121 public written reviews
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Alan Wake’s American Nightmare started off development as an action-focused aside for the Alan Wake series. While its wave-based survival mode is still a part of the package, Remedy fortunately came to their senses and realised fans were clamouring for more story, character and atmosphere for the darkness-battling writer. It might not be a full-on sequel but American Nightmare weaves an interesting tale, shedding…
After taking a break from the franchise to avoid the dreaded annual fatigue, UFC Undisputed is back and ready to step into the Octagon for its hard-hitting third instalment. With the superb EA MMA comfortably filling the gap in its absence, Undisputed has returned to reclaim its crown, adding meaningful improvements to multiple areas that elevate its already solid rendition of the brutal sport of Mixed Martial Arts.…
The minds behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning are certainly cultured in the world of fantasy RPGs. Ken Rolston brings his pedigree (and some Bethesda alumni with it) having worked on both The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and its successor, Oblivion ; while accomplished fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore breathes life into the world of Amalur, creating a 10,000 year history for the developers at Big Huge Games to pull from.…
Assassins Creed: Brotherhood was a genuine surprise last year, dismissing worries over its short development cycle by building on the solid foundations set by its excellent predecessor and providing another fantastic entry in Ubisoft’s stalwart, parkour-loving franchise. Its quality and success set a precedent for the series, so it’s no surprise to find us a year older with Assassins Creed: Revelations landing at…
You remember that trailer, right? The one that told the harrowing story of a small family torn apart by a fleshthirsty zombie infestation. The one with the slick editing, beautiful music, memorable imagery and emotional resonance we so rarely see in video games. The one that took the internet by storm and re-introduced us all to Dead Island; the zombie game that might just pull at the heartstrings, offering more…
Driver is back After the abysmal and controversial Driver 3 , Ubisoft Reflections’ high-speed Driver series took a drastic fall from the gaming limelight. Its stylish world of brutish muscle cars, Bullitt inspired car chases and emphasis on unadulterated 70s style driving went from being a jewel of the PlayStation era to a distant, forgettable, and often painful memory. Driver 3 dragged the once-popular series…
CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher was an ambitious game. It was hindered somewhat by its fair share of glitches and performance issues - relating to both hardware and abysmal voice work and English translation – but more than anything it showcased the Polish developer’s love for Andrzej Sapkowski’s source material, and their aptitude to not rest on their laurels. Almost a year after its original release in 2007, The…
A few years ago Duke Nukem Forever was dead. Sent to the doldrums of many a cancelled game, destined to never see the light of day. And yet here we are; the year is 2011 and Duke Nukem Forever is actually a finished game – a physical item you can sit down and play yourself. It’s quite a surreal experience considering the twelve year development hell that became the gaming industry’s longest running joke. It had gone…
WWE All Stars is a depiction of the sport young kids all over the world dream up during their wildest spurts of imagination. The hits are real and gloriously over-the-top, pitting giant, beefy superstars from multiple generations together in a gratuitous mix of outlandishly stylised, high-flying action. It takes you away to a world you may once remember, where wrestling was a fantastical sight to behold; away from…
Crysis 2 has had PC gamers worried. Crytek’s first foray into this futuristic world of military grade Nanosuits and alien invasions was a landmark title for the platform. Besides from the open, sprawling battlefields and novel abilities granted by the Nanosuit, this was a shooter lauded for its technical profligacy. The gaming rigs of its day couldn’t run it at its highest settings, and if there was ever a reason to…
A lot of sports games can be criticised for their yearly release schedules, with each new title offering very little from year to year in terms of meaningful new features, instead boiling down to a couple of gameplay tweaks and a roster update. With EA’s Fight Night series there isn’t the burden of annual releases so the team at EA Canada have extra development time to really refine and build upon their previous…
Despite their graphical restrictions and penchant for awful voice acting, the survival horror games of the ’90s and early 2000s always managed to frighten with effective use of the protagonist’s vulnerability and a fantastic, panic-inducing atmosphere. In recent years, however, this traditional survival horror genre has almost died out, with beefy mercenaries armed to the teeth with myriad heavy weapons, easily…
