While I’ll easily admit that I love the idea of the Xbox Live Arcade allowing smaller developers to create unique and imaginative games at a smaller price point, allowing for a fun diversion to the monopoly of AAA games out there, it’s a lot harder for me to admit that I’ve not used the service to truly enjoy some of those titles. I’m still yet to delve into Limbo or many of the other great games out there, but there’s an upcoming game available soon that may change that and highlight how great the service can be for creativity and some of the more imaginative games out there. I present to you ilomilo.

I’m not sure how best to explain it, but ilomilo is a puzzle game with 4 worlds and nearly 50 different levels where you’re responsible for reuniting ilo and milo as well as trying to help restore their memories through a series of different puzzles and involving a lot of cubes. As a set up, think the pure platforming sections in Super Mario Sunshine sans FLUDD, but in terms of what it originally looks like. Instead of nail-bitingly frustrating platforming with an average camera, think instead a nearly zen-like puzzle game that charms the pants off you and has you in its bed before you realise its the next morning and it’s made you breakfast in bed.

The puzzles don’t just use one plane of the cubes, and you’ll frequently find yourself running upside down and every which way with the carpets that allow you to walk to a different side of the cube you’re on and giving you another way to think about what you’re doing. Throw in movable extra cubes, creatures that eat apple cubes, creatures that pop out of the cubes and block you, and ones that stretch over long distances. Throw in the ability to swap between ilo and milo at any time on top of that and the deceptively simple in concept puzzler becomes one with many levels of depth and forces you to think about how you’re best going to proceed with the levels and challenge yourself to maximise how many of the pickups you can get as well.

Even though the main objective of each level is to reunite ilo and milo, that’s not the only thing you can be doing. Throughout each level are fragments of their memories, and collecting as many fragments as you can helps unlock parts of their memories, presented as fragments of a picture with writing that suggests this is a way for players to uncover the background story by themselves, instead of having it forced on you unnecessarily. However, even in the trial there was a hint of heart-warming moments that may pluck at gamer’s heartstrings, minimalistic as it is.
Not only that, but collecting the Safkas in each world helps to unlock a special bonus puzzle to boot, meaning there’s no reason that any gamer shouldn’t be getting everything on every level they can.

I mentioned earlier that this game has a strong sense of charm. It’s almost undeniable. The game has an incredible art style that teems with details at every orifice and doesn’t let go. It’s simply beautiful in its own unique way that helps give it that charm and draws you into the world before you even realise you’re addicted. It helps that the camera works fantastically and always allows you to see what you’re doing from the default view, with even a little peep-hole showing up if your character is being blocked from your view by scenery. There’s not much else than I can add to that as hyping up graphics in a game isn’t my forte, but this is a game with a great sense of style and if you’re not even the tiniest bit engrossed or interested by how it looks, I may have to call you a liar, a cad and tell you we duel at sunrise.

Don’t forget to add in the fact that even in the trial world there were lots of little bits of humour scattered throughout, though mainly delivered by that dashing tutorial guide Sebastian. It helps add to the experience with all the little noises and silly sound effects around that help put a massive smile on your face and want to laugh. Even the loading screens are at it in this game! It just helps to show how much love the creators put into the game and makes you fall in love with it just that little bit more.

Then there’s the music as well. The music that seemingly perfectly compliments the action of the game and pulls you into its world just a little bit further. Even all the sound effects too contribute, with there even being an achievement for using the sound effects to play along to the main menu music. It’s simply and utterly genius and I found myself downloading the soundtrack sampler the creators had on their site just to listen to it outside of the game.

Even with just a short trial, I found myself falling for this game in a big way. Did I get through the trial quickly, yes? Is there much room for re-playability? Maybe less than there’d seem, which could be a potential problem. Is it still one of the most refreshing gaming experiences I’ve had in a while? Heck yes. And most importantly, is the game fun? Most certainly.

ilomilo is out on Xbox Live Arcade on January 5th and will be available for 800 points. However, you can also play the trial now and play the full game in advance by clicking the following link:
http://wp7supersecretaccess.ilomilo.com/
Click the following link for the available songs from the game’s soundtrack:
http://blog.ilomilo.com/category/music/
Disclaimer: Some of the images used in this preview are from the Windows 7 Mobile version, which the game is also available for, containing more puzzles and portable puzzling!

-Jokesound

Gamers now-a-days are a pretty skint bunch of people. But don’t fret as the lovely people at X Box LIVE like to give you trial’s of games. These trials give you some play time and some are worth more time than others. Luckily Plants Vs Zombies is one of those trials that is worth downloading.

