Whines and Cheeses
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This week I will be giving a small review on three games, Wii Music for the Nintendo Wii, Resistance 2 for the PS3 and Tomb Raider Underworld, for the XBox360- each exclusive to their console.
Wii Music
I was relatively excited about this release, as my little brothers would like it, being music- lovers. Players are able to take control of a wide selection of instruments (wide enough, contrary to what some people might say- there’s no need to complicate the game with too many instruments and button combinations) and play a reasonable amount of songs, including tracks from Nintendo games like Mario and Zelda, and also traditional songs.
The gameplay is simple, and rather than relying on on- screen prompts that tell you when to press buttons, like how most music games work (Guitar Hero and Rock Band both follow this system), you press them in time with the music, and recieve visual confirmation of the correct notes from a colour- coded box on the top of the screen.
Only at the end of the song do you get scored on your performance, but like the Guitar Hero series if you can hear the music being played, you are doing something right.
Overall it looks like good fun to play, especially multiplayer, but I think it would have done much better as 'Wii ware' (software available exclusively to download through the Wii shop channel), as the interface is simple, the music is in MIDI (something that has been the source of many complaints about the game- I think it keeps the game in sync with Nintendo's simplistic, childish style myself- that's not necessarily a good thing though) and the instruments are played minimalistically.
As a full game though, it looks like it may be a slight dissapointment- but fun for the little ones.
Resistance 2
Although I have never played the prequel to this game, Resistance: Fall of man, I was interested to see what this was like after seeing a video of it's gameplay on TV. The visuals look stunning and really give good use to the wide array of graphical resources the PS3 has to offer- but like so many other games from consoles that appear to, and certainly do, in some cases, favour quantity over quality, the main campaign mode has suffered somewhat.
The online mode looks good on this game, and may be the only thing worth buying it for. If you don't have a 360, this would be a good alternative to Halo 3.
Small details litter the game in order to try and justify itself, such as individually animated clouds and randomly- generated areas in the cooperative mode. Although you can't play the protagonist, you can choose from 3 different classes to play through the story, and unlock new armour for them.
This seems to be one of the best shooters out there, up with Call of Duty (maybe not World at War though) and Gears of War.
Tomb Raider Underworld
This game needed to do rather a lot to impress me after Eidos' annoying habit of beating the life out of poor Lara Croft since they took over the series from Core and developed Tomb Raider Legend in 2006, but it seems they have finally managed to pull off a good one.
Visually, we are looking at the height of the 360's graphical capabilities. Lara has never looked better, and this really stands out along with the fluent control systems and amazing detail to the gameplay- for instance, Lara is more likely to slip from a ledge if it's raining, and will interact dynamically with the environment differently depending on whether she is holding one weapon or two.
The soundtrack seems to keep with the original; Brun Folman has remixed the original riff into an orchestral classic. Overall the music is heard less frequently than in Legend, but that isn't a bad thing.
I would say this is a necessity for all XBox owners- the fact that it is exclusive to the one console means that it is dedicated to the XBox experience, which can only enhance the gameplay.
EPIC FAIL: A blogly article discussing what's failed in the world of Jio.
This weeks Epic Fail is Gamesdev.net. I wish you were useful. :(
This site would seem like a dream to someone like me, but unfortunately it's a little bland. I tried editing a wiki on Nolan Bushnell and got a crashed Mac, I tried looking at some actionscript tutorials and I recived rambling trash, and I tried looking at the interesting headlines but was put off by the boring colours and lame fonts. Make your site better! And NO, I don't know c+/+/#.
MAJOR WIN: A blogly article discusing what's won in the world of Jio.
This weeks Major Win is Adobe Flash! You have given us so many great/ crap games. (Delete as appropriate)
I would see the general Flash game market is to those gamers who aren't really gamers but more bored people. But it's compatibility and versatility makes it worthwhile, and I'm starting to actually like Actionscript a little.
Leo Paine is making an excellent Flash game for a University project; look out for it here, but in the meantime, take a look at his other great stuff. :)
Holiday spirit is hiding somewhere- it needs to be coaxed out with repetitive christmas music, bitter winds, lack of snow (as what seems to be the norm nowadays) and soppy family films. I can't wait!!