In an attempt to motivate me and get me writing more, I’ve come up with a new concept for the blog. I’m calling these entries, Quickviews. Not the greatest of names perhaps but it works! These will be entries that are reviews of games I’ve been playing recently. They won’t be as in-depth as my other reviews and in some ways they will be more informal. They will only be 750 words at the absolute most, but more frequently 500ish. But hopefully they will give me the chance to hone my writing skills and get some content down, as well as master writing more succinctly so that I don’t waffle incessantly! And on that note, we start with WWE Legends of Wrestlemania on the Xbox 360.

WWE Legends of Wrestlemania is the perfect trip down memory lane for Wrestling fans. Featuring 42 wrestling superstars from the 1980s and 90s, it promises to excite many fans, admittedly this doesn’t include me. I was never very interested although friends were so I’m quite well versed in the likes of Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. I impressed myself by recognising a good 60-70% of the wrestlers in the game. Things were looking good at this point. I suspected I’d have a bit of a challenge on my hands as I was never very good at the Smackdown Vs Raw games and even worse at the Playstation Smackdown games of yesteryear. Boy was I wrong. I found Legends to be ridiculously simple; in fact it was too simple. All that was needed was a few grapple or punch moves to build up a combo bar, a two button press ‘finisher’ move and the fight is pretty much over. My record for finishing a match was a mere 43 seconds! There are a few different game modes available such as Relive where you, quite obviously, relive a famous Wrestlemania match. As well as this, there are Rewrite (you change the course of history so to speak) and Redefine where you are presented with a match from Wrestlemania history but in a completely different situation. Finally is the Legend Killer mode, and the one I concentrated on the most. This is where you create your own Legend and fight a gauntlet style battle whereby you fight 10 Wrestling superstars in a row, then move onto the next tier and so on. This mode ended up a lot more repetitive than the others. Most frustratingly of all, one of the tiers requires you to defeat 38 wrestlers in a row! Not so bad in terms of difficulty, however you have to do this all in one sitting. You can pause, but you can’t save at all. It was quite irritating for me as it meant I had to find a couple of hours that I could devote to this one Tier of battles. Luckily my stubbornness won in the end and I managed to get it done but it really wasn’t as much fun as it should have been. Finally, it was just far too short. The Wrestlemania Tour section would only take about 3 hours to complete and the Legend Killer mode took about the same. I am in no way a Wrestling game expert, but I do know that this should have been so much better and could have been a lot more fun too.

Written for http://www.xboxgamezone.co.uk

When the Resident Evil 5 demo came out in January of this year, many people including myself felt a little disappointed. It was good old fashioned Resident Evil, but outside. Being outside instantly lost the feeling of threat that previous games managed so well, even worse was the realisation that the control system was frankly a bit rubbish compared to modern titles. I am sure I wasn’t the only person that felt rather cheated. In hindsight, it was silly to feel that way. After all, I wanted Resident Evil; I got it, clunky control system included! With trepidation, I approached the full game desperately hoping that the demo wasn’t indicative of the full game. I was both right and wrong, but I’m pleased to say that despite the initial worries, Resident Evil 5 became one of my favourite games of the year so far.

There are two crucial things you need to know about Resident Evil 5. First of all, it starts quite slowly. In the early stages of the game, I spent much of the time frustrated by the lack of ammo available, and worst of all: bored because it just didn’t feel very interesting or exciting. The other crucial thing to bear in mind is that it really does need to be played alongside another person, at least for the first playthrough. You see, the partner AI is just not very good. Now to be fair to Capcom, it was a big step for them to introduce a co-op partner to the game. As a first attempt, I’ve had worse co-op partners than the Sheva AI but not in a few years, so it certainly feels dated in that respect. By now, Resident Evil 5 sounds distinctly average. It has a slow start, odd controls and poor partner AI, why should you bother playing it when there are games like Dead Space available to you? Simply put, because Resident Evil 5 ends up being bloody brilliant! Yet hugely flawed at the same time. No I haven’t been afflicted with split personalities, but I think Resident Evil 5 has.

