All posts in Game Over

Game Over – Dead Rising 2

by Johnus Maximus on April 10, 2011 in All, Game Over, Xbox 360 with No comments

My twelfth completed game of 2011 is Dead Rising 2 from Capcom and Blue Castle Games.

When Frank West was introduced to the world, no-one could have been more excited by his zombie-bashing escapades than yours truly. The prospect of running around an enclosed play area with literally hundreds of weapons at your disposal to use against the shuffling horde was enough to convince me to pick up my first Xbox 360 back in 2006. Despite discovering the truth behind the zombie outbreak, it was inevitable that the story would continue in some shape or form.

Taking place five years later, you get to play as Chuck Greene, a contestant in a Running Man-esque tv show, hoping to win the prize money that will allow him to purchase Zombrex – the drug he needs to keep his daughter from turning into a zombie. All hell breaks loose and the zombies once more maraud the streets, with Chuck being framed as the perpetrator. He’s got 72 hours to clear his name, keep his daughter alive, rescue survivors, incapacitate psychopaths and avoid becoming zombie chow.

Of course, he’s not completely helpless, being trapped in a casino/retail complex means you have even more weapons to choose from than Frank did, and also the ability to combine items to create unthinkable tools of destruction. Gaffer tape some knives to a pair of boxing gloves and you’ve got yourself a pair of home-made, snikkety snikt Wolverine claws. Or how about combining a sledgehammer and a fire axe to create The Defiler, guaranteed to make your enemy stay down.

And that’s just the beginning, this game quite literally is full to the brim of things to see and do, including a two player co-operative mode, and for the first time in a while I’ve actually found myself eager to carry on playing even though I’ve completed the storyline. Until I pick up a copy of my own though (this was a Lovefilm rental), I’ll have to get my zombie-slaying kicks by playing the downloadable epilogue – Case West.

Game Over – Kinectimals

by Johnus Maximus on April 3, 2011 in All, Game Over, Xbox 360 with 1 Comment

My eleventh completed game of 2011 is Kinectimals from Frontier Developments.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t have any children and were probably wondering what on earth drove me to making this game a “day 1 purchase” back in November when Kinect was released. It wasn’t the game concept, as to me this just looked like a “next-gen” Nintendogs clone. It wasn’t the fact that it was exclusively for Kinect, as I had already snagged some of the other launch titles anyway. It was all thanks to a video posted on Kotaku by Stephen Totilo.

I’m not sure if Frontier intended the inclusion of Halo-themed unlockables to attract “core gamers” like myself, but it certainly worked! As it turns out, the game was actually surprisingly enjoyable, if a little simplistic and repetitive – it is intended for children though, so I can’t really use these as fault points. There was certainly enough to keep me interested until the end, even if it did take me a while (insert obligatory moving furniture to play Kinect gripe here).

For the benefit of anyone this phenomena has passed by; the game sees you become an explorer of a mysterious island, inhabited by the Kinectimals – juvenile big cats – all eager to help you explore and play games with the many unlockable toys in the game. These toys range from footballs, Frisbees, remote controlled cars, skipping ropes and water pistols. You can also teach the animals tricks using motion and voice commands, and participate in a serious of challenging events such as assault courses and funfair-esque hoopla, shooting and coconut shy games.

Even though it had a few performance issues with limb tracking, as well as a difficult to access multiplayer mode, I can see this game being something pretty wondrous for children to play. It’s certainly proved to be one of the better launch titles for Kinect and I can heartily recommend it, even to “grown ups”, after all we’re all still kids at heart, right?

Game Over – Fallout: New Vegas

by Johnus Maximus on March 27, 2011 in All, Game Over, Xbox 360 with No comments

My tenth completed game of 2011 is Fallout: New Vegas from Obsidian Entertainment.

The old saying is that war never changes, but in New Vegas the real war is not waged with bombs or guns, it is instead waged in your mind as you struggle to decide which of the many feuding factions deserve your loyalty. Being shot in the head, buried and assumed dead is an unusual start to any story, but perfectly suited for the harsh world of Fallout. I thought the Capital Wasteland was intimidating, but the Mojave desert is even more full of thrills, mysteries and horrors.

