“Gears of War II is what GeoW should have been.”
” ‘Gears of War 1.5′, not ‘Gears of War 2′ ”

A tech demo is defined by wikipedia (who else?) as being:

“a prototype, rough example or an otherwise incomplete version of a product, put together with the primary purpose of showcasing the idea, performance, method or the features of the product.”

The original Gears of War was lacking several major features listed in the INX Gaming Manifesto, most noticeably a lack of an offline Instant Action game mode. It also lacked flexibility: there was no skirmish mode, there were in total only 14 enemy types (including Raam and set pieces such as Corpsers, Reavers, Nemacysts, Seeders and Kryll, which don’t really count). It also lacked a fleshed out story line, and balanced multiplayer. But that was a different “article” (rant).

There was no good reason not to include a “horde” mode in GeoW, even a stripped down one would be better than none, although I realise that optimisations to the UT3 engine made it easier to do the way it was done in GeoW2. There was no good reason not to allow us to do multiplayer skirmishes offline. Gears of War 2 doesn’t feel like the sequel to Gears of War, it feels like the game it should have been. Gears of War acts as a tech demo, a sample of the potential that a Gears of War game could have, and Gears of War 2 feels like the game it should have been.

Where were the chainsaw duels in GeoW 1? Where was the horde mode? Where was the variety of scenarios in the story mode that GeoW 2 produced? And above all, where was the flamethrower?

- John

Every time I play a game to completion I think “Man I can’t wait to review that for INX! But first I’ll have a nap because I’ve got work in 3 hours.” Then by the time I get back from work, tired and hungry, I go to bed to catch up on lost sleep. Then I never actually get round to writing the blog, because there are more games to be played.

So that’s why I haven’t completed Saints Row 2 before writing a review on it. But I’ve played it for just under ten hours and I’m going to play it for plenty more than that so here it is: Saints Row 2 is not a Grand Theft Auto clone. What it is is a vastly superior spiritual successor of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

While Grand Theft Auto IV is dark, gritty, and eerily serious in places Saints Row 2 is light-hearted and fun throughout (the exception being when your friend Karlos was killed by a rival gang and he died shaking your hand, in a strangely stark moment which effectively gives your character motivation). My avatar can’t even be bothered to shave every morning, or lose weight (or his cockney accent – you get to choose one of three voices per gender) but he finally has motivation to steal nuclear waste to have tattooed into a rival mobster’s face. I didn’t make that up. That actually happens.

Saints Row 2 doesn’t wait. You start by breaking out of prison, thankfully being allowed to skip the tutorial GeOW style, and continue escaping until you reach the mainland to find that your old gang, the Third Street Saints, have been wiped out by rival gangs. Old characters soon return, and the player can proceed with the storyline(s) or play around with the diversions, new ones of which include Fuzz (dress up as a policeman and get medieval on crime for the cameras), and car surfing (literally, jump on a car and try to keep your balance).

A lot of people were put off by just how broken the original Saints Row was in places, not that it actually spoiled your enjoyment of the game, but gamers are demanding and spoiled on the whole, and if you release a buggy game you will suffer. Volition clearly learned this and the results are easy to see: after nearly ten hours of play I’ve only seen one civilian “pop” out of existence when I turned my back on him. Cars no longer stream out when you’re feet away from them and, while the AI still leads to some strange behaviours from the police especially, it on the whole manages its job well enough.

Thanks to an absent, RRODded XBox 360 I played this particular gem on my PlayStation 3, so I don’t know about the achievements. But it doesn’t matter, Saints Row 2 rocks on anything.

- John

john AT inx-gaming.co DOT uk

A wrestling game may seem like a strange choice. Cancel that, a wrestling game must seem like a strange choice: they’re traditionally very slow and robotic, difficult to handle, and very repetitive. They also don’t stand up to the same level of scrutiny in terms of variety and depth of gameplay that the Tekken and DoA legions demand.

TNA iMPACT! by Midway games has breathed new life into the genre and has changed my opinion of wrestling games for the better, although I’m not entirely sure why. The same combinations of buttons lead to the same moves that almost all wrestlers have in common, and after the first match you will have heard all of the commentry that the game has to offer. The handling is fairly intuitive (and very quick to learn) but still feels robotic in places, and there’s still no strategy other than to chip away at the enemy’s health bar and then try to pin him, regardless of the wrestler that you’re using and the wrestler that you’re fighting. The lack of strategy can be observed by watching the AI: sometimes they’ll block a punch, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’ll reverse a hold that you’ve put them in, and other times they won’t.