Resident Evil 5 reminded me a bit of the film Saw. No, not because of the content, there are no unique torture scenes in this. But because, for the first half of the film it all felt rather average to me, and then the second half was so good and different, that I was willing to forgive it for boring me at first. This is exactly how Resident Evil 5 felt to me. I spent much of the early parts of the game fighting with the controls. The story hadn’t really got going at this point. All I could ascertain was that I, as Chris Redfield, was chasing after a ‘mad scientist’ type known as Irving who was trying to sell a bio-organic weapon on the black market. It just wasn’t really doing it for me. It wasn’t a bad game exactly, just not a very interesting one. I persevered and although obviously the controls didn’t instantly improve, I did learn to adapt quite well and I came to terms with the fact that this was not going to be Gears of War in nature. The greatest improvement however was the story. It picked up at a fast pace. It suddenly became bigger than just stopping Irving and along the way came the triumphant return of a few old ‘friends’. I won’t go into any detail regarding the story as it would definitely spoil a few surprises, but it really did grip me in the way that is normally only reserved for Japanese RPGs. What I can say is it ties in wonderfully with previous Resident Evil games so fans should be very happy. As well as that, the game was getting a bit more innovative than simply ‘run to this location, shoot some zomb….infected, collect a key, ad infinitum’ Granted a lot of it was quite similar, but it was the boss fights that made it so much more than a simple action horror game. The first boss that felt slightly impressive at the time was Uroboros, a tentacled creature that can be weakened only by fire. Oh look, there just happens to be a furnace nearby. You can guess what needs doing, encourage him into the furnace, switch it on and watch him burn. A small touch but at the time I was pleased to see a change from shooting an enemy. I honestly thought that would be it in terms of innovation which was probably a little condescending of me. In hindsight, this was nothing for Resident Evil 5. In later stages, a complete change of tactic was required. You actually had to run from a seemingly indestructible boss, not stand and fight. While playing in co-op, it was fun to see how my partner and I reacted differently to this scenario. I suspected that running was the better option but he stuck at the idea that killing the boss was possible. There were a few situations like this where brute force wasn’t required in any way, and just thinking about them makes me want to play it again. It’s extremely difficult to describe many of these scenarios as simply put; it would ruin far too many surprises. I will say one thing though. Only one part of the entire game frustrated me and this was right at the end. But once I figured out what needed to be done, all the frustration was washed away and I was simply awestruck at what a clever method of winning it was. This probably sounds all too mystifying to you, but I really can’t state enough how much I enjoyed playing Resident Evil 5 after its initial shaky start.

Yes the control system is clunky and I can happily concede on that point. I’m not entirely sure what the solution is as I do wonder if changing the control system to a more ‘run and gun’ style might lose some of the Resident Evil feeling to it, but I suspect maybe a reboot of the whole franchise is needed. Capcom have arguably already done this in a way as the game feels less like survival horror and more like action horror. Not one sequence made me alarmed, and overall the game felt a little too open to be scary in any way. However, Resident Evil 5 is extremely well balanced excluding the control system. Although ammo is quite limited and at times difficult to find, it is still remarkably well placed. There is always just enough to keep you going. The transition from a cut scene to the gameplay is sublime, and the graphics on the whole are truly astonishing. The level design has surpassed previous games and although very linear, manages to feel like you’re in a much larger area than you actually are. There are perhaps too few puzzles compared to recent instalments, but the ones that are there are well implemented. I genuinely found that each level was better than the last, with the end sequence in particular being impressively ingenious. Crucially for a game that encourages co-op play, not once did I experience any lag or connection problems while playing online. It was seamless and I might as well have been playing via system link, rather than with someone 200 miles away. My only complaint is you can’t use voice communication in co-op unless you are already in an Xbox Live party which is a minor, but somewhat irritating fault.

As you can guess I loved the game and I’m truly looking forward to going back to replay it a few more times. Capcom have ensured that there are plenty of reasons to return. Besides the obligatory achievements, there are plenty of in-game extras. Perhaps the most fun extra is the infinite ammo options. During the game you can upgrade your weapons, such as increasing capacity or firepower. Once a gun has been upgraded fully, when you complete the game you can unlock infinite ammo for said weapon. Then on a second playthrough, you can use those weapons in their fully upgraded form to play through the game. Obviously this makes things a lot easier, but also a lot more fun! In my case, it meant that thanks to my trusty upgraded shotgun, I could wipe out pretty much anything the game threw at me, including certain sequences that I simply had to run from previously. As well as this, one rather exciting feature is if you complete the game in less than 5 hours, you get a rocket launcher with infinite ammo. What’s not to love there! You can also collect 30 blue emblems throughout the game which adds to the longevity, figurines and outfits to buy, and there are S ranks to gain, whereby you complete a level particularly well, such as by not dying and having a high accuracy rate. If that’s not enough to keep you busy (and believe me, there’s lots to get done), after you complete the game once, Mercenaries mode unlocks. For anyone who’s played Left4Dead or Gears of War 2′s Horde mode, this is essentially the same thing. This as always, on paper, sounds dull, but is quite good fun and certainly a worthy bonus.

Now as much as I’m raving on about Resident Evil 5, that’s not to say, you won’t be infuriated at times. It does get annoying when you get killed, simply because you needed to reload and you have to stand still to do so. I don’t care if it’s more realistic, nothing about the game is realistic anyhow so it could have been avoided for the sake of fun. The partner AI will make you scream at times on higher difficulties, and I would strongly recommend you play Professional difficulty (unlocked after completing it on Veteran first) with a friend otherwise you might end up throwing a controller through your TV. But if you can play Resident Evil 5 with a friend, or don’t mind starting out on Normal difficulty by yourself, I strongly suspect you will have great fun. If you find yourself getting a little bored at first, keep going. Believe me, it gets a lot better the more you play and hopefully by the end you will feel the same as me, quietly impressed at just how clever some of the sequences were, willing to forgive Resident Evil 5 its flaws and desperate for another go of it!

