Heterogeneous Shed

Ubi Assassin's Creed II Fan Day Vid Featuring Yours Truly

2010-05-02T22:54:00.004Z

Check it. A vid from when we visited Ubisoft Montreal last October to check out Assassin's Creed II. It's a bit old now, but screw it. We like to share anyways.

Probe Away - Check Out Kabuto The Python's ME2 Tribute to Mining

2010-02-15T21:33:00.002Z

Who here loves Mass Effect 2's mineral extracting mini-game? Well Kabuto Python liked it enough to create a hip-hop track about it.

Listen to it right here via the link below.

Far Cry 2 Retrospective (Ubisoft, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

2009-07-21T14:04:00.011Z

Join The Shed, as we take a fond look back at one of the most divisive games in recent memory. Some love it for the challenge and the majesty of its African setting, while others hate it for being hard as nails and relentlessly unforgiving. Whatever your take on Far Cry 2 might be, you've got to admit, it's a hell of a feat and one hell of a game. Read on...

Anyone with even a casual interest in news and world events will know that Africa is a troubled nation, rife with disease and famine. What you may not know is that absolutely everyone carries a gun, drive jeeps with rear-mounted machine gun turrets and follow you relentlessly in a bid to kill you dead for no apparent reason.

OK, so that might not be true – in fact we’re certain that it’s not – but it is the Africa portrayed in Far Cry 2, where there are virtually no innocent civilians and the world is the most hostile and unforgiving you’re ever likely to encounter. Even the wildlife is far friendlier then the people. You could say Far Cry 2 is the all-time worst advertisement for Africa. Play the game for an hour and it’ll put you off ever wanting to go there for a lifetime.

You play as a shady mercenary who finds himself infected with malaria and working for various factions for your own personal ends. Amidst the deception and playing factions off one another, your goal is to kill The Jackal, a despotic weapons dealer who’s responsible for most of the conflict erupting in the surrounding areas. As such it’s up to you to locate The Jackal and take him down by whatever means necessary. Your first port of call is with The Underground, where you’ll be given invaluable malaria tablets that stave off your horrible mind-altering malarial pangs. You’re later introduced to weapons depots where you can spend any of the 200-odd diamonds found scattered all over the gameworld on new and more reliable guns. You’ll also meet a couple of helpful buddies that will help you out of tough situations later on in the game or alternatively, get themselves kidnapped prompting either a rescue mission or a brief sigh of indifference as you abandon them in captivity while you continue on your journey.

First, more on Far Cry 2’s weapons, of which there are many. You have two primary options when acquiring weaponry. You can either scavenge rusty old guns from enemies and end up carrying an arsenal prone to jamming during heated battles, or you can buy your weapons brand new from the weapon merchant, which means hijacking weapon convoys to unlock more guns for sale. It’s the latter option that proves the most sensible as salvaged weapons can suffer from severe unreliability issues and there’s nothing more annoying than having your AK-47 jam while surrounded by a rag tag band of mercs all intent on turning you into Swiss cheese. Incidentally, it’s at this precise moment that you’ll usually be assaulted by hallucinogenic malarial spasms, obscuring your view and sending you into panic mode. A stab of the left bumper is all that’s required to administer a malaria pill, but during a heated firefight, this can be a royal pain in the arse.

And there’s certainly no shortage of fraught gunplay throughout the course of Far Cry 2’s campaign to take down the morally dubious antagonist of the game, The Jackal. Apparently, The Jackal has issued the entire population of Africa with your picture and orders to kill on site, as almost every NPC you encounter in the wilderness will open fire in your direction. Even the most innocuous looking situation can be read wrongly, like one instance where we found ourselves out on a deserted dirt track when a small car approached in the opposite direction. Just one man driving said car looked innocent enough, when all of a sudden he jumped out brandishing a machine gun. Still one well-aimed bullet to the head sent him on his way to hell. This kind of thing is a common occurence in FC2, as everyone hates you.

This is but one example of the kind of blind hostility you regularly encounter in Far Cry 2’s unforgiving, brutal world. It’s accepted that you’re a hunted man, but FC2 takes it from the sublime to the ridiculous, throwing constant waves of enemies your way in a seemingly random fashion. Yet, this is really the only major negative in a game that stands as a quite astonishing achievement. FC2’s game world is not only incredibly vast, but possesses a majestic visual fidelity that makes traversing its jungles and stretches of savannah a real pleasure. There may be a great deal of repetition inherent in the game’s missions (especially the side quests), but then the landscape is so stunningly realised, so beautiful to behold that these structural shortcomings can be easily forgiven. When you’re driving along a desert road to destroy yet another enemy compound, the God rays flickering through the trees, the desert rain falling as zebras gallop alongside your vehicle make it a pleasant ride despite the fact you’re repeating a similar mission to the one you finished mere minutes earlier.

Far Cry 2’s beauty lies not only in its breathtaking vistas, but also in the explosive destruction you can wreak upon your enemies. You’ll often find yourself infiltrating enemy compounds to off a certain target as part of a contract, and in these instances your initial instinct is to favour a stealthy approach. The instances in which sneaking works in your favour are few and far between however and more often than not you’ll be found out, subsequently alerting every single person in the area. We found that it’s far more effective and fun to drive into the middle of the compound, mount a turret and blast the crap out of any explosives you lay your eyes upon. Doing this normally starts a few fires, which will flush out any enemies who you can then pick off one by one. Chuck in a Molotov for good measure and you can watch the flames propagate across the grass, up trees and through buildings. In minutes you’ll have reduced the zone to a smouldering heap of debris that you can now explore at your leisure. Works every time.

Ubisoft Montreal has crafted a game that they hoped would deal with adult problems, topical, important issues about poverty in Africa and so on. On this front Far Cry 2 is only a partial success. The Africa depicted therein is nothing like the Africa you see on the news and we refuse to believe that it is anything like what we’ve seen in Far Cry 2. Nevertheless, as a game Far Cry 2 is more successful although it is unbelievably frustrating and seemingly insurmountable at times. Enemy AI is often pretty dubious, with some blowing themselves up or running around like headless chickens. The sheer scale of the environment can seem very intimidating too and the moment you unlock the second half of the map, your jaw will hit the floor.

Forget about Far Cry 2’s veneer of unflinching realism and political commentary to just focus on the outrageous game beneath that allows you to set fire to anything that burns and you'll have loads of fun. Throw a few Molotovs around, blow everything to smithereens, and torch everything to cinders. Only then will you truly appreciate what Far Cry 2 is all about.

Score: 7/10

Resi 5 demo: WTF?!

2009-03-03T16:14:00.006Z

What the fuck is going on?
Is Resident Evil 5 a return to the old ways of the series - riding a good thing into the fucking ground?
I'm disappointed, even angry with the designers.
Nasty Fuckin Splitscreen

I can't believe they would do something this amateur. It looks SHIT. Makes it almost unplayable, no joke. Aiming, finding items, avoiding enemies, reading text, navigating menus - all a nightmare. Thought it might be a demo specific thing but this shot makes me think otherwise. Sigh.

The Controls
I'm a fan but this game highlights the need for some tweaks. More enemies, faster enemies, stronger enemies - bring em on, but don't make the shit UNBALANCED. Simple alterations would make a huge improvement.
Running with the analogue stick - shit is pressure sensitive, so fuckin use it. Running with a button held down feels a bit lame now - turning at speed is difficult, trapped on scenery, the usual problems. I'm not asking to be a gymnast, but come on...
Shooting and moving - damn this would improve things 50%. A slow walk wouldn't tip the scales in your favour but it would allow you to maneuver out of tight confines. Playing Dead Space I thought 'this is heavily influenced by Resi 4'. Playing Resi 5 I'm thinking 'this should have been influenced by Dead Space'. That game had the balance just right.
Personalised controller setup - should be able to assign that shit how I like it, not be given 4 different options, none of which are useful.

The Inventory
Again, I gotta look to Dead Space and tip my hat. If you're gonna do that real time menu shit, do it right. Allow me to move whilst I'm selecting items, allow me to select, use, give items quickly. Or alternatively...STICK WITH THE MOTHERFUCKIN ATTACHE CASE. I was a fan, now its gone forever. I liked having that calculated pause to sort my shit mid-battle. I liked spinning a first aid spray to stuff it in there. Granted it wouldn't work very well in co-op, one guy spinning herbs whilst the other guy combines ammo. Wait...maybe that would make a good little minigame. Fuck you Capcom.

About the ONLY thing I can say that's a definite improvement is using the D-pad to quick switch between guns. Nice.
What the fuck, my enthusiasm has dried the fuck up.
Maybe I won't be riding into town to buy this on release day anymore.
Fuck.

Landon Garrett for The Shed.

This week in my world

2009-03-03T15:59:00.003Z

This week we have a slightly late Street Fighter IV review on play.tm that can now also be seen at http://www.playboy.co.uk/ Nice, no?

On Strategy Informer we have a chat with Maxim Bodrikov, lead designer behind Elven Legacy and we preview the game too.

There's also an interview with Hearts of Iron III's Lead Programmer, Johann Andersson for your delectation.

Next up, a review of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and some exciting news about DLC for Midnight Club LA.

Until next week, friends...

Rich chats to Yuji Naka

2009-02-16T23:36:00.002Z

Check out http://www.play.tm/ soon for our interview with Yuji Naka regarding Prope: his new company, and his innovative new control method for Let's Tap on the Wii!

Also on play.tm, a review of House of the Dead Overkill later this week.

On http://www.strategyinformer.com/ there's a review of Monolith's eagerly anticipated F.E.A.R. follow up and a preview of Wanted: Weapons of Fate.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Review: Mass Effect (2007. Bioware. Xbox 360)

2008-03-24T20:03:00.008Z

A space opera with grand ambitions meets a writer with none. Can an RPG-phobe get to grips with a detailed sci-fi universe? Space-time was invested and Landon emerged from his gaming hypersleep 200 years later; a better man with hope for the future of gaming.

Way back in May 2007 Landon Garrett danced with Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion and was unable to find his feet. He tripped and fell over and felt cheated by his ogre of a date. Yet there was light at the end of the mountain pass. To quote, he wrote: "Mass Effect...could be the RPG I've been waiting for. Maybe I'll be able to get my character drunk in some crazy spaceport nightclub. Maybe it'll be my entry ticket." Flash forward 10 months and Landon has been fulfilled and surprised by an RPG that welcomed him into an unfamiliar gaming fold, offering him food and shelter and sex with alien races.

Sadly it's not possible to fall off your bar stool in Mass Effect, but you can enjoy erotic nightclub dancing. Developing games is all about making compromises, it seems. Thankfully, ME compromises little. Original ideas abound and characters are painted vividly - whatever else you get out of the game you'll definitely be left with some strong memories.

I, YOU, WE...are Mass Effect
Nowadays most games give you a choice of creating a 'unique' avatar - it's pretty much industry standard. A limited choice of stock heads with optional beards is a step in the right direction but it's easy not to be saddened by such shallow thought. Mass Effect's character creation tool is in-depth in the same way that Oblivion's was, except with a slightly more limited range to create hideous freaks. Male or female, you decide - it's worth taking the time to tweak your look before you begin; by the end of the game you'll have analysed your minor flaws from all angles. Hopefully though, these flaws will become a part of your character's identity in a way you never thought possible.

As well as creating a look for your Commander Shepard you also choose a backstory and a combat class for her/him, all of which resonate into the story in subtle ways throughout the game's run time of 20+ hours. Identifying with your character is also down to the choices you make in the moment. The basic principle asks you to travel one of two roads: Paragon or Renegade (or if you crave chaos, a schizophrenic blend of the two). Interaction in Mass Effect's universe is conducted with an intuitive 'conversation wheel' that gives you quick dialogue options at the touch of the analogue stick. The fresh touch here is that you direct the tone of the conversation. Diplomatic, hostile or neutral questions/responses open up branching dialogue, often in unexpected ways. It's a nice system and largely avoids blank repetition unless you call for it, mostly due to superb voice acting and a commendable lack of expositional writing. The characters that populate the planets, bases and walkways of the galaxy are always coloured by personal bias and opinion, something so rarely seen in games and so well handled here. Most conversations, no matter how trivial in terms of the plot, will tell you something about the world you're living in. The combination of all these elements create a rich and very personal protagonist for the plot to orbit around.

From the hub of The Citadel to the farthest outreach planets, most of the environments are unique and thoughtful in their design and dripping in craft and finish - a couple of levels in particular are mind-blowing. You'll work your way through these places in well-paced story missions but naturally you have the option to get lost in the abundance of side-quests on offer. It has to be said that most of these are an exercise in levelling up your Shepard with experience, new items and that all-important ca$h (much more than you can spend, it's a bit like Brewster's Millions). That said, a handful of these tributaries do flesh out your chosen character's story and those of your rag-tag crew, and give a taste of scale and vision. Standing on a planet's hilltop gazing into the stars at a distant asteroid storm is a beautiful sight, enough to bring a tear to any sci-fi lover's eye.

This isn't an RPG!
Some RPG veterans will be disgruntled that the combat in ME is real-time and not turn-based. Most humans (chiefly Landon) will celebrate this new hybrid of light-strategy and shooter skills, as it is more immediate and visceral. The Unreal 3 engine sets a now familiar tone - aim, shoot, take cover, flank. It's light on any real deep strategy but each chosen member of your crew has a talent to bring to the fight and before long you'll have mastered a playing style that works for you. The squad dynamics can be a lot of fun and the wide choice of combat styles on offer for Shepard mean repeat playthroughs will be distinct. Slick weapons and technology sit comfortably alongside physics abilities, or 'biotics' - ME's equivalent to magic and one of the most enjoyable additions to the action mix. Such powers are, as always with ME, incorporated into the story itself and the world around it with grace and fine dustings of detail.

Every silver cloud has a dark lining
ME swells and overflows with ideas and potential and so it's no great shock that not all of it is realised. Graphically the game is superb but too frequently suffers from slow texture loading. It seems to be a common occurrence in these early days of the current generation, but here it really takes you out of the moment and breaks the spell the game works so hard to weave. Many of the games planets are barren and bland in a fashion that makes exploration feel repetitive, different colours and textures stretched over the same peaks and valleys. The identikit human outposts and colonies you repeatedly encounter can be explained away (just about) in context as pre-fab contractor's work and when they're situated in some often stunning landscapes it's hard to complain big; but still, when you're hearing the same music underscoring a similar encounter it's a sour déjà vu. The item menus are confusingly designed and often mean you're left carrying far too much equipment, most of which will be multiples of the same items. Most of these negatives can be overlooked though, it's only in retrospect that we mention them - whilst playing they won't stand in the way of progress or enjoyment.

DLC and beyond
It came as sour news recently that downloadable expansion missions can only be played if you are midway through the game. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to let the completists get involved too? Having invested so much time crafting a character - in look and personality - naturally one might want to experience new missions with them and continue the saga. We guess this is what they call repeat-play value, but in this case it seems to have a hidden catch.

Landon loved his female Shepard so much, became so attached to her, that if not given the option to play a sequel with her in it, he would seriously think twice about doing so. A lot of the Shed's goodwill toward this game is because we connected emotionally with our characters and believed in the world they inhabited. The experience is so personal, it could almost make a gamer hesitant to play through a second time.
There is something so brilliant about seeing your character in game - talking, interacting and leading the focus of an interesting plot. Bioware have done an exemplary job of tailoring the experience. The Shed only hope that this personal touch can be continued into future instalments.

Bioware have created an engaging and unique game world that draws the player in and allows them an admirable level of choice with genuine consequences. For that alone the studio have earned their seat on the Citadel council. But the flipside of such an accomplishment is that the player almost expects too much and it is easy to pick apart the less than exemplary aspects of ME. However, we cannot measure a game by our own expectations. That ME raises our expectations to such heights is testament to Bioware's accomplishment. They have deftly avoided the pitfalls of the genre and crafted a worthy piece of art. This isn't Star Wars, this isn't Star Trek - this is Mass Effect.

Galactic Standard Points: 8/10

Review: Condemned: Criminal Origins (Xbox 360. Monolith, Sega)

2008-02-24T13:07:00.009Z

Those of a sensitive nature should look away now. Condemned is not for the faint-hearted. Assuming the role of Ethan Thomas, a fugitive fed who’s been framed for murder, your mission is to track the real killer and clear your name. Your pursuit will take you through some truly dilapidated areas, inhabited by violent crack heads and depraved, crowbar wielding sociopath types. During your hunt for the sadistic murderer known only as Serial Killer X (or SKX for short), you’ll take in a variety of relentlessly dark and uninviting environments. Taking their visual cue from the serial killer movie Se7en, most of the levels are rendered in different shades of brown and grey - sometimes greeny-brown but always pitch black and always pant-wettingly scary. Thank god then that you have a flashlight with infinite battery power to rely upon, because without it, you’re utterly screwed. Mercifully, you can also pick up any blunt instrument you may happen upon, be it a pipe, plank, crowbar, shovel, sledge hammer, fire axe or paper cutter (ouch!) they’re all available for you to visit your own brand of horrific mutilation upon the slew of manic, flailing pariahs that stalk you throughout the game’s ten chapters. There are also a paltry number of firearms for your delectation, although none of them are much cop with their limited ammo. The game’s melee weapons are more than adequate however and will easily see you through the compelling, twisty, twisted narrative. As a 360 launch title, Condemned is now showing its age graphically but it still stands up as a fantastic game, which bodes well for the forthcoming sequel, out 14th March. Condemned constantly shocks and surprises with grisly moments, surreal monochrome scenes fighting demons inside Ethan's fractured psyche and an accomplished script that successfully keeps you hooked until the very end. Factor in the light CSI style investigative elements where Ethan can collect evidence and you have a unique FPS. We just hope that these crime scene bits are expanded upon for the sequel because they do tend to be a little on the simplistic side.

Still, Condemned is a brutal, terrifying experience that will give you nightmares for weeks on end. Heartily recommended then.
Well worth suffering the cold sweats: 8/10

Xbox 360 exclusive Gears Of War 2 announced at GDC 08.

2008-02-22T16:22:00.011Z

Polish up your chainsaw bayonet and strap yourself into your bulky body armour because Gears Of War 2 is on its way. Epic's announcement at this years Games Developers Conference by studio president Mike Capps has got us salivating at the prospect of a sequel to 2006's best game and what many gamers consider to be the 360's finest title overall. Gears 2 will utilise Epic's Unreal Engine 3, the very same engine that brought Rapture to horrifying life in Bioshock and has since given us hulking great space marines blasting one another into chunky offal in Unreal Tournament III (out today). Specific details on the game are scant, but we can expect gameplay mechanics and screenshots to be slowly drip-fed in the run up to GOW 2's slated November release date. Until then we can look forward to spending our holiday season with Mr. Fenix and associates. Yeah!

Movie Review: Cloverfield (February, 2008)

2008-02-10T20:24:00.000Z

What do we know about Cloverfield? We know that it's a monster movie from JJ Abrams, the man who brought us Alias and is still melting our brains with Lost. He's hot property in Hollywood right now, which is why he's been entrusted with bringing the highly anticipated Star Trek prequel to the big screen. But first, he's brought us this curio. A movie that for all intents and purposes is Blair Witch via Godzilla. It's what would happen if in real life, if a giant monster went on a rampage through New York and it had been filmed by an amateur cameraman. Well, that's the idea anyway. The big question is – does it work? The answer? A big yes.
Opening with a strangely voyeuristic sequence between main character Rob and girlfriend Beth, we’re immediately drawn into these people’s lives. This is further developed in the subsequent party where Rob and his too-beautiful friends are gathered to wish him a fond farewell as he leaves for Japan. It’s during this opening that you’ll probably make your mind up about Cloverfield’s approach. Reports have been circulating that punters have been walking out feeling sick because they couldn’t handle the motion of the camera as it whirls around the party from person to person as Hud (a name that is maybe a reference to the abbreviation for Heads Up Display, the on-screen furniture you use in First Person Shooters. Or maybe not) records the goodbye messages of Rob’s friends. Get through the movie's opening however and you’re on-track for a real treat. You inexplicably find yourself lulled into participating in the party; even if you’re not entirely convinced by the actor’s performances it’s unavoidable. You forget that disaster will inevitably strike and it’s at this point that it arrives with a bang. When Cloverfield gets started, it doesn’t let up. For the entire duration of the movie you’re placed into Hud’s shoes, wherever he goes, we go too, whether we like it or not.
Pedants will hate Cloverfield. They’ll ask how the sound can be so good on a handheld camera? Why does Hud suddenly become able to hold the camera nice and steady in the heat of an attack when he was struggling to hold the camera straight at the party minutes earlier? How come the group are the only ones in the whole of New York City to think the subway would be a good place to hide? You could go on and end up ultimately missing the point entirely. Cloverfield is essentially a Hollywood action movie and none of these pedantic questions matter when it manages to be such an entertaining one. What makes Cloverfield special is the same thing that made The Blair Witch Project unique almost ten years earlier: the visceral experience of being centre stage of incredibly frightening and ostensibly real events. The documentary style works well here, even if the fictional document involves a bizarre creature tearing a city apart, decapitating treasured national monuments and being an all-round nasty blighter. What’s important is that it feels real and never staged, you believe in the characters; believe that they were subjected to these terrifying proceedings and the images of NYC being destroyed, covering the population in dust and debris are still incredibly powerful even six years on from September 11th. The shock and awe of rumbling explosions erupting in enormous plumes of orange flame also recall the harrowing footage of the attacks on Iraq. But then perhaps we’re reading too much into Cloverfield, which at its core is a good action movie that has some truly great moments and few bad ones. There are flaws that may irritate some, but they’re easily ignored. Cloverfield is best enjoyed at the biggest cinema you can find: it looks stunning and sounds exceptional. Well worth watching.
****

Slimline PS3 revealed.

2008-02-10T19:59:00.000Z

As is always de rigeur with Sony's games consoles, the PlayStation 3 is next in line to lose some extra pounds with a new slim and lite model. Following on from the slim and lite PSP launched last year, the new slimline PS3 looks kind of like a Wii with an extra bit stuck onto the side. As these new shots (shamelessly stolen from T3.com) show, the new PS3 favours a very minimalistic approach, shedding all USB ports and memory card slots for a cleaner, crisper finish.

Available this autumn in sexy satin silver, the new PS3 looks lovely but doesn't quite have the bulky "look-at-how-powerful-I-am" shiny black presence of the original PS3. However, speculative rumblings suggesting this could be the much-touted 160GB model lend this redesign some extra credibility, making it a more desirable console rather than a mere gimmicky overhaul. One could argue that this was the case with the psone, pstwo and PSP slim & lite, which were simply pared-down versions of their forebears with no major extra features to speak of.

Here's hoping that Sony manage to squeeze in the rumoured 160GB into the new PS3's slender shell and give consumers a genuine reason to splash their cash towards the end of this year.

For more on the PS3 slim and lite, visit www.t3.com

Review: The Orange Box (PS3, Xbox 360 (version played), PC. Valve, EA)

2008-01-17T22:49:00.001Z

Value for money is a rare thing to discover when buying games. Sure you can pick up a two-year-old game pre-owned for a tenner if you shop around or you could get The Orange Box - the biggest bargain ever to hit the shelves of your local games emporium. What Valve have packed onto one tiny disc is nothing short of miraculous. One of the most compelling sci-fi sagas ever to grace the PC comes to consoles packed to the gills with brand new extra content, to make up a simply mind-blowing proposition. So, in order to accommodate the sheer candy store of delectable gaming goodness on offer here, this review will be split into three sections - one for each game. Simple really.

Half Life 2, Episode 1 and Episode 2
Half Life 2 is the Godfather Part II of videogame sequels. Epic in scope and narrative heft, the game follows on from the original incident at the Black Mesa facility. Silent hero Gordon Freeman returns, ready to beat zombies and marauding head crabs into pate with his trusty crowbar. The first thing you need to know about HL 2 is that it is an unparalleled masterpiece - the perfect marriage of relentless action and story that is perfectly paced and balanced. Visually, HL 2 may showing its age a tad - the game is over 3 years old now, but still looks sprightly thanks to the superlative Source game engine. Gaming pedants may baulk at the relatively low-res textures in the first two games, but there's no faulting the quality of Episode 2's graphical finesse - it looks stunningly silky smooth, especially compared to its predecessors.

Set in the shadow of City 17 where the omnipresent Dr. Breen spouts looped propaganda on gigantic screens from on high, there’s an unshakable feeling of genuine oppression pervading every inch of Half Life 2. Soldiers line the streets keeping the population in order, their crackling radio speech an ever-present noise whilst rebels hide out in deserted, burnt out buildings. It’s such a fantastically well-realised environment that fully succeeds in embroiling the player within its universe. Whether you’re fighting the Combine in a derelict building or squashing Antlions on a beach, the world is consistently solid and believable, so accomplished is the fine attention to detail.
There are some well-drawn characters in HL 2 too; strongest of these is love interest Alyx who is thankfully quite handy with a gun. You’ll need her in Episode 1 if you want to attain the One Free Bullet achievement on the 360 version of the game (we did – it’s not that difficult) and her AI is advanced enough to be helpful in a tough situation. She’s not much good when you’re trying to squeeze through a doorway though, but then she does apologise for getting in your way – bless. Barney and Dr. Kleiner return from the previous game to lend a helping hand and are welcome familiar faces. Most surprising of all though is the connection you feel to Freeman himself as he interacts with NPCs, you’re given a real sense of importance and purpose. By keeping Freeman mute, you’re able to soak up the words of those around you, listening and simultaneously gaining a real sense that your role is of major significance. Everywhere you go the city’s survivors will recognise you reinforcing Freeman's status as an almost mythical saviour of mankind. It’s incredible how Valve have achieved this – think of another FPS where you can remember experiencing an actual connection to the protagonist. Exactly.

Let’s get physic-al
Interaction is the watchword for Half Life 2. Boasting some stimulating physics-based puzzles aided by the indispensable Gravity Gun, the game really comes into its own. Every object can be manipulated in some way and each item reacts in exactly the way you'd expect them to in the real world. Break a wooden strut supporting a platform of oil drums for instance and the barrels will come crashing to the ground and roll all over the shop - exactly like they're supposed to - demostrating the exceptional Havok physics engine at work. It sounds like a minor feature but it isn't, it elevates the game to levels lesser shooters can only dream of. Lifting objects with the Grav Gun means everything can be treated as a potential weapon as you can hurl lifted objects with a stab of the right trigger. A well-aimed paint-can will blind a zombie or a high velocity breezeblock ricocheted off an enemy's bonce will kill it instantly. Brilliantly, there are some levels that give you circular-saw blades to play with. You don't have to be a genius to know that sending jagged frisbees of death towards enemies and cleaving them in two bloody lumps of offal is massive fun. Half Life 2 also rewards players for lateral thinking and there are plenty of opportunities to flex your grey matter as there are some fairly involving conundrums peppered throughout the game. We won't go into any of these as it'll ruin the fun, suffice to say, there are some satisfying head scratchers to overcome along the way.
These tasks are counter-balanced by a glut of incredible action-packed set pieces where you'll get to give the games weapons a good workout. Freeman's armoury consists of the usual pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers and so on, but each feels spot-on. The sub-machine gun sprays hot lead and kicks like a mule and toppling (frightening) Striders with the rocket launcher is every bit as thrilling as you'd expect. Every set piece also outlasts the game's end living on in the memory. You'll never forget the first time you bring down a Combine ship, your first encounter with a Strider or thrashing around in your buggy sending soldiers flying over your front bumper. It's all gaming gold.

