that and the achievements and trophies for this game could have used a little more invention. Other than that online play is lag free and the single player is a nice romp that can be enjoyed in long sessions. Forget Gran Turismo 5, forget Split/Second heck even forget Blur. 2010’s best racing game is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

As a part of celebrating our 1000th YouTube subscriber we decided to delve deep into the belly of the bargain bins and review one of the worst games that the Xbox 360 has to offer. Hilarity ensued.

My immediate actions were ‘Sega what the hell have you done!’ in fact I felt so emotional about it I made a YouTube video on my personal channel venting my rage at what Sega have done. ‘They’ve managed to completely balls it up’ I said. There are a few problems with Sonic 4 but once you start playing the game and learning the fact that you can’t adopt the same mindset and techniques that you used when playing the game growing it up, it becomes an all together more enjoyable experience. In Sonic 4: Episode 1 you get four zones to play with. Now, firstly you have to question four zones for 1200 Microsoft Points. It seems pretty steep, by the time you own all of the episodes you are pretty much shelling out for a fully fledged retail title and I can imagine it’ll offput some of you whom have also played the trial and didn’t get on with it. With this in mind I’m hitting indecision, I do genuinely believe this game would have been fairer priced at 1000 Microsoft Points, that would have been a fair playing field. So with that out of the way, lets talk briefly about the games problems that sent me into an intial video rant.

Some had problem with the fact that Sonic has taken on his more modern look, I couldn’t care either way, I prefer his old look but its not a game breaker. What annoyed me was the fact that Dimps & Sonic Team included auto-targetting of enemies, springs and destructables. To me it originally looked as though they were dumbing the game down, when you actually sit down with the game in length and play past the trial period you’ll realise it’s actually utilised in a very clever way, chaining enemy kills to cross large chasms being a notable factor. My second gribe was the lack of inertia and the fact that Sonic will come out of a spindash very soon after starting one. This becomes less of an issue so long as you are holding in the direction you wish to go in when you perform this move. If you play it like the old Sonics natuarally you’ll be pissed off because it doesn’t work the way you remembered it. Once you take on board these issues, the game actually opens up to be very enjoyable indeed. Firstly, the graphics are beautiful. I would recommend taking advantage of the HD makeover and picking this one up on 360 or PS3 if you have the benefit of being multiplatform. Secondly it’s the set pieces I absolutely love. The second level on Casino Zone is a real treat. Sonic will fly through levels activating cards that can be turned into more rings or extra lives and he’ll also travel on a crest wave of cards to a near area within the stage, it feels seemless, it feels slick and it feels just great.

Enemies this year are a bitch, there are some re-imagining of the classic enemies such as crabs and sticklebacks but its the chameleons and bats that make you say ‘For Fuck Sake’ as rings burst around you. In some cases it is very much a case of trial and error as the first run through you have no idea where these enemies are positioned. That can be frustrating and so can be the giant chasms you face at times, you’ll have to use enemy kill chaining to cross these large gaps and sometimes the auto-targetting can feels as if the lock on isn’t available long enough to make it happen. However, Sega have been very clever and made well over 100 rings available on each stage. 100 rings equals 1 extra life, so before you know it you will rack up tonnes of extra lives and you’ll lose plenty of them at some stages also. You’ll lose plenty of lives figuring out the end stage bosses. As an aside Casino Zone – Stage 2 is now my favourite level in any Sonic game I have played, a testament then!

It’s the bosses in Sonic 4 that have really gone on leaps and bounds from the original game. Dr. Robotnik will pound, slam, fire, flip and wreak all kinds of havoc on you from the outset. The end level bosses are miles ahead from previous Sonic encounters with him and you’ll have to learn his attacking methods in order to have any success. The auto-targetting does not make life any easier either, it’s used extremely well. The four zones that you do come across in Sonic 4 all have a flavour about them of Nostalgia. I hope the next few episodes create brand new worlds but the re-imagining of the stages that are available are on the whole very good. The game really picks up from Casino Zone onwards and perhaps Sega should have showed us a level from this zone in the trial, as it would have won more people over. The same access to the emeralds apply with a minimum 50 ring contribution required before collection and ironically the opening stage seems to be one of the harder Emeralds to collect. One thing that Sonic 4 really does have ahead of the previous games in its legacy is the fact that you can go back and replay these stages and grab the emerlads, you do not need to restart the game to do this. Phew!