Not worth selling due to non-existent value:
Blue Dragon – I need to complete it anyhow
Crackdown
Football Manager 2006, 2007, 2008
Forza 2
Pro Evo 6 – only cost me £1.99 anyway

Emotional Value:
Assassin’s Creed – last game my Dad bought me.
Brothers in Arms – this may get sold on though.
Dynasty Warriors 5
Grand Theft Auto IV – I need to finish it too!
Perfect Dark Zero

Classic I can’t bear to sell on:
Bioshock Steel Tin
Burnout Paradise/Trivial Pursuit – perhaps not a classic but Trivial Pursuit in particular is ideal for multiplayer
Call of Duty 2
Dead Rising
Fable 2
Fallout 3
Guitar Hero 3
Left4Dead – but then again I’ve not touched it in a long time because I’ve hardly gamed online
Mirror’s Edge – actually it fits nearly all of these categories! But I definitely need to finish it
Scene It – another good multiplayer game
Sega Mega Drive Collection
Viva Pinata

I can sell on as soon as I’m done with:
Condemned
Dead Space
Guitar Hero:Aerosmith – I think, bit unsure about it.
PGR4
Prey
Resident Evil 5
Silent Hill
Skate 2
The Godfather
Tomb Raider Underworld

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, think of it this way. If I sold each and every one of these games for £5, I would have over £150, probably a lot more as some games would sell for more. How scary is that! That currently works out as around a month’s wages for me. Now obviously I’m not suggesting, we all hang up our game controllers and quit. That would be silly. In my case, games are my main expenditure. I always make sure I can pay the bills first, and I don’t really spend a huge deal on anything else, ever! But when you put it into perspective it is quite scary. Every console I’ve owned, I’ve had at least 20 games for at any one point. Even as a child, I’d scrounge up money for whatever game I was after. It’s amazing I managed it really. I’d best not think about how much money I’d have left over, if I hadn’t been a games addict!

Don’t worry, this is for the most part very tongue in cheek and just me thinking aloud really. I have very few regrets on the games side of things (except for selling my SNES and a few dodgy game purchases), I’m just trying to work out ways of raising more funds. Ironically so that I can buy more games!

I think really a more constructive use of my time would be to get on with completing the games in the last list so that I can sell them on as soon as possible!
Anyway, guess who’s going out now to find a copy of Rock Band 2? Yeah, guilty as charged.

I sometimes think my life can be a bit rubbish at times, not always quite as great as I’d like it to be, as I’m sure many of us do. However maybe on those occasions we should think of those poor souls that end up wrapped up in the world of Silent Hill, because their lives just end up a total mess and presumably in the aftermath of the games, they must end up in some pretty heavy duty therapy sessions.

Who cares about their post traumatic stress disorder though, we just love the disturbing nature of Silent Hill. I’m not really sure why the sensationalist media has never caught onto the fact that Silent Hill is much more disturbing than any Grand Theft Auto game has ever been, but I guess it is best not to question the logic of such people as your brain would only explode through excessive stupidity. Anyway, rant over and time to focus on the latest installment of Silent Hill. For those who have yet to play a Silent Hill game (in which case, where have you been?!), they are much the same in terms of gameplay. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way at all, but they do follow a similar path. They all use a third person perspective (think Tomb Raider) with most sections of the game being indoors, and very dark! When you are actually outdoors, it tends to be extremely foggy and difficult to see. All the kind of features that instantly put you off balance especially when you throw in the various monsters that appear from nowhere. The unique thing about Silent Hill, however, is it’s not the monsters that are the scary part. It’s the fact that everything around you is so down right disturbing and generally very weird. Being taken out of your element instantly puts you at unease and immediately makes things that bit more unnerving. All the games involve some puzzle sequences and combat isn’t really the centrepiece of the game. Finally, there are always multiple endings to encourage you to finish the game numerous times. So far, so good. In fact Silent Hill Homecoming matches with all of these vital Silent Hill features, which you would think would be a good thing and it very nearly is.

Silent Hill Homecoming starts out in classic Silent Hill style…..a flashy FMV sequence explaining roughly what’s going on with some great music playing (One More Soul to the Call for those intrigued). I felt instantly comfortable as if I was spending time with an old friend, assuming the old friend was a disturbing and creepy person that is. The storyline unfolds quite slowly but it’s all very typical Silent Hill stuff. You play Alex Shepherd, an American soldier, recently discharged from hospital (presumably from an unknown war), who is returning home. The opening level of the game is a nightmare that Alex has about his younger brother, Josh, and provides a helpful introduction to both the controls and the general theme of the game if you’ve not played a Silent Hill game before. Shortly after, you return to your hometown of Shepherd’s Glen and things take a sinister turn from therein. Although I can’t divulge the story too much without spoiling things, it does all get rather interesting. It’s a shame I felt a lack of empathy to the characters though, too many of them felt like cardboard cut out personalities rather than people I could really feel for.

