Often when playing a game you’ll find that you’ve played something in a similar vein – while the actual engine, plot and characters may change the general ideas are the same – be it a hack n slash, a racing game or a shooter. However, once in a while a developer – in this case 505 Games – tries to create something unique that hasn’t been done so many times before. Obviously this can be a risk – as you can’t guarantee what people will think. Taking such a chance, 505 Games brings us a new experience, in the form of Naughty Bear.

Naughty Bear takes place on ‘Perfection Island’, an isle populated by cute and colourful ‘Care Bear’-like teddy bears who live in peace enjoying cakes, dancing and other innocent activities. However, one bear is an exception – the game’s anti-hero who is disliked by all the other bears for being so naughty. Rejected by the others, Naughty takes it upon himself to exact his revenge by exterminating the cute bears with various methods of bludgeoning, maiming and scaring them to death. Somewhat in the vein of The Simpsons’ Itchy and Scratchy and South Park, Naughty Bear takes a seemingly innocent scenario and riddles it with psychopathic adult humour.

The style of the game is quite interesting, initially giving the feel of a children’s show as the convincing Narrator talks to naughty in a cheerfully patronising tone. The narrator is actually one of my favourite aspects of the game – while cheesy, it’s quite funny listening to a convincing children’s narrator talking naughty into exacting revenge, and shouting “CARnage!” gleefully as Naughty proceeds to smash a bear’s head in with a car door.

The gameplay of Naughty Bear involves a seven different stages, each containing a set of levels set in the same area with different objectives. Each stage has one bear in particular that must be targeted, such as stage one – ‘The Party’ – where Naughty must hunt down the birthday bear Daddles, who didn’t invite him to his party. Although the game gives the impression that it’s focused on killing innocent bears, I actually found myself sympathising with Naughty a little – the other bears seemed quite irritating and smug as they rejected him from their group. But perhaps that just helps you get into Naughty’s mindset.

Each level involves progressing through a few areas, meeting certain objectives in order to move to the next area until you ultimately reach the last area where the target bear resides. The normal levels require you to build up a certain amount of points to progress, by performing naughty actions such as killing bears, smashing things or destroying optional items such as Daddles’ birthday presents on the first stage. Once you have accumulated enough points you can move to the next area, rinse and repeat. Every time you complete a stage you are rewarded either a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum cup, and following stages are unlocked by winning a set amount of a certain kind of cup.

It’s generally up to you how you wish to progress through  the main stages – whether you want to be sneaky or simply go around beating up any bears you see. However, they’re not entirely defenceless – once aware of Naughty’s presence they will do what they can to deal with him, whether it’s avoiding him, calling for help, or fighting back. While some bears are cowardly, others will arm themselves with weapons of their own and will attack. While it’s possible to simply attack all the bears head on (to begin with, anyway), more points are awarded for being clever and more tactical.

Naughty has a few different abilities available to progress through the game. While general objects such as doors and windows can be passed through by a button press, many objects and appliances can be interacted with in one of two ways – they can either be destroyed, or sabotaged. Destroying objects gives you points – and with some vehicles, prevents bears from using said boat or car to escape the island when they get scared. However, for more tactical purposes you can sabotage them instead. Doing so will then give you more opportunities for special “ultra-kills” or “ultra-scares”, while bears are distracted trying to use or repair said objects. There are also other items littered around the areas, such as traps that can be set (bear-traps and mines), cake which gives you health, and ice capsules that freeze your multiplier for a while. The multiplier is a key factor for getting those high scores – chaining naughty actions can knock it from a 1x, to a 5x, all the way up to the maximum of a 100x multiplier for huge points. However, failure to be destructive or kill a bear will result in the meter slowly dropping back down.

This brings me to the main focus of the game – taking down your ‘fellow’ bears. Now, it’s possible to simply beat them until they die, using knives, bats, swords and even guns, but the better way to do it is with stealth. Once a bear is vulnerable – fixing a sabotaged object, stuck in a bear-trap, sitting in a vehicle, or attempting to use the payphone to call for back-up, the game will notify you of their action with a pop-up camera box. Then you need to act fast – once you get close enough you can press R2 (or RT) in order to do a contextual kill. These can be quite hilarious, watching a Naughty beat a bear to death with a phone before punching it down the poor creature’s throat, or grinding their face into fluff on a disco turntable. Similarly, when a bear is wounded from a beating, you can finish them with a special kill in the same way, the animation varying dependant on the weapon you have equipped.

However, to score even more points it’s possible to drive bears insane. Rather than beating them, it’s possible to ‘Boo’ at the other bears, in order make Naughty roar in their faces to knock them into a state of fear. Once scared enough, the bear will run around in a state of hysteria, now vulnerable to ultra-kills, and even better – the ultra scare. The scare itself isn’t that impressive, basically just Naughty grabbing them and roaring in their face, but this then triggers the bear to commit suicide. Just as funny as the other contextual kills, the bears will kill themselves with whatever weapon they have equipped – committing seppuku with a blade, or shooting themselves in the head with their gun. This is the highest scoring way to kill a bear – and can also cause chains of hysteria as bears will get more scared as they see deaths and other scary scenes – allowing you to scare the newly insane bears into a chain of suicides. Nice.

