“Alone in the Dark will provide a complete next-generation, action-packed experience within a highly detailed, free-roaming environment, featuring a mixture of astonishing real-time physics and full environmental interaction.” Was found on some website through google, assuming this was something for the press.

Okay, first things first. This game looks pretty damn sweet, although most of said sweetness comes from deep shaders and cinematic lighting (That is, most of the time, off), so it’s debatable how good it actually looks. suffice to say that they’ve done a good job, and it has a strong polish to it.

The action in the game generally centers around fighting off a number of enemies (read: zombies and other similar creatures) with whatever weapons come to hand, although most enemies can only be killed outright by throwing their body into some flames, or setting it on fire. The number of weapons to use is quite interesting, although they are all very similar (explosives and flamethrowers in essence)

The Inventory system is limited, which has had some negative press but personally I like it. The lack of space often means that you will have to make on-the-fly decisions about whether to take an extra first aid spray or to grab another molotov cocktail - either of which can be just as useful considering that first aid spray is only useful outside of combat.

When the player takes damage in combat, they receive wounds that have to be fixed with either first aid spray or bandages. I’m not sure whether you can die outright from your wounds (although one that is hemmoraging can kill you if you don’t fix it), although as you receive more you are unable to take as much damage when fighting off enemies in combat before being killed (which can make a huge difference)

A feature that is underplayed in this game is the ability to blink (yes, blink) when in first person. If you have acid or steam sprayed at your face, your vision will get clouded or overlayed and you won’t be able to see until you blink it out of your eyes. While a neat feature, most of the game will be spent in third person (guns are almost useless as far as I know) and the result is that you won’t actually notice this cool effect most of the time, which is a real shame.

Fortunately I’ve bought it for the PC, which makes it immediately better. However, since Microsoft is run by a team of idiots that’s large enough to inhabit the moon, they had to bring their own brand of cocking it up to the table. They had to bring in the “Game(s) for Windows - Live” malarkey. Honestly Microsoft, why do you have to take a good idea and turn it into a device of Satan. The “Windows - Live” part of this game actually screws up one of the most important bits, the main menu. A game should not crash on the main menu, it should crash when there’s a bit too much happening at once, not while it’s just sitting there.This is one of few complaints I have about GoW but it’s probably the biggest. I really hate it when Microsoft do things like this, why can’t they do it like everyone else and just have simple accounts with simple server lists, it makes so much more sense.

Anyway, I should really get to talking about the game rather than about the idiots who published it.

In GoW you play a character called Marcus Fenix who’s been slung in the joint because he disobeyed orders at the beginning of the war against the Locust (who are surprisingly humanoid). Thankfully you’re broken out of jail by your good buddy Dominic Santiago and are quickly pressed back into military service. You’re mission for the first half of the game is to deploy a device called “The Resonator” which will map all the underground Locust tunnels. The objectives in the second half of the game are a little fuzzy and the story seems to meander around for several levels which is a bit disappointing. Of course, you probably didn’t buy/ weren’t thinking of buying this game for the story, you just saw a guy in armour and a gun with a chainsaw on the end of it and there you were, at the counter with the game in one hand, thirty quid in the other and a happy little smile on your face.

The gameplay in GoW is actually pretty refreshing, even now. The third-person perspective was a great idea and so was the interactive cover. You can hide behind practically anything in this game, and you actually properly hide. One quick push of the Space Bar and Marcus is up against a wall like a cheap hooker, though without the lady parts. A little thing that bugs me about the whole “One button to rule them all” thing is that if you’re “Roadie Running” (sprinting) and you pass too close to a bit of cover, Marcus will suddenly stick to it and you’ll either have to waste precious seconds getting him off or be killed by something large and ugly. Like most action games, Gears of War also contains a shitty vehicle section which can get pretty infuriating when you play it on your own and it’s almost as bad when you’re with a friend but it’s only one level so it doesn’t spoil the game too much.