Variety is the spice of Half Life - there’s always something fresh to challenge and engage so you’re never left wanting. If Half Life 2 were a meal (lazy analogy alert), it would be a big Sunday lunch. A substantially meaty storyline, a hearty weapons stuffing and a hefty steaming ladle-full of action gravy.
In conclusion, HL 2 and the accompanying Episode 1 and 2 are peerless chunks of cerebral first-person action gaming and despite HL 2’s age, that it still puts the majority of its genre stablemates to shame is testament to the inherent depth and longevity you'll find. Everything about Half Life 2 is fully realised, wholly imagined, flawlessly executed – there isn’t a single bum note in the game. In a word: pure genius.

Portal
As an expansion of the Narbacular Drop concept dreamt up by the DigiPen Institute of Technology, Portal is the simplest of concepts, but makes for the most intriguing puzzle game you’ll ever play. The idea is so straightforward that you’ll be amazed no one ever thought to make a game out of it until now. An explanation then for the uninitiated – Portal casts you in the role of a test subject put through a series of situations that make use of the Aperture Science portal gun. The function of the gun is to create two portals one entrance, one an exit. Launching a pair of portals, one orange, one blue, to avoid confusion, allows you to enter one and exit the other. From this central premise there’s a range of possibilities and ways to solve Portal’s brainteasers. Further possibilities are unlocked when you learn that falling through a portal builds up velocity meaning that you can shoot out the other side at speed to clear gaps and make high jumps. Add to the mix, energy balls that you can manipulate to open doors, gun turrets that will hamper your progress and the sure to become iconic companion cubes that prove crucial at certain junctures and you’ve a recipe for a varied first-person puzzler.
Between them, the brains at DigiPen- employed to build on their original idea - and Valve have crafted a refreshingly unique and novel game with a dark, deadpan humour all of its own (what’s all this stuff about cake?) It may be short, but it’s incredibly sweet and the most rewarding game you’ll have played in a long time. In fact it's better than the majority of shooters masquerading as full games at full price.

Team Fortress 2
The Orange Box’s online component arrives in the form of long, long, long awaited shoot-em’-up sequel Team Fortress 2. Boasting a quirky cartoon style, Team Fortress 2 looks stunning and thankfully plays as good as it looks. Choosing from nine different classes the aim is to blast the crap out of your opposition. No surprises there then. Each class is what gives TF 2 its edge. You’ll quickly develop a favourite, as each possesses a unique set of abilities.
Sadly, at time of writing we’ve yet to play TF 2 extensively so expect a thorough play-test when we’ve bought ourselves a wireless adapter bridge for our 360. (How much?!)

Overall, The Orange Box represents fantastic value for money. It also happens to be one of the finest FPS experiences you’re ever likely to come across. To ignore it is to do Valve and yourself a massive disservice. Buy. It. Now.
Verdict: 10/10

BioShock (Xbox 360, PC. 2K Boston, 2K Games)

2008-01-11T00:13:00.000Z

It’s very rare that a game manages to successfully evoke a genuine sense of time and place, especially within an entirely fictional framework. BioShock sets its narrative in Rapture: an undersea utopia gone spectacularly wrong. A city that upon first sight appears majestic and inviting until BioShock’s compelling story begins to unfold and the reality behind the imposing statues and tall buildings quickly unravels before your very eyes. BioShock’s intro is one of the most jaw dropping we’ve ever seen. Beginning on an ill-fated plane journey, you wake up underwater struggling to make your way to the surface. Emerging from beneath the briny deep, you’re surrounded by bright orange flames and the disheartening sight of your plane gradually sinking out of view. The only place to go is the gigantic, foreboding black tower nearby. Apprehensive, you swim towards it. Who knows what waits for you within? It’s a humdinger of an opening that has you instantly immersed from the very second the game begins and the ensuing, serpentine plot is enough that you’re certain to be hooked throughout.
The strongest element of BioShock is its uniquely bold visual design. Utilising Epic’s much vaunted Unreal Engine 3, 2K Boston have crafted a solid and believable, intricate art deco styled nightmare filled with incidental details like 30’s styled propaganda posters, neon store fronts with twee slogans and haunting melodies of old, familiar songs. There are scenes of corrosion and desolation almost everywhere you go – exposed pipes spike out through cracked, rotting tiles, corpses lie against walls covered in thick, congealed blood. The devil here is most definitely in the details. With every surface of Rapture encrusted in filth or rust, the textures are so rich and tangible that you can almost taste the decay. BioShock is a visual tour de force and candidate for best-looking game on 360.

Walking around Rapture is simultaneously awe-inspiring and patently unsettling as hideously disfigured inhabitants known as Splicers threaten to pounce at any moment. Given that they too have had the same horrific graphical attention lavished upon them, they are truly terrifying – leaping towards you, screaming with fixed grimaces upon their clownish, surgically altered visages. Thankfully there’s plenty of weaponry and a steady supply of ammunition lying around in every crevice, desk drawer and cupboard in Rapture meaning that you’re seldom ill-equipped. Unfortunately, while this makes BioShock a lot of fun to play, it slightly drains the air of dread that pervades from the outset. After all, there’s always a checkpoint activating Vita Chamber where you can respawn an infinite number of times. Having the additional luxury of being able to save anywhere means that you’ll virtually never have to play through the same situation twice. While it keeps frustration to a minimum, (which is a very good thing) it does make finishing the game a breeze, even in hard mode (which is kind of a bad thing). You can purchase items like Medikits and Eve Hypos to replenish your plasmid powers, bullets and more from strategically placed vending machines. You’ll also come across U-Invent machines where a variety of scavenged items can be transformed into useful ammo and gadgets. Hacking said vending machines through a puzzle-based mini-game lowers the prices so you can save those hard earned dollars stolen from the still-warm corpses of anyone unfortunate enough to have been clubbed to death by your trusty wrench.
Central to BioShock’s premise is the acquisition of special abilities courtesy of power-ups called plasmids. Dual wielding plasmids alongside your conventional weapons quickly becomes second nature and makes you feel incredibly powerful. There’s a wealth of different abilities to discover, which you can upgrade later in the game to devastating effect. The best ones we found were the electro shock, incinerate and telekinesis, which are pretty self-explanatory from their names. Head and shoulders above the others though is the insect swarm which gives you the ability to cast armies of killer bees from your hand. Nasty. There are also downloadable plasmids available on Xbox LIVE meaning that there’ll always be scope for replaying the game, even if it’s just to see what new havoc you can wreak.

Invented by Rapture’s twisted founder and reprehensible wizard behind the curtain Andrew Ryan, plasmids are gained by accumulating a substance called Adam. Adam can be harvested from the macabre Little Sisters who roam the environments guarded by colossal, menacing Big Daddies who protect the Little Sisters at all costs. That’s where BioShock’s fundamental choice comes into play. Do you kill and harvest the Little Sisters for more Adam, therefore becoming more powerful at a much quicker rate, or do you rescue them and choose to build your powers slowly, gaining less Adam but potentially reaping greater rewards later on? It’s a no-brainer of a choice if you ask us. It quickly becomes apparent which is the better option dispelling any illusion that your selection has any kind of effect on the story. There’re two endings - a good and a bad one. You can probably guess which choice leads to each and which is the more rewarding. The choice that you ultimately make however will tell you a lot about your moral values (maybe). However, there are enough absorbing tasks and unpredictable plot twists to keep you occupied that you’re never really fully aware of BioShock’s (admittedly tiny) flaws until you’ve finished the game and had time to reflect on the journey that you’ve just taken. And playing through BioShock is indeed a journey, an intense experience that has few peers.
No other game in recent memory possesses the same brand of slow-burn psychological horror permeating every room, every passageway and every hall. BioShock doesn’t scare in the traditional sense; it quietly crawls under your skin and confronts you with unsettling scenes such as a couple lying in a lifeless embrace on their bed or a conventional family surrounding their TV set as static illuminates their grotesque, decomposing bodies. A game like Resident Evil would have you jump out of your skin as they spring at you, but BioShock doesn’t do cheap scares. It aims for something higher - it messes with your head. There are even moments that are scarily surreal, seemingly lifted from The Shining. A pair of Splicers gracefully dancing the foxtrot while a gramophone plays a crackling old record being one such instance. Setting them alight with your flamethrower just makes things worse though, which is where BioShock’s combat options come to the fore. You can play through BioShock in any way you like due to it’s flexible and varied system which allows you to upgrade almost every aspect of your character. It’s surprisingly in-depth; offering almost RPG levels of self-improvement such as quieter footsteps for stealthy wrench assaults, better hacking skills, stronger plasmids, better weapons, extra resilience and so on. Theoretically, you could play through without firing a single bullet; so plentiful are your options. You can set traps, enrage your enemies so that they fight one another, hack security bots to fight alongside you or even hypnotise Big Daddies to protect you instead of the Little Sisters. You don’t always have to torch your foes or shoot them in the face. The possibilities are vast and another reason why BioShock stands up as such an accomplished work of genius.
BioShock is an incredibly ambitious title, which more than delivers on its initial promise, managing to entertain and enthral from start to finish. Consistently surprising, shocking and eminently, compulsively playable, BioShock stands head and shoulders above any 360 title you’ll play this year. And even though the majority may argue that Halo 3 was 2007’s definitive 360 title, we enjoyed BioShock more. Even though it has far less features than Halo 3 (the lack of multi-player being a minor blow), BioShock possesses such scope and abundant imagination that for our money, it’s the finest game of 2007 and a bona-fide masterpiece.
I choose…Rapture! - 10/10

Movie Review: The Golden Compass (December, 2007)

2007-12-25T23:05:00.000Z

When it was announced that a movie adaptation of Philip Pullman's first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, Northern Lights had been greenlit the collective sphincters of millions of fans clenched in tentative anticipation of the result. With the director of American Pie and About A Boy, Chris Weitz drafted in to replace Shopgirl director Anand Tucker, fears for how the source material would be treated were amplified. Why on earth is the director of a puerile, gross out comedy being entrusted with such a high profile project? We as fans shared the fear that the worst would inevitably happen. That these fantastic books would suffer the same fate as Narnia and be reduced to kiddie-friendly popcorn fare with none of the drama and gravitas of the Lord Of The Rings movies.

And guess what? It's not nearly as bad as we'd anticipated, but still plays out like a tick-box list of events from the book reeled off in a fashion that is completely devoid of any kind of drama, threat or suspense. When Lyra is gifted with the eponymous compass there's no feeling that the device is of any significant importance, possessing none of the fanfare that came with the one ring. Galling too is the relationship between the characters and their daemons and despite the obligatory exposition-spouting opening voiceover explaining how a daemon is a person's very soul, there's very little indication of how deep this relationship runs. When Lyra is undergoing the intercision process at the Bolvangar facility the tension in the books is so palpable that you're grinding your teeth and digging your nails into your own leg. In the movie the same scene is stripped of all suspense and is in keeping with the rest of the film in that it's over in a matter of seconds. Weitz is in such a rush to race through the book's key moments that there's no time to really get to know the characters, no time to savour the breathtaking scenery and accomplished performances from a strong ensemble cast. The Golden Compass marches on, determined to get you from A to B and out the door as quickly as possible. It's truly a crying shame. Were Golden Compass given an extra hour of running time to flesh out the book's major central narrative components - of which there are many, all intricate, all compelling - the result would have been a far superior movie to the one that ended up making it into local multiplexes. There are some fantastic moments, but they're just too few and far between, bogged down in a mire of clunky exposition spoon fed in such an unenthusiastic way that it's hard to care.

The Golden Compass is a huge disappoinment, not least due to the enormous potential this had to be a worthy successor to Peter Jackson's hallowed trilogy. Pullman's original concepts and ideas are so well-developed in the books that translating them to the screen with the original sense of wonder intact should have been an easy job. That the execution is so ham-fisted is beyond belief. There are high points. The witches and ice bears, - particularly Iorek Byrnison voiced grumpily by a gruff Ian McKellen - are beautifully realised as are the daemons. Even the alternate universe where Lyra's story unfolds is brought to life brilliantly. Golden Compass just isn't the sum of its parts. On paper it should be an unbridled success. In practice it only succeeds in being a perfectly serviceable and mildly entertaining diversion for its two hour running time. It won't stay by your side like a faithful daemon, it'll simply float out of your conciousness like dust. Ironic for a movie where a person's soul is represented in the form of an animal that it has no soul of its own.

***

Review: Guitar Hero III Legends Of Rock (Xbox 360 (version played), PlayStation 3, PC. Neversoft, Activision)

2007-12-02T23:13:00.000Z

Let's clear something up before we get into this review. Standing in front of your TV gurning at the screen whilst concentrating on coloured dots ascending into view, clawing at a plastic guitar shouldn't be this good. And it almost certainly shouldn't be this compulsive. That it manages to be both addictive and fun is testament to the simplistic mechanic that's been at the core of Guitar Hero since its original inception. Couple this fiendishly simple device of strumming in time to coloured dots as they scroll up the screen with a setlist of seminal rock music and you've got party gaming gold. Looming on the distant horizon however is a more enticing prospect, Harmonix's new project with EA, post Guitar Hero II, the much vaunted Rock Band. Does this now mean Neversoft's efforts in developing a new Guitar Hero game are in vain, creating something that will inevitably pale into comparison when Harmonix and EA's monster eventually swaggers onto the scene? The answer is a resounding no. GH III more than stands up on it's own merits, deserving of it's own status as a rhythm-action game par excellence, though some will argue that Neversoft's game is now nothing more than a stop-gap before the main event. A supporting act if you will. This is partly true as it's difficult to ignore the huge shadow Rock Band casts over GH III. While playing GH III it's hard not to yearn for everyone in the room to get involved. With Rock Band providing vocals, drums, bass and lead guitar (at a hefty price no doubt) you can't help but feel GH III is lacking in some way.

Best thing about GH III is the track list. In our opinion it's the best line-up of Guitar Hero music yet, boasting tracks from The Who, Guns N' Roses, Queens Of The Stone Age, Black Sabbath and much more. There's something for everyone, whatever generation of rocker you happen to be, whether you're an ageing rocker or a lover of contemporary rock, you're guaranteed to find favourites you'll love and abominations you'll hate. You can take your thrashy metal bollocks for a start-we can't stand it. What are Slipknot doing in this game?! See, tracks you'll love and tracks you'll hate, just like we said. Irritatingly though some of the best tracks have been relegated to co-op mode only, which is howlingly stupid as you'll need to shell out for an additional guitar to be able to play them. So, if you want to play Beastie Boys' Sabotage or The Strokes' Reptilia and you only have one guitar, tough. You can't. It's a ridiculous oversight that robs the single player mode of several perfectly good tracks. Shame. And while we're on the subject of track choices, Metallica's One possesses none of the elan that playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird provided as a challenging final song, it's simply a trying test of patience that outstays it's welcome.

We still love Guitar Hero III though, it's ability to make you feel like a rock star and suck you into its inimitable caricatured world is still unique and although Rock Band may soon usurp it's predecessor there'll always be a place in our hearts for the original rockin' out game. And it's for this reason alone that GH III remains unbeatable amongst its (very few) rhythm action peers. Battling legends like Tom Morello and Slash provide the icing on GH III's excessive rock cake making for a satisfying meal of headbanging fun. There's nothing particularly new here that we haven't seen before in the last two games, but Legends Of Rock is still ace. Rock on.
Legendary: 8/10

Review: Ratchet and Clank: Tools Of Destruction (PlayStation 3. Insomniac, Sony.)

2007-11-22T15:58:00.000Z

The humble platform genre has been through a lot since the halcyon days of Sonic, Mario and their long standing rivalry. Now the spiny blue one and the portly, moustachioed plumber have buried the hatchet and platform games have evolved into the fully explorable, 3D visual feasts we've come to recognise on current-gen hardware. Ratchet and Clank have always served up such hearty feasts with fantastically realised cartoon sci-fi worlds packed to the gills with razor-sharp humour and equally well-honed gameplay. Possessing all the qualities of a Pixar movie (we're certain this comment has been bandied about a lot), the latest instalment of Ratchet and Clank is an HD treat, retaining everything that made its predecessors so emminently playable, Tools Of Destruction is brimming with ideas and imagination. R&C also happens to be one of the prettiest games on PS3 with lovely, high resolution textures fleshing out the bright, bold, outlandish characters and backdrops, successfully forming a solid and appealing set of environments.

Central to R&C's platforming premise is the array of novel and quirky firepower that you can wield and upgrade. Previous incarnations have always boasted a plethora of hefty weapons you can progressively upgrade and beef up as you use them during the course of the game. Later iterations introduced buying upgrades for bolts that still come spilling out of vanquished enemies and broken crates for you to hoover up. Tools Of Destruction offers the most complete and in-depth mechanic for uprading weapons yet. This introduces a degree of strategy as you are made to decide which weapons to lavish bolts and raritanium on upgrading with a view to what obstacles may await you further down the line. More than ever, this puts R&C's arsenal centre stage as you must carefully pick and choose your favourites or risk running around with an inventory of underdeveloped hardware leaving yourself potentially vulnerable when facing one of the many huge boss characters should you upgrade the wrong weapon for the job. Our firm favourites became indispensable in a clinch, consisting of the formidable Negotiator rocket launcher, Plasma stalkers, Mr. Zurkon and of course the Groovitron, which makes all on-screen enemies boogie uncontrollably. Thankfully, choosing to upgrade a useless weapon isn't completely detrimental to your progress. You can always die and continue to amass bolts and raritanium for upgrades. It's a system that allows you to be improving your weapons constantly so that the rewards and sense of progress is reinforced throughout the game's generous running time.

Ratchet and Clank: TOD is an absolute joy to play as ever, but will be instantly familiar to veterans of the previous titles on PS2. So, business as usual then for our Lombax hero and his robotic sidekick? Well, yes, but there's so much more to see and do in R&C's next-gen debut. On-rails outer space dogfighting makes a welcome comeback as do the intense arena battles, but familiarity here, rather tha breeding contempt, actually forms a part of R&C's lasting appeal. These are characters you'll want to spend time with even if you've never played any of the previous titles. The action and narrative is so well scripted and actually, genuinely funny that every moment is a pleasure.

In terms of longevity, Tools Of Destruction is a bit of a step back, shorn of the multiplayer modes that made Ratchet and Clank 3 such a comprehensive package on PS2. There's still a lot of single player action to work through bolstered by replay value in the form of a challenge mode that lets you replay the game with your array of deadly weaponry, stacking the odds firmly in your favour.

Tools Of Destruction is as good as it gets on PS3 at the moment. Visually stunning, effortlessly playable, R&C's latest adventure stands out as one of the most essential titles currently available for Sony's under-represented platform. When games for the PS3 are so scarce, it's important to celebrate the really good ones. This is one right here and therefore deserves your time. Simple.

A raritanium treat: 9/10

Review: Guitar Hero II (PS2, Xbox 360. Harmonix, Activision)

2007-11-16T15:28:00.000Z

Singstar and EyeToy on PlayStation 2 brought about a living room revolution a few years ago by getting the whole family involved in gaming. It was a masterstroke that saw Sony and the PS2 dominate social gaming. That is until the Wii was born and now everyone's at it, prancing and warbling around their living rooms like the latest X Factor rejects. No social gamer worth their salt will have bypassed Guitar Hero, the genius strumming game from the fellas behind rhythm action titles Frequency and Amplitude. Guitar Hero is essentially nothing new. Konami did the Bemani guitar peripheral thing years ago with Guitar Freak, but Guitar Hero is undoubtedly better. Lifting the scrolling notes mechanic wholesale from Harmonix's aforementioned efforts, Guitar Hero maps the notes to coloured buttons on the guitar fretboard and then adds a strumming switch and whammy bar to the guitar's body. The idea is deceptively simple; hold the corresponding colour to the one displayed on-screen as it scrolls up from the bottom of the screen and strum in time to hit it. You can tweak the whammy bar to add pitch and distortion effects to long notes thus garnishing solos with a touch of personal flair. Easy right? Well, yes but not to begin with. When you first pick up Guitar Hero, unless you're an actual guitar player your fingers will trip and slide all over the place like Bambi trying to walk on ice. Give it a few minutes though and you'll be surprised at how quickly you can pick it up. On easy mode Guitar Hero II is accesible to anyone, using three of the five fret buttons, it's fun and mildly challenging. Medium difficulty adds an extra button and ups the ante, whereas hard and expert are ridiculously complicated utilising all five buttons and requiring real-world guitar skills or insane dedication to master. However, nothing beats nailing a tough solo that you've been practicing for ages, giving you the same satisfied feeling you might get from beating a tough end boss in any other game you'd care to think of. And therein lies the brilliance of Guitar Hero II, it's the only game that actually makes you feel like a rock star. There is of course the argument that you could use the time dedicated to playing Guitar Hero to actually learn how to play the real guitar and yes, sometimes that feeling does creep in from time to time. Yet, it quickly subsides as you realise you're having way too much fun shredding your plastic axe to the strains of Sweet Child O' Mine or Freebird. There's really nothing else like it.

GH II's track list is expemplary, offering a varety of rock classics old and new to get to grips with. Obviously, you'll have your favourites (Jessica, Monkey Wrench and John the Fisherman since you ask) which you'll play over and over again 'til your fingers bleed.

GH II is compulsive, challenging and above all fun. Invest in a pair of axes and you can play rhythm, bass or lead in co-op or face-off head to head in a battle of riffs. Harmonix have covered all bases with this sequel, improving vastly upon its predecessor. It stands out as an essential title for 360 or PS2 and has the added bonus of making you everyone's best friend. So, get the beers and nibbles in, fire up GH II and rock on! Go on, melt some faces!

Te-riff-ic: 9/10

Playing Guitar Hero II seriously whets your appetite for the forthcoming sequel with development duties handed over to Tony Hawk stalwarts Neversoft. With its added boss battles against legends like Guns N' Roses' Slash, GH III is an exciting prospect. Not as exciting as Rock Band though, Harmonix's new pet project with EA that allows you to sing, play guitar, bass and drums. Outstanding. Will there be room for both games under your telly in the coming months? We'd say yes. If you're loaded buy both. Us? We're going to have to choose...unless we sell a kidney.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3 (version played), Xbox 360, PC. Infinity Ward, Ubisoft)

2007-11-15T23:32:00.002Z

Ever since Medal Of Honor exploded on to the gaming scene with its Saving Private Ryan (1998) style D-Day landing beach assault, World War II as subject matter has been exploited in countless shooters, Real Time Strategy games and more. Hell, even the grandaddy of the first person shooter Wolfenstein 3D was set during WWII, although we don't think Hitler in a mech-suit was entirely accurate from a historical standpoint. To say the subject is getting a bit stale as source material for a game is like saying Hitler was a bit of a mad git.

Thank God then for Call Of Duty 4, the first title in the series to ditch Nazi bashing in favour of something fresh and relevant, bringing the conflict into the modern day. The clue's in the title's suffix, it's all about Modern Warfare meaning a wealth of cutting edge contemporary weaponry at your fingertips.

You begin the game in the shiny boots of new SAS recruit Private 'Soap' Mc.Tavish under the tutelage of the outrageously moustachioed, gruff and instantly likeable Captain Price. The first task you undertake is dispatching wooden targets in a sparse training hangar. How fast you complete the tutorial determines your recommended skill level for the rest of the game and helps inform your decision when selecting your preffered difficulty level. Clever. After this brief training session you're plunged balls-deep into the action in the prologue level set aboard an enormous cargo ship in raging high seas. Your first mission? Find and secure a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere below deck. Easy. COD's opening stage is the perfect introduction to what the rest of the game has to offer. That is heavy, realistic gunplay supported by a squad with sharp AI who actually help rather than hinder your progress. Your team are so smart that you'll develop an affinity with them and you may even grow to care about them like we did. In having well-drawn and believable characters on your side, the moments where they're under threat are made even more poignant and tense. In fact there's high drama and awe-inspiring set-pieces throughout, which we won't spoil for you here, just know that each one is nerve-shredding and arse-puckeringly taut. Having to escape from a cargo ship that's being torn asunder and quickly filling with water is the first set-piece that has you on the edge of your seat. And that's in the first ten minutes. The action in COD 4 comes thick and fast, tightly scripted like the best Hollywood action movie imaginable, except you're the one in control, you're the star.

Call Of Duty 4 is probably the best shooter we've played this year and it succeeds in being such for a number of reasons. Key to the game's strength is it's guns that even without the rumble from the PS3's sixaxis still manage to somehow feel right. Shooting enemies is so incredibly authentic as they react to your bullets exactly as you'd expect them to, carking it in a well animated and completely believable fashion. Not since Black on PS2 have guns felt so meaty and lethal. When you pull the trigger things break. Masonry, bricks, walls-it's pretty much all destructible in some way and as such cover is no guarantee of safety, for you or your enemies. One such mission set in a TV studio is a perfect example of the kind of havoc you can wreak and the mess you can leave behind. In short it's just as you'd imagine war might be in real life, nowhere on the battlefield is safe and death will visit you quickly if you're not careful. Despite being brutally realistic, Call Of Duty 4 is real in the best possible way, enhancing the experience to levels of total delirious brilliance. You'll be punching the air and whooping 'boo-yah' like a jingoistic nutter (just make sure no-one's around when you are). You simply won't want the game to end which sadly it does after around 6-8 hours of wall-to-wall action and a dramatic pay-off that is quite possibly one of the best endings to a ever grace a videogame. All this and you get to play as good old British SAS soldiers for the majority of the game: a welcome departure from playing as America's Marine Corps or whatever. And the British accents actually sound pretty good for a change meaning you'll more than likely identify with the SAS team rather than the US Forces who consist of the predictable stereotypes we've come to know and love.

Call Of Duty 4 is unreservedly brilliant, boasting a storyline with characters you'll grow to love and weapons you'll love even more. Unfortunately, the experience suffers somewhat online as the game mostly involves killing and dying in quick succession without much scope to build any kind of momentum or longevity, but this is a minor gripe, which has probably more to do with our lack of online prowess rather than any inherent flaw. Also, it's a crying shame that the single-player campaign tops out at around eight hours if you're slow and methodical, less than this if you're a gung-ho Speedy Gonzalez. Thankfully, the on and offline multiplayer injects some longevity into the game and to be honest, COD 4's campaign is more than worthy of a second play-through.

So, the best Call Of Duty yet? That's affirmative soldier. Buy it now. That's an order.

Mission accomplished: 9/10

Review: Warhawk (PS3. Incognito, Sony)

2007-11-15T23:32:00.001Z

It's not often that you get a pleasant, unexpected surprise in the form of a game. You can usually gauge fairly early on whether a game is going to turn out to be a complete turkey or not. Warhawk initially appeared to be such a game. A flight-sim set in the near future? Pass. No thanks. It's been done a million times before and flight-sims tend to be stuffy, lifeless fare based entirely upon the player's ability to keep a crosshair steady for a couple of seconds to achieve a lock-on. Yawn. As console gamers our attention spans are inherently short and as such flight games normally don't fulfil our fast paced gaming needs unless you're talking about Namco's Ace Combat series which generally errs on the side of being pretty good. So, what makes Warhawk so special? Well quite a lot as it turns out.