And that’s the basis of the game. The levels get tougher as the story progresses, adding in new threats such as Ninja bodyguards equipped with katanas, and gun-wielding army bears who can cause very fast death if you get seen. However, clearing some stages with certain cups will unlock new costumes for Naughty, granting him new abilities and statistics. All suits have a rating of strength, speed, health and accuracy, obviously with some of the better costumes harder to unlock. Aside from making Naughty look quite funny at times – such as the police costume which comes fully equipped with a flashing helmet – some also come pre-equipped with certain weapons, which serves to save both time and effort, and some disguise Naughty so that he is able to walk among the bears without alerting suspicion on sight.

As I said, each stage has various levels within it (i.e. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3), each of which gives a new challenge within the level with special requirements. These different modes consist of challenges such as murdering them all, avoiding taking any damage, beating the stage under time constraints, or only being able to attack with contextual kills. Usually breaking the rules of the stage will result in failure, so these stages often offer more challenge than the regular levels – and it helps to mix up the gameplay and helps you develop other ways to play.

The game has some interesting ideas, but I can’t really decide how to feel about it. Although the style of the game has been pulled off quite well, the style itself feels a little disjointed and I’m unsure what audience the title is aimed at exactly. While the cutesy simplicity of the teddy-bear theme feels as though I’m perhaps a little old for the game, the game is obviously not for children with its very violent actions. I did find the game funny for a little while, but I don’t find myself drawn to playing it. Although I did enjoy the narration and had some simple fun with the game, I’d say if idea of murdering teddy-bears doesn’t initially appeal to you, the game probably won’t be giving you any unexpected joy.

Naughty Bear is an interesting new concept, but feels a little repetitive and simple – I think in most cases the game is a little immature for adults, but a little too mature for children. There’s some easy fun here if you’re looking for something to mess around with to kill some time, but I wouldn’t expect anything too deep.

-Leon

Naughty Bear supplied for review by 505 Games.

Out now on PlayStation3 and Xbox 360

It was a fair while ago when MGS: Rising was announced, with the news that it would be the first Metal Gear Solid title to go multi-platform – perhaps due to the amount of Xbox 360 owners who hoped Metal Gear Solid 4 would eventually be ported. However, the announcement didn’t really tell us much at all – just an image of MGS4’s version of Raiden with the words “Lightning Bolt Action”. It was said the game would be more hack n’ slash based, but to be honest all we could do was wait.

However, E3 has finally given us some real news on the subject. Kojima came on stage to proudly present “The Next MGS”. Keeping with what little word we already had on the game, it looks like the title will indeed have more some of the most impressive melee combat seen so far – and we got a small glimpse into what we can expect. Starting with a more CG looking video, we first see Raiden taking on some kind of armoured soldier – possibly not human but more than likely some kind of cyber-human hybrid, not unlike the B&B Corps from MGS4. We then proceed to watch as Raiden cuts him in half, and pulls out some kind of synthetic spinal cord. He then crushes it in his hand, apparently draining it of power. What does this mean? Well, apparently but the term “zan-datsu” meaning “cut and take“ has been emphasised, and it seems part of the game will revolve around collecting life, energy, parts, ammunition, items, and even information in a similar manner – most of which have obvious uses, but one or two being more intriguing. The one that catches my eye is “parts”, perhaps suggesting some kind of customisation may be apparent in the game. Information may be more for the sake of story progression, perhaps finding out passcodes or other data – but that’s merely me thinking aloud for now.

After cinematic introduction, we see a bit more in depth gameplay. The area featured shows a city-like area, reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 4’s earlier chapters. Thankfully, it’s looking as though the same level of quality has gone into the detail, so we could be looking at something quite impressive. As a fan of both MGS and hack n’ slash titles, the game play looks pretty exciting. Wielding his high-frequency blade, Raiden can be seen executing quick combos. But better yet, we see a lot of potential for exactly what the blade will be able to do. This is only a sneak-peek, but it seems the environment will be destructible, showing him cutting pillars clean in two, resulting in a collapsing structure that crushes some enemies.

The main focus, however, is the new cutting ability. Using a sort of bullet-time slow motion feature, the video shows us that Raiden has the ability to take his time with precise slices, giving the player control over a geometrical plane that shows the exact angle of the cut, and allowing them to execute slashes with extreme precision – cutting limbs of of enemies in mid air, and even slicing a melon into increasingly smaller pieces. It really looks very precise, and I’m not sure we’ve seen swordplay quite this controlled in a game before. And being part of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, I expect we’ll be something of high quality.

