Video Game Reviews, Video Game News & Wacky Views

When I first heard that Codemasters were in the process of making a sequel to the amazing rally game, Colin Mcrae: Dirt, I was really pleased. The original Dirt game was amazing, not only did you get a good taste of rally driving, but they also included different types of races where you could race in anything from buggies to Hummers, all in brilliant graphics. All of this great gameplay is maintained in the sequel, plus even better graphics, despite the legend Colin Mcrae passing away.

More and more games recently have been creating more of a focal point of the menu screen. The first time I really took notice of this was in Fifa 09 where the menu screen allows you to take shots at the goal. A more recent example would be in Guitar Hero 5 where you can jump straight into the song that’s playing in the background. As for Dirt 2, although it’s not quite as interactive as those, it’s quite interesting what they’ve done.

As you are a rally driver, you are on tour alot, so Codemasters have made the entire menu screen based around your tour trailer and your team area outside. Inside the trailer there is the career mode, which is simply a map on a table, the multiplayer mode, which is a pinboard, Options, ‘Your Stuff’ and then you can head on outside through the door. Once you’re outside, you can view your cars and make changes to them. Unfortunately, it’s not totally free roam and you can’t run around where you like, you simply direct the players head towards the area and it moves for you, but it’s still a nice feature to have.

The career of the game is pretty much the standard career that you had in the original game. You get given a series of races to complete and each race varies in type and what cars you can use. For winning the races you get some money and some experiance points which adds to your driver level. As you progress higher up in the levels, more races will unlock around the world, as well as varies tournaments such as the X Games.

Throughout various points in the career, you come across other star rally drivers who you become friends with and invite you to group races, they also offer some throwndown 1 on 1 challenges to test your skill. All of which can be accessed via your career map and you can accept them at any stage.

As for the tournaments, they are just normal races but against the top guns so they are slightly more difficult. For the X Games there are 3 races for each with the bottom 4 drivers of each race being knocked out. Once you win these tournaments you generally get a lot of experiance points, alot of cash and a nice new set of wheels provided by the tournament holders.

While on the subject of the cars, there is a wide range of cars to choose from, each type of race comes with around 8-10 cars that you can buy with your race winnings. As you get higher up the career, you unlock different levels of races which become harder and require to upgrade your car which upgrades the stats so you can keep up.

Not a huge amount has really changed in the way of the career, only a couple of new features. One being the ability to rewind time. I believe the first time we saw this feature was in the racing game GRID where if you crashed your car, you could simply rewind time and try again. This feature works the same in Dirt 2, but only if you total your car, you can simply rewind time and try again, the number of times you can do this is restricted to what difficulty you have selected. However, sometimes it doesn’t prove very helpful as in certain races, by the time you rewind the actual crash, you don’t get much time to correct it so sometimes the crash can become inevitable.

As this is the first Colin Mcrae game to be released since his tragic death, they have included a number of features to lay tribute to the legend he was. At various points in the game, the other celebrity drivers make comments to how good a rally driver and a person he was. Codemasters have also included a number of special things including special classic Colin Mcrae cars, which you can win throughout the career. They have also included a special Colin Mcrae event where you, a number of rally drivers and some sporting legends race against one another in honour of the man. I do think is quite a nice touch to include in the game as it shows how much people respected him.

Ever since the Xbox 360 and the PS3 were released many years ago, the level of graphics has been becoming greater and greater. This year seems to be a particular high point as we will be seeing some brilliant, visually stunning games such as Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5. Dirt 2 is one game that can be added to that list.

Great detail has been put into not only the cars, but also the surrounding environment. The accuracy of small things like water, gravel and dust is superb. The level that the developers are currently working at is mind blowing and I don’t think we will be very far away from seeing racing games that look like live television. Whether Dirt 2 will stand up to the graphics of other racing games like Forza 3 and Need for Speed: Shift is not known yet, but it still looks pretty awesome at the moment.

Summary

This is the first racing game that has truly impressed me. Although there are still a number to come, Dirt 2 is in a class of it’s own as it’s the only rally game so it gives you a totally different perspective of racing games and requires a different type of driving. If you loved the original Dirt or you just love racing games, you should be pleased with what you get in Dirt 2.

