WOooo - yet another 1st person shooter. Ok, it’s too easy to be cynical sometimes.

I just tried out the demo for PREY, and it’s actually pretty cool. It stands out from other games of this type by having the novel feature of being able flip gravity about (shoot special switches on walls/floors/ceilings) so making levels quite puzzley, and the ability to walk up walls and ceilings which again add a novel twist to navigating 3D space. You also have quake 3 style portals you can look though, only now you can shoot through em! Check it out for yourself here.

Yahoo games has a very good dload speed, and no annoying login like gamespy related sites.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Yay - got one! A nice new BLACK DS LITE. Wow they are cool, very slick little devices, seem more high-tech than a PSP oddly, neater build quality. Read below for a tale of my non-too-thrilling journey to DS ownership (no photos sadly as my phone refuses to bluetooth to my PC):

It was quite fun getting to the shop I was after, 1 tube / 2 trains and 1 tram ride in all. I’d been to the shop a few years back with El FluffyFist so wasn’t too hard to find, you may have heard of it - Ravengames. They have been around for quite a number of years.

Now before I set off I had to re-confirm my DS reservation by phone, as they seemed to have lost by email order. No matter, they still had DS’s in stock so all was cool. Now I’d tried to get part exchange (P/E) prices out of them for individual items I wanted to bring in, but they could only give a price for a job lot - they couldn’t even give a specific rate of P/E versus sale price (like CEX do).

Well they have been around for years, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and got to the shop about midday. I was greeted by a friendly lady behind the till, who took my games off me into a backroom for someone to test and price up. For exchange I had the following:
Freeloader - GC . Bomberman+DuoArcadeCard+FatalFury2+FinalZone2+AlienCrush+LordsOfThunder - PC ENGINE . ChronoCross+InTheHunt - PS1 . Jackal - JAMMA.
(I had some more but this was all they would take)

After about 10 mins, the total credit in exchange? £39. Not bad, not fantastic. You can’t begrudge them wanting to make a living, it’s just that they are so vague about P/E that it must put a lot of people off doing business with them. What’s more their prices for retro stuff is sky high, between double and quadruple Ebay (my JAMMA board was listed as £35 on their site soon after I returned home). They’d do better to price things a little more reasonably, people into vintage videogames tend to be tech-savvy, and as such will know how to shop about on the web for a deal. Anyway I don’t want to bag them out too much, they seem like nice folks and are great for current gen games and also for converting old consoles to RGB / adding multiregion etc.

After leaving the shop I trammed it back to skanky Croydon for a tasty Thai lunch with an old workmate, then headed homeward. Now, I tend to have bad luck with lcd screens, my first PSP had a honking great black dead pixel in the centre of the screen, even my phone has a couple of duffers. So I opened up my DS box with trepidation, a very neatly packed bundle of DS, PSU, spare pen and some manuals. Unfolded the case carefully and flicked the ‘on’ switch and WOOAAH - goddam that’s bright. And no farked pixels!! Ahh big sigh of relief, all turned out ok in the end.

Still no new games for it yet, still pondering what to go for…

Popularity: 1% [?]

The new DS Lite arrives in the UK this weekend, and I shall be going forth out into the big wide world to try and procure one of the buggers! The old DS was too darn ugly to convince me to part with my money, but the new ‘lite’ is smaller, slicker, and has an improved backlight. The UK will be getting white and black versions initially but I reckon some new colours will come out by next Easter.

So anyway, this Saturday I`ll be hunting in deepest darkest Kent with a bag of old games that I hope I can use in part exchange for a nice new black DS Lite!

I`ll let you know how I got on come the evening, and will try and post some grotty mobile phone photos of our adventures too :)

(now comes the question, what game do I get for it? Mario Kart / Phoenix Wright / Ouedan / Metroid…?)

Popularity: 5% [?]

Do you remember the Alien Breed games on the Amiga? Yes? Well if those were fond memories then I would recommend you check out this game:

http://www.shadowgroundsgame.com/new/

It’s a top down shooter with a very derivative plot (people colonise planet, people go drilling, uh-oh killer aliens unleashed… etc) but that shouldn’t really be a concern as long as the game stands up.

I tried the demo version that you can download for free (via Steam) that offers two of the early levels and one of the later ones. There is a nice progression where you start with just a torch light (that scares the smaller aliens - very neat feature), and slowly progress to pistol, shotgun etc. Weapons are upgraded via the currency of green blobs that some of the aliens drop after death, where you can add secondary fire functions or improve firepower. Levels are big and pretty varied in layout, it will be interesting to see if the final ones go more organic (alien hive) as the ones in the demo are all human facility buildings.

All in all this game is good old fashioned fun, and via the demo you get a great chance to try before you buy!

How much is it? - via Steam US$20 + tax or via play.com £18 and you get it in a box.

ps - I haven’t yet tried the coop mode, but really want to as it sounds like lots of fun (sadly it’s not over LAN, you all need to play on the same PC). And the only negative was that sometimes the graphic for my torchlight corrupted dramatically, which I’m hoping was caused by my drivers being a bit out of date.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Age Rating: 16+ (PEGI)

What is it?
3rd person shooter based on the 2000AD comic strip.

Is it fun?
Yeah

Is it worth the money?
At £25 from play.com, yeah.

Tell me more please:
Aw, ok :)

Rebellion, the company who made this and who also bought 2000AD a few years back, also made the turd of a game otherwise known as Judge Dredd. So my hopes for a decent outing for Rogue and his Biochip buddies seemed bleak.

But hey, having played through the game I have to say it ain’t half bad; not bad at all. On normal mode it’s not too taxing, but definitely fun to play through. Continue Reading

Popularity: 16% [?]