Pitting the Eucadian armies against the malevolent Chernovian, the game is a bit like Star Wars in its set-up. The Eucadians even look like the Rebel Alliance with their battle scarred craft and khaki fatigues. And as you'll have guessed by now, the Chernovians look typically Darth Vader-esque in black garb and samurai helmets. It's the perfect excuse for two factions to blow each other to kingdom come and requires no further plot, exposition or any other pointless details. Hell, there's not even the back-story blather that you'd expect to find in the manual, it's just good versus evil and that's it. What else do you need to know?

Warhawk isn't just any old flight-sim as our first snap judgment had us assume. It's actually an insanely tooled up playground of weapons, vehicles and gun emplacements all for your delectation. Will it be the heavily armoured tank or the nippy jeep today, sir? Everything is tailored towards creating multiplayer destruction and mayhem on a huge scale. Whether you're manning a gun turret, tank or you're running along on foot, everything feels perfectly balanced and weapon pick-ups are littered all over the place so you're never without a formidable arsenal at your disposal. Sometimes on foot you can get stranded in the middle of nowhere, say if you happen to flip your jeep en-route to a fray, meaning you have to hoof your way to the nearest vehicle or area of activity, which can sometimes grate. This happens rarely, so doesn't really matter. Still, a sprint button or handy pushbike that you can grab from your backpack would have been a helpful addition.

All of the usual game modes are present and correct, as you'd expect. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag being the obvious suspects. Best of all though is Zones in which you attempt to capture as much enemy territory as possible. There are also straightforward, no nonsense dogfights where you begin at the controls of a warhawk and stay there for the duration, shooting down as many enemies as possible within the time limit. This is Warhawk at its purest.

The most fun to be had playing the game is in piloting the titular warhawks. Effortlessly manoeuvrable, quick, nimble and deadly the warhawks are the real stars of the show. You can hover mere feet from the ground raining minigun flavoured death down upon unfortunate soldiers, jeeps and tanks although you leave yourself vulnerable to being shot down. You can spin through the sky gracefully dodging missiles, navigating your way through narrow gaps and canyons (although you'll need to turn pro flight controls on to get the most out of your hawk) shooting down foes with aplomb. Get the hang of Warhawk and you're in for a treat. Hours will pass in what seem like minutes as you play just. one. more. game! It's fiendishly addictive and will have you hooked on its great, big candy shop of weapons and destruction.

Warhawk is a game so flawlessly executed that it's a compulsory purchase for anyone with a PS3 hooked up to the PlayStation Network and a penchant for blowing things up. Be warned, Warhawk is online multiplayer only and will consume hours of your life without you realising it. Unashamedly undemanding and unreservedly brilliant, Warhawk is completely and utterly indispensable.

Fuel: 9/10

Movie Review: 30 Days Of Night (November, 2007)

2007-11-04T22:08:00.000Z

Based on the cult graphic novel of the same name, 30 Days Of Night sees a small town in Alaska terrorised by a band of marauding vampires out on a feeding frenzy during the titular time frame. It's a fantastic set-up for a horror movie, ramping up the tension as the days roll by.

<-- Melissa was disgusted by Josh's big farts

Barrow, Alaska is a friendly little place inhabited by hard working locals and tourists: the perfect location to be pillaged and torn apart by bloodthirsty
monsters then. Especially since the town experiences a month of perpetual darkness, spurring most people to leave, so tear the town apart they do in what proves to be an explosive, edge-of-the-seat movie.
Beginning with a relatively slow-paced exposition, the film’s opening establishes the minutiae of everyday life for Barrow’s residents as a whole chunk of them flee before the arduous month of pitch black ensues. And it’s not long before the action gets going because when the fanged menaces arrive, all hell breaks loose. Quick and brutal, the action is bloody, yet largely off-camera, probably to keep its audience-friendly 15 certificate. Don’t let that certificate fool you though because 30 Days is still pretty graphic in parts. Efficient and butal 30 Days vamps quickly wreak havoc, nicely captured using a sweeping overhead crane shot, the chaos they bring is unexpected. David Slade's assured direction means 30 Days is beautifully shot, the Hard Candy director executing Hollywood horror duties impeccably. The landscape is relentlessly bleak and oppressive amplifying the atmosphere as well as the innate feeling of helplessness and pessimism.
Recalling the claustrophobia and desperation of John Carpenter’s The Thing, 30 Days has moments of genuine tension that owe a debt to the 1982 classic. On the whole the performances are good, Danny Huston oozing a snarling, shark-like menace as lead bad guy Marlow although his band of followers are annoyingly resilient, popping up again when you think they’ve been offed. We thought we saw one particular bald vamp die about three times. Perhaps this was wishful thinking as his agonising, high-pitched screeching slowly drove us potty.
Strong too is Josh Hartnett’s performance as the squinty sheriff, delivering his squintiest and best performance to date. His journey from clean-cut lawman to beardy, worn-down, dead-eyed vampire slayer is seamless and convincing.
At its core, 30 Days Of Night is a fantastic popcorn movie, entertaining and relentlessly intense for the most part, boasting some explosive set pieces and interesting – if lightweight – human drama. Just don’t go in expecting traditional vampires in the Bela Lugosi mould, you’ll just feel incredibly disappointed. Vampire purists are better off thinking of 30 Days as a monster movie rather than a vampire one.
An accomplished horror-cum-action fest that justifies its exceptional US box-office performance by delivering terse atmospherics and good, solid performances. And it doesn’t skimp on the claret either. Well worth a watch.
****

Review: Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PS3 (version played), Xbox 360, PC, PS2, PSP, DS, Wii. KCET, Konami.)

2007-10-27T19:02:00.000Z

So, the quintessential soccer game finally makes its proper next-gen debut, complete with graphical overhaul, gimmicky AI-Teamvision feature and a brand new commentary team. Do any of these changes make for a better game of football? Read on.

From playing a short demo of FIFA 08 a little while ago, we speculated that EA might be on the right track towards playing catch-up with Pro Evo in offering unparalleled pick-up-and-play football excellence. And while this is undoubtedly true-there's no denying that EA have outdone themselves with this years instalment-Pro Evo still manages to play a superior game. But only just: this year, more than ever, the gap between the two titles is closing. FIFA continues to deliver the most comprehensive set of licenses whilst PES still lags behind in terms of providing the same level of authenticity. However, PES has taken some positive steps in the right direction with the majority of names and kits accurately represented in the game. Yet the complete set of Premiership teams remains conspicuously absent with only Newcastle and Tottenham blessed with proper apparel. Best of all though, is the new commentary from Jon Champion and Match Of The Day stalwart Mark Lawrenson. Still awful when compared to the seamless match analysis featured in any EA or 2K sports title you'd care to mention, it's a vast improvement over the woeful, notoriously bad, nonsensical ravings from past PES outings.

There's also a far slicker, TV-style presentation implemented in PES 2008, which places the game ever nearer the real thing. Sadly, the replays are absolutely, irrevocably terrible. Serious issues with the game's frame-rate mar the usual celebration of great goals by transforming them into farcical, comic snippets that wouldn't look out of place in a Benny Hill show. Apparently, this problem only affects the PS3 version and Konami are supposedly beavering away on a patch to fix the appalling stuttering that plagues the replays.

Thankfully, the in-game frame-rate remains stable for the most part, only invading the proceedings when things get hectic. The only thing that you need to know about PES 2008 is that it still plays relatively smooth and intuitive with goal scoring remaining blissfully rewarding as ever. Still, there's the slight nagging feeling that for all its newly implemented features, such as the new adaptive Teamvision AI, shirt tugging and diving, this is still the same old PES only with added High Definition graphical sheen. While in the case of PES one could apply the old adage, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', here you can't help but feel that the game could have benefited from some extra development time as the finished product feels exactly the opposite. PES 2008 possesses an indefinable 'scrappy' unfinished quality exacerbated by the stuttering animation and the atmosphere-shattering bitmap crowds that cheer in mechanical unison. Visually, PES remains stellar despite noticeable issues. Player likenesses remain eerily lifelike, yet old graphical issues from last-gen PES titles such as occasional clipping and dodgy collision detection persist, but luckily don't conspire to break the game.

Despite a number of annoying niggles that could be fixed with a simple, downloadable update, PES remains the king of football games. Accessible, fun and great with friends, it's also a somewhat disappointing update as we've come to expect better from the series. Still sublime then, just not as sublime as past triumphs. A bit like Maradona then, except without the overeating and the drug abuse.

Score: 8/10

As a post-script, special mention should be made of the game's abhorrent soundtrack comprised of amateurish songs and instrumentals that should be locked in a vault and jettisoned into the deepest recesses of space. Turn off the BGM before you even think about playing the game: it's that bad.

The Shed is in attendance at the London Game Career Fair.

2007-10-25T16:58:00.000Z

October 23rd-24th saw the Whitechapel area of London pay host to the annual London Game Career Fair, so we went along to have a look. Trudging off the busy tube to briskly walk along the streets, we were on our way, our senses assaulted by a heady mix of smells and the constant cacophonous racket of traffic. Once inside, The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane where the event was held proved to be an adequate size for the twenty odd boothes and jostling crowds competing to have their questions answered, ideas picked over and CVs read by the big industry bods.

Our unique angle? Writing of course, and we spoke to every one of the industry's representatives to see if we could find our way into writing for games. As it turns out, it's not that easy and the majority of reps we asked were either stumped or offered up QA and design as possible avenues.

EA, Ubisoft, Sega, Team17, Lucasarts, Kuju, Juice, Realtime Worlds, Rare, NCSoft, Freestyle, Other Ocean, Escape and Blitz were among the many developers with booths showing off their latest IPs. Being the intrepid reporter types that we are, we asked them whether there were any new hot IPs on the horizon. Lamentably, we were met with a firm "sorry, I can't say" from all comers. We even attempted to get some info on the upcoming collaboration between Free Radical and Luasarts' but were met with the same response. Hey, we tried.

Nevertheless, there were still a host of games on show, albeit current titles such as Viva Pinata, Sega Rally and Tiger Woods PGA 08, which was available to play on the four Nintendo Wii pods provided by EA.

In addition to the prescence of developers and publishers, attendees could take part in sessions focused on specific aspects of working in the games industry. They provided added insight beyond the advice and help being given by the booth residents.

However, the occassion could have used a boost from a gaming celebrity. On the walls near the bar area, were pictures of famous studio figure-heads, which looked like our wish list of who we would have liked to meet at this event. Hideo Kojima, Kaz Hirai, Gabe Newell. We could only imagine how amazing the fair could have been with the presence of just one of these guys.

Press presence was minimal, covered by the nice chaps at Imagine Publishing who were selling discounted issues of their fine award winning mag, gamesTM. Happily, they were also happy to dispense helpful advice and The Shed walked away with an invaluable email address.

So all in all, the London Games Career was a productive, if somewhat slow-paced day. Frankly, we would have liked to have seen far more games beyond the paltry offering of a few Wii's, but I guess you can't have it all. Oh, and the coffee was a tad too bitter. Next year then, more games, smoother coffee please.

Capcom announce Street Fighter IV!! Fanboys everywhere rejoice!

2007-10-21T00:31:00.000Z

We never thought it would happen but Capcom have recently announced a new Street Fighter game accompanied by a flashy debut trailer. The trailer (cast thine eyes south) shows old favourites and long time sparring partners Ryu and Ken having a right old punch-up, complete with instantly recognisable - nay, iconic - moves making a comeback. Classic moves like the Hadoken fireball and Sho-ryu-ken Dragon Punch are depicted in all their glory, erupting in lovely watercolour brush strokes, instantly rekindling fond memories of misspent youth rolling pocket money into SF coin-ops, albeit in an arty way that looks rather nice. All of this eye-catching tussle between the two stalwarts takes place on a painterly battlefield, not unlike the canvas employed by Capcom stablemate Okami. Is the trailer possibly indicative of a bold new visual style for the old school beat 'em up or just a dramatic way of re-introducing everyones favourite fighting game in a typically overblown way? We're not sure whether the hardcore SF fanboys will accept an artsy-fartsy new direction for Ryu and co. so our guess will be with the latter.
Watch this space to see more from the grandaddy of brawlers and find out if this old pugilist can recapture the glory from its bygone days. Meanwhile, enjoy the trailer...

Trailer courtesy of GameTrailers.com

We reckon Street Fighter IV will be Hurricane Kicking onto a console near you around this time next year...don't quote us on that though.

We're tired of waiting for the PS3 to get the games it deserves.

2007-10-12T23:17:00.001Z

For hardcore gamers, there's really only a choice of two consoles (the hassle and expense of a PC has never sat well with us when it comes to gaming and the Wii is just too damn family-focused). What happens when you can only splash your cash on one of them and you feel like ultimately you made the wrong decision? Being among work colleagues discussing the many incredible games they've been enjoying on their Xbox 360s, I've been feeling somewhat behind the times as well as completely alienated. As a PS3 owner I'm currently missing out on big-hitters like Halo 3, Bioshock, and PGR 4, not to mention established classics like Dead Rising (which I have played for an extended period), Gears Of War (ditto) and Crackdown. Since the PS3's launch, I've enjoyed a handful of fantastic games, most of which were multi-format releases and I don't necessarily regret my choice. I'm simply unable to shake the nagging feeling that as a PS3 gamer, I'm getting left behind. Discovering that I have to wait an extra month for the Half Life 2 Orange Box to be released was the last straw, I have to vent my frustration and convey my bitterness. I'm sick and tired of waiting for the PS3 to deliver the lofty promises that we're made from the moment Ken Kutaragi held aloft that big, slab of next-gen console. With PS3's killer apps turning out to be not all that killer (see Heavenly Sword, Resistance et al) and the PlayStation Store being the online equivalent of Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard, we're left looking impatiently at our watches for the big games to come along. And to be fair, there are some doozies just around the corner-well, about four to six months away. Home, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 are all going to be huge and you'll only be able to experience them on PlayStation 3. But what to do until the console finally gets the big, quality titles that have been so sorely lacking? Buy a 360? It looks as if this is the only (stupid, expensive) solution.

When the Xbox 360 came out almost two years ago, gamers were faced with what seemed like a tough decision. With the looming, power of the PlayStation 3 on the horizon promising a complete next-gen experience the likes of which the Bill Gates-box could never hope to muster, it came down to a simple, but difficult choice. Buy a 360, blowing your wad on the first of the next-gen consoles and hope the PS3 fails to live up to expectation or stick with your current console and wait it out for the promise of what will quite possibly be the uber-console that will blow the 360 out of the water? An easy A or B answer to a complex situation, we decided to opt for B, wait it out to hopefully feel smug that we exercised restraint, saving the pennies for the superior piece of machinery. After all, Sony's rhetoric promised incredible things for the future of gaming and on paper, it's the better console. A raft of huge exclusives, free online play, motion control, 1080p HD resolution through its HDMI output, backwards compatibility and exceptional graphics and sound that would outdo the 360 by some distance. That it looked like the Bentley of games consoles enrobed in luxurious, semi-transparent black plastic, something akin to the imposing monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey entirely convinced us that we'd get our just reward for our monk-like patience.

March 23rd and our PS3 arrives. For several months the warm glow of satisfaction is unmistakable, we feel safe in the knowledge that it was all worth the long delays and agonizing news stories about blue diodes and whatnot to experience the ultimate in gaming nirvana. Flash forward to the present day and well, we're feeling pretty stupid.

You see, the PS3 is an incredible machine delivering everything Sony said it would, except for one salient component: the games and a everyone knows that a console ultimately lives or dies by its games. Of course Microsoft have had a head start of over a year, but then the PS3 has now been on the shelves for seven months and the number of quality titles and exclusives can be counted on one hand. Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration, but the truth remains that the 360 is home to the majority of triple-A titles and exclusives. Blockbusting games like Bioshock, Halo 3, Gears Of War, Crackdown, Forza 2, Project Gotham 4, Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Condemned, Mass Effect, Fable 2, Splinter Cell 5: the list goes on and will no doubt expand even further in the coming months as Gates reaches even further into his bottomless pockets. However, glancing further into the future, there are a number of PS3 exclusives to get genuinely excited about. Unreal Tournament 3 and Haze will now lead on the PS3, debuting on 360 at a later date whereas the likes of Metal Gear 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo 5 and spy-based MMO The Agency will remain resolutely PS3 exclusive (for now). This of course is all well and good if you're prepared to wait and wait we shall. We've heard that good things do eventually come...

However, in the meantime while Landon enjoys the benefits of owning both a 360 and PS3, it looks as if I'm going to have to stick an Xbox on the credit card. Aaah. Plastic. Now do I go for the Premium or the Elite?

An Xbox 360 can currently be picked up for between £170-£300 depending on the model. Look out for some generous bundle deals. Free Halo 3 or PGR 4 for instance.

The PS3 can now be snapped up for either £299 for the 40GB model or £349 for the 60GB original. Again, shop around and you can grab yourself a tasty bundle package.

Sony offer an alternative to a price cut for PS3...

2007-10-10T22:07:00.000Z

Following Sony's generous UK PlayStation 3 package consisting of two launch titles, a brace of control pads and a 60GB console, the majority of punters looking to get their hands on a piece of Sony's next-gen pie felt a little fobbed off. Even more so in light of the price cuts seen in America and Japan, it seemed that once again the PAL territories were getting a bum deal.

Well, guess what? Sony have come up with a new, cost-effective way of making the PS3 available to potential buyers who found the £425 price tag too much to swallow. As of next week Sony will be releasing a diluted version of the PS3, stripped of a lot of the extras that made the launch model a truly premium console. The first and most significant casualty is the hard drive, which has been cut back to 40GB, a feature that will be expanded to a muscular 80GB in the States. Yet another poke in the eye for the UK market. In addition to losing 20GB of storage space, the new PS3 will be shorn of two of its USB ports and backwards compatibility with PS2 titles, although PSone discs will still work fine. Every cloud, eh? But wait, there's more. You won't be able to pop your music and holiday snaps onto the hard drive directly through the memory card slots simply because there aren't any on the updated, downgraded machine.
The upside to all of this is that those yet to own a PS3 can now pick one up for the more wallet friendly price tag of £299.99. Unfortunately, the really bad news is that anyone wanting the full spec original console will have to get it fast. Luckily, there's great news for anyone looking to get their mitts on the untouched launch model. You can now pick one up for the bargain price of just £349.99! Genuine value for money once the games start to arrive (patience, give it a couple of months). Rumour has it that soon the 40GB model will be the only available option so you'll have to get in quick or be condemned to own an inferior slab of plastic and chips. Ouch!

Also, while we're on the subject, The Shed would like to issue a pair of apologies. One for being away for so long (moving to London took some time out of our schedule) and two for being weighted heavily on the PS3 side. We assure you that we are totally unbiased in our console love. We love them all equally. Long story short, Landon is the 360 reviewer and he's a lazy git and neither of us own, or know anyone that owns, a Wii. So there.

The 40GB PlayStation 3 and cut price 60GB model is available from today. That's Wednesday 10th October, kids.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 VS. FIFA 08. Whose year is it?

2007-09-14T16:55:00.000Z

It's a fact known only amongst friends that we at The Shed are transformed into rabid, shouting nut-jobs when we are exposed to Konami's definitive footy opus Pro Evolution Soccer. PES (we pronounce it 'pez') is the cornerstone of any multiplayer games session, instantly seperating the men from the boys when it comes to settling the order of our social gaming hierarchy. Only TimeSplitters comes close to emulating the argument resolving power of PES, its universal playability means that all comers invariably want to get involved, ultimately being ensnared by the intuitive nature of the game.
Frankly, PES has had no equal for years, its reign as the purist's football game of choice has gone unchallenged since Konami refined it's sublime footy formula with ISS Pro Evolution (1999) on the PSone. Integral to the innate playability of Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo's (KCET) masterpiece is all down to the silky smooth responsive game it plays. It's like real football, shrunk down and shoved onto a disc. It's nothing short of miraculous.
EA's chart topping FIFA franchise has never been able to keep up with PES in gameplay terms, despite retaining a loyal fanbase, enticed by the unparalleled level of authenticity offered by EA's financial clout lending the title a complete set of licences. PES conversely has never been able to keep up with FIFA when it comes to the sheer quantity of officially licenced teams, strips, players, stadia, leagues, advertisements, commentary...you get the idea. It's always been a case of having to choose whether you value authenticity over gameplay or vice-versa.
For us, gameplay wins out every time; there's simply no contest. But this year the gap between the two titles is narrower than ever as EA have refined FIFA to such a degree that the 2007 instalment played a virtually identical game of footy to PES. FIFA 08 is now available as a downloadable demo on the PlayStation Store and after an in-depth playtest for the first time since the first FIFA made it's debut on the Sega Mega Drive in 1993, we're very nearly sold on the new FIFA.
EA appear to have finally nailed the magic formula for reproducing the beautiful game on a games console and they've done it by, um, copying PES in every conceivable way. Yup, if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery then PES must be blushing a deep shade of red. From a purely cynical standpoint you could accuse the latest FIFA of commiting an act of barefaced plagiarism, swiping Konami's near-flawless gameplay mechanic and dressing it in FIFA licenced clothes, but when you think about it, it's actually a very shrewd move on EA's part. PES has always maintained a high reputation amongst the gaming fraternity for playing a crisp, perfect game of football, whereas FIFA has always got by with its raft of liveries and slick presentation. PES has always compensated for its lack of proper kits and players by offering enough in-depth and detailed customisation options allowing you to create any GM Conference team you like should that be your desire. To our mind FIFA has never offered such editing bliss. Now that FIFA looks as if it may represent the complete package, PES' place as king of footy games could be under serious threat.

One of the most welcome additions to PES 2008 is the option to dive, a feature lifted from Sony's This Is Football. Remember? No? Us neither. ^

What's new PES-sy cat?
The real crux of the single player PES experience has always been the deep, all-encompassing Master League mode, but that's not what Konami are promoting this year. The big innovation that Seabass (that's Mr. PES to you. Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka) and his team are pushing is the new Teamvision AI system, which means that opposing teams will learn and adapt to your style of play resulting in a different, potentially more challenging match every time you play. Interesting stuff but not as promising as EA's 'Be A Pro' mode, which could possibly turn out to be a revolutionary addition to the game. Like dusty old Namco footy experiment gone wrong Libero Grande, you take control of a fixed player with the game camera positioned behind you at all times. Exciting stuff that could be great or utter toss depending on how successful its implementation is. If Namco's 1997 effort is any indication then expect a clunky, superfluous experience. If however FIFA 08's superb loading screen is to be believed then 'Be A Pro' could be an involving and visceral way to play the game. Placing you in the sweaty Nikes of buck-toothed Brazilian virtuoso and FIFA figure-head Ronaldinho, the game's loading screen plonks you in front of a goalkeeper (and goal, obviously) allowing you to get to grips with the game, try out the controls and knock in few screamers if the impulse grabs you. The great thing is you can do this to your heart's content: a nice little pre-match warm-up and a perfect example of the new FIFA's forward thinking. We're impressed.

Still, the burning question remains. Is it enough to knock the mighty PES from its high pedestal? Our verdict? Quite possibly, but ultimately inconclusive. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself trading PES for FIFA this year. Don't get us wrong, we absolutely love PES, but stranger things have happened and well, it's a funny old game...

Download the FIFA 08 demo from the PlayStation Store now and see if you agree with us.

Review: Virtua Fighter 5 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. AM2, Sega)

2007-08-29T23:25:00.000Z

Nowadays, gamers are pretty spoilt for choice when it comes to beat 'em ups. Want immediate arcade action? Buy Tekken or Soul Calibur. Looking for fast-paced explosive action with a strategic bent and pendulous breasts? Buy Dead Or Alive. But if you're after a beat 'em up with infinite depth and unparalleled finesse, there really is no other choice; Virtua Fighter 5 is where it's at.

First of all, a confession. We here at The Shed are completely green when it comes to the Virtua Fighter series. Our experience essentially boils down to a brief flirtation with the arcade versions resulting in many a lost quid and a quick dabble with the fourth instalment on the PS2. So why, you might ask have we even bothered to buy VF 5? We're graphics whores, easily lead by hype and as PS3 owners we're stuck with a console utterly bereft of high kicking, punchy beat 'em up action. Virtua Fighter 5 seemed like a logical purchase, after all, we've been playing Tekken since the beginning, we know the Soul Calibur series inside out and we could hold our own in a Dead Or Alive session any day of the week.

If like us you're VF virgins, you might find the game initially inaccessible, especially if you're used to a diet of Tekken, Soul Calibur and Street Fighter. You may find yourself especially frustrated by the pace of the action, more akin to a game of chess than an all action fighting game. Make no mistake, wade in fists flying like you would in Tekken and you'll get put down quicker than a scabby dog.

If you want to succeed in Virtua Fighter's world you'd best make a visit to the dojo first. It's there that you'll find useful tutorials to surviving a baptism of fire against the residents of the arcades that you'll battle through in the fantastic quest mode - the real crux of your VF 5 experience. Each arcade venue is made up of fighters whose data has been gleaned from actual player AI, each possessing varying skill levels. It's possible to trounce beginner and intermediate players by committing a few cheesy combos to memory and then relentlessly reeling them off. This dishonourable tactic will not serve you well against the more advanced players however, forcing you to actually develop your tactics and move set beyond just a basic handful of combos. It's tough, but it's worth it.

More than any other console scrapper, character selection is paramount as your chosen pugilist will be assigned to your profile potentially becoming a permanent extension of your Virtua Fighter self. The range of customisation options means that you can edit your character to make him or her your own, which actually adds nothing to the game unless you're playing the online enabled 360 version making your own character more recognisable (which begs the question, why is this a feature omitted from the PS3 version?).

Invest time in learning the many techniques, combos, moves and nuances of your character and Virtua Fighter 5 will start paying you back with dividends. Nothing is sweeter than mastering a fighter and subsequently vanquishing all comers. Due to the game's tough learning curve, grabbing a victory is always a great moment due to all that hard work you will have put in at the dojo and slowly working your way through the arcades. If you're good enough to win all of the numerous tournaments and reach a higher level, you may never go back to Tekken as it seems relatively lightweight by comparison.

Still in our own personal opinion, there's room for both the arcade thrills and immediacy of Namco's garish button mashers to co-exist alongside the deep, all-consuming face pulping of VF and to a lesser extent DOA. If it's longevity and depth that you're looking for, Virtua Fighter 5 really has no equal. Graphically sumptuous, flawlessly executed, VF 5 is a masterclass in sublime console beat 'em up action, which is more than worth its asking price. VF 5 is far too difficult and may test the patience of the fighting novice but is an essential purchase for all experienced fight fans seeking a genuine challenge.

Verdict: 8/10

Characters:

Virtua Fighter 5 is host to two new characters joining the roster of old favourites. Eileen uses a monkey-like technique called Kou-Ken whereas El Blaze is a Rey Mysterio-esque Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler. Below is a list of the 17 characters featured in VF 5 and the level of expertise recommended for mastery of each:

BEGINNER: For players who've never played a beat 'em up, these characters should ease you in gently if you don't know a Tech Roll from a Fig Roll.

El Blaze, Jacky, Lau, Pai.

INTERMEDIATE: The amateur VF player (like us) who've had a razz on Tekken or Soul Calibur and have an understanding of the beat 'em up basics will feel at home with this lot.

Brad, Kage, Lion, Sarah, Wolf.

EXPERT: If you're a seasoned VF veteran and you want to get better and advance further, then these are the fighters to plump for.

