DLC round up.

First up was Quantum Theory on 360. A sort of poor mans Gears of War but with the usual bonkers Japanese slant. I kind of enjoyed it and it's on my 'bargain bin' list despite a terrible review from EDGE

Next up was Enslaved:Odyssy To The West. Frankly I find just the thought of Andy Serkis annoying and I still have bitter memories of Heavenly Sword where initial delight turned into hating the boss battles. Still it's a very odd level to pick for a demo. Basically Chapter One of the full game it does the basics of tutoring you in how to play the game but is completely linear for the first half. When I say linear I mean it's an actual straight passage. Not inspiring. It's not without potential but I failed to see the Uncharted 2 comparison OPM where bandying about.

Regular readers may remember that Top Gun is my favourite film ever so naturally I was excited about the PSN Top Gun game. Especially as the films script writer was on board. While accessing PSN I thought I may as well download my free DLC to Heavy Rain.

This resulted in abysmal service from PSN. My PS3 was switched on for hours over a course of three days as it struggled with the basics of downloading things. It was slow when it was working and then for reasons unknown it would end up waiting.. for what I never found out. Considering the slick, smooth service from XBL on the same internet service I'll never understand it.

As for the results? Top Gun was very underwhelming and I felt a bit ripped off with the Heavy Rain: Chronicles. There are several endings but basically only one real location, not much to do (apart from open empty cupboards) and it really showed up the limitations of the format.

Much better was the half price offer of The Passing. A new campaign level for Left 4 Dead 2. A decent slab of content and of course shot gunning zombies with mates is always entertaining. Having not played the first game meeting the original survivors didn't mean much, and as yet I haven't finished it but it's everything you'd want from DLC, More of what you enjoyed, a decent length and a cut price. Oh and it downloaded the day it started which is always a bonus.

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal
Fracture - Casual
Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Heavy Rain - Medium
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Normal
Yakuza 3 - Easy
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box
Mass Effect 2 - Normal
Peggle: Dual Shot - DS
Splinter Cell: Conviction - Realistic & Co-op - Realistic
Dead Space - Easy - 360
Alan Wake - Normal
Split/Second - Career
Blur - Career/Level 50 Multiplayer
Red Dead Redemption
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - Sweet
Everybody's Golf 2 - PSP
The Saboteur - 360
Dark Void - 360
Limbo
Wolfenstein - Easy - 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 - 360
GTA IV - Episodes from Liberty CIty - 360
Halo: Reach - Normal (Solo) / Legendary (Co-op)

A happy coincidence of the holiday arrangements at work meant that I ended up taking the week off of release. I got stuck straight into the solo campaign on Normal and I really enjoyed it. For me it's the best ever Halo campaign. It's free of The Flood, annoying repetative levels and the kind of gimmicks that brought down Halo 2 and ODST (a second playable character and the city levels respecively).

It's also the first one that really gets the most out of the 360 with great draw distance and some stunning levels and architecture. There's also a lot of variety to the levels and action too (I wont say any more on this for fear of spoilers).

As you'd expect the Multiplayer provides a great slab of entertainment. Subtly rebalanced weapons wise there's a reasonable selection of levels out of the box and the selection of power ups is nice. As is the way post Modern Warfare nearly everything you do gives you XP for ranking, which is nice, and customisation of your Spartan which is frankly pointless.

I then made a stab at completing it on Heroic. I really had to up my game for this. It's brutally hard. Not helped by some unforgiving checkpoints. There was a couple of points where I had to put the pad down, have a deep breath, a smoke a drink and a ponder and come back to it. I do feel though it helped my improve my skills in general and there's been a marked improvement in my multiplayer skills. At least I think so.

I also had a great time completing the campaign in co-op on Legendary with Lee and Geoff. The advantage here is that as long as one person stays alive you're not sent back to the last checkpoint when you die which makes progress a lot less frustrating.

Overall a great campaign and a generous package. A fine last Halo Hurrah from Bungie.

Purchase Power Update

Here's a bit of a round up of my recent acquisitions.

First up I swapped Wolfenstien for Nier with a member of one of my regular forums. It turned up in very good condition and as I'd only paid £10 for Wolfenstien it was probably a fair trade.

Obviously Halo: Reach was a must. I got it in HMV for £40 with the usual 800 free MS points which seemed the best deal in the choice of two shops here on the day.

I ordered F1 2010 from shopto.net at the bargain price of £32 but apparently they now only give free recorded delivery with pre-orders (Which is the only way to guarantee that something will arrive next day here and even then it's not foolproof) so I paid £6 for next day courier delivery. It arrived on the thursday and was still £2 than in the shops here. Not a bargain for sure but I was very excited about getting it.

I found Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands brand new for £12 in HMV and that seemed like a must have. It's obviously been heavily discounted fairly quickly as there was a succession of reduction stickers underneath the latest offer.

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal
Fracture - Casual
Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Heavy Rain - Medium
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Normal
Yakuza 3 - Easy
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box
Mass Effect 2 - Normal
Peggle: Dual Shot - DS
Splinter Cell: Conviction - Realistic & Co-op - Realistic
Dead Space - Easy - 360
Alan Wake - Normal
Split/Second - Career
Blur - Career/Level 50 Multiplayer
Red Dead Redemption
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - Sweet
Everybody's Golf 2 - PSP
The Saboteur - 360
Dark Void - 360
Limbo
Wolfenstein - Easy - 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 - 360
GTA IV - Episodes from Liberty CIty - 360

As regular readers will remember I started off really hating this.. This summer has been quite a dry spell (happily coming to an end now) and so I decided to give this another chance. Installed to my HDD seemed to make quite a difference and it ran and loaded a lot quicker which made for a smoother experience.

Started with The Ballad of Gay Tony which I ended up really enjoying. The cutscenes where laugh out loud funny. The missions turned out to be action packed. It was perhaps a little bit limited by being DLC. I didn't enjoy The Lost & The Damned quite as much. It wasn't quite so over the top.

I did like how both stories interwove with GTA IV although it did seem an excuse for R* to reuse a lot of teh assets from the first game. All in all though a great package. Liberty CIty is always great to visit and it's a shame that R* haven't released more episodes.