Given how little they could get away with it’s impressive to see the lengths that Midway have gone to polish the game. They clearly tried to make this game the best ever wrestling game and leave it in a position to hold the title for a while: there’s a story mode with an actually interesting and well-written story, with lots of colourful characters and good cutscenes. There’s a create your own player mode, and there’s four player multiplayer at one console. New characters, new moves for the create a player mode, and new arenas can all be unlocked (for the fans of collectibles). This isn’t a game for the hardcore beat ‘em up genre fans, in the same way that WWF isn’t for hardcore martial arts fans. This is a game for people who want a shallow but fun way to kill a weekend with a friend, or who enjoy the showmanship style of fighting. TNA iMPACT! is to DoA what Earth Defence Force 2017 is to Gears of War: simpler, brighter, but much easier to pick up and play. It’s also more addictive than any of them.

john@inx-gaming.co.uk
Laying the smackdown since 2007

Progressing through miles and miles of level to screw up for just pressing the jump button a bit too soon, then falling down a crevice, then having to go back and do the same thing again another 10 or more times isn’t my idea of exhilarating excitement, before I discover by accident that I wasn’t meant to be jumping in that direction at all. Any combat is shallow and pointless. It’s an exercise in timing and luck, and the gaming industry’s oldest enemy “Frustrator” rears his familiar face.

Tomb Raider Legend is the 7th of 9 titles in the series (the 9th being the eagerly awaited Tomb Raider Underworld). It’s gone a long way to address the issues mentioned above:

Your “backup” team give you advice. Constantly. Your progress is saved regularly. The combat has been given added depth by the addition of sliding tackles, jumps (with bullet time, of course, what did you expect, real time? n00b) and side kicks, as well as the staple shooting with infinite ammo.

The puzzle solving has evolved too: it’s generally fairly easy to see what you need to do at a given time. There are exceptions, for instance when you’re doing battle with a giant black demon and you have to turn a gravity-gun on these four blocks on the wall that opens a container directly above you that you can use your grapple hook to pull a magical stone out of… I got somewhat stuck as to why the monster, that was taking damage, was just regenerating it. I had to take the stone out to progres! Of course! A bit of explanation would have been useful here.

If I seem unclear as to exactly what the stone, the demon, and the blocks are exactly it’s because I am unclear. That brings me onto my next point: the story has been revamped and includes all manner of arcane nonsense about King Arthur’s sword Excalibur and the cutscenes (skippable, thank God, they’re usually between a checkpoint and a hard part) are well scripted and executed. I say “arcane nonsense” but it definitely serves to drive the story forward and to a wide variety of locations: Kazakhstan, Nepal and Cornwall.

“As in take the M5 to the A30 Cornwall?” Lara asks incredulously, as I admire the improvements in script.

Tomb Raider Legend definitely still suffers from the problems that have always marred the series but the puzzles are original enough, the combat deep enough, and the game presented well enough to make converts of many nay-sayers and bring back the fans that were lost by the atrocity otherwise known as “Angel of Darkness”. If you liked the original Tomb Raiders then you’ll love this. If you want to try to expand away from your usual diet of shootyshooty action games and maimymaimy bloodandguts then pick this up and give it a try.

- John

And yes, I did a whole review without once commenting on her chest. Marvellous.

Part of the problem appears to be that it’s thought that making a game for the PSP is simple.

Step 1: Take parts of an existing well-liked distributed franchise and either port them directly or rehash them then port them, or tack a bit on then port them (Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, and Prince of Persia respectively).

Step 2: When you’ve managed to compile them successfully, plunge the graphics and animations quality until the framerate rises to a barely acceptable level.

Step 3: Ship the game. Yes it looks tacky and is buggy and frustrating, but so are all games for the PSP so who cares?

The consumer does. And since it’s our money, we’re going to spend it on games that have been designed, and implemented from the ground up for the console. Silent Hill: Origins is such a game. Without doubt the best lighting we’ve seen on the PSP, and it can rival plenty of XBox 360 games. It can be noticed best when you’re wearing a torch on your chest and swinging your fists around: it looks incredible. Climax Studios has successfully managed to reproduce the defining gritty horror of the series and has brought it all to the smallest screen. The only problem is that the Silent Hill series is the sort of thing that you play alone at night in a dark room with the sound turned up for hours on end (as they recommend before the opening title screen that this game should be played). And most of my PSP gaming happens on a brightly lit bus while I’m trying to ignore screaming children, and screaming adults, come to that.