Aoi, Eileen, Jeffry, Lei-Fei, Shun Di, Vanessa.

PROFESSIONAL: So you've been playing Virtua Fighter since it first hit the arcades and you've become an elite fighter capable of executing combos without a second thought. You're probably sneering at this article because you already know everything there is to know about VF.

Akira, Goh.

Review: The Darkness (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. Starbreeze Studios, 2K Games.)

2007-08-19T17:59:00.000Z

If there's one inescapable truth in gaming, it's that licensed games, be they TV, movie, or comic book adaptations usually tend to suck. There are of course always exceptions to the rule such as the recent Scarface (2006) effort, which avoided categorisation as a crappy movie tie-in, by being a pretty solid GTA clone with some good ideas thrown into the mix. Then we’re subjected to stagnant bilge like the new Transformers game and we remember why licences receive such a bad rap in the first place.
So it's with pleasure that we report that The Darkness, based upon a cult Top Cow comic book is actually a really good game. You may frown upon learning that the game is yet another entry in the overly crowded First Person Shooter category. But wait a minute, because The Darkness features some distinctive gameplay devices that raise this above the usual sub-par fare that we’ve come to expect from lazy shooters content to trade upon the same unimaginative shooting galleries starring legions of cloned goons.
Playing as young Mafioso hitman Jackie Estacado the game hurls you headfirst into the action riding in the back seat of a car with two fellow wiseguys up front. It’s a breathless introduction, grabbing your attention and immediately making you want to pursue the narrative. If the game doesn’t manage to live up to its explosive opening sequence it’s because there’s an interesting story going on here, with Jackie experiencing some big changes with the advent of his 21st birthday. You see, our hero is the host for a malignant force called (you guessed it) The Darkness and as such he finds himself developing strange, macabre powers, which manifest themselves in the freakish tentacles and toothy heads that sprout from under his big, leather trench coat. Initially this allows you to send out a snaking head to scout out ahead, crawl through small gaps and bite off the faces of unsuspecting villains. Don’t forget to devour your enemy’s juicy hearts too as this builds up your darkness level increasing the potency of your power. Keep chowing down on the aortic pumps and it’s not long before you’re running enemies through with a whip-like tentacle, tossing cars and other debris through the air or sucking hapless henchmen into portals, spitting them out deader than they were before. The Darkness succeeds in being compulsively playable due to these inventive abilities at your disposal and the opportunities for mucking about that they represent. We spent ages just flinging dead bodies around, seeing if we could roast them over a flaming oil drum or whether we could get them over a roof. Yes and yes in case you were wondering.
However, clever powers count for nothing in a FPS if the shooting is broken and thankfully Starbreeze’s previous experience developing The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (2004) shines throughout The Darkness. Firstly, there’s a decent range of weapons to wield, including a pair of funky darkness guns and most importantly the gunplay doesn’t disappoint. Squeezing off a few rounds is as enjoyable as it should be and dual wielding twin pistols and uzis is exactly as you’d expect. Our only qualm would be the omission of being able to mix types of gun when dual wielding as we’d have loved to rock an uzi and a pistol at the same time, but then you can’t have it all.
Graphically, The Darkness more than lives up to its title. It’s dark all right and you’ll need to keep it that way in order to summon your demonic innards. When exposed to light, you’ll hear your slithering buddies hiss like a steak on the barby. That’s your cue to extinguish any sources of illumination in the vicinity, an activity that can rapidly prove tiresome after smashing your 900th light bulb. Return to an area and you’ll find that an overzealous caretaker has ran around replacing all of the lights you broke meaning you have to bust them all over again. A tiny niggle rather than a game breaking flaw, but irritating nonetheless.

Atmosfear
The Darkness drips with urban gothic menace as you skulk around the deserted nighttime streets of New York. Lighting is spot-on as you cast tall shadows on the walls and hide away in the shadows to replenish your health. However, the streets can appear a bit samey after a while, with little to separate them. If each of the districts were unnamed, you’d have an extremely hard time finding your way round, as there are no distinctive landmarks or spots lending the area its own identity. There’s the graffiti of Grinder’s Lane, the Church of Trinity Cemetery and the orphanage at St. Mary’s but that’s it. All of the other areas look virtually identical. Between the missions you’re presented with hub area where you’re unable to call upon the darkness and your guns remain firmly holstered. It’s in these talk only subway sections that the game’s momentum grinds to a halt as you’re forced to slowly plod between rubbish NPCs to get the next part of the game going. Try interacting with the majority of these characters and you’ll be met with a boring stock phrase like “We good?”, “Everybody good?”, “You good?” It’s lazy scripting when that’s the best you can come up with for your peripheral characters, especially when every other cast member is so well catered for.
Another thing the game could do without are the patience testing loading screens featuring Estacado spouting some sort of exposition or aside. These aren’t that bad an idea until they start repeating and it’s upon hearing Jackie’s story about racing 90mph in a taxi with his buddy ‘Crazy Abdul’ for the 9th time that you’ll get up to put the kettle on every time.
Another shortcoming is the game’s slender run time, which clocks in at about a good ten hours, meaning we had the game finished inside a week. Usually, there’s a reason to go back to a game like this, but there’s little replay incentive beyond the usual collectible concept art and other gubbins. There’s a perfectly serviceable online multiplayer, which extends the game’s lifespan slightly but there are other more enticing online pursuits currently available.

The Darkness stands out as a largely well thought out and clever use of a comic book license that is for the most part an extremely fun and interesting shooter with a twist. With a mesmerizing, cinematic narrative that grips right from the off, The Darkness features some of the best voice acting we’ve ever encountered in a videogame. Its flaws are numerous, but none are so significant that they manage to ruin what turns out to be one of the most enjoyable and compelling games currently available. It may not be as accomplished a blaster as the likes of Half Life or BioShock but it’s still more than deserving of your attention.
Submit to The Darkness: 8/10

This Month: The Shed Loves NInjas.

2007-08-16T14:19:00.000Z

To celebrate the punishing sadism of Ninja Gaiden Sigma and the game itself by extension, we thought we'd take a look at the greatest games to ever feature ninjas. As there aren't actually that many, we thought we'd tenuously include games where ninjas aren't even the star, then decided not to.

Revenge Of Shinobi (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1989): The original Shinobi hit arcades in 1987 as a colourful side-scrolling slash 'em up starring series ninja poster boy Joe Musashi against the evil 'Zeed' clan. Next to the sequel, Revenge of Shinobi, the first game looks primitive by comparison. Revenge is where Musashi really hit his stride boasting far superior graphics, mental bosses that bizarrely included Batman, Spider-Man and an Arnie lookalike who had a Terminator endoskeleton. Hmmm. No wonder there were copyright issues in the original version. Some of these characters were later removed or modified, like the Godzilla boss who Sega transformed into a skeletal version of the same thing. Good work. Clearly, the 'Neo Zeed' clan will employ anyone to stop Musashi in his tracks.
Revenge Of Shinobi was a tough nut to crack although you could ease the burden with an infinite shuriken cheat. Even with the cheat enabled, the game was an unforgiving gauntlet of patience-shredding stages where a game over screen was never far away. The Shed is proud to have completed the game countless times, but not so proud to announce that only one of these times was without cheating. Cheat or no cheat, Revenge Of Shinobi still stands as a harsh but fair slice of 2D ninja action, firmly old school, incredibly cool and it's aged pretty well too. Well, sort of. Still hate that Labyrinth stage though.

Shadow Dancer: The Secret Of The Shinobi (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1991): Joe Musashi returns once again in the Mega Drive port of the 1990 arcade classic that saw the famous ninja partnering up with a dog named Yamato to avenge his master's death. In the Japanese version you played as Musashi's son Hayate, which makes no difference really, just a bit of useless trivia. All in all it's another excuse for another 2D side-scrolling ninja throwdown, this time taking on the 80's-metal-band-sounding 'Union Lizard' clan. Riiiiight. With a colour pallette that tended to adhere to grey and um, more grey, Shadow Dancer still retained an effortless cool, reinforced by the ability to command a mutt to do some of your dirty work for you. However, the missing option of commanding Yamato to cock his leg and take a piss on a bad guy seems like a missed opportunity to us. Sadly, we never made it past stage 4 (there were only 5 stages, so that's not that bad!) but we remember elaborate bosses, rock-hard platform challenges including a section that took place in intermittent pitch darkness. The original arcade version was also nails...does anyone sense a pattern emerging here? Yes, ALL ninja games are fuckin' rock solid!

Tenchu: Wrath Of Heaven (PlayStation 2, 2003): Not the best of the Tenchu series you might argue and you'd be half-right. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (1998) on the first PlayStation possessed a unique atmosphere and married two elements that had been screaming out to be combined forever. That is ninjas and stealth. All of the components were present and correct right from the start, ninja gadgets like grappling hooks, caltrops, smoke bombs et al. Animation was spot-on, protagonists Rikimaru and Ayame were cool as were their athletic abilities and tasty stealth execution moves. All the sequels could do is build on this established successful formula as it was already so well-formed in the first game. Tenchu 2: Birth of The Stealth Assassins (2000) added a decent level editor and new character Tatsumaru but was essentially more of the same. For us, the best Tenchu game was the third in the series making its debut on the PS2, featuring nice, smooth, if occasionally flaky graphics and get this...a really fuckin' steep difficulty curve. Fortunately, Wrath Of Heaven maintained the awesome atmospherics that initially made the series so unique, enhanced by beautiful acoustic strings and visual flourishes like rain and falling blossom. Packing in a bunch of bonuses like a new character who used needles to kill and a level set in the present day helped keep the third Tenchu fresh, even in the midst of taking on a frustrating level like the cemetery. It's games like Wrath Of Heaven that make us wish we were a ninja.

The Ninja (Sega Master System, 1986): Okay, not actually a good game but deserving of mention for being the single most hideously difficult game ever conceived. A top-down scrolling fighter, you played as a slow-moving, inept ninja with the singular goal of reaching the top of the level. Momentarily turning invisible didn't help matters as you quickly became plagued by superior enemies like bouncing boulders that would ensure a short-lived and thoroughly unpleasant gaming experience. A truly horrendous little game that has scarred our brain for life: the only truly hateful game to feature a ninja protagonist. Its only saving grace is its ability to induce fits of laughter at its inherent silliness. It's games like The Ninja that make us wish ninjas would go away.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PlayStation 3, 2007): Obviously. Ryu Hayabusa is the coolest ninja on any console, period. He's also the best character in the Dead Or Alive series, although he's not actaully cool enough to steer us away from playing as pneumatically breasted uber-babes. Sorry, Ryu. Check out the review below for more.

Too many ninjas: MK, SFII, Final Fight, Streets Of Rage, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Onimusha...

Review: Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PlayStation 3. Team Ninja, Tecmo)

2007-08-15T17:42:00.000Z

<~ Ryu is pretty damn agile, able to perform acrobatics that put the foppish Prince Of Persia to shame. Ryu's far cooler too.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is an extensive rejig of the Xbox classic featuring a raft of new features bringing Ryu Hayabusa back-flipping into the current generation. Essentially a remake of a remake, Sigma may sound like money for old rope but actually represents the perfect opportunity for non-Xbox owning gamers out there to sample the delights of arguably the greatest game to ever feature a ninja. Most obvious of these enhancements is a slick visual revamp, meaning that Sigma is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games on PS3. Also new to this version is the ability to play as the improbably endowed Rachel who only featured as a non-playable periphery character in the original games. Her chapters peppered throughout the game, whilst enjoyable in their own right, succeed in interrupting the game’s flow with their relatively sluggish fight sequences. After lithely rolling and flipping around as Ryu, playing as Rachel with her giant warhammer comes as kind of a drag. However, from a male perspective these sections are certainly easy on the eye and therefore forgivable.

We love Rachel, for obvious reasons. ~>

Thankfully, the rest of the game has retained its intense gameplay and intuitive control system, meaning that doling out lethal, ninja justice is as satisfying as ever. Of course, Ninja Gaiden wouldn’t be Ninja Gaiden without being harder than diamonds and on this front Sigma remains tooth grindingly challenging, without ever being unfair. So unashamedly old school and relentlessly tough as it is, you’ll refuse to give in. After dying three consecutive times you’re presented with the proposition of abandoning the Way Of The Ninja and continuing the game in easy or ‘Ninja Dog’ mode. If you’re anything like us, you’ll see this offer as both insulting and patronising choosing to stick with the current difficulty setting believing that you have the capacity to gradually improve and evolve into a gaming god. Either that or you’ll spin the disc into the nearest bin. There’ll be tears, broken pads and strong, sexual swearing, but in the end it’s worth it. Gaiden possesses that distinct quality, what we call the ‘one-more-go’ factor. Giver of the tough love as it is, you’ll still go back for more, like some sort of gaming sadist. Take the latter part of stage 6 for example. You’re still relatively new to the game, there are twenty stages in total, so you’re not that far in. Saving at the levels last save point you’re instantly assaulted by three enemies throwing explosive kunai. Once dispatched you come to an open area where soldiers jump you. This is the easiest bit and you can even go back and save if you like. Six ninjas, two machine-gunning bikers with sidecars and three fire-breathing demons later and you’re ready to give up. Thankfully a cut scene begins and you relax, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter that you’ve expended every health-replenishing spirit elixir from your inventory. Then you’re faced with the end of level boss because sometimes Ninja Gaiden likes to kick you while you’re down. If this sounds a bit much, then maybe Sigma isn’t the game for you.
The high difficulty level creates an illusion of extended longevity as most of the hours you put in playing the game are made up of dying and retrying, unless unlike us you’re unnaturally gifted at frenetic hack and slash. However, there is a wide range of challenges making for a substantial wedge of game for your money that longevity is definitely not an issue. You’ll be playing Gaiden for the best part of a year, that is assuming that you’re a normal, well adjusted gamer (unlike us, sun-fearing, gaming vampires).
Fundamentally, Gaiden’s innate playability is all down to the flawlessly implemented control scheme, which allows you to effortlessly execute an array of dazzling combos whilst looking obscenely cool. However, all of this amounts to nothing if you don’t immediately learn to block and evade, skills that veteran players will tell you are key to survival, as a few gouges from even early enemies will kill Ryu dead.
Sigma is an awesome remake of an already accomplished game, but if you currently own Ninja Gaiden Black or the original, it probably isn’t worth you parting with your cash once again, even if Sigma is undoubtedly the definitive iteration.
Ninpo: 8/10

Movie Review: The Simpsons Movie (July, 2007)

2007-07-28T22:58:00.001Z

So, it's finally here. The greatest TV programme ever made, debuting on the big screen intact, yellow-skinned and four fingered like always. As massive fans of the show, watching since the age of eight when The Simpsons first began, our expectations have reached a feverishly high level for the long awaited movie version. And by and large it doesn't disappoint, it just doesn't quite meet our lofty expectations. But it's The Simpsons, on the big screen, which makes it inherently bulletproof. First of all, there's the initial shock of seeing The Simpsons at your local multiplex, larger than life to overcome. After 17 years of comfortable small screen viewing, it's simultaneously strange and exciting to see Springfield's residents on blown-up on celluloid.

The Simpsons Movie completely belongs to Homer; his own unique brand of endearing stupidity sets the plot's wheels in motion when he adopts a pig from Krusty Burger. To elaborate further would mar the experience, after all, the trailer has already given away some of the funniest scenes (Spider-Pig for instance). As expected, The Simpsons Movie plays out in much the same way as an extended episode would, albeit an episode that is four times longer than normal. Unfortunately, the story is so centred upon a certain set of characters that a lot of the supporting cast are inevitably marginalized. Most criminally of all, especially given the nature of the movie's story, is the lack of screen time for Mr. Burns. With such a massive universe, that some characters aren't catered for was to be expected. It's just a shame that certain favourites are pushed into the background or don't appear at all. Bizarrely, the movie is also bereft of the kind of in-jokes and movie references that are normally peppered throughout Simpsons episodes. Thankfully the knowing wit and sharp satire remains (Schwarzenegger in the White House) making the movie unmistakeably the work of the genius team of writers who have collectively managed to keep the show fresh for all these years.
Any criticisms levelled at The Simpsons Movie melt into insignificance once it gets going. From the very beginning, it's wall-to-wall gags, making The Simpsons Movie pound-for-pound funnier than any other comedy movie you're likely to see. Given the sheer volume of comical material on offer here, there’s bound to be a few that don't hit the target, but fortunately these don't detract from the rest of the film's funnies.
The Simpsons Movie is a hugely enjoyable film that successfully transports America's most dysfunctional family to cinemas. That it's consistently funny, engaging and massive fun is testament to the longevity of The Simpsons. And if Maggie's final word during the movie’s credits is to be believed, we haven't seen the last of The Simpsons on the big screen. Woohoo!
****

Hands on with the Heavenly Sword demo.

2007-07-28T21:08:00.000Z

Our eyes light up! Our palms perspirate a bit! We even pee our pants a little! It's only a bloody demo of Heavenly Sword on the PlayStation Store! One hasty download later and we're ready to go. First impressions are promising as we bypass the lovely title menu, checking out the options and memorizing a few combos before we delve headlong into the action. After a slick expositional cut scene with heroine Nariko sharing a moment with her sister we find ourselves thrown straight into a breathtaking quick time sequence with Nariko sliding down ropes, leaping left and right as they're severed by the bad guys below. Successfully navigating this treacherous rope slide we drop from above ready to bring the pain to the gits who tried to end us. Swipe! Slash! Scratch one bad guy as we land on his head with the business end of our blade. So far so good.

But then we get into the real meat of the action and well, it's exactly what we feared. It's like bloody Genji or Dynasty Warriors: in short it's a button masher, nothing like the complex slasher we were hoping for. Early hype suggested a game mechanic similar to God Of War, Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry but it shares little in common with these great titles. What makes Heavenly Sword so frustrating is the glaring lack of a block or jump button, it's a huge omission, magnified by the fact that an older game- Ninja Gaiden has both block and jump buttons and feels so much more fluid, thanks to it's intuitive control scheme. Blocking in Heavenly Sword involves standing still, which just feels wrong during a frenetic sword battle. Jumping is replaced by a clumsily implemented evade move mapped to the right analog stick, which is not only ineffective but it's also easy to forget that it's there.

On a more positive tip, Heavenly Sword's combat looks outstanding when you're in full flow, even if you are just blindly pawing at the buttons like a chimp at a typewriter. There's an almost hypnotic quality to the action that almost dupes you into forgetting Heavenly Sword's flaws. Swordplay incorporates three stances to expand the combos on offer. You have your standard battle stance-just bash buttons wildly for best results-then there's ranged attacks which work like Kratos' chains in God Of War, unleashed by holding L1 as you attack. Finally, there's the power stance-hold R1-which gives you slow...wait for it, yes, powerful attacks to swipe enemies into the air unlocking potential for juggling moves. Mixing the three stances is a snap and makes the list of moves at your disposal nearly inexhaustible. A quick tap of O when your special meter's ready allows you to perform a fancy kill move on an unfortunate opponent, but this feels like initiating a cut scene rather than brilliantly executing a well-timed finisher. It has none of the instant satisfaction of say, tearing off limbs in God Of War, or transforming into a demon a la Devil May Cry. However, being able to throw virtually any object with a quick tap of X is a nice touch, particularly as you can throw dead bodies, barrels, discarded weapons, rocks...anything.

Heavenly Sword is achingly beautiful to behold, smooth and visually accomplished but ultimately a bit of a disappointment. We just hope that Ninja Theory delay the imminent release to spruce up the controls a bit, otherwise they may just squander the chance to give PS3 its first genuine killer app. What PS3 doesn't need is another Genji, what it needs is an iconic, console defining title and we had high hopes for the flame-haired Nariko to fly the flag on Sony's machine. We'll be sitting tight, praying we don't have to fly the white flag when Heavenly Sword reaches PlayStation 3 on September 14th.

Resident Evil 5: Is This The Scariest Resi Yet?

2007-07-27T19:13:00.000Z

For months now details on Resident Evil 5 have been scarcer than talking monkeys. All we've had is the initial teaser trailer then a sloooooow drip feed of tiny tidbits of information. Infuriating! But now Capcom have seen fit to finally release a more accomplished trailer revealing that the game will retain the new over-the-shoulder perspective that made Resi 4 such a groundbreaking instalment in the hugely successful survival horror series. Additionally the traditional T-Virus zombies and Las Plagas infected are taking a break to make way for a new breed of fleet-footed uber-zombie bastards. In the trailer we see aggressive gangs of zombified villagers wielding machetes and scythes, knocking Redfield to the ground, stomping him like a group of happy-slapper chavs outside Mc.Donalds, wide-eyed and absolutely terrifying.

Resi 5 will star Resident Evil stalwart Chris Redfield, as we'd already guessed but this time he's working for the BSAA, whoever they are. So far there's been no allusion to the shady, omnipotent Umbrella Corporation and no sign of series villain and Val Kilmer wannabe, Albert Wesker...yet. However to write off the possibility of an Umbrella resurgence would be stupid, absent as they were from the last game, it would be timely to have the all-powerful, evil corporation making a comeback.

Also present in the trailer is a tantalising glimpse of the much vaunted light and dark gameplay element. When Chris enters the hut to see a native having his face chewed off by two fellow villagers, we see that Chris's eyes have to adjust to the darker environment. It appears to be a well implemented feature that could enhance the scares when moving from light to dark and vice versa. In this scene we see the aforementioned savaged geezer scramble up to his feet, his eyes and nose bleed before he leaps at Chris. This means that when natives are bitten, the infection is accelerated so that the transformation is virtually instantaneous. Wow. Maybe those Umbrella fruitcakes decide to fuse their T-Virus with the Las Plagas?! Logically, this could be the case as it would mean that your enemies possess attributes of both viruses, which would explain the potent mixture of speed and intelligence that these new zombies exhibit. Scary stuff.
Luckily, it looks as if Chris has been spending his spare time in the gym beefing up. At one point in the trailer he kicks the zombie hordes back, just like Leon in Resi 4, but-get this-he follows it up with a meaty right hook. Yeah! Punch that zombie in his rotten face!!

<~ At the very end of the trailer this bint submerged in water opens her eyes in a typically sinister fashion. Who is she?

Aesthetically, Resi 5 looks as if it will utilise the same down and dirty, dusty brown colour pallette as Resi 4, upping the grimy detail for next-gen consoles. Early specualation that the game would take place in a sun drenched European locale have been eschewed by the ethnicity of the natives. Resi 5 is set in what appears to be an oppressive African regime, hinted at by the Idi Amin-esque dictatorial guy with the aviators wielding the megaphone. We're thinking maybe Haiti or Uganda? Either way, Resi 5 is shaping up to be one of the hottest titles for 2008 and our eyes are already bleeding in anticipation. Yeeeargh!!

Resident Evil 5 is pencilled in for an early 2008 release, subject to slippage of course. Check out the full uncut E3 trailer at the PlayStation Store.

Movie Review: Zodiac (May, 2007)

2007-07-22T17:27:00.000Z

During the late 1960s and ‘70s, Northern California was gripped by the ongoing investigations surrounding the notorious Zodiac killer. To this day the elusive serial killer remains unapprehended and the case was reopened in March of this year despite being marked as ‘inactive’ since April 2004. Great material for a slow burn thriller then and who better than David Fincher, who has previously brought visceral cops versus killer thrills to the big screen with Se7en (1995) to bring the story to vivid life. Fincher’s latest foray into the serial killer genre is a taut, atmospheric picture evoking such a strong sense of time and place that it’s impossible not to be instantly drawn in. Those expecting the glossy thrills of Se7en may feel slightly short-changed however as Zodiac is a movie that revels in the intricacy of details and authenticity, having more in common with films like All The President’s Men (1976) or LA Confidential (1997).
Zodiac is the darkest treat of the year, a film punctuated by starkly chilling murder sequences, real and spontaneous in their depiction of violence, they manage to be both minimalistic and shocking, the antithesis to the gratuitous, desensitising brutality portrayed in the likes of Hostel or Saw. In other words, effective in their own stripped down, perfunctory way.
At the heart of the movie are the fantastic central performances from the stellar cast. Mark Ruffalo is fantastic as the harried cop on the Zodiac case, Inspector Toschi, enveloped in the complex assignment to bring the killer to justice. Anthony Edwards offers solid support as his long-suffering partner, Inspector Armstrong. Robert Downey Jr. is typically reliable as acerbic journo, Paul Avery but best of all is Jake Gyllenhaal who is outstanding as the man who provided the movie’s inspiration with his brace of books based upon the Zodiac investigation, Robert Graysmith. Graysmith is a man who managed to be completely consumed by the Zodiac case, marginalizing his family and risking his own life, unearthing clues in an attempt to unravel the Zodiac killer’s identity. We’re there the entire way alongside him; helpless voyeurs watching a man and his family slowly fall apart as his obsession escalates. We’re there for the entire ride, through media hyperbole, red herrings, possible suspects, all leading up to the inescapable conclusion.
Zodiac may confound your expectations being unlike any of Fincher's previous work. It’s a deep and meticulous exploration of the men’s lives that were adversely affected by the eponymous killer. Two of these men, San Francisco Chronicle journalist Avery and editorial cartoonist Graysmith are brought to the fore as the recipients of the Zodiac’s infamous, menacing letters. Poorly spelt, boasting letters that ensured the Zodiac’s place in history despite committing just five confirmed kills. It was his taunting relationship with the media that perpetuated the ongoing myth of the Zodiac killer leading to numerous copycats, faked correspondence and movies like Dirty Harry (1971), which featured a maniacal sniper named ‘Scorpio’, based upon the Zodiac killer.

Zodiac is a spectacular achievement, Fincher dispenses with his trademark flashy directing style to deliver a master class in suspenseful moviemaking. Not only is it an ambitious and fully realised piece of cinema, but it is both challenging and enthralling as well as beautifully shot and flawlessly acted. At two and a half hours long it should feel like a draining slog yet it never does, thoughtfully slow-paced it still manages to effortlessly keep you hooked for the duration. Riveting.
****

Zodiac is out on DVD in the UK on 24th September.

Give Resistance a new lease of life.

2007-07-21T22:40:00.000Z

Sometimes here at The Shed we get a little bored and frustrated with certain games. It's all part and parcel of having a short attention span. So, whilst playing a two player deathmatch on Resistance: Fall Of Man with the point limit set to 250, mine and my brother's interest began to gradually wane. Rather than quitting to the main menu and starting a quicker, less time-consuming match, we decided to see who could commit the most elaborate suicide. And so the Resistance Suicide Olympics was born.

You'd be amazed at how compulsive blowing yourself up with a well-aimed grenade can be. Throw one just in front of yourself, run into it, time a jump and you can perform graceful aerial flips and spins. Watch with morbid glee at the ragdoll physics sending your hapless body through the air and then respawn and do it all over again.
At the Resistance suicide Olympics, there are hundreds of possibilities, numerous acrobatic variations to subject your poor ragdoll puppet to (note: not quite as satisfying with Chimera). It's not long before you'll be setting yourself alight, throwing an explosive near a third story window and challenging yourself to flip your character out of it. Alternatively, why not blow yourself up so that your corpse cartwheels through a car windscreen? Why not? In Resistance only mind you...The Shed does not condone real life suicide. Keep it virtual, people!
You might also like to try this in any game that possesses humorous ragdoll physics, high environments and oodles of explosives. Go on...give it a go. It's no substitute for fragging a buddy, but it sure is a funny diversion, in a twisted kind of way.
Gotta go. Medication time.

