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Check out my first impressions of APB: Reloaded over at MMOCrunch.com

Don’t really have time to post a decent review of this yet but here is a quick summary till I get a little more time…

It’s damn good!

Multiplayer is a blast…. as of 2:30am this morning I was ranked 94 on the overall board, and 25 for both Tag and Trailblazer! I doubt I’ll get it, but I’m aiming for top ten Tag/Trailblazer tonight! Not usually a fan of leaderboards but this kinda crept up on me so I’ll try to take it as far as poss before a slew of people overtake me.

…and no, I’m not an Alleyway Allen either! You all know who you are! Get out into traffic and get tagged you chickens! Spinning in alleyways because you can’t drive is pretty low. I can spawn a vehicle where I want so it won’t work either

Will be posting a full review and some multiplayer footage soon.

Finally played through the Undead Nightmare DLC for Red Dead Redemption.

Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, one of the better DLC releases if you ask me.

Firstly, because of the zombie content, it’s sufficiently different enough from the main game that I’m certain it was not denied inclusion to make more money. Many other devs put out DLC that really seems as though it should have been on the disk in the first place (That’s right Assassins Creed 2, I’m looking at you here with your missing ‘chapters’). Not only that, but a lot of developers start talking about how much the ‘day one’ DLC is going to cost before the damn game even ships these days!

I’m sorry, but even if you have a legitimate reason for not including that DLC as part of the retail package, you do yourself no favours in gamers eyes by talking about how much it’s going to cost on launch day before the game has even shipped. Delay it a month, give gamers a chance to sink their teeth into the game before you start the squeezing extra cash from them maybe?

Anyway, back on topic. The Undead Nightmare pack was perhaps some of the best value I’ve seen in a DLC pack outside of the recent Battlefield Vietnam addon. A new 6 hour single player campaign (albeit with some issues), some new weapons, new enemy types (or at least some reskinned ones that act a little differently), and some good use of the existing game mechanics in a fresh way.

I think I actually sank about 16 hours in total in to the DLC storyline. That’s not far off what I actually spent playing the full game if memory serves me right. Now that’s value in my opinion.

If that weren’t enough , the standalone DLC disk doesn’t even require Red Dead Redemption. I could be wrong on this, but as far as I’m aware you can grab the retail version and play it as a standalone game. It costs a little more than the marketplace version, but still. A stand alone DLC release? You can’t argue with that really.

The singleplayer campaign of the Undead pack begins with Marston protecting his family from a zombie attack, unsuccessfully as it turns out. You are then tasked to try and find the cause of, and cure to, the undead plague sweeping the land. Many people believe Seth and his glass eye to be the cause, some think West Dickens and his tonic are responsible, others believe the infection was brought over the border by the mexicans.

Along the way you will encounter several characters from the main game, alive and undead as it happens, and complete various themed missions for each in an attempt to discover the true reasons surrounding these events.

Missions include burning graveyards to ensure no more dead rise from the graves, securing towns from zombie attacks (enabling you to save in a safehouse), and many other undead related malarky.

Missions still have a ‘same old, same old’  feel about them. Once you secure one town, every other town is more of the same. In addition, towns only stay secure for a few days before another attack. Once the town is overrun you have limited time to secure the location before the survivors are killed. If all survivors are killed you lose that location as a savepoint. Not really that big of a deal as they tend to stay secure long enough for you to get a lot done without it being an annoyance. Quick travel helps immensely here and securing a town never takes too long. Either wipe out the zombie invasion or provide the survivors with ammo to take care of the issue themselves. If you give the survivors ammo, you will have to clear up any remaining zombies to secure the town, so either way, you’ll be fighting a lot of the undead.

The undead provided me with some issues. Specifically some of the smaller animals at first. Headshots are the only way to down enemies as you would expect, but the smaller the target, the more frustrating it is to headshot. Especially if bushes are obstructing your view. I gave up killing undead animals and elected to speed past them all on my horse in the end. There is an achievement to kill one of every undead animal in the DLC but I lack the patience to deal with that right now.