So what is Plants Vs Zombies? It is a game that I really didn’t expect. Another title by Pop Cap games, the people behind the, quite frankly marvelous game, Peggle. This is a strategy game where you have to fend off a horde of zombies, the zombies are trying to attack your house, so your most deadliest weapon against this undead horde is….Your Garden.

The idea behind this game is to create a garden that will be the perfect defence again the zombies. As this is a trial version you are not going to be able to unlock the full foliage arsenal but you do get a good deal of weapons. Such as cherry bombs, walnuts that defend your garden for an extended time and flowers that shoot things at the zombies.

Now with all strategy games you have to collect resources to build you army. This game is no different. You have to collect sunshine to grow your garden. Each thing you build costs sunshine and the more sunshine you have the bigger things you can create, so you have to balance your sunshine with the things you create. That’s where sun flowers come in. These handy flowers generate sunshine for you, so the more sunflowers you plant the more plentiful your sunshine resource will be.

The enemies on the other hand can be quite threatening in numbers. In the trial you get 2 types of zombies. Normal zombies who die in a couple of shots from your shooting flowers. And traffic cone zombies who have a higher defence, as they have a traffic cone on their head. So you have to get he right balance of defence and offence for these two types pf zombies. If you are not careful these guys will come in their tens or even hundreds so be careful and make the perfect garden that will extinguish the zombie horde.

Aside from constructing the perfect killer garden, there is also the bonus rounds. These rounds are a bit silly and rack up some good points. The bonus rounds in Plants Vs Zombies consist of bowling walnuts at the on coming zombie horde. You have 2 types of Walnut. The standard walnut, 2 of these can take down zombies in two hots, and the other is the exploding walnut which can take down up to three zombies at a time. As you can imagine the exploding walnuts aren’t as common at the standard so tactical bowling is needed here, seeing as the traffic cone zombies are thrown into the mix too and take four hits as opposed to two hits like the standard zombies do.

Plants Vs Zombies is a really imaginative game. You would never think that plants were the mortal enemies of zombies, but if this game is anything to go by they are. A simple game with an obscene amount of levels. The trial is worth getting for the skint of us out there. Now does anyone have some spare MS points so I can buy the full game?

Garv

Personally, I fall into the former category. Although I’ve not been playing Street Fighter as long as some fans, it’s been a good decade and I never really did sit with the idea of characters such as Sean, Elena, Necro and Oro taking the place of the established cast from all of the other titles – they just didn’t feel like real Street Fighter characters to me. However, the game did spawn some characters that are more familiar to me in later titles, such as Ibuki, Dudley and Makoto (added to Super Street Fighter IV) as well as Alex, Yun and Yang (seen in various Capcom vs. titles). While I’d be unhappy if Street Fighter III had set the new roster for the future of Street Fighter titles, it’s still an interesting title with a good engine and some interesting new characters – so I wouldn’t wish to deny it’s existence as a standalone title.

Recently, amongst the news of new titles such as Street Fighter X Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom 3, there has been a brief confirmation that we haven’t seen the last of Street Fighter III. At Comic-Con 2010, after discussion of Super Street Fighter IV, Yoshinori Ono revealed that Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition is being produced.

“We have not forgotten about SF 3. In fact, from it. We’ve just started producing to bring this back to you. Street Fighter 3, Third Strike, Online Edition. Because you saved my job, the least I could do is bring Street Fighter 3 back to you.

Now that I have announced it, the company can’t stop us, so we’re going to take our time to bring this out. It’s not going to come out in the immediate future, but just let everyone know that Street Fighter 3 is coming back”

Sounds like we won’t be seeing it in the next few months – but it’s good to know that it’s in the works. It’s too early to know if the game will be a simple port with a few updates, or a complete graphical rehaul in the vein of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix. Either way, it looks as though current-gen console owners will be able to get their hands on a copy of the title sometime in the future.

So what’s different about 3rd Strike to the rest of the SF series? Well – aside from the roster and stages, the game incorporates a parry system that allows people to block attacks with no damage – by precisely times taps of the down or forward direction, allowing for counters. The game also includes high jumps, dashing, and Super Arts, all of which were new to the series at the time – giving a lot more ability to move around the screen, and finish opponents with devestating attacks. The game also has bonus rounds, recently revived in Super Street Fighter IV. Oh – and SFIV Seth haters? Be warned, final boss Gill is also a very tough opponent to defeat.

It’s certainly nothing we haven’t seen before – but it’s an often missed chunk of Street Fighter history – and is more than likely the Street Fighter title most likely to have characters and features you’ve not seen elsewhere in the series. I’m definitely looking forward to it.

