Developer: Volition
Publisher: THQ
Release Date: UK Jun 5th 2009
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter
Age: 16+


I really do wonder, why in this day and age, so much of the attention of game makers, goes into the graphics and level design, camera angles, etc. when still, be it Gears of War, Call of Duty or Halo - rockets and explosions do minimal or more often absolutely no damage whatsoever to the scenery, save a scorched decal applied to the wall. Battlefield: Bad Company made a good effort to incorporate a level of destruction, and for the most part this was decent, with dents in the ground, and buildings able to be skeletonized (although a frame always remained in tact).

Previous red faction games had limited destruction (which even years ago were state of the art), but now they are in the current generation and Voltion need to pull something amazing out. Surprising then, that the first noticable difference (apart from being 3rd person now) between RFG and it's predecessors, is the lack of destructible terrain. You can fill rocky cliffs and precipices with rockets but not do a button of damage.

The thing is, I didn't notice this fact until after many hours of play. Reason being is because of the incredibly detailed and lengthy depths to which you can take down everything else in the world. Everything.

Yes, everything man made in this game is fully and completely breakable. 2, 3 or 4 storie buildings can be reduced to rubble with a vast array of weaponry. Not just rubble, but pieces of the building - this isn't just removing a wall and spawning some bits of rock in it's place - the wall has struts, supports, bricks, and some walls are even load bearing and will cause other bits to collapse after a few seconds. You really feel, whether you are using a hammer, rockets or mines, that you are taking apart a building - the splintering bits of metal and brick, the pipes, the objects in the building, and any neibouring buildings that your demolished structure happens to land on.

It's a beauty to behold everytime you get a giant smoke stack to collapse, shattering into a garage and breaking through three floors - all in realtime, no scripting - I really haven't seen anything like it before. What's more, a small section of wall I destroyed at the start of the game remains broken throughout my game - so it would seem that any changes made to the game world stick. Nice.


When you get down to it, that's really most of what this game is. The AI - seems smart enough, stealth isn't out the equation completely - I have sneaked past a few guards to covertly bomb a target, but things frequently get very messy, very quickly and any hostile action against the guards will soon result in your being swarmed by suicidal armoured cars and wave after wave of relentless troops. But they flank, take cover, close up distance and lob grenades, so I wouldn't say the AI is by any means poor.

It just often feels like whatever tactical plan you come up with to try and bomb and enemy supply depot, is going to turn to shit in no time at all. I typically get spotted and end up jumping out a window, whilst detonating the mines behind me - and getting out by theiving a car or just hammering through a wall and making a break for it. Fortunately, you can aquire an upgrade that shows guard locations on your mini map, which makes excursions like these slightly more tactical.


Aiming is a little bit ropey sometimes, although generally I can deal with it - and a lot of the weapons have either large splash damage, or enough fully automatic fire to take out who you need to, and I have the sensitivity low. Later on in the game, you gain access to Aliens style mechs, of which there are three types, and they are a hell of a lot of fun to use, as you mash up troops, cars and buildings like hot butter. Even the regular hand held weapons rock bells, the nano rifle for example, which disintegrates structures and enemies alike, or the rail driver, an old favourite from previous games, with the ability to scan and shoot people through walls - a bitch in multiplayer!


So the game is open world, and you are initially confinded to one area of the planet, with others parts opening up later on. There are various side missions, hostage rescues, bombing runs, escorts, sieges, etc. which are all a lot of fun, save maybe the vehicle recovery one. These side missions will help you get more morale and support in the local area - so inhabitants will occasionally help you fight off the EDF troops (although the companion AI can be less than helpful sometimes). Eventually, completing the main missions will vanquish the EDF from that area, and you access further areas of the world, and reducing the amount of enemy troops in the completed ...

Published by: THQ
Developed by: Volition
Genre: Third Person Shooter / Open World
RRP: £44.99
ESRB: TBC

Release: Jun 2009

I was lucky enough to be able to grab a keycode for the new Red Faction Guerilla demo.

*edit - the demo is now up for download by the general public - go try it!*



I haven't played much of the first few games - I think I rented red faction 1 ages ago. I was impressed enough by it's Geomod(1.0) technology which allowed you to burrow holes in levels with rockets, create trenches, etc. However, it was limited back in the day and only so much damage could be done to a level before everything became un-destroyable.