Note weird foetal position in this one. Eerie. Almost makes you want to stop blowing the poor fella up. Almost... ~>

Review: Calling All Cars! (PlayStation 3, EDI. Incognito, Sony)

2007-07-19T21:52:00.000Z

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best. Calling All Cars!' concept is infinitely beautiful in it's simplicity. From David Jaffe, the guy who brought us epic, mythological carnage in God Of War, Calling All Cars! is essentially a fusion of Micro Machines and old playground mainstay, 'tag.' Calling All Cars!' aim is to capture an escaped criminal and return him to jail. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, the easiest of which is running the apprehended crook straight through the prison's front door. Doing this only earns you a solitary point with two awarded for delivery to a slightly less convenient entrance. You can grab yourself three points by ramming the crim into the back of a paddy wagon or by dropping him at the least accessible prison entrance. Picking up four points means having to jab L2 for a nitro boost in order to pursue the helicopter, which you have to stick with for a couple of seconds before the writhing detainee is banged up properly. Nabbing five points is rare as you have to keep your eyes and ears open for the elusive red paddy wagon, but it's worth it as it can turn a game around in one fell swoop. And remember, you can't hold onto the slippery reprobate for long as after a while he'll escape. A host of wacky weapons help you keep hold of the crim and take him back when your opponents manage to ram you to steal him away (like 'tag,' see?). Inevitably, with the four of you scrambling to capture the same convict, things get pretty noisy and chaotic, pretty quickly. Like all great multi-player games, Calling All Cars! truly comes to life with a few mates (even moreso with booze).

As you've probably already gathered, The Shed is loving Calling All Cars! It's an unadulterated slice of old school multi-player mayhem, presented in gorgeous cartoony-exaggerated, cel-shaded, HD-O-Vision. Calling All Cars! is made all the more enjoyable due to it's wonderfully realised, quirky, cartoon charm; loopy music and brilliantly manic Oirish commentator ("Prison's frozen laddy! Go for the paddy wagon!"). In single player, it's diverting, but not nearly as much fun as playing with three drunk mates. But, then the same can be said of most games made with multi-player in mind. Once you've unlocked all of the single player vehicles, you probably won't bother revisiting it. Also, only having four stages-although all four vary significantly- limits replayability somewhat (more to download please). In multi-player however, Calling All Cars!' longevity is nigh-on infinite, like Shed multi-player faves Mashed and Micro Machines V3, Calling All Cars!' pick-up and play appeal will have you hooked for ages as long as you have mates. That's got to be worth a piffling £4.99, surely? Don't think so? Then maybe it's you we should be chucking into the paddy wagon. Laddy.
Score: 8/10

Killzone 2 breaks cover at E3!

2007-07-12T21:08:00.000Z

<~ Impressive as it first appeared, the original trailer for Killzone 2 was unfortunately pre-rendered target footage. Thankfully, Guerilla have outdone themselves with their new E3 trailer.

So E3 was slightly scaled down this year but that didn't mean that it was any less packed with explosive gaming revelations. Trailers of massive games like Mercenaries 2, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, Halo 3, LittleBigPlanet, My Sims, Rock Band and tons more. Most exciting of all- for us anyway- was Sony and Guerilla's big reveal of their super-hyped follow up to pretty good-but not great-first person shooter Killzone, the fittingly titled Killzone 2. Ever since the original trailer was exposed as target footage,
anticipation for actual in-game footage had reached fever pitch.
The new trailer for Killzone 2 is closer to the pre-rendered footage than we expected, rocking a grimy, Gears Of War-esque aesthetic, the inhospitable planet Helghan looks like a chaotic, post-apocalyptic, death-maze: a rubble strewn expanse of flaming buildings and deserted streets constantly pounded by bolts of lightning.

<~ Those unmistakable glowing orange goggles are fast becoming one of PlayStation's most iconic images. Make no mistake, Killzone 2 is going to be very special indeed.

Opening with ISA troops - including gruff mainstay Rico- embarking upon a loud, dramatic, aerial drop into enemy territory, the scene is set for some intense first-person action. The rest of the trailer doesn't disappoint, portraying the game's ultra-detailed environments, unflinching, brutal violence, destructible surroundings (pillars anyway) and sharp enemy AI with aplomb. Those evil orange-goggled Helghast stormtroopers actively seek out cover, choosing not to line up for execution, hiding behind walls and columns, displaying genuine intelligence. With the addition of claret-soaked decapitations, meaty, convincing gunplay and new, imposing, heavy troopers, Guerilla look as if they're on to a winner with Killzone 2. With first-person shooters being among
the most saturated genres, Killzone 2 appears to have enough good stuff going on to be able to compete with the likes of Halo 3, Haze and Bioshock.

Killzone 2 is slated for a March 2008 launch, meaning there's plenty of time for a thorough polish. In the meantime check out the trailer in HD at the PlayStation Store or at http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21504.html
Helghast-ic!

The Trouble With Being A Gamer Today.

2007-07-03T21:25:00.000Z

Saying games are big business these days is a gross understatement. It's widely documented that the games industry makes more money than the movie industry and with videogame production values growing all the time, games are increasingly becoming large scale undertakings. Furthermore, a number of games are using their increased budgets to create works of such limitless scope that they deserve recognition as the hugely ambitious artistic endeavours that they are. Even smaller scale games with original ideas like LocoRoco deserve mainstream credit, but are widely overlooked, simply because at the end of the day, they're 'only a game.' Yet, despite gaming's evolution from comparatively visually primitive games (no less worthy of artistic merit) to full blown, multi-million budget projects, more in keeping with a movie production, videogames continue to be marginalised by the mainstream as a lower form of creative media.
In recent years, games have slowly managed to seep into the mainstream, partially as a result of Sony's success with the original PlayStation making it a console for anyone and everyone. With the PS2 shifting millions of units worldwide and the subsequent runaway success of Nintendo's DS and Wii, gaming is more popular than ever, recalling the days of Nintendo's all-conquering NES and Gameboy, systems that managed to sell 40 million and 120 million units respectively.

Here's the rub. In spite of all of the progression games have made over the past two decades as an artistic medium, there still exists a tunnel-visioned minority who are completely ignorant to the value and importance of videogames. Whether it's an anti-games lobbyist like Jack Thompson, your average outraged Daily Mail reader or narrow minded ignoramus, they're all guilty of holding on to an anachronistic view of gaming as a depraved social evil, robbing children of sunlight, sanity and moral values. As long as this uninformed, blinkered view exists, games will forever be seen as unhealthy toys for kids: violent and anti-social, when the reality is that violent games are appropriately rated by the BBFC and gaming can be anything but anti-social under the right circumstances. Games like Guitar Hero, Singstar, Warioware and Wii Sports are transforming the image of games in a positive way, getting the whole family involved but there's still a long way to go before games become accepted by society as a whole.

The press jumping all over the latest controversy-baiting title only makes matters worse, perpetuating this unfounded perception of gaming and hindering the growth of the industry into one that is universally taken seriously like it should be. The recent outcry over the use of Manchester cathedral in Resistance and the banning of Manhunt 2 are the latest examples of games being targeted as a scapegoat for society’s ills. Whenever there's a tragic shooting or seemingly unmotivated killing, the finger of blame is always pointed squarely at either a game or movie that the killer used to play/watch as people desperately clutch at straws for a tenuous link in a vain attempt to try and explain away the offender's mental state. It's an argument that is fast becoming tired and predictable.

I recently experienced an attitude that is sadly still prevalent amongst the majority of the population, particularly those 40 and over. Talking to someone about the benefits of a 100Hz television I told her that as a gamer, 100Hz is something to look out for. She began to tell me how she never intends to game and from her tone, I could tell that she was of the opinion that gaming is for geeks with no social lives. Proclaiming myself as a gamer, she seemed disgusted, exclaiming, "Oh God! Do something else with your life!" It was this knee-jerk reaction to the mention of games that provided me with the impetus to write this piece.

It pisses me off that people still perceive games in this way, as a waste of time, an addiction that saps away at the life force of people who would otherwise be out climbing mountains or experiencing the wonders of the world. The reality is, gaming is not an addiction for the vast majority of players. It can be a more involving and sociable pastime than watching a film or reading a book and can engage and challenge a participant in a completely different way to that of a book or film. Neither does gaming get in the way of having a perfectly normal and well-adjusted life in the outside world. Until people are educated in the value of gaming as a well-established medium with an army of followers who are passionate about their pastime, gaming is doomed to forever be perceived as a hobby for wan, acne-ridden pariahs with nothing better to do. Just because I happen to be all of the above, means nothing. Gaming is the most exciting medium that continues to flourish and develop as innovation and invention largely thrives unabated. No other creative medium is so fast moving and genuinely interesting to be involved in. In this sense gaming is not just a cultural phenomenon but also a way of life. However until people attempt to understand gaming rather than chastise and judge it as a base form of entertainment, the medium will never be taken seriously.

The Greatest Co-op Games Of All Time.

2007-06-26T19:08:00.000Z

With the likes of Army of Two, Kane and Lynch and Haze ushering in a new era of co-operative gaming, we thought it was time to put our favourite games to play with a friend under The Shed's microscope. An exceptional co-operative mode featured as a carefully considered (ie: not an afterthought) option in any game can more than double its longevity and simultaneously boost its fun factor. While the option to play co-op online is a welcome one, it just can't compensate for the kind of experience that you can share with a trusted friend (or enemy) in the same room, barking orders at one another, maybe even exchanging punches. A headset and webcam just isn't the same. As co-op modes are becoming de rigueur in the majority of next-gen games (as they frickin' well should be) we do what we always do. Look to the past...

Streets Of Rage series: The pinnacle of co-op gaming, the Streets Of Rage games have always held an irresistible pull upon us. Streets Of Rage II particularly remains the finest co-op game we've ever played. Not exceptionally difficult, defiantly linear, but nigh on perfect for wading through generic urban punks with a range of satisfying-if limited-moves at your disposal. The first Streets Of Rage actually featured special acrobatic co-operative moves that unfortunately didn't make it to the sequel despite their usefulness. Coupled with the hilarious ability to hurl enemies down holes (Stage 4) or off a building (Stage 7), Streets Of Rage is a game more than worthy of its great co-op credentials. Inferior sprites, graphics and sound meant Streets Of Rage looks fairly basic next to its successors, but still stands up as a fun, knockabout skull basher, especially in co-op.
If Streets Of Rage II stands out as the best of the Streets Of Rage trilogy, then Streets Of Rage 3 is undoubtedly the series' low point. Plagued by criticism due to previous games in the series being too easy, Sega took Streets Of Rage and ramped up the difficulty level too much, breaking it in the process. As Streets Of Rage II veterans, we waited for SOR 3 with baited breath only to find that we were only able to finish the game on easy mode-thus seeing only a small portion of what the game had to offer-and we only succeeded in making it as far as the penultimate level on normal difficulty.
SOR 3's branching storyline was a great idea and Sega attempted to incorporate a more complicated (if convoluted) plot to the game-about robots and other guff. Losing great characters like Adam and Max didn't help matters, with newcomer Zan proving to be a bit of a joke. An old man with a weird cybernetically augmented frame, Zan looked completely abnormal amongst the classic mainstay characters. Still, despite all of its flaws Streets Of Rage 3 managed to do the co-op thing fantastically well. Testament to the innate simplicity of beating on undesirable thugs, SOR 3 didn't manage to undo the joy of cleaning up the streets with a friend.

Of all the games we've ever played, we personally feel that Streets Of Rage deserves a current-gen update more than any other classic title, no other scrolling beat 'em up-not even Capcom's Final Fight-has managed to stand the test of time as well as Streets Of Rage. It’s indispensable co-operative gaming, long overdue a redux.

Golden Axe: A barbarian, an Amazonian and a dwarf, each with a different elemental spell, fighting style and weapon. Put two of them together and you have co-operative bliss. Another classic Sega title, this time it's a fantasy slash 'em up where you must find and destroy the nefarious Death Adder and recover the legendary golden axe. OK, so the plot’s poo and it isn't the best game ever made but it still dwells in the mind as an accomplished co-op romp-even if you are pitted against some of the campest fantasy villains ever committed to a plastic cartridge. Unintentionally hilarious, Golden Axe is not only compulsively playable in co-op mode; it is also a master class in cheesy, clichéd fantasy. Taking its cue from Streets Of Rage, it's possible to kick or lure your enemies into bottomless pits, which proves to be an eternal source of mirth. Being able to ride dragons (something which always initiates squabbling over who gets to take the scaly beast) as well as weird pink, beaky creatures adds to the overall experience.
Special mention must be made of Altered Beast, another slice of classic Sega co-op action conceived in a similar mould to Golden Axe. There's a lot to be said for the sheer comedy value of sprinting ahead of your mate and nabbing any power-ups, leaving your friend skinny and weak whilst you storm ahead as a formidable beast. Genius. The same satisfaction can be derived from stealing every spell potion that hits the ground in Golden Axe and unleashing the power of the elements while your sidekick can only watch. Ha! Alongside Sega's Altered Beast and Alien Storm (Golden Axe with aliens) Golden Axe is yet another essential co-op from the house that Sonic built. And you get to kick the crap out of crummy little pixie thieves. What's not to like? There's a next-gen remake in the works too, which should be good...maybe.

Mercs: Sublime but ridiculous scrolling shooter played from an isometric view (Killzone: Liberation owes a debt); Mercs is an undiluted, overblown, balls-out, rapid-fire shooter. To this day we still don't know what this game is about, we always impatiently skipped the macho-bullshit exposition scenes and got on with the business of blowing away non-specific goons. With a selection of typically over-the-top weapons, Mercs is a shining example of Reagan-era politics, playing like an interactive version of Rambo III or Commando, which is no bad thing. It's just that in the current political climate, Mercs hasn't aged well, looking positively bone-headed and just plain dumb. Reducing native shanty towns to charred kindling is just one of the overtly silly things that shows Mercs’ age yet being able to eviscerate enemies with whip-like spins of the flamethrower manages to compensate, even if it is a little graphic, in a primitive 16bit kinda way. That doesn't mean that it isn't a blast to play, because it definitely is. However, it's best played with infinite lives and infinite ammo switched on as this allows you to enjoy Mercs at its most unadulterated. Marching into battle gung-ho, without a care for the consequences, boldly standing in the firing line, eyes glazing over as you unleash a barrage of bullets into a bizarre tank-cum-giant-impossibly-huge-gun-turret -thing, as it flashes in an epileptic-fit inducing lightshow as your hail of fire wears down the gigantic, screen-filling boss. Repeat until said boss explodes in a fittingly huge explosion, stand back and admire your handiwork. Mercs is as brilliant as this sounds, it's a game so relentlessly stupid but so indescribably brilliant that it has to be played to be believed. OK, so maybe we're veering dangerously into hyperbole here, but Mercs is undoubtedly great fun with a friend. Pick up a copy of Capcom Classics Collection: Vol. 1 and try it yourself if you don't believe us.

Gears Of War: The best game on Xbox 360 is also the best co-op game on 360. It's like the 21st century Mercs, Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago and his lantern-jawed compadres providing dangerous levels of testosterone and wanton destruction. Trampling the Locust through the fantastic campaign mode is an unparalleled joy with a buddy. Crossing the river when assaulted by the Krill is so much more nerve-shreddingly dramatic with a human-controlled colleague at your side. Knowing that you've a non-AI mate covering your back and that should you die you can be resuscitated makes life a little easier, but no less challenging and most importantly of all, co-op Gears is enormous fun. Not only that, but having a wingman at your side creates further scope for a more strategic approach. When routes split, one of you can go one way, while the other takes the alternative approach. Or conversely, why not stick together? Why not position one player at a high vantage point to pick off Locust on the ground sending your chum into the fray to meticulously plan a Hammer Of Dawn assault. Strategy worthy of any General worth his salt we think you'll agree and all part and parcel of the only decent co-op game we've played in recent memory. Except maybe Halo 2... Thrashing the Warthog around is so much funnier when you have a second Master Chief along for the ride.

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in The World Of Illusion: We love to throw in an anomalous choice into our lists and here's one. The antithesis of all the violent, machismo games listed above, World Of Illusion is pure gaming candyfloss, fantastical Disney platform fun at its very best. What made World Of Illusion more than just your average lazy, day-glo Disney game was the implementation of platforming obstacles designed specifically for co-operative play meaning that playing with a friend was always infinitely more involving and rewarding than playing alone. Whilst the co-op stuff was largely simplistic (it was a kid's game after all), it's arguably been an influence on the forthcoming Army Of Two, a game built from the ground up purely for co-op play, featuring similarly buddy-specific tasks like pulling one another over scaleable walls or giving your mate a boost. However, seesaw operated rail platforms are yet to be confirmed for Army Of Two.

Bubbling under…Two Crude Dudes, Probotector, Metal Slug, Gunstar Heroes...all classic, all great.

Manhunt 2 banned.

2007-06-19T19:03:00.000Z

It's been a low watermark week for gamers what with the controversy surrounding Resistance's use of Manchester Cathedral upsetting the Church Of England and now this. Manhunt 2 has become the first game to be banned by the censors in more than a decade. This isn't just a withdrawal like selected stores enforced with the release of the original Manhunt, this is a full ban: Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2 will not be released.

Be assured we'll still be importing this for our PSP, but it must be a massive disappointment for Wii owners especially. Of the three formats Manhunt 2 was confirmed for, Wii is the most bereft of mature titles and had the most exciting innovation with an inventive use of the Wii-mote for acting out its various executions. PlayStation 2 gamers can at least go back and enjoy the first Manhunt, which we maintain is still one of the console's best games. As we've already said, PSP owners have the option of ordering a US copy, which can easily be found at any number of online stores.

What we'd like to do to the UK censors. Does that make us sick? No. ~>

At the time of writing, a cursory glance at major online retailers indicates that the game is still available for pre-order, but we're not sure if this actually means anything. We just hope that the censors see sense and change their minds as they've ironically decided to ban a supposedly 'sick' game in the same month as a supposedly 'sick' movie. Eli Roth's notoriously gratuitous and graphic Hostel: Part II will have cinema-goers reaching for the sick bags on 29th June. The fate of Manhunt 2 however remains a mystery. We just want it even more now...you always want what you can't have.

HOT SHIT: the BIG 8.

2007-06-15T19:18:00.000Z

Why the big 8? Because, that's why. Only two of these forthcoming games are sequels (BiosShock doesn’t count although it’s a successor to the System Shock series) so it’s refreshing to see original games triumphing on next-gen consoles: these are the ones we want the most.

Haze (Free Radical, Ubisoft): We’re looking forward to pumping ourselves full of performance-enhancing Nectar and marching headfirst into Haze’s frenetic gun-toting action. Free Radical’s new first-person project leading on PlayStation 3, is really starting to take shape, its detailed, lush jungle environments giving Far Cry a serious run for its money. You play as a trooper for the shadowy and morally dubious Mantel Corporation. As such you have all the best kit at your disposal, the best weapons, dropships dropping off reinforcements and an unlimited supply of tasty Nectar. Administer yourself with a shot of said drug and the odds become stacked heavily in your favour. Members of the rebel Promise Hand group that you’ve been sent to root out glow like neon lights whilst you simultaneously receive a hefty boost to your strength and agility making melee attacks fatal. Additionally, Nectar has you develop foresight which means you're able to see grenade blast radiuses before they go off amongst other 'spider sense'-type abilities. Overdose on Nectar though and you’ll become engulfed in a drug-induced haze and begin to lose a grip on reality and your trigger finger. Hence the snappy title.
We’re going to say something real controversial now, but we think Haze could be the Halo-beater PS3 owners have been waiting for. No pressure then Free Radical.
PlayStation 3 gamers will be able to get their hands on Haze 28th September with the 360 version following March 2008.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (IO Interactive, Eidos): A genuinely compelling title from the makers of the Hitman games. Its mature, adult content should make for an unparalleled cinematic narrative as you take control of two thoroughly dark, depraved, mentally unhinged criminals. Kane is a traitorous diamond thief who's fleeced his old mob, The Seven. Kane’s agenda is to keep hold of the loot he’s hidden, which is where Lynch comes in. As Kane, you’re supposed to be leading Lynch to the hidden diamonds, so he’ll be keeping a beady eye on you. Hired by The Seven to have Kane retrieve the stolen booty, Lynch is a proper psychopath lacking any kind of moral code. His lack of ethics means that he’ll rock his shotgun whenever he likes, even populated areas like clubs. Being unstable, Lynch is capable of unspeakable acts of violence, which may make for some unsettling, disturbing scenes. So, a game starring a heavily scarred career criminal and a certifiable maniac should be truly intriguing. This has shot right to the top of our most wanted list.
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is out on 360, PS3 and PC November 9th.

Beautiful Katamari (Namco Bandai): We fell in love with We Love Katamari on PS2, so naturally we’re dying to play its next-gen sequel. Visually it looks like its business as usual, albeit with a hint of next-gen HD sheen. For the uninitiated, Katamari Damacy (as it’s widely known) is the worlds only roll ‘em up. Katamari’s premise is a simple but fiendishly addictive one. You play as the King Of All Cosmos’ son The Prince and it’s your job to push around your katamari (a big ball) and roll up as many objects as you possibly can whilst adhering to a time limit or set of rules. There’s no limit to what you can roll up with your katamari, and in We Love Katamari on PS2 one of the game’s final stages tasked you with rolling up landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben. Ultimately, you ended up rolling up all of your previously rolled-up katamaris accumulated throughout the game into one uber ball, then roll it right into the sun. Obviously. Mad as a baboon with rabies, the Katamari games are consistently brilliant standing out as both unique and eminently playable, which is why Beautiful Katamari can’t come soon enough. Roll on!
Beautiful Katamari is due for UK release on PS3 and 360 early next year.

Stranglehold (Midway): Showing off the much vaunted ‘Massive D’ engine (the D is for destruction) that will also feature in Blacksite: Area 51, Stranglehold is the digital sequel to John Woo’s Hong Kong action classic Hard Boiled. Reprising his iconic role as cocktail stick chewing super cop Tequila, you play as a flawlessly replicated Chow Yun Fat, able to recreate Woo-style gun scenes complete with trademark doves. Cool. Leaping with twin pistols blazing, you can string together some spectacular combos using various props and pieces of the surrounding scenery, such as banisters, tables, trolleys, chandeliers and more. One notable scene sees Tequila interacting with a T-Rex skeleton in a museum. It’s a perfect example of the kind of balls-out action we can expect to see in Stranglehold. Combine this with the ability to destroy almost anything in your environment and Stranglehold is set to be the premier action title that is going to rock your world.
Look out for Stranglehold on 360, PS3 and PC, September 7th.

Burnout Paradise (Criterion, EA): Burnout has arguably the finest pedigree when it comes to balls-to-the-wall arcade racing. No other racer offers such lightning-fast racing and such explosive, pornographic, automotive carnage. Burnout makes its next-gen debut offering an expansive, free-roaming city for you to explore at your own pace. Online, you can pull up beside someone you want to race, rev up and then go. In the middle of a race, if you think you’re going to rack up a huge crash junction score, you can seamlessly abandon the action and go for a record-breaking crash score instead. Genius!
Burnout’s vehicles look shinily desirable as always and this time Criterion say that they’re far more satisfying to handle. Handling physics look and feel more realistic as cars now have suspension allowing for accurate body-roll which means flipping your car may become a real danger when taking sharp corners at high velocity. Crashes will be more spectacular too as for the first time you can twist or break you car’s chassis which means you can potentially tear your vehicle in two or bend it into an unrecognisable heap of scrap metal. Nice.
Burnout Paradise will be pulling up on 360 and PS3 September 30th.

Mass Effect (BioWare, Microsoft): Elder Scrolls IV in space? Maybe. BioWare’s epic sci-fi RPG looks simply breathtaking. Create your own version of Commander Shepard: the game’s hero (or simply be Jack) then jump straight into what promises to be a uniquely immersive space opera. Have a meaningful chat with alien races with the best dialogue this side of Deus Ex, blast alien races or destroy alien craft. Travel to far off planets and destroy alien races or just explore. The edge of the universe is the only limit here, Mass Effect is going to be one of the biggest games on 360 this year along with, um, what’s that other big game called? The one with the Master Chef? Sorry, Master Chief… Check out Landon’s ‘Why I Hate RPGs’ for more.
Mass Effect is set to be released for 360 on October 5th.

BioShock (Irrational Games, 2K Games): Eerie FPS set in the drowned art deco city of Rapture, opening with your character lost at sea, you descend into the dark, submerged city ignorant to the unique horrors that await you. Rapture is utterly unsettling, scary and macabre, featuring some of the freakiest inhabitants this side of the Big Brother house: it’s that horrifying. Decaying ‘30’s style décor, accompanied by crackly, old records from a bygone age indicate to you immediately that all is not what it should be in the murky depths. Body harvesting little girls accompanied by their guardian ‘Big Daddies’ stalk the claustrophobic corridors along with the shambling, corpse-like freaks wielding rusty hooks and other welcoming tools designed solely to inflict gruesome lacerations. Chilling.
Adding depth to the game is a unique risk/reward dynamic in the form of Rapture’s energy-based currency Adam. Adam is a precious force, which can be gleaned from dispatching the creepy ‘Little Sisters’ and can be used to enhance your supernatural powers. Leaving ‘Little Sisters’ alone though means avoiding gruelling battles with ‘Big Daddies’ and can lead to greater rewards later on in the game…decisions, decisions. BioShock will undoubtedly be one of the best First Person Shooters available this year and is already looking absolutely essential.
Lucky PC and 360 owners can have BioShock induced nightmares August 24th. The PS3 faithful will have to pray for a release date. Seriously. PRAY.

Alan Wake (Remedy, Microsoft): Another game that Billy Gates has plundered from a multi-platform release, Alan Wake is yet another ambiguous title that has piqued our curiosity. In short, it looks amazing and coming from the people that brought us Max Payne it’s bound to be overtly cinematic and above all, very, very good. A mysterious, psychological thriller Alan Wake tasks you with investigating some mysterious goings on in a small town in Middle America. From what little we’ve seen, it looks like Remedy is going for a Silent Hill vibe, but without the gibbering flesh-bags.
Will be ace although PS3 misses out once again, which is a damn shame. Here’s hoping it finds its way to Sony’s baby sooner rather than later.
Alan Wake is slated for a July 30th release on PC and 360. In a mystery befitting of the game itself Alan Wake is available for PS3 pre-order on Amazon and will hit the console on September 30th despite the official site claiming exclusivity to PC and 360. Most curious…

It's the Church Of England's turn to have a go at games.

2007-06-13T20:05:00.000Z

It's been at least three seconds since the press and other concerned parties with far too much time on their hands have whooped with indignant outrage at so called violent videogames. Enter the Church Of England who are demanding a full apology from Sony for allowing Manchester Cathedral to be used as a site of a violent shootout in Resistance: Fall Of Man. Sony say that they acquired "all permissions necessary" to develop the game.

Church leaders held a meeting on Monday to draft a letter and discuss what additional action to take against Sony.
The letter stipulates four demands:
1. An apology for using the cathedral
2. Withdrawal of the game, or modification of the section of the game to remove the cathedral interior.

