Category Archives: Reviews

Portal 2 [360]

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The first Portal was a complete and utter surprise to a lot of people, sneaking into their homes inside The Orange Box to deliver one of the best loved titles not just of 2007, but of the entire decade. For a game so compact it had a huge impact on gamers and created a deep hunger for another slice of that tasty Portal cake.

After quite an abrupt awakening you find yourself back inside the Aperture Science testing facility where an indeterminate amount of time has passed and the actions from the first game echo in the aesthetics around you. No more pristine white walls and minimalist test chambers; these have been replaced with broken tiles, overgrown foliage, and smashed windows.

The locations and aesthetics alone tell a richer, deeper story than ever before.

You are guided through these opening levels by the wonderfully idiotic Wheatley, a spherical robot voiced by Stephen Merchant, who delivers such a pitch-perfect comedic performance that he nearly steals the entire show. I often found myself just watching Wheatley to see what he would say next and even went out of my way to find lines of alternative dialogue.

Wheatley may have been my favourite character but both GLaDOS and new addition Cave Johnson (CEO of Aperture Science) also bring the funnies on a regular basis and had me giggling like a Japanese school girl nearly every time they opened their mouths. These moments of hilarity are just the relief I needed after solving a puzzle and helped keep the game well-paced and my brain well-rested between levels.

You are given a short re-briefing as to how the Portal gun works (orange hole here, blue hole there, walk through one and come out of the other!) and quickly brought up to speed with increasingly difficult trials, that bring with them a whole new tub of toys to the playpen. These include Thermal Discouragement lasers, which are harmful to the player but also destroy turrets and activate switches; Excursion Funnel beams, which can carry and float the player and any object in its grasp, and Hard Light bridges, which can just be used to cross rooms but also occasionally serve as a shield against those cute little turrets’ not-so-cute bullets.

The real game-changers however are three coloured gels that each have unique properties. Once a surface is coated by the red Gel it increases the speed of any object and player moving across it; likewise the blue Gel makes surfaces and even objects incredibly bouncy, and the white Gel allows any surface coated with it to accept portals.  While these aren’t as revolutionary as the portal gun was they do make for a fresh and interesting twist.

Valve’s second helping may not pack the same punch as the first, but it definitely doesn’t skimp on the good stuff.  It still contains all of the ingredients that made the first game so darn tasty: a brilliant sense of humour, a well-written script, stand-out vocal performances and those famously mind-bending puzzles that just keep you wanting more.

Friends forever and ever and ever and ever and ever..etc. (You can't die)

In addition to the single player campaign there is an accompanying co-operative campaign which sees you and a friend taking control of two test robots and taking on the test chambers together. My co-op partner, as usual, was Adam and despite us starting off with the wrong shaped robots (he had the short, round one, I had the tall, egg headed one) we got off to a flying start and pretty much finished the game within two sittings.  Unlike playing solo you never find yourself stumped for very long because you are both usually looking at the same puzzle in a different way. This also helps alleviate the puzzle fatigue that comes with playing Portal for too long in one go, as I sometimes found myself just following Adams instructions  for a couple of chambers and then vice versa for the next couple.

What I would have liked to of seen is perhaps a more competitive element to the multiplayer, perhaps something where you are both given the same puzzle and you must solve it quicker than your opponent?  This would have definitely added to the longevity of the game, because as it stands it’s only really a one-off experience. Despite this though, it is still one of my favourite games of the year so far.

LA Noire spoilerific review

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LA Noire.

Although the latter half of this review might seem to focus more on the negative, I just want to say that I bought LA Noire on day one and had a great time playing through the main storyline. It is a unique game and i’m very much in favour of seeing a sequel. Firstly, it is gorgeous to look at. Experienced in full technicolour it is visually reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, while choosing to play in black and white puts you into the mindset of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Certainly a neat effect and one can genuinely appreciate the excellent lighting engine while playing in full-noir mode.

The soundtrack is thrillingly atmospheric and suits the mood of the game perfectly. If anything it has proved to me that more games need a jazz soundtrack.

LA Noire does a good job of tipping its fedora to other media set in the same time period. There is a character shared with 1997′s LA Confidential, a few subtle references to Bioshock (look out for Matthew Ryan, who could be Andrew Ryan’s far less capable brother), and the climax of the game is strikingly reminiscent of 1949 film noir classic The Third Man.

The game engine itself is as robust as ever. The explorable part of LA you’re given is huge (and apparently very true to life), and the people look amazing. Seriously, the new motion capture technology is no less than revolutionary. Being able to make decisions based on the subtle actions of the characters is so much fun.

Unfortunately, what I really want to get into is what irked me about the game and why I probably won’t bother with 100% completion or playing DLC.

HERE BE SPOILERS FROM NOW ON.

To get nitpicky point out of the way, loading felt far too frequent and too long. It seemed like every 5 minutes I was sitting staring at a poorly constructed loading screen waiting for the next scene to start. But what I really wanted to talk about was t he storyline.