Finally to round off the game there are attack and score leaderboards that connect with people worldwide. I have no hope of ever coming close to being up on these tables so i’ll be giving them a miss personally but I can imagine them being a great addition. Overall my reservations about Sonic 4 have been completely destroyed. My initial video made Sega very reluctant in sending us review material for this, so if anything please trust in my words that this is a very good game. My own coin was invested to bring this review to you. The game is slightly overpriced but if you are a massive fan I am sure you’ll find it is very worthwhile the investment. No stupid sidekick characters to annoy you either. Well done Sega, you have turned a very skeptical and critical reviewer into writing something positive about your latest work!

Since the announcement that Crytek would be working on the sequel for their highly regarded Crysis series I couldn’t help but punch the air. Even more so when I found that it was to be multi-platform. There was something about that futuristic shooter that looked so sublime, the destruction physics and then the benchmark of what it achieved graphically really topped it off.

To find its way on the Xbox 360 would be an interesting affair, for it is the Xbox 360 version we tested. You are put right into the middle of a war torn city, most of the power is cut and enemies are perching in multi-storeys ready to pick you off. The game visually meets that of Killzone 2 or at least it appeared to and the iron sights and the feel of the gun feel spectacularly similar too. As I tried to navigate the particularly difficult marker map on the HUD I eventually found my way to a cut-scene of a sky scraper falling down to the ground. Within an instant the game threw connotations to the dust and debris kicked up from the implosion of the WTC building as you were engulfed in a brown fog with zero visibility. As the dust settled you found your way towards a bridge and more enemies were waiting to take you down.

The enemy A.I isn’t great, I often found them squatting in the same spaces never moving once they had been found by my sights. So the intelligence most certainly requires some improvement before I can really recommend this title. As mentioned earlier the HUD is an issue. You’ll find that some of the objectives take place on multi-storey buildings. Unfortunately the HUD navigation never makes it truly clear whether your marker is above or below. I know it is early days for Crysis 2 but it has a real long way to go to be reaching the heights of quality. The biggest issue we found was the frame rate, during clustered sequences sometimes it would slow down to less than ten frames per-second resulting in a tense battle brought to its knees by the engine suffering to keep up with the action.

Crysis also suffers from texture loss. When approaching the bridge it disappeared below me, the game in places is just buggy as hell. The good thing is that the shooting feels good and when the frame rate is running fine the fire, particle and lighting effects are really impressive. However I do feel that EA would have been better off not allowing this code to be playable at Eurogamer as it could result in more negative publicity than good. If it can get all these bugs fixed by crunch it could quite easily be the best looking game the Xbox 360 has ever had.

IMPRESSIONS BASED ON CODE PLAYED AT THE EUROGAMER EXPO WHICH TOOK PLACE BETWEEN; 1^ST-3^RD OCTOBER 2010. THE EUROGAMER EXPO IS THE UK’S LARGEST VIDEO GAME CONSUMER EXPO.

I’ve already written this once; those of you out on Twitter will know that for some incomprehensible reason I left my laptop on the Greyhound bus back from London. Had all of the previews written and ready to throw online, get home and the disaster struck. So I will try my best to retain the same enthusiasm writing this all over again. Finally I can actually concentrate now that the chav music has died down here. Phew! So, after queuing an hour and having to stand up through possibly one of the worst people rotation systems (5 units, 5 people, 4 rounds at 5 minutes a round) I finally got a chance to play one of the additional multiplayer modes on the forthcoming Gears of War 3. As I write this the game has been delayed for a further five months. Surprised? Not at all, when we were queuing up the game actually crashed, so it is little surprise to find that the game is to be delayed before release.

First thing you’ll notice about GOW3 is that even at this early stage, the graphics are slightly better than the second. In this map we had broken down citadel buildings, grass vegetation and multiple paths leading into some inside spaces. This led to a real varied type of game and a map that was surprisingly easy to learn. Why would you put olive oil on baked beans? Am I seeing this for real? Sorry, I couldn’t help but get distracted by Nigella Lawson. Anyway, what is beast mode I hear you ask? It’s basically Horde reversal. Instead of playing as the COG infantry, you are instead one of the Locust Horde trying to wreak havoc on the humans. This leads to some very interesting gameplay styles, which offer wide strategy more so than Horde itself. You can be anything from an exploding ticker, gretch, beserker to name a few as well as the different locust classes available throughout the Gears franchise. You can even be a massive long centipede which shoots electric out of its tentacles. With the exploding Ticker you are fast, well hidden, weak but lethal. Planning a route carefully and exploding at your opponents feet has to be one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve played online in a long time. Especially if you are in the radius of several people, you can easily kill two people at anytime!