Good Points = Nice new graphics, great range of cars, fantastic range of races and tournaments.

Bad Points =Rewind time can leave you in awkward situations sometimes.

I give this game a 9/10.

The latest edition to the Guitar Hero franchise has been released this week, and it can only be described in one word really, ‘Wow!’ When Activision first announced their lineup for 2009, I was surprised because they were releasing so many new Guitar Hero games and I was concerned that they wouldn’t really be up to good standards if they were releasing so many. However, they have proven me wrong with this latest release.

For Activision, the new Guitar Hero 5 game is the latest ‘template’ for their upcoming games, what this means is that all the smaller games made from now on will be built from this latest game, which is great. Previously, the template for their games had been Guitar Hero World Tour, which if you have read my previous posts, you’ll know that I hated that game and they did a terrible job of it. But with this one, they have really excelled.

There is so much to talk about with this new game so I’ll begin with the menu screen. Not something normally you would talk about in a game review, but this one is quite interesting. When you load up the game, a song begins to play in the background and if all you want to do is jump into the excitement, just simply press the yellow button and you’ll be able to start playing that song. You don’t even have to do it by yourself, at any point, your mates can jump in and out of the song. Once your done, you can return to the menu screen, press Start and get the proper menu.

Moving on, the career starts off not too different to the other games, where you get to choose a character, or make one, then make your band. However, in Guitar Hero 5, not only can you make a new character, you can use your Xbox 360 avatar to play in-game. This fun addition to the game brings your avatar to life as they rock along to all the songs.

As I was initially creating a new character, one thing I noticed was that as  I was equipping my character with armour, as normal musicians do, I realised I wasn’t actually paying for this stuff. So after playing one song, I found that you don’t actually earn any money. I think this must be the first Guitar Hero game to not actually reward you with cash for completing songs.

The whole way the career is setup is basically the same as the other games, there are a number of different sections, each one containing 4-5 songs, plus a couple of encore songs. So not much has changed in the way you play the career, but what you are awarded has, quite significantly. I’ve already said that you don’t get money, but the other difference is that you can, potentially, get more stars than normal. In previous games, you could only get a maximum of 5 stars and then gold stars if you got 100%, but in this game, if you get 100%, you get a 6th star. That’s not it though. For each song, there is a challenge which you have to complete with a specific instrument. For example, some of the guitar challenges include getting a certain note streak or holding a 4x multiplier for a certain number of seconds.

Each challenge is split into 3 different rankings, going from gold to diamond and for each rank, you gain an extra star. So, potentially, if you were to get 100% in the song, then complete the full challenge, you will earn yourself 9 stars, a whole 4 more than any other game on the market.

This doesn’t really make any change to the game, but it does make you want to earn as many stars as possible, especially as there is an Xbox 360 achievement for every few hundred stars, with the final achievement for a massive 808 stars.

That’s pretty much it for the career, now onto the Quickplay feature. In previous games, you would have had to complete the entire career to be able to unlock all the songs. However, Guitar Hero 5 is the first game where you don’t have to do that. As soon as you load up the game, without even starting the career, you can play any song from the 85 strong set list you want in the Quickplay mode. That’s not the only change though. In other games, to start playing the songs, you would have to get everyone who was playing ready to go before starting the song, but with this game, any of your mates can jump in and out of the song, at any time, and not effect anyone else while doing so.

The final new addition to the game involves pretty much all of the sections of the game.  If you’re always having trouble choosing between your mates which instrument to play, as nobody really wants to play bass, then all these problems have been solved. You can now play any song with any combination of instruments, if you’re friends are all drummers or all guitarists, no worries, you can all play at once, just aslong as you have the kit to play it.

Now moving onto the graphics. The Guitar Hero team have done a great job improving the graphics all round. Each of the characters look extremely detailed and just better quality.  In previous games, the graphics had been quite poor, all the characters looked poorly done and the crowd had about 5 people just repeated so they all pretty much looked the same. Although I don’t think they have changed the crowd too much, they have slightly blurred the crowd from view and you see less of them so it doesn’t look as bad, nice tactic by Activision.