That’s all the video shows, but we do know more than that. One of my major concerns is that the title would lose one of MGS’s best features – stealth gameplay. However, it seems that the game will allow a degree of flexibility over how you play it, still retaining stealth elements – so I can see some exciting ninja-style infiltration in the works. Raiden’s upgraded frame will apparently give him boosted agility so we could even see some new stealth techniques we have yet to have seen in the series so far. He will apparently have access to “sub-weapons”, so I’m sure that there will be more aspects to combat than we know so far. We have no idea whether he will get any type of projectile weapon, however – so we’ll have to wait and see if it’s all going to be up-close and personal, or perhaps have some more “Snake-like” elements. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some hand-to-hand combat in there too, which doesn’t sound too far of a stretch.

As far as plot is concerned – little is known at the moment except that it is set before MGS4, with Raiden looking a little more dishevelled than we saw him before – the game should show a bit of his transformation, and hopefully cover some parts of his involvement before Guns of the Patriots. Although I would like to see the game heavily-story based (although not as much as that of MGS4) I have a feeling that the plot will be one that works on it’s own to a fair degree – what with the new Xbox 360 market that can’t guarantee players will have had access to the fourth instalment. MGs2 was released on the original Xbox, however – so hopefully it will have a few connections here and there as to his involvement in the general time line of the series.

There’s no solid information on exactly what we can expect from this new and exciting title, but everything we do know sounds as though it’s going to be something special. The swordplay looks as though it will be quite unique, and as long as the game continues to keep feeling like a Metal Gear Solid title in spirit, perhaps the Raiden-haters from the days of MGS2 will finally enjoy playing as him. I for one am excited – lets just hope Kojima Productions get the ratio of stealth, action and storyline just right.

Check out the E3 trailer below.

-Leon

Then if you look at the posts I had been doing months after that announcement. I said that Milo would in fact be pretty much impossible to make, because the world does not have the technology to make fully function organic Artificial Intelligence. If we did I would probably be sitting here right now next to my new Robot best friend drinking beer and planning to kill all humans. The fact of the matter is, how the hell could you make something so intelligent that it recognises every dialect of english and every accent english is spoken in. Plus how could you make something that would recognise every single human emotion, be it big or subtle. In this dayun age it’s quite frankly not possible. Or it’s just the fact MI5 have not told us yet and there is an underground base somewhere with Robots serving special agents tea.

Where am I going with all this blabber? Well I thought it was a bit weird that Microsoft in all their Kinect glory over this years Electronic Entertainments Expo, didn’t in fact show, mention or give us a glimpse of Milo. They didn’t even say, hey guys remember Milo from last year? Wasn’t he swell!

This all got me thinking. Was I right? Was it all just some flashy hoax with a woman in front of a widescreen telly carefully timing what she said to a video of a Computer Generated Small boy on a TV screen? Well yes and no. Yes because she was probably timing everything perfectly, and No because according to Microsoft and Lion head, this thing is still in development.

Now that's expert timing!

But here is the catch, After reading a little bit here and there across the internets. I actually found out from Kotaku.com. That Milo isn’t planned to head to retail. That yes, it is still in development but we are not planning to bring it to market.

Basically Lionheads big plan now is to perfect the “Milo Technology” and bring it to future game releases. So they want to integrate full on character interaction into games now? As opposed to having a single game where the aim is to sit down and interact with your new imaginary friend.

I have no idea why but this is again triggering off alarm bells in my head. But it might be something to do with the fact that this is stepping on stupidly dangerous territory. Take this from an RPG perspective, if Lionhead wanted to integrate it into say, Fable IV and have you as a character come up to someone in the street and fully interact with them, Not only would that take possibly five million more hours of game play just to get round one town and do the first quest. But you would be taking peoples lives away. Us humans have an addictive personality. I only say this because I once heard about a guy who has about 36 world of war craft accounts so he can go on quests by himself with a party of all of his characters, I could even go into the controversy that is Second Life and tell you about how that has swallowed about half of humanity and left a good portion of the human race dribbling and gawking into their PC screens as the virtual version of them selves gets all the handsome people and swims in a bath of money. But that would take at least a Novel and a Half to write, and I got to go to work in about half hour.

This Is How 1 Guy Plays 36 WoW Accounts....*Facepalm*

So to some up all this blabber I have been typing. It turns out that our old friend Milo will never be born and be brought to retail, He was just a tech demo at E3 last year and that’s how he is staying. Lionheads plan now is to integrate all this new “Milo Technology” into other games, and basically take over all the lives of us gamers out there. Take it from me, this idea is probably going to get too big for its boots.

Garv

Usually every year I am excited about the Microsoft E3 Press conference. Nothing puts a smile on my face more than the thought of some big game announcements and previews for my beloved console. But to hear that most of the conference was about Kinect and how much this thing is about as revolutionary as the latest Final Fantasy title I feel a little disappointed and underwhelmed.

To be honest I am pretty much done with speaking about Kinect. So if your interested at all at what Kinect does or whatever. Check out my previous post devoted to the thing. It will tell you what its all about and the games coming out for it.