Apparently we can’t get enough of the living dead. Whether it’s the traditional slow-moving kind, the terrifying speed-merchants, the plant-fighting variant or even those of Nazi descent, we just love killing zombies in a multitude of increasingly brutal and inventive ways. Even after all these years, Capcom’s Dead Rising is perhaps the prime example of this. Many were put-off and dumbfounded by its unconventional…
IO Interactive’s gritty third-person shooter, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men received plenty of publicity when it was released back at the end of 2007. Not because of any widespread high praise or revolutionary game mechanics, but because of a certain high-profile controversy. In reality, Dead Men was an exceptionally flawed game that failed to live up to its potential and the expectations placed on the Hitman developer.…
Yes, you can swing on water After the Prince’s cel-shaded and ridiculously easy adventures in 2008’s Prince of Persia , Ubisoft have seemingly abandoned their new direction for the series, opting to revert back to the original Sands of Time trilogy with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands . It may coincide with the release of Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney’s big-budget movie adaptation of The Sands of Time , but it…
Knock-out blow As a first-year product, UFC 2009 Undisputed was a fantastic start for the Mixed Martial Arts series. It accurately recreated the hard-hitting sport, with a solid stand-up game, plenty of depth and strategy to the ground and pound and its vicious submissions; an impressive bevy of fighters, and competent single player and multiplayer options. Its only problematic flaws came from some unwieldy controls…
Expect to see plenty of this When you think of a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay production, you think of big-budget, high gloss, action sequences with fast cars, multiple explosions and plenty of hair-raising moments. Vehicles are engulfed in flames left, right and centre, flipping into the air and careening out of control; buildings collapse upon the streets, shop windows are blown out, helicopters swoop down…
A successful, Stephen King-inspired horror novelist, whose dressing style features a suit-jacket with leather elbow pads, isn’t someone you’d expect to be an action hero. However, the titular protagonist of Remedy’s long awaited psychological action thriller, Alan Wake , is surprisingly adept at wielding all manner of powerful firearms. Maybe it should have been expected given Remedy’s pedigree for cinematic action…
FIFA’s World Cup and European Cup games have received a deservedly bad reputation throughout the years. They’re usually rushed out to coincide with the big event not long after the latest annual outing, often skimming over substantial features and adding nothing new to the gameplay despite their full pricing. 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa looks to break up this disappointing formula, featuring a plethora of new…
Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and co. may have satisfied our Wild West thirst on the big screen, but the world of gun-slinging outlaws has never really materialised in any meaningful way on the videogame circuit. Red Dead Redemption could go some way to filling that void this May, but until then, if you’re looking for some rootin’ tootin’ shootouts at dawn, Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West could be a good way to…
Sam Fisher may have lost his daughter, killed his best friend and seen his life begin to unravel, but his troubles are nothing compared to the tumultuous few years Splinter Cell: Conviction has endured. After a debut trailer depicting an old, downtrodden Sam Fisher - long hair and beard in tow – involved in hand-to-hand combat in broad daylight, the team at Ubisoft Montreal took early criticism on board and carried…
It’s rare for games from Europe’s Eastern Bloc to receive as much attention as games from the West and the Far East. The most successful titles from this region have been the Serious Sam and S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, but there’s always been something oddly appealing about this particular “genre” - if you can even call it that. Their storylines are typically fairly unique while the developer’s ambitions spread far and…
The first Army of Two had some issues trying to find its tone. On the one hand all it wanted to do was bro-out, offering fist bumps, air guitar and “pimped” out golden weapons to fire. While on the other side of the spectrum it dealt with seedy private military corporations in real-world conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some oddly-placed conspiracy theories about 9/11 and America’s reasons for going to war in…
Competition is always healthy. After dominating the realm of multiplayer first person shooters for so many years, DICE’s Battlefield series has been overtaken in recent times by the surging emergence of Call of Duty and its Modern Warfare brand. The first Bad Company was a step in the right direction, offering a substantial multiplayer package whilst also showcasing the Swedish developer’s first attempt at a…