As with the majority of the Guitar Hero games, some special musical figures have been included in the game. Some of them in Guitar Hero 5 include Carlos Santana, Johnny Cash, Matthew Bellamy, as well as a number of others. Although a huge amount of time has been spent getting these characters to look really life like, and a good job has been done, some controversy has surrounded one of these characters, Kurt Cobain. Members of Nirvana and Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, have made complaints about the character’s use, despite Love giving consent to use the image. Nothing has really come from Activision yet so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Summary

Overall this is one of the best Guitar Hero games ever released. Not only does it come with the largest setlist to date, it has a huge range of new features which have risen the game above all the competitors. Aslong as Activision provide a good online download service, I think this game could be the best so far.

It’s just a shame that the new drum kit wasn’t released with Guitar Hero 5 and not released with Band Hero later in the year, that would have made this release even better.

Good Points = Improved graphics, huge setlist, great new features, jump in and out of songs, no need to unlock songs for quickplay.

Bad Points = None!

I give this game a 10/10.

When I first heard that Harmonix were creating a new Beatles based Rock Band game, I was slightly unsure as I am not a huge fan of The Beatles. I like some of their classic songs but otherwise I’m not a big fan. Anyway, I decided to buy it simply because it’s a Rock Band game and it’s most likely got some great new features. However, it didn’t have as many as I would have liked.

The biggest thing that stands out in this new game is the amount of time and effort that’s been put into making all the cut-scene movies and the characters. The biggest and most impressive movie of the game has to be the intro movie which is absolutely amazing. The intro was created by Harmonix and the Oscar award winning film and animation company, Passion Pictures.

As for the characters, throughout the entire game you play as The Beatles going through the many years of their characters. As you would expect, they didn’t look the same throughout their career, so why should they in the game? For each section, the age of the players, facial features and hair styles all change to match what they would have done back in the 60’s. Alot of time, thought and effort has gone into making this game.

Although this is extremely good and it makes the game look and feel brilliant and new, it hasn’t really brought anything new from the last Rock Band game, Rock Band 2. There were only a couple of changes that I could see, the first one is that you can now have multiple singers to create the harmony effect that The Beatles create. The second one was that when you pause the game during a song, when you go to resume, it counts down allowing you to prepare and not miss a note. However, this is nothing new because Guitar Hero actually introduced this nice feature in Guitar Hero World Tour if I remember correctly.

The career of the game is split into 8 different sections with between 4 and 7 songs in each section. Overall there are 45 songs in the whole game that’s spread across the entire career of The Beatles, giving a great variety of songs. Once you complete each song, you are rewarded by unlocking a photo from the career of The Beatles. If you get 3 stars in the song, you unlock 1 photo, if you get all 5 stars, you unlock 2 photos, all of which can be viewed from the menu.

After you complete each of the sections, you unlock a new challenge, which are pretty simple really. All you have to do is complete each of the songs from section without a break and if you get 5 stars for each song, you unlock yet another photo.

A big downside of the game is the complexity of the songs. Even when you’re playing them on Expert difficulty, they are still quite simple, and this stands for all of the instruments. Playing through one of the songs on Expert Guitar, there was a total of 196 notes, this is nothing compared to the songs in the standard Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. I wouldn’t want to go through any of the songs on anything but Expert as there would be hardly any notes to hit.

Onto the graphics, not alot can be said about them because not much has changed between this new game and the previous. However, there is a slight improvement because more detail has been put into the characters and the backgrounds of the game, making the overall graphical appearance better.

Summary

Overall, it seems that alot of effort has been put into making this game, however, unless you’re a huge fan of The Beatles, I wouldn’t say it’s a must buy. No doubt it will make alot of money for Harmonix and The Beatles themselves, but I don’t think they will out sell Guitar Hero 5 which has been released about 3 days later, watch out for the review of that by the way.

Good Points = Extremely good cut-scenes, great detail of characters.

Bad Points = Not many new features, only great if you like The Beatles, songs are very simple.

I would give this game a 7/10 however it would be more if I was a big Beatles fan.