Combat against the normal undead zombies is fine and you soon get into a headshot rythm. Occasionally the control system will fight you at exactly the wrong time, but nothing too bad.

The new weapons are great and I especially appreciated the ‘boomstick’ of sorts you eventually get for the authentic Army of Darkness vibe. The new enemies are a bit… meh. Well the normal zombies are fine, the ‘special’ types are really just copies of Left4Dead2 special zombies without any tongue in cheek reference to why they are like that. Something I found a little odd given R*’s tendency to reference things for a joke.

Other than that, the usual Rockstar humour is at work here. Seth can be found hosting an undead party of sorts, West Dickens is still attempting to peddle his wares as zombie repellent when actually it attracts them (yeah, boomer bile). The film director spots the opportunity present and asks you to bring him live zombies for a film he is planning. As you can imagine, this does not end well.

Ahh yes, and for all the San Andreas fans, there is finally a Sasquatch in the game. It’s actually quite a sad mission really, but I wont ruin it for you.

Conclusion?

Great DLC, well worth the price of admission and a great example of how to implement paid content.

This game does not feck around.

Firstly, this game is not as difficult as it is made out to be. Largely, deaths are caused by player mistakes rather than anything the game throws at you. Overconfidence, recklessness, lack of attention, these are the main causes of death in this game.

There are certain surefire ways to end up back at the start of the level, frustrated and lamenting the loss of all the souls (xp of sorts) you gained up to that point, and almost every single one of them can be attributed to the player. After a while I got the feeling my biggest challenge was not navigating the world or fighting enemies, it was fighting my own impatience and recklessness honed over years of playing more forgiving games.
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I don’t normally do simulation games. The closest I have been to that side of gaming was back in the late 90′s when I was pretty keen on flight sims but beyond that I don’t have much experience. It’s not that I’m against them, I just don’t dig that genre so much.

However when offered a free code to try one, even if only temporary… well I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so it was I found myself playing Railworks 2 last week.

I’ve never been a train guy really, but I’ve always liked model railway sets from when I was a kid and my brother had one set up in his room. Always a lot of attention to detail present and Railworks 2 is no different.

For a train fan, I’m pretty sure this game is unrivalled. A lot of attention to detail has gone into the game which is obvious from the outset. Featuring a huge selection of trains to drive and play around with (plus many more through the use of DLC), plenty of routes and objectives to complete, and a world editor allowing you to create your own routes and stations/towns etc. – it’s a digital train set without the expense.

I jumped into the game in free mode and had a look at the York to Newcastle route as it was the route I am most familiar with. I say familiar, I’ve been to York/Newcastle stations and I know some of the surrounding area around York. Anyway, as far as I could see, both locations were recreated accurately and I was able to have a relaxing coffee while I watched the scenery zip past at a speed I’m pretty sure was violating some kind of law.

There are numerous views you can choose during travel, in-cab, multiple aerial shots etc., you can even choose to ride in style in the carriage of your choosing should you wish. The in-cab view offers you the ability to drive the train literally “hands on” with the controls of the train recreated and available to be clicked, pulled, or pushed using mouse clicks. If you don’t want to keep flicking to the in-cab view to adjust speed (or repeatedly blast your horn whilst zooming through stations refusing to pick up passengers) there is a handy overlay on-screen that allows you direct control of the train via helpfully labelled controls.

From what I can tell, this overlay is a new addition to the series intended to ease newcomers into the perhaps otherwise daunting control system. The tutorials are also a great place to start for a newcomer and after whizzing through the basics I was able to complete a few of the objectives without too much trouble. Well… I did de-rail a few times, but that was just for fun

The objectives start with simple tasks such as picking up and transporting passengers from station to station, then grow to be more complex with each requiring certain ‘checkpoints’ to be completed within the objective. This could involve shunting different carriages around (is shunting the right term? Who knows.. moving carriages), refuelling your train mid-route, time trial style challenges, and more.