The conference opened with a demo for Call Of Duty: Black Ops. To be honest I am not a big war game fan, it is all too real for me. But something about this demo actually got me a little excited. Which is a bit weird really as the Modern War Fare 2 stuff last year didn’t really phase me in the slightest. Thing is I really can’t put my finger on it either. In the demo came in two parts, first part you were taken through some underground tunnels to get behind enemy lines. The feeling of claustrophobia was pretty damn neer perfect as you had no idea if an enemy was coming round the corner or not. The second half of the demo show you hijacking a helicopter and causing all sorts of chaos, blowing up bridges etc. It looked pretty fun, and I would actually like to look more into it. It also turns out that Xbox 360 will be getting all the new COD maps and DLC before anyone. Good old limited console exclusivity…this is for the next three years by the way.

Next up we have Metal Gear Rising. Oh my sweet zombie jesus this game looks somewhat amazing. Not being much of a MGS fan myself but being a huge hack and slash fan, this game looks set to be a revolution in hack and slash games. In the first trailer you saw Raiden hacking everything and anything to bits, be it cars, people, buildings. But that’s not all, there was a clip where Raiden was pretty much dicing up a  in mid-air and you could control each slash Raiden did. This is going to be blood thirsty yet awesome. The trailer finished with the words “What will you cut? It’s all in your hands.” Yes this looks utterly insane and I cannot wait.

Next on the menu is the infamous gears of war 3. Now this is the part of the article where I look at the Gears footage and compare it to Jokesounds review of the future on gaming lives. Was he correct? Lets watch.

They showed off the 4 player co-op campaign mode for a bit. It looked typical gears Of War really, which isn’t a bad thing at all. What I really did like the look of was the Mutated Locust. Now these are some pretty mean SOB’s. You know in Halo 3 where some of the flood Mutate in the later levels. Think that times 20 and your kind of there. There are also some female characters for you to use so that’s always a plus for girl gamers and 12-year-old prepubescent kids. As for jokesounds review of the future. You may have missed the mark a tad, but its a demo at the end of the day so we just don’t know. There is gonna be a new mode called Beast, More on that when I get info.

Next up we Have Fable III with our good friend Peter Molenux, lets see what he has to say. He basically says all the things I know already, 10 decades after fable II, says revolutionary about five times then shows a trailer which looks pretty good. Looks like you will indeed have a dog again, and again you have to save Albion. but to me this time it looks like you can do things like combine magical spells, I saw fire and electricity being thrown at the same time so that looks pretty awesome. Not much else revealed though, watch this space.

A side note here, Crytek have joined forces with Microsoft game studios and are working on a project called “Codename Kingdoms” This is all I know. Moving on.

Halo Reach time, and yes I did nerdgasm a tiny bit. What was shown was a demo the campaign mode of the game. Its darker, more brutal and just generally more awesome than any other Halo title. Its classic Halo mixed with new Halo. The old tuning folk drop ships are back, elites are back and are as bad ass as ever. But what I did love was a glimpse of the space battle at the end of the demo. Yes that’s right people, Halo reach has battles in space where you are controlling a small gun cruiser and shooting up covenant space ships. Oh hell yeah! And that’s all bungie had to show. Bring on September.

Then the rest of the conference was talking about Kinect and the brand new Slime Xbox 360 with 250 gig HDD and hardly any fan noise. That’s cool and all but why do I get the feeling Xbox is trying to look like an old Fat PS3? *facepalm*

That’s all from me on the Microsoft press conference. Tune in for a round up of PS3 and Nintendo press conferences plus whatever else the team finds out about E3 2010.

- Garv

The cowboy game is perhaps one of the more underused concepts, given the popularity of the classic western films that inspired many a mind both young and old – from the legendary Clint Eastwood movies, to Back to the Future III, the idea of horseback gangs and outlaws with pistols has always had a certain appeal – and it’s an idea that you’d think would lend itself to games rather well. Sure, there’s one or two titles out there, but I’d hardly say it was as well covered as the myriad of modern warfare, medieval knights and ninja games out there. Desperados on the PC was fantastic, yet didn’t give you a sense of being a cowboy with it’s RTS style; Darkwatch was, well, a vampire story with cowboy elements here and there – and I struggle to think of another good western game I’ve played.

Rockstar have had huge success over the past years, specifically with the Grand Theft Auto series. Now, although GTA manages to do sandbox games incredibly well, breathing a lot of life into vast environments – games set in modern times aren’t really my style. (Unless they include magic, superpowers or Lara Croft). Why? Perhaps it’s because I live in modern times and have no huge desire to see a virtual version of the world I already live in. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy GTA – only that I always crave something a bit different, but with that amount of quality. So we have an underused genre and a company that couldn’t go wrong by creating something a little different. The result? Red Dead Redemption.

Rockstar’s newest release revolves around a cowboy named John Marston, a man who had previously worked with a band of outlaws, but had since quit – opting for a quiet life with a family of his own. However, when his family are threatened by the government, he is forced to return to the west for the sake of their safety. His mission – to take down the gang that were once his comrades, something John doesn’t object to – having left them on bad terms in the past. To do so, he must forge allegiances with others who can help him track down his ex-partners.