For much of the early part of the game, it continued to feel like classic Silent Hill to me. Plenty of creepiness, especially, if like me, you find little children wandering around in dark corridors creepy, and generally extremely surreal and disturbing. It is also immediately quite impressive just how many doors in this game have broken locks! This town certainly needs a good locksmith. Everywhere in the game is extremely dark, it starts out quite atmospheric but can get pretty irritating in places. In one level set in a hotel, in places it was quite difficult to actually see what was going on. Sure you can turn the brightness up on your TV but then it all looks wrong as the game is designed to be so dark. It’s all a bit of a catch 22 situation really which could have been so easily solved by Alex’s flashlight actually working properly and illuminating the way! Finding the map for each area is definitely crucial to help you along your way; it’s unfortunate though that even with a map some areas (such as the crypts you have to explore in the first third of the game) are extremely confusing to navigate! The game is admittedly extremely linear in terms of progression but I didn’t find that to be a problem, any single player game with a strong storyline can pull off a linear level structure and Silent Hill Homecoming does this well. With five different endings it’s not too linear but it does admittedly feel a bit of an afterthought, as the only things that affect what ending you get are a few decisions you make in the latter stages of the game. There were also a few places where backtracking actually produced bugs and stopped me from progressing so Double Helix has certainly designed this game with a very set routine in mind. It was pretty infuriating to be stuck because of something that game testing managed to miss!

I felt it initially very refreshing compared to other recently released horror games, that there weren’t hundreds of monsters around to try to kill me. Unfortunately it didn’t last for very long as in later stages; there are perhaps a few too many monsters for my liking. I enjoyed the exploration element of Homecoming much more than the combat, this is in part due to the combat being temperamental to say the least. It all just feels far too clunky compared to the likes of Gears of War and Dead Space. I appreciate that Silent Hill Homecoming isn’t meant to be a third person shooter, but surely a better combat system could have been implemented? It felt slow and cumbersome to do anything and dodging was particularly awkward to achieve successfully. I did get to grips with it eventually but it just didn’t feel as polished as it could have been. Having said that I had no problems defeating any monsters until I came across the fearsome Schisms who were just plain nasty! Especially as the first time I encountered one, I had very little ammo on me. However other than that, I didn’t actually find anything a huge challenge on normal mode. On a second playthrough on hard mode, you can quickly acquire a laser pistol which makes things even simpler. It’s all a matter of finding the right method to quickly kill your enemy. For example, use a knife to kill the feral dogs as it is quick enough to stop them fighting back. More fearsome looking enemies such as Smogs (they spit toxic fog at you) simply involve shooting at their glowing lungs at an appropriate moment a couple of times. Needlers involve a little more thought as you have to dodge their attacks frequently but it’s still fairly simple to defeat. Even the bosses follow a set pattern that doesn’t take much thought from an experienced gamer to traverse. It’s annoying as it makes fighting anything feel a bit tedious, I felt myself just wanting to get past the enemies so I could get on with unraveling the story instead.

Really the problem with Silent Hill Homecoming is it is just all too familiar. Familiarity breeds contempt as some would say. This isn’t quite the case with Silent Hill Homecoming. It’s a perfectly respectable game; it just feels like it could have been so much more. It’s as if Double Helix played it safe as it’s their first Silent Hill game, so they stuck to the tried and tested formula and made the game adequate, but nothing more. It’s hugely subjective but to me, the crucial thing that Homecoming lacks is passion, and like everything in life, a bit of passion can make things so much more exciting and more memorable. Really, it all depends on what you spend on this game. Full price and you’ll be a little disappointed but buy it at a budget price, and Silent Hill Homecoming is a perfectly respectable way of spending a few days gaming. And don’t forget, there may be no multiplayer mode (which would look very out of place!) but there are five endings to see which is surely worth a few replays! Give it a shot, just don’t expect too much of it.

Having had a small clearout of games earlier today, I’ve picked out a few games in my collection that I want to concentrate on for a while. Knowing me, I’ll change my mind within the week but you never know, writing it here is good motivation It’s in no way because the games are bad (they’re all pretty good really!), it’s just that my attention span is pretty poor at the best of times. Anyway, on with the list!

Call of Duty 2
I’ve recently got this back after lending it to a friend for a while. It’s one of my favourite 360 games and also one of the first I bought for the system. I started playing it on Veteran back in 2007 and never really progressed very far. It was part down to lack of patience, and mostly down to my crap attention span. However I fancy going back to it so I’m determined I will now. My Dad used to love watching me play it so it makes sense to finally do it on Veteran!

Condemned
I’m roughly halfway through this now so I’d like to get it done. It’s a good game that holds up well despite its age (both it and CoD2 were launch titles at the end of 2006) that deserves my time, especially as I’ve owned it for about 2 years now!

