Level256

EA have finally announced the date for the much anticipated WWII sandbox game: The Saboteur. The title will be hitting UK shelves on December 4th on Xbox 360, PC and PS3 (US gamers will be able to buy the game from December 8th).

Excerpt from the Level256 preview for The Saboteur:

“Set in 1940?s Nazi occupied France, this open world action/adventure looks very promising. You play as Sean Devlin, an Irish racing mechanic turned reluctant hero on his quest for revenge on those who destroyed his life. Pandemic are promising an intimate story line with big blockbuster action and from the brief glimpse I got at EA?s European Showcase, it looks like they are set to deliver an emotional roller coaster ride with plenty of action! The sandbox environment gives players a chance to explore a beautifully stylized Paris. Drive fast cars, meet loose women, derail trains, blow up zeppelins, destroy armored tanks and level buildings. Sneak in, then run out in a blaze of gunplay, explosions and glory!”

Watch this space for more news on this title from Pandemic Studios.

The Monkey Island series is considered a classic by pretty much anyone who was old enough to play video games in the 90s. I remember playing it when I was 12 and again on a drunken night in 1996. I fact I’ve probably played through this game half a dozen times since it was first released. I was thrilled to hear it was getting a revamp for the Xbox 360 and enjoyed this latest play through every bit as much as I enjoyed it the very first time.

For those of you who haven’t sampled the delights of LucasArts’ classic point and click adventure, it revolves around the young Guybrush Threepwood; a wannabe pirate trying to earn the respect of the denizens of Mêlée Island. The somewhat clueless Guybrush is set three challenges to prove his pirate credentials – Sword Fighting, Thievery and Treasure Hunting. Along the way he falls for the beautiful governor of Mêlée Island, meets the dread ghost pirate Le Chuck and hangs out with lowlifes, cannibals and Monkeys.The story is lighthearted and presented with genuine humour, the characters are genuinely funny and the scripting flirts with comedic genius. Memorable moments include insult sword fighting, the directions to Monkey Island and any interaction with the proprietor of Stan’s Previously Owned Vessels.

The Special Edition allows you to play through the game in two ways; either using the classic sound, graphics and interface or with a host of new features. You can switch between both views seamlessly at any point, either to relive your youth or to laugh at what people like myself once considered to be amazing graphics. So,how have the new look, sound and voice over changed the game?

Visuals

The backgrounds have been improved considerably, offering more atmospheric environments and highlighting some of the more obscure hidden jokes in the original (although I’m yet to find the Sam and Max reference as the one I was aware of has been changed to Day of the Tentacle). The characters have had varying levels of redesign with varying levels of success, switching between the two modes will allow you to choose your favourite. Guybrush and Elaine go from soft likable features to being gaunt and unattractive caricatures, while Stan the used boat salesman is hilariously rendered, maintaining his flailing movements and the static pattern on his jacket. In fact the movements have been retained from the original throughout which can be hilarious or distracting in equal measures. Though some may prefer the new character designs, I personally didn’t like some of the faces, especially when coupled with the retention of the original mouth movements.

Sound

The music is a vast improvement, sections of the original which were silent are now rich with music and background sounds. The voice acting is good but doesn’t manage to consistently interpret the original script to its full comedic potential. The comic timing sometimes misses the mark and the jokes which were designed for a text based game sometimes fall flat. It is telling that one of the funniest sequences in the game is an entirely text based battle which takes place behind a wall. Also, as sections like insult sword fighting require repitive sections of dialog, the voice acting can occasionally prove somewhat annoying. With speech that is slow to enable the player to switch between classic and SE mode without missing out, some scenes feel unnatural and are best viewed in their original form.

Controls

The control system is pretty hit and miss. It’s easy enough to navigate around the environments and complete basic tasks but when it comes to combining items or some of the more fiddly puzzles, the new interactions will often hinder you. There seems to be too much opening and closing of menus to helop the player to complete some of the more obscure actions. At several points I was forced to play the game in classic mode in order to progress. The developers have added a handy Hint button for those who are struggling so there will be no more chance of players getting horribly stuck and giving up as they may have done in the past. The hint system gently guides the player in the right direction at first but if used several times on the same puzzle will essentially bludgeon you with the answer. As a veteran of point and click I can say a little bludgeoning is occasionally what is required.

