Not Currently Playing: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

It happens fairly regularly in this hobby of ours. You've been watching a big title for months, reading previews and such like (I subscribe to OPM and EDGE. Read 360 when ever they feature one of my musings in their magazine and follow a variety of websites on a daily basis) and then the reviews drop and it's inevitably a disappointment.. but there's always the thought in the back of your mind that after all that potential can it really be that bad?

I came across a copy of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for £3 minus cover and green box but complete with manual and disc so how bad can it really be?

Well the answer has to be fairly bad. It's core shooting mechanic isn't that great. You often feel like you can't shoot guys until the game wants you to even if you've got them plumb in your sights. They hide in cover too with bits sticking out but you can't hit them and then to make matters worse they switch through 180 degrees when you line up a shot. The cover system doesn't work too well and it's just generally frustrating.

To make matters worse you can see the potential the game has. The characters are interesting and about a third of the way in (after a dreadful nightclub mission) it turns into a kind of Michael Mann style caper heist that despite the aforementioned complaints is still enjoyable. Despite the lack of online co-op.

And then? Then it all goes horribly wrong with a mission that makes you wonder whether it was ever play tested. I got so frustrated with it I removed the disc from the machine and snapped it in half and threw it in the bin never to darken my console again. It seemed better than braking anything that cost me more than £3.

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

Despite being almost as old as gaming itself I missed out on the birth of the first person shooter so Wolfenstein holds no special affection in my gaming history.

I spotted it for £10 brand new in GAME and figured it had to be worth a punt at that. There's hints of Halo ODST in the open world hub level and FEAR and, bizzarely, Prince of Persia: SoT in the time manipulation powers that unlock soon into the game. But mostly it's refreshingly old school.

For a start you can carry as many weapons as there are. Which is nice. Levels have a pleasing flow to them with enemies being seen off for good (none of this Modern Warfare respawning nonsense) and whilst it's not a particularly long game it doesn't outstay it's welcome.

There's a few simple puzzles but mostly it's a question of blowing a bizzare selection of Nazi's back to hell. It took me about 8 hours to complete and my only complaints would be that the achievements are very multiplayer focused (which I always think of as rather cheap way to generate interest) and sometimes it can be a bit fussy about lining up with switches. Other than that a solid 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
Everybody's Golf 2 - PSP
The Saboteur - 360
Dark Void - 360
Limbo

Limbo should be approached with as little prior information as possible for the best experience so this will be a very short post. It plays like a dream (almost literally) and is a stunning experience. Go download now.

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

Another one of those titles that showed intial promise that didn't review well enough for a full price purchase that I've picked up cheap to fill the summer void. £10 brand new in game.

Presumably no developer sets out to make an average game. One assumes it comes down to budget or time constraints or possibly both. Not everyone has Polyphony Digitals unlimited time and seemingly budget to reach for perfection.

Here things start off really well. There's a definite whiff of Uncharted, Not just because Nolan North voices our hero but also the jungle based opening levels and the cover based gunplay. There's also a similar 50s adventure serial feel to it. Especially when the rocket pack gets introduced a couple of levels in.

There's a mission soon after where your flying through the sky, landing on giant structures, fighting through them to destroy them from the inside out and then flying away on a wing and prayer and you think this could be a really great game.

However the aforementioned time and budjet constraints conspire to spoil it. The rest of the areas are fairly small and so you end up flying through very small areas fighting the same ships over and over again. Then before you know it the games pretty much over.

Fun while it lasts, looks nice enough, lots of potential but, much like my school reports, should of tried harder.

Currently Playing: SIlent Hill: Homecoming

Regular readers might remember that I played through Silent Hill 2 and 3 in preparation last year for this. A slew of average reviews and I decided to wait until it was cheap. Spotted it in HMV for £15 and picked it up.

It certainly just as horrifying as it's classic predecessors but perhaps not for all the right reasons. For a kick off there's no option to adjust the camera. Which means if, like me, you like to have the Y axis inverted you're going to spend a lot of time looking at the floor. Secondly there's no autosave. Which means you're back to wandering around looking for saves spots and a large chunk of replaying if you happen to die.

Oh and it's hard. Properly hard. I played the previous games on Easy. There's no easy option here and even on the default difficulty items are scarce on the ground. There's very few health packs and not a lot of ammo. Oh and there's monsters.. lots and lots of monsters.. it's not rare to stumble across five vicious nurses in a pack. Which means a lot of combos and lots of dodging.. which for someone whose timing is as bad as mine means a lot of dying.

I've just had to replay about three hours of game (thankfully a keep five saves on the go but I had to go back to the earliest one to get to a point where I hadn't already wanked away all my health and ammo) because I arrived at a Boss battle with half my health and no health items and no ammo. I'd just played through about an hours worth of game without a pick up in sight.. Oh and then I had to sit through an unskippable conversation before I could have another bash.. Enough for one day.

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.