Now we have a handful of games which expand on how destructible scenery comes into play, such as Battlefield: Bad Company, and Mercenaries 2.

Mercenaries 2 I felt was particularly underwhelming in this respect, it's graphics lacked polish (terrible water effects) and, whilst you could indeed destroy every building and structure in the game, there was again a lack of polish, and the feeling that quantity was prioritized over quality. For example, a building took a set amount of damage before it began to crumble and raise dust, and shortly after a standard pile of rubble was left. Of course, within minutes these buildings were magically reconstructed so as not to break gameplay.

Battlefield Bad Company tried a more subtle approach, with a lot of fully destructible scenery, and buildings, which could be skeletonized, rather than completely demolished. It worked fairly well, though it could get annoying that you could destroy some things and not others.

So, given that destructible scenery is one of Red Faction: Guerilla's major selling points, this is the first aspect I wished to investigate.



What I can say for certain is that if you like breaking stuff, and seeing things destroyed in an overly gratuitous fashion, then you will not be disappointed. The buildings on Mars, from military installations to flimsy shacks, will shatter, splinter, explode, collapse, break, twist and fall. Pipes, bricks, bits of metal and concrete all break apart as you'd expect and secondary explosions caused by good old fashioned exploding barrels can really rack up the carnage.



The smashing-up-of-things is the star of the show, no doubt, but a concern I had is one exemplefied by Battlefield: Bad Company's single player. This is the fact that in BF:BC, the enemy AI had trouble distinguishing between broken scenery, and untouched, solid walls. Red Faction: Guerilla's AI seems to handle it well enough, and at no point in the demo (although short) did I feel like the AI was being especially stupid.

In fact, the AI worked better than I thought. In the open world of RF:G, there are friendly miners going about their business, not bothering anyone, and driving random cars and trucks about (which you can 'borrow').

Then there are restricted areas, which, if you enter, the local guards will pop a cap in your ass, provided they see you. You can back up against walls, and crouch walk to avoid detection, and there's also a handy minimap to show nearby guard positions.



Of course, being fairly open world means that you'll probably get spotted sooner or later and then the guards come - with re-enforcements depending on how much shit you are fecking up - cause too much mayhem and truckload after truckload of enemies will bail in, overwhelming you.

Dealing with the enemies is fair enough too, there's usually accuracy issues in 3rd person shooters but enough has been done to eliminate frustration. For example, 3rd person melee attacking can tend to be a bit fiddly in most 3rd person games, but an auto lock on/lunge makes this a bit more satisfying. Though it could be cheap in multiplayer if the lunge distance is as it is in single player, I'd be annoyed if I got whacked by someone ten feet away, because the lunge auto-targets the nearest person. Still, works well in single player.



The guns, in the demo at least, are intuitive to use and feel meaty in sound and effect, and the remote detonation mines - whilst a little inaccurate when thrown, are a hell of a lot of fun, and creative use of them can result in some crazy situations.



So the actual mission in the demo is to first 'liberate' an Aliens-style mech loader from a garage which is in a restricted area. I had a few attempts at this. First, running in with guns and bombs was fairly effective, but as you raise more attention, you need to be on the ball or else you'll get swarmed by guards.



The second attempt I used was stealth - carefully avoiding enemies where I could, and taking the less travelled path, this too proved to ...

Puzzle Arcade
Publisher: Eidos Interactive Limited
Developer: Ctxm/Say Design
Genre: Puzzle
System: XBLA
Price:800 MS Points


Let's get right into it, this is a jig-saw game. Everything you do in this game is a type of jig-saw, either in the traditional sense, or with constraints placed on you in certain challenges, such as, having a minute to complete a jig-saw, a distorted image which becomes clearer the more pieces you get, and so on.

There are varying degrees of difficulty, which affect things like, amount of pieces, whether or not the pieces are laid out in a mess, with some bits facing the wrong way, or you can have all the pieces facing the right way and even pre-rotated to the correct orientation.


You can have the pieces separated into a menu of edges and colour groupings, allowing you to quickly find and select certain pieces.

To start with, I did a few of the challenges. Picking a few at random, I found different twists on the 'put the pieces in the right place' type fun that this game promises.