Dead Space
I’ve only owned this a couple of days thanks to trading a few games in. Initial impressions were very good. The graphics are very impressive, the HUD is an interesting concept and I love the audio logs. However now I’ve reached the fourth chapter I’m starting to realise its flaws. It all seems a little repetitive without really mixing anything up. It’s also only made me jump once which is surprising!

Fallout 3
I want to finish off the last of the achievements before Broken Steel. There’s not much left to do but I feel a bit burned out after obsessively playing it the last couple of weeks, so I’m leaving it a little while first. I have points waiting for Broken Steel’s release.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Yes I’m rather behind! Some very good friends of mine got me this at launch last year but my life was a total mess at the time and despite playing it a fair bit back then, it somehow got left behind a little, and I’d really like to return to it now. Plus I might get The Lost and The Damned once I’ve completed the main game.

Tomb Raider Underworld
I recently won a DLC code for Beneath the Ashes thanks to NowGamer, primarily the Twitter feed of one of its journalists. So this seems a perfect excuse to go back to Tomb Raider and try out the DLC and go back to the main story.

So yes, I have plenty to get on with! And that’s even before I mention the rental copy of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars on the Wii, GTA:Chinatown on the DS and my forthcoming copy of Resident Evil 5 that I’m reviewing next!

Sure, sometimes a game will be boring enough to make me want to switch it off and go play something decent, but I resist for the sake of integrity. However, I will admit it now. I failed with Shellshock 2. I hated it with every iota of my body, to the point that I’m afraid I couldn’t face completing it. I got three quarters of the way through and was seriously considering giving up gaming, it was so bad. I know I should bow my head in shame but seriously, if you had played this game (and I hope for your sake you never have to suffer this travesty) you would understand entirely.

There are many games that although not overly good, they still have a certain something about them that means someone likes them, but this? Surely not, I would dearly love to meet someone that enjoyed Shellshock 2, and possibly get a psychoanalyst to determine if they are sane or not. So I have probably intrigued you so much that you are desperate to know what’s wrong with Shellshock 2. A better question would be what’s right with it. Of course if I answered solely what’s right with it, this review would only be one word long: nothing. I suppose from a very optimistic viewpoint, it does two things right. It’s not very long; one playthrough would only take 4-6 hours by my reckoning of 20 minutes per level. The problem is it is so god forsakenly awful that it will feel like an eternity and that’s why you won’t complete it. The other good thing is it has very simple to gain achievement points if you are that way inclined, but you would have to be mad to achieve all 1000 of those points (especially as one achievement requires you to complete the game twice!). So now that we’ve got the good parts of the game out of the way, onto the tirade of things wrong with it!

The story, for once, is set during the Vietnam War, rather than the usual Second World War, which ordinarily would look like quite a positive step in terms of originality. The problem is, after about five minutes, you don’t really care as the focus is hardly on the story at all. You play Nate, a soldier whose brother Cal has managed to get caught up in a virus testing program called Whiteknight. This has caused an outbreak of zombie style soldiers all out to eat you, essentially. Typical zombie game type stuff really. As well as the zombies (technically they’re infected, it seems zombies are out, infected are in this season), there is also the small issue of the Vietnam War so there’s plenty of Vietcong to shoot as well.

After the initial storyline explanation, it all gets positively silly and ultimately you won’t care much. Still, a story isn’t always crucial for a good game is it; maybe the gameplay will make up for it? Excuse me while I try to stop laughing! I really can’t think of a redeeming feature in terms of controls or general game mechanics. Very early on, you will be baffled by why exactly Rebellion, the developers, decided to map the A button to the torch. Why use one of the main face buttons for this sort of purpose? Who knows, but still that’s not a game destroying feature, just a slight irritant. However, everything to do with aiming, perhaps the most crucial thing you need to be able to do in a FPS, is certainly game destroying. First of all, aiming just feels wrong, subjective I know but it feels awkward and inaccurate, and that’s because after a while you realise it is inaccurate! As you would expect in a FPS there is an iron sight on screen to help you aim. I say help in the loosest sense as in Shellshock 2; it just seems to obscure your view even further. It is so large and imposing that you can’t really see what you are aiming at. In the end I found it easier and more accurate to just move the iron sight around and press fire whenever it turned red to indicate an enemy was there. Due to the absolutely atrocious graphics, I’m talking Xbox 1 quality, it really wasn’t worth trying to spot the enemy, and it was easier to just wait for the iron sight to turn red. Excluding headshots, it didn’t seem to matter where you shot as it would always take at least 4-5 hits to kill the enemy regardless of the weapon, level of difficulty setting. I say this; I actually found that melee attacks and using the pistol was more effective than a rifle, AK-47 or even a shotgun. Even my brief time with a rocket launcher was useless, I was better off resorting to the ‘Wait till the iron sight goes red’ trick rather than actually aiming and trying to be skilful. This is in the case of killing Vietcong, but it is a similar tale with the Infected as I found a rifle butt to the body worked more effectively than a point blank range shotgun blast, 2 rifle butts or 3-4 shotgun blasts at close range, the logic? Who knows! Most weapons even required manual reloading which is frankly ridiculous! The enemies themselves are far from bright, they will, for the most part, just stand in front of you firing at you, waiting to die.