3. Sony to make a substantial donation from the games' profits allowing the cathedral's education department to target more effectively those aged 18 to 30
4. Sony to support other groups in Manchester fighting against gun crime.

Games are always a ripe target for moral outrage. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. They even have Blair on board, so they can't lose.

In a reply to the church's misplaced ravings, Sony said: "Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is aware of the concerns expressed by the Bishop of Manchester and the cathedral authorities... and we naturally take the concerns very seriously.
"Resistance: Fall of Man is a fantasy science fiction game and is not based on reality."
There are certain elements of this argument that we can empathise with, but once again the morally outraged have got the wrong end of the stick. Games are an easy target and you can be sure that not one of them have even played or seen the game. That last line from Sony's reply: "...fantasy science fiction...not based on reality.." about sums it up.

You can safely bet that were it a film or book that had featured the same sequence , we wouldn't even be writing this article.

Review: NBA 2K7 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. Visual Concepts, 2K Sports)

2007-06-12T19:27:00.000Z

Basketball. Not the most popular sport in the UK, but when it comes to videogames, whether you're a fan of the sport or not you have to admit it does translate well to games. Personally, The Shed is a casual basketball fan. We've been to proper games and everything. Hell, we even played for our school team and well, like everything else, wasn't that good at it. Still, three consecutive local championships is not bad, and we have the medals to prove it. So, we're more than qualified to judge the latest update in the NBA 2K Sports series, alright?

Take a look at our pictures. Do we strike you as the sporty types? Skinny in frame, wan and anaemic in complexion, we're not fat, but then we'll not be running the London marathon any time soon. In short, we tend to avoid sports like cats avoid water. It's not that we don't like to play, in fact we love to participate in a casual game of football, squash, tennis or indeed basketball every now and again. It's just that we're pants at all of them, so it's only sensible to keep our sporting pursuits strictly digital.

A while back, EA used to rule the roost with their sports range, "if it's in the game, it's in the game" the man who voices Solid Snake would proclaim...he still does in fact. We're just not nearly as convinced anymore. NBA Live lost its way around 2003, FIFA is only beginning to find it's feet again after years stuck in a stodgy mire of piss-poor physics, far too easy scoring mechanics and player models that resemble their undead counterparts. With Konami's Pro Evolution series comfortably providing punters with sublime football heaven it's the 2K series that has demoted EA's NBA Live franchise to the bench.

NBA 2K7 cements the reputation that it has steadily built, standing head and shoulders above all other basketball titles. Boasting every team, arena, player and a raft of licences, modes and customisation options, 2K7 is the not just the most accomplished current-gen basketball game available, it's one of the most accomplished sports games available. It deserves a place in your collection alongside Virtua Tennis 3, NHL 2K7 and the forthcoming Pro Evo or FIFA (whichever one is your taste).

NBA 2K7 is a joy to play. It's fluid, intuitive, incredibly simple yet deceptively deep. Using the left analog stick to run coupled with the right analog 'shot stick' with moves mapped to the face buttons means you'll be picking and rolling, popping threes and dunking in minutes. Free throws make for arguably the first truly inventive and natural use of Sony's sixaxis controller yet with you mimicking the shooting action. It almost feels like you're silkily guiding the ball to the basket yourself; it's a clever use for the under-utilised motion sensing pad. Not only a brilliantly realised b-ball game, NBA 2K7 is beautifully presented to boot. The game looks outstanding, right down to the likenesses and the individual beads of sweat that glisten under the stadium lights, NBA 2K7 is one of the best looking games on current platforms. Additionally, the commentary is great and the replays, highlights et al, are all recreated in flawless detail.

With its host of customisation options, 2K7 throws yet another ball square into EA's face. NBA Live has taken a hell of a slide in terms of customisation options, with staple elements inexplicably diluted immensely or scandalously removed altogether. NBA 2K7 packs in every conceivable customisation option you can imagine. Career mode? Check. Roster management? Check. Street ball? Check. Ludicrously in-depth create-a-player mode? Check. Create-a-team? Check. Classic teams? Check. Check. Check. It's all here and it's all good.

Of particular note are the create-a-player options. We're always incredibly disappointed when presented with a basic, po-faced player editing facility where we can make a player just fine, but we can't give birth to a hideously deformed, gangly uber-freak. Thankfully, 2K7 lets you make pretty much anything and The Shed's horrendously mutated, crimson-faced, angry abomination is testament to the excellence of the player edit mode. Other sports titles should take note, this is how it's done.

And that just about sums it up. This is how it's done. NBA 2K7 is an essential sports game, whether you like the third or fourth (we're not too sure) most popular sport in America or not, as a gamer able to recognise quality, it's your duty to purchase this. Get some friends round too and it comes into its own in multi-player. Better than that, get mates round, invent teams of genetically modified monsters and let the laughter commence.

Look around online and you can nab a crisp, new copy for £17.99. There's really no excuse not to own this, especially on the cheap. Swish!

Buzzer beater: 9/10

Review: Mortal Kombat II (PlayStation 3 EDI. Midway, Sony Online Entertainment)

2007-06-11T18:51:00.001Z

We're confused. Angry, frustrated and confused. Was Mortal Kombat always this difficult?! Is it just us, are we really this crap? Way back when The Shed owned a copy of MK II for the Sega Mega Drive and we remember being able to finish it effortlessly. We mastered fatalities, babalities, friendships; we could pull off special moves with ease and give any player a damn good run for their money. All this with only three attack buttons on the MD's funky boomerang-shaped pad and a minimum of gaming experience. What in the name of Shao Kahn has gone wrong?! Let us take you through our horrific MK II experience one step at a time.

The second we spyed Sub-Zero's frosty visage on the PlayStation Store games page we leapt at the chance to snap up a piece of gaming history. £1.99!? Bargain! Count us in, we hastily proceeded to download it to our PS3's hard drive, rubbing our hands and flexing our thumbs in anticipation. We're going to rock Outworld, just like we used to, so look out Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung and all you other crudely digitised characters, you're gonna get yours.

Title screen, good, we remember this. Convoluted intro story? Check. Character select screen: we remember all these guys! Ah, it's good to see them again. We choose old favourite Scorpion, taking on our first opponent, Sub-Zero, this should be a cake walk. We win, though not very comfortably, we realise that we remember nothing, no moves, no fatalities, not a thing. Johnny Cage up next and we so want to knock his whitened teeth out but he beats us again and again and again until we lose count of the pathetic beatings and decide to give up. Bested by only the second character, we're not off to a good start and this experience is beginning to marr all those rose-tinted memories of Mega Drive MK II. We study a few moves lists on gamefaqs.com and resolve to retry with a few special moves committed to memory. We pick Liu Kang this time round, his bicycle kick made him a force to be reckoned with, so we figure we'll be wiping that big spiky smile off Baraka's face. Wrong. Humiliating defeat after agonizing defeat, uppercutted into spikes, acid and other unpleasant stuff, it suddenly hits us. We're truly awful at this. Is this arcade difficulty? The level which was designed to rob underage kids at Blackpool pleasure beach of their hard earned twenty pence pieces? We suspect so and this being the case it seems frugal for us to bow out, research more moves and come back a lot later. We don't want to end up hating Mortal Kombat II, we really, really don't.

Nevertheless, memories of Street Fighter II come flooding back. To us it was always immeasurably better than MK, far more balanced, deep and rewarding, time hasn't been kind to Mortal Kombat II and placing it next to SF II makes it pale even more by comparison. Between SF II and MK II, give us Street Fighter II every time, better characters, better style, better game. Still, for a couple of quid, Mortal Kombat II is a real coup for gamers, a classic beat 'em up for the price of a tall cappuccino from your local corporate coffee house. A genuine bargain if ever there was one.

So, in summary although our experience of Mortal Kombat II was a deeply negative, dream shattering ordeal, chances are you may not be as unspeakably shit as we are. You may even have the balls to take the fight online where tearing an opponent's head clean off their shoulders will be ten times more gratifying when your rival is human controlled. Just don't expect to see The Shed participating online anytime soon, we have too much to prove against the horribly unforgiving, psychic AI that has consistently trounced us thus far. Plus, we'd quite like to retain a shred of our dignity. Give us time though and we'll be throwing a spear your way shouting, "come here!" Maybe.

<~ Liu Kang looks like he's having a good time in the pool there, check out his smile. This is a familiar sight for us, as acid-swimmer Kang, not victorious Zero.

Why the PS3 release schedule is SHIT.

2007-06-08T21:19:00.000Z

So, after months of agonising waiting and massive hype, the PlayStation 3 arrives and after the initial wow factor of the new console and the launch games have worn off, where next? MotorStorm, Resistance, Virtua Tennis 3, hell, even Genji have provided The Shed with hours of gaming thrills. Post launch though, all PS3 gamers have been given is a glut of shoddy movie tie-ins, PC and Xbox 360 ports and, well, nothing else. Literally, nothing. OK. As you may have gathered, we went stupid crazy for Elder Scrolls IV and have done nothing but harp on about its legendary status for weeks on end, but now that we've nailed the Scrolls dead we're at a complete loss as to what game to purchase and kill next. Spider-Man 3 is meant to be a glitch-riddled mess of a game, so I'll keep my 40 quid there thanks. Pirates Of The Carribean just doesn't float my boat (pun intended) and we've played and finished pretty much every other game worth playing for the console.

So, what's out next week then? Let's see. Fantastic Four? Hmm, that won't be shit will it? Fantastic Four games have a great pedigree don't they? No. No they don't. Pass. Wait! Army Of Two! Brilliant! Out June 29th! I can wait 'til then! What's that? It's slipped back to November 16th? Oh, ok...there's bound to be something just round the corner worth a punt surely? Nope. Just more movie tie-ins - Harry Potter, Transformers and Surf's Up - where the fuck are all the big games?

Flash forward to September, there's a full-on assault of gaming goodness coming to PS3. Metal Gear 4, Heavenly Sword, Stranglehold, Tekken 6, Final Fantasy XIII, Killzone, Ratchet & Clank, Blacksite, Haze, Kane & Lynch, Turok, Unreal III! Seven of these are PS3 exclusive! That's impressive, but it's three friggin' months away! Do developers want us to actually go outside?! Enjoy the summer sun? Are they kidding?!! It looks like The Shed will be forced out of their comfort zone, made to socialise with others, maybe go out, talk to people who dont play games...it's going to be a LONG three months.

We'll still be covering all the big 360 releases, we haven't forgotten that Microsoft have a console with stacks of great games. After forking out over £400 for a PS3 though, we expected more.

"Gaaaaaargh!!!! My eeeyyyeesss!! My transparent skin!! I'm melting!! MELTING!!! Oh, what a world!!!!" We don't want to have to see this. We want to be hunched over a pad burning our eyes, not our skin. ~>

Why RPGs may be the most important genre in videogames.

2007-06-07T19:07:00.000Z

When you break it down, all games can be described as Role Playing Games of a sort. Even when you're playing a racing game you assume the role of driver. In a beat 'em up, you adopt the role of combatant, eventually settling with a personal favourite. Every game casts you in a role and in becoming involved with a game's plot or structure of progression we essentially become the central figure in the game, we take on the role of protagonist.

<~ Oblivion's expansive vistas stop you dead in your tracks. In short, they're never anything less than breathtaking.

There's no purer expression of this level of involvement as that demonstrated in the RPG. Normally, your first action is to name your character, an immediate statement of ownership, stamping your identity on the game's central player. Recent RPGs like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Christ…not bloody Elder Scrolls again) and World Of Warcraft take this a step further, allowing you to create and personalise your own hero from scratch, down to the most miniscule of details. Increasingly more games are going down this avenue, enabling you to create your own character or edit and modify the existing protagonist. Sports games have allowed you to create your own players since the 16-bit days with early iterations of EA’s FIFA and NBA Live games. As games have evolved, so too have the wealth of options available for obsessive tweaking and customising. More recently, games like Grand Theft Auto have gradually introduced customisation options to each new version of the game. In Vice City, it began with being able to change Tommy Vercetti’s outfits subsequently leading to being able to customise CJ’s hair, clothes, body art and even physical appearance in San Andreas. However, in an unexpected decision, Rockstar have decided to reduce the number of customisation options available to the player for GTA IV. You’ll be able to change Niko Bellic’s outfits as in Vice City, but you won’t be given the option of transforming him into a slow, obese man mountain by devouring obscene amounts of Cluckin’ Bell chicken, Burger Shot burgers and cans of Sprunk. This appears to be a conscious choice on Rockstar’s part in keeping with the more realistic feel and aesthetic the team are adopting for their hotly anticipated sequel. It’s a decision that has confounded gamer’s expectations by flying in the face of what is currently a la mode in gaming, that is adding increased depth in the form of elements borrowed from the RPG. Conventions such as levelling up to reinforce the impression of character progression or evolution, unlocking new abilities or improving skills you already have, making your character stronger, faster, better. Games like Forza Motorsport, NBA 2K7, Virtua Tennis 3, Need For Speed and Tekken 5 have all added in-depth customisation options to their exhaustive list of features. These types of features are fast becoming a staple in the majority of games, whether it’s simply changing the colour of your car, dressing up a fighter in a panda suit or creating a custom player from scratch, the influence of the RPG becomes increasingly apparent. Granting the player the ability to evolve and grow as the game progresses, to ultimately personalise their own game experience are key elements that have been adapted from RPGs and continue to become more commonplace. With the advent of sand box gaming, games are taking the notion of freedom to a higher level. Though not necessarily an RPG staple, freedom is now the watchword for the lion’s share of today’s games and titles like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto, Mercenaries and more like them have embraced this by offering players expansive, immersive environments where the game world is your playground to do whatever you wish. Forthcoming games like Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Crysis and GTA IV pride themselves on their seamless, sprawling worlds, spoiling gamers for other titles with their fully realised, intricately detailed environments.

RPGs may prove to be the most important genre in videogaming as games continue heading down this route in order to satisfy players who demand a certain level of depth and longevity for their money. By incorporating components borrowed from RPGs, games have found an invaluable source of durability. Having characters that steadily grow through out the game and aspects that can be fully customised can multiply a game’s shelf life tenfold. Factor in the added possibility of downloadable episodic content and add-on packs available through online micro-transactions and a game’s life may cease to be finite. But this is all by the by as it’s these aforementioned RPG fundamentals that will prove to imbue games with a longevity that is only dictated by a player’s level of tolerance or attention span. The Shed’s prediction is that as games evolve and grow they will come to rely on using the idea of character advancement through levelling up or learning and increased personalisation within larger game worlds. It is with the current generation and the advent of high capacity formats like Blu-Ray that we are beginning to see a shift towards more ambitious fare that simply wasn’t possible on last-gen hardware. And this, friends, is a very good thing. To the future! And to the RPG!

Review: Killzone: Liberation (PSP. Guerilla Games, Sony)

2007-06-03T21:03:00.000Z

Killzone was to be PS2's next big thing and exclusive killer-app. Early buzz was that it would be PS2's 'Halo-beater,' when the reality was that it was actually a very polished, competent shooter, but lamentably no Halo. On PSP, Guerrilla have scrapped the first-person perspective for an isometric, overhead view, lending the game a slower-paced, tactical bent. It works where previous PSP attempts at the FPS have failed. Efforts like Coded Arms and Medal Of Honor: Heroes have tried to map FPS controls to the PSP's face buttons and analogue nub with little success. Verdict: FPS games simply don't work on PSP, so adapting Killzone for PSP in this way proves an inspired decision and the perfect solution. For veterans of the PS2 original, its war-torn environments, weapons and characters will be instantly familiar. Also returning are the sinister, bellowing orange-goggled Helghast, led by the ruthless General Metrac. It's your job to stop Metrac and his brutal Helghan forces by any means. At your disposal are the usual ISA and Helghan weapons as well as ISA hovercrafts and Helghan tanks to pilot. Making their debut here, the vehicles are fun to control and offer an enticing glimpse of what we can expect to be driving in Killzone 2 on PS3.

Duck, hunt…
Once you get the hang of the duck and cover tactics, getting to grips with timing your offensives, knowing when to pop-up and shoot, it's then that you'll get into what Killzone: Liberation has to offer. Thinking like Patton is the key here; on occasion managing your team to the best effect and masterminding the best strategy is the crux of Liberation. Rushing headlong into a firefight, taking bullets to the chest isn't a viable option here. Using cover is integral and the only way to effectively play Liberation. Guerrilla are to be saluted for taking a gamble by transforming their FPS into an overhead third-person blaster, when conventional wisdom would have predicted PSP Killzone would be a lazy, rehashed FPS cash cow. Thankfully, it works fantastically well. The levels are well designed; the difficulty is pitched just right, making it accessible for Killzone newbies and seasoned veterans alike. Factor in the myriad of longevity-increasing extra challenges and game modes including multiplayer and Killzone: Liberation is a package that represents great value. Additionally, Liberation is well-structured, able to be played in flawlessly paced, bite-sized chunks well-suited to the PSP. Our sole criticism? Well, there has to be one. Duck, wait, rise, shoot, repeat…can sometimes get a little repetitive, however there’s almost never sustained periods where you’re doing this, which means that it rarely, if ever grates.
Killzone: Liberation is one of the select few titles that are truly essential for PSP and the perfect way to whet your appetite for Killzone 2 when it finally breaks cover on the PlayStation 3. Will Killzone 2 be the ‘Halo-beater’ the Sony faithful have been waiting for? Watch this space. For the time being however, Killzone: Liberation is the best way to while away the months until Killzone 2 arrives.
In the zone: 9/10

Review: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PlayStation 3 (version tested), Xbox 360, PC. Bethesda, Ubisoft)

2007-05-22T20:01:00.000Z

First of all, a postscript to the great love/hate RPG debate. Landon clearly misses the point with his criticisms of Oblivion. It's obvious that you don't take on the hellish minions of Oblivion without levelling up a bit first. You're gonna get fucked up by annoying lil' scamps ad nauseum unless you go in prepared. You wouldn't climb Everest without a little preparation now would you? And whilst I can understand Landon's problems with turn-based combat, I find it hard to swallow that he doesn't dig the first-person combat of Elder Scrolls IV. What's not to like? Rest assured that Landon and I will be fighting this one out in a gladiatorial arena with maces and broadswords. One of us will not come out alive...

PC owners have been harping on about how great Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is for just over a year now and 360 owners have had the privilege of playing it for a good while too. Now, finally after being initially promised as a launch title, PS3 owners can see what all the fuss is about in the most definitive and graphically polished incarnation of the game. For those not familiar with the hugely popular, hugely successful RPG phenomenon (both of you), ES IV allows you to create your own fantasy character-with customisation options to rival EA's Tiger Woods PGA series-choose their race, skills and attributes, then unleash them upon the vast province of Cyrodiil.
Starting out as an imprisoned weakling in a potato sack and wrist shackles you're entrusted with protecting the Emperor of Tamriel, Uriel Septim (silky, booming tones courtesy of Patrick Stewart). Inevitably, things go awry and the Emperor gets himself assassinated by the Mythic Dawn, a rogue cult embroiled in the dark, daedric arts. You can probably guess what happens next. It's up to your tailor-made avatar to go out into the big, bad world and locate the rightful heir to the throne of Tamriel. Oh, and close the perpetual Oblivion gates that have sprung up out of nowhere spewing forth demonic minions. Easy peasy. This main quest is merely the wafer thin meniscus on a tall, heady brew that comprises ES IV: Oblivion. You don't even have to tackle the main quest if you don't want to. In fact, you can do whatever the hell you like. Want to be a mass murderer? Want to hunt vampires? OK. Want to be the hero, famed all over Cyrodiil for your courageous acts? Of course you do. It's the best way to tackle Oblivion, free of consequences such as jail time and massive fines or bounties on your head. Most players will inevitably end up becoming the shiny-shield, heroic ranger type because the rewards for following this path are easier to obtain and plentiful. Thieving, raping and pillaging is just too difficult and ultimately detrimental to your progress. The Shed chose to pursue the dark path after completing the lion's share of the quests; it's only then that you feel you can really cut loose.

The green, green grass of Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil is arguably the most rich, detailed, sprawling world ever to be rendered digitally. It is a thoroughly convincing, solid and lavish universe, unimpeded by pop-up, seam ripping or any kind of graphical glitches. The sole annoyance is the split-second loading times, which only stand out because you unavoidably sink into a hypnotic, trance-like stupor as you traverse the picturesque landscape. This tiny, insignificant interruption momentarily snaps you out of your comatose state and reminds you that you're still playing a game. Pointing faults out with such an ambitious and accomplished title seems puerile, akin to criticising a naked Scarlett Johanssen because she has a fungal nail infection.

Oblivion is one of the best arguments for purchasing a nice, big HD TV. On a standard-def telly, Oblivion still looks great, but in HD, it looks extraordinary. Textures are truly eye-popping, night skies are illuminated by millions of tiny ethereal stars and giant distant planets, rain creates tiny ripples on the surface of a lake and greenery looks lush, vibrant, alive. Cyrodiil is so breathtakingly beautiful that you can almost taste the mountain air, smell the grass and trees; drink it all in, it's your world to explore to your heart's content. And discovering everything will take weeks, months of extensive play as there's oceans of depth in here, hundreds of quests and tasks to discover, numerous paths to follow, many different roads to travel.

Cyrodiil boasts a massive population of NPCs, no two the same, each possessing their own agenda, politics and beliefs. Talking to them all is a mission in itself, there's a lot of repetition in what people say-for instance close the Kvatch Oblivion gate and be prepared to hear half the population drone on about how honoured they are to meet the 'hero of Kvatch.' Flattering the first few times, it makes you feel like a Cyrodiil celebrity, but after the 300th time it grates a tad. You can skip any irrelevant lines of dialogue so it's really not a problem; it's just us, trying to pick tiny holes in the game because it's otherwise flawless. There must be millions of lines of dialogue, so repetition is forgivable and pretty scarce. Forget we said anything.

"This sword is too heavy!"

Some might argue (cough, Landon) that the combat is "unfair, clunky, basic," which is half-true. It takes a fair bit of levelling up before you become comfortable with your character, swinging your chosen weapon with a modicum of finesse, unimpeded by mud crabs, rats, wolves, imps, scamps and other irritating little creatures. It's then that Oblivion really comes into its own as combat and spell casting becomes second nature and flows naturally. For the impatient amongst you (cough, Landon), The Shed urges you to stick with it, it's more than worth it, because Oblivion is an instant classic, a genre-defining RPG that has to be seen to be believed. If you're not already a fan of RPGs, this is your best chance to get on board and become a convert. Not convinced? Just play it. Still not convinced? Then you should probably check your pulse because chances are, you're probably dead inside.

Level up: 10/10

Why I Hate RPGs...by Landon

2007-05-20T20:47:00.000Z

I have no problem being a dork, a geek, a freak. Us people are just into something - comics, fantasy board games, science-fiction, cheese - in a big bad way. I find the geek's deep enthusiasm for a chosen subject infectious, no matter how seemingly throwaway or dismissible some might say it is. You love the wines of southern France and northern Spain, I love my games. It's all love, a love nonetheless. I love my games dearly, they entertain and tell great stories, but there's one genre that has never converted me to its ranks: the RPG.
Really 'hate' is too strong a word, but my misgivings with these types of game means I leave them well alone. I never had my watershed moment as Rich did with Final Fantasy, I was too busy playing Metal Gear Solid. Without the currency of nostalgia and monk-like patience, I find myself easily frustrated with most RPGs I dabble with. Maybe to dabble is to misunderstand, but if a game doesn't grab me in the first few hours of play then maybe it isn't doing its job. "You've got to persevere, it gets better when you're powered up to Level 7." 23 hours of game time later...am I finally ready for the fun to begin?

In the beginning...
I find the lack of immediacy in RPGs incredibly frustrating. After all the praise heaped on Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion, I decided to take a bite. The first couple of hours made an impression. I was humbled, ready to eat my flat-cap with a flapjack - could I have been wrong all this time? I found myself hunting deer under a starry sky, bow and arrow in hand. I was a hunter, a ranger, born under the sign of a thief but destined for nobler things. I'd been seduced into enjoying myself. I'd created a cool looking character and thought he'd soon be on the road to greatness.

And then I stumbled at the first hurdle, repeatedly dying at the first major test of my skill. Surrounded by fire, I'm stalking through pitch black towers, unable to see anything, getting attacked by little red demon bastards. Fireballs! Shit, I didn't drink my 30 second fire resistance potion! Do I have to do this with every enemy I meet? It's going to be a long road. Why isn't my shield working? Ah, I'm dead. Again. Is my character not skilled enough with a blade? Is he weak in the dark arts of magic? Do I really give a fuck anymore, killed by a minor bad guy for the umpteenth time? I turn off the console and read a book in defiance.

No mistake, I appreciate that the game dispenses with turn-based combat. I've never understood the joy of this system; 'I hit you, you hit me back, let's keep it fair now.' Oblivion has enough fucking menus as it is, so I figured I'd be sold on the real-time fights, but I wouldn't exactly call them visceral or exciting. It feels choppy and unfair, the underpowered underdog left with no fighting chance. Oblivion is a big step in the right direction, but I can still pick large holes in its attractive surface fabric. The 'be anyone, do anything' concept feels diet-light. Essentially you level up the same attributes until each character is virtually identical in all but appearance. It deals with over-familiar themes, biting Tolkien and savouring it. And yet the world is so rich in detail and this goes a long way to making it an original force in its own right.

Here's the rub....
See, that's the real issue - I'm in love with the idea of the RPG. 'Sand box', 'open world', however you paint it, the essential essence has huge appeal to me. I've always been a sucker for expansive environments in games. I want to be able to sit my character on a rocky mountain top in the rain, eating a baguette as I look out over a valley veiled in night. I want to wash in a lake, hitch a lift on a fish, dive for buried treasure. I want to sit in a tree, sharpening my sword, taking a shit from high in the canopy. I appreciate great art design in games and RPGs are one of the only genres that allow the gamer time to appreciate the craft.

I'm not completely without patience. I'm no action junkie, no great lover of bombastic war games and the like. I love the intricate details that make a game world convincing and believable, no matter how fantastic. Perhaps my expectations are just too high and I'm waiting for games to catch up. For me a living, breathing game world still remains a future prospect. I love the idea that a game world doesn't necessarily revolve around the protagonist; citizens of RPG-land going about their business; working, socialising, fucking. I love that prospect and hope one day to leave the realm of the real and live full time inside that future console, saved as data on some organic, pulsing hard drive. When I can take a realtime, convincing shit in an RPG, I'll become a fan. I'm sure Bethesda Softworks are already working on it.

For all my mistrust, I remain optimistic about the future of the genre. As RPGs merge with other genres and create hybrid styles, interesting titles will be born. It's a common example, but it's very easy to see why the Grand Theft Auto series is so popular - it combines RPG elements of detail with pick up and play flourish. GTA IV I hope will expand on the character advancements introduced in San Andreas and the interesting elements of empire building shown in games like Scarface: The World Is Yours. But let's face the music, GTA has no desire to be an RPG.

On the flip, Bioware's Mass Effect does not disguise its roots. As a sci-fi head the lack of ogres and spells is pleasing news to me. Without fanfare, it looks fantastic. From what I've seen of the combat, it looks as immediate and action fuelled as any solid shooter. Couple this with a story taking in solar systems, planets and space stations, all open to explore and interact with socially, and it may be the RPG I've been waiting for. Here's hoping I don't have to fuck about with 5 different menus just to eat a food item. Maybe I'll be able to sit down in restaurant and have a civilised meal. Maybe I can get my character drunk in some crazy spaceport nightclub. Maybe it'll be my entry ticket.

