I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again if you just stumbled upon this page using a dodgy Google search query; I’m not big on racing games. The main reason that I find most realistic racers boring and difficult to master as I like a real steering wheel, and a peripheral doesn’t cut it for me.

Generally, I play arcade style racing games such as Mario Kart and Ridge Racer. Every now and then I spot a racing game that takes my eye one way or another that is realistic and is causing so much hype that I think, maybe I should try it. So here I am ready to review Forza Motorsport 3; does drift to the point that it tears me away from other racers and games in general, or does it crash in a blaze of burning tires?

Taking the Starting Line

Forza 3 is all about being a professional lone racer, your not a part of any team per-say but a dude who’s doing all the handy work and managing their cars by themselves. You start by being given a car to test your skills with to compare with the difficulty setting you chose. Once you finish that race you are given a choice of cars that will set your career off.

No specifics on story, just pick an event and race. Nice and simple. But the games approach would lead you into thinking that a possible story could be in place. As any car nut will know, having useless attachments to a car will slow it down despite it looking nice, you just want raw power to make a good racing car… or game in this game. Froza 3 delivers that perfectly.

See, once you picked your car you can then race it in an event. Each event are spread across 3-4 different races over a course of 2 weeks in the game during the weekdays (though I wouldn’t worry about weeks too much to be honest) with a class race at the end of the two weeks to compete in on Sunday.

This is pretty much how the game progesses with time stretching over a few years. Each event you are posed have their unique factor such as car type, maker, size and so forth. So not just any cars can get into a race forcing you to stick to the rules and build up a large number of cars and tweaking them in such a way is still within the rules for the race.

You can also earn experience points (XP) as a driver and for each car, which is a nice twist. RPG fans may get confused by this but it doesn’t add to any stats to improve your driving or car but rather what people think of you. So as your drivers XP goes up, you get offered new cars from dealers and new opportunities. Your cars XP goes towards respect from car and parts dealers offering discounts on new stuff. It’s interesting as money flow isn’t so easy so you need to weigh up using a certain car to gain discounts for new parts to get more money in the higher races.

Don’t Race, Don’t Worry

I suppose there are a lot of people in one of three or four camps when it comes to cars and/or racing games.

1. You are a car enthusaist and love modding cars but can’t race them

2. You love racing cars but don’t know a clutch to a gear

3. You know none of the above

4. You know how to race and mod cars

Well, if you are 4 this game is perfect for you.

If you are 1 or 2 then this game is also good for you.

If you are 3 on the other hand, this game will work for you!

Forza Motorsport 3 takes a lot into account to a point where I don’t think a realistic racing game has done this much. It’s impressive that any sort of gamer coming to Froza 3 can pick up and play without worry of feeling in-over their head.

The driving gameplay in Forza 3 is very accurate, meaning that there is lots to take into account when cornering and overtaking to the point that you do need to know the racing line. If you are confident then you can drive with all these factors in place… but if you are at the other end of the scale where you need a lot of help then you can set it all up so that all you need do is steer and accelerate and the game will do all the breaking, ABS and TOS to best follow the racing line. Oh, and what’s the racing line? Well, the game will show you a racing line on the track with indication to show if you should be accelerating, slowing down or breaking.

Good thing in addition to all this is rather than setting it all as levels of difficulty you do get the option to tweak them. So you do have your Easy, Medium, Hard and Real, but you also have the ability to say “I want easy, but no auto-breaking, only a partial racing line and medium difficult on opponent cars”. Honestly, this makes the game so nice to progress and it allows you to customize the learning curve of the game.

That all being said, the cars handle like you’d expect them to in real life if you want them to so there is no shortage of realism here, but that is depending on how you want them to handle. Gameplay is what you make of it here, although not to a very arcade style, you are going to choose the level of realism you want rather than choosing a style of play. But if you challenge yourself then you are able to grab more points at the end of the race to go towards your XP.

It’s all made even easier (if you want) by providing a rewind feature that allows you to go back a few seconds in the race and re-do a corner. For the length of the race, you can rewind as much as you want to strive for pole position. This isn’t limited in any way so what ever setting you play on, you have an infinite rewind ability. This can be very tempting to use and even hardcore players will find that they may want to tap the rewind button to shave a few seconds off that corner. As good as this sounds, it can cheapen race times by not having a realistic impression on what sort of time people get as you can easily turn the clock back.

“Listen To Her Purr”

When it comes to tuning cars, this is where I really struggle as I’m not sure what improves or makes the car worse and whether or not I need a certain thing for one race type or another for this type. But luckily Forza 3 has you covered using simple techniques that anybody can be a master modder using.

Each car is given a class from F to A and beyond into the pro-racing classes. To mark what class a car is, it’s given a score based on all the parts the car is using. As you improve the car parts by adding a more powerful engine or making it lighter, better tyre grip and all that, the car gets more points and can move up a class. Pretty simple stuff; basically, you look at the cost of the part and the more points it assigns your car the better you know the car is getting.

There is also smaller factors that the Froza 3 shows you that deals with specifics of your car such as speed, acceleration, breaking and such like that will go either red or green when you look at a part showing that it decreases a certain function (goes red) or improves (green). Really simple stuff, but if that even blows your mind you can opt to do an auto-tune where it will tune up your car to the top of the chosen class without you worrying about what’s the combo of stuff. To the polar oppoiste of this, you can fine tune your car to the point of tyre pressure, suspension and all that other stuff that worries me on my real car.

Really, this game is a racing game for any level of gamer, it’s unreal how easy or difficult this game can be depending on what you want.

Keeping Track

The graphics in Forza Motorsport 3 are fantastic, and really shows off a lot of the Xbox 360′s power fluidity display high resolutions. The cars really do look real and the tracks and environment are fantastic. Though, on this note, the less said about the crowd the better as they do look bad when you get up-close to them on a crash… makes you wonder if there really is a need for people waving on the side lines?

Some of the tracks are based on real ones such as Silverstone, Le Mans, New York and Nürburgring with a few extras thrown in like Maple Valley. As far as I can tell, these tracks are realistically copied in the sense the bends and turns are what you’ll find on the real tracks. Either way, there is enough versatility in the track listing to keep you entertained, from your hippodromes, straight flat-outs to the more curvaceous tracks where that racing-line indicator really comes in handy.

You can tell the devs are happy with the graphics though when you notice the camera option of taking photos at any point during a race and upload them to the Forza Motorsport website for the whole web to see or even to the in-game “online” store. It’s like having your own in-game dSLR as you can pause the game at the moment you want to take a picture, enter the camera mode and start selecting options such as aperture, colour, satin, shutter speed, etc. If that’s not enough, there is even an option to edit a movie of a particular race and upload those as well as showing off your skills.

Amid  all this, there is also the ability to customize your car that’s a pretty standard feature in racing games now, especially using decals that you can download from within the game. But Forza 3 takes a new stab at it by offering a whole set of tools and templates to create your own decals. Already I made a pac-man decal but people have gone into some intricate art that mostly copies popular icons such as The Simpsons, Family Guy and other cult cartoons. But this shows what the tool set is capable of.