Twists such as bots who make frustrating attemps to complete the puzzle ahead of you. This is the equivalent of having 3 people over your shoulder, grabbing bits of your puzzle and moving them around, shouting - 'that bit goes there!'. Now, if I was actually doing a jig-saw puzzle, first of all, I'd have to be 80 and an old woman, and second; I'd be doing it to relax and have a bit of peace!

So this being the case, the last thing I'd want when doing a jig-saw is other people annoying me, or even time constraints, or missing pieces, or any thing in fact.


So after these challenges, I took to the main, 'just do a friggin regular jig-saw puzzle' mode. So here i thought I'd set up a puzzle, with the pieces not sorted - scattered about, upside down and six-ways from-Sunday, with the maximum amount of pieces (somewhere in the region of 1300).

So I spent about two hours, slowly grabbing pieces, flipping them if needed, sorting the edges and corners to one side, and getting ready to tackle a large puzzle.

Do you know what? It was actually quite relaxing, theraputic even! But after a couple of hours (at which point I hadn't even put two pieces together - I was still sorting edges!), I decided to take a break, and finish my monster puzzle later. It didn't allow me to save my progress. Gutted.

After sorting that mess for two hours, I wasn't able to save my progress and resume later. How in the name of shitting-crikey are you supposed to finish a 1300+ piece puzzle in one sitting?

I've given more than enough words out for this game so I'm going to get to the point - which is this - what's the point?

Why? Why would you play this game, who would play it? How long would they play it for?

Why would you play this game? I guess if you really like jig-saws, and think it's be cool taking pictures with the XBox Vision Camera and turning them into said puzzles, then yes, go for it. But who is going to want to do jig-saws on an XBox 360?

The lack of a save function for some puzzles means that there really is no point starting a huge one, as you'd have to do it in one sitting. Although some do allow saving.


The multiplayer aspect is a strange addition, and I guess it would work like the mode with the bots who keep grabbing bits of your jigsaw and moving them around (i.e. annoying). But I can't say for sure because I couldn't get an online match, ranked or otherwise, as presumably only someone with a very sad life would play online jigsaw puzzles at half ten on Saturday night. And as sad as my life is, I was reviewing it so I had an excuse and if I had found anyone playing this online I would have been interested to talk to them and possibly find out who they are and alert the authorities about a potential suicide risk.

So I'd struggle to justify buying or even playing this game. If you really want a taste of last century (or the one before that even) then go for this, if you think jig-saws belong in the past along with ball-in-a-cup, ludo and slap-the-stepchild, then avoid.

If you're that into jig-saws, then you probably aren't going to appreciate the extra factors and difficulties put into place by this game. You're better off with the real thing.

...

The first iteration of Portal we saw was attached to the sweet-as-a-nut deal The Orange Box. At the time I paid 60 quid for the Orange Box, and I was noted for saying that I'd have paid that for Portal alone. This was of course a lie, that would be mad, but Portal's quality and uniqueness stood out from the other parts of the Orange Box (Half Life 2 and it's episodes, and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box as a whole was great, Half Life 2 and it's episodes are a fantastic play, they age well and converted to the 360 nicely. Team Fortress 2 has a big following even today. The 'Box was full of Diamonds, and Portal was like a, Golden Diamond.


A number of things set it apart - for one it wasn't a First Person Shooter, it was an FPP (first person puzzler). Puzzle games until then had largely been restricted to 2D, with no real story to speak of. Portal showed us unique puzzle situations with a deep and often darkly humorous story, and a good game mechanic which was well realised. The way the game plays is simple enough, one trigger puts up one portal, the other trigger, a second portal. You can travel between the two. And that's it, but I can't explain in words how intricate this game mechanic makes Portal. It sounds simple, but when you take into account that you can use portals to redirect missiles, take objects through to use elsewhere, and that momentum and gravity are unaffected by portals, then the game becomes much more rich and rewarding.
Portal: Still Alive, is a hard one to figure out. To be brutally honest, it's a mutilated version of the original. There are puzzles I remember that are cut out (perhaps to fit the XBox Live Arcade maximum size limit). So you get the feel for what the game is, and you get a good taste for the puzzle element, and most of the story is here in tact. There are no new story bits that I noticed, but some of the puzzles themselves seemed to have small additions or twists I don't remember from first time around.