To celebrate the release of The Beatles: Rock Band game, which is being officially released tomorrow (September 9th), Harmonix are giving gamers the chance to win and buy a series of special edition Beatles Xbox 360 consoles. Each one of the consoles has been professionally designed and styled to match the intro movie to The Beatles: Rock Band game.

For a chance to win one of these highly limited edition consoles, there are currently two different methods. The first one will be the most expensive as it’s currently being sold on the online auction site eBay. For your chance to win this console, all you have to do is bid. All the proceeds from the sale will be going to the charity, Doctors Without Borders. This console will certainly not be cheap as at the time this post was published, the bid was at $780 with another 9 days to go. It’s going to be interesting to see how much it ends at.

The second method to get your hands on the console is to buy the “All You Need Is Love” song, which is exclusive to Xbox Live gamers. The song will cost 160 Microsoft Points and is being released tomorrow, the same day as the game’s release. Once you purchase this song, you will then be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win one of the special edition consoles, as well as a Rickenbacker 325 guitar controller, not bad for 160 Microsoft Points. Once again, all the money earned from the sale of the downloadable song will go to the Doctors Without Borders charity.

From what the press release said, it sounds like they will be giving away more than just the two limited edition consoles.

*Update* The charity auction for a limited editio The Beatles styled Xbox 360 is going well, with just over 7 days still to go, the price has rocketed to $7,100.

As a fan of Batman, I was exited when I first heard there was a new game coming out, its been years since we have had a actual Batman game and this game does not disappoint. The last game that was released about the Batman series was the Lego Batman game, which, although it’s a great game, it’s not quite the same as a proper Batman game.

The story of the game is based entirely around the Arkham Asylum. It starts by Batman apprehending Joker after he attacks the mayor’s office, he then returns the Joker back to Arkham. Once inside Arkham, the Joker springs his trap and with the help of Harley Quinn, he escapes and disappears into the maze that is Arkham Asylum. Your part is to play as Batman and work your way though the Asylum in an attempt to stop the Joker. Along your journey, you come across a variety of enemies that range from standard goons to ’super criminals’ such as Croc, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow and a number of others.

Now onto the gameplay, this is where the game really gets good. There are two types of gameplay, the stealth in which you use gadgets and your sneaky ninja skills to take out people with guns which plays alright, it does get a little boring after a while. Then there is the brawling in which you fight against a group of goons, this is where the game gets really good. By hitting the X button you perform strikes at the enemy and once you have hit them three times, you go into this mode called free flow in which just by hitting the X button and holding the direction you will seamlessly move from enemy to enemy in a cool cinematic style combat. The combat is one of the best things about the game, it seems so powerful and free flowing.

Any Batman game wouldn’t really be complete without the gadgets, and this game is no different. As you progress through the game, you get a huge amount of gadgets which you can upgrade to make them more powerful. They range from explosive gel, which you can use as a tactical weapon, to things like controllable Batarangs for taking out difficult goons.

The gadgets not only help you during combat and getting to those to of reach places, but they also help with collecting the secret items. Early on in the game you are contacted by The Riddler who has hacked into your radio communication. He tells you that he has a series of riddles set out all around the asylum. In total there are 240 of them and they range from riddles, which you have to work out, to items that you have to pick up. This does add some extra length to the game as once you have finished with the story, you can continue looking for them around an empty asylum.

Now onto the graphics and audio. The visuals in Batman Arkham Asylum are really good, Arkham is given a kind of dark and gritty feel about it. The game uses the same graphics engine as the Gears of War 2 game, which would explain why all the characters are are heavily built and over exaggerated. The camera style of the game is also very similar to Gears of War, it’s an over the shoulder, slightly off centered view. The audio in Batman is cool, I really like the script in this game, especially the Joker and Harley Quinn speeches.

Summary

Overall this game is great, although it’s not hugely long, with the riddles to find, it gives you a number of hours of gameplay. Plus, once you have finished, although it’s not a multiplayer, there are a series of challenge modes which you can complete. They are split into combat modes and stealth modes with each one awarding medals for higher scores.

Good Points = Very good graphics, simply amazing combat, cool range of gadgets.

Bad Points = Storyline could be longer.

I give this game a 9.5/10.