However there are still some irritating quirks that I really don’t fully understand. Such as enemies appearing from behind you despite there being absolutely nowhere that they could have come from because of a dead end. If this is how the Vietnam War really was, then no wonder it was such a difficult War! With no cover system and an inability to hit the ground and crawl, it can get frustrating when caught up in the crossfire, as dealing with enemies that you can hardly see and can hardly hit because of an appalling hit box system is really not my idea of fun. Oh and did I mention the appalling way of telling where you are being hit from? White flashes show from the four sides of the screen to show where the bullets are coming from, the problem is it still didn’t really help in distinguishing exactly where the enemy was. With no radar system available (even the first Call of Duty managed to have this!) and the awful graphics combined, it really is awkward to see exactly what’s going on and to be able to make an informed decision as to where to aim. As well as this, it felt difficult to determine exactly how much damage I had taken during a firefight. From what I could determine, a red haze goes around the screen to indicate damage; the problem is the white flashes of being shot obscures the red meaning it is quite difficult to tell what’s going on. This invariably means you die at times which feel unfair, simply because you couldn’t accurately guess how close to death you were. Probably by now, you’re sick of these unfair deaths, so you go to change difficulty for the next level. Oh no you don’t! Despite furious looks, I couldn’t find anywhere in the options that would allow me to change difficulty mid campaign, much like the Call of Duty series and various other games offer. Instead you have to restart the entire game at that difficulty and never change it. This seems incredibly short sighted to me and I really don’t understand why it’s the case.

Besides these logistical nightmares, the game is just so predictable in terms of layout. I don’t mind linear games if they push you along in a manner that disguises it well, such as the Call of Duty series for example, but this just feels so forced. Essentially you start a level, you run a little way, and you stop and shoot at a load of oncoming enemies, then once that’s cleared you move on a bit further ad infinitum. Occasionally there will be booby traps which provoke a Quick Time Event, these are simplistic to the extreme and really don’t add anything to the game. As well as this, occasionally an enemy will jump out at you (or the game will get confused and suddenly warp you to them) and you will have a slightly longer Quick Time Event to survive, on Easy it is a matter of 4 button presses, but on Medium and Hard there are 9 buttons to press, yes 9, that is a bit excessive really.

So, just to recap: the controls are awful, the graphics are terrible, the loading times are slow, the gameplay is atrocious, there is no multiplayer and the story is mediocre at best. Should you buy this? Not in a million years! Seriously, don’t even spend £10 on this awful, awful game. It really isn’t worth it. If you want a War FPS, go play the Call of Duty series, even if you have completed them all, replay them! If you want an atmospheric horror game, play F.E.A.R 1 or 2, play Bioshock, Resident Evil 5. You might as well go buy a copy of The Darkness, it’s cheap but cheerful! Just, please don’t play this. I implore you. If people keep buying this type of unspeakable awfulness, Rebellion might think they are doing something right and make more of this nonsense. Just say no.

Everyone loves Lord of the Rings, don’t they? Well, actually, I don’t. I quite liked the books, but I wasn’t fussed with the films at all which is a bit of a surprise considering my love for all things dwarfy and elfish. Arguably this puts me at an immediate disadvantage to enjoying Lord of the Rings: Conquest and maybe it does. However as I liked Star Wars: Battlefront (also made by Pandemic Studios), Dynasty Warriors and various other hack n slashers, I thought I’d give this game a shot. After all, surely it will be a fun hack n slasher, they can’t be that hard to make surely? Unfortunately it seems I was wrong.

The game opens up initially offering multiplayer and one single player or co-operative campaign depending on if you can find a willing friend to play along: the ‘Good’ campaign, War of the Ring. Once this campaign is completed then the ‘Evil’ side of the game opens up in the form of Rise of Sauron, essentially the same story, just from the evil perspective. The story of course being the main storyline of the books with a bit of poetic license and of course, the Evil campaign having an alternative ending. Each campaign and subsequent levels feel extremely similar in terms of gameplay. On opening, one can choose to play as one of four classes: warrior, archer, scout or mage.