On a side note – it seems that we may also be seeing a new Darkstalkers game at some point, with Yoshinori Ono rallying fans for support at Comic-Con. There’s no official word on such a title – but we can only hope the concept will turn into reality sooner or later – it’s about time we saw a full-blown Darkstalkers title released in Europe – and with Morrigan and Felicia appearing in Marvel vs Capcom 3, perhaps now would be a good time for Capcom to seriously consider it.

You can read Mike Nelson’s full coverage of Capcom’s Street Fighter IV panel at Comic-Con 2010, here.

-Leon

When the news came to my ears that a brand new 2D Castlevania for an actual home console was on the way, my heart leapt – aside from a couple of ports and remakes of classic titles it’s been two years since the somewhat disappointing Order of Ecclesia on the DS, and a whopping thirteen years since the last release of a non-remake 2D ‘vania on a home console – Symphony of the Night. While the GBA and DS titles were generally amazing on the whole, I’ve long since hoped for a full-blown 2D title to grace this generation of home consoles, with HD graphics and brilliant 2D gameplay in a metroidvania style.

However, I was disappointed to hear that Harmony of Despair would not be the title I’ve long since dreamed of – rather a co-op based title allowing for 1-6 players in a more arcade style experience. As a Castlevania enthusiast, I wouldn’t let my disappointment stop me from buying the new title – my ‘vania collection is amongst my largest, and I was still intrigued to see what exactly the game would be like. Alongside my fellow ‘vania fan Ray, we got ready to team up for the first time in the series’ history and take down the vampiric castle for oh, the 15th time or something.

Harmony of Despair plays somewhat inbetween the styles of the older ‘vania titles. While level-based - more in the vein of the early titles – each stage acts as a sort of mini-free roaming castle more in the style of Symphony of the Night and it’s predecessors. However, unlike normal Castlevania titles where each room is loaded separately, you can instead see the entire castle loaded on-screen at once. Although I was unsure at first, this style works well as you can zoom in for a more normal view (with no loading at all between the seamless rooms), while being able to zoom out to various magnifications, as far as showing the entire castle on-screen at once. Although this has never been done before, you can quickly see why it’s been done – with up to six players moving freely around the castle at once, it allows you to keep track of the others’ movements more easily, whilst also keeping an eye on the location of the mission’s boss – and there’s even a few extra little features, such as portraits that teleport you to other areas of the castle, and special boss attacks that can span huge areas, as far as attacking you on your way to the boss itself.

The way HoD plays is quite simple – all of the players are placed in the castle (sometimes at the same point, others at different areas of the map), and are charged with taking down that level’s boss together to complete the stage. However, getting to the boss can prove to take a little work, as you often need to activate various switches and such to open up new routes for yourself and your comrades. While it’s possible to beat the stages solo, sadly it feels as though you miss out on things due to a fair amount of co-op style puzzles such as “person A stands on switch while person B walks through gate”, so it doesn’t really have that feel of a single player game even if you wish to play it that way. On the plus side, however, it does feel as though Konami have done a good job at making Castlevania co-operative, with players able to roam at their leisure, together or apart.

Since the game encourages multiplayer, it introduces perhaps the most exciting part of the title – the option to choose between five different characters from the Castlevania series. In order of the menu, the protagonists are: The soul collecting Soma Cruz from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, the good vampire Alucard best known from Symphony of the Night, the young vampire-killer wielding Jonathan Morris from Portrait of Ruin, the beautiful glyph-bearing Shanoa from Order of Ecclesia, and magic-toting partner to Jonathan - Charlotte Aulin, also from Portrait of Ruin. There’s a decent mix of characters in there, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a single Belmont character in the line-up to represent Castlevania’s pre-Symphony characters. However, there’s a possibility of extra characters as DLC, and the selection that’s available is still pretty good.

One of my biggest concerns with the multi-character idea with HoD was that since each of the characters had different ability styles and methods of playing, and that Konami would spoil their unique styles by giving them all dumbed down move-sets and ignoring their previous styles. However, I’m pleased to say that the game actually manages to retain their unique aspects rather well. While all characters access their equips from the same menu system, consisting of Offensive Gear, Defensive Gear, and (in the case of Jonathan) Martial Arts, all of their abilities have been mapped into this new menu system to work in the same way as always. For instance, Alucard’s weapons are equipped in the Offensive Gear menu, whilst Shanoa uses the same option to equip her weapon runes. Soma still has access to his three types of souls, such as the blue souls which are assigned to the RB button, and Yellow souls are equipped as a passive equip. Likewise, Alucard’s transformation abilities are instead mapped to the RB button, while Jonathan uses that button to access his unique Martial Arts skills. Perhaps most importantly, every character can equip four offensive abilities, mapped to B, B+Up, B+Forward, and B+Down. These abilities take the form of sub weapons, bullet souls and Alucard’s magic while allowing you to equip four at once – while most of the original titles allowed for only one to be mapped at a time. Not only are the various abilities assigned in their unique ways, but the ways they are obtained are also keeping close to the original format – Shanoa still gains glyphs by absorbing magic spells by holding the Up direction, and whenever an enemy is defeated it has a chance of releasing a captive soul for Soma to collect. It’s pretty cool, too – since Soma can also collect the souls of enemies his allies kill!

