Currently Playing: FUEL

There's no First Look for this because I hated it when I first played it. It seems that the teams ambition has out stripped either their talent or the amount of time/funds they had to make the game.

There's precious little in the way of tutorial and the career mode is badly laid out. Each area of the world has it's own camp where races can be chosen. Win enough races and you can unlock new areas. However when you get to the second and third camps you haven't got enough FUEL (the games in game currency) to unlock the vehicles needed to complete the new events..

The loading times are incredibly long. Sometimes longer than it can take to complete the event. The AI is terrible as well. It sometimes has problems path finding and the elastic banding is terrible. It's an out an out arcade racer really so you start every race at the back and the pack zoom off and you've got to catch them. Mostly they stretch out enough that you'll pass the last car just before the chequered flag but miss a gate or have a crash and you'll find that you're in last place. Conversley race a good clean section and you can suddenly find they've all bunched together and you can pass all of them in a couple of corners.

However I do like a driving game and so I stuck at it. Eventually in one of the long loading screens a tip was displayed about not ignoring the challenges, several of which are available per camp but have to be 'spotted' first. It turns out not only are these a lot of fun providing plenty of variety from the racing but also a great way to earn FUEL. Soon I'd unlocked plenty of vehicles and some of the games potential has been unlocked.

When it's good it's a lot of fun. The handling is very arcadey with huge power slides being the norm and brakes are almost always for wimps. Some of the events have very few check points and allow you to ignore the GPS and pretty much set your own course. The trick here is to balance the risk/reward of a more direct off road route with the tracks and roads where the vehicles travel faster. Is it worth cutting across the forest and saving a huge portion of driving? It's decisions like this on the fly that make it fun. Dodging between burnout cars and trucks and finding the jumps gives an impression of being Mad Max too.

There's a lot here. There's also a lot to like. It's a pity then that it feels, at the moment at least, that a bit more polish and play testing could of made all the difference.

Purchase Power

This, I think, is my first pre-order of the year.

It certainly the most expensive game I've ever bought (never having imported a console I've never had to pay ridiculous money for a SNES cartridge).

Can you guess what it is yet? Yes that's right I've pre-ordered the Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2 from HMV for £119.

I'm a sucker for Night Vision Goggles.

First Look: No More Heroes

I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I do. From the moment you start the game for the first time it's incredibly cool. The highly stylized visuals and the way the story is introduced all drips with atmosphere and a brilliant sense of humour.

At first I was a little disappointed with the gameplay. I was expecting to be able too swing my wii-mote around like a whirlwind chopping up bad guys like so many Master Onions but instead your combos are mainly confined to the A and B Buttons. Swings of the wii-mote are used for finishing moves where you swing the wii-mote in the direction of a little onscreen icon. It's also used to charge the beam katana and pull of wrestling throws. Once you're in the thick of the action though it makes sense and you're soon working up quite a sweat (or at least I was anyway) and stylishly chopping your way through minions to get to the boss battle. I'm assuming the PAL version has been sanitised cos sadly the bad guys disolve a-la the slain vampires in Buffy.

I spent last night doing side quests, side assasinations and visiting the shops and the gym. While it's not actually a living breathing city in the style of a GTA there's enough going on to make it more than just a hub world. I particularly liked the gym. The stat improving mini games where a very nice touch making me do reps with the nunchuck and wii-mote.

My only slight reservation is whether there's enough variety in the main story. 11 Assassins to take down. I'm now number 9 and so far the formula has been fairly simular. If the humour and great dialogue continue then I guess I'll enjoy the ride.

Purchase Power

Having spent a quiet half hour reading EDGE yesterday I was intrigued by the feature on a sequel to No More Heroes. Hearing the games creater Goichi Suda compare making the game to 'having a shit' I was inspired to go and pick it up today. £9.99 in Game. Job very much done.

I was amused in the article where Suda was told by his staff players found the bike in the first game difficult to control. His Response? "Make the bike twice as big!".

First Look: Battlefield 1943

Friday night is now the official EDGE X-Box live night. Last night they decided they where all going to play Battlefield 1943. Inspired by the EDGE review which made it sound simple enough for me to pick up and play and the fact that I had a spare 200 points knocking about meaning that I could buy just a 1000 points I took the plunge.

It's a very steep learning curve if you jump right in. Although it is fun and fairly simple to see what you should be doing when you get going it's also very annoying. There's basically 5 flags on each level and the game ebbs and flows as they are captured and re-captured.

You can have an awesome spawn where you find an AA gun take out a couple of planes, jump on the back of a jeep, gun you way to a flag, capture it and then rocket an incoming enemy tank and you generally feel like Rambo.

You can also spawn miles from the action, walk all the way there because someone will jump in the jeep you heading for an literally drive off in front you despite the fact you're yelling "wait for me" at the top of your voice (Sometimes even when it's someone you're in party chat with) and just as you get to the action someone rifles you dead that you can't even see.

I ranked up a couple of times and I'm rubbish so it's fairly accessible at the moment.

Granted it was the first friday night since release and so you'd expect it to be popular but it was nigh on impossible to get a game after 10pm..

The "Complete" List

Resistance 2
Mirror's Edge - 360
Quantum of Solace - 360
House of the Dead: Overkill - Story & Directors Cut
Fable 2 - Story Mode
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot - (Liquid Easy)
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
Saints Row
Race Pro - Career Mode
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (Easy) - 360
Conan (Easy) - PS3
GTA IV - 360
Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Manhunt 2
Prince of Persia

As the game went on there where more and more things I didn't look. The combat is utter bobbins. I don't normally mind QTEs but these seemed particularly harsh. The button flash that allows you to get up from the ground without being saved by the princess is ok.. But the ones during combat I very rarely got. Fortunately it's a very forgiving game. The other problem with combat is that all the bosses in the game need defeating five times each and they're all pretty much the same. Fairly soon into the game the bosses assume the same three states.. It's dull.

The AI on the princess could of done with a bit more polish as well.. She's often stood in the way. She's not always in the right place at puzzles either. If she can fly why does she need to be carried over the vined sections? It slows the prince down and often breaks up the flow of movement.

The camera is generally good and the right stick nearly always let's you see what you want.. But having the A button do pretty much everything means that often you'll be lining up a jump only to find the camera changes angles and thus you leap into space. Or you run vertically when you want to run up and vice a versa. Again very annoying when you want to wall run left and then leap. He'll instead run up the wall and then leap 180 degrees back into nothingness. It's less bad if you go more slowly make sure you've moved the camera and then waited for the prince's animation to see which way he's leaning but once again it slows the progress down.

My other two niggles are there weren't enough puzzles. In fact I can only think of three. All well done but there could've been more of them considering there wasn't much else too break up the action. After you've unlocked the green power plates the next three powers are all pretty much the same too.. The yellow was in particularly rubbish involving zooming from one plate to another but in a very disorientating flying style where you're supposed to dodge stuff but it's not always clear which way you're supposed to dodge.

Having said that, in an EDGE style, having dissed it constantly I absolutely loved the game. The art direction and style is fantastic. You genuinely want to see what else is around the corner. It felt a bit cheap making you do the levels twice too. But I really liked the transformation itself and then it was fun trying to get as many light seeds as you could (Although I was, in no way, compelled to find 'em all).

I also loved the growing interaction between the two leads.. I've read some complain about the end but for me it was perfect. As I already said it's not as good as Sands of Time but being the second best PoP ever made is no disgrace.

Summer drought?

There was an article on Eurogamer yesterday that seemed to suggest that traditional summer drought was going to end..

Not this year it seems. We've seen some big name games released in the Spring of 2009 and EA may be releasing some of it's games a little earlier this year.. But having just checked the release schedule on Play from now until September, what I'd class as the traditional Summer months, seems as blank as ever.

I do have a couple of titles on the back burner (Mass Effect and Silent Hill 2 spring to mind) and I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on so it's not a huge deal but it seems that once again it's going to be an expensive Q4.

Purchase Power

Just time to update you on a couple more eBay bargains. Some guy was listing multiple new sealed (allegedly) copies of both Zak and Wiki Quest for Barbaros Treasure and Grand Theft Auto:Chinatown Wars all starting at 99p and all ending within a minute of each other. At first I smelled some kind of rat but he's got over 600 transactions and a 100% rating so I guess it should be ok.

One would of thought he'd of maximised his profits by selling them one at a time. For sure when I got out bid I just moved down the list. Anyway I ended up paying £12 for the pair including free 1st class postage.

I just need a DS now.

First Look: Prince of Persia

Minus £2.50 of Reward credit I got this for £10.50 second hand in GAME yesterday. Intial impressions are that it's an improvement on The Two Thrones and Emo Within but nowhere near as good as Sands of Time which, it sadly seems, we'll never see the like of again from Ubisoft.

These are the things I like:
It's pretty
It's very forgiving for Mr Easy writing this Blog
The Prince himself (much has been made of his annoying accent and personality.. Perhaps too much. He seemed quite funny to me)

Things I don't like:
The over simplified controls.. All the flair of covering the levels in Sands of Time has been lost. It's like they've taken a leaf out of Altairs book. No surprise what with it being the same engine I believe. But when I'm bemoaning the lack of challenge it's a bad thing.
The combat.
The Princess.
The annoying bits where you have too run between green nodes with no checkpoints..

Overall though I enjoyed my first session last night.