Unfortunately I seem to be running out of things to say about this game. I guess it’s because I last edited it on June 4th, it’s now June 13th 0_o Oh well, lets talk about whether I enjoyed this game or not. Truth be told I did enjoy it but at only 18 to 20 hours of gameplay it’s a little on the short side, especially if you play it solid for a couple of days. The multiplayer isn’t as fun as it could have been with a pitifully small amount of servers with most of them being spawn-camp-tastic. There really needed to be larger multiplayer modes with a focus on more players, you really need more of everything in the multiplayer for it to become interesting. The Co-op campaign, which can be played online or offline is a fun aspect though as it means you can kick ass and take names with a buddy rather than just playing with yourself. The A.I. isn’t exactly smart so bringing along a friend is a better way to play the game and you can always chat or have little competitions like “Who can stick the most grenades” which can end in hilarity.

Overall, a good game with a weak story but fun gameplay. Also, be prepared to get pissed off by the Windows Live part of things, if you can survive that then you’ll probably do alright in the game. Buy it, if only to tide you over till a release your really looking forward to.

P.M.

I was a little dubious at first about this fourth instalment in the Indiana Jones series, mainly due to George Lucas’ poor attempts at finishing off the Star Wars saga using only CGI and Green Screen. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg has managed to keep Lucas on a short leash and there’s minimal use of CG in this film. It’s a good thing too since most films that are released now consist of mostly fake backgrounds that are a little hard on the eyes.

When the film finished I was left a little confused and I think this was due to the fact that I haven’t seen a film in this style for quite a long time. Crystal Skull actually went on a journey across half the world, there are always new environments and situations for the characters to encounter, not just the same stagnant places. There was actually an interesting story to follow and all the characters had their own motivations for being there, though the story could have been a little stronger.

The acting was great by everyone, except perhaps Cate Blanchett who’s accent slipped from Russian to English and the end of some of her lines which kind of impacted on her character and didn’t make her seem quite so evil. That was the one thing that irked me about this film, the baddies weren’t as dark or as evil as they could have been, there wasn’t the same sense of malice from the Russians as you got from the Nazis in the originals. Ray Winstone (Mac) kind of steals the show from Blanchett as the main evil character, though his motivation is purely selfish he just back-stabs so well. Harrison Ford has lost none of the charm that fits so well with Indy and the fact that he’s still doing all his own stunts brings more realism to the film. Shia LaBeouf was a great choice for the role of Mutt Williams and does much better acting than he did in Transformers. Karen Allen makes a return as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders though doesn’t add too much to the film.

Overall, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a good film, it’s not quite as good as the originals but then sequels never are. It’s a solid addition to the series and isn’t the total let-down that some critics said it was. Apparently Lucas wants to make more Indy films, though I think they should quit while they’re ahead. I’d recommend Crystal Skull but only if you’ve seen the other three as you might be left a bit confused by its return to “classic” sort of film making.

P.M.

There’s really not much more to add to Yahtzee’s thorough raping of this game in his review of Clive Barker’s Jericho.

I’ll give you a quick run down of the basics though, just so I have something to talk about.

You basically control a team of 7 retarded and obnoxious twats who are members of, and I quote: “An elite military team who specialises in the paranormal.” So they’re a bit like the F.E.A.R. team only less under-funded and without a guy who can slow down time and nail enemies to walls.

The story is apparently atrocious but fortunately I couldn’t experience any of it because the demo instantly thrust me into brown castle number one and gave me no explanation as to why I was fighting un-dead gladiators. 0.o

In this particular section of the game I was only controlling three members of the team, thank God. For some reason you have the ability to switch between your team members, which takes more time than I’d like it to and when you’re finally seeing through their eyes all they were looking at was a wall. The first character I started as was a female with a reasonable sized…gun. “Ok”, I thought, “I’ve got some kind of assault rifle here.” Oh how wrong I was. It turned out I was armed with a sniper rifle that had an under-slung grenade launcher.

“Wait a minute, we’re inside a building, a sniper rifle will be totally useless” I thought to myself. It was. I could have got more use out of a soggy ice-cream cone. Anyway, after figuring out the controls to switch characters, I chose the guy with the mini-gun. Memories of Team Fortress 2 flooded my mind as I walked through brown corridors hosing the un-dead with hundreds of round a minute. That is until I was inexplicably killed by a fire-ball that was apparently hurled by a set of stairs.