There are extra and new test chambers (puzzles) to be done individually (i.e. not featuring any of the classic Glados chatter or story). These are simply puzzles and that's it. So I found myself asking - what is this? It's not a prequel or a sequel, and it's not a remake, because a remake would warrant extra and updated content. It's more like a dowloadable content pack for Portal. But it included most of the original game so the only real extras if this were classed as DLC, would be the 20 or so extra puzzles, and if I paid over 5 quid for 20 short enough puzzles, even for what was and is one of the greatest games of all time, I'd cry blood. I'd want more than that for DLC!

But as it stands, Portal: Still Alive is not DLC, it's standalone Arcade game. So where does that leave my opinion? I love the original Portal, but for this review, I just had to play a bastardized version of the game I love. Why would I play this game? For the extra puzzles? I want more of the excellent story! For the achievements? It's a bit lame to be buying something you already completed just to get extra points (or just to be able to say "rub it up ye, Paddy, I gots more points than u!") There are also modes where you have to do each test using only a set amount of portals or footsteps but really, could you be arsed if you've already done them?

I seem to be giving this game a bollocking so far, but the best way I would recommend this game, and this is the important part of this review, this is what I want you to remember - If, AND ONLY IF, you have never played, and have no intention of ever paying for and playing, the full Orange Box package, Portal included, then you owe it to yourself to get this. This will probably be the case if you don't like first person shooters much. And that's fair enough, but Portal is not a first person shooter, not at all. The rest of the Orage Box however, is. And if indeed you are that small minority that doesn't like shooting the christ out of anything that moves, then you should opt for Portal: Still Alive on the Arcade.
It is a great game, even in this slimmed down arcade version, and if you are not a FPS fan, there's no point going for the full Orange Box, take this and enjoy it, because although it's not a complete version, it's enough to show you how awesome the world of Portal is, and you will get almost as much as enjoyment out of this version as the original.

Scores:

if you have the Orange Box
if you haven't ...

Braid
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Jonathan Blow
Genre: Platformer/Puzzler
Players: 1
MSRP: 1200 MS point ($14.99, £10.20, €13.96)
Platform: Xbox 360

Are games art? It's a broad question which has been asked and answered, and re-asked and re-answered many times. Especially in recent years, where technical and graphical limitations have become less prevalent, and programmers and artists alike are free to create new ways of using current generation hardware. Many games are a clear argument against games being art, with their unoriginal concepts and gimmicky game play and art styles. Braid is proof that some games, only some, can be artistic masterpieces.

I played the XBox Live Arcade version of Braid. Very few games on the Arcade have piqued my interest over the years. Worms, N+ and Castlevania, to name but a few were all, in my opinion, genuinely worth the money spent. I can say that Braid, although hefty in it's pricing, is worth the money.


The only way to review this game without getting as complicated as some of the levels can be, is to take it's individual elements one at a time. First of all the graphics. I've never been terribly impressed by games using alternative art styles, like cell shaded games, or retro style brightly coloured shooters. Braid's hand painted wonderland feels like somebody spent a hell of a lot of time on it, and that you're playing something that has been lovingly crafted especially for you, and not just put in the graphical style of the month. Not many games ever make you feel like that. The music is also masterfully composed and whilst, you won't be humming any of it in the shower, it is pleasant on the ears all the way through.

The story is probably something you will make your own mind up on. Initially it seems like a 'save the princess, get to castle, she's in another castle' affair. Which is a deep as you need to get in a platform game. However, dig deeper and look at the intro story for each level, the character's motivation for playing, and even the design of some of the levels, and the pictures made from the collectible jigsaw pieces, and you will wonder, is this a story derived from the classic platform plot, twisted into something plausible? Or is this a very personal tale of lost love and regret? Has the author suffered some deep heartbreak that makes him wish he could rewind time and fix his old mistakes, or it is better to learn to live with them and learn from them, or how about having knowledge of what mistakes you will make, and then making them anyway, knowing it will lead to ultimate success? That entire last sentence is a thinker for sure, but it's also how you need to think to complete some of the game's puzzles, and this fact in itself is simply genius.