The best games for the PSP are “pick up and play” ones. The sort where you can make progress, or have a complete game, within 5 minutes, or at most under 10 minutes. The Burnout series is a great example of this. I know that Burnout Legends and Burnout Revenge use pretty much the same engine, and EA didn’t even try to make a pretence about Burnout Dominator (which was shipped under the same name for both PS2 and PSP!) but Burnout is perfect for this sort of thing: there is progress (so something to look forward to on those commutes) but short bursts of gameplay keep it fresh and entertaining and playable in short stretches. The same cannot be said of Dungeon Siege – imagine Diablo on the PSP – that had lots of progress but horrible story, and dialogue and graphics, and…

So far the best PSP game that I’ve had in terms of how addictive and entertaining it is while being able to play in short bursts is Worms Open Warfare 2. Maybe not only because Worms really uses the wide screen that the PSP provides, perhaps because it’s really easy to control and perhaps because it’s a low-tech game (so it doesn’t require development time to be spent on high-detail 3D graphics and animations which would be better spent on improving gameplay and fixing bugs), but this game alone is worth having a PSP for. I was in the middle of a really exciting match today, my third attempt against an enemy team on Hard difficulty setting, and I’d just used the Ninja rope to swing in over the opponent’s last worm and…

My PSP ran out of batteries.

- John

One of countless hundreds.

This game was worth the money easily.

The “in” jokes, the awesome sneaking gameplay, the thrill of wondering if the guard walking towards you will see you, the variety of missions in the variety of environments, the dialogue, the humour, the sorrow, the single best Mech fight I’ve ever encountered in a game (MG Rex versus MG Ray) the return to Shadow Moses (Back To The Origin? After all, Only Snake is the True Hero), and the epic boss battles. The sting in the tail ending (these spoilers I won’t reveal) is after the best climax of any game I have ever played.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is an epic end to an epic series. Pour it a pint, it’s done bloody well for itself. Here’s to you Kojima! You went wrong with Raiden but you went right with Meryl. You went wrong with the PS3 exclusive but you went right with the well-timed MGS2 launch. Sony may have denied you the ability to have us switch controllers to fight Mantis, but you burned them for it. I never thought I’d say it but I am truly satisfied – my MGS cravings are completely filled, and you wrapped up the story perfectly. Congratulations – you are a true hero.

- John

john@inx-gaming DOT guess DOT uk

And I felt the same way through the start of Halo 3. Other than sometimes stupefyingly good graphics (some of the scenic shots are even better than the ones we saw in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and some of the best vehicle-based fighting we’ve seen in an action game (my favourite is a sort of hovercraft called “Ghost”) there was nothing remarkable here, but there were annoying harmless little aliens with annoying squeaky voices, there was a backstory that the game made no attempt to explain (but the manual does, so take note) and there were several pistol weapons that seemed pretty much interchangeable: overall a wholly missable experience.

Suddenly, it changed. In chapter 4 a machine called a “scarab” gets dropped and you have to destroy it by shooting at its joints with rockets (sound remarkably similar to almost every other boss battle ever made ever? If not it should do), but the difference is now that I was having fun! I was excited and enthused and hooked! Then, in the following chapter, the monsters suddenly went up a notch: they looked scary and suddenly posed a real threat, especially en masse (which is what they were). Halo 3 had gone from being mediocre to being a great gaming experience. The jumping no longer bothered me, the squeaky voiced enemies did return, but much later thankfully, and I was really looking forward to the vehicle sections. I even forgave the game a bug which killed me about 7 times (when you destroy the power source while standing close to it in the Scarabs in chapter 7 there’s about a 30% chance that shrapnel from the exploding power source will knock you out of the edge of the world. Admittedly this is more likely to be Havok’s fault than Bungie’s), as opposed to the bug which I didn’t forgive which sometimes prevents the allies from driving cars you’re in, either sensibly or at all.

One of the most common complaints levelled at Halo 3 is a messed up difficulty curve. While I admit that the last chapter is surprisingly easy (and full of damn good buggy-based fun!) compared to the 8th, the game does become increasingly difficult as you play it, and what more do you expect from a difficulty curve?