The first person camera is terrible, it’s constant bobbing means that half your shots go wide and the other half hit your team-mates who seem to always be two feet away from the enemies. Also, when you get hurt your screen gets covered with blood, dust, muck and fire for no apparent reason. It’s just an infuriating distraction that will most likely get you killed faster as you run blindly about looking for cover. The lack of any kind of health indicator doesn’t help this situation at all, it just makes it all the more frustrating.

Overall, this was an atrocious game. I can’t recommend it, I can’t even give it a score (for what little that means anyway). My advice, stay away from it. It has AIDs.

P.M.

Iron Man

It’s amazingly hard to not like this film, it’s excellent.

I could stop there and let it lie but I wouldn’t be a very good reviewer if I did so I’ll have to soldier on. It’s really hard to critisize a film which has almost no faults. As this is also my first film review it’s probably going to meander a bit anyway and should be pretty short, thankfully.

Robert Downey Jnr. plays an excellent Tony Stark, his line are delivered with great timing and he really fits the part well. Man, this all sounds corny but seriously, he’s a great actor and does complete justice to the Tony Stark character. The visual effects are brilliant, Stark’s suit gets chipped, dented and broken which makes the film feel alot better because in the end Stark is just a man. A cool, rich, wisecracking man but a man none the less.

I’ve always been a fan of Iron Man ever since I watched the cartoon series, he’s a really awesome character because, despite not having super powers he can still has super strength, super speed and the ability to fly aswell as having some really cool gadgets in his suit. Seriously, what other superhero has a cell-phone in his suit?

Anyway, back to the review. I went into Iron Man hoping it wouldn’t be another terrible Marvel film (see. Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spiderman 3) and I came out knowing that it was one of the best Marvel films to date. This is probably because it was produced independently by Marvel and that’s great. The only thing that niggled me was the cameo by Stan Lee (he appears as Hugh Hefner of Playboy). That’s the one thing I don’t like about Marvel films, the Stan Lee cameos. Yes, we know you helped create all the Marvel characters but I don’t want to see you in every damn film, it was cool in Spiderman, now it’s just annoying.

So should you go see it? Well, I can’t tell you whether to go see it or not, that’s your decision. What I can do is say that I thought it was an excellent film that’s really enjoyable. I also think you should go see it ;)

I just hope that “The Incredible Hulk” is just as good.

P.M.

So, what about the gameplay. It’s repetitive and un-imaginative. You have to collect “Thermal Energy” to stop yourself from freezing to death. This “Thermal Energy” is obtained from killing enemies, there’s no explanation as to why the enemies drop these glowing orange blobs, they just do. That was my first beef with this game. It’s really very easy to kill everything, far too easy in fact and you actually end up with an excess of “Thermal Energy” meaning you can dither about for as long as you like before moving on. I thought this was supposed to be “Extreme Condition(s)” not “Average Conditions”. You can only carry two guns but you only ever need one, the machine gun, because there’s so much ammo either lying about or on the disappearing corpses of your enemies that running out never becomes a problem.

Upon starting up the demo I immediately checked out the controls, only to find that they were displayed as Xbox 360 controls. Hello CAPCOM, I’m playing this demo on a PC, console controls are useless to me. The least they could have done was change the controls screen so that it actually showed keyboard controls rather than things like “Right Trigger = Fire”. MY KEYBOARD HAS NO “Right Trigger”!!! It was then that I threw caution to the wind and set about picking one of two levels.

My first impression was “Oh dear” as I moved the character around in a clunky and boring fashion. The animations aren’t brilliant, neither is the AI and the environments felt dull with their un-inspired graphics. In fact, the whole demo was just 375MB of dreary mediocrity. Thankfully STEAM has the option to “Remove all local content.” Which I quickly did upon finishing the demo. Well, when I say “finishing” I actually mean getting so frustrated at the stupidity of the game overall I gave up.

