Level256

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.

Right, I’ll get the disclaimers out of the way: I am a girl, I’m a retro gamer at heart, I’m not fantastic at fighting games and I’m not a boxing fan….that being said – let’s review Fight Night Round 4!

First of all the game looks stunning. The 40 plus licenced boxers are now available with extra shiny shorts and skin and each boxer has a distinct look, to the point where even I recognised some of the bigger names. As I’m sure you will have heard, Round 4 features such boxing greats as Muhammad Ali, Ricky Hatton and (in his first appearance in a boxing sim) Mike Tyson.

You can now fight on the inside and height is accounted for, making this installment in the franchise a much more strategic game to play. Fighting as Muhammad Ali against Mike Tyson, I had to keep my punches coming hard and fast to stop Tyson getting on the inside and annihilating me. I felt in full control of my fighter’s movements which were fluid and intuitive. Having played through the training level, I won won my first fight by knockout in the third round, using the tactics I had been taught and not by random button bashing (or stick wiggling in this case).

Fight Night Round 4 lets you control your character’s movements with the left stick and his punches with the right. That was fine, though it took me a little while to get used to using the triggers and bumpers to add nuances to his movements and blows, such as blocks and haymakers. When you block a punch you can counter attack, which is by far the quickest way to do lots of damage quickly. It’s quite difficult to get the timing right on the counters but they are well worth it once mastered. This and the ability to fight dirty when the ref isn’t looking should lead to some interesting and closely contested fights in multiplayer. With glancing blows and signature punches also available, it looks as though EA may well deliver on their promise of no two fights ever being the same. In fact the level of control you have over your boxer’s movements is very impressive, though occasionally I felt that the game took a while to register my punches – admittedly this may just be down to the frantic pace I was setting. The AI responded very well and adapted to my fighting style, ensuring that the same trick didn’t work over and over again and keeping each bout interesting.

Another nice touch was when my character was knocked down and I entered a mini game in which I had to regain my balance and get up before being counted out. This was achieved by moving the left stick from side to side (aiming for a sweet spot) to right myself and then getting up with the right stick once my equilibrium had been restored. I also enjoyed the multiple replays from varying angles whenever I landed a particularly impressive blow. I felt a strange sort of glee as I watched Tyson’s face get mushed up from several different viewpoints. The sweat and blood effects from the previous game have been refined and look almost sickeningly good at times.

Between rounds you can use points that have been collected by performing well (landing a percentage of shots, stunning your opponent, finishing a round etc) to boost your character’s stamina, health or damage. These points can also be saved for strategic later use.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t play that much of the Legacy mode. It looks competent enough, with the ability to create your own fighter or relive the career of a star, but I found that starting from scratch wasn’t as much fun for me as playing with established fighters. I imagine that once you get out of the gym and gain a little respect, there is a lot of fun to be had here but I found it quite dull, especially when I foolishly pressed the ’simulate fight’ or ‘watch a really dull play by play for what seems like forever’ button. It works similarly to every other career mode I’ve played before, start off small, make a schedule, do some training, win some fights, move up a rank, repeat…only with occasional text messages from your trainer to guide you.

I did however thoroughly enjoy the training mini games. Your performance in these obviously affects the stat boosts they’ll give you and I quite liked that it was necessary to vary the training to become a balanced fighter, as training will usually impact negatively on one or more stats whilst improving others. From hitting a punchbag whilst ‘in the zone’ (requiring swift movement and fast punches) to ducking back and forth a set number of times without being hit by a bag from above, each training mini game is guaranteed improve your play. I played around with these for a while trying to beat my own high score.

The fighter creation seemed somewhat limited despite having 80 odd faces to choose from, but that seems like a small sacrifice when there are so many famous names present and the content that is available looks so damn good. The commentary is relevant and actually helpful in fine tuning your strategy at times, which is a rare find in a sports game.

Although I only played Fight Night Round 4 for a short time, I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I stated above, this isn’t normally the type of game I would choose to play, so if it can win me over I’m confident that fans of the series will be thrilled when the game is released on Friday 26th June.

I awoke on my day off on June 16th geared up to grab myself some more Left 4 Dead achievements. As I stared at the strangely blank menus of my dashboard it hit me…Xbox LIVE is down….DOWN….TODAY…ON MY DAY OFF! Why was this happening to me? What do people do if they aren’t playing online? WHAT HAPPENS?? Gaaaaah!

I tried to will the 360 to connect for a little while but accepting that I cannot force servers to be online using the power of my mind, I flicked through the arcade games on my machine. I decided it was at last time to give in and try Peggle, a game I had endured friends and colleagues raving about for months.

Oh Peggle. Where to start…

The point of the game is to fulfill the crazy, peg related desires of a bunch of generically cute (yet strangely charming) cartoon animals. Okay, that may not be the actual point but these little critters are sure interested in what I’m doing. So much so that each will lend me the use of their unique ’special’ powers in order to help me clear the game board of orange pegs and blocks using balls fired from a cannon at the top of the screen. I feel a picture is in order to demonstrate:

Using a limited number of balls – hit as many pegs as you can! Blue pegs provide moderate points, purple boost your score and green unlock those coveted special powers. The aim of each board is to get as many points as possible whilst clearing all the orange pegs and blocks. Each peg the ball makes contact with lights up and eventually disappears. Points are awarded for each peg cleared and these points increase as you clear orange targets and fill your Fevermeter. Once you hit that final orange peg the screen fills with rainbows and fireworks and Beethoven’s Ode To Joy blasts out from your sound system. I occasionally rose from my chair cheering when this occurred!

Beyond a basic understanding of how angles work this game is mostly luck. There is something very satisfying about watching that little ball bouncing its way madly from peg to peg though. I started out thinking each shot through carefully but eventually took the same approach I do with bowling – throw it in what looks to be the right direction, then sit back and enjoy the outcome knowing I had little influence. I found myself willing the ball to bounce favorably and screeching in delight when I was awarded ’skill’ points for flukey shots.

The only thing that lets Peggle down is its lacklustre multiplayer modes. The best way to play this multiplayer is the old school ‘pass the controller when you die’ method, thus ensuring fun for all.

Peggle is a delightfully simple game which somehow ate my entire afternoon, as such I’d highly recommend it to anyone who just wants to kill some time and play something that won’t infuriate them. It’s instant gratification and silly enough to have you smiling throughout. Buy it. Buy it now!