Timeshift Demo Impressions

Timeshift has been a LONG time coming. Originally planned for the Xbox, it made it's shift (get it?) to the next (current) generation and now, it seems, is eventually being released.

So, at it's core, it's a FPS with destructible environments and time-warping abilities. Bored yet? I'll start with the good stuff, eh. The destructible environments are really impressive. Walls and pillars breaking away as you fire at you enemies looks sweet. But then, it did in the Stranglehold demo, too. A bit like the slow-mo... It's certainly lovely, but we've seen it in a fair few games haven't we? Max Payne, F.E.A.R (also made by Sierra, funnily enough), Far Cry and Stranglehold, all pull off bullet-time remarkably well.

Timeshift DOES have two other time-shifting abilities. Stopping time gives you a few, short seconds to run about unhindered, while reversing time enables you to wind the clock back and try things again. A bit like Prince of Persia and Full Auto, then... Ahem.

In all fairness, Timeshift seems to be a solid, well made game, from people who have great experience in creating FPS's. The level design ranges from ingenious to generic, but the good bits are great. It doesn't look like a game that's been upgraded from an old machine. There's loads of great particle stuff going on and nice weather effects. However, the 360 has MILLIONS (well, not quite) of FPS games and the temptation is to add this to the pile of mediocre ones. I can't help but feel that it would be more appreciated if Bioshock hadn't just been released and we weren't all waiting patiently for the Halo 3 release, just around the corner.

If you've already played through Call of Duty 2 and 3, Bioshock, Prey, Gears of War, F.E.A.R, Lost Planet, Perfect Dark Zero, and Far Cry, then you MIGHT want to give this a go. It's not that it's BAD.

You see, Bioshock (I'm getting bored of hearing it's name) doesn't have any fancy gimmick like Timeshift's time-warping. It just does everything else perfectly. It's a great demonstration of design and gameplay being FAR more important than just originality. Timeshift appears to have neither.

Okami on Wii?

Rumours are abound that Capcom's superb Okami is on it's way to the Nintendo Wii. If it does, I'll forgive my Wii for having no new good games ever, because it will be giving me, not only Okami, but the new Nights Into Dreams. Pleeeeease? :-)

Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday, 29-08-07

YES YES YES.

Today, we finally get the chance to play Capcom's BRILLIANT puzzler, Super Puzzle Fighter 2, in glorious high definition. They've cleverly named it Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD and it's lovely.

I've been a fan of Super Puzzle Fighter for years now. It's fast-paced and unforgiving and it's got a wonderful art style. Seriously, it's worth playing to see some of backgrounds to the stages. A Street Fighter beach scene with Deejay buried in the sand while Guile watches from a lifeguards tower, anyone? YES.

If you don't know, and you're stupid, Super Puzzle Fighter is a PUZZLE game, similar to Columns or Puyo Pop, that stars characters from Capcom's various famous 2D beat-em-ups. It's not just Street Fighter either! Felicia from Dark Stalkers pops up, as do various other familiar faces. And they're all in lovable super-deformed style meaning cuteness galore. As you score points, you're chosen character 'attacks' your opponent, meaning bombs fall on their screen, making it harder for them to clear blocks. As I say, it's tough but it's super fun.

The HD graphics look brilliant, on the whole. Almost everything looks sharp and crisp, with the exception being the characters in the centre of the screen. They're OBVIOUSLY enlarger sprites, and they're a bit blurry and splodgy. This clearly doesn't detract from the game, it's just a bit of a shame, really. When Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is finally released, I'll be the happiest man alive, I reckon.

The other (surprise) appearance today, was Sega's classic, Streets of Rage 2. There's not a heap to say about SOR2, to be fair. It's a scrolling beat-em-up and it's pretty good, but not as good as Final Fight. The 'blurry' special graphics thing that looked great on Sonic predictably looks shit on this. Oh well. Where's Sensible World of Soccer, eh? :-(

Sensible World of Soccer - Sometime in 2007

I've just watched a new (and pointless) trailer on Xbox Live for SWOS. There's no release date it's still saying Summer 2007, then I read on the forum it's now September. I can't wait much longer...

Guitar Hero 2 - He's a Bit Good

Whilst searching for 8 year olds on youtube I found this video. This little bugger is playing on expert and misses about two notes, he's got a very annoying face.

Joust Movie Announced

Fuck off a hundred times.

Joust CANNOT be a film. It just CAN'T.

If, when released, it turns out to be good, or even just average, I'll eat my shoe. Really, I will.

It's set in the future. I bet future soldiers riding ostriches, jousting and then collecting giant eggs from their opponents will look awesome in huge CG, won't it? No. Fuck off.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 Demo Impressions

It's the same as the last years version.

I'll probably copy-and-paste this review for the next FIFA, NBA Live, NBA 2K, NHL Live, FIFA Street, Pro Evo, Madden, etc etc...

Why I Love Scary Video Games

I've just been sat playing Bioshock with my housemate Robbie. And it's absolutely scaring the crap out of me.

If you haven't played it yet, PLEASE go and download the demo now. It's a beautiful game, but what's more, it's frightening.

I love it when games harness some kind of emotion in you. That may sound stupid to people who don't really play games as much as I do, but games can have just as much, if not more, emotional power over you as films or literature. If a game can succeed in drawing you into it's world, like Bioshock does, then you're not just playing it, or watching it. You're experiencing it first hand. If something's scary, you can't just hide your eyes for five minutes. YOU have to walk down that corridor. YOU have to open that closet... I bloody love it.

Of course, horror isn't the only emotion that games will draw from you. Who didn't feel utter sadness when leaving Kokiri Forest and, more importantly, Saria in Ocarina of Time? What about when (*SPOILER*) Aeris died in Final Fantasy VII? And let's not even go into the 'emotions' Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball encourages.

