Blog a Day 65of365: Week’s Roundup
Ouch what a week! Not all of these reviews were actually written this week, then again I’ve written quite a few others for next week so it all balances out. I’m actually planning on cutting back my workload a little for a while. Too many games to review, not enough time to play games I actually want to play! Plus I’d like to focus on some feature writing again.
Anyway, bear with this rather long roundup!
First up was SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3 for the PSP, reviewed for GOONL!NE. Not bad fun really.
Despite being a mouthful of a name to say, SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3 is a very enjoyable semi tactical shooter. Think of it as the Taken or Die Hard of the tactical shooting world, it’s not the most intelligent of games but what it lacks in originality it more than makes up with entertaining gung ho action.
Then there was Your Doodles Are Bugged, an Xbox indie game that is Lemmings-esque. Good fun too and ridiculously cheap at 80 points. There’s mad people that spend more than that on virtual clothing for goodness sake!
Your Doodles are Bugged is a title that has a few too many jokes attached to it. Besides the obvious misspelling of bugged creating a whole new genre of gaming, it conjures up images of doodles with massive bugging devices attached to them. Or at least it does if you’ve got my sort of imagination. In the case of Your Doodles are Bugged, there’s no sign of covert spying devices nor intimate relations with doodles, instead it’s much like the classic puzzle game Lemmings.
Then Thexder Neo for the PSP which was a little bit rubbish really. Also rather difficult to say the least!
Robots are very cool. We all know that. Sure they’re ridiculously geeky at times but who can resist a good robot, that’s why Transformers continues to be so successful after all. Despite quite enjoying both robots and side scrolling shoot em ups, I’d never heard of the Thexder series of games, that is until Thexder Neo appeared for the PSP recently.
Along came Space Pirates From Tomorrow, a very ambitious (probably too much so) indie title but one that falls flat on its face due to a truly awful control system and poor pricing.
It started so well for Space Pirates From Tomorrow. Starting with a loading screen akin to a Commodore 64’s was an inspired touch. One that instantly made me want to feel great fondness for the game. Throw in the fact that everything I’d read about the game suggested it was trying to be Elite, and I was really rather keen to give it a shot. So it’s unfortunate that it turns out that Space Pirates From Tomorrow is really rather poor.
Then Gyromancer for the 360. Enjoyable but not as much fun as Puzzle Quest.
Puzzle Quest was a brilliantly fun cross between an RPG and Bejeweled 2. It was as addictive as Bejeweled 2 but this time round, there was a purpose: to level up and complete the game by saving…well, I can’t remember the story but I know I wanted to keep playing. So it’s not very surprising that we now see RPG heavyweight Square Enix jump into the affair and, alongside casual games supremo PopCap, produce their own Puzzle Quest-esque game in the form of Gyromancer.
Finally on the review front was Guitar Hero Van Halen. Yeah, that wasn’t too great either. Go buy any other Guitar Hero or Rock Band!
There’s no denying that music game fans have a hell of a lot of choice on their hands these days. With the likes of two full Rock Band games, Lego Rock Band, various Guitar Heroes, Band Hero, and not forgetting band exclusive titles such as The Beatles Rock Band, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith; there’s a lot of competition when it comes to what music game is the best. In the unfortunate case of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, it all feels a bit lacklustre. There’s certainly no reason why you should choose this full price offering over any of the others available.
And finally in this roundup, Rumor Killers which looked at the possibilities of a new Zelda this year, a new Epic game to be announced at E3 and NeoGeo games coming to PSN.
I’m looking forward to a slightly quieter week next week. Getting too burnt out lately and I’d rather focus on a few big things for a while.
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