At a basic level, you can tell that Read Dead Redemption (RDR) is a GTA-esque title. The structure of the title has a lot of similarities in terms of controls, HUD and general engine to that of GTAIV. If you’re a GTAIV player, the majority of the controls are the same, with the “enter/exit vehicle” button allowing you to mount horses in similar fashion. The game provides a large map and minimap, various letters denoting the locations of the characters you can meet in order to access the next mission and progress in the storyline. In contrast to GTAIV, RDR features a lot of small settlements scattered over vast landscapes that you must explore.

That’s not to say RDR feels like a repackaged GTA, however – as the game has clearly been built around the western theme. Rather than a load of automatic weapons, the game has a good selection of vintage weapons including revolvers, rifles and shotguns, which all feel good to use. Since the game is more focused on sharpshooting, the game includes the “Dead Eye” system, which allows you to expend some of your Dead Eye meter to slow down time temporarily and allow you to make precise shots. It’s good fun to use, and fits in nicely without feeling overpowered. The horses control well, having a similar style to that of Zelda, where you can speed it up by spurring it on – but you mustn’t overdo it or you’ll end up slowing the horse down – or even get bucked off. The game really does play well, and the “non-GTA” elements have been implemented perfectly. There’s even a lasso to catch horses or tie people up with, helpful if you want to take someone down without killing them.

The really great thing about RDR is that it more or less makes you feel as though you can do anything you would want to in a western game. Missions include shoot-outs on foot or horseback, horseback racing, or helping other characters with various tasks. These generally are the more combat heavy sections, as they often involve fighting other gangs for various reasons, or keeping yourself alive while trying to fulfil certain objectives. The missions have real charm, as Rockstar have managed to keep the game full of colourful (and questionable) characters that all have their own distinct personalities and humour – such as Nigel West Dickens, a “doctor” conning people with dodgy miracle cures, and Seth who seems to enjoy the company of corpses a little too much.

The thing that really makes this game shine in my eyes is the amount of things you can do outside the storyline. It’s all well and good having a huge expanse to traverse, but there’s got to be things to do or it’s nothing but travel. Red Dead delivers, offering a myriad of side-quests and fun things to do. Fancy gambling? Take your pick of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Blackjack, Liar’s Dice, Arm Wrestling and more… all fully fleshed out and good fun at that. Maybe you’d like to earn some extra cash? Try taming some wild horses, hunting wild animals for materials to sell, or taking up bounties to take down criminals dead or alive (alive paying twice as much). On top of that, you even have “Strangers” you can meet, which are ongoing side missions that can be completed at any time, involving other characters who can be just as interesting and intriguing as the rest. Of course, no cowboy game would be complete without gun duels – which involve quick aiming in order to kill or disarm an opponent using Dead Eye before they can riddle you with bullets. Duels are obviously included in missions sometimes, but they can be done with random challengers in towns as well.

There are even more side challenges that this, though – including fulfilling various objectives to unlock new outfits for John (some granting bonuses such as improved Dead-Eye or the ability to cheat at poker), and “Ambient Challenges” which are various ongoing tasks (such as hunting specific animals or finding treasure) to improve your skills and unlock some more bonuses.

The game has a system of “Fame” and “Honour”. Fame raises the more you do missions and side quests, and is a general measure of how famous you are in the west. The honour system is a bit more flexible, offering as a sort of morality meter. Saving and helping people, or making honourable choices will raise your Honour, while murdering people and stealing will cause your Honour to lower. Although you can choose to be a bad guy in most respects, the story does seem to suggest John is more of a good guy than a bad one. Still – if you wish to become a famous killer go for it – although you will become a wanted man! There are a few aspects to gameplay which only really surface when doing bad things, and unlike GTA you don’t generally have to upset the authorities unless you go out of your way to do so – so it might be good fun to play the game a second time and try playing the bad guy if you didn’t first time round.

If the game’s huge scale isn’t enough for you, there’s also a full blown online multiplayer mode. I have yet to really delve into this so I can’t say too much about it as of yet – but you can form gangs with other players, battle with other groups and participate in team shoot-outs, gaining EXP to unlock new character models, weapons and mounts. I can see some good potential if you have a group of friends to play with, but perhaps a little empty for people who prefer to play solo.

Really, Red Dead Redemption is simply packed with content. As soon as you’ve finished doing one thing, there’s always a load of other things just waiting to be done. Aside from the missions which are solid as GTA’s, there’s so many things to do you can keep yourself busy for a long time without getting bored. This is how sandbox gaming should be – and in my eyes it’s even better than Grand Theft Auto. But maybe that’s just the Dr Emmett Brown in me talking.

- Leon

I put my bucket over my head in order to avoid the nightmares…something about the radiation messing with your head. 10 hours of tracking took their toll and I was soon fast asleep…

“Artyom! Artyom!”

