Again, I find myself with too many games and too little time. Right now I’m in the middle of slaying thousands of zombies using a ridiculous arsenal of home-made weaponry, feeling nostalgic and old for the first time ever because of a classic 2D platformer, and am climbing and fighting my way across an overgrown jungley wasteland inhabited by killer robots. Below are some thoughts of Dead Rising 2, Sonic 4 Episode 1, and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, so far…
Dead Rising 2
Chuck lost all sense of fashion when the zombies took over...
Killing swarms of mindless zombies has never been more fun since the first Dead Rising, but the sequel has proven to be superior in a number of ways. The game still gives you a rather irritating time limit to carry out certain tasks, but there is a lot more stuff to do in Capcom’s hilariously entetaining sequel. Scattered throughout the mall are these maintenance rooms which allows protagonist Chuck Greene the ability to combine a huge variety of items with each other to form makeshift weapons. Its brilliant fun figuring out what goes with what, and you end up with such insane contraptions as the Defiler (fire axe + sledgehammer), the now infamous Paddlesaw (boat ores + chainsaw) and my personal favourite the Plate Launcher (cement saw + plates). You will kill literally thousands of zombies if you play this game, and its 80% fun with 20% frustration. Expect a review from either Paul or myself in the near future.
Sonic 4 Episode 1
Sonic 4 nearly gets it right...
FINALLY, Sonic has returned to his roots! Sonic the Hedgehog holds a special place in my gaming memories as he was the first true gaming hero I loved as a kid. The megadrive was my first real console, and as a result, I grew up playing the original sonic games. The new one finds sonic returning to those glorious 2D days – the visuals mimic the style of the old games very nicely, and the sound effects and music are all full of nostalgic bounceyness. It’s not quite there, though… For the first time ever, I feel myself thinking “they don’t make them like they used to…” and am disgusted with myself for it. Argh! Still, at least Sega hasn’t completely forgotten what made Sonic great in the first place, and I have hope that the future episodes will be even better.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Monkeying around...
It’s very rare for me to have never heard of a game until I’ve seen an advert for it on TV. And generally when it does happen, I’ll dismiss it as being crap, which is what nearly happened with Enslaved. As soon as I found out it was co-directed by Andy Serkis (Gollum), and co-written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine) I suddenly became interested. I bought it on impulse the other day for the Xbox 360 and have been blasting through it for the last couple of nights. It’s a beautiful game set 150 years in the future where most of mankind has either been killed or turned into a slave for these deadly machines that have taken over. Cities are overgrown and derelict, and you have to escort techno-geek Trip to safety back to her home. Along the way you’ll do plenty of Tomb Raider style platforming and climbing, along with some simple, brutal melee fighting against some pretty cool robots. The animation is particularly good. Generally, Enslaved is very fun, but I’ve clearly been spoiled with the likes of Unchartered 2, which does a lot of similar things, only better. Still, I’d easily recommend it so far, and will try to have a review of it within the next week or so.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Format: PS3
Release date: 2010
Heavy Rain is more like an interactive movie than a game, and it is mostly excellent. It’s a game about choices and living with the consequences. I played it through twice myself, just to see how different decisions affect the story and its ultimate conclusion, but to say that my first try was emotional would be the understatement of the century. This game almost broke me. I’ll tell you how soon, but first I want to recount the story of one of my friend’s choices… Like I said, watching Heavy Rain is just like watching a movie, but watching your friend play Heavy Rain gives you an amusing bit of insight into their psychology. The results can be hilarious.
Now and then one can’t help climbing aboard the hype train. You work yourself up into a frothing frenzy in anticipation of some new game whose trailers and screenshots make it seem like the best…thing…EVER. That’s how I felt about Conker’s Bad Fur Day when I first read about it in N64 Magazine (before the internet butchered the magazine industry). They did several preview write-ups about it in the years before it was released, and it changed from being a cutesy 3D adventure, to merely looking like a cutesy 3D adventure plastered with a layer of adult filth. I couldn’t have been more excited to play it. Did it live up to my expectations? Hell yes.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein introduced me to the world of PC gaming. I have my uncle Dave to thank for this. He used to play two games, Wolfenstein and Fighter Ace, and I loved going round his house because he had a gaming PC, curiously built by a company called Gateway… The PC was something so alien and awesome to me that it made my N64 seem like the toy it always was (I still love you, my 64). Wolfenstein became Enemy Territory, a free standalone multiplayer component, but it was the ‘original’ Return to Castle Wolfenstein that dragged me into PC gaming, and I’ve never looked back since.
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