The worst part is that it could have been good. Great even. If only CAPCOM hadn’t made stupid decisions and employed simpletons to design and make the game. Here’s what I think they should have done. Instead of “Thermal Energy” being dropped from enemies, they should have put things like burning barrels in certain places so that you had to stay near them to warm up before you could move on. The enemies should have been harder rather than the push-overs that most of them are. There really needed to be more imagination in the design stages. Then again, this is CAPCOM and they’re aren’t known for their brilliant imagination (see; Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter).

PC Gamer threw an 81/100 at this game, I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion but after all, they are the “Frat Boys” of the PC gaming demographic so a proper review wasn’t really to be expected. My advice, don’t buy this game unless you’re looking to be bored or annoyed out of your skull. It’s weak attempts at being good are over-shadowed by the fact it’s a total let down. Spend your money on something better. Like Gears of War.

3/10 = Pitiful.

P.M.

Since launch its got itself quite a dedicated little following in the 4 months it has been online. However this only numbers in the hundreds, but the forums are active and the chat is always alive. The game attempts to draw people to continue to play the game by providing you with energy, this tops up by a small amount every hour. However this top up feels like a minuscule amount, plus your energy bar can only hold 10 hours worth of energy. This obviously means to make the most of the game you have to play 3 times a day and at the same time, this is the most you can play the game, otherwise you will be wasting your own time.

The gameplay revolves around traditional mmog aspects of fighting monsters to level up and collect items. There is also the ability to collect and train monsters, however this ability can sometimes feel like an afterthought. The game doesn’t add anything new to the genre but does the traditional aspects of the genre well.

While the game acts and runs seriously, the graphics delayed my introduction to the game. And further into playing the game the gameplay issues caused me to give up logging into the game. However for anyone unsure, its still possible to get in early and stand a chance at being a top player.

I gave the game a 5 out of ten.

Now this is a great game, but it has its issues. Firstly there are too many zombies in the easier modes, while this is good for getting points, it means that the zombies quickly overrun you. Secondly, while the base items are availiable in the non defence games, the number of zombies is soon too many to build a base that can stand up to the zombies.

The graphics are very refined and give the game its comic style. However the sound is a little bland, and repetitive. But the guns all sound like they should, and make firing the rocket launcher fun. Gun upgrades can be unlocked by getting a higher bonus multiplier which you add to by killing zombies. Being the 5th in the series its surprising still to see continued innovation from the creator. Overall this is a great game, if being a little short and repetitive.

I give this a beefy 8 out of ten.

The game can be found here.

Harvest: massive encounter is the newly released game from oxeye games the makers of Dawn of Daria. harvest is an addictive strategy game that is hard to put down.

The games strength is its level of polish, every aspect has been improved in part due to its extensive beta process. This puts it in a good position to impress people who may not be so interested in strategy games. I certainly was impressed by its gameplay and spent many hours trying to improve my base. Since this is what the game is about, building the best base and staying alive for as long as possible. You begin on an empty planet with a couple of solar buildings and resources scattered around your base. You then move onto building miners and connecting points. This is when the aliens start to attack, slowly at first but as the game progresses their numbers rise. Your defenses come in the form of laser towers and missile turrets.

How you build your base is up to you, but in harvest there are a couple of better strategies which you discover as you play. This is the fun bit of the game, trying to find the ‘best fit’ base. Other gameplay types exist, they are wave mode, rush, insane and also creative where you can do what you like. theoretically there is unlimited gameplay here as you can never have the ‘best’ base. But the game does get repetitive thanks to the limited number of buildings and defenses.

The visuals and sound are both simple and repetitive but are very enjoyable. They inspire creativity and also enable the game to be run on lower spec computers.

Overall i found the game to be a great break from the hardcore games and highly addictive. However it didn’t last long before i returned to my hardcore games.

I would give the game a 7 out of 10.

The trailers for BLACK were quite impressive, though this could be because that part of them was in reality and the other part was in-game. Suffice to say the trailers left me excited…at the time, but time is a fickle thing and having only obtained BLACK sometime
last year it had mostly been forgotten by myself and the gaming world. So why review it?
Because we need something to fill the site up and if you’re actually looking to buy this game :O then I thought you should know a bit about it.