This image more than set the scene Zombies, zombies, zombies; they’re everywhere. In our games, our movies, our books; whether they’re the classic slow moving kind, the crazy sprinting kind or even those that aren’t technically zombies, though we all know they really are (you’re not fooling anyone Resi 5 ). It seems we can’t get enough of the brain-hungry undead, even when they’re becoming about as stale as their…
Spooky! Zombies, zombies, zombies; they’re everywhere. In our games, our movies, our books; whether they’re the classic slow moving kind, the crazy sprinting kind or even those that aren’t technically zombies, though we all know they really are (you’re not fooling anyone Resi 5 ). It seems we can’t get enough of the brain-hungry undead, even when they’re becoming about as stale as their own decomposing bodies. As a…
Assassin’s Creed II’s first piece of downloadable content, The Battle of Forli, was a short, underwhelming effort, though it did have some redeemable features, filling in some blanks in ACII’s story and introducing a few interesting new characters. The second piece of DLC, The Bonfire of the Vanities, is short on story elements but it’s a much more substantial package overall, offering a new area to explore and a…
Bioshock 2 has long been bemoaned as the sequel that was never needed. The original Bioshock captivated gamers with its thrilling narrative and cast of fantastically eccentric characters; dealing with philosophical ideals, moral choices, a society driven to insanity and the complexities of free will in an underwater utopia gone wrong. Rapture was the star of the show; an atmospheric city built deep below the waves.…
It’s rare for video games to look to the literary world for direct inspiration, and you can guarantee there were plenty of eyebrows raised with the announcement of Visceral Games’ brutal action title, Dante’s Inferno. One man’s journey through the Nine Circles of Hell, as depicted in Dante Alighieri’s epic literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy, doesn’t exactly lend itself to the hack and slash genre. But if you…
Are you bored of modern shooters and their emphasis on the latest high-tech weaponry, Middle-Eastern conflicts; the brutality of war and plot twists you can see coming from a mile away? Well, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter might just be the game for you. There’s no story, no characters to care about and most certainly nothing that could be considered sophisticated. The emphasis is purely on shooting as many…
Late last year when downloadable content was announced for Assassin’s Creed II I was definitely excited. The second game in the franchise was a vast improvement on the original in nearly every way, and earned its place as one of my games of the year for 2009. Both pieces of DLC, Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities , will slot into the vacant spaces for memory sequences 12 and 13, filling out blanks in Ezio’s…
Bayonetta is a very generous game. Past the 14 hour run time, through the epilogue, final credits and beyond, it never stops giving, providing plenty of surprises and spectacular moments that are sure to leave you picking your jaw up off the floor time and time again. Emerging from the mind of Hideki Kamiya and PlatinumGames, the comparisons to Devil May Cry are plentiful. But Bayonetta ’s sultry female lead,…
James Cameron’s Avatar has been a long time coming. The acclaimed director’s first film since the award winning Titanic has been shrouded in mystery for years with the inevitable video game tie-in following suit. This year’s E3 saw Cameron spend a good few hours talking about the project during the Ubisoft press conference without even a shred of footage; instead relying on his own words to sell the product. With…
World War II games have saturated the market for many years now. They’ve focused on the front lines of war from the view of various Allied forces and an aim to recapturing those jaw dropping ‘Saving Private Ryan’ moments with patriotism and historic relevance. Pandemic’s swansong title, The Saboteur , throws all of that out the window, using World War II as a backdrop - rather than a focus - for an open-world story…
After all the hype and anticipation; controversy surrounding questionable viral videos and shockingly violent leaked footage; lack of dedicated servers, uproar amongst PC gamers and multiple boycotts; it’s clear to see Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has a lot to live up to and answer for. This type of attention is normally reserved for a major Halo or Grand Theft Auto release, but after the success…
From April 2008 to October 2009 our time in Liberty City is finally over. We’ve led the life of an Eastern European immigrant in search of the American Dream and a chance at revenge, to the rough and tumble biker just trying to keep his gang - or should I say ‘family’ - from the brink of annihilation. We’ve experienced the seedy underworld of this sprawling city, and now it’s time to hit the high life; full of…
Read the full review Say goodnight to the city that never sleeps