Playing as a Beserker is a completely different ball game, you have a charge attack and your peripheral vision looks almost like you’ve had one too many shots of whisky. Your biggest threat is the Torque bow, tracer fire is the least of your worries. If you can get close enough to an opponent, it’s pretty much game over for them. I’m not so sure the slow paced meandering of the Beserker is such an entertaining experience though. There are much better characters on offer to make the experience more entertaining. Gears doesn’t appeal to everyone in terms of multiplayer, but throw in your usual co-op story, horde and beast mode and you’ll give those that hate fighting in two’s something to come back to after the single player has finished. It’ll be promising, so long as they can work all of the bugs out.

THE FOLLOWING GAME WAS TESTED AT EUROGAMER EXPO BETWEEN OCTOBER 1^ST-3^RD 2010. EUROGAMER EXPO IS A LARGE CONSUMER EVENT HELD AT EARLS COURT IN LONDON. IT WAS THIS BUILD OF WHICH I FORMED MY IMPRESSIONS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following in the footsteps of other youtube mash ups featuring Modern Warfare 2 such as the pairings with Twilight and Halo. Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid teams up with Infinity Ward’s Ghost to battle the evil Activistsun empire in this parody video by Beatdownboogie called “Modern War Gear Solid”.

Today Remedy Games have released the first DLC for Alan Wake. The Signal is a epilogue to the main story of the 2010 hit game. The add-on starts off like every other episode of Alan Wake by showing us what previously happened, ending with the famous quote “It’s not a lake. It’s an ocean!” And it is as we soon discover just how deep and creepy this ocean gets.

The Signal has been priced at 560 msp or roughly $7 US. But not to worry if you purchased the game new you should have your insert that provides a redeemable code to download the content free of charge. If by some chance you were one of the knuckle heads who tried to redeem this DLC before it was released not to worry Microsoft is working on the issue and will soon be e mailing all afflicted gamers new DLC codes to replace their now useless ones.

Car-nado

If you enjoyed the main story of Alan Wake there is no doubt you will enjoy this add on. Plus its free so get it anyway. The first thing I noticed when playing was that the enemies are much tougher, smarter, and there are a lot more of them. In some areas they even seem to infinitely respawn no matter what you do. This makes it extremely difficult to look for the always annoying collectibles. There are two new forms of the collectible, six cardboard cut outs and ten alarm clocks. Both have achievements to go with the collecting of them.

The DLC ran about two hours long for me on normal. This should be pretty standard for most players I think as I have beaten the game on nightmare mode and still had a bit of difficulty with this on normal. During these two hours there a lot of different scenery changes going from a town to the woods and also spending lots of time outside as well as in. One example of one of the more terrifying sequences take place in a basement that can be described as nothing short of Freddy Krueger’s boiler room. With exploding furnaces abound and unrelenting enemies attacking from all directions.

There are eight new achievements for the Signal. The achievements add up to 250 gamerscore bringing Alan Wake’s overall achievable score up to 1250 which I will get because believe me I will go back and get that last fucking coffee thermos! The most difficult new achievement has to be Run-On Sentence which for 50 gamerscore requires you to complete the episode without reloading the game or restarting a checkpoint. So basically you have to do the whole thing in one sitting without dying. Going to be a tough one fore sure.

If you haven’t started downloading this amazing add on already what are you waiting for its probably free for you and if not it is definitely worth the 560 msp. Pick it up now exclusively on Xbox Live.

A recent blog update over at Kotaku has suggested that a new Xbox Dashboard upate is pending. Whether or not this dashboard will be mounted with a banhammer for modded consoles remains a mystery, but what we do know is that Microsoft are planning to introduce a few new features regarding child safety and a family Xbox Live account. One of my biggest gripes with Xbox Live is the fact that you can’t just have one Live account for the whole family. You’ve had to pay a single subscription per person, and that my friends is complete bullshit! Microsoft are introducing a family subscription, but don’t jump for joy, it comes at a premium. Rather than giving added value and tying it in to a set number of local profiles, you’ll have to pay a whole lot more to play online. Is it worth it? Not really.

Fortunately allot of game developers have allowed Live Guest which enables people to jump in as a guest on your live account to play online. Such bastions of these features include Halo 3, Gears of War and FIFA to name just a few.

With increased parental features (see picture) such as the ability to dictate a Microsoft Points balance, whether they can play online, have an online status and be given the ability to purchase DLC at all is a very nice addition from Microsoft. It gives peace of mind to those whom have their credit cards stored on file. As for the Dashboard update in itself, it’s nothing majorly drastic, but it sprucens everything up a little and gives it a visual lift. The predicted date for this update hits around the usual November time of the year.

As you can see, the typography has changed a little bit and it could be argued that a new default background will be used also. These changes may fail to excite allot of people, but what with the wealth of options already available on the system, would Microsoft really have space to bulk it up more, without jeapordising existing DLC sales and making navigation confusing for the user?

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you as always.