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” —Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

The burning of books is not a good thing. Throughout history groups have sought to manipulate others through such methods of controlling information. But that’s not what is being prompted for discussion, rather:

Is it all right to burn games?
Well ok, not literally burning, but rather destroying games that are otherwise fully intact and working. They may not have been around as long as books, but even in their short existence they have had a serious cultural impact.

And the reason for all this?
To complete an electronics project I need a small casing, and it just so happens that an N64 game cartridge is a very suitable size. I tend to look after my own junk - ahem videogames - too well and don’t have a deceased one.
On Ebay I saw a cartridge going for £1, cool, but hang on it’s a working Zelda. I can’t destroy that game its great, so I’ll look for something else, no broken ones that I can see, erm how about NBA PRO 98? That’ll do nicely…

So comes the dilemma…
Just because I see no inherent worth in NBA PRO 98, I can’t be sure there won’t be others who might. And on top of that I would be helping a limited resource creep further toward extinction. Is it ok to divide games into camps that should be saved and camps that should be erased? Or is it just up to each individual to keep safe those media which are important to themselves alone?

Let’s Get Theoretical! - As Olivia Newton John once never sang.

Popularity: 5% [?]

The original Silent Hill was one scary little game back in the PS1 days. Afterwards Resident evil seemed quite tame by comparison, going for silly jumps and scares along with some occasional OTT giant monsters (and an even more scary targeting system - frustrating). Silent Hill was all sorts of nastiness and nightmares rolled into one, with a fully 3D game world alternating between a relatively calm fogged out ghost town, to a darkened hell version of the same town made up of rusted metal and bloodstains.

It really used to freak out me and my old flatmate, as we played on into the dark quiet night… brr. The audio alone was fantastic, and it was critical to the game - its ablility to create such a powerful atmosphere.

If the new film version couldn’t recreate that same atmosphere, then to me that would be an instant zero score. Did it manage to? Find out below in this mini review: (some small spoilers - beware)
Continue Reading

Popularity: 5% [?]

BEWARE - SMALL SPOILERS - skip the italicised text if you don’t want to know!

Age rating: 12+

What is it?

Adventure, action, but not really enough puzzles.

Is it fun?

Yes, for the most part.

Is it worth the money? £29.99 (from Play.com)

Yes, but the game is a little short (…I am seeing a theme recurring here)

Why?

Now Tomb Raider Legend has been released, the first Tomb Raider game in a long time. I heard Angel of Darkness (the most recent TR title before this) was utter pants, and was even blamed for the poor box office showing of the second film (which was a tad harsh, I wasn’t keen on either of the films) - I never played it though, having mostly given up on the franchise after playing TR3 (too much mucking about with flares for my liking).

I was really keen to see the new game regain the franchise’s former glory, and have just played through the PS2 version. How does it fare then? Continue Reading

Popularity: 16% [?]

Age Rating: 18 (BBFC)

Is it fun?
Once you get past the first few levels.

Is it worth the money? £12.99 from Amazon
Only because it’s cheap now!

Why?

Manhunt? What - isn’t that game a bit old? Yeah, you wouldn’t be wrong. But is it any good?

Well for one thing it isn’t scary. I was expecting some sort of Silent Hill level of jumps and scares, but the game is more comical shlock than edgy terror. The game premise is simple enough; you play a convicted criminal on death row, who at the last minute is pulled from the electric chair and dumped into a kind of ‘Running Man‘ scenario where you must kill your way past gang thugs to gain freedom.

From early pre-release hype I wrongly got the impression that the game involved you trying to record killings like some sort of snuff movie. Well, really all that happens is that when you perform a special kill (think Metal Gear Solid sneaking up from behind but with shards of glass/baseball bats etc.) the in-game camera just shows the kill in close-up.

The gameplay at its core is pretty much lifted from Metal Gear Solid with lots of sneaking about and hiding in shadows - and as such its actually pretty damn good (well not a patch on MGS of course, but not bad all the same). But you need to get past the first 3 or 4 levels (just after the zoo if I remember correctly) to really enjoy the game. The early levels suck both in terms of visuals and design.

A lot of elements let the game down unfortunately: Ropey-looking enemy characters that look lifted from GTA, weak early levels, some awful cutscenes, excessively nasty kill cutscenes that get tedious quickly, some enemy line-of-sight bugs, sometimes a LOT of patience is needed to get through levels, crappy dayglow obvious highlights on item pickups and the final boss encounter is rubbish.

Some good things are: Most of the later levels are good fun (wait till the enemy get torches on their guns!), basic core gameplay is good, it’s a BIG game and it’s so old that it’s cheap now!

In conclusion, it’s a decent game but you have be tolerate a fair amount of duff bits to get to the good stuff. One for the determined only! (I only played through it because it was related to a job interview)

Popularity: 12% [?]

What is it?

1st person shooter - everything explodes!

Is it fun?

Yep

Is it worth the money?

No - too short, combined with no multiplayer, naff story and weak replay incentives.

Tell me more!

I`ll keep this brief. First up, the good stuff:

• Explodeable scenery and destructable cover, great stuff.
• Mostly superb level design.
• It’s a pretty-looking game, lots of blur and bloom effects.
• Lots to shoot (always a good thing in a shoot-em-up).
• Enemies that pretend to act smarter than in most games (circling around you, etc) - and I don’t remember any instances of the enemy doing any really dumb stuff, like ignoring you when only feet away (which they sometimes do in Killzone).
• Good variety of distinct weapons to muck about with.
• Controls are good! You don’t feel like they hinder you like in some console shooters.

Now for the bad: Continue Reading

Popularity: 9% [?]