The launch of Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action in late 2007 brought about a new age for the Xbox 360 if you ask me. No longer was the 360 the console just for hardcore gamers, it was suddenly becoming the family console. The console that everyone could gather round at Christmas and have some fun, young and old alike. For me, the first Scene It? game meant that I had a reason to stick the 360 in the living room, the whole family enjoying the movie trivia fun that it brought with it. In late 2008 this has all been extended even further with the launch of Lips and You’re In the Movies. So it only seems fitting that now there’s a new Scene It? game to join the fold. Scene It? Box Office Smash can actually be summed up in very few words. It’s more of the same, but as players of the previous game can tell you, that’s not a bad thing at all!
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- Nintendo DS (3)
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Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria
December 22nd, 2008 Haly Posted in PC | 1 Comment »
Written at launch, December 2008. No doubt there’s been many patches since!
Lord of the Rings Online arrived last year to much excitement. What could be better for the typical PC games player than an MMO set in the world of J.R.R Tolkien’s classic books? Well it seems, as usual, it was World of Warcraft. Luckily however, many stuck by Lord of the Rings Online and a surprising sleeper hit of an MMO emerged. Unlike World of Warcraft and many other MMOs, Lord of the Rings Online focused on its narrative, a somewhat rare thing in the world of MMOs. The main storyline, known as the Epic Quest Line, follows a series of books and chapters (quests in other words) which lead the player through a surprisingly tight narrative. It all made a pleasant change, and I’m pleased to say that like all good expansion pack, Mines of Moria builds upon this admirably.
The Last Remnant
December 10th, 2008 Haly Posted in Xbox 360 | 1 Comment »
Written December 2008 shortly after launch.
The Last Remnant seems to have come along as yet another example to the Japanese markets that yes the Xbox 360 is the console for them and to betray their PS3 loyalties in favour of a wealth of RPGs on the 360. It’s a good plan by Square Enix but quite flawed too. The problem being that some of their best talents such as Hironobu Sakaguchi have jumped ship to Mistwalker to make Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Square Enix have tried to combat this with titles such as Infinite Undiscovery and now The Last Remnant. It’s not often you can have an RPG that can appeal to both the purist and the novice, but The Last Remnant just about manages to do it. However, much like the rest of the game, it’s all a bit of a double edged sword.
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Spiderman: Web of Shadows
December 3rd, 2008 Haly Posted in Xbox 360 | No Comments »
The life of a games reviewer is often not as fun as you may think. When it comes to story based games you have to suffer absolutely atrocious examples that not even a five year old would enjoy, and when you come across a truly epic game you have to rush through it to make sure you see everything possible before your deadline, so it’s not often that I can wholeheartedly say a story based game is simple, good old-fashioned fun.
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Dungeon Maker
November 29th, 2008 Haly Posted in Nintendo DS | 1 Comment »
Back in the late 1990s I absolutely adored Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper. Its dark, quirky charm was beguiling at the time, essentially Theme Hospital but with demons and dominatrixes. Unfortunately Dungeon Maker is nothing like this. I wish it was though, so very much. Admittedly I suspect Dungeon Maker isn’t aimed at me, with its cutesy and simplistic styling and its Pokémon style mentality; it is most definitely destined for the hands of younger gamers.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
November 18th, 2008 Haly Posted in PC | 3 Comments »
For over a year now, 11 million people around the world have been eagerly awaiting the release of the latest World of Warcraft expansion pack, hungrily lapping up every single scrap of information they could find on the game and the exciting changes it said it would bring. Finally, Warcraft fans’ patience have been rewarded well with this latest installment. At least they have providing they’ve already reached the end game of The Burning Crusade. For that reason alone, if you’ve never played World of Warcraft, you should probably stop reading now. Yes, now. There is nothing here that would convert you so there’s no point reading my ode to Wrath of The Lich King.
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Fifa 09
November 16th, 2008 Haly Posted in Xbox 360 | 1 Comment »
Written November 2008
EA’s Fifa series of games has been around forever…well not quite forever, 15 years to be exact, but as there are gamers younger than that now, it might as well be forever for many. Every year a new Fifa game comes out, and every year, it’s essentially the same old game with updated player stats and a few minor improvements made…..
X-Men 3
November 5th, 2008 Haly Posted in Xbox 360 | No Comments »
The X-Men have been around in comic books and films since the 1960s. It centres around a gang of mutants fighting against the evil humans who want to experiment on them just because they’re different. As well as this, the X-Men also attempt to educate the nice humans so that they know mutants can be good people too. There’s so much variation in the mutants thanks to the different genetic strains, that they can be intensely interesting as the possibilities are endless. A classic story really, the fear of humanity when they encounter anything a bit different from the norm. Will X-Men: The Official Game fight against this tide of normality and become something a bit special, much like the characters it portrays? If only.
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WWE Smackdown 08
November 5th, 2008 Haly Posted in Xbox 360 | No Comments »
I know nothing about Wrestling. I was offered a promo copy of this game to review for a site, despite them knowing about my lack of wrestling knowledge, so couldn’t say no. Funnily enough, it has never been published on the site so maybe it’s terrible :p
A perennial fixture in many console line ups, the WWE (formerly the WWF) series has sold many thousand of games since the old days of WWF Wrestlemania, and has attracted both wrestling fans and games fans. So we come to the latest incarnation, WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2008. Published by THQ and featuring a number of new additions compared to its previous edition, does it manage to address old problems and become the greatest wrestling game available? Well, yes and no. The problem is it seems that with the addition of new features, the developer Yuke’s forgot to fix the problems that were already there. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad game, just a flawed, great game.
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Warhammer: Mark of Chaos Blood March
November 5th, 2008 Haly Posted in PC | No Comments »
When I was younger, a friend of mine got hooked on the world of Warhammer and quietly happily spent a small fortune on miniature models that he had to paint himself before playing the table top game. I could never quite see the appeal in either the pricing or the fact you had to paint them yourself, but the game looked fun, just far too much effort to put together in my eyes. Not long after this, the Warhammer video games started arriving on the scene, and I had a great time playing Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat on the Playstation 1. I returned to the Warhammer world with Dawn of War but I somehow managed to entirely miss out on Black Hole Entertainment’s interpretation of Warhammer in the form of Mark of Chaos until I had a copy of this expansion pack thrust upon me.
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