Playing the game is simple, you move around, jump on heads to kill enemies, and flick switches. You also have the x button to rewind time, right back to the start of the level if you need to (you often will). It's the characteristics of each area that make these simple elements go beyond simple and become brain taxingly complex.


Later on, new levels bring new features, such as your shadow self, levels where moving right moves time forward, moving left moves it back, and standing still, well, you get the idea, at least, you'll think you do until you realise the problems that come with such a situation. When you combine these and more features even further into the game, things get very difficult, and some puzzles will leave you saying only one word; 'impossible', even with your timeless advantage. But when you finally figure out the puzzle, and there are often multiple solutions, you'll feel so damn satisfied and well chuffed with yourself.

You'll notice that sometimes you have to think not only outside the box, but you'll have to forget there ever was a box in the first place. You'll often be going out of your way to save enemies instead of killing them, to get them to wander into a certain position where jumping on their heads will help you get to something previously unreachable. The game is full of concepts like this, where you go out of your way to do something which seems detrimental to progress, to achieve more.

So when we combine all these elements into one game, we've got a beautifully painted landscape, with delightfully composed music, a casual or incredibly deep storyline depending on how you look at it, and amazing use of time control for puzzle solving in an environment where the only other controls are move, jump and hit switch.


We have a winner here, and if you only ever download occasionally from XBox Live Arcade, as I do, this is one of those few games actually worth the money.

Reading over this review I realize I have my tongue firmly up it's asshole, ...

Well I just watched the new trailer. A 1 minute 2 second beauty of CGI!

The first bit is fairly slow, but sets the mood nicely before blowing us away with roughly 30 seconds of action, with an almost real-life looking Chief.

I'll skip the lame talking kids bit and get straight to the action...


Suffering from shellshock, we look through the Chief's eyes as he reaches for his helmet and puts it on. Then we see him receive some news from command, and then in come the wraith attacks on the scarred battlefield! How can Chief survive against such a barrage of deadly blue plasma? Well, he whips out some sort of grenade type device, fires and sticks it in the ground at his feet - and up goes a big hex covered sphere around him. Safe in his bubble, the plasma falls about him and he emerges unscratched to take a mad run and jump into a pile of what look like Brutes.


All in all, fairly good, I wasn't expecting to find any new gameplay details in a movie with no in game footage, but I think we can safely say that this shield is the much pondered use of the 'x' button. We know from a 1up.com report that the 'x' button is something you activate, and also that it's not a central part of a muiltplayer match, since, the 1up players said they didn't need to activate their 'x' button once in a match of Halo 3.


It seems from the new movie that it takes about a second to plant the shield before it will activate, and only lasts for a moment, so use of this feature may be an answer to the 'cover' style gameplay of Gears of War, adding some tactical play to the multiplayer. My guess would be that the time it takes to deploy the shield leaves you vulnerable, but if you can get it up, it will defend against possibly any attacks for the moment it remains active.

I'm still left wondering what happens if an enemy is intersected by your shield (chopped in half?!), or can you move after planting the shield? Can you be melee attacked whilst it is active? Probably not, you probably stop to plant it, and have to wait until it fades before moving on. So, as the trailer suggests, it must be a primary way for Chief to defend against Wraith and grenade attacks. How will it change Halo's multiplayer feel? Hard to say - I'm kind of getting used to being able to take cover behind burnt out cars and buildings, and I think I'd miss Gears of War's hidey-peeky-shooty antics in any future first person shooters.

By the time Halo 3 comes out, one would hope GOW's pretty bad matchmaking (or lack thereof) system will have been long fixed, and if so, GOW will be perhaps competing with Halo 2 for most played Live title. So when Halo 3 does arrive, it's not going to be the only decent shooter in the village!


You can watch the trailer on xbox.com here


Adios.



...

Click here to go to the Microsoft site and check out the new (Dec 4th) cgi video for Halo 3. I'll be staying up till 2:15am GMT which is when it goes live.

Whilst it will offer no actual gameplay footage, it should contain some awesome music, and hopefully some sweet Master Chief action.

It was made by Hollywood FX house, Digital Domain, who were supplied with models and assets directly from Halo 3's creators, Bungie.

Stay tuned for an update as soon as it goes live! Until then, here is a selection of smileys for your viewing pleasure: :rofl: :rofl: :thumbup: ...