Taking inspiration from classic grindhouse movies, WET ’s fairly unique visual style is mixed together with some slow-motion based gun combat that’s vaguely similar to both Max Payne and Stranglehold in its execution. Sadly, though, it’s a case of style over substance as the gameplay quickly becomes tedious, instead relying on its grindhouse presentation to hold interest until the very end. The Tarantino-esque story…
Staring at a heavy metal album cover can muster up many thoughts: why is there a Black Panther shooting laser beams from its eyes? Why do I find that so cool? And what in God’s name does this have to do with the actual music? The answer to the latter is normally ‘nothing’, but the crazy, elaborate heavy metal album covers of old never failed to capture the imagination. They definitely inspired Tim Schafer in his…
The last few years has seen a plethora of Lego titles, tackling such high profile properties as the original and new Star Wars trilogies, the Indiana Jones movies and even the Batman universe. It’s difficult for a kid-friendly 3D platformer not to take inspiration and borrow a few ideas from the popular series in some way. Sadly, Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes – based on the recent Clone Wars…
Read the full review Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
Harmonix have always been fully committed to DLC with their Rock Band franchise; with new songs released every week to amass a gigantic library of content from a whole host of different genres and artists. However, one band has thus far eluded the downloadable sonisphere; specifically because they demand a much bigger stage than a single track pack. Harmonix have faithfully obliged, taking a year out – and possibly…
The IL-2 Sturmovik series has been a staple of PC combat flight simulators for many years now. Its overabundance of authentic World War II aircraft, large scale multiplayer and mechanically proficient simulation gameplay has made it a fan favourite among the PC gaming crowd. Thus far this enthusiasm has failed to transfer over to the console market, with games such as Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X and Ace Combat failing to…
It’s understandable to be a little sceptical coming into Batman: Arkham Asylum . Whenever developers Rocksteady have shown trailers, gameplay and screenshots, the game has looked fantastic; but that uncontrollable doubt is always lingering in the back of the mind purely because it’s a licensed comic book videogame. For that reason alone, Arkham Asylum is the surprise game of the year. It might not be difficult to…
There was a lot of excitement leading up the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled . The original “Un-Shelled” edition was a big hit in the arcades back in ‘91, and later on for the SNES in ‘92. For a long time I shared this excitement, but a few levels into this remake I came to the realisation that this was purely because I hadn’t played the original in so long. Games have come a long…
Read the full review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled
A few levels into ‘Splosion Man you’ll find a rather large scientist with a particular fondness for doughnuts. Upon picking him up and using him as your own human shield, an original song about doughnuts, and how much everybody loves them, begins to play that could very easily rival the greatness of Portal ’s galvanizing hit, Still Alive. This is just one example of one of the many moments in Twisted Pixel’s…
Those that have spent a large amount of time exploring the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3 have probably come across the downed Alien Spaceship before. It lies to the north and has little significance other than to provide you with one of the best weapons in the game and stir up some thoughts and musings at to how the ship came to be. Mothership Zeta - the final piece of DLC for Fallout 3 - is here to provide some…
Read the full review An unflattering end to a decent run of DLC.
It might be hard to grasp but back in the ’90s LucasArts were at the forefront of the adventure game genre. They may not have always received the commercial success they deserved, but critically, and amongst fans, LucasArts created some of the greatest games to ever grace the genre. The puzzles were inventive, challenging and quirky, and the writing was of another level; hilarious, witty and with plenty of heart and…
Less than meets in the eye - a phrase that could easily be applied to the first video game tie-in to Michael Bay’s action-heavy robot opus, Transformers . It was a lesson in mediocrity, and as such, a new developer has been handed the reigns to the sequel in a bid to make giant transforming robots fun again. How hard can it be? In truth, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a much more focused project than it’s…
This Christmas the nice folks over at Media Molecule - creators of the ridiculously cute LittleBigPlanet - decided to team up with Konami to give us, the fans, a little gift. “What could this be?” You might ask. “Some new character skins?” As is the norm on LittleBigPlanet at the moment. Well… yes, but not only that because they’ve also decided to give us a level pack. Now you must really be intrigued, but it’s all…