All the classes are controlled in a very similar manner but are fairly well balanced. The warrior, somewhat predictably, mainly has physical up close attacks, although can throw axes a short distance at the enemy. As well as this, the warrior can use special attacks by adding special elements to his weapon such as fire. The archer can fire poison, fire or multiple arrows at its target and in some ways is the strongest of the classes, as a well aimed headshot invariably kills the enemy immediately. The scout can backstab an enemy, if it manages to sneak up behind one successfully, instantly killing them. While the mage can heal as well as fire lightening bolts and flame attacks. But don’t worry; you won’t be stuck with whatever class you choose at the start of the level as at various points in the level you can change class. As well as this, occasionally you will be given the option to play as a hero. These are where Lord of the Rings fans will be very happy as you are given the opportunity to briefly play as heroes such as Aragorn and Gandalf. Unfortunately as exciting as it sounds, it’s not very. You see Aragorn is simply a reskinned Archer class and Gandalf is a reskinned Mage. Still, if you’re a die hard Lord of the Rings fan, you will probably still be very happy nonetheless. Of course, who cares what class you are; if you don’t know what you’re doing you won’t get very far. This is where the trusty yellow arrow comes to it. In game it tends to be a bit manic with warring factions all over the place, so to help you along the way, the yellow arrow points you at every objective you need to get to. Sometimes it stops and you have to defend the area you’re in but for the most part as long as you follow the arrow around, you’ll be ok. This is fine if you don’t mind an extremely linear game. Or the fact that you can just run past everything else, Orcs and all, and head to the nearest yellow arrow to progress in the game. I know it defeats the object of the game but I have no doubt that after the first mission or two, you will be doing this too. After all, you won’t be missing out on much. Sure you will miss out on the ‘fun’ of the clunky combat that feels far too detached, or the reminder that all the classes are mostly the same when it comes down to it. But when it comes to quality gameplay, you won’t miss a thing as it’s just not really there. The objectives almost always come down to a few basic ideas: defend a location, capture a control point (a flag essentially) or meet up with your allies. When you die, you simply respawn at the nearest control point with all the enemies around you having the same health as they did before you died, meaning if you had inflicted a fair bit of damage already then you can finish them off easily. This makes things a little too easy at times considering you can simply keep respawning and chipping away a bit at your opponent. As well as this, if the enemy happens to be right next to a perilous cliff, you can push them off causing their instant death and a very easy solution for you. It’s a pity as I would have liked to have seen more intelligent enemies; it would have made things that bit more challenging. The only really irritating parts I found were when you had to defend an area for a set time. This was where the friendly AI felt a bit lacking as it just didn’t seem very good at defending, leaving everything down to you which in some places got extremely tedious when for the 100th time you were overrun simply because the friendly AI had left the area you were guarding. Perhaps the most annoying thing that then occurs is if you fail an objective, the level ends and you restart right back at the beginning of it which is a much harsher punishment than if you die, which seems a little unfair. To break up the monotony of repeating the same actions over and over again, there are some different segments in the levels such as being able to play as an Ent and using mounts. Unfortunately the controls feel a little clunky. In fact in terms of playing a tree, I found the mediocre Prince Caspian game fulfilled my tree playing urges much better than Lord of the Rings: Conquest has, which is worrying in itself considering how poor Prince Caspian was.

Aiming to be the shining light of this fairly average game is the online facilities that EA has kindly provided us with. For once, they almost work. It does have its quirks but for the most part I can see it making a nice change from the usual FPS/Sports games monopoly on Xbox Live. When I initially went to search for an online game to play by selecting quick game, I was initially rather annoyed to see that I couldn’t because I didn’t have the appropriate downloadable content. So I had to look under marketplace in the game and I couldn’t find any new map packs. Rather annoyingly, the new map pack isn’t listed in game despite all other DLC being there. You have to go back to the Xbox Dashboard and look through there. Only a minor niggle but considering there was a very recent title update, you would think it would already be there. If nothing else, surely EA are missing out on business by not including it? I digress, back to the actual multiplayer element. Offering conquest, capture the ring (flag to you and me), team deathmatch and hero deathmatch, there are plenty of options to whet your appetite. With 2 pieces of DLC available already there’s plenty to keep players busy. From what I have seen, the community is actually thriving quite nicely which makes a pleasant change as so many games lose their community very quickly. In places it reminds me of a third person Halo 3 but without the smack talk which is always good! Although not a reason to buy this game, it is a nice bonus to see a well rounded multiplayer facility despite the somewhat lacklustre offline mode.

Overall, Lord of the Rings: Conquest is the sort of game that a Lord of the Rings fan is much more likely to enjoy than a gamer. To a gamer, it is distinctly average and slow. The combat feels sluggish in places, and the graphics not quite up to scratch. On top of that it just gets too tedious too fast. However to a Lord of the Rings fan, it is a perfect companion piece to the films and books. It will evoke memories of events seen in the films (especially as many FMVs are closely linked to the film), it will excite you as you get to play your favourite character, and Howard Shore’s music score will be like, well it’ll be like music to your ears frankly. Presentation wise Conquest is top notch, it has to be said. It is just unfortunately the gameplay side of the game which has suffered, which is inexcusable considering it is a game after all! As you may be able to guess, no I can’t recommend this game. I would actually go so far as to say I enjoyed Dynasty Warriors 5 more, as although it was a somewhat tedious hack n slasher, it was at least fast paced, as any decent hack n slasher should be. Maybe if you’re bored and it’s very cheap and you enjoy achievement gaining (it is very generous at doling out achievement points), but don’t expect much at all. Unless of course you are a huge Lord of the Rings fan, in which case ignore all this and rush out to get it. But seriously, just don’t do it.