While I do think the characters are done well, sadly one of my other worries did come to realisation – the lack of a decent plot. Due to the game’s somewhat arcade feel, the mish-mash of characters and the possibility of six player co-operative mode, the game doesn’t really bother with much of a story. The general idea is something to do with a magical book that creates different incarnations of Castlevania each with its own master – nothing exactly riveting. While Castlevania isn’t the most plot-heavy series in the world, games such as Dawn of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night (from which the characters originated) had some good dialogue at times that gave the characters some good personality, and even a few decent plot twists here and there. It’s a shame, but it’s just a different style of game, really.

As the title scraps the more modern EXP system from recent Castlevanias, there are only a couple of ways to increase your stats – one being the various weapon and item equips, which can be found in various chests around the stages, or bought with gold obtained in the same way, or by selling said objects. The other way is by powering up your various sub-weapons, through usage or collecting multiple of said ability to power it up, your base stats growing as your powers do. The various chests, along with the switch puzzle elements to the stage, make up the core exploratory stages of the castle, each Castle loosely based on a certain theme. In terms of graphics and enemies, there’s little new content – most of the castles and enemies recycled from various other Castlevanias. Although this does work in some areas – I particularly love the “Gallery” style stage based on Portrait of Ruin, some of the areas feel a little thrown together and don’t quite have the atmosphere seen in previous titles and feel a little mashed together. The game’s music is nice, with a very Castlevania “rock-orchestral” feel, with each stage having one or two tracks that plays throughout that level.

Overall, I’d say Harmony of Despair is a must-buy for Castlevania fans, but I’m not sure about new players to the series. While the game certainly has a very nostalgic feel, and it’s quite fun playing as the various characters, I can’t help feeling that I wouldn’t find the game quite as enjoyable if I didn’t already know all of the cast, enemies and Castlevania references littered about. Plus – if you’re not a fan of the series, I definitely wouldn’t reccommend going solo, as the game is quite tough, especially if you don’t already know what to expect from some bosses. If you’ve never played Castlevania, I highly recommend downloading Symphony of the Night instead, or even picking up Aria of Sorrow or Portrait of Ruin on the GBA/DS respectively – where the characters and gameplay are shown to their real potential. Still, I was pleasantly surprised, finding the game quite enjoyable as an opportunity to co-op with fellow Castlevania fans, playing as some of my favourite characters, it’s just not the real 2D Castlevania I’m still hoping for.

Leon

Back on the Sega Mega-Drive, one of my favorite games I would play constantly was Streets Of Rage 2. For some reason 1 and 3 didn’t compare to the second outing of thug bashing. Plus there was a kid on roller blades who I thought was awesome. So I started off playing beat ‘em ups, a side from the classic FPS games which I don’t really need to mention  now.

When I finally got to play Castle Crashers on XBL I loved it, but for the life of me couldn’t complete the damn thing on my own. It was a perfect mix of old school beat ‘em up, plus some awesome medieval and quite comical graphics and theme, it was truly a game that brought back some fond memories.

Since then I have been thinking, what would be the perfect game to combine Castle Crashers and Streets Of Rage 2? Well put simply, there wasn’t one out on the market…Untill now.

I have been following Scott Pilgrim Vs The World intently. I have all the comic bar Volume 6 (just finished volume 5 see) I am pretty much booking the evening off for the day the film comes out, and to be honest I just think the whole concept of Scott Pilgrim is just beyond awesome. You may remember the post I did about the whole Scott Pilgrim universe a couple of weeks ago, but if you don’t the basic story is that Scott has fallen head over heals with a girl named Ramona Flowers and in order to date her he has to defeat her seven evil Ex-es, throw in a tone of video game references and you have a pretty awesome story. In the last post I only showed you a video of what the game has to offer, but now I can give you an insight into the game and what the Downloadable has in store for noobs and Pilgrim fanatics a like.