The main character, Keller, is an elite Black-Ops soldier who appears to have been arrested for…something. Frankly, the story is as clear as mud as you’re playing through events that have already happened. Not the best storytelling technique in my eyes as you know that Keller is at least going to survive, due to the cut-scene (live action I might add) at the start where he’s talking to some guy from some government. As I say, it’s not too clear. The main objective of the game appears to be to kill the leader of some-sort of group, named Seventh Wave, who are doing something naughty somewhere in the world. The Ex-Soviet Union looks to be the likeliest country as all the enemies shout loudly in Russian, immediately giving away their positions, allowing you to shatter their precious cover with an un-healthy dose of bullets.

Speaking of cover-shattering, BLACK focuses mainly on a few things: blowing stuff up,
shooting stuff up and blowing out doors. “But surely that’s the point of every FPS game?”
you say. Well, yes, but BLACK does it bigger, better and more repetitively than any other
FPS out there. The graphics are really very good, around “next-gen” quality. The
environments look battered and dirty, the weapons are sleek and smooth and the characters are quite good too. If you’re going to be killing terrorists of any kind then you want to be doing it in a very destructive and Rambo-ish way using insane amounts of ammunition and breaking almost everything that gets in your way. BLACK came highly praised for its ability to destroy the environments. It deserves the praise, it really does. Though the environments tend to look very similar toward the end of the game.

The weapons are another thing that BLACK focuses on. Though it seems to only focus on a few, mainly the G36C, MP5, AK47 and Remmington (shotgun). The assault rifles all seem pretty equal in their accuracy and power so it doesn’t matter which one you pick up. There are other weapons such as sniper rifles, machine pistols, HMGs, RPGs and one or two pistols though they seem to be bolted on as extras rather than being a key part of the weapon choices. The RPG can come in handy for blowing open emplacements, though they only seem to be there to block your path. The shotgun is only good for blowing doors off their hinges (as well as blowing holes in weak walls), which can be quite good if you blow the door, pop a grenade in, whip out your assault rifle and the hose the survivors with automatic fire.

There’s almost no shortage of ammo in BLACK, as the standard enemies carry similar weapons, so you can spray-and-pray through some of the smaller levels. The only beef I have with the weapons is that they seem to take ages to reload, especially the Magnum. Yes, it’s a powerful gun but I’d rather it was able to fire 6 shots off with reasonable speed than firing one, then having to wait for Keller to pull back the hammer with the speed of an arthritic bear. Sometimes you’ll spray fire into a room, fall-back to reload where-upon a particularly clever enemy (which are few and far between) will come running round the corner and put a clip into your chest as you stare gormlessly at the magazine of your gun. The reload animations feel drawn-out which can be frustrating in the middle of a gun-fight.

The enemies aren’t the smartest I’ve ever encountered but they’ll be a challenge in a confined space, especially if their are lots of them. There are only several types of enemy
for the whole game so you can quickly master how to defeat them and which weapons will work best. This isn’t that surprising as BLACK seems to be Criterion’s first game with anything other than cars in it.

The controls are tight and pretty intuitive but the complete omission of a “jump” button (and action) seems a little odd, though I suppose it stops you falling down massive holes in floors about 3 stories up. Actually, no, wait, invisible walls stop you doing that. To be honest, not having a “jump” option is actually quite good as it means you can’t go bunny-hopping around like a retarded BF2 player before leaping to the ground in front of your enemies and filling their groins with hot lead.

The addition of a multiplayer to BLACK would have been lovely, even a co-op mode would have been welcome. I like the idea of being able to run through the levels, tearing up the scenery with a buddy while legions of enemy troops fall before you eventually creating a
stylish carpet of corpses. The game almost begs for a multiplayer because the levels are
very linear which means almost no replayablitly and I can imagine that things like Team
Deathmatch and Assault would have suited the game brilliantly, oh well, hopefully in the
next one.

Well, people seem to have been throwing scores of around 8 out of 10 at BLACK. It’s good but it’s not great, I wouldn’t give it 8. Probably about 6 due to the lack of coherent story and lack of multiplayer. Otherwise it does everything else reasonably well, except graphics and ’splosions which it does brilliantly. We’re going to have to work out some kind of rating system here…maybe next time. ;)

P.M.