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks on this blog, for which I apologise for. I’ve been quite busy as well as lacking in motivation which isn’t a great combination for this blog, nor for a budding writer such as myself! Writing wise, I’ve just finshed up a review of Codename Panzers Cold War, the white sliced bread of the PC RTS world. It’s my first paid review and my first review to soon be featured on playboy.co.uk so I’m rather happy with that. Pity it was such a mediocre game and so terrible to review. Terrible, not because it was a bad game, but because it felt like there was so little to say. It was a real challenge as it was just so middle of the road, nothing positive or negative stood out! I’ve just finished writing up the review for Lord of the Rings:Conquest which I was rather disappointed with. I generally love a good hack n slasher. Despite their repetive nature, they are my guilty pleasure. However LoTR:Conquest just doesn’t cut it for me, it’s just too slow compared to the likes of Dynasty Warriors amongst many other things. Review will be up here in the next few days as well as a link for Codename Panzers.

Back to gaming for fun, I’ve been busy with a few games.

I finished off Prince of Persia at last. I never did figure out if I enjoyed it or not. I assume I must have as I played it to the end but it had a lot wrong with it. A lot of the time it felt like an on the rails platformer, if such a thing could exist, where I just had to press a, b or y from time to time to progress further. I didn’t particularly like the two main characters, and certainly didn’t like having to stop every few minutes to listen to a conversation that I couldn’t skip. As well as that, the combat was very tedious. Yet I still played it, and I’m still not 100% sure why. I guess it was because it was easy so it was a nice stressfree simple game. So yeah I guess I enjoyed it. Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though.

Next up in the pile was Sega Mega Drive Collection, otherwise known as a nice walk down memory lane. I know Nintendo never will, but I would kill for a similar collection of Super Nintendo games rather than be restricted to the Wii’s Virtual Console. Anyway, back to the Mega Drive. I’ve enjoyed replaying the various Streets of Rages, especially 3 as I never played that originally. Also enjoyed playing the Sonics again. When I have some time I’m going to play through the Phantasy Stars and Shining Forces as I also missed those when they first came along. I guess that’s the problem with being a kid in those days, I couldn’t afford many games so I missed out on so many classics! I used to love playing The Story of Thor but I never actually owned it. Instead I rented it as often as I could in my local Blockbuster. Of course the problem there was it had a battery back up save system on its cartridge. There were two copies of The Story of Thor in the store so it all depended on if I got the right copy as to whether I could progress much further in my game. Plus on a few occassions some git had deleted or overwritten the save anyhow. As you can guess, I played through the opening stages of the game a lot, and never actually completed it! One day I started it the other day and was surprised how much harder it was than I remember. Maybe I’ve actually got worse at games with age?! That’d suck. It certainly reminded me of how much easier games are now, and so did a few other Mega Drive games. I don’t know what I’d do without a save function now.

I’m finally starting to get into Fallout 3 after erm about 3 months of just not getting into it. I’m about 15hrs in and I’m finally starting to enjoy it. I still don’t think it’ll be in my Top 10 games of all time or anything like that but it’s certainly gone up the list of all games I’ve ever played. I love it sometimes, then sometimes I hate it. It is immensely satisfying to headshot a raider with the very nice VATS system, and then it goes and pisses me off. Usually by my getting lost in a tunnel because it all looks too samey, or when an NPC gets stuck walking to somewhere that I have to follow them to. I have no doubt that I’m probably being excessively critical (there are more irritants, I’ve just managed to have a blank moment and forgotten them all!) and yes it is the definitive first person RPG, but you have to remember: I don’t tend to like Western RPGs, I much prefer JRPGs. I really enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, but I found Mass Effect disappointing and lacking soul, and Oblivion was alright but not the be all and end all that others found it to be at the time. On the other hand, I loved Enchanted Arms and Eternal Sonata both of which suffered a few mixed reviews. So ultimately, I guess, like everything else, it all comes down to personal opinion! Mind you if everyone accepted that, I’d be out of an aspiring career so don’t listen to me

Finally, I picked up Tomb Raider:Underworld for £10 (after using a voucher from Christmas). Only played the prologue and the start of the first level. First impressions were not as I hoped. I found the first proper level a bit vague and open for my liking. I like being in a Tomb, I don’t want to be in the middle of an ocean. But ah well, I’ll crack on with it when I have the time.

As my final comment tonight, my iPhone is unfortunately a bit unwell and off for repair at the moment. I had no idea how useful I found it to be until now that I’m without it. When I bought it last year I was worried I’d be lured into the ‘ooh shiny gimmicky gadget’ bug, which I had been. However it’s very useful too. The mp3 facilities, the video playback facilities, being able to twitter on the move, facebook on the move, email, wi-fi, train times etc. I miss it. I hope it comes back soon It’s been about 10 days now.

On that note, feel free to add me on Twitter if you like my random musings: JenjeaHaly is the name on there