A voice was yelling a name, it wasn’t mine but sounded familiar.

“Artyom get up! They’ve breached the barriers! We need everyman we can get!”

Suddenly my eye broke open, I was in a bunker underground, only a small candle for light, the smell of musk and dirt filled my nostrils my body was coated in sweat and rough cloth. A man burst in through the door.

“Artyom! To the barracks now! We have to defend the children!”
As I got up he trusts a pistol into my hands.

“Go! I must get the others!”

As he left an unearthly wail filled the air followed by rampant gunfire. I don’t know where I was, but I was sure in a lot of trouble…

Metro 2033 and I have…a troubled relationship. I’m doing a first look now because I’ve only had 3 hours of it so far on the Xbox 360 and my PC version has decided to give me the finger, but a replacement is on the way.

SO Im gonna give you guys a taster on what to expect with this title.
First up it looks gorgeous, despite mainly being set in the Moscow Metro meticulous detail has been used to give it a feeling of claustrophobia and fear. You dread what might be around the next corner and with good reason, the beats are seriously messed up, worthy of STALKER or Farcry. The weapons, while not all that special, feel real within the scenario. The ammo and weapons are handmade. However, the ammo trading system is a little odd. You can trade the better quality military issue rounds for weapons or dirty ammo that you can use as well, although they are not as effective.

The bunker hubs feel alive and bustling; you see people cooking, cleaning sleeping and children playing. A lot of love has been put into these linear but lively areas. That said, there are problems. The AI can be…pretty terrible. From the normal swarm to kill from monsters to randomly running and shooting from open ground from human combatants that hurt the game feeling.

Still, I see hope in this title and can’t wait to give you the full verdict. Heh, seems I reviewing a lot of flawed gems these days…

So when the next Lara Croft game is announced your automatically going to think, ‘oooo another tomb raider!’ well this time I am afraid you are wrong. Yes there is a new Lara Croft game coming out, b ut it isn’t a tomb raider title. Let me shed some light on this slightly confusing concept.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a new digital download game that stars our well-loved female relic hunter. This title I would imagine will be available across the PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE and PC, even though that bit of information hasn’t been set in stone yet, it would be rather silly if it wasn’t available for those platforms.

So what are the finer details of this title? Well as it is a DLC title, you would expect that it is not going to be as lengthy as your average Tomb Raider title, sadly, you would be right in thinking that. But and this is a big BUT, this game is said to focus more on re-play value and Co-op play which sounds pretty interesting to any well seasoned Lara Fan. Also the game play is said that it will go back to its root, with boob-trap puzzles, tombs and all the other game elements we loved from the first games.

Now that’s all well and good but what are we talking about story wise? Well the plot in all honesty isn’t that thick, you are Lara (obviously) and you have been teamed up with a Mayan tribes man who goes by the name of Totec, Totec of corse will be controlled by your co-op buddy when you decide to blast through the campaign mode as a pair. You are in search of a mysterious and yet powerful artifact called The Mirror Of Smoke, which of course has unleashed an evil spirit by the name of Xoxolt (kudos to anyone who can pronounce that name) who is unleashing his power to raise the dead. So you will be coming across a lot of zombie tribes men as you progress through the puzzled filled levels, plus a few other bigger and nastier enemies.

Camera angles these days play a huge part in gaming. This title features a fixed Isometric camera, which to me is probably one of the best type of camer angles you can have, meaning you will not get the camera stuck in walls or have it stop where enemies are pummeling you behind some scenery, Legacy of Kain did it well and I expect to see much of the same here.

Retro arcade gamers here are in for a treat, as this is mainly a puzzle orientated game, it sounds as though enemy combat will be straight out of your classic 1980’s shooting games, meaning that you point Lara at any enemy you want to die and press shoot, that’s all there is to it. Remember people this is a puzzle game after all, combat is only the icing on the gaming cake.

As I said previously, this game has a co-op mode, and with co-op modes you will find a lot of handy co-op moves for the both of you to use. For example, instead of welding duel hand guns such as our lovely heroine, Totec has spears, these are mainly for skewering the undead, but they also can be stabbed into walls for Lara to swing on, Also Totec has a shield which Lara can use as a platform while Totec holds it above his head. Lara also has her trusty grapple hook which she can swing across large gaps in classic Lara croft fashion, but Totec can also grab hold of Lara as she swings to aid him across. Lets just hope that he is a gentleman and does not go for the obvious hand holds.

Lara Croft and the Gardian of Light looks like it is shaping up to be a nice little downloadable game. It will be avalible this summer on a console/PC near you.

Garv!

So who can imagine my epic excitement when I heard about portal 2’s conformation yesterday. The beautiful people at Game Informer magazine gave us a nice slice of the Portal 2 cake and have given us some great information which I cannot help but be excited about.

All this started when the tech heads at Valve let loose some new content and patches for the original Portal on PC last week. There was one new achievement slapped onto the game and some weird new cryptic noises and sounds coming from the radio in your chamber when you start the game. These new additions to the game sparked off a lot of PC geeks out there in the vast universe that is the internet to decode these sounds, turns out they were some sort of morse code which could be subverted into images. Sounds blinking weird I know but, these were the images that were uncovered.