Movie Review: Spider-Man 3 (May, 2007)

2007-05-15T18:30:00.000Z

Comic book franchises simply don't come any bigger than this. On its opening day Spider-Man 3 made $59.3 million at the US box office beating previous record holder Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). There's a good reason that the Spider-Man movies make so much money. They're incredibly entertaining, well-made, popcorn blockbusters that beg to be seen on the big screen. A movie that succeeds in being such a huge spectacle, needs a screen to match. They're essential multiplex viewing and waiting for them to come out on DVD simply isn't an option.
Of the trilogy, Spider-Man 3 is by far the most ambitious, juggling not only Peter Parker's (Tobey Maguire) complicated relationships with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and newcomer Gwen Stacey (Bryce Dallas Howard) but also three unstoppable villains this time. Of the three villains, the imaginatively named 'New Goblin' (James Franco) is the least successful, adopting a cheesy, 'edgy', extreme sports style with his ski goggles, mask and flying snowboard, he resembles nothing from the original comics. The presence of Thomas Haden Church as the fugitive Sandman more than makes up for this however, his Sandman brings a much-needed dose of pathos to the proceedings as a criminal out to raise money to support his sick daughter. While this may sound hackneyed and maybe a bit cliché, Haden Church's performance is executed with such aplomb that you're never in doubt that Sandman's motives are sound even if his methods aren't.
Venom's late addition to the cast whiffs of studio interference, shoehorning a fan favourite into the narrative to please the die-hards. As comic book fans, The Shed was not disappointed; he's pretty much spot-on. The only negative is the lack of screen-time he's given and the hasty spontaneity with which he corrupts enraged photographer, Eddie Brock (Topher Grace). Venom's a great character and while he faithfully makes the leap from page to screen, he simply isn't done enough justice here, rendered entirely peripheral to the overall plot. Sam Raimi's original choice of the Vulture would have worked better or developing the ongoing tease of Dr. Connors (Dylan Baker) in this and the previous two movies to the include the Lizard would have been an inspired choice. Seems like a wasted opportunity to us.
Such minor quibbles pale into insignificance as Spider-Man 3 is a frenetic, action packed blockbuster boasting plenty of fast-paced set pieces as well as some fresh and funny sequences - Bruce Campbell's extended cameo being a noteworthy highlight.
As always, Spider-Man 3 raises the bar again in terms of comic book action. No other comic franchise manages to faithfully adapt its source material whilst successfully crafting such an accomplished action flick. Also worthy of mention are the special effects, the genesis of Sandman worthy of special mention, being both jaw-dropping and genuinely affecting at the same time.

Spider-Man 3 is more than likely the best blockbuster you’ll see this year. Its balance of drama, comedy and action is so well honed that you’ll be hard pushed to complain. There’s something here for everyone, which is why it’s no mystery when Spidey movies consistently set the box-office ablaze.
Spider-Man 3 is a nigh-on perfect conclusion to a fantastic trilogy, which begs the question, will the saga live on with Spider-Man 4? The answer is sadly that we want it so bad, likelihood is, it'll never happen. What? It's been confirmed? Scratch that then.
****

Why I Love RPGs...by Rich

2007-05-10T22:04:00.000Z

Role Playing Games, of all the many videogame genres has the most prominent geek stigma attached to it. No other genre carries such heavy connotations of Dungeons & Dragons inspired geekery, informed by a history of sad, anorak stereotypes that refuse to fade away. Personally, I encountered a number of D&D, Warhammer loving elf-fanciers during my school days, but I'd hope that playing an RPG and becoming consumed by the same type of universe doesn't necessarily place us in the same camp. While this may sound like I'm in denial, desperately trying to justify my relatively new-found obsession for orcs and goblins by distancing myself from the nerds that I had the good fortune to go to school with (sorry, no names, but you'll know who you are if you're reading this), I'm merely pointing out that RPGs make up only a portion of my gaming Recommended Daily Allowance. One of my five a day, if you will. A quick bite of hearty shoot-'em-up, a sports game snack, a driving elevenses, a slap-up dinner of RPG action and then a wind-down with, oh, I don't know...a puzzle game supper? It's all part of a healthy balanced, gaming diet. Yet, increasingly, my love for the RPG has steadily grown over the past ten years and continues to bloom unabated.

Once upon a time…
It's a story that I'm sure is a common one among gamers weaned on the first PlayStation. I got into RPGs after being swept up by Final Fantasy VII's (1997) epic plot. Even today it still lingers in memory as one of the finest moments (well 70 odd hours), in my life as a gamer. I never got into RPGs on my first console, the Sega Master System (were there even any?), as I was simply far too busy playing Sonic The Hedgehog and Alex Kidd In Miracle World. When I upgraded to the Sega Mega Drive my time was monopolized by the likes of Revenge Of Shinobi, Golden Axe, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Road Rash, Desert Strike, Sonic (again), Probotector, the Streets Of Rage series and much, much more. Once again, there may have been some great RPG games on the MD, but to this day, I remain blissfully unaware of them. When I finally got my sticky mitts on a PSX and got to play games in proper 3D (not the fake kind that Probotector had, which incidentally made my eyes go weird) it opened my eyes to a whole new world of gaming. To me the Final Fantasy games (VII and VIII, I missed out on XI) were instrumental in demonstrating where the future of games lay. That is in immersive, vast, intricate worlds and at the time FF VII seemed like the absolute pinnacle of what I could ever expect from a game of this kind. By the time the PS2 came around, I was foaming at the mouth at the prospect of FF X, and while it didn't disappoint it turned out to be essentially more of the same. For my opinion on the latest in the series, FF XII, scroll down a bit.

Here’s the rub…
Central to the problem that RPGs have always been synonymous with D&D geeks is the preoccupation with conventions and characters that have been with us since Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings. Orcs, goblins, elves and wizards have seldom been cool and when placed into a slow-paced environment, accompanied by apparently sterile action involving hit-points and long, drawn-out battles of attrition, it’s really not all that difficult to see why RPGs have earned their reputation as stuffy, dated games best left to their intended, acne-ridden demographic. Sadly, I would have agreed until I was seduced by the Akira style ‘cyber-punk’ aesthetics of Final Fantasy VII. Peter Jackson’s hugely successful movie adaptations of Tolkien’s masterworks didn’t hurt the RPG much either. Take a look at Elder Scrolls and the influence of PJ’s movies are abundantly clear. ES positively reeks of cinematic Tolkien. Not that that’s a bad thing, far from it. To claim to possess a love for RPGs whilst only having played certain instalments of the Final Fantasy series may seem a tad illogical, but it's a love nevertheless. Maybe this article should be entitled: 'Why I Love Final Fantasy.' And that's what I would have labelled it until I recently discovered Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Not since traipsing through the slums of Midgar for the first time have I been so absorbed by a digital landscape. And therein lies the beauty of the RPG. No other genre has the innate power to completely engulf a player in its unique universe, indiscriminately stealing away hours of your life back in the real world and refusing to ever give them back. It’s testament to Elder Scrolls IV’s rich, detailed and stunningly realised world that spending time there is never a chore and simply trekking through its lush greenery and treacherous mountains is one of modern gaming’s greatest experiences. Furthermore, Elder Scrolls' 'be anyone and do anything' premise makes it unique in that no two people will experience the same game, which encapsulates the depth of what Bethesda’s masterpiece has to offer.
Some may argue that I should get a life and say that I need to get out more, and while this may be true, I can think of nothing else I’d rather do than sit in front of the TV and see what adventures I’ll embark upon next with my daedric armour clad, level 25 dark elf. Hey, maybe I have become just like the geeks that I tried my utmost to avoid in school, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love RPGs, and if that makes me a dork, then so be it.

There’ll be a review of the PS3 version of Elder Scrolls IV on The Shed in the next few weeks. Also, coming soon...Why I Hate RPGs...by Landon.

PlayStation network: the story so far.

2007-05-09T17:52:00.000Z

It's been nearly two months since the PS3 came to European shores and although Sony promised UK gamers a 'wealth of game and video content' (so says the official UK PlayStation site), we've failed to see very much appear in the PlayStation store over the past six weeks or so. In terms of video content, all that's currently available are a bunch of adverts and trailers, most of which you'll have probably already caught on TV anyway. Sony's 'This Is Living' ad campaign is available in full but why you'd bother with repeat viewings we're not too sure. A selection of HD trailers for movies like Speed and X-Men 3 are all well and good, but they're all a bit, well, pointless. Why there aren't any current trailers for theatrical releases is a bit of a mystery as it would make perfect sense to make them available for free download on the PlayStation store. A missed opportunity if you ask us.

Then there's the game content, the real meat of the PlayStation store experience. We were told that we'd be able to download loads of free demos, full games including classics from PSone for the PSP and exclusively developed titles for download only, a la Geometry Wars on Xbox Live.
What have we got at the moment? A handful of downloadable games, the only truly essential one being flOw alongside a paltry selection of free demos, the majority of which are racing titles. The Shed doesn't want to sound like a spoilt child, but we want more!! (WAAAAAGH!!) Frankly, we expected more and a cursory glance at the US PlayStation store reveals some great retro games (Mortal Kombat II, Gauntlet II, and, erm, Q*Bert), classic PS one titles and more. It's still not nearly as much as there should be for a facility that's been online for almost the past six months! C'mon Sony! Get your fingers out!

Back on European soil and Genji players are well catered for with a triumvirate costumes and a set of Ridge Racer 7 decals make up the entirety of the available game add-ons. Wow.

It's easy for us, up on high in The Shed's solid gold and ivory citadel to diss Sony for their lack of content, but there is a lot of new stuff around the corner. David Jaffe's (of God Of War fame) Calling All Cars, Nucleus and additional content for Resistance and MotorStorm should fill out the anaemic array of items on display.

Hopefully, there'll be a whole raft of additional new content appearing on the PlayStation store in the near future, but we're not going to hold our breath.

The overiding triumph of the PlayStation network is its ease of use. In comparison to Xbox Live's front end, it's much less fussy and far easier to navigate. Most importantly though, it's free, which is always a plus. Then, wouldn't you prefer to pay if you had access to the depth of content offered by Microsoft's well-established, clearly superior service? It's an unfair comparison since the 360 has had a major head start over the PS3, but it's one that we'll make nevertheless. And when it comes to offering a glut of old skool thrills nothing can match the Wii's Virtual Console, which boasts Mega Drive, NES, SNES, N64, TurboGrafx and Neo Geo titles. Why isn't Sony doing the same thing?! There's easy money in retro games, surely? The Shed would go rabid for downloadable versions of Streets Of Rage II or Samurai Showdown. There's a vast, untapped goldmine of nostalgia just screaming to be exploited and there must be millions of gamers just like us who would pay to play old games, right?

PSN's saviour will obviously be the revolutionary Second Life inspired user hub, home which will offer a new and exciting way to communicate with fellow gamers, arrange online games and more. What's more. the exciting and innovative LittleBigPlanet is built entirely around user created content and along with home, PlayStation network will really come into its own. Until then, we'll have to be satisfied with playing Genji dressed as a pirate or a cowboy. Sigh. For now it looks like we'll have to accept that the PlayStation store will remain a barren wasteland for the time being. Let's just hope that home turns out to be as good as Sony claims because if it's as sparse as its store, expect users to lose interest fast. Don't say we didn't warn you, Sony.

A load of balls coming to next-gen consoles!

2007-04-29T20:07:00.000Z

Japanese games magazine Famitsu have confirmed that Katamari Damacy will be making its PS3 and Xbox 360 debut sometime this year. We're sure that the mad as a bag of ferrets humour and soundtrack will return in addition to a load of new stuff to roll up. Although what else Namco can add to the outstanding PS2 version, we're not too sure, but we're racking our brains. Just give us crisp HD visuals and count us happy. Apparently the game will feature more than 50 of the Prince's cousins to find and control which should mean a lot of challenges to play through. As always keeping the King of All Cosmos happy will be a must or else expect the usual laser-eyed fate. We want to be able to use the Sixaxis on PS3 to roll around please.

In other related ball-shaped news and although not yet officially announced, a sequel to arguably the best game on PSP, LocoRoco may appear on PS3. We seriously hope this happens because we loved LocoRoco and the PS3's Sixaxis would be a perfect fit for LocoRoco's colourful, tilty world. Make it so, Mr. Sony.

Review: Okami. (PlayStation 2. Clover Studios, Capcom.)

2007-04-29T14:26:00.000Z

Wearing its Japanese heritage on its flea collar, Okami is a game that casts the player in the role of the sun god named Amaterasu who also happens to be a white wolf. Still reading? Good, because Okami is truly unmissable. What you may not realise is that Okami is actually a unique and involving RPG, possessing all of the requisite depth that you’d expect with a healthy side order of invention. Some might argue that Okami borrows heavily from the Zelda series, especially GameCube classic Legend Of The Wind Waker. Take the ability to summon winds and change the time of day as just two examples, that we’re sure are just affectionate homage and not lazy rip-offs, but you get the idea. Forget all of that though because Okami stands out as yet another beautiful and majestic game worthy of mention in the same breath as Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus.
What strikes you about Okami is its unique look, like a watercolour painting comprised of elegant brushstrokes, it’s a treat for the eyeballs standing up as one of the most beautiful games on PS2.
Kicking off at a sedate pace, you’re tasked with assisting the inhabitants of the cursed Kamiki village. Involving anything from drawing a washing line for an old washerwoman to stealing turnips (!), Okami’s errands are amusingly varied. Drained of colour and life by the presence of demons, it’s Amaterasu’s job to restore the land to its former glory. Throughout your journey you’ll regain all of your lost powers, eventually transforming Ammy into an omnipotent being capable of all sorts of cool and useful stuff.
Okami’s much vaunted innovation is Amaterasu’s weapon of choice, the Celestial Paintbrush. Holding R1 temporarily freezes the in-game action making the screen your canvas. Using the left analog stick with you can then scrawl a variety of different shapes to achieve accompanying effects. A deft flick of the stick to paint a line will cleave an enemy in two for instance.
After a good few hours, you’ll be able to blow stuff up with cherry bombs, draw lily pads to traverse rivers and lakes, even cast vines to swing up to certain inaccessible points that were previously out of reach. You’ll need all of these abilities as the action kicks up a gear after extended play, casting you deeper into its quirky universe, quickly evolving into a sprawling and immersive game that will eat up your time without you even realising it.
Our only tiny criticism would be that the dialogue, which consists primarily of incredibly high-pitched, helium-squeaky voices can grate after a while and to a cynical spectator it can look like you’re playing a kid’s game. But then, really who cares? Okami is both original and enormously playable. Highly recommended. Chances are that you won’t play a better game on PS2 this year which is why, for us, Okami is to be The Shed’s PS2 swansong. And we can’t think of a better way to end a magnificent, incredibly gratifying and fulfilling seven-year relationship. Woof. Blissful.
Bite: 9/10

Review: Virtua Tennis 3 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. SEGA.)

2007-04-21T20:40:00.000Z

Since the days of heavy set, polygamous kings, tennis has always been a noble sport. Favoured by royals, toffs and rich people alike, tennis has always had a stuffy image. Strangely, having Cliff Richard as an ambassador hasn’t helped to dispel the stereotypical representation of tennis and to this day tennis struggles to be regarded as cool. In our opinion the only thing that has come close to helping tennis gain even a modicum of credibility in the cool stakes is videogames. Virtua Tennis, along with Namco’s Smash Court series have arguably managed to elevate the status of tennis, proving to be essential purchases on consoles and a notorious devourer of pound coins in the arcades. Virtua Tennis 3 is no exception, proving to be undoubtedly the best in the series thus far, serving up acres of game for your bucks.
First in VT 3’s set of aces is its generous roster of 20 pros, ranging from the lesser known likes of James Blake and Nicole Vaidisova, to the world conquering Roger Federer, shrieking siren Maria Sharapova and serial disappointer-crashed-out-in-the-first-round-again ‘tiger’ Tim Henman.
VT 3 boasts a raft of options and features including an in-depth World Tour mode where you begin by creating your own potential tennis champ, training him or her via a series of bizarre, surreal training mini-games and then taking your creation to the top. Becoming the no. 1 seed will take you a hell of a long time as you gradually enhance your character in training, playing matches, stopping to periodically rest and recharge. All of these events are attached to a running calendar, so managing what events you participate in and being ready and rested for them is important if you want to be in tip-top shape come game time. Within your first couple of hours you’ll have levelled-up a fair bit and you’ll quickly be mingling with the pros, eventually presented with your pick of the top players to become your doubles partner. Hint: Federer is normally a safe bet. Disappointingly, player creation options are fairly limited and the inability to engineer gangly-limbed tennis mutants comes as a bit of a letdown.
Virtua Tennis 3 is a joy to play being a smooth, realistic tennis game with a slight arcade bent. It’s fast and accessible, a true pick up and play game where any newcomer with even a rudimentary understanding of the sport, or Pong for that matter, will be absorbed in a matter of seconds. Our only criticism would be that some games can turn into farcical leaping sessions, where your player becomes constantly stretched, activating the dive animation to bound around the court in order to return difficult shots. In multiplayer, this can prove to be pretty comical and was a running source of mirth for The Shed during protracted hours of play. Equally ridiculous is the PS3's Sixaxis control, which is simply far too unwieldy to be of any use, and stands only as an experimental diversion. Trust us; stick with the traditional control method.
As always, Virtua Tennis succeeds in being an entertaining, indispensable multiplayer game that really comes into its own with four players scurrying around the court. Being a graphically accomplished title with incredible (albeit slightly waxy-looking) player likenesses and spot-on TV-style presentation doesn’t hurt the overall experience either. Unfortunately, PS3’s lack of online features is a huge missed opportunity, but 360 owners can get the most out of VT 3 on Live.

So, turn off the music-which sounds like someone let a pack of rabid baboons loose in a music store-get some mates round and you’ve got yourself a near flawless tennis game, which also happens to be one of PS3 and Xbox 360’s most essential sports games. Game, set, match to Virtua Tennis 3 (bet you never saw that coming).

Seed: 9/10

Review: flOw (PlayStation 3 EDI. thatgamecompany, Sony).

2007-04-12T15:22:00.000Z

If someone attempted to describe flOw to you and you knew nothing about it, you’d be forgiven for not being immediately hooked on the idea of playing a game starring an illuminated series of dots with a mouth. The sole objective of flOw is to evolve by munching plankton like particles whilst fending off larger predators by eating them too. It’s (sort-of) Pac-Man for the 21st century.
Anyone who watched David Attenborough's outstanding Blue Planet extensively will know that there's some weird stuff lurking in the murky depths. Glowing, wormy, microbe thingys, nasty looking toothy fish and so on. Watching these surreal, glittering aliens of the deep is perfect preparation for playing flOw, just don't expect the soft, seductive voice-over. (Did we just say Attenborough’s voice is seductive?!)

flOw appeals to every gamer’s not-so-secret obsession with collection giving you a bunch of different organisms to evolve and subsequently unlock. You can than store them at the game’s title screen and pick and chooses which one you’d like to use for your next relaxation session. Each one has a distinctive structure, moving in their own unique way with their own colour scheme for their level.
There’s an indescribable, calming quality to flOw, perfect for winding down after an intense session on Resistance or MotorStorm. It’s a hypnotic, stress-relieving experience that acts as the ideal antidote to PS3’s eye-watering torrent of stunning next-gen gaming. This is undoubtedly the best game to utilise the potential of Sony’s much-criticised Sixaxis controller. In flOw it initially feels wrong, taking some grappling to get used to. Give it time though and it feels like an extension of your arms, becoming so instinctive that you’ll forget what you’re doing and become fully absorbed in reaching your life form’s ultimate evolutionary conclusion.
flOw is the first essential EDI game to grab from the PlayStation Store and at only £3.49 there’s really no excuse not to download it. Go ahead, better yourself, evolve, you won’t be disappointed.
Evolutionary Scale: 8/10

Review: Genji: Days Of The Blade (PlayStation 3. Game Republic, Sony.)

2007-04-11T21:42:00.000Z

Onimusha was a fantastic series of games. An ambitious, epic narrative, grand scale, high production values, it was a joy to play. Dynasty Warriors was not so great. A repetitive hack and slash chore, it was enjoyable only in short bursts. KOEI milked this cash cow for all it was worth until they were churning out the same game for countless instalments. Really not good. Combine the two and you get Genji, a great looking but ultimately shallow swords and samurai game set in feudal Japan (isn’t it always?) You’d think the love-child of Capcom’s epic demon slaying samurai epic and KOEI’s slicer and dicer would be something to shout about and initially Genji does impress. However, it only impresses in the same way a stereotypical supermodel might. Stunning to look at to begin with, but delve a little deeper and you’ll eventually discover a hollow, vacuous void. This sums up Genji perfectly. It’s a dull, hackneyed slog savaging endless waves of identikit masked demons, stopping only to find a certain key for a corresponding door in order to progress. Game Republic have vainly attempted to inject a little variety into the turgid combat with the bullet time (yawn), button matching (yawn, again), mini-game Kamui system which can be employed upon filling a bar to dispatch multiple enemies. Again, it’s another visually accomplished touch, but it takes place in a swooshy, multi-coloured environment detached from the rest of the game. In other words, it’s a poorly implemented feature that adds very little to the overall experience.

Being able to switch between different characters – fat, slow strong one, quick, lithe lady assassin, nimble, young hero etc. – is a nice touch, but you’ll quickly find your favourite, which means you’ll probably only ever use the others as extra lives. Each character has a host of different weapons to wield, but when all you’re using them for is cleaving through unrelenting hordes of monsters then it’s all gravy.
Genji is a pretty unsatisfying game and is one that provides early promise with stunning graphics, rich design and lush detail, but ultimately it fails to deliver. Movement is slow and shoddy, combat is stilted and repetitive, puzzles boil down to simple find-key-to open-door fare and the use of Sixaxis is both badly executed and pointless.
So, all in all, Genji is not the best game to feed into you PS3 disc slot if you’re looking for a positive next-gen encounter and just doesn’t sit well among the other stronger launch titles currently available. If however you’re a big enough fan of the genre, you may be able to look past Genji’s numerous gaping flaws and you may even find something to like here if you’re willing to spend the time looking hard enough. But you’ll have to look very long and hard. We tried it finding that it’s just simply too boring to love and there are better games out there. Fancy a slash? No thanks, Genji.
Edge: 5/10

Review: Resistance: Fall Of Man (PlayStation 3. Insomniac, SCEE)

2007-04-04T19:54:00.000Z

Jaffa Cakes are pretty addictive. You open a pack and you can be sure that they’ll be gone in a matter of minutes. Sometimes we wish we just had more self-control. The same can be said for our gaming habits. As soon as the console begins to whirr into action you can wave goodbye to a good few hours of your life.

Resistance: Fall Of Man is the kind of game that is compulsive enough online that it will draw you in and even if you’re losing constantly you’ll still go back for more. Call us suckers for punishment but online Resistance has become something of an addiction for The Shed and boy, do we suck. But that’s another story. The bottom, line is Resistance is addictive, pick-up-and-play accessible and a ton of fun.
Starting with the story campaign – which can be played alone or with a friend co-operatively - is the perfect way to get into Resistance. There’s a moderately engaging storyline, with you assuming the role of the uncharismatic American (what else?) hero, Nathan Hale on missions. Taking you on a tour of the UK from Grimsby to London is a welcome change to the usual military facilities and endless corridors of other first person titles. Oh, wait a minute. Resistance has a lot of those too as after a promising start the narrative eventually descends into predictable territory presenting you with underground bunkers, alien structures and hackneyed corridor shooting. Fortunately, this only makes up a relatively small middle portion of the game and doesn’t prove to be detrimental to the single player campaign as a whole. Fighting the Chimera – the alien/human hybrid creatures that act as Resistance’s monstrous enemies – is always a joy, since shooting ugly monsters never grows tired, especially ones as frightening and intelligent as the Chimera. We’d even go out on a limb and say that they’re a cut above The Locust from Gears Of War, but only just. Their AI provides a decent enough challenge as they actively seek out cover, never queuing up like imbeciles to be picked off one-by-one.
The mixture of 50’s Britain, scarred by impressive, towering Chimeran architecture lends the landscapes some welcome variety, seamlessly switching between the familiar, the sci-fi or a combination of both. It all blends to create a chilling atmosphere, scary in a ‘what if this actually happened?’ kind of way.

<~ Resistance is full of "Holy Crap" moments like stumbling upon this imposing conversion facility here.

Missions are injected with a little extra variety in the form of heavy vehicular mayhem. Ragging the LU-P Lynx jeep through Cheddar Gorge is a genuine thrill as is navigating the M-12 Sabertooth tank through war-torn London. It’s not exactly Halo, but hey, it’s a start. But the real stars of any FPS are its weapons and Resistance is no slouch in the hardware department. Insomniac’s previous experience on the Ratchet & Clank games is strongly evident in the game’s arsenal of inventive, exotic artillery. All fictional, the weapons are a blend of human-developed automatic weapons like the usual sniper rifles and such, advanced rapid-fire weapons like the meaty Hailstorm gun and futuristic alien pieces like the plasma spewing Arc Charger. Our personal favourites are the Bullseye, which allows you to tag enemies and then fire laser-flavoured death around corners and the Auger, which lets you shoot through walls at unsuspecting Chimeran scum.

Aforementioned online play offers a series of modes, including the standard deathmatch fare alongside some newer modes available via a quick update. This offers near infinite longevity, especially if you, like us enjoy dying every five seconds. Maybe, unlike us you may actually be rather good and climb the online leaderboard, which you can find at www.myresistance.net
Either way, it’ll rapidly evolve into an obsession as you climb the ranks and assemble a clan. Ours is The Shed of course, currently three members strong. (Whoo!)

While playing Resistance however, you can’t help but consider its rivals. Halo, Gears Of War, Half Life 2, the forthcoming Quake Wars and Bioshock all offer more accomplished shoot-‘em-up thrills. What Resistance does have is enormous potential and you can tell that developers Insomniac are going to deliver on all this promise and produce something that will not only rival, but may even surpass its contemporaries. No matter how great the sequel might be however, there will be one simple truth that will forever remain. We’ll still suck.
Ammunition: 8/10

Look out for redriceman82 and LandonGarrett sucking and dying online now.

