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

Expectations weren't too high for this. Average review scores combined with my own experience of Pandemics last effort and the fact that poor sales meant that EA closed studio weren't a good indicator.

However I have to say it's the most enjoyable game I've played all year. War torn Paris is a great location. The Nazi oppressed city is portrayed in stark black and white with huge swathes of Nazi Red flags and uniforms combined with splashes of resistance blue make it eye catching and it's really well designed. From the city itself to the rural out skirts and coastal villages make it an interesting place to explore.

The core aspects of shooting, movement and driving are rock solid. Compared to the cluster fuck that was running, shooting and cover in GTA IV the saboteur himself (Sean Devlin for that is his name) is a joy to control. The selection of weapons is meaty and most of them have a use (although I quickly settled on my favourites). The driving is also brilliant. Pandemic understand that we want to feel like we're driving on the edge of control without the frustration of actually being out of control. Theres plenty of satisfying tyre screech as you handbrake around corners without ever feeling like you're fighting the cars. They also have a lovely authentic look to them.

There's plenty to do as well. One of the nice things about the freeplay targets is that it actually helps out in the main body of the story, Take down some of the tanks and sniper towers and your escape will be easier. The story itself doesn't really get going until about half way through when the missions get much much better in both size and scope and whilst the story is a little on the short side (I spent just over 12 hours clocking it) I went on to spend nearly the same amount of time again in freeplay.

It's also chock full of humour, both intentional and not so intentional. Sean's accent is a bit none more Oirish but it works in the frame work of the game. He has so many saying that I was still hearing him exclaim new things right up to the end.

Probably the most fun I've had with a sandbox game since GTA III.

Unboxing the 360 Slim

So I got my new X-Box 250Gb Slim home yesterday. To be honest it's still quite a heavy wee beasty in the box. Thanks to the staff at GAME for giving me a bag so big I could've carried the store home!

First thing of note. The box is much nicer to open and closes properly after you've taken everything out. I really hated the stupid flappy design of the last one.

It's actually not that much smaller. The PSU is smaller but probably just as thick. Other than that it looks nice. The shiny black effect isn't quite up to the quality of my original PS3 but it's nice enough.

Having plugged it all in I was able to use the transfer cable to copy all my saves and games across to the new machine from my old 20Gb HDD (Big shout out to Geoff who made this possible!) and it was soon up and running.. One problem here was that the new on off switch is so touch sensitive I managed to turn the 360 off by accident whilst plugging in a USB device (in this case said transfer lead) which could be annoying if you lost game progress whilst trying to plug a second controller in.. but I can't see it cropping up to often.

I was soon up and running and wirelessly connected to my new (Stylishly Black) Netgear Router. I tested Blur and Forza 3 and had absolutely no problems at all. No noticeable lag or lack of performance compared to the wired connection of my old 360.

Talking of which, if you'd asked me yesterday morning, if my old 360 was noisey I'd of said that when I have the TV on at a reasonable volume and my hi-fi playing I can barely hear it. Turns out I'd of been wrong and I'd of just gotten used to the background hum. Even running a game off the DVD drive the new console is spookily quiet.. so quiet in fact that it's a bit un-nerving. I even ended up turning the TV way down. The PS3, even sat idle on the XMB, sounds noisey in comparison and I'd of sworn that ran silently before.

My only other complaint would be that the disc drive tray itself is still a bit cheap although this is offset by the lovely touch sensitive eject button and the wee noise it makes to let you know it's working.

Having ran it all night I noticed that the left hand vent on the console (the side that's next to my Sky+ Box (also black fact fans!) was very cool. Possible cooler than ambient temperature. The vents in the top and the right where running quite hot. I guess that means it's cooling itself very effectively? Although I do worry that the huge vents in the top will let a lot of dust in and that could be a console killer too. Only time will tell.

Overall I'm very happy with the new machine.

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

I've been playing Everybody's Golf games since the very first one on PSone. The title is somewhat misleading though. Sure enough the games are very inclusive and easy enough to learn without really having to have much of a grip of real golf. But the combination of some killer courses later in the games, The steady increase in the amount of buttons you'll have to press to pull of the kind of shots required at the higher level and some very fine golf by your AI challengers means it can get very tough towards the end.