There’s a Real World Out There

So with this as also the option to save car tune ups that, if you are advance enough to know a good tune setup, or customized car, you can sell them in the game to other real world gamers.

This adds the extra level of earning credits in the game. So you made a decal and want to sell it, set your price and how many units that are allowed to be sold, and away you go! If you got something good that’s worth noticing then people will start downloading and paying you credits.

Multiplayer-wise, Froza 3 takes a different stance in that rather than using your outfit of cars, it goes straight for the arcade style of select what car you want to race in a particular race type depending on the class limitations. You still get all your settings on how realistic you want the driving, but hard-work on building up a car in the main game are gone to waste here.

It seems as if a big hit was missed in the multiplayer to allow their career to also be representative on Xbox Live as well as in races. It’s a shame really as there is very little out there in the way of a racer MMO and Forza 3 had a shot at possibly being the first to hit on this, but has rather taken the easier option of “select any car you want within rules and earn bragging-right points”. Granted a minor point some may say, but with a service like Xbox Live, people love to make the most out of it and this doesn’t quite cut it.

The Checkered Flag

Forza Motorsport 3 is something that Xbox 360 racing fans have wanted for some time now, and it delivers almost perfectly in its execution, but the multiplayer and rewind feature let it down a tiny bit in being more of an after thought on the game and too easy even for hardcore gamers, respectively. But it’s fun, addictive, and adaptive to your play style so if you want to get into racers or know all there is about them then Forza Motorsport 3 will work for you!

Related posts:

1. Fuel [Xbox 360 Review]
2. Fuel [Xbox 360 First Impression]
3. Colin McRae: Dirt 2 [Xbox 360 Review]

Slice, dice and serve on rice! Oh yes, this is Dead Space where head shots don’t mean jack, in-fact, they waste time! See, you got to think differently with weird things coming at you as they don’t really need a head to do much, but rather their limbs. But lets see if this twist on the On-Rails shooter works?

Space… This First Part and The Final Frontier

Dead Space Extraction is a prequal to the Hallowe’en hit of last year, Dead Space on the PS3 and Xbox 360, so for those who know the story then they will feel quite at home here as this is the events that lead Issac Clark from the first game to investigate the Ishimura.

The colony Aegis VII has found a strange looking object dubbed “The Marker”. Since the discovery of this Marker strange events have been happening on the colony, but a group of religious nuts called the “Church of Unitology” say that this is some holy symbol for their religion and think the events are nothing to do with each other but are all quite happy about this discovery! But as they try to remove The Marker… lets just say the poop hits the fan. So you as a survivor have to make your way through the nasties and get out of the place to safety. In space, I’m not sure what safety is!

The story is interesting enough on it’s own right; it’s not too complex but at the same time, it’s not just something scribbled to justify the game. It’s something you could realistically put into a film, which is very much the case with a Anime based on these course of events called Dead Space: Downfall. I feel the execution is terrible for this type of game. It worked so well in the original Dead Space, but in this On-Rails shooter, there is a little too much of it happening within the context of gameplay.

"You took it one Uranus joke too far!"

First point is that there is too much for a On-Rails shooter. Think back to how you played them in the arcades and at home, you have story and you have action and the two were separate for the majority part. Sometime the action will quickly break into story, but then you where back to pumping lead. Dead Space Extraction fails on this front where the others worked: skippable! In any On-Rail shooter game I’ve played, the story is skippable where as in Dead Space Extraction, it’s the game! It often gets in the way of the fun and makes me think what’s the point of playing the story mode through again if half of what I’m playing is story? It’s not like Metal Gear Solid where by that’s why you played, it’s an On-Rails shooter… you want to shoot! The story could be as long as you want, but I want to be able to skip it and great straight to the action. This brings me to…

Point two; with half the story also being told through video logs, sounds files and text logs, you are too much aware of your characters uncontrolled movement towards the enemy to care about this audio log playing. I did like that they carried on the same system where the action doesn’t stop, especially  having the audio logs play out of the Wii-motes speaker, nice little touch. But this worked original because you could find a relatively safe corner, prime your weapon and listen/watch/read the log and not worry about your character walking into an onslaught. Also, a slight issue with the consistency is that the action does stop for text logs… what’s up with that?

Dry Cool Wit and All the Fun Shooting Stuff

So, past the story and we are at the shooting stuff! Huzzah!

It’s an On-Rails shooter like I said, so game-play is going to be somewhat limited, you are forced to go in a certain direction, shoot what’s ever stopping you in the way (if you are me, friendlies count) and carry on till you are at the end of the level. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s a formula that works and works well so no real complaints.

The devs have added extra layers that meld into the Dead Space universe that extends the On-Rails aspect. There are parts where you have to fix/hack doors so you can open them and in order to do this you solder a path onto the chip set. This follows the electric wire game with extra elements acting as hazards; you get hit by a hazard you loose energy, or if you go off the path, you loose your place and back at the beginning. It works quite well and even adds a panic to the game when you have to solder at the same time as enemies are coming towards you… and you can’t shoot and solder at the same time!

Burn! Burn! Baby... err... space mutant I should say?

There is also the use of the kinesis and stasis modules.

The stasis module acts to slow down enemies, it can be incredibly helpful when you are swarmed down with enemies or having to solder a path on a panel. On the higher difficulty levels you will need to rely on this a hell of a lot.

The kinesis module is the only one that really annoys me. In order to interact with lockers, boxes and the such like to grab loot and story elements you have to use the kinesis module. Now you think with story elements the devs would want you to pay attention to them, but you end up looking around for stuff to grab with the kinesis missing half the plot in doing so. So, why try and do this any way? It’s really for ammo and gun upgrades you want through the game, there is no other way to gain this stuff other than to pick it up.

It works nicely at some points such as picking stuff up to block the way, but these parts are far and few between that in all fairness, the game would have been better off with a system that you can blow boxes up or doors off stuff and then auto grab those items like a lot of other On-Rails shooters do.

It’s There!

This is a minor point that I think is more of an issue for the Wii rather than the game itself, but you have no option to turn off the reticle on the screen. I say it as a minor point as I think a lot of people like having this reticle on the screen to help them aim and know where they are shooting in regards to these enemies (which I’ll get to in more detail why), but why force the player to play with it? It would be nice to have a free shooting system thats more On-Rails apt that you don’t know where you are shooting there for adding excitement when you miss and realize you’ve only got one shot left.

It would be difficult to not have the reticle at all in the game as the Wii-mote doesn’t make it easy for shooting, but those with a gun attatchment (a la moi) would like some un-guided shooting. It feels like too much a point-and-click to kill interface where you are selecting an area and shooting at it. So no guess work and steady aim work, just point and kill. Just doesn’t feel quite right…

"I challenge you to a dual!"

Now I said about taking into regard shooting an area on an enemy. This is a good, nay, cool part of the game where doing simple head shots isn’t going to cut it as these things don’t need a head to move, but they do need limbs. That’s right, you are cutting limb-after-limb off these enemies in order to get the better of them. A real nice way to, one, keep in line with the Dead Space universe itself, and two, to stop that annoying person from doing “BOOM! HEAD SHOT!” as it mean bugger all! It is a nice change on it’s own merits and also as strategy to how you kill something, so either slow them down first, or reduce their attack? Your choice!

“Looks like one doomed space marine!”

The graphics are very nicely done on the Wii, especially following the art style on the PS3/Xbox 360 versions of the game. The Wii did have to undergo a downgrade process, but this hasn’t suffered the game at all, to be honest, it can be a little hard to notice unless you’ve played both games recently. It’s a good job well done on the Wii.

An annoyance I find and so have others is this game is very dark, meaning you will find it hard to spot some enemies coming at you. I’ve tried sorting out the brightness and contrast on my TV, but it looks unnatural when I do so (and all my other games don’t look right on the same settings), so I am strongly lead to believe it is a game issue . I understand the need for low lighting in space in all, but it’s a shooting game and I can’t see what I’m shooting at.

A big flaw I found is with a glow worm you get at the beginning the game. You enter a low-lighting area and are told to shake the Wii-mote to charge up your glow worm; it gives you a green light and you can see better what is attacking you. But this is only available in certain areas and those areas you might not use it that often, yet in areas with low lighting and lots of enemies coming at you, that’s when you really want it but the game says that you don’t. The bastard.

Further Limits

Dead Space Extractions sound is pretty good, the voice acting is well cast, but I did find the woman a little annoying and bland

I said the story intruded a little on the game; this is true but is also made up as the game has two little extras that tackle my issues! Both of these are more available as you play through the story making it worth while.

The first is the Challenge mode that allows you to jump straight into a game and fight wave-after-wave of enemies. Great! It’s the game without the story, so you can blast all the limbs you want to playing through areas that where featured in the story and there is no story! This makes is so worth it to unlock all the areas by playing through the story.

The other is a voiced graphic novel from the actual prequel graphics novel illustrated by Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell: Feral City). It’s like having a cast reading the comic book to you while having somebody making sure you focus on the correct panel.

These are both cool additional features that do add a lot for fans of Dead Space, shooters and comics in general.

Final Breach

Overall, looking at the gameplay mechanics and story, in my opinion this may of done better as a FPS, rather than an On-Rails shooter and I feel this could have been the original direction.

I may have found some real faults with this, but there is fun to be had, just you either have to look/wait for it or you really enjoy a story that takes over the On-Rails shooter experience. Just to justify that this isn’t being picky; to overload a On-Rails shooter with story is the same as removing the crazy hair from a JRPG; it might work, but it removes the charms.

So if you liked the original Dead Space and want to play through the prequel story to find out more, then this is a good title, but if you are looking for your simple On-Rails shooter then this may not be it.

Related posts:

1. Dead Space Extraction [Wii First Impression]
2. WET [PS3 Review]
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [Xbox 360 Review]

Guns, swords, action, violence (lots of it), awesome tunes and a hot woman; throw that in with something heavily inspired by Quentin Tarentino and you should have something that I will jump on straight away, right?

When I played the demo on the PlayStation 3 I loved the style of it and the feel of the game play; but with these things you worry that maybe there is a slight issue afoot that may or may not ruin the whole game.

What The Bleeding Hell Is This?

So you are a hot woman and have to kick ass because you are paid to do it… seems simple enough! But that’s not a good way to sell a game, so lets do this properly.

You are Rubi Malone, a hot tempered assassin who does Wet Work for various underground syndicates that pay a heafty price for the service. You start off having to to steal a transplant organ while assassinating various gang memebers to save a rival gang member’s dying father who heads the gang. A year later, said father comes back to you to return the favour to save his son’s life due to the fact he’s running a undesireable gang in Tokyo that daddy isn’t too proud of.

Cue twist-after-twist of story!

As lame as it comes across, it entertaining enough especially when you consider the game is passing it self off as a highly interactive movie of sorts. That in mind, it’s a very short story with the game lasting a long single sitting. But this doesn’t degrade the quailty of the game in any way, but rather if you want to play a story so short or you see past it and look deeper into game play.

Jumping Around Like A Wounded Duck Are We?

This is the first time I’ve been confused if the game play actually works or not. I’ll say straight off the bat that the game play isn’t terrible or bad, but rather needs some attention. But first, the impressive part.

Those who played Max Payne [and if you haven't... shame - ed.] will be clued up on the whole slow-mo (aka “bullet-time”) affect of diving and the game going all slow allowing you to take out a number of enemies with ease. In WET the slow-mo system works really well creating a feeling that makes you feel as if it’s all down to you being awesome rather than the game itself.  There are times where you are put up against a large number of enemies in one area and to have this slow-mo ability is great as the game would be impossible without it.

So as well as diving and shooting in slow-mo, you can also knee slide, swing, wall run as well as others and still be able to shoot mobsters. Some of the abilities are only avaliable once you have unlocked them using points that are acumulated killing enemies in combos and stylish ways. You can also unlock gun and sword upgrades to better your equipment.

The interesting addition on all this is as well as slow-mo looking good and adding to your point to be a more stylish wet worker, it provides something pivotal to killing off mulitple enemies, using two guns on two different enemies! So you go in to slow-mo and you gun will lock on one target while you are then given free control of the other to shot where-ever you wish; so you can shoot other targets or concentrate on the one for a quicker kill. Up to you.

But with all this emphasis on the shooting mechanism, I feel the issue that I mentioned at the beginning of this review rear it’s ugly head. As good as the controls while shooting are, the devs seemed to have forgotten the exportation and the controls that go with the game to progress forward and slapped it in at the end by rehashing the slow-mo controls.

In slow-mo you are given a lot of control of movement and also the ability to do it quickly without over shooting this, a very fine balance. So if you take this control scheme and removed the slow down, you’d find that you’ll probably be overshooting the controls and missing your target as the movement is too quick, and this is what happens when you run around the level. I often found myself miss-judging a jump and falling to my death or running too far falling to my death again due to the controls being a little over sensitive. Game play in a lot of games has often been called “too stiff”, but in WET, its a little too loose.

Don’t let this get you totally down that the game is a loss as there isn’t too much in the need of precise movement but just running and shooting, just when you come to certain parts of the game where you want the controls to be stiff then your TV and controller are both at risk of making forbidden love!

Is She A Tasty Crumpet Then Charlie?

The graphics aren’t really anything special, they aren’t bad, but it’s not pushing the PlayStation 3  (or Xbox 360) to any new boundaries. It’s not out to do that though.

The character models are realistic enough and there is no major issues in bad textures or tearing, but during the cut scenes there is an issue with lip-syncing about 0.4 seconds out and this may bug people. Though I try and suss out if this is intentional due to reference within the games cut sequence to drive-thru movie ads that appear, and from what I gather from drive-thrus they don’t have the best sound-to-motion syncing. It does add a little charm but I think it can annoy gamers at the end of the day.

What often saves cut-scenes is the regular use of quick-time event; this is where you watch a cut-scene and a button will pop-up on screen and you have to hit it before it’s too late otherwise you loose and die. Its nice to see a game use it in a way that doesn’t make what is happening next so predictable but rather keep you on your toes! The downside of these quick-time events is that you can screw up the last button and have to go through the sequence again and as it’s the same sequence of buttons there isn’t must to keep you keen really so it can get annoying.

One thing I liked about the looks in WET is the film grain effect. Rather than just having nice smooth graphics in ultra high resolution, there is a filter on top that produces a film grain look to degrade the graphics. This may seem stupid to a lot of readers but let it be known that you can turn this off if it annoys you, but you loose charm in the game and the overall drive-thru experience WET tries to pull off. It’s not the first time a game has done this, Silent Hill has used it on all there titles (not sure on the very first one, but since 2 for sure) to add ambiance. WET isn’t a horror game, but it’s a 70′s stylized action game so it wouldn’t be right it the film quality was perfect now would it?

Bunch of Sloppy Hair Gits Barely Playing Their Instruments!

The music in this game is, in my opinion, excellent! I’m passionate about music and especially rock and it seems the devs behind WET understand music in games. WET has this down to a fine T with southern inspired heavy rock sounds that work so well with the game. Parts where you are in rage mode, the music represents it perfectly along side the lock-in battles where you have to lock the enemies out of a given area.

Each track is around 3-4 minute mark, and so when you are in a given area a special track is playing if you hear the song again, you know you are kind of sucking at that area. Also, where most games will re-use pieces of music, WET tries to make each area have a unique track in the background to accompany the scene.

To be honest, I fancy buying the soundtrack to WET if they release one, it’s quite cool!

Back To Bloody Square One Are We?

Aside from the story mode, WET offers up a challeng mode that you can run through to earn the highest points running through the training level with a certain gun. There is also the “Point Count” mode that is the story but emphasis on scoring points, so high score junkies will be entertained for hours.

So All Comes Down To This Then, Cupcake?

It’s not the most complex game nor the longest game, but it does offer some great gameplay in shooting even if this is hindered by the game play’s flow. There is enough here to keep you entertained for a few run throughs and could even keep casual gamers entertained as well as hardcore gamers; you can choose to dip-in and dip-out or sit down and play through solidly. The story entertains enough and the graphics have their appeal.

It’s a good game and a lot of fun to play with even if not polished as much as it should, but at the end of the day, that is what matters is that you enjoy a game and I really enjoyed this for a mindless romp! I’d say, pickup the demo and if you enjoy it then go get this great fun little stylized shooter!

Related posts:

1. Dead Space Extraction [Wii Review]
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [Xbox 360 Review]
3. Ghostbusters: The Video Game [PS3 Review]

I have a bit of a funny history with this title. When it was first announced that there was going to be a Batman: Arkham Asylum game, I took the title quiet literately and thought it would be based around the comic of the exact same name. It was one of my favourite comics and so a game on that would be awesome. Then when the story came out it dropped off my wire as it was far from the comic and I thought the devs missed it completely. That is until recently when the game came back on after reading more about it, seeing the footage and playing the game I quickly turned my head!

This isn’t a re-imagining of the same comic book, but a whole new addition to the Batman Universe and the stories behind the H.P. Lovecraft inspired Arkham Asylum.

Going Down to Arkham

So seems The Joker was holding up the Mayor of Gotham City’s office again, till Batman came and took him down and in. Upon his arrival at Arkham Asylum, Batman confesses his fears that The Joker seems to of given in without a fight, as if he wanted to get caught. Not a moment later, Joker springs free from the guards and starts running amok in Arkham, holding the city and the warden at ransom while the Joker makes Batman jump through his hoops.

The whole game follows Batman solving the mystery as to why the Joker wanted to take over Arkham and what his plans are with Batman himself. A lot of Batman history is covered in the game but not so that you have to know it but rather learn about it from meeting inmates who Batman previously caught and sent to the asylum.

Walking Around the Insanity

The game is pretty much an open world game based around the island allowing you to go where ever you have access thanks to the variety of tools Batman has at his disposal. The island isn’t that big so to add extra length to the game, back-tracking is involved. This has been carefully thought through as it feels fresh when you are forced to go into an area as you gain the new tools you travel to new parts. The outside part of the island is your hub to travel to a new building where you can often choose how to enter any given area and decide to either go for the up-front and personal approach, or the true batman style of sneak in a surprise!

You have to sometimes solve a few puzzling elements that require some logical thinking, but if you feel this isn’t for you then no worries. Batman: Arkham Asylum offers a detective mode that you can activate at any given moment to look for interactive parts of the level as well as for enemies in and around a given area. This adds a nice little twist on the gameplay to give you that Batman feeling that fills the game in so well.

Don’t Mess With the Bat

It’s interesting to think why Batman: Arkham Asylum game has worked so well and it has to be the fact that the developers must have taken a methodic approach to designing Batman because playing this you do feel like you are Batman.

Batman isn’t the sort to walk in to a room and just start throwing punches and struggle with a fight, he uses tools to gain an advantage first and then when he needs to fight, he does it with such ease. The game follows this extremely well. You normally need to take a stealthy approach into a level where you have to suss out how to gain the advantage and use it. When you are pushed into a fight, you are extremely good at it.

B: AA uses a system called free-flow-combat where you are given three buttons to fight with, but typically use one: hit, counter and stun. You will first start off button mashing the hit button to knock down all your opponents in a very cool, stylish way, and this works for a limited time. As you progress through game, you learn to adapt to use the other three to gain a better advantage in battle when you have have up to 10 thugs trying to attack you at once. The better the combo you get in these fight, the more experience (exp) you gain, which will allow to upgrade your armor and arsenal.

It’s strange how well this system does work, that you are powerful, but still careful on how you approach a situation. Anybody who has played Assassin’s Creed will know how this works.

Tasty Jaw Line, Bats!

The graphics are extremely good and some the best I’ve seen in a comic book game. It uses the Unreal 3 engine, famous for games such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War 2, but this is the first I’ve seen it not using all beefy characters but some slim. They are all rendered in a way you expect to see them; fat, slim, beefy, huge, mencing. Each model is crafted to perfection!

The world itself looks like it should too, providing a very menacing look with dark corners and disturbing scenes across the asylum, you are engrossed in the look and feel of the game world. It’s hard to talk about how good the graphics looks without sounding as if you are getting a little over excited about it, but they work so well and can’t be flawed. The only issue is when you are in detective mode, a lot of the niceties are lost, but if you are anything like me, you will reserve the detective mode to when you really need it! On both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the graphics are immaculate and exactly the same; there is no worries on superiority here but rather the devs really push both consoles to show what can easily be done on both system putting others that complain about cross platform coding to shame.

Adding to the Back Pages

The game adds challenge modes on top of the normal story mode that allows you to test your skills that you learned in the game. Even though you will probably play through the game more than once, this allows extra-longevity that would normally be lost. At the moment, there have been two extra download content packs available for both system, with the PS3 also having an extra pack to play as the Joker through the normal challenge missions. This is possibly the only pro and con of the systems is that ability to play as the Joker exclusively on the PS3; there is no release planned that I know of to have the Joker on the Xbox 360, so this maybe the reason to purchase the PS3 version if you are stuck as to what system, mind you, if you are an achievement whore, then they are (kind of) easy on B:AA so that may sway you also.