Despite not really being into the simulation genre, or trains as such, I had more fun with this than I expected and would certainly recommend it to any train simulation fans out there. There’s lot’s of attention to detail, extra content available via DLC (and presumably community modifications), and a great editor mode to play with.

I’m torn.

Firstly, I only played the trial demo. I’ve literally only played Act 1 of the first zone. Part of me likes it, part of me is… hmm, what is the word I’m looking for. Repulsed is too strong. I don’t know, something doesn’t sit right put it that way.

For starters, I never liked the homing attack. NEVER. Now, call me old fashioned but when I play a platformer I like there to be some requirement for precise jumps. Whether landing on an enemies head, or leaping to a far away platform. What I don’t expect is to just be able to double tap jump and automatically zoom to, and destroy the nearest enemy. Nor do I like to automatically home in on a jump pad. Nor do I like missing a jump only to make it by hitting double jump. OK, fair enough, I could play without using it, but it’s my understanding that some of the level design has been built around the assumption that people WILL be using it which leaves me in a bind.

I understand that in the modern gaming world, everyone gets a medal for showing up, games like to strip difficulty back to get as wide an audience as possible yada yada.. but I don’t like it. My play through of Act 1 was done in about 2 minutes, I literally whizzed through the entire level with double jumps and auto lock on. I lost zero rings and encountered very little difficulty. Yes, opening act is supposed to be easy, but even so… previous 2D sonic games have ALL had a stronger opening act compared to this in my opinion.

Graphically I like it. I like HD 2D when done well and this looks very nice no doubt there. The new Sonic design looks, OK. Well that’s harsh, it does look good… when standing. Running, meh. It’s not bad but it’s not good either. Which brings me to my biggest complaint. The physics.

They don’t seem right. Sometimes Sonic is painfully slow to get moving, as though he has concrete shoes on. Other times a quick (here it is again) double jump will speed you up. In previous sonic games if you were lacking enough speed you couldn’t make it up certain slopes. In this version you can slow waltz up steep slopes that would have sent you packing in Sonic 2. It’s funny, some sections flew by as fast as I remember older Sonic games being. Then I remind myself that is largely thanks to double jump. I’m not even looking for pads, I just double jump to them and spring off again. I’m not even looking. *sigh*

I can get past the character design changes. I can get past the weakish running animation. What I can’t get past is the toned down difficulty that the homing attack feature has caused. I’m not sure I’d spend 1200 MS points on this simply because I don’t feel it will offer any challenge.

In conclusion, I think it speaks volumes that after playing through Act 1 twice.. I loaded up Sonic 2 and smiled. Not only did I have a lot more fun, but the game is cheaper on XBLA. Hell you could pick up S1/2 and still have some change for a banana Frijj!

A little disappointing overall, but could have been worse. If homing attack sounds like you won’t be bothered by it, give it a whirl. I’ll personally wait it out for Ep1 to be discounted before I try the full version. I’m still interested in Ep2 if only to see how they have progressed it.

Well, it’s certainly taken some time to get round to writing anything about this game. According to Xfire I’ve played for around 110 hours so I guess it’s about time I gave it a crack.

Firstly, JKA is an old game… about seven years old in fact. I could kick myself for missing this when it came out, but at the time I will have been entering into a contract to sell my soul to Monster Hunter so it’s no suprise really. A lot of games slipped past me back then as nothing was dragging me away from hammering Rath’s in the face and boozing it up with everyone in Hunters Tavern.

Anyway, I’m playing it now… better late than never and all that guff.

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So I was always a huge fan of the original Tony Hawk series. I thought it lost it’s way in terms of map design somewhat by the third game, but the fourth made up for that. The THUG and Wasteland additions killed off any interest I had in the series for good.