After struggling with the platinum run of events for quite some time ( A combination of my general rubbishness, The brutal courses and wind and somewhat incosistant ball physics IMO) the game took pity on me and introduced an 'EASY' level pretty soon after picking it up again for another bash... It turns out it's still fairly challenging (the events with special rules i.e. +2 for bunkers or +2 for rough could see my score for 9 holes come in at +20).

I eventually managed to win enough cards across a combination of events to challenge the final boss character and despite some riduclously good shots from him (combined with a fair amount of rubbish ones it has to be said in comparison to EG:World Tour where the last but one character nails every shot) I managed to beat him on the second time of asking and, for the first time ever, saw the credits roll on an Everybody's Golf game.

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

Regular readers will probably remember how much I enjoyed the first No More Heroes game. In fact it's probably my favourite game on Wii. So I was very excited at the prospect of playing the sequel.

Normally in the world of video games it's easy to sum up sequels as "Bigger, Better, More". This being a Suda 51 game of course nothing is as straight forward.

Of course he's not turned it into a Kart racer. It's still similar. But things have changed in Santa Destroy. Not least of which being the nature of your friend Bishop's head's relationship with his shoulders. Out goes the open world nature, Out goes paying entry fees, Out goes the 3D side quests and jobs, Out go drunk russians, Out goes the adorable telephone conversations via the wii-motes speaker and in it's place?

Well that's the thing. In this case less is.. well less. I finished the entire game, including playing with my cat and enough side jobs to buy all the beam Katanas in just under 8 hours. Not a bad length in this day and age and there's certainly a degree of replayibility.. but not as much time as I spent enjoying all the side quests and bits and bobs in the first game.

So what is new? Well bizarre cut scenes with some woman in a booth behind glass on a telephone (a bit like in American Prison Films) and some extra playable characters. Shinobu who Travis spared in the first game. I liked her bits. She's fun to control and because she has a jump control the levels have a vertical element which adds some variety.

Basically the crux of the sequel is that it's been streamlined down. I wrote in my Blog last time that "It's basically ten boss fights in a row". Well this is 'X' boss fights in row. That's it. You can do the 2D side missions but there's a reason we don't play 8 bit games anymore. These seem to have been designed with rubbishness in mind too. The only one I liked was the steak cooking one and that has one button which you press once.

Still the game remains incredibly stylish. The cut scenes and dialogue are both gripping and hilarious in places. The combat, which again is fairly repetative throughout, never gets boring. So there's substance too.

In fact if they convert it to PS3 it'd probably make me buy Move just to play it all again in HD.

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

To be honest I've had a bit of like/hate relationship with Red Dead Redemption which is why I've resisted writing about it until I finished it.

There's no doubt that Rockstar have created a stunning world complete with amazing eco system for you to play in. The first time you see a sunset or a herd of buffalo or stumble across a grizzly bear are some great moments..it's just everything else that let's it down.

Well not quite everything else. There's been some improvements since GTA IV. Mid-mission checkpoints for story missions ease frustration. The auto targetting mostly selects the right target and the 'Dead Eye' bullet time mode stacks the odds in your favour.

However lots of other things are starting to feel a bit dated. Compared to something like Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2 it all feels a bit clumsy. Running is still consigned to the (A) button. Meaning no matter how far I push my analogue stick I still walk at a snails pace. Moving from cover and trying to line up with ladders and doorways is still comically rubbish most of the times but frustrating when you're trying to complete missions.

Horses just aren't as fun as cars. Whilst the wild west is an impressive sight there's no getting away from the fact that there's only so many paths and trails you can travel down compared to say Liberty Cities warren of streets. This means that a lot of journeys boil down to galloping along the same stretch of country back and forth over and over. You can quick travel but of course being Rockstar first you have to find somewhere to set up a camp and then select the map and then quick travel.

My biggest gripe is that after four 3D GTA games I'm starting to get a bit bored of travelling from a to b to accept a mission and then from b to c to start. Most of the missions revolve around killing a load of bad guys and by half way through it had all started to turn into something of a grind. Rockstars writing just isn't as good or interesting as they think it is and I really couldn't of cared less about the plot. Come the last section I was skipping cut scenes and just desperate to get it all over with.