So with all this positivity in a comic book game, there has to be some negatives. There is one and that’s obvious; the cliche ending. That’s all I’m going to say, it doesn’t spoil the game as the plot up until the end is great along with some really cool, and confusing, surprises.

BOOF! POW! WHAM!

One of the best “super hero” games ever released; it stays close to it’s source material and adds a whole new chapter to the DC and Batman universe with this true homage to the Dark Knight. This is a game to add to your collection whether or not you are a comic book fan.

Related posts:

1. PS3 Exclusive Joker Content for “Batman: Arkham Asylum” is Free
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum In the Guinness Book of Records
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [Xbox 360 Review]

Before I begin this review in earnest I feel it’s important to be upfront about my likely bias opinion of this game! I’m not a big fan of motorsports in general. Cars or bikes going around the same circuit time and time again, for hours on end. However, when it comes to rally, there’s little I enjoy more. I love watching it, and I enjoy having a go even more. So when it came to Colin McRae; DiRT, I bought it on release day way back 2 years ago and still play it to this day. Colin McRae: DiRT 2 has a lot to live up to, can it do it?

Gettin’ Dirty

First thing I noticed was the intro movie. If you played the first incarnation of this game you should be familiar with the stunning hill climb intro movie, and I have to say I was disappointed. Not only did the intro movie not compare to the first, but it was ruined more so by the voice of Ken Block. I’ve got to say I’m somewhat of a purist when it comes to rally, and although he is doing a great job promoting the sport to a wider audience, he isn’t Colin McRae!

Slightly disappointed I dubiously pressed the start button. After a basic set up, input first and last name and choosing your country, you then get to take your pick of a surprising long list of male names, female names or nicknames. Which ever one you choose is then used throughout the game by an enormous cast of competitors ranging from Dave Mirra and Ken block right through to DiRT’s Travis Pastrana, in their comments and congratulations.

Engines Revving

The game has moved away from the tiered tree career format of the first DiRT game, to several locations across the world.  Each location has between 10 and 20 events, across 3 difficulties (Rookie, Pro and All-star). What I really liked about the original was the full rally separate to the career mode.To begin with I was under the impression that DiRT2 didn’t have this feature, which was a massive disappointment. However, after reaching a certain level World Tour events become available to play. There is one for each discipline (including rally) and for each one you must first complete a series of qualifying events. These play much like the rest of the game but allow you to compete over several different tracks/circuits in one hit, in just one discipline at a time.

There’s plenty of cars available to you each with loads of unlockable liveries, as well as different horn sounds and in car “toys”. This brings me nicely onto the graphics… One of the toys is your avatar, dangling from the mirror. All of the “toys” react to the movement of your car (ie the G-forces) swinging or wobbling in the correct direction at the correct time. If you do at least one thing after buying the game or downloading the demo, I really recommend driving a wet course with the camera in the cockpit. Not only are you blown away by the realism of the driver movements, but the reflections on the bonnet of your car are fantastic. On top of this, as soon as you drive through water, it splashes up onto the windshield and is blown realistically up the windshield, The windscreen wipers come on and again realistically wipe it away. Truly beautiful.  The rest of the graphics are stunning, with the only noticeable flatness on the dirt coming off the tires.

DiRT 2 features online play against up to 7 other drivers. This is an area that I haven’t fully played through, but have found that all the race modes are here, and the other drivers are fantastic. A little too good for me at the moment!

The Road To Victory

Overall this is a fantastic game that I would happily recommend to anyone that enjoys racing games. However, if you’ve never played a racing game, don’t have an interest in rally, or haven’t played the 1st, I would say to download the demo before parting with your cash. Although this doesn’t give you a real insight into the game, it does give you an idea of the style. Neat lines around corners just simply doesn’t cut it. Sideways quite often is the only way to win a race!  The graphics are superb, and are rarely, if ever a let down. The soundtrack is amazing and spot on with the games theme. The cars and liveries are brilliant, and the gameplay is utterly fantastic.

Related posts:

1. Colin McRae: DiRT 2 Demo Trailer
2. Dirt 2 Single-player and Multiplayer Demo Out Now
3. Forza Motorsport 3 [Xbox 360 Review]

You often hear of games that talk about the size of their world, but very often, the size isn’t that big, a select few games have really managed a massive game world. But here comes Fuel with over 5,560 miles square of record breaking in-game world size, it’s not to be sniffed at. But does this really provide a solid gaming experience or does it end up being a gimmick?

Racing Story

Unsually for a racing game, this one has a sort of story, more setting shall we say. It’s set in a post-apolocolyptic world where global warming has lead to extreme weather conditions altering the world as we know it. People no longer live in cities but fled to different areas to live more “green”,leaving behind huge supplies of fuel. Rather than let the fuel go to waste, an underground racing league has emerged to make use of the baron landscapes and excess of fuel for their enjoyment.

Not that story really matters in the vast majority of racing games, but this makes it work in a very simple way. Also adds a certain juxtaposition in that although this game is showing what happens when we choose not to care about the environment, the after effects is that we have an awesome landscape to go racing with!

Why do we race? To win fuel! And why do we want fuel? To buy new vehicles!

A little too simple

The gameplay is great to start with, you are given a variety of tracks to race on each with a unique run, so no two races use the same path; they may join roads, but there isn’t a need for mirror track races like many other racing games use. There’s plenty of race type and challenges,  from checkpoint racing forcing you to keep a strict path, an A-B race across a few miles but you need to find the quickest route to get there, helicopter race where you have to get to the point before the chopper does and more. Each of these comes with their own little challenges, such as the A-B race that you could just point towards the finish line and drive, but if your vehicle cannot traverse dirt roads well then you are scuppered. Also the helicopter race may trick you and directed you towards a cliff face that you cannot get up without going round.

But with all these types and hurdles to get round, I found it started to lack after the 4th time doing a particular race. Some of the challenges you are given will only allow you to ride the vehicle they selected. So you may have the most powerful dirt bike going, but they will want you to race with the cheapest one going. Really, the challenges are more for winning fuel to get better vehicles for the main races. Its an okay way to do things, but it makes it tedious and a chore to then do a simple race; people may also find the races are a little too easy.

With some races, you may have to rely on your GPS to navigate the map… this isn’t always the best course-of-action as it can’t work out off-road at all, and can struggle with some roads! Often it would tell me to go back the way I came when infact I was going the correct way just because I verred slightly off the road.

My first play through, the first 2 locations I found myself jumping straight into the most difficult races as I was lapping in the easy setting. As I may of said before, I’m not a racing game person so naturally I’m not going to be that good, but when I find that I’m starting to play the game on the harder settings to get a challenge then a real race fan might find it too easy. I started to find it difficult in the latter races due to spending my money on the wrong type of vehicle, that meant the going back to the tedium of grinding the challenges that I now found boring. It came off almost like an RPG in it’s execution with the grinding to level-up/get more fuel to have better vehicles to be able to win races.

Though, an interesting point to make; every race in this game requires you come in first to win, so if you worry that progression can be way too easy with needing to just be in the top three, it isn’t that bad. At first I wondered why this was the case, but when the difficultly level isn’t the best in the world, requiring to finish in pole-position adds that touch. I must admit, there have been a few hair-tight finishes. In a strange way, this does add excitement and recovers the game from the boredom. Normally in the top difficultly you will find that the number 2 vehicle will be close on your tail and will always find that speed boost around a corner on a cliff face.

Open-World

As mentioned, Fuel features over 5,000 square miles to play in but I’m in mixed minds about this. The first is that this is pretty cool that you can drive to your hearts content around the massive map and never really be restricted, only by what you can traverse. You can travel to the next camp (rather than take a helicopter ride), find scenic spots and liveries (paint work for your vehicles), and random challenges can pop up.

But the second mind set kicks in… it’s a bit boring travelling 33 miles through nowhere with nothing much happening. It’s not like Grand Theft Auto where you have a bustling city with lots going on, all you have in Fuel is nature and the odd truck, there’s no real reason to travel this massive map unless you are a real keen racing fan.

It must be said though to be able to do stupid and crazy stuff was fun, such as take a massive ride down a hill or get some major speed going through sand dunes, but these fun bits are far and few between and is not something that has to be done.

Building your Marks

Having the massive world map does allow you to create your own races using the games race builder. It’s a pretty simple system that lets you use the overview map to quickly build a race using checkpoints where ever you want. The variation is limited to using the check points, so no helicopter races. I quite enjoyed making a 40 mile race around the dunes, but it did cause the GPS to cack up even though I did plan it out so it flowed well but the GPS often told me to go back on myself making it very confusing.

It’s not the most powerful race builder you’ll ever see, but it’s simple and effective enough to make a race in 2 minutes without the prior knowledge.

Visual Distance

The world is beautifully created; it has a massive draw distance with minal pop-up noticeable (with respect), and seeing your vehicle getting dirty is cool. Despite how the landscape doesn’t alter that much in my opinion, it’s impressive to look at, and driving through it all is some-what of a pleasure.

There is plenty of detail and often goes missing in the world, but this mainly due to the static nature of the map. It’s awesome to see the weather effects but the everyday effects are lost on the cars. Trees don’t react when you hit them, I expected leaves to fall and the trees to shake, but nothing much happens, just you crashing and having to restart…

With the graphics being as good as they are, the load times are majorly affected. When you are on the map, there are no loading times whatsoever from one side to the next, but when it comes to going in and out of the menu and restarting a race, the loading feels painfully long. It got to the point where if I fell off a cliff and completely screwed my race up I would have to make a difficult choice, should I restart or try to finish the race? I would normal carry on and still win.

Racing Appeal?

When I first started playing Fuel, I was quite excited about getting into a racing game and tearing up over 5,000 square miles of land, but as the game went on it really dragged for me. Slow loading times, repetitive gameplay and music made playing Fuel a chore and couldn’t keep my attention. There is appeal here for the hardcore race fans out there, but not that realistic.

This is one you really should rent before buying and give it a solid play through, but that’s for the race fans. If you aren’t the car loving sort (apart from Grand Theft Auto or such-like games) then I can’t recommend this at all. A nice game engine, but it’s screaming for so much more!

Related posts:

1. Fuel [Xbox 360 First Impression]
2. Forza Motorsport 3 [Xbox 360 Review]
3. Overlord II [Xbox 360 Review]

I’ve owned a Playstation 3 a few times since launch but I would always end up selling it because in my opinion there wasn’t really anything that was worth playing!  But I decided to get a PS3 again for one main reason really, Killzone 2! I’ve been following the development of this game since it was first announced at E3 in 2005.  It’s been almost 5 years, and comparing this game with the development from that video in 2005 is pretty damn close. Now with the next generation of gaming here, people are expecting a lot more as far as gameplay.  They want graphics; and for Killzone 2, I think the PS3 was the only one that could handle such a load.

Killzone 2 comes after Killzone for the Playstation 2, and Killzone: Liberation for the PSP, but now you are the enemy’s planet – Helghan.  Two years earlier in the first Killzone, it was the Helghast coming to destroy an Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) colony.  This was on Vekta (the ISA’s homeworld), and after pushing the Helghan back, they decide to attack them on enemy territory to end this war once and for all.

Meet the Crew

Players will take the role of Sergeant Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko, who was a battle-hardened veteran of the special forces unit Alpha Team, who have a mission to take out the Helghast Threat.  The Alpha Team also consists of: Corporal Dante Garza; a smart-mouthed and young, Garza is a loyal, optimistic and trusty soldier.  He is a close companion of Sev, as they have served together in previous campaigns before being selected to join Alpha Squad.

Master Sergeant Rico Velasquez is the leader of Alpha Squad, and also your squadmate from the first Killzone; He’s the type of person that prefers to shoot first and ask questions later but despite this, he does have a good heart. Also, Corporal Shawn Natko, a Demolitions Expert for the ISA Special Forces Alpha Squad is an experienced soldier of the same generation as Rico.

There are also other characters that you stumble upon in the game, including Colonel Jan Templar, who was the main character in the first game, but is now the Commander of the ISA Fleet that invades Helghan.

Prepare for the Next Generation

Do you remember the days when you would be playing a video game, and the cutscenes just looked stunning, but when it got to the gameplay it was totally different?  Well in Killzone 2, the transition from the cutscenes to the gameplay is incredible, you can’t even see a change.  That was one of the main things that I liked about this game was when you are watching a cutscene, it usually doesn’t go to a loading screen but go right into the battle, and you can get going on killing the Helghast.

The Gameplay in Killzone 2, is just like any First Person Shooter, the only difference many people may expect is the controller itself.  I personally wasn’t a fan of the Dualshock controller because of how the analogs were positioned, but after getting use to it, it would just be the same as playing an Xbox 360 game. Similar to Call of Duty 4, with R1 for fire, and L1 to zoom in, while still moving, it’s very easy to go with.

They have an assortment of weapons ranging from Machine Guns and SMG’s, to Grenade and Rocket Launchers, something that they did well with the Grenade Launcher, is they didn’t make it some overpowered weapon used for instant kills but for more strategic purposes. Killzone 2 has a lot of cover-and-shoot gameplay. Similar to the Gears of War series, players will need to take cover in gun battles to get through. It’s not  a “run-and-shoot” game, and  requires a bit of strategy. Plus with the 4 difficulty settings from recruit to elite (which completely removes the HUD) you will have quite a battle on your hands.

Getting it Online

The Multiplayer for Killzone 2 supports up to 32 Players, and has a variety of game-types. Something that Guerrilla Games did with the online play, is something other developers could learn from: put all the gametypes into one game, instead of looking for a game of Deathmatch or Capture The Flag they have mashed it up into one game-type.  The way it works is when you start a game, it will start with a particular game-type such as Team Deathmatch. Once a winner has been decided it will then move to the next game until all of them are complete, announcing an overall winner.

Some games can last between 30-50 minutes, so make sure you have the time to play for that long.