It’s also got a lot more guns! There’s a huge array of weapon types available, and the ability to break down spare ammunition to create some with more potent abilities (hollow tip, armour piercing, overcharged plasma, etc) was a neat touch. With an improved companion system allowing up to two characters to support you, there’s many ways in which to approach your desert survival. My personal satisfaction came from using long range plasma weaponry, combined with the “Bloody Mess” perk.

There’s a little more optimism and humour in this game, taking some of the edge of the oppressive intensity of the game. In a marked improvement from Fallout 3, the optional quests link into the central plot with much more importance and though you still get a karma rank, there’s less of a sense of “good” and “evil” in the game, it tends to become a matter of perspective.

Sadly, I felt a little disappointed by the ending as I was unable to fully control the outcomes of certain scenarios, it felt a little like I was being funnelled toward a predestined goal. No matter though, sometimes the journey is more important than the end or the start, and the journey I had with New Vegas was immensely entertaining.

Game Over – Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

by Johnus Maximus on March 19, 2011 in All, Game Over, Xbox 360 with No comments

My ninth completed game of 2011 is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 from LucasArts

I’m a child of the 80′s, so growing up with Star Wars in my veins was an inevitability. I’ve played many Star Wars games over the years, and while recreating canonical events can be thrilling – the battle of Hoth in Rogue Squadron 2 my particular favourite – offering the player the chance to unleash amplified powers and “kick ass with the force” was the real selling point of The Force Unleashed when it was released in 2008.

The unnecessary, but inevitable, sequel puts you once more into the role of Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, who on account of being dead following Force Unleashed’s “good” ending has been resurrected as a clone. This accelerated rebirth means you have to relearn the abilities that you had in the first game, whilst traipsing around the galaxy in search of your genetic forefather’s love interest. The plot is lifeless, the direction of the actors inconsistent and the level locations lack the diversity of the prior game, which overall made what little time I spent with this game not particularly enthralling.

There was a glimmer of salvation, a piece of downloadable content which assumes you chose the “bad” ending and lets you travel to Endor during the events of Return of the Jedi. Your mission – hunt down and kill Chewbacca, Han Solo and Princess Leia, and eliminate any of those annoying, hairy ewoks that get in your way! Going off canon felt truer to the nature of Starkiller’s powers and was way more fun, to the point where I wished that the whole game had been like this.

Sadly, as was to be expected, the extra content was far too short and could not redeem the game in my eyes. I’d have to recommend people avoid this, unless they are after some easy achievement points and a Star Wars experience almost as rubbish as Episode 1.

Game Over – Bejeweled Blitz Live

by Johnus Maximus on March 15, 2011 in All, Game Over, Xbox 360 with 1 Comment

My eighth completed game of 2011 is Bejeweled Blitz Live from PopCap Games

Every so often a game comes along that perfectly fits my subconscious desire for addiction. Usually it’s something with a simple game mechanic that can be played quickly and repeatedly in rapid succession. If someone could travel back in time and eradicate all traces of the game Solitaire from every PC I’ve ever owned, the collective hours of wasted time returned to me would probably be enough to build a small space station!

In the last few years, a new contender for the time-leeching throne has to be PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz. First it came out on Facebook, then it came out on iPhone and now it is out on XBLA – I literally cannot escape this game! What started as a bit of friendly rivalry between myself, my dad and my brother turned into a sinister obsession – “just one more minute, I must beat their scores” – repeated on a weekly basis as the high score tables were reset.

Fortunately, the Xbox Live version of Blitz does not link up with Facebook, else I would be doomed. With the classic and twist game modes available, true Bejeweledists have plenty of reason to grab this version, though I did feel it was lacking in some of the visual flair a console version could have had. Also the omission of the “boost” game enhancers seems a real shame, but with the hint of downloadable content, who knows what will be added at a later date.

For now though, I have completed all the achievements, which my brain seems to recognise as being the right time to stop playing. I’m just praying that in the future PopCap don’t combine the game with an RPG, a la Puzzle Quest, otherwise I might never see daylight again!

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