Overall

Secret of Monkey Island is a classic. It’s genuinely funny and the characters are relatable and well designed. At only 800 MS Points this is definitely worth a play. The Special Edition offers a new look at a great game and is definitely worth a download for those wanting to relive their youth or discover the Secret of Monkey Island for the first time. Some of the changes are hit and miss but this is largely an improvement on the original game.

Battlefield 1943 has finally overcome most of its earlier issues and has proved worth the wait.

This is FPS presented in its purest form. Very simple to pick up even for someone like myself whose experience in this genre is limited to weekly games of Left 4 Dead, some Counter Strike “Back in the Day” and the testing of Battlefield 1942: Road to Rome back in my EA days. Within a few rounds I was holding my own near the top of the leader boards and I’m even managing to get a few kills in before my kamikaze runs to the flag inevitably fail.

The reason this is such a fun title comes down to the simplicity. There are only three maps to choose from (excluding the Air Superiority map – more on which later) and each one uses the capture the flag mechanic. With three character classes available as either the Marine Corps or Japanese Imperial Army it is possible to change your tactics at each respawn. The Rifleman is good for mid range combat and melee, Infantry works best at close range and against tanks and the Scout is the resident sniper. I found it best to switch between all three, depending on how the round was going – favouring the Rifleman for attacking and the Scout for defence. The weapons in the game have unlimited ammunition so the player can concentrate on their next move without scrabbling around for bullets, although it is possible to expand your range of weaponry by picking up items dropped by fallen enemies to change your class.

There are several vehicles in the game, most of which will allow multiple players to travel – our favourite tactic was to have one person driving a jeep while the others caused chaos and destruction with mounted weaponry or by throwing grenades from the passenger seat. In fact our Doom Buggy runs were not only hilarious but also effective. There are also tanks, boats and planes. For some reason I’ve read in several places that vehicles can’t reverse – this is wrong. Vehicles can reverse just fine by pressing the Left Bumper. I would recommend playing the tutorial to anyone who needs a hand getting to grips with the controls.

After the player base reached the 43 million kill mark – they were rewarded with the Coral Sea map, an Air Superiority map featuring only airborne combat. Due to my inability to control planes I had to give this mode a miss.

At only 1200 MS Points and a download of under 600MB, Battlefield 1943 is a fantastic online multiplayer experience. It is graphically impressive for an Arcade game although it occasionally suffers from graphical glitches. The controls and game modes make it very accessible but I imagine that the limited number of maps available may put off some of the more hardcore players.

Many moons ago I worked at EA as a CQC tester, a job that (at the time) involved playing a finished game from beginning to end to ensure it was possible to complete it without any horrendous bugs rearing their ugly heads. Of the many games I worked on, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone on the PS2 was the one that didn’t seem to go away, bouncing in and out of our department for quite a while before it was finally released. It was with trepidation then, that I picked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as this week’s wild card review.

The first thing I noticed about Harry was that he can’t jump. The second thing was….wait…he can’t jump? Thus I discovered that Half Blood Prince was a sandbox game and not a generic movie platformer. Don’t get over-excited, we’re not talking Saboteur or GTA here, we’re talking one of those little shell shaped plastic sandboxes that you get from Argos ? small but serviceable. The problem is that somebody forgot to give you any toys, so you’re left playing with a stick (Quidditch), some ants (Duelling) and most exciting of all ? sand and water (potion mixing)….oh and the ability to stomp around your little box to your heart’s content. This (to push the analogy to breaking point) actually rings true as the older you are ? the smaller your play area feels.

A brief summary of the activities on offer:

Potion mixing is a nice little game where you have to grab ingredients from the table and mix them in a pot whilst ensuring that nothing sets on fire and you don’t run out of time. It’s quite challenging and actually fun at times.

Quidditch requires you to fly in seemingly endless circles on your broom whilst passing through star shaped gates to rack up extra time before you catch the Snitch to win the game.

The Duelling game lets you use different combinations of spells to beat your opponent into submission. This is by far the most broken of the three activities as spell inputs don’t always register and it is possible to get through three quarters of the game using only two types of attack.

Unfortunately Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is merely a 4 hour exercise in walking from one of the mini-games to the next. In a typical 20 minute play session you will be on your way to a Quidditch game (having just finished a potions class) and be accosted by some random for a duel. Sometimes they’ll mix this up a bit by having you on your way to make a potion in the herbology shed (having just won a Quidditch game) but stopping by the duelling club on the way to…I don’t know…get a book or something.

That’s it. The graphics are average. The voice acting is fairly poor and the gameplay is repetitive and boring. The potion mixing mini game is the best thing on offer here and would have been something to praise the game for, had I not been forced to do it every 10-20 minutes.

The prospect of playing the dark overlord who sends his evil minions to wreak havoc and destroy entire cities on a whim is one which most of us would embrace with open arms. Especially when the minions are strangely cute, mangy little servants that can be sent to swarm enemies and obstacles, destroying anything in their path whilst maniacally giggling and screeching with glee whenever they discover something new. They’ll offer up any treasures they find to their mighty master and equip any trash that you can’t use, leading to a rag tag band of gremlins wielding pitchforks and clubs whilst wearing broken bits of barrels as armour. Overlord was a great game and many chose to overlook its faults as the overall game experience was enjoyable and genuinely funny. It was with great anticipation then, that I tried my hand at Overlord 2.

By way of tutorial, the game starts with the budding Overlord as a child in a normal town. After taking control of a handful of minions, the player is introduced to the basic controls and the feel of the game. Controlling your minions is very simple; the Overlord is controlled with the left stick and the minions can be swept across the screen with the right stick -- generally destroying anything and anyone who gets in their way. The right stick also controls the camera (henceforth referred to as MPWO2 -- My Problem With Overlord 2). Early on the game demonstrates some of its new features including the ability to disguise your minions (very funny) and have them ride mounts as a further boost to their abilities.

The lead character is the offspring of the previous Overlord and is indistinguishable from his predecessor. Once again he is tasked with rising in power and improving his evil tower whilst bending to the whims of his mistresses and the ever vocal Gnarl after being cast out of normal civilization by the Empire both for being a magic user and, you know, being inherently evil. You can choose whether your overlord will kill or enslave civilians in his bid for power and forge increasingly impressive armour and weapons to improve his effectiveness.

As before your devilish followers come in 4 colours; brawling browns, fiery reds, stealthy greens and magical blues. Each type has been improved somewhat by the addition of different mounts and abilities. Browns can charge on their wolves, Reds ride salamanders as living, breathing flamethrowers, Greens can climb walls on spiders and blues can blink through solid objects and act as medics. Minions now level up and no longer die if abandoned somewhere in the far reaches of a cavern. If a levelled minion or one with great equipment dies they can be resurrected at a cost to the player so you are spared the seemingly endless backtracking from the first game. However, the control you have over your minions doesn’t feel as natural as it did in the previous game. Although they are less likely to wander idly into certain doom, they also seem rather reluctant to pick up treasure for you and it’s often quicker to wander over and collect items yourself, something which does not meet the level of respect one should demand as an Overlord. Sweeping doesn’t always get the results that you would expect either with minions bunching into corners rather than attacking an enemy -- this is largely down to MPWO2 which occasionally makes it feel like you are having to fight the game for control.

Overlord 2 is more action based than its predecessor, with your character having to get much more involved in fights than before. There are some nice new touches including impenetrable Empire units in formation which can be cast into disarray by incapacitating their leader. Unfortunately some of the action is spoiled by MPWO2 as you’ll be forced to experience it whilst clipping through a house or trying to make out what is happening through a mess of textures. In fact, the camera seems on a permanent mission to hinder your progress. The addition of ship navigation and the use of weaponry is more annoying than fun and detracts from the core elements of the game.

Overlord 2 is genuinely funny. Getting your minions to club seals to death and ransack towns in a drunken daze is a mischievous delight and the scripting is at times hilarious. As Overlord is often likened to Pikmin it was a special delight when the game unveiled Florian Greenheart, the leader of the hippy elves, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Link of Legend of Zelda fame (shortly after this a giant yeti threw barrels at me…).

Unfortunately the humour doesn’t cover the game’s many flaws and it lacks the charm of the original. Though the puzzle elements are still there, many sections feel messy and MPWO2 rears its ugly head throughout. All in all Overlord 2 left me more frustrated than entertained.