Weapons online are just like Single Player, only there are some that aren’t included, and you can’t just start with powerful weapons right off the bat.  Compared to other FPS’s, you need to unlock the weapons, abilities, and different classes. They give you a rank system as well, so when you get to a certain rank, or earn certain metals, you can unlock different weapons, abilities (i.e. Heal teammates, build turrets), and classes (i.e. Engineer, Spy, Medic).  So you will spend quite a bit of time just to unlock those. I have currently played the game for about 13 hours online, and I’ve only unlocked 2 new classes, but I’ve gotten most of the weapons.

Is it in the Killzone?

The game is amazing with regards to graphics, gameplay and online features, but the story did seem like it was short. I managed to complete it in an 8 hour run first time.  I was a little disappointed but the online game more than makes up for this.

Related posts:

1. ‘Crasher’ Announce from Punchers Impact
2. Alpha Protocol Due This May
3. Ghostbusters: The Video Game [PS3 Review]

With the distinct lack of any big titles out in the last few weeks, or even months, and none on the horizon for a while, I decided to get Overlord II. I haven’t played the first and to be honest, I had no idea what this game was about, and the blurb on the case didn’t give much away. So with no expectations what-so-ever, I handed over my cash and proceeded home to an evil filled weekend of mischief, mayhem and destruction.

The game begun, in my opinion quite slowly. You start the game as your younger, teenage self, a hooded, yellow eyed creature, in the outskirts of a small medieval style village. You then have to run through this villiage on a very linear path, completeing small objectivies that get you used to the basic controlds such as walking, camera movement and minion commanding. After you have succesfully created some serious mayhem and arson and pissed of just about everyone, the Empire starts bombarding the village, this leads to you being thrown to the soldiers and you must make your escape. A nice feature that’s introduced here, and repeated throughout the game,  is the ability/chance to control other objects, in this case a catapult. This nicely breaks up the usual gameplay with some extra destruction on a larger scale.

After you make your escape, you end up frozen in a block of ice. Some minions (small evil creatures that resemble gremlins) decide you might be ‘The Overlord’ and this results in the beginning of the real story. Starting again with a training mission, going into more depth, the game leads you through an arctic setting where you get to have your Minions club to death small, furry seal pups with big soppy looking eyes by the bucket load. This really sums up the game. A game that really allows your evil side to flow out.

I don’t want to go into too much more deatil about the story, but it leads you to want to find out more about your predecessors, and about the Minions plans, while letting you smash up inanimate objects, or club to death anything living. The real fun comes with the decisions you are forced to make throughout the game. Should you be evil, or REALLY evil? A nice touch in my opinion. Enslave the world or destroy it completely? The choice is yours! I have to say I thought I’d enjoy the killing, and destruction path more, but there is probably more fun to be had by enslaving every innocent person you find. Walking around a level with all your Minions in tow and a score of innocent creatures that you’ve turned into zombies is truly a sight to behold. If some of those creatures end up getting killed by becoming a human meat-shield, then who really am I to say no! After all they are sacrificing themselves (unknowingly) for the good, or should I say EVIL of the world!

Another particularly nice touch is the customisation options you get. As the game progresses you are able to ‘buy’ items for your minions, aesthetic options for your fortress and spell specialisations.

The game’s real ‘come-back and play some feature’ for me has to be the puzzles. These are frequent enough to be a really nice break from the mindless destruction, without becoming to often that they become repetitive and boring. Sojme of my favourites have to be when you take control of one of your Minions. Giving you access to places too small for your bulky Overlord to squeeze into. Some of these involve steath much like the original splinter cell games. ie. dodging behind guards and staying out of sight while watching a guard’s patrol pattern.

Summary

All though this game does have a few flaws (the cut scenes aren’t great, and having to walk miles around your tower to access the different menus) the game itself is simply fun. The right amount of smashing stuff up and being evil, split up by nice puzzles that’ll have you thinking a little.

Related posts:

1. Fuel [Xbox 360 Review]
2. Ghostbusters: The Video Game [PS3 Review]
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [Xbox 360 Review]

Anybody around the same age as myself is sure to remember the original incarnation of the phenomenally popular robot toys. These weren’t your usual, standard, run of the mill robots though, oh no, they could transform into everyday objects, and had a back story that could rival those of popular comic book heroes of the day. Thats right I’m talking of course about Transformers.  I still remember playing with the toys and watching the cartoon, wishing I was as lucky as spike and could meet some real transformers.

Luckily for me, and an entire generation of 20+ year olds, as well as the younger generations that got wrapped up in some of the later re-incarnations of the transformer universe, including the new films, this opportunity has been for-filled with the release of the transformer games. The first was released to coincide with the first of the live action and latest incarnations of the Transformers multi-verse. I enjoyed the first game for a while. However, it quickly became tedious with the majority of the missions being very repetitive. I found I had very little to entice me to not put the controller down or switch to a different game. Don’t get me wrong, driving at top speed as Jazz and then quickly switching to robot mode and skidding to a halt, never gets old. Nor does flying around as Blackout shooting at tanks, and then transforming and falling to the ground only to smash up some buildings and more tanks or trucks. The main issues were the camera, short story and simplistic game mechanics.

It hasn’t however, put me off buying the sequel!

The best of both worlds

Hurrying through the main menu, all I could think about doing was smashing up some Decepticons and saving the Earth from their evil! You begin your robot career with a dilemma, made even harder if you’ve played the last game. Autobot or Decepticon. Which one first? When I played the first game I wanted nothing more than to play as Optimus Prime, so this was an easy choice, but as I’ve mentioned above, playing as the Decepticons, was just as fun, if not more so. I eventually gave into my evil side and went for the Decepticons.

The first thing I noticed was that you have a team section, and a hologram of the world, which as you later discover becomes populated with missions you can attempt. Each one unlocking in a specific order so as to not ruin the fluidity of the story. Talking of the story, it does seem a little hard to follow through the game, with your missions as Decepticons being explained to you by a very robotic voice, which at some points made it difficult to understand.

Getting to it

The action starts rather slowly with lots of pop up boxes explaining basic things such as “This is a mission, press A to start it” (I abbreviated it, but that’s the gist)! Once you finally, ‘ok’ through all of these the tutorial itself is just as painful. Travel round getting beacons, teaching basics such as walking. Obviously you need to learn the controls, but I’m pretty sure that any one can work out the left and right joysticks on their own! Once this tutorial is over you get returned to the ‘team’ section where you can spend points that you earned during your last mission, in this case the tutorial. You get the choice of speeding up the amount of time it takes for your weapons to over heat, or reducing the length of weapon cool-down time as well as increasing the power of your melee attacks. This is a nice addition, giving you more of a reason to do missions faster, collecting more of the collectables. There is also, as with the last game, an ‘unlockables’ section. However, this time it’s based on the number of enemies killed, or by killing multiple enemies with a special move, et cetera.

The missions are basically exactly the same as they were in the last game. Run around attempting to destroy, or find objectives while the enemy comes at you in waves. The AI hasn’t improved either, with enemies simply standing still, some distance away and shooting at you. This mean that you can simply fire a couple of big shots in their direction while moving just a little and kill them without taking any damage. Melee has in my opinion got even worse, if you get close enough to an enemy they will normally transform and drive off, transform back again and shoot at you. The best you can normally do is get a couple of weak punches in before they run away. This is really infuriating at times.  To make things even easier, the AI will quite often decide the best option is to run/drive away and climb up the nearest building. I’m not sure why they do this, but to make things worse, once they’ve made this decision they won’t stop till they’re at the top! Yes this does mean you can physically abuse them with whatever weapon you like, shooting them in the back till they reach the top!