I’m a huge fan of the storyline of LA Noire. It’s expertly scripted and acted, and in my opinion the overarching main plot is one of the most interesting in gaming history. That said, the process by which you experience the story is distractingly convoluted.

The narrative develops across three intertwining devices (there is a fourth but it’s a weird little thing and i’ll get to it later). There’s the main storyline that concentrates on you playing as Detective Cole. There are flashback sequences that give you insight into the character of Cole and his comrades-in-arms during World War II. And finally, you find newspapers strewn about LA that give you a villain’s perspective on what’s going on.

You spend the first quarter of the game as an LA cop in training. Remember that fourth storytelling device I mentioned? Well during your first forays into policing there’s a Narrator doing a voice-over at the start of every case. The narration complements the Noir setting nicely and helps to set the tone for the cases. Then it disappears without warning, for no reason, and for the rest of the game. When I stopped hearing it I actually thought it might be a bug. Nope.

You start by solving unrelated crimes (many of which involve a horrifying amount of violence done to women) and learning the ropes. I enjoyed this, although Cole is an angry bastard. Choosing ‘Doubt’ or ‘Lie’ during interviews with witnesses and suspects almost always led to them being shouted at, poor buggers. Makes you wonder why anyone would try and be helpful. This is also the period where you start to realise that every case is going to unfold in a very similar fashion.

You are given a literal checklist of tasks to accomplish, places to visit, people to talk to, with very little room for deviation. Sure, you can drive around looking for side-missions as a distraction, but they’re all pretty same-y and do nothing to advance the storyline.

Even though throughout the game you work for different police divisions (all of which are spoiled for you at the start of the game as they’re all marked in your notepad), every crime that you investigate is handled in exactly the same way; walk around the crime scene waiting for your controller to vibrate, “investigate” clues that you find and talk to any witnesses that happen to be standing around. Then you work down the checklist (there’s never an advantage to working the checklist in any way but from top-to-bottom) of places and people. Do a few interviews and you’re done, case solved. Or so you think.

By the time you’ve been a Homicide cop for a while (disc 2), you’ve started to realise that there might be a serial killer at work here and that you’ve probably arrested people for crimes they didn’t commit. This is where the dissonance begins. You as a player can see that you’re questioning and arresting the wrong people, but you as a cop can’t. This is mainly due to the fact that you’ve been given a crystal ball in the form of a newspaper that shows you what the criminals are getting up to, and it makes you feel like you’re a rubbish cop for not cottoning on.

Why are we being shown what’s happening from the villain’s perspective? There’s no mystery if we’re shown what’s behind the curtain. It’s makes for a frustrating paradox where you know who the antagonists are and what they’re doing, but you also don’t at the same time. This means you’re forced to stick to your investigative checklist until such time as the game decides you can act on information you were shown 4 hours ago. It is very frustrating.

By the time you’re promoted into Vice, all of the storytelling devices (current investigations, flashbacks and newspapers) have started to come together and form the bulk of the narrative. You feel like it’s building towards a big crescendo and you’re waiting for that extra morsel of Cole’s character development… you’re doing more cases… waiting some more… then he has an affair.

Cole is an asshole. You’re given very little reason to like the guy. During the first three quarters of the game you are made to think he’s a dudley do-right, working by the book as the Golden Boy of the police force (the Army too, you see in flashbacks). Then suddenly he trundles off to have an affair with a club singer.

I uphold the letter of the law but FUCK YOU, SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE.

Not that you ever care about his wife and kids either. The only time you see his wife is when she’s throwing Cole’s belongings out onto the pavement. That’s when it struck me – Cole has a house? I’ve been playing as this character for 10 hours, choosing what he can wear, which car he can drive, whereabouts in the huge swathe of LA he travels to, but I don’t even know where he lives? It made me feel even more detached from him.

Shortly after Cole shacks up with the singer is when the story takes a turn that you don’t see coming. Cole gets demoted to Arson and you start playing as a different character, a character who is a vast improvement over Cole, Jack Kelso. Kelso is a badass. At one point he rolls into a guy’s office, shoots him in the leg and delivers a witty one-liner. He even seemed better at handling interviews than Cole did. It made me wish i’d played as Kelso the whole game.

Then there is the very end. There is a nice twist to it, it is a very naturalistic ending, but since there is so little reason to care about the main character, it just feels weak and empty. You end up with a deeper affection for every other character in the game, so to me, Cole’s death was not a big loss

Obviously, if all the cases had been connected from the beginning it would have been rather silly, but I just wish Cole’s character had the depth that I felt the other characters had. We are given glimpses of what happens to Cole during the war but still come away with the feeling that GTA IV’s Nico Bellic character was more fleshed-out, and his backstory was never played out for us.

For me, the issue is more than just caring about a character on screen, it is about the construction of a complete story. Unfortunately, L.A. Noire does not do this particularly well, even though it excels in other areas.

