Wow… Just wow!  In a calendar year that has seen a good comic book title in Batman Arkham Asylum, and a great cartoon transfer with Transformers we finally get two great games based on movies in the space of a week.

But Disney’s Toy Story 3 deservers even more praise than Warner’s Lego Harry Potter.  They have done the impossible and made a game based on a current movie whilst also staying true to the previous movies and Toy Story universe in general.

What you must realise is that this game isn’t aimed solely at a younger audience and fans of Toy Story.  There are plenty of elements that you will enjoy if you’re neither but to get the full enjoyment you really need to be familiar with the subject matter.

The main story mode is great fun and comprises of eight short to medium sized levels utilising various play styles throughout.  To start you are riding Bullseye as the heroic sheriff Woody.  You must race through a crumbling canyon, leaping gaps and dodging rocks to catch up with a runaway train under the control of the evil Pork Chop.

Each level takes on a new guise, offering up a real mixture of play styles from the on rails shooter element of the level inspired by the start of Toy Story 2 to the Lost Vikings inspired three way puzzle play of the Sunnyside Nursery level.  There really is something for every palette (even a MicroMachines inspired mini game!).  Whereas this would normally feel a complete mess they have actually managed to hang things together really well and provide a set of self contained cohesive levels.  It even encompassed elements of Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter and the aging Bizarre Creations classic The Killing Gameshow.

Graphically the game is seriously spot on.   The look is clean and bright and in many scenes achieves the quality level of the first Toy Story movie.  The animation is what makes this possible which is absolutely top notch, looking every bit like Pixar handled it themselves.  Riding Bullseye around as Woody is absolutely joyous – it just made me smile like a grinning buffoon.  The varied levels mean the environments never get old and the characters are all well known and loved from the series of movies.  Everything is silky smooth and any Toy Story fan will be pleased with the look.

Sound wise is also of a high quality.  The biggest drawback is lack of some of the original cast as voice actors.  No Buzz or Woody for instance.  The people they have in place do an excellent job in their own right it’s just that those character voices are so well established it jars a little.  The music is lifted from the movies and is well implemented.  One issue can be that the music might grate after awhile as the same themes are used throughout.  The spot effects and general foley work is of a high standard as well with many similar sounds from the movies used.  A real missed point was Woody not shouting “Ride like the wind Bullseye”… luckily I made up for that!

Not today Zurg!

The glorious and triumphant ride of Toy Story 3 unfortunately comes to a screaming halt – after about three or so hours.  No, seriously, the eight levels will take even the most average of players about three to four hours.  There is some replay value in so far as you can search each of the eight levels to look for missing collectables – coins, cards etc.  This will maybe knock you r playtime up by an hour or two at most.  So why does the game score so high?  Why all the praise?  Simple – Toy Box mode!

Hold on because this might blow your mind a little.  Toy Story 3 utilises some of the elements found in Red Dead Redemption.  Told you!  What Toy Box mode gives you is an open world environment with which to undertake missions and side quests to help rebuild the town in the Woody’s Roundup story line.  You undertake small missions like building and painting a bank or doing a time trial race riding the always excellent Bullseye.

This might seem like a very odd inclusion but it works a treat.  Allowing you to sink literally hours and hours in to roaming your town, decorating your buildings, dressing your townsfolk and generally exploring the whole place.  Missions are varied but normally involve some kind of fetch and carry scenario or building a specific building to please a villager.  These tasks are mostly simple enough with the odd one leaving you in a state of “what now?” a few times.

This has been negated to some extent by the very handy mission selection screen.  Select the mission you want to undertake from the ones handed out by pressing the select button.  You will then get an arrow in the bottom right corner that will guide you to your destination.  A perfect solution for kids frustrated at not being able to complete a level.

Ride like the wind Bullseye!

On that note I must say the game was a tad easy, even for my 6 and 9 year olds.  That said it meant there was a steady flow of progression and a large payoff for doing the simplest thing right.  The game does have some collision issues, the controls can get a little fiddly at times and the camera has a habit of being just a fraction in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Oh and the pan on the camera is so slow it frustrated me, but that is probably just me.

For the full asking price you might want to weigh up the relatively short story mode but this is corrected with the deep Toy Box mode.  Also the 2 player implementation has been done very well in Toy Box allowing you to go off and just explore or race Bullseye whilst your partner does whatever they fancy.  It’s a refreshing freedom that many titles, not just children’s games, get very wrong at times.

Final Thoughts:

Disney seems to have really got the point of these movie tie-ins with Toy Story 3.  Their portfolio of titles just seems to get stronger and stronger as the months progress.  Toy Story 3 is accessible and fun for players ranging from tiny tots to grinning grannies.  The difficulty is perfect for younger and casual players but maybe a tad washy for the more hard core.  The game perfectly complements the new movie as well as being a standout title independent of its movie tie-in status.  Move like this please everyone!

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You see, this is what I LOVE about the Playstation Network.  On the PC and Xbox 360 you have Trials 2 and Trials HD.  All very serious, very realistic and super gritty.  Now on the PS3 you have the likes of Joe Danger.  For all intents and purposes going after a similar “itch” as the Trials games but scratching it in a whole new way.

Joe Danger is the first title from upstart UK developer Hello Games.  Formed by ex-staffers from some of the top studios in the UK, Hello Games are four friends who set out with one purpose – to make a fun videogame.

Now it might sound like a simple plan, “a fun videogame”, but in these days of hyper-realism and videogame “art” a lot of developers forget to make games just… well… games really.

The premise of Joe Danger is real simple.  You control the titular character in his big career comeback – that was the story btw.  Your aim?  To get to the end of the allotted course in one piece.

Along the way there are various challenges that you can choose to partake in or not.  The beauty of Joe Danger is that it does not penalise you for not wanting to collect all the blue stars or hitting every target throughout a level.  Sure you’ll get a better score or earn more of the vital Gold Stars that help you buy entry to the later levels, but the game never really forces you to sweat this stuff.

Instead it allows you to get pretty far through the fifty levels on offer before you really need to concern yourself about earning those Gold Stars.  Luckily by this time you’ve probably sunk a good two or three hours in to the game and it all starts to make beautiful sense to you.

You see Joe Danger is one of those games that lets you have a fun filled ten minute blast whilst you’re waiting for your dinner to cook or you can sink hours in to repeatedly trying to collect every blue star, land of every target space, find every hidden star or the multitude of other treats that will keep you coming back to the game.

And if collectables really are not your thing then don’t sweat it- Joe Danger has you covered with adrenaline fuelled super crazy stunts and massive combo multipliers.

Reading through the pre-release information sent with Joe Danger a couple of things are evident.  These four guys LOVE games and they all love different types.  The elements have come together surprisingly well to combine the speed and gathering of Sonic, the combos & score multipliers of a Tony Hawk title with pure arcade fun from titles like Paperboy then add a dash of Excite Bike.  Heck they even acknowledge that Trials was a big influence.  Although any company that can reference Wheelie in their game has already got an extra 1 point added to their score!  If they had gone the whole hog and reference Kickstart 2 then you’d be looking at an 11/10 right now.

Joe Danger benefits from a gorgeous and vibrant aesthetic.  Capturing the spirit of titles like Modnation Racers and Little Big Planet this game stamps a mark of the early 90’s videogame scene on it with very pleasing results.    Joe is a delightful render, wonderfully animated, just large enough to articulate clearly and just small enough to be thrown all over the place in stunts and jumps.  The game shifts at a very satisfying rate of knots and remains smooth and clean the entire time no matter what is being thrown at it by the in-game stunt action.

I’m not sure how they managed it but they seem to of channelled the spirit of Paperboy in to their opening menu music – it makes me grin every time I hear it and I’ve been whistling it for days on end.  The rest of the in-game music is just as infectious and well produced.  As are the wonderfully cartoon sound effects that follow Joe’s onscreen antics.  The only thing I would change is the air-horn that bleats when you start a “coin” run as when you have to do several level restarts, achieved quickly with the [select] button, it gets repetitive quickly.

Whilst I’m having a gripe let’s get the criticisms out of the way – they leave a bad taste in my mouth to even mention them to be honest but every game has its issues.  Luckily Joe Danger’s are very few and far between.

The main issue lies in this style of game.  The trial and error nature of some of the levels means that frustration can set in.  Luckily due to the not too stringent goals set by the game you can muddle your way through pretty well.  Later levels can become a little too frustrating at times though.  Also, due to the generous physics model used some jumps end in a crash and then the very same jump will result in an awkward landing the next time.  It just makes the game a little bit of guess work on some occasions.

Controls are super simple.  R2 sees you make Joe’s bike accelerate and you use the left stick shift Joe’s weight on the bike.  This allows you to pull wheelies, do endos or spins in mid-air.  You also have a boost bar that fills as Joe performs Wheelies and this is activated with the X button.   Using [ ] will allow you to crouch under objects and then perform a small “bunny hop” to get over low lying objects.  The controls are tight, intuitive and simple to pick up.  The combo system is also easily implemented by using the L1 and R1 buttons.  Mastering the combos takes a little time but it will eventually just “click”.

Longevity is NOT an issue here as when you finally finish the fifty levels on offer, collects all the items on each level, complete all the speed runs and score trophies for them you can then square off against your friends scores.  You see much like Trials you get a score leaderboard at the end of each level telling you your standing amongst your friends or the rest of the world.  This makes for addictive cycles of bitterly trying to outdo a friend’s score on a level.

There is also a multiplayer component but sadly this is only 2-player split screen.  An online component would of taken this title into the upper echelons reviews.  As is stands the multiplayer challenges are good fun if you have someone local to take them up.

If not you can take a stab at the surprisingly deep and simplistic level creator that is bundles with the game.  Simply pick an open save slot and drive Joe down the track, hit triangle and enter the edit mode.  From here you can select various objects, ramps, collectable and oddities to create your track with.  You can have a simple track up and running and sent to a friend in a little more than 5 minutes tops.  With a little time and dedication the level editor can be used to create some very professional looking levels.

Final Thoughts:

Joe Danger is an absolute blast.  This is a fun, light, challenging, shallow game with great hidden depths.  It’s an anomaly of construction that harks back to the day when videogames were just that – games.  You can play for the sheer thrill or play to master the combo system and collect everything.

I cannot recommend it enough & for under £10 it’s an absolute steal.  Hello Games can rest easy, their first game is superb and one hell of an achievement for four guys from Guildford.  There are a lot of major publishers and developers sitting back and thinking “How the fuck did they pull this off?!”.  I eagerly await the next title from Hello Games – and so should you.

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When is it right to use a J-pop influenced Eurohouse mix in a game?  When it’s a shoot’em Up thats when!  Back in the very early 90′s side scrolling shooters were all the rage.  You could thrown a rather tiny stick in any arcade and be sure to hit at least one of them.  Huge classics such as Parodius, Apidya and Project X were amazing players the world over on home systems and all way pure and good with the world.

Then some smug git invented some fancy “3D” games called Wolfenstein and apparently shooting things in 2D from the side was less exciting.  Flash forward many years and SCHMUPS (as they are now known) are making a slow resurgence, hitting a niche audience of pure “twitch” gamers that like their games rock hard and frenetic.   The latest shooter from EastAsiaSoft and SideQuest Studios hits all the right buttons!

This is a shooter so don’t expect any real story here.  Thankfully EastAsiaSoft have slid a neat sheath of a story around the action and to be honest you’re never really drawn in our put off by the story element.  If you really want to know the background then it is 3124 AD and the Soldner X defence force has been re-formed to push back the imposing threat in the galaxy.  You take on progressively harder foes through a series of eight stages.  Each stage taking you roughly five to ten minutes to complete.

As with all games of this type there is no save feature so if you start at stage one be prepared to battle for a good hour and a half if you want to reach the end of the game.  Thankfully as you progress you do unlock a stage so you can start again at what ever your highest reached stage might be.

Graphically the game is a blast (no pun intended honest!) & looks absolutely gorgeous at times.  The ships and enemies are well drawn and animated with impressive attention to detail for what basically amounts to cannon fodder.  The multiple layers of parallax scrolling are both impressive and dizzying at the same time.  The sheer volume of bullets, lasers, projectiles, enemies, rocks and then mutli-layed backdrops all skimming by at a blistering sixty frames per second can look dazzling – both in a good and a bad way.

The game is incredible to look at – for a download SCHMUP that is – but it sure can get eye meltingly busy on screen at times and you can find yourself just over come by the sheer volume of on-screen activity.  This is both the curse and the beauty of a good shooter though and it’s in the balancing of a screen full of mayhem with a solid gameplay experience that seperates the men from the boys in this field.

Soldner X2 manages this eighty percent of the time, only slipping up at a few points when there is purely too much happening on screen to be deemed a playable sequence – it still looks fantastic though!

Sound wise the game is jammed full of the hi-hat, bass pulsing eurobeat you would expect from this kind of title.  There are a few tinges of J-Pop in some of the undertones but this is pure Euro-Dance from the late 90′s and it fits the game perfectly.

Explosions are meaty as are the range of pulse, beam and bullet weapons on offer and the shits and foes all explode with a satisfying cacophony of flaming death.  The voice acting within the game, if you can really call it that, are mostly limited with and intro voice over and some informative radio broadcasts received during the game.

The game controls like a dream whether using digital or analogue methods and the power-up and limit break system employed, although initially confusing, soon becomes second nature.  Gone are the days of picking up power pods to fill a single meter and trading them in for better weapons or boost.  In Soldner X2 you pick up power up pods sure, and these help increase your ships overall “power” but you also pick up power-up pods for one of your three weapon types too.  These slowly build up your beam, bullet etc.  You can easily switch between weapon types by using the R1 button and different weapon types benefit you at different times.

Adding to the chaos you can build up a limit break metre which, when activated, make the entire screen erupt in fiery death dealing massive amounts of damage to all enemies.  You also build up the smaller scale, but equally useful shocker too that helps take down a small number of enemies in a close proximity.  The energy bar used for each of your ships means that you can collide with a few objects of bullets and not get frustrated.  This adds a slightly more relaxed feeling to the play style but things are still frenetic throughout.

Add to all this the regular wave after wave of enemy.  The increasingly ludicrous creations to destroy and the unrelenting adrenaline fuelled gameplay and this really is an example of shooters at the top of their game.  Longevity might be an issue but truthfully if you are buying this kind of game you already know the limitations it has in that respect.    The game ramps up nicely in difficulty with me, having not played a shooter for a few years, managing to get to Stage 4 without using a single continue.  Later levels are fiendishly difficult and very satisfying to complete.

The longevity is improved by the ability to choose from several different fighter ships and each plays a little differently so you might get something from playing through with each class.  The online leaderboards are also a nice touch as are the unlockable challenges.

Final Thoughts

Soldner X 2 is a superb shooter.  It takes the essence of what made shooters like Gradius, Thunder Force and Apidya awesome back in the day and distils it with some modern technical know-how to serve a veritable ocular cacophony on your PS3.  It suffers from the draw backs of it’s genre – shallow gameplay, niche twitch market, no multiplayer, overly frenetic screen action – but does a superb job of delivering what it sets out to do.  For under £10 this a a must purchase to any SCHMUP fan and a great place to test the water if you’re remotely interested.

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You start this game as a legendary hero of old, hiding your sword in a magic forest. Why? Well so the next hero can find it, of course! Nevermind that it would make more sense to have it readily available for the next time, and maybe hidden in the castle itself! That isn’t how it was done back in the 8 or even 16 bit era, so that is NOT how we are going to do it now! You better get that into your mind, because this game draws a lot of it’s charm from harking back a much more innocent era of gaming, from the first pixel you see on the screen to the ending epic music.

The rest of the story is the standard fair of hero doing hero things, collecting the objects needed to defeat the ultimate evil, namely a dark bishop out to rule the world, and not really that worth noticing, but the details along the way carry the charm of the title quite nicely, often joking about or outright paying tribute to other series we have known for years. While I would never play this game for it’s main story, I highly recommend talking to everyone you come across in your adventure.

And that adventure will scream one name at you the entire time: Zelda. That about sums up the gameplay as effectively as any description could. You will run around an overworld in a top-down view swinging a sword at enemies as you go, only to find your way to dungeons which each contain a small part of your goal as a reward for completing them. Those dungeons even standardize the rooms the same way with one screen per room!

However, not was not perfect in the old days, and this game will remind you on occasion of just how cheap the games could be back there. Often enough, when that screen switched to another room, I found myself either a split second from an enemy rushing at me full speed, or they simply appeared on top of me, taking away that precious first hit before you could do anything about it. And when that was one specific enemy who’s hit literally cuts you down to half an apple (they couldn’t use hearts) and NO MAGIC, it will piss you off like the old days too. Thankfully though, often enough is not often enough to ruin the game… just to piss you off till you get past one very specific dungeon.

Of course the game does have a few of it’s own tweaks as well, including the ability to change swords and even take the swords you have to a blacksmith to upgrade their powers and size. In this game, size matter… mostly for better, but unless you bought the right other upgrades, sometimes for worse as well. These upgrades only take effect while you are at full health, so this doesn’t remove all elements of old school gaming skills, but it can sure make them easier while it lasts.

In addition to the main game, you will also have some minigames in town you can choose to play if you want to. As expected, these games are tributes to the simple and casual styled games we all know…. 3D Dot Game Hero style. Among the games I found were a racing game where you dash around a race track as fast as possible, and a breakout clone where your shield is the paddle. I didn’t spend a lot of time with these, but if you need a break from the main game, they are a fun couple of minutes before you go back and make this game perhaps a little more suitable for a marathon.

Graphically, this game will occasionally slow down your PS3… which at first glance would seem unacceptable for the CPU powerhouse the machine is, but think before you judge this one. Each character is made of blocks, much like your hero is, and it’s reasonable to suspect that in the same manner as the editor lets you create a hero of your own, they were edited one block at a time. This would mean behind this quaint and designed to look a little old and archaic image, EACH PIECE OF THE SPTIRES IS MEING HANDLED BY THE CPU. Add a few effects to that and any machine would be huffing along! The results though, are simply as charming as the rest of the game… 3D renderings of what would be 2D sprites from the 8-bit era of gaming. There are a few glaring exceptions to this, which ruin the effect while they are on the screen, but thankfully I could count them on one hand.

The music, of course, carries the solid charm of the game forward as well, keeping to the kind of music you would expect to hear back on your SNES… in fact it sounds like From Software did their best to get their inspiration from the original Legend of Zelda. It paid off, big time. In fact, as a side story, the end dungeon music was inspiring sadistic revenge from my brother who just happened to walk in to talk to me as I walked in the giant door to it. When you can have that kind of effect on someone without them even playing the game, JOB WELL DONE.

Overall, if you are looking for that old-style gameplay, this game is an almost perfect fit for you. It is old-school gaming done right, done fun, and for the most part, perfected. If you are looking for something different from the average FPS/3rd person shooter you could do infinately worse then this one. But if you never liked the Legend of Zelda, walk away. This game is not for you.

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As last year’s The Beatles: Rock Band proved, Harmonix are really quite good at making single-band games work far better than Activision managed to with Guitar Hero: Metallica (which featured, er, Weezer) and Van Halen, a product of such high quality that the publisher literally gave it away with Guitar Hero 5. The problem is, their second attempt at a specialist Rock Band title is centred around Green Day, a band who haven’t really done much from this writer’s point of view save for play some noisy guitars and turn from hardened teenage poster boys into whiny emo fops with the release of last year’s 21st Century Breakdown.

Cynicism (and questions of why Green Day merited their own Rock Band title) aside, Green Day: Rock Band is at the very least an honest product, delivering what it promises on the front of the box: a Rock Band title that has lots of music by this particular band. Hats off to Harmonix already. You’ll divide your time between playing guitar and bass, hammering away on drums (with drum fills, missing from The Beatles: Rock Band due to an agreement between publisher MTV and Apple Corps, making a welcome return) or singing away by yourself or with friends to create three-part harmonies. Hit lots of gems in a row and your score gets bigger, and Overdrive can be deployed to double your multiplier. Classic Rock Band then.

As you’d expect the game features the likenesses of guitarist/singer Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and rubber-faced drummer Tré Cool, who were kind enough to motion capture some performances for the game. The result is that the graphics are an improvement over Rock Band 2‘s and The Beatles: Rock Band‘s simpler caricatures and begin to venture into mildly uncomfortable uncanny valley territory. Everything from Billie Joe’s stage-strutting during particular solos through to Tré dancing around and pulling faces during the drumless intro to F.O.B is in there and it makes for mildly entertaining viewing if you’re spectating. Of course, it’s nothing on The Beatles‘ dreamscapes of pure fantasy, but then Green Day were never on LSD.

That music, to be precise, consists of 47 tracks spanning most of the band’s musical career from the early days of Dookie through to the mainstream success of American Idiot and the, er, whinefest that is 21st Century Breakdown and includes these three albums in their entirety along with a selection of tracks from other points in their gently varied history. With each change in era comes a change of location, and the game’s Career mode takes you through a run-down warehouse in the Dookie timeframe, on-stage in Milton Keynes (exotic!) for the Bullet In a Bible live concert and The Fox Theater in the States for the performances of more recent songs.

Much like The Beatles: Rock Band the Career mode is built around playing the songs on your own or with friends, with high-scoring performances unlocking rare band photos and additional score challenges, which themselves unlock archive video. While Green Day don’t quite carry the same allure as the Fab Four, it’s admirable on the part of Harmonix (and contracted dev team Demiurge Studios, just down the road from Harmonix somewhere in Massachusetts, obviously drafted in while the big boys toil away on Rock Band 3) that the effort has been made to please the Green Day hardcore. All four of them.

Career mode aside, Green Day: Rock Band also wisely features a set of online game modes, which restricted The Beatles in that it meant that those times you were up at 3am (it’s happened to all of us) and fancied a quick strum with someone it either meant doing it alone or waking up your flatmates to join you. Which never works out well. Full band quickplay and career play is possible across the net and you can also engage in score-based face-offs against your online friends when co-operating with them gets too boring.

Aside from that, once you strip back the admittedly slick presentation of the game (“inspired by” Green Day album art, or something) you’re left with a Rock Band title packed with nothing but songs by one band. How much you enjoy this game will depend, obviously, on how much you enjoy the music of Green Day. There’s also a danger of boredom kicking in for a few of the songs as Green Day’s back catalogue, while occasionally iconic, is generally a middling mixture of three-chord punk anthems and, in the case of the newer material, a place where not much goes on unless you’re singing.

I’d have personally opted for some more of the band’s earlier songs (there is, for instance, nothing from their very first album) and Harmonix’s enthusiasm for the variety of the online Rock Band Music Store means that 21st Century Breakdown is not truly complete without the 6 songs already available for download. It feels like a bit of a cop-out if you want to have the entire album (and the arguably best songs of album, 21 Guns and Know Your Enemy, are two of the songs not included with the game) or at least cut back on the songs that feature very little actual interactivity for some members of your band. One track, Song of the Century from 21st Century Breakdown, features nothing but a singing track. What’s the point of that?!

Final Thoughts:

Green Day: Rock Band, in the end, comes across as a game that’s not quite sure what it’s doing. There’s an attempt at striking a balance between showing Green Day some love and building a game around it but it’s let down by some poor soundtrack choices that aren’t involving enough for all band members at once and a bit of an underwhelming feeling that a band like Green Day didn’t really merit an entire game to themselves.

Still, if you like Green Day you’ll be completely catered for and occasionally there’ll be a song that provides at least a mild challenge to even the most seasoned players on any instrument. On top of that, you can export all of your songs to your Rock Band library for use in Rock Band 1 or 2 if a virtual Billie Joe Armstrong isn’t your thing. All in all, it’s another Rock Band title that does what it says on the tin so it’s fun if you’re really desperate for some new songs to play. For the Rock Band hardcore and Green Day enthusiasts only.

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Obsidian Entertainment have had an interesting development history, taking on sequels to well known franchises.  They created KOTOR II and Neverwinter Nights 2, and they are behind Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3.  However, Alpha Protocol represents the first time the company have created a completely new game, and what follows is, to be quite honest, a very mixed bag.

Alpha Protocol describes itself as an espionage RPG.  The reality is that the game is a weird splicing between a third-person shooter, a stealth action game and an RPG.  You play the role of newly trained operative Michael Thornton as he goes undercover with ‘Alpha Protocol’ status to investigate a plane crash in Eastern Europe when it turns out the plane was shot down by a surface to air missile which is of American origin.

This isn’t the prettiest game ever made.  Textures have a horrible tendency to pop up after a few seconds, and the graphics do look a bit dated.  Some of the animations are a bit weird, as well.  The facial expressions and animations are good, but body animation looks a bit unnatural at times.

You will be travelling to several different locations throughout the course of Alpha Protocol, including Saudi Arabia and Moscow, and will come across many different characters on your travels.  Conversation with these characters is handled by a series of stances you can choose, the main ones being ‘Agressive’, ‘Suave’ and ‘Professional’.  You have to be quick, though, as you only have a couple of seconds to choose your stance once the options appear.  Your relationship with each character will change depending on how they react to your words.  As you might expect, what works with one person won’t work with another.   For example, someone may be impressed by your professionalism, but someone else might see it as a bit stand-offish.

Forging good relationships with certain characters can allow you access to additional intel and weapons that you couldn’t previously get.  As well as actually talking, your actions with one person can affect your standing with an organisation.  For example, when you defeat a boss, after a chat, you can choose to execute them or negotiate with them.  These decisions can have drastic effects on the way the game turns, meaning that you can play through the game several times and have a lot of differences.

These twists and turns in the narrative are helped by the fact that the story of the game is very well written, and is backed up by some very good voice acting.  Admittedly, the whole conspiracy theory has been done many times before, but AP executes it in an interesting and unpredictable way.

Certainly, on paper, the story strength and the fact that game offers choices that genuinely affect the game, rather than just giving the illusion of it, means this game could be something special.  There is one slight stumbling block that prevents this from being a great game, and that block is the gameplay.

The shooting mechanic is somewhat shoddy.  Accuracy is a major problem when simply using the reticule and immediately shooting.  Despte aiming for an enemy’s head, it took 4 shots to take them down.  It’s possible to get a single headshot kill on them by holding your reticule on the enemy for a few seconds, going into ‘Critical Hit’ mode.  However, if you’re caught in a firefight situation, this is very impractical.  Not least because the enemy AI is totally random and guards run around like the proverbial headless chickens, throwing a seemingly limitless supply of grenades in your general direction, although they aren’t very good at getting the grenades near you to cause any damage.

In addition, there are problems with the cover mechanics.  Switching to a cover position further ahead means aiming the camera at said cover and hitting X.  The trouble is, the indicator that pops up to signal you to change cover seems to only have a small catchment area, so you can find yourself moving the camera a lot to get exactly the right cover spot.  In addition, a lot of the cover is just shorter than you when you are crouched, making it easy for guards to hit you in the head with bullets, defeating the whole point of cover.

The stealth aspect of the game seems like a great idea.  Sadly, it doesn’t always work very well.  You can usually take a couple of enemies out without being detected, but the AI has an annoying habit of being able to spot you when they really shouldn’t be able to.  For the most part, stealth isn’t really a viable option, meaning you have to rely on your gun skills to get through.  This is a particular problem in the earlier levels until you build your gun skills up and increase your damage and accuracy, which in turn makes the game a bit more enjoyable to play.

On the subject of building skills up, you gain experience points by completing missions.  You can gain more experience in levels by buying objectives in the Clearinghouse.  Once you get enough XP to level up, you can assign action points to various categories, in a very similar way to Mass Effect.  You can unlock abilities to use which have a cooldown on them.  Putting further points into that ability will reduce the cooldown, improve the effectiveness, or even have the ability permanently active without having to activate it.

Aside from the problems with the gunplay and the stealth, the game has several bugs and glitches.   Things such as not being able to shoot in cover sometimes, even though you could shoot from that cover a few seconds earlier, are frustrating.  In one boss fight, I found myself stuck in the corner of the stage, being completely unable to fight my way out or even move for a few seconds, allowing said boss to basically beat the shit out of me.  Not fun.

It’s a shame this game has so many issues, as it could have been a great game.  Hopefully, if a sequel turns up, Obsidian can iron all the problems out of the game.  Or even just patch some issues out of the existing game.  Who knows.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Alpha Protocol very much represents a missed opportunity for Obsidian Entertainment.  The voice acting and story in this game are fantastic, and the characters are varied and interesting.  In addition, the fact that choices actually affect later areas of the game is great.  Sadly, this is backed up by a frustrating and slightly glitchy game that just gets annoying half of the time.  The way the game plays out very much encourages a second playthough to do things differently, but the fact that the game isn’t a lot of fun to play means you’ll be unlikely to do so.  With a bit more work and polish, this could have been special.  As it is, Alpha Protocol is just above average.

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Media Molecule really started something you know. Sure Little Big Planet was flawed and at times overly complex, but the game and creation tools just blew everyone away. That was 18 months ago now and not a whole heap has been done to recapture that impetus. Well that was until now.

ModNation Racers developer, United Front, have taken the foundations laid down by LBP, stripped it down and applied it to a whole new genre.

What ModNation Racers boils down to is a Mario Kart clone with the ability to create your own karts, tracks and driver. Now when I say create I don’t just mean take a handful of wigs and noses and slap them on a manikin, oh no indeed. What you get are hundreds of noses, eyes, ears, facial hair design, wigs, helmets, glasses and so forth – think LBP modification levels and you are on your way.

To call ModNation Racers a Mario Kart clone is a little unfair but it serves to give you the framework of what the game involves. You play as Tag, a newbie racer in the world of MNR taking part in the world kart championship you plough through a lengthy single player campaign taking on progressively more difficult tracks and opponents.

Control is ridiculously simple. R2 to Accelerate L2 to brake and then one face button to fire a weapon and another to drift. Oh and drifting is oh so simple, more simple than in Mario Kart or Crash Nitro Carts. Literally press the X button and your kart will skid. With a few light touches of the Left stick you can control it exceptionally well with minimal skills. Trusty me, I suck at drifting normally!

The various pickups on the track give you varying weapons of varying use. A sonic boom that floats to the front and deafens all around, basically stunning all karts for a few seconds. There are also lightening bolts, rockets and all manner of other great toys to collect. Another neat trick is that collectables are cumulative. Pick up two rocket pickups and you get a level 2 pickup. Pick up another and that is updated to the highest level 3 status. This can make collecting the various power orbs a necessity even when you have one onboard already.

The weapons can be fired front or back (just like Blur has introduced) and performing specific moves like drifting, drafting of crazy jumps will add to your Boost metre. Filling your Boost metre has several functions. Firstly, and most obvious, it allows you to apply a burst of speed for a limited time. Secondly it allows you to deploy a shield when incoming ordinance is headed your way.

The karts handle very well and can be thrown around the track with arcade like precision. Plenty of guidance is given during those early level, meaning that even the kart game newbie could pick it up with real ease.

One thing I will say about the single player is that the AI is a cheating shit! Well, it seems to be anyways. As you progress in to the later stages the AI always seems to have just the right upgrade or weapon to go tearing past you across the line or obliterate you back to 6^th place. To be honest it probably is not cheating but these moments feel very cheap and add frustrations to the whole experience.

When you start MNR you are dropped off in the ModSpot. A large “hub” that serves at the menu to the game – think Crash Bandicoot level selection screens – with karts. Here you can drive around to various options and information. For example the top three karts of the day are displayed proudly on a podium. As are the top three drivers of the day.

You can drive around and take a look at your friends fastest laps and set about challenging them to time trials on certain courses. You can visit the ModShop where all the customisation takes place or you can simply head over to the Online, Split Screen or Career race arenas. This is a neat touch and keeps you immersed in the game – it’s just a shame that the thing takes so long to load in and out.

Actually let’s deal with that little issue right here – the load times stink. I mean really stink. How about almost two minutes to load in a track and start racing. In fact I had time to check Twitter and my email whilst waiting for the damn race to load. Oh sure it is worth the wait when it does but I just spent about ten minutes installing a shed-load of data to my hard disk when the game started!

Let’s get on to the look, feel and sound of the game. Overall this is great. It is a little bright and sugary sweet in the visuals department but it just about pulls it off. Imagine the bastard child of a threesome between Little Big Planet, Wii Sports Resort and Mario Kart.

The animation is fantastic and the look and feel of the world is clean and colourful. There is some pop-up and texture fill on tracks but unless you are watching someone else play I really do not think you will notice this. While we are talking graphical glitches there are a few clipping issues and the frame rate hitches when in the hub section from time to time.

The sound is great and there are plenty of fun ditties, roaring engines and silly touches to the game to make you smile. The sports presenters that introduce each race can be laugh out loud funny at times and gratingly annoying at others – just like real presenters then!

Now on to the real meat of ModNation Racers and the reason it has had so much hype – the creation. Now the creation is pitched pretty much perfectly allowing a novice who wants to tinker enough help to get their creation made in minutes. It then adds the master stroke of being damn deep for those who want to take their track or kart creation to another level.

Kart creation allows you to take a basic kart frame and build it up using predefined body style. As you race you unlock more and more items to help you with customisation. New bodies, fenders, wheels, accessories, patters or engines are all available for unlocking.

Below is an example of the first kart I made. It took me about fifteen minutes from start to finish and looked frikking awesome! The game basically helped me out but I still like I had achieved something special even with my limited artistic skills.

The First kart I made took me a whole 15 minutes!

Kart creation has nothing on the pure joy of track creation. I tinkered with this for ages and made countless impressive looking tracks with absolute ease. You can simply click to add a track path, drive the on screen pavement maker where you want the track to go, including up or down, and it places it behind you as you go.

Made half the track and are happy with the projected rest of the track that the onscreen diagram shows you? Great, hit X and the game will finish the track for you! Want to auto populate the entire track with trees, buildings, stands, hay bales etc? Great, just press X and BOOM! The whole thing builds in seconds in front of your eyes.

If you want to take it deeper you can. You are free to complete every placement, every twist, turn and shortcut you want. You want to form a large penis with Donkeys on the third bend? Go for it!

To test the simplicity of this creator I sat my 9 year old son down in from of the game handed him the controller and within about 20 minutes he had made a mad looping tracks with tunnels, bridges, viaducts, volcanoes and all manner of foliage and buildings. It really was that easy to pick up and do.

You can also take snaps of your creations, Karts, people and Tracks. A real shame is that you cannot directly upload these to something or share them on Twitter or Facebook. Also, this seems like a real missed opportunity to add YouTube support for showing off test runs around your newly made tracks.

You can though share your creations ala Little Big Planet. Want to race your mates on the track you just made – no problems. You can also upload any of your creations to the public domain and everyone in the game can grab them, rate them and let you know what they think.

In theory the amount of Karts, Avatars and tracks is limited only by the end users imaginations. You want to sit down a recreate all the levels from Mario Kart on the SNES? You can and then share them with your friends!

Final Thoughts

ModNation Racers is a flawed racer wrapped around an incredibly powerful and intuitive creation system. The racing will provide hours of great fun online and with friends. The AI is suspect but serves the purpose – but let’s face facts, you have to take this game online. The possibilities are endless, the content is potentially limitless and it’s a hilarious time waster with you and some mates. If you are a Mario Kart fan or fancy making a few tracks then I recommend this title 100%

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Wow! Has it really been 2 years since the release of the Grand Theft Auto IV? Not only is that a long time in games but its also a long time for a sequel to come out too… oh wait – this isn’t a sequel to 2008′s GTA IV? Nope! It is in fact the long awaited arrival on the PS3 (and PC for that matter) of the timed exclusive DLC content previously only available on the Xbox360.

Thankfully that exclusivity was only timed and this means we now have the chance to experience what Xbox 360 owners have been revelling in for the past year or more – in fact the first DLC arrived around 9 months after the release of the original GTA IV.

What we have here is the retail boxed package of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. On the disc you will find both pieces of DLC, The Lost and the Damned as well as The Ballard of Gay Tony. Now if you download the content from the store you will need a copy of GTA IV to play the new content. If you pick up the retail pack though you just need that disc – which is a nice bonus.

So let us start by stating the obvious, GTA IV was one of the best games of 2008 and I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue with that. It redefined the open world genre once again as Rockstar previously did with the release of Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City. So we will take each piece of DLC as it comes so we will start with the oldest content, The Lost and the Damned.

The Lost and the Damned sees you running with a biker gang, called The Lost, as mean arse biker Johnny who incidentally featured briefly in the main GTA IV story – the gang that is. This is a slice of more of the same from Liberty City and easily the weakest of the two DLC titles. It might be due to the fact that you play the two DLC titles close together but this one feels just too formulaic. Don’t get me wrong the 12 or so hours you will spend with The Lost and the Damned will still be greatly entertaining – just don’t expect anything you really have not already seen in the main game.

The biggest improvements here are things like mid-level checkpoints (a real godsend on the longer missions!), some new weapons (like a sawn-off shotgun, machine pistol, pipe bombs and more) and improved motorbike mechanics.

The story focuses on the tussle for control of The Lost when former head honcho Billy is released from Jail and he and acting head Johnny think the gang should go in different directions. The story is engaging enough and by the end you will of enjoyed the story jsut enough to keep you interested in the next DLC.

Before you move on though I heartily recommend some of the online elements in The Lost and the Damned. Adding several new play modes like Race and Lone Wolf Biker takes the online to a new level. In GTA IV it was a nice novelty for awhile but soon forgotten. This time out it is a viable and entertaining option that will keep you coming back after the main campaign is long gone.

Now on to The Ballard of Gay Tony. Mike already reviewed this back in November 2009 so I won’t plough headlong into this one as you would be well served reading his review on the episode – after all it is identical. What I will give you is my impressions on this slice of GTA action.

The Ballard of Gay Tony has to be the best of the two DLC offerings for GTA IV. It expands the game out over a 10+ hour slice of riotously funny action featuring a series of characters good enough to of been in the first outing. Brucie’s abusive brother is a riot and main man Luis has his moments too.

Introduced in this DLC is the Driving Range activities, a parachute (Base Jumping is back!), some updates to the original multi-player modes (Deathmatch, GTA Race etc) and some new weapons. Things like the AMC Auto Mag pistol and sticky bombs are all well and good but it’s the mission scoring system seen in GTA: Chinatown Wars that really gives this title it’s greatest update.

After each level you are shown how you have performed against the expected normal completion results. Not get the result you wanted? Then you can replay a mission at a later time and improve your rating. Combined with the mid-level checkpoints from The Lost and the Damned this is a great addition to the franchise.

The story plays out over12 to fourteen hours and is a lot more entertaining than the previous DLC. The characters seem to of been let off the chain for this final “hurrah!” and it shows. The plot and missions owe more to Rockstars final last generation title in the series, GTA San Andreas, than it does to the original GTA IV. And this is a very good thing as it changes things up enough to make them exciting.

True this episode seems to pack the most offensive content into it with racial slurs and stereotypes being thrown around with, pardon the pun, gay abandon. That said it rarely oversteps the mark – although the Princess Robot Bubblegum cartoon series is seriously wrong! Hope they make a series soon !!

Shit son! This is my lunch pack - This is gonna hurt some!

The issues that were there with GTA IV - screen tearing, occasional wonky frame rates, strange “open world” nuisances and the Marmite car controls (you either love them or hate them – I loved them by the way!) are all still there. Also the GTA IV engine is probably in need of more than just a nip and tuck to bring it up to modern day graphical standards but the game still looks and play great.

Highlight of the whole thing for me? The inclusion of the GTA: Vice City radio station in The Ballard of Gay Tony – pure awesome!

Final Thoughts:

What with giving you a new slice of GTA IV life and the 20+ hours of rich, deep, gameplay how could anyone NOT think GTA: Episodes from Liberty City was an essential purchase. The down notes I picked out about The Lost and the Damned are only such because of the quality that shines through in The Ballard of Gay Tony. The whole package is an absolutely essential purchase for any GTA fan and a nice taster of you have never played a GTA game before.

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Arkanoid really has a lot to answer for. For many years, there have been various clones and variations of the whole ‘break blocks with a ball and a bat’ theme. And so, the latest addition to this group is the iSquare developed PSN title Hyperballoid HD. But is it really all that hyper?

You know how these games tend to work. You have a bat and a ball, and you use a combination of the ball and various power ups to try and clear all the bricks out of each level. And boy, are there a lot of power ups. Hyperballoid HD contains two distinct sets of levels. One set has a mythical, Egyptian sort of theme, while the other is more futuristic, with flashing lights and alien shaped patterns. The shapes and patterns do sometimes move around, making things more interesting. For example, and early level has a rendition of the wooden Horse of Troy, made out of wooden blocks that are easily destroyed. The whole thing does kind of make it look more like Peggle than Arkanoid.

While some of the designs are certainly interesting, the colouring and backdrops of the ancient themed levels are very drab and bull, with browns and greens littering your screen. The futuristic levels are much more interesting to look at, with black holes, flashing metal bricks that fly around the screen as you hit them and stars littered all over the place. Big contrast in style. The graphics are crisp and clean enough overall, without being too special, but then they don’t really need to be for something like this.

There is quite a pumping, techno soundtrack to the game, which fits in very well with the style. The main annoyance is the actual lack of different music tracks within the game, though. There are a lot of levels and some of them can take a good 10 minutes or more to clear, so hearing the same music gets very repetitive after a while. Sound effects are minimal, except when things get hectic and all sorts of pings and explosions can be heard.

Gameplay wise, there’s nothing you haven’t seen in this type of game before. You move the bat left and right, occasionally using the shoulder buttons to speed up, and the cross to button to fire or use other powers. They are simplistic and responsive, which is all you can ask.

The only real downside to this game is it’s lack of originality. It’s another block breaker, and there’s nothing in here you haven’t already seen elsewhere. Games like Shatter, with it’s suck and blow mechanic (stop sniggering back there) and sideways perspective, added a different twist to things to make it more interesting. Also Magic Ball took things one step further with the moving shapes thing. Where Hyperballoid HD has bricks in the shape of a ship, Magic Ball had actual ships, islands and buildings to give it a very different look. Hyperballoid HD just does what it needs to do.

It’s certainly addictive, and for the £3.19 price point, you’re getting around 100 levels, and some of them can take a good few minutes. You cannot say this game doesn’t offer value for money. It’s nicely priced so that the casual gamer might buy it as an impulse, and they most certainly will be hooked.

FINAL THOUGHTS
There’s not much to say, really. Hyperballoid HD techincally does nothing wrong. If you’re the sort of gamer who isn’t familiar with Arkanoid or it’s various clones, you’ll get a lot of fun out of this. But for anyone who’s used to these games, there is nothing original or ground breaking here. Still, if you’re interested, it’s worth a punt and won’t put a big dent in your coffers.

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“Its coming home, its coming home, its coming. Footballs coming home!”. There ends my in-depth knowledge of the beautiful game. Sure I’ve played me some school yard footie and I’ve taken a stab at the odd football game but truly, honestly – football bores me. Paying £40 for a nylon shirt with the name of a Korean firm on the front just strikes me as a little crazy. What does excite me? The World Cup. Every four years comes my excuse to act like “a real man” and embrace the nation’s favourite pastime (excluding binge drinking of course!).

Much like the last FIFA football game, and the one before that, FIFA 2010 World Cup South Africa is just a re-skin of the last iteration in EA’s humongous football franchise. Luckily for EA ,and for us , FIFA 10 was the best football game on the planet.

Taking the huge strides that FIFA 10 set forth and adding to them, all be it slightly, can only be a good thing. The game has options a plenty allowing you to either jump in to quick matches, Captain Your County (CYC), practice penalties (more on this later), undertake a limited or full World Cup campaign in single player, play the online World Cup or jump in to a series of mini online challenges.

We will skip the raw mechanics on this one I think because if you want to know how FIFA 2010 World Cup South Africa plays then read our PS3 & Xbox 360 reviews of FIFA 10. They really do play identically for the most part. Where the game differentiates is in things like the newly implemented Penalty system. You now have a huge array of options for what to do when faced with England’s greatest nemesis – the penalty shoot-out. You can use the new system to chip or curve the ball with great accuracy. This is also helped by a blue reticule (well its more like a blue circle to be honest) which can be toggled on and off that will show you where you are aiming the ball. These are a really simple set of updates that greatly improves the playability and quality of these normally random occurrences.

The Pro mode of FIFA 10 has been replaced with the Captain Your Country mode. This basically operates in a similar way to the old Pro mode. It allows you to create a player that you will then try and take from the lower ranks of the B-Team up through the A-Team into the starting eleven and then finally become captain of your team. This is implemented just as well in FIFA 2010 World Cup South Africa as it was in FIFA 10. You still have to pick a field position and plat that position throughout. This removes one of my pet annoyances with FIFA – the random player selection in matches.

My main gripe with FIFA has always been the un-intelligent way the AI picks the player you should be playing next. To be honest this is still very evident in this version of FIFA – it appears to be worse than FIFA 10 as well strangely. This can be controlled with the right stick but this still feels random and unwieldy resulting in huge amounts of frustration when the player nearest the ball is about to get it then your playable character moves to someone ten feet away and possession is lost.

This comes in to play when using the superb Online World Cup 2010 feature. This is the same basic mechanics of the FIFA 10 online accept this time you play for the big prize. You create your favourite team within a local group. You then take this team online to challenge others that appear in your group table. This forms the early stages of the World Cup tournament. As you win, lose or draw you add to a global points tally for your team. You will then see which teams are in what position globally. This gives you a huge sense of global community as you do battle on the pitch to secure those vital points for your teams tally. Come in the top two of your table ad you move on to the quarter final stages and so on. Due to the early nature of my playing I found it tricky to secure a game but I am sure this will not be a problem in the slightest when the game is released. I did find at times though that in the few games I had online there was some significant lag. This might be due to the service not being in full swing but at times it was almost impossible to play.

Graphically the game is a mixed bag. All the menus and presentation is super slick and works very well. In fact due to the removal of several options from FIFA 10 the menus are much easier to navigate. The on-pitch graphics are just as well realised as FIFA 10, which was gorgeous to look at. The stadiums are well implemented and offer a very atmospheric experience. The issues start when you have to close up animations. The start of matches when the camera pans the stadium and then the players is super jerky and looks like the frame rate plummets to sub twenty frames a second. Sure it looks really pretty, the confetti is raining down and fireworks explode but it really chugs along. Add to that the odd “canned” feel of the animations at times and the graphics seem a little borked compared to FIFA 10.

My preferred method of play still has to be the CYC mode. It removes the annoyances of the random player usage and gives you more purpose to the games. Being able to import your FIFA 10 Pro character is great as is the ability to use EA’s Game Face technology. That being said this game, more than FIFA 10, does a great job of giving you a core “purpose” and driving you to feel passionate about your virtual team. It felt amazing to actually lift the World Cup after a long and torturous campaign.

Audio wise? The game is a mixed experience once again. The EA Trax selections seem at odds with the event they are paired with a lot of the time. The tribal and reggae vibes are when the soundtrack is at its best – even though these will be the least well know tracks they just work better with the aesthetics. The commentary is of great quality and the general conversational aspect of the coverage is a real treat. That said it’s flat out broken at times with Clive exclaiming “He should of troubled the keeper with that one” when all you are doing is passing back to your own keeper! Or “They really need to get a handle on this game” when you are 2-0 up. Mostly though it adds great value and helps put you in the mood. Talking of which, nothing helps this more than the ambient sounds and crowd chants. These help lift the game greatly and nothing beats the surge of the crowd as you break for goal, chants and songs ringing around the surround sound as you plough the ball in to the back of the net.

Final Thoughts

The numerous World Cup specific modes add greatly to the overall tweaked FIFA 10 package. The online World Cup tournament is hugely satisfying as is the Captain Your Country option. The ability to take your team from the early friendly matches all the way up through the tournament is a huge time sink and is great fun. Also you can capture your best moments and upload them to EA’s servers (see below!) whcih can be great for bragging rights. This is probably the best football game out regardless of its World Cup license. It has a few issues that FIFA 10 did not have and it is very iterative, which has affected the overall score, but is still a fantastic use of the license and the essential partner to the World Cup.

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