With all the problems however, it is a game that allows you to play as a Transformer. Does this mean I will happily look past the repetitiveness of the mission, or the poor AI. Well to be totally honest yes it does. There really is nothing better for the child in you to drive at full speed into the middle of enemies transform and shoot and punch your way through them. It’s really fun!

Is this a good game in disguise?

A game with fairly average graphics, below standard AI and repetitive missions. Not a game to buy if you want a serious game. However, it is a game that will appeal to your inner child and although during one sitting gets boring, it does get you going back just to have another go at it. Not sure it has any re-play value once it’s completed, but you will want to complete, I’d suggest in small bite-size, one mission pieces. Ultimately it is Transformers and so can it ever really be that bad?

Related posts:

1. Overlord II [Xbox 360 Review]
2. Fuel [Xbox 360 Review]
3. Forza Motorsport 3 [Xbox 360 Review]

Ghostbusters is one of those films I remember as a kid growing up and absolutely loving it, hell, I even had all the toys; the Ecto-1, the power pack, I even had the fire station! I never played any Ghostbusters games, and judging by what people like the Angry Video Game Nerd say, I wasn’t missing out on much!

But here we are now where video games are mainstream media, and isn’t something just for kids but for all ages. Funnily enough, those of us who where kids when Ghostbusters first came out are older and (somewhat) wiser now, possibly with kids of our own (not me). But enough of the nostalgia, lets review!

Stay Puft is Back!

Ghostbusters: The Video Game takes you back to 1991, 2 years after the second Ghostbusters film, where a new, nameless, recruit (you) joins the team. Alas, it’s not long before a shock-wave hits the city and ghost are on the rampage again, along with a familiar destroyer known as “Stay Puft”. You find out it’s Gozer upto his old tricks and the game unfolds new and interesting discoveries in the classic Ghostbusters way.

It’s not hard to like the story and the voice cast as it’s the original actors we loved the first two times; Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson. So the voice acting is 100% on par, but also Aykroyd and Ramis are back on writing duties for the game, making the experience that so genuine to a third film. Although your character doesn’t speak, this makes the flow of the story easy to take in as not much has changed with the dynamics other than some rookie jokes pointed your way. It does tie both films together and explains those bits missed in the previous films making this the conclusion to a trilogy we didn’t know about.

Getting down to some bustin’

The gameplay works well in the context; although at the start of the game there is a lot to take in like how to wrangle the ghosts using their three-part method but once you get the idea of this it becomes second nature. There are difficult moments when you have to fend off fast and/or multiple enemies, sometimes multiple massive enemies with ghosts and creatures all at once in the latter levels, but it adds effectively to the difficultly curve keeping things from going stale, so when you think it’s getting easy, the game kicks it up a notch.

To help you with your ghost busting you are given a variety of new ghost busting equipment at your disposal (the wonders of being the chief tester eh?) that equate to a real world weapon. As well as your proton beam you’ve got the Dark Matter gun which is a rifle and a machine gun all in one, the blue beam that can freeze any enemy and also is able to shoot a shotgun-esq scatter, and lastly the Slimer (from Ghostbusters 2) which spreads slime on the ghosts but also can be used as a tether gun that can be used to solve puzzles later on. All 4 weapon types have their advantage and disadvantage, be it clumsy, weak, slow or rubbish reload times.

Thankfully, this game doesn’t have a “ammo” system, but rather it has a painful reload system, so you can keep firing and overheat your proton pack and wait a few seconds, or manually vent it to cool down and quickly use it again. While this does help a lot with the game, you are inclined not to worry so much about what you are doing and be very trigger happy. The pay system in Ghostbusters should of helped this trigger happy approach, but I didn’t worry about it. See, each level is basically a job, and you are paid for it, but any damage you cause will cost you; unless you are looking for the trophies/achievements then you needn’t worry. The money you get is used to fund upgrades to your weapons, so the more money, the more upgrades you can buy. I never once worried about losing money and I got all the upgrades, so I think this may have been lost a bit.

As well as ghost busting, you also do research that will help you unlock upgrades and generally little side-stories, although this isn’t a real requirement through the game, it’s cool if you are a fan of collecting in games and helps towards those trophies/achievements.

It’s like being in the movie

There are about seven levels in the game and the majority are taken directly from the films with the first level pretty much being from the Ghostbusters first film where they have to track down Slimer in the Sedgewick Hotel, going back up to the twelfth floor. Little details to the original plot really do make this game. We aren’t talking some cheap rip from the film, but proof that Aykroyd and Ramis really did want to prove this game to be a possible (true) third sequel.

The graphics are very nice and really do the films justice, even if the soundtrack does miss out on the lip syncing. But I found that this is one of those games where the in-game cutscenes are a lot better than the FMV sequences; see, I understand why developers have to use FMV at times, but they either need to better mix the FMV with the in-game graphics, or do an amazing job of it. There has been talk about the PS3s graphics not being as good as the Xbox 360′s, but looking at comparisons, I wouldn’t worry about it as when you play it you won’t notice it – possibly due to the fact that it’s hard to calibrate the PS3 for comparisons with the 360 as they both use different screen rendering software that doesn’t translate truly to a screen shot.

One thing i found is that the gameplay in the levels is extremely liner; you’ll never feel as if you are going off the path of the game meaning that there is no real exploration. You are told where to go 95% of the time; not the best feeling in the world when playing a game nowadays, and does cause this game to be very short in that respect. It took me under seven hours to complete and that wasn’t rushing. There are a few times I was lost in what I was meant to do or who to speak to that takes a blow to the pacing of the game.

A saving grace is that your able to play missions over again to find that missing item or ghost you didn’t capture the first time round and the online multiplayer feature. I haven’t play much of the multiplayer to be honest other than to say that it’s great to be able to play with friends online and do some busting together and I can see it being addictive leveling up, earning cash. I just found getting into a match slightly difficult with being chucked out due to map version issues. This could be just me, but without extensive testing I’m not going to let it affect my judgement.

Does bustin’ make me feel good?

If I’m going to be honest here, this game is very good but may not be so much on it’s own merits.

This has to be one of the best film-to-game’s I’ve played, but that’s saying as a fan of the Ghostbusters and having a big grin on my face the whole time playing it. The only time I got irritated was when I had to load the game again after dying as the loading screens do take about a minute to work through, but you are graced with the Ghostbusters theme so they have tried to keep you amused whilst waiting.

Overall; this game is totally worth a go, and if you loved the films then this will be great to add to your collection, but if you never got into the films then it’s a sure fire rent to get you into the Ghostbusters universe and keep you entertained for a few hours.

Related posts:

1. Ghostbusters: The Video Game [PS3 First Impression]
2. Fuel [Xbox 360 Review]
3. Overlord II [Xbox 360 Review]