But horror is my favourite. I remember playing Condemned on my 360 and being SO scared that I put Belle and Sebastian on full blast in the background to mask the screams and scary music of the game. I remember the absolute terror when the Hunters first made their appearance in Resident Evil and you knew that they were right behind you. Silent Hill (pictured) on the Playstation is my perfect horror game, though. It's creepy at times but it will also make you're heart race with every little thing it does. The music, the camera angles, the creatures and the bizarre storyline... They're all, for me, the best examples of horror and terror in video games. I finished it six times when it first came out. I can run through the game in about four hours these days, but the same things still make my skin crawl and make my hair stand on end. I love it to bits.

More horror, please! :-o

Medal of Honor: Airborne Demo Imprssions

Medal of Honor: Airborne could be the best game in the world. It could revolutionise FPS's and have the best multiplayer mode since Halo 2.

Unfortunately, I STILL wouldn't give a shit, because I'm SO fucking bored of World War 2 games. By my count, there has been TWELVE Medal of Honor games since 1999. Not to mention the Call of Duty games, the Brother In Arms series, the Day of Defeat games, Hidden and Dangerous, the Wolfenstein games, Battlefield 1942, etc etc...

TWELVE MEDAL OF HONORS! The first one was alright, but it WAS on the Playstation which pretty much only had about two FPS games. So that's ok. I've got HUGE respect for Call of Duty for finally moving to a different theme for their new (and undoubtedly brilliant) game in the series. Wolfenstein returned after nearly ten years, but gave us zombies and black magic. Battlefield went all modern combat and it was ACE.

Why is EA's latest gimmick Parachuting? It's dull as fuck, guys. I've got Call of Duty 3 if I want to shoot Nazis.

If I want to be devils advocate, I'd say that the game looks good, and the enemy AI is really impressive. The Nazi soldiers are RUTHLESS and frequently catch you and your NPC team-mates off guard with a melee attack to the face.

But that doesn't matter. I'm bored of World War 2 and just want to play Bioshock.

Geometry Wars Is Back In PGR4

Hooray for Bizarre Creations! The lovely lads and lasses who make the Project Gotham Racing series have revealed that there WILL be an iteration of retro-shooting masterpiece Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 4.

Named Geometry Wars : Waves, the title is exclusively available within PGR4 and will not be available for purchase through the Xbox Live Marketplace. While it's always nice to have a freebie, I wonder how Geometry Wars fans that weren't planning on purchasing PGR4 will react...

Me? I'll be first in the queue.

skate. Demo Impressions

I, initially, wasn't too excited about skate. (why is the punctuation of it so stupid?). I've always been a huge fan of the Tony Hawk games, even when everyone else had forgotten them. I've played through them all, and have only recently started getting a little bored of the formula and kinda wishing they'd update them a bit.

As it's pretty obvious that Neversoft have NO intention of updating their franchise, it's fallen upon EA to bring something new to the world of skating videogames. So, we have skate.

The demo went up a couple of days ago and I'm pretty much hooked. The important thing to know about this game is that you have to forget EVERYTHING you've got memorised from the Tony Hawks games and, literally, re-learn how to skate. Ollies and flip-tricks are all achieved using just the right stick. It seems like a really bizarre thing to get to grips with at first, especially if you've got in implanted in your brain to use a button to do all these things. But it just works. With one tiny change in control, EA have managed to not only revolutionize the way we should approach skating games, but to bring a control system that feels natural, realistic and, most importantly, extremely playable. Sure, you'll bail over and over again, at first. But then it kinda clicks and you'll, guaranteed, have the most fun since you played your first Tony Hawks, 1080, Cool Boarders, whatever...

As a side note, the game looks really swish. There's nothing you wouldn't expect, but it looks pretty, the animation is fluid and I've noticed very little in the way of glitches.

I'm seriously looking forward to the full game and am eager to see if the team behind this announce any other extreme sports games. They should! :-)

Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday, 22-08-07

It's Wednesday again, which means more Xbox Live Arcade content to waste your Microsoft points on. Or not.

This week sees the release of Spacegiraffe and Street Trace : NYC onto the Marketplace.

Spacegiraffe, from Llamasoft, will set you back 400 points (about £3.00) if you decide to buy the full game. But I wouldn't if I were you. The game is a typical arcade style shoot-em-up, in a kind of mix between Space Invaders and Geometry Wars. You can move your ship from left to right, but your shots aren't restricted to just shooting vertically. You can tilt your weapons using the right stick. The visuals of Spacegiraffe, unfortunately, go a long way to ruining it. It looks JUST like the 360 (and Windows Media Player) visualisations when you play some music. By that I mean it looks like vomit. In space. You can't see what's coming. You can't see where you are shooting. It's boring and ugly. That's about it, really. Don't bother.

Street Trace : NYC (pictured) reminds me a lot of TrickStyle for the Sega Dreamcast. Like TrickStyle, you ride a hoverboard in the future and trick off ramps and grind around a 'used future' environment. UNLIKE TrickStyle, the game revolves around a deathmatch tournament, in which you fire rockets and drop mines to take out either AI or human opponents.

The game has a fairly slick, clean, cell-shaded look to it, much the same as Crackdown. But whereas Crackdown is one of the best games ever, Street Trace is shit. It's plays okay, but is ultimately let down but rubbish weapons, crap maps and no feeling of accomplishment when you take down an opponent by randomly firing into the air. It costs 800 points (about £6.00) with which you COULD buy Castlevania, Bomberman, Doom, Geometry Wars or countless other Live Arcade games that blow this out of the virtual water. Leave it well alone, please.

So, another crap week for the Live Arcade! Luckily, next Wednesday brings Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD and Sensible World of Soccer. FINALLY. I can't bloody wait. :-)