Halo 3 gave me a load of vehicle and FPS fun, some achievement points, and a desire to play more Halo 3. And what more do you expect from a game?

- John

Finished the Fight.

The back of the Crysis box states that you need the following to run it on an XP machine (with Vista you need higher specification – these are shown beside XP’s in brackets):

Processor: 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz)
Memory: 1.0 Gb (1.5 Gb)
Hard Disc: 12 Gb (12Gb) – my install was 6.03Gb but then I didn’t install the additional programs on the disc or the French, Czech, and Polish language packs which are ticked by default. When you install this game make sure to uncheck these.
Graphics card: NVidia GeForce 6800 GT or greater, ATI 9800 Pro or greater (Radeon X800), 258 Mb.

However, Hellgate London wasn’t available for me to play (the spec of which is closer to my laptop) so I ended up playing Crysis instead on my portable beast which clocks in at:

Processor: 1.66 GHz
Memory: 1.0 Gb
Hard Disc: 60.0 Gb
Graphics card: GeForce Go 7600 128 Mb

So I need to point out that, even on the lowest settings for all of the options, it still churns and rocks and grass are visibly streamed as I approach them (I put this down to my “low” spec laptop not the game). But I will say this: even on the lowest settings, it looks lovely. The HUD comes in four colours, all of which make it look downright sexy, the models are detailed and the textures are among the most detailed that we’ve seen in games. The AI really brings the Korean soldiers to life and makes this open world a really hostile one – when you waltz into a defended area it throws enemies at you relentlessly. The game gives you four different modes to act in (which are accounted for by, believe it or not, your suit): armour mode (where your health recovers), speed mode (where you can zip past enemies), strength mode (where you can leap high into the air), and cloak mode (where you are invisible for a period of time). So it’s a bit like a free-roaming Halo 3 but, thankfully, without the stupid enemies with the annoying voices. But there are limits to the free-roaming – I tried to swim out to a boat in the distance and was promptly fed upon by a beautifully detailed pair of sharks. Ah well.

This isn’t so much of a review since I haven’t completed the game yet, it’s more of a “first impressions”. But I can tell you this: if you have a beast of a gaming rig then you owe it to yourself, and your machine, to buy this. You will be staggered (even my grandma commented on how beautiful the scenery was). Rest assured, I will post a full review when I have completed Crysis.

On my proper gaming rig.

- John

john AT inx-gaming DOT co DOT uk

1. The multiplayer often doesn’t work out of the box, (and when patched requires port mapping).

While port mapping isn’t a problem to a lot of us, it is to lots of others. You shouldn’t need to be technically adept to be able to play UT online against your friends. Given that the Unreal Tournament franchise was effectively born of fans wanting to play Unreal online this is a real disappointment.

2. Face!

The favourite multiplayer map, Facing Worlds, is making a noticeable non-appearance. UT2004 had two versions of this map, a modern one and the classic one. I refuse to believe that no one on the Epic Level Design team thought “Hey, why don’t we include this level that has always been a favourite among fans and that is simply iconic to a huge chunk of them.” If they thought it they should have said it and if they said it they should have been listened to. While on the subject of levels…

3. Not enough maps

The maps that are included in the box are all great, but you’ll be disappointed if you expect it to compare the volume of maps in the UT GOTY edition. Expecting heaving contribution from the modding community is almost a given, but leaning on them this heavily isn’t giving the gamers enough variety and doesn’t meet the high bar set by earlier games from the UT series.

Don’t get me wrong, UT3 is a great game, but these issues really do stain the game for me. When I’ve made a UT3 Face I’ll be sure to make it publicly available through INX, until then I’ll go and have a go on UT.

- John

Play nice. Play Face.

Lords of the Realm II consists of two parts – the empire builder and manager (which is turn based) and the top down battles (which are played in real time). Sadly Lords of the Realm III tried to blur the boundary by making the empire building part real time and so forcing the player to sit and wait for up to five minutes while he watches his army doddle from one side of the country to the other. There were other faults, but the end result was that the Total War series of games knocked its socks off.

But that’s not an issue for us gamers any more because Lords of the Realm II is still the game it always was. The success of Sonic the Hedgehog, Worms, and Street Fighter II on XBox Live Arcade show that it’s not just a few nostalgics killing a few hours – these games are still worth playing.

And always will be.

John

john@inx-gaming.co.uk