Character select, Mario style - Taken from IGN.com

From the get go you get to choose from 4 different characters. Scott Pilgrim himself, Ramona Flowers Scott’s love interest, Stephen Stills who is Scott’s friend and lead singer of his band Sex Bob-bomb and Kim Pine who is the band’s drummer. All of these characters have their own set of unlockable moves (which are unlocked as you level up though the game, much like Castle Crashers) and unique special attacks, they also have the ability to call in for a striker to help them for a momentary time. It is all what we are pretty much used to when it comes to a 2D side scrolling beat ‘em up. But there are a couple of nice little touches that keep the game fresh. For instance you can use sub-space if you so wish. On your travels if you find a door marked Sub-space you can use it to take a short cut through that level, this is completely in optional, in subspace you will find a number of mini games, one of which is a mini game where you have to destroy flying piggy banks to collect their coins.

Well that's sub space for ya - Taken From IGN.com

As with all old school beat ‘em ups, it’s not all about punching and kicking. Scott Pilgrim is no different, you do have some weapons at your disposal you can pick up bats, recycling bins, and even snowballs which does always add a nice element of carnage in there, but the really cool thing is you can pick up your team mates and do a team up attack also, nice touch.

Well that’s a little bit more info on the up coming game, I personally can’t wait for this title. Oh, but one bit of good news is that the Xbox 360 version of the game has been confirmed, so I am breathing a sigh of relief at least.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World hits PlayStation network on August 10th and Xbox LIVE Arcade on August 25th. Pre-order you PSN version and get an awesome Sex Bob-bom T-shirt for your PlayStation home avatar.

I hope they do one for XBox LIVE avatars…..

Garv.

Leon: Thank you for taking the time to answer questions with Plus XP, Nick. After seeing the recent news on Perfect Dark on Xbox Live Arcade, we’re excited to know more. So, on with the interview!

The game has been given a fairly big overhaul, looking a lot cleaner than the original. Have there been any modifications to the game’s engine at all, or is it mostly aesthetic changes?

Nick: The original Perfect Dark codebase has been ported over to the Xbox 360, which means that the game benefits from higher resolution textures, geometry and performance whilst retaining the original game’s unique look and feel. Under the hood there have been a lot of changes to the game engine to keep it looking and feeling like Perfect Dark on N64, and the overall effect has been to improve the aesthetic experience to something that looks fantastic in 1080p HD.

Leon: The original Perfect Dark featured bots that would allow players to play deathmatch modes with AI characters to make up numbers and allow solo play on the multiplayer modes – a good feature that is sadly rare nowadays. Will we be seeing a return of this feature in the XBLA version?

Nick: Yes, I am pleased to confirm that the simulants will return in all their glory. Multiplayer games are still capped at 12 entities, but this can now comprise eight human players and four simulants (the original game was capped at four human players and eight simulants). Of course, if you want to play as a single human against 11 DarkSims, be our guest!

Leon: Great to hear that!  Will this option be available in the online mode, or local only?

Nick: Online

Leon: With an improved multiplayer engine compatible with online play, I assume this will be a bigger focus than in the original version. Will there be any new features we can look forward to?

Nick: In the original N64 game, the classic weapons (based on GoldenEye guns) could only be used in single player. We’ve brought them into multiplayer as a series of Classic weapon sets, so players can now use the GoldenEye weapons on GoldenEye levels for the first time since, er, GoldenEye.
 
It’s no good supporting LIVE if you can’t find someone to play against, so the game supports a variety of matchmaking scenarios across both Solo and Team modes. In addition, Private Custom Games are supported so you can set up that painfully obscure game scenario you used to play with your friends all those years ago.
 
Aside from the boost to eight players, the game engine now runs at a solid 60 frames per second at 1080p. This makes a big difference, particularly in four-player split-screen where players can now have more resolution in their split-screen game window than they did in the original N64 single player game!

Leon: It has been said that there is to be new support for online co-op and counter operative modes. Can you tell us anything more about this addition?

Nick: The game supports two players over Xbox LIVE, in addition to the classic split-screen experience. Players will be able to search for games on any mission, and we hope it opens up the excellent Co-Op and Counter-Ops modes to many more players.

Leon: I’ve heard that maps from GoldenEye will be included in the game’s multiplayer modes – is this perhaps a sign that we won’t be seeing a similar port of the popular Bond FPS in the near future?

Nick: The Felicity, Temple and Complex maps which were included in the original N64 Perfect Dark are available in the XBLA version. No other maps from GoldenEye have been added to the game, and we have nothing to announce regarding DLC at this time.

Leon: Xbox Live gives us a lot of options for competing aside from online play – are we likely to see any leaderboards or similar features included?