UFC Undisputed: 2010 [360]

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I’ve had this game tucked away for a while now but a couple of weeks ago it jumped out of my box o’ games and roundhouse kicked me in the head! I don’t mean this literally, of course, but metaphorically it definitely delivered a short, sharp blow to my senses. I had played the 2009 iteration of THQ’s mixed martial arts sim and despite a hefty list of flaws I still found it enjoyable, especially when playing against a human opponent as opposed to the CPU. I only bought the 2010 version because I saw it cheap somewhere and thought it’d be a good game to whip out when mates come over or for when I just fancied pounding a musclebound piece of man-meat. 
 

I’d dabbled in the career mode of 2009 and found it to be really tedious as it would take hours and hours just to raise your created fighters stats to a decent level. Unfortunately this hasn’t changed much in the 2010 game as it remains mostly the same as before. In-between fights you can train up your fighter on a basic level by levelling up stamina, strength and speed and you can also train specific stats by sparring and completing challenges such as “perform 3 takedowns” or “kick him in the head, like, really really hard.”

You spend about 10 weeks, on average, training between fights and it’s here where the career mode suffers the same problems as before. You spend all this time training and building up to the big fight itself and then within a few minutes, sometimes seconds, it’s all over and you’re back in the gym again, training for the next fight.  

“I’ve heard of being kicked in the head but THIS is ridiculous!”

 Obviously the game is more of a sim than a traditional fighting game, but did they have to make the training segments so ball-achingly boring!? I always choose to do the free-sparring because it offers a slice of action and allows you to get some points to boost your stats, but these sparring bouts literally last a minute and don’t really give you time to try strategies or build up any momentum, so they’re really not fun at all. It’s such a shame, because the fights themselves are fantastically brutal and possibly the best fighting I’ve experienced in any game.

This brings me back to what I meant at the start by it taking me by surprise, because I forgot just how fun the fights were! When I started playing the game I jumped straight into the career mode as I assumed this is what the game was built for, especially for the single-player experience, but the tediousness of it all gets to you after a while and the thrill of the fight just doesn’t provide enough reward for the hours you put into the training. I think this is why I got bored and didn’t bother playing it again. I find it strange that they don’t allow you to pick a professional fighter and go through the career mode with him, or at least let you level up quicker so it’s not as mundane.

 So when I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago and played it, I just wanted to jump in and have a good ol’ scrap, so I checked out the achievements and tried finding something suitable that I could work towards and get my fix of UFC action at the same time.  First thing I did was go online, which was a big mistake. Not only was I rusty as hell, I was also never really good in the first place, so naturally I got my arse handed to me in about 10 seconds.

 

I did notice, however, that the online version is vastly improved and I hardly experienced any lag, which was a big part of the reason I never played 2009 online, because it was a nightmare! The skill of the players on there does seem to be of a very high standard and I was never matched with someone at a similar level as me.

 

Like I said before, the fights are great fun and this is due to the deep mechanics on offer. You really need to think about the way you fight and timing is the key here. There’s no room for button bashing as you’ll most likely just tire out your fighter or leave him exposed to a dangerous blow, which could end in a one-punch knockout. I’m not going to lie to you fine folks, this is a tough game that takes a while to get used to. I still haven’t mastered the submissions and often get caught out with the classic armbar or triangle choke. But that’s the beauty of the game, you can choose a style and try to master it. Some people like the brawl and just go toe to toe whilst avoiding takedowns, some people like to take it to the floor as soon as possible for some good ol’ fashioned ground and pound. 

 

I prefer to fight close quarters whilst clinched and get them to the side of the cage and knee the bejesus out of them. Incidentally, using the cage is a new addition to the fighting system that allows you to make use of your surroundings and this gives the fights even more depth than ever before. Make sure you run through all the tutorials when you start as you really won’t get anywhere quick if you don’t. 

 The best way to experience them is by playing against a human or setting up an “event” which is a DIY PPV feature that allows you to construct a whole night of carnage using the robust roster to create up to 8 fights. At the end of the 8 fights you are treated to some highlights in the form of “fight of the night”, “submission of the night” and “knockout of the night”, which add an interesting twist and is brilliant for re-living those beautifully visceral moments. It is a shame they don’t have a fully implemented replay system because there are so many “WHAT THE FUGG!?” moments that would benefit from this feature.

 

 Other modes include the Ultimate Fights mode, which gives you the opportunity to relive some of the most famous and popular fights from the past. Your goal is to perform specific moves during particular rounds in order to recreate the fight as best as possible. It’s an interesting mode that adds a little variety but I really didn’t find the fun in trying to score “ten shin kicks in round 1″.

 

At its core UFC Undisputed: 2010 is a great fighting game, with a strong foundation in its gameplay and overall it is only let down by the menu-heavy career mode. If you avoid the career mode there’s a whole pile of fun to be had here.

8/10