Computer And Video Games - Reviews

Moto GP 09/10

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:56:00 GMT

Bike-o-path.
When a game arrives with a yearly suffix at the end of its name, it often proves a challenge to work out what, if any, shiny new features have been added. In the case of officially licensed racing games it normally extends no further than a list of new teams, drivers and a few tweaks to the circuit list. We're happy to report, however, that MotoGP 09/10 is very different to its predecessors.

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Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:50:00 GMT

More gold-plated than 24 carat...
Considering you can buy Resident Evil 5 Platinum Edition for under £15 you'd expect Capcom to have something special up their sleeve for the Gold Edition. Unfortunately, if you already own Resi 5, the extra content here doesn't match the cash you'll spend. You get the whole of Resi 5 and two new episodes: (Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape), Mercenaries Reunion (with four new characters but no new maps), and the online Versus mode.

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Star Trek Online

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:59:00 GMT

Paul Presley launches his quantum torpedoes at Cryptic.
We've all wanted a Star Trek-based online world for many, many years now. We've dreamed about it, plotted it out, made our plans for what we'd do, gotten excited over potential, and then steadied ourselves in moist anticipation once it was finally announced that the dream would be turned into reality all those press releases ago. And they've given us... well, a travesty.

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Metro 2033 review

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:02:00 GMT

From Russia with love.
You're crouched in a corner clutching your AK-47 with both hands. You're down to your last magazine. Five monsters are trying to get a lock on your scent in the next room and just beyond them a group of Nazis are sitting at their sentry post waiting for movement. You should have saved some ammunition but you blew it all to buy a sniper rifle at the last outpost. Nietzschean law doesn't apply: what doesn't kill you here just makes you weaker. You want to go back but you can't: the shelter doors are locked and won't be opening again any time soon. Life in the Metro is tough - but above ground the situation's even worse.

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Metro 2033

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:02:00 GMT

Perfect Dark XBLA

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:22:00 GMT

The golden days.
In many ways, Perfect Dark arrived ahead of its time. In the dying years of the N64's lifespan, when all but everyone had shipped off to the shimmering next-gen shores of Dreamcast, Rare's masterpiece was overlooked - which is very much a discredit to what it managed to deliver in the year 2000.

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White Knight Chronicles

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:23:00 GMT

A clunky Japanese RPG with too many fatal ﬂaws.
White Knight Chronicles is a frustrating game. This long delayed JRPG, which has been out in Japan since late 2008, is full of interesting ideas, all of which have been very badly implemented. For every plus, there's a gang of minuses just waiting to kill your buzz.

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Supreme Commander 2

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:34:00 GMT

Stand in awe of big stompy robots.
There aren't many strategy games which star a man wholooks like a furniture salesman, but has somehow ended up piloting a giant robot instead.

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Yakuza 3

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:24:00 GMT

Dark and gritty turns fun and games in gorgeous morality tale...
A violent gangster roaming a city of criminals, raking in the cash, a haul of weapons up his sleeve... remind you of anything? Relax. Fold those preconceptions back into their box, push down the lid and stab it for a bit. Kazuma Kiryu is nothing like Niko Bellic and Yakuza 3 is nothing like Grand Theft Auto - or any of its clones. Yakuza 3 is madness, though in an endearing way that, like Boris Johnson, forces you to forgive its idiocies.

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God of War 3

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Taking no prisoners.
As we fought a giant scorpion in God of War III, we couldn't help but remember PS3's first software demonstration, when a similar crab-like foe in Genji: Days of the Blade did "massive damage" to Sony's reputation. If it was THIS that Sony had shown back in 2006, the massive damage would have been to people's wallets as PS3 took over the world.

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BlazBlue Calamity Trigger

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:45:00 GMT

Hands off the panda.
Like all fighting games, Blazblue hates you. It hates your stupid hands which can't keep up with your stupid brain which can't keep up with the cheese-tastic AI or the bloke sitting alongside you or the sod on Youtube who keeps posting combo videos which make your feeble four-hit efforts look like a half-incher in a big willy contest. It has no tutorial, is loaded with nonsense - Guard Libras, Heat Gauges, Revolver Actions, Barrier Bursts, Distortion Drives, Negative Penalties, Astral Heats, and other impenetrable jargon - and would probably rather you just effed right off.

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Super Yum Yum

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:53:00 GMT

The clever puzzler that does just enough.
Making the leap over from various mobile phone platforms, Super Yum Yum is a clever puzzler that sees you guiding a Yoshi-esque lizard through a number of top down maps.