Nick: Yes, the game has full support for Leaderboards on every mission from Agent to Perfect Agent. In addition, there is an Overall Leaderboard based on Percentage Completion. We also have 20 Achievements, which is a first for an XBLA title.

Leon: Another modern feature is the option for DLC to be added to games. Do you know whether it’s likely there will be any additional content available for download at a later date?

Nick: 4J have only just begun to recover from finishing the game, and you’re already asking for DLC? Well, that’s a good sign… but the honest answer is that we are going to wait and see how Perfect Dark performs on Xbox LIVE Marketplace before making any decisions. We should probably wait until at least one person gets 201% complete before making a decision.

Leon: Do we have an official release date for the UK? I need to set a date for my calendar!

Nick: Perfect Dark launches in the UK on 17th March 2010 – the same day as the USA. That’s right… no need to import the NTSC version this time around!

Leon: Excellent! Do you have anything else you would like to let us know?

Nick: Everyone involved has been working extremely, EXTREMELY hard to get Perfect Dark for Xbox LIVE Arcade finished and we really hope you enjoy the final result.
 
We know Perfect Dark fans were told the game was coming “this winter” back at E3 in 2009 and didn’t get much more information than that until X10 a few weeks ago. We managed to get some screenshots out in the interim, but for the most part everyone involved has been heads-down for the last six months getting the game done.
 
We appreciate that people wanted to know more about release dates and the like but (contrary to popular belief on t’internet) the game was only finished recently and we didn’t want to pluck a date out of thin air and then miss it.
 
My point being: Sorry for the wait, PD fans – we honestly didn’t have an official date till a few weeks ago!

Leon: Thank you again for your time, Nick. It was a pleasure hearing from you.

So there you have it – it sounds like all good news, with plenty to look forward to. Make a note in your calendars – 17th of March will see the UK release of Perfect Dark on Xbox Live Arcade – definitely something worth getting excited about.

-Leon

Now, as much as I enjoyed GoldenEye, there was one game that I enjoyed so much more – Perfect Dark. Sporting perhaps one of the coolest heroines I’d seen since Lara, Joanna Dark, the title blew me away and had me hooked for a long time.

Created by Rare, the same company that brought GoldenEye to the N64, Perfect Dark featured a large focus on solo gameplay – something that’s always suited me. Sure, I love a bit of multiplayer, but in the end a game’s gotta be able to keep me entertained all by itself. With seventeen missions, the game featured lush visuals for its time, with a good range of weapons and some interesting gadgets, akin to a certain Mr Bond. While these missions were good in themselves, the game featured something quite unique – and surprisingly something that’s rarely been done since – multiplayer bots. In this way, the game allowed you to do standard deathmatches with only one player, or allow co-op play against a team of AI opponents. To be honest I was fairly young (about 13), so I can’t vouch for the AI completely, but I remember it being fun and never had a problem with it so I can only assume it was more or less done rather well.

One of the game’s best features was its weaponry. As well as having a large quantity, the game introduced the concept of secondary functions – almost every gun featured a second firing mode, which meant for double the fun, and some interesting abilities. Specific ones I have in mind are the Laptop Gun - which had a decent machine gun mode, doubling up as a portable turret - and the strongest gun in the game was able to activate infra-red vision, and could shoot through walls at a long distance. Insane. On top of that, a firing range accessible to Joanna in her headquarters allowed the player to unlock special versions of all of the weapons – renamed copies of weapons taken from the older GoldenEye title – a fun challenge and rewarding.

So naturally, when I heard about the release of Perfect Dark Zero on the Xbox 360, I was excited. However, perhaps the company hadn’t moved with the times, or they simply didn’t put enough care into the title, but for whatever reason it resulted in a semi-decent bargain bin title that was hardly a worthy sequel, even with the younger Joanna sporting an image rehaul.

Now, although I did play the original quite a lot, sadly I never owned a copy of my own, and I have since longed to get my hands on a copy to relive those old days – but alas, so far I have had no joy. Tracking down a decent quality copy, as well as an N64 Expansion Pak, is quite expensive even in today’s gaming market.

However, today I learned this great news – Perfect Dark is set to be released for download on Xbox Live Arcade within a month or so! According to Rare’s twitter, the title will be seeing a release in Q1, most likely February. There’s been no mention of a PS3 release, so we can assume it won’t be going multiplatform.

The port will include retouched visuals (i.e. slightly better textures and less pointy bits), and full multiplayer support both offline and online. If you’ve played the original, rejoice – and if you haven’t, it might very well be worth a shot, assuming it hasn’t dated too badly. I for one look forward to it eagerly, and will be downloading it upon release.