Confused much? I sure as hell am. But as I dug deeper into the wealth of information about these images, it turns out that these are images taken from the Aperture Science CCTV from the first Portal. I bet some of you are thinking, yeah? so what? Well these images contain vital equations and data that all of the portal geeks out there were hungry to find and solve. After slaving over a keyboard and staring at these images till their eyes bled, it turns out they all lead to a number that once dialed up would let you into Valve’s bulletin board system and then let the user download some more images. These images known as ASCII images are images that are made up of keyboard characters. Here is an example

These were the first ever images of Portal 2. A lot of hacking coding and problem solving boiled down to 3 of these images….

…Then valve went and confirmed that Portal 2 will be coming out and hitting shelves at the end of the year for Xbox 360 and PC. Game informer then scooped it up and hey presto we have a sequel to a truly awesome game.

So what is this next installment going to be like? I have been doing reasearch here and there and I have found a couple of things out. Whether they are true or not I don’t know but I am going to list them anyway.

1. This is going to be a full-blown title, unlike Portal 1 where it was an attachment to the orange box. This title will be a stand-alone. Meaning it will be a lot bigger. This make me think that Portal 1 was maybe testing the water for the actual main event which is portal 2

2. This title is going to be set way in the future. Meaning that the long abandon Aperture Science labs are going to overgrown with foliage and very forest like. But be rest assure that this will not stop GLaDOS one bit.

3. GLaDOS makes a welcome return. The next generation SHODAN is back Baby!!

4. You again play as Chell (the same woman you played as in Portal 1)

5. split screen and online co-op staring 2 biped robots. Apparently these robots like to hold hands alot…in teresting.

6. some of the games physics will be juggled about to make up for some interesting game play. An air vent can be combined with a portal. This in turn sucks the player into the portal and spits them out the other side. Sounds awesome.

7. there will be alot more interactive objects from things that fling you sky-high to cubes that will deflect lasers.

8. there will be some new characters and a bit more story. Meaning that Valve has probably going all out on this title.

And that’s about it so far, stay tuned to Plus XP for more Portal 2  info as I hear it. Untill then I may have another stint at 1. I love GLaDOS!

Garv

As many people will agree, Sonic games have been on a steady decline since they left the 2D roots – although I enjoyed Sonic Adventure, the games have seemingly gotten ever worse with SEGA trying everything they could to make him work on a 3D plane, and with each failed effort moving ever closer to his retirement. The latest installment, Sonic Unleashed, had me cringing at cheesy voices and boring gameplay, with some semi-enjoyable running scenes and a heck of a lot of awful “Were-hog” parts that separated the fun parts with some long, really boring rubbish. I quit the game soon enough, and finally accepted that Sonic was well overdue on his retirement, and had strayed too far.

However, I recently got hold of the demo of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. I don’t know why I did – I mean, I’m not a huge fan of racing games or 3D Sonic, so it didn’t have a lot going for it. Perhaps I was bored. Anyway – the single race the demo offered made me want to try a little more, being surprisingly decent and bursting with colour.

Come release day, I decided I’d buy it and give it a real shot – heck, I hadn’t bought a racing game since Mario Kart Wii, and I felt like picking up something casual to play between Heavy Rain and Final Fantasy XIII.

As Garv said in his demo review, S&SASR plays almost exactly like Mario Kart – with fast paced multiplayer kart-style racing set in colourful environments, with weapons, jumps and turbo pads. Almost everything feels like Mario Kart – but is this a bad thing? I don’t think so.

Thing is, I think Mario Kart is a real solid racer, especially good for casual fun with friends and equally good fun solo. However, since I’ve never been a fan of Mario, the cast was never something I really enjoyed – I picked my characters for their attributes since none of the characters appeal to me for who they were. So what have we got? Take the Mario Kart system and change all the levels and characters to that of Sonic and other SEGA titles – and pretty much what S&SASR is on a basic level. And that’s the end of the Mario Kart comparison (mostly) how does the game stand as a title of its own?

 The cars in the game aren’t Karts, rather they’re vehicles specific to each character – Sonic drives a personalised blue sports car, Eggman (or Robotnik as he should be known) drives his traditional Egg Mobile kitted out with some monster-truck wheels, and Billy Hatcher drives an egg-styled car. Some characters, such as Ulala and Tails, have vehicles that don’t even have wheels, but they all play evenly and balanced - though they have different stats with some characters with better acceleration, while others are better at manoeuvering or have better turbo boosts.  There are 20 characters in total (plus one or two extra depending on console), with racers from wide range of source games both old and new.

The game offers 24 tracks in total, which are separated into 6 Grand Prix’s for the main solo mode. There are eight main level themes including Sonic “grassland/beach” style, Sonic “Casino” style, Billy Hatcher themed courses, House of the Dead and Samba De Amigo themes. Each of these themes has three courses, but they’re all individual in their own right – such as the HotD stages which include an outdoor course, a sewer run and an indoor/rooftop course. There’s a good mix of different arenas, from the snowy Icicle Valley (of the Billy Hatcher set), the psychedelic Samba De Amigo stages, and the urban Shibuya Downtown city course (as one of three Jet-Set Radio courses). The selection is quite vast, and it feels as though it encompasses a wide range of different areas and elements.

As you progress through the game, you earn “Sega Miles” which act as credits to unlock new characters (since only some are available to start), courses to play in the modes outside of Grand Prix, and alternate music tracks which can be selected to play when you race. Unlocking new characters is always good, and the other items feel worth unlocking rather than just garbage gallery content, too. Each character only has one car each, which at first disappointed me – until I realised that they all have their own unique vehicles, unlike the Mario Kart’s simple Light, Medium or Heavy class Karts – and all of their unique vehicles are actually well modelled and often intricate, which is quite impressive really.

As with a certain Kart game I’m no longer mentioning, the game has a variety of weapons, obtained from pickups around the course. There’s a good selection of weapons such as homing missiles, proximity mines, nitro shoes, and disorienting abilities such as the “Confusing Star” which flips the target’s screen upside down, and the “Pocket Rainbow” which temporarily obscures the vision of whoever is unlucky enough to hit it. There’s a decent selection, and they don’t feel too overpowered, either. There is one super-weapon, though – the All-Star move. Each character has a specific attack that they can access at random, usually when toward the back of the pack, and it gives them a temporary but huge advantage – such as driving at super speed for a while, or being able to fire barrages of missiles at anyone who gets in their way. The moves are really fun, and it’s quite exciting to see what each character does – Sonic turns into Super Sonic and speeds up the road, while Billy Hatcher runs on a giant egg and crushes anyone he rolls over. Although the moves are powerful and can make a big difference, they don’t feel overpowered so in the end skill is the main deciding factor to who wins the race rather than chance - it just gives a bit of extra fun and a helping hand to whoever falls behind.

The game has a decent challenge to it - the Beginner mode is easy enough that a skilled player should be able to win 99% of the time. However, once you progress to the Advanced level, the AI really ups it’s game and it’s a lot more challenging to pull out ahead of the pack. I have yet to attempt Expert, but I can safely say it will definitely need some skill to master – it’s required to learn how to drift and score extra turbo boosts if you want to keep up with the AI on the later levels, since they’ll be making use of it all the time.

The game has a solid base to it with a good cast and a decent selection of tracks, but one thing that does make it shine is the inclusion of optional extras. The time trial mode is included as with most racers, and allows you to race against the leaderboards, yourself, and also a Staff Ghost to give yourself a sort of par to set yourself to. One of the bigger modes is Mission Mode, which gives an assortment of different challenges with set rules, such as winning one-on-one race as Tails against Sonic, collecting rings and chaos emeralds down a course within a time limit as Eggman, or crushing as many birds as you can using Billy Hatcher’s special. This mode really adds some extra enjoyment, feeling like a real full mode rather than simply filler material, giving the game some extra depth.

Obviously with a game like this, Multiplayer is a big factor - and it goes just as well as it should. Offering up to four-player local split-screen, the game allows you to play all the courses against your friends, and also allows you to toggle weapons and AI opponents to tailor the matches to your needs. Sadly there’s no “multiplayer Grand Prix” mode, but the game does keep track of who wins each game so all that’s really missing is an end-of-set award ceremony of sorts.

Of course with today’s standards online modes are included, allowing for 8-player matches. This is great for playing against friends, and is also fun in random matchups, although I must say the lobby system might need some tweaking – I found myself waiting for over 15 minutes to get into a session before, but this may just be early-release kinks that will be fixed when there are more people playing. Still, when it works, its great fun and you can keep playing so long as there are people left in the lobby after each race.

Although the game is available on all three major consoles, I personally went with the Xbox 360 version which is arguably the best, with the most characters. The 360 version includes Banjo-Kazooie as an extra character, alongside the ability to play as your Xbox Live Avatar – which works really well given the game’s graphical style. The Wii version includes Mii capability, and the PS3 has no extras (no idea why it got the short end of the straw).

The game is solid, and although it’s almost impossible not to compare it to Mario Kart it seems to be using the ideas to great potential rather than simply making a sub-par clone. The game is bright and exciting, and is really good fun with lots to do. Personally, I think that the courses, racers and modes elevate the game to a level even more enjoyable than Mario Kart, but then I am a little biased. Let’s just say, I own both – and I know which one I’ll be sticking to in future.

Although the game is fleshed out and definitely doesn’t feel lacking, it’s been said that DLC is also a possibility in the future – if the coming year finds us having access to an even wider selection of racers and courses to expand the game even further, this could easily be one of the best kart-style racers ever made. With Sonic 4 on the way, perhaps Sonic’s got something more to give us yet.

-Leon

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