TH1 & 2 were great games. Yes they were still arcade based and you were racking up million point scores with never ending runs, but they were enjoyable for gamers and skateboarders alike. Somewhere along the line, Neversoft felt what the series needed was more Bam Margera and Jackass related humour. What most players over the age of 12 felt the series needed was more of what actually made the game great. Skateboarding.

When challenges degraded into mimicking Bam Margera’s trademark idiocy splashed around like so much urine on a drunks shoe (to re-quote myself), many gamers were understandably turned off the series. I personally played the games because I skateboard in real life and I enjoy any extension to that hobby that I can get. Once the Jackass style gameplay was added and focused on, I walked away from Mr. Hawk, never to look back. His recent attempts to win gamers back by bundling the same old game with an expensive, unreliable, plastic gizmo have fallen on deaf ears. In fact, as I understand it, it has been so poorly received they have slammed the final nail in the franchises coffin, given up and geared the entire thing to appeal to the twelve and under age groups. I’m sure TH’s marketing will include some guff about trying to get the youngsters into the sport, and if it does then more power to him, but I think TH, Neversoft, and Activision know that they will never reach the lofty heights they once enjoyed and grew complacent upon.

Now it’s Black Box’s turn. Now is the age of Skate.

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Limbo is a simple game, with simple objectives, a simple art style, and a simple soundtrack. Only one puzzle stumped me for longer than ten minutes, the ending explains nothing and the story is seemingly non-existent. The game lasted about four hours but looking at Youtube, people have done speed runs of about one hour.

So far, not a great review technically. In practice however, Limbo is a shining example of ‘less is more’.

Firstly I’d like to address the price point issue here as it seems to be a strong reason people give for not purchasing the game. 1200 MS points = £10.28 (roughly). I got about three to four hours from Limbo on my first run (not going to count replay time here). A retail game costs roughly £40 in the UK and lasts anything between eight and fifteen hours on average. It’s simple maths really, multiply the price of Limbo by four to roughly match retail price at £40, and if you do the same with the time to complete you will be left with a twelve to sixteen hour game for £40. When put into perspective, the price is actually comparable to most retail titles and I can guarantee there is more imagination and creativity in Limbo than half the games out there. People will happily drop £40 on the latest Tiger Woods game despite it having virtually no advancements compared to the last game, yet Limbo is too expensive for an XBLA title? Give me a break. I’d strongly suggest giving the demo a spin before making any rash decisions.

OK, so with that out of the way lets talk a little about the game now.

The game has such a striking art style it is hard not to be intrigued. Ever since I saw the first screenshot released I was convinced I’d buy this game based on the graphics alone. Not often do games strip back the level of graphics to this degree, but it really works for Limbo. The game tries to create a very bleak atmosphere and the art style only serves to enhance that tenfold. The same can be said of the soundtrack, what little there is of one (well that is technically wrong as you will always hear ambient/background noise no matter where you are in the game, be it an off key horn or the increasing volume of static noise during the spider sections). Every sound in Limbo is designed to put you on edge and it synchs so well with the gameplay that it’s often easy to forget there is any soundtrack at all. The only rest you get from the audible assault on the senses is after the various tense world turning/flooding/chase elements are over, when the ambient sound becomes almost soothing in comparison to the tension laden moments you just experienced. There are no traditional pieces of music, only atmospheric noise that is sometimes the equivalent of running fingernails down the chalkboard of your soul… depending how immersed you allow yourself to become anyway.

Talking of immersion, personally I like to give myself over to games like this, and I genuinely feel the only way to play Limbo is at night, in the dark, with all the curtains shut. I played Silent Hill 1 with a friend in the same way and I think it added so much more to our experience of the game that without that element, I would still have enjoyed it, just not in the same way. I know people often don’t play games in this manner so a lot of this will probably go over peoples heads or be mocked and ridiculed, but I don’t care and I’m positive anyone who plays these types of games in the same way will understand just what I’m talking about.