Review: MotorStorm (PlayStation 3. Evolution Studios, SCEE)

2007-04-01T22:14:00.000Z

Gamers are an aggressive, pushy, destructive and just plain malicious bunch. We’ll shoot anything without question; pummel an opponent into submission forgetting to maybe talk things through first and drive over an innocent pedestrian whilst cackling maniacally. Fortunately, the majority of players confine these activities to their games, keeping their virtual insanity just that: virtual.
We’d like to think that were we to participate in a huge dirt track event that involved jostling for position amongst a variety of different vehicles, we would be careful not to kill ourselves, driving responsibly, considering the safety of others.
Adopting such tactics in MotorStorm is a sure recipe for disaster. Races are all about unleashing the aggressive gamer within, not thinking twice about callously ramming a bike into a canyon wall in a bloody huge big rig. Take even a split-second to consider the racers around you and you’re mincemeat.
MotorStorm’s tracks are intense and unforgiving with constantly changing terrain, destructible obstacles and sheer drops off treacherous cliff edges. It takes every ounce of concentration coupled with a honed instinct to best MotorStorm’s increasingly challenging events, especially online against other actual, sadistic gamers just like you. Leave your conscience to one side while you play MotorStorm because you don’t want to feel guilty about nudging the race leader into a chasm, sniggering to yourself like an idiot. MotorStorm makes you work for victories and when you do win you really feel like you earned it.
Arguably, your most merciless opponents in MotorStorm are the eight gruelling courses. Navigating potholes, muddy furrows, rocks and burnt out cars isn’t easy and watching in horror as your car flips over in a shower of twisted metal, losing precious seconds can become a frequent heart-in-mouth moment.
Forming part of PlayStation 3’s launch line-up, MotorStorm is not just an amazing console exclusive, it’s PS3’s first truly essential game, edging out global bestseller Resistance: Fall Of Man for sheer thrills. Instant gratification is what MotorStorm is all about. It’s the perfect game to keep ready in the disc slot, ready to quickly fire-up and grab a quick hit of eyeball scorching, next-gen excitement.
Visually, MotorStorm is like nothing else on current hardware offering attractive desert vistas with terrain that transforms with each lap. Developers Evolution have worked miracles with a palette of colours that are essentially all differing shades of brown. Wet mud glistens in the sunlight, dust kicks up in a vehicle’s wake and the surrounding scenery is breathtaking. Unusually for courses comprised of only mud and dust, they boast heaps of character and are individually recognisable, boasting their own unique challenges and traits. MotorStorm’s tracks with their towering rock formations and buzzing atmospherics invoke a sense of the epic, instilling an impression that you’re involved in something big.

Taking a peek under MotorStorm’s bonnet reveals an eclectic array of rag-tag vehicles, designed for the sole purpose of churning up mud and creating chaos. Each machine has its own strengths and weaknesses that you’ll come to learn and developing a favourite won’t take long, since there’s something to suit every taste. Bikes are vulnerable, twitchy and nimble able to take narrow short cuts whereas at the opposite end of the spectrum, big rigs are slower, heavy and able to effortlessly smash through barriers and rivals. Between these two extremes are ATVs, rally cars, buggies, mud pluggers and racing trucks each possessing unique individual characteristics. Each ride has its own set of physics making them either bouncy or weighty, suited for ploughing through sludge or flying off strategically placed ramps. Part of the fun is finding out which vehicles are best for certain routes and surfaces.
An element of strategy comes into play when boosting by holding the X button. Ideally it’s best to boost out of corners and down long straights but boosting, as in Burnout, rapidly becomes an art and can become pivotal in grabbing wins. Boost too much and your boost meter will flash just before your engine blows, sending a flaming wreck soaring through the air. Incidentally, it’s a laugh to try and time an engine eruption just before the finish line to triumph in style. Like Burnout, crashing has a starring role in MotorStorm doling out instant retribution for the reckless player. Crashes rarely frustrate however as they look spectacular, accompanied by a shower of sparks, flame, debris and an ill-fated, airborne rag doll driver. They’re always fair too and it’s your own fault if you tear nose-first into a rock. Less acceptable are the indiscriminate AI bullies, who relentlessly shove until you meet a fiery demise, but it’s all part and parcel of the game and against online players you’ll quickly form grudges. MotorStorm is an essential racing title for PS3 and a must have for all the aggressive, nasty gamers out there desperate to get down and dirty. That’s everybody then.
Filth: 9/10

Console Wars!

2007-03-31T01:30:00.000Z

The current generation has given us the most fevered gaming contest since Sega vs. Nintendo and the 16-bit battleground of the early 90s. It was a simpler, more innocent time for The Shed, just moving into double figures as we were. Back then the rivalry seemed to be confined to the games, iconic characters going head to head (a pit fight, Mario vs. Sonic: who wins?) as gamers took sides, arms folded in a b-boy stance. It was a contest between the fans of the two camps, it was about the gamers. The difference between that time and the current conflict is crucial and telling and when we get down to the brass, just as silly.

This time it's the companies who are so openly fuelled by the competition. No longer are they content to sit back and let the software speak for itself. It's a constant to and fro, Sony and Microsoft vying for press attention in a bid to look bolder. Their is no holding back, the inner workings of the marketing machine are obvious and plainly exposed and honestly, it's fucking boring. Do gamers really care about the conflict? Must we still pledge allegiance to a side?

Microsoft's bearing is that their machine is all about the software. "At its heart, (the 360 has) been built as the best video gaming machine that's going to be available in this generation. That is what it's all about for the gamer." So sayeth David McLean, one of Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division bods. A bold and fair statement, if only it were the whole truth. It's contradicted somewhat by the announcement of the new 360 Elite, due later this year complete with 120GB HDD, HDMI hook-up and ugly black casing (a step back in design terms, perhaps).

"We won't force experiences that require the new HDD. Games will still be optimized around the 20GB experience. Nobody will be forced to buy a new drive." So speweth Albert Penello, Microsoft's director of global platform marketing. So if not required for essentials like game saves, then what is the extra storage for? In the long haul it'll be painfully obvious: movies, photos, music and all sorts of downloadable firmware and game expansion packs. The extra space will be indispensable if you want to get the best from your machine, and Microsoft knows this. And so we have to ask why these features weren't implemented from the off. Shrugging and saying 'the technology wasn't ready' doesn't quite cut it when you're faced with an army of 10 million raging 360 owners. Suddenly Sony's 60GB basic startup seems like a stroke of marketing genius. Microsoft's constant attack on Sony's PS3 pricing is starting to sound tired too. A fair point - the PS3 is expensive - but we've all known this for a while now.

Sony says the European cost of £425 is justified when consumers consider the long term capabilities of the machine they are buying. A 'fully blown entertainment device', a lifestyle device not confined solely to playing games. The BluRay capabilities and the ambitious plans for the online 'Home' community are just two examples of their widescreen view. Still, there is one Sony pricing issue worth talking about - the pricing up of the PS3 for the European market. That certainly can't be justified. For a CEO, Howard Stringer seems to have a bleak realist view: 'If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field." Contrasted with Phil Harrison's optimism, again we see contradictions and shaky marketing plans revealed.

Alberto Penello on the 360 Elite: "And for a unit that's got twice the hard drive storage space as the PS3, comes with an HDMI cable, an Ethernet cable and a headset, it's still $120 cheaper than the $599.99 high-end PlayStation 3." Not for existing Xbox 360 customers, sadly. The Elite looks a timely marketing move and a shameless attempt to steal some of PS3's shine in the week of its Euro debut.

Fortunately, the competition on the software front is something heads can really get excited about. Awesome, era-defining games are on the horizon for both consoles, and the frenzy of anticipation can be marred only slightly by the two giants taking every opportunity to snipe the exclusives. The Shed says this: neither console has the edge, neither is better, it's all gravy. Consider that the predicted shelf life for this generation is 10 years, it's dumb to pledge loyalty like shit isn't gonna change. Until consoles can wax your genitals and print bank-notes, hardware and spec talk will remain a mind-numbing bore. Can't everybody just get along and enjoy the games? It's a bit sad that all the consoles, peripherals and HDTVs will cost game lovers a couple of grand to enjoy the best of the best.

^ Nintendo: Slick and unique console design.

Perhaps Nintendo should be held up as an example called 'How to enjoy the fanfare without blowing your own brass'. They have quietly and calmly done their own thing with the Wii and have made a massive impact, 1.2 million sold and counting. The approach is savvy and refreshing; from the much-loved Wiimote, to the classic games for download on Wii Shop Channel, to the unique little touches like WiiConnect24. Massively expanding the potential audience of worldwide gamers, the Wii is ironically more about 'lifestyle' gaming than its bully rivals can currently hope for. Surely there are seismic shifts to come, but right now Nintendo are standing small and acting clever.

Up, Down, On, Off: Custom Tracks

2007-03-31T01:11:00.000Z

What does it mean to customise? Customisation is on one level the ability to turn in game music up & down, on or off. Nowadays gaming is all about avatars and profiles, creating your personality online and in-game. Games like Elder Scrolls take this customisation to ridiculous heights and that's great - if it's offered, why not go all the way?

Custom tracks bring me grief. Rather it's the lie, the unfulfilled promise on the back of the box, that really grates. NBA 2K7 is my favourite new perpetrator. I couldn't wait to hear my own beats blaring out on court, but it wasn't to be. Custom tracks ain't having beats blaring out through the 360's Dashboard. If it ain't in the motherfucking arena, I don't wanna hear it. I definitely don't want my favourite rappers shouting '2K Sports!' in my ear hole. You're nice on the mic, but I'm still gonna mute ya. Compared to NHL 2K7 and its detailed customisation options, NBA looks like the sickly sibling. Two different developers, but doesn't the same publisher want a uniform feel to all their sports titles? MotorStorm is a brilliant game, PS3's finest so far, but the racing experience could have been so much better if gamers could choose their own soundtrack. Imagine racing to The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird? Or The Ramone's Blitzkrieg Bop?

Music heightens a gaming experience. I'll never forget the joy of racing to Prodigy's Firestarter in WipEout 2097. Although it was in-game music, it was as if I'd chosen it. I love the Prodigy, it felt personal. Unfortunately most game developers aren't as spot on musically. That depends on your taste, and that's my point - choice is the only way to please everyone.

In this age of hard storage, I reckon this is something gamers want. It's a small want, but nonetheless part of the overall package Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are selling. Definitely it should be standard for sports and racing titles. But taking the idea further, why can't we have user chosen beats in story driven titles? Imagine running through the mall in Dead Rising, listening to your favourite songs all tinny, piped through the Tannoy. I understand and respect the reasoning against this. Designers make creative decisions as to how music and sound serves the atmosphere, but...c'mon, it could be made to work with a little extra effort. As long as the users music can be featured in game and in context, there shouldn't be a problem.

I can only suspect that the resistance has something to do with record labels and exclusive licensing rights. Thanks, boardroom dealmakers, now I have to listen to Slipknot. Oh, wait a sec...I can turn it off! Wow. It feels so real. Out here in the desert, only engine hum for comfort. Hang on...hey...I can turn that off too. Adrenaline soars, racing in silence. Forget all that legal balls - if the GTA franchise can do it, so others should follow. Give us the option, at least. I fucking hate Slipknot, man.

GTA IV trailer: The Shed speaks!

2007-03-30T19:51:00.000Z

^ GTA IV's protagonist suggest that Rockstar may be
giving us another rags to riches story as this fella's fresh
off the boat and out to begin anew. He does lack the charisma of previous GTA anti- heroes, so maybe we're being a bit hasty in thinking this is the guy we'll be playing as.

Millions of rumours and speculations have been circulating about what shape GTA IV will take. London? Tokyo? Chicago? THE WHOLE WORLD? It's been a long time coming but Rockstar have finally got round to releasing some details on GTA IV. The hotly anticipated trailer has had Rockstar's servers melting over the last 24 hours with rabid gamers desperate to get a glimpse of the biggest game of this year.
The Shed mentioned that Rockstar said the GTA IV trailer would offer an in-depth look at the game but unfortunately we were wrong. What it does give us is something to foam at the mouth about as well as a wee taster of what the game will look like.

Depicting what looks exactly like New York, with familiar famous landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge GTA IV will either take place back in an expanded, more detailed Liberty City or real life New York. In either case, colour us mildly disappointed. We hoped that Rockstar would have made an effort to fabricate something entirely new and original, after all we have been to Liberty City twice now (three times if you include the brief sojourn to LC in San Andreas).

Visual clues suggest that the game will retain the unique brand of tongue-in-cheek humour that the series is famous for, ads for Sprunk and Clucking Bell join the huge 'Getalife' building in the trailer being prime examples. These clues may also offer insights into how the game will unfold. 'Getalife' could be construed as a mission statement since GTA's new protagonist is an Eastern European immigrant fresh off the boat, starting with nothing, coming to the land of opportunity to make his fortune. Could be interesting.

New York or Liberty City, GTA IV's new world looks solid and well-realised, looking like a well established, more densely populated urban maze. GTA IV looks like it is set in a real city, taking a small step away from the stylised cities of previous instalments.

Just remember that all is not always as it seems when it comes to Rockstar's games and there may be a lot more to GTA IV than this first trailer suggests. The Shed wouldn't spit coffee across the room in surprise if the uber-developers threw a curve ball in the coming months with new conflicting follow-up details to confound and confuse us all. Presently, we remain a tad underwhelmed but ever optimistic that Rockstar will blow us away when GTA IV blooms into full fruition when it hits the shelves of local game emporiums everywhere. Until then we pray that "Things will be different." Just watch the trailer and decide for yourslves and for the love of God, lets us know what you think!

GTA IV trailer coming soon!! (Tomorrow)

2007-03-28T15:29:00.000Z

We've been salivating like a pack of hungry dogs for this ever since we hammered the final nail into Vice City Stories' coffin and exhausted the array of GTA clones vying for our attention. We want the real deal now more than ever, so it's perfect timing for Rockstar to release a trailer for next-gen GTA.

Whaddaya know? Those wonderful people at Rockstar have created a trailer which can be viewed from tomorrow at their official Grand Theft Auto IV website. Wanna see it? Of course you do and you can find it right here with this link: http://www.rockstargames.com/IV/

Expect an excited reaction from The Shed as soon as we've had a chance to take it all in and make up our minds about it. Come on, you know it's gonna be special.

Rockstar have promised that this is no mere teaser too, stating that it will be in-depth and offer a genuine taster of what to expect.

Words can't justify the excitement...

The weekend that was the PS3 launch...

2007-03-25T15:55:00.000Z

After months of fevered anticipation it was with pure elation that The Shed snatched its new PS3 away from the postman on launch day morning. Here's a run-down of our first three days with Sony's beast.

The same weight as a breeze block, the PS3 feels next-gen and upon wiring the black monolith up to The Shed's 37" HD beauty it was time to drink in the future.

Kicking off with MotorStorm was a good move, it's the perfect way to settle in with the power of PS3, packed to the gills with next-gen moments.

Surprisingly, the sixaxis works pretty well and so far we're not missing the rumble function too much, although a bit of feedback from rough terrain would have been nice...sigh.

Our next experience isn't so satisfying, Genji: Days of the Blade being a stale hybrid of Dynasty Warriors and Onimusha but not nearly as good as that sounds. We perservered with it for a good while, but it wasn't long before repetitive hack and slash got the better of us and we opted for a blast on Resistance: Fall of Man.

A solid, well-made first person shooter, Resistance is good fun, engaging and instantly accessible. Shooting aliens is a bit of a no-brainer admittedly, but Resistance does it well enough.

After giving Resistance's multi-player a quick going over, we get a taste for competitive gaming and resolve to throw Virtua Tennis 3 into the disc slot.

Having played the 360 version already, we attempt to scrutinise the differences between the two graphically and there's very little to separate the two. Virtua Tennis 3 manages to consume the subsequent 5 to 6 hours as we sink into its variety of wacky minigames and multi-player options.

It's getting pretty late and we haven't even taken PS3 online yet. First things first, we download firmware update 1.60 which takes ages. Gran Turismo Concept HD is free from the PlayStation Store too so we decide we'd have to be completely Jordan-brained not to grab it. Weighing in at a mere 690MB GT HD still manages to take over an hour to download, monopolising valuable time we could be gaming. We find out we could have been doing other things while it downloaded in the background thanks to our recent acquisition of 1.60 firmware. D'oh...

We decide that taking our multi-player gaming online probably isn't wise right now what with our slow connection. We'd rather not start off our online experience with a series of laggy, humiliating defeats.

It's with burnt retinas, an HD-induced headache and a wry smile that The Shed rolls over onto the couch, fully-clothed, teeth unbrushed, falling into a sweaty, blissful slumber. Lucid PS3 dreams follow as we look forward to spending the next ten years together.

PlayStation 3 has us tightly gripped in its clear black and chrome claws and refuses to let go. The next-gen is here, and we love it.

Review: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2007, Capcom. Xbox 360)

2007-03-20T17:50:00.000Z

Capcom bring out the big guns in 2007. On a hostile planet, one bland man stands alone against thousands of alien bugs and fails to be the hero.

You could argue that ever since the advent of cut-scenes computer games have aspired to involve gamers in the same way that movies involve the viewer. Interactivity is the dividing line of course, but the storytelling language of film continues to influence how games tell their own tales. Is it fair to judge a game by standards of film criticism? Perhaps not, but as games and films begin to come together, its fair that we do focus on a games story-line and the quality of characters and writing. Lost Planet is a game with cinematic flair but disappointingly its story doesn't inspire great hope for the future of games. And then there's the gameplay...

Before the bashing begins, let's start with what Capcom has done well. The graphics are beautiful, up there with the best of the next-gen. The frozen planet makes for some interesting terrain and the lighting is the beautiful sheen holding everything together. Ambient glows, diffusion, its all done to perfection, a softened look that is truly striking in HD. It's all done with bombast: smoke and fire, real depth of field, solid collision detection, even when dealing with some wild enemy design. These creatures and machines will loom tall before you, each moving distinctively, each with its own personality. The world and design of its levels are interesting, the old school boss battles are grand set pieces that are never short of challenging. But then there's the plot...ah.

For 150 years human settlers have searched for a means to terraform and colonize the harsh ice planet E.D.N III. Sub-zero conditions make it difficult to stay alive and warm and the native alien race (the Akrid) are hostile and many. The humans fight to conquer the infestation using heavy artillery and huge armored robots (Vital Suits), but progress has ground to a halt, slowed by infighting between the factions competing to be the first to make the terrain habitable. Enter Wayne, a confused young guy caught up in the madness. He seeks to dissolve the mysteries of the 'Frontier Project' and absolve his survivors guilt by hunting the monster that killed his father, the Akrid known as 'Green Eye'. In outline form Lost Planet makes a great idea for a game.

OK, so that last bit about vengeance is a little silly, but this is anime-lite after all and there's no denying the setup sounds intriguing, a chance for epic gunfights on a beautiful, desolate planet. Particularly in the early levels, Lost Planet delivers on the details and design with raw creative skill. That early promise is precisely what becomes frustrating as the story eventually descends into unfocused madness. Honestly, the story outline could be written on a napkin and most probably was. Sadly, Capcom's half-cut vision doesn't really go beyond the napkin stage. The story continues but nobody cares, they just want to shoot shit. Fair enough.

Most reviews would stop talking about the plot here, dismissing it with a scoff and moving on to gameplay talk, but fuck that. The Shed cares about plot, about character and nuance and good writing. In this most cinematic of generations, we should expect more from our games. Why should story not be under scrutiny? You see, the different warring factions that sounded so intriguing are all essentially fighting to achieve the same goal. After 150 years you would have thought they might have reached some peace agreement and combined their efforts. The allegiances of the different characters shift wildly as the writers attempt to double cross the audience, instead out-thinking themselves and leaving a messy spaghetti of plot strands. Terrible pacing, continuity blunders and cut-scenes that rarely reflect the in-game action really take away from any feeling of involvement or connection.

Sitting atop the mountainous disaster of the story is perhaps the least charismatic protagonist games have ever known. Wayne Holden is the reluctant hero (hero is a bit overzealous) awaking from a 30 year coma, fighting amnesia and alien scum on his slow journey towards the truth. Initially we can forgive the poor sap for being such a bore - his father was deaded by a big green beetle, his feet are a little chilly and he can't remember who his friends are. Every cut-scene deeper into the tale, we learn nothing new about the man we control. Perhaps it would have been interesting to explore Wayne's inner turmoil as he slowly realises that he doesn't have a personality? At any moment The Shed was expecting him to just cry and give up the ghost. Instead we see no emotion whatsoever on Wayne's stoned face. What's funny is that the makers found it necessary to show the character copyright on the title screen, like he's the new Mario or something. Crazy.

Wayne would certainly be more bearable if he was fun to control, but therein lies this game's most unforgivable and glaring flaw. Wayne is slow. Wayne is clumsy. Wayne is weak. Wayne is a hate conduit. On foot the character moves like he's running in treacle, which makes sense trudging through a snow drift, but he never gets any lighter on his feet. Protracted movements make jumping or throwing a grenade feel like Herculean tasks. Most enemies you face are a lot faster than you and often much larger, so Wayne's shortcomings are quickly stretched to breaking point. No doubt the designers wanted to replicate the feeling of a heated battle, explosions and smoke disorientating you and ramping up the intensity - but with a severe lack of any decent defensive manoeuvres, Wayne is often left being battered around in a succession of slow falling or standing animations. There are moments where you might as well just put down the controller and grimace like a dickhead in your enforced role as spectator.

Hey, at least the fucked up controls are consistent, easily transforming the many and varied Vital Suits into novelties that quickly wear off. Wow, you can really feel the weight of these 10 tonne machines! My boosters are pathetic and so is my firepower! When a gatling gun can't take down a foot-soldier in less than one shot, something is very wrong. The weapons are great - all manner of big mounted rockets and lasers - but they lack any real kick. Again, movement and aiming are obstacles to any feeling of control. Better tailoring of actions to the controller would have made a massive improvement.

Beyond subtle changes, major additions could really have enhanced the basics of game-play and transformed this into the stellar title it should be. For a start, Wayne needs to be twice as quick. The Shed loves Arnie, but the one-man-against-the world schtick is laughable here since Wayne is so below average in the agility stakes. A choice of playable characters from Wayne's team would have been a nice touch, each with their own different strengths to bring into battle. While we're at it, the device of forcing the player to collect Thermal Energy to survive is clunky at best. Even in the bowels of a volcano you still have to worry about the cold. Heat sensitive this ain't.

Why so angry? Really it comes down to Capcom not making the most of such huge potential. There's a lot to like about Lost Planet. Amazing graphics and sound, superb art design, a fun and unique multiplayer experience (which works chiefly because all opponents are human controlled, leveling the playing field) - it scores well on the most common targets. The long distance irony here is that looks don't mean shit if the fundamentals aren't up to scratch. Lost Planet is a tramp dressed in a tuxedo. He looks striking, but soon you realize that what strikes you is the smell and that underneath the evening wear he hasn't showered. There's a lot to like about Lost Planet, but not a lot to love.
Taste: 7/10

Review: Final Fantasy XII (2007, Square Enix, PS2)

2007-03-19T20:36:00.000Z

Hopefully the arrival of this review will go some way to explaining the Shed's recent, inexcusable absence. Final Fantasy is always an epic affair, effortlessly consuming your spare time with its absorbing narrative. Unrivalled in scope and grandeur, FF is the undisputable granddaddy of all RPGs.
Following the online only PC and 360 exclusive FF XI, the latest in the long running series has taken its sweet time arriving on these fair shores. And the first thing you notice after a few hours play? FF XII stinks...absolutely reeks...of George Lucas. There's more than just echoes of Star Wars (1977) inherent in FF XII, it practically lifts the movie's central characters and drops them in a different universe. Protagonist Vaan is an orphaned local boy who crosses paths with a roguish sky pirate and his sidekick. Together they embark on a journey to rescue a kidnapped princess. Heard this before? So far, so very, very familiar.
Once you get over the obvious similarities between this and a certain popular space opera, FF XII really comes into its own. The usual thrill of exploration remains ever present as you're presented with a rich and brilliantly realised world. Meticulously designed towns and cities give way to vast, sprawling deserts and plains inhabited by (now avoidable) monsters.
There are however a few problems with FF XII. First of all, the game can take a while to get into and doesn’t draw you in right from the off like previous instalments. Secondly, there can be a lot of aimless wandering, fighting creatures that whilst avoidable, will track you relentlessly, attacking you as you attempt to flee. The new free roaming combat system is a bit of a cheat too, as all it really allows you to do is move freely while you fight.

It actually has no effect on the course of battle as moving away from attacks doesn’t prevent hits from connecting and attacks are still turn-based. Not really the revolution we were hoping for then, but a positive step in the right direction nonetheless. On the up side, FF XII’s licence board system for upgrading your party is a masterstroke allowing for steady growth of your characters by purchasing weapons, items, accessories, magicks and technicks, then purchasing the requisite licence to be able to use them.
Biggest problem of all though is FF XII’s comparative lack of charm over its stable mates. You see, FF XII has adopted a look that whilst rich in detail and flawlessly designed just seems to lack a certain je ne c’est quoi. Final Fantasy XII is still undeniably brilliant and absolutely essential, it’s just that for us, it doesn’t quite gel.
We still love Final Fantasy XII and as always it unashamedly robs 50 + hours of our precious time. It’s a testament to the timeless appeal of the series that FF still blows us away with each new iteration, consistently managing to reward the player with enduring memories and fresh, exciting experiences.
Did we say our inexcusable absence? Here’s our excuse…now you have an excuse too. To go play this, now. Just remember to say goodbye to family, friends and your social life for the next few weeks.
Hit Points: 9/10

The Shed is back.

2007-03-15T22:09:00.000Z

The Shed has been on a brief hiatus because...um, because...a dog ate my homework, sir.

There's no excuse for it really. We've just been playing a lot of games, which means there'll be a torrent of new reviews coming soon.

Rest assured that we're not resting on our laurels and will be writing a whole bunch of new stuff soon.

We continue to wait for PS3 with baited breath and are impressed with Sony's take on Xbox Live and Wii's Miis entitled home. Slightly plagiarising elements from Nintendo and Microsoft for sure, but taking a different approach. Very exciting stuff.

In addition take a look at LittleBigPlanet and try not being intrigued...go on, try.

It's an exciting time to be a gamer, friends. Exciting time...

Our favourite movies: #2: Commando (1985)

2007-03-02T22:03:00.000Z

Joel Silver produced the Matrix trilogy, a successful film series for sure, but nothing, NOTHING compared to the Silver produced Commando. Starring Arnie at the height of his powers, the movie opens with our hero swinging his chopper around, thumping wood into halves. A fitting metaphor for what is to come as John Matrix (Schwarzenegger) has got some wood to chop and nothing's going to get in his way. And this time it's personal, as the bad guys have (cliche alert) kidnapped his daughter. Time to go shopping. That's right, shopping...Arnie style. Using a bulldozer as a key to the gun store, Matrix goes a bit Dale Winton chucking bazookas, shotguns and grenades into his trolley. As you do. This brilliantly ridiculous scene sets the tone for what is arguably...no, not arguably, IS the greatest action movie of 1985.
Driven relentlessly by that stunning, not to mention unique steel drum soundtrack, Arnie reels off some of the best one-liners committed to celluloid. Delivered impeccably in Schwarzenegger's trademark Austrian dialect, the lines zing like rapid-fire, white hot bullets of rapier wit wounding their targets before they've had a chance to bite the dust. And bite the dust they do in spectacular fashion. Arnie's escort fatally elbowed in the face: "Don't disturb my friend. he is dead tired." Snivelling henchman Sully dropped off a cliff edge: "I let him go." Tough guy nemesis, Bennett impaled by a steam pipe: "Let off some steam, Bennett!"
Zing! You're dead. Schwarzenegger uses words like a machine gun toting Shakespeare.
Throw in expendable soldiers torn up by bullets, grenades and scalped by frisbeed circular saw blades and you've got yourself a bona-fide action classic.

The visible springboards intentionally left in shot as Arnie's foes are blown up by his tossed pineapples only add to the movie's charm which we're sure was a concious artistic choice on the director's part. And it all works beautifully.
Commando represents a star at the height of his powers ruling over the movie world and the entire action genre. Screw becoming the governor of California, this is Arnie's greatest achievement.