Let’s just hope they don’t remove the multiplayer bots, I’d love to see more of that in FPS games nowadays.

-Leon

Well to be honest with you I haven’t updated the past couple of days and I gave both trial versions of this game a run through last night. So what the hey here it goes!

Dishwasher Dead Samurai:

As much as i love te genre, wen it comes to hack ad slash games of any kind i always approach them with caution. I think somewhere in the back of my mind sub consciously i think that mashing a lot of buttons to kill enemies doesn’t sound like fun. But as i say sub consciously :p

When first playing the dishwasher trial What really grabbed my attention was the seedy Gothic ad very dark nature of the game. Its aura gave me chills from the start menu so i had high hopes for it right from the word go.

After a short comic strip cut scene (which was pretty cool added to the feel very well with its graphics novel esque storyline) I was straight into the action. You play as the dishwasher. A guy who finds himself in an empty back room of a kitchen with 2 meat levers in his hands. You are being hunted down and you don’t know why.

When I killed my first enemy my mind almost immediately thought Castle crashers! But after playing it a little more I soon found out that it was its own game. The feel of it, the combat had its own feel and the game just felt better, the combos are easy to string and the challenge is defiantly there.

You have strong attack, light attacks messy finishers and normal fishers, you have the ability to run up walls, combo in mid air and just unleash evil hell on your enemies.

I only played the first level (which is standard for Xbox live arcade demos) but to m this game has a lot of potential, it has co op mode and arcade mode which i am yet to explore. For 800 MSP i think its time for m to dig deep into my pockets and scrounge up some cash.

Flock!

Ok so what would you say if i said a game where your an alien spaceship that has to abduct farm animals? Sounds pretty hilarious and a little weird. But does it make a good game concept?

Having played the demo i am going to say Yes, yes it does! The idea behind flock is tat you have to guide animals through maze type levels using a flying saucer, with tractor beams, and compression beams (there could be more i am sure) you then have to fill up your quota of animals an the faster you do it the better your rewards.

Ever heard of  the saying simple is effective? Well it sure as hell works here. But don’t get me wrong the game has had a lot of thought put into it. Each animal you round up is unique in same way. E.g. if you round up cows and keep pushing them, they will eventually stampede, Pigs roll easily and are attracted to mud piles and sheep shrink in water. With all these ability’s and quirky stats it defiantly gives this game a good sense of humour as well as a great element of challenge.

But that’s not all, in some levels there are crop circles you can make, make the right crop circle and you will get a point bonus, but be careful, everything costs time, and the faster you do the levels the better!

The graphical look o this game is very pleasing to the eye and i believe this is what makes up most of the games 1200 MSP price tag. A little steep in my mind but as i haven’t played the whole game im not sure if its worth it or not.

Capcom again have come up with a good game which will definitely kill a few hours.

Well that’s if for my 2 xbla demo reviews. Its times like this when i need more money

Garv!

Upon booting the trial, there was an impressive title screen - an impressive flame covered city in a very artistic oil painting style - quickly realising that upon moving the analogue stick a small shadowy figure at the bottom of the screen began to move. So, I excitedly ran away from the flames, and a little stumpy red haired man emerged from the shadows. He didn’t give me much of an impression, but I moved on anyway. A little way along the screen scrolled across to the interior of a house. Seeing the doors made it clear that this was some kind of ‘hub’ for a set of levels. OK, I think. On with the first level.

So, I enter the first door to find myself in a room of clouds with five or six books. As I walk in front of them, text appears on the screen – a well written story, albeit vague, about this guy ‘Tim’ and a princess. Evidently he loves her but theyre not entirely happy. So, I enter the first door – not even noticing that this is infact World 2 (skipping world 1?) - and find myself in a very green world, reminiscent of any platformer’s first level. The art was definitely well made, but I wasnt sure about the gameplay. I make my way across the level, climbing some fences and doing a couple of jumps, and discovering I can rewind time by holding X. Kind of neat, but nothing new – after all, Prince of Persia did this on a much larger scale, in a 3d environment with complicated animations. As I walk along, I find myself facing an entirely unscary little hedgehog thing which dies when I jump on its head. Very Mario – but I never saw the real love for Mario as others did. Shortly after, I quit the game pretty underwhelmed and left it alone, going back to playing Street Fighter IV and whatever else I was playing at the time. I’d seen it before – basic platformers getting overrated by people who liked simple games. Fair enough, but not for me. Sure, it had the ability to rewind time but this seemed to be just a gimmick.

How wrong I was.