Puzzle-wize, Limbo has some of the freshest and imaginative takes on the age old platform/puzzle formula’s I have seen in some time. The game takes place over three distinct sections with each featuring appropriately themed puzzles to the area you are in. The forest section has you avoiding man-traps, spider webs, and in some of the tenser moments of the game (for arachnophobes anyway) you will be running for your life from a giant spider. The deserted city section contains lots of water based puzzles as much of the environment has been flooded, whereas the abandoned factory area features a lot of physics based puzzles involving saw blades and conveyor belts. The different areas enable an interesting mix of puzzles and before anything begins to feel too repetitive you are experiencing something new to wrap your head around. The pacing is superb although personally, I would have liked to see more of the forest areas as that was hands down my favourite area. Not only in terms of puzzles but in terms of questions.

The forest area for example is the only section of the game you will encounter other living things. Other children feature heavily here, firing what I can only assume are pea shooter style weapons, operating mechanical spider legs, rolling flaming tires down on you from above. Who these children are and why they are opposing the player is never made clear. Neither are the repeated instances of tree houses in the first, middle and very end sections of the game. The title screen features a tree house which leads me to believe there is some significance there, but this is half the fun of Limbo. The game asks more than it answers, and yet it asks nothing. The human mind is geared to enjoy solving puzzles and the game not only has these by the dozen but it’s very essence, themes and settings raise many questions that beg to be answered.

I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, 2001 Space Odyssey, Phantasm… I’ve always been interested in media that leaves questions to be pondered over even if there are no answers to be found. The human mind automatically attempts to fill in the blanks even when not required to and whether by design or accident, I think Limbo takes advantage of this psychological element of the human brain very well. I realise however, this is not everyone’s cup of tea, and as a result many have simply dismissed the game as an attempt to be ‘arty’ and ‘hip’ as many other indie games have attempted. To these people I would urge them to ignore this element and simply enjoy it as a puzzle/platform game. There is a lot of fun to be had here even if you are not intrigued by the same elements that I am.

In my opinion Limbo is one of the freshest, imaginative games to release in recent years. Even if you wait for the price to come down, or only give the demo a spin, I’d strongly recommend this to anyone in possession of an Xbox and a spare 1200 MS points. It really is that good.

Finished The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester Wednesday night. Very good book.

Gully Foyle, an illiterate space bum with zero prospects, has been trapped in space living in the only remaining airtight area of his ship (the Nomad), a 4×9 foot tool locker. For 6 months he lives like this, playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with air canisters, then one day a ship appears. Thrilled at the thought of rescue, Foyle sets off a series of distress flares to attract attention to himself. The ship draws level, then in an instant is gone along with any hope of rescue for Gully Foyle. This is enough to ‘wake’ Foyle up from a life of passivity and give him the drive he needs to get out of this situation. To hunt and kill whoever gave the order to leave him out there. All he has is the name of the ship, Vorga, and a a murderous thirst for vengeance.

Foyle is a great character. On the one hand you can get behind his quest for revenge and cheer him on in his mission, on the other hand, Foyle is a rapist and a murderer and probably has more bad traits than good. This is a man so consumed by revenge he will do anything to reach that goal. In one part of the book, after discovering that 2 of his 3 leads have had medical procedures performed on them, designed to stop the heart if sensitive information is about to be revealed, the third lead is knocked out cold and using Foyle’s cybernetically enhanced speed and hypnosis training, he removes his heart, then connects him back up to a pump system designed to keep blood circulating around the body without a heart. Threatening to keep him alive like this for a long, long time, Foyle soon discovers the information he requires.

Throughout the book, Foyle transforms from an uneducated space bum, to an intelligent, medically enhanced, ruthless killer… before finally becoming almost a God at the end. I really enjoyed the end, but can’t talk much about it without giving spoilers away so go check it out for yourself.

Everything I have read from the SF Masterworks range so far has been gold, and this was no exception. A solid 5/5

Next up is #6 on the Masterworks list, Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany