By
PSM2_
posted January 7, 2005
It's easy to accuse film licences of being soulless sub-average dribble, but that's because, usually, it's true. You wouldn't believe the amount of generic third-person action/adventures we have to sift through each month and, with the exception of truly original titles like The Thing and Indiana Jones, tie-ins are basically merchandise. They're designed to sit alongside mugs and lunch boxes and hoover up as much of your hard-earned as possible. That's the unspeakable truth. Deal with it.We'd
By
Edge_
posted January 5, 2005
There's a moment when AntiGrav makes every game you've ever played seem ridiculous. It comes when you're explaining the controls to a curious friend, and you find yourself saying, "Jump is jump." But jump is jump. Duck is duck and left is left. It's a system so simple it ought to take no explaining, but so radical that it needs quite a lot. AntiGrav is a future racer that uses hoverboards, which you control entirely via Sony's EyeToy. On screen, you see an avatar that copies your movements,
By
NGC_
posted December 20, 2004
Hands up, everyone who hasn't played this. There must be a few people out there who haven't experienced Mario's finest moment on its native N64 format, and if you're one of them, you'll love this. There's even more to do than there was before, with an extra 30 stars, new levels and new characters.That we have any reservation at all is entirely due to the control system. Mario 64 was less designed with the N64's three-pronged controller in mind than the controller was created specifically for
Their diet is unnatural, and those who consume it are shunned by society. If discovered, they're driven out by mobs waving pitchforks. Yes, Monster Munch and Iron Bru-scoffing games journalists are a hideous breed, and should be slaughtered in their sleep.Vampires though, just as horrible and eighteen times as sexy, get their own videogames. Vampire: The Bloodline Masquerades differs from your average nibble-'em-up. Yes, there's superhuman powers of the undead and blood-drinking, as seen in
Things aren't going well for the three Baudelaire children. They've just learnt that their parents have died, when they're shipped off to live with an evil uncle. It's not ideal.They need to come up with survival techniques to survive in a house laden with nutcases and creepy crawlies. This involves inventing weapons and gadgets that keep them out of trouble.Luckily, Baudelaire Violet is uncannily good at making gadgets out of random objects - all she needs are the correct items. Which is where
By
PSM2_
posted December 1, 2004
It's the best war game on PS2 then. Job done. War is over. Troop disbanded. You can all go home for Christmas in an ill-fitting free suit. It's easy to be glib. Easy to see Call of Duty: Finest Hour as 'just another war game' and easy to question why you should buy it when you've already got Medal of Honor: Frontline and Rising Sun. Thanks. Here's why: Call of Duty is, at its best moments, twice as good as either game. If you want realism in your FPSs (and lots of people do given the
Rarely does a game feel this frustrating. Here's an example: my Rohirrim archer cavalry are piling arrow after arrow into Mordor's dark towers. They sit out of range, laughing to themselves at impotent orcs cut down as the fortifications crumble. Right click, move on to attack the next. Without warning my men rush in to the fray, disobeying my direct orders. They're cut down instantly. Their corpses left to rot in Middle-Earth's mud. Or try this, an early level: the Rohirrim are on the attack
Off the heezay! After SingStar copping big chart success, clones were as inevitable as Eminem upsetting your Gran. This is the rap one, and it's got the best track line-up we've seen yet, ranging right from the roots of hippity-hop (Rapper's Delight), through the gangsta era (Dre and Snoop tunes) right up to the modern era (Dizzee Rascal and Kanye West).But think about it. At the risk of getting all over-analytical on yo' ass, rap's all about words, rather than tunes. Because of this, Get On Da
By
Edge_
posted November 23, 2004
When Californian studio Naughty Dog veered off from the 3D platformer path and into GTA territory with its second Jak game, it made at least two significant mistakes. First, it thought buzzing around a cityscape in hovercars would be as much fun as hammering around streets in cars (it wasn't - by a yawning margin), and second, it failed to thoroughly playtest its work, resulting in a selection of missions so frustrating in their make-up only the masochistic could find them pleasurable.Both
Okay. We could bang on about how Fight Club isn't actually about fighting, but an attack on the sort of consumerist culture that - for instance - licenses out popular films and makes them into games. Or we could point out that in Fight Club, the winner doesn't matter, so that the structure of the game - which revolves around travelling between groups and hitting incidental characters from the films - doesn't make sense. We could even question the inclusion of kung fu-style spinning kicks that