Weeks later, I see an announcement that Braid had been reduced in price. I was bored, and for some reason I decided to download Braid ( a game I’d already acknowledged as half-baked) over the expansion for Tomb Raider Underworld (a game I had enjoyed). I don’t know why I did what I did, but thats what happened. So, I load the game up once more, and as I run through the first stage once again, wonder what had come over me to pay for it. But I had paid for it, so I was going to bloody well play it.

Now, each world of Braid is separated in the main hub, and each world has a different ‘time-rule’. The first world is very much a ‘this is how to play, look you can rewind’.  As I continue, I find that there are puzzle pieces scattered around, although they don’t seem to be needed to continue. However, being somewhat of a completionist, I try to grab all that I can as I continue. Its all pretty standard, jumping over things, avoiding spikes and using rewind to correct any little jumps I miss-time. In the next room, I find a board that allows me to assemble the puzzle pieces I have found in this world. I connect what I have, wondering what purpose this puzzle serves, and continue. There are a few puzzle pieces that seem to be unreachable (just out of my jumping ability), but I ignore them for now, assuming later on I will be able to get them. At the end of the level,  you find a very Mario-esque ending with a flagpole and a little stuffed dinosaur who tells you the old words: ”I’m sorry but the princess is in another castle.” Upon leaving the level, the next room of the house lights up and the next world is available.

After another room of vague (yet well written) story books, the next world introduces enemies and objects that cant be rewound. For instance you can rewind everything by holding X, but as you do so the ‘hedgehog’ enemies that have a green aura continue to walk, ignoring your unexplained manipulation of time. The same is applied to doors and keys, meaning you can unlock a green-aura door, rewind the whole way and the door is still open. My brains a little more interested, but I still cant decide if I’m actually having fun. I manage to finish the puzzle for this world as well, yet I didnt really find any result from this, other than an achievement. I love my points but a game needs more, I think. The platforming/time manipulating puzzles need to be solved to collect the pieces, but the actual stages can be exited easily, so the challenge is collecting them all.

The third world is where I decided the game was a fairly fun puzzle game. Same storybooks at the start (which now don’t seem to be in any particular chronology, but I take it all with a pinch of salt, thinking maybe it’s just some text they decided to add to make the game seem a little more fleshed out). The next world offers an interesting concept – your horizontal position on the level also dictates where in the level’s timeline you are – move left and time reverses, forward and time moves forward, and stop and the world grinds to a halt. This was pretty interesting, the idea of time moving in such a manner made me think, and caused a fair few head scratching moments before solving some of the puzzles.

The next world offers a sort of doppelganger - if you do something and then rewind, your shadow will perform you’re last action you did before rewinding as you are free to do something else. This allows you to almost co-op with yourself, allowing you to flick switches at the same time as standing on the platform it activates. The puzzles continue to bewilder and befuddle, always offering satisfaction when you finally succeed. The last world offers a ring that you can drop, slowing down time in a small radius around it, allowing you to manipulate small pockets of time.

So, at the end of all of these worlds, I felt that the puzzles had been quite fun, and I was determined to collect these last pieces. I had realised by this point that the ladder on the right side of the main building went up to another level, and missing links were being added as the puzzles were finished, so I finally knew what they were for. After hours of confusion, frustration and satisfaction I collect my last puzzle piece. Interested to see what kind of ending the game would have, I climbed the ladder to my fate.

This is it. This is what I had paid for. Suddenly, I find myself in another area with another time rule. I can’t tell you exactly what happens here without spoiling it, but suddenly things begin to fall into place, and as I reach the end I realise what’s happened. The ending confused me a little, but I feel this game is about making you think. There are more cryptic story bits, more strange than ever. When the game finishes, I feel like something special has happened, but I cant quite put my finger on it. Then, after some net research on Braid, and various interpretations, everything fell into place. Every vague bit of story now made perfect sense, I realise things that I never saw before, and I’m almost overwhelmed at the realisation of exactly what Braid is.

Its a game that needs to be played to understand, even then leaving you with questions. Its very much up to the player to interpret. To me, Braid was an experience I won’t forget. It wasn’t so much a game as a tale of morals, perspective, time and causality. To the casual gamer, they could easily miss the hidden meaning of the game altogether, but then they’d probably be quite content with the face value of the game. It’s a game thats much deeper than it appears, and left me with a foreboding shiver after I was done with it.

Score:
Gameplay: 9/10
Length/Replay Value – 7/10
Music - 9/10
Story - 10/10
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Overall -  9/10

Note:  Although the game is short (5-6 hours), I’ve given it a 7/10 in replay value since it has hidden stars that can be collected for an alternate ending, something I have still to do, and new things keep being discovered

-Leon