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Final Fantasy XIII

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:01:00 GMT

Defining the action RPG.
RPG fans are going to buy Final Fantasy XIII. No surprise there. But what is surprising is that under that stat-ridden RPG skin is the core of a fast-paced, hard-hitting action game that could even turn the heads of button-mashing face-stomping Killzone and God of War lovers.

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Aliens vs. Predator

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:00:00 GMT

It's not a nice thing, having Steve Hogarty hug your face.
My favourite sound, probably out of all of them, is the ones made by aliens when they're being horrifically slaughtered in their second film, Aliens. It is, I think, based on a heavily distorted recording of a trumpeting elephant, sped up to make it absolutely terrifying in a way only the panicked, high-pitched scream of a flailing pachyderm can be.

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Battlefield Bad Company 2

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:00:00 GMT

A tale of two shooters...
The cliché 'game of two halves' normally conjures up images of classic football comebacks, but after staggering through the glaringly uneven single-player campaign in Bad Company 2, twenty-four hours after spending a whole day solidly playing the superb multiplayer component, there's hardly a more apt description of DICE's wannabe CoD-killer. Because, despite the sterling efforts of the men from Stockholm, if you're coming to this for your lonesome combat kicks, you're going to be massively, desperately disappointed. This is all about the online game.

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Napoleon: Total War

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:22:00 GMT

Gallic bred.
Napoleon: Total War is a standalone title, but essentially plays like an add-on to 2009's much-celebrated Empire: Total War.

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Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:45:00 GMT

A work of kart.
The kart racer is often what happens to a once loved game series, or mascot, which is on its last legs.

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Sonic & Sega All-Starts Racing

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:45:00 GMT

Review: A work of kart.
The kart racer is often what happens to a once loved game series, or mascot, which is on its last legs.

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Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:00:00 GMT

PSP re-imagining of the PSone original gets under your skin...
Silent Hill does two things very well: ambiguous, meaty horrors and plot twists. Like a Turkey Twizzler, really. The former is simple: take the contents of a deli counter and add legs. But it's the series' world-rocking revelations that win it major plaudits. There's brains in all that meat - Silent Hill 2's conclusion still deﬁnes video game twists. And after their ﬁne, if unambitious, PSP prequel Origins, Climax have now added a few more smarts, this time grafted onto a retelling of the ﬁrst Silent Hill.

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Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:15:00 GMT

Chinese take it away.
We have a dream: that one day Dynasty Warriors code will pop through the office letterbox and we don't end up playing 'pass the parcel'. We try not to prejudge, but it's hard not to when a series has consistently and impressively underwhelmed as much as this. However, when Strikeforce arrived, there was a sting in the tail: four player co-op. Now everybody has to play...

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Guitar Hero Van Halen

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:05:00 GMT

Casual fans need not apply...
There's been enough of these dedicated rhythym-action games to give devs an idea of what makes a good one. Here's our checklist: ﬁrst, take a group with plenty of memorable hits that are fun to play on multiple plastic instruments.

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Aliens vs Predator

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:46:00 GMT

Review: Sci-fi's biggest scrap is about to chestburst onto your console...
From now on, every time some casual gaming type tells us that graphics aren't important and they can get by with blurry, indistinct visuals, we're going to point them in the direction of Aliens vs. Predator.

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Darwinia +

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:02:00 GMT

Survival of the flattest.
Life, reckoned Lord Attenborough in Jurassic Park, finds a way. It's a maxim which holds true for Darwinia+'s little computer people who have grown complete virtual lives within a computer simulation, only to be pushed to the brink of extinction by a computer virus. Recruited by the Clive Sinclair-alike creator of Darwinia, it's your job to eliminate the virus with real time strategy, digital weapons, and brain-tickling programming clout.

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Polar Panic

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:13:00 GMT

A chilly puzzler that leaves us a little cold.
Polar Panic's like Bomberman. Let's get that out of the way. It's basically Bomberman but with a Polar Bear. But to get into some kind of overly critical comparison here would probably be the wrong move.

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Vancouver 2010

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:53:00 GMT

Hardly captures the Olympic spirit.
You can usually rely on an Olympic tie-in game to stink up your console, and in this respect, Vancouver 2010 doesn't disappoint. Capturing almost none of the excitement of the actual winter Olympics, this collection of snow-themed mini-games is a sterile mess.

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